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Nico steps out of the shadows into the dimmest corner of Aaron’s living room, and takes a moment to breathe. It’s funny how comforting the smell of this place is, just a couple months into dating its occupant for real—it isn’t home, but it’s familiar. Easy.
Aaron’s in the shower—Nico can hear it running. He briefly considers slipping in to join him, even just to stand there and feel the hot water on his shoulders, but he’s not really in the mood right now. Instead he kicks his boots back off and steps out to the little patio off the kitchen, shooting Aaron a text so he’ll see it when he’s out of the shower:
Back and in the hammock 😘
The patio is more of a balcony, really, not a lot of space to begin with—and most of it is taken up by the hammock. Aaron has it strung diagonally for maximum tension at each end, one where it’s tied to the metal railing in the corner nearest the stone wall and the other to the railing facing out into the narrow alley between this building and the next. It’s precarious, and cumbersome, and one of Nico’s very favorite things about Aaron’s apartment. Definitely better than the weight bench in the living room.
He’s gotten enough practice by now to know the right angle to sprawl into the hammock, exactly where to aim his weight so it won’t tip him back out onto the tile. He sticks the landing—so to speak—and settles in as the hammock swings back and forth with the force of his fall before it settles into a more soothing rock. Nico puts his phone in his pocket, closes his eyes, and deliberately relaxes as many muscles as he can talk into it.
He isn’t sure what exactly he expected from visiting Will. They hadn’t really talked in 8 months, no more than a couple logistical texts since Will’s moved back out here, so he really had no idea what it would be like at all. But he thinks it went well. At least, it could have gone so much worse. If it had been more awkward, if Will had been weird about Aaron, if either of them had tried to talk about December any more than they did, he would have been—was—fully prepared to leave a nervous wreck.
But instead it was just… friendly. Almost chill, even. Almost. The little sliver of skin he caught sight of, Will clearly having just pulled his shirt over his head before he answered the door, that—that was a lot. And then the brief, insane impulse to add but we’re open to the end of the sentence when he told him he was seeing someone—as if there’s any way in any universe Nico could ever hook up with Will on the side of anything, could ever be any kind of casual with him, as if that’s not the literal exact reason they didn’t have sex eight months ago—like the idea of even trying doesn’t make him feel kind of nauseous—
That would have been messy as hell. He doesn’t actually want that, doesn’t actually want Will, not the way they both are now. Nico breathes, sways in the hammock, and feels centered in that knowledge. The thirst is real, but the feelings are just ghosts. Old habits are just hard to break. Will’s just still six feet tall.
“Hey, you.” Speaking of six feet tall—or more like six-two—Nico smiles at the sound of the door sliding open and shut, the shift in the air as Aaron steps out onto the balcony. “Will it kill your zen if I join you?”
“Please do,” Nico says without opening his eyes. He expects Aaron to climb into the hammock with him—what he doesn’t expect is for him to climb into the hammock naked.
Okay—no—not completely naked; when Nico opens his eyes, startled, he realizes his boyfriend is wearing shorts. But he’s very shirtless, hair and that tan expanse of skin still a little damp as he settles himself on Nico’s chest and snuggles into his arms, twisting and folding his big frame to fit comfortably.
“Oh, hello.” Nico runs his hands up the twin planes of muscle that make up Aaron’s back. “You smell nice.”
“For once.” Aaron grins up at him from his shoulder, and Nico lifts his head just enough to lean down for a kiss. The hammock has mostly stopped swinging again now that Aaron’s comfy and still. “How’re you doing?” he asks.
“I’m good. I got to see Odie.”
“Odie?”
“Oh, Will’s cat,” Nico says. “Did I not tell you about Odie?”
“Oh, right—no, you totally did, I just didn’t remember his name,” says Aaron. “So how’s Will?”
Nico sighs. Aaron knows the backstory in its broad outline, of course. They talked about this morning well ahead of time, and he was completely on board. He’s reassured Nico more than once that he’s cool with whatever amount of contact Nico wants to have with his ex, because that’s his relationship to deal with how he wants to and Aaron trusts him—and Nico doesn’t actually want Will back in any way, shape, or form anymore—so why does he still feel weirdly guilty about this, like he needs to explain everything more clearly, like there’s something to confess, like Aaron doesn’t actually get it? Because if he got it, there’s no way he’d be as chill with everything as he is?
“I think he’s fine,” he says. “It seems like he’s doing better than he was last time I saw him. And I am too,” he adds, squeezing Aaron fondly around the ribs—not that Aaron’s the reason for it, but he’s a main one for sure. “His place is nice. I—guess it was nice to see him.”
“You guess?” Aaron repeats, teasing. Nico shakes his head and exhales sharply into his hair.
“I don’t know. I feel weird, and I don’t even know why. But maybe that’s just part of the process,” he adds. “I don’t know. I’m still glad I went.”
“Mm. Yeah.” Aaron shrugs. “Did you, uh—did you tell him—?”
“About you?” Nico smiles. “That’s all you really wanna know, isn’t it.”
“No, no, I wanna know how you’re feeling!” Aaron says quickly. “But—I mean, yeah.”
“Uh huh,” says Nico. “Yeah, I told him I have a boyfriend. He was—fine? I think it surprised him, but he didn’t seem upset or jealous or anything, so that’s—that’s good.” Aaron’s quiet for a beat longer than Nico might have expected before he says,
“Did you think he would be?”
“No, I—of course not,” Nico says, as much to himself as Aaron. “Not really. I was maybe, like, projecting some of how I was, back when he first started dating someone new after we had broken up—but that was a long time ago, and we’re a lot older now, so, no, of course not.”
“Oh. Huh,” says Aaron. “What were you like?”
“A jealous little bitch,” Nico tells him honestly. Aaron stifles a snort, badly. “I’ve grown out of that.”
“Yeah,” Aaron agrees, cause—well, no shit. “And that’s good that he’s not either, then,” he adds, “cause that probably means you guys really are on the same page about the whole goddess thing, right?”
“Oh, yeah,” says Nico. “As in not actually wanting to get back together? No, I never doubted that.”
“Yeah.” Aaron shifts a little, snuggling against him like he’s trying to get closer, tighter. A lightbulb burns on in Nico’s head:
“I thought you didn’t get jealous,” he teases, trying to be gentle about it. “What happened to monogamy being an oppressive construct?”
“It is,” says Aaron, “but if your ex was still in love with you, yeah, I’d be kind of, like—weirded out, to say the least. Not because other people shouldn’t be in love with you, obviously,” he adds, “you’re incredible, everyone should be falling for you left and right—” Nico rolls his eyes, and isn’t quite brave enough to voice does that mean you’re officially in love with me?, because they haven’t said that yet— “but when there’s that much history, it’s, uh… yeah. I don’t know. I guess how I’d feel about it would depend how you felt about it, and maybe that is jealousy, right? If my feelings depend on how you feel about another guy?”
“Yeah, I guess it is, in a sense.” Nico draws his arms up to wrap around Aaron’s shoulders and squeeze. “Well—I don’t think he’s still in love with me, thank the gods, and I’m not into him. I mean, he’s hot,” he adds, a little against his better judgment, but—they’re grown-ass gay men, realistic and mature about their sexuality, and they talk about other guys being hot all the time, and it shouldn’t matter, he tells himself, because they’re open, so— “like, I still think he’s attractive—but I’m not interested. If that makes sense.”
“Yeah, I get it,” says Aaron. “Wait, what does he look like?”
“You haven’t, like, Instagram-stalked him?” Nico asks, honestly surprised. He Instagram-stalked all of Aaron’s exes. Of course, Aaron makes it a lot easier than Nico does, because he actually posts pictures to his Instagram—and leaves old ones up, even with guys he dated like five years ago now.
“No—not yet, anyway.” Aaron laughs. “Let me see?”
“Okay—” Nico fumbles for his phone—
“Is that your hand in your pocket, or are you just happy to see me?” says Aaron, sounding disgustingly pleased with himself—Nico resists the temptation to jab him where it would really hurt—
“Shut up—okay, here.” He opens his phone and flicks through Instagram to find Will’s profile, holding it up. Not that there are a ton of pictures of him there, because he’s the kind of guy who mostly just posts pictures he takes of places and his cat, but that’s what the tagged photos tab is for.
“Aw, is that your kitty friend?” says Aaron, so Nico taps the most recent post before he swipes over. He’s a California cat now 🌞 captions a photo of Odie stretched out in the sunlight under a window, orange and blissful.
“That’s him, yeah.”
“Cute.”
“Yeah.” Nico lingers for a couple seconds before he taps back over to whatever the tagged photos of Will are going to be.
As they load, his stomach swoops—and not really because of Will at all. He’s not actually in any of the pictures that show up along the top row, so they must be sets he just appears in somewhere, but all the posts below that—without scrolling, anyway—are pictures of Will with a woman Nico has seen before, because he did Instagram-stalk Eva Nadal last winter. By way of this very same page. He manages not to drop his phone, and instead hands it to Aaron so he can look through the photos for himself.
As he does, watching over his shoulder, Nico thinks he’s mostly just surprised Eva hasn’t deleted all these. Isn’t that what straight people, hell, most people, do when they break up with someone? Not Aaron, clearly, but Mateo deleted the two pictures Nico was in from when they dated four years ago. Piper doesn’t have many photos up with Nina anymore, though she does have a bunch with Shel—but that’s different; she and Shel are still good friends.
Everyone processes things differently, Nico supposes. Besides, it took Mateo a couple years to do.
“Wait, is Will bi?” Aaron asks as he scrolls through the pictures of him and Eva.
“Oh—yeah.” Nico braces himself—he doesn’t think Aaron would be weird about that; he’s friends with bi people—and instantly relaxes again as he says,
“Oh, huh. Cool. I didn’t know that.” He pauses at a picture of Will and Kayla at what looks like someone else’s wedding—
“That’s his sister,” Nico clarifies.
“Oh, okay,” says Aaron, “I was gonna say, I wouldn’t have thought.” Yeah; looking through these photos, Nico does feel weirdly called out by the type Eva is. Or at least, how she looks in the pictures: dark hair and usually a dark lip, often rocking a black leather jacket, though she reads polished hard femme where he thinks his own punk-inflected vibe rests more in the middle of the gender presentation spectrum.
Regardless, they’re each not so much Will’s type as to be a pattern—it’s just the two of them, across his exes, as far as Nico can tell—but they’re in many of the same genres, and it definitely feels like something. Something about how Aphrodite decided to dump Nico back into Will’s life right on the heels of that breakup, out of all of them.
Well, nice try.
“Let me know when I can have my phone back,” he says.
“Sure, I’ve seen plenty.” Aaron hands it back. Nico closes Instagram and thinks a prayer of gratitude. “He’s cute,” Aaron adds. “I get it. You really wouldn’t even fuck him again? Just for the fun of it? A cute little throwback?” He’s clearly joking, teasing, but Nico can’t laugh about it.
“No,” he says. “I really wouldn’t. That would be too messy.”
“Hey, I don’t mind a little mess.”
“Well, I do.”
“Oh, I know,” says Aaron. Nico smiles in spite of himself.
“You’re all the mess I need right now,” he says, teasing back. “I’m all the mess I need.”
“Well,” says Aaron, grinning up at him. “At least we’re hot ones.”