#dramatic will solace

Will is sure of it.

He'd been so close. Will had felt his breathing, spine tingling, on the curve of his dry lip: he had stood on on the bottom stair of the porch of Cabin Seven, a little shorter than Will even than usual, hands hovering over Will's wrists. Will had fought with the temptation to slide his wrists just so upward, just enough to slot against his open palms; he had resisted, in the end, but it was a close thing, a desperate need to feel the chill of Nico's chapped hands through his bandages, past his tangled string bracelets. Nico had parted his lips, meaning to say something, and Will had exhaled, quick and short, flicking down to meet his eyes, already staring. Nico's pupils were dilated, even obvious with the dark dark dark of his eyes, and his eyelids were low-slung, long eyelashes fanning. He had managed one word.

"I --"

And then Will's stupid watch chimed, and Nico glanced down, and he cursed, wrenching his hands away, and that time Will did grab them, just for a milisecond, just on reflex. And Nico had frozen and stared down at their joined hands, eyes wide, but Will was already halfway through a reflective "Sorry! Oh my gods! Sorry! Don't be late!" and Nico straightened, eyes narrowing in determination, and rushed out his okayseeyoulaterbye and sprinted across the common, disappearing into the shadow of his cabin. And Will stared after him for several minutes, until his vision was obstructed by a camper.

A camper who turned to him, eyes wide and sheepish and hopeful, wrist bent oddly, and said: "Hey, Will --"

And Will screamed his frustration so loud the camper jumped out of his skin, squeaking out an excuse, and walked quickly off, which was just as well because Will doubted he could be very much help when he was so busy stomping back to his cabin, burying his face in his pillow, and screeching until his voice went hoarse.

"Fucking boys!" he shouted.

Lou Ellen, in his cabin for some reason, flipped a page of her magazine, snorting.

"Hear, hear."

And that was that.

-- -- --

Except that wasn't that.

Because Nico sends him letters.

"I don't get any of those," Percy observes , peeking over his shoulder. Will slams the paper to his chest. shoves his face away, and storms off, face burning.

"Maybe because you are a tool," he mutters darkly, and flushes worse when he does not mutter at all, and Annabeth laughs so hard she chokes. He ducks into the stables and presses his steaming forehead to the wood, eyes squeezed shut, letter clutched to his chest as he waits out Annabeth's wheezing, Percy's hurt mumbling.

"I'm not a tool, am I?"

"Oh my gods I am going to pass out."

Once she reassures him, giggling, and drags him off Somewhere Else, Will peeks out. There is Clovis, curled up on the ground, but he is out cold. There is Miranda, a little ways away, tending to an olive tree, but she minds her own business. There is Connor, rigging...something, but that's okay. Will knows his pressure points.

He exhales, willing the heat away from his face. It doesn't work. He sits down in Guido the Pegasus's stall, anyway, shooting him a small smile in greeting, and smooths out the letter on his thigh. It reads:

Dear My Friend Belov

Will,

Hi.

Okay, hi again. I let this letter sit for two weeks because I was embarrassed. I don't know what to say. Because I'm

Hi. Again.

I have locked myself in my room with a pen and no food source (you would not approve). I gave one of my father's minions a key. They are not to release me until I have filled at least one page. So.

Uh, -- wow, is it stupid, writing 'uh', I used to write letters for competitions at school -- I miss you. I guess. I got a papercut yesterday and my stepmother gave me a bandaid. It was so strange and then I blinked because -- it shouldn't be strange, right? That's what you do for papercuts. But then I realized that I never get bandaids for papercuts. You just healed them.

And then I realized I have become a booger.

Will stops, and laughs. Guido huffs and raises his horsey eyebrow at him, and Will knows its in judgment because horses are the judgiest creatures on Earth, except for church ladies, and his ears burn. But he cannot force away the giant smile on his face no matter how hard he tries. He shifts, laying back onto the haypile -- and ignoring Guido's whiney huff, see, being mean has consequences -- and holding the letter above his face. From this angle, he can see the scratch marks bleeding in from the back, from all the words Nico has crossed out. Will considers using his X-ray machine to determine what it says and then realizes that is insanity. His pulse fires in his ear, loud and red-hot.

What does booger even mean.

I used to -- fight manticores! Empousai! I fistfought The Original Werewolf and won!

You make me weak.

He hears it, loud and echoing: the stutter of his heart, the actual moment where it pauses for a second, as if it doesn't have a job. Will inhales sharply and freezes with his fingers pinching the edges of the pages, breathing out, and out, and out; he exhales the sum total of oxygen left in his lungs and does not move, still, shifts only his eyes as they swing rapidly from line to line and word to word and trace every shift and bend of the careful cursive letters.

I don't -- that's maybe not the best way to write that but I tried three different sentences and they don't work right. What I'm trying to say, is: I used to be really cool and badass and everything, but you keep bossing me around and I keep letting you, and now I use conditioner in my hair.

He snorts a laugh, finally, swimming vision rebalancing as his lungs inflate again. His hands shake, ever so slightly, so he rests the letter gently on his lap, and tucks his hands under his thighs. Guido noses gently at the mess of his hair, and Will leans into the clever horse, smiling.

Which you don't even use! Because you're awful like I used to be and use -- that stupid 3-in-1 stuff! Because you never have time for anything! Because you don't tell people with papercuts to stuff it and get their own bandaids! Because you're ridiculous!

I guess I am really just thinking: sleep. You, I mean. I sleep until my servants wake me, which, I mean, there's no sun down here, but is probably noon or something. You should sleep, because now that I'm not there I'm sure no one else is bothering you to do it, and you're an idiot.

So.

I reached the end of the page so I don't have to write anymore. I hope you get this letter soon and you haven't dropped dead from exhaustion, even thought I know you haven't because I would feel it and I would kick your ass right back to the land of the living.

I love you

Don't kill yourself. Be meaner.

Love, Bye,

Nico. (di Angelo)

"Of course you have servants," Will mumbles, and buries his face in his hands.

Guido neighs at him, loud and exaggerated directly in his ear. Will shoves him off, scowling, and somersaults to his feet, standing with his hands on his hips. Guido blinks his big eyes at him. They are dark, like Nico's. Will considers screaming. He doesn't want to receive a hoof to the kneecap, so he doesn't, and instead redirects his energy into finger-combing Guido's mane and making general groaning noises of discontent. Guido rolls his eyes at him, which is rude. Which is -- judgey, and Guido is a dumb horse and he should not be embarrassed in front of a dumb horse but he is and it is the worst and all Nico's fault, he knows it.

"You're a horse," Will says, huffy. "You do not understand my gripes. How would you feel if you fell in love --" Will falters -- "if you -- well -- well!" He stops, squeezing his eyes shut. Don't kill yourself. Be meaner.

What is wrong with him.

What is wrong with him.

"Did you know he smells like a garden," Will says, eventually. He loosens his hold on Guido's mane when he whinnies in discomfort, pressing a smooch of apology between his giant eyes and using his hand to shake his fist at the heavens instead. "Just -- all the time. He smells like when you dig up the dirt, right before you put the flowers in the ground. That -- heady smell. You know?"

Guido blinks at him.

"Of course you do not know. You are a winged horse, and I need a straightjacket." He smooths down his patchy coat, sighing. "Guido, which pegasus do you have a crush on."

Guido, being a horse, does not answer.

"Is it Princess Peach Sour Rings?" He glances over at the dusky orange mare, lips pursed in consideration. Guido, too, looks in interest: they make eye contact, look to Will, and then back at each other. Will swears he sees them raise their eyebrows. "It's Princess Peach Sour Rings, isn't it."

The look in Guido's eyes says: you are unwell. Will doesn't need to be distantly related to Pegasus Himself to glean that much. Unfortunately, he's directly related to the God of Being Delusional, so this flies over his head.

"Okay, Guido, we are going to do what's called a Guided Thought Exercise. Are you ready? You don't look like you're ready. You need to take a Deep Calming Breath. Good. Okay."

Will closes his eyes for the Effect. He takes the thoughts his brain just constantly has of Nico -- smiling; Nico with his tongue poking out of his mouth, concentrating; Nico with sweat plastering his hair to his forehead, eyes glinting, sword a moving shadow; Nico hopping out of the window of Cabin Eleven, cackling as he is chased across camp by several furious, shouting, now-moneyless children of Hermes -- and envisions balling them up and tossing them out his ears. This, predictably, does nothing. Will ignores this failure and moves on.

"Guido, imagine for a second you are a regular, boring horse. You do not have cool wings like the rest of your friends. But it's cool 'cause you can gallop really fast. Maybe. And then one day, this other horse -- Princess Peach Sour Rings, are you imagining her -- comes in and this horse is just the most beautiful horse you've ever seen. Big, beautiful brown eyes, almost black, really, except when he stands by the campfire they glow like amber." Will clears his throat. "Uh, she, I mean. Princess Peach Sour Rings. And -- and, when this beautiful horse comes into the stable, you notice she has the most graceful wings you've ever seen and also coincidentally the most powerful kick in the land. And all she is valued for is her kick. And it makes you sad. Because the wings!"

Will pauses. He shifts so he has either hand on Guido's face, staring directly in his eyes. Guido allows it. Will cannot resist another smooch, tinier this time, right on his big snout. Then he pulls back and resumes eye contact.

"Guido," he says, seriously, "I have lost my metaphor. My brain is noodles."

Guido bumps his head softly against Will's. Will groans, leaning into the touch. Nico had accused Will of making him weak. Well, Nico makes him stupid. Constantly. Will is generally a really intelligent and articulate person. Nico makes him feel like his Wernicke's area has been pulled out with a fork. Which is an issue, because Will relies on his Wernicke area among others to do things such as brush his teeth and oh yeah, also surgery, because as Nico has so deftly pointed out this camp is broken. And also illegal. But Will has a job so he can't really be worried about that right now.

He screams.

Guido, gently, headbutts him. Will picks the letter up from the floor and shakes it violently.

"I am going to -- burn this," Will says, lying. He notices his fingers have creased the thick paper and rushes to smooth it out. "In a fire. Yes. Right now." He nods to himself. "Bye, Guido."

Guido does not respond. All well, though, because even if he could Will is too busy muttering to himself, tripping every forth step, scanning the looped cursive for hidden messages that are clearly not there. He kind of hopes if he holds the page up to the light then the words hey I should have kissed you before I disappeared for a hundred years that's my bad will appear, but this is all for naught. No such words appear. Only y's looped in a really gay way and that's stereotyping, it is, but they really do kind of follow the pattern.

"If you had kissed me I would have let you," Will says to the letter, because the only way he is saying that to Nico himself is if someone successfully clones his body and forces a microchip in his brain. "Like, just saying."

The letter, predictably, does not respond. This is perhaps for the best as if it did Will would have grander problems, which is saying something, because his mother fondly calls him Math Textbook, which is funny if hurtful. Anyways.

He makes it back to the middle of Camp, and stands for several minutes in front of a blazing brazier. There is if he is not mistaken a can of paint at the bottom of this one. That would explain the fumes. It would also explain the Chiron shouting at the grotesquely accurate spray-painted depiction of a penis on the side of the Big House and the various gathered Hermes children standing in smug Miranda-rights silence.

"It would be a great shame to burn you alongside evidence of a crime," Will says to the letter, solemnly. "Nico worked very hard to get you to me." He turns red as the sun as he says it and ignores it because he is well-rounded and developed and mature and emotionally available and adult and not emotionally repressed in any which way shut up Austin. "Maybe I will burn you individually, instead. Yes. More personal, that way."

He folds the letter carefully along the seams so as to conceal its contents from wandering eyes and marches with grand purpose, double time, to the Arts n Crafts shack. He notices the pottery wheel is out and twitches towards it, remembering the increasingly ugly vases he is creating and gifting to Chiron to see how long he will politely accept them before finally cracking, but remembers at the last moment that he is on a Quest and cannot afford any further distractions. He does take a quick second to flick a spot of paint on the back of Drew's neck but that is unrelated and cannot be traced back to him.

"Hi," he says, to the crowd at large. Lacy waves enthusiastically. Will waves back and makes a heart with his hands also because she is the best and Will loves her. "Does anyone have a lighter or a match or flint or something of the likes?"

Mitchell pauses. Will leans over to observe the jewelry box he is painting and nods in serious appreciation. He is very fond of the individual muscle veins being painted on Naruto's likeness.

"I am trying very hard to think of a non-terrifying reason you are so intent on a source of fire," Mitchell says gently, placing a gentle hand on his shoulder. "See, the way you have requested it reads arson to me, if you can imagine."

"What if I wanted to start smoking cigarettes."

"Hm."

"He could be learning lighter tricks," Valentina offers. "You know, put a bunch of hand sanitizer on and then set your hands on fire. The such."

Will nods enthusiastically. Mitchell somehow does not look assuaged.

"Aren't you a." He pauses, pressing his hands together. "Hm. Is lighting your hands aflame sanctioned by a medical professional such as yourself?"

"I think freedom of expression is important, yeah."

"...I see."

Will pats his shoulder. He continues to look alarmed, but returns reluctantly to his mostly naked Naruto painting. Will, as always, appreciates his endless support. Nobel Peace Prize for Mitchell Lastname 2013.

"So," Will continues, when no lighter is brought forth, "no flames?"

"No," says Valentina, sadly.

"No," says Mitchell, less sadly.

"If you're going to self-annimilate, do it elsewhere," Drew says, not sadly at all. She adds a careful dot of red paint to the grotesquely accurate depiction of Connor Stoll's decapitation. "I don't want the heat to dry out my hair."

"Self-immolate," Will corrects, and wanders off.

His search for a lighter produces no results. You'd think, in a Camp as oft-flammable as this one, the task would be an easy one, but Will wants it too badly, see, so the universe has punished him for the crime of hope. 'Tis likely why Nico did not kiss him, actually. Will pauses as he considers that Nico might not return if Will wants that too badly, too, just like his brothers, and gently and lovingly places that thought in the box in his brain labelled 'YIKES'. He pushes forward, humming.

"Nyssa," he says jovially, running into her. She pauses, eyeing him warily.

"You're not getting an alibi from me again, Solace. I don't want a repeat of..." She shudders. "Last time."

Will schools his face into a mask of sincerity. "Of course not, Nyssa, I would never, Nyssa, what do you take me for, Nyssa, I am only a boy, Nyssa." He is careful to cross his fingers behind his back lest he set off his allergy. Nyssa does not notice but seems to suspect.

"One day you're gonna suffocate," she says cryptically. Will inclines his head knowing she is correct. "It will be your own fault."

"I need a lighter," Will says, batting his eyelashes to change the subject. He makes his face as innocent and hopeful as he can manage. "Not for arson, I promise. Well, only kind of. The definition of arson is broad."

Nyssa sighs and walks away.

"No one in this Camp loves me," Will laments. He folds the letter back along its careful creases and tucks it, in its worn envelope, into the many beautiful and non-excessive pockets of his shorts, patting in gently. "I guess you get to survive, letter. You will remain the last manifestation of any affection Nico has for me as it surely fades for a cuter boy with nicer jeans down in the Underworld. How ye Gods are moved by my plight, and yet, none can break the ancient Sisters' iron decrees; doomed, by all Fate's accounts, for mine own torch to burn; down to embers, down to coal, down to ash; forgotten in the wind and reduced to the wind of memory; a weak, pitying blast in the stillness of the future."

The sun shines brightly in approval of his misery. Will shoots a thumbs up at it, sighs wistfully for at least seven seconds, to really seal it in, and follows the rest of the camp to the dinner bell. Percy only pouts sadly at him three times and then is easily distracted by dessert. None bring up the arson, although Mitchell watches with careful eyes.

Will sighs and sulks through dinner, pushing the food around his plate until he remembers he's ravenous and shovels it down. He rebuffs his siblings attempts at conversation by virtue of being too heartbroken to speak, not unlike Penelope, awaiting her beloved Odysseus, but then Kayla claims that bluegrass is a mid shadow of jazz and Will is so indignant he needs both hands and a borrowed third hand from Austin to properly list all the ways she's wrong. By the fiftieth stanza of their argument, obviously in couplets because they are not animals, the letter stops burning a hole into the khaki. By the seventieth, Austin starts weeping in misery, and he has almost entirely forgotten it. By the ninetieth, he resigns it to a hidden page in his journal, stashed under his mattress.

He is sure, anyway, that it is a fluke.

After all -- Nico could have kissed him, before he left.

But he didn't.

-- -- --

"Solace, I am going to strangle you."

For someone to claim to have absolutely no Apollonian talents outside healing, Will has an exceptional proclivity for the dramatics. If it weren't for the slightest, barest, most miniscule twitch in he corner of his mouth, Nico would have believed his ruse wholeheartedly.

Instead, he watches that tiny little twitch and the deliberate, sympathetic tilt to blond eyebrows and rolls his eyes as hard as he can.

"You really have my deepest sympathies!" Will insists. He tucks his hands behind his back, glancing down at the ruined, crushed brownie making home in the grass, next to the brazier. "It's -- a tragedy, really. So young, so fudgy. Taken from us too soon."

"You have a lot of gall for someone so close to a fire."

"The last camp brownie of the month, too. Squashed on the grass. It's a metaphor, really. For life."

"Oh my gods."

That cracks him, and he smiles, shoving it down as quickly as he can but Nico sees it, because he isn't fucking slick, because he is an irritant and annoying and an all around pain in his side who has better things to do than taunting Nico about a stupid freaking brownie, but he is not doing these things because he is a doofus. Of the highest magnitude. A doofus with very big blue eyes that sparkle ever so in the evening sun and a very delicate Cupid's bow, that is still fucking twitching.

"You should give it the proper rites," says Will solemnly. "Here, I'll help."

Before Nico can stop him, or strangle him, he drops to a crouch, his own plate of food falling forgotten by his feet, and scoops the brownie chunks in his large hands. He fishes a napkin out of his pocket, smoothing it on his thigh, then lays the brownie ever so gently upon it, picking out the blades of grass and covering it carefully.

He holds out the napkin-shroud.

"O Prince of the Dead, Seer of Rites, Guide of Lost Souls, I pass this Fudge Brownie Supreme onto thine most capable hands; grant, take her, and with great care, bring her to the gates of Hades, so that she may be judged, against the lightness of her heart, and brought to the gardens of Elysium; paradise."

"Are you done."

"No." He clears his throat. "For mine own healer hands could not bring her back to the warmth of the Earthen light --"

"Oh my gods."

Nico watches, with his own two working eyeballs, gobsmacked, as Will begins to glow golden from the palms of his hands, enveloping the brownie corpse in strands of gentle sunlight.

"-- and so I entrust her, O Reaper Junior, O Pipsqueak of Pluto --"

"That's enough."

Faster than Will can stop him Nico tears off a chunk of his shirt, wraps it around the tip of his sword, and plunges it into the fire. Will shrieks and, wisely, bolts; in milliseconds Nico is gaining, now-flaming swords inches from the dumbass's neck, cussing him out in every language he knows one decibel louder than Will's screaming for help.

None comes.

As is life at Camp Half-Blood.

"Okay! Okay! I was joking! I'll never call you Pipsqueak again --"

Immediately, Will starts wheezing, neck swelling with splotchy red hives, and Nico has to take a moment to hold his flaming sword to the side and drop his face in his free hand. He prays to his father for strength. His father, more miffed about the blasphemy than the blatant disrespect of Nico's honor, gods help Will's soul, does not respond.

At Nico's pause, Will falls to his knees.

"Please," he begs, or with his swelling tongue more says pdease. He clasps his hands together, brownie falling to the ground. "Spare me! I'm too pretty to die! Or, at least, I'm too pretty to die by flame! Have mercy on me and stab me lightly in the side, so I have enough time to recite Mercutio's monologue as I bleed out!"

"I wanted to stab you twelve percent more with every word."

"That's what, almost five hundred percent? Surely that is enough for the rage to become funny again. Jester's privilege. I must be spared."

He waves his clasped hands again for emphasis.

Nico's mouth twitches.

Godsdamnit.

"You are the most annoying person in this camp, you know that?"

Will counts seven seconds after his sword is sheathed, just for insurance, then jumps to his feet, beaming.

"Really? Only camp-wide? Aw, you do love me."

His allergic reaction immediately begins to subside. Nico flushes. Will pounces upon his moment of weakness and slings a stupidly long arm around his shoulders, pulling him close enough that Nico's can't flail away or sucker punch his way free.

"I love you too," he says, pressing a smacking kiss to his cheek with a mwah! so loud it echoes from the lake to Half-Blood Hill and causes four separate eavesdropping Aphrodite campers to faint, fanning their faces. Nico's face goes so read his vision starts to swim.

"Your death will be slow and public," he promises darkly.

Like, he wanted to.

And he did.

But it was not his original intent.

His original intent was to stabilize his patients (success), climb out the back window of the infirmary (success), stick the landing (failure is good for growth), meet Nico behind the Big House (success), and shadow travel to his cabin without throwing up (fifty percent is a pass). The secondary intent was to sprawl on his boyfriend’s lap, taking up as much space as possible in his massive, against-camp-regulations bed (how it is possible to be Dionysus’ nepo baby without actually being a child of Dionysus, Will shall never know), turn off his brain, and watch him play video games for a while.

The issue is that Nico is so comfortable.

Yeah, he’s bony. And yeah, sometimes he gets really into the game and forgets that Will is there, elbowing him in the face as he cusses at the screen in what sounds like ancient Latin. And yeah, the sound of a CoD lobby is the opposite of a sleep-conductive environment. However.

However.

While he may spend hours of his week standing on tables, lecturing on healthy eating habits and regular circadian rhythms via sonnet, and enforcing said habits via taser (rip Leo Valdez, you would’ve loved watching Will taser people for stress relief, come back alive soon), Will is what his friends and family call a ‘big fat hypocrite’.

He wouldn’t know healthy habits if they painted themselves bright neon blue (the easiest colour for him to see), stood ten feet tall, dressed in Malvolio’s outfit from Twelfth Night, and roundhouse kicked him in the teeth his mother spent thousands of dollars on (braces suck). He has not slept through the night even once his whole life. Yesterday, his two meals were 1) twizzlers and 2) audacity. He once measured how much liquid he had in his system on any given time and then drank approximately two point seven litres of RedBull to become, by volume, one half percent caffeine. (His heart did indeed stop. But it started back up again when Jason shocked him, so it was fine. Plus, he wrote it all down, so in reality it was science.)

Also, his dumbfuck peers keep getting themselves maimed, and he was informed unfortunately by Chiron that he cannot strike and leave them to suffer. (Accusing him of violating his First Amendment Right To Petition got him nothing but stable duty.) As of ten minutes before Nico picked him up, he was on his thirty-ninth consecutive hour of being awake. Probably. (He’s reasonably certain that climbing a tree on Friday morning and belting himself to the trunk, Katniss Everdeen style, for a quick catnap was not a fever dream, but one can never be too certain.)

Regardless. Point is, Will had cute boys to cuddle and Thoughts to Think. He had no intention of falling asleep.

And, yet.

He wakes up warm — the perfect kind of warm, wherein you feel akin to a soupified caterpillar in a chrysalis — or like a croissant lovingly shaped by the hands of an elderly chef in Paris and baked with care in a regulated oven — or like a wonderfully blubbery elephant seal baking on a slick rock — or like a space rock hurtling through the —

“Morning, Sunshine,” murmurs a very familiar voice. Following the very gentle murmur is a very gentle smooch on the forehead. Will, still mostly asleep, thinks he would sign off his soul without a second thought to ensure it happens again. “Or evening, rather.”

“Has anyone ever offered you their soul?” Will asks, fuzzy and disoriented. He tries and fails to blink the grogginess away, but the world around him stays dark, and the hand in his hair remains where it is, and he is so, so sleepy.

“Not yet,” Nico says. Will can hear the amused smile in his voice. “Why?”

Will yawns. “No reason. Timizzit?”

“Late, tesoro. Past curfew.”

Will groans, knocking his head gently back into Nico’s hold.

Of course his dumb ass slept through the evening. Of course he now has to drag himself awake and walk, in the blistering, nose-numbing frost (it’s sixty degrees, Solace) across camp, dodging feral harpy attacks (Apollo kids have harpy immunity, William), and trudging into his sad, small, lonely bed (gods above you are your father’s son) where he will of course be fully awake by the time he gets there. God really does give his hardest battles to his strongest soldiers. (You’re an atheist, William Andrew.)

“Why me,” he laments, refusing to move from his boyfriend’s lap. Perhaps he will simply wither here, warm, satisfied, and more importantly away from little siblings who will not stop squabbling even when their long-suffering older brother looks longingly and pointedly at a bottle of cyanide.

Nico snorts. “Because the gods are punishing you for your crimes.”

“I have committed no crimes! This is unjust! Partisan! I am Hester Prynne and she is me —”

“Your mother is going to hell for teaching you literacy.”

“Defamation and libel!”

“Shut up, Will, gods —”

But he softens the blow of his words by leaning down, hands on either side of Will’s face, and kissing him like he’s trying to breathe him back to life. Or keep him quiet, honestly, but he smells like woodsmoke and citrus and old leather so Will doesn’t really mind. Even if he did, the chapped skin of Nico’s lips serves as a very good distraction, as does the brush of his thumb over Will’s cheekbone and the cool press of his ring against Will’s heated skin.

“Stay over,” he whispers, shifting his lips to Will’s chin, his jaw, his neck. He scratches his teeth lightly against Will’s adam’s apple and his hemoglobin briefly forget how important their job is. “You don’t have a shift tomorrow and everyone at camp owes you, like, twelve favours each.”

“That’s very convincing,” Will mumbles, unsure if he’s referring to Nico’s sound logic or the breath he blows on the shell of Will’s ear, which makes his arrector pili muscles go crazy. (He could make a more convincing case for the logic if all the blood had not abandoned his brain. Alas.)

“I’m a very convincing person.”

He slides a hand under Will’s shirt and his already very weak resolve pulls out a suitcase, packs its things, and abandons its family to pursue a career in competitive shoemaking. Or something. Nico’s hands are very very cold and it feels really really good for some reason and Will is just one man, okay. He may have been named after willpower but that does not mean he possesses any. And Nico is a convincing person. He out-stubborned Death.

“Okay,” he gasps out, arching into the nail Nico scratches over the intensely sensitive skin of his hip, “I’m staying, I’m staying, please take all your wiles and ship them out into the sea in a wine crate ala Danaë and her newborn.”

“…You are such a deeply strange person.”

“And yet you love me so.”

“Still not my birthday, Solace.”

“Eh. One day I’ll say it and it’ll be right.”

The flowers he’s holding — pretty, ruffled deep red, although Nico doesn’t recognise them — remains extended between them, clutched fist unwavering. Nico rolls his eyes, biting the inside of his cheek, and takes them.

“Of course, you could also just tell me when your birthday is.”

“No.” A pause. He brings the flowers up to his face, pointedly ignoring Will’s wink, and inhales. They smell almost identical to the shampoo Will wears. “You’re such a loser.”

“And yet you spend all your time with me.”

“Not — all,” Nico protests, cheeks burning. “I spend —”

Time with others, he was about to say, and while it is indeed true that he does, in fact, socialize with more than one person, he realises with startling clarity that Will is almost always there.

Will grins, wide and cheeky and knowing. “Having some thoughts, there, Neeks.”

“Shut the fuck up.”

Will gasps dramatically, and when that is not enough he holds up a hand, digs a string of plastic pearls out from his many pockets, clasps them around his neck, clears his throat, and gasps even more dramatically, clutching said pearls.

Nico laughs.

Unfortunately.

But he chokes it back last minute and turns it into a weird horse noise instead, so he’s victorious, basically.

“How dare,” says Will, indeed dramatically, “how dare, di Angelo, deride me, your closest friend, in such a way —”

Nico deliberates his options. Should Will have the space unimpeded to continue on than he shall do so, with increasing gusto. At the six minute mark he will graduate to elevating himself on whatever surface makes itself available, from an infirmary stool to An Actual Roof, and project his voice to make sure that everyone suffers his Elizabethan histrionics, not just Nico (or Kayla or Austin or Lou especially Cecil or Mitchell or Piper or or or or). At the nine minute mark he will be accompanied, magically, by intense background music, because Apollo deserves all of his trauma. Nico doesn’t know what the ten minute mark will bring, but frankly he’d rather walk on hot coals with open sores on his feet than find out, so.

“— good friends, sweet friends, from this group I hail, and to such a sudden flood of mutiny! To bend to the leadborn suffering —”

When Nico gestures he is graceful, obviously. And poised. When Will gestures he narrowly avoids smacking himself square in the face nine times out of ten, and sometimes, like now, he actually does smack himself in the face, but for some reason this does not deter or embarrass him. Perhaps because he, like most Apollo children, does not actually have the part of his brain that produces shame, and such gleeful shamelessness shows in his devastatingly wide eyes. Which are, Nico notices, beginning searching for the nearest climbable surface.

Ah. Level one has been exceeded.

“Hide not thy poison with such sugar’s words —”

Drastic times, drastic measures; in time of theatre kid, regress to caveman instincts. Et cetera. Nico knows the drill. He’s a twice-adorned war hero. He understands sacrifice. He understands betrayal. He knows timing, knows difficulty. He knows the burden of doing the right thing to prevent further tragedy.

He sets his flowers delicately on the ground beside him, ties his hair back out of his face, does a couple stretches, exhales peacefully, and tackles Will to the floor.

“Shut up,” he grunts, over Will’s screeching. Will, predictably, does not shut up, moaning instead about his spleen, his spine, pausing to yell, loudly, et tu, Brutus?!, moaning about his kidneys, and then once again wallowing about Brutus and betrayal.

“Someone should take away your Riverside,” Nico says solemnly, pinching Will on the arm one last time for good measure before crawling off him.

Will remains on the floor, arm thrown over his eyes. “I would sooner live without the lungs in my chest.”

“It’s gonna be me. I’m taking away your Riverside.”

Will lifts his arm, searching to meet Nico’s eyes before pouting. It is a remarkably well-planned strategy, because he has very pretty eyes, and Nico is a flaming homosexual who is openly weak to Will’s wiles. Will, who is a shit and judging by the smirk he is barely fighting back in favour of a quivering lip, knows this.

“Don’t you love me?”

“No,” Nico lies. He forces himself away from Will’s gaze, ears burning. “Go away, you walking annoyance. I never want to see you or anything about you ever again.” He scoops up his flowers and stomps off, smiling as Will cackles.

He buries his head in his pillow and screams as loud as he can.

Of course, it does nothing. The music is playing inside his head, because his father is the most annoying being ever to pop into existence. Apollo’s children get whatever song suits their father’s current mood — not a good sign that it’s emo today, fuck — blasted directly into their cranium as the sun crests over the horizon, every single day, just so they know how much their dear papa is thinking of them.

Will, however, is head counsellor. And as head counsellor, he gets his daily brain torture exactly one half hour before the sun rises, because fuck him, apparently.

Has he not been through enough.

He screams again, quieter this time, conscientious of his still-sleeping siblings. The song does not go away. It will not go away until he is on his feet, any chance of unconsciousness having swiftly betrayed him.

The creaky floorboards groan in protest as he slams onto them, not bothering to remove himself from his blankets before rolling onto the floor. He considers remaining there, in the fetal position, strangling himself in his tangled sheets, for twelve point three seconds. Then he remembers he has a stupid shift in the stupid infirmary that he stupid runs, and forces himself to get up.

“Being alive is a prison,” he laments hoarsely. It has, tragically, considerably less effect when there is no one awake to hear his complaints, because it is four forty-two in the godsdamn mcshitting fucking morning.

His father is not getting so much as a grape as an offering today. He’s going to scrape an entire plate for Auntie Artemis.

He takes an extra-long time brushing his teeth, spitefully determined to be two minutes late for his shift. No one will notice, because no one is awake. The thought soothes him.

Nine minutes to his shift, he forces himself out of the bathroom and pads over to his dresser. He has no surgeries planned, today, so he’s not gonna bother with the scrubs, and he’s gotta do inventory, so he needs pockets. He picks out his head medic shirt and his lucky cargo shorts and starts to dress himself, squeezing his eyes shut to try and force his muscles into keeping him awake. He can do this. It’s fine. He’s got training with Nico today, so that’s something he can look forward to. If he can distract Kayla and her teasing mouth with training Gracie, he can ogle all he pleases as the son of Hades attempts, for the ninetieth time, to teach him how to use a sword without beheading himself. It’ll be great.

He barely manages to swallow back a shriek when he misses the leg hole for his shorts and goes sprawling.

Fuck mornings. This is an omen. He should go the fuck back to sleep.

As if hearing his thoughts, the stupid song in his head blasts louder. It’s hard to make out the words with all the screaming and drums and all, but he’s almost certain he hears the lyrics, don’t you dare!

“Al-right,” he snaps, scowling. “I’m going, I’m going. Lemme get my damn shirt on, yeesh.”

It takes him a second to find the head hole in the dark — because the godsdamn sun is not up yet — but after a minute of fumbling he manages.

He realizes, the second he tugs it over his chest, that something is wrong.

“What the —”

Now, Will orders his shirts in bulk. He has to. He’s the only one wearing them, after all, and the sheer amount of times per day that he is covered in bodily fluids is a number he chooses, for sake of his sanity, not to count. He is well used to the process of ordering his shirts along with other linen and infirmary supplies. Every fortnight, without fail, he orders a set of orange Head Medic t-shirts one size too big, because it gives him a little breathing room without being too baggy.

When he pulls on this shirt, however, it practically clings to his skin. He can practically feel the fabric groaning as it stretches over his broad shoulders.

And, worst of all — the hem barely brushes the edge of his ribcage.

“Austin,” he growls, practically lunging for his drawer to inspect the rest of them.

As he suspected, each one of them has shrunk. If it weren’t for the Head Medic decal printed across them in bold, Will would assume his laundry was mixed up with Yan’s.

“Why do I still try to assign him laundry duty,” he hisses, cursing himself for his oversight. He’s been busy lately — he didn’t do a very thorough job writing this week’s chore chart. He must’ve put Austin on laundry, and Austin is never allowed to do laundry, because for whatever reason, no matter what he does, he ruins someone’s clothes.

“Fuck!”

His watch beeps at him, LED display reading five o’clock. His shift has already started. All of his shirts are shrunk, and he’s out of time.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck.”

He shoves his feet into a pair of flipflops, sprinting for the infirmary. Hopefully, today is on the warmer side, or else he’s going to freeze, on top of looking ridiculous. Fuck.

———

Thankfully, the first couple hours of his shift are blissfully empty and quiet. With no one to distract him, he manages to finish the laundry list of chores he’s been putting off the last week — nectar and ambrosia restock, cabinet reordering, file sorting, et cetera. He has the place spick and span in under ninety minutes.

Unthankfully, he starts to get bored fast.

Feeling an awful lot like his father, which is unfortunate, he begins to slip into what his siblings call “the dramatics” (and what Will calls rational emotional responses, but, take some, lose some). Without his permission, he begins to glance at the door every few minutes, disappointed every time no one is there. He spins around his desk chair, kicking half-heartedly at the desk. He sighs, once or twice, with a tone that he would call tastefully bored and Lou Ellen might label as histrionic. After a half hour, there is on his face, Will cannot deny, a pretty big pout.

In his defense, he can hear the sounds of the rest of the camp waking up through the open windows: laughter, cursing, yawning, Drew chasing her siblings around the camp with her knife, shrieking, promises to return stolen hair straighteners, begging for mercy. Morning sounds. Familiar sounds.

“Ugh,” he mumbles, sinking back into his chair. Then, for good measure, he frowns harder and repeats with more feeling: “Ugh.”

As if summoned by his yearning, disparaging loneliness, the little bell by the door rings as someone stumbles in. Will brightens, jumping to his feet.

“Hi!

“Hey, Will, could I get some ambrosia, Sebastian stole Drew’s straightener and she — woah.” Mitchell freezes. “Um. Woah. Huh?”

Will rushes over to the supply cabinet. “Yeah, of course! I heard the screeching, did she stab him fully or just slash him? Should I come over? Should he come here?”

“Hnngh,” Mitchell says.

Will frowns, hands stilling on the ambrosia. “Mitchell? Are you okay?” He tilts his head. “You’re — really red, dude, maybe you should —”

“I! Hngh! Am fine!” Mitchell shouts, scrambling back from Will’s outstretched hand. He won’t meet Will’s eyes. “Actually, Will, you know what? Sebastian needs to learn, actually, and he’s barely even bleeding, so I’m gonna —” He stumbles backwards, knocking his head into the doorframe. “I’m just going to! You keep that, Will, I’ll chest you — see! I will see you later! Goodbye!”

He turns away and flees, leaving Will alone, again, with a container of ambrosia hanging limply in his fingers.

“That was weird,” he mumbles, and turns to put it back away.

———

Mitchell is far from the first Incident — capitalised, because they are indeed Incidents — of the day.

Maybe a half hour after Mitchell leaves, two more Aphrodite campers walk in. Will smiles, turning to greet them, but before he can even say anything, they shriek in unison and sprint off. As silly as he knows it is, a bubble of hurt begins to bloom in his chest — is everyone actually avoiding him today? Or does it just feel like they are?

(The ADHD makes it hard to tell. He gets his feelings hurt really easily, and constantly has to remind himself what is and isn’t rejection. It doesn’t help that he sometimes feels trapped, as one of the only campers with vitakinesis and therefore constantly in the infirmary. It’s hard not to feel a little isolated. But usually, he’s got his friends and his siblings to remind him he’s not alone. Hopefully, today is just a fluke.)

Nobody else comes into the infirmary during breakfast. Will eats the oatmeal one of the nymphs brings him, smiling at her and thanking her profusely — he hadn’t realized how hungry he was. She leaves pretty quickly, too, but a lot of the nymphs are kinda squeamish around the infirmary, so Will doesn’t think too much of it. In fact, he‘s put most of his shitty morning behind him until Kayla walks in for the start of her shift.

“Huh,” she says, after a solid minute of staring.

Will shifts defensively. “What?”

“Oh, nothing, nothing. Just preparing for our day, brother dear, pay no mind.”

“You are so strange,” he mutters, but he’s long since given up on trying to understand her.

For the next hour, things are almost normal. He and Kayla chat as the freshen up the linen on the cots, treating the odd camper who comes in for lava wall burns or sword scrapes. The infirmary is rarely ever empty once the camp activities start, but in terms of numbers, today’s a pretty slow day. Will starts to feel fidgety pretty quickly.

“Oh, ho ho ho.”

Will grins when he hears his friend’s voice, shoving his clipboard aside and standing to greet them. Lou Ellen and Cecil linger by the door, matching grins on their faces. (Which, usually, would be cause for great alarm, but Will is so bored and so happy to see them that he decides, just this one time, that whomever they’ve just robbed will just have to be an unfortunate victim. Hopefully it wasn’t anything too valuable.)

“Hey, guys! Please tell me you can stay for a bit. I’ve still got a few hours left of my shift and I feel like I’m going to lose my mind.”

“Of course we’ll stay, Willy,” Cecil says innocently. “How could we refuse with such a wonderful view?”

Will is too happy to bother correcting him about his name.

There’s not much to do, so the three of them sit by the nurse’s station and chat. If anyone asks, they’re talking strategy for the upcoming capture the flag game, but really, Lou Ellen heard Damien White from Nike and Chiara Benvenuti from Tyche arguing behind the canoe shed again, so they’re talking shit.

“I honestly don’t get what she sees in him,” Lou Ellen whispers, and Will is nodding fervently, “Right? I mean if she’s happy then good for her, obviously, but come on —”

“Hey, Will?”

Will leans around Cecil, looking for who called him. A group of maybe nine campers crowd around the door, all standing behind one of Cecil’s sisters, Julia. Many of them are giggling.

“We, uh, totally need your help.”

“Here we go,” mutters Cecil. Lou Ellen starts snickering.

Will hardly hears them, absentmindedly grabbing his stethoscope and toolkit.

“What happened? Was there a fight, do you need —”

“Rosamie’s leg is, like, super sprained.” Julia gestures to a younger girl behind her. “We got her this far, but she needs you to lift her to a cot so she can rest.”

“Hermes’ fucking wings,” Cecil says under his breath.

“O….kay,” Will says slowly. “Did you…all need to come for that?”

“My heartbeat is all weird,” pipes up a boy from the back. “I need you to look at that.”

“And I need a band-aid!”

“I broke a nail.”

Their voices start clambering over each other, rapidly getting louder. Will holds up a hand, silencing them.

“Okay, okay, I hear you. If you’re fine to walk, head on over to a cot, I’ll be with you in a minute. Julia, can you help Rosamie —”

“Can’t,” blurts Julia quickly. She holds up her arm after a beat if hesitation. “Totally pulled a muscle. You’ll have to carry her.”

Will furrows his brow. It’s Mitchell all over again.

“Okay, I guess.”

Unwilling to have a group of campers loitering by the doorway any longer, Will gets it over with, scooping up Rosamie with a hand under her knees and behind her back and carrying her to the nearest cot. Will knows that everyone experiences pain differently, but she seems awfully giggly for someone whose leg is apparently sprained.

A cacophony of giggles erupt as he sets her down.

“Gods, Will, do you work out?”

Will flushes. “I do the same training as everyone else, I guess.”

“Cool.”

Will looks at them strangely. How is that cool? He glanced back at his friends, eyebrows raised, but they’re hunched over the station, badly biting back laughter.

“Maybe everyone’s got the flu, or something?” he mutters to himself, even though he knows that’s not true.

He makes quick work of healing the group of campers. Most of them are fine — he couldn’t even find a sprain on Rosamie, but wrapped her knee anyway in case there was more pain. They left as quickly as they came, giggling to each other and running down the porch.

Without even a minute between, another group of campers barged in, just as giggly as the first.

The rest of his shift is chaotic. People practically pour into the infirmary, all with minor, barely there injuries — and all of them demand Will’s help.

Will is no stranger to busy days, but this is nothing he’s ever seen.

“I don’t get it,” Will remarks to his sister in a rare minute of calm, totally bewildered. “It’s like everyone’s suddenly got glass bones.”

Kayla blinks at him. He stares back at her, wide-eyed.

“Yeah,” she drawls, after a minute. She looks him up and down. “What a deeply confounding mystery this is.”

Twelve campers rush in before he can ask her what she’s talking about.

By the time Will manages to escape, it’s an hour past the end of his shift, and he’s crawling out the window in the back office of the Big House to avoid the crowd of people at the front door.

“Solace? What are you doing?”

Will yelps, losing his delicate balance and falling face first into the flowerbed. Low, raspy laughter curls around the air, and Will goes bright red.

“Just let me pass away,” he mutters, curling around a crushed daisy.

Nico snorts. “You are such a drama queen. Here.”

After another quick second of wallowing, Will takes his offered hand, letting him pull him to his feet. His shorts are smeared in dirt and there are flowers in his hair. Frantically, and uselessly, he tries to brush himself off.

“…Damn,” says Nico slowly. When Will chances a peek, he finds his friend looking him over, slowly dragging his eyes from head to toe. If at all possible, he goes even redder. “So it is true. You are walking around half-naked today.” Nico grins, wide and wolfish and teasing, and Will genuinely has to grab the wall behind him to keep upright. “No wonder the rest of camp has been so empty.”

“Is that what it is?” Will cries. “The infirmary has been — packed! All day! And no one has been hurt! They’ve been — they came for —”

“I think they came to watch the show, Solace.”

Will lets out an agonised wail. Alongside the flush so bright it puts his father’s cows to shame, he feels himself start to glow, like an flaming beacon of idiot.

“They’ve been demanding I carry them around places!” He looks at Nico, aghast. “I’ve been doing it!”

For a moment, Nico tries bravely and valiantly to keep a straight face. But then Will remembers the camper who told him he lost feeling in his hands and asked Will to hold his biceps to try and get them back, and his face must absolutely crumple in mortification, because Nico loses it.

“Zeus, Hera, and Hades,” he gasps, doubled over. “Oh my gods, Will, your face, you —” He cracks up again. Genuine tears pour down his face. Sometimes he manages to calm himself down, but then all he has to do is look at Will’s horrified grimace and he breaks down again, until he is literally writhing on the ground, holding his stomach.

“Oh — oh gods, I’m gonna — I think I’m gonna throw up —”

“I hope you choke on it,” Will says hotly. “I won’t help you. I will let you die. You’re a horrible friend.”

Nico shrieks again. Will has never seen him laugh this hard, ever, which is wildly unfair because he’s been practicing jokes with Piper in an attempt to see him smile more often, and this is what finally gets him?

“I hate you.”

“No you don’t, Solace,” Nico sighs, finally starting to calm down for real. The smile on his face doesn’t go anywhere. “Help me up.”

Will pouts. “Whatever.” He should leave Nico there to rot, but he reluctantly clasps their palms together and yanks him upright. He goes to pull away, but Nico squeezes his wrist, holding fast.

Will stares at him with wide eyes. Slowly, his wide smile thins into a crooked, downright dangerous smirk.

Will goes weak at the knees.

“I know you’re going to go get a bunch of new shirts immediately,” he murmurs, and honestly, who gave him the right to a voice like that? Huh? Who did Will piss off? What does he need to do to make amends? “But, well.” He glances down, then back up, smirk widening. “If you wanted to wear that shirt when you’re ogling at me during training, I wouldn’t mind. Might even the playing field.”

And then, because the gods actually hate him, Nico winks. He lets go of Will’s wrist and saunters off without another word, idly swinging his sword as he whistles.