Work Text:
Nico and Will were enjoying the afternoon sun, sitting on a blanket on the grass. A bunch of cards were spread out on the blanket, while Nico attempted to explain the rules of Mythomagic to his best friend.
Suddenly, a shadow fell over them. They both looked up from the game to find one of the other campers standing next to the blanket.
“Hey Amy,” Will greeted the girl.
“Nico, Will, hi!” she smiled at both of them. Then shifted her gaze to Nico. “Nice day today, isn’t it?”
Nico stared at her, at a loss for words. Most people were still too afraid to address him directly. Was he supposed to answer? What was he supposed to say? He’d never been good at small talk.
Luckily, Will saved him before it got awkward. “Very nice,” he agreed easily. “What can we help you with?”
The girl, Amy, looked at Will and a small frown crossed her face. Then she focussed back on Nico, smiling once more. “Just saying hi,” she said innocently. “Although actually, I was wondering… do you want to, you know, hang out sometime?” She looked at Nico expectantly.
Nico shot a glance at Will, who was looking at Nico just as expectantly.
He looked back at Amy, who was waiting for his reply. She did not seem scared of him, or disgusted, or at all concerned with the whole son of Hades thing. Maybe they could be friends indeed.
“Um, sure,” he replied.
“Great!” Amy’s smile brightened. “How about the campfire tonight?”
The campfires were actually Nico’s favourite moment to hang out with Will. He could steal glances and listen to him trying to sing in key and imagine Will sometimes giving him lingering looks back and overall be completely obsessed with his friend-slash-crush. He didn’t want anyone else imposing on that.
“Or you could just hang out with us now,” he suggested with a shrug, trying to sound casual and not like he wanted to protect his valued campfire time with Will. “I’m explaining Mythomagic to Will.”
Amy frowned a bit at that. Maybe she thought it was a childish game.
He noticed a strange look overtaking Will’s face. He looked like he was trying not to laugh, but also looking exasperated at the same time. “What?” Nico asked him.
“You know she’s trying to ask you out, right?” Will said.
“She’s… what?” Nico repeated. He snapped his gaze back to Amy, who nodded with a hopeful smile on her face.
“Oh… I, um… no… sorry, I can’t do that,” Nico mumbled, looking anywhere but at Will. He couldn’t meet Will’s gaze now, not when Will’s the only person he can think of when someone else is asking him out.
Amy shrugged. “Okay. Too bad, but I could try. See ya around then.” She waved before she ran off back to her friends.
Nico looked at Will, who couldn’t hold back his laughter anymore and broke out in giggles. “You really didn’t realise?” he asked.
“No,” Nico cried out. “She asked to hang out, how am I supposed to know that’s not what she meant?”
“She was ignoring me completely, looking only at you and she did that cute seductive smile thing, like this.” Will demonstrated the smile and, gods, Nico's heart melted a bit at that.
“Still…” Nico grumbled, cheeks heating.
Will sighed. “You really are so dense.”
“I’m not dense! When people want to ask someone out, why don’t they just, I don’t know, ask them out? Why do they go this roundabout way, asking them other things while smiling specific smiles and then you’re supposed to just know or what?”
“To gauge their interest,” Will said when he was done laughing at Nico’s outburst. “You don’t want the other person to turn you down, so you first give them hints to see if they’re even remotely interested in you.”
“You could just ask that too,” Nico grumbled. He gathered the discarded cards from the blanket again. “Anyway, I was explaining the drawing phase during a battle.”
Will didn’t say anything, so Nico looked up at him. His friend was staring at him while biting his lip, as if… as if deciding whether he wanted to say something or not.
Nico’s mind whirled back to the conversation. He’d said that people should just say it when they liked someone, and now Will looked like he wanted to say something. Will had called him dense, he did that often actually. And he had said that people flirted to know if the other person was interested… He often wondered if Will was flirting with him or if that was just the way he interacted with everyone. Usually he decided it was the latter before his mind ran away with it, but now he wasn’t so sure.
What if Will was actually flirting with him? Given the possibility, his mind suddenly didn’t want to let go of the idea anymore. He was suddenly thinking back on all their interactions in the past month, sharing looks in the dining pavilion, sitting together at campfires. Will ordering him to stay in the infirmary for three days, the first time he’d called him dense.
Maybe he really was dense.
He dropped the cards he was still holding and gathered his courage. “Will, do you…” he started nervously. “Wait,” he still needed the specific smile. He tried but it felt fake on his face, more like a grimace. “Nope, nope, that’s not working.”
Will was stunned at first but he lost it completely at Nico’s attempt to smile seductively.
“Shut up,” Nico grumbled, but he was fighting back a smile himself.
Will caught his breath, looked back up at Nico and immediately burst into laughter again. “Sorry, I just – your look…”
Will’s laughter was so infectious that Nico couldn’t help but join in. “Fine,” he said in mock annoyance, “then I won’t ask if you want to hang out sometime.”
Having finally calmed down somewhat, Will looked up at him. “I’d love that. How about right now? You were explaining the rules of Mythomagic to me, I believe.” His eyes sparkled with joy when he mocked Nico’s perfectly innocent way of hanging out.
But Nico had no intention of keeping things merely friendly anymore. “Sounds good,” he replied, while he reached out and placed a hand on top of Will’s.
Will’s eyes widened in surprise. Then he turned his hand around and intertwined their fingers. “Sounds very good,” he agreed.
It was a bit harder to explain the card game with one hand occupied, but somehow Nico managed.