#implied solangelo

nico, just trying to show them around: *squints* w h a t. t h e. f u c k?

Sure

Today is the day. I’mgonna do it. I’m gonna ask out my best friend that I’ve practically lived withfor the past ten years. He’s either going to say yes, or he’s going to say no,but either way he’ll still be my best friend. Yeah, that sounded prettygood. Carter rolled his shoulder and took a deep breath. He waited by Joseph’slocker the same way he did every single day after their last class. Carter alwayssped his way out of English a lot faster than Joseph was ever able to get outof his engineering. A lot of the time, Carter ended up grabbing Joe’s keys andhis books out of his locker and met his friend down in the engineering lab andhad to peel him away from a project so they could go home. Don’t forget to ask him out. As if Carter could forget he had planned on asking out his best friend.

“Joe?” Carter swung the car keys on his hand and glancedinto the classroom. Normally, Joseph was working on some sort of project on oneof the computers and was so concentrated that he didn’t even notice Carter comein. “Hey, Elon Musk, come on, I told the parents we’d stop at the grocery storefor them tonight before dinner. If you want to hold up spaghetti night, you doso with your own life on the line.” Carter joked. Both of his fathers wereparticularly passionate about spaghetti night, and Carter was not going tostand between Nico and the literal three pounds of pasta he makes. It doesn’t matterthat the rest of the family couldn’t even eat half of the pasta, Nico madethree pounds every time like it was religion.

“Hold on,” Joseph responded without turning to look atCarter. “Just give me five minutes, and don’t look at my screen just yet. I’mnot finished and I don’t want you to see it without all of its glory. I’veworked really hard on this one.” Carter thought that was kind of funny, becauseJoseph worked really hard on all of his projects, and it showed. He was one ofthe most promising engineering students the school had to offer. Still, Carter wasn’tgoing to ruin Joseph’s project based solely on curiosity.

Carter messed with one of the gravity programs on a freecomputer for a while before Joseph suddenly shot his chair backwards across theroom. They stared at each other for several long moments and Carter’s mindshouted at him. Do it! Ask him now! Just askhim out! Carter didn’t listen. Instead, he shut down the computer he hadbeen playing on and he picked up his backpack. “Ready to go now?” Carter askedsoftly. Joseph nodded mutely, but he didn’t make any move to push his chairback or pick up his own bag.

“Check your email.” Joseph instructed. Carter frowned andpulled his phone out of his pocket. Did he miss another school email? Carterlaunched the little blue app and waited patiently while his phone struggled toovercome the school Wi-Fi to open his email. There was a link inside and emailfrom Joseph and Carter’s frown only deepened. He pressed on it and watched as alittle box popped up on his phone screen and burst open.

It wasn’t the animatic that surprised Carter, Joseph was actuallyreally good at making those, and the computer coding club had tried on several occasionsto get Joseph to join them, to no avail. No, what surprised Carter was thewords that came out of the box. He read them over several times just to be surehe wasn’t seeing things.

Will you go out withme?

⚠️Mentions of self harm⚠️

“Nico” Wills voice is soft and low, and filled with concern. Nico hated that tone. The one you give an injured animal, between pity for it and caution of it lashing out. “I’m fine” Nico insists. “It’s nothing” Will looks doubtful. Nico is already regretting agreeing to this infirmary stay, even if it was for Will. “The darkness and the werewolf scratches I get, but I can sense these old injuries. Where are these from?” Will offers Nico a piece of paper listed with ailments. Third rib broken, sprained ankle, hairline fracture on the scapula, minor spinal damage… the list went on. Old wounds that had only half healed. Nico pushed it away.

“They’re old. What does it matter? I’m not the only demigod with some old scars” Wills voice didn’t waver from that calm, infuriating tone. Still, his concern seemed genuine. “These were never treated. Not even with ambrosia. I get you didn’t want to come back to camp but I know you had access to ambrosia, at least. Why wouldn’t you take it?” Nico bit the inside of his cheek. He should have known Will could sense those. His father had given him ambrosia to carry around with him. Will was right. It wasn’t as though he purposely tried to hurt himself. But when he did get hurt, fighting a monster or following some mission yet again. Somehow the pain became… cathartic. He was paying penance. Penance for his mistakes, for what he had done, for who he was. Nicos expression wavered, just slightly as he tried for an answer. “It wasn’t that bad.” Wills tone wavered too, he was started to get exasperated. Maybe desperate. “I can feel how bad they are Nico! Even now, they must still hurt. I just want to know why you would keep them to yourself” They did hurt. They hurt when he walked, drank, laughed. Sometimes more than others. In spite of himself Nico’s face went red. He broke his gaze with the son of Apollo in favor of staring at his shoes. How was he supposed to explain that he’d kept them as a form of punishment? He’d kept them because he deserved them. He’d also kept them because… they helped. The ache in his bones, in his body, kept his thoughts away. Somehow those were always worse.