Title comes from 'The kids aren't alright' by Fall Out Boy

Will is eight years old.

He lives with his mother, his father left when he was younger. All he remembers about him is what he has seen in a picture he keeps on his bed side table. Will thinks he looks like him. A little bit, at least. He has the same blond curls. Will's got the blue eyes from his mother, though. He likes to fantasize about his father. Was he a scientist? Or writer? An astronaut would be cool!

He goes to school every day and doesn't hate it nearly as much as all his friends seem to do. You see, he wants to be a doctor when he grows up. Maybe his dad was a doctor.

Will is eight years old.

Will is nine years old.

A new family moved next door. They have two children: a girl with piercing brown eyes and a kind smile. And a boy Will's age. They're Italian. Will's never met anyone outside of his little town.

He knows he ought to introduce himself, but he's a little scared. The di Angelo's are intimidating. They have a big house and they're always dressed very nicely. Will doesn't care about his clothes. He doesn't even know if the colour of his shirt and pants match.

He doesn't have to introduce himself, though; the boy does. He just walks up to Will when he's playing on the street one day.

'I'm Nico', he says. 'Can I play with you?'

Will stutters his name and nods.

Turns out Nico di Angelo doesn't care about Will's clothes. Or his. Because soon enough they're rolling in the grass and their clothes have green patches everywhere.

Will isn't scared of the di Angelo's anymore. They invite him over for dinner one day. Nico's father is a little stiff, but his step-mother and sister are really nice. He thinks it must be awesome to have a sister like that. Nico absolutely adores and worships her.

Will has found his new best friend. Nico di Angelo, the boy who can't stop talking and asking questions. The boy who smiles all the times and laughs at all of Will's jokes.

Will is nine years old and pretty sure that laughing until your stomach hurts is the definition of happiness.

Will is ten years old. The years starts of nicely. He notices things about Nico that he never noticed about anyone before. How he's got little golden flecks in his black eyes. How his hair is just long enough to create figures in the wind that all tell another story. How his whole face lights up when he laughs.

When Will's not at school, he's spending his days at Nico's house. Bianca is there and joins them sometimes. The boys are always together and if they didn't look so different, people might mistake them for brothers.

The years starts of nice, but doesn't end the same way. The world turns black and so do the di Angelo's clothes. The funeral is hold at the one graveyard they have in town. The priest says some word but they don't mean anything because he never knew her. But Nico adored her and her death breaks him.

When Bianca's heart stops, so does Nico. He stops. He stops smiling. He stops asking questions and talking when he can avoid it. He stops wearing colours and only ever wears black anymore; it looks like he's mourning all the time. He simply stops and Will stays by his side.

It's quite simple, really, especially for a ten year old, to stay by your best friend when they need it.

And that's what Will does. It's a hard year for Nico, but it's less so because Will's always there to take his mind of it. He's always there.

Will is ten years old and he would do anything to see Nico happy again.

Will is eleven years old.

Nico's still sad, but he's getting better. He likes to draw and Will likes to play outside. It feels like their bond is only growing and that they're growing closer each passing day.

Will wants to be around Nico all the time. All the other kids at school are way less interesting. They're not as funny as he is. They're not as nice as he is. Will doesn't know them by heart as he does Nico.

That year, Will hears his mother crying when she thinks he can't hear her. Of course he can. The house is quite small and the walls aren't that thick. You can practically hear everything that goes on.

He thinks she might be lonely. He doesn't say anything to her. He wouldn't know what. After all, he's just eleven and there's only so much you can do at eleven. He talks to Nico, though. Because that's what he always does when he's got a problem. He tells Nico everything and Nico listens carefully. He doesn't know what to do, either, but he promises Will he'll think about it. And Will trusts him. He'd trust him with his life if he had to. He was always the smartest of them two, anyway.

Will is eleven years old and wonders who else only pretends to be happy.

Will is twelve years old. He's grown and is now a good head taller than Nico. Much to the dislike of the latter. The boys at school talk about girls and how nice they look and how they might be in love with one of them.

And Will talks with them. What do a bunch of twelve year olds know about love, anyway? They just pretend to understand what it is; at twelve years old you think you know everything until you grow up and realize you didn't know anything.

When Will talks to Nico about girls, he just nods and doesn't really pay attention. Will doesn't understand why.

He gets a girlfriend that year, but she breaks up with him the same day.

When he tells Nico he loves her so much and that he will never recover and that she broke his heart in half, Nico tries to comfort him. Will doesn't understand that the feeling he gets around his best friend, is more love than anything he ever felt for that girl.

His mother stops crying where he can hear her, but he knows she still does when he's not home.

Will is twelve years old.

Will is thirteen years old.

He kisses a girl and kind of likes it, but not really. When it happens, the first thing he does is go to Nico and ask him about it. But when he gets there, he doesn't. Something's stopping him and while they're talking about other things, he notices the way Nico's lips form the words and he wonders how it would feel to kiss him. He's scared. Is he allowed to think that? He excuses himself and quickly goes home. He wants to talk to somebody, but the only person he trust is Nico and he can't talk to him.

He ends up doing it anyway.

'Is it weird for a boy to want to kiss another boy?'

'Not to me. Why? Do you want to kiss another boy?'

'Maybe. I'm not sure.'

And that's it. Nico doesn't judge him. He doesn't pull away in disgust, he accepts Will for who he is. Just like he's always done. Since the day they met and Will thought his clothes weren't fancy enough.

Will is thirteen years old.

Will is fourteen years old.

His mother has stopped talking to him. Or at least, saying more than a sentence at a time.

Will kisses a boy. It's during summer, they're with a couple friends from school. He finds himself alone with a boy he barely knows. They talk for a bit and then they just kiss. They don't really know what to do. The kiss is a little sloppy and over very fast. The boy makes Will promise not to say anything to anyone. Will doesn't understand. Why is no one allowed to know? Nico's okay with it. And that's when he realizes that not everybody is as nice and accepting as Nico. He realizes the world is a more cruel and colder place than he thought it was. And it scares him.

When he gets home, he ends up telling Nico anyway, because he figured Nico didn't count as anyone as he knew everything about Will.

And when he looks at Will with his black, flecked with gold eyes, Will realizes that, maybe, in his head he wasn't kissing that boy, but that, maybe, he was kissing Nico. His best friend.

Will is fourteen years old and he's learned something about himself he didn't know before.

Will is fifteen years old.

His feelings are getting out of hand. He wakes up more than sometimes with the taste of Nico lingering on his tongue and his image burned in his brain. In a way that isn't meant for best friends.

Things get awkward between them. Will doesn't know how to talk to him, anymore. Not without picturing what he'd been dreaming the night before. But he tries anyway. He cracks a joke and Nico smiles. Ever since Bianca died, Nico smiles less than he did before, but his smile is so bright Will thinks it might be better, anyway. He doesn't want the world to go blind.

And one day, he realizes he's in love with his best friend and that there's no way back. It's too late. His feelings have spread all over his body and he can't fight them anymore.

So he does what he does best: he talks to Nico. He tries to be subtle but fails miserably, Nico sees right through it.

He figures out that the friends Will's talking about is, in fact, Will himself and that the person said friend likes (or loves, whatever) is, in fact, him.

When Will's done with his story, Nico just straight-up kisses him. There in his backyard, where they've been spending almost all their afternoons since the age of nine. That's where they kiss for the first time and it's another perfect moment to add to all the other perfect memories.

Will is fifteen years old and, he realizes now, he never knew what happiness was until then.

Thanks for reading! It really means a lot to me. Let me know if you liked it or what you're favorite line was or that you hated it. Just tell me what you think.

Love,
Vlindervin