Pt. 2 
Nico  

He woke hours later, to the sound of someone clearing their throat.

It took a second for the room to register. The sheets tangled around his legs. The stretch of soft light through half-closed curtains. The slow, sour ache in his thighs and shoulders. And, oh God, he was naked.

Nico jolted upright, tugging the blanket over himself just in time to see Alfred standing in the doorway. 

“Good morning, Nico,” he said. “Apologies. I knocked, but you didn’t stir. Mr. Thorne had to step out. He asked me to drive you. Home or school. Your choice.”

The words took a moment to land. Nico glanced toward the empty space beside him, then back at Alfred, who didn’t so much as raise an eyebrow.

“Right,” Nico said, voice cracked and sleep-heavy. “Um. Thanks.”

Alfred gave a small nod and stepped back. “I’ll wait outside.”

The door clicked shut again with polite finality. Nico sank into the pillows, one hand still clutching the blanket to his chest, his heart thudding like he'd been caught doing something he wasn’t supposed to be doing.

Jordan was gone. No note, no message. Just Alfred.

Nico moved slowly, like the wrong gesture might make the whole apartment turn hostile. He slipped out of bed and found his clothes folded in a neat pile on the armchair; his shorts, his hoodie, even his socks, all stacked like someone had deliberately taken the time. Whether it was Jordan or Alfred, he didn’t know which would be worse.

He got dressed without turning on the lights. On the nightstand, he spotted his phone beside an empty glass and a half-drained bottle of water that wasn’t his. 

Nico's backpack was by the door. He double-checked for his keys, ran a hand through his hair in vain, then looked around the apartment one last time, unsure if he was forgetting something or just trying to delay walking out.

He thought there'd at least be a goodbye.  

When he stepped outside the apartment, Alfred was already waiting by the elevator. The older man gave a polite nod, pressing the button as Nico approached.

Nico watched the numbers tick down, before catching his reflection in the mirror lining the back wall. His hair was a mess and his eyes heavy. 

“Do you know where he went?” His voice was still a little hoarse from sleep.

Alfred didn’t look at him. “Mr. Thorne had an early meeting. He left just after seven.”

The elevator slowed to a stop, doors opening onto the underground garage. The space was huge and every car parked there looked expensive, spotless, the kind of cars you didn’t leave on the street. Alfred gestured toward the familiar car parked nearby, unlocking it with a quiet beep. 

“He, um…” Nico cleared his throat. “He didn’t say anything before he left?”

“No,” Alfred said, pulling open the back door. “Just that I was to take you wherever you needed.”

“Oh. Okay. Cool.”

The night before, Alfred hadn’t let him out down here. He had taken Nico through the lobby instead, just like the first time Jordan had brought him home.

The garage made sense now, he guessed. It was morning. People would be coming and going, the concierge probably wide awake at the desk, neighbors passing through. 

Discretion. Right.

It left a weird taste in his mouth, but he ducked into the car anyway.

Nico spent most of the drive home staring out the window. When they pulled up outside his building, Alfred put the car in park and wished him a good day. 

Nico mumbled a quiet thanks, shutting the door behind him. A few neighbors were heading off to work. Nico couldn't help but feel a little awkward when they greeted him with a good morning. 

His mom's keys were gone from the hook by the door. She'd already left for work. He dropped his backpack in his room and sank down at the desk, his phone still in his hand. The number Jordan had called from last night lit the screen. 

He typed a message, but quickly erased it. He tried again, but erased that too. Everything he wrote sounded too clingy. 

In the end, he settled on the simplest version of what he wanted to say: 

Thanks for last night :) 

Then he waited.

But nothing came back.

Not that day, and not the next. 

Jordan didn’t text him back until four days later. It was the middle of the night, 3:12 a.m., when Nico’s phone lit up on the nightstand:

Hey

That was it. No context, or apology or follow-up.

The thought of completely ignoring Jordan’s message, turning over, and going back to sleep crossed his mind, though only briefly. Nico ended up sitting up, thumbs moving over the keyboard:

Hi

Sent.

It became a pattern, just not a predictable one.

Sometimes Jordan reached out twice in a week. Sometimes not at all. Once, it was two whole weeks of nothing, just silence and a gnawing ache Nico tried to pretend wasn’t there. And always, it came in the middle of the night. A message. A call. You up? Come over. I’m outside.

Nico always said yes.

He’d stopped trying to initiate anything himself. The few times he had, once to say hi, once to ask if Jordan was okay, he’d gotten nothing back. And worse, it felt like those texts made Jordan retreat even further. So Nico learned. He just waited. He only answered when asked. 

Some nights he stayed for hours, only to be sent home before sunrise. Other nights he fell asleep there, waking up alone, the sheets still warm beside him. Sometimes they had sex, sometimes they didn’t. There were nights they barely touched at all; just a movie playing in the background while Jordan nursed a drink and Nico talked about music, about chords and lyrics and the little things most people didn’t notice. Jordan always listened. 

And then there were other nights, quiet in a different way. Jordan's hand would brush the back of his neck when he walked past. His fingers would trail over Nico’s wrist, his knuckles, like he couldn't help himself. 

They’d sit by the window sometimes, their reflections tangled together in the darkened glass and the city glowing below them. Nico liked those nights best. The nights when Jordan would dim the lights, open the balcony door to let the cool air in, the curtains shifting with the breeze. Nights when he'd ask Nico questions, why he liked this song so much, what kind of music his dad used to listen to and play. 

It was more than enough to keep Nico coming back. Though the rest of his life didn’t slow down to make room for any of it.

School became harder to keep up with. Not the material, he still understood the work when he bothered to do it, but the routine of it. The early mornings after sleepless nights. The group projects he forgot to show up for. The teachers who used to smile at him now frowned when he walked in late, or didn’t walk in at all. He missed more days than he should’ve. Some weeks, he barely kept track.

But at night, when he wasn’t at Jordan’s, or waiting for Jordan to call, he played. Fingers on keys, or strings, or anything he could get sound out of. Not because he had a plan or because he was chasing the dream. Just to stay sane.

He started recording again. Just low-effort, one-take tracks from his bedroom. He uploaded two of them to MySpace under his real name, no edits or fanfare. 

One night, he wrote a song about Jordan. Or tried to. It was bitter and aching and messy in all the wrong ways. He barely made it past the second verse before deleting the whole thing.

It wasn’t good anyway, he told himself.