One Shots, Two Shots And A Dead Drew.

Can I tell you something?

"Will, can I tell you something?"

"You can tell me anything." He glances up from his clipboard, grinning wide and wry and sparkling. "Especially if it's that you've got food."

Nico knows his best friend, so he does have food; a pack of twizzlers the size of his face that he tosses, deliberately quickly, at his face, smiling to himself when he misses and dives down to grab it anyway. His clipboard clatters to the ground, pen bouncing after it, as he tears into it, inhaling at least ten twisty candies in half as many seconds.

"Gods, I love you," he groans, mouth open like the disgusting mannerless loser he is.

Nico coughs. "Funny you should say."

He's spared from having to jump clear through the nearest window and landing right on his neck by the honestly uncomfortable noises Will continues to make - by the gods if he finds out it's been another twenty three hours since William has eaten he is going to kill him and resurrect his skeleton for permanent manual labour - and instead worries himself with the first random task he sees unfinished. Do the kiddie Band-Aids actually need to be emptied from their boxes and sorted by size and vibe? No. But Will won't stop him. And Nico needs, like, twenty minutes of recovery. So.

"What did you want to ask me, by the way?"

His mouth is still - somehow - full, so it sounds closer to whaa joo wanna asme. Nico, brave veteran that he is, feigns confusion.

"Hm?"

"Question," Will swallows, an actual, audible gulp, gods, where have Nico's standards gone, "that you had." There's the sound of joints cracking and a deep sigh, then quick footsteps, and then Will is in front of him, eyes squinted, mouth wide and crooked, leaning on the counter. He has been up before the sun and working the entire time, people pouring in and out like ants to an anthill, and Nico knows he has not rested, but energy still sparks all over his skin. He bounces, almost, from his frizzy ringlet curls to the balls of his feet, humming, twitching, moving.

"I." Nico's throat is dry, and his eyes move from the bandages, to Will, to the bandages. "Well."

When Nico was a kid he would stutter over his words. He was a shit speaker. Bianca spoke four languages by the time she was six, and Nico could barely ever manage the one; he knew what he was trying to say, and he would say it, only somewhere along the way his brain sent the wrong sparks or maybe his tongue got twisted or maybe his mouth made the wrong shapes. Or he blended them all together, like ice sleet on helicopter blades, and everything left his mouth just fine but got smashed to bits in the air outside of him, never reaching his audience quite right. And then he was ten and everything he cared about was smashed to dust and he stopped caring about where the words got twisted and stopped relying on them at all, and stared, instead; glowered, let his face speak for him, even if they weren't saying the same thing. It annoys everyone around him. It frustrated his mother and pisses off his father and annoys or frightens every other person around him, and everyone guesses, fills in the blanks, deciphers what he is going to say to make his presence just a little easier to bear.

But Will waits, rocking, as he always does, eyes flicking around the infirmary, a handwidth of space between them. Fingers, drumming on the curve of his thigh, his front teeth gnawing on his chapped bottom lip. Waiting. For the words, for the time, for the courage.

"I missed you today," Nico blurts, and it isn't what he meant to say, not by a long shot, but it's an approximation and it will count. And Will is suddenly smiling, huge, too big for his face; beaming, brightly, beautifully. "I hate it when you work too long."

"Yeah?"

Nico exhales, cheekbones ruddy. "Yeah."

"That's not a question, Neeks."

"Oh, stuff it."

Will laughs, then, and the room gets brighter, and Nico gets warmer, braver, and takes his hand. He walks even both out of the infirmary and Will goes willingly, even though there is work too be done, swinging their hands, and he talks, and talks and talks and talks, and then he waits, quietly, humming to himself, and Nico says nothing, although he thinks things, and Will acts like he has said them. And his palm is still rough and warm against his, and the sun is setting, and Will smells like artificial strawberry and lavender body wash, and Nico thinks, You can tell me anything, and he vows that he will. And he holds his hand, and squeezes it around his, and smiles, and waits, easily, contentedly.