Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

A dog ran across a black field. It was one of those German Shepherd dogs with big brown ears and a pointy nose. Nico had never seen one before. The grass under the dog’s feet was scarlet, like it was bleeding. Actually, he couldn’t be sure it wasn’t bleeding. All around him looked like a sea of blood that only really looked like grass if he focused really hard on each individual blade. Otherwise, it was just a mess of frothing, wiggling red as far as he could see and pooling around his feet.

The dog was getting farther away. He had no choice but to run after it.

A dark gray sky stretched out above him. Distant lightning seemed to light up sections of it, but he couldn’t see any strikes.

The shepherd disappeared over the edge of the horizon. When Nico got there, he saw a huge valley. It really looked like more of a chasm. A four-foot drop extended below his feet. Along it, grass gave way to rock that was such a deep red that it was almost black. The dog was all the way across the crater now. Its face was turned to Nico and it was barking so loudly that Nico could’ve sworn it was right next to him.

He peered over the edge. The drop wasn’t that big. He had fallen a lot further on the climbing wall at camp.

Nico had kicked one leg over the edge when everything went wrong. Something yanked down hard on his ankle and before he knew it he was falling. He managed to grab the rocky edge with his fingertips before he was dragged down completely. Pain raced through the back of his arms. Panting, he swiveled his head around. A yelp broke out of his mouth. What had been a small drop a minute ago was now an endless plummet into nothingness. He knew what that cavern was. The sight of it made his body lock up in terror. Blood pounded against the edges of his cells. It made him feel crazy.

He turned back to the cliff edge. Thin vines were now encircling his arms, embedding themselves in the bend of his elbow. It wasn’t comfortable, but it was holding him up and taking just enough weight off his hands that he could relax a little bit. His feet scrambled for an extra grip.

“Look at the Ghost King.” Nico’s eyes shot to the voice. A figure had appeared above him. It was blond and male, but other than that, Nico couldn’t identify them. At horrific times, the face with the snarl looked like Jason’s. Other times, it was Octavian. And still, occasionally, it was a face with blue eyes that he couldn’t quite place.

“Shall he go back where he came from?”

Nico’s eyes swam. A knife appeared in the figure’s hand, and before Nico realized what was happening, the vines around his wrists had been cut and he was falling backwards, his back facing the cavern below and his limbs flailing in every direction. He screamed.

For an instant, the world around him hardened. He found himself in a room with walls and features as clear as day. He tilted his head to the side to see a multitude of machines and lights.

His back slammed into gravel. The air that had been yanked from his chest materialized in front of him in a cloud of white mist. Pain arced through his ribs. His body was covered in a thousand pockmarked cuts. The sky was white and antiseptic.

Nico sat up. The world had no form, no features. Just endless gravel. His blood stained the nearby rocks.

If he listened really carefully, he could hear soft classical music echoing through the air. Nico got the sense that if he screamed, it wouldn’t make a sound.

Something grabbed his arm without warning. Nico tried to pull away but it was no use. The invisible assailant pulled Nico’s arm whichever way they pleased then abruptly let go. Nico stumbled back, kicking up pieces of rock as he went. Then came the unmistakable feeling of hands on his chest. Once again he tried to escape with no success. The sky shifted to ceiling tiles, then back to white. A face appeared in the expanse and then dissolved.

In his rage and panic, Nico fell to his knees. Upon impact, the ground buckled, sending waves outward as if the gravel was nothing but water. They disappeared into the distance but before Nico could blink, they were back, racing towards him. The gravel morphed into faces and arms and Gods Nico wished he had his sword or a knife or—

The waves choked him. He was sure he was dying, He was going to die under a pile of gravel, of all things and no one would ever know what happened to him. The darkness was coming, the grays were shifting, changing, becoming larger, solid, growing into shapes and shadows and there were voices and noises—

And Nico couldn’t take it anymore, so when he felt a hand press into his shoulder, he lashed out. This time, his body did what he asked. His arms shot towards the attacker and when they landed on what could have been skin, he squeezed. The person slipped out of Nico’s grasp and fell away, gasping and stuttering. Nico still couldn’t really see, so he followed his instincts and lunged. Something in his mouth held him back. Dark red pain shot through his throat and a warm metallic sensation filled his mouth. He started choking and sputtering but he couldn’t tell what was in his mouth or what he was trying to do so he couldn’t really do anything except let the blood and spit fill his mouth and throat and run over his lips. A burning sensation was racing up and down his arms too, but the pain paled in comparison.

Hands landed on him again, and this time Nico didn’t have the composure to fight back. There was a tug and then a painful sliding sensation. Whatever was in his mouth and throat had been removed. He could breathe again. His lungs spasmed desperately for air that he controlled, but all they got was the spit from his mouth. He kept coughing, trying to push himself into a sitting position so the fire in his lungs would stop.

After a minute of gagging and sputtering, he no longer thought he was going to die. He spat a glob of pink-tinged saliva onto the white blanket in his lap.

Nico’s eyes darted around wildly as they tried to find whoever had started this god-forsaken interaction in the first place. His eyes landed on a dark-haired kid who couldn’t have been more than 25 years old. His eyes were wide and terrified. His hands were held up in a surrender gesture. Nico wasn’t sure he had seen that look of terror on someone’s face in a long time. A sick part of him was pleased.

“Who the hell are you?” Nico hated how gravelly and weak his voice sounded. It did not seem to matter to the guy though. His face paled and he tried to take a shuffling step back even though there was nowhere for him to go.

“My name is Diego,” he said shakily. “I’m a nurse. You’re in a hospital, in New York City.”

Nico narrowed his eyes. The slight change in perspective made his head hurt and briefly took the world out of focus.

“I don’t go to hospitals.”

Diego opened his mouth, then closed it again. “I don’t know what to tell you, sir. You hit the call light button, so I thought you needed me, but if you have an issue I can get someone else—”

“I didn’t hit any stupid call light.”

A machine next to them started beeping, making Nico jump. Diego flipped a switch to shut it up, all the while maintaining eye contact with Nico. In the dark, the shadows arching over his eyes made him look almost skeletal, and definitely monstrous.

Diego’s eyes flicked down to Nico’s arms. The stinging hadn’t gone away, but Nico wasn’t going to look down to see what was going on.

“Sir, if you’ll just let me fix the IVs—”

“Don’t you dare touch me.” Nico slapped Diego’s reaching hands away. He recoiled without any other urging.

Without another word, Diego walked out of the room. As soon as he was gone, Nico threw the blanket off. He finally looked down at his arms, which were covered and blood and actively bleeding where he had ripped the needles out. Bandages were also criss-crossed over his chest, stomach, and thighs. The plastic bracelets the hospital had put on his wrists were cutting into his skin.

Nico really had no idea what was going on, and that terrified him. As he unsuccessfully tried to swing his legs off the bed, he racked his brain to try and figure out how in the gods’ names he ended up in a hospital. His mind was a black hole. Not only did it not remember a single thing that could’ve explained his current situation, but it also apparently couldn’t do anything with the plethora of new information coming at him from all angles except turn it into nothing. There were zero puzzle pieces for him to put together. Nico remembered being in class. Nico remembered his dad Iris messaging him and telling him that he needed to come to the Underworld for a couple of chores. Nico remembered coming back to New York. That was it. Nothing else.

There were very few things Nico hated more than not knowing what was going on.

He couldn’t panic though, as much as he wanted to. It would waste what little sanity and energy he had left.

Getting up was much harder than Nico had expected. His body wouldn’t do what he wanted it to. The panic in his chest wiggled around. The disconnect reminded him too much of his dreams, not just the one he had awoken in, but also all the ones he had had throughout his life. He hated his dreams. He hated where he was now because it felt so much like a dream. Nico had never been in a real hospital. He barely tolerated the infirmary at camp. Where he was now was too much. It was too sterile, too regimented, too claustrophobic. He wanted out, now, but he couldn’t get his body to listen. He was dizzy. He felt like a jackhammer was slamming repeatedly into the back of his head. The bandages on his chest were pulling at his skin, and under that, his skin and his muscles ached. Putting even the slightest amount of weight on his arms or legs made them shake uncontrollably. He couldn’t lift himself even an inch.

Diego came back in, followed by a woman with hair as startlingly red as Rachel’s. Nico set his face back into a deep scowl, which must have been suitably terrifying as Diego’s steps faltered. The girl didn’t seem to care though, which irritated Nico. She marched over to him, crossed her arms, and stared him down. He stared back. Even though he couldn’t really move and was probably dangerously close to passing out, he wasn’t going to let anyone here intimidate him. He barely knew who they were. People didn’t scare Nico. He was determined to keep it that way.

“I think you should get back in bed, sir.”

“No.”

She raised her eyebrows. “No?” Nico nodded. It made him nauseous. “And why is that?”

Nico let his chin fall to his chest. He chuckled a little. “Does it look like I’m keen on being here? I’m leaving.” He tried to push his weight up again but it still didn’t work. If anything, this time he was shakier and weaker. He bit his lip. She did nothing except watch.

“The only way you’re going to leave here is if you can get up and walk out of here yourself, and based on the looks of it, I don’t think that’s going to work out too well for you.”

His eyes shot up to meet hers. “You can’t just keep me here.”

“No one said I had to help you with your escape either.”

If Nico had had the strength, he would have punched her. “I’m not staying.”

“I think life would be a lot easier for everyone if you got back in bed. I can fix your arms and you can go back to sleep and negotiate your unlikely release in the morning with the doctor.”

“You’re acting like you understand everything,” Nico snapped. He was tired, he was scared, and he was dangerously close to crying. He knew he was acting like a caged animal lashing out, but he didn’t particularly care to stop himself. These people couldn’t possibly know what was best for him. He needed to get away, go back to camp, and then he could figure everything else out.

“I don’t need to be here,” he continued, his voice rising. “Whatever is wrong with me, I’ve had worse, so if you could just stay out of my way, I would greatly appreciate it.” His voice was finally loud enough that it caused the woman to flinch. A horrific mixture of satisfaction and revulsion filled his chest. Nico liked scaring people, but he hated it afterwards. He liked knowing that he wasn’t completely vulnerable and that even if everyone around him abandoned him he would still be just fine on his own. But being mean went against everything in his actual nature and against everything his mother had taught him. He had learned to be mean as a survival skill and as a way to cope with the 28-year-long fuckup that was his life. It didn’t stop the acidic feeling from eating away at his ribs every time he saw the pain he had put on someone’s face. Nico was sure this girl didn’t deserve what he was giving her, and yet he also knew that he wasn’t going to stop.

“Your injuries are very severe,” the woman said, her voice steady. “I cannot let you leave in good faith. The doctor can explain everything tomorrow. In the meantime—”

Nico saw red. When he was alone later, thinking about the million and one ways he could have made this situation result in a better outcome for him, he regretted physically lashing out at the nurse, but in the moment it was the only thing he could think of. In hindsight, he knew there was no way in Hades he was going to win. What he had really wanted, he supposed, was for her to take him seriously.

His plan obviously went off the rails immediately. The minute his hands landed on the woman’s arm to push her away, she pushed back. In his borderline emaciated state, Nico was much, much weaker than she was. That dormant panic in Nico’s stomach flared in his veins. What could have happened to him that had sapped his strength so much? How long had he been in this room, laying in this stupid bed and wasting away?

In his shock, panic, and general total disorientation, the woman was able to get Nico back into bed without much more of a fight. It was clear by now to Nico that leaving now, as much as he hated his alternate option, was out of the question. He glared at the wall as the woman and Diego cleaned up his arms and reconnected him to the IV bags and the machines. He hoped one of those dumb bags contained some kind of pain medicine because whatever damage had been done to his chest was starting to cause some serious discomfort.

“My name is Abby, by the way,” the woman said as she flipped the heart monitor back on. “Care to share yours?”

Nico glared at her, his jaw set. Then he slowly shook his head. Her shoulders sank a little.

“Alright. I’ll see you in a few hours then.” With that, she was gone, leaving Nico alone to finally have the breakdown that he had been keeping in since waking up.

It had started raining at some point. Rain and wind lashed at the windows like ghostly arms. He could see faint light outside, the glow from the buildings and cars in a city that never slept. He thought of Percy and Annabeth and wondered how far away they were. What they had been doing.

The walls watched him. Everything around had eyes.

Chapter Text

There was no rest for the wicked.

Even though Nico was dead tired, he didn’t fall asleep before the nurses came in for rounds. Part of that was because he was in pain. Whatever the nurses had put in his IV wasn’t touching the deep soreness emanating across his chest and abdomen. The rest of him was sore too, presumably from laying in one place for way too long and losing what he assumed was copious amounts of blood. For not the first time in his life, Nico cursed how fragile human bodies were. He hated being hurt. He hated having to recover from being hurt. All he really wanted was ambrosia and nectar, but that was obviously out of the question. There was no way he was going to hit the call button and summon those nurses in again though. He would rather grit his teeth and let the pain ebb and flow than deal with anyone else.

Most of the reason he couldn’t sleep, though, was because he refused to stop thinking. This was one of the few times in his life where he actually didn’t want to stop thinking. Nico wanted to figure out how the hell he had ended up in a hospital and the only way he could do that was to wrack his brain and comb through every memory he could scrape together. He wasn’t getting very far, though. It was like he was trying to fill a glass with sand using tweezers. He had some images, some feelings, but nothing that could rightfully be called a memory. The lack of clarity drove him up the wall. At least thinking kept his mind from the temptation of trying to run away.

The lights flipped on at exactly 5 am. Nico shut his eyes, partially to feign sleep and partially to stop his eyes from burning from the sudden change.

“Good morning, sir.”

Nico looked over. He didn’t recognize the nurse who had come in and he wasn’t sure if he appreciated that or hated it. Being forced to meet new people every hour wasn’t exactly going to lift his spirits.

“It’s nice to see you awake this morning. How are you feeling?” Nico stared for a second, then gestured vaguely to the bandages on his chest. The sparkle in the nurse’s eyes dimmed a little. She recovered quickly.

“I can move your IV site if you would like. To prevent it from bruising.” Nico shook his head. “How’s your throat? Would you like some water, or juice?” Again, he refused. The nurse stifled a sigh. “Alright. Let me just check on some things, and then I’ll be out of your hair.”

Nico didn’t protest as she ran around his bed like an ant, checking on the various tubes plugged into him. He wasn’t above causing another scene, but he recognized that being difficult more often than not was going to prolong his time here. Maybe if he could hit a certain line, though, he could get everyone to leave him alone until he could weasel his way out.

“You guys might have better luck with people if you didn't wake them up at 5 am.” The nurse laughed for a second before she looked at Nico’s stony expression. Her laugh faltered. Her eyes seemed to shift to the heart monitor out of discomfort.

“I’ll be back soon with your breakfast. And your doctor will be in soon to explain some things to you.”

Nico wasn’t the least bit hungry and had no intention of eating whatever breakfast was brought to him, but he didn’t protest. He just stared at the wall. Waiting.

“Good morning.”

Something in Nico’s mind locked into place. That voice. Some part of him recognized that voice. His eyes shot to the door. He half expected to see someone that he recognized, but when his eyes saw brown hair and blue eyes, all he could do was draw up a blank. He still couldn’t get over his voice though. He knew that voice, he knew he had heard—

How was this guy walking when he came in?

A brick may as well have been thrown into Nico’s skull. He could have been convinced that someone had some in and stabbed him with a frozen sword given how cold the panic in his chest felt. His throat closed.

“My name is Dr. Sims. I’m the head of the emergency department here.” Nico was surprised he was registering any words at all. “I was one of your surgeons. You really gave us quite a scare, huh?”

This guy is one lucky son of a bitch.

The memories were so clear. The voice in his head was like crystal, solid and firm and ethereal, but he couldn’t see it. Even now, seeing the face of the speaker, he saw nothing. Only blackness. The kind of blackness one saw in a deep sleep. There was something in front of him, something between him and a memory that was so close he could practically feel it. He could reach out. Run his fingers across it.

It cracked. Shattered. Light shone through the cracks like crystals of ice.

A waiting room. Someone at his side, him leaning against them. The ceiling. Someone blond. Lights brighter than he had ever seen.

The memories were so powerful that he gasped audibly. The real world raced back. The doctor was closer than he had been before, his hands reaching for the bandages on Nico’s chest. Nico jolted away. He could only imagine the ire in his eyes.

As a kid, in Italy, Nico and one of his friends had once cornered a stray dog in an alleyway. They had wanted to play with it. They had always seen other people with dogs but had never had their own, and so they wanted one to pet and play tug with. Neither one of them understood why the dog had gotten so angry in that corner. Nico vividly remembered the way the dog bared its teeth, the way its lips curled around its canines and the way it held its tail between its legs while he held its weight back, ready to pounce at them if they moved closer. The look in its eyes, Nico had thought then, resembled the devil’s. It was only when Bianca found him and dragged him away that she explained it.

“You scared him,” she said at the bridge. “That’s all it was. He didn’t really want to hurt you.”

That memory was one of the first he had gained after that deal with his father. He had never shared it with anyone.

“Right. The nurses did mention that you don’t like being touched.” Nico shifted even farther away, even though moving definitely still hurt. He was making himself small even though that went against everything he had taught himself about fear throughout his life.

Dr. Sims moved to the foot of Nico’s bed and sat in a chair the nurse had placed there earlier. With his legs crossed and his hands folded over his knees, he looked a little like Hades when somebody brought him a proposal. Nico would have much preferred his father.

Gods, how disappointed his father would be in him right now.

“Here’s the deal,” Dr. Sims said. “I’ve been working this job for a long time. I’ve never been so certain that someone who walked in my ER doors wasn’t going to make it and somehow been proven wrong.”

“Why would you tell me that?” Nico deadpanned. He was ignored.

“I have no idea what gave you the injury you have, but it was certainly not something to take lightly. The laceration on your chest was deep, all the way from your right shoulder to the top of your left leg. Severed more blood vessels than I could count, including a nick on your femoral artery, which supplies more blood to your body than most other blood vessels combined. There’s a secondary laceration on your arm too. We hung 100 units of blood for you and you had to be resuscitated. We weren’t entirely sure that you would wake up, let alone—”

“Okay, can you stop, please?” Nico pressed the palms of his hands so hard into his eyes that it started to hurt. He tried to remember that stupid grounding thing Mr. D had taught him all those years ago, but the memories were crawling away like ants. He took a deep breath. Then two. When he looked back up, his eyes had hardened. His walls sprung back into place.

“I appreciate you giving me a warm and cozy story time about my near-death experience, but I can assure you that I don’t really care. What I care about is getting out of your hair as quickly as possible. Wouldn’t that be best for the both of us?”

Dr. Sims leaned back in his seat like he was playing a game. Nico had no interest in being treated as such. His resolve hardened, pushing the still blooming panic a little closer to the back of his mind.

“Believe me or not, all of my interest is in getting you out of here, but I would like to do that in a way that keeps you as healthy as you can be. It is my professional medical opinion that you are not well enough to leave right now. You had a major surgery less than a week ago, and your body is incredibly weak. You’re still receiving blood transfusions and copious amounts of medication through those IVs that you tried to rip out.” Nico’s cheeks flushed. “If you really, really want to leave, I’ll have the nurses get you an AMA form and let you sign it and high tail it out of here without a fight. But it will very much be against medical advice, and I am not going to give you that form until you listen to what I have to say about your condition. Okay?”

Nico’s blood was boiling by the time Dr. Sim got off his soapbox. Nico did not exactly think he was better than other people (in fact, he rarely did. His career path and his life of never-ending unstable mental health all but ensured it), but he did wholeheartedly believe that Dr. Sims didn’t understand all of this situation. How could he? He had no way of knowing and would never know how Nico’s ending up here was a result of a monster attack of some kind that Nico himself wasn’t entirely sure of that was really a symptom of the entire Greek world pulsing underneath the mortal one. Even though Nico didn’t expect him to understand it, Nico also couldn’t see past it. Nico wouldn’t be able to explain himself if he got too freaked out and the room suddenly went cold and frosty and bones started crawling out of the morgue. Nor would he be able to explain it if whatever element in his blood that made it demigod blood showed up on some test. And he definitely wouldn’t be able to explain himself if he somehow got his hands on some ambrosia and magically got better. If he stayed in this room for too long, a monster was bound to find him eventually and murder him in his bed.

Oh, yeah. He also had school and a job to worry about. The normal side of his life. Creature comforts.

Dr. Sims seemed to take Nico’s silence as begrudging acceptance of his situation. His posture visibly relaxed as he stood up and walked back over to Nico’s side.

“May I check your stitches now? Make sure they look okay?” Nico didn’t want that for a number of reasons, but realized he had no bargaining power left, he pulled the sheets off his chest and looked away. He had no interest in seeing his own mangled skin and he had even less interest in seeing how Dr. Sims would react to Nico’s already copious amount of scars.

Nico loathed being taken care of. Maybe that was his biggest qualm in all of this. It was the single largest source of interpersonal conflict in his life. He had fought with Percy and Annabeth and everyone else he liked about it hundreds of times. More than one romantic relationship he had been involved in ended precisely because of it. Nico had long ago concluded that he was just a backwards little person missing a key part of most people’s personalities, but it did not make living his life with a seemingly cold personality any better.

As Dr. Sims peeled the bandages off his skin, Nico felt his dignity slipping away. As much as he tried, he had never quite managed to completely rectify the self imposed skinniness he had condemned himself to almost twenty years ago.

“Your stitches look good,” Dr. Sims said after what felt like too many minutes. “Are you nauseous or anything like that? In any pain?”

Lying, Nico shook his head. He was both of those things, but he needed this conversation to be over so he could deal with the emotions in his head and probably cry in peace. Dr. Sims seemed content enough. Even if Nico couldn’t fool his friends, he could still fool random people into thinking he was okay. Good to know.

“Good. On another note, I’m sure you’ll be happy to know that you won’t have to deal with me much longer. Seeing as you’re no longer an emergent patient, I’ll be transferring your care to one of our general surgical residents, Dr. William Solace. He took much of the lead on your surgery. He really is an amazing surgeon and doctor, so I’m sure you’ll be in good hands. Do you have any objections to that plan?”

Great. Another doctor to meet, Nico thought. Outwardly, he shook his head. Sims smiled patiently.

“You’ll see him in a little bit then. Rest up.”

He was almost freed. When Dr. Sims was less than a foot from the door, the nurse came back in with his tray of food. The pent up emotions in Nico’s body made him want to hit the tray out of her hands. He was pretty sure he would find some ephemeral satisfaction in watching a juice box explode against the clinical tile floor. The nurse set the food down on a tray she had pulled over his lap. Next to it, she placed a blue bag.

“In case you get nauseous,” she explained. Nico suppressed the urge to roll his eyes, but it wasn’t very successful.

The door swung shut behind the two of them, and Nico broke down completely.

In two seconds, Nico went from being able to put on a brave face to having no control over himself. Using more composure than he knew he had in him, he had managed to suppress new memories of Dr. Sims and everyone else from cropping up in his mind. Now they all came in a rush. They felt like fists punching the backs of his eyes. He couldn’t keep up. His head was spinning. His throat was closing. His chest was filling with cement, and oh Hades he had forgotten how awful it was to remember, forgot how awful it was to hate the way his brain worked, and Nico swore he could feel his heart contracting and squeezing and he knew he was going to die.

Half his world was the hospital. The other half was bricks. Nico knew this. This was an alley. He felt himself turn, half of the room turning with him, and pain raked across his chest. He felt the blood like it was happening again, warm and wet between his shirt and his skin, gluing them together. A harpy loomed above him. Its claws glistened with Nico’s blood.

Nico managed to stab it before it got another swing at him. The dust cloud rained down on him. He looked down. The blood bubbled.

The sky greeted him.

And then he felt himself being pulled up. When his head lolled to the left, he saw a woman holding him up. His chest didn’t hurt anymore, which he thought was odd considering how dizzy he was becoming.

He prayed to his father.

The woman pulled Nico's ravaged jacket over his chest to hide the blood.

Then bright lights. Really bright lights.

“Is there somewhere I can direct you or something else I can help you with?”

A single moment of clarity. Nico smiled.

“You could say that.”

The real world of Nico’s hospital room swung back at him in full force. He found himself leaning over the edge of the bed, clutching one of those blue bags in his hands and gagging violently. Nico could have screamed from the pain in his chest and throat. Obviously there was nothing in his stomach to throw up, but his body didn’t seem to care. He spit blood into the bag. He had never wanted nectar more in his life. He needed something cool in his throat. A brief glance at the grape juice though told him that he would do whatever it took to not have that in his stomach.

“You can do this,” he muttered to himself. He spat again into the bag. “You are Nico di Angelo. Son of Maria and son of Hades. You can do this.” Nico did not fully believe his own musings, but he had to at least try to pretend he did or he was never going to be able to push his head above the surface ever again.

Voices echoed in the hall. He couldn’t tell exactly what they were saying, but the idea that there were people nearby that weren’t going away sobered him a little. A crowd of shadows moved through the curtains like tree branches in a storm. The useful adrenaline in his system picked up. Nico tossed the puke bag to the floor and scrambled back into bed. He mostly managed to contain his grunts of pain. Closing his eyes, he took a deep breath and tried to steady himself. The façade needed to go back up, so he built it into place.

The door swung open and Nico opened his eyes.

His heart jumped.

Standing in his room among a gaggle of white coated medical students was the doctor he had first seen in the emergency room, and now, getting a better look at him, Nico could tell he was also the same face that had been in his dream along with Jason and Octavian, holding him off that cliff.

He was also the most attractive man Nico had seen in a long, long time. Maybe ever in his life.

Nico was still scared. He still felt mildly associated from however many minutes of panic he had endured over the past few hours. He was still in incredible physical pain and hated where he was. But now he was also distracted by a stupidly hot guy. And he really couldn’t afford to be.

Of course he’s a fucking doctor, a voice in his head joked.

“Good morning sir.” His voice sounded like rainbow clouds floating around the room. It was unbelievably annoying. “How are you today?”

Nico set his jaw. The way everyone here talked to him set his teeth on edge. “You know people don’t like you very much when you bother them before the sun comes up.” Nico’s hands twitched. He needed something to hold on to so he didn’t dig his nails into his palms and massacre his skin. His eyes caught on the orange on the tray in front of him. He picked it up and started passing it back and forth between his hands.

“His eyes…” someone behind the man said. Nico’s glare hardened.

“Yeah, I’m sorry about that. We’ll try our best to be quick.”

Nico rolled his eyes and turned his attention to the window. He could feel everyone’s eyes on him, but especially the man’s. He wasn’t anything but a science experiment to them, and an uncooperative one at that.

“My name is Dr. William Solace. I was one of your surgeons.”

“I don’t really care.”

If Dr. Solace cared about his comment, he didn’t react. His face wasn’t like the other doctors’ faces though. It was softer, but somehow not any less stern.

“Olivia. Present.”

The poor intern Dr. Solace called on rattled off the same list of issues Dr. Sims had listed earlier, but this time in excruciating medical detail. Hearing it a second time did not convince Nico that being there was worth his time. He couldn’t imagine why anyone would want their lives, droning on and on about medical this and injury that. Even if he at times hated his life, he much preferred going from place to place and changing what he was doing every day to this monstrosity of anonymous paperwork and torture.

“Absolutely fascinating,” Nico deadpanned. Olivia’s mouth fell open a little bit. Dr. Solace ignored him. Nico wanted him to react, almost needed it. Some weird creature in his stomach was yearning for it. It made him feel even more sick than he already did.

“So what are we watching for in the next few days?”

An intern in the back popped her head out of the gaggle. “Monitor for signs of infection and continue intermittent infusions to treat the anemia.”

Nico whipped his head back around. “I’m sorry. The next few days? How long do you expect me to just…” He fished around for words in his head and came up with very little. “Sit here and let you poke and prod me?”

A flash of emotion finally flashed across Dr. Solace’s face, but it wasn’t the expression Nico expected. It was almost one of amusement. The interns’ heads all swiveled towards Dr. Solace like a bunch of geese following a thrown piece of bread. He took a visible deep breath.

“Your injuries are severe. They will take time to heal. You staying here and having us help your body to heal itself is in your best interest.”

Nico’s anger and annoyance would have grown if there was any room for it to spread to. He had talked to too many people by now who just kept telling him the same thing. No one would listen. He wanted to squeeze the orange in his hands so hard that it would become liquid, just to make a point.

“You don’t know what you’re talking about. I didn’t ask to come here. It’s not my fault that some random woman found me and dragged me here.”

Nico swore he saw the flash of a smile on Will’s face, but he wouldn’t be surprised if he was hallucinating by now.

“Now that you are here though, it is my professional medical opinion that you should stay where you are.”

“I don’t care. I don’t want to be a science experiment for you and all the other people crowded behind you that are looking at me like I’m a freak.”

One of the interns gasped a little. Dr. Solace glanced over at them. His eyes then slid over to the window. Nico risked a quick look. Frost was creeping up the windowpane, no doubt from Nico’s haywire emotions. His nerves amplified. Exactly what he was worried about happening was happening. He needed this interaction to end. Soon.

Dr. Solace’s attention was back on him. “If you’d like to have a conversation about this, I can get my attending and—”

“Haven’t I made it clear that I don’t want to talk?”

As usual (and as he should have expected by now), Nico’s anger got the best of him. He needed his point proven, and clearly whatever words he could produce were not up to the challenge. Before he really knew what he was doing, Nico threw the orange in his hand at the tray of food in front of him. His aim wasn’t great. He had hoped it would crash into the stupid eggs and bacon and knock everything into the floor. At least then he could pretend to be a threat and cause some shock and get everyone to leave him alone until he could function as a normal person again. Nico had not counted on the physics of an orange being launched at high speed onto a flat surface. The fruit did hit Nico’s breakfast and send it crashing to the floor. It also flew straight at the group of doctors. Nico’s wonderful luck. One of them ducked out of the way. If it had hit her, Nico probably would have burst into tears. As it was, he wanted to collapse to the ground and apologize.

Nico was so focused on the orange that he didn’t realize Dr. Solace was moving to grab him until his hand was on Nico’s wrist.

The minute their skin touched, little lightning bolts shot up Nico’s arm, followed by an inescapable and comforting warmth that turned every thought in Nico’s mind off. His eyes flicked up to Dr. Solace’s face, which was now so vicious that Nico couldn’t be entirely sure that he was interacting with the same person as before. He now understood what everyone must see when they looked at him.

Something in Nico’s stomach twisted.

Why did his eyes have to be so damn blue?

“Will, do you want us to call—”

“Nope.” His eyes did not budge. His grip tightened slightly. “Nope, I’ve got this. You guys can go. I’ll get you if I need anything.”

By the time the interns left, Nico had gained enough of his senses to realize that he should move, and so he did. He yanked his arm out of Dr. Solace’s grasp. The warm feeling disappeared. Nico immediately missed it, which he also hated.

Dr. Solace sighed and sat down at the end of Nico’s bed. Nico shifted his legs farther away. He watched with morbid curiosity as the rage dissipated from the doctor’s body. He watched him run a hand through his hair. Nico didn’t believe that this man got mad very often.

Neither one of them looked away from the other.

“Listen.” Dr. Solace was clearly back in his element now. Nico envied his ability to calm himself down so quickly.

“You can be mean and nasty to me. I can handle it. You’re not as scary to me as you try to make yourself out to be.” Nico suppressed the childlike urge to protest. “But you’re gonna have to stop being a dick to the nurses and the other doctors. No one here is out to get you. If you stop throwing stuff at people, they’ll be inclined to treat you with a lot more grace and hospitality. Got it?”

A little bit of tension eased out of Nico’s body. The seriousness of the conversation struck him, but he couldn’t entirely treat it as such. He couldn’t entirely believe what the doctor was telling him because he very rarely believed what people told him in the first place. But Dr. Solace was calming in a way he couldn’t place. Nico wanted to trust him. Part of him wanted to reach out and touch him, just to see if he was really real. To see if he could get that warm feeling back.

“Do you want anything else to eat? You’ve gotta be hungry.”

Nico blinked the comfortable haze away. He glanced down at the space where his breakfast had been. He was hungry now, hungrier than he had been since he had woken up. Without Nico telling it to, his head started to nod.

“I’ll be right back,” Dr. Solace promised before strutting out of the room. Nico stared after him, slightly shocked. Somewhere along the timeline of this interaction his brain had short-circuited, maybe even a couple of times. He was left in a stupid thought loop he couldn’t smack himself out of. He wanted to leave. He was in pain. One of the doctors seemed nice. He was also hot. Nico was hungry. Repeat.

He rubbed aimlessly at the place where his arm had been so unbelievably warm just a minute ago.

Nico decided to pout at the wall like a toddler to collect himself. It didn’t do much.

The footsteps came back. Nico turned again to see Dr. Solace holding a board game, of all things.

“Let’s start over,” he said as he sat down at the end of Nico’s bed again and dropped the box between them. Mancala. Dr. Solace had really gone somewhere else in the hospital and gotten mancala. Nico could have laughed at the absurdity of it all. He caught Dr. Solace glancing up at him. He straightened.

“You’ve played mancala before, right?”

“Um. Yeah, but—”

“Great.” Nico wanted to say more, to protest or laugh or something, but he couldn’t do anything but stare as Dr. Solace piled the little glass gems into their divots. Nico hated that he couldn’t stop staring at his eyes. He noticed that they almost looked proud.

“My name is Dr. William Solace.” Dr. Solace started playing before Nico could reach forward and start instead. “But you can call me Will. Or Solace. Or Doctor. Or anything remotely close to my name.”

Nico couldn’t hold back the smile that broke onto his face. Will was a nice name. It suited the guy a lot better than William or Dr. Solace did. The uptightness of the title “doctor” didn’t quite work with his now very obvious teddy bear personality. Nico reached forward to pick up the mancala pieces.

Will waited a minute to talk again. “I’m a general surgeon. I’m almost at the end of my third year of residency.” He shrugged a little and it was so cute that Nico forgot that they were in a hospital and that he was supposed to be mad. “I’d say it’s going pretty well.”

This time Nico had to suppress a laugh. He managed to work it down to a smile. Will clearly noticed because he sat up straighter and grinned a little. Nico’s stomach responded to the action with a little dance. He was going to have to berate himself later.

“I’m 28. My birthday is in May, so it’s soonish, I guess. Being a doctor has all but ensured that my social life is pretty nonexistent, but I’m pretty okay with that. I’ve never been the most social person in the world. Not that I don’t like having friends. I just don’t always like going out.” Will’s hands hovered over the pieces for a minute and he chuckled to himself. He picked the marbles back up and shook his head. His eyes tilted back up to where Nico was now very clearly staring at him.

“And as you can probably tell, I like to ramble.”

Nico smiled fully and it was then that he realized that the knot in his chest that he had woken up with was gone. Will was treating him like a real person with feelings and thoughts and fears. The doctor persona was fully gone now. The sweetness that had been in his words earlier had vanished too, leaving melodic tones that made Nico want to listen to him talk forever. Nico could have been talking to a friend from Camp he had known all his life and he wouldn’t have felt any less comfortable.

And then Nico remembered he was supposed to be scary.

His eyes dipped back down to the marbles. The blue stones glistened in his fingers. Could he actually trust all this? For all Nico knew, Will would leave the room and turn back into Dr. Solace and demand that Nico be thrown into a psych ward. Going through this alone though… Nico didn’t know how long he could survive that. If this guy was sincere, maybe it was worth it.

The blue locked on brown again.

“My name is Nico.” His voice was soft, the acid gone. “Nico di Angelo.”

Chapter Text

“You’re what?”

Nico winced at Percy’s voice over the phone, thanking his dad and all the other gods that he had called Percy and not Annabeth to break the news of his hospitalization. He hadn’t exactly wanted to call either of them, but Will had been bothering him about it ever since he had woken up.

“You’re really not going to call anyone?” Will had asked one day while checking his stitches.

He shrugged, his eyes locked on where Will’s fingers were undoing his bandages and running over his skin every so often. “I mean…I don’t really think anyone is looking for me.”

Will rolled his eyes. “Come on. Someone has got to be worried about you. A parent or something?”

Nico shrugged again. He liked Will, but he wasn’t going to spill his life narrative to him. A dead mom was a topic he didn’t necessarily like to broach as small talk. And he definitely wasn’t going to mention Hades.

“I’m of the opinion that everyone is missed by someone.”

Nico couldn't help but snort a little bit. Will shot him a glare, and Nico attempted to suppress it.

“I’m serious!”

“You can believe what you want, but that doesn’t mean my life follows it.”

“Careful, before I call the psych ward for you.” They both smiled at each other for a second before Nico realized what the hell he was doing and then looked down at his hands. His face flushed red. He really, really hoped Will wasn’t looking at him.

“Regardless,” Will said, pulling Nico’s shirt back up his chest. “You should call someone. You can put on the act that you don’t like anyone, but I’ve been in this job long enough to be able to tell when someone misses someone else.”

As much as Nico didn’t want to admit it, Will was probably right. He had thoroughly enjoyed getting to know Will over the past few days, but he found himself increasingly having to watch his words, hiding all the demigod things he couldn’t share. Nico wasn’t immune to loneliness. Missing people he had known for almost 20 years was bound to eat away at him eventually.

So one day Nico took up what felt like the nurse’s millionth offer to dig his cellphone out of the bag of clothes they had cut off when he first arrived and called Percy. He hadn’t really expected him to pick up since it was the middle of the workweek, but then the line connected and Nico was forced to face his problems head on.

Now he was sort of regretting it.

“I’m in a hospital.” He rattled off the address one of the nurses had scribbled down for him. “If you’ve been wondering where I am. Or if you want to come visit, or whatever.”

He could practically hear Percy blanching on the other end of the line. “Of course I’ve been wondering where you are, are you crazy? Have you not been trying to figure out why I’ve been calling you for, like, three days?”

“Wasn’t really looking at my phone.”

“Of course you weren’t.” Percy groaned, and then was quiet for a minute. Nico could imagine him at his desk at work or tucked up in the shadow of some fish tank, staring at a stingray or something and wanting to strangle Nico so he would stop interrupting his life.

“Ok. I’m assuming that you aren’t going to tell me why you’re in a hospital over the phone, so I’m not even going to try and ask. I’ll call Annabeth and let you know when we’re on our way, okay?”

Nico’s heart jumped. “You’re coming?”

“I’m going to slap you. We’ll see you later.” He heard Percy move away from the phone, but before he could hang up, he was back. “You’re okay, right? You’re not being rushed into an emergency surgery or seeing visions of your dad or anything?”

Nico tried for a laugh, but the unwanted tears getting stuck in his throat made it garbled and more unnerving than he meant it to be. “Yeah, I’m okay, I’m just…” He trailed off. He hadn’t been sure what to say even when he had started the sentence, so he just didn’t finish it. What could he say? That he was lonely? In pain? He had admitted enough weakness in the past few days. It wasn’t like Percy wouldn’t see right through any veneer Nico could put up when he saw him in Percy anyway.

“Okay. Good. Be there soon.”

The line went dead. In spite of himself, Nico smiled.

An image of Will’s grinning face at the news that Nico had actually called his friends skittered through his mind. He shook it out.

Nico was self-aware enough to realize that A. he was rapidly developing a crush on Will and B. that was definitely not smart for so, so many reasons.

It didn’t surprise anyone that Nico wasn’t really a romantic relationship person. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to be involved with people—he was just really bad at it. Even Parcy and Annabeth’s haphazard dating advice over the years hadn’t managed to break his curse. Nico never found himself able to open up enough to make anything work out, and whenever he tried his best to do so, it always seemed like things went wrong anyway and he scared people away. There was that guy who had walked out on him the first time they had had sex (and the first time Nico had ever had sex, but that wasn’t the point). And then there was the guy who had broken up with him during one of Nico’s depressive episodes. And then there were a couple that were entirely Nico’s fault. And that was just demigods. Nico had come to the conclusion long ago that dating mortals was in all honesty a terrible idea given how much shit in his past he simply couldn’t lie about.

Even in a perfect world where Will was a demigod, Nico was out of practice and too awkward and mean. He wouldn’t stand a chance.

He could still look at Will though. That was pretty much the only benefit to being here anyway. The blond hair and the blue eyes.

Nico rolled his eyes at himself. If he could suffocate the thoughts out of himself with the hospital pillow without actually dying, he would.

Nico sighed, reaching for the remote control. He had learned that hospitals were incredibly boring, and that the only tolerable solution to that that he had been able to come up with and tolerate was to watch a copious amount of Jeopardy. Nico and Jeopardy had a long history. After the wars, when Nico had been trying to learn something about the 21st century, Nico had dug up a plethora of Jeopardy tapes in the closet of the Big House. Watching them, it turned out, had served multiple purposes. It gave Nico something to do when he was sick of doing any of the camp activities. It calmed Nico down when he needed something mindless. And it taught Nico a plethora of fun facts and popular culture that came in handy both in his 1930s life and at bar trivia. Nico had become somewhat of a Jeopardy fiend. There wasn’t a single episode he hadn’t seen, and after the Hephastus cabin had designed the tech jammers that let demigods use technology without fear, Nico had binged his favorite episodes many, many times. He and Annabeth would have Jeopardy nights and compete to see who could get more correct, and Percy would be sadly dragged into it. Nico lived for those nights. He couldn’t beat almost anyone at trivia because of how much of the show he had watched.

The telltale blue squares filled the tv screen and Alex Trebek’s calming voice echoed through the tiled room. Unsurprisingly, Nico recognized the episode immediately.

Nico didn’t realize he had fallen asleep until he saw the scene in front of him, although it shouldn’t have surprised him given how little he had slept since waking up. He expected to be floating through the aether like he always did when he dreamed, but this was different. He couldn’t control where he was going or what he was seeing. He could barely tell he was dreaming at all.

He was in Persephone’s garden. Nico hated Persephone’s garden in the best of times. The plants and gems and the aura of it all made his skin crawl. Something about it had always called to him, and probably always would, in a way that nothing else did. It spoke to him, begging him to stay and listen.

Nico never went in on his own accord though.

The scarlet poppies made the ground bleed.

With no memory of why he was here or what he was meant to be doing, Nico ventured further into the garden. His fingers caught on lilies and hydrangeas as he moved. Each time his skin grazed the velvety petals, a tingle slid up his arm. He tilted his head to look down at them, half-expecting to see an animal or a monster of some kind ready to rise up at him and tear out his throat, but all he saw were the flowers with gem-like pollen glistening in the red light pouring down on them from above. Nico ran his finger over a particularly blood-red petal and plucked it from its stem.

“Defacing my garden, are we?”

Nico spun, instantly recognizing the voice as Persephone’s. She stood in front of him as lithe and as terrifying as always. He knew she had never liked him since he always reminded her of that little slip-up Hades had made in the 30s, but since the Battle of Manhattan a healthy respect had developed between the two of them. Persephone admired the war hero who had grown into the similarities there had always been between Nico and Hades. Nico respected Persephone’s ability to keep his father in line and calm. Plus it helped that Nico was no longer an annoying, deeply-troubled 11-year-old.

Persephone raised her arm, holding her palm up so Nico could return the petal. Her wine-dark nailed shimmered. Nico’s throat grew tighter.

As their fingers brushed each others’, Nico felt her warmth coursing up his arm, invading his own coldness like a poison.

Her fingers closed around the petal. “That’s better.”

Nico shifted his weight. “I didn’t mean to invade your garden.” He wanted to add ‘please don’t kill me,’ but he held his tongue.

Persephone’s expression didn’t change.

“Last I checked, you were dying.”

Before Nico could respond or even process what his step-mother had said, she turned and sat down on a bench Nico hadn’t noticed before. With her black dress draped over the red mahogany wood, she looked even more regal than Hades. That didn’t want to make Nico sit down though. The grain of the wood looked like veins, or thorns, or a thousand other things that could spell his doom. The whole stupid garden was pulsing, its blood rushing around and swirling and watching him from every angle. He wanted to run, but his feet were stuck to the ground.

But Persephone was watching him, and her eyes were scaring him more than whatever could be lurking in the marigolds.

He sat.

“Clearly, I am not dead,” he muttered, stuffing his hands into the pockets of his jacket. He felt incredibly small, which was a feeling he loathed. Persephone smiled slightly, twisting the flower petal around between her fingers.

“Quite a nasty scratch, though, wouldn’t you say?”

Nico’s cheeks grew hot and his chest started to ache. If he focused long enough, he could hear his ribs crackling as if they were moving in and out of place and snapping where they had been severed not that long ago. He elected to ignore it, knowing that if he did listen, he’d go insane.

“Do we always have to talk about my issues? Can’t you just describe your day as an ancient goddess sometime?”

Naturally, Persephone did not seem to care that Nico was talking. “Do you know which flower this is that you picked?”

Suppressing the urge to roll his eyes, Nico looked at the flower. Since it was not a rose, dandelion, or carnation, Nico did not recognize it. It was red, but everything in this stupid garden was either red or black. He shook his head.

Persephone tilted her chin up. “A fleur-de-lis. Usually they’re purple or yellow, but…” She twisted the petal around in her fingers one more time before raising it to her lips and laying the petal delicately on her tongue. Nico wanted to look away, but something about the interaction was too curious, too alluring. The gods were weird. Nico knew that. But this was different in a way he couldn’t quite place. Persephone’s eyelids fluttered shut as if she was savoring something sweet in the flower. Then, with her lips still closed, she pulled the petal out again. The red color had disappeared, replaced now with a mix of purple and white that looked totally out of place and alone in the darkness of the garden.

“I’ve always preferred red.” She grinned, revealing red stains across her teeth. Nico found himself in a state of shock. He managed to rip his eyes away and stare back out at the garden. Nausea bubbled in his stomach. Pain kept stabbing at his chest.

“It’s really a type of iris,” she continued, unbothered by Nico’s reaction. Her fist closed around the petal and when she opened it again, the petal had become yellow. “They grow around the River Lys, in Flanders. The French kings chose this silly little flower to represent their monarchy up until the French Revolution. Isn’t that fascinating?” Nico glanced back at the flower petal but his discomfort was so overwhelming that he couldn’t stay still or focused.

“Virtue. Heraldry. They associated these flowers with so many noble traits. I doubt anyone who ever used this flower in the emblem ever really thought about its real meaning: burning.”

The pain in Nico’s chest exploded. It was so potent and instant that Nico doubled over and gasped. Something wet was spreading across his shirt. When he pulled his hands away from his skin, they were sticky and scarlett.

For the first time in a while, Persephone looked up from the flower. She glanced at the flowers around her, seemingly unaware of Nico’s agony.

“And isn’t it entertaining that you’ve sat us in the part of the garden full of begonias, the flowers of warning.”

Nausea punched Nico in the gut so hard that he vomited. He was horrified to see pure blood spill from his mouth. A scream tore out of his throat.

“What are you doing to me?” he shrieked. Blood was now gushing out of a huge cut in his chest. He could see his own muscles, his own bones. When he threw up a second time, the blood didn’t splash onto the ground. Instead, the blood joined a sea of the stuff that stretched out endlessly around him. Before his eyes, the begonias melted into blood. His horror sharpened.

Persephone made a clicking noise in her mouth. “Oh, Nico. Good luck.”

Nico could tell she was gone even though his vision was blurry and going black. The acrid smell of blood was overwhelming. Horrific guttural noises were echoing around him, and Nico had the sneaking suspicion that they were coming from him.

“Help,” Nico moaned to the ground. “Please.”

Foreign hands slid under Nico’s arms and hauled him to his feet. At first, Nico wanted to fight it, but then he felt the warmth coming from the hands and saw that hair and those eyes.

“My name is Dr. William Solace.” Nico swooned as the ground fell out then reappeared underneath him. “But you can call me Will. Or Solace. Or Doctor. Or anything remotely close to my name.”

Nico’s knees gave out under him, but Will caught him.

“You don’t look too good. Let’s get you back in bed.”

Nico felt himself tipping back. He clawed at Will’s shoulders to keep himself upright, but then he felt something cushion-like against his back and saw the white tiles above him and he realized he was in his hospital room with jeopardy blaring as if nothing had ever happened.

Nico’s heart was beating out of his chest. His disorientation quickly gave way to sharp focus. He threw his blanket off and frantically looked down at the gauze covering his chest. No blood. His chest was still aching, but not any worse than it had been this morning. A sigh of relief escaped him. He was okay.

He could see irises when he closed his eyes.

Nico didn’t have time to digest his dream though, because something in the hallway caught his attention.

“Excuse me? Can you tell us where Nico di Angelo is?”

Annabeth’s voice was clear as day, and she did not sound happy. Nico was screwed.

He threw his uninjured arm over his eyes.

The door opened.

“Nico di Angelo, you have lost your mind.” Annabeth had come in without Percy, which wasn’t necessarily unexpected, but was terrifying nonetheless. Nico peeked out from under her arm. Her eyes, as usual, scared him.

“Hello.”

“Hello? That’s all you have to say?” She put her fingers against the bridge of her nose like she did when Percy was being annoying. “I suppose we’re lucky you called at all and didn’t just show up at our door in two weeks or have us find out at your graduation.”

“You do realize that this sort of yelling match is why I didn’t call you?”

Annabeth looked up at the ceiling as if talking directly to Athena. The door clicked open behind her, but she didn’t seem to care. “Nico. It’s been three days. It took you three days to tell us that you almost died!”

Nico pushed his annoyance down. “To be fair, I didn’t tell you I almost died. You figured it out.” He presumed Annabeth might have killed him via strangulation if Percy hadn’t wrapped her in a well-timed hug.

“She means that we’re very glad you’re alive,” Percy said. He lowered Annabeth into a chair and dragged one over from the corner for himself. “But also, what the fuck dude?”

Nico moved his arm away from his eyes and let it rest in his lap. He was sure that he looked tired and more emaciated than he had in years, and he was sure all the medical equipment freaked his friends out as much as it had him, and he was still annoyed by most things, but honestly he was just glad that Percy and Annabeth were there. Part of him still couldn’t believe that they were at all. Annabeth looked like she was trying to gamble with a toddler. Percy looked tired and held a facial expression way too similar to the one that had been on his face when Bianca died. But they were still there. As much as they seemed irritated, they were there, talking to him, having him see a familiar face. Nico could’ve cried, and he probably would have if Percy hadn’t pulled a plastic bag full of the very recognizable color of ambrosia. His mouth started watering without Nico giving it permission to.

Naturally, he couldn’t just reach out and take it.

“I’ll give you this as soon as you tell us why we’re talking to you in a hospital,” Percy explained. He waved the bag temptingly. Nico’s gaze hardened.

“You’re really trying to bribe me? Over pain medication? Have you forgotten who you’re talking to?”

Annabeth caught onto something Percy did not. Her eyes widened a little, but whatever shock was there was quickly replaced with irritation. “You didn’t let them give you anything? Morphine or—”

His face burned. “Do we really have to rehash how much I don’t like taking care of myself?”

Percy’s mouth went slack. “Nothing. You’ve been here for three days and you’ve let them give you nothing for the pain you are very obviously in.”

“Well, maybe if you’d give me the ambrosia, I would be in a better mood to have a conversation with them.”

“Nico—”

“You absolute imbeciles.” Annabeth yanked the plastic bag out of Percy’s hands and tossed it in Nico’s direction. Almost as soon as he caught it, he popped a square of the stuff in his mouth. The taste of the tiramisu his mother used to make exploded across his tongue. Nico could have cried for so many reasons. A tingling feeling grew in his chest. Like a wave ebbing onto the sand, he realized he hadn’t thought about his mom at all since he had been here and he had barely thought about Bianca. Logically, he knew that thinking about them didn’t do him any good. It never did, and anyway, it had been twenty years. There had always been this balance in his head between forgetting and remembering. Sometimes he wished he could wake up and forget it all. But then he would panic because he couldn’t remember the exact way his mom used to smile at him when she read him bedtime stories or how Bianca would cut the crusts off his sandwiches in Maine. His throat would get smaller, just like it was doing now, and he couldn’t believe he wasn’t eight or nine or ten again, crawling out of that blown apart building with Bianca screaming behind him or racing into the woods with twigs and branches biting at his skin until he tumbled face-first into that horrible labyrinth.

Now he really couldn’t breathe. The ambrosia threatened to slide back up his throat.

“Are we gonna have to get that doctor in here to get you to talk?”

Nico’s eyes cleared from an entirely new type of panic. He was used to extreme and rapid mood changes, but he didn’t think he had ever been quite so floored from one line. The confusion came, and then something that was way too similar to lovesickness, and then the nerves. Nico knew how to mask fear and sadness. Apparently he wasn’t good at masking shock. Or a crush.

Annabeth and Percy picked up on his mood change immediately. The whole mood of the room shifted from annoyance at Nico to deep and unrelenting curiosity and teasing about this newfound, very entertaining fact.

“The blonde one in the hallway?” Annabeth asked.

“Hang on—”

“Dr. Solace or something, right?” Percy turned to Annabeth as if Nico wasn’t even in the room. “I talked to him for a minute while you were in here. He seems nice. Very cheerful.”

“And if he could deal with what I’m sure was a rabid version of Nico for three days, then I’m sure he’s great.”

Percy smirked as if gearing up for something he knew would piss Nico off. “Plus he’s totally your type.”

Nico’s fingers drummed angrily against the mattress. “I fully regret ever calling you.” He let his mouth shut but opened it again when he realized he wasn’t done. “So what if I smile sometimes when the only person who doesn’t treat me like a leech around here is nice to me? It doesn’t have to mean anything. I don’t just fall for people who are nice to me.” Even as he said it, he felt his chest growing heavy from the guilt in knowing he was lying.

The sharpness in his tone made the two of them back off. In the silence, Nico reached for the remote to quiet the horrifically loud noises of Jeopardy. They were pretending to have interest in the screen, but really he knew that they were waiting for him to talk on his own terms.

The aching in his chest and arm began to dissipate as the ambrosia worked through his system.

Slowly but surely Nico told his friends a combination between what he could remember and what Will and all the other doctors had told him. Percy looked more shocked than Nico had ever seen him. Annabeth managed to keep most of her emotions hidden under a straight face except for when he mentioned being resuscitated. By the time he was done, Percy looked like he was ready to throw up. Annabeth leaned forward and grabbed Nico’s leg. Under normal circumstances, he would have moved away, but now he could feel how much Annabeth cared for him even from the simple touch. Nico glanced towards the window, guilty once again that he hadn’t called them earlier.

“I have never met someone more deserving of a break,” Percy said. “If I ever find out that a god sent that monster, I’m going to go to Mount Olympus and strangle them myself.” A crack of thunder echoed from outside, making the three of them jump. Percy’s head spun to the window. He glared at it. Nico had to smile.

“Anyway…” Annabeth reached into her bag. “Do you want to play Uno?”

Percy and Annabeth didn’t leave for over an hour. Annabeth, it turned out, had brought a zillion games and other activities in her bag that she probably could have filled an entire day with. They played Uno, then checkers, then Scrabble. They talked about Percy’s job and Annabeth’s job and how their daughter was doing and how Nico’s schoolwork was and what was going on at Camp. It was nice for Nico to just be himself. Nico could trick himself that it was normal if he didn’t think too hard. As much as the three of them talked and played games though, Nico couldn’t keep his mind still. It kept wandering to his creepy dream and, even more stupidly, a certain blond doctor. As he looked at the translucent tiles of Blockus, Will’s stupid smiling face drifted through his vision. One night, when Nico was out to dinner with a few of his friends from his masters’ program, they had gotten to talking about aphantasia, a condition where people didn’t see images of what they were thinking of. Nico couldn’t imagine living like that at the time, but now he wished he couldn’t see anything. Somehow, he didn’t think that would solve the problem. Even if he couldn’t see Will, Nico had the sneaking suspicion that he would still be able to feel him, to remember how warm Will’s hands had been when he had grabbed Nico’s wrist that first day, or even to feel how he somehow lit up a room with his stupid fucking smile.

Nico had never met a person who could actually do that.

The sun had dipped far below the horizon. Nico was getting tired and slightly annoyed that Percy and Annabeth did not seem to want to leave him to his own life.

The door opened and Nico recognized the blond bush of hair immediately. Nico’s heart rate jumped. He smiled, forgetting that he was supposed to be getting over this.

Will’s expression grew bashful. Nico almost succeeded in not noticing it.

“I can come back later.”

In less than a second, Percy, Annabeth, and Nico had a silent conversation. The two of them smirked at Nico in that annoying way that reminded him that they had known each other and had been married for too long. Nico darkened his eyes. Annabeth wiggled her eyebrows and then turned to Will.

“No, no, it’s alright. We were just leaving anyway.” Nico fought the urge to glare. If they weren’t trying to set him up already, they definitely were now. The thought of being around Will right now made him ill.

Percy stood up. To Will, it probably looked completely normal, but Nico could tell how much extra energy Percy had now that Will was in the room.

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah. Our daughter is at home with my mom, so…” he gave Nico a look that he did not even want to dissect, “we should probably go before she makes her cry. Makes my mom cry, not Silena.”

Will smiled sheepishly. Annabeth leaned over the bed and gave Nico a kiss on the cheek. He would’ve pushed her away since he felt like a toddler, but then he noticed her handing him another baggie of ambrosia. He shoved it under his blankets.

“We’ll see you tomorrow, okay?”

As Percy and Annabeth gathered their things, Will stood in the doorway completely out of place. Nico expected Will to look the most at ease in a hospital room, but instead he looked nervous and pale. He only looked like a doctor because he had his white coat on. He certainly didn’t seem like the same doctor who Nico threw an orange at. It was sort of nice. Nico watched as Will shifted his weight back and forth, wondering what other layers of Will he could uncover before he got out of this place.

He stared for too long. Will caught his eye. Nico was lit on fire.

But he didn’t look away.

How did he want to play this?

Will wasn’t a game. Nico had no desire to treat him as such, and if Nico ever hurt the kind, caring doctor, Nico would die a thousand deaths. But he also was never going to get to know anything more about Will if he didn’t open his mouth.

He would be sure to strangle Percy and Annabeth later.

Nico stuck a crooked smile on his face.

“Thank you for saving me from that. They were getting annoying.”

Will sat down and gave an awkward little shrug. Nico was electrocuted again.

“They seemed nice enough when I talked to them earlier.”

“I didn’t say they weren’t nice.” He moved his arm above his head. His nerves were too great for him to stay still. “We’ve known each other for a long time. I was ten when I met them, and they’ve always tried to take care of me. Sometimes it works.” Nico closed his mouth. He had no idea why he was talking. He didn’t just share things with people, let alone random mortals. There was no way he could actually explain what Percy and Annabeth meant to him anyway. A sour taste flooded his mouth.

“Sometimes it doesn’t.” Will face got sadder. Nico flicked his eyes to the window to avoid seeing him. “They’re just worried about me. It annoys me to no end, but… I guess they’re right to worry sometimes. This isn’t exactly the first time I’ve gotten into trouble.”

Will didn’t look shocked. Nico knew somewhere in the back of his head that Will had more likely than not seen all his scars anyway during surgery, but until now he had at least been able to pretend that Will had been so focused on saving his life that he had missed it. On top of that, Nico still hadn’t told Will why he had shown up bleeding in his hospital in the first place.

Will started fidgeting with the edges of his coat. “It’s still nice to have a familiar face around.”

“As if you aren’t becoming one.”

Nico said it without thinking. It wasn’t that what he had said wasn’t true. It very much was. But it was so out of pocket even for whatever character Nico was trying to put on. Nico had always been abrasive, but he had never been so outright flirty. He had the paranoid urge to look around and make sure that Aphrodite wasn’t lurking somewhere in the room and using him as a puppet. Then he had the even worse idea that Cupid was hanging around and tormenting him again after giving him a nice fourteen year break. That was really why Nico didn’t deserve for Will to treat him like a person—he would always have that uncanny ability to turn everything good into something horrible.

Will’s face turned red. Nico had to hope that it wasn't from rage.

“How are you feeling?”

The question took Nico by surprise. “I’ve been better.” Gods, his answers were so stupid.

Will’s eyes were locked on Nico’s as if he was keeping them there by force.

“Can I get you anything before I go?”

Nico had seen that look in the mirror. Will was scared.

He ended up blabbering something about jello. He was sure that what his face was doing didn’t match what he was thinking of doing. Nico wasn’t exactly used to going over this kind of autopilot. Shame gurgled in his throat.

Once Will was gone, Nico looked down at his phone. Percy had sent him a gif of a skull with heart eyes.

Chapter Text

“Can’t you just come and break me out? I promise I feel better.”

Hazel raised her eyebrows at him through the shimmer of the Iris message. Nico knew that asking was absolutely useless, but the teeniest part of his brain, in its medicine-induced haze, delusionally hoped that Hazel would hop in a car and drive across the country to get him. He sighed. Jeopardy kept going on the TV but Nico was bored with it. He was bored with everything. The ceiling was boring. The walls were boring. The bed was getting more and more uncomfortable. He was barely even in pain anymore, so being here really felt useless.

His sister, however, did not have much sympathy. “This is what you get from hiding this from up.” Percy and Annabeth had very expectedly snitched on Nico.

He rolled his eyes. “I get it. I suck. Can we move on now?”

She smirked a little bit. Nico would see Camp Jupiter in the background of her frame. It probably was much nicer than Nico’s surroundings. In order to Iris message Hazel, Nico had had to rig one of the hospital’s nebulizers to put water vapor directly into the path of the sunlight coming in the window. At this time of day, that meant that Nico had to hang halfway out of his bed and hide the nebulizer and the image close to the floor. Could he have just called her? Yes. But he wanted to see her face. Sometimes Iris messages just felt better than a phone call anyway.

“What’re you planning to do about graduation?” Hazel asked. It took Nico a second to remember what she was talking about. His discomfort was dulling his awareness.

“Uh. Go to it? What do you mean?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know. Didn’t know if you had missed too many days from your various errands or if this particular injury had set you back in some particular way.”

Nico chuckled. “No. The mist works in wonderful ways.” Nico had a deep appreciation for all the bullshit he had been able to get away with over the past three years. Even before that, it had been somewhat of a struggle to decide where he wanted to go to college. Once he had decided that that was what he wanted, that is. He could always have gone to New Rome and gone to university there, but he had very little desire to be so far from New York. Hazel would be there, obviously, and he’d be much safer from monsters than he would be anywhere else in the world, but it felt too far. He needed Camp and Camp needed him. He needed New York and everyone in it. So Nico just got really good at using the Mist. It couldn’t cover everything, but as long as he kept his own ducks in line, it generally worked out well enough for him to get on with his life.

“Are you gonna invite dad?”

Nico made a weird face. “I don’t know. A graduation in Yankee Stadium doesn’t exactly seem like his cup of tea.” He blinked. “Am I supposed to?”

Hazel shrugged again. “I don’t know. It’s not like you and him have ever followed conventional standards of father-son relationships. Or even the conventional standards of demigod father-son relationships.” The memory of Nico screaming at his dad to intervene in the Battle of Manhattan popped into his head.

“Mm. I’ll think about it. I don’t really want him to start clapping and raise the dead on a call to Alecto or something.”

She chuckled. “I guess. Percy and Annabeth are coming?” He nodded. “Is Rachel?”

“No. She has some event with her dad that she can’t cancel just to go to some event for a friend that her parents have deemed ‘a bad influence.’”

“She’s 30 years old. Can’t she do what she wants?”

“Apparently not when your last name is Dare.” Nico glanced at the time on the wall clock and sighed. “I’ve gotta go, The nurses are gonna come in to draw blood soon and as well as the Mist works, I don’t think I could hide this.”

Hazel sighed dramatically. “Fine. Call me back later if you want. I’m just gonna be here doing praetor stuff. Maybe you’ll even get to see Frank.”

“I’m sure he thinks incredibly highly of my injuries. Not all of us can turn into an ant on command.”

“You’re lucky he was in a meeting when you called and told me where you were. He would’ve turned into a bulldog again.”

Nico remembered the time he had turned up to the border of Camp Jupiter with a broken arm and Frank had actually turned into a bulldog. It was a memory he looked back on fondly and often.

“Alright. Bye.”

“Bye.”

Nico yanked the nebulizer out of the wall and rolled back into bed. His back hurt from leaning over. Oh, the things he’d do for Hazel. He wanted to eat more ambrosia but he was slightly afraid of lighting himself on fire. He had just settled back into his pillows as if he had never moved in the first place when a nurse walked in.

He had learned from Will that this was Abby. With his superior detective skills, Nico had also learned that Abby was probably Will’s best friend in the whole hospital. Nico sort of supposed that meant he was supposed to act nicer to her than he did most people, but so far that wasn’t panning out. His brain had decided that “nice” wasn’t the mood they were going with. Even if he wanted to be kind, which he wasn’t sure of, he didn’t think he could be. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to be nice. Deep down, contrary to popular belief, he was nice. That was why being a social worker and a camp counselor worked out for him. But he was uncomfortable and did not really want to be poked and prodded every day. Even though he wasn’t in pain anymore, he was anxious and bored out of his mind. Most people in the hospital still gave him weird looks. He was really only kept from running away by a promise he had made to a certain blond doctor that Nico continued to deny that he liked more than he should.

So he settled on staring at Abby and at least not glared at her when she walked in.

“How are you doing Mr. di Angelo?”

For the thousandth time, Nico regretted telling them his name. Every time someone said it he felt like a lightning bolt was going to come out of nowhere and smite him.

He shrugged in response to Abby’s question. She nodded and carried on with whatever she was doing. If she was perturbed by his lack of response, she didn’t show it. He appreciated not being seen as a leper by her. As long as she hated him in silence, they were good as far as Nico was concerned.

“Any new aches or pains or other changes I should run and consult a doctor about?” she asked as she slung a blood pressure cuff around his arm. He shook his head. “Fabulous. You’re my easy patient today.” Nico did not think that anyone had ever used the word “easy” to describe him in his life. He could hear Mr. D laughing from Long Island.

“Your blood pressure looks pretty good. A little bit low, but I’m starting to assume that that’s sort of your normal state of being anyway.” Nico almost smiled. “Dr. Solace should be in in the next couple of hours to check in on you. Do you need anything until he comes? Food? Another pillow? Medicine I should order?” Nico tried to ignore how he could see his heart rate pick up a little on the monitors when Abby mentioned Will’s name. He shook his head stiffly.

“Great. Holler if you need anything.”

A thank you came out of Nico’s mouth. He flushed slightly as Abby turned back to him. A real smile graced her face. Nico felt like dying, and not in a good way.

He grabbed the remote and flipped on Jeopardy before either of them could say anything else that would incriminate him. Luckily, Abby left before the tiniest bits of frost began appearing on the windowsill. As soon as she was gone, he glared at them until they melted away.

Because the gods never ceased to fuck with him, the topic of one of the Jeopardy categories was Greek mythology. Another was Romans. Great. Nico dug the writing pad Percy had brought him out from under his sheets. The stupid cast they had put on his arm was getting in his way. Since his arm didn’t hurt anymore, it seemed completely useless. It was bulky and annoying and he wanted it off, but he didn’t really know how to tell the people in the hospital that his arm felt fine and that he didn’t need the cast, especially because his arm hadn’t been healed by the most normal means. Maybe one day he would cave and tell Will. But until then, he was stuck with it, so he wrote annoyingly and his handwriting was atrocious. Whatever. It was still better than speaking out loud to himself.

An episode and a half later, the door to his room opened again. In stepped none other than Dr. William Solace. If Nico had been standing up, he was sure he would have stumbled over his own feet even if he had been standing still. Apparently his body wasn’t getting the memo that it wasn’t supposed to react in any sort of way when it saw Dr. Solace other than with ire. His life would be so much better if his body just listened.

He sighed inside. Whatever character he was playing, he was sort of tired of it.

Will nodded his head towards the TV. “You like Jeopardy?”

Nico could’ve laughed if he hadn’t been busy pretending to try to keep his attraction to the doctor to a minimum. He caught Will staring at the TV as if he were trying to meet it with some sort of laser vision. It was funny, the way he so obviously tried not to stare at Nico. But it wasn’t quite the normal way he tried not to stare at Nico. He kept shifting his weight, moving his hands, pulling at his hair. It was almost unsettling. He didn’t know why Will was acting this way, but he wanted to put him at ease. He did not, however, want to get into his whole life story, even if the lovesick part of him wanted to. So he settled on a short answer.

“Yeah. A little.” When Will did not immediately respond, Nico’s nerves kicked in. The incessant urge to talk that came so rarely to him bubbled in his throat. He didn’t understand why this guy he barely knew could make him feel so many things he had never felt before in his life, but it was really starting to cause problems. He was growing hyper aware of every movement he and Will made and he didn’t have the energy for it.

Nico paused the screen. “I miss Alex Trebek though. He really made this show fun.”

Will nodded. His eyes still weren’t really moving. “Do you know all the answers?”

Nico glanced at the screen. Of course they were on the mythical river category. Why would they be on absolutely anything else when Will came in? Nico didn’t see any choice but to play along.

“I’d say I’m pretty good,” he said with an air of false confidence that almost made him grind his teeth. “I definitely know this one. What about you?”

Will stared at the TV screen, giving Nico the ample if not regrettable chance to study his profile. Somewhere in the back of his mind, a much smaller, weaker part of Nico screamed its protests. Unfortunately, the forefront of his mind was so preoccupied with the way Will’s jaw slid down to his neck and the way his throat looked from the side that he didn’t particularly care that staring was a terrible idea.

The doctor turned back to him. When their eyes met accidentally, Nico felt the lightning bolts arc across his skin. All of Nico’s emotions went through an amplifier. He couldn’t have stopped his smile even if he wanted to.

“Care to enlighten me?”

It took Nico a minute to remember what the question was. For a minute, he got scared that he didn’t know the answer. Then he remembered that this was his life and that he could have answered the question half-dead. Or literally dead, given his parentage.

“The River Styx. In order to cross it, you have to pay Charon a drachma so that he’ll take you across. A lot of people didn’t have the money, so they were stuck.” Will looked absolutely rapt, hanging on to every word, which gave Nico the nerve to keep talking. Will had this way about him that no one else Nico had ever met had that made Nico want to keep talking and talking just to see how happy and enthralled he could make Will.

“In Greece, if you swore on the River Styx, you would have to do whatever you swore. If you didn’t, you’d die. No exceptions.”

“Oh, so no pressure, right?” It wasn’t really a funny joke, but Nico laughed anyway. It was worth it to see Will smile. Even though Nico knew that leading the guy on wasn’t in anyone’s best interest, he couldn’t seem to stop himself. His carefully honed sense of self-control just seemed to evaporate whenever Will was in the room. His laughter made Nico feel 100 times better than any ambrosia ever could.

They lapsed into silence. Nico could see the jiteriness creep back into Will’s movements. He cleared his throat.

“So, uh, your wrist is okay to write?”

Nico glanced down. His annoyance piqued again, both at his arm and the incredibly mundane nature of the conversation they were starting.

“Oh. Yeah. It’s doing okay. Guess you’re good at taking care of me.” Oops. Nico wished he could keep his damn mouth shut. He knew he was being flirty and probably inappropriate on a lot of levels, but the words were out now, so what could he do now except go with it or cry and have a breakdown?

Will, to not his credit, looked like he was having an apoplectic episode.

“Where did Percy go?”

Nico was unable to hide his annoyance at this point. He could think of a million more entertaining things to talk about than Percy. He answered anyway.

“I don’t know if you noticed the other day, but Annabeht is, like, eight months pregnant or something ridiculous, so I forced him to stop watching me like a hawk and go home and help her out with their absolutely insane daughter.” He sighed. “Not that Annabeth wants his help. She’s very insistent on remaining independent, even though she can’t see her feet.”

“Wow. Most people would take it easy at that point.”

Nico smiled a little. He remembered one particular dinner the three of them had had when Annabeth was pregnant the last time. Annabeth was having false contractions and was still flitting around the kitchen trying to clean and Percy was trying to chase her and get her to sit down. Whenever she would stop and close her eyes to get through a wave of pain, Percy would pace and try to help. Anyway, the night had ended with Nico tipsy on the couch as neither of them were paying him any attention.

“Annabeth doesn’t really do easy. Trust me. Percy has tried.”

“Silena’s their daughter, right?”

“Yeah. She just turned five. She started pre-k last year, and it has made her hyperactivity even worse, somehow. They have their hands full. I have no idea what they’re going to do with two more kids.”

Will’s eyes bulged. “Two more.”

They weren’t even Nico’s kids, but he loved when people had that reaction. “Twins. Percy nearly passed out when they found out. It was entertaining to hear him talk about.” More specifically, Percy had called him fully sobbing and unable to get words out. Annabeth had taken the phone from him and explained it, which only made Percy cry harder. Later, he had clarified that 90% of it was out of joy.

“Well. Godspeed to them, I guess.”

Nico nodded, but he didn’t offer to continue the conversation. He really wanted to know why Will was in here in the first place. He liked talking to Will and looking at him, as the butterflies in his stomach made very apparent, but he didn’t quite believe that Will had it in him to find a non-medical reason to check in on him as much as he did. If Nico was proven wrong, however, he was going to have to throw himself out the window because that was just too foreign.

“Did you come in here just to talk, or did you have a purpose?”

Will’s demeanor changed instantly. Nico wished he wasn’t able to read people so well because then maybe Will’s change in expression and the way he was standing and everything about his presence wouldn’t make him sick to his stomach.

“Your bloodwork came back,” Will said finally. “It showed a pretty high level of benzodiazepines. Is there anything I should know?”

Nico’s blood ran cold. He tried to block out the onslaught of thoughts racing through his head at the mention of a benzodiazepine. He knew the exact implications of what Will was trying to get at immediately. He basically had a masters degree in social work for Hades’ sake. He also knew that one of the very things he had been afraid of happening was now happening and that all the ambrosia he had been consuming like candy was finally starting to show up in some way on Will’s radar. But he didn’t want to believe it. He didn’t want to believe that the spell that Will had cast, the one that made Nico feel like a real person who could be treated like someone normal, had broken. He didn’t want to believe that Will thought he was wicked like everyone else. Logically, he knew that Will was just doing his job, but the rational thoughts were being crowded out amidst the new crop of thoughts that were appearing and telling him how little he was worth.

He took a breath. Forced himself to stop his hands from shaking.

“Considering that I don’t know what a benzodiazepine is, I’m gonna go with no.”

The lie tasted like battery acid.

Will looked down at his feet. In the few seconds that passed, Nico imagined a whole other world. Will could look at him and smile. “Yeah. I thought it was an error,” he would say. “I trust you.” Gods, he wanted Will to say that. So few people in his life had ever told him that. That was usually fine. He knew it was a byproduct of his own carefully constructed personality, but for some stupid reason he wanted WIll, someone he barely knew, to say it, to tell him that he trusted Nico because even though he barely knew him, Will was so pure and so honest and so real and maybe Nico just needed one completely free person like that to tell him that he was normal. That it wasn’t his fault. That he was good. Wouldn’t that be wonderful?

Wow. Maybe he was reaching a new low.

“They’re a drug class usually used to treat anxiety and depression, but they’re really addictive. They tend to be prescribed for legitimate reasons, at first, and then people get addicted to the way they make a person feel and then people misuse them.”

Nico debated fully breaking down into tears, and he would’ve done it if he thought it could actually end the interaction. Then he just got angry. Part of him was angry, irrationally so, at Will for what his horrific manipulative brain could only perceive rightnow as ruining him with his fake smile. But he was much, much angrier at himself. He was mad for ever thinking that Will saw him differently than everyone else. He was mad at himself for going against everything he always told himself to do when dealing with other people. He was mad at himself for being an evil, cryptic, horrific monster.

A memory snapped into his head in perfect clarity.

Because Nico had been raised for most of his adult conscious life around people who would seriously consider killing anyone who messed with him, he had never had to deal much with face to face homophobia outside of what he had dealt with in the closet as a child in Italy. The first time he had really had to deal with it was in downtown Manhattan of all places.

Nico hadn’t been expecting it. He and his friends including one guy Nico had sort of liked at the time had been out to dinner. After chatting and hanging out for about an hour and Nico spending at least a little bit of that flirting very badly with the guy, Nico had stepped outside because he was getting a little bit claustrophobic. He had sat down on a bench and started to fiddle with a paperclip he had in his pocket to try and work some of the anxiety out of his hands. He was having a good time. It was hot. The restaurant’s neon light was coloring him red.

He was just about to go back inside when a group of men walked up to him. They were probably older than him, although he couldn’t tell that much about them in the dark. He couldn’t remember seeing them before they moved in front of him, but that didn’t stop them from staring at him as if he were a piece of gum on the bottom of their shoes. Nico wasn’t scared. After everything that had happened to him in his life, he didn’t think humans could scare him.

After giving them a quick glance, Nico turned his head to the right to look down the street. The minute he did so, the guy at the front of the pack kicked Nico’s foot. Nico snapped his head back. The guy was smirking at him. Nico glared.

“Can I help you?”

The guy laughed. “Yeah, probably.” Nico continued to glare, waiting. Upon seeing that Nico wasn’t going to say anything, the guy laughed again, this time turning to the flock and getting them to laugh along too.

“I’m just saying you could act a little bit less like a fag when you’re out in public like this.”

Nico raised his eyebrows. “Excuse me?”

“You know,” the guy said. He gestured vaguely to all of Nico. “You’re wearing clothes like that. Carrying yourself in that way and clinging onto that guy inside like you’re some woman.”

All of them laughed. Nico glanced down at himself, not because he believed them, but because he had no idea what they were talking about. All he was wearing was a plain black shirt and a pair of jeans. He thought about saying that what he was wearing wasn’t really any different to what they were wearing, but he was sure that would end up causing more trouble than these guys were worth.

“Thank you for the constructive criticism,” Nico said dryly. He stood, put his hands in his pockets, and turned to go back into the restaurant.

Bam. A fist connected with the left side of Nico’s jaw. Pain splashed across his face. He had been hit and stabbed and clawed a lot in his life but he was almost certain that he had never been hit so hard with so little warning in his life. It definitely wasn’t the hardest Nico had ever been hit or the most painful, but the shock made up for all of that. He barely managed to tuck himself into a ball before hitting the pavement. He definitely did not succeed at falling and rolling the way he had been taught to for years. The grain of the concrete cut at his skin. He felt the gush of blood in his mouth before he tasted it. When he saw the evidence of it on the sidewalk, he felt dizzy. He was uncharacteristically slow at understanding his surroundings simply because he couldn’t believe that a random man had actually come up to him and punched him for no reason.

He felt something wet on his cheek. Someone had spit on him.

Get up, his survival instinct screamed. Get up before they can attack you again.

But he didn’t get up. He didn’t even get up when a kick landed on his ribs. He didn’t feel like he could get up and fight even though that was all he ever did. He couldn’t pull out his sword. He couldn’t summon a skeleton to tackle the guy, He had no idea what he was supposed to do. Monsters were easy to punch back. Humans, not so much.

So Nico rolled over.

That same guy was staring down at him. He was flexing his hand. At least the guy was experiencing some physical consequence.

He was looking down at Nico with a grin more evil than Nico had ever seen on any monster.

“Maybe this will teach you,” the guy muttered. He pulled his foot back to kick Nico.

I wish he’d break his leg, Nico thought.

A sickening crack shot through Nico’s head like a railroad spike.

The man screamed.

The sound gave Nico the sense to scramble to his feet. His vision was blurry. Squiggles were crawling across his eyes. The man who had attacked him was laying on the ground clutching his shin. Nico was afraid that the rest of the group would come after him, but they seemed so stunned by what they were witnessing that they didn’t do anything but stare at the guy on the ground.

Nico’s eyes slid down. One of the other guys dragged the man’s hands away for a second. Crimson blood crowded out Nico’s vision. That is it, it crowded out everything in his field of vision that wasn’t the stick of bone protruding from the man’s skin.

Nausea flooded Nico’s chest. The minute he saw it, he knew he had done it, somehow. He hadn’t even known that he could do that, but there wasn’t any other explanation for the screaming man on the ground. Dead bones, skeletons, sure. Living ones?

He thought back to tearing the ground apart years ago when Percy told him that his sister had died.

Nico stumbled backwards over his own feet before sprinting away.

He had never told anyone about that night. He took ambrosia to heal the bruises on his chest and drank and drank and drank that night to try and forget the details. It didn’t work.

Nico remembered that night clearly now. The same loop of thoughts he had had that night were replaying in his head. No normal person, not even a normal demigod, would be able to do what Nico had done. Only someone as fucked up as Nico would have been able to stop. Even Percy when he had been suffocating Akhlys on her own blood and tears had been able to stop. Nico could never stop himself, and apparently his rage and sadness were so powerful that he could do things without even meaning to. He was monstrous, plain and simple.

And then, of course, there was the whole thing that had happened with Bryce. Nico wouldn’t get over that memory for as long as he lived.

He didn’t want Will to see him like that, even though he deserved it. The thought of that made him feel like he was dissolving.

The truth seemed like his only option. That meant denial.

“Oh. I see.” He tried his best to ignore how loud his heartbeat was becoming. “Is it the fact that I look angry all the time that made you come to his wonderful conclusion? Or is it the fact that I came in here with a mysterious injury that nearly killed me that I still haven’t told you how I got it that was more informative?”

Will looked shocked. The reaction pleased the deepest, vengeful parts of Nico. But then Will’s expression changed and Nico could tell that he was primed for a fight.

“All I can do is respond to what I see on the papers,” Will said, “and get you the resources and the help that you need in the meantime. We have an excellent addiction department here, and—”

“I’m not addicted to anything.”

“Nico—”

“Where would I even get them? I haven’t been anywhere but this stupid bed since I woke up. And my bloodwork or whatever didn’t show anything when I got here, right?”

“No, but—”

Nico could see the argument coming from miles away. “And don’t you dare insinuate that Percy or Annabeth of all people brought them in for me. They would never do anything that would ever put me at risk for something like that.” His finders started drumming on his tray table again as the anxiety of getting too close to the truth kicked in. “I know that I’m odd and suspicious and somewhat creepy, and you and your nurses and the other doctors can think that all you want, but I’m not a drug addict and my friends are not sneaking in drugs for me.” Just to make Will feel a little bit of something, he added, “Maybe your precious hospital messed up or something, but I swear to all the gods that I didn’t take anything.”

There. Done. Nico had probably made Will as angry and irritated as he could, and of course the net result was that Will was still standing there in his white coat and his stupid button down, and Nico was all but wheezing and trying his absolute best to fight off 20 years of demons. He ran a hand through his hair, unable to keep himself completely under lock and key.

The fact that he had said gods instead of god was the least of his worries.

“Okay. I’m sorry. I believe you.”

Nico stared at him. He wasn’t sure anymore if he could believe what Will was saying. Everything about his body language, the way he held his arms and shuffled his feet and curled his shoulders in, suggested that he was sincere. Perhaps he was more sincere than Nico had ever seen him. And yet Nico couldn’t quite be sure. He looked as conflicted as Bianca had looked when Percy appeared on that cliff.

Why is it that I can always read everyone in the room perfectly apart from you, Nico wondered.

Slowly, he lowered himself back into his pillow. He was careful not to let his expression fall. He was still on edge and if you had really asked him, afraid.

He didn’t feel like he had done enough.

Refusing to look at Will, he said, “If I were you, I would go check on the guy in room six.”

Will jolted upright. “What?”

Nico let his eyes slide back to the window. He picked up the TV remote.

“Just a thought.” The familiar prickling in his spine was so intense that he didn’t even flinch when the intercom clicked on. Will didn’t either, but that was because he was too busy staring at Nico with his eyes in an absolute panic. As expected, Will left after only a few seconds of the alarm going off since he had a job to do, but he by no means looked happy about it. Nico caught Will’s eyes one last time as he slipped out the door.

They looked terrified.

An electric shock radiated over his skin.

As soon as Will had left, Nico picked up his phone. Percy picked up on the second ring.

“We have problems.”

Chapter Text

“Whatcha doing there?”

Nico’s eyes snapped up as if he were a child getting caught for sticking their hand in the cookie jar. Will was standing in the doorway of his room, smirking. The way he was holding himself looked confident enough, but Nico could tell from the way his eyes looked at him that he was tired. And Nico knew exactly why.

The past 24 hours had felt like one of those ridiculous spy movies. His conversation with Percy had gone something like this:

“The ambrosia showed up on the labs.”

“What?”

“They think I’m a drug addict.”

“I probably would too if I didn’t know you.”

“Percy!”

“Sorry. Let me ask Annabeth about what to do.” Some muttering. “She says use the Mist.”

“Do you know how much work that is? If I step into the hallway they’ll put me right back in bed.”

Silence. “Fine. I’ll be there in an hour.”

Nico didn’t really think that what he and Percy ended up doing was what Annabeth had meant when she said “use the Mist.” She almost certainly hadn’t meant that Percy was supposed to spend an hour trying to unsuccessfully hunt Will down to make him forget that anything had happened. She certainly hadn’t meant that Percy was supposed to call Piper and get her to use charmspeak on the lab techs to get them to toss out Nico’s most recent blood sample. In the end, Nico supposed that it had worked since A. No one had given him harsher glares than usual, B. People had stopped mentioning drug rehabilitation programs, and C. Percy had peeked over the shoulder of some nurse and had confirmed via Nico’s chart that there were no suspicious labs left.

But they hadn’t gotten to Will. Or, at least, anything the two of them had thrown at him hadn’t worked. According to Percy, he had been walking around with that stressed expression on his face that he was trying his best to cover up with grace and business and a general love for his job. Even though Nico hadn’t seen Will, he could imagine his expression perfectly. It was similar to the one Will wore the first few minutes he spent talking to Nico about anything not related to medicine, where he was nervous and stressed about someone seeing him and thinking the wrong thing. Now, though, Will was clearly afraid, and very, very tired. Nico couldn’t imagine what it was like to see things that didn’t add up with everything you had known for 30 years. Even though Will wasn’t a demigod and couldn’t see the actual horrible things in this world, Nico was sure that it was still shocking enough to not have things add up. Nico realized he hadn’t really helped with Will’s fear by seemingly predicting the near-death state of one of Will’s other patients.

Will would be okay though. Nothing was so wrong that it wouldn’t be forgotten about in a few days. He and Nico could get back to whatever the weird normal in their relationship was and that would be that.

Unfortunately for Nico though, and probably Will too, Nico’s brain wasn’t working at peak capacity. Annabeth had made the executive decision that Nico should cut down on the amount of ambrosia he was eating and should only eat it when he knew the nurses wouldn’t be running blood tests anytime soon. That sounded like a beautiful plan until the pain came back. Nico hadn’t realized how much the ambrosia was really doing until he didn’t have it in his system anymore. The pain came back with a vengeance. Delirious, sweating bullets, and ready to cry if the angle of the air conditioner changed so much as changed, Nico relented and let the nurses give him more pain medicine.

Nico had never had pain meds. As it turned out, they made him loopy as fuck.

He had no idea what they had given him (he hadn’t listened and he hadn’t asked), but he was torn between thinking it was the best feeling in the world and the most unsettling sensation ever. He was giggly and uncoordinated and the world was moving ever so slightly slower than he was pretty sure he was turning his head. It wasn’t too dissimilar of a feeling to getting drunk, but Nico wasn’t a silly, goofy, laughing drunk and he was a silly, goofy, laughing drugged person. The personality was so antithetical to how Nico was in real life that he sort of thought he was going crazy.

Oh, and he was still in pain, so that was cool.

When Will walked in, Nico knew he had to at least pretend to be normal. Even drugged, he knew he wouldn’t survive Will thinking that he was a dumbass. But his antsy body really, really, wanted to go on a walk, so Will had caught him halfway out of his bed. Nico knew that he probably looked scarier now than many moments in his life, with his muscles shaking and his oily hair hanging in his face. He cackled at himself.

Nico blew a strand of hair out of his eyes and grinned sarcastically. The minute his mouth started to move, he could tell that he had lost nearly all of his inhibitions. This was going to be a wonderful interaction. If he could get out of this conversation without traumatizing Will, he would be proud of himself.

“I was trying to go on a nice little walk around the room. I’ve been awake in this bed for five days after all, and asleep in it ten days before that. A change of scenery would be nice.” Nico knew his math could not be entirely correct.

Will smiled a little. Some of the weariness at the corners of his eyes disappeared. “Hm. I see. Did your doctor tell you you were cleared to go on a little walk?”

Nico’s head rolled to the side. He saw Will blink a few more times than usual.

“I don’t know, Doctor Solace, you tell me.”

Will laughed. The pain medicine suddenly made Nico feel like he would fly away.

“I’ll make a deal with you. You can go on your little walk down the hall with my help if you let me check your bandages and stitches first.”

Nico’s eyebrows shot up. Apparently he had decided that he was going to be cute. He was either flirting, or Nico was losing his mind. The latter seemed more possible.

“Wow. A walk with the Doctor William Solace? How could I refuse?” His eyes were locked on Will’s as he laid back into bed. If Will called him out on it, he could just say that he was loopy and couldn’t be blamed for his own actions. Now seemed as good a time as any though to do what he had really wanted to do since he had met Will, which was, unfortunately, to stare at him. He really just had to check that his eyes were really that blue.

“Although,” Nico said weakly, “I’m getting the sense that that’s what you came in here to do anyway, so maybe I’m being tricked.”

Will raised one eyebrow. “You probably are.” Nico smiled and held out his arm.

Luckily, Nico was so out of it that his normal embarrassment instincts weren’t working. If they had been, he surely would have been stammering and blushing and crawling around in his skin at the idea of Will touching him so much. He was very aware that that was not the correct reaction a person should have to their doctor. He was pretty over caring anyway. So what if he liked Will? He would only have to last another week or so in purgatory and then he would never have to see Will again. And then he could go back to his normal, dangerous life, and try his very best to not get into any more lethal accidents to end up in this hospital and then he could go on being disappointed by the looks and personality of every other man that wasn’t Dr. Solace.

When he said it like that, his prospects after he got out of here sounded absolutely peachy.

Nico lost focus. Will had moved onto the bandages over his stomach. When he pulled one of them away, the tape clung to his skin. Nico barely managed to stifle a small exclamation of pain. Will’s fingers froze. Nico went back to wanting to die.

“You alright?”

“Just the tape. I’m fine.” Nico looked down at Will’s hands. Compared to his own mangled and scarred skin, Will looked like a god. Nico remembered Apollo driving him to Camp that first time. Will almost reminded him of that.

He needed Will to cut his hair off. Maybe that would help his situation. Nico straightened.

“You’re really too observant for your own good.”

“It’s my job to be observant. You should thank me. I’m being gentle.”

Nico rolled his eyes, but his chest was warm. “And slow. Can we move this along? I would like to get out of this room.”

“Two minutes.” Will tucked the bandage back into place. He had a weird, almost surprised look on his face that would’ve made Nico blurt out some curt response if Will hadn’t kept talking. As he stripped his gloves into the trash, he said, “You may be the fastest healer I’ve ever seen. And I’ve had a lot of patients.”

Warning bells went off in Nico’s head at a volume that was far too loud for his budding headache. This was stupid. It wasn’t like Will had any clue why he was healing so fast anyway.

“Is that a bad thing?”

Will shook his head, but he held visible nervousness in his shoulders. “No, it’s good. It’s just surprising. Remarkable, actually.”

With his inhibitions still gone, Nico said, “Maybe it’s just because I’ve had a great doctor.”

Will coughed awkwardly. Nico almost fully laughed at him, which would not have been cool. Sometimes Will was actually too awkward for his own good. It was still incredibly endearing. It made Nico’s nerves glow under his skin. And then he started getting afraid that he was making Will upset.

“Yeah. Okay.” Will moved to stand at his full height. “Do you wanna go for a walk or not?”

In less than five minutes, Nico had learned a very important fact: Ambrosia’s healing effects may have helped his literal injuries, but the dose he was on now did not do much to keep his strength up once they were out of his system. He was obnoxiously weak. The last time he had been this weak was after transporting that stupid statue across the planet. When he had tried to summon those skeletons on Half-Blood Hill, he had really thought he was done for. The vivid feeling of warmth being snatched from his fingertips and then snapped back into him in an icy bang was a feeling that he still felt every night when he tried to fall asleep. The ceiling of his apartment always looked too much like the utter blackness he had seen then, even though the sun had been out and beating down on him. For all he had known then, the sky could’ve been fake since he couldn’t feel any of its warmth, just like he hadn’t been able to hear the sounds of hundreds of teenagers and monsters crashing together around him. He hadn’t even thought that the ground was real. Nothing was there. There hadn’t been anyone to try and stop him though. No one had noticed him either until the battle had ended and someone found him on the ground.

Nico had always wished that he had passed out then. Based on the record of what happened when he overextended his powers, he should have. Instead, he was forced to stare at the sky and feel a tear drip down the side of his face and burn his scrapes until someone remembered that he existed.

As he struggled to stand, his drugged brain wondered if Will would have stopped him from doing something clearly destructive. Nico had the inkling that he would have.

“We don’t have to do this today,” Will said as Nico fell back onto the bed again. “No one would blame you if you wanted to keep resting.”

“Will?”

“Yes?”

“Stop talking.”

Nico huffed and puffed his way to a standing position. He could tell by the way his skin moved that he would regret trying so hard later, but for now being vertical felt incredible to his soul, even though he was heavily dependent on Will’s physical support. Oh well. It was an excuse to be close to him without being creepy. Or at least, too creepy.

He got bored as they walked. Quickly. So his mouth opened again.

“So, tell me about yourself, Dr. Solace.” Will looked affronted. It made Nico snicker. “I’ve shared more than enough about myself with you while I’ve been here. It’s time for you to return the favor.”

Will gave him a look out of the corner of his eye. If holding Nico up was tiring, he didn’t show it.

“What do you want to know?”

They shuffled past a cross-hallway. “I don’t know. What’s it like working here?” What a stupid question. Being creative was not one of Nico’s strong suits. If he had been smarter or braver or more committed to the Nico personality he had created, he would have asked something to make Will blush or squirm or do something else cute, but he had asked about his job.

The worst part was that nIco actually cared about hearing Will’s answer anyway.

Will shrugging against him felt nice. “I don’t know. Busy. Tiring. But it always keeps me on my toes. I enjoy it, most of the time.”

Nico smiled a little since Will couldn’t see it. “Did you ever want to do anything else?”

“No. I’ve wanted to do exactly what I’m doing my whole life. My mom tells stories of me when I was really little doing pseudo-surgery on vegetables and asking for stupidly advanced medical equipment for Christmas as a kid. I went to Texas A&M and actually got to study medicine for the first time and fell even more in love with it.”

His smile. Nico would do anything to keep seeing that smile.

“I’m sure it’s pretty helpful that you’re good at it.”

The scarlet cheeks came back. “I don’t know. Maybe.”

Nico forced his feet to a dead stop, even though moving was certainly easier at this point. Will nearly tripped face-first into the floor, which was sort of funny. Shock crossed his face, but when he realized Nico wasn’t hurt, his features melted into confusion. Nico felt a cocky smile erupt onto his own face.

“Oh, come on. You’re obviously good at it. I can see how the nurses talk to you, and I’m sure they wouldn't be so nice to you if they hated you.” Not yet content, he continued to yap. “Your bedside manner or whatever you call it is impeccable, even if you do annoy me sometimes.” The irony of his words was not lost on him. “And you kept me alive when literally everyone in the building was certain that I was going to die. What more proof do you need?”

Will was clearly unconvinced. Nico was frustrated. Maybe having one person who wasn’t scared of him was detrimental to getting people to do what he wanted. He huffed.

“Okay. Take two minutes out of your life to brag about yourself. Two minutes, and then I will be happy and I will never say a nice word to you again.”

Will rolled his eyes and gave Nico a ‘drop it’ look. Nico did not intend to do that. He was deeply serious. He wanted to see what Will looked like when he was proud of himself. Nico was sure it was an aura that he wouldn’t forget any time soon. He watched as Will’s resolve crumbled.

“Why?”

“I’m not walking anywhere until you do it, so unless you want to explain to everyone why your patient is sleeping in the hallway of the ICU, I suggest you start bragging.”

“I get it. No need to blackmail.” Nico waited smugly. Will was clearly nervous, glancing up and down the hallway like Will did when he was checking for monsters. Nico understood Will’s hesitation. If he were in Will’s shoes, he would kick himself in the balls. Nico didn’t like talking about himself either.

“I don’t lose patients very often,” Will whispered, more to the floor than to Nico. Nico opened his mouth to interrupt and say something snarky, but Will clamped his hand down tighter on Nico’s shoulder. He got the message.

“Obviously there are people who come in that are way too far gone for anyone to save, and sometimes bad things happen that no one can predict, but usually, people don’t die when I’m the one doing surgery on them.”

Nico expected him to keep going, but he didn’t. Will looked back up and down the hallways as if someone could have heard him speak some negative energy into the universe that was going to come back and bite him. His eyebrows were scrunched up. Will was a very tall person trying to make himself look small. Nico met his eyes.

“Like, an abnormally high amount of people live that shouldn’t? Like me?” Will did not seem bemused by the reminder that Nico had almost died. He nodded anyway.

Will shrugged. “I don’t know. It’s not that I do things differently than anyone else does. I’m just lucky, I guess.”

“Lucky.” Nico had every intent to make a more complete sentence than that, but the words disappeared in his mind. In that moment, the moment when Will spoke, something in Nico shifted. It was as if someone had turned his bones into a glowstick and snapped it, and now the freezing, glowing liquid was crawling through his veins. He was focusing, really, really, really focusing, to try and drag back whatever had left his mind. Nothing came. The feeling of sludge crawling through his chest wouldn’t go away. His hand tightened on the IV pole. Will watched him. A veil was cast over Nico’s eyes, separating what he felt and what he could perceive. If he could just cut it open…

The feeling was yanked out through his chest. The second of pain was overshadowed by the bliss of nothing. Even the pain in Nico’s body ebbed a little.

He forced his feet forward and they kept walking.

“Your turn,” Will said. Nico gave him a dubious look. “You have to tell me something about yourself now. It’s only fair.”

“Hah. No.”

Will’s eyes sparkled. That almost made up for the foolishness of his request.

“Do you realize how many other things I’d rather do?”

“Please?”

Nico tried to change the subject. “Have I mentioned that you’re really strong?” Less drugged, he would have felt embarrassment at the images of Will’s fantastical muscles that popped into his head and made him warm and fuzzy inside.

“Thanks, but you’re not getting out of this.”

“No, like, really strong.” He tilted his head in confusion. “You are pulling me through the hospital. No person should be this strong.”

“I’ll have the nurses take away your jello.”

Nico scoffed but couldn’t stop the absurd grin that graced his face. He forced that expression to fall away in exchange for one of fake shock. Will laughed. “Oh, now you’ve gone too far.”

“Guess you’ll have to tell me something then.” Nico grinned widely. Will looked over at him and caught him. Heat rushed under his skin. Will’s cheeks turned a rosy color. Will’s eyes snapped forward a second quicker than Nico’s did.

Nico mulled over Will’s original proposition. He wasn’t sure he could tell Will anything that he would want to know, other than the very obvious things Nico couldn’t tell him. He didn’t consider himself a very interesting person overall.

And then an unfortunate lightbulb went off in his head.

“What if I tell you something…tangential? Something that I promise you really, really want to hear?”

Will raised his eyebrows, clearly not entirely convinced that Nico was going to tell him anything that wasn’t bullshit. “Are you finally gonna tell me how you got those wounds that almost killed you?”

Nico snorted. “Not a chance.”

Will rolled his eyes. “Alright. I’m listening.”

Nico stopped walking for the second time. Neither of them almost tripped this time.

“You’re not crazy.”

Will’s mouth fell open. Nico would have laughed if the prying eyes of nurse’s wouldn’t have seen.

“That? That’s what you wanted to tell me? That’s the tangential secret that I really want to know?”

Nico smiled and shrugged. “I don’t think you’re crazy. I know you think you are, but you’re not.”

The rest of the walk, neither of them spoke. Nico worried that he had pushed too far, somehow been too cryptic. Will looked like he was walking on glass and Nico felt bad for making him feel that way. He was still joking, but he looked like something had been pulled over his eyes. Maybe they both walked through shrouds, walking through parallel realities without crossing each other’s. Nico supposed that dream wasn’t actually that far from the truth of the matter.

He never really figured out if Will knew he was talking about the drugs.