Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The sun is just beginning to crest over the top of Half-Blood Hill, painting the sky above in the faintest tinges of rose and lavender. The stars are still visible, though, when Nico tips his head back to find them. The contrast, night and day brushing against each other, is such a stark sight that it kind of takes his breath away. 

He doesn’t remember the last time that he had the time to do something as simple as just look up. He’s been running for so long, he’s been trapped and let go and pushed and dragged across the world and back again, and he doesn’t know how it happened but somehow he has found himself standing still—maybe for the first time since he found out he was a demigod. Maybe for the first time since he and Bianca were brought out of the Lotus and back into the real world, when she’d cupped his face between her hands and promised, “Now we’ll have a real life, you and I.”

He wonders, as he often does, what she would think if she could see him now. Sitting on the porch steps of the Big House at Camp Half-Blood, picking at a loose thread in his worn, dirt- and blood-crusted jeans two days after his second war in two years has ended.

He is fourteen years old. He had no idea it was possible to feel this tired.

Nico thinks about going back into the infirmary, maybe tucking himself back into the bed in the far corner where Will Solace had put him so he could have an illusion of privacy. But there are others trying to sleep in there—people who are truly injured, people who likely don’t want his death aura ruining their healing—so he stays right where he is. It’s not like he’d get any more sleep, anyway. 

The sky is lighter when a familiar figure begins to make their way up the hill. Nico notices the shock of wild blond hair before anything else—even before the ungodly combination of scrubs-on-denim-on-flip-flops. Will Solace. 

He’s already tensing before he’s within speaking distance—as soon as he thinks Solace can hear him, he’s defending himself. 

“I’m not running away. I just needed to get outside for a minute.”

To his surprise, though, Solace’s immediate response isn’t an irritated or impatient snap. He merely looks at Nico, surprise flashing across his face as if he hadn’t registered his presence before, his normally vibrant blue eyes dull. The shadows beneath them, Nico notes, are nearly as dark as his own. 

“You’re free to go, anyway,” Solace says, coming to a stop right before the steps. He shoves his hands in his pockets, rocks back on his heels, and avoids meeting Nico’s eye. “You slept through all three days. But it’s nice to hear that you’re a man of your word.”

Nico frowns. If exhaustion could be condensed into a single sound, he thinks it would probably be the dry rasp of Will’s voice. He thinks about asking him if he’s okay—but he doesn’t know if that’s allowed, if it’s something he can do. He spends so long debating it that it takes him nearly a full minute to process what he’s just said. 

“Wait—I slept through all three days?” 

Solace’s mouth quirks, like a smile that can’t decide if it wants to fully show up on his face. “Yeah,” he says. “I was kind of impressed, too. You slept through seven visitors and two fights. I tried waking you up, but.” He shrugs, and his not-quite-smile finally emerges on his face. Nico can hear the way it changes his voice, too, when he adds, “You sleep like the dead.”

Nico can’t even find it in himself to be annoyed by the stupid pun. Maybe it’s because it’s too early in the day to muster the energy. Or maybe he just prefers when Will doesn’t sound quite like him—dead on his feet.

Hey, he can make stupid puns too. Let him live.

He snorts, forcing himself to tear his gaze away from Will—returning to the horizon, where the sky is now completely overtaken with pink and tangerine. He thinks, if he had a bit more practice or use for the art of poetry, he could probably find words for the beauty of it. But Nico has never been very good with words—so instead, he just finds himself feeling grateful for it. He was beginning to grow tired of waiting for the sun to come up. 

“Is that the best you can do?” he asks Solace. “I’m a bit disappointed.”

“It’s not my best,” he admits, with a quiet, raspy laugh. “Try me again when I’ve had more than two full hours of sleep in as many days. I’m afraid my sense of humor is about as great as my dad’s when I’m running on fumes.” 

Nico debates calling Will out on his blatant hypocrisy. Three days ago, he’d dragged Nico—albeit, maybe willingly, fine—into the infirmary and practically shoved sleeping draught down his throat, claiming that “sleep was the single most influential factor in the recovery process.” 

“Recovery from what?” Nico had asked, already regretting his decision. “I’m not injured.” 

Will had looked at him, dead serious, and just said, “Your life.” 

And, well . . . Nico hadn’t really been able to argue with that. 

The thing is, though—in spite of Will’s ironic disregard for his own exhaustion, or maybe because of it, this is the longest conversation Nico’s had with him that hasn’t already devolved into an argument. And it’s . . . nice, he thinks, just to sit and talk with someone early in the morning, before the rest of the world is awake yet. 

He doesn’t get many opportunities to just sit and exist with someone who isn’t . . . afraid of him, or disgusted by him in some way. And Will, for all of his faults, seems to lack both fear and disgust towards him. What a concept. Nico is still having trouble knowing what, exactly, to make of that.

So instead of snarking, the way that comes naturally to him, Nico decides to try a different approach.

“Maybe you should . . . I dunno, take the day off, or something? Go back to bed, Solace. It sounds kind of dangerous to have the camp’s head medic running on empty. What if, like, someone needs their arms sewn back on, or something? Shouldn’t you be alert for that?” 

. . . Well. He did say he’d try a different approach. Not that he’d entirely succeed. 

It gets Will to crack a tired grin, though, which feels like a win somehow. “Careful, di Angelo—someone might get the wrong idea and think you sound worried about me.” 

Nico scowls, looking away before he can even realized his gaze had gravitated back to the other boy. “Well—that sounds like someone’s an idiot. All I’m worried about is you accidentally stabbing yourself to death on a scalpel, or something equally as stupid, with me nearby. I’d have to escort you to the Underworld, which means I’d have to stop by my father’s house for dinner, and I’m not in the mood to deal with him.” 

Will hums, the sound amused—but not like he’s making fun of him, which is kind of strange. “Your father, hmm? I’m not sure I’m ready to meet him . . . Although it may depend on what he’s serving for dinner. Is he a good cook?” 

“Terrible,” Nico replies drily. “Persephone’s better—but only marginally. Honestly, your best bet is to order takeout and hope the delivery guy doesn’t get lost in the Fields of Asphodel.” 

Will seems to get a kick out of that. “Nico di Angelo . . . Have you made some poor Door Dasher bring McDonalds down to the Underworld?” 

“Of course not. I only order In-N-Out Burger when I’m in the Underworld. I can only get it if I make sure the delivery guy uses the LA entrance—and honestly, a lot of people in LA know about the Underworld entrance. My dad’s not as good at being stealthy as he thinks he is.”

Will stares at him for a long moment, expression unreadable. Nico wonders if he should feel uncomfortable—but right as he’s starting to fidget, Will says, “I genuinely can’t tell if you’re fucking with me or not.” 

Nico bites his lip to tamp down a grin—it’s too early in the morning to be smiling, and he doesn’t smile, anyway. He’s Nico di Angelo. 

“Anyway,” he says, instead of answering the question he can practically feel Will pointing at him. “Rest. Somebody told me that it’s kind of a big deal. You should go get some.”

He thinks Will might try to joke with him again—but to his surprise, he doesn’t. A beat passes, and then he sighs, reaching up to run a hand through his poofy hair and only succeeding in making it stick out in even wilder directions. 

“I know,” he says, and his tiredness from the beginning of their conversation seeps back into his voice. “I—I’ve tried. It’s just . . . There are a couple of patients in critical condition, still, and every time I close my eyes I worry that when I wake up, they’ll be . . .”

He doesn’t finish. He doesn’t need to. With another heavy sigh, Will glances behind them to the door of the Big House—thinking about the infirmary within it, no doubt. “Well. I should get back in there. If I can’t sleep, I might as well be useful. Maybe I’ll rest when Thanatos finally stops loitering around my infirmary.”

The conversation is about to end—Nico can tell. Will’s got that lilt in his voice that would indicate it, even if his words himself didn’t confirm it. The sun has risen higher in the sky while they’ve been talking, too—the sky’s beginning to brighten to a lovely cerulean, the start of a promising and beautiful day. 

And Nico, for the life of him, is suddenly desperate not to be alone to face it.

“Wait—Will?” 

Will pauses, looking down at him from where he’s stood up during Nico’s two-second-long moment of panic. “Yeah?” he says. His eyes are bright blue, even as tired as he is—they’re as vibrant as the sky, and beneath them, Nico finds that he kind of wants to evaporate into monster dust. But also, he finds that he kind of . . . doesn’t.

“I—” Nico hesitates. Bites the inside of his cheek and mulls it over. Is it a stupid idea? Probably. Is it a desperate attempt at a maybe, sort-of friendship that Nico still doesn’t quite understand, and honestly doesn’t think will go anywhere? Definitely. 

But Will just stands there, patient and curious, and Nico’s resolve wins out. He takes a breath. 

“I . . . Have a pretty solid relationship with Thanatos, you know. So I could probably—I mean, if you don’t think it would disturb any of the patients’ rest—I could hang around . . . Keep watch. And if he shows up, I could tell him to get lost and he’d probably listen. It wouldn’t be the first time, anyway.” 

Will stares him down for another silent moment. Nico squirms, fidgets with his fingers, but doesn’t dare to take back the offer. Finally, Will says, “You really think he’d listen to you?” 

This, Nico can answer easily. He nods. “Absolutely. It’s Saturday, right?” 

Now, Will blinks, and confusion furrows between his brows. “Uh . . . Yes?” 

Nico nods again. He thought so. “It’s the busiest day of the week for him. Thanatos hates Saturdays. So, he’d likely be eager to skip over a job if it were deemed . . . not worth it. And I can be pretty persuasive.” 

Will’s eyes begin to glitter with something Nico can’t quite place—intrigue, maybe? Something stronger than curiosity. 

Finally, he says, “That, I don’t doubt. Now, get your butt up, di Angelo—I’m gonna find you a scrub shirt and put you to work. What's your experience with cutting bandages?” 

True to his word, Solace locates a spare scrub shirt in the infirmary’s supply closet and shoves it at Nico, pointing in the direction of the bathrooms. When he comes out, prepared for anything and, quite honestly, expecting the worst, he’s surprised when the first thing Will does is holds up a golden drachma. 

“Before I forget,” he says. “I was under strict orders to have you call your sister and Praetor Reyna the second you woke up. There’s a prism and a water fountain in the office.” 

Nico blinks in surprise. “Oh—thank you.” 

“Don’t mention it.” Solace tips his head in the direction of the office, smile crooked. “Now go—I’m kind of terrified of what your sister and the praetor will do to me if I keep you any longer.” 

The Big House's office is a kind of stuffy, old-fashioned room—and that’s saying a lot, coming from a kid from the thirties. There’s an overstuffed plaid couch in the corner, the pulled-back curtains are a heavy, faded color that Nico can’t quite discern, and the books on the shelf are all in Ancient Greek. 

On the desk, though, is a small fountain that bubbles quietly, positioned so the sunlight through the windows falls directly on it. Nico sits himself in the high-backed armchair behind the desk, adjusts the prism until a rainbow appears in the mist, and flips the drachma through it.

It takes a moment for the image to come in to focus: Hazel’s curls taking up most of the space as she leans her head forward over something Nico can’t see. Nico clears his throat to get her attention—and then again, when she doesn’t hear him the first time. She stays focused on what she’s doing, though, muttering under her breath.

Finally, unable to keep the smile out of his voice, he says, “Hazel.”

Hazel jerks her head up, confusion evident in the crease between her brows. Then, catching sight of Nico, her expression melts into a brilliant beam. 

“Nico!” she exclaims. “Hi!”

“Hey, Hazel,” he replies. He feels a tension that he hadn’t even realized he was feeling evaporate, just at the sound of her voice.

“I’ve been waiting for you to call! Will promised he’d have you IM us as soon as you woke up.”

“He kept his promise,” Nico informs her. “I just woke up this morning.” 

His sister blinks in surprise, but doesn’t let the fact that he slept through three straight days rattle her for long. It’s him, after all—he’s taken much stranger, much more life-threatening naps. 

“Well, I’m glad that you’re up now. I hate that we weren’t able to stay until you woke up—but clearly, you needed the rest. How are you feeling now?”

“I’m . . .” Nico falters, because since he woke up, he hasn’t actually stopped to consider how he’s feeling. He’s surprised to find that he doesn’t feel . . . terrible? He’s still tired, but then, he’s always tired no matter how much sleep he gets. But he isn’t in any agonizing pain, he isn’t in danger, and he’s actually kind of . . . looking forward to the day? That’s new. Nico never really looks forward to anything. 

“I’m good,” he settles, after a moment of Hazel’s patient waiting. “I’m—yeah, I think I’m pretty good, Hazel.”

Hazel’s smile makes Nico feel like he’s doing something right. He finds that it’s pretty much impossible not to smile back, even as strange as the expression feels on his face. 

“Oh—hang on, I need to go get Reyna!” Hazel suddenly exclaims. Nico doesn’t try to identify the feeling that bubbles in his chest as he watches her dart away, but he thinks if he had to, it would feel pretty close to happiness. 

That’s definitely a new one. He’s surprised to find that he isn’t even that worried about it going away. For once, he isn’t all that worried about . . . anything. 

When Nico steps back into the infirmary, a familiar figure has his back to him as he speaks with one of the healers—one of Will’s sisters, Nico thinks—gesturing with his hands. 

“He was just here last night—I get that he can be a slippery little fucker, but you have to have seen him sometime this morning. Seriously, he promised he wasn’t going to leave—” 

The healer catches sight of Nico behind him, raises a single eyebrow, and points. 

Jason whirls around so fast that the movement nearly gives Nico whiplash. The relief in his face is even more jarring—the way Jason’s shoulders almost seem to slump when he sees Nico, in the half second before his face is overtaken with a dumb, happy grin. 

“Nico!” 

It’s the second time today someone has sounded so excited to see him. It’s funnier, though, to watch the way Jason stumbles over himself—he takes a step forward and his arms come up like he wants to hug him, then clumsily drops them when he seems to remember who he’s coming for.

Nico watches him with amusement as he struggles, before finally deciding to take pity on him. “One hug,” he says. 

Jason’s grin goes stupidly bright, and he doesn’t give Nico a chance to reconsider. He reaches out to reel him in, Nico barely suppressing his surprised yelp as Jason squeezes him so tightly that he lifts him off the ground a little. 

“This wasn’t part of the agreement,” he grumbles against Jason’s shoulder. Jason just laughs, but thankfully sets him back on his feet. 

“Sorry—I’m just, I’m so glad to see you, man. I was worried that you might have left camp or something.” 

“Yeah, I got that.” Nico steps back, crosses his arms, and pointedly says, “‘Slippery little fucker?’” 

Jason looks a little embarrassed. “Well—you can be,” he says defensively. 

Nico rolls his eyes. Jason shoves his hands into his pockets and tilts his head towards the door, his expression shifting to something more muted. “Can we talk for a minute?” 

“Uh . . .” Nico glances over to where Will’s sister is obviously still watching them—seriously, she’s not even pretending to be distracted by something—and says, “Can you tell Will I’ll be right back?” 

She shrugs. “Yeah, sure.” 

Nico and Jason step out of the infirmary, Nico glancing curiously at Jason as they head down the hall to the front door of the Big House. “What’s going on?”

Jason sighs, but doesn’t reply as he opens the door and gestures Nico through. He goes to sit on the steps, and Nico follows him, wariness creeping in at Jason’s weird silence. 

“I wanted you to hear it from me,” he says. “And I don’t want it to freak you out. I take it Will didn’t, uh, tell you about the . . . arguments?”

Nico frowns. “He mentioned that I slept through a couple fights,” he replies. “He didn’t seem like he thought they were a big deal, though. Why? What happened?”

Nico worries, for a brief moment, that maybe Gaea has resurrected for a round two with Camp Half-Blood. Or maybe, even worse, his personal fears are coming true—that someone, or multiple someones, don’t want him at camp and came to make their case known. He can imagine Jason trying to break it to him gently: sorry, Nico, but it turns out you really are just too creepy and weird to belong here. I did the best I could, but. He imagines Jason shrugging, eyes sad and disappointed, as he hands him an already-packed bag. It’s best for everyone if you leave. 

But then Jason opens his mouth, and what comes out is somehow even worse than Nico’s worst expectation. 

“Yeah, so . . . Percy came to see you, while you were out of it.”

Nico freezes. “. . . what.”

The mention of Percy has a sudden, horrid memory flashing up in the front of his mind. Himself, saying the words, I had a crush on you. Percy, dumbstruck, replying, wait . . . what. High-fiving Annabeth Chase. 

He told Percy Jackson that he wasn’t his type. 

Oh Zeus, or Dad, or any other god or goddess who’s in the mood to strike down particularly pathetic demigods, he prays, please set me on fucking fire and throw me into the nearest bottomless pit. 

Gods, somehow between waking up and his conversation with Will Solace, followed by his talk with his sister and the arrival of Jason Grace, Nico had completely forgotten about his moment of lunacy before Will dragged him to the infirmary. He wonders suddenly, desperately, why Will couldn’t have grabbed him just two minutes earlier, to keep him from making such a horrendous, life-fucking mistake. 

He’s never going to live this down. He’s . . . he’s going to have to flee camp and never show his face again. 

His heart is beating so fast that he thinks it’s going to slam out of his chest, and maybe break a few of his ribs along the way. Suddenly, it’s incredibly hard to breathe in the clean camp air. 

“Yeah.” Jason grimaces, thankfully unaware of Nico’s panic. “He said he had something . . . important to talk to you about? He came by all three days, and tried to insist that he should be allowed to stay in the infirmary overnight in case you woke up. Which I said was ridiculous—I know he’s probably the last person you’d want to talk to, like, even if you weren’t just coming out of a three day coma. It was sort of a big argument . . . Anyway, he’s probably going to come looking for you. And I have no idea what he thinks is so urgent—but I wanted to let you know that you don’t have to talk to him, if you don’t want to. Seriously, if you don’t want him bothering you, just say the word and I’ll send a stray lightning bolt his way.” 

As concerning as all of this information is, the thought of Jason going after Percy on Nico’s behalf is kind of ridiculous. Nico snorts, and the sound forces his lungs to kickstart, letting in a fresh wave of oxygen to stave off the building panic. 

“Thanks, Jason, but you don’t need to do that,” he says. “I . . . don’t want to talk to him, though. I—I’ve said everything I needed to say to him. Really, if I could go the rest of the summer without seeing him, that would be great.”

Curiosity joins the concern in Jason’s gaze, but thankfully, he doesn’t ask. 

“Well—I’ll make sure to tell him that, if I see him,” he says—and that’s the end of that. He switches subjects so smoothly that Nico would be impressed if he weren’t so relieved. “Also, I was thinking you and I could pair up for camp activities, since we’re both the only ones in our cabins. You want to go grab breakfast, then hit the climbing wall or something?” 

Nico glances back inside, to where Will Solace and the infirmary are waiting. 

“That sounds like a great idea. But could we make that lunch? There’s something I sort of promised I would do.” 

Jason’s answering smile is equal parts relieved and elated. Between him, his sister, and Will Solace, Nico is beginning to hope that the end of summer might not be so bad.

. . . That is, as long as he can somehow manage to avoid Percy fucking Jackson. Suddenly, the war with Gaea doesn't sound like it was all that difficult. 

Fuck, he thinks, with all-consuming dread. This is going to be the single-handed most disastrous, soul-crushing summer of my life. 

Chapter Text

The Hades cabin is the worst fucking place Nico has ever tried to sleep in his life—and this is coming from someone who once took a weeklong nap in a jar. 

He doesn’t know who approved the interior design of this place. The exterior, he knows, is his own fault—the cabin had been built around a year ago, after the Titan War when Percy made all the gods promise to stop ignoring their kids, and Nico had decided to give Camp Half-Blood another try. So he had approved the cold obsidian stone that the cabin is made of, and the Greek fire torches that decorate the doorway. He had even approved the lack of windows—which Nico is now coming to regret, sitting in the dark on his bed, knees pulled up to his chest and trying to ignore the hot prick of tears behind his eyes. 

He is fourteen years old and he has survived two wars and he has gone through Tartarus and he has been outed by the god of sexual desire in front of a guy he barely knew—he is not going to cry because his cabin is dark. That’s just fucking stupid. 

Still—Nico can’t sleep. The blankets are too thin and the sheets are scratchy—not to mention the beds themselves. Nico had actually dragged his mattress off of the stupid bedframe and put it on the floor in the corner, so at least he’s got one side protected while he sleeps and doesn’t have to worry about being snuck up on from behind. But that doesn’t change the fact that there are literal coffins in the room, and it’s colder than a fucking crypt because there’s no source of heat or warmth of any kind or light, real light that isn’t a sickly green that makes him want to vomit,   and he will not sleep here, he will not sleep here, for all the gods sakes why can he not fucking sleep here? 

Nico curls up on his side and keeps his knees to his chest, trying to keep the chill at bay. He still shivers, though, and the tears that leak from the corners of his eyes feel icy when they drip across his skin, and he takes in a shuddering breath but all that comes out is a sob, and he should not be crying, he should not be crying, why the fuck is he crying? 

He does not sleep. Any time he tries to close his eyes, it feels as if the darkness is going to swallow him whole, and he comes back to himself with a fresh wave of panic and a bought of tears that he knows are going to be hell to scrub away in the morning. 

Before the sun has even begun to surface over the horizon, but early enough that Nico can walk around without fear of the harpies eating him for breakfast, he washes his face and heads out with no real destination in mind—just away. 

He finds himself on the steps of the Big House once again, like he’d somehow developed muscle memory for the location over the span of a day. In reality, it’s probably because the Big House is at the very top of the camp, so he can look out over the woods and has a better view of the sun rising. 

The sky is still a deep navy, almost black, with just a hint of lighter blue beginning to emerge on the horizon, but the stars above are brilliant and therefore provide more light than his own fucking cabin. He leans against the porch’s stair railing and stares up, tracing the constellations in his mind and recalling Bianca’s voice, now so faded that it likely no longer sounds like her at all: over there is Perseus, the hero constellation. You can see the tip of his sword, there—and if you use your imagination, a bit under it and to the left is Medusa’s head. 

Nico had never really gotten the constellations. He used to try to see what Bianca saw—he would squint and stare without blinking until his eyes burned, and he had memorized their locations and the general lines of the stars because she had wanted him to, but he could never fully picture the things she tried to get him to see. 

He thinks the constellations are probably related to the pareidolia phenomenon, in some way—that the ancient Greeks who came up with them were experiencing the same sort of things that modern humans do when they claim to catch ghost faces on camera. In reality, it’s usually just tricks of the light, the graininess of a camera’s processor, or sheer wishful thinking. 

(That’s not to say it’s impossible to catch ghosts on camera—it’s happened before, sure. But the things is, they only appear when they want to, which, unless you stumble upon a ghost who really loves attention, means your chances are pretty slim. Ghosts are slippery spirits. Usually they don’t try to draw attention to themselves, because it means Nico’s father will send some unlucky minion–read: Nico—to wrangle them back to the Underworld.)

Anyway—the ancient Greeks were either like those hopefuls, trying to make some sort of meaning out of nothing, or they were just high out of their fucking minds. Knowing the Greeks, either is as likely as the other. 

Still, Nico traces those arbitrary, insignificant shapes in the stars until the sky lightens enough that it’s impossible to see them any longer. Then, he watches the way the colors splash their way across the deep blue until the darkness has retreated entirely, painted over in pastels that Nico should probably find revolting, and would call as much if asked for his thoughts. Everyone would probably laugh their asses off at the idea of the son of Hades finding the color pink appealing. Gods, the Hermes cabin would probably paint the damn Hades Cabin to look like Barbie’s dreamhouse—and as much as he hates the place, he’s not sure that would be any easier to live in. 

. . . although, on second thought, Barbie never seems to have any trouble sleeping, or nightmares, for that matter. Maybe she’s onto something. 

He’s stuck on that train of thought—ruminating on the idea of plush, baby pink carpet and fuzzy blankets—when Will Solace’s frowning face appears over him. He’s staring down at him, arms crossed, and he has a vague line of concern knit into his brow. 

“Nico?” he says, with the tone of someone who has said his name several times with no response. 

“Uh—hey, Will.” Nico sounds like he’s been chewing glass. He cringes, clears his throat. “Sorry—morning.” 

“Morning . . .” Will replies, but he’s still frowning. “How long have you been sitting here?” 

Nico shrugs. “Time is an arbitrary, manmade concept.” 

Will rolls his eyes. “Okay, Socrates. Keep your philosophical mysteries. But since you’re here—you want to help me reorganize the medicine cabinets?” 

It’s sort of like magic—the way Will Solace just shows up, and suddenly Nico doesn’t care about how miserable he was all night. It’s probably stupid as hell, but Nico doesn’t care about that, either. When Will reaches down to offer him a hand up, Nico takes it. 

Nico actually doesn’t hate the infirmary. 

Whoever designed this place, he thinks, knew what they were doing. It’s all one giant room that takes up half the ground level of the Big House, but it feels like it’s its own sort of operation. There are tall, pristine windows lined along all three walls, spilling in the watery morning sunlight through sheer yellow curtains. The beds are all spaced evenly apart, made up with crisp white sheets and thick duvets that Nico kind of hates to admit that he misses after a night spent with his own shitty velvet comforter. The whole room smells like Pine Sol and rubbing alcohol, and it feels clean and safe.

Separated by a curtain at the back is what Will calls “doctors’ headquarters.” All of the medical supplies is back here, arranged on floating shelves and put away in cabinets, and there’s a desk in the corner with papers spread haphazardly across it, half-falling out of a thick manila folder. 

“Why can no one ever just put shit away properly?” Will grumbles, seemingly to himself as he stalks over to clean up the papers. But then he seems to remember he’s not alone, and his cheeks go faintly pink as he glances up at Nico. “Uh—sorry.” 

“What are you apologizing for?” Nico is genuinely confused. Will still looks embarrassed, for some reason. 

“I don’t know—my siblings all tell me I’m too uptight about stuff. Infirmary stuff, but—really, anything. I try not to really show it in here, but I just . . .” Will huffs, reaching up to run a hand through his hair. “That’s probably all you’ve really seen of me, huh?” 

“That you’re kind of an asshole? Yeah, I got that when you called me an idiot like, twelve different times while we were surrounded by monsters on all sides.” 

Will somehow seems to flush even harder. He ducks his head down to focus on the papers he’s reorganizing, and his voice is almost a mumble when he replies. “Yeah . . . About that. I know I never really said I was like . . . Sorry. No one should talk to you that way— I shouldn’t have. There’s no excuse for it, even if we were both really stressed. So, I’m sorry for the way I spoke to you during the battle.” 

Nico is a little bit floored by that—he wasn’t expecting any kind of apology from Will, or even thought he really deserved one. He was an asshole during the battle. Will was an asshole back. He figured that was just kind of the way things go. Things . . . Whatever they are. Friends? It’s probably too soon for that. 

“It’s . . . really fine,” he eventually says, because he isn’t sure what Will wants him to say. It would probably be appropriate to apologize back, right? “I mean—I was an asshole, too.” 

“Yeah, for a good reason,” Will says—a bit of frustration creeping into his voice now. He looks up at Nico again, and he’s surprised to find a peculiar fire in the blue of his eyes. “That stuff I said to you, about how no one ever pushed you away . . . It wasn’t my place to invalidate your experience. I know not everyone at camp was very nice to you, when you were here before—and it was gaslight-y of me to try to tell you that wasn’t the case just because I always wanted to be your friend, but never had the guts to approach you. It was a dick move.” 

Nico, admittedly, doesn’t really understand a good chunk of what Will Solace has just said. He makes a note to ask what gaslighty is at a later date. But for now, his brain glitches and gets stuck on one thing, and one thing only. 

“You . . . wanted to be my friend? When?” Nico can’t even comprehend the possibility. All he remembers from his previous stints at camp were blurs of Demeter kids glaring at him for killing their plants, Ares kids getting pissed at him for shadow-traveling away when they tried to shove his head in a toilet, and the nymphs huffing at him every time he accidentally raised a skeleton too close to them when they were serving dinner. 

He tries to recall memories of Will Solace, but genuinely can’t. He feels like an asshole for that. 

Will’s face is no less red, but at least he doesn’t look so awkward as he puts away the now-organized folder in a drawer. Nico was starting to get tense just from looking at him. 

“The . . . the first time you showed up at camp. Do you remember? My dad brought you guys, and since you crashed into the lake, Chiron instructed my brother Lee—who was head medic at the time—to check you for injuries. I was training in the infirmary at the time, and you came in . . .” 

Suddenly, Nico’s hit with a sudden flash of recollection. Himself, young and stupid and rambling about Mythomagic and Percy fucking Jackson. A kind older teenage boy, smiling and nodding like he was listening as he took his vitals. A smaller kid behind him, hair poofy and eyes too big for his face, following the older medic’s instructions to write certain things down. He had been wearing an oversized doctor’s coat. And before Lee instructed him to go, Will had turned to him and sheepishly pulled something out of his pocket.

“You . . . Did you give me a green lollipop?” 

Will blinks at him, expression vacant for a moment—and then something clicks, and he laughs. The sound is jarring and bright, like a match sparking in the dark. 

“I did! Anyway, I thought it was so cool that my dad thought you were important enough to bring to camp . . . And you were so talkative and you weren’t scared at all about being a demigod like I had been when I got to camp. You kept going on and on about this game, Mythomagic—” 

“Oh, gods,” Nico groans, covering his face with his hands. “Don’t remind me . . .” 

“Why? It was cute,” Will says, a laugh still in his voice. “Anyway, I bought a pack of Mythomagic cards that Christmas while I was with my mom. I was hoping to play with you when I got back, but . . .” 

As quickly as it appeared, his smile fades. Nico watches as he clears his throat, glancing away and trying to redirect from where, he imagines, Will knows his mind has gone. 

“I’m . . . sorry,” Nico says, because the revelation makes a lump form in his throat. It makes him sad, a little, to think of that little kid he met once coming to camp with a pack of cards in hand, ready to play with a new friend . . . only to find that he’s disappeared. “I didn’t know,” he lamely adds. 

“Well, how could you?” Will’s mouth quirks, like a smile he doesn’t really feel. “It’s not like I ever told you. It’s my own stupid anxiety’s fault.” 

“To be fair . . . I was kind of scary, every time you saw me after that,” Nico offers. Will rolls his eyes, at that, and somehow the heaviness in the air seems to dissipate as quickly as it materialized. 

“You, scary? With the oversized skull shirts and those bags under your eyes? Please.” Will laughs as he bends to rummage through one of the desk drawers—when he stands back up, his eyes are sparkling. He throws something, and Nico catches it instinctively, even though he’s not looking at it—he’s kind of frozen by the honesty in Will’s face. 

“I was scared of a lot of things as a kid, but one thing I can promise you, Death Boy, is that I was never scared of you. Every time I saw you, I could feel your hurt, and I kind of just wanted to give you a lollipop. I used to think they could fix anything.” 

Nico opens his hands. Within them is a lollipop in a plastic wrapper—bright, artificial green apparent underneath. In spite of everything, he smiles. 

“Maybe they still can,” he tells Will. 

Will’s answering smile is brighter than the morning sunlight streaming through the windows. Staring right at it, Nico finds that his chest feels lighter than it has in weeks. 

Chapter Text

Nico’s second night in the Hades cabin passes in much the same fashion as the first. So does the third, and the fourth. He’s miserable, but constantly reminds himself when he finally gives up on the idea of sleep and drags himself out of bed that things could be much, much worse.

And, in spite of this, his life begins to take on . . . something resembling a normal routine? 

He’s as shocked as anyone. But again—he’s had worse. 

Before the sun comes up, he’s out of his cabin and taking a lovely morning stroll through the valley up to the Big House. This is where Will Solace finds him sometime after six a.m., making increasingly concerned comments about Nico’s visible state of exhaustion before leading him into the infirmary. Nico helps unpack deliveries, organize medical supplies, and wash the bedding of recently-released demigods, and he and Will bicker (good-naturedly! Who would have thought?) and joke until the conch sounds, signalling breakfast. 

Will departs to collect his siblings with a smile and a “see ya later, Nico!” It is painfully stupid, how quickly Nico’s heart grows accustomed to hearing his name said so fondly. He does not know what to do about it. 

Nico goes to meals because it is required, and for that reason only. On the first day, Jason had sat down at the Hades table with his plate like it was no big deal, and when Nico had stared, he only shrugged. “Got permission from Chiron. By the way, I got a printed copy of our new schedule!” And that had been that. 

It is where he sits now, on the morning of day four, poking disinterestedly at his eggs while Jason tells him about a fight between the Demeter and Aphrodite cabin kids on his way to the dining pavilion. Somehow, Piper had gotten herself involved, and now her siblings are angry at her. 

“So she’s making them go through their stuff and throw out anything that isn’t cruelty-free this afternoon. It’s probably going to be ugly,” Jason finishes, and frowns when Nico does not respond. “Hey—Neeks? Did you sleep, like, at all last night?” 

“What?” Nico blinks blearily, and realizes that his head was starting to slip off his hand where he’d had it propped up. “I’m fine. Did you—” He squints. “Did you just call me Neeks?” 

Jason opens his mouth and closes it, then shrugs, evidently his only defense mechanism. “I—”

“Hey, guys. Is it, uh. Is it cool if I sit here?” 

Nico’s blood runs cold. He does not need to look up to know who it is, and he does not want to. 

Cursing himself, hating himself, he looks up. 

Percy Jackson stands in front of the Hades table, holding his plate and awkwardly shuffling from foot to foot like an elementary school kid on the first day of school, trying to find a place to sit in the lunch room. Nico thinks it’s the first time he’s ever seen Percy look unsure of himself. 

“I don’t think that’s a good idea, bro,” Jason says to Percy, without a hint of apology in his tone. At the same time, Nico shoves away his untouched plate and stands. 

“You can do whatever you want,” he mutters. “I’m done eating. See you later, Jason.” 

He spins and walks off with no real direction, trying to ignore Jason’s irritated “Seriously, Percy?” and the stares of a few campers as he passes by. He’s sure he’s a sight to behold—he has not slept for a single hour in four days, and he has barely eaten during any meal he’s attended in this dining pavilion, and to be honest, he hasn’t been all that hungry, but seeing Percy has made him feel sick to his stomach and now he would like to go find the nearest toilet to throw up in. 

Instead, not looking where he’s going, he runs headfirst into someone. 

“Sorry,” he mumbles, still not looking up. “I’m—”

“Woah there, kid.” Coach Hedge brings a hand down onto Nico’s shoulder, and Nico tries his hardest not to flinch at the contact. Really, he does. When he looks up, the coach is frowning at him, something that looks suspiciously like concern in his eyes. Nico is getting tired of people looking at him like that. 

“You alright?” he asks. “I haven’t seen you since you got to camp, you know. You settling in okay?” 

“I—yeah,” Nico says. He blinks, trying to clear the fog from his brain, and remembers something. “Hey—how’s the baby?” 

Coach Hedge does something extremely unsettling—he grins, something genuine and proud. “Chuck’s great! The strongest little fighter who’s ever been born! I was actually just about to take him to the arena so he could get a headstart on studying warrior tactics.” 

Just then, Coach Hedge’s back makes a high-pitch, gleeful baa-aa-aa. A little fist waves above the coach’s shoulder, and with a start, Nico realizes that the baby is strapped to his back. 

“Can I—” His heart does this complicated twisty thing, and he falters. He would like to see the baby. More than that, he thinks he would like to hold him. He’s never held a baby before—he thinks that holding something so tiny and innocent would make him forget about all his own stupid problems, for a bit. 

But that would be weird to ask for, he thinks. After all, Coach’s kid doesn’t know him, so it would be like forcing him to be held by a stranger. Nico doesn't want to make him uncomfortable. And like he said—he wouldn’t know how, anyway. And—

“You know what, kid?” Coach Hedge says, after observing him for a moment. “Why don’t you come with me to the Big House? I can whip up some lemonade for us both while you entertain Baby Chuck for a bit. How’s that sound?” 

“I . . .” Nico wonders if he’s actually that easy to read, or if Coach Hedge has just suddenly developed the ability to read minds. Both options are equally unsettling. But he nods, because he’s more grateful than he knows how to put into words, and Coach Hedge gives him another one of those weird, real smiles, and when he turns around to start trotting back up the hill to the Big House, Nico catches a glimpse of his son’s big eyes and teeny tiny horns and hooves for the first time.

That’s what I was fighting for, he realizes, suddenly. For that baby—for new life, new beginnings. A chance to start over and do something good. To  have something good.

He follows Coach Hedge up the hill. 

Nico doesn’t think it’s fair that babies get to be so cute. Seriously, who gave them the right? 

Baby Chuck may be the most adorable thing Nico has ever seen. Laid down on a baby blanket on the porch of the Big House, he kicks his little hooves up in the air and stares at Nico like he’s never seen something so fascinating. He’s got one of Nico’s fingers wrapped in his teeny fist, and Nico doesn’t think he’d even be mad if he never gave it back. 

The baby has wild, curly brown hair and eyes so dark that it’s difficult to distinguish them from his pupils. Still, they gleam brightly as he blinks up at Nico, shakes the fist that holds Nico’s finger, and solemnly says, “Baa.” 

“Baa,” Nico replies. “Baa, baa.” 

Baby Chuck lets out a peal of giggles. Nico thinks his heart melts into a puddle of goo.

It’s then that the coach steps out onto the porch, with a tray that bears two glasses of lemonade and a plate of cookies. “Well, it sounds like someone’s having a good time,” he says, directing an affectionate glance down at his son, and then a pointed one at Nico. “Here, kid—I expect you to drink the whole thing, and eat at least half these cookies.” 

He sets the tray down on the porch next to Nico. With a sigh, Nico picks up the glass closest to him, fingertips cool where they meet the condensation. Still, he says, “Thanks, Coach,” because he thinks Bianca would come back from her new life to give him a year-long lecture for being impolite to someone who’s done something nice for him. 

Coach Hedge just shrugs. “Don’t mention it,” he says.

Distracted by the baby and Coach Hedge’s anecdotes about Chuck’s first days of life, Nico does manage to eat a couple of cookies. They kind of taste like sand, but he swallows them anyway. When Coach Hedge appears satisfied that Nico has actually eaten something, he drags the tray over to himself and plucks up a handful from the plate. 

“You can hold him, y’know,” he says, before stuffing the cookies gracelessly into his mouth all at once. “He likes you.” It sounds like he says “Hwe lies yoo.” 

Nico is startled by the offer. “. . . really?” 

“Yeah, kid. Just hold him like he’s a really delicate football . . . and make sure you support his neck. That’s pretty much all there is to it.” 

That advice is not helpful in the least, seeing as Nico has never held a football in his life. He thinks if he said that, though, Coach Hedge would be more offended than if he didn’t support Baby Chuck’s neck. 

Evidently, he must do it right somehow, because Coach Hedge doesn’t move to correct him or snatch the baby out of his hands when Nico lifts him. Baby Chuck is light, like a decorative pillow, if decorative pillows had legs and tried to kick you. Nico doesn’t hold it against him, though, because the baby is still looking at him in fascination, going so far as to crane his head back to look at him when Nico settles him on his knee. He worries that this conflicts with Coach Hedge’s support the neck instruction, but he’s not sure how to ask the baby not to look at him. 

He’s so . . . little. Nico can’t get over it. His hands are smaller than Nico’s palms, and Nico’s hand is as big as his whole back when he settles it there to support him. Once again, he grabs ahold of one of his fingers and squeezes it tight, but then becomes distracted by the ring on his finger and starts playing with it instead. 

“You’re good with him,” Coach Hedge observes. Nico glances up, then feels his face flush with embarrassment when he finds that the satyr’s watching him, not with criticism or concern that he’s going to break his baby, but something like . . . pride? Nico’s not used to having that directed at him, in any way. “I’m gonna have to enlist you for babysitting duty, sometime. After making me drag your butt halfway across the world, and keeping you from dying on top of that, it’s the least you can do.” 

Nico doesn’t point out that really, he’s the one who did most of the dragging. Instead, he smiles, wiggles his fingers to make Baby Chuck laugh, and says, “That . . . Doesn’t sound so bad. I’d love to, Coach.” 

Coach Hedge just shakes his head, mystified. “Just wait until you have to change his diapers, kid. It’ll take your idea of bad to a whole new level.” He shudders.

Nico does something that he doesn’t do very often. He laughs. 

Mass murder is taking place outside of the Aphrodite cabin when Nico walks past, later that afternoon. In the grass in front of the steps that lead up to the door, a pile of what appears to be discarded makeup is being placed into a green trashbag by none other than Jason Grace. Standing next to his crouching form is Piper, whose voice is thick with exasperation as she speaks to several of her crying siblings.

“Guys, come on. Most of this stuff should have been thrown out years ago, anyway. There’s mold growing in your Retro Matte MAC Lipstick in Ruby Woo, Jax. Would you put this on your lips?” Piper brandishes an open tube of lipstick at one of her brothers, whose lower lip trembles as he stares forlornly at its decrepit state. 

“That . . . that was my first one,” he whimpers in defense. “It’s special.” 

Piper points to the dozens of tubes of lipstick littered around Jax’s feet, which all look exactly the same from what Nico can tell. He sobs and turns away, fleeing without another word.

With a sigh, Piper crouches by Jason’s side to help him gather up the scattered cosmetics. Nico decides to pitch in, despite the dangers that come with pissing off Aphrodite kids, and comes to kneel in the grass on Jason’s other side. 

“What exactly is going on?” he asks, as he picks up one of the small metal tubes. His fingertips come away smudged in black that he isn’t entirely sure is dust or dirt. 

Piper sighs again. “Hey, Nico. Demeter cabin was threatening to go to the Council of Cloven Elders after my siblings decided to give one of them a surprise makeover—using non-cruelty-free and non-vegan products. This was the compromise to stop a bunch of angry satyrs and wood nymphs from coming after us.” 

“Oh . . .” Nico winces. He would not want to be the one dealing with that. “Yikes.” 

“Yikes, indeed,” she agrees. “Hey, can you pass me one of those bio-degradable trashbags?” 

A few minutes pass in relative peace. Two of Piper’s siblings, who introduce themselves as Lacy and Mitchell to Nico with shy, somewhat wary smiles, come over to help. 

“I really don’t understand what the big deal is, anyway,” Mitchell mutters. “MAC isn’t even all that good anymore, compared to the cruelty-free brands we have access to now! Just switch to Fenty, or Anastasia Beverly Hills, am I right?” 

With a start, Nico realizes Mitchell is speaking to him. “Uh . . . sure?” he offers, after a moment. 

Mitchell nods, satisfied. “What’s your favorite brand? You seem like a Milk Makeup kind of guy—or maybe Glossier?”  

“Uh—” Nico looks to Jason and Piper for help, but they both seem just as lost. Jason shrugs, like, sorry dude. “I . . . I don’t know. I’m not really a . . . any makeup kind of guy.” 

Mitchell’s hopeful expression falls. “You poor soul,” he whispers sadly. “The potential . . . The things you could do with some liquid blush and a little bit of eyeliner . . .” 

“Leave Nico’s face alone, Mitchell,” Piper commands mildly. 

Before Mitchell can wilt further, or perhaps try to insist on giving Nico a makeover anyways, a scream pierces through the air: “TAKE THAT, YOU BEAUTY-STEALING FIENDS!” and a large, volatile projectile comes hurtling from the door of the Aphrodite cabin. 

Nico flinches, and before he can even mentally process what’s happening, he’s reaching out and instinctively catching the heavy object—stopping it mere inches from Jason’s face. Without a doubt, Jason would have been knocked out cold. 

Piper’s expression turns more thunderous than her son-of-Jupiter boyfriend’s. She stands up, eyes flashing, and demands, “WHO did that?” 

While she stomps off to deal with her hell-raising siblings, Jason turns to Nico worriedly. “Thanks, man. You okay?” 

“Yeah. It was just a . . .” Nico frowns. Glances down at the improvised weapon in question. Turns it over in his hands. “A lamp?” 

A baby pink and ivory lamp, the base shaped into a heart below the heart-patterned lamp shade. It screams I belong to a Child of Aphrodite! in a way few inanimate objects manage to do so convincingly. 

“Huh,” Jason replies, squinting at it through his off-kilter glasses. “That might’ve hurt.” 

Nico snorts. Turns the lamp over in his hands again. Thinks: maybe . . . 

“Hey, Jason,” Nico says, trying to keep his voice as neutral as possible. “You think the Aphrodite cabin would miss this lamp, if it suddenly disappeared?” 

Jason’s squint turns less observant, more confused. He glances from Nico, to the lamp, then pointedly to the doorway it was cast from. “Uh . . . I would think, from how it would have shattered against my skull upon impact, that that would be a solid no . . . Why?” 

Nico shrugs and rises to his feet, lamp in hand. “. . . No reason," he says.

Chapter Text

If awards were given out for Best At Evading Percy Jackson in Increasingly Creative and/or Pathetic Ways, Nico thinks he would win the gold. 

It starts after that day in the dining pavilion, and begins to make itself apparent as a problem shortly after that. Any time Percy sees Nico around, he tries to talk to him—whether that’s on his way to the sparring arena with Jason, or walking alone from the infirmary, or sitting with Jason and Piper and the Aphrodite kids who have recovered from what Lacey referred to as “The Day the Aphrodite Cabin Chose Death.” (She thinks it’s hilarious, and Nico does admit it’s a clever turn of phrase. All the Aphrodite kids chose death in some way, that day—whether to their old cosmetics, or to their lamp and dessert privileges for the next week.) 

Anyway—the thing with Percy is starting to get stressful. The moment Nico notices him coming towards him, he comes up with some excuse for why he has to disappear. These excuses range from babysitting for Coach Hedge to making sure no skeletons have popped up in his cabin to claiming that he has to go find his sword (he says this while holding his sword in his hand; that one was by far the most embarrassing). 

Each scenario ends with him bravely running away. That is, the situations where Percy sees him first. The situations where Nico sees him, however . . . Involve him shadow-traveling himself from a canoe ride with Jason to the first place his subconscious latches onto, which just so happens to be the infirmary. 

Nico hits the linoleum floor with a thud that manages not to draw attention—but only because what does draw attention to him is the bang! that resounds the moment he tries to lift his head and makes contact with the underside of a desk. 

“OW,” he complains, reaching up to rub his forehead. “Fuck.” 

He then horrifically realizes where he is when he’s met with a pair of golden-toned, muscular shins, and then the owner of the aforementioned shins bends down, and he comes face-to-face with the frowning face of Will Solace. 

“. . . Nico?” Will sounds more baffled than Nico thinks he’s ever heard anyone sound. “You—where did you come from?” 

Nico winces, but accepts Will’s help up as he pushes back his rolling office chair and tugs Nico out from under the desk. “Shadow-travel. Sorry. I guess . . . the only shadow in here was the one under your desk.” Nico frowns. That makes sense—it was stupid of him to try to travel to the brightest place in the whole fucking camp. 

Will’s frown deepens. “Shadow-travel?” he says, tone suspicious. “Nico—it’s only been a few days since you nearly shadow-traveled yourself out of existence. Are you sure that’s okay for you to do right now?” 

The way he phrases the question indicates that there is only one right answer, and that it is not the one that Nico would choose. Still, he shrugs, tries to take a step, and immediately stumbles as his knee buckles beneath him. 

Swearing under his breath, Will catches Nico before he can hit the ground again—face-first, this time—and directs him back into the office chair, settling him gently atop it. Will’s hands are warm, even through his T-shirt, and Nico tries to ignore the way it makes his whole skin feel like it’s setting ablaze. 

“You idiot,” Will says, but he doesn’t sound half as angry as he does worried. “Hang on.” He leaves Nico alone, and Nico laments the loss for a full thirty seconds before Will returns and presses a vial into his hand. “Drink the full thing.” 

Nico does—he downs it like a shot, which was probably for the best, considering the way it burns on the way down. He coughs, eyeing the empty tube suspiciously as he pushes it away from himself. “What the fuck is that?” 

“Unicorn-drought laced Mountain Dew. The Romans taught us how to mix it to maximize our reserves, and Mountain Dew ups the potency times, like, eleven.” 

Nico makes a face, then pushes the vial back at Will. “Well, it’s terrible.” 

Will hums. “But you feel better, don’t you?” 

Nico hates to admit it, but once his throat stops being on fire, he realizes that he no longer feels so dizzy or unstable. “Well, thanks, Will.” 

“Uh huh.” Will hops up on the desk to sit facing him, his frown returning in full as he focuses his full attention on him. “Now, are you going to tell me what possessed you with the genius idea to shadow travel instead of just . . . Oh, I don’t know, walking here?” 

Nico winces. He redirects his gaze to the wood of the desk so he doesn’t have to meet the full intensity of Will’s blue gaze. “It was an emergency. I had to . . . get away.” 

Immediately, Will shifts back to worry. Even without looking at him, Nico can hear it in his voice when he says, “Get away? Why? Was someone trying to hurt you? What happened?” 

“No, Solace—it was nothing like that. I mean, nothing happened. I’m just . . . trying to avoid someone.” 

“Avoid someone?” Will repeats, confused. “Who?” 

Nico sighs. He scuffs his shoe against the floor, thinking about how he should probably get some new ones. His are starting to fall apart. 

“Percy Jackson,” he mutters. Will stills. 

“. . . Percy?” he says. “But—why? I mean, aren’t you guys friends?” 

Nico winces again. Is that what people think? The heroic, impressive son of Poseidon, friends with the weird, creepy son of Hades? Maybe that’s why people are being nicer to him at camp, this time around. Maybe they think they have to be, because if they aren’t, Percy will explode a toilet in their faces or something. 

He worries what will happen, then, when Percy gets fed up with Nico’s running and blurts out to the whole camp that Nico’s not who he says he is. Nico is a fraud. Nico is a freak. Nico is—

Will waves his hand in front of Nico’s face, and he blinks back to himself with a start. Will’s worry has increased to one hundred percent, instead of the regular seventy-five-to-eighty percent.

“Maybe you should lay down,” Will says. “Did you sleep last night?” 

Nico laughs, at that, except it’s not funny. He doesn’t remember the last time he slept. Probably here in the infirmary. How many days ago was that? 

“I’m okay,” Nico says, because he kind of hates that look on Will’s face. Like he feels bad for him. Like he thinks Nico might keel over and die on the spot. “Do you need any help with anything, today?” 

Will lets the subject drop, even though he still shoots Nico concerned looks as he sends him off to help Connor Stoll administer ambrosia and unicorn-drought-flavored Mountain Dew to the demigods who are still injured. 

Luckily, those numbers have all but dwindled to none. Only three patients remain—an Ares kid named Sherman who asks for a second shot of Mountain Dew, claiming it’s the greatest thing he’s ever tasted; one of the Victor sisters, although Nico can’t remember which one; and finally, one of Connor’s own siblings, Julia, who Nico worries is going to replace the magical Mountain Dew with an even more dangerous acid if he looks away for more than a few seconds. She kind of scares him. He decides to let Connor handle her medical care. 

While he’s stripping one of the beds that was vacated this morning to take to the laundry room, Connor goes, “Psst. PSST.” 

Nico looks over warily. Connor’s smirking, and jerks his head over to the doorway of the infirmary on the opposite side of the room. Will’s standing with Chiron, who’s in his wheelchair form to ensure he can actually y’know, fit in the doorway. He’s nodding along to whatever he’s saying, but his gaze is on Nico. He looks . . . Nico doesn’t know how to describe it. Worried, still, but that’s not all. There’s something else there that Nico isn’t used to seeing. It makes his heart twist out of place in his chest. He doesn’t particularly like the sensation.

He looks back at Connor Stoll before Will seems to process he was staring right back at him, and frowns.

“What?” he says. 

“He’s been shooting you those looks all week, yanno.” 

Nico rolls his eyes. “No, I don’t know,” he says. “And why should I care if Solace is staring at me, unless it’s because I’ve fucked something up and he’s about to murder me?” 

Connor snorts at that. “Solace, murder you?” he replies. “Please. He’d never.” 

Nico isn’t sure what he’s supposed to do with that statement. Is Connor implying that Will couldn’t murder Nico? Because, after spending a week with him, Nico is certain Will could kill Nico in at least twelve different ways and make it look like a medical accident outside of his control. No one would ever know. 

Before Nico can ask any of that, more noise erupts from the doorway. “Percy, my boy!” Chiron says exuberantly. Nico’s twisted-up heart freezes into an ice block, and he momentarily worries that he’s going to develop lifelong cardiac issues from how much stress it goes through on a daily basis. 

“Hide me,” he blurts to Connor. The doctor’s headquarters are on the opposite side of the room—meaning that, to get there, he’d have to run past the person he’s trying to avoid. 

Connor frowns at him. “Huh?” 

“Just . . .” Nico’s desperation rises as he hears his name muttered in conversation—Percy’s asking if they’ve seen him around. He looks around for any possible shadow to disappear into, anything he could hide behind, any of the beds . . . 

He locks eyes on the thick duvet and sheets he holds in his hands. 

The next moment, he’s a pile of blankets on the floor, curling up in a ball and tossing them over him so it looks like they were naturally thrown in a heap. 

Footsteps pad in, and Nico shutters his eyes as Will’s voice fills the room, muffled by the sheets. “He was here earlier, but he may have left already . . . Sorry, Percy.” 

“I just don’t get it,” Percy replies. “He won’t even look at me, and I have no idea why. I want—I need to talk to him. It’s important. You’re sure he’s not here?” 

His own voice is low, raspy in a way that’s unique to him. Nico used to think about the way he spoke all the time—he used to long to hear it, becaues it meant he wasn’t alone, it meant he was with someone who knew what to do. He used to feel confident that with Percy, no matter how bad things got, they’d somehow work out in the end. 

Now, he wants nothing more than to not hear Percy’s voice again. Not that he wants anything to happen to Percy, or for him to leave Camp Half-Blood, but—it would be easier if Percy would go back to ignoring him, the way he used to. 

Funny how that works. Nico never gets what he wants. 

“Again, I’m sorry,” Will repeats, managing to sound genuinely sympathetic. “Nico’s pretty elusive like that. I’ll let him know you were looking for him when I see him again.” 

Percy sighs, the sound tired and frustrated. “Maybe I . . . Could I wait here, for him? I could help you out around here until he comes back.” Footsteps draw closer to Nico’s blanket-disguise, and his heart begins to thump faster. He holds his breath. 

“Sorry, dude, but don’t you see I’ve got this covered?” 

Nico’s lord and savior, Connor Stoll, speaks directly above Nico’s head. He’s louder than he needs to be, and Nico can imagine him gesturing with his hands as he says, “Laundry’s all that’s left to do here, and unlike di Angelo, I will be here all afternoon—so back off, Jackson. Besides, you’re not on the schedule.”

“I . . . What are you even doing here, Connor?” Percy sounds perplexed by how annoyed Connor seems. “I didn’t know you helped out in the infirmary.” 

“It’s my punishment for a prank gone wrong,” Connor says glumly. “It’s so boring and horrible. I’m here all week.” 

“I’m standing right here,” Will says blandly. 

“You did it to yourself, my boy,” Chiron adds on, amused. 

Percy sighs again. Nico feels kind of guilty because of how despondent he sounds, but then he remembers why he’s avoiding him and shoves that feeling down.

“Well . . . anyway. Just—just let him know I’d like to talk to him, okay? And that he can come to me whenever—seriously, no matter how early or late it is, my cabin’s always open. I’m . . . I’m worried about him.” 

“I’ll tell him,” Will replies, gentler now. “And I’m sure it means a lot to him, that you care so much. He’ll come to you when he’s ready to talk about . . . whatever it is the two of you need to work out.” 

A moment of silence passes, then Percy dejectedly says, “Yeah . . . yeah, maybe. Well, thanks again, Will. I’ll see you.” 

Nico stays hidden even after Percy leaves, worried that Chiron might see him, or otherwise wonder why Nico is trying to avoid the other demigod so badly. He only moves when someone kicks the blankets, but he can’t even be aggravated at Connor, considering he just majorly saved his ass. 

“Thanks,” he says, sighing as he pushes off the blankets. “I owe you.” 

Something dangerous sparks in Connor’s eyes, and he immediately regrets what he’s just said. “A son of Hades, in debt to moi?” he says, resting a hand over his heart. “Now, that is an offer I will certainly be taking you up on in the future.” 

“Leave Nico alone,” Will scolds, appearing on Nico’s other side. He’s frowning as he reaches a hand down to help Nico up again. It’s the second time today Nico touches him, and the heat of his palm burns just as much as it had the first time. He feels the fire spread up his arm even after Will drops his hand, and Nico clenches his fist to try to mitigate the tingly sensation. 

He can tell by the inquisitive, intentional look Will gives him that he wants to ask him about Percy—but luckily, he doesn’t. Instead, he pointedly directs his gaze down to the blankets on the floor and says, “Get back to work, Death Boy. We both know Stoll over here would blow up the washing machine if he was left alone with it.” 

But Percy doesn’t stop looking for him, after that. Nico finds himself sneaking away from campfires early, shadow-traveling when possible and, when he fails to escape fast enough, dodging requests to pair up with him for the trireme battle simulation and Capture the Flag that weekend by using the excuse that one of Piper’s siblings is on fire and needs his assistance. 

All of these methods work about as well as can be expected—but Nico probably should have known that they would eventually fail him completely. What happens is this: 

Nico is completely, soul-crushingly exhausted. 

It’s all because of his stupid cabin. As if the decor and the darkness weren’t enough—the lamp he thrifted from the Aphrodite cabin has made things worse, rather than better. He should have expected it, because nothing in his life can ever be easy, but the Aphrodite lamp’s lightbulb is pink. 

Pink. Nico takes back all the semi-fond thoughts he’s had about the color before, because it’s the worst one on the light spectrum that exists. Barbie is either filled with a hidden and well-disguised self-hatred, or she’s actually a monster in disguise. The color pulses in the dark of his cabin, highlighting shadows rather than dispelling them, pulsing in the darkness like the heartbeat of none other than Tartarus. 

Pink, Nico decides,  is too close on the spectrum to red to ever be considered lovely. Red is the color of his nightmares—the ones that aren’t swathed in shadows and rippling blackness, that is. Red is the blood-red smile of monsters, red is the blood on his hands, red is the blood that spills from him every time he gets his heart broken, every time he is abandoned, every time he finds himself alone. 

So no, Nico does not sleep, with or without the godsforsaken lamp. He has not slept in upwards of a week. He thinks, as he floats from the infirmary and stumbles from the dining hall and falls into the sand on the shore of the Sound, that he may never sleep again.

Perhaps this is how he will die. Not from trekking alone through the pits of hell, suffering and terrified so badly that each time his heart stopped beating, he believed it to be the very last. Not being born the son of a pagan god in Mussolini’s Italy as a gay boy, not being hunted by the king god of fucking Olympus himself and having his mother killed in front of his very eyes. Not being held captive to time for seventy years, only to come out and face an unbearable, terrifying culture shock with no one but his sister by his side. Not losing her, not losing himself, not being homeless for four fucking years and trained by the ghost spirit of personified manipulation, not being unwanted and unknown and unloved by everyone. Not being captured and held in a jar for what felt like a suffocating eternity. Not being outed—the single most terrifying moment of his life—in front of a guy he barely knew, a guy who could have left him in Croatia to fucking rot like the piece of sewage Nico was if he’d so desired to. Not transporting the Athena Parthenos halfway across the godsfucked world with two companions and his own emaciated, traumatized self.

All of those things, Nico has survived. All of those things, Nico has taken and buried in a place where he hopes they won’t resurface to hurt him again, lest they be the knife that finally pierces his heart for the final time. But Nico had not accounted for what would become of him when he was finally granted the chance to stop running. To be still, and let the fear catch up to him. The pain. 

The exhaustion. 

Nico is so, so tired. All he wants to do is sleep. 

He will not sleep until he is dead. 

But perhaps numbness can be close enough. Perhaps if he lays here in the sand long enough, his heart will stop aching like a festering, infected wound. Maybe he can convince himself that the heaviness behind his eyelids is not the weight of unshed tears, and maybe he can lull himself into a sense of security by telling himself that no one can hurt me here, no one will see me here, no one will abandon me because I will not let myself be known to anyone, I will not let myself be cut by anyone.

All those things he used to long for, he is now so terrified of that he cannot breathe when he thinks of them. He thinks of love, and of how he doesn’t remember how that feels, and of how he thinks feeling something so intense would probably kill him if he ever found it. He thinks of his sister’s goodness, her inexplicable kindness and generosity to a brother who treated her terribly again and again, and he wants to create a fissure in the ground to suck him down into the Underworld where he belongs. 

He is terrified of the dark, but he belongs to it. He was born from it, and he will die in it, and he will spend his eternity wandering as a shadow in his father’s fields because he never built up the courage to learn to care again. Already, he is perfect in the practice; he closes his eyes and feels nothing, does nothing, is nothing. 

“. . . Nico?” 

Nico’s eyes fly open—but before he can even think to shadow-travel away, a hand is wrapping around his wrist and holding tight. Nico thrashes— snarls— “Get AWAY from me!” but Percy holds tight, kneeling in the sand next to him and looking down at him with shadowed green eyes. His hair is wet, like he’s just gone for a swim, and the water trails down from his hairline to his jaw like unapologetic tears. Nico wonders what it’s like to cry without feeling ashamed. He thinks he will never know. 

“Percy,” he says weakly, going limp when Percy’s grip doesn’t relax. He’s too . . . too tired for this. He cannot handle this, right now. “Please let me go.” 

“I would,” Percy says, and Nico thinks, in some delusional part of himself, that Percy sounds almost as tired as he feels. “I would, if you would fucking say two words to me that aren’t a lie, Nico. If you would just stay still and look me in the damn eye and let me apologize to you, gods damn it, then yes, I would let you go. But you aren’t going to do that, are you?” 

Nico doesn’t reply. With a sigh, Percy loosens his grip, but doesn’t let go. Nico wonders if he can feel how weakly his pulse flutters. Will would probably be alarmed by it. 

Thinking of Will’s worried blue eyes makes Nico’s chest ache. Everything aches. He wants to scream, that’s how terrible the pain is. He wants to die—wants it to be over, so he can go home to his father and tell him, “I tried, I really did,” and curl up in bed with one of the skeletal cats that roam around the palace and finally sleep. 

The thought of his father is oddly comforting, right now. He knows he would have a place there, if he asked for it. He knows his father would never deny him anything—not anymore. 

“Nico,” Percy repeats. He thinks this is the most times he’s ever heard Percy say his name. He thinks he hates the way he says it—like it pains him, like he haunts him. “Please talk to me.” 

Nico closes his eyes. He feels Percy’s fingertips against his wrist and thinks of how cold they feel, compared to Will’s. Percy is like the sea—cold and tempestuous and, at times, unforgiving. Terrifying. 

But he isn’t afraid now. He’s just defeated, which may be infinitely worse. “I . . . I’ve already said everything I needed to. There’s nothing else to say, Percy.” 

“There’s everything to say,” Percy shoots back. Stormily. Unforgiving. “You don’t just . . . you don’t just say something like that, and expect there not to be a follow-up conversation. I thought you hated me. You told me, to my face, that you hated me, and I thought you would never forgive me for the things I did to you. Then you go and say you—you had a crush on me, this whole time? Do you know how much worse that makes things?” 

Nico flinches—he can’t help it. Percy’s words are as sharp and jagged as rocks that jut up out of the sea, deadly enough to cut and kill. He waits for it: waits for Percy to tell him he’s disgusting, waits for him to call him an abomination, waits for him to bring down his sword and put him out of his fucking misery. 

Instead, it’s Percy who sounds miserable—fully, Akhlys-inspired miserable— when he whispers, “I . . . I used you. I only ever—I never treated you like a friend. I only spoke to you, only approached you when I needed something from you—I never asked how you were. Never tried to keep you at camp. Never showed you any sort of kindness. I was a monster to you. So . . . so why, Nico?” 

Why? Isn’t that the million drachma question. Nico had asked it of himself so many times that he felt dizzy just from trying to puzzle it out. It had never done him any fucking good—because who the fuck knows? 

There’s only one answer he ever came back to, anyway. It doesn’t make much sense out of context, but it’s the truth. 

“Because you’re Percy fucking Jackson,” he mutters, half-hoping Percy won’t hear him. By the way Percy’s laugh sounds more like a choked-up sob, he thinks he hears it as if he screamed it at him. 

“I’m so sorry,” Percy says, like he’s grieving for someone. Like something has died, and nothing will ever be okay again. Nico thinks it’s the worst thing anyone has ever said to him. 

He opens his eyes—pushes himself up with his palms. The sand scrapes again them, unpleasantly dry. Percy is watching him, eyes haunted like the ghosts who circle Nico every time he lays down to try to sleep. 

Nico has enough ghosts. He does not have the strength to deal with this one—Percy’s guilt. 

“I don’t want your apology,” he says. He doesn’t mean for the words to hurt, but by the way Percy flinches away from him, he thinks they might. “I just . . . Just want to move on. Leave me alone, Percy.” 

He stands up, wobbling on unsteady feet, turning away the moment he’s able. He begins to walk back up the Sound to camp, and Percy does not call after him. The only sound is the howling wind, rushing past his ears and whistling like an arrow. He doesn’t know when it picked up—but the sky is overcast when he glances up, and he thinks that it looks poised to crack in half, just like him. 

He barely makes it to his cabin before he collapses. 

The dreams may be the worst he’s ever had. They swirl around him, indiscernible from one another, swirling until they’re a hurricane and Percy is at the center of them, eyes a sickly green and the shadows beneath them as bleak as the Underworld as he shouts, over the roar of the storm he’s created: “I’M SORRY, NICO.” 

And within the storm are flashes of everything that has ever broken Nico, intensified and blown up so large that he cannot ignore them. He cannot close his eyes against them because the wind is so intense that they keep his eyes open, burning and blinding, inescapable. 

He sees Bianca’s face, her smile that is warped by time, the sparkle in her eyes distorted and cruel as she tells him: “This was always your destiny, little brother.” He sees himself in Croatia, facing Cupid as he cruelly taunts, “You are a coward, afraid of yourself and your feelings. Will you hide among the dead, as you always do?” He feels the earth caving in beneath him, feels himself being swallowed up, falling down, down, down . . . 

He is choking on fire and ash and pain and fear. He is captured, held in a jar, starved and tormented and the voices in his head still do not stop, still do not leave him alone, they scream at him that—

YOU ARE UNWORTHY OF LOVE.

YOU ARE PATHETIC. DISGUSTING. A COWARD.

YOU WILL DIE HERE.

NO ONE IS COMING TO RESCUE YOU. 

YOU ARE MEANT TO BE ALONE. YOU WILL ALWAYS BE ALONE. 

And the whispers, somehow even crueler, come to him in his own voice: 

Who would want to be with you, anyway? You’re nothing. 

You’re nothing. 

You will always be nothing. 

Nico wakes with a scream. The shadows around him are contorting and flickering so badly in the Greek firelight that they appear in the shape of his worst demons, reenacting his nightmares and making him feel so afraid that he wants to throw up. But he’s even more angry than terrified, and with a burst of manic, delusional rage he picks up the first thing his hands land on—the lamp on the floor beside his bed—and throws it so hard that it shatters. 

He sits there in the dark, chest heaving, unable to think through the horrible sadness that consumes him. And then, creeping in at the edges, then overwhelming— panic. 

He’s just . . . He just destroyed his only light source. Even if it was the lightbulb from hell, it was still better than this awful darkness, this godsforsaken isolation and he can’t even see his fingers in front of his face and he’s so fucking scared that he can’t breathe and he—and he’s—

Crawling across the floor because he cannot stand, his legs would give out if he tried and his hands are shaking, the stone floor is freezing beneath him and he hates it and he wants to sob and thinks he probably does, and his hands are landing on something sharp and a moment later they are wet, slick with blood that fills his cabin with a pungent iron smell, and he is aching and screaming and the lamp is broken, it is unfixable just like him and he did it, it is all his fault that he is in the dark, just like it is all his fault that he is alone, that he will always be alone, that there will never be a single night in his life where he will not be alone. 

In the distance, something is pounding like monsters threatening to break down his door, and he thinks they must have finally come for him, they will take him away, but if this is a nightmare perhaps he could transport himself away, wake himself up, so he digs the broken glass further into his skin and forces the pain to clear some of the insanity, forces himself to think of anywhere, to go anywhere— 

“Nico, Nico, no no no please,” a voice is saying, and Nico screams even louder, jerking his body away from the hands that find him, and he is sobbing and pleading as he is gathered up against someone’s chest and he knows that this must be the end, this is the end. Maybe he should be grateful that it’s almost over but it hurts so much and he has never been this scared, he has never been in this much pain, and if he knew dying would feel like this maybe he would have tried to take care of himself a little bit better. 

“Shh, shh,” that voice is saying, a little more familiar through the haze, now. Another voice, sounding like liquid sunlight and burning, murmurs, “We need to move him to the infirmary—the glass is too deep, he’s going to bleed out.” 

“It hurts,” Nico gasps, and he doesn’t know why he’s bothering to say it—no one has ever cared before, why would anyone care now?— but the arms around him tighten and hold him closer against him and suddenly, he knows exactly who is holding him. He had dreamed of these arms a million times in between his nightmares. He knows the smell of saltwater and the ocean breeze better than maybe any other. 

“I know it does,” Percy says, and his voice breaks, and Nico feels another sob shake itself free of his own body. He is trembling, he realizes, from head to toe—so badly that he doesn’t know how he doesn’t vibrate right out of Percy’s arms. 

“I know,” Percy repeats, and he sounds stronger now, filled with conviction. Strong enough that when he says, “But we’re going to make it better, now. I swear, I’m going to fix this, Nico,” Nico finds himself almost believing him. 

Maybe he even would have, if his body hadn’t chosen that moment to pass out from the pain.

Chapter Text

Nico wakes to warmth.

It’s not a sensation he’s familiar with, so his mind is unwilling to cooperate with waking up—the warmth curls its gentle fingers around the dark parts of his brain, urging him into sleep, tugging him into rest. 

If he dreamed, he has no recollection of them, and he thinks that may be better than even good dreams. He floats in the soft nothingness of it—peaceful and quiet and golden, even against the black of his eyelids—until he can no longer ignore the sounds that surround him. 

Voices. As soft as the warmth—reading off numbers that mean nothing to him, saying words that filter in and out with no significance. Nico thinks they sound nice. They remind him that he is part of the land of the living, even if he does not feel like he is fully there, even on his best days. 

Hell—he’s not even sure he knows what a good day for him looks like. His subconscious whispers that if they feel like this, he should have more of them. 

He burrows deeper into thick, plush blankets, inhaling deeply. Laundry detergent, lavender. He sighs, and the world around him stills. 

“He’ll be waking up soon,” that voice says again, drawing Nico closer to it—making him want to wrap up in it like it’s another blanket. “I’ll leave you alone to talk to him, but let me know if he needs anything, okay?” 

“Yeah,” another voice replies. “Thanks, man.” 

As the first speaker fades away, Nico laments. Come back, he pleads. He stirs, thinking that maybe if he reaches out, maybe if he can speak—

The next sensation that washes over him is not so pleasant as the first—pain lances through him, jolting and sudden. An uncomfortable groan tugs itself from his throat, which makes him aware of another sensation—his throat, which is on fire. After that, it’s impossible to let sleep hold him any longer. He wakes, with a choked little cough that sounds like he’s gargling gravel, and squints against the light of his surroundings, which unlike his sleep-light, is as sensory-overloading as the sun itself.

“Mmph,” he grumbles, turning onto his side to try to block out the light. His eyes crack open without his permission, and he catches the unfocused, but very real presence of the last person he would ever want to see, upon waking. 

He’s immediately shooting up in bed—or at least, he’s trying to. He cries out the moment his wrists make contact with the soft surface beneath him, and he hisses in pain as someone else fills up his line of view, the words just as indistinct as the rest of the world. 

“Hey, Nico—take it easy, it’s okay.” A hand lands on his shoulder and he flinches violently, but the weight doesn’t lift. Slowly, the words begin to piece together into syllables with meaning. 

“I . . . Jason?” He cringes at the sound of his own voice. He hardly recognizes it through the rough, cement-against-metal filter. 

“Yeah,” Jason replies, still gently. “Why don’t you lay back down? You had . . . a rough night.” 

“I . . . no.” Nico frowns—he tries to think, but doesn’t have to very hard. It comes back to him in flashes: the shadows and the screaming, the pungent smell of his own blood filling his senses. “Oh—oh my gods. I—I’m . . . so sorry.” 

He’s horrifed and ashamed. Oh, gods, he must have looked like a fucking lunatic last night. He just— fully lost his shit, unhinged in the strongest sense of the word, and he can only imagine the sight he must have been to others. 

Gods—and other people were probably just trying to have a good night. It was Will’s night off—did he have to stay in the infirmary because of him? 

The infirmary. That’s where he is—Nico knows the way light streams through these windows, the lavender detergent and Pine Sol scent. It is lovely and calm, which makes him stand out as a hideous blight even more apparently than usual. 

“You don’t have to be sorry,” Jason tells him. “You did nothing wrong.” 

The tone of his voice, while still kinder than he has to be, implies an unspoken ending to the sentence: but someone did. Someone should be sorry. Punctuated with his pointed glare to Nico’s left, it doesn’t take much to put it together.

“Jason,” Nico says. He’s already exhausted, and he’s barely been awake for a minute. He doesn’t want to see anyone, right now—let alone get in the middle of Jason and Percy’s unspoken power feud. 

He doesn’t where to go from there, but thankfully, Jason seems to understand anyway. His mouth flattens into a thin line, but he nods. 

“We should talk about what happened, last night,” he says. “But I understand, if you need some time. I can go find you something to eat—I bet you’re hungry.” 

Nico isn’t—he can’t remember the last time he was hungry—but he doesn’t argue the chance to escape from beneath his watchful, worried gaze, even if it means he’s left alone with the full weight of Percy’s instead. 

And things must be bad, he thinks, if he can’t even muster the energy to get as far away from Percy as he can. He already knows that if he tried to get out of bed, he’d probably collapse. He wouldn’t make it to the door. 

Besides—Nico knows that Percy is less likely to mince words with him, the way Jason would. 

“What happened last night?” he asks. He still can’t look at Percy—physically, he’s kind of terrified to—but he knows he’ll tell him the truth. Percy may be a lot of things, but he’s never dishonest. Nico wishes he could say the same about himself. 

“You . . . You don’t remember?” Percy’s voice is less a single string of sound and more a broken up, corrupted audio file. Somehow, he sounds even worse than Nico. 

Nico shakes his head. He stares at his hands—the bandages around his wrists, pristine white and taped to perfection. Will’s work. Great. He doesn’t want to think about what he probably looked like last night, but he’s probably ruined any chance of Will wanting to be friends with him now. 

He’s probably ruined everything. The thought is more devastating than he ever could have prepared himself for. 

“I mean, I remember . . . I lost my shit. Went crazy. I don’t remember anything after that, though.” 

“Hey.” Nico hates that after all this time, he can still hear that Percy is frowning by the tone of his voice. “You’re not crazy. At least . . . not any crazier than the rest of us.” 

Nico snorts, at that. “Comforting,” he says. 

“You know what I mean.” Percy sighs. “You’re not the only one who’s ever had a mental breakdown. I guarantee, you’re not the first one to break down this week.” 

Nico shakes his head. He holds up his hands and says, “Probably not one quite like this.” 

“No,” Percy acquiesces. “Probably not.” 

Silence falls over them, strange and heavy. Usually, when they’re in the same room together, they’re facing a life-threatening monster, or searching for a god’s super important something-something, or even more commonly, both at the same time. 

Thinking about that now, Nico struggles to remember how he had even had time to develop a crush on Percy in the first place. He recalls Percy on the beach, saying, why, Nico? 

Here’s the thing, though. All that shit Percy said, about never being a good friend to Nico, only ever using him—Nico had done the same things. Hell, when he was twelve years old, he was willing to trade Percy to his dad for a few scraps of information on his mother. There was a time, too, where he probably would have been willing to trade Percy’s life to get his sister back, if things worked that way. Sometimes, Nico thinks he only ever saw Percy as a means to an end–a solution to his problems, a tool to fix something, a key to unlock a door that Nico himself never could have gotten through. 

He doesn’t think they’ve ever been very good people to each other. 

“Can I ask you something, before Jason comes back?” Percy asks. “You don’t have to answer—but quite frankly, I don’t think he’d work up the courage, and I think it’s important.” 

There’s something about the way he asks it that makes Nico’s stomach twist up uncomfortably. Every instinct in him screams at him to say no—he doesn’t owe Percy anything, he doesn’t owe him his honesty, and honestly, there’s not a single part of him that’s ever desired to be honest with Percy. (His lapse in judgement after the battle with Gaea doesn’t count—he was still running on adrenaline when he approached him then, which is about as bad as approaching someone you used to like while inebriated. Nico was basically doing the demigod-equivalent of drunk-texting.)

But then he makes the worst mistake he could make—he finally looks at Percy. What he sees . . . it isn’t something anything could have prepared him for. 

Percy looks like . . . well, like him. His eyes are sunken, the skin beneath them bruise-like, even worse than yesterday. His skin is washed-out, like his natural tan’s been bleached out, and his hair is greasy and unkempt like he hasn’t washed it in a month. But the most startling thing of all is the redness of his eyes—the bloodshot veins surrounding his irises, the tight, angry skin at the corners where his eyelashes meet, like tears have long since dried and crusted there. 

Percy’s been . . . crying. Nico has never seen Percy cry before. Oddly, it’s never something he’s even imagined he could do. 

Nico thinks there’s probably some unspoken rule that states that when Percy Jackson has been crying, you go along with whatever it is he asks of you. Even if you’re not in love with him anymore. 

“. . . okay,” he acquiesces. 

Percy steeples his hands together. He stares down at them, like suddenly he’s the one who’s trying to avoid Nico’s gaze. He takes a deep breath that Nico can see because of how starkly his shoulders raise, and when he exhales, his voice is so low that Nico doesn’t understand him. 

“Did you do it on purpose?” 

“Did I . . . what?” Nico blinks. 

Percy clears his throat. He still won’t look at Nico. 

“When . . . When we found you. Will said you’d managed to cut deep into two significant arteries—it’s why you passed out so quickly, where there was so much . . . so much blood.” Percy swallows, appearing nauseated, and unfolds his hands to reshape them into fists in his lap. “Will said, from the angles of the glass he pulled out of your hands and wrists, that it didn’t look intentional. That it was too . . . too clumsy, not precise, the way he’s seen other victims’ injuries. But—but we have to know, Nico. I need to know . . . Were you trying to kill yourself?” 

Was he . . . ? Nico’s stomach drops.

Is . . . Is that how it looked? He replays it all in his mind in less than a second—himself throwing the lamp, the crashing, the screaming, the pleading, the sobbing. He remembers the pain of the glass shards cutting into his skin—even though he doesn’t remember how or why he thought picking them up was a good idea. He was desperately alone, and terrified, and he needed a fucking light source, but how many people would think that, from the look of it alone? 

 It looks bad. Two significant arteries. That looks deliberate. Did you do it on purpose? 

“I . . . No,” Nico stammers, and hates how he sounds so . . . guilty. Because he didn’t. “I’m a son of Hades, Percy. I know what’s waiting for me when I die. I’m not eager to get there before I’ve had a chance to have a fucking life. And besides—my dad would be furious. Why would I try to kill myself?” 

Back in the thirties, suicide was a taboo subject. It was never spoken of, and when it did come up, the word was used in whispers, shameful and secret. Families of suicide victims were often shunned in their communities. He has a vague memory of attending a funeral Mass with his mother and Bianca—he couldn’t have been older than five—and they had been the only ones who had shown up besides the family. The mother had wept into his own mamá’s shoulder, and he remembers the way sadness had shrouded the sanctuary like smoke, making it hard to breathe. 

Now that Nico has spent enough time among the dead, he’s heard stories from those victims themselves. He knows how hard this life can be, even for those who aren’t part of their world. Pain, and sadness, and suffering—those are all universal experiences, and some people get a harder lot in life than others. He’s met victims of abuse, he’s met people who were abandoned, he’s met people even more painfully alone than himself. Sometimes, this life becomes too much for a single person to bear. He understands that. He empathizes with it. 

But like he said to Percy—he knows what’s waiting for him. He likes the Underworld well enough to consider it his second home—he even loves his father in an odd sort of way—but he is not ready to call it his permanent residence. His father told him that he wanted him to be happy, and Nico desperately wants to try. It’s a strange thing, to try to please your parent by simply . . . being yourself. Having a life. But after spending so many years desperately chasing Hades’ approval—this, he thinks, is the one thing he can maybe achieve, where he failed all those other times. 

He can be happy. He can try. He can get there, maybe. He wants to get there. 

He does not want to die too soon, like all of those sad, lonely victims. He doesn’t want to be a victim anymore, himself. He thinks he would like to heal from his sadness, from the pain of wandering the earth alone. He thinks he would like to be someone new. 

He does not want to die. Suddenly, it crashes fully into him—the reality that he almost had, and it would have been his own fault. 

Nico can’t tell because of how thickly they’re wrapped, but he thinks his hands might be shaking. He almost died. His heart is racing too fast, much too fast. It feels too hard to breathe, like the thick, smokey feeling in that church all those decades ago. 

“I—I didn’t want to die,” he chokes out, like it might be his only chance to say it—to confess it, to make sure someone knows, even if that person is Percy Jackson. “You . . . you have to believe me. I didn’t mean to. I didn’t want to hurt myself—I didn’t mean to, Percy. I . . . I didn’t—” 

“Hey . . . hey, okay.” He’s shaking, not just his hands but his whole body—he jolts when the bed dips next to him, and he wants to shrug off Percy’s hand when he touches him but it’s all he can do to keep himself in one piece. And then Percy is drawing him in, and Nico is raising his hands to clutch against his chest, and he’s sobbing again—how pathetic is that?—and Percy’s holding him and he doesn’t even care, he doesn’t care because he almost died and even though he has been through hell itself, he cannot imagine anything more scary than that. 

“We’ll talk about this later,” Percy says, like it’s a promise, and Nico doesn’t doubt that he means it. “But right now, I’ve got you. It’s okay, Nico. I’m here.” 

Somehow, instead of feeling like a bad thing, the words bring Nico overwhelming relief. 

“It . . . it was the lamp.” 

The infirmary is completely empty, save for himself, Percy, Jason, and Will. The latter had excused himself after changing Nico’s bandages and making sure he was okay on painkillers—he’d muttered something about privacy, but Nico has this awful, sneaking suspicion that he just doesn’t want to be around him anymore, after seeing him like . . . the way he had been. 

So Nico sits with his knees curled up to his chest, staring at the plate of uneaten food in front of him. There’s strawberries on it, with whipped cream and a waffle that’s been cut up into small pieces. His stomach turns at the sight of it. 

“The lamp?” Percy repeats, confused. 

“The one from the Aphrodite cabin?” Jason adds on. He sounds nearly as perplexed. 

Nico nods miserably. He can’t believe he’s even about to admit it—the son of Hades, fucking scared of the dark— but he knows if he doesn’t tell them the real reason, they’ll probably stick with their suspicion that he hurt himself on purpose. Nico doesn’t want his fresh start at Camp Half-Blood ruined by the idea that he tried to end it all. He doesn’t want to be seen that way—especially not by Jason, his friend, and Percy, who’s . . . Percy. 

“I haven’t slept at all since the war ended,” he confesses. “Except for when I was here for those three days, I mean. My cabin . . . It’s—it’s awful. It’s so dark in there, all the time, even in the middle of the day. Even the Underworld isn’t as dark as the Hades cabin. It always feels like the shadows are going to swallow me whole if I close my eyes in there, so . . . so I don’t. And I’ve been so . . . so tired.” 

The strawberries blur in his vision, and he forces the tears back with a harsh sniff. He doesn’t look at Jason and Percy, because he’s not sure he wants to see what they’re thinking.

“So when the Aphrodite kids threw that lamp at you, I thought maybe . . . maybe it would do some good?” he continues. “But it didn’t. It actually made it harder to sleep. The way the light played with the shadows, it reminded me of—” He almost says the word, but his throat closes up. “A-anyway. I got angry, so I threw it, and it broke. And then I panicked, because it was so dark, and I guess I . . . I guess I thought I could put it back together? I don’t remember what I was thinking, exactly. All I know is I wasn’t in my right mind. I was . . . I was so scared.” His voice cracks. “I know it’s stupid. I’m sorry for causing so much trouble.” 

“It’s not stupid,” Percy says. He sounds angry—but when Nico forces himself to look up, Percy looks unbearably understanding. “It’s so fucking hard to sleep after being—there. I get it, Nico. I’ve been sleeping with my cabin light on since we got back. Being completely in the dark every night. . . I can’t imagine it.” 

Nico nods. He’s relieved, a little, that he isn’t alone in his suffering—even if that’s a little bit horrible. But Percy probably understands it better than anyone else could, considering he’s one of the only other two people who’s been where he has. Nico doesn’t have to explain it to him. 

“And for the record,” Jason adds, “You haven’t caused any trouble. You don’t have to apologize for struggling, and we don’t want you to feel like you should. We don’t want you to hurt, Nico. I’m sorry I didn’t realize something was wrong sooner. I’m sorry we didn’t try to help before—but we’re here, now. We’ll figure something out to make things better, okay?” 

Nico is getting so, so tired of crying. The tears burn hot against the backs of his eyes, and he blinks them back as best as he can, but a few manage to escape anyway. He tries to brush them away with his hands, but only ends up hitting himself in the eye. 

“This fucking sucks,” he mutters, dropping his hands back down and glaring at them. 

“Yeah. It does,” Percy agrees, reaching for the box of tissues on the table beside the bed. When he holds it out to Nico, Nico takes the whole thing with a resigned sigh. 

“It sucks—but we’re in it together now,” Percy says, a determined glint in his eye as he pushes his seat back and stands. “So let’s save the fixing for tomorrow—today, we’re going to throw a damn pity party. I’m going to go hunt down some drinks.” 

Chapter Text

“I’m not really one for giving alcohol to minors,” Percy disclaims, even as he cracks open a can with an audible pop! and passes it into Nico’s hand. “But desperate times, desperate measures. I’m not letting you get drunk, though—so let’s not get too wild and crazy with the law-breaking.” 

Nico stares at Percy, deadpan. “You’re seventeen, Percy.” 

“Desperate times,” Percy repeats gravely. He cracks open a second can for himself and takes a swig. 

“Where the hell did you get alcohol in Camp Half-Blood?” Jason says. There is visible horror in his face, which is hilarious, but not nearly as hilarious as the way his eye visibly twitches when Nico raises his drink to give it a test sip. “You’re not going to drink that, are you? You’re fourteen.” 

“Technically, I’m older than both you and Percy combined,” Nico points out. His experimental sip does not go well—he makes a face, and it is all he can do to keep from spitting it back out. “What the fuck is this—Dionysus’ piss?” 

Percy sits back, eyeing his own drink with a deep contemplation that does not make Nico feel reassured. “I’m not sure, actually,” he says. “The Stolls’ called it Olympus’ favorite nectar-laced hard seltzer. But since there’s no ingredients list, Dionysus really could have just bottled his piss and started selling it as a joke. Who knows?” 

Nico considers his can of seltzer: the happy, frolicking naiads and satyrs prancing across it. He thinks it really says something about his life, if he’s come to a point where he’s genuinely considering willfully drinking something that could possibly be his camp director’s piss. 

Then he decides he doesn’t care, and takes another swig. Jason looks on in dismay. 

“I brought you one, too,” Percy says, pulling a third drink from . . . actually, Nico doesn’t know where he’s pulling them from, and offers it to Jason. Jason shakes his head, crosses his arms, and scowls. 

“I can’t believe you,” he says. “If we were at Camp Jupiter and someone found us, we’d be digging trenches and scrubbing latrines for months.” 

“Good thing we’re not at Camp Jupiter, then.” Percy sets the extra drink on the table beside Nico’s bed. “What—so we can save the world numerous times, be pawns on the gods’ and titans’ chessboard, and deal with the lifelong scars and trauma from the things we’ve been through . . . But this, we can’t handle?” 

Ah—there it is. Nico suspects the pity party has begun. He sits back against his pillows, making himself comfy with his drink, and nods in agreement. 

“Right. Not to mention the deaths of the people we love the most, or our parents using us to fulfill prophecies, or being kidnapped and shoved in a jar smaller than a coffin.” 

“Having our memories wiped,” Percy says, and his mouth is quirked like a smile, but his voice cracks. “Our entire lives reduced to a single name and our ability to carry a goddess across a river. Being alone, with no one on your side, and everything to prove. Everything at risk.” 

Silence falls for one beat, two. Then, a heavy sigh fills the air, and Jason abandons his indignant stance and comes to sit at the foot of Nico’s bed, completing their small circle. 

“Being the byproduct of an affair gone wrong,” he offers. “And then literally being raised by wolves. And then growing up to be the praetor-in-the-making . . . The golden boy, who literally can’t afford to make mistakes.” 

“Being homeless for four years,” Nico says. “Technically, seventy-four years—give or take—, if you count the Lotus Casino as not being a home.” 

“Having a nosebleed that almost ends the world,” Percy supplies. “Having to abandon friends in . . . in Tartarus.” 

“Losing friends, altogether,” Jason adds, voice softer. They all quiet for a moment. They think of him, his name filling the air, but no one dares to speak it. 

It’s the biggest uncertainty Nico has felt in a long time, when it comes to death—and he doesn’t want to think about it, so he doesn’t. 

“Being a gay kid from the 1930s,” he says, not because he’d rather think about that, but because he’s kind of on a role, now. This self-pity thing feels kind of different, out loud and with people you trust, instead of locked in your head with only yourself as a judge of how bad things really are. “And having a crush on the straightest guy on the planet. And then being forcibly outed by fucking Cupid in a front of a guy you don’t know in a country you’ve never been to before, not knowing what the consequences will be because, again, you’re from the nineteen fucking thirties .” 

He takes a long, long drink after that. This silence is thicker than the last—more deliberate. 

And then Percy says, voice low, “What?”  

Jason winces, glances between him and Nico. When Nico shrugs in answer to his unspoken question, Jason sighs. “Right. You don’t know that story, do you?” 

Nico lets Jason tell it. He doesn’t have to look at Percy to gather his reaction—he can practically feel the temperature drop, the way it does when he’s upset. 

Percy is quiet for a long, dangerous moment when Jason finishes speaking. Then he says, a solemn oath, “If I ever meet him face to face, I’m going to fucking kill him.” 

Nico snorts. “You can’t kill a god,” he tells him. “Not one as powerful and omni-present as Cupid.” 

“Fucking watch me.” Percy crushes his empty can in his fist. His face, when Nico looks up, is thunderous. “That’s . . . That’s evil. That’s cruel in ways that—that no god has ever been to me, and I thought I’d seen it all. Nico, I’m . . . so sorry that happened to you. That should not have happened to you.” 

Strangely, the way Percy says I’m sorry doesn’t make Nico feel like literal shit, the way it had last time Percy approached him with an apology. Instead, it feels like . . . validation. Acceptance, in a weird way. It’s empathy, acknowledgement that something bad happened to Nico, instead of guilt that it’s Percy’s fault, specifically. Because Nico doesn’t want to play blame-games, anymore. He’s tired of the anger, and the effort it takes to hold grudges. 

But some things do still hurt. 

“I think it might be the worst thing that’s ever happened to me,” he confesses. “And I . . . I’ve been through a lot, you know?” 

Percy nods, his face grave. He doesn’t try to say anything to that—and somehow, that feels like enough. 

When the quiet falls over them again, it doesn’t have the chance to last for very long. The curtains drawn around Nico’s partitioned-off area in the infirmary slide open and a shadow falls over Percy’s sitting form. 

“Well, well—what do we have here?” Will Solace says, with a perfectly arched eyebrow. 

“We can explain,” Jason says, holding up his hands like he’s just committed a major crime. The guilt on his face is genuinely a bit hilarious. Percy rolls his eyes, reaches for the spare drink on the table, and throws it at Will—who catches it swiftly out of the air. 

“You’re amazing,” Will says, barely glancing at the label before popping the tab. “You have no idea how badly I’ve needed a drink for the past, like month.” 

And then, as the Big Three trio watches in silence, Solace tilts his head back and chugs the entire fucking thing in one go.  

“What?” he says, strangely defensive when he realizes how intently they’re staring at him. “Just because I’m head of the infirmary doesn’t mean I don’t need to let loose every once in awhile.” 

“Well . . . Yeah, but.” Percy is the only one who dares to speak. “You just tossed that whole thing back like it was water.” 

Will just shrugs, dismissive as he walks over to the corner and drops the empty can into it. “The byproduct of growing up in dive bars, probably,” he says. “Anyway—what’s this about a pity party that I overheard?” 

Nico’s heart drops into the pit of his stomach. 

If Will overheard them talking about their pity party . . . What else did he overhear? Did he hear Nico talking about Cupid? Because, oh gods, that would mean . . . 

“Yeah, we’re just reminiscing about all the ways the gods have fucked us over,” Percy says. And then, in spite of the desperate look Nico shoots his way, he adds, “Why—you want to join?” 

The corners of Will’s mouth quirk, a half-formed smile. There’s something bitter about it, which looks completely wrong on his face. “As . . . cathartic as that sounds,” he starts, eyes flicking from Percy to Nico. The intensity within the blue of his irises makes Nico feel like a deer in the headlights. “I was actually hoping I could talk to Nico. Alone.”

Nico’s heart, still pretending to be a rock in the his stomach instead of an organ in his chest, freezes over with a layer of frost. He sends Percy another desperate, pleading look, which Percy still doesn’t seem to get. 

“Oh, sure,” he says, with a curious glance between the two of them. “There’s something I’ve gotta go check on, anyway. Jason?” 

Jason blinks at him, then furrows his eyebrows. The two seem to have a quick telepathic conversation that Nico catches none of, because then Jason goes, “Oh, right. Yeah, let’s go.” 

To Nico, he says, “We’ll be back in a little while. You good here?” 

No, Nico wants to scream. No, I am very much not ‘good,’ you traitorous assholes. 

“Yeah, I’m good,” he says instead, vaguely sounding like he’s choking. Jason shoots him a weird look, but doesn’t call him out on it. Nico kind of wishes he had, just so he’d have an excuse not to be alone with Will Solace. 

He has no idea what to expect. Is Will going to yell at him for going and getting himself injured in the stupidest way possible? Or maybe he’ll tell him he doesn’t want to be friends with him now, because he’s finally realized the full extent of Nico’s fucked-up-ness. Or maybe he overheard Nico talking about being a gay kid from the thirties, and he’s going to tell him he’s a disgusting freak who doesn’t belong at camp. 

The last one, truthfully, is probably the one Nico is most terrified of—and also the one he’s most expecting. So when Jason and Percy have left the infirmary, their voices fading as they disappear into the hall, Nico is a bit surprised when the first thing Will says is, “How are you feeling?” 

It’s a genuine question, Nico realizes—not just small talk, or a polite courtesy, or even medical protocol. Will looks . . . concerned, he thinks. He looks like he cares. 

That’s why Nico feels he can be honest, even in spite of how anxious he is about . . . well, everything.

“Tired,” he confesses. “And . . . really stupid.” 

Will frowns, and Nico immediately wishes he could take it back. But then he comes to take a seat at the foot of the bed, and Nico becomes more preoccupied with how close he is, with how he can smell the fancy soap they keep in the Big House’s bathroom intermingling with the infirmary’s strong antiseptic scent on him. 

“You’re not stupid,” Will tells him. “Why would you think that?” 

He sounds so genuinely confused that Nico kind of wants to laugh. He doesn’t, though, because his embarrassment far outweighs the slight amusement. 

“I didn’t . . . want this to happen,” he says. Again, he finds his gaze travelling down to the bandages on his wrists, wrapped by Will himself, and thinks about how they came to be there. “I’m sure everyone in camp has probably heard about it, by now—about what a crazy, probably suicidal fuck-up I am. Even though . . . that’s not what I meant. I didn’t want to hurt myself. I didn’t . . . didn’t mean for any of this to happen.” 

“No one thinks you’re crazy,” Will says. Nico is a bit startled by the intensity of his voice—but not nearly as much as he is when Will reaches out and takes his hands, holding both of them in his own. All he can do is stare, wide-eyed, as Will directs his own gaze to their hands, watches the way his own thumbs brush over the bandaging he put there. 

“Or a fuck-up, for that matter,” Will adds, after a moment, like he’d nearly forgotten Nico said that at all. “If anyone tried to say so, I’d shut it down myself. No one should judge what another person is going through— especially if they don’t know the full story. I don’t tolerate that kind of behavior towards my patients.” 

“. . . oh,” Nico says, a bit lamely. He doesn’t know how else to respond. Will’s smile is brittle, out of character, lacking its usual warmth. He squeezes Nico’s fingers gently, then lets go. 

“I actually have something I need to confess,” Will tells him, with a little sigh that Nico would have missed, if he hadn’t been so close. “I overheard your conversation with Percy, earlier. I didn’t mean to eavesdrop, at least at first, but . . .” This sigh is heavier, punctuated by a little slump in Will’s shoulders. It’s guilt, Nico realizes belatedly. Will’s entire demeanor . . . He’s guilty. 

“I told myself it was because I was worried. What Percy was asking you were things I was planning on asking, anyway. But it’s . . . It’s a difficult subject. Self-harm is . . . a horrible sickness, for some people. It brought up some old stuff for me, which is why I was a bit distant, when you woke up.” Will runs a hand through his hair, making it stick up in a dozen different directions. “It wasn’t fair, though, to invade your privacy like that. I’m sorry, Nico. If you’re mad, I get it.” 

Maybe Nico should be mad. He’s a private person, anyway—and he knows that if Will overheard him and Percy talking, then he definitely overheard him crying, which is fucking humiliating. 

But it means Nico doesn’t have to explain it again, which is one less emotionally-draining conversation that he has to endure. And if he’s being honest, he’d rather Will have overheard that than . . . 

He must not have heard. That’s the only reason Nico can think of why he’s here. Why he’s apologizing to him—why he’s still talking to him, like they’re friends. 

Are they friends, now? Nico desperately wants to be. Everything within him is screaming: don’t fuck this up!

“I’m not,” he says, only realizing when he does that he has been quiet for far too long. He clears his throat, feels his face heat up with embarrassment, and looks away. “I’m not . . . mad, I mean. Mostly, I’m just sorry you had to see me like that. I’m sure patching me up is getting pretty old.” 

Will shakes his head. “Now, that’s far from true,” he says. This time, his smile is a little sunnier, a little more like himself. “Patching people up is kind of my thing. Besides—I would much rather have been there than not have been there.” 

Nico doesn’t know what to say to that—so he doesn’t say anything. Instead, he nods, and fidgets with the cap of the drink he’s definitely not going to finish. 

“So, I’m pretty glad you’re not mad,” Will says, before the silence can stretch on for too long. “Because that would have made this a little bit awkward.” 

Before Nico can even open his mouth to ask him what he means, Will reaches into his pocket and pulls out something small and rectangular—and instantly, nostalgically familiar. 

“Is that—?” A surprised, short laugh chokes its way out of his throat. Will grins, light and boyish, and flips it around so Nico can read the words: Mythomagic: The Official Starter Pack. 

“Found it under my bed when I was deep-cleaning the cabin the other day,” he tells him. “Thought it was kind of ironic, considering we’d just talked about it. Then I thought it must’ve been fate.” 

“Or you’re reading way too much into a pack of cards you’ve had under your bed for years,” Nico points out, but he has to bite his lip on the stupid grin that’s threatening to emerge. “Mythomagic’s for kids, Will.” 

“Ah—but you forget, we are kids,” Will points out. He cracks open the box and pours the deck out into his hand. “If we were in the mortal world, we’d be ninth graders. And ninth graders are peak nerds. The way I see it, we’re kind of obligated to play this game together.”

. . . Huh. Nico doesn’t think he’s been called a kid—by anyone except Coach Hedge, who doesn’t count—in a long time. It’s weird to hear it out loud, from someone who’s also his age. 

They’re just kids, aren’t they? Kids who have done far more and seen far more shit than most people ever have to. Damaged, exhausted, terrified kids. 

“Have you ever played before?” he asks, after a moment. “We may be here for a while, if you haven’t. There’s a lot of rules.” 

“I have not,” Will says. Then, cheerfully, “Guess we’d better get comfy.” 

They play multiple rounds over the span of the next couple hours. Will loses every single one. His laughter fills the infirmary like the best song Nico has never heard before. 

“No,” is the first thing that comes out of Nico’s mouth, before Percy’s even finished speaking. “No—absolutely not.” 

Percy frowns. “Nico—” 

Nico hates the placating tone of his voice—the one that implies Nico is just some stupid little kid, and he doesn’t understand yet that this is just the way it is, just the way it has to be, now. It’s the way people have spoken to him his whole fucking life, even after he’s done more than enough shit to prove himself, to prove he doesn’t need to be coddled, to prove that he can be—that he’s fine on his own. He has managed just fucking fine all these years by himself. He doesn’t need people to start giving a fuck now. 

“No—you know what, why don’t you just back the fuck off, Percy. You think we can have one heart-to-heart conversation and then you can go and fuck up everything I’m trying to build for myself here?” Nico shoves back the blankets and swings his legs over the side of the bed, but makes the mistake of standing up too fast and nearly falls over. When Jason reaches out to try to help him, though, Nico snarls at him. 

“You too, Grace. I don’t need this—I don’t need a fucking babysitter, and I don’t need the two of you following me around every hour of the day. It’s not going to happen.” 

“It’s non-negotiable, Nico,” Jason quietly says. His tone has that same quality as Percy’s—pitying, almost, fuck him— but his gaze is hard, jaw set as he stares him down. “You can’t live by yourself, right now. It’s not good for you. This is happening whether you want it to or not.” 

Nico stares back at him, fists clenching and unclenching at his sides, trying to think of anything he could possibly say through his fury. But his eyes are hot, burning with anger, and he thinks anything else he might say will only end up with him in tears, again. 

So he turns away, biting his tongue, and storms out of the infirmary. The two older boys know better than to follow him, at least—they don’t even call after him, and Nico finds himself feeling stupidly grateful for it. Then he feels angry at himself for feeling grateful for it. 

He makes it to the back door of the Big House before the first tear falls—he makes it through the door, thank all the gods, before the first sob tears free from his throat. And he feels so stupid, immediately, for crying. There’s a part of him that knows he’s being illogical, that he’s being overdramatic and stupid— but the bigger part of him is screaming that this isn’t fair, that it’s not fair that this is happening, that he’s been deemed so mentally incompetent by the camp director that he can’t live on his own anymore. Apparently, he’s old enough to fight in two wars and go to literal hell and be kidnapped but he can’t even be allowed the right to his own space, anymore. He’s been deemed “a danger to himself,” and by all the gods, isn’t that the funniest thing he’s ever fucking heard? 

It’s going to get around camp—he knows it. All those things Will said, about not letting people say bad things about him? Will’s not going to be able to stop it. The whispering is going to start again. The looks, the glares. Everyone is going to hate him, or be afraid of him, or just disgusted that someone like him is even daring to be in their presence. 

Add mental illness to the list of everything else that’s wrong with him. Maybe he should’ve fucking known. 

He wonders, distantly, if homosexuality is still considered a mental disorder. Or if mental disorders are still considered to be caused by demonic spirits. 

Gods, he hates himself. He thinks, in this moment, about all those times he was afraid of shadow-jumping into oblivion—and wonders what he could’ve possibly been so terrified of. Oblivion has got to be better than this. Being nothing has got to be better than feeling like you’re worth less than nothing. 

“. . . Nico?” 

Nico jumps, his heart literally leaping into his throat, and whips his head around so fast he’s surprised he doesn’t break his neck. But it’s not Percy or Jason standing there, thank the gods—or even Will, which may have been even worse. Instead, it’s Piper’s brother Mitchell, standing in the doorway with a basket of neatly folded laundry on his hip, the scent of detergent and lavender-scented dryer sheets wafting from it. 

Great, he laments. Someone else to think I’m completely insane. 

“Hey, Mitchell,” he says miserably, hating the way his voice cracks. Gods, can he get any more embarrassing? “Don’t mind me. Actually—if you could pretend you didn’t see me, that would be great.” 

Mitchell silently observes him for one beat, two beats. He adjusts his basket to his other hip, then reaches a hand down to Nico. 

“I have a better idea,” he says, “You, my friend, look like you’re due for a spa day.” 

“. . . Spa day?” Nico faintly repeats. He does not know what that means, but it sounds terrifying. 

“Spa day,” Mitchell says, his solemn tone undermined by the smile that takes over his face. “C’mon—I just got these great Korean sheet masks that I’ve been dying to try—and you look like you could definitely use some brightening and rejuvenation.” 

Nico spares a moment towards hesitation—he glances behind him to the door of the Big House, knowing he should probably go talk to Jason and Percy. But the idea of going back in there, of facing them after how angry and ugly he'd been . . . He feels physically sick at the idea. 

So instead, he takes Mitchell's hand and allows him to pull him up. He has no idea what the Aphrodite kid has in store for him, but surely it's better than anything Nico could do to himself. 

Chapter Text

“These are great for opening up your pores and eliminating all the bad, nasty stuff you don’t want ruining your skin,” Mitchell says, as he descends on Nico with the white face mask that vaguely reminisces that guy from those slasher horror movies. “Not that you seem to need much help with that. Seriously, what moisturizer do you use?” 

“Uh . . . Water?” Nico guesses. Water is moist. He thinks that’s probably a reasonable guess. 

By the way Mitchell’s face falls, Nico realizes that it is not, in fact, reasonable at all. 

“I don’t get it. Why do some people get to just have perfect skin while the rest of us have to follow twelve-step skincare routines religiously?” he complains, sounding so upset that Nico barely even flinches when he sticks the mask on his face. Immediately, all he can feel is slime. He wrinkles his nose, and Mitchell lightly flicks him. 

“Stop it—you’re gonna ruin it,” he scolds. 

“Sorry,” Nico instinctively replies. He doesn’t want to disappoint Mitchell, for some reason—even though he barely knows him at all. Maybe it’s because he has so few friends who he hasn’t been through life-altering trauma with. Maybe it’s because he has so few friends at all. 

The Aphrodite cabin was kind of overwhelming to the senses, when he first walked in. But after sitting here for a few minutes and letting his eyes adjust, it’s not so bad—even with all the pink and pastels and general brightness. Mitchell has a candle burning that smells clean and calm, and as Nico breathes it in, he finds that the headache he’s had since he started crying earlier begins to lessen. 

Speaking of crying. He’d rather not, but evidently Mitchell doesn’t sense that. “So—you wanna talk about it?” 

“Talk about what?” It’s difficult to speak with a sheet of cold, wet paper on his face, but he manages. When Mitchell doesn’t flick him again, he assumes it’s safe to do so. 

Mitchell looks up from where he’s opening a second sheet mask just to roll his eyes at him. “Oh, come on,” he says. “I get that everyone thinks the Aphrodite cabin is just a bunch of airheads, but we have brains y’know.” 

Nico frowns as best as he can through the mask. “I don’t—” 

Mitchell waves his hand through the air, like he’s dispelling smoke. “Please, it’s not like I care what people think. The point is, I’m pretty good at reading emotions, and even if I wasn’t, I have eyes. I’m guessing something has to be pretty wrong for a son of Hades to think it’s worth crying over.” 

“I . . .” Nico’s frown deepens enough for him to feel the mask shift minutely on his face. He’s glad Mitchell is focused on his own appearance in the mirror, so he doesn’t see it. “It’s not, really. I mean, it’s stupid.” 

“There’s never a stupid reason for crying. Crying means it means something to you.” 

Nico closes his eyes. The scent of the candle wraps around him, and he feels his shoulders relax a little. He wonders if there’s some kind of magic imbued in it. 

“I . . . guess you’ve probably heard about what happened last night,” he finally says. 

“A bit,” Mitchell replies. “The cabins closest to yours said they heard screaming yesterday, a little bit after dinner time. You were taken to the infirmary. Percy Jackson had to carry you because you were unconscious.” 

Nico feels his face go hot, and wonders if that’ll negatively impact the effects the mask is supposed to have on his skin. He isn’t sure what’s more embarrassing—the fact that Percy Jackson had to carry him like some fucking damsel, or that people saw it happen. 

“Yeah, well.” He swallows the ugly, horrible feeling in his throat. “It’s because I had a nightmare. A—a really bad one. And I guess I was really disoriented when I woke up, because I hurt myself. And now Chiron is making me stay with Percy and Jason because I can’t be trusted alone.” 

Mitchell turns to look at him, head cocked to the side. The gesture, combined with the mask on his face, really helps sell the slasher costume vibe. Not that Nico can imagine Mitchell even killing a bug. 

“Did Chiron really say that?” he asks. “That you can’t be trusted, I mean.” 

Nico looks away, feeling vaguely interrogated, even though Mitchell’s voice only displays genuine curiosity. He doesn’t feel judged, exactly . . . Just challenged, maybe. He’s not used to that. 

“Well, no,” he admits, after a beat. “At least, I don’t think so. Jason and Percy were the ones who broke the news. But still—the situation kind of speaks for itself, doesn’t it? I fucked up, and now everyone’s going to think I’m dangerous. Chiron’s sticking me with Percy and Jason in case I try to hurt someone else, because they’d be able to handle me better than anyone else in camp. It makes sense.” 

Mitchell frowns, then seems to realize what he’s doing and reaches up to pat the mask back into place. It occurs to Nico then that, of all the bizarre and insane and downright unbelievable situations he’s been in, this may be a top contender for the weirdest one he’s ever been in. Having a serious emotional conversation with a guy he barely knows while they’re both wearing cartoon-esque ghost masks. He would maybe want to laugh, if he didn’t feel like he was actually going to cry again. 

“Feel free to correct me if I’m wrong,” Mitchell says. “You know the situation much more than I do. But . . . have you considered that maybe Chiron isn’t sticking you with Percy and Jason because you’re dangerous, but because he thinks maybe it’ll be good for you—for all three of you?” 

Nico frowns. “What?” he says. “How would this situation benefit Jason or Percy?” 

“Think about it.” Mitchell hops up on the bathroom counter, kicks his legs lightly against the cabinets. “All three of you are the kids of the Big Three gods—you’re the most powerful kids in camp, powers-wise at least. You’re probably also the most traumatized. Not that I know you very well—but you just kind of radiate vibes that you’ve been through some shit. So do they. Maybe Chiron thinks it would help all three of you to not be alone anymore. I can’t imagine not having anyone to share a cabin with. I bet it’s pretty lonely.” 

Nico doesn’t know what to say to that. Quite frankly, he hadn’t thought of it that way at all. Percy and Jason . . . Sure, they’ve been through shit too. Percy’s been to Tartarus, just like him, and if it affected him anywhere near as badly . . . 

Still—there are worse things than loneliness, Nico thinks. There’s disgust, hatred, resentment. Nico is terrified of those things. He is so tired of having them directed at him. 

“The nightmares are bad,” Nico confesses. “I don’t . . . don’t want them to see, you know? I don’t want to just become a problem for them to deal with.” 

“Nico, you silly goose,” Mitchell says. “That’s not how friendship works. In fact, it’s the opposite. Friends help us deal with our problems. I bet if you asked Jason and Percy, they’d say they just want to help you feel safe at camp.” 

While Nico ponders that, a beep beep beep begins to emit from the timer on the counter. “Welp—that’s it for the masks,” Mitchell says, voice cheerful, and slides off the counter to return to his objective of . . . Well, Nico’s actually not sure what Mitchell is trying to do, but as long as no more slime is involved, he doesn’t think he’ll mind too much.

“You should try this vitamin C serum I have— oh, and this lip balm, because no offense, but your lips are so cracked. Also, how would you feel about eyeliner, because—” 

Mitchell doesn’t seem to mind that Nico is lost in thought for the rest of the time they spend together. In fact, he seems perfectly happy to drop their previous conversation altogether, allowing Nico to ruminate on it in peace even as he attacks his face with products Nico could not tell you the names of to save his life. 

And when Nico leaves the Aphrodite cabin—gifted with a tube of lip balm, a lip oil (he insists there is a difference), and the command to come back soon so Mitchell can give him a haircut—he feels impossibly, indescribably lighter than he had when Mitchell found him crying on the Big House’s porch. 

And he thinks Mitchell might be a lot smarter than he gives himself and his siblings credit for. With resolve to swallow his pride, Nico goes in search of Percy and Jason. 

He has to do some hunting, but he finally locates them in the dining pavilion. They’re sitting at the Poseidon table, heads bent slightly towards one another—so they can hear each other over the din of other voices, no doubt—going virtually unnoticed by everyone around them. 

No one even really turns to look at Nico as he makes his way through the crowd—only a couple of people side-eye him, which is basically the same thing as being welcomed with raucous applause. Percy and Jason both seem to sense him when he nears, though, because they lift their heads at the exact same time. Nico bites his lip, swallows his nerves, and sinks down onto the bench next to Jason. 

“Hi,” he says, and immediately wants to kick himself. Hi? You basically threw a temper tantrum last time you saw them, and now all you can think to say is fucking hi? 

“Hey, man,” Jason says. He stares at Nico strangely, which he understands. He sighs, stares at the plate of food that a passing nymph sets in front of him. 

“Look—I get it if you guys are pissed at me. I’m really sorry for the way I acted earlier—I was upset, and honestly embarrassed, and . . . and angry. I didn’t like having my problems pointed out like that. After everything I’ve been through, it made me feel . . . weak.” 

“We’re not pissed at you,” Percy says. He’s staring down at his french toast, which he has arranged into a frowny face. “For the record, we should’ve figured that’s how you’d react, in retrospect. I think we . . . Or at least, I just got really caught up in the idea of being one cabin together, with you. Not being alone anymore. But if that’s not what you want, we can figure something else out. Will’s offered to make a space for you in the infirmary while we renovate your cabin—or you could stay in one of the Big House’s bedrooms. Whatever you need . . . We can figure out how to accommodate you. No one’s going to force you to do anything you don’t want to do. I’m sorry we made you feel that way, before.” 

Nico chews on his lip—forgetting, for a moment, that all the dead skin was scrubbed off by Mitchell earlier. His mouth tastes like a chemical vanilla cupcake. 

“I guess I just . . .” He falters. He isn’t sure if he should continue until Jason gently nudges his shoulder against his own, then he takes a deep breath. 

“I won’t be a very good roommate, you know,” he says. “I—the nightmares, they’re . . . bad. And, and I haven’t shared a space with anyone in years. I’m sure I’ll be annoying and horrible.”

“That makes two of us,” Percy says. “I, uh . . . I’m going to have to deep clean before you guys move in. You do not want to see it right now. Also, I talk in my sleep.”

“I snore,” Jason chimes in. “Like . . . badly. It’s the reason why Leo decided to make our rooms on the Argo II soundproof.” 

A beat after Leo’s name leaves his mouth, Jason falters—his smile immediately melting away, eyes diverting to his plate. No one says anything for a long moment. Nico feels the heaviness in the air, and the uncertainty of it all makes him angry. His hands clench into fists in his lap. 

“Anyway—” Jason clears his throat, and with a shake of his head, he brings his smile back to life. He even looks like he means it when he looks at Nico and says, “You’re not the only one with flaws, Neeks. If you can put up with us, we’re more than happy to put up with you.” 

Nico’s heart twists in a way he’s not familiar with—it’s not anguish, or anger, or desperate want, or any other negative emotion that he can name on instinct. No . . . It’s lighter, softer, gentler. 

Friendship, he thinks, with tentative certainty. It feels like friendship. 

He goes to the campfire with Percy and Jason that night. They sit with Annabeth and Piper, who greet Nico with warm smiles and marshmallows. Annabeth pulls Nico down onto the bench next to her and immediately pulls out a roll of graphing paper from her backpack. 

“Percy told me about what’s going on with the Hades cabin,” she says, her eyes steely and determined. “We’re going to fix it.” 

Nico becomes so engrossed in listening to her ideas and jotting down notes that he doesn’t even notice the shadow that’s fallen over him until there’s a tap on his shoulder. Nico jumps, instinctively reaching for a sword that is not there, and when he looks up, Will Solace is smiling crookedly at him, his hands tucked into the pockets of his cargo shorts. 

“Hey, Death Boy,” he says. “Can we talk for a minute?” 

“Um.” Nico blinks stupidly, does nothing but stare at him until Annabeth nudges him with her pen and an encouraging nod. Then he hastily makes his way to his feet, just barely managing not to trip on himself, and says, “Yeah—sure, right.” 

Will leads him away from the others, and Nico swears he can feel their gazes on his back as he follows Will to the other side of the amphitheater, to the back row where they’re farthest from the noise of the kids leading the singalong. Will sits down and props his feet on the bench directly below them, so Nico does the same. 

“What’s . . . uh. What’s up?” Nico tries. He’s not usually the one to initiate the conversation, especially with Solace. Will is way better at talking than him. Most people are—they just somehow know how to do it, like it’s instinct. He guesses for most people, it is. 

“I heard a rumor that you’re moving in with Jason and Percy after all,” Will says. He turns his face to Nico, so he’s half cast in shadow, half in the glow from the campfire. He’s smiling, still. “I’m glad to hear it. Although you should know, you’re still welcome in the infirmary any night. I’ve heard that Jason snores.” 

Nico raises his eyebrows, admittedly a bit impressed. “How did you hear that so fast? I didn’t even tell Jason and Percy until dinner,” he says. 

“Camp gossip travels fast,” Will says, his grin sharpening. When Nico continues to stare at him, though, he cracks. “Okay, fine—Mitchell told me. And before you go thinking that it’s because he’s an Aphrodite kid, and they’re notorious gossips, you should know he just told me. We’re pretty good friends, and I ran into him on the way to the campfire, and he brought it up because he wanted me to invite you to group.”

“Why does everyone think that I think so poorly of the Aphrodite cabin?” Nico wonders aloud. Then he frowns, the rest of Will’s words catching up to him. “And what group?” 

“The demigod emotional support group,” Will says. “I started it last year after—well. A lot of us were kind of damaged after the Battle of Manhattan. But it’s not just about demigod stuff, or war stuff. A lot of us also bring baggage with us from our mortal lives, when we come here. So on Thursday nights, we get together in the rec room and talk about how we’re doing. There are snacks. Sometimes, we’re able to convince Chiron to let us order out.” 

Nico’s frown deepens, at that. “I doubt that’s the kind of thing people would want me at,” he says. “My damage is . . . freaky. It would probably just traumatize people more.” 

Will shakes his head at that, his smile ebbing just a bit—just enough to let his seriousness show through. “We all think that, at first,” he says. “And sure—you’ve been to places none of us have ever been, and you’ve seen things a lot of us will never understand. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t have a place to talk about them. You deserve to have your experiences heard just as much as the rest of us. And if someone doesn’t want to hear about it . . . Well. We’ve got an open door policy. They can leave whenever. But you’re always welcome.” 

Nico doesn’t know what to say to that. Will’s smile returns in full force, like the fucking sun beaming on him, and he reaches over and squeezes Nico’s shoulder before Nico can even think to flinch away. Not that he’d even really want to, if he’s being honest. 

“No pressure, but just think about it, yeah?” Will says. “This week, we’re getting donuts. We’re even going to have Boston cream.” 

He says Boston cream like it is a very, very big deal. Nico tilts his head. 

“I’ve never had a Bostom cream donut,” he says. At that, Will’s face falls—and then is overtaken with fierce determination. 

“Well, now you have to come,” he says. “That’s practically illegal, di Angelo. How can you have lived this many years and not have had the most sacred donut of all donuts?” 

Nico bites his lip so Will won’t see how stupidly big his grin is fighting to be. He looks down to the fire below, considers for a long moment. And then he looks back over at Will and says, “We’ll see.” 

It’s not a yes. It’s barely even a maybe. But Will’s answering, brilliant smile makes Nico want to say it a hundred times over, just to keep himself under such a warm, wonderful light. 

Chapter Text

Sharing a space with other people is . . . weird. Not entirely pleasant, in the sense that it’s something Nico actively enjoys, but it’s . . . well. 

It isn’t bad, to say the least. 

True to Jason’s and Percy’s warnings, the nights are loud. Between Percy’s incoherent mumblings and Jason’s ungodly snoring, they make a soundtrack that’s chaotic and unharmonious—but somehow, it makes Nico feel better than laying in the darkness of his own cabin, alone in the suffocating silence. 

It helps, too, that Percy’s cabin feels . . . fresh? Light. Percy’s got this freshwater fountain in his cabin that glows blue when the lights are off, and it babbles softly like a backing nature track to Percy and Jason’s symphony. It casts soft blue light on the ceiling in the corner, and Nico likes to watch it while his eyes grow heavy, imagining that the color is clouding his brain with sleep. 

They leave the bathroom light on, too—a compromise to Percy and Nico’s aversion to the dark, but Jason’s inability to sleep with lights on. One of Piper’s sisters gave Jason a Barbie-pink silk sleep mask, too, and sometimes it’s a bit unnerving to look over from his bed and find only a set of dramatic embroidered eyelashes staring back at him in the dark. 

So, no, sharing a cabin isn’t bad. It’s strange to hear others in his space during a time where there is usually nothing and no one, and it’s strange to have to let Jason or Percy know whenever he’s going to take a shower, and it’s strange to do his laundry and find that somehow, Jason’s T-shirts or Percy’s shark-patterned socks have ended up tossed in with his clothes. 

And somehow, it’s not even bad when he wakes up trembling from his nightmares to find Percy sitting up in his own bed, arms wrapped around his knees like he’s trying to hug himself, eyes glassy and not-entirely-present when he looks at him. He’ll nod at him, and Nico will nod back, and they’ll sit in the silence just like that until they’re both ready to try to sleep again. 

It reminds Nico that he isn’t alone, in a way that even the sounds and presence of his new cabinmates doesn’t quite manage to do. It’s a revelation that even as fucked up as he may be, somehow, he’s not the only one. 

And if Percy Jackson can manage to wake up and make it through each day, after everything he’s seen and gone through . . . Well. It gives Nico hope that maybe they aren’t entirely past the opportunity for healing yet, after all. 

The days pass more quickly, with this new routine they’ve adopted. Nico still wakes early, still goes to the infirmary to spend the morning unpacking shipments or reorganizing the stock or changing sheets. But then the conch will ring for breakfast, and Nico will join Percy and Jason at the Hades table (they reason that of the three Big Three gods, Hades is the least likely to give a shit about other god-spawn occupying his space), and Nico will stare impassively while Jason and Percy see who can catch the most grapes in their mouth that the other throws at them, and refuse to mediate when they begin arguing that the other is cheating. 

Breakfast will end when Nico tells them that they’re both losers, because what kind of idiots toss grapes at each other and call it a contest, and then they go to their first activity together. 

They’d collectively decided that they all want a break from fighting, in any capacity—hand-to-hand combat, sword-fighting, archery, the like. So instead, they had each selected some weird niche activities to fill their schedules and appease Chiron. First, they go to basket weaving with the lake naiads—Percy’s choice—which Percy and Jason are both laughably bad at. They leave from the lake to attend Annabeth’s brother’s class on the history of combat theory sans actual combat—Jason’s choice—and Nico tries not to fall asleep amidst the stacks of dusty books in the Athena cabin. 

And then they go to Nico’s choice. Jason and Percy had both stared at him like he’d grown a second head when he announced it, but then they’d shrugged and said, “Could be cool,” and that was that. So now they sit at the picnic tables in the common area between the cabins, surrounded by buckets of beads and string and Aphrodite children. 

Mitchell, the leader of the session, typically plants himself next to Nico after announcing the creation of the day. Today, it’s “friendship bracelets,” which sounds fucking stupid, but considering how animated Mitchell was while talking about them, and how several of the other attendees have multiple strings of beads around their wrists, he picks up that they must hold some sort of significance. In fact, he’s noticed them on Will, beads of different colors and patterns and words that Nico’s never been close enough to read wrapping around both his wrists. He’d never thought much of them—figured it was a weird fashion statement or something, like his scrubs-on-jorts combo. 

Now, Mitchell measures out string around Nico’s wrist, warm brown eyes narrowed with concentration as he snips it. “You, my friend, are gonna end this summer with oodles of friendship bracelets,” he promises him. Then he smiles, and sets the string down in front of himself, and hands Nico the roll of string and the scissors. “But I’m going to be the one to say I gave you your first one.” 

The bracelet Mitchell makes Nico is all hearts and flowers, although he offsets the baby pink and lavender with shiny black beads that he somehow ties in effortlessly. Nico can’t say his own is the same—the beads are fucking annoying, and they take forever to string on, so he doesn’t even bother with the tiny ones that Mitchell weaved into his. The one Nico passes to him is chunky and all black, but Mitchell beams as he slides it on and says, “A Nico di Angelo original—it’s my new favorite!” 

Nico rolls his eyes, but he can feel his face burning. “Shut up,” he says. “You don’t have to pretend it’s good.” 

“Obviously I don’t have to pretend,” Mitchell says, returning the eye-roll with one of his own. “This isn’t acting class, silly. It’s perfect. Oh, shit, I mean styx — Harley, where did you get that glue gun? Put it down!” 

Mitchell rushes off to stop the chaotic seven-year-old from setting all the DIY jewelry on fire. When Nico looks back to his companions, he finds them both staring at him, eyebrows raised. 

It’s eerie, seeing the same expression on both their faces. What’s worse, he doesn’t know what the look fucking means. “What?” he demands. 

“Dude.” Percy darts his gaze from him to Mitchell, who’s now lecturing Harley with his hands waving wildly, back to Nico. There’s some intention there, but Nico doesn’t understand it. Not until he goes, “He was like— flirting with you. Right, Jason? Wouldn’t you call that flirting?” 

“Oh, definitely,” Jason says. “Aphrodite kids are usually brutally honest about jewelry. Nico, no offense, but your design-technique needs work.” 

Nico pointedly stares at Jason’s own friendship bracelet—every bead is a different color and size, with no clear pattern or plan behind it. “You’re one to talk,” he blandly says. 

Jason clutches his bracelet against his chest. “That’s hurtful,” he says. “I’m pouring my heart and soul into this bracelet. It’s a symbol of the progression of my friendship with Percy.” 

“That’s so poetic, man,” Percy says. He seems genuinely touched. “I’m just making yours all blue—that way you’ll always think of me.” 

“Oh, my gods,” Nico says. “Which one of us is supposed to be the gay one?” 

It’s still jarring, feels a little bit wrong every time he says the word out loud. He can’t help tensing, like something’s going to come out of the ether and attack him, or he’s going to get struck down by the god of homophobia. It’s weirder to say it when there are people around—albeit, they’re far enough from any of the other campers that they’d have to be listening really hard to hear, but it still scares him, fills him with panic the moment the word comes out of his mouth. He wants to take it back—to pretend he never said it, that way there’s no chance anyone could hear it. 

But Jason just returns to stringing beads onto his string. “I’m Greek now,” he says. “I can be as gay as I want.” 

That spurs a snort from Nico—disbelieving now. “Why would you want to be gay?” 

It comes out sounding more acrid than he’d intended—bitter and burning like a splash of venom. And again, he wishes he could take it back, swallowing the words down and pretending he doesn’t have to hate himself. It makes both Jason and Percy pause—they look at him, the good humor dropping from their faces. 

Shit. Dread replaces the other awful feelings swirling in Nico’s stomach. 

“Nico,” Jason says slowly, “There’s nothing wrong with being gay.” 

Nico averts his eyes. He grabs the spool of elasticky thread and cuts off a random length. “Sure,” he says. 

“Seriously.” That’s Percy, voice far too grave for the setting they’re in, surrounded by sparkly beads and with the little kids a few picnic tables over singing some repetitive song. “Nico . . . You’re not even the only gay person at camp. You know that, right?” 

That causes Nico to pause. He glances up, in spite of himself. “What?” 

Percy nods. His expression softens a little, once he has Nico’s attention. “Yeah. I’m talking about like, people who are out. Annabeth’s brother, Malcolm? Miranda, Mitchell, and Connor . . . also Holly or Laurel, although I can never remember which one. And there’s more. There are a lot of gay people here at camp, Neeks.” 

The information feels like a shock to the system—it’s hard to believe, if not impossible. It feels a bit like Percy must be lying. If there were other people like Nico at camp, surely he would know it. But he’s never heard anyone talk about it, or seen people together like that here. 

He’s spent years believing that he would never be accepted at Camp Half-Blood, not only because of his godly parent, but because of that. If people who are gay have been here this whole time, then that means all the time he’s spent hating himself, believing he would never fit in because of it was for nothing. 

“I know my joke might’ve been in poor taste,” Jason adds, clearing his throat awkwardly. “But there are also plenty of gay demigods in New Rome. Michael Kahale helped create the sex ed curriculum they use now, because the one before wasn’t LGBT inclusive. It helped a lot of people at camp learn to accept and understand themselves better.” 

“Oh, gods.” Nico’s face starts burning—he thinks the word sex is probably even worse to hear than saying gay out loud himself. “That’s . . . great, Jason. Really cool. Can we move on now?” 

“Not quite.” Jason is searching Nico, knowing suspicion coloring his eyes. “Nico, has anyone ever talked to you about sex?” 

Nico drops the thread that was going to become a bracelet—now, it’ll never get the chance. “I’m done,” he announces. “This is over. Thanks for the pep talk, really. Bye.” 

He gets up and speed-walks away before Jason or Percy can say something else humiliating. He thinks he’ll head to the lake and drown himself, or maybe stop by the Hephaestus cabin and volunteer to be used in their next experiment, which would hopefully result in his swift and chaotic demise. 

“I think the key here is windows,” Annabeth says, marking something down on her graphing paper. “Your current cabin has none—which explains why you’ve been feeling so trapped. There’s nothing to connect you to the outside world. So I was thinking something that might help, especially at night, is skylights. We could put them here and here.” She makes another few adjustments, then slides the paper over to Nico. “Right above your bed and Hazel’s. What do you think?” 

A lump had formed in Nico’s throat as soon as Annabeth had found him and sat him down in the dining hall to look over blueprints with her. He hadn’t thought Annabeth was serious about redesigning his cabin—but she’s so serious about it that she’s gotten her siblings and the Hephaestus cabin involved, and they’re already ordering materials. 

She wants to have it completed by the end of summer, because that’s when she and Percy go back to the city, and obviously it would be weird for Nico and Jason to sleep in the Poseidon cabin without him there. (Nico is grateful for that, because the only other option is the Zeus cabin, and he refuses to sleep or even step foot in there. The thought alone has him shuddering.)

“Nico?” Annabeth taps the paper with her pencil, drawing his attention. He blinks—remembers that she asked him a question. 

“I think . . . yeah.” He nods, tries to clear his throat of the emotion there. “I like that idea a lot. Could I get a window beside the bed too?” 

“Of course.” Annabeth draws a box on the right side wall. “As for nighttime, and other light sources . . . I’m assuming we’re done with wall sconces?” 

“Definitely,” Nico agrees. “No more Greek fire. No colored lights at all, actually.” 

“That’s easily done. We’ll probably keep all the bulbs around 3000k—similiar to the night light temperatures in the infirmary. Percy mentioned that you had an easier time sleeping there.” 

“I . . . yeah.” Nico’s face burns a little. He still can’t help feeling a little embarrassed about the fact that he needs a night light to sleep, now—but the fact that Percy can’t either, and that Annabeth knows that, makes it a little easier to talk about. “Anything . . . warm. Will says that while I was out of it, he had to pull over some sun lamps to keep me corporeal. I think it would make me feel safer, especially when I have to shadow-travel a lot.” 

Shadow traveling is something he’s been trying not to do as actively since he woke up in the infirmary (the first time, not the second). He remembers how bad he was before he went in—the way his fingertips were starting to go translucent and slip through things. He hasn’t had much time to linger on it with everything else going on, but it’s terrifying that he got to the point of almost shadow-traveling himself out of existence. He doesn’t want to go there again. 

But that doesn’t change the fact that there will come a day where he’ll need to use his powers again—and that day will probably come sooner than he’d like. The chaos never stops for demigods, and eventually, Hades will come asking him to do favors again. When that happens, he wants to be better prepared. 

“Sun lamps! That’s a good idea. I’ll ask Will where he sources the ones for the infirmary—I’m sure we can order a couple.” Annabeth jots that down. 

The surge of emotion returns, making it hard to speak. Nico looks at all the pages Annabeth has spread across the table—math equations jotted in the margins of drawings of the cabin’s interior, little notes scribbled across the areas where Nico had thoughts or requests. Annabeth has taken so much time to not only plan this for him, but to really listen to him and what he wants. No one’s ever asked him that before—especially not when it comes to where he lives. He’s never gotten to choose the color of the walls or how many windows to put in them. He doesn’t know if she realizes what a big deal this is to him. 

“Hey, Annabeth?” 

“Hmm?” Annabeth is making another note on the corner of the page closest to her. Her curls are falling in her eyes, but she doesn’t seem to notice because of how intently focused she is. 

Nico thinks he understands why Percy loves her so much. He doesn’t think he’s ever met someone who throws herself so wholeheartedly into any project to help anyone, regardless of whether she’ll get something out of it in return. He remembers when he was younger, a part of him used to hate her. The other part wished that he could just be in love with her too, because it would have been so much easier. 

Neither of those would have solved his problems, though—and he’s glad now, that he could never hate her. He’s glad that he’s finally, miraculously, at a place in his life where he can see her for who she is and not hate himself for it. She’s kind, and determined, and generous. In a weird way, he thinks Annabeth must see him as some kind of friend. To have gotten so many people involved in helping remodel his cabin, she has to. 

“Thank you.” He has to say it—if he doesn’t now, he thinks he might lose the courage. “I . . . I know I probably don’t deserve your help, after everything. But I’m so grateful. I don’t know how to express it, but I am.” 

Annabeth pauses in her writing to look up at him. Her eyes are a light gray in the sun, with flecks of gold clustered near her irises. Her forehead crinkles, then smooths out as she smiles. 

“You don’t have to thank me, Nico,” she says. “I’m more than happy to help. Camp Half-Blood is my home, and I’ve always felt that way. You deserve to feel that way too. I want this to be your home.” 

That lump is harder to swallow now—it feels like it’s approximately the size of a Hydra egg. Nico nods, looks away, before he can do something stupid like start crying. 

“I want that, too,” he tells her—and the thing is, he really means it. He wants it so badly that his heart aches whenever he thinks about the fact that it might not work out again, just like the other times. He doesn’t want to leave again. He wants this to be his home more than he’s wanted anything in so long. 

The blueprints before him, though, give him hope that this time might be more permanent, after all. You don’t make plans like this just to throw it all away. And the fact that others are helping him makes him think that maybe, this time, people want him to stay. 

It’s a different feeling—knowing that there’s someone who wants you around, or at the very least, doesn’t want you gone. Making plans, and drawing windows, and looking at color swatches. It’s a good feeling, like the beginning of something permanent. Like the beginning of belonging.

Thursday night comes, and Nico finds himself standing on the porch of the Big House nervously. It’s stupid—he comes here almost every day to help Will in the infirmary, he shouldn’t be so nervous to just step inside. But he is. 

Will had reminded him of the Demigod Emotional Support Group earlier, with the little nudging comment that he hoped to see him there tonight. So now here he is, fidgeting and glancing in the direction of the cabins. It would be so much easier to just go back to the Poseidon cabin and listen to Jason and Percy bicker about the rules of whatever card game they’ve decided to play. He could even join in, although he’d eventually get so annoyed at their nonsense that he’d throw his cards at them and quit. 

“Nico?” 

Nico jumps, jolted a little by the interruption—then turns and finds Mitchell standing on the steps. His face burns. 

“Oh. Hi.” 

“Hi,” Mitchell says easily, not seeming to note Nico’s embarrassment. “You here for group?” 

“Uh . . .” Nico casts another glance towards the cabins. “I mean . . .” 

Mitchell snorts, then takes Nico by the shoulder and starts corralling him towards the door. “C’mon, before all the good donuts get eaten.” 

Sure enough, there’s an assortment of donuts laid out across the ping pong table in the rec room. It’s the first thing Nico notices when they step inside, because there’s so many, and in so many different colors: there’s donuts with sprinkles, and pink icing, and donuts with no icing that are speckled with blue or red (fruit, he presumes?), and normal-looking chocolate and plain ones. The smell of baked goods fills the room, which is unfamiliar to Nico, but comforting in a way. 

A few other demigods already occupy the room: Connor and Cecil, as well as Lou Ellen and a few others who Nico recognizes, but whose names escape him. But then there’s Will, standing at the head of the table and passing around plates and napkins. He beams the moment he looks up and meets Nico’s gaze. 

“Nico! You made it!” He sounds pleasantly surprised, like Nico had to make more of an effort than walking up the hill to get here. “I saved you a Boston creme.” 

He reaches for a plate resting on the table slightly to his right, then turns and offers it to Nico like a grand gift. Nico can’t ignore the way his heart does this stupid twisty-thump, the way it screams Will remembered you! He wanted you to come! 

Will saved him a donut. He expected him to come. He meant it when he invited him. 

“. . . Thank you,” Nico says—and he’s unable to sound sarcastic or gloomy or whatever way he’s probably supposed to. He thinks Will probably hears the stupid gooey gratitude in his voice. It causes him to tilt his head, his crooked smile saying something in a language Nico doesn’t yet understand. 

“Of course, Spooky. You can’t have a successful first group session without a good donut! Now come on, let’s grab the comfy chairs before everyone else gets here.” 

_____

Group is . . . weird, unlike any form of weirdness Nico has ever experienced before. And that says a lot, because Nico doesn’t even have a frame of reference to identify normal anymore. 

Everyone sits around the ping pong table—although not necessarily everyone, because Will said that sometimes people who usually come to group don’t show up. Sometimes they’re busy, or they need the week off. Sometimes there are new people, like Nico. No one bats an eye at Nico’s presence, though, which is also a newer experience. They all seem to be too distracted by the donuts, by the small fidget-y items Cecil dumped on the table for everyone to play with, by each other. 

(Nico watches, while trying to pretend he isn’t by picking at small pieces of his donut, the way Mitchell and Connor sit so close that their shoulders are touching. The way Mitchell breaks off pieces of his donut that Connor snatches up from his fingers like a seagull stealing pieces of bread from picnickers on the beach. The way they smile at each other, goofy and open, for anyone to see.)

Will starts group off by tossing a beach ball. It’s the “Sharing Beach Ball,” and only the person who holds it gets to speak. That being said, the moment anyone raises their hand or asks for it, the holder is quick to toss it to them. Nico sits back and quietly watches as the ball passes from Lou Ellen’s hands to Miranda’s, from Miranda’s to Mitchell’s. They all speak openly, honestly, about how their week has been. They talk about frustrations with cabin mates, with recovering from the war and injuries, and with nightmares. Regardless of how serious the subject, everyone listens intently. 

“What about you, Will? How you settling, now that you’re not chained to the infirmary?” Cecil says, tossing him the beach ball. Will catches it easily, twirls it between his hands. He watches it for a moment before saying anything. 

“It’s been hard,” he finally confesses—voice calm, even. It’s jarring to Nico, who has to blink the surprise off of his face before anyone can see. He’s seen Will almost every day this week. 

“Now that the infirmary’s empty, it’s like . . .” Will hesitates, stilling the beach ball. He drops it into his lap. “I can feel some of the old stuff coming back. I have more time to think about it now—the war, and how terrified everyone was. Hell, all my little siblings are still having nightmares every night. And I get it, because . . . because I was scared too. I’m still scared. It was the first time that some of them have seen that kind of violence, and people getting hurt . . . and I hate that I couldn’t stop it. I keep thinking of all the ways I could’ve stopped it.” 

“I’ve been thinking the same thing.” It’s Lou Ellen, on Will’s other side—she reaches over to take Will’s hand, which still rests on the beach ball. “Wondering if there’s some sort of spell I could’ve used that I just don’t know about yet. But Will . . . there’s nothing we could have done beyond what we did. And you kicked ass. Everyone who came into the infirmary came back out.” 

“. . . this time,” Will says. His voice is quieter than Nico thinks he’s ever heard it. He looks small, shoulders shrunk in as he ponders the beach ball. The whole room goes quiet for a moment, taking in that grief—that even if their latest war didn’t kill them and those they loved, people are still gone. The old pain hasn’t been canceled out. 

Then Will clears his throat, shakes the frown off his face. He turns to Nico, beach ball raised, a question on his face. 

Nico shakes his head. Abrupt panic fills him at the idea of having to be honest in front of all these people, people he barely knows. He doesn’t know how to explain that to Will—how to ask him to please skip him—but before he can try, Will is nodding and tossing the ball in the completely other direction. 

Connor starts talking about his cabin’s latest stint gone wrong, and the heaviness in the room is swiftly replaced with laughter and groans of disapproval. Will sits back and listens, smile bright and posture at ease. He doesn’t speak much more during group, but Nico finds himself constantly watching him, looking for some kind of reaction. Will doesn’t show it, though. 

It gives him a lot to think about. So much that he doesn’t even realize until the end of group that he’s eaten his entire donut, leaving nothing but crumbs behind.

Chapter Text

Nico wakes to a series of erratic thumps on Cabin Three’s door. He startles up, banging his head on the bunk above his, and groans in unison with Jason and Percy. 

He glances over to them, bewildered. “Who the fuck is that?” 

Both Jason and Percy appear annoyed and grim. “No idea,” Percy says. “But if it’s about another fucking prophecy I’m going to vault myself into the ocean and never return.” 

Jason, the most civil of them, is the one to get the door. On the other side stands Annabeth, wearing cargo pants, a hard hat and safety goggles, swinging her sledgehammer a bit too comfortably between her hands.

“Suit up, boys,” she says, as her brother Malcom launches three matching hats and pairs of safety goggles at them. She grins, her eyes wild and frenetic, and announces, “It’s demo day.” 

Evidently, many people are excited about demo day. When the three of them step out onto the porch, they’re met with the sight of many demigods rushing around, some carrying construction equipment. Many sport the same hats and cargo pants. All head in the direction of Cabin Thirteen. 

“We haven’t gotten started yet, so if there’s anything you need to take out of the cabin, go ahead,” Annabeth says. “We already removed the shrine to your father, though, and set it in the Big House for safe keeping until the renovations are over. I figured you might want it—but also, I just don’t want to get on his bad side.”

Nico is oddly touched by the thoughtfulness. Not just to asking if there’s anything he still needs out of the cabin—although, he supposes it does make sense, being his cabin and all—but also thinking of his father’s shrine and moving it to a safe location without having to be asked. 

Still, he shakes his head. “Anything else that’s in there, I’m better off without it,” he says. He squints. “Is that a bulldozer?” 

It is, in fact, a bulldozer. The Hephaestus cabin has pulled out all the stops. Harley, the little seven-year-old from the Hephaestus cabin, is practically vibrating with excitement as he runs around with his own sledgehammer (which is nearly as tall as him, might Nico add), asking everyone, “When do we break things? Can we break things now? I wanna use the bulldozer!” 

The thought of such a tiny child being given a weapon of mass destruction is a bit unnerving, but if anyone else thinks so, no one says anything. Of course, he’s not the only young kid present by any means—Nico recognizes a few of the younger Ares and Apollo kids, and even a couple Aphrodite ones, surprisingly. They’re notable by their neon pink construction vests. 

Will is there, chatting with someone whose name Nico is able to place to her face—Nyssa, daughter of Hephaestus. He looks up and smiles when he sees Nico, says something to her before jogging right up to him. 

“Hey!” he says. “Big day. How do you feel?” 

“Half-asleep, still,” Nico confesses. “Somehow I missed the memo that my own cabin was being destroyed today.”

Will laughs. He, like many of the others, looks like he came dressed to destroy stuff. He’s in paint-covered cargo shorts and a tank top, and one of the goofy hard hats that Nico has refused to put on. It sits crooked on top of his head, and Nico instinctively reaches to fix it before he can think it through. Will grins and tips forward a little so Nico doesn’t have to reach so high, and he feels his cheeks flush.

“What are you doing out of the infirmary, anyway?” Nico asks as he lowers his hand, trying to distract himself from the sudden awkwardness squirming inside his stomach. “You’re telling me you don’t think anyone’s going to get injured with a bulldozer and sledgehammers involved?” 

“Oh, I know they will. That’s why I stuck Austin and Kayla in there as punishment for cursing the Ares cabin with the ability to only speak in song form.” Will laughs again, but then tilts his head in the direction of all the imminent destruction. “Besides, I couldn’t miss this. We’re going to say fuck you to the old cabin in the best way we demigods know how. And then we get to start rebuilding your real home.” 

Your real home. The words sound foreign, like Will suddenly switched into Latin and Nico’s having to use more of his brain to translate them. What’s even more unknown to him is the security in Will’s voice—like he’s confident that what they build back will be better, will be a place that Nico will somehow, impossibly feel can be his home. 

“. . . thanks, Will,” he says, kind of hating how gooey his voice sounds, like he’s touched or something. But Will doesn’t seem to hear it, thank the gods. 

“Let’s go grab our sledgehammers. Since it’s your cabin, you get the honor of the first swing.” 

Nico raises his eyebrows. “Is that what everyone’s waiting on?” 

“Of course,” Annabeth says, and plops the hard hat Nico had rejected firmly onto his head. “It’s symbolic. You’re taking control of your destiny—in a safe, well, semi-cautious environment. Hat stays on, di Angelo. Will, watch him.” She hands him a pair of safety goggles.

“Yes ma’am,” Will replies, with a little grin that widens when Nico glares at him. He unfolds the goggles and slides them onto Nico's face as he says, “C’mon, Neeks—today’s about you. Let’s go!” 

A day about Nico. That’s a new one. But he won’t deny that it feels nice to take hold of a weapon-like object. He hasn’t held his sword since he moved it into Cabin Three. Will doesn’t allow weapons in the infirmary, which is where he’s been starting his days, and between that and him and Jason and Percy wanting a break from combat activities, he just hasn’t really needed it. Which is new, and he finds himself instinctively reaching for it even when he knows it’s not there. It feels a bit like taking off a seat belt in a vehicle hurtling a hundred miles down a highway, walking around without it, but the weight off his hip is . . . strangely nice. Also new. 

Regardless, the weight of the sledgehammer in his hands is familiar. He gives it a little test swing, getting a feel for it. Around him, the others begin to take notice of his stance in front of the porch, and the horrible itch of self-consciousness begins to take root under his skin. But then Connor Stoll yells, “Yeah, di Angelo, do it!” and Nico realizes that the buzz around him isn’t judgement—but excitement. Connor and Harley start up a chant of “Do it, do it, do it!” and when Nico looks to his side, he sees Will grinning as he joins in. 

“You guys are ridiculous,” he scoffs, fixing his focus on the hideous porch steps, but he can feel his face burning a little. He takes a deep breath and swings the hammer, smashing through the wood with a loud crash that sends splinters flying out from the impact. Suddenly, he's grateful for the safety goggles. 

Someone starts cheering, quickly followed by “Woop woop!”s and “Hell yeah, Nico!”s, and then everyone else is crowding forward to help destroy Cabin Thirteen. The sound of the chaos is kind of beautiful, and as Nico takes a step back and watches the others get to work, he feels something light and oddly relieved take the place of his self-consciousness. 

This ugly, horrible, nightmarish cabin goes down without a fight, taking with them Nico’s nights of misery, cold and alone and in the dark. He’s already approved Annabeth’s plans for the new model, and it will be nothing like this place. There will be wooden floors instead of stone, skylights for plenty of natural light, a fireplace. He won’t have to worry about being cold, or being trapped in the dark. He’ll be able to look up at night and see the stars and remember that he is still among the living. 

Today, he feels it. The sound of demigods working in unison to destroy something is familiar to him, and strangely comforting. Percy and Jason somehow turn the task into a competition, goading everyone around them to keep score of who’s doing the most damage, getting more riled up as people begin to take sides. He sees Cecil Markowitz taking golden drachmas as bets are placed. 

“They’re so goofy,” Will says next to him, amused. Nico glances to him—he’s stayed by his side, apparently uninterested in taking part in the demolition. But he’s smiling and at ease, like there’s nowhere else he’d rather be on a random Tuesday at eight am. 

“Percy and Jason, or everyone taking bets?” Nico asks. 

“All of them,” Will says, voice fond. “Everyone in this ridiculous camp is a complete, utter goof.” 

“Not me,” Nico says. Will snorts, reaching out to flick Nico’s forehead. Nico makes a noise of affront, but he doesn’t back away, so he wonders if maybe there’s truth to Will’s assessment after all. 

“Especially you, di Angelo. You’re one of the goofiest people I’ve ever met.” And before Nico can try to argue about that, Will spies someone and grabs hold of Nico’s hand to pull him along. “Hey—there’s Nyssa. Let’s go ask her if we can drive the bulldozer!” 

And well—with that level of excitement, how can Nico say no? He follows, hand in Will’s, ignoring the butterflies flapping to life in his intestines. 

Naturally, the infirmary sees a significant uptick in occupants by that evening. Will recruits Nico to help patch up the wounded, which mostly means handing him ambrosia squares and measuring out nectar and unicorn draught. Will does, however, teach him how to bandage up nasty head wounds by using Jason as his test subject. Somehow during their dick-measuring contest, Percy had whacked Jason in the head (thankfully with the handle of the sledgehammer and not the actual hammer part) and split open a nasty, bleeding gash. Percy sits by his bedside now, holding Jason’s hand and apologizing as Nico dabs rubbing alcohol against his forehead. 

“Bro, I promise, I’ll never touch another sledgehammer as long as I live,” Percy swears. “Your safety matters more to me than the thrill of breaking things beneath my manly, godlike hands.” 

“You’re ridiculous, Percy,” Jason says with a roll of his eyes. “You just want me to think you feel remorseful so I won’t try to get you back later.” 

Percy grins. “Is it working?” 

Nico slaps a bandage on Jason’s forehead and leaves before he can do something violent to land both of them in the infirmary overnight. He much prefers the company of Connor Stoll, who isn’t in for any injuries related to the demolition of his cabin, but for pissing off Sherman Yang from the Ares cabin and getting his shoulder forcibly dislocated. 

“Hey Spooky,” he says with a grin, even as Will’s sister Kayla takes hold of his shoulder to yank it back into place. “Ow, gods fuck, a little warning next time, Lala! So uh, how did it feel, watching your cabin be smashed into a million pieces?” 

“Oddly therapeutic,” Nico says. He hands him a shot of unicorn draught laced with Mountain Dew and Connor throws it back almost eagerly. “How did it feel when Sherman yanked your shoulder out of its socket?” 

“Ah, that’s just another Tuesday for me, di Angelo. You’ll learn that once you’ve been here long enough.” 

Before Nico can say anything, Mitchell rushes into the infirmary, immediately recognizable in his neon pink safety vest. He’s accompanied by an equally bright pink and squishy stuffed animal. “Aw, babe!” he cries when his eyes lock on Connor. He rushes over to the foot of his bed and takes off his satchel, rifling through it and pulling out a king sized Kit-Kat bar and a bag of blue Doritos. 

“I came as quickly as I could after I heard what happened,” he says. “I brought the comfort snacks and Mr. Snuggles. But why, oh why did you think it would be a good idea to cheat at cards against Sherman again, especially when he's already pissed off from being cursed?" 

“Mitchell,” Connor whines, glancing at Nico out of the corner of his eye. He looks uncharacteristically embarrassed. “No one’s supposed to know about Mr. Snuggles.” 

“Oh, so you don’t want him?” Mitchell raises his eyebrows, holds the stuffed toy out of reach. Connor balks. 

“Well, I didn’t say that. Give him to me.” He reaches up to snatch Mr. Snuggles away, then winces in pain and flops back against the pillow, clutching his shoulder. “Ow, ow, ow—” 

“Idiot,” Mitchell says fondly, then carefully sets Mr. Snuggles on Connor’s chest and pats his head. Then he looks up at Nico and the gears in his brain seem to instantly switch tracks. “Hey, I was looking for you!” 

Nico blinks. “Me?” 

He wonders what Mitchell could possibly want from him. He mentally wracks his brain, but comes up with nothing. No one ever looks for Nico unless they need something, though. 

“Yeah! Now that construction of your new cabin is about to start, I figured you need a trustworthy interior designer. I love Annabeth to death, and no one can beat her when it comes to architecture, but that girl takes minimalism to a tragic level when it comes to decor. I’ve already got tons of ideas in my sketchbook. You want to take a look?” 

“Oh.” Nico takes a minute to process that. Mitchell wants to decorate his cabin? Mitchell’s already drawn out ideas? To get Nico’s opinion? 

Nico blinks again, this time in an effort to keep any emotion from showing on his face. He doesn’t want to do something stupid like smile or cry. 

“I . . . That’s really thoughtful, Mitchell. I’d love to see them.” 

Mitchell brightens up. “Great! We can go now!” 

Connor makes a noise of affront. “Excuse you? I am injured.” 

“We both know you’ll be back in here next Tuesday. You’ll live, sweetums.” Still, Mitchell bends down to press a loud smooch on Connor’s cheek. Nico looks away, embarrassed and a little uncomfortable. He doesn’t get to linger on it, though, because Mitchell grabs him by the elbow and begins to lead him away, ignoring his squawk of protest at being unexpectedly touched. He has only a moment to call to Kayla, “Let Will know I’m leaving!” before he’s being corralled out of the infirmary and towards the overwhelming muchness of the Aphrodite cabin. 

Across Mitchell’s bed splays a rainbow of paint swatches, rug samples, and different sketches of furniture ideas and layouts. Nico can’t lie—he’s a bit overwhelmed. He’s never seen so many colors, let alone at the same time, and Mitchell’s advice is to “feel the vibes of whichever one is calling to him the most.” 

Nico doesn’t know how to feel vibes. All he knows is that pink and red are definitely out. He stacks all of the many variations of the two colors and sets them aside, but then he’s left with—all the rest. 

There’s so many choices. 

“How am I supposed to decide?” he asks. “I mean, I don’t even know how everything else is going to look yet.” 

Mitchell hums. He sits at the foot of his bed, flipping through his sketchbook, but looks up to answer Nico. “The color you pick kind of sets the mood for how everything else is going to feel. Colors can make a space feel bigger or smaller, and some colors—bright ones, for example—can cause anxiety and stress. Obviously not for everyone,” he gestures around to indicate the Barbie dreamhouse hue of his cabin, “but I get the feeling you’re going to want to go with something more . . . subtle. You’re off to a good start, tossing out the pink and red, since you know that’s not the vibe you want. Let’s go from there, process of elimination. What are the colors you can never see yourself thriving in?”

Putting it like that makes narrowing down the options a little easier. Orange is a no—he sees enough of that around camp as it is—and he’s never been drawn to the color yellow in his life. Blue is complicated, and all of the reasons why make it another reject: it’s too similar to Cabin Three, too much a reminder of Percy. And though Nico knows he’s over it, he really doesn’t want to be reminded of his first crush when he’s just trying to exist. He’s already been there. He has no desire to do that again. 

Purple’s a tough one, because he knows Hazel is fond of it, and he doesn't really have anything against it, but he ultimately puts it aside too. That leaves him with greens and neutrals—gray, brown, black. 

Green. Nico brushes his fingertips over a muted olive hue on one of the paint strips. His throat tightens a little before he even registers why—and then it clicks. Bianca’s floppy, stupid little hat that she always wore. Nico used to tease her for it, saying it looked like a deflated beret. She never paid any mind to his critiques, because he was younger and had no good sense in fashion anyway. Hell, his clothes had hardly ever matched when he was trusted to dress himself. 

She loved that fucking hat. He remembers her lovingly hand-stitching a hole closed in their dorm at Westover Hall. She had compared every different shade of green she had until she found the closest match, and still hadn’t been quite happy with the best choice. Still, by the time she was done with it, no one ever would have been able to tell there was anything wrong with the hat in the first place. It looked perfect, just how she liked it. 

Nico’s fingers close around the swatch. “Is there a way . . .” he falters. “I don’t want the whole cabin to be this color. But if there could be something green—I don’t know, maybe a blanket . . .” 

“Green accents? I’ve gotcha.” Mitchell takes the swatch and draws a star on the shade Nico indicates, then examines it closely. “This is a nice color. You have good taste.” 

Bianca had good taste. If she were here, she’d be rubbing that fact in his face. In spite of himself, Nico smiles. “Thanks.” 

Mitchell sits back, taking a look at all of the remaining options. He hums, tapping his fingers on his knees as he ponders. “If you’re wanting splashes of green in the cabin, you really can’t go wrong with any of these neutrals. But I’m going to throw out my opinion—and it’s just my opinion—that you should go with brown.”

Nico blinks. “Brown?” 

He doesn’t think he seems like a . . . brown kind of guy. Brown is—warm. Like the earth, or hot chocolate. It’s not that he has anything against it, but he would never associate himself with either of those things, and he’s sure that no one else would either. 

Then again, going off of his last cabin, people associate him with skulls and green fire and stone. He doesn’t particularly want to stick with that image, either. 

Mitchell nods, confident. He draws little circles on specific shades as he explains, showing them to him. “I think a warm, deep shade would look really nice. Annabeth mentioned she’s putting in a fireplace, which I think would really add something to it, too. Maybe coffee, or sepia, or syrup? Nothing too warm, but just enough to give that cozy feeling. Which is what I get the impression you’re going for.” 

Nico tilts his head, curious. “What makes you say that?” 

“Well, there’s the fireplace. The only other cabin that has one of those is the Hypnos cabin, and—well. Those guys are experts on cozy. But then there’s what I’ve gathered from Annabeth. Lots of windows, connection to the outside world. I think you want to feel grounded. Not that I know much about what you’ve been up to, the past couple of years—but I can imagine that as a Big Three kid, you never stayed put anywhere long. Tell me, as a Hades kid—do you spend a lot of time in the Underworld?” The tone of Mitchell’s voice is non-judgemental, just curious, which takes Nico by surprise. Normally, people talk about the Underworld with disgust or fear. The lack of either prompts him to answer truthfully. 

“Uh—yeah. I spend more time down there than up here, sometimes.” 

Mitchell nods, like Nico’s just confirming what he already thought. “So, there’s the familiarity aspect too, right? Because you’re trying to become accustomed to being up here, in the land of the living. Brown’s the color of soil, everything under the earth, so to speak. There’s brown in the Underworld, isn’t there? I’ve always imagined so.” 

“. . . actually, yes.” Nico thinks of the packed dirt that makes up its surface, the dried up grass in the Fields of Asphodel, the brown plumes of smoke that swirl up from the Fields of Punishment. The soil in Persephone’s garden. None of those things are exactly appealing, but Mitchell is right—the thought of them brings a sense of familiarity that’s strangely comforting. 

“So there you go. A little bit of the Underworld, a little bit of Earth. I don’t really know how to explain it beyond that, but brown just seems like it suits you. Again, though—just my opinion. We could always go with black instead.” 

“No.” It’s instinctive—Nico’s done with sleeping in the dark. His cabin walls before were black; he doesn’t really see the point in painting them the same color, just to end up where he was before. 

Brown. It’s new. Different. Not something Nico would immediately associate with himself. 

“Brown,” he says, laying out the swatches Mitchell marked so he can compare the hues side-by-side. Soil. Earth. The color that plants grow in, the color that brings forth life. “I like it.” 

“Where’d you disappear to?” Will asks, jogging up to him as he’s leaving dinner with Percy and Jason. They’re on their way to the nightly campfire, and after exchanging a look that Nico knows will mean trouble for him later, they innocently turn away and begin to walk off. Nico watches them, feeling a deep sense of dread. 

But then he remembers he’s not alone, and that he was asked a question. “Oh. Mitchell dragged me away to look at paint samples for my cabin. Sorry, I would have told you, but it was kind of . . . spontaneous.” 

Will laughs. They start walking together. “Don’t worry about it, I know how he is. Had to deal with Connor whining and moping after he left, though. I swear, those two are almost an unhealthy level of codependent. But they're also cute, so I guess they get a pass." 

“Oh.” Nico faces forward, suddenly feeling that if he doesn’t, he’ll lose his footing and go tumbling down the hill. That would be embarrassing. Like the way his voice croaks out, hardly intelligible when he asks, “So, are they like . . . you know . . . ?” 

Will somehow manages to understand him. “Oh, yeah. You should’ve seen them at the beginning of the summer—all the pining and tiptoeing around each other was so annoying. Connor kept pulling pranks that would inevitably go wrong, meaning I didn’t sleep outside of the infirmary for weeks from all the accidental injuries that he caused. Honestly, between that and the whole Romans-invading-camp thing, I would pick the Romans every time. At least they were forward about what they wanted and didn’t have to be locked in a closet to talk about their feelings.” 

“Oh,” Nico repeats. That sounds like . . . a story. He can feel his cheeks burning, and hopes to the gods that it’s not visible. He doesn’t know how Will is so calm, talking about two boys like it’s—nothing. Just another Tuesday, as Connor would say. Does no one give a shit, or is that just Will? Does he ask, or is that wrong? He doesn’t know what any of the rules are, when it comes to this, which is fucking ridiculous considering how much a part of this he is. 

Before he can find a way to dig himself out of his spiral and say something he’ll instantly regret, Will says, “So hey—picking the paint for your cabin’s exciting. What shade did you pick?” 

Paint. Nico breathes a sigh of relief, even though he’d spent the literal hours before dinner talking about nothing else with Mitchell. “I picked dark brown.” 

“Oooh interesting. What shade? Like a deep, cool mocha? Or maybe syrup? Syrup's a good one.” 

“No—like dark brown. That’s the name of the shade.” 

Will laughs, but before Nico can think to react with defensiveness, he nods, ponders a moment. “Straight to the point. No nonsense. Honestly, that’s fitting, Neeks. You seem like a brown kind of guy.” 

“That’s what Mitchell said,” Nico says with a frown. “But I really don’t see it. What about me screams brown?” 

“Well, that’s easy to answer,” Will replies, matter-of-factly, “Your eyes are brown.” 

Nico snorts. For the first time in this conversation, he feels like Will is the clueless one. “What? No, they’re not. My eyes are black.” Black—deep and soulless and void of life. They’re nothing at all like Will’s blue ones, clear like the sky and hiding nothing. 

“I beg your finest pardon?” Will stops walking, which means Nico stops walking too. He turns to face Nico and frowns, like Nico has just gravely offended him by telling him he chose the paint color I killed your grandma and this is her blood, or something. 

“I will have you know that as a doctor, I am an expert in eye color identification. I have to put it on all the paperwork.” Will steps closer to Nico, and Nico doesn’t think to step away, even when Will reaches forward and smacks his hands to both sides of Nico’s face. Nico stares, frozen, unable to comprehend what the fuck is happening what the fuck what the hell what, as Will stares back, unblinking, the little frown at the corner of his lips identical to the one he wears when he’s trying to figure out if he should use nectar or unicorn draught on patients in the infirmary. His hands on Nico’s cheeks burn. Nico wonders if he’ll have a sunburn when he eventually lets go. 

“Yep, it’s as I thought. Or rather, knew,” Will says when he finally drops his hands. “You have brown eyes, you pretty little liar. It’s more obvious in the sun, but they are definitely always a shade of dark-roasted coffee brown." 

“O-oh.” Nico doesn’t have the faintest idea how to respond to that. Part of his brain is screaming did he just call me pretty? The other part is screaming Will Solace just touched my face and stared deeply into my eyes and apparently thinks he knows the color of my eyes better than I do what the fucking fuckity fuck. 

But Will smiles like Nico is not internally descending into a gay panic and puts his hands in his pockets like he hadn’t just done something panic-inducing with them. “C’mon, lets hurry up before we miss the opener. Cecil’s doing his card tricks, and I promised Lou Ellen I’d be there in case he steals an Ares kid’s wallet and needs medical assistance."

Chapter Text

“So,” Jason says, voice a careful neutral that immediately has Nico on edge. “Will, huh?” 

Nico is both thankful that Percy is in the shower, and therefore cannot take part in this conversation, and irritated that this conversation is happening at all. “No.” 

He busies himself with the furniture catalogue that Mitchell had given him, with the instructions to have choices circled and returned within the next two business days. Mitchell is eager to have his cabin fully furnished and decorated before the end of summer, when he goes back to California. Nico can’t believe summer is almost over already. 

“Do you think briar wood or burnt umber would look better in my cabin?” he asks, flipping the catalogue so Jason can see it. He inspects the page carefully, leaning forward to squint at it, then says, “Definitely the burnt umber. The warm tones will go well with the walls.” 

Nico flips the page back towards himself, thinks it over, and nods. “You’re right.” He circles the color and continues to the next page. 

“I’m just saying,” Jason says, “If you want to talk about it, I’m here. You guys have gotten pretty close, the past couple weeks, huh?” 

“We’re friends,” Nico says tersely. He contemplates gold accent throw pillows. Hazel would like them. “Will’s not scared of me. He’s kind of funny, sometimes. So naturally, I don’t mind hanging out with him.” 

Jason scoffs. “Please. He’s kind of funny,” he mimics. “You think he’s cute.” 

“I do not,” Nico denies, too quickly. He scowls into his catalogue. Maybe he decided to convert his aesthetic too quickly. He thinks he should add weapons into his decor plan. A wall of swords would look nice. He could source them from the Underworld—all Stygian iron. Anyone who dared to get up in his space without his permission would, oops, trip and fall into them, getting their soul eaten. He can think of a few potential victims. 

“It’s good that you’re forming new relationships,” Jason says, tone not unlike a life coach’s. “And that you aren’t closing yourself off to your feelings. I’m proud of you.” 

“Jason,” Nico says, “If you don’t shut up right now, I’m going to throw something at you.” 

Jason puts his hands up. “Alright, alright. But, again . . . proud of you.” 

Nico rolls his eyes and immerses himself fully back into the catalogue. Still, there’s this stupid, warm feeling in his chest, like he’s happy that Jason’s proud of him, that he’ll never, ever tell him about. 

The reconstruction of the Hades cabin is off to a good start. The foundation has already been laid, and Annabeth has a team of her siblings and the Hephaestus kids helping to lay the flooring and walls. Nico chose a sleek, dark ebony wood for the exterior—he still has a Hades kid aesthetic to maintain, after all, especially being smack dab between the Hermes and Iris cabins. He thinks he might send Hazel a message and ask her to come visit so she can add some of her gems to the exterior. That way they can both be represented, even if she’s not here. 

“It’s looking good,” Percy says. “Are you going to ditch me and Jason the moment it’s finished?” 

Nico scoffs. “Please. Like you guys aren’t ditching me at the end of the summer.” 

Nico looks away, out over the water. It’s mid-afternoon, and Percy and Jason decided the perfect activity would be to . . . do nothing. Percy’s stretched out along the dock, not wearing a shirt to soak up the sun, while Jason’s smeared in zinc sunscreen that makes him look even more ghostly than Nico as he reads a book on minor deities and their worshippers’ practices. Studying up for all the shrine-building he’s going to be doing over the next year. 

Nico doesn’t know why he had kind of assumed Jason would be staying after summer was over. It’s not that Jason ever said anything to suggest it—but it had still come as a little shock, finding out he was leaving to go to school with Piper in the mortal world and bounce back and forth between the two camps in his down time. 

Nico’s going to be alone this fall, and not just in his cabin. As much as he loathes admitting it, he doesn’t know what he’s going to do without them. 

“Hey,” Jason says, nudging Nico with a little frown. “We’re going to visit. Promise.” 

Nico rolls his eyes. “Oh good, because I’m going to be sitting at the top of Half-Blood Hill every dawn to dusk, waiting for the two of you to appear.” 

“Aw, Nico. I had no idea you cared so much,” Percy says, pressing his hand against his heart. Jason glares at him. 

“Seriously,” he presses. “You can’t get rid of us now. We’re best Big Three brothers for life. BBTBFL’s.” 

Nico stares at him. “You didn’t just come up with that on the spot, did you? You’ve been waiting to use it.” 

Jason grins. He sets down his book and reaches over to drag Nico into his side, squeezing him tight. 

“I’m going to miss you,” he says, and the thing is, he really sounds honest. “Piper doesn’t tolerate my bullshit like you do.”

“You won’t even get to miss me,” Percy says. “I’ll be here every weekend, hiding from Annabeth. You’re gonna get so sick of me.” 

“Bold to think I’m not already sick of you. Honestly, I’ll be glad to have you guys gone. I’ll finally get a peaceful night’s sleep.”

“We love you too,” Jason says fondly. 

Nico turns his face into Jason’s side so neither of them can see the way he has to blink back tears. If either of them suspect it, well, he’s grateful that they don’t say anything. 

Nico’s dreams, as usual, are not pleasant. But they aren’t the typical visions of Tartarus—of monsters being born out of the ground, of drinking from the veins of the living being itself. Instead, he dreams of the aftermath—of when he was plucked from Tartarus’ mouth and was shoved right into the jar, like he wasn’t a living being, but a doll, a plaything, meant to be held over the heads of those more powerful and important than him. 

No one was coming for him. He knew that. He knew Percy too well—knew he’d see through the giants’ ploy and cut the loss, not that he would consider Nico a considerable one anyway. Percy’s loyalty only stretched so far, and Nico had broken his trust too many times to be worth the sacrifice. And the others? They didn’t even know him. 

Hazel would mourn him. He knew it, and he felt like shit for it. He had not been a good brother to her, and he knew he wasn’t worth her tears. But she would cry. With his eyes closed, he could picture it. He had seen Hazel cry before, and it was awful. He would give anything, do anything to keep it from happening. 

But he was in a fucking jar, with no way out, and no one coming to rescue him. The giants got one thing wrong, when they chose him. He wasn’t useful or valuable to the Seven. He wasn’t worth anything. 

So he closed his eyes, and tried not to think about how small he was. He tried to take shallow breaths, preserving what little air trickled through the lid, and he tried his hardest not to cry. The last was the hardest. After everything, it was so fucking unfair that this was how it was going to end, and he wasn’t even allowed to cry about it. 

He was suffocating. He couldn’t breathe, he couldn’t move, he couldn’t think. He begged, begged, his father with every breath that his next would be the last. But it never came. 

Darkness, then light. The lid of the jar lifted. It was over. 

When Nico opens his eyes, watery sunlight is trickling through the windows. He can hear the sounds of Jason and Percy moving around, getting ready for the day. But when he tries to sit up—he can’t. 

His eyelids feel heavy. His lungs feel tight—like someone’s got their hand around them, squeezing just enough to make it hurt to breathe. He tries anyway, and regrets it. His next breath comes out in a strangled wheeze. 

The sounds in the room pause. Percy’s voice, “Nico?” 

Nico squeezes his eyes shut. He can feel the tears at the corners of his eyes. He curls his knees in tight to his chest, because that seems to be the only movement he’s capable of, and lets his next breath shudder out as a sigh. 

“Hey.” Movement at the edge of his bed—someone sits. “Nico? You feeling okay?” 

Percy puts his hand on his shoulder. Nico doesn’t flinch. He doesn’t even open his eyes. He thinks about being in the jar. He thinks about dying without ever hearing Percy’s, or anyone’s voice ever again. 

“What’s the matter?” Jason, now, worried and settling on Nico’s other side. He reaches out to feel his forehead. “He doesn’t feel warm . . .” 

“I’ll go get Will,” Percy says. His weight leaves Nico’s bed, and Nico still doesn’t move, even though he wants to tell him not to get Will. He’s not sick. He doesn’t need a doctor. He doesn’t need . . . anything. 

Is he even alive? Shit, sometimes he doesn’t know. He doesn’t feel alive. He feels . . . gone. He remembers his fingers dissipating into shadows, the terror that had run through him as his powers had begun to eat him up from the inside out. 

He just feels bad. He can’t pinpoint a pain, or an ache, or a problem. He doesn’t want to move—his limbs are too heavy. He feels like a corpse, like he should be in a coffin somewhere, in the ground, like maybe he should still be in that jar, wasting away. He can see his skin rotting off his bones, his eyes lifeless, his lungs unmoving. Maybe he should be that version of himself. 

“Hey, Nico,” Jason murmurs. “It’s okay. Whatever’s wrong, we’ll fix it, yeah? We’re here.” 

Nico thinks, for a moment, that it would be easier to rot if he were alone. But then he thinks about being alone again, and the hand around his lungs squeezes so tight that he can’t breathe at all, for a moment. He feels Jason’s pick up his own—warm, human, alive. Jason is alive. Which means Nico must still be, too. 

It doesn’t change anything. It doesn’t make the badness inside of him go away. If anything, it makes it worse. Why can’t he sit up and just act normal, stop Jason from worrying? Why can’t he even squeeze Jason’s hand back? 

Why can’t he do anything? He’s capable of doing many, many things when he thinks he’s past the point of unbearable exhaustion. He’s traversed Tartarus, and survived being held in a jar, and shadow-traveled a statue halfway across the world—and he really thought that would be the thing to kill him. But he’s so fucking tired, now, and for what? Yesterday, he sat in the sun and looked at furniture. Yesterday, he ate a s’more at the bonfire. Yesterday, he was fine. 

But he doesn’t feel fine. 

“Nico?” A new, softer voice. Nico recognizes it instantly—he wants to open his eyes and tell him to fuck off, Nico doesn’t want him here, Nico doesn’t want him to see him looking like shit again. How many times has Will seen him in a horrible, hideous state now? Even if Nico did have feelings for him, Will would never so much as glance at him like that. Not after seeing him . . . in all of the awful ways Nico is. 

“I’m going to take your temperature,” Will says. Nico hears the scanner gun beeping, knows what it’ll tell him. No fever. Nico isn’t sick. He’s just . . . broken. 

He lets Will check the rest of his vitals, mostly because he’s unable to do anything else. He doesn’t move at all, which he’s sure makes checking his heart and lungs difficult, but Will seems to manage it, because he doesn’t say anything, and he doesn’t try to make him move. When he’s done, he hears him sigh, smells the faint mint of his breath. 

“I thought so,” Will says. He reaches out to brush Nico’s tangled hair off his forehead. “Sadly, this isn’t something I can help. It’ll have to pass naturally.” 

“What? Why?” Percy asks, concerned. “What’s wrong with him? I thought you could cure like, any physical ailment. I’ve seen you reattach limbs before, Solace.” 

“Well, sure,” Will replies. “But this isn’t physical. Unfortunately, my father’s gifts don’t extend to healing depression. If they did, half the camp would’ve been cured ages ago.” 

“Depression?” Jason repeats. “But . . . If Nico’s depressed, wouldn’t he have already been showing symptoms? I mean, yesterday he was fine, and now he can’t move.” 

“That’s the tricky thing about mental illness. It comes and goes.” Will sighs. “My guess is that Nico’s—er, sorry, I’m not trying to talk about you like you’re not here, Neeks. You’ve been in fight or flight mode for so long, your brain’s never had a chance to just shut down before. Now that you’re in a safe location and have had some time to process, your brain chemicals may be going a little haywire. Honestly, I’m a little surprised it hasn’t happened yet. A lot of us have been crashing, post-war.” 

Nico appreciates being talked to like he’s present, even if he doesn’t feel like he is. Will’s words are kind of watery, like they’re right above the surface of a pool, and Nico’s trapped under it. Depression. Is that what this feels like? It sounds pathetic that after everything, he can’t move because he’s, what? A little sad? 

“Okay, but you said there’s nothing you can do,” Percy says. “What about medication? Chiron won’t let you order in anti-depressants?” 

“That would be a hard no,” Will says. “I’m trained enough to know the symptoms, sure, but I can’t just be handing out Prozac to every kid in this camp who needs it. I’ve got an older sister in the city who’s a trained psychiatrist, and when things are extreme enough I refer campers to her, but putting someone on medication before trying to address the problem holistically is just bad practice.” 

“How do we address it holistically, then?” Jason asks. “How do we help him? And how long will he be like this?” 

“Hard to say. Could be a few hours, or a few weeks. All you can really do in the meantime is just . . . be here. Try to get him to eat, maybe, or drink water. Talk to him. Give him time.” 

“Got it,” Percy says. He sighs. “I’m going to go get breakfast for us, then—maybe a fresh cup of coffee will animate him a little. Jason?” 

“Yeah,” Jason says. Nico realizes he’s been holding his hand this whole time. “I’ll hold down the fort. Thanks, Perce. And thank you, Will.” 

“Of course. I wish I could do more.” Will sighs. “I’ll stop in to check on you, Nico. I hope you feel better soon. I know this sucks.” He squeezes Nico’s shoulder, and the warmth from his fingertips is almost jolting, even though Nico’s T-shirt. Almost. 

Will leaves, and Percy returns. Nico hears Jason and Percy’s soft chatter distantly, but doesn’t catch onto any of the words. He smells coffee, knows Percy asks if he wants it, but he doesn’t respond. He can’t. Jason reads aloud to them from his dusty, boring book until Percy can’t stand it and says, “That’s it, I’m going to get an actually good book from Annabeth.” He disappears and returns, and then Jason reads them Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Nico recognizes the story, he realizes with what surprise he can muster. Bianca used to read it to him, first in Italian, and later in English when they were learning. It was one of her favorite books. He can almost hear her voice, in place of Jason’s. 

Nico feels hot, silent tears gather behind his eyelids and spill over. If either Percy or Jason see them, they don’t make a big deal out of it. Jason reads, and Percy interjects his own commentary, until the sound of their soft bickering lulls him back into uneasy sleep. 

Nico dreams of the sky alight with fire, of Octavian’s sneer and his screams as he died, of himself standing still, careless and heartless and selfish. 

The greater good echoes in his ears, a lie he never believed, a lie he’s always told himself. What is the greater good, if death is necessary to achieve it? And who is Nico, to have washed his hands clean and let the Fates do as they pleased? Who is he to have caused death, to have melted Bryce Lawrence into nothing with the sheer force of his own anger and hatred? 

He’s disgusting, everything about him is disgusting, is a horror not meant for anywhere but nightmares, and he’s sure he has caused many, many more nightmares than he has had. The guilt and shame on top of the depression is suffocating—Nico can’t breathe, he can’t breathe. 

He hears the sound of rain, pattering softly on the roof. He hears a door open, and the rain becomes louder, bringing with it its electric, heady scent. 

He almost regrets when the door shuts, dulling the sound. “Hey, Neeks,” Will says, and Nico forgets all about the rain. 

He feels him sit down on his bed; smells something sweet and fragrant that he can’t quite place. Will’s hand is on his face, brushing his hair away again. Nico is sure he looks like a complete, absolute mess. 

“Brought you a cup of hot chocolate and a donut,” he says. “I pulled a favor and even got you a Boston creme. You don’t have to eat it, though.” 

Nico manages to open his eyes—a struggle in itself, considering how crusted they'd gotten with his tears—just in time to watch Will rifle through his tote bag and pull out an animal-shaped pillow. 

“This is Rosie. She’s gotten me through a lot of bad days and nights, so I thought maybe you could use her. She’s got a whole backstory—her family’s British, and she likes to drink tea and eat biscuits. Great company.” 

Will sets down the pillow by Nico’s hands so that it’s easily accessible. After a moment, Nico finds that he is able to work up enough strength to reach for it. It’s . . . squishy, doesn’t even need that much force to mold under his fingers. He slowly pulls it into his chest, wraps his arms around it, and sighs. 

“You won’t believe what happened in the infirmary today. So Reggie—one of Lou Ellen’s siblings—came in for some Tylenol, and while I was getting it for them, Drew from the Aphrodite cabin also came in. And you know how Drew is—well, maybe you don’t—, but she can be pretty mean when she wants to be. Like, she’s made Mitchell cry so many times, but then again, lots of things make Mitchell cry, so maybe that’s not the best proof. Anyway, she made this snappy comment to Reggie, and they got pissed, so they cast a spell and now Drew has temporary scaly skin. Not like, dry skin—like draconian, snake-like skin. Oh, she is livid, but she couldn’t do anything because her charmspeak wouldn’t work on Reggie.” 

Nico has never spoken to Drew, but he’s seen her around. Tall, pretty, perfect hair and expensive clothes. He can see how someone like that would get angry about being turned into a reptilian. He opens his mouth to say something, croaks a little, closes his mouth. Will waits patiently, like he can sense that Nico’s trying to speak. 

Nico huffs, frustrated, and manages to get out, “Why wouldn’t her charmspeak work?” 

“Reggie doesn’t like girls. Gay people have a pretty convenient work around for that particular magic, huh?” Will laughs lightly. “Anyway, it should wear off in like, a day or two, but in the meantime she’s stomping around camp making as many people as she can miserable.” 

“Sad that I’m . . . missing out.” It takes a minute to say. Will laughs again. 

“Don’t worry. Someone else will find another way to piss Drew off before the end of summer.” 

The end of summer isn’t very far away, anymore. Nico closes his eyes, sighs. 

“Think I’ll be out of bed by then?” 

“Knowing you?” Will pats Nico’s knee. “You’ll be up in time for Capture the Flag this weekend, I guarantee it. After all, somebody’s got to help me patch up Percy and Jason after they fuck each other up.” 

Nico manages a small snort. “Sounds riveting.” 

His stomach chooses then to make a loud, embarrassingly long rumble. For a moment, he thinks maybe they’ll both choose to ignore it. Then Will says, “So, about that donut?”

With a sigh, Nico lets Will pull him up so he’s sitting against the pillows, so he won’t choke to death while eating. Will hands him the donut wrapped in a napkin, and Nico picks apart a small piece with his fingers. Then another. Suddenly, he’s starving. 

Will watches him, but after so much time under his doctorly gaze, Nico’s learned how to ignore the self-consciousness around him. He eats the whole thing in less than a couple minutes, and before he can say he’s still hungry, Will’s pulling a sandwich out of his bag. 

“How did you know?” Nico asks, shaking his head as he takes the sandwich. 

“I didn’t. I just hoped.” Will pulls out another sandwich for himself. They eat in silence, and when his sandwich is gone, all Nico can do is sit back and watch Will back. The sandwich settles in his stomach like a stone, and he somehow suspects that his moment of lucidity is going to come to an end. 

“Do you really think I’m depressed?” he says. He doesn’t know what answer he’s looking for—he guesses he just wants to hear it again, while he’s still capable of fully processing it. 

Will chews his sandwich for a moment, thinking. There’s a crumb at the corner of his mouth that Nico would be tempted to wipe away, if he had the energy or the courage. 

“I think you’re definitely experiencing depression right now,” he finally says. “But do I have enough information to know if you’re depressed— as in, if it’s your constant state? No, I don’t. Brains are funky, and they never act quite how you expect them to. It’s possible you’ll wake up tomorrow feeling fine, and then go months and months before feeling down again. Or it’s possible that it’ll be something that comes and goes permanently, and you’ll have to find ways to treat it when it does. But either way, you don’t have to deal with it alone. We’ll figure it out together, yeah?” 

“. . . okay.” Nico lets Will press the cup of hot chocolate into his hands. It’s still hot—it’s in one of the magic goblets, which holds its temperature. But it doesn’t burn when he takes a sip, and he welcomes the rare sweetness. He stares into it, thick melted chocolate, little marshmallows dotting the top, and his throat works as he tries to gather the courage to ask a bigger, scarier question. 

His dream is still echoing in his ears. He can hear Octavian’s screams. He wonders if Will hears them, too. If he ever dreams about it. If he has nightmares like Nico does. 

“Do you think I’m a bad person?” 

Will looks taken aback by the question. He shakes his head, almost absentmindedly, before asking, “What, for having a depressive episode? Of course not.” 

“Not that.” Nico clutches the goblet with both hands. It’s heavy—he worries it might spill if he doesn’t. “The . . . the Octavian . . . thing. We haven’t talked about it, but I—I’ve dreamt about it. Why do you even . . . why do you talk to me? Why aren’t you disgusted or—or horrified?” 

Will reaches out to put his hand over Nico’s, and he realizes then that he was about to spill the drink all over the blankets. “Nico . . .” Will hesitates. “Yeah, I think about it, too. I see Octavian in my dreams. But the thing is, I was there with you. I could’ve said something. But I didn’t, because . . . because sometimes, to end a war, people have to die. And if it was between him and my family? My friends?” Will shakes his head. “I know it’s selfish, but I’ve lost too many people. I wasn’t going to sacrifice them for someone who was never, ever going to accept a ceasefire and agree to peace.” 

Nico thinks about that, but can’t think of anything to say. He sighs, pushes the goblet further into Will’s hand. Will takes it away. 

“I just feel . . . bad,” he says pathetically. 

“I get it,” Will says. “Trust me, I do.” A pause, and Nico listens to their breathing in the quiet. “Do you want to lay back down?” 

Nico nods. Carefully, Will helps him lay back on his side, pulling the blankets up to tuck securely around his shoulders and settling Rosie against his chest. 

“I’ll stay with you until Jason and Percy get back from dinner,” Will tells him. “But you can go back to sleep. You’re safe here.” 

Safe. It’s still not a word Nico fully knows—it’s still so new, and uncertain, and untrusted. But he closes his eyes, because though he doesn’t know a lot, he does know he trusts Will. Will hums softly, a song that Nico doesn’t recognize, until it carries him away into sleep. 

When he wakes again, the rain has passed, and the sun filters warmly into the cabin. He blinks against it, eyes sensitive and sore, and tries to roll onto his side, only to bump right into the side of Jason’s leg.

He’s sitting up against the headboard, reading once again from his thick, tedious book. He glances down at Nico, smiles weakly. “Hey,” he says. “How you feeling?” 

Nico takes a moment to think about it. His left elbow bumps against something soft, and he looks down to find Will’s squishy cow stuffed animal. His heart does a twisty thing that he decides to ignore. 

He thinks about Mitchell rushing into the infirmary to see Connor, bringing with him snacks and Connor’s own stuffed animal. He thinks about Will bringing him a donut, sitting with him in this bed when Nico knows he must’ve been the worst company. Then he decides to ignore that too.

“Better,” he finally says. “Sorry for . . .” 

He doesn’t know where to go from there. Sorry for having another mental breakdown in the span of like a week. Sorry for being so pathetic. Jason shakes his head. 

“Don’t. You have nothing to apologize for.” Jason closes his book. His expression is serious, which is pretty on-brand, but Nico still isn’t used to having the sheer weight of his gravity focused on him.

“I’m going to tell Piper I’m staying here for the school year,” Jason says. “I think it might be more . . . prudent. I don’t want you to be here by yourself, trying to deal with this alone. You don’t deserve that.”

Nico pushes himself to sitting up, shaking his head. “Jason, no. Don’t be ridiculous.” He hugs Will’s pillow to his chest, thinks about the warmth of his presence near his own. He thinks of him saying we’ll figure it out together. “You can’t change all your plans because I had one bad day. Will doesn’t even know how often it might happen—it may not happen often at all. And I’m not alone.” It’s almost impossible to believe, saying that out loud—but it’s true now, isn’t it? He’s not alone. He has Will, and Percy and Annabeth are only a quick shadow jump away in the city, and Connor and Coach Hedge. He can always Iris message Hazel or Reyna if he needs to. Maybe it’s still not many people in the grand scheme of things, but it’s far more than he’s ever had before. 

“I’m really grateful that you care enough to consider it,” he says. “Really that’s . . . so nice of you. But you don’t have to stay here to be my emergency babysitter. I’ve survived worse on my own.”

Jason doesn’t look particularly convinced by Nico’s assurances. He looks . . . kind of sad. “Nico, I don’t think I need to be your babysitter. But I made a promise to you that things would be different if you stayed at camp this time—and now so many of us are leaving. I don’t want you to feel . . . abandoned. I don’t want you to think I’ve stopped caring.” 

“I won’t think that.” There’s a lump in Nico’s throat. He refuses to cry. He absolutely refuses. “I know you care. No one’s tried as hard as you have to make me believe people might actually want me around. I’m not just going to forget that the moment you leave. I literally couldn’t if I tried.” 

Jason seems to take a minute to digest that—to really consider Nico’s point of view. Then his shoulders slump; he sighs. 

“I just . . . I’m going to worry about you so much,” he says. “Maybe not necessarily that you’ll leave, but . . . I want you to be happy. And if you’re not happy, I want you to have people you trust who you can talk to.” 

“I have those people,” Nico reminds him. “You’re only an Iris-message away. I know you’d answer any time.” 

“. . . that’s true,” Jason acquiesces. “Any time. You can even shadow-travel over if Will lets you.” 

Nico snorts. “Yeah, that’s not happening anytime soon,” he says. “See? I’ve got someone ready to replace your mother-henning.”

Jason’s mouth quirks. “We should start an emotional support group to discuss strategies and tips for handling you.” 

Nico rolls his eyes, but he isn’t really annoyed. He bumps Jason’s arm with his own elbow. 

“For the record,” he says, “I want you to be happy, too. After everything, you deserve to just try to be normal. Even if it doesn’t work long term—at least go, so you can say that you tried.”

“Yeah,” Jason says, his half-smile still there, mood lifted. Huh. Did Nico do that? “Okay. But only as long as you promise to call. Weekly. I expect to hear from you.” 

“Yeah, yeah.” He makes it seem like it’ll be a chore, but he already knows he’s going to look forward to it. 

Things to look forward to. He’s probably going to need those. And the strange thing, the new and kind of wondrous thing, is he’s got them.