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Nico hadn’t even known that Will was at the dining pavilion until the end of lunch rolled around and Will appeared beside him at the Big Three table, shoving a stopwatch under his nose. The numbers flashed up at him, paused at 17:38, and Nico felt himself flush.
“Beat your record,” Will said, a grin in his voice, before he started to walk away, off to the Apollo cabin’s first afternoon activity.
Nico huffed as he got up to clear his plate, pointedly not watching as Will left the pavilion. There was no point when he would be out of sight soon enough, anyway.
The game had started because Nico was a liar and a coward.
He was trapped in the infirmary for three days of mandatory bed rest after restoring the Athena Parthenos, and kept getting caught staring at one particular son of Apollo, more times than he would have liked. (Preferably, he would rather that he wasn't caught at all.)
He’d been studying the other boy, trying to figure out why everyone seemed to like him, and why just the thought of being near him made Nico feel like he’d touched a powerline.
Will always grinned when he caught Nico, rather than looking annoyed or grossed out, and Nico always looked away as fast as he could, pretending he didn’t exist. Until Will started confronting him, and then Nico was screwed.
“See something you like, Ghost Boy?”
Nico crossed his arm and turned his head away. “No.”
“Well, you had to be looking at something,” Will pressed, sitting down on the edge of Nico’s cot and leaning in, like he was trying to stare through Nico’s soul. Nico looked anywhere else. “C’mon, now you’re not even gonna look at me?”
Nico’s shoulders hitched. “I don’t like eye contact.”
“Oh.” Will leaned back instantly, turning his head toward the window over Nico’s shoulder, as if Nico hadn’t said anything unusual. Like it was normal to feel uncomfortable looking someone in the eye. “That’s okay. I’ll keep that in mind. But seriously, why do you keep staring at me?”
Nico drew his legs up, his knees pulled to his chest. “Sorry, I’ll stop. I didn’t mean to creep you out.”
Will laughed, stirring up butterflies in Nico’s stomach, even though he hadn’t said anything funny. “It’s not creepy, and I didn’t ask you to stop. I just want to know why. Do I have something on my face?”
“No,” Nico said quickly, and then scrambled for anything that could be believable, as long as it wasn’t the truth. “I wanted to see how long it would take you to notice.” Oh, gods, that was probably creepy, too, wasn’t it?
“Oh, cool,” Will replied, surprising Nico once again with his nonchalance. “How long did it take this time?”
Nico blinked, and glanced toward Will. He was still smiling, his gaze flickering between the window and Nico, but he mostly seemed to look at Nico’s hair. Gods, when was the last time he’d washed his hair? Why did he care all of a sudden?
“If you’re trying to see how long it takes me to notice, aren't you keeping track?” Will asked. “I would kind of like to know how long you’ve been staring me down, if only so I can be sure I haven’t been ignoring my favorite patient for, like, an hour.”
“Not an hour,” Nico told him, though his mind was suddenly circling around favorite patient. That must have been a joke, right? “Maybe… five minutes?”
Will hummed. “Not bad, I guess. But try to make yourself a little more noticeable if you need medical attention, alright? Five minutes isn't a terrible reaction time when nothing’s going on, but it’s horrible if you’re choking on a grape, or something.”
Nico snorted, and practically felt the room grow warmer as Will started beaming.
“Feel free to get my attention if you just want to hang out, too,” Will offered. “I know it can get pretty boring in here, but having good company always helps the time pass by a little quicker. And you know what…” Will fiddled with something on his arm, and the next thing Nico knew, Will had grabbed his hand to wrap something around his wrist. “Next time, keep track for me. I wanna see how good I am at paying attention to my surroundings. Just press this button to turn on the stopwatch.”
Will pulled his hand away a second later, and Nico stared down at the simple digital watch on his wrist, the stopwatch already speeding along.
Nico still kept an eye out for Will even after he’d been released from the infirmary. He tried not to stare as often, not wanting to get caught by Will or anybody else at camp who might think he was being a creep. He did still, on occasion, tap the stopwatch button on the watch Will had given him whenever he was sure Will couldn’t see him. The highest time he’d managed so far was just shy of eight minutes.
There had been a few times, back when Nico was still in the infirmary and shortly after he’d been released, that he would look for Will, hand ready on his watch, and find Will already staring back. His smile always brightened when Nico spotted him, at least as far as Nico could tell before his eyes darted away, sure his cheeks were tomato red.
It seemed like, now that summer had ended and camp had mostly emptied out, it was too easy to spy on Will in peace. Nico had given up on his quest of finding out what was so great about Will Solace.
Almost.
Jason had dragged him out to the campfire, probably the last of the season since it was getting colder and colder overnight, and Nico had been busy pretending to hate the experience thoroughly until a hand landed on his shoulder that nearly startled him out of his skin. A familiar figure - really, too familiar, after so much staring - dropped down onto the seat beside him.
“Gods, Solace,” Nico grumbled, “you can’t sneak up on people like that.’
“I would think our resident master of shadows would be a little more aware of his surroundings in his natural element,” Will replied. Was he teasing him? Nico made sure to roll his eyes as dramatically as possible to make sure his annoyance was clear, even in the dark. Will bumped his arm, and Nico glanced toward him with a frown before he noted something glowing between them - sort of like the watch on Nico’s wrist, but bigger; about the size of Will’s palm. “You should really pay closer attention, mister dark lord.”
Nico looked down at the screen, the numbers flashing steadily though the screen itself stayed lit. The stopwatch read 9:13.
“Nine minutes?” Nico said, horrified. Will had been watching him for that long? What had he been doing in the last nine minutes? He’d had a s’more - did he chew with his mouth open? Did he have chocolate on his face? Oh, gods, what else? What did Will see? “The longest I’ve managed wasn’t even eight minutes!”
Will shrugged. “Guess I’m just better than you at your own game.”
“What game?” Jason asked, leaning slightly into Nico’s side, and Nico felt himself stiffen. He’d forgotten Jason was even there.
“Nico passed the time when he was in the infirmary by seeing how long he could stare at me before I would notice,” Will answered, tucking his stopwatch away in the pocket of his hoodie. He was grinning, Nico could hear it in his voice; this was definitely teasing. Nico wasn’t sure what exactly he was feeling, but it sort of made him want to scream until a crack opened in the ground and a hundred skeletons crawled out. “I thought it sounded fun, so I started doing it, too. This is the first time I’ve broken his record, though.”
Nico whipped toward him, grateful that they were far enough away from the fire that he couldn’t clearly see Will’s eyes. “You’ve been watching me this whole time?” he exclaimed.
“You didn’t know?” Will asked, like it should’ve been obvious, somehow. “You’ve caught me a bunch of times already.”
“Yeah, but I didn’t know you were timing me,” Nico complained.
Will bumped Nico’s shoulder with his own. “To be fair, I didn’t know either, the first few times. Truce?”
In the dim firelight, Nico saw Will’s hand appear from where it had been hidden in his hoodie pocket, his pinky outstretched toward Nico.
“I don’t think pinky promises are generally used to seal a truce,” Nico said.
“Alright, fine,” Will said. “Not a truce. How about an agreement to start fresh? But I still get to keep my record time.”
Nico’s eyes narrowed. “You’re not gonna keep it for long,” he said, and quickly hooked his pinky around Will’s, breaking the hold only a second later.
“We’ll see about that.” Will stood up and said, “See you around, Nico.”
“Not unless I see you first!” Nico shot back, hunching his shoulders as Will started to laugh on his way back to his original seat.
“Fun game,” Jason commented, and Nico flinched, forgetting, once again, that his best friend was seated beside him. What kind of freaky Apollo aura did Will have that made Nico forget the rest of the world existed?
Nico huffed. “You can’t join.”
“I wouldn’t want to,” Jason replied. “I don’t want to interrupt your weird flirting.”
“It’s not--” Nico squawked, and thankfully realized how loud he was speaking. “We’re not flirting.”
“If you say so.”
Nico didn’t know what the tone of Jason’s voice meant, but he didn’t like it.
For a while, the loudest anyone had heard Nico di Angelo speak was when he would cry out, “Caught you!” and point in the direction of Will Solace, who would laugh, look at something in his hand, and sometimes call out a number. Usually, that number made Nico growl and stomp his feet, which only made Will laugh more.
Sometimes, Will Solace would look up, smile brighter than the sun, and wave in the direction of Nico di Angelo. “Caught you!” he would say in a friendly tone, and Nico would shout out a number that would make Will laugh or call back, “I’ll get you next time!”
None of it really made sense to anyone, but the speculations into what was actually happening made camp gossip interesting enough.
There was only so much to do around camp to keep people occupied during the slower months. Nico spent most of every day in the arena, training on his own or accepting challenges from Ares campers who thought they could take on a so-called hero of two wars. (Nico had never liked being lumped in with the other heroes of the war - it felt wrong when he’d really only shown up at the end both times.)
It was nice to stay in practice, though. Sword fighting seemed to be a great way to bond with the other campers, and it didn’t involve touching, talking, or eye contact. Nico had gotten to know the fighting styles of almost everyone at camp, and really, wasn’t that better than knowing their names or favorite colors?
He’d been sparring with Nike-girl-who-favored-her-left-ankle when he noticed a small crowd forming in the stands off on the edge of the arena. Normally, he wouldn’t pay them any mind, but he’d spun to dodge a swipe from the girl’s sword, and swore he caught a flash of blond curls among the stands.
Nico dodged another hit, parried, swung a few times on his own, and then as soon as he saw an opening, he turned back to the stands, his left arm extended and his sword pointed straight at Will as he shouted, “Caught you!”
He didn’t have a chance to feel satisfied at catching Will in the act before the back of his knee erupted, knocking him off his feet as his leg was sliced open. He cried out in pain as he fell flat on his chest, his sword flying out of his hand as he went down.
Distantly, he heard the Nike girl rambling apologies, but then Will was kneeling at his side, offering comforting reassurances as he assessed the damage. “We need to get you to the infirmary, okay, Nico?” Will said, and then he placed a hand on Nico’s shoulder, hesitating. “The back of your knee… This is going to make it tricky to carry you, so bear with me for just a--”
Nico reached out blindly until his hand wrapped around Will’s wrist, and he dragged them both into a shadow.
They emerged in the infirmary, and instinctively, Nico tried to land on his feet. His injured leg gave out underneath him, and when he went down, his head connected with the edge of a cot.
Nico woke up feeling groggy, his leg aching and his head throbbing. He groaned, the only noise he could manage - because he’d been told to do whatever he could to get a healer’s attention when he needed to - and within seconds, there was a hand on his arm and a warm, calming presence at his side.
“Good morning,” Will said softly, not-so-subtly pressing his fingers into Nico’s wrist to check his pulse. “How’s my favorite idiot feeling?”
Nico frowned. “Don’t call me an idiot,” he mumbled.
“Then you should probably stop doing stupid things,” Will replied lightly. “Catching me in the middle of a fight? Shadow traveling us both to the infirmary? You probably would have passed out on your own just from overexertion, even if you hadn’t hit your head when you landed. I’ll need to do another concussion check soon, by the way.”
“You said you couldn’t carry me,” Nico said. “Easy fix.”
Will scoffed. “Sure, super easy. Definitely made my life easier when I still had to manhandle you into a bed.”
Nico winced. Will didn’t sound happy about that - annoyed, maybe? “I’m sorry,” he muttered.
Will squeezed his arm. “It’s okay,” he said, his voice going quiet. “I’m not upset. I was worried about you. But I’m glad you’re awake. How are you feeling?”
“Bad,” Nico answered easily. “My head hurts, and my leg hurts, and my stomach is a little… funny.”
Will nodded. “That can happen with head injuries. Is it okay if I check your head?” Nico hummed an affirmative, and Will rolled himself closer on his bedside stool. A hand landed on Nico’s cheek, turning his head toward Will just slightly. “I’m going to have to look into your eyes,” Will told him. “I’m sorry. It’ll only take a second, but if you feel more comfortable, you can try to look right through my head.”
Nico braced himself, but a light was shining in his eyes a second later, and he couldn’t see much of anything until Will had already moved away.
“Looks much better,” Will told him. “I’ll need to change the bandages on your leg before I can discharge you, but other than that, you should be back to normal in a few days.”
“How long until I’m discharged?” Nico asked.
Will shrugged. “Lunch today. Dinner at the latest. Can I talk to you about something, though?”
“Maybe,” Nico said, his eyes narrowing. “What is it?”
“This game we’ve been playing,” Will said, speaking slow like he didn’t want to talk about this at all.
Nico’s eyes dropped to his bandaged leg, propped up with a pillow. “You want to stop, right?”
“No, not at all,” Will said quickly, his hand resting on Nico’s wrist once more. When did he start being okay with Will touching him so casually? “I’m just thinking… Maybe the arena should be off-limits, you know? Just so everybody stays safe. So you stay safe.”
Nico felt himself flush, so he turned away. “I guess that’s fine. And just so you know, whatever record you got while I was out doesn’t count.”
“Of course not,” Will said. “That wouldn’t be fair. I mean, how could you even try to beat twelve straight hours?”
“Twelve hours?” Nico repeated. “I was out for that long? You… You watched me for that long?”
“No!” Will exclaimed, his hands flying up as if to prove his innocence. “That was a joke! I-- I checked on you a few times, but-- No, I was asleep until about half an hour ago.”
Nico exhaled, letting himself relax slightly. “Oh. Okay. Good.”
“So, anyway,” Will said, spinning slightly back and forth in his chair. “I was thinking I could grab breakfast for us? You’re the only patient right now, but I have a feeling the peace and quiet won’t last for long, since Chiron’s been planning some camp-wide bonding activity. But, um. Waffles?”
Nico’s lip twitched. “I like waffles.”
Nico monopolized most of Will’s time up until he was dragged away by the carnage that came after the camp bonding activity. (He’d gotten a pass from participating on the grounds that Nico shouldn’t be forced to sit in the infirmary alone for however long the activity was supposed to take.)
As far as Nico could tell, the activity had been some sort of nearly-deadly obstacle course, based on the complaints he heard as injured campers filed in one after another, and given the varying wounds they all possessed. Nico was happy to have been left out, surprisingly glad for his mild concussion.
Will, being the expert healer that he was, made quick work of triaging patients before Chiron could show up to assist. Within an hour or two, the worst of the injuries had been sutured and bandaged and healed to the best of the medics’ abilities before being left to rest in cots across the infirmary, while everyone else had left after a few drops of nectar and a quick healing hymn.
Dinnertime was nearing, and Nico was still in the same cot he’d woken up in, but he tried not to get antsy. Will had estimated his approximate discharge time shortly before becoming overwhelmed with an influx of new patients, and had spent the last hour or so filling in patient charts and writing out discharge notes for those who had already left. Nico didn’t even mind being in the infirmary - he probably would have stuck around if he’d been discharged earlier in the day, anyway - but Will had said he would be free by dinner at the latest.
A non-urgent discharge was not an emergency, so Nico didn’t try to do anything to get Will’s attention. He did, however, take advantage of the perfect view he had of Will’s desk from where he sat on his cot with his back to the wall.
He watched the way Will sat, hunched over his desk and holding his head up with one hand while the other scribbled furiously over the page in front of him. He ran his hand through his hair, sometimes to brush the curls away from his eyes and sometimes seeming to be nothing more than an unconscious movement. He chewed on his lip as he tapped the eraser of his pencil against the chart, and glared daggers down at the page whenever he had to erase something with enough force to knock the edge of the desk against the wall. His knee bounced or his foot tapped or he chewed on his thumb and whispered words to himself. He put on a happy face whenever someone approached his desk, and eventually, while talking to one of his siblings, Will held up the chart he was writing in, pointing the page at Nico.
The words Caught you, unmistakable when they were written in Ancient Greek. Nico felt himself blush, his head turning away and his hand automatically dropping to his wrist, stopping the clock.
He glanced down, only curious about how long he’d been staring out of reflex at that point, and frowned when he saw the timer still counting up - though it had only just reached four seconds.
Huh. He must have forgotten to start the clock.
“You know, it’s really hard to beat your record when you keep asking me to hang out with you all the time,” Nico grumbled, carefully shredding a single blade of grass into the smallest pieces manageable.
Will was stretched out on the ground beside him, his arms folded behind his head and his eyes closed against the glaring sun. (Nico had considered starting his watch, but it didn’t seem worth it when Will could open his eyes at any second.) His lips curved into a smile at Nico’s words. “Maybe I’m doing that on purpose.” He squinted one eye open, raising a hand to block out the sun. “Or maybe I just like hanging out with you.”
Nico scoffed, rolling his eyes. “I bet you just wanted to test everybody’s theory that I couldn’t get within ten feet of the strawberry fields without killing the whole crop.” He plucked a berry off the nearest plant and tossed it at Will. “Joke’s on you.”
Will flinched when the berry bounced off his chin, and his laughter came a second later. “Hey, have some faith in me - I know better than that!” He scooped up the berry that Nico had thrown, but before he could lob it back, Nico picked another and threw it as hard as he could into Will’s chest. “Hey! The Demeter cabin will kill us if we trash this field!”
“I guess you better stop, then,” Nico shot back, laughing and shielding himself from Will’s attacks with one hand while throwing more ammunition with his other.
“You started it!” Will cried out.
“You brought me here!”
Nico hardly had a second to notice that Will’s onslaught had come to a stop before he was being tackled onto the dirt, strawberries likely being crushed under him and staining his clothes. He fought back when he realized Will was trying to pin his wrists to the ground, and flipped their positions easily - probably only so simple because Will was laughing as hard as he was. Nico sat himself down on Will’s stomach, his scrawny size probably not doing much to keep Will in place, and grinned in victory.
Nico’s eyes fell to Will’s, and his head started to spin, dizzy from knowing that the sky was up above his head and yet he was staring down into it. He dropped his gaze as fast as he could, a blush spreading quickly across his face, and caught his eyes on Will’s mouth instead. His lips were parted, stretched wide in a smile and showing off teeth that were just shy of perfectly straight.
Nico was rapidly coming to the realization that staring at Will’s mouth was maybe even worse than looking into his eyes, and yet, for some reason, he couldn’t drag his gaze away. “You have nice teeth,” he blurted out, feeling like he was on fire, “and, um. Pretty eyes.”
Nico watched Will’s smile as it grew, and as his lips formed the words: “Thank you.”
It seemed like that movement was enough to spur him into action, finally able to tear his eyes away and lean back, forfeiting his hold on Will’s wrists.
Will sat up, propping himself on his hands. “You also have really pretty eyes,” he said. “And nice hair. And a beautiful smile.” Will pressed forward even more, and Nico came to the horrible realization that he was sitting in Will’s lap. “Can I kiss you?”
“What?” Nico startled backwards, scrambling off of Will’s lap until there was at least two feet between them. “Why would you ask me that?”
“Because I want to kiss you,” Will replied easily, “because I like you.”
Nico was so baffled, he couldn’t think of anything to say except to repeat, “Why?”
Will drew his legs in, sitting criss-cross and scooting himself a few inches closer. “Because I think you’re cool, and funny, and I like the way it makes me feel when I catch you staring at me.”
Nico’s heart jumped. “You do?”
Will nodded. “It makes me feel… I dunno, wanted? Cared for? It’s nice to know someone’s paying attention, you know?”
The butterflies in Nico’s stomach were in a frenzy. He’d never tried to put words to the feeling he got whenever Will looked at him, but that all sounded pretty darn close. “Yeah.”
Will started to say something else, but Nico wasn’t listening - his brain was too focused on recontextualizing everything that had happened over the last few months until he came to the conclusion that--
He liked Will.
He pushed himself up onto his knees, grabbed Will’s face in his hands, and squeezed his eyes shut before pressing his mouth to Will’s.
It was barely more than a second - hardly even a peck - and then Nico was scrambling back again, sure that he’d misstepped or read the situation wrong or that he didn’t know how to kiss and it would make Will change his mind about liking him back. He tried to scrub the feeling of Will’s lips off of his own as he glanced out across the strawberry fields. “That was…”
“Really good,” Will said before Nico could find a way to apologize. He shifted closer again. “Can we do that again?”
Nico didn’t trust himself to try to read Will’s expression - he’d fail even if he could manage to keep his own biases from getting involved. “You want to?”
Will’s fingers brushed over Nico’s cheek in lieu of an answer, and when Nico turned his head, Will’s lips slid over his own. Nico held his breath, afraid that if he moved an inch, the moment would come to an end, and he couldn’t have that. Will’s kiss was like a sip of nectar that made Nico feel warm down to his toes, and he never wanted it to end.
When Will did pull away, Nico tried not to miss the feeling, and let himself suck in a breath. His eyes had closed at some point, but he thought opening them would break some kind of spell, and Will would stop running his thumb across Nico’s cheek.
“I’ve wanted to do that for so long,” Will whispered.
Nico’s eyes blinked open slowly, confused because… That didn’t make any sense. Wasn’t Will just realizing his feelings for him at the same time as Nico?
Nico frowned. “What? Why would you say that? What do you mean?”
“I said it because it’s the truth,” Will said, his voice light and puffs of laughter passing over Nico’s cheek. “You didn’t notice that I’ve been flirting with you?”
Nico jabbed a bony knuckle into Will’s chest, a soft spot just beneath his collarbone. “You have not.”
Will laughed, curling inward and using the hand that had been on Nico’s cheek to protect that spot. “I have! Are you trying to tell me that whole staring contest thing wasn’t flirting? Because I thought it was flirting. I mean, I was flirting!”
Nico’s stomach dropped, and his eyes went wide in horror. “Oh. Oh no.”
“Nico?” Will asked, his fingers glancing over Nico’s shoulder before Nico buried his face in his hands. “Hey, are you alright? I’m sorry if I made this weird, or--”
“Jason was right,” Nico moaned. “We were flirting.”
Will paused. “Yeah,” he said. “Is that okay? I’m getting kind of mixed signals here, since you were okay with the kissing but now you’re not cool with flirting.”
“I don’t know how to flirt,” Nico grumbled.
“I thought you were doing pretty alright,” Will replied, and then gentle hands were tugging at Nico’s wrists, and Will was leaning in again. “You can practice on me whenever you want. Same with kissing. I hear that takes a lot of practice.”
Nico let out a breath. “Are you flirting with me again?”
“I am.” He could hear the grin in Will’s voice without even needing to look up and see it for himself - but it was a pretty smile. He let his eyes flicker up to catch a glimpse. “And I’m going to keep flirting with you until you tell me to knock it off. From here on out, if you’re ever not sure, just assume I’m flirting.”
Nico felt a smile tugging at his lips. “You’re so weird.”
“Yeah, but you still want to kiss me.”
He did. And so he did.