Chapter Summary: But still, Will says nothing about Drew Tanaka and that should be a whole answer in itself, but Nico is wringing his hands and he can't let this go. He can't, he just can't.

Status: Chapter 7 of ?

Notes: This was supposed to be done last week. This chapter was too much for me.

Anyway, you may have noticed that some of the titles are from lyrics in the playlist. I should probably cite them. This title is from Sayde Price's "Untitled No. 3" I'll get back to the other chapters later.

PEELING OFF THESE OLD IMPRESSIONS

The apology is the easiest part after Percy's revelation.

Nico finds Reyna at lunch at their usual place under the large oak tree tucked away in the corner of the field, but she is not alone. His footsteps falters when he sees another girl – it must be Piper – sitting there and talking to her. Strangely, he feels like he's intruding on an intimate moment despite the fact that they are in plain sight. Reyna dips her head down and a rare smile breaks across her face, sunlight streaming through the shadows of the leaves to highlight it.

And suddenly, Nico feels a deep crevice open up inside his chest, a gnawing sense of loneliness opening up to grasp at anything it can get a hold of. Nico swallows, trying to push down the darkness and he's about to turn away from the two of them and find a quiet corner before Piper looks up and meets his eyes. He's surprised when she waves him over and calls out his name.

Reyna looks up at him, her smile fading but fortunately not being replaced with a scowl. He walks over slowly, foot crunching the crisp grass beneath his feet. Perhaps if Nico lets himself soak in the surroundings, he may hear the faint sound of the funeral dirge playing in the background.

That thought brings a humourless smile to his face, and he throws the silly impression away. "Hi, Piper. Reyna." When he says her name, he looks deliberately at the dark-haired girl staring stoically back at him. "I'm sorry about what I said yesterday." He is completely sincere, no hint of sarcasm or mockery in his tone or expression.

Apparently the apology comes as a surprise because Reyna's eyes narrow for a second before she is stoic once again. "And I am too," Reyna says a little too stiffly, like this is a business transaction. "I should have never made those accusations in public –"

"No, it's okay," Nico says, sliding his hands into his jean pockets and kicking a misplaced stone. He stares at the grassy ground when he says the next words. "Percy told me about him."

There's silence and then the predicted, bewildered but somehow exasperated at the same time, "What?"

He rushes to get the words out, not wanting to dwell on the thoughts of his own developing feelings at the time and what all of Will's actions mean now. "Will – William's just trying to get to me because he doesn't want me to point fingers at him. He was playing with my feelings, that's all. Thanks for looking out for me." The words fall flat at the end. Truly, he is grateful about Reyna looking out for him, but no matter how grateful he is, reality hits hard.

Nico remembers when he read a book about multiple universes, mainly he was trying to understand Bianca's condition at that point, but the thought has surfaced again. If only he were someplace else, a different person, perhaps a different time. And maybe he would have never met Will and he would happily be in love with Percy Jackson. Or maybe – just maybe if things were different but nearly the same, he and Will would not be worlds apart the way he feels like they are now and maybe they would have met in a different way –

There are too many maybes for Nico to even think about. No matter how many worlds he imagines in his mind, he will always be stuck in this one.

"Nico, I'm sorry," Reyna says quietly, and he starts out of his thoughts to see his friend looking at him with pity.

"I'm the one who's sorry," Nico says with a bitter smile. "I shouldn't have trusted him so blindly like that." Before she can interject, he shrugs and adds, "I've only known him for a few days anyway. It's not like there's any damage done yet." That should be true. That should be true; Nico doesn't feel like it is. "I'm fine." The echo of the text message he sent that morning reverberates in his head and he clenches his hands into fists, releases them, then breathes out.

The words are indicative enough of a truth he doesn't want to admit. He wants to hate Will for how weak he's made him, but he ends up hating himself for being so pathetic and trusting and stupid and gullible. If only he could erase the last few days from his life and he can go back to being Nico the wallflower rather than Nico the victim. But the picture has already been painted and the only thing he can do now and find a fresh coat of paint to replace it.

"Why don't you sit down with us?" Piper asks, tone gentle and soothing. He nods, swallowing at the lump in his throat and sits down between Piper and Reyna on the grass, not even caring if he's interrupting a romantic moment.

Reyna must have told Piper at least a little bit about what happened at the party because she scoots over so she isn't touching him. He can't find it within himself to be mad over it when he's feeling numb and upset at the same time. Maybe he should gone home like the nurse suggested, but he didn't want to see Hazel's pitiful looks anymore.

"You…want to talk about it some more?" Reyna asks uncertainly, never having been one for the words. She was good with the practical, not the emotional.

Nico shakes his head no, bringing his knees up to his chin and wrapping his arms around them. It's warm here even with the tree's shade, but his body feels cold and heavy, like he's fallen through a frozen lake and then dragged out and dumped unceremoniously in the snow.

Piper, ever the perceptive, speaks before Reyna assents. "Will isn't bad."

He looks over at her, slightly surprised to find the pensive look on her face when she stares off into the fields in the distance. "What do you mean?" he says, finding his voice. Not monotone, but a flicker of emotion that even he cannot decipher.

She begins to hesitate, eyes flashing to his before she looks back at the field again. "When I was… Well when I was dating Jason, I was part of 'their' group. It's a clique thing, you know – all the privileged band together." She shrugs like it's nothing, but there's something harsh behind her otherwise lightweight words. "Admittedly, they are not the best people in the world. Pretty shallow too if you ask me – seeing as how Jason was cheating on me with Drew the entire time." She laughs humourlessly. "But Will – well. He's not like the others."

"How so?" Reyna asks, looking genuinely interested in what Piper has to say despite her earlier animosity for him.

"He's always been a little bit different, I guess," Piper says vaguely. She continues before either Nico or Reyna can scoff at her words and rebut that you could say that about anyone and everyone who ever lived. "Will's never really belonged the way everyone else did. It's kind of like he was just going through the motions without really meaning it, you know? And yeah, we considered each other to all be friends, but Will was another category. To be honest, I don't even think he considers anyone close to him to be friends."

"So he's fake," Nico summarizes in his own words, ripping a blade of grass from its seams on the ground and tossing it away from him.

Piper shakes her head. "No – he's the opposite." She turns to stare at Nico with those piercing eyes and he is rooted to earth by the intensity of her gaze. "He doesn't care about status or reputation or any of it, but he's surrounded by people who do, and not by choice." She doesn't elaborate on what she means by choice and instead ventures elsewhere. "He may seem like a socialite, but he's more isolated than anyone else. And Nico, I don't think he's playing with you. He wouldn't go out of his way to spend time with someone he doesn't genuinely like, whether it's for his own personal gain or not."

Nico can't find anything to say to that, and he forcibly tears his eyes away from hers, no longer wanting to be pinned by her look.

"You were always the perceptive one," Reyna remarks, though more timid than Nico has heard her. Maybe he should be happy for her and the fact that the two of them are going somewhere after two years of stasis, but all he can think about are Percy's words and Piper's opinion.

They don't match at all, and Nico is once again unsure of what he should be feeling. He so badly wants to believe in Piper's hopeful words, but he doesn't want to set himself up for major disappointment.

"Thanks," Piper says, eyes flashing to Reyna's face before looking away again, and Nico thinks that he's probably intruding on something right now and should leave. However, he is lacking in strength of the physical and the mental states so he remains fixed in his spot. "But Nico, I hope you take what I said into consideration. Will isn't trying to hurt you."

"Do you even know what happened that night?" Nico asks, finding the tone of his voice involuntarily rising upwards to a shrill sound. He winces and then breathes out, trying to calm himself down. "Will has every reason to try and manipulate me." Why is it so hard to put it into words? Nico feels short of breath after he says it, and he closes his eyes and takes a deep breath into his trembling lungs. (He is so, so pathetic right now.)

There's a beat of silence and then, "Nico I know what happened. Reyna told me." He cannot muster the energy to throw an angry look at Reyna. "Will has every reason to approach you, so don't write off his intentions so quickly."

Piper is so calm and reasoning that it makes him feel like he's talking to a brick wall even though she's telling him everything he wants to hear. Maybe that's the reason why he can't find himself fully trusting her words: because this is the Will Solace that he wants to believe exists for him alone, and not another person who will wring him dry of his uses.

"I wish I didn't give a shit," he speaks out loud, meaning to have thought it but not have said it. "I wish I didn't care about any of this – Will and Drew and Beatrice – I hate myself for caring so goddamn much." There is an unexpected amount of vigor that rushes through him at the last words.

"There's nothing wrong about caring," Reyna reassures him.

Piper agrees: "Don't be so tough on yourself."

But Nico is done with this: done with sitting around with a lake of angst deep enough to drown him if he is immobile long enough. He's done with letting other people tell him conflicting opinions on what he should thinking, and mostly, he's done with dwelling on the past like it's something dragging his entire being down into a pit of darkness –

Who is he kidding?

The vigor leaves in the same rush that it had entered, and Nico feels drained once again like he's never had it in in the first place, and this whole world is full of wishes, but Nico feels more alone than before. Somehow, just barely, momentary strength urges him to get to his feet without stumbling.

"Yeah, I know," he says in reply to the two girls, and then gives them a false smile, big enough that he looks genuine but not large enough for them to tell it to be untruthful. "Thanks, Piper," he directs toward the other girl even though he isn't sure what he's thanking her for. He turns around and leaves the two of them alone in their little haven without his woes to bother them.

His feet takes him back inside the school, and it's quiet for lunchtime when all the students have been released from their classes. It's a different place without all the students clamouring about, wanting to hear the latest rumour about what was going on and who was dating whom. It was all so conceited and garish, so Nico was glad to finally find the hallways empty of the cackling calls from the vultures who had decided to turn their attention to Nico ever since that Friday night.

His footsteps echo through the vacant hallways without direction until another pair of faster footsteps follow his. Nico turns around quickly on the heels of his shoes, eyes narrowed, heart thumping, and waiting for one of the girls from that Friday night to appear; he should have known – should have known that he's not safe enough and especially not while walking through the school so aimlessly no matter how brightly the sun is shining outside.

But it is not any of them – it is the person that Nico has wanted to meet the least at this very moment.

"Hey, Nico," Will says with a sunny smile, so-called friends absent, and Nico's reminded so much of Piper's words. He may seem like a socialite, but he's more isolated than anyone else. Here in the empty hallway with Nico at a standstill and Will approaching him with more haste than what can be considered normal, he feels those words resonant the clearest.

"Hi," Nico greets back noncommittally, not wanting to seem like he's spent hours thinking about Will. Vaguely, he wonders how Will would react if he were brave enough to ask him the true intentions behind all of his actions. Percy's offhand comments invade his thoughts, shouting loud over Piper's and Nico takes a step back to create distance between the two of them.

The other boy notices and Nico thinks he may have seen his expression fall but maybe he's just imagining things that don't exist. "Where are your friends?" Nico continues the conversation, covertly trying to uncover the truth he's looking for.

Will looks to the side and shrugs, dismissing the question. "Around, probably," he answers, turning his eyes back to Nico, and Nico tries to swallow his disappointment. Of course Will would turn this around as easily as he proposed it.

But still, he says nothing about Drew Tanaka and that should be a whole answer in itself, but Nico is wringing his hands and he can't let this go. He can't, he just can't.

"What about…" He can't say her name; he can't say her name so he substitutes it for another: "Octavian?"

After all, it was only yesterday when Octavian gripped his cold hands around Nico's wrist and demanded to know what was going on between him and Will. He doesn't want to think about the way that his hostility nearly hit something deep inside of him that would make him remember things that he wants to forget. And now the thought of him is making him avert his eyes, fingers reaching to scratch down roughly on the inside of his right wrist.

But then Will's hands are suddenly covering his wrist, having closed the distance between them in a few short steps, and he finds his eyes widening when the warmth of Will's skin presses against the fabric of his long-sleeved shirt – touching him but not at the same time. Yet he can't find himself pulling away, and…Will's hands do not bring forth any lingering memories that would urge him to pull away. He holds just above Nico's wrists and pulls them apart before he releases his hold, leaving warm imprints on where his hands were just seconds ago, cold air rushing to replace where his warmth was.

Nico searches Will's face immediately; the other boy averts his eyes and takes a step back. "Ah – sorry. I don't know what came over me," he apologizes, running his hand through his hair and looking at anywhere but Nico. "I just noticed… That you, um, scratch yourself when you're uncomfortable. I'm sorry – what I did was just out of hand – I wasn't thinking."

He's startled by Will's attentiveness, knowing that Will couldn't have possibly known that unless he's carefully observed Nico over the past days. But even then this would have been difficult for him to pick up in those few days. He's about to ask him when and where did he catch on, but Will quickly deflects that with his answer of the original question.

"Anyway, Octavian and I aren't really friends. We're just acquaintances."

"He sure didn't act that way yesterday," Nico comments. In the emptiness of the hallway, his observations sound more like an accusation.

"He's a little brash," Will admits. "But I've asked him to stop after what he did. We're not really friends." There's a pause and then, "I promise I'm not like him."

Nico nods but doesn't speak, not knowing what else he can do except bring up the topic of Drew, which he doesn't want to. Will must sense that something's changed between them since this morning because he peers almost anxiously at Nico and then asks in the wake of his silence, "Am I upsetting you? Because if I am, then I could just leave. I'm sorry." The words fly out in a rush, stumbling over each other and practically falling over with nervousness.

He doesn't get why Will is so antsy around him right now, spouting apologies here and there, and he thinks maybe it has something to do with the way that Will had touched him, heat against heat, and there's something intimate about it: an empty hallway and two boys, a breath's width too close to each other.

Maybe, Nico muses, it's internal homophobia creeping up on him. The whole touching sequence must have left him confused and have broken all sorts of 'no homo' societal rules. Will himself had confirmed that he was straight yesterday when Nico probed the answer by saying that he wasn't gay, even if it was a somewhat noncommittal affirmation.

"I don't understand you." The words escape faster than he can clamp his mouth shut. He wants to scratch down on his wrist again after hearing his own words, but he knows that the other boy will take notice of it so he forces himself to continue: pulling the words out even if they make him bleed in the process. "Why are you so focused on me at the end of the school year when you've had four years to even ask for my name? Why now? You've already denied it, but I still feel like it has something to do with that party. And I also don't understand the deal with your friends. They all act like they hate me – which is fine – but they hate me when I'm around you. Are they just all very possessive or do they all have a common list of pros by being friends with the wealthiest guy in school? And then just now –" He doesn't know how to finish it. Maybe Nico had merely imagined that the touch was more intimate than it really was. He looks away from Will and shoves his hands into his pockets, eyes tracing the lines of the tiled flooring.

The silence seems to hold its' breath for a second before it is broken by Will's voice. "I don't know how to answer that."

Words that feel like waterfalls: "Piper told me about you." A trickle. "She said you were not like the others." Perhaps a roaring rush. "That you seem like you have it all, but in reality you're lonelier than all of your so-called friends combined." But nevertheless involuntary, unrelenting, uninhibited. "But I still can't figure out true from false. Tell me without bringing up that night – why have I suddenly become interesting to you?"

Silence is heavier than it seems; Nico's thumping heart is the only rhythm in his ears when he forces himself to hold eye contact with Will.

The boy in question doesn't look away, but there's a note of hesitancy in his eyes, an inner struggle to pull away and attempt to laugh it off even though they both know they can't. A part of Nico berates himself for bringing this moment upon them so quickly; he hadn't meant to destroy the fragility of their budding relationship as friends or whatever the hell they were, but he couldn't live with not asking these questions ever.

"I'm afraid that's impossible." The words are a punch to Nico's lungs, and he deflates the moment he hears them, the little hope that he had sinking down the bottom of his shoes. Will confirmed it: everything between them up until this moment was purely because the incident at the party and saving his own face. And it's only been a few days, but somehow Nico feels that loss echo deep inside of his chest.

And all Nico can say is: "I see."

He should turn to leave right now, but his feet are frozen in place, and it feels like Will's eyes are holding him in his place. If only he could swallow these emotions and then let it burn in the acid of his stomach.

Finally, the one stepping down on him relents, averting his eyes, sighing heavily and running his hands through his hair in such an exasperated way that Nico feels like this is all of his fault – just like that Friday night. Standing there with only Will for a witness, he realizes what a truly tiresome burden he's been to everyone, and he wonders what it will take for everything to go back to the way it was no matter how alone he felt then because it is nothing compared to the way he feels now.

Will mumbles the next words: "That's not what I meant." Maybe he intends to reach out and touch Nico again, but he seems to remember himself and his arms drop down to his sides. Nico finds himself drawn to hands, clenching into fists and then unclenching to hang loosely by his side.

"I don't understand."

The outburst is unexpected but yet everything has been building up to this moment after all. "Yes, okay? Yes! I did approach you because of what happened Friday night at my place and supposedly under my watch! And I'm fucking sorry for what happened, but I can't change a single thing and I feel like shit for it! But I'm not approaching you because I think I can shut you up if you want to speak up against me. Hell, I want you to say something bad about me: it sure would feel like retribution for the things I let happen." There's a choked off laugh, and Will rubs his hand over his face, and Nico is suddenly aware of how tired Will looks – the imperceptibly slouched posture, the hint of bags under his eyes, and the too light pallor of his skin.

And now the roles have been reversed, or at least that's how Nico feels. "I'm not mad at you for what happened."

Will's words don't cut corners. "But I am! And every time I look at you –" A pause, a beat, then the realization.

"I get it," Nico finally voices, forcing a fractured smile upon his lips even though he would prefer to just turn around and walk away from him. "Then just…leave me alone if it makes you feel that way. It's not like I'm not complaining." The attempt at nonchalance comes out horribly inadequate, more like a taunt than anything.

And in a span of these few minutes, they've both managed to wreck their fragile relationship with nothing but words spoken in the wrong moment.

But Nico can't live with that, can't look at Will to gauge his expression before the storm, but he can't take the words back so he throws more into the fire, hoping with everything he has that these words will be the quelling water.

"I'm sorry. I…didn't mean it."

Everything sounds so vapid and empty, but he can't do this – this dance of pretending, of avoidance, of circling around each other. "I just don't know what to think. I didn't mean for it to come to this. I…" A laugh bubbles up, and then the hallway resonances with his hollow laughter. "I'm so worked up about this, but I shouldn't be. I should just let it go." It's fucking hilarious, Nico thinks, reminded of him and Reyna two years ago right after she confessed to Piper and gotten rejected. "Don't ever fall for straight girls."

Will isn't exactly a girl, and while there have been rumours circling around his sexuality, he did vaguely confirm he wasn't into males, and why is Nico thinking about this again?

But somehow Nico's somewhat inside joke but not at the same time has made a confused grin crack on Will's face.

"I'm sorry for flipping out – that's not like me," Will says, taking a step closer to Nico. "Are we…okay now?"

But the laughter is just as shallow as their words. Still, Nico can't help compromising. He admits it: he wants to believe Piper's interpretation of Will's intentions more than Percy's. And hope has gotten him so far, so here's to hoping. "To an extent."

Will puts his hand on his shoulder. "Leave it to you to say what you're thinking." He lifts his hands a second too late, and Nico realizes that he is becoming obsessed with Will's hands.

Still, Nico wonders how often he says what he's thinking, especially around someone who manages to make his heart react so violently in such a trivial timespan.

Notes: help me this fic is a snowball effect. I will try to keep it below 50k but sometimes I really let myself go.