I carefully push the door towards the kitchen open, my gaze glued on the tiles beneath my shoes. Drew pushes impatiently against my back while rambling on about how we've got to be quick to grab all the ice cubes before they all disappear in Percy's alcohol mash. My fingers dig into the doorframe, the wood chips slowly peeling off under my nails. 

"Come on Di Angelo!" Drew laughs as she grabs both my shoulders to guide me further towards the fridge. 

"You're so boring when you're sober. Do I have to take you to the strip club again and call Olivia?" 

I throw my head back to see her grinning from ear to ear. 

"That was like one time! And I clearly asked for an ice tea not a long island ice tea!" The blush starts spreading over my cheeks again at the memory of it. Drew laughs loudly when she notices.

"From drinking that much alcohol you still seem to remember very vividly." she teases while squeezing one of my cheeks. I slap her hand out of my face with a shy glare. 

"Besides, you should have known that they don't serve lemonades at the strip club." she says. I bury my heated face into my hands while groaning. 

"It's not a lemonade."

"Oh, it sure wasn't." 

I can feel her hands shake with laughter as she leads us around the counter. 

"Hell, I can still see you dancing around that po-"

Her voice abruptly stops. I want to take another step forwards but she quickly pulls me back as if I was going to mindlessly walk into an electric fence. I let my hands slide away from my face and glance at her in confusion. She doesn't speak, she doesn't move, almost as if she turned to stone. Her nails dig so deeply into my shoulders that they almost pierce through my skin. 

"Drew w-what..?"

Her eyes don't waver from the sight before her, completely devouring the impossible image they captured. I follow her gaze. When my eyes land on his posture, I almost stumble back against her. Tripping over my own feet while shaking my head in denial. My lungs collapse in each other and it feels as if someone tried to smash my head with a metal bowling ball.

"H-hi?"

There before us sits the one and only William Solace crouched down next to the fridge with a sandwich in his right hand. His blue eyes sparkling with curiosity and a drip of mayonnaise in the corner of his mouth. My throat pulls itself together, leaving me gasping for the tiniest bit of air. He wipes his mouth clean before laying his sandwich aside and standing back up again. I pull desperately at the brim of my shirt but it still feels as if I'm suffocating. He rubs his hands over each other to make the crumbs fall off his fingers. 

As he notices the both of us still staring at him with gaping mouths, he glances back at the sandwich that he left on the counter.

"Oh my God, I'm so sorry, was that yours?" he asks with a red blush dusting his freckled cheeks.

The world is tumbling around me. Not a word is able to slip past my lips as my eyes glaze over with new tears. 

It feels as if I've been hit by a truck, all too heavy, all too sudden that the anguishing pain sparks like violent electricity through my nerves. 

Hell, I've had beatings that could make my limbs go numb for months, I've cried rivers that made it seem like my eyes would go blind and I've felt heartache that I thought was impossible to feel. And every time I think that; 'this is the most painful thing I'll ever feel in my life.' and every time life decided to prove me wrong.

This was that realisation all over again.

Why is he acting like that? 

Why is he playing games with me?

Does he like rolling the dice, pretending that I'm just a pawn he can keep knocking over?

I stare at him as if I've never seen him before. Because for a moment I'm not sure if I ever did.  Desperately trying to take in every little fold of his existence and for a moment doubting if I'm not simply seeing ghosts again. 

So many emotions bubble up to my throat but not one is able to transform itself into words. I wish I could detangle all those mixed and confusing thoughts from the chaos in my head. My lips stay sealed. I can only stare at him with wide, begging eyes and stay frozen to the floor beneath me. 

Where have you been?

How can you be back?

Why on earth didn't you tell me sooner?!

Everything about him... The way he rolls up his sleeves, to the watch he's still stubbornly wearing on his left wrist, to the smell of his cologne clinging to his checkered shirt...

"A-are you crying? Omg you're crying, he's crying!" Will rambles on as he looks desperately at Drew who still hasn't budged an inch. 

"Dude, I'll make you a new one okay? No worries I'll make the best sandwich you've ever eaten." 

He turns back around to the fridge and crouches down.

Why is he doing this?

Hasn't he hurt me enough?

What use is this little play he's putting up?

"Do you like tomato?" he asks while waving one around in his hand. 

"D-do... do I... do I like tomato?" 

The words feel like heavy metal on my tongue, only with the greatest effort I force them out. Something in Will's posture shifts into nervousness as he visibly sees the muscles in my body stiffen. 

Enough.

"Is this a joke to you?" I hiss out with a cracking voice, "Am I, a joke to you?!" 

Drew flinches slightly away from me. 

The room is spinning around me in a dazzling speed. I can feel the anger soaring through my veins, boiling my blood while the echo of that painful throbbing in my chest beats louder and louder between my ears. 

"Nico." Drew warns sharply as her hand clenches around my upper arm. She keeps coming back into my vision, her dark eyes demanding to be stared back at but I roughly shrug her off. 

"Nico calm down!" 

Will only eyes me cautiously as he gets back up again. His hand still lingering on the handle of the fridge.

"Look man, it seems like you had quite the shitty day and I'm not here to make it worse for you. I'm sorry about your sandwich but it was an accident, okay?" 

He holds his hand out to shake as the everlasting peace maker he always tries to be. 

"Friends again?" 

He cocks his head to the side a bit in that adorable puppy manner of his. This time however I don't think it's that adorable anymore. If anything, I'd gladly knock it off his shoulders now. 

"accident?" I choke out, the headlines of the newspapers still ghosting through my head. My screaming that had bounced off the walls when the newsreader had announced his name over live television. I had punched the screen until my knuckles bled, until glass shards shattered at my feet, until the cracks made purple and yellow flashes before the image fell out. With bruised hands I had yanked it out of its wires and thrown it into the wall, over and over, as if the outcome would change if I punched it hard enough, as if the light would flicker back on and a different name would be said.

any name,

my name,

just not his. 

Percy and Jason had stormed into the room and had wrapped me up in their embraces, dragging me away from my mess. I kept kicking and screaming until I went limp in their arms and that was the start of a tear flood that I know now, wouldn't stop for weeks. 

But it was an accident right? Nobody to blame except me. 

"Are you going to shake my hand or do I have to hold it out for another five minutes?" 

He raises his eyebrow impatiently, a small smirk playing around his lips. Drew squints her eyes tightly closed as she anxiously massages her temples. Wrong choice of words.

Will glances down at my bruised fingers that roll themselves up into fists, the bobble on his throat going down when he swallows at the sound of cracking knuckles. 

"Nico..." 

Drew's voice is a begging whisper now. 

After an endless year of suffering and abandonment he's not going to march into the kitchen and eat my fucking sandwich as if he didn't left for a year, as if we're two strangers meeting for the first time. If he wants to play stubborn and I have to knock the memory back into that heated brain of his, I'll gladly will. 

He's not going to play with my heart like that again.

Because to be completely, blandly honest; there's not fairly much left to play with anymore.

His eyes keep glancing down at my purple fingers, a nervous twitch at the corner of his mouth. I take in a deep breath before closing my eyes for a second. Drew already takes a step back, knowing what will come and unable to stop the hurricane she let in through the front door. When I open them again, his deeply blue irises are already staring back at me.

"Will Solace, I'm gonna beat your ass." 

The last thing I saw before lunging at the boy before me was the widening of his eyes. 

Then everything went to hell. 

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Some angsty shit right there, Will just want his sandwich guys.

What do you guys prefer; short chapters more updates( like this one) or longer chapters but less updates? let me know!

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