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“You ready, di Angelo?” Will Solace asks, standing beside Nico’s bed in the infirmary with a clipboard in his hands.
Nico stretches his arms and gives Will an exasperated look. Of course, he was ready. He’s been stuck in the infirmary for three days now. Finally, he’s able to go back to his own cabin and be alone.
Will smiles brightly and touches Nico’s inner wrist; checking his vitals. It took Nico a while to get used to the casual touch, but his heartbeat still speeds up each time. Will nods slightly, obviously lost in thought as he writes on the clipboard.
“Okay, Death Boy.” Nico rolls his eyes at the stupid nickname, but doesn’t protest. “You’re free to go. I would still like to check up on you once a day. And I would still like to monitor your food intake.”
“My food intake?” Nico raises an eyebrow. “What, like counting calories?”
Will puts down the clipboard and offers another bright smile, but it seems off. Nervous, maybe? “I was thinking more along the lines of I’ll come by your cabin and pick you up for breakfast? And you can sit at the Apollo table with me. Or-or I can sit at the Hades table with you, if you’d like that better.”
“I can handle sitting alone for a meal.” He didn’t bother making his voice at all pleasant.
“I know,” Will says hurriedly. “But… you don’t have to anymore.”
Nico looks down at his fidgeting hands. The idea of socializing with others seems like a horrible time. But if it was Will? And maybe even Kayla or Austin, who Nico has gotten to know through his extended stay in the infirmary? Now, that doesn’t seem so bad.
“The Hades table for breakfast tomorrow,” Nico finally says.
Will’s face lights up. Literally. Like a cracked glow stick. “It’s a date then.” Nico’s heart goes into double-time, his cheeks warming up. He awkwardly murmurs something he hopes Will will take as acceptance. “You are discharged. I will pick you up before the breakfast bell rings.”
---
Nico lays in his bed that night, silence radiating in the empty cabin. The coffin-like beds aren’t helping the weird vibe going on. The darkness in the room is heavy, almost tangible. Nico swears if he brought his stygian steel sword out, he could slice through the darkness.
He takes a deep breath and closes his eyes, but that only makes it worse. The darkness reaches out and grabs his throat, pushing on his chest, stopping his airflow. Nico's hands reach out, thrashing and struggling against the darkness.
He gasps, unable to breathe, and rolls out of bed, onto the floor. He jumps up, in fighting stance and faces-
Nothing.
Nico flips the lights on and searches around, but still finds nothing. With his heart racing, he searches the entire cabin. Nothing is out of place or monstrous, aside from the awful decor. It’s already five a.m. if the terrible candied skull clock on the wall was accurate.
Nico turns off the lights and climbs back in bed, still trembling. It was probably a trick of the mind. Probably.
And he probably would have believed that, but as Nico closed his eyes again, the pressure pressed on his chest again, suffocating his lungs. Nico grabs at his throat, struggling to make a sound or even take a breath. The darkness surges, strangling him even more.
The room is closing in, the darkness overwhelming him. Voices come to him, awful voices he remembers from Tartarus. Taunting him and tormenting him and torturing him. Nico screams soundlessly, his voice unable to penetrate the empty void around him.
“Nico! Nico! I’m here!”
Something squeezes Nico’s hand, but it’s not a dark force like the pressure on his chest.
“Nico, listen to me. I need you to take a deep breath in and out. Nico, a deep breath, now .”
Nico inhales unevenly, struggling to fill his lungs.
“Nico, you’re having a panic attack. I need you to listen to my voice. That was a good breath. Can you do another one?”
William. That’s Will’s voice beside Nico.
“Nico, your body is part shadow. I need you to listen to me and materialize. Please, let me help you.”
Nico takes another shaky breath. His eyes flutter open, the light burning his eyes. “Will?” His voice is rough, as if he’d been screaming for hours. “Are you glowing?”
Will shakes his head and throws his arms around Nico, who is now solidified again. “Shit, Nico. I thought I- we’d lost you.”
Nico weakly puts his hands on Will’s back, which is as much of a “hug” that he will do. “What happened? I couldn’t breathe and it felt like… hell.”
Will shakes his head. “Panic attacks are normal after everything that you went through. I should have thought of it. I could have warned you and helped.”
“You did help,” Nico interjected, frowning.
“I thought you were gone. You were almost totally shadows, Nico. Your powers must have manifested in your panic.”
“How do I stop it from happening again?”
“I don’t know, but we’ll work it out together. Night lights, sleepovers in the infirmary, anything we need to do, I’ll help you.”
Nico grins at the blonde boy beside him. “You glow enough to be my nightlight.”
Will blushes brightly and hides his face in Nico’s shoulder.