Work Text:
“Stop fucking baby-ing me,” Nico snaps, and it sends a fire through Will’s chest.
They had been arguing more recently since Rachel’s prophecy made it painfully obvious that they wouldn’t be able to avoid the Tartarus trip.
“I’m not baby-ing you, Nico, I just-”
“You just don’t trust me to take care of myself.”
“When did I say that?” Will demanded, his arms flying around wildly as his cheeks flushed a deep red.
“You implied it,” Nico huffs.
Will opens his mouth to protest, but Nico waves him off and sinks out of the Apollo cabin.
“I’ll see you when we leave,” Nico huffs and sets out to the Hades cabin.
--
It was a simple mistake.
Nico wasn’t supposed to get hurt, Will was supposed to be able to heal him, but Tartarus was fucking with his mind, and Will couldn’t keep up anymore.
But Will is alone with the hollow body of his boyfriend and no way to get out of Tartarus.
--
Orpheus. Godsdamned Orpheus.
Tears stream down Will’s face. He wants so badly to turn around, to see Nico, to feel a calloused, olive-toned hand on his own, to kiss him, and to love him. He feels the ghost of a hand on his shoulder-- Nico’s, no doubt in his mind. As Charon’s ferry slices through the water of the River Styx, Nico’s hand grows more firm, and Will can swear as if his life depends on it, Nico squeezes Will’s shoulder ever so slightly. His arms shake, and his legs become twigs in a storm, but Will pries the rest of his drachma from his pocket with unsteady fingers.
“Thank you, Mr. Charon,” he says. “I wish I could give you more, I’m sorry.”
Charon gives Will a sympathetic smile and waves him away.
Will has never felt a temptation this great before. He wants to embrace Nico so tightly, his boyfriend wouldn’t be able to breathe and, gods, are they outside yet? Are they in the natural sunlight? Can Will turn and see Nico?
Will pauses and takes a deep breath, then speaks again, this time to Nico.
“Neeks, I don’t know if you heard your father, but he gave the whole Orpheus/Eurydice dilemma. I’m not going to look at you until I know for a fact you’re in the light, okay?” His voice breaks. “I’m going to talk about space to distract myself. I don’t want to lose you again, Nico.”
Will can definitely hear a tearful chuckle behind him, and he begins walking. Every movement adds a thousand pounds to his shoulders, but he doesn’t let up, he can’t.
“So, there are these storms on Neptune,” Will starts, “that are humongous. They go, like, 1,600 miles an hour--it’s insane. They’re essentially giant cyclones on steroids. Anyway, scientists hypothesize that they could actually swallow up the entire planet Earth and destroy it.”
A whisper of a voice bleeds into his eardrums. They’re almost to the surface now.
“Saturn is actually supposedly the flattest planet,” the son of Apollo adds, “which is pretty interesting, I think. Its polar diameter is 90% of its equatorial diameter because it has really low density and slow rotation. Saturn days are only, like, 10 and a half hours.”
Will continues rambling and spitting space facts, telling Nico everything he already knows and more. Will is still talking even after they leave the DoA Recording Studio, and he doesn’t shut up or look behind him for a full two minutes of walking until the sun shines directly onto him, and he feels Nico grab onto his arm.
Will whimpers pitifully for a moment. “Can you... Nico, please tell me you’re in the sunlight,” the blond begs, and Nico squeezes his bicep. His metal ring is cold against Will’s freckled skin.
“Turn around, Sunshine,” Nico whispers, and Will feels gentle lips press against his shoulder, and he’s gone.
He’s surging against Nico, wrapping the smaller up in his warmth, kissing his temple, his cheek, his neck, his hair, and wherever else he can manage trapped against the crook of Nico’s neck. Nico hugs him back just as fiercely--Will can hardly breathe--but Will is so elated to have Nico solid and real and alive, he hardly cares.
“I hate you,” Will whispers into the son of Hades’s neck. “Gods, Nico, I hate you so much. I’m so mad at you.”
“Shh, Will, I’m fine,” he says back. Nico cards his hands through Will’s hair and succeeds in melting the tension in his shoulders. “I’m okay, my love. I’m okay.” As if he’s trying to calm Will down. As if he wasn’t dead ten minutes ago.
Will repeats it: “Nico, Nico, Nico,” because he feels so much that his brain has short circuited and his boyfriend’s name is the only word able to form.
“Will,” Nico says over and over and over again because he’s so proud of Will for resisting the temptation of glancing behind him for so long, and Nico wouldn’t trade his boyfriend for anything.
“I love you,” Will says. It’s been too long since Will has said it, and he’s spilling over the brim with emotion.
Nico cries against him because he was dead twenty seconds ago, and Will fucking did it. “I love you too.”