excelsior.

just a shadow of ourselves.

pie-is-not-a-meal:

Soo.. This is my Secret Santa for @ollympus ( @festiveroah ). Sorry it wasn’t ready for Christmas itself, but solangelo were playing hard to get. Also, this is pretty awful - I haven’t written anything in ages. Hopefully this is the coffee shop au you wanted, but I threw in a bit of soulmates au too ;) Merry Christmas!! (title is from ‘talk to talk’ by this century, and disclaimer: I do not own any of these characters, as much as I would love to..)

——

Nico is nearly ten the first time Bianca tells him about soulmates. Well, tells him properly, anyway; in a world such as this one, everyone knows about soulmates, about how you have one perfect match in this life, and it’s up to fate how and when - and whether, even, because not everybody is lucky enough to meet their’s or for the bond to be mutual - you meet them.
“What if I don’t ever meet them?” Nico had asked her anxiously, his small hands clenching together and turning the skin across his knuckles bone-white.
“You’ll meet them,” Bianca had replied, her dark gaze gleaming with such assurance that Nico had believed her whole-heartedly.

He’s fourteen (“and three months,” he tells his older sister seriously, his eyebrows pulling down above his grey eyes when she just laughs and ruffles his hair) the first time his soulmate’s curling handwriting appears on his forearm, neat and definite and in glittering gold ink. Don’t forget your keys, the words flourish, luminous against his pale skin, and it’s something so mundane that Nico can’t help but let out a burst of surprised laughter. Since then, he’s seen almost every thought that passes through his soulmate’s head and it’s… odd, mostly; he feels like he knows this absolute stranger completely, and it’s weird for them not to be more literally in Nico’s life. Although, he thinks he is glad that they’re his soulmate. There’s no other way to describe it, there’s something simply… sunny about them. It’s an almost complete contrast to Nico, but he can’t help but like it regardless.

He’s sixteen, the dark curls of his unkempt hair tickling his face, the first time his soulmate’s words burn their way onto his arm. The pain is so sharp and so unexpected that Nico slumps over right there, in the middle of his maths class.
“Mr. Di Angelo?”
He can’t breathe to reply for a moment and he ignores the teacher in favour of running his fingertips faintly along the surface of his mark, where there are no words, only a blur of searing gold.
“Mr. Di Angelo? Is something the matter? Do you need to visit the nurse?”
He could go, he supposes, but it would be pretty useless considering that they wouldn’t tell him anything anyway. They couldn’t. Even for Nico to ask would be frowned upon, because it would mean that he didn’t trust fate to deliver his soulmate safely to him in its own time. All he could think was what if something happened, oh my god, what if something has happened, what if, oh my-
“No,” he croaks eventually, “I’ll be.. I’ll be fine.”

——-

Nico’s breath is a misty white cloud in front of him when he walks into the coffee shop on a cold day in December. He inhales sharply, as he pushes open the glass door, at the rich smells that assault his nose and then turns back to Percy, who is sauntering along behind him, a reluctant Annabeth in tow. For a second, his smile threatens to fall, but then he glances down at his arm, at the gleaming writing scrawled there, and the corners of his mouth tilt back up. His soulmate is currently thinking oh wow and Nico wonders for a moment what they could mean, before he glances up and meets the gaze of the barista.

His blond hair has fallen across his face and his lips are slightly parted, caught on an exhaled breath. Nico thinks he might be blushing, but it’s sort of hard to tell with his tanned skin. The italian goes to take a step closer to the counter… and falters. There’s a man in front of him waiting to be served, who is currently snapping at the barista, “Hello? I said, are you going to be serving me any time today!” Nico diverts his stare away from the now stuttering blond, and instead looks at the teenager’s forearm, which is currently a blank expanse of golden-brown skin, dotted with tiny freckles like constellations in a clear night sky.
“Well, it’s about time, too,” barks the man in front of him, shaking his head and glaring at the server.
“What a jerk,” mutters Nico under his breath… which rapidly stops and then starts again twice as fast when the phrase ‘what a jerk’ flashes in messy ink the colour of midnight across the barista’s arm. His eyes dart back up to the blond’s face, to his fair brows scrunched up thoughtfully as he attempts to deal with the rude customer.
‘It’s just a coincidence,’ the dark haired boy thinks, and glances over his shoulder to ask Percy and Annabeth what they want to drink. When he turns back, though, his barista (the, Nico corrects himself, he’s not my barista) is staring wide-eyed at where Nico has pulled up the long sleeve of his black winter coat; or, to be more precise, at the patch of skin where the words oh wow still curl, the colour of sunshine, towards his wrist.

“Um,” begins the blond barista, tilting his head to meet Nico’s gaze, “would you like some coffee?”
“Why else would we be in a coffee shop?” drawls Percy, finally dragging his attention away from Annabeth and stepping up beside Nico, who rolls his eyes at his green-gazed friend.
“I, uh, actually meant would he-” at this point, the barista nods at the younger boy, “-like to get some coffee… with me?”
“Yeah, uh,” Nico starts, ducking his head as his cheeks begin to flush, “yes, that would be nice..?”
“Oh, sorry, I’m Will. Will Solace,” the blond says, offering his hand, and Nico says:
“I’m Nico Di Angelo,” in reply, and goes to grasp the barista’s - Will’s, Nico thinks - palm, but then he pauses, his pale hand stranded in the air, when he happens to see the word 'Nico’ scribbled across his arm out of the corner of his eye. The twists of his name gleam gold. For a second, he’s confused - why would his soulmate be thinking his name? Then he suddenly realises why… And the moment slows like his hand hanging, motionless, over the counter. His head spins further when he sees that 'Will’ has appeared on the blond boy’s arm - and in his untidy handwriting, he recognises, as he peers at the dark, stygian letters. Time stretches on for seemingly much, much more than a moment… Before everything snaps into place as Nico meets those smiling eyes.

“It’s you,” Nico whispers, when he finally manages to look up at Will. At his soulmate, whose face is caught in an almost identical mix of surprise and joy and wonder.
“Sooo…” interrupts Annabeth after a minute or so more of the pair grinning speechlessly at one another. “Coffee?”

oh wow, I had completely forgotten about this one!

• 9 May 2018
• 142