Nico drops his keys, trying to slide them in the old, shitty lock.
He has to take a moment to breathe.
He can just -- pick them up. They are maybe three feet away, right there on the ground. On the cold, frigid doorstep. Right on a layer of powder snow, which has puffed and pillowed out on impact to flutter over the brass and aluminum and the beaded keychain Kayla made for him, years ago. They blur, the longer he stares, faded pinks and greens swirling with tarnished glinting silver and grey, dead white. It is stupid to be fighting back tears.
But unsurprising, with the day he has had.
He exhales quick and bullish and forced his stiff knees to crouch, his frigid hands to dig around until they close around his key loop, until the apartment key, icy, is clenched between his reddened fingers and shoved, creaking, into the garbage, stubborn lock, until he has yanked and twisted with enough desperation that it finally -- finally -- gives. The swollen door is stuck in the frame, because of course it is, but it feels good to shove, to punch the solid face of it with enough force to ram it open, groaning, slamming against the narrow walls of the front hallway.
There is blues, playing in the apartment. Patti Page.Nico works his boots off, exhausted, and smiles as his foot hits the floor and he hears Will singing, or humming, rather, loud enough that he can hear it over the oven fan, over the record player.
He is trying to be quiet, Nico can tell. Maybe listening. But the apartment is tiny, and he is incapable, besides.
He pads his way to the kitchen, leaning against the doorway, and watches his husband way his hips absentmindedly to muffled French horn, dull knife slicing along to the rhythm of old Oklahoma accent. His apron straps are tied wrong, too short on one side. He is wearing too-tight shorts and an old, oversized band shirt, and very little else. The heaviness along every dot of Nico's spine fades almost to nothing.
"Sorry I'm late," he murmurs, wrapping his arms around Will's waist. Will hums, not startled -- he was listening for him, then -- and leaning into his hold, into the chin Nico hooks over his shoulder. "Huge fuckin' -- mess, EZ Death Line had a -- stampede, or something, I couldn't piece together --" He stops, and sighs, curling into Will's warmth. Will drops a hand onto his frigid wrists and squeezes, turning to press a kiss to Nico's hair.
"Long day, huh."
"Long fuckin' week."
"Mm. You're cold, too."
Will squeezes, again, and then reaches back for the knife. Nico tries not to pout too obviously at the loss. At the teasing, rolled eyes he can feel from Will's direction, he doubts he is successful, but Will concedes to lean farther into him, even though it throws him off balance. So it cannot be too bad.
"I don't know how much it will help with the shitty week, sweetheart, but I guessed at the cold." He points his chin at the pot sitting neatly on the stained stovetop, wooden spoon balanced precariously off the half-bent lid. "I made -- well, I tried to make, don't get your hopes up -- pasta fasioi. Called Chiara about it."
He says it easy, nonchalantly, but Nico watches the grip he has around the knife's handle, and grins. Don't get your hopes up, he says. As if he didn't half-grow up in the back of a diner, as if he doesn't know his way around a spice rack.
Nico presses a kiss to his neck, grateful, and slides over to the stovetop, lifting the still-warm lid. It doesn't look like much -- the best food rarely does -- but it smells like old, old home, like salt and flour and the beans drying in the depths of Mamma's cantina. The music, too, is old enough that it almost sounds like home, like woodwinds and radio static and cold wind blowing through thin windows.
Nico dips the spoon in, bringing it to his lips. It would never be allowed, usually, but tonight Will is quiet, tonight he bumps his hips into Nico's and lets him close his eyes, exhaling, remembering the thick almost-graininess, the sweetness of the slight basil and sharpness of the cheese that is probably too expensive for them to be using. On a resident's salary, at least. But Will only smiles, when Nico curls into him, and brings his strong, warm hands up to the back of Nico's neck, roughly chopped vegetables forgotten on the wobbling counter.
"Thank you," Nico whispers, into his shirt. It smells like -- rainfall, almost. Summer showers.
Will presses his soft, sad smile into the line between Nico's hair and his forehead.
"Course, darlin'."
They sit to eat -- on the floor, because their one table is covered in one of Will's research projects -- and Nico even eats the salad Will shoves at him. It's good, too, but he complains about it, just to watch Will huff, just to watch his shoulder square and brow furrow as he lists, in alphabetical order, the twenty different ways each individual protein or whatever will fix his aching muscles. Will holds his hand, as they eat. Even though it makes eating more difficult, and he spills thick soup on the dead front of his goofy, ridiculous, cat-in-outer-space apron, and pouts when Nico cackles at him. There is a point as Nico is struggling to breathe again where he sets his near-empty bowl on his favorite tile (the chipped one, that he feels bad for) and turns to face Nico fully and watches with his cheek cupped in his free hand until Nico gets self-conscious.
"What," he says, shoulders raising, "did I get something on my face?"
But he didn't, and he knew he didn't, before he asked. Because he knows the look in Will's sky-black eyes, the shy, disbelieving pleasure of it: the gods, you're beautiful and I can't believe I have this and you are everything I prayed about. He knows, because Will says it, often, because he doesn't flinch from it the same way Nico does, from theâŚbubbling shame of it. Not from loving him, never from loving him, but from his witnessing of it, of the raw, endless pounding of his heart, unbelievably obvious. Not from his wanting to hide, but his incapability of doing so.
"Your head is spinning," Will comments, and it is. Nico wonders how he knows, so exactly. If he can see it. If there's a look in his face. "Get up."
Will pushes himself to his feet, and holds his hands out. Nico takes them, both of them, and when Will has pulled him up he lingers, still, brings Nico's knuckles up to his lips and kisses until Nico is flustered, squirming.
"There's no one here but us," Will reminds him, softly.
Nico shudders. "I know." He drops his shoulders, exhaling, expelling. "I know, I know. It just --" He shrugs. "I can feel it still, I guess. Everywhere but here."
It is not the first time he has said it and will not be the last. The Underworld doesn't bother him, not like it does Will; it is home, in many ways. His father is softer, now, and his step-mother almost tolerates him. He has friends in various gods and deities and satisfaction in his responsibilities.
But there is always, always someone watching. And after a while, it makes his skin crawl.
Will rubs his rough palms up and down his bare arms, expelling the feeling. The record pauses and they look up, the both of them, and when it starts again it starts with low, muffled trumpet, and Will perks up, and Nico groans, more teasing than anything, and lets himself be dragged, sighing, into what passes for a living room, and is really just the clearest corner of the one-bedroom. Will wastes no pretense and pulls him close, immediately, close enough that Nico can feel the rumble of his chest as he hums, low, too low for him, really, but Nico sighs into it anyway. Sighs into the arms Will tucks tightly against him, the cheek on his head, the breath lining up with his; this song is old, and sad, but it makes Will think of home and of summer and of campfire, and it makes Nico think of Will. So he doesn't mind, really.
"If I was her I woulda kicked my friend's ass," Nico murmurs, and Will laughs.
"I don't blame you," he says, quiet through the brass and piano solo. "I like that she loves them still, though. Both of them."
"They betrayed her."
"And yet, she sings softly about them."
Nico sighs, and mutters something about hopeless romantics. Will smiles, sweet, and draws him in closer, somehow, as if there is nothing separating them, no clothes, no air, no atoms. As if they are they same cloud of existence. Patti Page sings I remember the night, and the Tennessee Waltz and Will turns them, slowly, and sings back Now I know just how much I have lost. And his voice is light, soft like hers. Sacred and reverent. And Nico can't read his mind, not really, but he knows he is thinking about old friends, about love. About how things shift, and change, about how years ago, Will sang this song, along his brother's trumpet, and Nico's heart beat through his chest. About how four years ago, this June, Will sang this song again, and Nico waltzed with him, on an over-polished, slippery floor, in dress shoes that pinched.
"I love you," he says, over quiet, old tears and arpeggioing piano.
"I know," Will says, just as quiet. He ducks down and kisses Nico gently, lovingly. "I love you, too."
I know, Nico thinks of saying. It is in the bags under his eyes and the work on the table but the hours spent in the kitchen anyway. It is in the letters Nico keeps tucked in the bulging pocket of his favorite jacket and the mess of their shoes at the door, the six blankets on their double bed even though Will overheats every night. In the too-expensive espresso machine that he doesn't know how to use but lets take up space on their tiny counter anyway, in the pictures hung crooked on every square inch of wall space, in his hands, warm and searching, on the back of his hips, in the breaths pressed to his skin because he is cold still and tired and dancing.
Instead, he says quiet. Instead the Tennessee Waltz ends, and he says nothing as Will reaches over, arms long and straining, and pulls the needle back, slightly, right before strumming guitar over muffled brass. Instead he exhales, long, slow, total, and presses his nose to the crook of Will's neck, and memorizes the borrowed scent of petrichor and the constant scent of lavender, and the edge of his burn scars against his skin. And he waltzes, and waltzes, and melts in the arms of his loved one, away from the ice of the cold and the depths. Away from anything but sweet Southern summer's embrace, and gentle, warbling blues.
