This is a request for @Kawaii_Eren_Aot, who wanted a one shot with Will and Nico's moods switched. It's a little hard to explain, but it'll be more understandable in the story itself.

Will's POV

Raucous laughter surrounded me on all sides, the sound of fun all around. I stared around at the lunch table, at the pretty girls and the hot boys and the first thing that popped into my mind was that I didn't belong here, in the midst of people I had been friends with for years but had never truly gotten to know. I didn't belong with these people who bathed in happiness and confidence, who could think of a joke in a second and have it roll off of their tongue as naturally as breathing. The people surrounding me were confident people, pretty people, happy people. And as I stared around at the lunch table, I could tell that I didn't belong. I was the single spot of black paint on a pure white canvas, the stain on a favorite shirt that wouldn't wash out no matter how hard you tried. 

"You good, man?" Brad Johnson asked, clapping me so hard on the back my juice nearly spilled out of the carton. The chatter stopped like someone had flipped a switch and I could feel seven sets of eyes on me, boring into me. Maybe I liked it better when I was ignored. 

"Yeah, just thinking about a test," I lied, the words effortlessly spilling off of my tongue. 

"I feel that, man," Brad said, offering a nod. He turned back to Rachael Goodrich and the conversations around the table resumed and once again I was alone in the middle of a crowd.

During environmental studies I felt a tap on my shoulder and glanced back to see the smiling face of Nico Di Angelo. "Hey," he said, his chipper voice somehow even happier than the day before. "You ready to work on our project?" Even nodding seemed to take a toll on me, my head feeling like a hundred pound weight dragging my spine into a perpetual curve. Nico brought his chair over to my desk and spread out a spiral notebook, small doodles of birds in the margins where the lines of his neat handwriting didn't reach. "Have you made any observations?" Nico asked. "I got some, but you can go first, if you want." I pulled my notes out of my backpack, a crumpled sheet of white lined paper with a few sentences scrawled out, crumpled from being shoved inside of my bag. I smoothed them out on the desk in an effort to make them look slightly less inferior to Nico's. 

"I found a nest near my house," I said, squinting at my handwriting. "It's got berries, some seeds and nuts. We can check it out, if you want." Nico was beaming. 

"Yeah, that'll be perfect!" he said. "Does today after school work for you?" 

"After lacrosse, yeah," I said. I despised lacrosse, but I couldn't skip. "Meet me at the field at three thirty?" 

"I'll be there," Nico said. "Should we go over some of my notes?"

"Yeah, sure," I said, my voice noticeably flatter and duller than Nico's. Nico began talking exuberantly, every movement animated. As Nico talked I found myself wondering how, despite the fact that Nico didn't have nearly as many friends as I had and despite the fact that he didn't have quite as much as I did, he still managed to stay so much happier than me. And then I found myself wondering how, despite the fact that I had so much, I was still so sad no matter how many people I surrounded myself with or how many things I did to fill up the time I was wasting away.

I stepped off of the lacrosse field drenched in sweat and exhausted. Brad waved goodbye to me as he slipped inside of his car, packed with his other friends. While we sat together at lunch every day I wasn't quite close enough to ever talk to him outside of school. I wasn't close enough with anyone to talk to them outside of school. I wasn't sure when I would accept that, that I would always fall just shy of having a real friend. Maybe I never would. 

Nico was waiting for me as promised in the parking lot, sketching out a bird in the journal he was using for his notes. He caught the light bouncing off of the eyes perfectly and each wing had complex layered feathers, as if it could soar off of the page at any moment. "Oh, hey," he said once he saw me looking. "You done?" 

"Yeah," I said, wiping the sweat from my cheek. It was the first spring day of the year and throughout the practice the warm sun streaming down on us had felt as if it was boiling us. "My house isn't far, only five minutes away." 

They walked in silence until Nico turned to me, his footsteps stopping. "Hey, I've been meaning to ask you something," he said. 

"Go ahead."

"You're friends with Brad, right?" I nodded. "You don't seem to enjoy hanging out with him much." I shrugged. 

"He's a good guy, and his friends let me hang around him. It's a good arrangement."

"You should be friends with people you want to hang out with, though." 

"It's easier this way," I told him, continuing on the path to my house.

"What do you mean?" He was jogging to keep up with my quickening pace. 

"It's easier just to have the illusion of real friends sometimes," I told him. "You don't get hurt that way. People don't pry into your life that way."

"Don't you want real friends, though?" his tone was quiet as we reached my house. 

"I guess," I admitted. "But it's easier this way."

"But-"

"Come on, the nest is back here," I said, cutting him off. "We should get this done soon."

I led him out to the back of my house, down a thin path leading into the forest. It was strewn with leaves and it was cooler in the forest, the tall tops of the trees blocking out the sunlight. "It's so cool in here!" Nico marveled, grinning up at the sky. "Do you come in here a lot?" 

"Yeah, I guess," I said.  I didn't tell him about the late nights creeping through the silent forest, reaching the small tree house, leaning my back against the cool trunk and letting the tears run over my hands and through my fingers. I didn't tell him about the hours spent alone, alone in the silence of the forest with nothing but my thoughts to distract me. It hurt most of the time, being alone with my thoughts but in the end it was for the best because in the end I could let the sadness wash away for a few hours before it began to seep inside of me once more and the cycle repeated. 

"You're so lucky!" Nico gushed, spinning around the path. "Hey, what's that?" He had spotted the sorry excuse for a tree house, a long, thick board nailed to the trunk of a tree, beaten after years of abuse from the elements. 

"That? That's- that's nothing," I stammered. I was beginning to regret bringing him here, no matter how important to my grade it was. He was drawing closer to the tree house, putting a foot on the ladder and climbing halfway up before turning back to me. 

"Can I go up?" 

"Sure," I sighed, making a move to climb after him. Even from here I could feel his curiosity, and I knew that there would be no stemming it until he had gone up. 

We were lying on our backs, staring up at the sky. Just through the mass of green I could see pieces of blue, the sky barely visible. "When do you come up here?" he asked, turning his head to face me. 

"Anytime, really," I said. "Sometimes when the world just gets too much." My voice started to trail off once I began to realize what I was saying but Nico had already heard because he frowned, his eyebrows creasing. 

"What do you mean?" he asked. "Is everything alright?" I nodded but it seemed incredibly fake. Probably because it was fake. 

"Sometimes everything is just really hard, you know?" I didn't want to be saying the words that were coming out of my mouth but they were like a waterfall, rushing out of me uncontrollably. They almost felt good. "Sometimes it feels like there's this huge weight on my chest, like no matter how hard I try I'll never be happy, and I'll never fit in. And when that weight gets too heavy to bear, that's when I come up here." I felt tears in the corners of my eyes but I blinked them back. I didn't know Nico too well, and I didn't want to cry in front of him. But the tears kept coming no matter how many times I blinked them back and soon they were streaming down my cheeks as I stared blindly at the sky, my eyes taking in the sight but ignoring it at the same time.

"You don't have to feel that way," Nico said quietly after a pause. For the first time I heard a tremor in his voice, as if he wasn't sure what he was supposed to say. This was uncharted territory for him, I supposed. This was uncharted territory for both of us.

"I can't help it," I said. "I try to get rid of it, but I can't. It just keeps coming back, heavier and heavier, until I'm scared that it'll crush me."

"Then stay here for a while," Nico said, resting his hand over mine. It was warm and soft, and the human contact sent sparks up my arm. "Give yourself a chance to push off the weight." 

"What about the project?" I asked, turning to him. I could see kindness in his eyes, the kindness that only came when someone truly cared. 

"The project can wait," he said. "The most important thing right now is you."

Hi guys, I'm sorry if that was bad, and if it got a little bit hard to follow at times. I hope I interpreted the prompt correctly, and I hope you liked it!

Nina