Chapter 7 – He's more than been there all before

A/N: Ok so here's a really cute chapter that I hope you'll all love. Please let me know what you think :)


Nico laid down on the bed and stared up at the ceiling, determinedly not looking at Will, who was sitting next to him. The quiet that he grown so accustomed to over the last few days shut up in this very same room was present, but now he felt more at ease. With Will here, he didn't have that panic in the back of his head that maybe what he had done was stupid, or that he had royally fucked up his life. And the fact that Will was here meant that Nico didn't have to spend so much brain effort on worrying about whether Will hated him now or not.

"I'm sorry for yelling at you." Nico told him after some time.

"I know." Will replied, and shot him a smile. That beautiful smile was back again, and Nico, who had spent the last week without any time around Will at all, found himself overwhelmed by it for a moment. He was struck by how much he had missed Will. In just a few short weeks, how he had let Will get so close to him? Somehow, with all the jokes, laughter, smiles, texts, study sessions, and classes that they had shared, Nico had ended up letting himself get attached. But, at least thus far, it didn't seem to be a bad thing.

"Do you want to talk about it?" Will asked, and Nico hesitated. There was a careful balance that he had to keep. He wanted to tell someone what had happened. He couldn't keep it all tucked up inside himself. Nico had learned recently that if he tried doing that, everything would just burst out of him eventually. He trusted Will, he wanted to confide in him, and he didn't want to push Will away again. Nico wanted him to stay. But...

"Not yet." He searched around for something else to say, something to do, because he knew that most people weren't comfortable just sitting with someone in silence the way he was. They would want to do something, to have a purpose with every moment that they spent (the thought alone made Nico feel exhausted) and though in most ways Will had proved that he wasn't like most people, Nico felt something nagging at him saying that he couldn't let Will get bored and give up on him. And besides, there was something that he wanted to show him. There was at least one part of him that Nico felt ready to share.

"Did you ever play this when you were young?" Nico said, reaching out for the Mythomagic deck on his bedside table. Will's eyes lit up in recognition, and he laughed.

"What do you mean, when I was young? Are you suggesting that I should have grown out of this brilliant game by now?"

"Well, do you want to play?"

"What kind of question is that?" He smirked. "I just hope you're ready to lose."

"Like hell."

It turned out, Nico really should have prepared himself for the loss. Will absolutely smashed him. But in any case they were now relaxing around each other and forgetting about what they were really doing there. Nico had even forgot that there were other people in the house until he heard Hazel.

"Percy, you get back here! Leave them alone." She whisper-yelled, obviously not wanting Nico and Will to hear her. They did.

"Do you want to go back out there?" Will asked him, raising an eyebrow. Nico hesitated, suddenly overcome by all the thoughts and insecurities that rushed to the surface of his mind - did Will want to stay? Did he want Nico to say yes? Was he getting bored? Did he want to go home? What were the others wondering about them being in his room for so long? - but he shut them down and put a smirk on his face. "Why? Are you scared that I'm going to make a comeback and whoop your arse at this game? Do you just want to quit while you're ahead?"

"Good play, di Angelo." Will grinned mischievously. "If only you could play the game that well."

"Screw you, Solace." Nico said, but there was none of his usual bite to it.

Another bad hand later, another set of joking remarks exchanged between the two of them, and Nico had been able to talk himself into telling Will a bit more about himself. "I haven't played this game for years."

"Is that why you're so terrible at it?"

"Ha ha ha." Nico put another card down before continuing. "I just meant that I haven't played this since my sister-" he stuttered, fumbling for the right words, "I mean, I always played it with my sister- I only ever- Not Hazel, I mean my other sister-"

"Bianca." Will helped out, and Nico nodded, a lump welling up in his throat at the sound of her name. "The others told me today."

"She bought this deck for me, for my birthday." Nico found himself saying, not even sure why, and then all the details that he hadn't spoken before came pouring out. "Bianca was way taller than me, and always teased me about it, though that just meant when she hugged me she could lift me up. She loved to play hide and seek. She called me 'fratellino', which means 'little brother' in Italian, or 'lino' for short. Her favourite colour was green. We...we buried her in a green dress."

And then he was sobbing, and Will had reached out to him and Nico was holding onto him for dear life, and he kept talking, not sure how much of it Will could understand through the tears and sniffling, tears of grief and pain and loss that he hadn't let himself shed since the funeral for his mother and sister. He told Will about his mother too, of how she had always smelled like roses and coffee, and that she had held him as tight and close as Will was holding him now.

Even after the tears slowed, they stayed like that, holding on to each other. Normally in a situation like this Nico would be feeling vulnerable, scared, or freaked out. But this time he didn't have the energy to feel anything other than safe in Will's embrace. "I told my dad I'm gay." He whispered. "I didn't mean to. It just came out. Just like I did, I guess." Nico tried for a laugh, but he coughed and spluttered on the lump in his throat instead.

"Oh, Nico," Will sighed, "did he kick you out?"

"No. But I didn't stay there, not after how he reacted. He was so...disappointed. As though being gay is a failure, like it's the worst possible thing I could be."

"You know it's-"

"Yeah, yeah, I get that, I just...it hurts to hear it from someone so close to you, you know?"

"Yes. I do." Nico pulled back to look him full in the face.

"Will? What is it?"

"I...I never really explained my end of it all did I? Well, there was a reason I was pissed at you for saying I found all of this easy." He fiddled with his hands, twisting them over each other and staring at them instead of at Nico. "It wasn't quite the same thing. I just..." He sighed. "I'm not from the city. I live way out, not too far from here actually. I'm the oldest of three boys. Our dad left when I was young, and I don't really remember him. My mum looked after us all, and then I helped look after the others. It was hard. Mum worked a lot, so she wasn't home much. There was a lot of pressure on us to do really well at school and succeed at everything, but that was just because Mum genuinely wanted the best for us, and wanted to make sure that our home life didn't hold us back in any way. I loved them all, and I was planning on staying there and going to a university closer to home so that I could still live with them and look after them. Help Mum out and everything."

Then his tone of voice changed from nostalgic remembrance to something darker, a tone that Nico himself had used not too long ago. "None of them knew I was gay. They still don't. One day, Mum was called into our high school to talk to the principal about how my two brothers were bullying some kid for being gay. Calling him slurs, throwing him around, roughing him up...and though in front of the principal she scolded them, as soon as they all got home she said that they were free to have their own opinion and exercise their freedom of speech, as long as they didn't let the gays drag them down."

Will echoed the bitter laugh that Nico had given before. "She actually said that. She may have been joking, but does it really matter? My brothers bullied some kid for being the same thing I was, and my mother was willing to turn a blind eye to it. So I changed my plans. Thanks to Mum I had worked hard enough to get into a university in the city. I had planned on giving that up to stay with them, but I couldn't do that any more. I couldn't live with them any more, not knowing what they thought of people like us. I told them that I had chosen the best place for my education, and that I was moving so I could be closer to the uni and wouldn't have to spend hours travelling each day. I found a small apartment in the city to call my own, and in the 6 months since I've only been back to see my family once."

Will sighed, then looked back up at Nico, who could see the unshed tears welling in his clear blue eyes. "So I'm sorry that I got so mad at you the other day for saying that I found it easy. You couldn't have known. I was just tired of hiding so much of myself." He tried for a smirk that wobbled on his face. "I guess I should have taken my own advice to you and told someone about it."

Nico was struck dumb. He never would have imagined what Will had been through. Like him, Will went through a lot of effort into putting up a mask and acting as though things didn't bother him. Will just had the opposite way of going about it. Nico didn't know what to say, but maybe this wasn't a moment when words were needed. It was more important for Will to know that he had heard and was listening. So for once he put aside his uneasiness about physical contact for just a little longer in the name of giving comfort to someone, an act that he was not used to in any way – who would look for comfort in Nico di Angelo? - and reached out a slightly shaking hand to cup Will's face.

"It's okay. I promise." Nico stared deep into Will's eyes, searching for the emotion he was feeling, trying to take whatever sadness he could find there and banish it. He must have helped somewhat, because a hint of Will's beautiful smile was tugging at the corners of his lips. Lips that looked smooth and soft and perfect and-

Nico jerked himself away from Will and stood up. He looked back in time to see a look of hurt flash across Will's face. The expression tugged at his heart strings, and so he held out his hand to him. "Come on. We should probably go tell the others I'm okay." Will took his hand and pulled himself up next to Nico.

"Are you okay?" He questioned, raising an eyebrow.

"Yeah. Yeah, I'm okay. Or, at least, I will be." Nico answered, not entirely believing it, then pulled Will out of the room by the hand. Though he let go before any of the others could see, he stayed by Will's side for the rest of the night. They sat side by side at the table while the five of them had dinner, each checking in with the other from time to time with a glance or a smile to reassure and comfort. They only parted ways at the front door, when Will, along with Percy and Annabeth, promised that he would call him and visit when he could while Nico continued to stay with Hazel.

And as Nico stood at the door and waved goodbye to his friends as they pulled out of the driveway, he thought that yes, maybe he really would be okay.