#when in doubt just compose the entire fic out of dialogue and nerdy references

[blackgwenstacy]

‘tis the season (to be merry)

[shows up five days late with starbucks and a gay fanfic] hey y’all merry chrysler

Happy holidays to @connorstolll !! I was your secret santa for @pjosecretsanta2k17. I hope you enjoy your Solangelo college au <3

word count: 2,200

summary: Will Solace is a little in love with his roommate, and holiday party shenanigans only confirm that he’s a lot in love with his roommate.

warnings: alcohol use, a few f-bombs, and STEM major roasts

There’s a certain feeling one gets after taking their very last final of the semester. A freeing feeling, like the entire world has been lifted off their shoulders and each anxiety-ridden thought suddenly flees from their mind.

Will hasn’t felt this relieved since before the semester started. After those stressful weeks, he wants nothing more than to spend his break sleeping, eating, and binge watching Netflix.

And pining after his roommate. His dorky, adorable, oblivious ass roommate.

Will’s had somewhat of a crush on his college roommate, Nico di Angelo, for the past six months. They’ve roomed together for a year now, but it took some time for Will not to be intimidated by Nico’s dark features, brooding expression, and his infinite knowledge on the secrets of the universe.

Once Will had grown used to all of that, however, boy was he gone.

It’s not like Nico seemed to notice any difference in the way Will was acting toward him. It was quite ironic to Will, especially because Nico was the one who  loved to rip characters apart and analyze their every word and action. Watching any movie with Nico was one hell of a psychoanalysis.

Then again, Will could be a bit more. . . expressive about his affections. But it’s not like he was letting every opportunity to admit how he feels slip through his fingers, allowing himself to suffer in silence.

(That was exactly what he was doing.)

“Hey,” he calls out upon entering his dorm, stuffing his lanyard into his backpack and tossing it at the foot of his bed. As much as he’d like to sleep forever, he told Travis he would attend he and his brother’s party tonight, so he ought to get ready for that. 

“Hey,” Nico responds. He’s in bed, occupied with a rather thick looking book, an empty mug of coffee resting on the nightstand next to him. Will frowns, already knowing Nico was hardly going to pay him any attention, hyper focused on whatever literature he was studying. “How was the Physics exam?”

“Physiology. Anatomy and Physiology.”

“That’s not the same thing?”

“I’m just glad it’s over.” Will plops onto the stiff mattress of his dormitory bed, removing his boots and peeling off his socks. “I thought you were finished with assignments?”

Nico doesn’t look up from the book. “I am.”

“Then why are you reading—” Will gets up, crosses the short distance between their beds and bends over slightly to glance at the book cover, “—Canterbury Tales?”

Nico still doesn’t pay Will any mind, adjusting his thick-rimmed glasses. Will struggles to ignore how adorable Nico looks with them on. “I’m taking English Lit next semester— ”

“Oh my god.”

“Did you know J.K. Rowling got inspiration for the Tale of the Three Brothers from the Pardoner’s Tale?”

Will did not know that, and actually thinks it’s pretty cool, but he’s still in disbelief of the fact that Nico was still studying, even after all of his finals.

“Aren’t you tired of reading?”

“Me, the English major, tired of reading? Preposterous.”

“Don’t you want to do something fun?”

Nico drops the heavy book in his lap, taking on a defensive tone. “I think literature is very fun, thank you.”

“Okay,” says Will, “and action potentials are as great as Disney World to me, but even I want nothing to do with them after talking all those exams.”

“You, the STEM major, want nothing to do with action potentials?”

Will chokes back his laugh. He want’s Nico to take him seriously, his sarcasm be damned.

“Take a break, man.” 

Nico frowns, taking off his glasses, and Will tries not to look disappointed.

“I don’t know,” Nico sighs. He crawls across his bed and shoves Canterbury Tales into his overflowing bookshelf kept at the foot of it. “It feels weird. Like, I keep thinking there’s something I should be doing.”

“What you should be doing,” Will starts, “is rewarding yourself for surviving Hell Week.” He drops the bomb. “The Stolls are having a holiday party tonight. You should come with me.“

Nico looks the opposite of intrigued. “No, thanks.”

“Come on, Nico,” Will stresses, “You haven’t left the residence hall in two weeks. You’ve only left this dorm room to take your finals.”

“I think having to evacuate last week because Leo started a fire in the communal kitchen counts as me leaving the residence hall.”

Will rolls his eyes. He knows Nico doesn’t have much of a party personality, but some of Nico’s friends would be there. It would be good to catch up with them and get some human interaction.

“It’ll be crowded, and noisy,” Nico objects. “Did you know noise is one of life’s most common stressors?”

Will hums, and quips, “So is loneliness.”

Nico glares at him. “You know, when I decided not to request a different roommate next semester, it’s because I thought there wasn’t any way you could possibly get more irritating.”

Will ignores the jab. “Are you sure it’s not because you love me?”

Nico amusedly raises one of his eyebrows.

“Fine,” Will relents. “I’ll go by myself. Alone. Even though loneliness is one of life’s most common stressors—“

“You are the biggest Drama Queen,” says Nico.

“Says you.“

Nico rolls his eyes, standing up. “Fine, I’ll go. But not for long, I’m already mentally exhausted.”

“Okay, cool,” Will says calmly, though on the inside he was dancing on flowers and rainbows. He gathers up his toiletries and his towel. “We’d better shower. It starts at seven.”

“You better not use my fucking stall, Solace, I swear to god.”

Will doesn’t know what he was expecting when Nico agreed to go to the Stoll’s party with him. Perhaps he thought Nico would spend the whole time sitting quietly, keeping to himself and counting the minutes until it would be over. Maybe he thought the festive atmosphere would warm Nico’s heart like his smile did to Will’s cheeks, and he would confess his love to Will after the two shared a cliche kiss under the mistletoe.

Whatever he was expecting, it definitely wasn’t this.

“And since we’ve no place to goooo, let it snow, let it snow, let it snow,” Nico sings, or slurs rather, along with Dean Martin’s suave voice. His face falls. “I can’t believe Jon Snow died.”

“He came back,” Will reminds him.

Nico’s face lights up, and so does Will’s heart. “Woah, you’re right.”

They sit next to each other on a raggedy green sofa in the Stoll’s apartment. There’s music playing in the background, the playlist going back and forth between traditional Christmas songs and whatever’s on the Hot 100 this week. There’s a few dozen people that are here, most of them Will knew by association. They’ve only been here an hour and Nico’s on his third cup of eggnog.

“I’ve been thinking,“ Nico starts, “when I was a kid they made us pick grass and put it in a box under the tree for the camels to eat on Three Kings Day and when I was a kid I didn’t question it but now I’m not a kid and camels don’t eat grass. Wait—do they?”

Will isn’t sure if he’s amused or concerned by how many conjunctions Nico just used in one sentence. Nico has a conniption every time Will uses a comma in an unnecessary place when they text.

“—They live in the desert. There’s no grass in the desert. Wait—is there?”

Nico doesn’t indulge in alcohol very often. Not that Will has ever seen, at least. He wonders if he usually sings Christmas carols and talks about camels when he’s drunk.

He watches as Nico scowls and peers curiously into his red cup. “I think there’s something in this eggnog.”

“Yes. Rum. I told you that before you drank it.”

Nico’s eyebrows raise, far enough for his bangs to hide them, blinks with wide eyes. “Oh shit.”

Then he shrugs, and downs the rest of the spiked drink. Unbelievable.

Will snorts. “You’re going to regret that.”

Nico grins mischievously. “Me, the college student with an existential crisis, having regrets?” he says, looking about the room. His eyebrows fly into his hair again. “Does Percy have samosas?”

Nico stumbles to his feet, and disregards Will as he chases down Percy for some of his samosas.

Well, at least Nico wasn’t miserable, Will thinks. He was enjoying himself, sort of. This could’ve been worse.

Will sits through a horribly rehearsed, yet hilariously iconic Mean Girl’s Jingle Bell Rock reenactment by Leo, Piper, Percy, and Jason, and a marshmallow eating contest between Cecil and Lou Ellen. It’s been twenty minutes and Nico still hasn’t returned. Will hopes he’s not throwing up eggnog and samosas in the bathroom right now.

He waits five more minutes before getting up to go look, passing a couple passionately making out under the mistletoe in the hallway. He checks the bathroom, which happens to be empty, and unwillingly checks the two bedrooms, which are not so empty. He hopes the Stolls change their sheets before they crash later.

Having no luck thus far, Will ventures into the kitchen. Maybe Nico’s judgement wasn’t totally impaired and he decided to find some water to flush his system. Or he was looking for more eggnog.

“Hey, Will,” a familiar voice says. Connor Stoll, sitting atop the kitchen island, grins down at him. He has a red solo cup in one hand, the other rests around the shoulders of his boyfriend, Mitchell. He raises his cup. “Eggnog?”

Will shakes his head. “I’m good.”

“DD?” Mitchell asks.

“Well, I guess so now.”

Mitchell raises a pierced eyebrow.

“I came with Nico. He’s kind of tipsy.”

“It’s Grandma Stoll’s famous holiday eggnog,” says Connor, raising his cup in praise. “Pure fuel.”

“Hey, have either of you seen him? I’ve been looking for him for half an hour—“

“Found him,” Mitchell smirks, pointing with his cup. Next to him Connor bursts out in rambunctious laughter.

“Oh, yeah, he’s feeling merry, all right!”

Will spins around, and — Oh. Oh.

Nico was dancing rather uncoordinatedly in the middle of the living room, surrounded by a dozen people, an Ariana Grande song blaring from the speakers. Everyone whoops as the dark-haired boy gyrates his hips on an offbeat.

Will lets out a bark of laughter, unbelieving of what he was witnessing.

“Strip tease!” a voice that sounds suspiciously like Leo yells.

Nico smirks at the suggestion, but doesn’t move to take off his clothing. That is, until, he catches Will’s eye in the crowd of people.

He sends Will a wink, and begins to pull off his sweater. Will can feel his stomach flip, his face heating up.

There are hoots and hollers, and people scramble to pull out their phones. It only seems to egg Nico on more. Will thinks there’s a bit too much liquid courage pumping through his veins.

He. . . should probably stop this. Nico would be mortified in the morning if Will let him give all their classmates a drunken strip-tease.

Nico’s stripping doesn’t advance very far, however, because his sweater promptly gets stuck over his head. Everyone roars with laughter, Nico’s giggles muffled by the knitted fabric.

Will grows anxious at all the phones recording tonight’s events. There was no way Nico wanted to be the center of everyone’s social media attention. He pushes his way through the crowd, grabbing at Nico. “O-kay!”

He pulls the drunken man away from the limelight, into a less crowded hallway.

Nico speaks from inside his sweater. “Will, is that you?”

“Yes.”

“I’m stuck.”

Will laughs fondly. “I see that. Here.”

Will helps Nico pull his sweater back down. Nico huffs and ruffles his hair, looking flustered.

“I think,” says Will, fixing Nico’s bird nest hair, “you’ve had too much eggnog.”

Nico hiccups in response.

“We should probably go back to the residence hall,” Will suggests, and Nico nods exaggeratedly in agreement.  His brown eyes catch on something above them.

“What?” Will asks, and follows Nico’s eyes. Oh.

A mistletoe, in all it’s holly jolly glory, hangs mockingly right above them.

Yeah, they’re not doing that.

“That’s so cliche,” Nico comments, squinting at the fake branch.

“I agree,” says Will. He grabs Nico by the shoulders, spins him around so he can guide him. “Let’s go.”

It took nearly an hour to get Nico back to their dorm. Will struggled with guiding the stumbling man all the way to his car, then had to drive slower than usual due to Nico’s complaints of motion sickness. And as much as he adored Nico, he would still kick his ass for throwing up eggnog and samosas inside of his car.

“Oh, you are going to hate me tomorrow,” Will says to Nico, tapping through the stories on his Snapchat feed. There were various clips of Nico’s clumsy performance tonight. Hysterical as it was, Will felt slightly embarrassed for him.

Nico looks over from where Will had tucked him into his bed. “Enough to change my roommate request?”

Will laughs at Nico for the hundredth time tonight. “I hope not.”

“It’s okay,” Nico yawns before continuing, “you’re a STEM major and I still haven’t requested a new roommate. You could be in league with the First Order and I still wouldn’t request a new roommate.”

Will snorts. He wasn’t sure how Nico could be intoxicated and still manage to be a fucking nerd.

Will puts his phone to sleep, setting it down on his nightstand. He turns in his bed to face Nico. “Why’s that?”

“You said it yourself,” says Nico. Will stares at him for a long time, not quite sure what he meant. Nico smiles at him, and turns in his bed. “Merry Christmas, Will.”

Christmas wasn’t for another week. Nonetheless, Will smiles fondly, and turns off his lamp. He lies down and indulges in the butterflies that warm his stomach. They match the fluttering of his heart.

“Merry Christmas, Nico.”

the Ariana Grande song Nico was dancing to was Wit It This Christmas LMAO