neighbors | solangelo au

1.1

Nico di Angelo heard the steady beeping noise of a truck backing up in the next-door driveway, a sound unfamiliar to Nico, so he left his sandwich half-made on the countertop and went out to the porch.

There was, in fact, a truck outside. Even more inexplicably, it was backing into the driveway of that house next door, which struck Nico as a miracle unto itself, considering that no one had lived in that house as long as he could remember, and he kind of understood why, having been inside it once or twice himself.

It was a nice house; all the houses in this neighborhood were, just, it was kind of falling apart, and dusty as fuck. Nico remembered his father saying something about "a partially cracked foundation" and "outdated pipes" while he stood in the living room among the sheet-covered furniture, looking utterly out of place in his suit and glasses and impeccably slicked back hair.

Yet, against all of Nico's expectations for human beings' acceptable quality of living (which were actually pretty fucking high), someone had decided to move in.

He moved to the left side of the porch and sat down on the white wood railing, swinging his legs over the side so he was facing the truck, which had parked by then; a small silver car followed it, and was parked in the street.

A man got out of the moving truck (he could tell by the giant U-Haul logo on the side) and walked around the back of the truck as two people who had been in the silver car made their way to the door.

Nico realized how strange it looked, him sitting on the porch and staring at his new neighbors (he guessed) as they moved in, so he swung his legs back over the railing and went back inside to find Bianca walking through the kitchen on her way outside.

"There's people moving in," Nico said, turning to follow Bianca back outside when she moved outside.

"I thought I recognized that atrocious shade of orange," she said, referring to the truck.

They stood there, watching the new neighbors struggle to unlock the front door (Nico added the lock to his mental list of shit that didn't work in the house), until Bianca said, "Nico, look, he's your age."

Nico craned his neck to try to see around the man closest to them. Bianca was right; the boy standing to the right of the man struggling with the lock looked to be about Nico's age.

Nico frowned. "Wonderful. Social interaction, my favorite."

"Oh my god." Bianca sighed, and Nico could tell she was rolling her eyes from the tone of her voice. "Don't be like that; I'm sure the two of you could be friends. And anyway," she paused to smirk at Nico from under her bangs. "He's cute."

"Bianca!" Nico said, maybe a bit too loudly, because the neighbors looked over, so he grabbed Bianca's wrist and dragged her into the house.

She lauged quietly as Nico let go of her arm and headed towards the main staircase. "You know, I don't automatically like every guy I see just because I'm gay."

"I know, I just like to make you angry," she responded, grinning up at him.

.

Nico was sitting in his room, enjoying his summer vacation-induced freedom, the event of the neighbors moving in forgotten, when the doorbell echoed through the house and he heard Bianca's feet on the stairs.

He started a mental countdown from 5, and heard Bianca yell "Nico! Come down here," when he got to 1.

Nico reluctantly heaved himself up from the bed and tripped down the stairs to see the new neighbors standing at the door with Bianca, whose plastered-on smile changed to a real one when she saw the look on Nico's face.

Nico considered going back upstairs, but decided against it.

He joined Bianca at the door and put a smile on his face. Bianca put a hand on Nico's shoulder. "This is Nico, my little brother."

"Great!" The man, who Nico recognized as the one who was struggling with the lock earlier, smiled widely and extended a hand for Nico to shake, which he did tentatively.

"I'm Andy Solace, and this is my son Will," the man, Andy, said, releasing Nico's hand. The boy standing next to Andy, the pretty one, Will, smiled at Nico with blinding teeth.

"Hi," he said, with a little wave.

Nico mumbled something sort of like "hi" in response.

"Well, it's nice to meet you, we just came over to introduce ourselves," Andy said warmly.

"It's nice to meet you, too!" Bianca replied, with appearingly equal enthusiasm. "It's great to finally have neighbors. I'd invite you in for dinner, but, um, our parents are away-" Lie, Nico thought. "-and they usually make dinner-" Another lie. He awkwardly brushed his hair behind his ear and avoided eye contact with Will or Andy. "-but you should definitely come for dinner when they get back."

"Oh, no, we wouldn't want to make trouble for you," Andy protested.

"No, it wouldn't be any trouble," Bianca insisted with a smile. Nico wanted to step on her foot or something.

"Well," Andy responded, looking pleasantly surprised. "I guess you can just pop on over whenever your parents get back, since we live in such close proximity."

"Yup," Bianca replied, with another smile. "See you soon, hopefully!"

"See you soon!" Andy said, starting down the stairs.

"Maybe we can hang out sometime?" Will asked sincerely, trailing slightly behind his father to look at Nico, who offered a half-hearted "sure, sounds great" in response.

They left (finally) and Nico followed Bianca into the living room, where she reclaimed her seat on the floor in front of the fireplace and pulled her college textbook and a highlighter into her lap.

"You know we're not going to be able to get her down here for any kind of dinner, right?" Nico said, sitting on the coffee table.

"Maybe it'll be a good day," Bianca said, not looking up from her book.

"The last good day was two fucking months ago," Nico replied. "The bad days come more often than the good ones now."

Bianca slammed down the highlighter. "Look, I know you're not a big fan of other kids, and I know this situation is kind of shitty, but we just have to deal with it, okay? And anyway-" she took a deep breath and went back to her textbook. "-Dad will probably care enough to sit for a quick dinner, and he can make some kind of convincing excuse if it's not a good day."

Nico shrugged one shoulder. "I guess."

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so there's chapter 1. what do you think so far? i'm pretty excited, i have a lot planned. idk when the next chapter will be up; i want to spend a lot of time on chapters and make them as good as possible. if you haven't read the description, you should go do that now for trigger warnings bc those are a thing. anyway, author's notes will generally be shorter (and chapters longer, hopefully). also a quick shoutout to christine5cw for praising this which gave me the necessary motivation to post it.

i love you all

xo - lucy