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“We should turn back,” Will said.
Nico turned his head to look at him, gesturing towards the banner displayed above them. “Are you even sure we’re in the right place?”
“This is the address on the tickets Carmen sent us.” Sighing, the son of Apollo inspected them for the fourth time since they’d arrived at their destination, shaking his head as he came up with the same answer once more. “My sister was clear in her message that the venue was unmissable. I just didn’t think she’d mean, well, this.”
He gestured to entrance, proudly declaring them to be entering the festival Unholy Metalfest. A great deal of people had already entered in the time they’d been standing there, all similarly dressed in black and leather. Many of them were pierced from head to toe, with tattoos and hairstyles neither Nico nor Will could imagine seeing anywhere else, and they all looked like they could outscream a harpy.
With their slightly more, well, normal attire, they were glaringly out of place. Even Nico’s skull necklace was plain in comparison to some of the jewellery a few of the other attendants were spotting.
“Well, if you’re sure, I guess there’s no harm in going in at least, right?”
Will shrugged. “I suppose.”
Despite the amount of people entering the festival area, it only took a few minutes before they were inside, and told to head to Stage B. All around them, the dark and gritty clothing of the other attendants was sharply contrasted by the white of the snow that had fallen the previous week, which was glittering sharply in the moonlight. It made for quite a pretty scene, even if it also meant that Nico, for at least a brief moment, nearly thought he was back in the Underworld. At least this darkness was temporary.
As they walked towards the stage area, the son of Hades couldn’t help but take note of how many others were also heading in their direction.
“Didn’t you say this was a newly formed band?” He asked quietly. “I thought there was going to be a couple hundred people at most. Not well over a thousand.”
Will’s face scrunched up at his words. It was still cute, all those years after he’d first borne witness to it, and he caught himself wanting to place a kiss on his cheek. Here was not the place for it though. Not surrounded by people that reminded him of death.
The more Nico thought about it, the more it plagued him. This place felt strange, and not in a way he knew. Crypts, mausoleums, those carried a familiar feeling with them. They reeked of expected death, of souls that had long since left their final resting place. Battlefields were worse. They were always accompanied by a sense of violence that was soon to come, the arrows never fired or the hit of blades that never struck right. The missed opportunities of souls who still felt they had more to give. There, more lingered. Even if he could not see them, he would always sense them.
The black metal festival was as if a piece of the Underworld had been brought up into the world of the living. Despite being surrounded by living beings, there was something off. Nico fought off the instinct to draw his weapon (the dagger he’d talked Will into letting him bring) as his senses searched for monsters. Why was everything so wrong?
He studied the people again, finally finding the pieces that had put him so on edge. They wandered, but not aimlessly like the souls in the Fields of Asphodel. They screamed, but not because they were in pain in the Fields of Punishment. They laughed, joked, shared bites of food amongst themselves, but not in the gentle way the souls in Elysium always did.
They reeked of death, yet remained so very alive, and Nico found he could not understand them.
“Nico?”
Will’s voice snapped him out of the spiral. Taking a deep breath, the way his therapist had told him to do whenever something like this happened, he forced himself to focus only on his boyfriend. Let him be his lighthouse. It was a cheesy name, but, as Evelyn so often reminded him, what mattered wasn’t if it sounded stupid, it was if it worked.
That didn’t mean he was going to give into his boyfriend’s lighthearted prying about what it was he was calling it though. Some secrets he’d rather keep to himself. By the gods, he’d only become more romantic as time went on anyway. He’d even started giving Will unironic petnames two years ago.
“Sorry,” he said. “Just got lost in thought. This place is-” He broke off, searching for the right word.
“You’re not sensing any monsters, are you?”
Nico shook his head. “No. We wouldn’t be here if I had. But there’s something off about this place. I can’t quite explain it.”
Will’s brows furrowed, his eyes moving away from Nico to presumably look for a quieter space. Not that there was one. Whatever spaces weren’t occupied were covered in snow just deep enough that it would be uncomfortable to stand on, and even if there had been available spots, the volume of the voices around them would barely have changed regardless.
“Just let me know if it gets worse, ok?” His boyfriend settled on. “This isn’t exactly the most friendly-seeming crowd anyway.”
“I will,” Nico reassured him.
A few minutes later, they’d found their place in the crowd in front of Stage B. It wasn’t overly large by any means, but the size of the speakers communicated clearly enough that there certainly would be no issue in the sound department.
“I think we’re all better off for Zeus having yet to discover the wonder of speakers,” he whispered to Will, who in return let out a shrill of laughter.
“Oh could you imagine,” he responded. “That booming voice, only amplified ten times? There'd be no doubt as to the existence of the gods then, that’s for sure.”
“I’m sure your dad’s thought of it at least once,” Nico remarked. “He has to have. With the way Zeus’ acted towards him this past decade? I’d have tried to invent godly-level silencers at the very least.”
Will snorted. “That’s only because your solution to gods talking shit is to find a way to shut them up. And usually, the way you do that is to make them so pissed they find themselves at a loss for words. How some of them still fall for it, I don’t understand.”
“The downside of never changing. They fall for the same tricks over and over again.”
It was one of the things that had changed in recent years. Ever since he and Will too had moved to New Rome for college, Nico had somehow been adopted into the Seven, or, well, the Six that remained, and as a result, become privy to their jokes about the Second Wars. As was expected, Percy’s were the worst, but Annabeth’s were not far behind. When they combined forces, they were a terror Nico hoped he’d never be at the other end of. It was nice, in a strange way, though. They’d all made it clear to him that they wanted him in their space, and finally, he’d been ready to take them up on the offer.
Will was still a little pissed that Nico refused to relay the best hits, however. Mostly because Nico now could disarm him with his retorts nearly every time. It was great fun, all in all.
They continued to chat lowly amongst themselves as they waited for the concert to begin. It had been Will’s idea to be slightly early, as he had more experience with concerts, and was not fond of disrespecting start times. Nico found that their earlyness also had an unexpected side effect: He no longer thought as much about the people that surrounded them, and as time went on, even grew the smallest bit excited about what was to come.
“How long is it meant to last?” he asked Will absentmindedly, after what he estimated to be around ten minutes of talking.
“About two hours, I think,” his boyfriend answered, checking the clock the Hepaestus kids had given him the year before. According to them, he hadn’t even discovered half the features yet. Nico struggled to imagine what else they could possibly have come up with. A laser, maybe? Hopefully not anything to do with plants. He still hated plants.
Nodding, he turned his head back to the stage. Just in time too, as two bright stage lights turned on, and four dark figures took the stage, all seemingly wearing hoods.
All around them, people began to cheer. Will let out a wolf-whistle alongside them, as Nico had expected he would.
The band, to his relief, wasted no time with introductions. As soon as the drummer sat down, the show began.
Immediately, Nico had to fight the urge to cover his ears. It was clearly music, with rhythm and melody, but every part of it had been roughened. As if a song had gone four rounds in a fighting ring and lost every time. Even the other metal songs he’d listened to before hadn’t been like this.
He fought off the instinct, forcing himself to at least give it a solid try before he dismissed it entirely. It was Will’s sister they were here for, after all.
The song barely finished before another took its place, with the drummer performing an improvised transition between the two songs. It elicited screams from the crowd again, as they cheered the figure on, clapping and some even stomping their feet.
Nico watched on, as things continued to get wilder and wilder. He and Will even managed to join in briefly on a jumping session as the crowd screamed the bassline for Carmen to sing on top of. It was almost fun, watching the crowd so in sync to the music and contributing to the performance in a positive way. He could almost forget the things he’d picked up on in the beginning too.
But only almost.
Only ever almost.
And then, about an hour into it, the mood shifted. People that had seemed exhausted before were reinvigorated, as if they’d all simultaneously taken a bite of ambrosia they’d saved for this moment.
On stage, the band members all shed their hoods to reveal their makeup and hair, which was striking even from a distance. It was loud too, just something one would expect from a group of this genre.
Nico looked to Will for an explanation. It took the son of Apollo a moment to understand what it was he was asking for, but when he did, a smile came onto his face.
“Oh, this is the song everyone knows apparently,” Will whispered into his ear. “The one they got their band name from. Nights.”
From the moment Carmen began to sing again, the crowd seemed to go from normal insane, to a point of no return. Instead of jumping to the music, or even singing along, they yelled nearly loud enough to drown out the sound of her vocals. Their voices, that once were unified, now devolved into a chaos unlike anything Nico had ever heard.
No, that was wrong. He had heard screams like that before.
At that moment, it was as if he’d jumped into an icy lake. Every part of his body felt alive, on hyper-alert. All the emotions that had initially faded away with the music now returned tenfold, and he was helpless to stop the onslaught.
He felt the blood rush from his face as it suddenly became difficult to even stand without falling over. As he did not trust his voice, he pulled sharply on Will’s jacket instead.
“You know what’s over the rainbow?” Carmen sang above them, leading them into the chorus. “The black-black-blackest of nights!”
At her words, he moved his gaze to look at her, and was immediately hit with a vision he’d managed to avoid thinking about for years.
Because despite standing there, in a black dress that looked nothing like the one he was thinking of, all he could see in Carmen was his mother on the day she had died. Her black hair, the confidence that had laced her voice, it was the same even as it was different.
Nico slammed his eyes shut, trying to focus on his breathing. Thankfully, he managed to regain enough control to trust his voice.
“Nico?” Will’s voice, though barely audible over the shrieking that sounded from all around them, was finally able to be registered. “Are you-”
“I need to get out of here,” he breathed. Despite the fact that he was sure his words were swallowed up by the crowd, his boyfriend still managed to understand what it was he needed.
“Ok, ok,” he said, pressing his cheek next to Nico’s ear so he would hear him. “Just hold onto me so we don't lose each other.”
It was the one good thing about their placement. They were close enough to the edge of the crowd that they could make their way out without causing too much of a ruckus. Despite that however, they still managed to lose hold of each other once, when an unexpected burst of jumping forced Will to let go, lest he end up with a broken arm. Though they only remained apart for the better part of ten seconds, Nico still felt remarkably worse when he felt the gentle touch he knew on his arm again. He was sure he looked paler than a sheet, and he nearly shook like one too. It was only Will’s touch that kept it at bay, the reminder that now was not the time to fall apart.
The guards by the entrance had no trouble accepting Will’s hastened explanation that Nico’d gotten sick acutely, but was not in need of medical attention, and instead just needed some rest in a more quiet space. Nico wasn’t even sure if they really needed to explain themselves, but with the way he was probably looking, it was better to be safe than sorry. There was only one healer he’d feel comfortable examining him, and he was holding his hand.
“Where do you want to go?” Will asked, his voice still quiet.
“I think you know,” Nico pushed out in response. “If one’s still open.”
Despite the lateness of the evening, they still managed to find a quiet italian joint a few blocks away from the festival entrance. On the way, Nico managed to inform his boyfriend of what had made him lose it so suddenly, though it was complete with shaky words and many a restart. Though neither of them felt particularly hungry, it was the best place they had available for comfort, and it would have been rude of them not to buy at least a little thing. They settled on a small platter of bruschettas, with Will having the foresight to also order Nico a coke he knew he’d desperately need soon enough.
Once the food and drinks had arrived, Will nodded for Nico to start talking. He attempted a few different approaches at first, but eventually decided it was better if he was direct about it.
"I haven't thought about mom's death in a long time," he began. "Well, I guess, not that part of it at least."
Will offered his hand underneath the table. As he offered him a small smile in return, Nico grasped it tightly. His boyfriend continued remaining silent, letting Nico explain at the pace he saw fit. Offering the quiet support Nico loved him for, that always let him know he wasn't just adored, but respected, too.
"All of those people were finding joy in this darkness. They screamed and pushed because they were having fun, not because they were trying to escape their eternal torment. And I should understand them. I should be right there with them now. But-"
He sighed. His gaze fell to their clasped hands as his breathing fell into the patterns he'd learned early on in therapy. Even years later, it was difficult to truly express how he was feeling.
"I can't. I look at them and all I see is death," he pushed out, blinking away the tears that had built up behind his eyes.
“I know.” Will’s words were gentle. Soothing. Shining, like a beacon. Words couldn’t shine, but Nico didn’t care. Will’s always did. “I don’t sense it as you do, and I still felt as if something was wrong. It’s so much at once. Gods, you know what my dad’s like, especially now that he’s decided popping up as Lester every now and again is a great idea, and I still doubt he’d really enjoy whatever kind of music Carmen’s making. It’s an acquired taste, and I’m pretty sure he’s still recovering from that time Piper tricked him into trying vegemite.”
Despite himself, Nico let out a laugh. “Stop distracting me. I’m trying to do the proper talking thing, and you’re not helping me.”
“Sorry, m’dear,” Will answered.
Nico glared at him. “Was that truly necessary? That so-called southern charm of yours is looking way more like east-coastal humour again, I’ll have you know.”
Will held his gaze, smirking as Nico’s annoyance slowly gave way to a smile.
“There you are,” he said, his thumb now caressing Nico’s hand.
It would forever remain one of Nico’s favourite things about his boyfriend. Once he expressed a boundary, Will would always let him be the one in control of it. If he wanted to relax it, Will would make sure they did it on his terms, and never went too far. Public affection was one such thing. It had always felt like too much for Nico. The hugging, the kissing. Maybe it was one of the few things that lingered from the childhood he’d lost. A remnant of the times he once thought he was meant to live in. No matter the explanation, it remained a fact that he preferred the more subtle touches, the ones that could be excused as something platonic or even at times accidental. They felt safe, the way few things did. As Will did.
“I know Maria is a common name,” Nico said, resuming his explanation. “ I know the most famous of them is connected to the god I probably would have known if things hadn’t gone the way they had. But even if I have let my mom go, I still wonder. Her name is the only concrete thing I have. Her first name is the only thing I know that is uniquely hers. And names, well, they’re precious in the Underworld, as you know. Rarely are they ever a good thing.”
Will snorted. “When was the last time we encountered someone in our world whose name was a positive? It’s been quite a while, I think.”
A few years maybe? Nico gave it a thought. “Fortuna was fine,” he said. “She just wanted the horn back.”
“If ‘not trying to kill us or demand we work for them’ is the metric we’re working with, I guess that’s the one, yeah,” Will acquiesced. “At least she didn’t bring up the bone-man incident.”
“I thought we agreed never to speak of that again?” Nico remarked. “Especially because that inevitably means someone will bring up the star incident?”
“Darlin’,” Will said. “You just did.”
Nico rolled his eyes. “Exactly the point.”
It hit him then that Will had just successfully had him joke his way out of the mental breakdown he probably had been heading towards. Whether it was the healer in him, or just how well his boyfriend knew him, the trick was an old one, and a dance they now fell into as easily as breathing. And despite how often it had been repeated over the years, it had yet to lose its use.
“Anyway,” he said, taking a bruschetta from the platter between them, “I’m alright now, so let’s focus, ok?”
“Got it,” Will responded promptly, nodding as he spoke.
“When we were there, at the concert, it made me think about her in a way I haven’t before. And I know it’s stupid, but she’s always just been ‘mom’ to me. I didn’t think about what she might have been like as a regular person, just the mother I lost.”
It was difficult to admit. Bianca had always been easier to think about, because as much as she was his sister, she was also a person he’d known and shared memories with. With Maria Di Angelo, he was empty. The love he held for her had grown from the few stories he’d been told and shown, of a mother that loved him. It was all she had been to him through the years. The only piece. Even if he’d let her go those years ago, the loss still lingered.
“I know she’s happy where she is now, and I don’t need to see her again, but it would be nice to have something mortal, for a change. When I listened to that music, it was like I was reminded of our mortality, you know? And that part of me comes from her. Gods, we talk so much about our immortal parents that I almost feel we forget the other half sometimes. Because even if they’re different people for each of us, they still gave us the same thing.”
Will nodded, looking a little sheepish. “Since we’re on the topic, somewhat. I’m sorry I didn’t ask Carmen about the concert beforehand. If I’d known-”
“You’ve got nothing to apologise for,” Nico said, cutting him off. “And besides, you’ve heard me listen to quite similar things before.”
He sighed. “If I’m honest, it’s not the music that made those thoughts hit me, not really.”
Will’s eyebrows rose, as if he hadn’t expected those to be his words. “What, then?” he asked. “You definitely didn’t like the sound earlier. Not that I blame you, but that reaction was almost visceral.”
“The people,” Nico answered him simply. “The mortals. It wasn’t just the joy they found in the music. It’s the fact that they sought it out. That for them, darkness means a night of fun, and the joking either has no meaning, or has a positive one. They’re so different. Maybe, if I’d known what I was getting into, I would have been able to handle it, but going in blind-”
“The less you know, the more you fear,” Will recited. “Isn’t that the saying?”
Nico’s eyes fell to the table. He stared at the bruschettas as he spoke next, feeling himself slip away just a little. “And the more you assume, the less you will know,” he added.
“Ah, that’s what I missed.”
They stayed silent for a few minutes, now actually peckish enough to enjoy the food they’d bought. Nico moved his bread around the plate for a bit at first, before the temptation grew too great, and he took a bite. Though it was far from the best he’d tasted, it was more than good enough to have him long for more. It was a bit impractical to eat with only one hand available, he admitted to himself, but there was no way he was letting go of Will’s hand. For all that he wasn’t fond of overt displays, the ones he was fond of, he was very fond of.
As he ate, a thought struck him. Had there really been an aura of death about all those people? He’d been certain of it before, when they had surrounded him on all sides, but now that the initial shock of his reaction had settled, he began to wonder. Death auras had always been a strange thing to deal with, and coupled with crowds, they became especially complicated. He had assumed that his instincts had been right, but as he’d just told Will, assumptions were not the same as knowledge. Maybe some of the people in the crowd had carried auras (with that amount of people someone was bound to, and disorganised crowds didn’t exactly help with sorting out who) and he’d just mistaken feeling overwhelmed for feeling death? It wouldn’t exactly be the first time. Feeling a great deal of death was usually when things became too much as well, after all.
“I think I’ve made an assumption,” Nico said. “An erroneous one.”
Will paused, his food halfway to his mouth. Had it been any other moment, Nico would have chuckled. “Oh?”
“It’s been so long since I really spent time in the mortal world,” he said, “the way we’re doing now. We’re living in it, we’re going to places mortals go, and we’re using their ways of communication almost more than the ones we’re used to. I guess I’d forgotten that not every strong emotion I feel has to be connected to the godly side of me.”
“Ah.” Putting his bruschetta down, Will wiped his hand on a napkin before he offered it to Nico, this time above the table. Surprising even himself, Nico took it. “Yeah, I can see how that could happen. We’re still adjusting to this whole thing, after all.”
“I think-” Nico cut himself off. “No, I know that I was wrong before. I’m certain. When I freaked out at the concert, it was because I mistook the discomfort I was feeling in a disorganised crowd for a sense of impending doom. Even if they were a bit nuts, they were still just a crowd of mortals. And yeah, I’ll admit, I don’t think black metal is for me. At least not in concert form. But I shouldn’t have compared them so quickly to the Underworld. Because even if I haven’t realised it until now, that’s kind of what I’ve been proving they aren’t, right?”
Will smiled at him. “I’m proud of you,” he said. “I didn’t want to say anything about it, because I hoped you’d realise it yourself, but you have been building the argument against your feelings practically since we sat down here. Maybe you did know deep down, and you just struggled to believe it for a bit? Either way, you figured it out. And I will say, I don’t think black metal’s quite for me either. As much as I love music, there’s still some genres that aren’t for me.”
“You don’t say,” Nico responded, a soft smile growing on his face. “I’ve never seen anyone be as disgusted as you were when you heard that pop song for the first time.”
They shared happy looks between them for a moment, before resuming their meal. Once again, Nico had been reminded of why he loved his boyfriend so very much.
And one day, not too soon in the future, that man would carry a ring on his finger as they shared their names.
“Tell you what,” Will said, once they were back home. “Tomorrow, we sit down, and we find a place to dance.”
Nico’s face scrunched up in confusion. “Why would we do that?”
“Well, you said you wanted to get to know your mother better, right? And one thing you dad did say was that she danced some kind of traditional dance. Maybe, even if you can’t get to know her the way you wish you could, you can still grow closer to her in that way?” Despite the lightness of his tone, it was obvious that his boyfriend was a little nervous about the suggestion. He had his tells, just as Nico had his own, after all. This time, it was in the way his shoulders stiffened.
Placing a hand on his back, Nico gave him a brief kiss. “That sounds wonderful, actually. Thank you, Will. My sweet shining ball of sunshine.”
“You know I hate that nickname,” Will muttered, fondness in every word.
“It’s way better than Death Boy, and that you cannot protest,” Nico pointed out, the debate as old as time.
“Well well, Debbie Downer, is that a date then?” Will asked, kissing him on the nose.
“It is indeed, my significant annoyance,” Nico answered him, smiling in the way only Will could get him to.
“Now, what did dad call that dance again? Pizzica?”