Boys In Love [Solangelo One-Shots]

Overheard

The apartment he shares with Cecil Markowitz is positively ancient. The stairs creak like the bones of a great-grandfather elephant, the plumbing moans and groans and sputters every time someone in the building takes a shower or flushes the toilet or washes their hands. The carpet has endured so much that Will isn't even sure what the original color was meant to be. Every appliance looks like it was dragged straight out of the beginning of time, because it was.

The landline is no exception. It's off-white and clunky with a spiral chord that's really only good for tripping over and twisting fingers through during particularly intense discussions with various take-out places. The keys stick, the receiver kicks up static, the numbers are wearing off, and sometimes when they're put on hold, they can still hear everything being said on the other end.

It's normally not that big of a deal, it's a problem that can be solved by setting the phone down and walking away, but occasionally, Will overhears things that he maybe shouldn't have.

Once, it was it was a dramatic break up that Will didn't have the willpower to walk away from, another time it was a single sentence that held altogether too much information and painted a mental image that would be burned behind his eyelids to this day, but this time listening in seemed harmless. After all, he just wanted to sit and pine a little, let his ears be caressed by the soft way that Nico di Angelo pronounces his vowels, and maybe laugh because his roommate is altogether the most ridiculous person he has ever met.

It did start out that way. The two friends were just discussing the latest episode of some sci-fi horror show that Will didn't have the time or the patience for (but that he was then considering picking up for the sake of a crush) and Cecil was making some comment about a character who he thought was hot and Nico was laughing and saying, I don't know, I prefer blue eyes over green. (Will was counting that as a score, although he should probably be a little offended that Cecil seems to have forgotten that he put him on hold at all.)

But then Cecil was laughing and saying, "Oh, I know. How's it going with you and Mr. Blue Eyes anyway?" and Will's hand was slowly suffocating because he'd pulled the cord so tight around his wrist.

So, now he's wadded up on the couch with an ancient beast of a phone curled up on his lap like a temperamental cat, its tail winding down his forearm, and his breath is maybe just a little too shallow as Nico sighs softly and breathes, "I don't know. I really like him, Cecil." (He has trouble with the soft 'I' sound and Will's heart is behaving strangely because he knows that his name sounds like 'Weel' when he says it.)

He wants it so badly to be him. It's wishful thinking, it's dangerous hoping. He knows that there are countless other people with blue eyes and he's only one of them. He knows that his chances are slim.

His roommate lets out a shallow laugh, "I know. You've liked him for years. Maybe it's time you stop gushing over him to me and actually do something about it."

Will can practically see Nico standing with his hip popped and his bottom lip firmly between his teeth, eyebrows drawn inward. "I'm just... scared, you know? Don't you think he would have said something to you before now if he liked me back?"

"Nico..." Cecil is pausing and letting out a long, slow breath just to bide himself some time. It's one of his things, like moving his hands a lot to distract people from his face or straightening up to the point of snapping to overcompensate for nervousness, "just because we're roommates doesn't mean that he tells me everything."

Will's throat closes up entirely, his mind narrows down to a single word: roommates.

Everything is spinning. What if he heard wrong? He must have heard wrong. He doesn't want to believe that he didn't hear correctly. Cecil only has one roommate.