"You've got to be kidding me!"

Nico di Angelo was not a tolerable person to begin with, okay?

He was snippy and rude on his best days, and not too many people caught him on his worse days and lived to tell the tale. (Okay, that was dramatic, but the point is still there).

He constantly made people want to punch him in the face with all the gloominess that he simply fucking seemed to radiate, which also sort of put a halt to any and all attempts to be friends with the guy. Nico simply was just an ass, and today, he was assier than usual.

It all started when he woke up, honestly. He hadn't been particularly encouraged to go to work today, even though it was the only thing keeping him on his own feet right now, besides his sister. Hazel Levesque was a brilliant and beautiful girl, and Nico loved her to bits, but damn, she needs to know when to end a call. He was up 'till three am last night with her, and he ended up falling asleep on the phone anyway.

So when he woke up on the ass-crack of dawn, drooling on his phone, he wasn't happy. He was tired as fuck, and still frazzled from last night (see: three hours ago). He felt like shit, so now he was absolutely delightful, of course!

Haha, no way.

Not many sane people would want to go to work after three hours of sleep (granted, not many sane people stayed up so late that they only got three hours of it) only to have to handle loud and annoying customers. Customers that, bless their hearts, demanded their coffee to be reheated, because oh, it's two degrees below boiling, and I can only drink boiling coffee, and to try to convince people that no, Starbucks is most definitely not a good place to have a video-call interview, and worst of all, to be nice and tolerable during all of it. It was enough to put anyone on the grumpy side, to say the very least.

But Nico had pulled himself up anyway, and quickly dressed himself. He'd washed his face, brushed his teeth, run that little amount of eyeliner under his eyes; the usual morning routine. Because at this time, it had been usual enough, so, like usual, he was looking forward to a nice cup of coffee that would burn his mouth and settle over him like a warm, energised, terrible blanket.

Yeah, life had other plans. Because, today, it had decided to fuck Nico over – and not in the good way, either.

His only bottle of milk just happened to out of date, which had been annoying, but he could get around that. It just meant his coffee would be a little hotter and sharper, no biggie. So he'd thrown the bottle out, pinching his nose from the smell, and went to make his delicious, lovely beverage.

Then, oh, of course, his coffee machine refused to work. He'd hit it, unplugged it, turned it onandoffandonandoff, and had even just pleaded with it, with false hope that it would somehow work. He eventually had to give up when he had hit it so hard that his palm reddened, and the stupid machine started making some sort of sharp beeping noise, that could've been Morse code, or a warning signal, or a bomb counting down – quite possibly all three.

So, he'd given up. No coffee for him today, that was all. It's not the end of the world. It's not that bad... right?

Let it be repeated: no way.

Because Nico di Angelo needed his coffee. It was what kept him running after wasting his night on tumblr, and then wasting his morning on the phone with his amazing sister, and then going to deal with the people of New York City. Most of the time, coffee was what he looked forward to, because it was like a miracle worker. It kept him up, it kept him awake and energised, it made him tolerable, and it made life a little less bland tasting – if only for a while.

It was one of the reasons why he worked at the shitty Starbucks down the street from Hazel's place, one of the many, many ones in this great, smelly-ass city. Coffee was one of the reasons why he almost always smelt of the beans and grounds of it, and it was the reason why he has had not one, or two, but three different coffee machines in his apartment.

Most of all, he needed his coffee, because generally, he wasn't a complete arse if he had caffeine in his system. Generally, he was as falsely nice as he could get, if he had coffee. Generally, he could deal with all that stuff that life is, if he had coffee.

He loved his coffee – but he hadn't had any.

So nothing was there to help him stop and think. Nothing was there to reign in his explosive anger that his ADHD caused. Nothing was there to keep him from getting out of his car to scream at the person that had just crashed into the back of it.

It was a shitty old car that was rusted in some places and annoyingly more pink than the red his sister said it was, but it was still his car. Even though it sometimes seemed like it would fall apart any second, it got him around, it got him to his job and to the store, which were the only places he really went these days, besides Hazel's place.

And now it was completely scraped up, the bumper of it almost unrecognisable as his car through the bent and scratched metal. It looked worse than it really was, but it was still something that left Nico throwing down his last straw.

He gritted his teeth, closing his door in a way that could definitely have been less cruel, and surveyed the damage with a hard expression, like he was judging the car itself for getting beaten up. He didn't know how much money it would take to repair, but he did know that he didn't have that kind of money just to hand out. It'd have to come out of his college money, or he won't have a car full stop. God fucking damn it, di Angelo, why didn't you get insurance?

He cursed in rushed, slightly slurred Italian, and turned almost immediately, to confront the person who had caused the accident, ready to spout every curse in every language he knew at the idiot. He knew he looked intimidating, and he was definitely going to use it. He had dressed especially dark today, like it was going to be some sort of protest against waking up so early – dark clothing, hair still in its usual short undercut, all of his piercings in place. Add on a look that could kill, a damn good reason to be angry, and a severe lack of sleep, and he was pretty scary.

But that all that didn't matter, of course, because as soon as he set sights on the other person, he swore to God his heart stopped. His anger dwindled, if only slightly, and his delightful expression fell.

The other boy's hair was golden and curled and just, well, pretty as hell, and his skin was wonderfully tanned. His eyes were blue and bright with guilt, with eyelashes a few shades darker than his hair framing them wonderfully. He was a good few inches taller than Nico, and maybe a year or two older, and was wearing simple jeans and a garishly orange summer camp shirt.

And, God, Nico was so glad he was gayer than Magnus Bane under a rainbow on the Fourth of July, because this guy was hot as fuck, and he could properly appreciate that.

Golden Boy spotted him immediately, and his pretty face drained of colour. And not from fear or surprise or anything, it seemed, but from guilt. Nico watched in muted shock as he stumbled over his messy, untied converse shoes to rush towards him, but then sort of skidding to a stop in sudden realisation that that was a really bad idea.

The Golden Boy made a face that was a plea for forgiveness in itself, moving his hands in a way that could mean anything, flapping them about a little. He looked like a lost child, honestly.

"Oh, God, man, I'm so sorry," He said, speaking for the first time, and Nico hated that his voice was as gorgeous as the rest of him, but also sort of loved it, as well, "I didn't mean to – no, wait, I just wasn't looking, and you were in the way – no! You weren't, never mind, it was all me and I'm so sorry and – I destroyed your car oh my god and you probably won't be able to – wait no, sorry, I don't know you – God damn it Will get your act together – hey, wait, you're bleeding."

Nico stared at him, his mouth slightly parted. "Huh?"

The Golden Boy – Will, it seemed – smiled. Nico watched as the the right side of the other boy's mouth twitched up before the left did, which made everything about his smile adorably, sinfully crooked. Then he was moving towards him again, this time considerably more controlled and slow, like it would scare Nico off or something if he moved faster, or, maybe he was just trying to communicate that he wasn't going to hurt him (and like he'd let him). Will didn't seem at all intimidated by the dark-haired punk of a kid that he was, and it kind of made him eternally grateful, honestly.

"There's a cut just above your eyebrow," The blonde boy started, his voice as soft as the sunshine he seemed to simply radiate at the moment, "And it's bleeding."

It took Nico a few more moments to register his words, as he was sort of still in a bit of a daze because of this Greek God of a boy. Turns out he sucked at paying attention, because all he could do was frown and take a measured step back. "What?"

"You're bleeding," The Golden Boy repeated, laughing gently, keeping with his not-trying-to-intimidate tactic. He didn't exactly intimidate him (not in the slightest, in fact), but rather, he made Nico's insides melt and his stomach writhe. Another laugh, this time with tagged on, hushed words. "Here, just let me see, please?"

Nico was almost going to protest, because why the hell would he let a stranger touch his so-called wounds? Of course, it was the very same stranger that he would love to make out with right now, yeah, but still, he'd caused him to get this so called scratch.

He wasn't allowed the time for it, although, because Will was already in front of him, holding a small white cloth that he got from God-knows-where in his hand. He reached up his hand, and delicately wiped at the skin, cleaning the cut with a gentleness that was sort of surprising, giving his crazy appearance and all. Luckily, clean the cut was all he did, because Nico really didn't want to be patched up with a Hello Kitty Band-Aid like a little kid that fell off the swing set.

"My car..." Nico started in a sort of slurred mumble, trying to force himself into sounding like he wasn't in a daze, because he totally was, "It's—"

"Don't worry!" Will rushed, cutting him off with a grin that had to be painful, "I'll pay for it, it's no biggie."

"I don't want—"

He, infuriatingly, got cut off once more. "No, I did it, I'll pay for it; it's only fair." Mr Golden Boy said, shrugging, as if it didn't really matter.

Nico gaped at him, completely caught off guard by this idiot stranger for about the third time now. He didn't know what to think about the situation right now, partly because it was too complicated for his overtired mind to fathom properly, and partly because a certain part of his mind was still focussed on beloved coffee.

Will laughed again, and it was sort of adorable. "You look like a dazed fish."

Fish?

Nico frowned, opening and closing his mouth in a slightly comical way, and obviously explained the fish statement. "I just – wait, what?"

Blue eyes surveyed him for a moment, and then Will's lopsided smirk was making a come-back, and Nico's stomach was once again twisting in knots. "Actually, I have one request."

"You have… one request?" Nico echoed, blinking a few times as if to wake himself up. Was he hearing right? Had the accident actually been much, much worse, and he was now lying on the street, dying and hallucinating about Angel boys and their pretty smiles?

"I'll pay for this little accident, but you have to let me properly check out that cut of yours, and come get a coffee with me."

Well, he did miss out on his morning coffee...

xxx

Author's Note:

This is a repost; for reasons. Yay. Please give feedback; a sequel is on the way, if the request is high enough.

You can find me on a tumblr, under the same name, where I take requests willingly. I mostly just post Harry Potter, though, tbh.