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Nico was fine, or so he insisted to Will who was insisting he stay in the Infirmary.
So what if he had been a little stressed out and it made him throw up, and so what if there may or may not have been a little bit of blood in that throw up. He was fine, his stomach didn't hurt that bad. But nooo Will was going to be sweet and concerned about it.
Nico knew people didn't normally throw up blood unless they were dying but he wasn't dying but he felt fine, he had been anxious but he was always anxious that came with PTSD. He didn't even know why he was so nervous, he just was, his body felt like it was ready to jump into action at any minute and he didn't know why.
He had also realized he was noticing things that most people didn't notice; someone started breathing differently and his heart started racing, his mind screaming ‘they were mad at him’ when all they had done was sigh but his heart and his mind took it as a threat, took it as proof that he was going to get kicked out and abandoned again.
He didn't mean to do it, he didn't want to have these thoughts, didn't want to be panicking like this, didn't want to take every gesture as a threat, every sigh as proof he didn't belong, every glance that lasted a little too long is proof they knew there was something wrong with him.
But they did know, they knew he was gay, they knew he was a son of Hades, they knew so much about him and they didn't care, not in the way people don't care cruelly but they didn't care because he was Nico and they liked Nico.
But his mind couldn't seem to accept that, his mind couldn't seem to accept anything good ever. So now he was sitting in the Infirmary, in a chair because he refused to sit in a bed as he wasn't actually injured, watching will work offering to help and being declined.
“Will, I'm fine” Nico insisted, spinning Will's rolly chair in semi circles. He refused to take a bed in the infirmary as he had no real injury and Will had already given him ambrosia but Will was insisting he at least sit in the infirmary just in case so to be a bit petty (and in a half-hearted attempt attempt to get himself kicked out so Will would stop stressing over him) he decided to steal Will's chair because it was the only one with wheels and he liked spinning in it.
“You threw a blood that is not fine Neeks,” Will insisted, organizing the new medications he had just received from Chiron.
“It was only a little bit and you gave me ambrosia so that probably fixed whatever problem it was.”
“Still it was blood.”
“My stomach doesn't even hurt that much anymore.”
“Which is the concerning part because it shouldn't be hurting at all anymore, I gave you Ambrosia, and because I can't tell why you threw up, what did it feel like?” Will had already asked that question about three times and Nico had always given him the same answer ‘it felt like throwing up’ because how else do you describe throwing up?
He could describe it graphically but that felt weirdly too personal, like a part of his soul he didn't want to bear; he could describe the way it made his eyes burn, the way it made him feel like his throat was closing up, the way his nose became stuffy and he could barely breathe but he was pretty sure throwing up covered all of that and he didn't want to give the graphic details, didn't want to think about it more than he had to.
“Like throwing up” Nico said with a shrug, his throat was still burning, it was always burning even if sometimes it felt like it was burning more than others, it didn’t feel like burning from spicy food but burning like it did before he was going to throw up as if his body was always ready to vomit at the drop of a hat. He hated this. He hated his body. He hated his throat burning but if even Ambrosia couldn't fix it there was definitely no cure.
“Wow, thank you for that wonderful and detailed description, a little more help please, Neeks?” Nico didn't want to give the graphic details will have seen him throw up and he had not been freaking out about anything other than the blood so Nico assumed all of the other details were just typical vomiting.
“I don't know, like throwing up, I mean there was that burning sensation in my throat and and it felt like my stomach had a hole burning into it but y’know” He said with a shrug but Will turned to him with that look, that look that meant ‘you just listed symptoms as if they were just everyday occurrences and you will now be getting quizzed on them so I can try to diagnose the problem’
“What do you mean?” Will asked, grabbing his notepad.
“The, the burning feeling that, you know, you get in your in your throat when you get anxious and then you feel like you're going to throw up and like there's a hole burning in your stomach?”
“Like acid reflux?” Will asked, writing down the symptoms.
“Kind of, I guess?” Nico shrugged.
“Nico, do you know what a stomach ulcer is?”
“An ulcer in or on the stomach?” He guessed and Will give him a look “No not really” he mumbled.
“It's a hole in the stomach lining, that stomach acid burns into the stomach lining, there's plenty of reasons they can happen; diet, lack of diet,” Will gave Nico a pointed look.
“My stomach hurts all the time, it doesn't exactly make me want to eat.. and I'm better now I eat more” Nico argued, and it was true he had gotten better about eating, he had had problems with it ever since the jar but slowly and surely and thanks to the Apollo cabin not making any comments about, except for Will's medical concerns, he had slowly felt better eating, his stomach did hurt most of the time so eating was hard but he had begun to actually eat proper real meals.
Will sighed but nodded. “You do and I'm proud that you do, um.. stress can also be another big cause of stomach ulcers.”
“What?” Nico stopped spinning the chair and semi circles and turned to just look at Will.
“Yeah, people can get so stressed out they literally burn a hole into their stomachs from worry and anxiety and nervousness..” Will stare at his notes avoiding eye contact “I've had a few myself actually, never thrown up blood though they've never gotten that bad.”He admitted Nico felt a little less bad a little less uncomfortable with the information he now potentially had a whole burned into his stomach because of his stupid trauma because Will have gone through the same thing, Will understood it and maybe he didn't understand Nico’s perspective of it perfectly but he understood better than most.
“so what? I have a hole in my stomach that’s not supposed to be there now?” He went back to fidgeting by Spinning in semicircles in the chair, stimming as Kayla had called it he didn't really understand the word but he liked the way it sounded.
“Maybe yeah.”
“How do you fix it?”
“Stop being stressed,” Will said, only half joking.
“I'm serious, Will.”
“So am I, I mean diet changes and medication can help but if it's stress-induced..” Will trailed off.
“The only fix is for me to stop being stressed.” Nico groaned in annoyance, dramatically flopping back in the chair.
“Not necessarily but it's likely to come back, I’ll ask Chiron to get the medication but it'll probably take a while to get out here but I can give you Tums in the meantime.”
“Tums..” Nico said tilting his head, try to remember the meaning of the word; he'd heard it, he knew it was some kind of medicine but that was about it. “I've heard of them but I'm not sure what they are”
“They're like chalk tables? They- they help with stomach acid and acid reflux and all of that,” Will said as he went to the cabinet where he kept most of the generic anyone-can-use medications. Nico had taken a lot of ibuprofen from that cabinet to help with the post shadow travel body aches and also just the regular body aches. Because apparently not only was his mind fucked up and not only did he apparently have a hole in his stomach, his body decided that another fun awesome thing it could do would be to make everything hurt all the time. Why was it like this? What had he done to deserve this? He used to think he deserved the pain; the stomach pain, the body pain, all of it, because he was queer but Will was queer, so many other people at Camp Were queer and none of them would deserve something like that, a part of his mind, a part that was cruel and sometimes almost sounded like his father, whispered it was because they were good and he wasn't but he knew that wasn’t true, Will loved him and that had to mean to something.
“Chalk? You want me to eat chalk?” Nico asked, sounding almost offended. He loved Will, he would do almost anything for Will, he didn't particularly want to eat chalk though.
“Not actual chalk” Will laughed, lighting up the room, lighting up Nico’s whole world. “I'm not going to make you eat actual chalk Nico” Will assured.
“I don't know! Modern medicine is weird!” Nico whined.
Will just laughed and handed him a bottle of brightly colored tablets, that did, in fact, just look like cut up chalk sticks.
“Antacid tablets? I thought you said these were Tums?”
“Tums is a brand, these are generic but it's all the same thing.”
Nico nodded and took a few out, pouring them into his hand, colorful dust spilled from the bottle alongside the tablets. “You're sure these aren't just chalk?” Nico asked, a bit suspicious but mainly playing it up for fun.
“Yes, I'm sure, only take three, uh they're different flavors.” We'll have said that simply to get a reaction out of Nico flavored medicine usually meant an abomination like honey NyQuil.
“What are the flavors?” Nico asked, furrowing his eyebrows, his suspension no longer being played up for fun. He had had one too many encounters with medicines that claimed to be cherry or honey flavored and then tasted nothing like what they allegedly were supposed to to trust modern flavored medicine fully ever again.
“I think each different color is supposed to be a different Berry flavor?”
“What happened to Medicine?” Nico mumbled, not really asking Will. They haven't had flavored medicine like this in the 1940’s, children had just been expected to take bitter medicine and deal with it.
“At least I'm not making you drink honey flavored NyQuil” Will teased, poking Nico’s cheek wit his pen.
“Never speak of that, never speak of that ever again.”
Will just laughed. “It's not that bad.”
“It is! It's so bad, why do they call that honey? That is not what honey tastes like!” Nico whined.
Will just laughed more and Nico's stomach flipped but not from stress or from the apparent hole that was probably in it but in the weird way it always did when Will laughed, that fluttery feeling he had, he liked that feeling, it felt good.
But sadly their moment was cut short by a camper, a girl from cabin eighteen, coming in with an arrow in her leg, Will muttered curses under his breath and quickly went to go help her onto a bed and treat her.
“Nico, could you grab the bandages for me?” Will asked as he inspected the injury. Nico lit up happy to be helpful and grabbed the bandages and rolled over to the bed the girl was laying in, refusing to get out of Will's spinny chair, as Will was fussing over her like the nervous mother had he was. Any camper under twelve may as well have been his kid with how much he worried for them.
The two worked together in the infirmary, weaving around each other as Will worked and Nico helped him, there weren't that many injuries; a few mishaps from various training exercises and a few burns from non Hephaestus Kids attempting to use the forge but mostly just Will and Nico and occasionally Kayla and Austin, when they had free time, talking in the Infirmary and hanging out and joking as Will did busy work.
It was moments like this where Will felt like the Apollo cabin was full again, he had memories of being an annoying younger sibling and bothering the older Apollo kids in the Infirmary before the war, and although he missed that time, he was glad he got to be the older sibling in the situation now, he knew those kids, his siblings, would be proud of him.