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mediumgayitalian · 2 months

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Nico wakes up with a mouthful of hair.

“Are you serious.”

He sticks out his tongue, trying to get it out of his mouth without spitting on it, giving up after about four point three seconds of trying. He wriggles his arm out from where it’s pinned between his body and Will’s, flicking the last few strands off his tongue. For good measure, he kicks the first thing he can reach — his boyfriend’s thighs, go figure — in protest.

“Please, no,” Will mumbles tiredly, batting blindly under the cover until he slaps on big hand over Nico’s ankle, squeezing. “Please. I got in at three thirty last night. It’s barely seven. Please.”

Nico sighs, relaxing his muscles. Will presses a brief kiss to his shoulder in gratitude, face buried in his chest, sinking boneless into him.

“The whole knowing the time without a clock thing will never stop being weird,” he mutters, pressing a kiss to a freckled forehead. He rubs his hands over Will’s bare shoulders, digging his thumbs along the knotted muscles, and smiles as he groans, trying in vain to plaster somehow closer to Nico, practically melting into him. “Gracie keep you up all night?”

He shifts as he nods. “Harley, too. Poor things just want someone to hold their hair outta their face and rub their back, they’re so miserable.”

Nico hums in sympathy. It’s flu season — hitting the little kids, mostly. Will has been on his feet for days trying to mitigate symptoms, soothe aching bones and sore throats. There’s not too much he can do for the flu, but the kids are miserable and they trust him, so his presence is more of a cure and a comfort than anything.

“Kayla there now?”

“Austin and Lou. Kayla’s on after lunch; Piper’s with her.”

“Good.” He squeezes his shoulders again, leaning down to press a long, lingering kiss right between his eyes. He leans into it, sighing. “Sleep for a bit, okay? I’ll come check on you, but I don’t want you up before 2.”

“‘Kay,” Will sighs, unconscious again by the time Nico’s wiggled out of his hold. For a moment he stands, watching him: his bare, broad back, spattered with dark freckles and moles, dipping at the base of his spine and covered barely by the soft, white sheets; arms curled up all the way around his face in Nico’s absence, bicep squeezing his cheek, pursing his delicate Cupid’s bow; long, light eyelashes fanning over round cheeks; even, steady breathing, in and out, in and out.

Golden hair, of course, frizzy and messy and poofing out around his head; haloed in the early morning sun.

He’s barely able to tear himself away to go shower.

———

“They’re everywhere,” says Kayla in disgust, peeling a long, curly strand off her shirt. “I haven’t been in the same room as him in two days. This is a brand-new shirt. How am I still somehow covered in his hair?”

“He’s like a dog,” Austin explains. Nico snorts. “He sheds, and at first it’s subtle, here and there, you get used to it. The suddenly two years go by and people are complimenting the fur coat that was not fur before you bought it.”

Gracie sticks out her bottom lip, eyes watering. “Will is not a dog, he’s a boy!”

Austin groans, muttering something about favourites and annoying older brothers and where was this energy when I ate the last secret cabin twinkie and was accused of being a ratbag, huh, Gracie, where was my defense squad and annoying older brothers again. Gracie is unmoved by his whining, glaring at him with big green eyes — ever her oldest brother’s defender.

Nico hides a smile in his hand. No wonder, with how Will dotes on her. On all his siblings, really, but only Yan and Gracie are young enough that it doesn’t embarrass them.

Kayla and Austin, on the other hand. (At this point, Will enjoys embarrassing them in front of their friends as much as the actual doting.)

Kayla, weak to her sister’s pouting, pokes her playfully in the side. “I’m only teasing, Gracie-girl. Of course Will isn’t a dog.”

“Except the shedding, and the constant yapping, and the fact that if you don’t let him loose to run around for a while he goes batty, and of course the following Nico around like a lovesick pup—”

“Thank you, Austin,” Nico interrupts, clearing his throat. He sends a quick prayer of thanks to his father for hair genetics covering his flaming ears.

Austin snickers. “Anytime.”

After three years it’s futile, but sometimes Nico really considers rescinding his doctor’s note. Is sitting here during meals really worth his peace? Is it?

“He really does shed, though,” Kayla says after a moment of silence. She pinched yet another hair off her shirt, sighing. “Like, not to agree with Austin or anything —”

“Hey!”

“— but, like, damn. If he’s been there, you know it.”

Nico snorts. “Tell me about it. I keep finding hair on my pillows, it’s driving me insane.”

It does drive him insane. He finds it in the shower — although to his credit Will really does try to get them all there — and in his hairbrush, on his clothes, his sheets, his mattress. The floor. Once, notably, on the shrine in his cabin, after which Will had panicked and sprinted to the pavilion to scrape an entire pot roast and pray not to get smited, leaving Nico to laugh himself to tears at the base of it.

Too late, he notices the total silence at the Apollo table, the wide eyes boring holes into his head, the loose, dropped jaws.

“What?” he says, shoulders curled defensively.

As soon as the word leaves his mouth, realization dawns on him. He chokes on a grape.

“You two didn’t tell us?” Austin demands. “How long has this —” he gestures vaguely at Nico and at the infirmary, which, he assumes, is meant to represent Will — “been going on?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he wheezes. With his rapidly asphyxiating brain, he attempts to summon his boyfriend, still conked out, via sheer force of will. GET THE HELL UP AND COME RUN DAMAGE CONTROL, he screams silently.

Predictably, this does nothing.

Kayla shrieks. “Oh my gods, look at his face! They’ve been doing this forever!”

Nico bangs his hands on the table, trying at once to convey his protest and also hi, hello, children of the god of medicine, I am choking to death, fix please. Neither signal gets picked up, inhabitants of the table erupting an a screeching series of questions so loud that other campers notice, understand, and approach, equally as screechy.

“Will and Nico are together?”

“Holy shit! Since when?”

“I thought they’d never get out of the pining stage!”

“Don’t they hate each other?”

“Bro, are you stupid? Do you not know what bad flirting is?”

“Hey, is di Angelo turning purple, or is that just me?”

Throwing himself into the nearest shadow, Nico disappears.

———

“Get up, get up, I fucked up, I fucked up!”

Will shoots straight upright with a gasp, force of his own body sending him careening right over the side of the bed. He goes down in a tangled heap of cursing and yelping and ow, fuck, shit-damns.

“What happened?” he demands as soon as he’s free from his fabric prison. He rushes (stumbles) over to wear Nico is still wheezing, hands braced on his knees, for dizziness now as much as to catch his breath. “Neeks, woah, slow down for a sec. Deep breaths with me.”

He tries to follow along to Will’s exaggerated breathing, steady, long inhales and exhales. A calloused hand touches the curve of his neck, warmth blooming under it, and suddenly his airways are cleared.

“Thanks,” he manages hoarsely, breathing back somewhat under control.

Will squeezes his hand. “No problem.”

There are several pillow creases criss-crossing on his cheeks, making him look soft and sleepy, although his eyes are alert, crinkled in poorly-concealed amusement. His hair is somehow more mussed than when Nico left him this morning.

“What happened?”

“So I. Um.” Nico clears his throat. “Your bother was roasting you for shedding like a dog. I, of course, had to join —”

Will rolls his eyes, mouth twitching. “Of course.”

“— and I mentioned super casually that I get your hair all over my shit, right? And, well — well.”

“Well?” Will prods, when Nico cuts himself off. Chancing a glance, Nico finds he doesn’t look angry, or nervous, or disappointed — and of course he wouldn’t. Not for something as silly as this.

He is gonna laugh, though. Nico hates when he’s righteously clowned.

“Well, I.” He lowers his voice to a mumble. “May have said something about all of your hair that ends up on my pillows.”

For a moment it’s silent. Nico keeps his eyes trained away, although he leans into Will’s touch, his hands in his face, the side of his neck, the warmth thrown off his sleep-addled body.

He’s almost startled by the giggle.

Almost.

“…Oh, you dumbass.”

He tries very hard to look annoyed as Will cracks up. He taps his foot, crosses his arms, and tries very, very hard to frown, but Will’s laugh has always been the most musical thing about him, and he loves to serenade. And Nico is very weak to song.

“Stop laughing at me,” he snaps, without heat.

Will’s cheeks puff up from the force of him trying, face going red around the edges.

“I’m trying, Neeks, I am —”

“Not very hard.”

“I am, I am.” Valiantly, he draws in a deep breath, only breaking into giggles twice before managing to hold a somewhat straight face. “Nico,” he says, suddenly very close and very warm, “I love you.” He presses a kiss to his forehead. “And I love sneaking around with you —” the bridge of his nose — “and making out in dark closets —” his cheeks, both, quickly, one after the other — “and behind the Big House —” the base of his jaw — “and in the —”

“I get it,” Nico interrupts, flushing. He can feel the curve of Will’s smile against his skin.

“My cabin, if it’s empty,” Will murmurs, kissing the underside of his jaw, his neck. “Yours.” Slight nip of his teeth. Nico gasps.

“Will,” he whispers. His knees start to shake. “Will, c’mon, we gotta —”

Will presses a kiss square to his Adam’s apple, lingering. “We’re in yours quite a lot. I’ve gotten used to it, honestly, Neeks, I —”

The door bangs open, making both of them yelp. The matching screeches to not help the general air of panic and sitcom level foolishness.

“Oh my gods, you really are porking!”

“Get out, Kayla!” they both yell together.

“Jesus,” Will curses, forehead resting on Nico’s shoulder.

Nico bites his lip. Will shifts, turning to meet his eye.

They last two whole seconds before losing it.

“Three years of sneaking around without so much as a soul finding out,” Nico huffs as Will snickers. “Three whole years.”

Will pecks him loudly and exaggeratedly on the cheek. “And endless more in the open.”

“You’re such a goddamn cheeseball.”

“And yet you’re in deep, deep love with me.”

“…I am.” He cradles his face, pressing a kiss, finally, to his lips. Will presses back, smiling. “I love you.”

“I love you too.”

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