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Nico woke up feeling too tired and sick to ignore it. His skin was scorching hot, causing him to sweat enough for his shirt to stick to his back. He coughed as he kicked the blankets out from on top of him and kept coughing as he reached a hand to the side table. His eyes felt swollen, but he could still see a rash spreading from the upper part of his arm. Fuck, he told himself as he tried to make sense of the situation at the same time he finally found a single drachma on his nightstand and the prism necklace he had gotten from the Iris Cabin.
“O Iris, goddess of the rain…” A coughing fit stopped him for some seconds. “Bow.” He finished before he started to cough into his fist. “ Cazzo… Show me Will Solace, at the infirmary.”
Despite the multiple breaks, Iris was kind enough to listen to his call and grant his wish. In front of him, the happy face of Will appeared in the mist. The boy seemed to be filling out reports at the infirmary, dressed with his medic outfit, which consisted of adding a coat on top of his camp shirt and changing flip-flops for crocs. A part of him wanted to wait until Will noticed the message himself, just so Nico could observe his relaxed face a bit more, but another cough disrupted his plans.
“Hm? Neeks!” His blue eyes lit up for a moment before gloomy worry took over them. “You’re sick.” He stated. Nico had already guessed that far, but hearing his doctor boyfriend say it so plainly and definitely didn’t cheer him up.
“Yeah.” He cleared his throat. “Looks like, eh, scarlattina ?”
Being with the Apollo kids so often meant that he heard a bunch of highly scientific and specific medical vocabulary he didn’t know how to use while simultaneously not knowing the common English name of illnesses he had only learnt in italian.
“Scarlatina? As in, scarlet fever?” Will asked, tilting his head. “Are you not vaccinated against it?”
Nico tried to look back. Little by little, he had started to get his memories from the 30s and 40s back, but searching for something as specific could be a bit hard. He closed his eyes and took a hand to pinch the bridge of his nose, trying to think of his mom or Hades taking him and Bianca to the doctor. He knew he had gotten some vaccines —he had multiple memories of him being scared at the needles—, but he had no idea which ones. Finally, he found a very fuzzy memory of a kid from school telling him another classmate was at home with scarlatina and his reply being “I just got vaccinated for that!”
“Think I am.” Nico said, trying to think of what else it could be. “Big case of varicella?”
Will looked at him, eyes full of worry and both hands together in a finger gun that rested against his face, right under his nose, as he studied Nico’s symptoms.
“You’re not vaccinated against chicken… varicella, are you?”
“It has a vaccine?”
A long sigh escaped Will, who dropped his head and moved his hands to caress his temples before talking.
“You haven’t gotten a single vaccine since you went into the Lotus, have you?” Nico shook his head no. It wasn’t anything he had even stopped to consider. He listened how, under his breath, Will said something along the lines of “I’m gonna shoot myself in the foot” and waited until his boyfriend turned to him again. “Don’t even think about leaving your cabin. It looks like measles and those were eradicated from the country in 2000.”
“Eradicated?” He asked before being sent into another coughing fit. In the mist, Will was standing up and packing a first aid kit with medical paraphernalia Nico didn’t recognise.
“Pretty much reduced to zero with the vaccine.” Will said, opening the door to his office and shouting into the other room: “Kayla, tell Chiron to order one of each vaccine discovered after the 40s, will you?”
“One of each!?” He heard Kayla shout confused.
“I reckon we are gonna need them if we don’t want the whole camp to catch eradicated shit. We have a patient from the 30s, remember?” It wasn’t as loud, so Nico couldn’t make the words up as well, but Kayla said something that sounded slightly like “oh, Gods” and had a bit of “how did we miss that?,” as well as some cussing into it. “I’m fixing to leave to his cabin!” Will shouted in the direction of the door, having moved to put on some gloves and a mask. “He’s got measles.”
“Measles!?” The girl made it into the office, as if she wasn’t going to believe Will unless he said it up close. The blonde pointed to the Iris Message, where Nico was dry coughing again. He had been close to death too many times to say he felt like he was about to die, because it was nothing in comparison, but he could have very easily done without the fucking measles. What even was a measle? “Gods above, that looks awful.”
Nico would have given her a sarcastic thank you if he could speak.
“Make him company till I get there, alright?”
She nodded and Will made it outside the room. Kayla approached the call, smiling too much for the situation, and Nico’s throat felt too hoarse to greet her with anything other than a nod.
“Hey, there! Do you know how vaccines work, Nico?”
“They poke me and I suffer?” She shook her head at his reply.
“I mean the science behind them! But I promise you won’t suffer once we get around to vaccinating you.” She started. He tried to believe her, but apparently needles still weren’t his cup of tea after all those years. “Will will be super careful with you, I promise! Heh, Will will, that’s silly, isn’t it?”
He didn’t have the energy to laugh, even if it was a bit silly, but at least the idea that it would be Will vaccinating him made him feel a bit better.
…
Will made him into his cabin without Nico having to open the door, and as much as he was sure it had been locked, he didn’t really care about the ins and outs of his entrance as long as he had him close by. He closed the door behind him and took the chair from the desk he had added in order for Hazel to have somewhere to sit on to draw whenever she stayed at camp. Then, he sat down next to Nico, carefully caressing his sweaty hair.
“Oh, angel, you look like you’ve been rode hard and put up wet.” He mumbled out before Nico could shift his eyes from Kayla, who was waving goodbye as she broke the mist call, to him. He said nothing in reply, nuzzling into his touch instead.
“Glove…” He complained, noticing he didn’t get full contact with Will’s warm hand. He expected the other to say something, but instead, Will just took the gloves off.
“You’re lucky I’m immune to this.”
“Child of Apollo?”
“No, modern medicine.” Will laughed stiffly. “I can’t believe we forgot to ask you about vaccine history.”
“Am I gonna need a vaccine for this shit?” He asked.
“Nope, long as you survive you’ll be immune for life.” Will said. “And you’re not dying on me, honey.” He stated as he began rummaging through his bag. “I might could check if we have a broncholytic later, but I think you won’t need it.”
“You’re so southern today.” He said, not wanting to know what a broncholytic was. Will presented him a spoonful of something Nico accepted without question, thinking it was ambrosia. It tasted way too horrible to be ambrosia, he found out, but he still forced himself to swallow.
“Thank you, it comes up when I’m nervous, and I tend to get nervous when the love of my life comes down with something that’s been eradicated for about 10 years.” He said, cleaning the spoon and handing him a bottle of water. “You should hear yourself.” Will took the bottle back into his hands when Nico struggled to open it. “I haven’t heard your accent this strong since right after Half-Blood Hill.”
“Thank you.” He said, both to copy what Will had said earlier and to thank him for opening the bottle. He took a sip and continued. “It comes up when I’m tired, and I tend to get tired when I come down with whatever a measle is.”
“It’s measles, in plural.” Will said, closing the bottle.
“Still don’t know what they are, though. You don’t happen to know the Italian word for it, right?”
“I can give you the other names it has in English and see if anything rings a bell.” Nico nodded, thinking it was a good idea. “Up the top of my head, there’s measles, there’s rubeola and there’s morbilli.”
“Oh, morbillo !” He said. Nico had just enough energy to raise his hand and lazily cross himself. “ Ave maria, gratia plena… ” His own coughing cut the prayer soon after he started.
“Shh, leave the talking to me.” Will said, placing one hand on Nico’s feverish forehead and another in his chest. “ Mnísomai oudé láthomai Apóllonos ekátoio…” He began chanting in Ancient Greek. The boy stopped after one minute, making Nico pout at the loss of contact. “How do you feel now?”
“Better.” His throat and lungs felt less clogged now, and the swollenness of his eyes had decreased. “Thank you.”
“I am gonna bring you something to eat, alright?” Nico groaned, not wanting to eat anything and feeling nauseous just thinking about it, but his stomach rumbled and betrayed how hungry he was. “I know, sweetheart. But you’re thin as a store-bought thread and if you don’t get food in your system during illness you’re gonna have it way rougher than you need to. I’ll bring something you like. What are you feeling like?” Nico pouted harder, but it didn’t work. “Nico…”
“Soup?”
“I’ll ask if there’s any.” Will smiled. “Rest until I come back, alright? And drink lots of water.”
After some long minutes, Will came back with a bowl of hot soup in one hand and his red Nintendo on the other. He set the console on the nightstand and helped Nico sit up properly.
“Want me to feed it to you?” He asked. Nico shook his head no, even if he thought the offering was a cute gesture, and took the bowl in his rash-covered hands. “Okay! I am giving you a tiny dose of nectar as dessert.”
“Woohoo.” Nico cheered. He made it sound dry on purpose, but it wasn’t like he was opposed to the idea of a bit of nectar. He kept eating his soup before turning to Will. “Mamma got morbillo once. I thought about it while you were gone.”
“Really? Lift your arm for me, hun.” Will asked at the same time he placed a thermometer in his axile. “It must have been scary with how medicine was back then.”
Nico shook his head.
“The doctors weren’t sure she’d make it.” He explained between sips of soup. “But Bianca told me she was sure she would. That she felt it, and I felt it too, so I didn’t question it. And, well, of course our father wasn’t worried. It makes sense now, heh.” He looked at Will’s beautiful face as the blonde picked up the now beeping thermometer. “What’s the diagnosis, doc?”
“101 degrees.” Nico raised an eyebrow, making Will roll his eyes. “39, I think. It’s a lot, but it’s good for measles. It’ll go lower with the nectar, and I will sing you another hymn later. A mortal lasts about 7 days with it, but you should recover in two or three. Now, I need to know what you’re vaccinated from.”
“It’s hard to remember that stuff…” He complained. “Can’t you do some Apollo thing to find out?”
“I have never tried.” Will said. “But I’ll try for you.” Nico placed his spoon on the bowl and Will took his hand between his, cupping it and surrounding it in warmness. “ Eísi dé formízon Litoús erikydéos yiós… ” His hymn died in his mouth, which pronounced the words quieter and quieter each time until Nico was confident he was singing them in his head instead. He didn’t mind, seeing as it gave him a chance to just hold Will’s hand. After some time, the other raised his eyes to look at him. He seemed tired, as if he had just made a huge effort —he probably had, but Nico would feel too guilty if he dwelled on that thought— but he was smiling nonetheless. “New power unlocked. And, good news, you are safe from tetanus, smallpox and diphtheria! Also, typhoid fever and tuberculosis are out of the way, which is great. I’d say that’s mostly everything you could have been vaccinated from.”
“Those are a lot.” Will’s face betrayed that it wasn’t much compared to everything he was gonna have to get. “I don’t like that face.”
“It’s alright, you’re just gonna need…” He pulled out a clipboard from his bag and counted, mumbling some words under his breath. “Chickenpox, mumps, meningitis, paplo… paplio… papil… this one, hepatitis, shingles…”
“I don’t even know what half of those are.” Nico complained. “And I hate needles.”
Will smiled softly to him.
“It’s fine, angel. I will be there with you through them all, alright? Holding you and keeping you warm and safe.”
Nico held out his pinky.
“Promise?”
“Promise.” Will stretched his finger. “Do you want dessert now?” After a small nod, Nico was being fed a portion of ambrosia so tiny it was outrageous. It tasted like ice-cream, though, so he didn’t comment on the size. “I brought you my DS if you wanna play, but also, I have a bunch of free time.” Nico raised his eyebrow at that again, surprised to hear Will had free time. “I let Austin and Kay in charge. Chiron agreed this was a rather special occasion. I was gonna ask if you would be okay with me staying to look after you for some hours.”
When wouldn’t I be okay staying with you for some hours? Nico wanted to ask. Instead he cleared his throat and requested: “Can we play Mythomagic?”
They played about 5 matches until Will got tired of losing. After that, Nico offered to give him some tricks and hacks to win more often, but the next 2 matches they shared after that didn’t show much improvement on his side. They made a list of things Will could bring him later to make his two or three days of confinement and recovery easier. It featured a computer from the Athena camp in which they could watch stuff together and the blonde’s favorite comics, among others. Nico would say they had a rather good day, as long as one ignored the multiple times they had to stop in order for him to take another sip of his newly developed enemy (cough syrup) and receive another hymn. Will’s watched beeped after some hours of quality time.
“Oh, it’s time for supper.” He drawled out. “Mind if I use your shower really quick, honey?”
Nico shook his head no and told him to go ahead. Meanwhile, he entertained himself by taking the Nintendo from the nightstand and continuing his and Will’s shared file on Pokémon Diamond. He got over the toughest part of a gym before the other left the shower, hair damp and dripping into an orange shirt and jean shorts unbuttoned. He shoot a smile at Nico, who wanted to complain about how the other could be so nonchalantly handsome as if it didn’t rock his whole world every time he looked at him.
“It’s chilly these days, mind if I borrow a hoodie?”
Nico was so busy staring that he almost forgot to nod.
“Yeah, you can take one.”
“Thank you, sweetheart.” Will walked to his closet and picked out Nico’s skeleton hoodie, putting it on in a swift motion. “You’re not seeing it ever again, by the way. How do I look?”
“Good enough for me to allow you to steal it.” He scoffed.
“I would kiss you so bad if I hadn’t just disinfected myself from your eradicated disease.” He smiled. “I’ll bring you some food later, sweetheart. Remember to rest and drink water.” The boy said, walking up to the door and swinging it open before turning back to Nico again. “Oh! One last thing!”
“What is it?”
“I love you!”
With all the strength he had (which wasn’t much, considering the measles) Nico threw a pillow at him.
“Sap.” They both laughed as Will walked back inside to return the pillow to him. “You know I love you too.”