Archive of Our Own ^beta

Nico was already regretting not bringing his laptop with him to the cafe.

After hours of working on his thesis at home he decided that he needed a break. He needed to just not look at the thesis for a little bit because he was getting absolutely nowhere with it, and he knew that if he brought his laptop with him he would just end up working on it anyways. 

So there he was, sitting at one of the little tables on the patio in front of a cafe soaking up the late-spring sun. He leaned his forearms on the table, and took a selfie with his drink and sent it to his group Snapchat to prove to his friends that he does in fact go outside, thank you very much . 

After sending the snap he turned his phone off, placed it face down on the table and took a sip out of his drink. 

Gods, he was so bored.

He could feel the trickle of each minute that went by, and slowly felt anxious energy start to boil deep in his chest. He really should be working on his thesis, and every minute that he spent at that damn cafe was another minute that he was wasting. 

What if he never finished his thesis? Or he ended up making an edit to it that was so egregious that his supervisor just dropped him as a student? Then he wouldn’t finish his degree, he’d be in debt for nothing, and he wouldn’t get a job that paid enough to pay off his loans, and he’d probably die early from the stress or from starvation-

He almost jumped up and bolted back to his dorm before he halted his thought process.

That spiral just proved that he needed the break; there’s no way he could be productive if he was going to be thinking like that. He needed to chill for like half an hour at a cafe. 

He could do it. He could be chill. He was so chill. You just had to ignore his shaky hands, the tapping of his foot, and his heart that was beating so fast he felt like he was running a marathon. 

Yeah, he was chill.

His phone buzzed, and he picked it up immediately. There was a response from Jason in the groupchat. Nico opened it to see a slightly blurry picture of Jason. It looked like he was on a treadmill. He was giving the camera a thumbs up, and the caption read “proud of u.” Nico rolled his eyes and exited the app.

He made himself look busy on his phone by idly flipping through his apps. He would open a social media app, scroll for a couple seconds before opening up his email and refreshing it to nothing new, opening up another social media app, and repeating the cycle. Every time he switched between apps, the little number on the side of his text app alerted him to the unopened texts that he was blatantly ignoring. 

Of course it wasn’t just school that was stressing him out. It couldn’t be, life wasn’t that fair. Why, when he was balls deep in thesis work and studying for his finals, did his dad feel the need to try to repair their rocky relationship. Why couldn’t his dad have texted him after the semester was over. He could've waited just a couple weeks, for Nico’s sake. It was very rude of him honestly. So Nico would ignore those texts until he submitted the final draft of his thesis. But until then, the unopened texts would haunt him. And haunt him they did. 

He was so deep in his thoughts that he barely registered someone else sitting down at one of the tables near him. However, he was forced to acknowledge it when there was a sudden weight on his legs, stalling their anxious bouncing.

He blinked down at his lap. A dog blinked back at him. 

“Oh. Hello,” Nico greeted, his voice higher and softer than usual. The dog, a fluffy golden retriever, had placed its head firmly in Nico’s lap, and wagged his tail slightly at Nico’s voice. He reached down and started petting the dog's head, causing its tail to pick up speed.

“Oh my god I’m so sorry,” a voice said to Nico’s left, presumably attached to the other end of the dog's leash. Nico looked up, and felt his heart stutter, and his hand stilled. The dog whined.

The prettiest man Nico had ever seen was looking at the dog in his lap with a pained smile, and lightly tugging on the dog's leash. The man had curly hair, which was catching the sunlight in a way that made it look like it strung from gold. He met Nico’s eyes, giving him an apologetic smile. His eyes were the same colour as the clear sky above them, and Nico swore he saw gold flecks in them. Across the man's nose was a splash of freckles, that Nico kind of wanted to count. 

Nico swallowed.

“Maple, get back here.” Maple the dog just sat down stubbornly, and whined. Her tail was now thumping against the ground as it wagged, keeping her big head firmly in Nico’s lap.

“Sorry about her,” the man apologised. 

Finally snapping back into the present and ending his obvious staring, (how pathetic was he to lose his mind at a pretty stranger) Nico gave the man a small smile.

“Oh um. Don’t worry about it,” he said laughing nervously, and picked back up on petting. “It’s just surprising. Dogs don’t usually like me.”

“Well, Maple is too friendly for her own good sometimes,” the man said with a chuckle. Nico laughed back, and continued petting her.

The man cleared his throat, and Nico looked back up and saw the man looking at him with an expression that Nico couldn’t read. Oh no. Was he waiting for Nico to say something? What were the expectations of interacting with a dog owner when petting their dog?

“My names Nico,” he blurted, hoping that would satisfy whatever social expectation he was horribly failing to meet. 

The man smiled at him. He had pretty teeth. They weren’t perfect; he had a little gap between his two front teeth and a couple others were slightly crooked, but Nico thought that it made him look even more attractive. 

“I’m Will,” he replied. Nico nodded, and turned back to Maple, unsure where to take the conversation from there. 

Good lord, how was he supposed to woo this beautiful man if he couldn’t get past introductions. This was pathetic. Whatever gods did exist probably just needed a laugh, so they sent this hot guy just to watch Nico fumble him. 

“Um,” Will started, and Nico glanced back at him. Will was looking at him, his face now pinched with hesitance, his eyes flicking between Nico and the dog. Nico watched as Will started to say something, and then stopped himself, biting his lip. Nico raised his brows at him, silently questioning. 

“Sorry if this is intrusive, but like, are you okay?” 

Nico stares at him for a second, before sputtering out a not very confident sounding “Y-Yeah? Why?”

The man looks pensive for a moment, before speaking again. “Maple is a therapy dog, so like she does this to people experiencing distress. So like, are you good?”

Nico blinked at him. Then Nico burst out laughing. 

Of course the one time a dog actually walked up to Nico on its own volition was because he was so mentally distraught that he couldn’t be ignored. It’s decided, whatever divine being was overseeing his life did send over this man to humiliate Nico for a laugh. 

Nico wiped a tear out of the corner of his eye as he took a deep breath, trying to control his laughter. 

He took Maple's face in his hands and cooed, “Sorry cucciola, did you pick up on my spiralling? Thanks for trying to make me feel better.” He giggled again, rubbing the top of Maple's head.

When he finally looks at Will again, he's staring at Nico, eyes wide, lips slightly parted, and a small flush in his cheeks.

Remembering Will had in fact asked him a question, which Nico had answered with maniacal laughter, which is not the ideal answer to ‘are you okay ’ Nico rushed to actually answer him. “Um yeah, I’m good. Just have finals and some family stuff all piling up. I came here for a break.” He turned back to Maple. “And I’m glad I did because I was able to meet this sweetheart,” he cooed, scratching under her chin. She leans into it, closing her eyes.

“Yeah, me too. Uh, glad that you could meet Maple. That is,” Will said, ending his sentence with a cough. Did he sound… nervous? 

Nico looked up at Will, who was definitely blushing now.

Will cleared his throat again. “Anyways, I have to go. I’m supposed to take Maple to the Old Main building to visit students. I do it every Thursday at 3pm if you ever want to visit her.” 

Nico smiles up at him. “Sure, thanks. I’ll keep that in mind.” Will nods back, before furrowing his brows and biting his lip again. 

Nico thinks that he wants Will to bite his lip like that. 

Feeling the blush creep onto his face at just the thought, he forced his gaze off of Will and onto the table in front of him. 

He took a sip of his drink, and listened to Will moving at his table, likely packing up his stuff. Then he walked up to Nico, which Nico assumed is because he needs to collect Maple. Nico stopped petting her, which earned him a whine.

“Or, um. You can just text me if you want,” Will said, placing a napkin on the table in front of Nico, with what looked to be a phone number scrawled on it in sharpie. 

Okay, maybe whatever god was overseeing Nico’s life decided to throw him a bone. A bone he would gladly take. 

“To visit her? Or you?” Nico asks, curling his tone flirtatiously at the end of his sentence due to a sudden burst of confidence because this beautiful man is giving Nico his number .

“Uh, either or. Whatever you want. Yup. Okay, lets go Maple” he rambled, gently coaxing her off of Nico’s lap. The blush crawled all the way up to Will's ears, which Nico thought was pretty cute. He gave Nico one last smile and small wave before he walked away.

Nico enjoyed the view as he left, and as soon as he was out of sight Nico scrambled to his phone. He opened Snapchat and took a zoomed in picture of his face and wrote, ‘just got a cute guy's number,,,, maybe I should go outside more often’.