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Nico was on the tail end of a long day, after an even longer week - which was saying something, since it was only Tuesday, but he hadn’t gotten to experience a weekend in close to a month. As much as he’d rather do fucking anything else - like, huh, maybe the job he was already doing and actually enjoyed - Nico was being groomed to take over DOA Records once his father retired, not that that was going to happen any time soon.
So now, on top of everything that Nico had to do for his regular job - consultations with bands and their managers about the production timeline for their next albums, creating compositions for the label’s few solo acts who were more than happy being the face of the music without actually putting any work into the writing, and recording backing tracks for bands with absent members or who simply didn’t have a regular drummer or bassist or whatever as part of the band - he now had to do everything else, too. He had to listen to shitty demos, tell the execs not to sign the bands with the shitty demos, then onboard the bands of the shitty demos when the execs decided to send Nico a big fuck you in the form of assigning him to be their new producer. He had to run the studios, organize recording space reservations, fill in for producers who were either on vacation or couldn’t be bothered to show up for work that day.
If there were five of him, it still wouldn’t be enough.
Probably the worst part of it all was that he did actually like being there. He knew how the place ran better than anybody else - maybe even his father, to a certain degree. (Nico didn’t understand anything about the money behind any of it, and whenever he was forced to take over, he was going to have to hire somebody specifically to deal with the money of it all, because Nico simply could not make himself care about that.) They couldn’t find a baby, raise it exclusively on rock and punk and alternative music, teach it how to play five different instruments by the time it turned fifteen, ship it off to school to major in music production with a minor in business, then have it shadow Hades di Angelo for the rest of the old man’s life, and expect it to do a better job of running DOA than anybody else on the planet. They couldn’t, because Nico had already done all that, plus he’d had six different garage bands before graduating high school, and conned his way into an internship at a different recording studio while he was in New York for college just to make sure his education was well-rounded.
So, yeah, nobody could do a better job than Nico.
But, come on, that didn’t mean that he wanted to get stuck doing it!
Anyway, he was fucking exhausted after a long fucking day - his feet hurt, his back hurt, his hands had been cramping on and off for the last hour, and he was starting to get a headache. He just had to sit through this last boring-ass meeting without falling asleep, and then he could go home.
(Another thing to add to Nico’s list of new responsibilities to hate: sitting in on meetings with the execs, who only cared about the money and not the music.)
As soon as Thanatos reached the last slide of his presentation and said the words, any questions? Nico braced himself to jump to his feet. He glared daggers at anyone who looked like they might open their mouth, and after a short moment, Thanatos turned to disconnect from the projector, and Nico bolted out of the room like a kid on the last day of school.
As soon as he reached the hallway, though, a voice called out, “Nico,” and he skidded to a stop, his whole body seeming to roll forward as he hung his head.
Fuuuuuuck.
He turned on his heel and watched as old men in suits filed out of the room, until one of them finally stopped in front of him. “Father,” Nico said, trying not to let his irritation show, though it made his voice come out totally flat.
Hades frowned. “You can call me dad sometimes, son. We’re not estranged, or royalty, you know.”
“And you can use a different tone of voice,” Nico replied, stuffing his hands into the pockets of his jacket, “so it doesn’t sound like I’m a teenager who’s about to get grounded.”
“Nico,” Hades tried again, and Nico could tell by the look on his face that he was trying to sound more lighthearted, though his voice came out the same. “Your consultation for next week got bumped up to today. The new artist is waiting outside your office.”
Nico cringed at the word office. For years, he’d been ditching his coat and bag in a mostly-unused closet on the studio floor and then held all of his meetings in a lounge or conference room - and he’d preferred it that way. Now that he had his own space… Suffice to say, he’d made himself at home, and still preferred to hold any meetings elsewhere.
“Which one is it?” Nico asked, his mind spinning through the hundreds of demos he’d listened to over the last few weeks.
Hades waved a hand dismissively. “I can’t think of the name. One of those TV singing contest winners. You know the one.”
“Not American Idol,” Nico replied, dread and anger mixing in with his exhaustion. “Dad, I fucking swear, if somebody signed that chick who won American Idol after I specifically said that her demo sounded like shit--”
“No, no.” Hades waved him off again. “That other show-- I gave you his demo last week.”
Nico paused. “Gave it to me,” he asked carefully, “or put it on my desk?”
“Put it on your desk, of course,” Hades answered casually. “You’re so hard to track down, how do you expect me to hand you every thumbdrive of demos when I hardly ever know where you are? Really, Nico, be reasonable.”
Thumbdrive, Nico thought. Shit, that was going to be harder to find on his mess of a desk than a jewel case. Why did people stop burning their demos on CDs? They were so much easier to find!
“You did listen to the demo, didn’t you?” Hades asked, and when Nico didn’t answer right away, Hades sighed in frustration. “Really, Nico, you had a week! How long does it take you to listen to ten demos?”
Fuck, there were ten on this one? How was he supposed to figure out which one belonged to the person he was meeting with?
Hades clapped him on the shoulder, and then practically shoved him in the direction of the elevator. “Go, already. You’ve kept him waiting long enough.”
Nico stumbled on his first step, and barely managed to catch the elevator doors before they closed. If only it had been empty, he might have curled into a ball on the floor and taken a nap, but alas, he had to act like an adult. He pulled out his phone instead, finding a few texts from Lou Ellen, one of the interns-slash-studio hands-slash-whatever her job was. Nico just knew that she kept the studio reservations on schedule for him (maybe she was a receptionist?) and that she had called dibs on being the next recording substitute if a band’s guitarist couldn’t make it in. That wasn’t how it worked, but Nico wasn’t going to argue with her about it.
There’s a guy outside your pigsty who claims to have a meeting with you, she said. I tried telling him you were dead, but he didn’t believe me, sorry. I think he said he won The Voice? dw though, I already warned him that you’re an asshole.
Nico thought about texting back either a platonic I love you or a request for her to get the guy’s name for him, but then the elevator doors were opening, and Nico rushed to step out. He found Lou sitting behind the reception desk out in front of the recording studios - and, holy shit, how did Nico never realize that she was a receptionist? - and she hurriedly waved him over.
“He’s hot, he’s blond, and he’s a fucking giant,” Lou whispered to him as soon as Nico was close enough. “And he’s waiting outside your office.”
“You didn’t get his name?” Nico hissed. Lou Ellen barely had a chance to shake her head before Nico was storming away, down the hall that was full of conference rooms and practice rooms instead of recording booths. At the very end of the hall was Nico’s office - though he had to walk by his favored mostly-unused closet on the way, and he was tempted to hide in there until his new client got sick of waiting and left - and Nico had only made it halfway down the hall before his eyes locked with the hot blond leaning against the wall beside his office door.
The man perked up as Nico came closer, though Nico forced his expression to remain neutral and not murderous as he pointedly avoided eye contact. He wasn’t allowed to be attracted to his clients - he’d learned that the hard way after the last time - so he wasn’t even going to humor the voice in the back of his head that wanted to... ew, lick his neck? What the fuck?
“Hey,” he said as Nico hurried to unlock his office door, “are you Ni--”
“Give me a minute,” Nico cut in, shouldering his door open and slamming it shut in the guy’s face. It shouldn’t take more than sixty second for him to search up the name of the last The Voice winner, and as long as his office computer cooperated, pull up the corresponding demo off the thumbdr--
Fuck, he was going to have to search for the thumbdrive still.
He launched himself into his desk chair, firing up his computer, though he started his internet search on his phone because he knew it would take a hot second for the old desktop to get going. His search for The Voice season 25 winner - which sounded so incredibly fake, since Nico had a hard time believing that show had actually been on the air longer than five years - resulted in the name Will Solace and a picture with a face that matched the guy currently standing outside Nico’s door.
Nico tapped on the first YouTube link available, and Solace’s blind audition played. He set his phone aside with the volume cranked while he began digging underneath the mountains of paperwork on his desk in search of the thumbdrive his father had dropped off.
He had a nice voice, Nico would give him that. Good tone, a pretty decent range. Had probably had lessons before, considering the technique Nico could hear when Solace slipped into his upper register. A quick glance at the phone screen showed that he was playing an acoustic guitar, too, which was a good sign. He wasn’t a total lost cause, like some of the other TV contest winners Nico had come across. If he could write his own songs - which Nico would know if he could find the fucking thumbdrive - then Nico might be able to determine whether or not this would all be a waste of his time.
The ah-ha! he let out when he finally found the thumbdrive was far too loud, but he was more worried about getting the drive plugged in so he could pull up the demo. Worst case, he would listen to the demo in front of the guy - Solace didn’t know who this process was supposed to work, anyway.
He stopped the video on his phone, pulled up the demo - only six songs, but things could be worse - and called out, “Alright, you can come in.”
The door opened hesitantly, and Will Solace poked his head inside. “Uh, hi.” He stepped inside and closed the door behind himself before he approached the desk and held out a hand. “I’m Will--”
“Will Solace, I know,” Nico cut in, not bothering to raise his hands from his keyboard as he glanced at Will out of the corner of his eye. “You can take a seat. And try not to touch anything. I have a system.”
Will looked especially skeptical at that statement, and said, “Uh, can I ask what that system is?”
Nico thought about telling him no and leaving it at that, but instead he gestured to the desk as a whole and said, “This is all the shit that other people think is important or that they want me to pay attention to, but I don’t care about. That’s the system. Anyway, I see you recently won The Voice. Congrats. And now you’re here because you want to be a rock star, right?”
Will’s nose crinkled in distaste, and Nico’s brain betrayed him as the word cute somehow managed to fight its way to the forefront of his mind. “Uh, no. I just want to make music, really. Both of my parents were musicians - my mom is more well-known than my dad - and I kind of just...wanted to experience that life for myself, you know?”
Nico turned toward his computer, prepared to do a quick search again as he asked, “Who’s your mom?”
“Naomi Solace.”
Nico almost grimaced. “We don’t do country music here.”
“No, I know,” Will said quickly. “That’s why I’m here. I don’t have a good voice for country, and I kind of wanted to get as far from it as possible, and, well. You guys don’t even have a pop label. I know this isn’t what most artists would say, but I would kind of love to get shoehorned into a specific genre right now.”
Nico raised an eyebrow at that. “So, you have a specific sound you’re trying to create?”
Will shrugged, and Nico felt his headache worsen at the simple motion. “Not really? I mena, I know what my voice works for, but I, personally, can only play acoustic guitar and just enough piano to get by, but I’m not trying to be, like, The Lumineers, or something. More like a mix of… Like, Olivia Rodrigo’s kind of punk-lite meets Phoebe Bridgers’s grungier stuff, you know? Ooh, and kind of like--”
“I’m going to stop you right there,” Nico cut in before he had a fucking anuerism. “Let’s listen to your demo, and how about I tell you what I’m hearing?”
Will nodded, and Nico took a breath as he turned to play the first track on the demo.
There were a lot of things that Nico could say about the demo. A lot of things. A lot of them weren’t good, either. Will’s voice, as much as it had shone during his audition, fell flat as it failed to carry a steady melody through the first verse. Lyrically, the song needed work as well. For a first draft, it wasn’t horrible, but it was going to need work. A piano joined in behind the acoustic guitar during the chorus, and something about it felt so... discordant that Nico had to pause the track.
“Okay.” Nico sighed. “Okay, this gives me...a very good idea of what we’ll need to work on. I’ll need to listen to the rest of them before I can get a... feel for what genre you’re going for, but I-- I just remembered that I have a dinner to get to tonight,” Nico lied quickly. “So, I’ll listen through the rest of these, make some notes for you and get those to you as soon as I can. What I’ll need from you before our next meeting is...basically anything else you can give me. Lyric sheets, half-finished melodies, anything.”
“Do you have any notes for me right now?” Will asked, leaning forward in his seat eagerly. “Just based on what you listened to?”
Nico took a deep breath. He was trying to be nice, Will hadn’t done anything except exist so Nico had no reason to be mean--
“Your lyrics are shit,” he blurted, and the words just kept coming. “Too repetitive, too rhymey. Like a teenager’s first attempt at songwriting. I know you’re capable of carrying a tune, because you can sing somebody else’s song just fine, but I can’t tell if you don’t know how to write a melody, or if you’re incapable of holding one when somebody else didn’t track it out for you.” He took another breath. He was sure he was leaving things out, but his head had started pounding, and he was so fucking tired that he couldn’t even find it in himself to tear Will down any further.
After the silence stretched on into a thick tension, Will dropped his hands onto his thighs and said, “Great!” When Nico looked back at him, he was smiling brightly, though Nico could tell it was forced by the fire behind those blue - blue, fuck, that’s such a pretty shade of blue - eyes, and, god, that fire was hot. “Are we done here?”
Nico barely had a chance to tell him, yeah, that’s it, before Will jumped out of his seat. Nico watched his entire demeanor change as he left the room, slamming the door behind himself on his way out.
Nico took his time shutting down his computer. He tucked the thumbdrive into his pocket before heading out himself, hoping that he’d given Will enough time to vacate the building so that they wouldn’t run into each other in the hall. After locking up his office, Nico passed by Lou Ellen’s desk and asked, “Is there any way that you can ban any mention of the name Olivia Rodrigo on this floor?”