tw;; ment. death, underage drinking (OH MY GOD WHAT A SIN), the fucking amount of sexual tension

It had been the best school year ever, hands down. Well, teachers were still shitty sometimes, and Nico drowned in homework during finals season, but he was actually happy for, like, 85% of the year.

He had Will to thank for that. Apparently Will was unable to keep himself from talking to people, and by the end of the year, he'd formed a little group of friends, who became, through that weird best friend correlation thing, Nico's friends as well.

Nico and Will had been blessed by the public school system with the same lunch period, and their little booth was soon joined by Percy, Annabeth, and Frank, who were upperclassmen in Will's PE class, and Hazel, a girl in their grade. Hazel's friend Leo, a tiny freshman as short as Nico, showed up a few weeks into the year, and brought his friends Jason and Piper to sit with them as well. Zoe would cut class at her preppy private school and show up to have lunch with them until the security guards caught her in November and started doing annoying as fuck ID checks at all the doors.

Initially, Nico would've rather jumped off a fucking bridge than been in a situation like this one, but he eventually warmed to the idea of having friends (plural!), and even became close enough to Hazel to think of her as a sister.

He still had the same awful, relentless crush on Will, that had annoyingly grown into love, but he was able to deal with it now. Nico could have a normal conversation with Will, he could make eye contact, they could have physical contact, and, yes, that horrible, wonderful burst of butterflies in his stomach happened whenever he saw Will, but he was handling it, for the most part.

And he had to keep handling it, since they were pretty central parts of each other's lives now. They'd spent Christmas and New Year's together, and both of their birthdays. On the anniversary of Will's mom's death, Will insisted that Nico come with to visit her grave, and back at Will's house, they sat in the backyard in a foot and a half of cold-ass snow while Will leaned against Nico and cried silently. They were like family now; Nico definitely loved Will as much as he loved Bianca and his mother, if in a slightly different way.

Nico was actually sort of surprised nobody had found out yet, the extent of his crush. Well, nobody except Hazel. She apparently had noticed the abnormally large amount of time Nico spent staring at Will, and confronted Nico mid-year. Nico grudgingly confirmed her suspicions, effectively making himself Hazel's bitch, as she threatened to tell Will how Nico felt any time he pissed her off (which was quite fucking often). However, she tried about once a week to get Nico himself to confess to Will, and spent the morning of the first day of summer break lecturing Nico on why he should tell Will how he felt.

Nico's dad had gone out of the country on a business trip (maybe to Dubai? Nico never paid much attention), Nico's mom was in the hospital while the doctors tried to get her new meds for the umpteenth time, and Bianca went to Marseille with Brian's family for a week and a half, so the house was wonderfully devoid of adult supervision. Nico and Will and all of them had decided to take advantage of the empty house to have an extremely small nine-person party (it probably should've been called a sleepover, except they weren't in fucking middle school). Hazel, being the solid maternal figure in their group (despite being the youngest?), came over to Nico's house early to set up, since Nico sure as hell wasn't gonna make an effort, and spent a good half hour before anyone showed up perched on Nico's dresser, giving him "advice."

"Tell him," she said. "C'mon, you have to."

Nico was laying on his carpet, looking at the ceiling. "Fuck off. No, I don't. Besides, why bother? He doesn't-"

"You'll never know unless you ask." Hazel bounced her heels against the side of the dresser.

"That's a cliché. And since I know he doesn't like me back, he'll just think I'm creepy and stop being my friend if I tell him. And that's a hell of a lot worse than unrequited love."

Hazel rolled her eyes. "You don't even fucking know for sure; you should just tell him."

Nico sat up. "Did you even hear the last thing I said. HE DOESN'T LIKE ME AND WILL HATE ME FOREVER IF I TELL HIM."

Hazel laughed. "No, he wouldn't, if that were the case, which it's not. You're such a drama queen."

"I swear to God-" Nico started, and froze mid-sentence when his bedroom door opened and Will came in.

"Speak of the devil," Hazel murmured, looking at Nico with a smirk. Nico decided to take a moment to pray to every god he could think of that he and Hazel had been talking quietly enough that Will couldn't have heard them. 

"Did I hear something about Nico being a drama queen?" he said, walking over to Hazel and leaning against the dresser beside her. 

"Guilty as charged," Hazel replied, grinning at him.

"That's what I always tell him." Will grinned. "Great minds think alike."

Nico groaned and laid back down on the carpet. "I can't believe I'm being abused like this in my own home."

"Like I said: drama queen."

"I'll fucking push you down the stairs." Nico shot Will a death glare.

"No, you won't, you love me," Will replied, pushing himself to his feet and heading towards the door.

Hazel made eye contact with Nico and tried to smother her laughter. Nico flipped her off and then got up and followed Will downstairs.

"Have we ordered pizza yet?" Will said over his shoulder to Nico.

"Yep," Hazel said, waving her phone. "Do you think a football-sized one is enough?"

"Are you kidding? Have you seen how much Percy and Zoe eat?" Nico replied, laughing. "Get another regular sized one."

"You all are ridiculous," Hazel complained, sitting down on the bottom stair step to order more food.

.

Eventually, everybody showed up and they found themselves gathered in the front living room around the coffee table, laughing their asses off at Frank's animal impressions. Maybe it was just the Chardonnay Zoe had brought starting to affect him, but Nico could've sworn that when he casually looked over at Will, the other boy had been staring before their eyes met. Nico felt his face go entirely red and he turned back to the conversation at hand, trying to force himself to breathe normally again.

Hazel, of course, had to notice Nico's discomfort and grinned at him across the table. "You guys, this is great, but you know what would be better? Truth or dare."

Nico just about had a heart attack. "No, absolutely not. We can just, like, put on a movie."

"If you say so," Hazel said knowingly, rolling to her feet. 

As they were gathering up empty plates and glasses, Will moved to Nico's side by the sink. "You and Hazel aren't a thing, right?"

Nico resisted the urge to laugh, or kiss Will. "What?!? No. Fucking- no, absolutely not. We're, like, siblings. It would be creepy. Besides-" Nico couldn't resist the urge to smile slightly at him. "-don't you remember me being like 'I'm gay as fuck' when we first met Zoe?"

"Oh, right," Will replied. "Okay, good. That's what I thought."

"What's that supposed to mean?" Nico raised an eyebrow at him.

"Nothing," Will replied, flashing a smile.

.

By about three in the morning, Annabeth and Percy were asleep curled into each other on the floor in front of the TV, and Zoe, Frank, and Leo were passed out on the opposite side of the sofa. Nico, to his simultaneous delight and terror, had been sandwiched between Hazel and Will, until she fell asleep against Frank and Nico was (not unhappily) left alone with Will.

Nico was horribly tired, and eventually gave in to the urge to lean his head against Will's shoulder (obviously in a purely platonic way), and sleep. He'd closed his eyes and was just about to fall asleep when he felt Will's hand against his own, and then their fingers were intertwined. Had Nico not been literally so tired he couldn't open his eyes, he probably would've reacted, but his exhausted brain didn't do anything, and he fell asleep with Will's head against his and his hand encased in Will's, and the warmth from Will's chest radiating off of him and curling into Nico's stomach.

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WELCOME BACK FUCKERS. everybody's favorite inactive solangelo trashcan has returned. hopefully you liked this chapter?? idk what it is?? it's like a beautiful gay-ass trainwreck.

in other news, YURI ON ICE HAS ME GODDAMN SHOOK. i wanna cry every time i think about ep 7. have any of you seen yuri on ice? if so, leave a comment so we can live in the glory of victuri together.

love y'all