I woke up to someone banging on my cabin door. Unless if the camp was on fire again, or the Romans were visiting, it was probably Will waking me up at the crack of dawn again for something stupid. As the groggily idiotic person I am I opened the door to see what the commotion was and there, with a brightly colored industrial size bag of cereal, was Will fucking Solace.
"Nico we need to finish this it expires tomorrow and I never opened it." instantly he was inside panicking and frantically looking for something to, presumably, stab the bag open.
"Solace, if you expect me to eat a dog food size bag of cereal I would like to remind you that I spent days in the underworld being served nothing but bran and corn flakes by Demeter. You've got to be shitting me if you want me to eat another bowl of the wretched-"
"They're Fruit Loops."
"All right I'm in."
We spent the morning watching terribly written cartoons Will, of course, insisted on. I don't think bowls on end of sugary cereal and a couple of ADHD kids mix very well.
"Hey Nico, Death boy, it's the last bowl. You want to share wink wink nudge nudge" I couldn't exactly tell if his eye was twitching from the sugar or if he was trying to wink at me. Either way he probably wasn't a poster child of healthy living at this point.
"Did you actually say that out loud? Why do you even have a huge bag of this stuff anyway?" his goofy grin and twitchy face fell into a more solemn look like he didn't just eat twelve bowls of mostly sugar.
"Well back when I was a kid, before camp, my mom was always working. Don't get me wrong she is an amazing mother she was just busy most of the time. So my uncle Vance would look after me. Well, not really it was more like to make sure I don't burn the house down or play with knives or anything that could result with death or scarring." he turned towards me with his striking blue eyes filled with bittersweet remembrances.
The same way I looked when I would talk about Bianca and I.
"Whenever he took me grocery shopping we would see how much junk food we could get. Now thinking about it that was a terrible idea and could of put me at risk of type two diabetes along with unhealthy levels of blood sugar along with- I'm getting off topic again aren't I?"
"Yeah..."
"Anyway, so one time he came across these giant bags of cereal and obviously we had to buy five of them. Mom got so mad at us. I guess it's kind of an inside joke so the last time I visited he of course gave me a bag."
I gave him a questioning look "Then why didn't you just eat it a bit at a time like a normal person?" I questioned. Will seemed to hesitated a bit, obviously this Vance guy was a better father figure than Apollo himself. Actually I think most anyone is a better parental figure than the Gods.
"He was sick Nico, even I couldn't help him. If only I…"
If only I came sooner
"Look Will, if it means anything I'm not leaving anytime soon. So you might as well get used to dog food size bags of off brand cereal showing up on your bed from time to time."
"Thanks Neeks"
"Don't call me that."