Will was late.
Nico had been curled up in their bed, waiting for the familiar sound of the door opening, for almost an hour now. Will should've been home.
Nico sighed and checked the time again. 7:20. Oh gods, it was even later than the thought. Panic started swelling up in his chest as his mind jumped to the worst possible conclusions, but he willed himself to calm down. Freaking out wouldn't help. Whatever was holding Will up, it wasn't something either of them could control. Maybe the train broke down, or there was a really bad accident that blocked everything up. There was nothing Nico could do but wait.
Yep, Will definitely was not sitting in a ditch somewhere, clutching at a bleeding wound. He was definitely not tied upside down and being dangled over a boiling pot. His eyes were not glassy, his head was not limp, his fingernails were not bloody from where he'd futilely tried to fight back-
Nico clutched at his own head, gritting his teeth as another swell of panic rose. He snatched up his phone again and checked his texts. Nothing. He opened the conversation with Will again.
5:48 Dr. Sinshine: Omw home!
5:48 Me: nice
6:23 Me: close to home?
6:39 Me: William?
6:54 Me: ok you're really starting to scare me now please respond.
Now, he typed something new into the text bar with shaking hands:
7:21 Me: are you in trouble? is your phone dead? please answer
Nico had already called him twice, and was debating calling him again when the door creaked open. Nico tossed the covers off of himself and flew out of bed, slamming into a wall on his way to the door. Sure enough, his fiancé was standing there, sopping wet, with one hand raised instinctively to stop an oncoming Nico.
It didn't work. Nico slammed into Will's side, nearly knocking the box he was holding under his arm out of his hands.
"Whoa, whoa, whoa! Careful!" Will insisted, adjusting the box. Nico, too preoccupied with the relief of Will being home safe, didn't give a second thought about it, and pulled Will down roughly by the collar of his shirt to slam his lips against Will's.
"Where have you been?" Nico demanded, out of breath, as soon as he pulled away. "Why weren't you answering your phone? Are you hurt?"
Will blinked a few times, seemingly realizing why Nico had run to greet him. "Oh," he said softly. "Oh, no, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to make you worry. I'm fine." He set the box (which was also drenched) on their glass coffee table and pulled out his phone. "I-I must've had it on Do Not Disturb for work, and forgotten to turn it off again…" He trailed off, eyebrows furrowing, as he looked through Nico's frantic messages. Nico, embarrassed about how much he'd freaked out now that it was certain nothing was wrong, walked up to the strange cardboard box and peered into it. Inside, there were…
"William Michael Solace." Nico's voice was hard. "Did you bring puppies home?"
Will grinned sheepishly. "Uh, yeah. That's why I was late." Nico turned around to face him silently. Will gave a little nervous laugh at Nico's clearly-not-amused face. "Ok, look, we don't have to keep them, but I didn't want them to die of hypothermia! They were just sitting in that box on the side of the road in a bush, and I waited for like, twenty minutes to see if anyone would come back for them, but no one did, and they started mewing all sadly, and-"
"They're dogs, Will. They don't mew."
"Okay, fine, yelping, whatever! Point is, I just couldn't leave them there, so I checked to see if they were all still alive and then brought them home." He finished his story by letting his hands fall to his side, looking at Nico expectantly. After a moment, Nico sighed.
"Go change," he told Will. "I'll start trying to warm them up."
Will disappeared into the bedroom, and Nico quickly threw together a makeshift dog bed of old blankets fetched from a nearby closet. Then he gently lifted each pup out, one by one, dried them off as best he could, and put them on the wide pile of blankets. When he was done, he tried halfheartedly to pull the blankets over all the dogs. They were still shivering, so Nico pulled the whole 'bed' over to the heater, just under the window. Will stepped up to Nico's side and held his hand out to one of them, running his thumb across its head gently. The poor thing's eyes were still closed, it was so young.
"Are they even old enough to be able to survive on their own yet?" Nico asked.
"I think so," Will said. "I saw something on tv about humans taking care of a puppy in a shelter. It'll probably be fine."
"They still look cold… what are we supposed to feed them?" Nico cast Will a worried look. Will smiled lightly.
"Research time!"
.
.
Nico was sitting cross legged on the floor, holding a bottle up to one of the babies' mouths. It had been a few days since Will came home with them, and they had quickly scrambled to get everything they needed: special milk, special bottles, a larger, dry cardboard box, water, tissues, rice socks. Now they had a whole little station set up, and Nico was luckily able to work from home, so he could take care of the pups (even if he was multitasking by feeding them and being on a conference call at the same time). The cabin fever was driving Nico a little nuts, but it wasn't like Will could work from home as a doctor. Oh, well. As soon as they were old enough to be home alone (or as soon as Nico and Will felt confident enough to either get a pet sitter or just give the pups away), Nico could go back to work.
Will, who'd just recently gotten home, crouched next to Nico, who handed off the puppy he was feeding to Will. "Need to make people dinner," he said. Their rule had long been: Nico does the cooking, Will does the cleaning. It worked out well, as Will never burned the apartment down and Nico never had to clean a toilet. Truly a win-win.
While chickpeas and pasta cooked, Nico sat back down next to Will. All of the puppies had been fed, so Will was just cuddling them now. Nico did the same.
"Wish we knew what breed they were," Will said.
"Yeah, they kinda just look like rats at the moment," Nico replied, making Will laugh. "Oh!" Nico said suddenly. "Should we name them?"
"Do you want to?"
"Well, yeah. I'm getting tired of saying the black one, the tan one, the one with black spots all the time."
Will laughed. "Okay, what should we name them?"
"Hmmm." Nico looked at the one in his hands: a brown one with black chunks that looked sort of like dots. "How about we name this one Cerberus?" Nico lifted it up to show Will. "Since Cerberus is based on the word for spotted, and he's got spots, see?"
Will grinned. "Okay, great! And this one…" Will looked at the tan one in his grip. "Butterscotch!"
Nico rolled his eyes. "Of course you'd name it that."
"Hey! I just wanted to name one of them Butterscotch because I used to ride this horse named Butterscotch-"
Nico snorted. "Texas much?"
"It was at a summer camp thank you very much, of course they had horses. And I've told you a million times now how different Texas is depending on what part-!" He stopped, looking at Nico's lopsided grin. "Oh, you're trying to annoy me."
"Maybe," was Nico's reply.
Will sighed and shook his head, then pointed to a pure chocolate brown puppy. "Gomez," he said. "Like from The Addams Family?"
Nico nodded. "I was afraid you were going to name it Hershey or something."
"Shut up!" Will grinned. "Now, c'mon. I named two, you should name another one."
"Uhhhh." Nico looked at the dogs. "I don't have any ideas."
"No? None at all?" Will looked at them, too. His eyes lit up suddenly, but then he turned away, blushing.
"Did you have an idea?" Nico asked.
"No, it's your turn to name one."
"Nah, it's ok. I'll name the last one, then it'll be three and two."
"Mmmmm, okay," Will said. "Well, I just thought that one," he nodded to the black puppy, "looked like a Maria."
"Maria?" Nico was so shocked, he almost dropped the dog he was holding. "Why?"
"Dunno, she just looks like it."
"Will… Maria was my mother's name?"
"Oh!" Will smacked his forehead. "Sorry, I forgot. We can pick something else-"
"No, no, I like it!" Nico said. "We should name the last one after your mother. Naomi?"
"Yeah." Will picked up the brown and tan dog. "Imagine me calling my mom and just being like, MOTHER I NAMED A PUPPY AFTER YOU!"
Nico laughed. "I'm sure she'd be thrilled."
.
.
Eventually, they gave the puppies away.
Not that they got tired of them, or anything, but five dogs was a lot. They'd been planning on getting one dog, maybe, eventually. Suddenly having five pups to take care of was… a bit too much to handle. So, when the vet determined that they were old enough to be separated from each other, Nico and Will started asking around if anyone wanted a dog. The answer, as they found out, had been an unabashed yes. Apparently, all of their friends had been looking at the puppies for a while, assuming Nico and Will would eventually give them up.
"We're too predictable," Will had said.
In the end, Will's mom took Butterscotch (she said she would've taken the one named after her, but things would've been too confusing around the house), Hazel and Frank took Gomez, Percy and Annabeth took Naomi, and Leo and Calypso took Cerberus. Which left Nico and Will with Maria.
Even years later, Maria the black yorkiepoo (they discovered the breed much later) still yipped at their ankles when they came home at the end of the day.