Will

I stand here lost on the street with my sneakers on the coarse pavement. Watching as cars slide by on the bridge to the highway, their headlights two glowing eyes slicing through the darkness of the upcoming night. I wander between lampposts and cherish the warmth of my hands in my pockets. 

I'm trying to tell you all about this love story. Pull the fragments of happiness and sorrow together and weave it into a whole. But that's not a love story, that's life. 

I guess what I'm trying to say underneath the early twinkling of the first evening stars, is that people can only view love as love when it isn't theirs. When it's an untouched concept where they and only they can be the creators of, when it's a movie scene they can swoon for, a song with only the perfect words, or an instagram couple who never posts about the failures they've endured together. 

Beware for the years to come because no matter how carefully you've locked your idea of love up in a neatly painted wooden box, it will not stay untouched. 

It will deform.

It'll bruise.

It'll break.

And you'll want it even more. 

What about the tale of happiness and sorrow? I hear you think as you walk along the road next to me.

Well,

It's kind of like being frozen in the winter. Every breath that escapes your chattering teeth turns into fog before your eyes. As you're curled up into a ball of strained muscles, your brain thinks;

I'll never be warm again!

That's sorrow. 

It's impossible to believe your veins will stop sloshing ice water through your limbs as your lips turn purple before your very own eyes.

But then summer arrives and sweat trickles down the back of your neck. You pull at the collar of your shirt to let the heat escape through the thin cloth. 

And guess what.

You're no longer cold.

I want you to think about that next time your toes are freezing off.

I smile to myself. What else would I do when I look back at the story Nico and I struggled through? If you know all the hardship we've endured was as temporary as the defrosting of another blue winter. 

Sure, good times come and go as well.

But thank God they do. How else can we feel happiness if sorrow doesn't exist? It only makes us long harder for the golden summer and will warm our heart even more so when we stand into the heat of its rays once more. 

Come and go as seasons may,

I know my Nico will always stay. 

So I look up at the roaring airplane soaring through the sky and let my heart ache with an emotion I've never felt before. 

I got all these words inside of me.

All these scenes and tales I wish I could tell you. 

But putting feelings into words doesn't do them justice. I guess I can only walk silently besides you and let you feel them with me. 

Most stories start with a beginning,

Nico and mine however started with an ending. 

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

When I awoke beneath the piercingly clean white lights of my hospital room, my mind was as blank as the void it had left behind the time Octavian had dragged me and my drug induced brain off a highway. 

No matter how hard my head had slammed into the sharp edges of the rumble of the old ICUT building, no floating memories of a past life with Nico filtered through the gaps. The year I was presumably down in my coffin, was a year I would never get back if only in a few unrecognizable  flashes of places that made my skin crawl with familiarity. 

What did hit me after ten seconds of sluggishly blinking up at a smooth mint green ceiling was the horrified feeling that flooded my senses before I last had closed my eyes. 

Nico.

Alone. In the mercy of Nathan's psychotic mind. 

I forgot the way oxygen was supposed to move into my lungs and bolted upright with the frantic beeping of the heart monitor next to me. Blurry faces rushed to my bed. 

First the iron grip of my mother's fingers around my hand. Squeezing so hard she might have broken every knuckle I have, and second the wide cried out eyes of Nico boring into mine. 

The drumming of my heartbeat slowed down. 

"William are you alright?"  My mom's voice cut through the haze of my thoughts. 

I couldn't answer. Could only stare at him. 

He looked completely broken to the core of his existence, paler than the stainless white curtains by the window, more exhausted than I've ver known him as dark bags clung beneath his muddy eyes. 

The mischievous twinkle they usually contained, dulled into nothingness. It was scarier than waking up with a frenzied Nathan next to my couch. 

"Nurse!" My mom called frantically as I failed to respond in five seconds. 

"My chest hurts." was all I could give her as that one dominant thought circled around in my morphine clouded brain. I winced as I struggled my way up into a sitting position. My mom's face snapped my way before gripping my head into her pink painted nails as she started kissing me all over. 

"Oh thank God, oh thank God, oh thank God!" she kept gasping between lipstick pecks. 

All the while Nico stood there on wobbling legs, hands clasped onto the railing of my bed, mouth hanging open but not a word coming out. 

"Mom you're hurting me!" I complained as she refused to pull away. I tried to reach out my hand for Nico to take but he stared at it as if it was going to burn away his flesh at the touch. His dead eyes found mine.

"You know I love you right?" He croaked out so suddenly it sucked the air right out of my lungs. 

"So much." His fingers gripped tighter around the cold steel. For a moment I feared he was going to topple into my bed but he regained his balance. 

He shook his head, making greasy black bangs fall into his hollowed out face. 

I remember the way my whole body ached for his embrace while fearing it at the same time. 

"And I thought I wouldn't be able to ever tell you that again."

A tear slid down his cheek at the cracking of his small voice. His eyes never left mine.

"Neeks..." 

I didn't have the chance to finish as he basically flew himself on top of me. His arms snaking so tight around my body, you might have thought he was trying to hug water. His whole body shook with tremors of sobs. 

"If you ever, ever, dare doing that again..." he gritted out between hiccups. 

I closed my eyes while laying my head on top of his. 

"I'm sorry," I whispered as my fingers glided over the loss of fat around his ribs. 

"I can't take it another time, I can't... I can't," he gasped out of breath before more tears spewed from his eyes. 

The longer I held him, the harder my chest started to throb from a second hole in my chest. 

The first time he lost me,

I was never there to witness the atrocity Nathan had pulled him through. I wasn't even aware someone in the world was bawling his eyes out from the idea of no longer being able to share his Spotify playlists with me, of throwing popcorn at my mouth while watching teenage junk movies or walking hand in hand on the beach. My spot was empty and I had not the faintest clue I was supposed to fill it.

This time however,

I held the aftermath of my self-inflicted tragedy in my arms and boy, was it a heavy weight to carry. Nico was not even half the boy I left behind anymore. The moment I shifted him upwards to hug him closer, his frail form felt thinner than ever in my grasp. He whimpered at the movement, his hands anxious to keep holding on to me. 

We wrecked him.

Nathan and I,

we officially wrecked him. 

As if reading my thoughts, my mom laid a gentle hand on my shoulder right when I was about to speak, "We both been... very worried about you Will. Nico however," she winced at the consideration of her own words, "lost it a bit." 

"I didn't," Nico interjected from on top of me. With shaking limbs he tore himself away from me like a magnet who had to fight against the draw of another field. I immediately reached for his arm to pull him back while looking up at him with confused warm eyes. 

"I didn't," he assured us again, voice a bit firmer this time. I gave him a wary smile.

Nico's lip started trembling at the sight of it, a new load of tears filled his eyes. He furiously rubbed his hand raw against his face as he tried to mask the plunging of salty drips on my bedsheets. 

"I thought I'd lost you again." his voice a quiet squeak. More sobs wrecked themselves through his throat. 

"I can't lose you... I can't..I-I" His breaths rushed quicker and quicker through his chest.

"Neeks. Nico."

 I felt his arm go boneless in my grasp.

"Nico, I'm right here, hey!"

I tried to pull him back onto the bed, wincing at the sharp sting in my side. One last raspy breath slithered over his lips before his legs gave out beneath him. He passed out against the bed before sliding down onto the floor into the arms of a nurse who just arrived. My heart monitor skyrocketed, frantic beeping throbbing between my ears. My mom's chair scraped over the linoleum floor as she hurried to help.

It stung terribly to have to lay back and watch the scene go down, unable to help.

"I've got him don't worry," the nurse said as he scooped him up into his arms while giving me an apologetic smile, "it was bound to happen, I'm surprised he lasted this long. I advised him to go home countless of times but he always flat out refused."

"That sounds like him, yeah."

Mom gripped my hand tighter. 

The road to recovery was a rocky path to take. Long for as far as I could peer at it and sometimes far too slippery than I would've liked. 

The moment I was safe back home in the comfort of my own bed, swimming in pillows and sheets, Nico's fever broke through at a terrifying full force. No longer paranoid about my health, his body finally crept up with its own. For two full days he had been sitting in my lap like a violently shivering rag doll. Sweat plastering his hair against his forehead and dripping down the base of his neck... Whenever he tried to change my bandages with trembling fingers and a swimming heavy head, I wrapped my hands around his wrists and pulled him on top of me. Sometimes he'd get back up with a panting chuckle, other times his body surrendered itself to the softness of feathered sheets and he didn't find the strength within himself to get back up for a few hours as he fell asleep to the steady pounding of my heart. 

The good news was, if he was resting, he wasn't fussing about me.

The bad news was, I couldn't chase him around anymore if he wasn't.

It was on a bleak Tuesday morning when the blueness of the upcoming day hung solemnly behind the trees of the forest, that an unresponsive Nico laid like a trembling angel against my side. No amount of shaking or calling out his name awoke him from the death grip his fever had on him.

My bedsheets radiated from his heat. 

Nathan's inflicted trauma had nestled in Nico's body like an ulcer, unable to sweat it out. The whispers slipping past his lips were cries in the form of my name. 

When he opened his muddled eyes after three terribly long minutes of a lividly beating heart in my throat, only strings of confused babbling came out.

"You're not real. You're not real, you're dead."

If seeing him fading before my eyes didn't break me, those words surely did. 

It took me five seconds to ring Percy up who appeared in my doorframe with Sally by his side. Against the scared sobs of Nico, they were able to peel him off me and buckle him up in the back seat of Percy's pick-up. 

Time crawled by past that point. 

Sally cut him off entirely from the world that right then, was too heavy for Nico's own good. 

Which meant;

No calls.

No messages.

No Will.

He couldn't heal if the sight of me kept throwing him back into another nightmare. 

The minute I was able to get out of my bed, I threw on my jacket and sneakers and walked all the way to Sally's house. 

Two months had dragged on. Nathan Miller had been accused of more sinister terms than Nico had ever dared speaking of. The cards were not shuffled in his favour and his dad's head was next on the chopping board. Annabeth's mom, Athena, my lawyer, made sure of it.

The boy who spotted me on the driveway from where he sat on the little balcony was everything I ever imagined Nico would have looked like the first time we fell in love. 

"Shouldn't you be resting in bed?!" 

He called out with a dazzling smile. The sun shone in his brown eyes. Golden rays circled around his pupils and lit up a faint tan skin. His messy hair had faded from sun damage into a lighter hue, could even be considered to be coffee brown if you looked at it from the right angle. And if you drank the bitter brew with painfully little milk in it. My mouth dropped open. 

As my feet hurried closer, I decided, the only God I would pray to for the rest of my life is Sally Jackson.

"I could ask you the same, you know?!" I yelled back. He looked down gleefully. I had to force my head into my shoulders to gaze up at the edge of the steel balcony. 

"I'm feeling fine!" 

I squinted against the bright midday light. For once believing every word of it. 

"How did your skin get so tan that quickly?!" 

He snorted as he crouched down to wring his legs through the two bars. 

"I'm Italian Will!"

"What?!" I yelled back with my hands cupped around my mouth.

"I said; I'm Italian!"

"What?!" I taunted again while gesturing at my ear. Nico rolled his eyes at my grin.

"You're still a pain in the ass I see!"

I blew a kiss his way. His legs wiggled back and forth, slightly swaying in the wind as a sweet smile curled around his lips. 

"Percy took me swimming again," he said as he noticed me gazing at the light strands of hair, "I guess I spent a tad too much time in the sun." 

I looked at him silently as I let his words fill me with an aching joy that itched in my chest. The image of him splattering around in the pool of the Half-Blood House again like he used to was such a foreign idea that left me as equally hollow as happy.

"You know if you really don't like it, I can still dye it purple?!" he teased, barely able to keep his laugh out of his words as he shouted back at me through the wind. 

I stared at him until my eyes started to water, from pure joy, the prickling of sunlight or the glorious mix of both. 

"I still can't hear you!" 

Nico's chuckle bounced off the apartment walls. For a while the both of us just gazed at each other as a mild breeze ruffled through Nico's hair. 

"You're coming or what?!" Nico shouted with a nod to the rusty stairs beneath him.

"I'll go get the elevator!" 

"What?" he cheekily cocked his head to the side, "you're scared you're going to fall off grandpa?!"

"No, falling off stairs is your speciality!" I yelled back without missing a beat. Nico threw a paper cup down at me but I dodged it with a laugh. 

"I'm going to built a shrine for Sally," I mumbled under my breath as I yanked the handle of the heavy door open. 

-----------

"When will he come visit me?"

His orange jumper pulled tight around his shoulders. His hand clenched around the cold red telephone as his light eyes teared up under the sickly white lights.

I stayed silent as a hateful tear slipped down his cheek.

"When is he coming Will?!"

He banged his shaking hand against the thick glass, making a dull clang vibrate between us. I sat unmoving. 

His fingers strained harder around the silent phone as he squeezed his eyes closed. Nathan buried his scrunched up face into the palm of his hand. His shoulders shocked up and down as sobs flowed through him.

"The jury has found Nathan Lucas Miller guilty as charged for abuse of a minor," my own monotone voice announced to the silence. My eyes trailed further down over the neat paper in my hands. 

"Guilty for destroying state property and tampering with state evidence."

One slit of a green eye peered back at me. My voice sounded distorted in my own ears. Nathan quickly wiped the last trails of tears off his meager face.

"Guilty for blackmailing and stalking Octavian Augustus Servio."

My messy handwriting danced in a blur on the white paper. Nathan's lip pulled up in a snarl, still his trembling hand was unable to lay the phone down. Forcing himself to take in the words another time. Terrible as it was, I was the only company he had had for over months.

"Guilty for the attempted murder on Nicolas Di Angelo in the second degree."

"Stop it," he hissed with closed eyes.

"Guilty for the attempted murder of William Solace in the first degree."

"Stop it!" he screamed as his fist hammered against the smudged glass. A guard took a step forwards. With heavy breaths Nathan drooped back down into his chair while raising his hands up in surrender. 

A cruel smile ghosted my lips. For a minute neither of us spoke as the verdict hung heavily between the both of us. Nathan's eyes turned glossy from hate. He picked up the phone again, his words were strained into a calm he didn't possess. 

"I heard it the first time in court. Don't need you echoing it in here another time."  

I leaned back into my chair with a content sigh. 

"I know." I twirled the curly plastic wire between my fingers, "But when the jury convicted you with these claims I just had to write them down. You see, every time I read them to myself, happy chemicals flood my brain."

Nathan ignored my biting remark and glanced back at the door behind me, endlessly waiting for a boy who would never walk in.

"He's not coming " I said. 

Nathan didn't budge. 

"You asked," he noticed. 

I sourly bit down on my bottom lip, not able to deny it. 

"Yes."

When he sat on the couch with a pillow locked in his embrace, staring at the wall before him as I told him the verdict of the trail. I asked him once. He shook his head and hugged the cushion a bit closer to his chest. 

"They're going to put him in the chair Neeks." I told him.

"Good." was all he answered. 

I didn't dare telling Nico how Nathan asked after him every day I visited him. I wanted him to forget something unforgettable. I wanted his mind to swallow that entire chunk of trauma down into a void with no memories. Maybe that is why I sat every evening face to face with Nathan Miller, to hush the gnawing feeling inside of me, to gloat before his eyes in the reality that he'll never get past these stupid seven inches of thick plexiglass. 

"You know, in my mind he's always smiling." Nathan's voice cracked happily. His lashes gathered a new wetness. 

"And it's funny because he never did anymore." 

He chuckled hollowly. His breath made a strand of sand brown hair flutter up into the air. 

"I guess that's how memories work... You try to make the perfect one in the moment and if you don't succeed, your mind does it for you." 

There was something in the way a smile overtook his sad face that made my gut clench. Whatever emotion flickered in those treacherous eyes of his, I couldn't name it in a million years. 

"Here he's always happy," Nathan said as he ticked against the side of his head, "he sits in the chair where you sit and asks me how my day went."

"You're mad."

Not a question.

"Madly in love," he said with a sharp smile. Tears streamed out of his red eyes without ending, "it's a disease Will."

"Well you'll be cured soon enough when those volts of electricity fry through your body."

Nathan's hand formed into a fist.

"It doesn't matter," he said softly, "long after I'm gone, he'll remain mine. He's in my heart, I'm in his head and neither of us are leaving."

"Well I am."

I folded the paper back into a square while keeping the phone locked between my shoulder and ear before stuffing it away in my pocket.

"In fact, I am walking out of that door into the fresh air of another glorious evening and never coming back to this place again."

I shoved my chair backwards and got up to my two feet. Nathan's face twisted with desperation and rage. 

"because Nico is waiting for me, he cooked his special pasta dish, so I got places to be." 

Nathan jumped up right. 

"don't you dare," he sneered. 

I ignored him as I cocked my head in a challenging way to the side. 

"Oh almost forgot to tell you. We caught your dad."

Nathan's eyes grew larger than the green meadows.

"His trail starts next week."

With that I hung the phone back into its place and ignored the soundless screams of Nathan on the other side. His face red and teary. His hands pounded against the glass before a guard came rushing to drag him back to his cell.

From the corner of my eye I could see his lips hatefully mouthing my name, his legs kicking in every direction...

I turned around.

And did exactly what I said I would do. 

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

"You come here often stranger?"

I look up from where I had been kicking against pebbles on the road to a smiling Nico with his arms crossed over each other. 

"You came looking for me?" I ask while coming to a stop only a few inches away from his face. He stays quiet. A smirk pulls at the corner of my lips as I lay my hands on his hips, "you so did, you were fussing over me, admit it." 

He rolls his eyes up to the sky but can't help smiling wider.

"don't flatter yourself. You were gone for a while and I didn't want my pasta to turn cold."

He hooks his arms around my neck.

"You're right on time, I was already planning on eating all of it myself," he muses.

I give him a look of sheer terror, "Oh you bastard!"

He smiles against my lips as he steals a swift kiss.

When he pulls away, his eyes dart down to the street, "you two had a lot to discus apparently."

I cup his face into my hands and force his chin upwards.

"Nico it's all over now, alright. Don't worry. You know that was the last time I visited him." 

His big brown eyes look back at me full of doubt and hope. 

"Was it?" he asks in a small voice.

I gently lean down to place my lips onto his. Nico melts in my hold and I can't help the sparks that flare up in my stomach as he deepens our kiss. 

"It is. Trust me," I pant as he pulls back all too soon. 

I wipe away some strands that have fallen before his eyes as a gorgeous smile graces his face. 

"It's the end of that horrible chapter," I say. 

Nico sways us a bit back and forth, arms still locked around my neck, "well it was not all that bad," he says as his eyes dart up to the sky, "I mean how horrible can a chapter be with you in it?"

A warm feeling threatens to overflow from the pit of my stomach. I grin stupidly before he bursts out into a laugh. 

"You're blushing so bad!" 

I press him so close against my chest, he nearly suffocates in my shirt from laughing. 

"Stop flirting with me the pasta is getting cold," I say with flaming red cheeks. 

Nico wrestles himself out of my hold, careful to not hit the scar on my side. 

"Well let's eat some pasta then," he says as he slaps his hand dramatically into mine.

"And then?" I ask.

"And then," he echoes as he already pulls me further down the street, "then I'll show you some of my cheerleader tricks."

I let him lead me over the coarse road, my smile broadening from one ear to the other. Heat prickles underneath the skin of my cheeks. 

He looks back at me with twinkling eyes.

"Let's write that right happy ending now, would we?"

My heart beats painfully fast in my chest.

"I'd love to," I answer softly, "but... I'm still going to eat your delicious pasta first."

"Not if it's all gone by then." Nico challenges. 

"Oh bring it on deathboy!"

I break out into a sprint, dragging a brightly laughing Nico along with me. 

From a tiny window of one of the houses we run past, an old lady chuckles to the pigeons on the windowsill. 

"He fixed it," she grins gleefully and pulls the curtains closed.