Chapter Text
Leo felt fine and Jason said he just needed a nap when they got back to camp, but Chiron insisted all three of them visit the infirmary anyway. Apparently, demigods returning from quests often didn’t realize they were hurt until days later, when all the heightened emotion worked its way out of their systems and they weren’t too exhausted to differentiate injury-type pain from normal-soreness-type pain, so there was a standard practice of doing a thorough “scan” — Leo wondered what kind of summer camp employed onsite radiologists — and treating everything that came up.
Will Solace was manning the infirmary by himself at the time, cabinmates off at archery practice. He took care of Piper and Jason first, since Piper had that ankle and Jason had a probable concussion (and had also died and been charmspoken back from the banks of the Styx, what the fuck), and Leo watched.
It turned out that the “scan” wasn’t radiological; it was demigodly Apollo powers. Will hovered his hands an inch or two away from their heads and hummed, probably magical healing music, face pinched in concentration, palms glowing with soft yellow light, and moved his hands down and around their bodies without touching them, locating an inflamed tendon here, a bone bruise there, splinters and shrapnel buried in the flesh. He pulled supplies off a little rolling medical cart, put salves on their skin in the spots they couldn’t reach themselves, wrapped Jason’s wrist and Piper’s ankle, gave them potions or something to drink because they’d already maxed out on nectar and ambrosia for the day, and sent them off.
When Will turned to Leo, there was a sheen of sweat on his brow.
“Gimme a minute,” Will said wearily. “I need a recharge.”
He went to a corner, pulled a bottle of apple juice from a minifridge and a couple of wrapped oatmeal cookies from a cupboard above it, and chowed down.
Leo pulled a broken wind-up mouse toy he’d found in the sewer out of his toolbelt and started taking it apart to keep his hands busy.
In a few minutes, there was a squeak of wheels. Leo looked up to find Will carelessly dragging over the little cart.
Will parked the cart in front of the cot Leo sat on and said, “I’m drained from healing them and it’s more difficult to scan while hovering, so I’m going to actually have to put my hands on you.” He stood behind Leo, rested his hands gently on his head, started humming, and moved them down the sides of his head, to his shoulders, and further down his body.
Leo wasn’t usually big on being touched by people he didn’t know well, but the light pressure of Will’s hands trailing down his back as he scanned Leo for injury was oddly soothing. His hands were very warm, like the light from his palms was actually sunlight.
Will paused with a hand over Leo’s left third and fourth ribs. “Big bruise here. Lotta bruises on your back, actually, but this one’s deeper, like you landed on something. Nothing broken or ruptured, though. Took a fall?”
“Sure,” said Leo. “You could say I took a few falls. Or crashes. Or got thrown toward the ground at high speeds. Whatever you want.”
Will snorted and reached over Leo’s shoulder for a jar of what looked like butter on the medical cart in front of the cot. “Sorry for asking. Here, I have a bruise cream—”
“Bruise cream is just lotion marketed as bruise cream to give it a placebo effect,” Leo interrupted. He’d spent enough time treating his own injuries on the streets to know.
“Sure, in mortal medicine. But when you get demigods with healing abilities involved…” Leo heard the jar lid untwist. “You can make magically enhanced stuff that actually works. Take your shirt off.”
Leo was also not big on having his shirt off around people, but Will’s tone was somehow simultaneously businesslike and gentle, and Leo felt safe. He barely hesitated before he grabbed his T-shirt by the back and pulled it forward and off, letting it sit on his forearms.
The stuff Will smeared onto the spot where his hand had rested smelled vaguely like pine trees. After it sat and absorbed into his skin for a few seconds, a warm sensation of relief cut through the general aches of his upper body. Leo sighed involuntarily, feeling muscles in his shoulders relax that he hadn’t realized were tense before.
“There ya go,” Will said with satisfaction. “Believe me now?”
Leo pretended to mull it over. “Hmm. Maybe.”
Will came around to the front of the cot, knelt, and ran his hands lightly down Leo’s legs from hip to ankle. He frowned and tapped Leo’s left knee. “You banged this on something, and…” then he tapped Leo’s right ankle. “... you rolled this.” He kept a hand on each joint for a few moments, humming, and finally said, “They’re fine, though. A bit weak for a few days, maybe. Just don’t do anything too strenuous.”
“I’ll try to avoid any more crashes from the sky or fights to the death, yeah.”
Will made a huff that might’ve been a laugh and said, “You’re all good, I think. Come back if anything starts bothering you.” All the muscles in his face seemed to droop with fatigue now.
Leo stood and put his T-shirt back on, watching Will roll the cart into a corner. “Your powers tire you,” he remarked.
Will gave him a tight smile. “A couple cabins in a feud started duelling earlier today and it got ugly. I was already drained when you got here. Doesn’t matter.”
Doesn’t matter? Leo thought.
Will turned away from him, starting toward some other task. “Go on, get,” he said over his shoulder. “I’ll see you at the camp council meeting.”
Leo was back in the infirmary a few days later, swinging himself in on a pair of crutches that the Hephaestus kids decades ago had scrounged away in Bunker Nine for exactly this purpose.
Two Apollo kids whose names Leo didn’t yet know were deep in some cluttered cabinets with clipboards in hand. Will was at a desk writing furiously on official-looking documents. When Leo reached the threshold, he looked up with an expression of unmistakable trepidation.
“Guess who dropped a nail gun and shot a nail straight through his foot!” Leo sang out.
“What on God’s green earth,” said Will under his breath, rising from his chair. He gestured toward a corner where a shallow washbasin was set into the floor. Leo headed that way.
Will caught up with an armful of medical supplies. “Sit down and take your shoe off,” he ordered. Then he called out, “Kayla! Can you do the numbing spell?”
The girl — Kayla — came over and chanted something in Ancient Greek that made his foot entirely numb. Will thanked her and then used his “scanning spell” to determine that it was safe to yank the nail out, which Leo did himself because he felt bad about making someone else do it. While he was on that, Will was hooking up some hose-and-nozzle contraption to the faucet of the washbasin.
Leo dropped the nail into the basin and watched as blood began to bubble from the hole in his foot. He pointed at the device hooked to the faucet. “What’s that?”
“This puts out the water as a small pressurized stream,” Will explained, “which will let me rinse out the puncture thoroughly before healing it.”
Will pressed the nozzle of the hose contraption to the exit wound on top of Leo’s foot. Bloody water flowed out the entry wound on the bottom.
“Hephaestus kids always have more interesting injuries,” Will commented as though discussing the weather. “Everyone else has normal stuff. Sword wounds, burns from the lava wall, kicked by a pegasus. Your siblings are always crushing body parts with hammers and blowing off fingers with engineering projects that exploded.”
“Blowing off fingers?” Leo squeaked in alarm.
“Don’t worry,” Will said in a voice that was way too casual for the topic at hand, “I always reattach them. If there’s enough left to reattach.”
Leo stared at Will, who kept his gaze focused on Leo’s foot. “You are insane.”
“Yeah, buddy. I’m insane. This camp is insane. The demigod world is insane. You’ll get used to it.”
Will rinsed for about a minute more before removing the nozzle. He grabbed two wash bottles and rinsed the puncture with disinfectant, then with nectar, and then chanted another Ancient Greek incantation that closed up the wound.
Will stood and threw Leo a towel. “Clean yourself up. Later the foot might ache a little, but it should be good as new in a day or so.”
Beginning the Argo II and generally puttering around the disorganized Bunker — gods, this place needed an OSHA visit — turned out to be a consistent source of injury. Leo found himself back in the infirmary at least twice a week for the next month: various gashes, broken toe from a dropped mallet, and yes, even a blown-off thumb.
He came to look forward to the infirmary visits. He liked the sound of Will’s voice, the familiar sweet lilt of his Texan accent. He liked the way Will walked, the softness to his movements like he was a lanky cat stretched out in a spot of sunshine. He liked the soft curl of Will’s bright blonde hair and his pale blue eyes and the constellations of freckles across his face. He liked hearing and saying his name, the way the syllables of Will Solace tasted in his mouth.
“You got a crush on the guy or something?” Nyssa asked him as she fired up the industrial grinder, a couple hours after he returned from having his thumb reattached.
Leo almost dropped his drafting pencil. “What! No. What do you mean?”
“Every time you see him, Will Solace is all I hear about for the next four hours,” said Nyssa. “Will this and Will that.”
“I’m straight.”
Nyssa laughed so hard at that, Leo wondered if she was listening to a John Mulaney set in airpods or something.
“Okay, Joker Boy,” she finally said, catching her breath. “Let me know if you still think that by summertime.”
Leo frowned, confused. He was fairly certain that he was the straightest guy alive. Leo loved da ladies, and all da ladies loved Leo. He opened his mouth to inform Nyssa of this, but at that moment, one of the ancient ceiling lights came detached and crashed down right on top of him. It was blindingly painful.
The next thing he was aware of was Nyssa scooping his scrawny ass over her shoulder in a fireman’s carry and saying, unconcerned, “What a treat for you. You get to see Will Solace twice today.”
It is a treat, Leo thought, and then passed out.