"Mom this is Nico."

"Nice to meet you Nico, I'm Joana."

I clutch the cup of water tightly in my hand. I can still feel her blue eyes on me, filled with regret and sadness but not the slightest hitch came through her voice.

She lied for me.

And she didn't even had to think twice about it.

"What's wrong?"

Wills disappointed gaze finds mine.

"I just have to go, I'm sorry." 

I squeeze my eyes tightly closed. my shaking hand makes the water in the cup slosh around and I sigh deeply. 

"Look at you," 

from the other side of the room, Nath comes walking in with a little pill box in his hand.

"I warned you that seeing Will would harm you but you went anyways." His face mimics something close to compassion but his glittering, green eyes betray his true intents. 

"I tried to keep you safe, to not let that messed up mind of yours get even more wrecked and look at you now."

He pulls the chair next to me backwards with a scraping sound. He smiles warmly at me and I shiver.

"Ignoring my advice."

he clicks his tongue.

"Being all upset and hurt."

He leans in towards me, his lips almost brushing my ear. Goosebumps cover every inch of my skin as he hovers there for a moment.

"Feeling ill."

I startle as he slams the pillbox on the table. His gaze bores through my skull as he leans back in his own chair. 

I keep my mouth shut as I watch him with endlessly dark eyes. 

"And it all could have been avoided."

His hand reaches for a black strand that has fallen before my face. He hums while tugging it gently back behind my ear. 

"If only you would have just..." I wince as his nails glide over my cheek, "listened." His eyes trail hungrily down to my mouth.

The word hangs breathlessly between us before Nathan kisses his command on my lips. The warmth that his touch usually brings with it, is gone. I lean in in a desperate attempt to find the pleasant heat again and he grins against my lips. Another cold shiver wrecks through my body, this time however it's from a whole different fever.

He abruptly pulls back, leaving me hanging with an even bigger emptiness than ever before. 

"Is he hurting you? Nico is he hurting you?" 

From far away, Joana's words whisper in my ear. The way she had pulled me to the side when Will went upstairs and the desperate yet always so gentle way she had gripped my arms was all too painful and familiar. 

"No, are you mad?!"

I had hissed back in a whisper-shout but my words felt like merely a breeze that flew past her head.

"I haven't seen you in forever. Did he ask you to stop visiting me? Does he know you're here?" 

I turned my head away from her soft blue eyes, wishing more than ever that Will would just storm down the stairs and save me from the truth.

"Look at me Nico!" The shock of the harshness in her voice must have shown in my eyes because her face fell down as if the very walls we were standing next to crumbled to ash before her feet.

"He is." 

I shook my head desperately but the terror was already readable on her face.

"Joana you're wrong."

Her eyes darted all the way over me, again and again. Searching manically for a damage that for her eyes wasn't there.

"Don't lie."

"I'm not."

Her grip tightened on me.

"Nicolas Di Angelo, don't lie to me."

At that point it was just automatism as I shook my head and kept my expression blank.

"I'm not, I promise."

Layers and layers of cloths, lies and makeup would make sure that her eye would never find what it was searching for.

She pulled back the collar of my shirt a little bit. Quickly taking in every inch of the seemingly  unblemished skin she could find before I could have the chance to swat her away. 

I didn't budge anyways. Drew's primer was spread out all over my collar bones and that stuff could stick through an apocalypse. 

Doubt clouded her sky blue eyes before her hand slowly released me, hovered above my arms for a little bit and then with one swift movement fell to her sides again.

Before me Nathan and the kitchen table evaporate into thin air. A daze of the clouded memory washes back over me and all at once I'm standing behind the corner of the living room with Joana again. The memory growing louder and brighter in colour as it continues to play before my eyes.

"Are you absolutely sure he isn't harming you?"

A flash of fear sparks through me as I feel myself falling into the blackness of her pupils. 

"One hundred percent." 

My voice is barely above a whisper.

She bites her bottom lip so hard that a drip of blood taints her teeth.

"I'm sorry Nico. "

She blinks back the wetness lingering in her glazed over eyes.

"I've just missed you so much."

She tries a shaky smile and my gut clenches. 

"just didn't expect to lose both sons, that's all." 

If I had eaten that morning, I'm sure, whatever was left in my stomach would have rolled back up my throat at the absolute pain in those words. I could feel that loaded statement pierce though my form until it physically hurt me.

"Joana..."

She waves away my hurt expression with another smile.

"I'm sorry, I'm getting over sentimental," She wipes a lost tear off her cheek, "As usual."

She chuckles quietly before her face distorts back to its full seriousness. For a moment neither of us speak as the air fills itself with unsaid apologies. I look up, trying to get rid of the burning feeling prickling under my eyelids.

Lying to Joana... 

Rockbottom has an elevator down, hasn't it?

Her smooth hand glides over the side of my cheek in a motherly gesture to comfort me. I wish I could smile back at her but everything inside of me is just so terribly empty. Her hand slides down and stays on my shoulder, light as ever.

"Will had been such a wreck the weeks he came back, he was completely lost and confused. And then... and then one day he came home smiling." She chokes up in a mingle of tears filled with happiness and tears loaded with agony, 

"And I just knew he had found you again."

"Drink this."

With a loud splash Nathan drops an aspirin in my glass. The fog clears out of my head as I watch the tiny bubbles stream out of the yellow pill. Joana's voice is now nothing more than a whisper of what could have been a horrifying dream.

"I-I've already taken a pill." 

Nathan ignores me as he shoves the glass a bit closer towards my huddled form.

"This one is for your headache." 

When I still don't make a move to lift up the glass before me, he takes my hand and wraps it in my fingers. 

"I know how to take care of you, remember?" 

His eyes refuse to leave mine. All my thoughts are so scattered over the place that I nod.

"You do." 

He smiles while tapping his nail against the glass. The sound seems to echo all around me. As I gently lift the glass off the table, completely hypnotised by the dissolving pill, I can't help but wonder;

Is this what going mad feels like?

For a moment I hesitate as the cold surface clatters lightly against my teeth. 

"You'll feel better, I promise."

I look to my side to see Nath's eyes gleam like a cheshire cats. His calm voice is all I need to close my eyes and tilt the glass backwards.

It probably is.

-----------------------------

- Will -

All there is, is the sound of his breathing and the distant noise of the wind blowing through the pine trees. He stares at the ceiling above his bed, following with his eyes the same old lines as always before rolling over onto his stomach with a strangled groan.

That was the third dream he has had about Nico and he's fairly sure by now that it won't be the last one.

He buries his face defeatedly into the mattress. 

"Get out of my head."

Blond curls fall over his face as he rolls himself into a ball. 

It had been so simple.

Just him and Nico studying together in the library at a school he doesn't know or his mind had made up. Turning pages, him watching the Italian frown at his text book and eating skittles as if they've been doing it for years. 

It was perfect.

And it wasn't his.

He sighs deeply while wallowing in his misfortune.

"Only you could manage to get a crush on the most impossible person in the world." 

He grumbles in himself as he abruptly pushes himself upwards. The morning rays wait eagerly behind the curtain to flood the room but Will turns his head from it, denying the beginning of a new day, denying that yearning feeling gnawing at his chest.

"I'm not in love with him."

He reaches for his laptop before propping himself up against his bed with pillows. His hand rests on the laptop.

"I'm not, in love with him." He keeps mumbling that same sentence like a mantra.

The laptop opens and the sound of a Skype call fills the silent room. The screen shifts before revealing the smiling face of Steve with his neatly combed, purple hair. 

"Hey handsome, how are you doing? You seem tired."

Steve's crackly voice is almost physically painful to his still half sleeping brain. All wires seem to have cut lose in Will's mind. He tries to form words but only one sentence sticks like a chewy piece of candy in his mouth. 

He tries to stop it.

He can't.

"I'm in love with him."

--------------------------------

- Octavian- 

Octavian listens fearfully to the all too familiar voice slithering out of his phone.

"I've heard that you gave our little doctor a job on the side in the Roman Room."

Octavian blinks away the itching dryness in his eyes. It's as if he forgot how to function, as if he has to command his body to breath.

"Why not? He lost his memory and I could use the help."

The caller clicks his tongue in disapproval.

"Tavie, Tavie, you really want it all don't you?"

He stays silent. 

"I want the equipment of doctor Solace at my door before tomorrow, understood?"

"But-"

He shushes him abruptly.

"No buts, or do you rather have your name in the newspaper with an article explaining how precisely you got that promotion for the Roman Room?"

The caller laughs at the telling silence that follows.

"That's what I thought."

Octavian wipes away the pearls of sweat that are beaming on his forehead. 

"Don't be late Tavie, you don't want to keep me waiting."

And with that the loaded sound of a beeping phone rings in his ear.

It almost slips out of his hands as he pushes it back in his pocket.

"Oh God, oh God, what have I done."

His hands wipe through his sweaty face.

"I don't want to do this anymore."

He shakes his head to himself.

"I have to, I have to for the sake of the Roman Room, I have to."

He covers his own mouth as he realises the weight of the choice he's about to make.

No one told him when he met Nathan Miller a year and half ago that he was about to make a deal with the devil.

----------------------------

Oh boy, I'm supposed to be studying for my exams but no I'm writing this fReAkIng story.

I just love this whole setting so much.

leave a vote for my pain xx

thanks.

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P.s shout out to @solangelo-is-my-otp for the super gorgeous cover that was made for this book, crazy talented and I'm super thankful!!