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For someone who made a habit out of collecting Grammys like one might collect vintage stamps, Naomi Solace lived a relatively modest life. The exterior of the Austin house she bought with the revenue made from her second record resembled something out of a Homes and Gardens magazine rather than an extravagant mansion. The house was painted a clean white, while the front door was a bright red surrounded by a wooden porch. A bench swing decorated with matching pillows swayed lightly with the breeze as Nico and Will walked along the sidewalk up to the house. Nico knew from past visits to Will’s childhood home that many of the flowers that lined the driveway were planted by Will and Naomi and were loved with meticulous care whenever they were around.
If Nico personally asked Persephone and Demeter to watch out for their plants during one very embarrassing family dinner, that's only for them to know and Hades to laugh at.
Camp had only been in session for a couple of weeks, so the Texas heat was teetering between pleasantly warm and excruciatingly hot. For all the time he spent with the children of the sun, Nico still didn’t know how to handle the warmth that overtook the summer days. He could almost hear Will’s chiding tone in the back of his head. “Wearing black clothing is only going to make it worse”, and “Black absorbs all light as opposed to white which reflects, leaving people cooler”, and “You are going to pass out from overheating in that”. But Will didn’t understand that he had a reputation to uphold and a bet with Jason to win.
Currently, Will wasn’t complaining about Nico’s wish to die of heat stroke, or explaining the story of every seed he’d ever planted in the yard, or naming every little crack in the sidewalk. He was, however, clutching Nico’s shirtsleeve with a grip that could rival the dead. He also looked sick.
He took stock of Will for a moment. His hair, which usually glinted in the midday light, lay limp against his forehead, and his eyes were two shades too dark. Will, despite being taller than Nico, was slumped into Nico’s side. “Hey, are you good?” He wrapped the arm Will was clinging to around his shoulders, bringing him closer and bearing some of his weight.
“Haven’t, ugh, haven’t shadow traveled in awhile. Never that far. Might die.”
“You aren’t going to die.”
“You’ll be at my judgment, right?”
“Will.”
“Or at least put in a good word with your dad.”
“Will.”
“Oh, Gods. I don’t have a will… Ha, Will doesn’t have a will.”
“William.”
“Tell my mom I love her.”
“Tell her yourself, dumbass. Come on, we are twenty feet from the door.”
“Want a nap.”
“Okay.”
The few other times Nico had been to Austin involved a road trip, a lot of gas station food, and tales of every musician that came on the radio. He adored those trips. This time, however, Will wanted to surprise his mom for her birthday, and neither of them had a car. Will had planned on flying back home, but Nico didn’t trust him in Zeus’s realm after Apollo’s impromptu punishment. Thus, even after arguing about Nico’s health for three days and only yielding after getting the medical opinion of two of Will’s siblings and Chiron: shadow travel.
“You were so worried about me, but you look like you’re about to keel over.”
“Must I remind you that you almost dissolved into shadows.”
“I was fourteen.”
Will only grunted and put more of his weight onto Nico as they walked up the five steps of the porch. Nico took it upon himself to knock on the door because Will was too busy attempting to burrow himself into Nico’s shoulder to search for his house key.
The door was flung open with a fierce excitement Nico often only saw in his boyfriend. On the other side of the threshold stood a woman with curls that matched Will’s, but colored similarly to fallen autumn leaves, not the gold of an early morning. They had the same freckles that danced along their noses and cheekbones, the same blue eyes that seemed to know all the secrets Nico never wanted to share.
People at camp would often remark how similar Will looked to Apollo, but that wasn’t the case. Will had his dad’s golden hair, sure, and maybe his flare for dramatics could make the Titanic look like a comedy, but everything else was Naomi. The twist of his mouth when he smiled, the scrunch of his nose when he laughed, the demeanor that would make even the highest government official comfortable enough to spill all classified information. All from Naomi Solace.
“Boys! What are you— how are you— what?”
Will decided that Nico was no longer worth his time and threw himself at his mother, pressing his face into her neck. “Hi, Mama. Surprise.”
“Hi, my beautiful boy. Oh, I’ve missed you,” She said, wrapping her arms around Will’s shoulders. “Have you gotten taller?” Will shrugged. “Are you feeling okay?”
“Nico tried to kill me. Need nap. And sunlamp.”
Naomi looked at Nico then, raising an eyebrow.
“Shadow travel.”
“Ah. He did always get motion sickness really easily.”
“Slander,” Will protested lightly as he slipped from his mother’s grasp. “I know your birthday isn’t for another couple of days, but I wanted to surprise you. How about I make you dinner after I sleep for a bit?”
“You know I love you, but I don’t want you burning down my kitchen. Counter Proposal: we order pizza and a movie of my choice?”
“Pizza, movie, and a round of uno.”
“You are so on.”
The Austin night sky was a beautiful sight. The moon softly lit the backyard of the Solace’s estate in a way that would make Apollo jealous. Will’s old brightly colored play structure was muted in the dark, the unlit fire pit rested forgotten with the collection of empty chairs and crickets for company. The occasional lightning bug flickered into existence before vanishing into the night again.
Nico sat in the living room, curled in the nook that looked out upon the yard and the pond on the outskirts of the property. A book of nineteenth century short stories he found wedged between two different copies of The Picture of Dorian Gray in the library hours ago lay forgotten by his side. Will ended up sleeping through dinner, the hypocrite, and after checking that he was still breathing, Naomi and Nico ordered pizza for themselves and played seven rounds of Uno before Naomi taught Nico how to play Texas Hold ‘em. Oh, if the Lotus could see him now.
Naomi had retired to bed hours ago, and even though Nico felt comfortable in this home, he found it hard to sleep. He’d spent several hours tossing and turning in the guest bedroom Will long since designated as his. When he eventually fell asleep, he was haunted by nightmares that left him shivering and aching.
So he had made his way downstairs, careful not to make any sound or turn on any lights. Being surrounded by photos of a family that seemed intent on keeping him around, even if he couldn’t make out the details of Will’s bright smile or Naomi’s thoughtful eyes, eased the panic in his chest.
The creak of a stair was enough for Nico to snap out of his peaceful trance and materialize his sword from the shadows of the room. This house might have the best security money could buy, but monsters and the mist aren’t known for playing by mortals’ rules.
Spinning around, instead of facing the decrepit snarl of a monster, he was greeted by the messy curls and wide eyes of his boyfriend’s mother standing on the last stair, hands held in surrender.
“Oh! I’m sorry! I’m so sorry! I heard a noise and I thought—”
“Nico. Nico, kiddo, it’s fine.” She sounded entertained as she dropped her hands and stepped off the final stair. “Thanks for protecting the house.” Her lips turned upwards as she let out an amused breath. “How much damage can that nerf gun do?”
Nico looked down at the stygian iron sword in his hand and tried to imagine it as the toy rifle Kayla had stashed in her bed, loaded and ready for when her brothers got on her nerves. He almost laughed. “Uh. It’s a sword, I think the mist is hiding it from you.”
Naomi’s smirk fell and her eyes focused in on the sword in his hand as if she could will the mist to vanish. For all the stubborn strength she held, the magic of the world she only knew through stories and the scars on her son was not something she could manipulate. “Oh. Well, it’s just me.”
In the past three years, Nico has spent a fair amount of time alone with Naomi Solace. She may be a country music star known for her storytelling prowess and her predisposition to pissing off half her fanbase on a regular basis, but Nico had only ever known her as Will’s mother. She had always made it a point to make Nico feel welcomed into the life she built for her family. Even when there are things he refused to share with her or moments that should have terrified her (how did a hellhound get in a Buc-ee's anyway?), nothing seemed to phase her. She took everything in stride and with a confidence that everything would pan out, but now it seemed as if she was having a moment of realization.
“Are you having trouble sleeping?” Nico snapped his head to Naomi, who was heading towards the kitchen. With her back turned, he sent the sword back into the shadows and followed dutifully behind her. “Every time Will is home, whether it's for a night or for the school year, I wake up in the middle of the night to make sure he’s okay. After his first run in with a monster, I would get these nightmares every night around three am. For a few weeks, I thought the devil was at work. An idle mind is the devil's workshop, after all. Thought I was going to have to get an exorcism.”
Something Nico had come to notice about Naomi, is despite no longer participating in the religion her parents raised her in, almost two decades later she would still say things that would make people think she attended church every Sunday. She had once told Nico that she was “an atheist in the eyes of everyone normal,” because how does one explain that she once believed in a higher power, then didn’t, then discovered gods are real, but she doesn’t hold much respect for ancient beings that treat their children like playthings.
“Uh, yeah. I tend to have nightmares about… various things. Most often Tartarus.’
Naomi shuffled around the kitchen, filling a small pot with water and placing it on the stove. “Is that what you dreamt about tonight?”
“I, uh, no. Well, not quite. More like the direct aftermath of Tartarus.”
“First or second time.”
“Second. Will, he was so sick down there. And even when we got back, there were moments I thought he wouldn’t—” He cut himself off when he heard Naomi take in a sharp breath. Perhaps, it's not the best idea to tell a mother he thought her only son could have died. “Sorry, I shouldn’t have said that.”
Naomi shook her head, grabbing two mugs and filling them with the hot water. “Don’t apologize. I know y’all don’t like talking about what happened, but I can decipher the basics.”
“Still, no one wants to hear that.”
Naomi walked into the living room, setting both mugs, now steeped in tea, on the coffee table. “If you want to talk, I’m more than willing to listen.”
Nico took a sip of the tea, studying Naomi. She’d never been anything less than genuine with him and she wouldn’t start now. “When he slept, his breath would sometimes get too shallow and he wouldn’t breathe for too long. Every time I wanted to shake him awake to make sure he was still here, even though I knew he was. If he were to… I would be the first to know. Even now, though, I find myself seeking him out at night just to hear his breathing.”
Naomi took a moment to swirl her tea around her cup before speaking again. “This is going to sound bad, but that makes me feel better. Not that you get nightmares and feel the need to make sure he’s still alive, that's terrible, but that you watch out for him like that.” She looked across the room, a vacant expression clouding her face as she formed her next words. “I used to call Chiron when I got nightmares after he left, just asking for him to go check on him for me. Eventually, he stopped answering my calls after ten pm. I can now usually go a few weeks in between nightmares, but when he’s home, it’s like my body knows I’m the only thing between him and danger.”
“If you ever want someone to check on him for you, you can just call me. The Hephaestus cabin made a few demigod safe phones and all head counselors got one. They are meant for emergencies, but I think only your son follows that rule. Percy, Jason, and Piper keep trying to get me to play 8-ball with them.”
She looked at him and for a moment Nico could see all the effects being a mother to a demigod has done to her. There's a hollowness in her eyes that Nico had never seen on her, but he’d seen before on the face of Sally Jackson when she thought no one was looking.
Eventually, she smiled again, the very smile that has charmed crowds. The same smile she shared with her son. “You’re a good kid, you know that?”
“Thank you, Ms. Solace.”
She let out a dramatic groan then, slumping back into her arm chair. Perhaps the dramatic gene was hers after all. “It’s Naomi. How many times do I need to tell you?”
“I’m sure one more time will do the trick.”
Naomi rolled her eyes before setting her cup down and heading towards the TV stand. She rummaged through DVD cases for a moment, moving Will’s Star Wars collection to the floor before holding up a clear plastic case with a DVD inside. Written on top: 1997 - 1999. “So the other day, I was going through the storage to find some old demos of mine and I stumbled upon some DVDs of photos and videos of Will when he was little. Would you like to see?” She’s got this glint in her eye and Nico mostly recognized from Percy and Jason when they are about to embarrass him.
“Shouldn’t we wait for Will?”
Naomi shrugged, “He’s seen these all before. Plus, this is part of my obligations as a mother.”
And, well, Nico can’t tell her not to fulfill her duty.
The screen was completely black except for small white text at the bottom right that said “Nov. 17, 1997“ and a voice, clearly Naomi but younger, spoke, “Will? Will, honey, what are you doing?” The TV screen lit up to a scene of a small child sitting on the floor surrounded by plush animals and various plastic toys. If Nico hadn’t known it was Will, he wouldn’t have recognized him. His golden curls were hidden under a bright red hat with a stylized fire on the front and his eyes were covered by a pair of oversized sunglasses – probably Naomi’s at some point. Most noticeably, his freckles, the ones that cascade over his nose and never fade even in the coldest, darkest days of winter, had multi-colored bandages stuck on top.
Little Will looked up sharply when he heard his mother’s voice, causing the glasses to tilt and slide off his face revealing bright excitable eyes. “Mama! Doctor!”
“Oh, are you playing doctor?”
Will nodded with a seriousness that Nico couldn’t help but laugh at. It was so reminiscent of his attitude in the infirmary. A quiet determination to prove himself useful and worthy of his title as head medic, even when no one questioned his skill. It was a simple, universally known fact around camp that Will could pull off miracles. Everyone’s best bet was to be seen by Will, even a toy bear.
The video shook a little as the video zoomed in on the environment. There were several bandages tossed across the floor and one stuck to the wall. A plush penguin sported a neon green bandage right across the eye and was in the process of receiving one on the mouth.
“Is Mr. North Pole hurt?”
“No, he's cold.”
Naomi let out a laugh that shook the camera again, “Oh, my bad. Carry on.” And the screen went black again.
“So, he’s always been that way?”
“Medically interested? Yeah. When he was… Oh, I don’t know, three hours old, he grabbed the stethoscope of one of the doctors giving him a check up. I didn’t think much of it, and honestly partially forgot about it, until Will told me about working in the infirmary for the first time.”
“Was that weird to you? Finding out who Will’s father was and everything that meant?”
“Oh, yeah. I don’t remember much of that time, to be honest. I just remember being in a constant state of panic for about a year and punching a guy at the grocery store in the nose for calling me “sweetheart”. I kinda snapped. I was mostly terrified for his life, nothing else really set in. It wasn’t until later that I started to question what might have been genuine interest and what was divine intervention. I’m still lost about all of it, honestly.”
“I often wonder what makes the gods decide when to explain what’s happening and when not to. My mother knew, or at least it seems like she did. Ms. Jackson knew, to some extent. Beryl knew. I know Hermes' partners tend to know. I’m not sure who doesn’t tell or if it depends on the partner.”
Naomi shrugged. “From my understanding, Apollo was not the best person before his whole,” she waved a hand around, “thing. It wouldn’t surprise me if that was just an Apollo specific trait.”
“Does that bother you?”
“It used to, but we didn’t really know each other when we were together. I thought we did, but looking back I’m not even sure I ever told him my middle name. But I knew I loved him, and despite the fact that we didn’t know each other as much as we probably should have, it hurt to lose him. I don’t have much to complain about, though. I got Will out of that hurt. Hell, that relationship practically paid for this house. I was broken-hearted for a while, and I was angry at myself for being a fool, but I was young, only a couple years older than you are. So I’ll give my younger self grace, because in many ways she was just a kid.”
“That's really commendable.”
“Thank you, honey. But don’t get it twisted, I was angry for a long time. I was heartbroken for a long time. I wished that I could go back and make different choices and I wished that I had better luck, but eventually I looked around and counted my blessings. It's a balancing act sometimes. Recognizing that you’ve been wronged and you deserved better but also knowing that life is really good. You know what I mean?”
Nico nodded, taking another sip of his tea. He’d known for a while that his younger self deserved better, but he was content with where he was now. He grieved constantly, but he laughed more than he sulked nowadays. He didn’t have many memories of being a true child, happy and carefree, but he hoped he could be like that as an adult. It was what his family wanted for him, and he was working on it.
“I know you were born in a time before shit like this was readily available, but do you have any childhood keepsakes?”
Nico shook his head, “No, not really. I used to have a collection of trading cards, but I threw them away.”
“What about your dad?”
“Hades? What about him?”
“Yeah, does he have anything of yours? Or has he ever told you any stories of what you were like as a baby?”
“Uh, not that I know of.”
Naomi hummed, unsatisfied. “You should ask next time you see him. I know y’all have a fraught relationship, but maybe it would help the two of you to discuss the past a bit. Learn a bit about the person you used to be. Share a laugh.”
“Our relationship has been pretty good recently, actually. It helps when we have family dinners and a certain goddess isn’t around. And besides, I’m not sure learning what I was like back then would help anything.”
Naomi got that all-knowing look in her eye, one that Will has often tried to emulate. He tended to look more like a frightened baby bear than anything else. “On the days where I’m hard on my past self, I like to look at photos of who I was then. I listen to the songs I wrote. I read the emails I sent to my friends then. Sometimes, as people get older, we forget the context of our actions. We place the knowledge we have now onto the people we were then, before we ever learned the lessons that taught us differently. So we judge our past self harshly and feed into a cycle of self-hatred. Sometimes, it’s easier to be kind to yourself when you remember that there was a time you didn’t know any better. And sometimes the easiest way to do that is to hear childhood stories. Knowing how I acted at three, how it affected how I acted at thirteen, how that influenced my actions at twenty-three, so I can learn from my mistakes at thirty-three, and hopefully know better at forty-three.”
“That… that makes sense.”
“And who knows, maybe you’ll be able to remember an old interest that got lost to time. Or have a cute story about yourself to tell your friends.”
Nico gave Naomi an incredulous look, “you think I’ll be interested in the same things I was interested in as a toddler?”
“Will was playing doctor before he could string a proper sentence together.”
“I don’t think I was holding funerals for my toys at two years old.”
Naomi let out a snort, “sure, but what if you were?” Then, on-screen three year old Will was asking someone to help him on the swing.
After about ten minutes of watching Naomi’s collection of home videos, the stairway light flicted on and the sound of grumbling followed the sound of descending footsteps. Will appeared, hair tassel with sleep and frowning.
“Mama. Nico.”
Nico let out a short laugh at Will’s begrudging acceptance of his life as Naomi stood, pausing the video and grabbing her now empty mug.
“Hey, Hun. Did we wake you?”
Will nodded, accepting a kiss on his cheek from his mother as she passed him. “It's four am. Ain’t I the one that's supposed to wake up obnoxiously early and wake y’all up in the process?”
Naomi and Nico shared a look, a moment of understanding passing between them. He doesn’t need to know that, even when asleep, he was still the reason they woke up in the middle of the night.
Will clambered over to the couch, curling himself into Nico’s side like he belonged there. “What were y’all laughing at anyway?”
“You,” Nico replied honestly.
“I was asleep.”
“Yeah, for thirteen straight hours.”
“We were watching some of the DVDs Uncle Andy had put together of some of your baby videos,” Naomi called from the kitchen. “You were a cute kid.”
“I’m still cute,” Will grumbled, though it was clear to Nico that Will wasn’t fully invested in the conversation. He was still weaving between consciousness and sleep.
Nico pressed his lips to the top of Will’s head, trying to ignore the way Will’s hair tickled his nose as he did so. “If you think bedhead is cute, then sure.”
“I think your bedhead is cute.”
“No flirting with me when your mother is in the next room.”
“Why? She knows. Should I come out to her again?
Naomi walked slowly back into the room, eyes intent on the two mugs she was holding. Placing the newly acquired mug in front of her son, she gave Will a critical look. “Oh, because it went so well last time?”
“I was eleven!” Will cried, hiding his face further in the crook of Nico’s neck. That wasn’t a story Nico was privy to just yet, but as Naomi pressed play on a video of a four year old Will attempting to play t-ball, Nico pressed another kiss to the top of Will’s head and allowed himself to feel excited about learning more of Will’s past. And perhaps, if he was lucky, some of his own.