Will remembers the night like a dream or a backward hallucination.

It starts in a bar made of low lights and swaying bodies. Lazy disco lights that filter through fingers like something sticky.

The music makes the atmosphere what it is. The band that's performing is just starting out, and Will doubts that anyone in the room is sure of what their name even is, but they fill up the room with their noise. It's a hazy timbre of electronic sound, it breathes and pulses, controls the fibers of everything it touches.

Their lead singer has a voice that's so soothing it turns Will's limbs to waste. He exists only front and center on the stage, crooning, hangs from the microphone like he wouldn't be standing otherwise. He's less dancing to the music and more singing to the dance. His movements control the way the words are breathed from his lips.

Will hasn't been so mesmerized by someone before in his life.

After they finish performing, he finds the melodist at the bar, throwing back a drink and settling it back down onto the counter with a gentle exhale. His lips part slightly, face tilted toward the ceiling and catching a glowing serenade of lights. He's made of everything soft and lovely in that moment.

Will's first words to him can barely be heard over the second band of the night.

"I'd like to know your name."

When this stranger sets his gaze on him, Will feels his fingers go numb. His eyes are just as dizzying as everything else about him. The smile that he offers is enough to jolt into action an earthquake across Will's ribs.

"Nico," He breathes it like a secret. Will leans forward like he wants to hear more, like he has to, and so Nico leans forward too, "di Angelo. Nico di Angelo."

Later, when Nico pulls him into his hotel room, Will whispers it against his thighs, feels fingers twisting into his hair and hears Nico curse and whimper. It's vertiginous, like standing at the edge of a drop-off, watching tiny pieces of earth crumble away and drop into the abyss.

Will kisses every inch of him, shivers and curls his toes at the feeling of Nico's hands moving over him, his breath against his ear, his words the only important thing that exist in that moment. They're all that is.

And afterward, Nico lays in his arms and sings into his hair and then against his neck, and Will tells him that he's beautiful, because he is.

He's not there in the morning.

Will would suspect he dreamt it, but the marks scattered across him prove otherwise.

-

Two years later, Will hears news of Nico's band coming back through town and after arguing with himself for days on end, he gives in to the part that insists he needs this. So, he gets himself a spot front and center in the audience, the place he knows Nico di Angelo comes to life.

He slips onto stage like a shadow, the way he makes his way forward tricks Will's mind into believing that he belongs there, that he's just an extension of the rickety ceiling fans and loose floorboards.

His band is still small enough that a part of Will thinks of him as a secret to be kept from everyone else.

Will watches Nico's fingers curl around the mic stand with such exact fascination that the breathy, "Hey," uttered from above him makes him startle slightly before flicking his gaze upward. Nico stares straight back at him, all eyelashes and tight jeans.

The smirk that works its way onto Nico's face as his band starts in on the first song of the night is dangerous and he practically makes love to the microphone, pulling his hands down it and letting his knees go weak. Will wants to stand in its place, let Nico utter the lyrics onto his lips.

As soon as the performance ends, Nico slips off the stage and lands right in front of Will, drags him into a kiss that's all slow fire and Will's brain blinking out.

That night, they dance against each other for hours and Will tries to memorize the paths his hands take. It's not surprising that he wakes up to find Nico tangled in the sheets next to him. It's also not surprising that he closes his eyes once more and when he opens them again, the other side of the bed is vacant.

-

It becomes habit. Every time Nico's band goes on tour, they find their way back to a certain town huddled off to the side of a city that screams loud enough for the entire world.

There's a point that Nico recalls vaguely, a restless night where it's four a.m. and he's thinking about a boy. A boy that lives all the way across the country. He's wondering how he walks because they've never really been together long enough for Nico memorize something like that, to even pay attention.

Will Solace's hips are the only consistency that Nico knows outside of the band. He knows the shape of him as well as he knows the shape of his guitar and it aches low inside of him, the way nothing else makes him feel quite as whole. So, even when his band is hitting top 40s lists, he gets them into the venue nearest to the boy with the freckles and he utters a cryptic greeting into his microphone when he finally spots him in the crowd, as close to the front as he can get.

Will knows where to find him after every concert. And he does, despite telling himself that he won't, that this is the year he won't find himself trapped in the singer's web.

Nico stands out back next to the trash cans where no one else wants to venture, lazily pulls at a cigarette while he waits. Just like every other time before.

When Will catches sight of him, he frowns. "That's going to kill you one way or another, di Angelo."

Nico just tilts his head back and blows smoke into the night, "I only smoke once a year, Sunshine."

The meaning is clear, but Will is not flattered. "I don't believe that. You could just stand out here."

"That's not nearly as fun." He drops the cigarette and smashes it beneath his boot, creeps up to Will with a look on his face like vengeance flipped upside down, catches his belt loops and drags him closer.

Will sighs, lets their lips find each other in the dark. It's too familiar, Nico's hands slipping beneath his t-shirt.

Nico's kisses tell a story.

His lips are soft and quietly desperate, they caress and move with such care that it feels almost irreverent to breathe and disrupt their dance.

His tongue is pleading, it nudges against Will's lips and slides against the edge of his teeth, he's not afraid of being wounded.

His hands are tragic and tumbling, they don't know where to rest and the shivers across Will's nerves chase them.

Nico di Angelo is a drifter, nothing about him is quite certain, but when he kisses him, Will thinks of rainfall. He remembers sun breaking through clouds. He feels petals across his fingertips, breathes the sweet smell of honey and kicks up clouds of sand.

Nico is a summer breeze, he's always welcome and never there for long.

Will always, always wants him.

So he drags himself away, holds Nico at arms-length, "No."

Nico's expression is more viable then than ever before, "What?"

"Tonight, we're going somewhere. I'm. . . I can't just have you for one night anymore, Nico, I just can't." He face crumbles as he says it and he pulls Nico slowly closer again, but more tender this time, just his hands against Nico's biceps and their foreheads touching.

Nico closes his eyes, they're so close that it would be difficult to just look away. "You know I can't stay."

"I'm not asking you to. I'm just. . ." Will sighs defeatedly, kisses his cheek softly because it's the only way they've communicated for so long, in touches and feeling. He wants to convey: I want so much more of you than what I have.

Nico's breath catches. People are not tender with him, they do not want more, it's always been one-night stands and coiling smirks and emptiness. He's just a thing to be discarded.

But Will has always been different, softer.

He proves it now, nudging his nose against Nico's, pushing hair from his face and muttering a quiet, "Hey," into the wind.

Nico smiles a bit, "Hi."

That makes Will laugh, but then they're quiet again and it's just their breaths and hands against skin and over clothing; tentative.

"We've known each other for years, Nico. And I don't even know your favorite color. I don't think I've even asked. . . I want to talk to you. I want. . . I want to know you. Really know you."

Nico is already nodding, without even thinking it over really, because it's always been what he wants too.

Will lets out a breath, "Where do you want to go?"

Shaking his head, "I can't. . . We can't go somewhere where I'll be seen. I don't want to deal with that tonight, Will."

Will makes a face like he's berating himself for forgetting such a simple thing. "Oh. Yeah, of course. We can. . . Just. . ." He opens his eyes, brushes his fingers over Nico's cheek to get him to do the same, "Come to my place?"

Nico's breath catches. Being invited into Will's home feels symbolic.

"Okay."

Will pulls his jacket off and drapes it over Nico's shoulders instead, pulls the hood up so it shades his face, and then guides him into the parking lot by the hand. Nico keeps his head down and holds his breath when they walk past large groups of people, but Will does his best to guard him from view and no one bats an eyelash.

Will Solace's car is such an obvious reflection of him that Nico laughs. It's an old, red pickup truck. The kind that belongs in the country, trundling over long and serene views of endless hills. Will just shoves him playfully, saying that he can walk if he's going to disrespect his truck, and Nico shakes his head. "No, I just. . . I should have known that you'd own something like this."

The look Will gives him makes Nico's face flush enough to match the car. (It's wondering and awed and lovely.)

Will turns the radio on as soon as he starts driving, and Nico watches as he taps out beats on the steering wheel and sings along off-key, flashing him sideways grins in between verses. It's endearing because he's not quiet about it. This a windows down, all or nothing afair, and Will Solace is giving it his all.

Soon enough, Nico joins in, and Will's voice falters in the second afterward, because it seems almost disrespectful to sing over something that beautiful.

They keep up their chorus all the way to the door, though, even without the radio backing them up. It's all laughter and Nico knocking their shoulders together, trying to shush Will, who's not discouraged in the slightest. He only shuts up when he gets shoved against the door and Nico yanks their mouths together fierce enough to make his heart give out.

"Goddamn," he chokes, and Nico laughs and laughs, pulls the keys out of his weakened fingers and opens the door for them.

Everything between them is as natural as breathing. A small part of Will recognizes that it probably shouldn't be, but he doesn't really care.

They sit on the floor in front of the couch with a vast assortment of junk food and just talk. They find things out about each other that are so mundane it's hardly believable they didn't know before. Suddenly, they're more than just bodies, they have souls.

Nico reaches out and curls his pinky finger around Will's.

"Just come with me. Come on tour with me. I'll stow you away in the bus and we can just be together, you know?" He says it sadly, looking down at their hands. He knows it's not really possible.

Will sighs, "I wish. I wish."

Nico just bites his lip, lets out a shaky breath. "At least promise me that you'll be here. You'll be here."

Will nods. He knows that Nico means: Tell me you won't find someone better.

He lifts his hand a little, pulling Nico's with it, "I pinky promise."

Their laughter fills up the apartment, gives life to the walls, and when Will wakes up the next morning, Nico is curled up with his head in his lap. He closes his eyes once more and when he opens them again, it's because of the soft press of lips against his own.