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Nico di Angelo and Will Solace were not dating.
Nico had been very clear about that. In his own head. To himself. Multiple times. While staring at the ceiling of Cabin 13 while pondering in his bunk. Listening to the darkness and the spirits breathing around him.
He and Will were not dating. They were something. Something that had not been officially named, because officially naming it would mean having a conversation, and having that conversation would require Nico to be brave in a way that didn’t require him stabbing monsters with his Stygian Iron sword in the Battles of Olympus. That brave Nico could do anyday.
This situation required the kind of bravery of sitting across from someone and saying I think I might love you, and it’s killing me in ways I can’t explain. And to Nico? That was significantly, considerably harder.
So no, they were not dating. Just friends who sometimes held hands. Friends who visited each cabin at midnight because they couldn’t sleep and needed the comfort of one another. Just friends who had spent the last four months gravitating towards one another at every meal, every campfire, every free hour, like moons locked in orbit around the same sun, like the moon and tide helping each other pull through the darkness.
To Nico, Will Solace was, objectively, the most annoying person to ever walk Camp Half-Blood. He was aggressively cheerful. He hummed while he organized medical supplies. He said things like hydration is actually really important, Nico with the sincerity of a golden retriever. He was also, and Nico thought this with a source he refused to dive deeper into, breathtakingly handson, in the way that things born from the sun sometimes are, all warm edges and easy smiles and hair caught by sunlight like he’d been designed to be stared at.
Which was fine. That was fine. Nico was fine.
Everything was fine.
Until Phaedra Nikos arrived from a satyr escort out of Atlanta, claimed her bunk in the Aphrodite Cabin within minutes, and apparently decided that Sunshine Boy William Andrew Solace was the most interesting person at camp.
The downfall began two weeks after the new girl’s arrival.
Nico began noticing it the way most things registered for him. Slowly, creepily, at the edge of awareness. The way the fog moves before you realize it’s already swallowed the roads ahead and the paths up ahead have vanished in front of you.
One day Will was sitting beside him at breakfast, bare, muscular shoulder rubbing against Nico’s sleeved arm, stealing his orange juice claiming Nico wouldn’t drink it (which he wouldn’t). The next, Nico looked up from his eggs, and Will was three tables over, sitting with the Aphrodite and Iris kids, laughing at something Phaedra had said, his head thrown back, laughing easily alongside as if he just fit there.
Phaedra.
What in the name was that?
It shouldn’t have meant anything.
It needed to mean nothing.
It meant everything.
Pheadra, to Nico’s eyes, was objectively pretty in the deliberate way Aphrodite’s kids often were, dark curls pinned up with a pencil (she probably charmed to stay put all day), naturally fitting her way into things Aphrodite kids do. She was funny, apparently. She touched Will’s bicep when she spoke, fingertips grazing his forearms like they were meant there. She had this way about her, the way she leaned in that made the whole world tilt towards her.
Will leaned back.
Nico ate his eggs, and surprisingly, did not stab anything.
Great, said a small, vicious inner voice in his chest that sounded uncomfortably like him at thirteen. The version of him still navigating everything. The version who was still madly in love with Perseus Jackson. You’re jealous. Very mature.
The problem, well one of the many on his list, was that Nico didn’t actually know if he had any right to be jealous. They weren’t dating. Will had never said anything, not explicitly, not in the kind where words were said and labels were exchanged. There had been hand-holding, yes. Midnight visits. The way Will always seemed to gravitate towards him in crowds.
But Will was also just like that. He was a ray of sunshine and people were drawn to him and maybe all of it had been exactly what it looked like and Nico had been reading into the naturally given warmth into something more particular than it was.
He pushed his eggs around his plate.
Fine, he thought. I don’t care.
Nico di Angelo absolutely cared.
By day four of this new routine, routine being Phardra materializing at Will’s elbow at meals, at the campfire, apparently during infirmary hours because Nico had walked past the big house and heard Will’s laugh drifting through the window. By this time, Nico had developed a very thorough mental catalogue of things about Phaedra Nikos that he resented. This was petty and he knew it. He resented it anyway.
On day five, Connor Stoll fell into step behind him on path to the armory.
Connor Stoll, cabin 11. Lanky, brown-eyed, and constitutionally incapable of walking anywhere without slightly bouncing on his heels, like his body had an overconsumption of energy and he didn’t know what to do with it.
He was also, Nico had grudgingly admitted over the past year, not as terrible as he’d once assumed. He was actually, behind the pranks and running commentary, and the way he treated every conversation like a performance, kind of decent.
“You look like you’re plotting something,” Connor said cheerfully, bouncing up to pace next to Nico.
“I’m not.”
“Or someone’s plotting against you. One of those.” He glanced sideways at Nico. “You see Will and Phae doing that thing they do at breakfast? The leaning-in thing?”
Nico said nothing. His jaw was doing something complicated, clenching invisibly you could say.
“She’s got this whole charm-speaking adjacent thing,” Connor continued, oblivious, or pretending to be. “Not actual charm-speak, that's Piper’s deal. More like, regular charisma, but like, refined. Like expensive charisma.” He paused, “I think she’s really into him.”
“Great,” Nico said, flatly, a short drag in his words. “Good for her.”
Connor looked at him for a long moment. He had the Hermes-kid gift of reading a room, or in this case, a person, with unsettling accuracy. His face twisted into something that wasn’t quite a smirk.
“You know what’s fun?” Connor said. “Hanging out with people who are fun. You should try it sometime. Specifically with me and Travis at the lake tonight. We’re doing this thing with the canoes–”
“I’m not helping you prank anyone.”
“Who said anything about pranking? I said canoes. Very peaceful, therapeutic.” He grinned. “Come on, you clearly need somewhere to be that isn’t wherever you currently are.”
Nico thought about the campfire. About Will’s easy laugh, and her hand on his arm. About sitting alone in his cabin, which he genuinely preferred most of the time, but recently it felt less like solitude and more like exile.
“Fine,” he said.
Connor’s grin got bigger. “Fanatstic.”
The thing was: it was actually fun.
Nico would not have said that out loud for any sum of drachmas, but Connor and Travis Stoll in their natural habitat, which was apparently a canoe in the dark, armed with a thermos of hot chocolate that Travis had definitely stolen from the kitchen, were genuinely entertaining in a way that didn’t require anything from Nico other than being present in the moment
Connor told a story about a disastrous quest he’d been on the summer before which involved a mistaken identity situation with a minor god of parking lots. Travis countered with a story about the first time he’d gotten a response from their dad, which had turned out to be a coupon for a gas station in Nevada.
They argued about which of them had pulled off the better prank during last year’s Capture the Flag. They both, at some point, seemed to realize they were doing their twin thing where they forgot other people existed, and pulled Nico back into the conversation with casual ease.
It was nice.
He thought; Will would hate that I’m having this fun without him.
Then he thought, Good.
Then, sinking slightly he thought, No, I don't actually want that.
He was quiet on the way back, trailing slightly behind the Stoll’s as they argued about whether the coupon had technically counted as parental communication. The path to the cabins cut past the infirmity and, through the amber glow of the windows, Nico could see Will inside, alone now, bent over something at his workstation.
Alone.
Not with the Aphrodite girl, (Nico couldn’t even bear saying her name even in his thoughts), just Will. At eleven at night, probably reorganizing something or writing notes on patient charts because he was physically unable to leave things undone.
Nico stopped walking.
“Go ahead,” he said to Connor. Connor gave him a look, knowing, and made a gesture that said obviously without using any real words, and then he and Travis were gone into the darkness of the path
Nico stood in front of the infirmary door for a beat that was probably shorter than it felt.
Then he knocked.
Will looked up with the expression of someone braced for an emergency. When he saw Nico, the expression shifted into something softer. Warmth. “Hey. Why are you–” He checked the yellow clock on the wall. “It’s almost midnight.”
“I know what time it is.”
“Were you–” Will tilted his head. “ Were you at the lake? I thought I saw you with Connor and Travis earlier.
“We hung out.” Nico stepped inside, let the door fall shut behind him. The infirmary smelled like antiseptic and dried herbs and whatever eucalyptus balm Will used on burns. The familiarity made something in Nico’s chest ache. “It was fine.”
Will was watching him with that careful attention he normally reserved for patients who pretended to be okay. “Cool,” he said, which meant I have so many questions.
“You’ve been spending a lot of time with Phaedra.” Nico said. He hadn’t planned to say it. It arrived before he did, apparently.
Will blinked. “Yeah? She’s new. She was homesick, I was—” He paused. “What?”
“Nothing.” Nico crossed his arms. “She seems great. She’s very..” He made a vague gesture that was intended to encompass beautiful and charming and tactile and everything I’m not but what came out was something looking more like he was swatting at something invisible.
“Nico.” Will’s voice had shifted. The clinical brightness was gone. This was the other Will, the Will Nico wanted, the one who showed up at odd hours, who sat with him in the dark without needing any explanation. “Are you jealous?”
The word landed between them like a dropped weapon, like Nico’s sword falling from its sheath during the battle of a lifetime.
Nico opened his mouth.
“Because,” Will continued, standing up from his stool and moving around the workstation. “I think you might be jealous, and if you are, I need you to understand something, so” He stopped a few feet away from Nico, close enough that the lamplight caught the particular gold of his eyes Nico had come to love. “Tell me, what’s going on.”
“Nothing is going on,” Nico said, but it came out smaller than he expected.
“Nico, you went to the lake with Connor Stoll,” Will said. “You said you’d never hang out with Connor Stoll. You barely hang out with anyone, nonetheless Connor Stoll. No offence.”
“None taken.”
“Nico.”
The gentleness in his voice was the worst part. Nico could deal with a lot of things, monsters, the Underworld, death on a scale that would shatter most people. He was significantly less equipped to deal with Will Solace looking at him like he was something worth being careful with right now.
“You were spending all your time with her,” Nico said, staring at a fixed point somewhere around Will’s collarbone, the freckled, sun-kissed spot. “And I, I don't have the right to say that, I know that we haven’t,” He exhaled. “I don't know what we’re doing. I don’t know what this is. And I thought if you were, if she was,” He stopped. “I don’t know how to do this.”
The silence that followed was very full.
“What do you want it to be?” Will asked quietly.
Nico looked up. Will was watching him with an expression that Nico didn’t have a word for. Open, careful, something that looked, if Nico was allowed to hope, like an answer waiting to be matched.
“Something,” Nico said. “Something with a name.”
Will let out a breath that was either relief or the thing that comes just before it. "Yeah," he said. "Me too."
"Phae—"
"Phae has a crush on Marco from the Ares cabin and wanted advice on how to talk to him without accidentally hexing him out of nerves, because apparently her emotions have a minor magical radius." Will's mouth curved. "I am not interested in Phae. I am — very specifically, kind of embarrassingly — interested in you. Which I thought was somewhat obvious but clearly I should have led with that."
Nico stared at him. "She has a magical emotional radius?"
"Aphrodite kids are wild," Will confirmed.
Something in Nico's chest unclenched so completely that he felt slightly dizzy. "I went to the lake with Connor," he said, "specifically to make you — I don't know. Notice."
"I noticed," Will said. "I have always noticed. You're sort of extremely noticeable."
"That's a terrible thing to say."
"Is it?" Will took the remaining few feet between them in two easy steps, and then his hands were on Nico's shoulders, warm and certain, thumbs pressed gently to his collarbones the way he touched things he was trying to hold carefully. "You are," Will said, quieter now, "a lot of things, Nico di Angelo. You're really hard to look away from. I've been trying for months and it's not going great for me."
Nico looked up at him. In the lamplight Will looked less like sunshine and more like the last warmth before dark — present and specific and here. His grip was gentle in a way that was clearly deliberate, that careful awareness he had of Nico's body, of where Nico lived in it and where he sometimes didn't.
Will had never made him feel anything except exactly what he was.
"This is a really embarrassing way to start a relationship," Nico said.
"I'm going to put it in the good story pile," Will said. "When we're old and you hate camping and I still think it builds character, we're going to tell this story and it's going to be great."
“I already hate camping”
“I know.” Will was smiling. It was doing something catastrophic to Nico's composure. "Nico. Can I—"
"Yes," Nico said, before he finished asking.
When Will kissed him, it was soft and a little clumsy and neither of them were entirely prepared for the angle, and Nico had to grab a fistful of Will's shirt to stabilize himself, and it was the opposite of dramatic. It was warm. It was specific. It was Will's thumb against his jaw, adjusting, and Will making a small sound like something he'd been holding had finally been set down.
It was the most real thing Nico had felt in a very long time.
In the morning, Nico walked to the Hermes cabin and found Connor on the porch.
"It worked out," Nico said, without preamble.
Connor pointed finger guns at him. "I know, Will texted Travis at seven AM like a golden retriever who learned to type." He grinned. "You're welcome, by the way."
“I am not, by any means, thanking you.”
"No, obviously, that would be extremely unlike you." Connor leaned back on his palms. "Hey, for what it's worth — he was jealous too. About you and me. He didn't say anything because he's also really bad at this, turns out." He tilted his head. "You should have just talked to each other three months ago."
"Thank you, Connor, for that extremely helpful retrospective."
Connor laughed. "Anytime. Hey — you're not as bad as I thought you were, di Angelo. For a son of Hades."
Nico considered this. "You're not as annoying as I thought you were," he offered. "For a Stoll."
Connor looked genuinely pleased. "I'm putting that on my tombstone."
Nico left him there on the porch, grinning at the morning, and walked toward the infirmary.
Will was outside it, leaning against the doorframe, face tipped up to the early sun with his eyes closed — just existing in it, uncomplicated and bright and his, apparently, in the new named way that sent something warm all the way through Nico's ribs.
He looked up when he heard footsteps. His smile was immediate. "Morning."
"Don't say anything embarrassing," Nico said.
"I wasn't going to say anything embarrassing."
"You were going to say something about sunrises."
"I was going to say good morning, Nico, you are so—" He caught Nico's hand as he drew level with him, fingers slotting together, warm and familiar and completely unambiguous. He squeezed once.
Nico looked at their hands. He looked up at Will, who was watching him with that expression — the careful one, the particular one.
"Good morning," Nico said.
Will beamed like he'd said something extraordinary.
Maybe he had. Nico was, he was slowly realizing, still learning which ordinary things were worth saying out loud.
He thought he probably had time to figure it out.