“Hide me hide me hide me hide me hide me.”
Nico blinks, watching blankly as Will ducks under his arm, situating himself behind the door and peeking around it. When Nico doesn’t move, he cranes his neck to look at him, face urgent, and says, “Close it, dude, hurry up!
Nico blinks again. He squints across the common, trying to suss out what Will’s staring at. It doesn’t take long. She’s hard to miss, especially in full armour.
“Are you…hiding from Clarisse?”
“Am I hiding from —” He scoffs. “No, I’m just behind this door for fun. Fucking obviously I’m hiding from Clarisse, Nico, now get with the program and close the damn —”
Both of them jump. When Nico looks, Clarisse is already way closer than she should be. Before he can process enough to slam the door, and heedless of Will’s increasingly-harried oh my gods oh my gods oh my gods fuck fuck fuck fuck, Clarisse is closer, and closer, and then suddenly she’s barging inside, pushing Nico aside like it’s not his damn cabin.
Will groans. “Aw, come on, Clarisse!”
She doesn’t bother to humour him with words, choosing instead to grab him by the collar and drag him bodily out. Will does not make it easy, going completely limp and getting his clothes grass-stained beyond belief, because Clarisse tugs him along like a sled behind her, bouncing over every stone. Nico follows, on the grounds that it’s not being nosy if Will dragged him into it technically.
“You have siblings! You have a boyfriend!”
“And yet I’m choosing you,” Clarisse says easily. “I’ve already told Chiron. It’s a done deal, weatherboy. You’re chariot racing with me.”
Will groans, trying in vain to squirm out of Clarisse’s grip. “There is no reason for me to be your partner in the stupid chariot race, I am a healer, I am at camp to heal —”
She shakes him a little to shut him up. “All the more reason. You focus too much on one thing, brat. All you do is heal and study like a big nerd. You need to get out of your comfort zone.”
“Um, no way. I’m very comfortable in it. That’s why it’s called a comfort zone.”
“You could use some training,” Nico pipes up, and the betrayed look Will gives him would be more effective at making him feel bad if it wasn’t so funny. “Last time I tried to teach you how to use a sword you almost sliced off your own face, so.”
Clarisse looks at him with appraisal. “Maybe you do have some sense in you, di Angelo.”
Nico chooses to take that as the compliment it is.
“Ugh,” Will says dramatically, and finally manages to wrench out of Clarisse’s grip in order to embed the appropriate level of drama in his face-down flop to the floor.
Clarisse kicks him. “You’re pathetic.”
Notably, he stops protesting. She kicks him again, affectionately this time, and stomps away.
“If I work myself into another coma, I don’t have to chariot race,” Will says gleefully, shoving the bottles of nectar Nico hands him onto a shelf. He’s been buzzing around the infirmary all day, healing things he is meant to be healing with a band-aid and a stop being a clumsy dumbass, dumbass with hymns and salves. “I’m gonna try to cure cancer again.”
Kayla, walking by, reaches out and smacks him. “Try it and I’m crack your country CDs in half.”
Will turns to her, opening his mouth —
“Every single one of them,” she stresses, green eyes narrowed.
— and closes it again, huffing.
“I’ll find a way,” he says glumly.
Nico pats him delicately on the back. “There, there.” A pause. “I mean, personally, I can’t wait to watch you fall out of a chariot.”
The look Will shoots him is nothing short of wounded. “You think I’m so uncoordinated I’m gonna fall out of the chariot?”
“Gracefully!” assures Austin from across the infirmary, smiling supportively. He grins brightly when they turn to look, nose scrunching with the force of his smile. “I’m sure!”
Will’s scowl twitches in the face of his brother’s blind enthusiasm. (It is impossible not to be endeared by Austin. He is genuinely the sweetest kid in the entire universe. Nico even gets, to his horror, the occasional urge to squish him. Gently.) He sighs.
“Of course! Love you Will!”
The twitching scowl melts into a full smile. “Love you too, kiddo.”
Watching chariot race practices, very quickly, becomes Nico’s favourite pastime.
He sees, now, why Achilles would bring them up, unprompted, wistful look in his eye, every time Nico visited. There’s a beauty in the rawness of it; the whipping winds, wild horses. Squealing wheels and bending axels, open-backed and inches from death at all time. Dangerous, exhilarating. Humanity, at it’s most thrilling and old — some of the first tools, the first domestic animals, the first machines, all at once. It’s pure, raw excitement.
Also, Will falls out of the chariot, like, eight whole times. And there’s nothing funnier than watching him lose his shit at a splintered pile of wood that was once a carriage, helmet thrown to the ground in a fit of rage, accent so thick he’s literally incomprehensible. Nico never gets to see him like this. His stomach actually hurts from laughter on several occasions.
Slowly, though, he starts to get the hang of it. He’s smart — incredibly so — and when he stops spending half his time complaining, and the other half pouting, he actually gets pretty decent. He’s fast, after all, and quick to observe, to respond; the other teams struggle to land hits on him, in practice runs, and sabotage is difficult when your opponent seems to have an almost prophetic gift to see things coming.
He can’t, however, steel himself to hit back.
And therein lies the trouble.
“For fuck’s sake, Will, I’m not asking you to kill anybody,” Clarrise snaps. “You need to get your head in the game!”
Will’s shoulders curl defensively. “I know! I’m trying! It’s just —” He kicks at their broken wheel, in two clean pieces on the ground. “Do no harm.”
“Do some harm. Or I’m gonna kick your ass.”
Will brightens. “And then ask somebody else to be your partner?”
“No, and then make you my partner forever.”
Will’s sullen face is hard to look at. He’s got those big, puppy dog eyes, round and sad and pouty. Not even Clarisse is immune. (And certainly not Nico, who finds himself halfway off the spectator’s stands and jogging to the tracks before he wonders what exactly, the fresh fuck, he is doing, and sprints right back.)
“Shit, Solace, don’t look like I killed your goddamn mother.” She cuffs him on the shoulder, sending him sprawling with a muffled oof. “We’ll figure it out. Let’s go again.”
Accepting the spare chariot someone wheels towards her, she pulls herself up, making space for Will to do the same. He doesn’t get on immediately, still looking miserable, but concedes eventually.
His forearms look kind of nice when he grips onto the rails for dear life, Nico notices. From a totally objective perspective.
The four practicing teams guide their horses to the starting line, running a few last minute checks. To avoid spilling any secrets or strategies, everyone uses the same practice-issue wooden chariot and wears the same armour, but it’s still obvious who’s who.
The Hephaestus team’s chariot, despite being standard issue, gleams like it’s brand-new. The wood is polished and looks to be altered, barely; a carved groove here, a sharper wing there. Nothing that could really be considered an upgrade, but definitely making the whole thing look smoother. The spears they hold promise a plethora of untold ability hidden within.
The Hermes chariot looks deceptively beat up. There’s a chunk missing from the top of the left side, and one of the wheels appears to be just slightly out of alignment. Upon careful inspection, though, Nico can see clear, hollow tubing attached along the rails and open to the back — definitely a quick rig of some sort. Base (not acid, Cecil had happily lectured him on the benefits of using a base rather than an acid when dissolving anything from steel to human flesh), if Nico has to guess, or maybe Greek fire.
The Aphrodite-Iris chariot doesn’t have to do much to look great. The whole thing seems to coast gracefully to the beginner line, and neither charioteer looks particularly bothered or preoccupied with the competition — if Nico recalls correctly, and he does, their goal is to win through “gay audacity”, which Nico does not understand but supports wholeheartedly.
Will and Clarisse’s chariot, by comparison, is pretty run-of-the-mill. They haven’t done much training with the Ares horses or the Apollo flying chariot, because Clarisse is primarily concerned with training Will — she knows the equipment is fine.
Lacy, standing at the edge of the track, puts a sparkly pink whistle to her lips and blows loudly. It’s not nearly as loud as one of Will’s sonic whistles, but it does the trick, and the teams are off in a blur of movement; Will and Clarisse in the lead, Hephaestus behind them, Aphrodite-Iris in third, and Hermes lagging slightly behind.
As they turn their first corner, positions largely unchanging, Nico hears footsteps from his left — Lou Ellen smiles at him as she climbs the stand, settling into the space he makes next to him.
“What’d I miss?” she asks, brushing dust off her hands.
He shrugs. “Not much. They were in the lead the last practice round, too, but on the last lap Hermes caught up.” He gestures to the heap that was once their practice chariot. “Julia had her sword at their wheels. They were on the inner ring, nowhere to move; the only way to get rid of them would have been to knock her arm, probably dislocate her shoulder. Will couldn’t do it.”
There’s a ripping sound, followed by cackling — the Hermes chariot has finally made use of their hasty rigging, setting off an explosion behind them that rockets them forward. It has the added bonus of shaking the ground, slightly, unsettling the other drivers for just barely long enough for them to pull into third place. Far ahead, still in first, Nico can see Clarisse yelling instructions at Will, although he can’t hear what they are. His grip on the rail has tightened.
“Why,” starts Nico carefully, and based on Lou Ellen’s pinched face she knows exactly where he’s going, “does she make him — well, you know.”
Lou Ellen is silent for a good long while, watching the practice chariot race with eyes that aren’t paying attention. Hermes is gaining, but Hephaestus is gaining faster.
“Clarisse has always liked Will,” she says eventually. She meets Nico’s incredulous expression, snorting. “Well, as much as Clarisse can like people. I got here way after he did, so I don’t have any more details there than you do, but he’s never been afraid of her, and she likes that. He’s never been mean to her, either. I mean, I know she can be a bully, but people aren’t exactly light on her, to be fair.”
The Aphrodite-Iris chariot turns out to have some tricks up its sleeve — it starts to glow; barely at first, but quickly blinding. At its crux, everyone has to look away, allowing them to pull into first.
Well, except that Will doesn’t seem nearly as staggered as everyone else. In fact, he doesn’t look bothered at all — for the first time that Nico has seen, there’s something like competition pulling a crooked smile on his face. He stares straight at the still-too-bright chariot, reigns wrapped around his arms as he yanks them forward.
“Is that why she drags him away sometimes?” Nico asks. “To train?”
“Something like that. Most of his training was with —” she falters. “Well, you know who. Medicine and some archery.”
They’re both quiet for a while. Neither of them ever knew Lee or Michael well, if at all, but over time Nico has found himself almost clamming up at the mere thought of them, the way one might tiptoe around an authority figure when they have something to hide. Forbidden subjects, where before Nico simply didn’t think of them often.
“You can’t just not train, though,” Lou Ellen murmurs, eyes trained on the chariots. Hephaestus throws one of their spears, lodging it in the spokes of the Aphrodite-Iris chariot. They come to a very abrupt and very screechy halt, knocking them out of the race in any real capacity. “Not at Camp Half-Blood. She taught him hand-to-hand because she was the only one strong enough to physically drag him to the arena. Everyone else gave up after the first few tantrums — I think she was kind of amused by the challenge. Or something.”
“Or something,” Nico agrees. Privately, he thinks that there is something about Will Solace that makes you want to protect him. Not frailty — he is not by any means incapable — but something about his smile, his genuineness. The stubborn belief that people are good and kind and worthy of everything he has to give. A naivety, except someone who’s been through what he has (what they all have) cannot be naive — his hope in the world is hard-earned and well-won. It makes people want to protect his hold on it, by any means necessary.
Even, Nico reasons, ornery old fuckers like Clarisse LaRue.
The three remaining chariots start the last leg of the race — Apollo-Ares, barely squeezing out in front; then Hephaestus, quickly gaining; and finally Hermes, lagging slightly but not to be discarded. As they round the bend, Nico watches as Clarisse cuffs Will briefly on the arm, clearly proud. This is the farthest they’ve made in first so far, after two weeks of training. Will, reigns safely transferred back to Clarisse, beams at her — bright enough that Nico can see it from dozens of yards away.
With sudden, calculated speed, the Hephaestus chariot surges forward.
As if coordinated, Nico and Lou Ellen inhale sharply, leaning forward. He sees the scattered few other campers so the same in his peripherals, watching with single minded focus as the chariot levels exactly with Will and Clarisse. Nico eyes the spear nervously — of all weapons, they’re the easiest for Will to dodge, to fight off. More impersonal.
But the sons of the smartest god around would know that.
For at least a hundred feet, nothing happens. Ares-Apollo and Hephaestus stay neck in neck, every urge forward matched, every pesky road-blocking stone avoided. The finish line is dangerously close, but no one pulls ahead, nothing changes. Four shoulders remain tense, four helmets stare resolutely forward.
Then, in a quick movement, the taller Hephaestus charioteer hands the spear off to the shorter, swiftly taking the reigns, and the shorter lunges — aiming right for Will’s shoulder. Will’s quick, though, and has his own spear poised to parry in an instant. There’s a barely perceptible nudge from Clarisse, and then Will’s eyes harden, and he lifts his spear to jab right back, needle-thin tip gleaming in the late afternoon sun, right for the chink in the charioteer’s armour and then —
The charioteer rips their helmet off, dropping it at their feet.
Hephaestus’ darling; hell, the camp’s darling. One of their youngest and brightest, with big, mischievous brown eyes, contagious smiles, endless enthusiasm. Cute, clumsy Harley, the only one of Hephaestus’ children Will doesn’t have to nag to get treated, who walks dutifully over the infirmary every time he gets so much as a second-degree burn and treats each one of Will’s overcautious instructions with utmost seriousness. Who Will sends away each time with an affectionate kiss on the forehead and a prized purple sucker — who Will, frankly, favours. Who Will would never, in a million years, even consider hurting.
A dirty trick by the Hephaestus cabin.
Immediately, Will flinches back, spear dropping from his hand and splintering under thundering hooves and spinning wheels. Without a second of hesitation, Harley launches his spear in the same move as before — sticking it in the wheel’s spokes, inertia sending the charioteer’s sprawling, knocking them out of the race.
Except, maybe it’s different when the chariots are so close. Or maybe the chariot was faulty to begin with. Because as soon as the spear gets wedged, the fragile floor of the chariot seems to implode — sending Will and Clarisse under the still-moving machine, instead of flying over. The horses, disoriented from the sudden change, rip free of their harness, adding more force to the already precarious tumble.
There’s a sharp, sickening crack, so loud Nico can hear it as if it’s next to him. In the brief nanosecond immediately afterwords, he closes his eyes, sending a prayer to his father: please be the axle. Please be the axle. Please be the axle.
As the Hephaestus and Hermes chariots rocket past the finish line, Clarisse lets out a shrill, blood-curdling scream.
Nico’s off the bench and halfway towards the crashed chariot before he can blink. He’s not the only one — he processes, barely, everyone else’s quick convergence, including the remaining charioteers — but he’s there first, diving into the wreckage seconds before anyone else is close enough.
There’s not a lot of actual debris, chariots being as small as they are, but the dust cloud from the track is so huge and the pieces of wood are so splintered that it feels like there is. As the dust settles, and he kicks some debris out of the way, he starts to see the shape of Will, kneeling, in front of a prone Clarisse and an ever-growing pool of blood.
There’s a bone sticking straight out of her thigh.
As the rest of the campers converge upon them, Will looks up and meets Nico’s eyes. His own blue eyes are dark, steely — determined, but afraid.
“I don’t have time,” is the only thing out of his mouth before he braces both hands on Clarisse’s leg, immediately starting to sing urgent hymns.
“Lou, Julia, Chiara,” he barks, taking charge in absence of Will’s voice. The three girls snap forward to him immediately. “Sprint the the infirmary and tell them what happened. Austin’s on duty — make sure he doesn’t come with you, we need him to prep a surgical suite. Send everyone else and send them fast. Bring a stretcher.”
He turns to the Hephaestus kids. “Jake, Harley, start clearing the debris to make space. Damien, join them; move the big stuff first, small stuff is secondary. We need a space for Will to work and a space to lay the stretcher. Jen, Butch, Lacy —”
He barks off a list of orders, doing his best to channel the commands he’s watched Will give dozens and dozens of times. In minutes, he has the track cleared, Will’s medical bag dragged over from the stands, and everyone who is not helping stabilize out to the infirmary to help as needed.
As soon as there’s an opening, he rushes over to Will and Clarisse, kneeling by her head.
“Help is coming,” he promises, watching the glow dim and flicker in time with the rhythm of Will’s chanting. The bleeding has slowed, marginally, but he can tell from the volume of blood alone that this was an arterial hit. It’s going to take more than Will’s raw healing power, although there is a lot of it, to keep Clarisse alive and keep her leg functioning in recovery. He needs tools, he needs nectar and ambrosia; he needs the surgery suite. He needs time.
“Is it helpful for me to knock her out?”
Clarisse, of course, is still conscious. Barely — and in so much pain Nico will be surprised if she’s processing anything at all — but enough that every few seconds she lets out an agonised shout of pain, writhing and flinching so hard Will has to focus on steadying her as much as healing her.
Without breaking his song, eyes still trained on the injury, Will nods. Nico breathes, squaring his shoulders, then shuffled forward to rest Clarisse’s head gently in his lap, fingers pressed to her temples. He presses, hard enough to feel the beat of her heart — weak — through his fingertips, and squeezes his eyes shut.
He’s no son of Hypnos, but dreams are the Underworld’s domain. Are his domain, as heir and prince of the Underworld, in every way that matters, that can be counted.
He lets himself sink into careful limbo; body in physical space, mind and soul elsewhere. Not too much — he’s no use if he falls unconscious — but enough to slip into Clarisse’s mindscape, step into her subconscious.
The whole place bleeds white, hot anguish.
Nico stumbles when he first walks in, nauseous despite being nothing but his own mind. It’s been a while since he’s experienced this kind of pain, his own or not, and he has to consciously beat back memories of brimstone and rot; liquid fire, endless red, red, red.
“Clarisse?” he calls, softly as he dares.
She doesn’t respond. He’s not sure she knows how to respond, even if she could. Cautious of the memory and emotion swirling around him, he steps forward. If he focuses, her anguish is pointed — is central. She will be at the centre of it.
He has volunteered, but he’s not sure he wants to follow.
Steeling himself, he shoulders through swirling masses of pain, of hurt, of fear. It’s blisteringly hot, and feels not unlike the sandstorm he was once stranded within, in the middle of the New Mexico desert four years ago. His face prickles; he’s blinded.
“Clarisse? Clarisse! Can you hear me? It’s Nico!”
Desperately and uselessly, he wishes he had more practice. Will has offered, the few times he’s needed to anaesthetize someone, but for the most time Nico has foolishly declined. Why on Earth he would pass up a much easier mindscape to navigate through in preparation for something like this is a mystery to him. Fuck.
“Clarisse! Try to — focus on me, can you hear me?”
He forces himself forward, a few more — well, there’s no distance in a mindscape, nothing measurable, anyway. He forces himself to look up, braving the assault to his face, and try to scan his surroundings. The swirling mass is more centralized, now, almost hurricane-like and conal. He’s closer than he was before, but if he can only find…
He looks up, and almost cries in relief: weak against the roaring storm, but still present, is a flickering, golden light. A very familiar light. Nico squeezes his eyes shut, thrusting out his own energy in an uncoordinated mass — boy, is that going to be uncomfortable to extract later — and flails wildly until he finally feels the warmth of Will’s energy entangling with his own, grounding him. He opens his eyes, and suddenly everything is clearer.
Clarisse kneels in the centre of her mindscape, hands pressed tightly to her ears, eyes screwed shut, mouth open in a silent scream.
“Hey,” Nico murmurs, kneeling in front of her. It takes a few seconds, and a few moments of gentle coaxing, before she looks up.
She’s more vulnerable than he’s ever seen her — eyes brown and big and wet, pained, face twisted and chin trembling and achingly, unbelievably young. She is nineteen years old, but in that moment she appears almost childlike. The years of warrior’s hardness has abandoned her; she is armourless.
Nico swallows the lump in his throat. “I know.”
“Come here, Clarisse.” He reaches out and wraps a gentle hand around hers, tugging her close. The knee jerk discomfort at close contact is barely a flicker — he is so entwined in her right now that her fear has started to bleed into his; her rawness. He needs this comfort almost as much as she does. Right now she is a person, in agony, and so is he, and it is unbearable.
He holds her until the pain slowly stops.
Will is in the surgical suite for seven straight hours.
“Bed,” Nico says softly, rising up to meet him as he exits. It says something about how exhausted he is that he doesn’t even protest, letting Nico place a hand on the small of his back and guide him past the on-call room, past the patient cots, past the Big House living room couches, past Cabin 7. He leads him across the common and right into Cabin 13, with its double beds and blackout curtains, with its insulated, soundproof walls. With Nico.
He helps him out of his bloodstained scrubs, peeling them off his skin and tossing them directly into a trash can. He’d guide him to the shower, usually, but there’s a — glassiness, to his eyes, that there usually isn’t after surgery. Nico chooses instead to skip it, guiding him into the sweatpants he left behind the last time he was here and an oversized The Doors t-shirt of Nico’s, and then to the spare bed he always uses, across from Nico’s. He peels the covers back for him like he’s a child, tucking him in, brushing the hair out of his eyes. He’s asleep in minutes, curled tightly around a pillow, furrowed crease not leaving the space between his eyebrows, even in sleep. Nico smooths it away with his thumb.
“Goodnight, Will,” he murmurs, brushing the backs of his knuckles across his forehead.
He watches him sleep far past what is normal, and then slips back out of the cabin.
“On the bright side,” Will says, squeezing the hand that has left to leave Clarisse’s arm, “you’re free from your chariot race obligation! As am I!”
Predictably, she only glowers.
“Not a chance, Solace,” she rasps.
Will helpfully gets her a glass of water, fussing over her blankets while she drinks until she bats him away. Chris watches the whole thing with great amusement, shoulders brushing Nico’s.
“He’s a mother hen, isn’t he,” he comments, tilting his head in Will’s direction, who narrowly avoids having his fingers bitten off trying to feed her a square of ambrosia.
Nico snorts. “Yeah.” He watches the fussing for a few more seconds, making note of Will’s shaking hands, his shakier smile. “He’s guilty.”
“He didn’t do anything. She doesn’t blame him.”
Nico meets his dark look, mouth twisted in understanding. They both know this logic is futile.
“Yeah, well, someone tell him that.”
“Will — stop it.” In a startlingly quick move for someone on as much morphine as she is, Clarisse darts out and clutches Will’s fluttering hands. He hesitates, wondering if it’s worth it to pull out of her hold and possibly jostle her leg. “I’m fine. And you’re still charioting.”
“You’re not fine,” Will frowns, conveniently ignoring the part of the sentence he doesn’t want to deal with. “Your femur snapped in half and tore through your femoral artery on its way out of your leg. You’re going to be on bedrest for a week at least, and it’ll be tender for a good long while besides. That’s what we in the medical business call a Big Fucking Deal.”
She tightens her hold, staring at him until he finally meets her eyes.
“Will.” She narrows her eyes. “You are still participating in the chariot race. I’m not asking.”
“It’ll have to wait until you’re better,” he says lightly. “Besides, we’re focusing on you right now.”
Nico can see in her face when she decides to switch strategies.
“Okay,” she says, stubborn glean in her eye, “then I’m asking you, as a personal request, to stay in the race. Or else I’ll drag myself onto a goddamn horse myself, killing myself in the process, and that will be on your head.”
Will scowls. “You can’t tell me what to do.”
Clarisse doesn’t bother repeating herself, letting go of his wrists and readjusting her blankets.
“I am done talking now. I believe it’s time for morphine-induced unconsciousness. Please remember that I took down a drakon with my own bare hands; it is well within my abilities to drag myself out of heroin-haze and onto a chariot with no legs, let alone one. Good talk.”
As soon as the words are out of her mouth, she leans back on her pillows and passes out. Genuinely, actually passes out — not closes her eyes, not behind to fall asleep; she is unconscious. Snores ring through the air.
“Well,” Chris says carefully, unfolding his arms. “It might be time to let Clarisse rest for a while.”
Will, healer that he is, cannot exactly argue with that. Will, drama queen that he is, decides to make his fury known by stomping out of the room, a feat in flip-flips possible by him alone.
“She is so infuriating!” he shouts the second they’re in the main room, startling several people. He either doesn’t notice or doesn’t care. “I put effort in! I failed! She can’t even — it’s not even about spending time together, obviously, since I still have to do it! What does she want from me?!”
Chris, like Nico, has wisely decided to let the hypothetical questions remain hypothetical and stay silent, lest his fury be turned onto them. Ten minutes into Will’s rant, Chris excuses himself to go sit by Clarisse. Nico waves him off.
“Will,” Nico suggests the next time he takes a breath, “let’s maybe go for a walk.” He glances at the group of wide-eyed patients. “I think you’re scaring people.”
Deflating, Will nods, following Nico out the door. “Yeah. Yeah, let’s go for a walk.”
The fresh air probably doesn’t fix things, per se, but as they lap around the cabins, Will seems to droop further and further, curling in on himself. The anger recedes from his features.
“I feel really shitty,” he admits softly. “Just, like, generally.”
Nico softens like a goddamn slab of ice cream on hot pavement. For the second time in three days, he opens his arms in offering, although this time it’s significantly less difficult.
Without even a beat of hesitation, Will collapses into him, arms around his waist, head tucked under his chin. Nico fights the urge to wince — Will, usually, takes quite a bit of pride in his height. He likes to be the one to wrap around people, not the other way around. Nico has been indoctrinated into Will-affection, in the time since the Giant War, and if Will is the one curling into him, seeking comfort, than he is struggling.
Nico hates it when Will struggles. He always feels out of his depth.
“There, there,” he hedges, feeling a good bit like an NPC. “It’ll be okay.”
Will makes a small, wounded noise. “You don’t know that.”
“Um, yes I do, I know everything forever. I’ve never been wrong even one time in my life.”
His awkward attempt at lightening the mood is rewarded by Will’s laugh. It’s slight, and nowhere near the brightness it usually is, but it’s there and it’s genuine and that’s all Nico wanted, really.
“You good?” Nico asks softly, squeezing his arms.
Will nods. “Yes.” He hesitates. “Can I stay here a little longer?”
Nico wraps his arms impossibly tighter, aching at the quiet vulnerability in his voice.
The last practice before the chariot race is nowhere near as fun to watch as the others. In fact, it’s not fun at all.
Clarisse, casted and upright, appoints her brother Sherman to race in her place, much to both his and Will’s very vocal complaints. Will’s, because he still doesn’t want to race at all and especially not now that Clarisse is out of the running, and Sherman’s because, well, when isn’t Sherman complaining about having to breathe the same air as someone or whatever.
Clarisse silences both of them with a glare. “Do it,” she orders.
They comply, stomping over to their practice chariot.
The practice race is awful. Nico is surprised, frankly, that they managed to finish at all, as badly behind as they managed. He could practically hear their squabbling all the way from the stands. For as much as Will is generally easy to get along with, he’s impossible when he’s stubborn, and worse when he’s petulant. He takes every command from Sherman like it’s a personal offence, and Sherman, being who he is, does too. Every shout to veer right or deflect an attack somehow sounds like a jab at Will’s speed, or a remark about his general intelligence. When they stomp off the track, helmets thrown in a heap with the rickety chariot, Nico is almost relieved.
“We’re going to lose, tomorrow, and I can’t wait,” hisses Will darkly, fists curled at his sides.
Nico watches him warily. “You’re not even going to try?”
“What, so he can remind me that even when I’m trying I’m a useless idiot? Not a chance.”
Nico has to almost jog to keep up with him, striding as powerfully as he is. He’s not even sure where he’s going — he seems to be, mostly, going away from the track and from Sherman, wherever that may be.
“You’re not a useless idiot,” Nico offers, when some of the stormcloud has lessened its hold on Will’s usually sunny face. “Nobody thinks you’re a useless idiot.”
Will closes his eyes, sighing. “I know.”
“And Sherman is just a generally grouchy person.”
“It feels very, very weird to be the optimistic and comforting one, right now.”
Will snorts, finally meeting his eyes. “I know.” He flops onto the ground, cheek resting in his knees, and pats the space next to him. Nico sits much more delicately. “I’m sorry I’ve been such an asshole lately.”
“You’ve been stressed,” Nico points out. “A little assholery is warranted.”
Nico knocks their shoulders together. “I forgive you, then.”
Will smiles. “Thank you.”
For a while they sit in comfortable silence, watching the hustle and bustle of camp. Will’s presence is a comforting one, even though Nico can feel the turmoil leeching off of him. Strangely because of that, actually — sometimes Nico feels like he’s the only one who struggles out of the two of them. Will spends so much of his time smiling and joking and lecturing, hands on his hips, that Nico had almost forgotten that he doesn’t know what the hell he’s doing, either. He’s just good at faking it.
“I’ll be watching, tomorrow.” He bites his lip. “And I won’t, like, bring pom-poms, or anything, but I’ll be cheering you on.”
Will grins tiredly. “Silently and in your head?”
His smile softens considerably, melting into something almost shy, before he turns back to face forward.
“Well, then, damn. I guess I’ll have to try.”
On the morning of the chariot race, Will acts like Nico is escorting him to his goddamn execution.
“It is a race that will last a maximum of twenty minutes,” Nico says with no small amount of exasperation, “including prep time.”
Will looks no less grim. “A twenty minutes that will never be returned to me.”
Nico rolls his eyes and decides to stop humouring him.
He drops him off at his chariot with a quick pat on the shoulder, jogging back to the stands. They’re full, today, as expected, with every camper and countless others cramped into the minimal space. Nico looks at the shoulder-to-shoulder crowd, and is about to consider breaking his promise and fleeing back to his cabin before he sees a doodled-on hand stick in the air, waving wildly. He exhales in relief and heads over to sit in the spot Kayla and Austin have cleared between them.
“How miserable is he?” Kayla asks brightly, tapping her purple shoes. “He left before we woke up this morning. Assumedly to sprint around camp a few times like a feral cat.”
“Pretty miserable,” Nico answers. He reaches over to pat Austin’s head when he rests on his shoulder, knowing he’s nervous even if he tries not to show it. “A lot of it is self-induced, though. Like, yeah, Sherman is going to be a dick and it’s going to be stressful, but I feel like, in the grand scheme of things, this is among the least stressful things he’s ever been forced to deal with.”
“There was that one time he had to remove a brain tumour in the middle of the forest,” Austin muses. “I think that was probably pretty stressful for him.”
Nico opens his mouth. He closes it again.
“Demigod life is a nightmare,” he settles on eventually.
“Hear, hear,” both siblings mutter.
They lapse into silence as they turn back to the racetrack, evaluating the turnout.
Competition will be hefty.
Sherman has finally arrived, Ares horses in tow. The garish things look almost wrong next to the brightness off the flying Apollo chariot, but that may just be the tension between the team’s charioteers that’s so potent it seems to warp the air around them. Nico is vaguely surprised that they’re managing to stand so civilly next to each other, even if they could not be more visibly uncomfortable. Will, at least, tries for a smile, which drops immediately when Sherman mutters something too quiet to be picked up this far.
Nico sighs. This is going to be hard to watch.
There are about twenty other chariots lines up. Hermes, Hephaestus, and Aphrodite-Iris, like at practice, but Athena is competing too, as well as Nike, as per usual, and Tyche. In fact Nico, and by extension Hades, is one of the few cabins not participating — everyone else seems primed and ready for a chance of laurels and extra dessert. And, of course, settling personal rivalries via bloodshed, et cetera, et cetera.
The biggest competition, if Nico had to quantify it, will be Hephaestus, tricky as they were during practice; Athena, for obvious reasons; and Will and Sherman themselves will be their own worst enemy. He can’t tell if it would be better for them to fail out early to avoid racketing tension up further, or last close to the end to keep things at a healthy simmer.
In the end, it doesn’t matter. The second warning whistle goes off, and the chariots rush to the starting line — Will and Sherman at third position, Demeter to their left, Dionysus-Hypnos to their right. The stands go silent, the charioteers get in position, and with a sharp, shrill whistle, they’re off.
The first few seconds, as always, are chaotic.
In the ground with the settling dust are three separate chariots, including, surprisingly, Hermes, whose rigging backfired and sent their entire chariot up in smoke. They are luckily unharmed due to their unusually well-prepared fireproof armour, but neither Julia nor Connor seem too pleased about being out so soon.
The rest of the race continues on without them. Athena has a decent stretch of first place, but Nike is following fast. Behind them, barely a hair’s breadth of distance, is Will and Sherman, rocketing forward smoothly. Unlike Clarisse, Sherman does not care for giving Will any learning opportunities — despite the horses being Ares’, Will is on the reigns. Sherman is armed with his sword and his spear, slashing and jabbing at anyone who gets too close. Neither Ares or Apollo is big on tricks, not like some of the craftier cabins, but together they’re fast and strong and make a formidable opponent.
Or, well, they would. If they were working together, rather than two people simply being in the same chariot.
They cross into the second lap, Will guiding them across the innermost ring to move them up past Nike. They’re gaining on Athena, now, but that won’t be an easy task — challenging the camp’s wisest never is.
Kayla hisses through her teeth. “Shit.” She purses her lip at the trailing Nike chariot — they’re gaining, and they’re seething. Damien — at least Nico thinks it’s Damien, it’s hard to tell with the helmets — has an arsenal of throwing knives poised in his left hand, and as his teammate steers them steady, he takes aim. Nico has to resist the urge to shout a warning.
As the short knife sails towards the reigns wrapped around Will’s hands, though, aim ringing true, Will’s spine goes ramrod straight. Almost as if he can feel it. With an eighth of a second to spare, he shifts and jerks his hands out of the way, avoiding the knife and managing, somehow, to stay on track.
With a skill and ferocity that has Nico’s jaw brushing his toes, Will dodges all eight of the knives lobbed in his direction. In one memorable manoeuvre, he rips his left hand from the reigns, holding them in his teeth, and uses it to shove Sherman down behind the wall of the chariot right before a knife would have lodged itself in his uncovered cheek. Out of weapons, he steers their chariot right next to Nike, allowing Sherman to sever their reigns and send them rolling to a sad, victory-less stop.
Without pausing to look behind them, they race on.
Athena’s chariot has a lead, but their chariot is built for stability, not speed. They’ve accounted for every possible sabotage and built accordingly. They have not accounted for, however, stubbornness and sheer force of Will. The Ares-Apollo chariot gains on them, helmets glinting, skeletal horses gaining faster, faster, faster. Both Sherman and Malcom, Nico believes, have their spears drawn, ready, as the space between them gets smaller and smaller, to fight barbarically for first — for honour.
Nico doubts even Rachel, powers of prophecy fully restored, could predict what happens next.
Either too furious to accept a loss or simply deciding to throw the game, one of the Nike charioteers crawls out from their carriage, darting onto the live track. They scan the ground, looking for something. When they stand in the dead centre of the track, body perfectly tense, gripping something glinting in their hand, Nico gets it.
Austin gasps, nails digging into Nico’s arm. “Oh, no.”
Before anyone can say anything, they take aim. They measure once, twice, and then let the knife loose with deadly precision, knife cutting through the air with ease and hurdling with impossible power towards to two finalists chariots.
If the knife hits the Athena chariot, it will slice clean through the axle. Architectural wonder it may be, the chariot cannot withstand Celestial bronze at terminal velocity, and it will give, and the chariot will crumple. In an effort to lesson the chariot’s load, the Athena charioteers have largely forgone armour. Their fall will be painful and disastrous; as deadly as Clarisse’s, if not moreso. A hit to the Ares-Apollo chariot will be similarly as race-ending, but both Will and Sherman are in full armour. It will be bruising, but not deadly. They will lose, but they will survive.
All they need to do to win is shift, just slightly, so that the knife hits the Athena chariot.
Will, like with all the others before it, seems to feel this knife coming. Unlike the others, he glances backwards, looking at the knife, looking back at the Athena chariot. Sherman follows his gaze, and seems to realize what Will has calculated a split second after he does. He shouts something — presumably an order to move, to shift, to sabotage.
The knife hits the Ares-Apollo chariot, slicing through the left wheel.
It careens around, unbalanced, dragged into a heap by untethered horses.
The Athena chariot pulls forward to victory, the remaining functioning chariots quickly following.
The Ares-Apollo canon is left broken and humiliated only a few feet from victory, the almost-first-place.
As soon as they come off the track, things get messy. Both Will and Sherman are covered in dirt and grime, striped with grease from the broken wheels, bleeding sluggishly from various scraps. Sherman has his non-flailing hand clamped to an oozing wound on the side of his neck, and Will is limping.
“—and I cannot fucking believe you, Solace! All I asked for was effort!”
“Oh, forgive me,” Will says sarcastically, finally close enough to hear. “In the hustle and bustle of being shot at, I made a couple errors.”
“That gonna be your attitude in battle? ‘Oh, sorry, there was a monster chasing me so I lost all focus —’”
“Battles are not usually fought on a chariot going a hundred fucking miles per hour!”
“That’s no excuse! You need to be —”
“What, Sherman, fucking what? What indisputable flaw do I have, oh great one, that needs to be so desperately remedied?”
It’s startling when Will’s composure cracks. When he goes from bitey and sarcastic, eye-rolling from his usual distance, to right in Sherman’s face. It’s eerie to see him at his full height, no slouching, reminding anyone watching that yeah, actually, their laidback medic is six-two, strong, capable, in more ways than what they’re used to.
Sherman, in usual Ares kid fashion, doesn’t even flinch.
“Your reflexes, for starters,” he says coolly. “No matter what you do, Solace, you’re always one second too fucking late.”
A collective gasp ricochets through the gathered campers. The tension rackets up so rapidly that Nico coughs, lungs suddenly constricted. Will rears back so violently Nico is half-convinced Sherman actual punched him.
Sherman, for his part, seems to realise he’s crossed some kind of line. The cold look on his face twists into a scowl, uncomfortable and apologetic at once. “Look, Will, I just mean —”
“You don’t get to say that to me.”
Will’s quiet voice seems to echo through the entirety of the valley, cutting through laboured breathing of charioteers, pegasus neighing, even the crashing of the waves in the distant shore — everything goes silent.
Nico likes to think he knows Will pretty well. He knows what he sounds like when he’s giggly, watching his siblings argue about nothing; when he’s excitable, rambling about his newest obsession; when he can’t choose between amused and stern at whatever dumb thing Nico has gotten himself into. He knows what he sounds like when he’s exhausted, too, overworked and done with everything; when he’s annoyed, when he’s hurt and sad.
But he’s never heard Will sound so dangerous.
“Of all people.” His words are articulated, deliberate. The usual warmth of his eyes is gone. He’s completely still in a way he never is outside of surgery — no shaking in his perpetually trembling hands, no bounce to his curls, none of the constant energy that seems to constantly exude off him. Still, cold. Icy. “You do not get to talk to me about being one second too late.”
Sherman looks stricken. Guilt is written across each of his features, and for a second he steps back — as if afraid.
The son of Apollo turns without another word, striding over to the distant tree line and disappearing into the woods. No one chases after him.
Predictably, the silence does not last long.
“You fucking idiot!” Clarisse explodes, the second Will is out of eyesight. She bats Chris’s hand away from her, and he, surprisingly, lets her go easily — his usually understanding face has hardened. She hobbles towards her brother, remarkably quick with her clunky cast, and starts truly tearing into him. “I asked you to do one fucking thing! One!”
Sherman quickly gets defensive under the scrutiny. “Well, you didn’t make it fucking easy! Just because he’s your protege doesn’t mean he’s my fucking problem —”
Nico doesn’t stick around to listen to their argument. He searches around the gathered crowd until he meets Kayla’s eyes, flicking his head towards the woods. She nods frantically. Knowing he’ll make sure they have privacy, he takes off, aiming for the same place Will went, barely slowing down once he enters the forest.
Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck.
“Will?” he calls, well aware he’s not going to get an answer. “Where are you?”
While there’s definitely no response from Will, he damn near jumps out of his skin when a dryad melts from her tree, shuffling towards him.
“Blond boy?” she asks, leaning close so he can hear her whisper. “Tall? Crying?”
Nico swallows. Fuck. “Yeah.”
“Headed down southeast, ways past Zeus’ fist.“
“Thank you,” he says, hoping she understands how much he means it.
She nods, then disappears back into her tree.
Following her directions, Nico jogs down beaten paths, heading in the direction that he is vaguely sure is southeast and mostly praying that he’ll find Will eventually. He shouldn’t have that much of a head start, since Nico left maybe five minutes after he did, but who knows. Will’s fast, and sometimes this forest seems bigger than it really is. It’s easy to get lost.
He searches for what feels like hours, and might actually be hours; sky darkening as the sun disappears into the lake. The temperature drops significantly. Nico is hoping that he won’t be spending the night sleeping in the dirt when he hears sniffling.
Heart pounding, he freezes, focusing on the sound. It’s muffled, sobs choked-off and sound hidden behind cupped hands. The echo sounds strange, too; it’s close, that much is obvious, but Nico almost can’t tell if it’s coming from the left or the right. Truthfully, it doesn’t sound like either.
On impulse, he looks up. Almost invisible in the branches of a large oak tree is Will, stained clothes blending in with the scratchy bark, leaves covering the rest of him.
Except, perhaps fittingly, his bright, golden hair.
Worried that calling out to him might startle him right off the tree, Nico begins to climb. He’s not great at climbing — he doesn’t have a natural sense of what is and isn’t a good foothold — but oak trees are easy. Every half-step has a branch, and this tree is old enough that the branches are thick, sturdy. He’s twenty feet up before he even realizes, barely breaking a sweat.
He pauses a few feet shy of his target, straightening until he’s standing on an almost flat branch, arm looped tightly around the trunk.
Will startles. He looks around frantically, struggling in the dark, until his bloodshot eyes finally land on Nico. He bursts into more tears, shoulders shaking as he sobs.
Alarmed, Nico crawls all the way up.
“Woah, Will, breathe, vita, breathe —”
He’s not sure what tree-sobbing etiquette is, but regular sobbing etiquette often involves some kind of comforting physical touch, so he goes with that. And Will, he knows, likes to be crowded, likes to be almost suffocated with the sights and touch and smells of other people, to remind him he’s not alone, even if he feels it. So Nico scoots as closely as he dares, legs wrapped around the branch, and slides one arm around Will’s back, one against his chest, and tugs him closely.
With a bit of manoeuvring, he’s tucked under Nico’s chin, shoulders hunched and shaking, enveloped entirely in Nico’s arms. He can feel a wet spot growing on his left sleeve, and honestly he should be at least a little bit disgusted, but he barely even notices. He’s too busy fighting the lump in his own throat, blinking back his own tears.
“It’s gonna be okay,” he murmurs, pressing a soft kiss to Will’s curls. “Let it out, Will. You’re allowed.”
Will wails, a deep, choking, broken sound, and Nico loses the battle with his own tears. He’s never heard Will like this. He’s never heard anyone like this, except himself, in the echo of this same forest, years ago. It hurts like biting ice.
“It hurts, they’re gone, they’re gone, and I hate them, I hate them so much —” he heaves, dragging in breath like it cost him to say it, like part of his soul was dragged out of his vocal chords — “and I hate myself for hating them, I hate, they’re gone, I’m never —”
He dissolves into sobs, again, words breaking into nothing understandable, crying around the same repetitions over and over again. Nico hides his crumpling face in Will’s hair, wincing at every broken cry, every hitched breath, every moaned word. His heart feels like it’s breaking into a million fractals. He’s never felt so out of depth in his life.
“Let it out,” he whispers again, for a lack of anything else to say. “Let it out, sweetheart, let it out.”
For a long time, Nico had no one to hold him.
When he lost Bianca, he was by himself. And when he thought he had someone to guide him, someone to fix him, he was wrong — he was vulnerable and easy to manipulate. He had no one to hold him until he was too bitter and too closed off to let himself fall apart, anyway, and losing Bianca stayed somewhere rotten inside him, a bruise that never, ever stopped aching.
Last December he had cracked like an egg. He hadn’t meant to — it wasn’t even in the back of his mind — but he’d opened the door to Will’s smiling face on the morning, cold and sad as it was, and just started bawling. Some part of him, some deep, buried part, stomped it’s way from the prison Nico had kept it in and took the hell over, yanking open the floodgates, forcing him to expel every last drop of shadowy, strangling pain that had stayed inside him so long. He thought he was going to die. His entire body shook and jerked like a rowboat in a deep ocean storm, and it had been Will’s lighthouse, his endless, light eyes, his warm hands, his firm hold that had held him steady until he’d dragged himself out to the other side. It was and is the most painful thing he’d ever done in his life. And the most important.
He doesn’t think Will has had anyone to hold him, before, either. Not ‘til right this moment. Not Chiron, not his mother, and certainly not an older sibling. Will has been running on empty for as long as Nico has known him. Longer.
“Let it out,” Nico whispers again, and holds him tighter.
By the time either of them move again, it’s pale, early morning, and they’re damp from the dew and Will’s tears. Nico is as stiff as the tree he’s sitting on, but doesn’t dare say a word about it.
“I don’t want to go back,” Will croaks, the first either of them have spoken in hours.
Nico tucks a strand of hair behind his ear, resting a gentle hand on his cheek. “Okay.”
“We can’t stay here forever.”
“We can stay a while.” Nico pulls away slightly, just enough so that he can cradle Will’s face in both hands, tilting his chin up to meet his gaze. “I mean it, Will. As long as you need.”
“What if I’ll never have enough time?”
“Then I’ll stay with you until time runs out.” He presses a tentative, careful kiss to the centre of his freckled forehead; staying when Will shudders, leaning into it. Against his skin, he murmurs, “But you’ll have enough time, vita. You’re the strongest person I know.”
“I don’t want to be strong.”
“So don’t, I gotcha.” He presses another kiss slightly above the first, and another, resting again at the crown of his head. “But you can be.”
They stay like that until Nico’s face starts to go numb, and even then he doesn’t go far, shifting so his cheek lays on the top of Will’s skull. He ignores the slight tickle of his curls against his nose, focusing instead on the brand of his hands on his waist, the shakey but constant inhales, holds, exhales, again, again, again.
“Clarisse is my friend,” Will starts. “She was as important to me as — as Cass, before the war.”
Nico hums. “But she betrayed you.”
“And you resent her for it, a little.”
Will nods. “It’s disgusting.”
“It’s human, Will, Christ.” He moves them around so they’re both sitting facing each other, Nico’s eyes firmly meeting Will’s. “I will never fully forgive Percy for letting Bianca die. Never. It’s not fair to him, and I love him anyway, and I am choosing to move past it. But I will carry that burden. Am I disgusting for that?”
“Will, you — look at me.”
“Clarisse actively chose her pride over her people. So did the rest of her cabin. She’s not fully responsible for that choice, and the blame, as always, lands on Kronos’ shoulders, but —” Nico laughs, a bitter, defeated sound. “Out of all of us, you lost the most. No one lost as many as Apollo. No one burned as many shrouds. You’re allowed to be hurt, allowed to be angry.”
“I forgave them,” Will admits. “I did it publicly and called off the stupid rivalry right after the war. It was the first thing I did as head counsellor.”
“Trying to do what Michael would have done?”
“Are you kidding me, he —” Will scoffs, swiping at the tears trickling down the corners of his eyes. “If Michael were alive, and he found out I forgave them after what happened to Lee, too Diana — he would have been furious. He would stop speaking to me. If I was trying to be like Michael, I might’ve refused them treatment.”
Nico tries to imagine that for a second — Will refusing anyone treatment. It makes something sour uncurl in his stomach, something unsettling.
“You would never refuse someone treatment. I didn’t even — I didn’t think you guys were allowed.”
Will shrugs. “There are no rules to our practice. I just never made refusal an option, and the kids are too young to know any different.”
‘The kids’ — as if Kayla and Austin aren’t as old or older than Will was when he was in charge, when he held the bashed pieces of his brother’s brain as it oozed out of his skull. As he sat, exhausted, hands shaking, next to Nico, and embroidered twelve shrouds. As if Yan and Gracie are his, rather than Apollo’s.
“You forgave them so your siblings wouldn’t grow up bitter,” Nico realises. “Oh, gods, Will.”
He shrugs again, picking at his nails. “For me too. Grudges aren’t healthy.” He tries for a teasing smile. “You’d know.”
“I would.” Nico tries to smile back. It’s easier than he thought it would be, although it fades back into something serious quickly. He reaches out, linking his hands with Will’s to stop him picking before he bleeds. “You can be selfish sometimes, you know.”
“Not in front of anyone.”
“You’re admitting it in front of me,” Nico points out.
Will hesitates. “That’s — different.”
“You get it.” He looks down, voice quiet. “You get me. I can —” He meets Nico’s eyes again, a kind of helpless smile on his face. “I dunno. You’re safe. You’re okay with me, even when I’m ugly.”
“Even then,” Nico echoes quietly. He reaches up and tucks a strand of hair behind Will’s ear again, even though none were loose. His fingertips linger, and the skin under his touch warms. “Especially then.”
“You can, too, you know, I lo —”
Will exhales in relief. “Good.”
He slumps forward until his forehead rests on the swell of Nico’s shoulder, breaths warming the air between them. Nico tries to match his rhythm — in, out, in, out. Hold. Out, in.
“Can we — hide here, for a little bit? Just a little longer.”
“Of course,” Nico murmurs, squeezing his wrists. “I’ll hide you as long as you need.”
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