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It’s on the tip of his tongue when Nico appears out of the shadow of the couch. So near to tumbling out that Will has to lock his jaw and he isn’t sure he's learnt his lesson if it’s all too easy to slip back into old habits.
But he holds his tongue because this isn’t the Nico he knew and he truly has no right to say anything.
He’s wearing white; that is the first surprise and Will lingers on the observation too long. It’s more white than Will has ever seen on Nico, which used to be limited to the skulls on his shirts. He’s wearing black scrubs, but it’s a white lab coat that Nico pulls off and hangs on a hook by the door. Hands that are no longer pale clip an identification card off his shirt and onto the coat pocket with nimble familiarity.
And because everyone in Will's life — which is really only Rachel and his siblings if he’s being honest with himself — tiptoe around the topic of Nico, Will has no reference as to why the son of Hades is dressed in scrubs in the first place. Perhaps he’s been undercover on one of his missions for his father, or maybe he thought them comfortable?
And comfortable was never a word Will would have used to describe Nico, but that’s how he looks ten years later. Warmth has returned to his skin and lean muscle shapes his silhouette. His ink-black hair falls above his shoulders at the back, curling gently at its ends, and Drew’s voice in his mind tells him it’s called a ‘wolf cut’ and then promptly tells Will himself that he's due for a haircut in that unimpressed tone of hers.
Percy approaches Nico then, his little girl on his hip and a "thank gods, you can have her now " on his tongue.
And Nico was never a kids person, but there he is smiling as he plucks the girl from her father's arms and twirls with her.
"Uncle Nico!" She squeals with a bright laugh.
"How are you, Angioletto ? " The rich warmth of his voice is sunlight through overcast skies and Will wants to hear it again. Again and again and again.
The girl speaks at a mile a minute and where Will would have certainly snapped — his years of being a patient medic behind him and bitterness puppetting his actions — Nico is crouched to her height, reacting with animated expressions.
He stays there with her patiently listening until she is running off again, disappearing through a doorway.
"Man, she's just like you were." Will wonders at that confusedly, because the Nico he had known was quiet and brooding, nothing like Percy’s enthusiastic daughter.
Percy claps a hand on Nico's shoulder and there is no flinch, no pained expression or flicker of anger. Will wonders at that too. Nico delivers a playful punch to the son of Poseidon's arm, who whines loudly about it still being sore from their last spar.
“Has she asked if you can surf yet?” And there is an inside joke there that Will doesn't understand, but it makes the two chuckle.
Annabeth emerges then, in a grey t-shirt that reads ‘ Sorry I have plans…(I'm an architect)’ and Will could guess that Percy had given it to her with a wide grin. She enters from a hallway that Will had yet to explore and he doesn't know where it leads. He hasn't been given the official tour, he doubts he will get one either. Though Rachel has assured he is welcome, he has his doubts. He'd only come because she'd insisted — no, begged — and Will has burnt a lot of bridges in the years past so he said yes. He won't let himself lose her too.
It is clear his company hadn't been expected, fair enough when it's an Argo II reunion and the closest Will ever got to that boat was to treat a Hephaestus kid who’d pinned his hand to its hull with a nail gun. But Rachel is a regular attendee, perhaps for her role as the Oracle in bringing them all together — much like Reyna who’s been adopted as an honorary member of the quest group and now sitting on a stool by the kitchen counter.
Annabeth embraces Nico murmuring something too low for Will to hear, but the not so subtle glance across the room at Will tells him everything he needs to know. Nico didn’t know Will was coming, Annabeth had just given the heads-up.
Nico’s eyes flit to Will a moment later, just once, looking for all the world unbothered as he gives a casual shrug to the daughter of Athena. And that is that. Two years of their life spent together, condensed to an indifferent gesture. He's guiding her to the kitchen, pulling a tupperware container out of the shadows from literal thin air. Annabeth and Reyna, who Nico is now engaging in light conversation with, beam at the offering.
And that's another change—Will is starting to tally them on his fingers, collecting them like souvenirs so that he might formulate a picture of who this Nico is— that Nico and Reyna and Annabeth can coexist. There was a time, ten years ago, where Nico would avoid the two. Reyna after she joined the Hunters and hurt and fear told Nico to distance himself from the ex-Praetor. And Annabeth as a side-effect of him avoiding Percy, but Will had been still around when the tension between those three had all but faded.
Reyna is snatching away the mystery container, happily tugging off the lid to inspect the contents; food, Will realises and adds another tally because Nico never used to cook. The son of Apollo needs to actively stop himself from picturing Nico dressed up in an apron and cooking over a stove.
He brought a dish with blue pasta, if Percy’s exclamation is to be believed, though the son of Poseidon is hastily shooed out of the kitchen, beer bottle in hand which is quickly passed off to Leo. Shooed away because Nico has done the same shadow trick to summon a bottle of wine for just the three.
Reyna enthusiastically pours it into the glasses that Annabeth sets on the counter as she asks, “So where’d you get this one from?”
And over the din of the gathered group, Nico responds, “Florence, I ducked into one of the family estates and the neighbours recommended this little winery down the road.”
And a silly image of Nico leaning over the side fence of a home chatting away with a faceless neighbour, pops into Will’s mind. The sheer absurdity of it tugs at the corners of his lips earning an odd look from Rachel. The girl has been watching him since Nico appeared—anyone else and he’d tell them to ‘ fuck off’ , that he's not fragile or stupid or about to do something he might regret. But it's Rachel and she knows it all anyway, she'd been the one to sit him down with a razor barbed tongue and tell him to get the stick out his arse.
He’d been pissed at her at the time, because how could he have messed it up as bad as she claimed he did. He was a healer, he didn’t break things.
Except he did.
And now he's not a healer (not in the same way).
And he might be working on himself, seeing the psychologist Rachel had found for him. But only at the bare minimum because talk therapy makes him want to tear his hair out. And fixing himself— healing himself— didn’t mend what he broke before. Maybe he should have tried harder to make therapy work when just looking at Nico seems to reignite every issue between them that Rachel had so viciously laid out so many years before. The way his poison tongue still made to scold him for using his powers when he could have just carried that wine bottle.
‘Using my powers isn’t making me sick, Will. You are!’ Nico’s words haunted him in the evenings still. ‘Not going in the sun, not healing or singing or shooting a bow — that makes you and your siblings sick. Why would I be any different?’
And unlike back then, Nico is different now. He laughs openly, tipping his neck back to expose his throat and smile stretches across rose lips. He has a tattoo too; crawling up his left arm a blend of dandelions, pomegranates, gemstones and the fetching ends of arrows
Yes, Nico is different now, and yes, the new information makes Will's headspace crammed as if his mind doesn't know how to assimilate old Nico with new Nico so both versions are forced to coexist.
But neither version is the kind of different that Will had made him out to be back then. And his psychologist would assure him that there was an element of trauma behind it, that his subconscious fear of death likely stemmed from the patients that died in front of him, the wars he saw, and the siblings he lost all before he was fifteen.
“Because you are, Nico, you are different. Death and shadows aren't supposed to be controlled, can't you see that ?”
Will could still see the crushed expression on his now ex-boyfriend's face; glassy eyed and brows pinched. It was a wonder—and a tragedy— that they still lasted another two months.
Rachel is tugging him up now, and he's left an imprint on the couch cushions that he stares at because he didn't realise just how much he'd been pressing himself into them, hoping to disappear. Eventually he turns his head away and finds himself and Rachel in front of Hazel, who has just made her way upstairs to join their gathering, Frank on her arm. Hazel is quick to mask her shock, golden eyes widening for just a split second before forced back into a warm gaze. Her smile is forced, as is his— two liars circling each other, waiting to see if the other would break. He will lose, of course; he will always lose.
There is a brush of skin at his elbow and oh the irony that it's Will that flinches away as if burned. And there's Nico, wrapping his half-sister in an embrace, giving her a kiss on the forehead and a “Haze! How have you been?”
And she's laughing, telling him that they'd ‘just seen each other, but yes, she was doing good’, and he's offering Frank a handshake much warmer than the protective brother shit he used to pull.
But Frank and Hazel are engaged if the rumour mill is to be believed and maybe that gives Frank more leeway.
Or the two boys had become friends, Will realises this as Hazel allows Nico to steal Frank away and Will thinks he hears talks of a “new expansion pack”. He's grateful for the distance it gives them, so he might not feel as though they are breathing the same air.
But it leaves him with Rachel and Hazel. And Rachel may be his friend but she'd probably agree with Hazel if she decided to sock him. Because while Percy had got it out of his system, Will has been better at avoiding Nico's sister. The last he properly spoke to her was the day he'd sought Nico out, turning up at her door with a bouquet of sunflowers and love declaration on his tongue.
Even then, faced with his last chance to turn back time, he'd done it wrong. Nico had made a habit of bringing Will sunflowers because they reminded him of Will. And if Will had really tried, he might have thought to bring Lilies—which he knew were Bianca's favourite— or Asphodels or Moonlace. It was no wonder really that Hazel had taken one look at him, dressed in his usual camp shirt and cargo shorts with a bouquet of flowers that Nico would hate, and slammed the door in his face.
He’s had a lot of time to think about what he'd do differently.
But Hazel doesn't hit, or shout, or lecture him over his mistakes. She doesn't bring up the fact that Will never came to her door again after that. She ignores him, in the kind of pointed way that must run in her genes because Nico would do the same thing after an argument. A frosty sort of indifference that is anything but.
So Hazel chats idly to Rachel about her new jewellery brand she's been building in the times where her Praetorship doesn't bury her six-feet-under in meetings. And Rachel is showing off her latest series of portraits on a phone with a hand painted case.
And Will doesn't want to leave the comfort of the person who dragged him here, but he's bored and disinterested and the whole reunion is making his skin itch with discomfort. So he goes, shifting away from Rachel and swerving past sofas and the piles of books stacked on random surfaces, leaning so haphazardly it's a miracle of physics that they remain standing tall.
He goes to the balcony both because no one is out there thanks to the chill in the air, and because the icy breeze on his face might snap him out of his wallowing.
It works in the sense that he's now freezing his ass off instead of being frozen out of conversation. It works in the sense that he can't think past how fucking cold it is for early fall, and not about how good Nico looks in white.
It works until it no longer works because there's another presence on the balcony, the aforementioned white coat being pulled over his shoulders to defend against the cold.
“Oh, sorry. I didn't know someone else was out here.” Nico says when he finally sees Will tucked against the railing too far from the door to notice until it's too late.
Will should say something along the lines of ‘it's fine’ or ‘I was just leaving’ but his eye catches the embroidered black on the lab coat's pocket and instead he blurts, “You're a doctor?”
Because there on the breast pocket reads ‘DR NICOLLO DI ANGELO. Doctor of Medicine’ .
“Mh-hmm,” Nico affirms wordlessly, smoothing out the coat before tucking his hands into his pocket. Hiding that skull ring from view.
The ring that Will had selfishly wanted to keep on the chain around his neck. He'd walked with it through Tartarus after all. But Percy had come to take it back, along with the rest of Nico's things that had accumulated in the Apollo Cabin. Apollo's Cabin because Will had practically moved him in at first opportunity, keen to keep him away from that windowless and menacing, obsidian cabin.
Nevermind that Nico had designed it himself, nevermind that it was the first home he'd had since his dip in the Lethe. Nevermind, nevermind, nevermind.
Will has a lot of regrets.
And Nico has his ring again, the one Bianca had given him and it's all too selfish for Will to wish he had hidden it, or claimed he'd lost it just so he would still have a piece of the boy he loved.
But Will had been selfish back then in other ways (in all the ways that mattered).
“Will you specialise in forensic pathology?” Will asked to fill the silence.
And Nico's face is twisting into an expression he can only describe as unsurprised disappointment, “Why study eight years to do something my powers let me do naturally?”
And it might have been a dig at Will, if he had managed to make it through med school. But as it was, Will had studied all of six months after their break-up before all his repression caught up to him.
Maybe Nico knows that, maybe he doesn't. Will doesn't know and the bitter part of him hopes that he too can't bear to even hear the other's name.
“So just a doctor then?” Will asks because he has to know. Years of curiosity accumulating to a single moment alone together on a balcony.
Nico takes a long sip from the wine glass in his hand, “Psychiatry.”
And he has to continue because the word comes without context, “I'd like to specialise in Psychiatry.”
Will thinks of the little case of pills in his medicine cabinet, untouched because like talk therapy, they make him want to tear his roots from his scalp, with the way they make his mind fuzzy and mood decline. And maybe he should have spoken to someone about it, but it's easier to pretend he's okay and call it a day.
“What about you?” Nico asks, refusing eye contact and draining the remainder of his drink.
Will hesitates, and he imagines this is what a high school reunion would feel like if he hadn't done the majority of his schooling at Camp. Nico's the successful doctor, the one no one expected to graduate thanks to life circumstances or lack of attendance. And Will's the one who had goals and aspirations, the one who made the grades and got the scholarship…and dropped-out.
It's a shitty feeling and he's not entirely sure why mortals would put themselves through this to see a few friends from high school they hadn't bothered to keep in touch with.
“I'm back at Camp,” Is the answer he spits out.
“Oh, how's the infirmary?” Nico is looking at the door now and Will isn't sure if he wants the son of Hades to stay or leave.
“I wouldn't know,” The truth is acrid and biting and it shouldn't be, because this is the life he chose and it's not Nico's fault. Nico turns away, fair enough when Will just snapped at him— at himself actually, but Nico didn't know that— and Will hastily amends, “I just mean that Chiron has taken over, maybe he finally realised that having a fourteen year old in charge of the infirmary was a recipe for trauma.”
And he has said too much but at least Nico hasn't left. He leans himself against the doorway, on the precipice of staying or going at a moment's whim.
“I'm mostly a combat medic on quests these days.” Will supplies, cataloguing the twitch of Nico's lips and furrow of his brow. And maybe the temperature drops a few degrees but it's hard to be certain and Nico's poker face is too good.
“That's… different .”
It is. He is. They are.
And he could say something along the lines of “ someone has to do it” but truthfully Will went looking for trouble these days. He used to pray to his father for tasks to do, now he volunteers for the minor prophecies that filter through every so often, and goes on every supply run.
He is being reckless, according to Apollo who has stopped providing him with ‘excuses to get himself hurt’.
So, Will just nods as though he isn't screaming inside.
Nods like there isn't a chain around his ankle that fetters him to camp — a chain made of memories of nights cuddled up watching movies and afternoons spent in strawberry fields. He pretends like it doesn't hurt to see Nico moving forward — moving on .
And it hurts, in that selfish way, that the marks he'd left on Nico — the overprotective, obsessive version of Will that had emerged from Tartarus—seem to have been erased.
“Yeah, you're a doctor.” Will settles on but the emphasis is all wrong and hurt flashes in those coffee-black eyes. And Will thinks that maybe his opinions, even now, affect Nico more than he lets on.
“And you're not,” Nico’s voice is cool, distant, like they were nothing more than acquaintances.
Will winces at the bluntness, but he can’t blame Nico. He has always been straightforward, cutting through the bullshit with the sharpness of a blade. “Yeah… I guess I’m not.”
Nico doesn’t get the chance to respond before Piper is sidling up beside him, glancing between the two warily, “Everything okay out here?”
“We were just…catching up.” Will says at the same time Nico mutters, “I was just leaving.”
And Will is watching him disappear, eyes mapping every inch of the man before he disappears into the house once more. Nico makes walking away look so easy.
Piper grimaces, “Well, that looked like it went well.”
Will scoffs, picking at the buttons of his denim jacket. “I messed it up.”
“You still love him.” Trust the daughter of Aphrodite to be blunt.
Will leans heavier on the railing, “It's been ten years.”
“You still love him,” She repeats as if she can hear the very beats of Will’s heart as it tries to tear itself from his chest and follow after Nico.
“I don't see how that's any of your business,” Will said.
“Well, the blinding pink aura around you for starters,” She squints at him, “And Nico's my friend, so I make it my business where he's concerned.”
She moves beside Will, hoisting herself up to sit on the balcony railing, unbothered by the fall beneath her.
She waves a hand towards where Nico departed, “So, what did you say this time?”
“Nothing worth repeating.” He would only need to repeat it all to Rachel later anyway.
“Why don't you come inside then?”
“Better to not impose,” Will just wants to leave.
“You wouldn't be.”
“Nic–”
“–will be hiding out downstairs for a few minutes at least. He came out here to escape the madness, but you stole his usual hideout it seems.” And of course Will had naturally gravitated there, to the place Nico would be. He couldn’t escape it, the push and pull of the ocean between them, a ship returning to port.
“I'm not getting out of this am I?” Will sighs.
“Nope!” Piper hops down, grabbing Will's arm and firmly leading him back inside but planting them separate from any of the mingling groups of people as if sensing his anxiety. “So, what have you been up to?”
And there’s that question again, the useless shame that rises with it even though he chose this. “Camp.”
“And how is camp?” She seems amused by his monosyllabic response.
“The strawberry crop this year was our best yet,” Will says dryly. Piper nods still looking at him with those kaleidoscope eyes all too keenly. And something in his face makes her eyebrows buckle and lips tug down sympathetically.
“Are you okay?” She asks, as if that is such an easy thing to answer.
Will forces a smile, but it feels brittle. “Yeah. Just… this isn’t where I thought I’d be.” Ten years ago, that is.
“At this reunion? Or in life?” Piper asks with humour.
Both. But he’s not that honest, not aloud. So he chews on the answer and his bottom lip, searching for something palatable to offer. Something to say instead of ‘I thought I’d be successful’ , or ‘ I thought I’d be happy’ or ‘ I thought I’d be with him’.
Nico returns to the room and Will feels it like a phantom limb. He comes into view with an excitable Percy at his side and twisting the ring on his finger religiously.
Piper ignores that he has yet to respond, her gaze drifting to where Nico was talking with Percy and Hazel. “It’s weird, isn’t it? Seeing everyone together again after all this time.”
He thinks she says it for his benefit, because she’s been in touch with these people in the time between then and now.
“Yeah,” Will agrees, though ‘weird’ doesn’t even begin to cover it.
Piper is silent for a moment, then she glances at Will. “You know, Nico… he’s different now. But in a good way, I think. He’s… happier.”
‘He wasn’t with you. ’ Piper doesn’t say it but Will hears it all the same. Will’s chest tightens and he nods, even though it feels like he is being torn in two. “That’s good. He deserves to be happy.”
Piper studies him for a moment. “So do you, Will.”
Will wants to believe that, but the guilt that has been his constant companion for ten years refuses to let go. It’s got its claws sunk deep in his chest, stifling his every breath and even if it retracts, he can’t help but conclude that he’d bled out in the aftermath. This guilt — this grief — is the last piece left of a boy who once loved him back and he can’t live without it. It is his oxygen.
Poisonous and acrid like the air in Tartarus, but still he breathes it in.
There’s a beeping , sharp and abrupt and it cuts through the room with a knife. And murderous as it is, it steals away the object of his attention: the dark haired angel cursing quietly at a pager he’s retrieved from his pocket. He’s apologetic, blush-toned lips pressed tightly together in a frown after he explains, “They need me at the hospital,”. The others are kind about it, offering friendly waves and ‘see you around’s and Hazel is tugging him into a hug before he can think to leave.
Will catches his eye across the room. Brown meets blue. It’s barely a second, just a moment's pause, but the air between them pulls taunt and shivers. A fragile thread stretching across the distance, delicate but undeniable. The noise of the reunion fades, and all that remains is the electric charge of their gaze, the unspoken words crackling in the space between.
Will’s heart stutters in his chest, a pang of urgency flaring. He can’t let Nico walk out like this, not again. Not when there’s still so much left unsaid.
He wants Nico to stay.
He wants and wants and wants . He could drink a whole ocean with his desire, drown in it, let it fill every empty space inside him that’s been aching for years. His fingers itch to reach out, to pull Nico back, to hold on and never let go.
And then the moment’s gone, and so is Nico, slipping into his sister’s shadow and leaving the room one person emptier.
“So you and Nico talked?” Rachel says later, the two of them sequestered in her own house in New Rome, previously for the Augur but it was offered to Rachel whilst she was reforming the Sibylline books. She’s sitting on the coach, cushion pulled to her chest and chin resting atop it while Will stands behind her, wrangling her unconquered, flaming curls into a sleepy braid.
Will gives a noncommittal shrug. “We exchanged a few words.”
“And?” Rachel prompts,
“And it was… fine,” Will lies. “We’re different people now”
Rachel hums, clearly unconvinced. “Is that so bad?.”
Will shakes his head, “ He’s different, now. And I haven’t changed, I just keep hurting him.”
Rachel tilts her head to the side to study him with those piercing green eyes, “So something did happen.”
“I was surprised…that he’s a doctor now,” Will says, letting the braid fall from his hands and rounding the sofa to sit beside her.
“Because you didn’t know he wanted to go into medicine?” She narrows her eyes, “Or because he’s a son of Hades?”
Will knows there’s a right answer but he can’t bring himself to lie to her so he responds, “Both.”
“Tsk,” She hits his shoulder lightly, “What happened then?”
“He walked away.” Will said, “I didn’t mean to upset him, then or now.”
“You both went through hell, Will. Literally. It’s not surprising that things got messy.”
Messy is an understatement. What had happened between him and Nico was more than just a misunderstanding or a series of bad decisions. It had been a downward spiral, fueled by trauma, fear, and a desperate need to protect each other that had turned toxic. Will had tried so hard to keep Nico safe, to shield him from the darkness that seemed to hover around him like a shadow, but in doing so, he’d ended up hurting him even more.
“You know what I remember most about you and Nico?” Rachel asks, pulling him out of his thoughts.
Will glances at her, curious despite himself. “What?”
“The way you looked at each other,” she says softly. “Like you were each other’s world. Even when you were fighting, or when things were tough, there was always this… this spark between you.”
Will’s chest aches with her words. He remembered that too. He remembered the way Nico would look at him, with a mix of trust and vulnerability that had both terrified and exhilarated him. But that was before Tartarus had broken them in ways they didn’t fully understand until it was too late.
“I lost that spark,” Will admits quietly. “I was so afraid of losing him that I ended up pushing him away. I didn’t know how to deal with my own fears, my own guilt. So I tried to control everything, including him. And it wasn’t fair.”
Rachel’s expression softens. “Will… you were a kid. You were both dealing with things that most people can’t even imagine. You did what you thought was right at the time.”
Will sighs, rubbing a hand over his face. “But it wasn’t right, Rach. I suffocated him. And then, when he needed me the most, I let him go.”
Rachel is quiet for a moment, her gaze searching his. “Do you still love him?”
Will’s breath catches in his throat. Piper had asked the same question—had implied the answer too. Love was a complicated thing, twisted up in memories and regrets, in what-ifs and missed opportunities. But if he was honest with himself, if he stripped away all the guilt and fear, the answer was simple.
“Yes,” he says, his voice barely a whisper. “I think I always have.”