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For helloseatttle
"Word around camp is that you had a crush on someone before me." Nico whirls around, dark sword in hand, ready to pounce on his enemy. Instead he finds Will, whose blond locks and smiling face are in deep contrast with Nico's mood.
"Who says I have a crush on you?" Nico's desperate enough to keep his cheeks clear of blushing that he almost prays to the nutjob in the sky. Thunder crackles behind him, as if said nutjob can now read minds.
Will shrugs and smirks in that infuriating (and yes, attractive) way. It's kinder than Clarisse's smirk and less off-putting than Percy's, though his has gotten better after the whole Roman escapade. Nico fancies himself very good at glaring and awful at smirking, so he does the former.
The son of Apollo doesn't even flinch. He does quite the opposite, actually. Golden head thrown back to the sky, he laughs, loud and clear, and the clouds seem to blow gently out of the valley to let the sun wash the camp in its rays.
Nico figures he must be insane, because now he's writing poetry in his head.
Three days later, Nico has a several inch long gash in his right arm. He didn't cut it himself, of course, one of the idiots with a stupid blue feather sticking out of his helmet had had the pleasure. The kid had jumped Nico from behind and slashed at his arm, forgetting two rules: don't maim, and try not to kill your own team members.
Predictably Percy, on winter break from college in New Rome, nabs the flag for the red team. Nico hears it from a girl who turned her ankle in a rabbit hole near Zeus's Fist, because his cut is bleeding too much for him to hide it.
Another child of Apollo-Leya, maybe?-winces at the sight of the gash. "It'd be a lot easier for us if you didn't use real weapons," she says, tutting in the way a mother would, even though she's younger than Nico.
It wouldn't, he thinks. You can't kill a monster with a plastic sword, but it can kill you no matter what.
He sits down on a bench, hoping that no one notices him so he can leave and lick his wounds alone. He is unsuccessful.
Stupid, pretty, blond haired, blue eyed Will seems to be the only one who has time to treat him. Of course, Will isn't stupid, he thinks on his feet and can name all of the bones in a-Shut up, stupid. Nico shakes his head and continues to berate himself.
"Got cut?" Will is smirking again. Nico figures that must mean he's alright. "Annabeth do you in?"
No doubt Annabeth had planned the attack that won her and Percy's team the flag, so Nico wishes he could say yes. He finds himself unable to lie. "Stupid kid on my own team."
"Seems like you need someone good on your team," Will says, and all of the sudden it doesn't feel like they're talking about capture the flag. The son of Apollo's fingers make his skin feel weird even though they're gloved.
Nico is about to ask what he means when Will continues. "So I'm guessing it wasn't Annabeth before me. Tell me I'm right, because she's some serious competition."
He says it as if he's asking for the weather.
Next, Will finds him in Bunker Nine. Leo is fixing up the Argo II, and Nico is the only one comfortable around water from the River Styx, except maybe Percy, but he's in California for a few months.
Despite its underground location, the bunker is hot with steam from its forges and the fire that's always present around Leo when he's immersed in something. Nico keeps clear of the flames. They remind him of black power, explosions, and his mother, the sort of distant memory that played out seventy years ago. It makes him skittish.
Leo waves a hand behind him, shouting for something undecipherable over the clanging of the hammer he holds. Nico gingerly hands him a bottle of Styxian water, and takes several steps back when the engine begins to spark. The dead are better than this.
"Not a fire person, then?"
"Shit," Nico swears, bouncing on the balls of his feet in surprise. "What the hell, Solace?"
"I see," Will smiles, but it's not a smirk this time. Nico finds himself strangely missing it. "I like the fire."
"It'll burn you too."
"Dad's the sun god, remember? We're a little flame resistant."
Nico raises an eyebrow at Will's naturally pale face and says, "Not with that skin, you aren't."
Will sticks out his tongue. It's a nice tongue, really, long and nice and what is he doing? "I guess it's not Leo then," the blond haired boy says decisively.
"What?"
"Your previous crush." There's that wicked smirk.
Nico rolls his eyes and hands Leo another bottle of water. His lips are pursed in an effort to keep from smiling.
"So it's Piper." Nico wakes up to Will's face and his scrutinizing blue eyes.
"It's not," he replies, groaning. Battles suck.
"Is too," the healer returns. "You saved her."
"No I didn't."
"Of course you did."
Nico frowns, folding his arms and wincing when his bandages shift. "No, my dead Confederate soldier stepped in and killed something that she already had under control."
"It was very gallant." Will nods seriously.
"I don't think skeletons are capable of being gallant." Nico hoists himself up to a sitting position. The infirmary is full, as it always is after a fight.
Will shrugs, but Nico gets the feeling that he's won this joking battle. He isn't sure if that should make him feel good.
"You're ridiculous."
The healer gives a fake salut before hopping off of Nico's bedside to tend to another patient. The spot where Will had been sitting felt strangely cold in his absence.
Will has been gone for two weeks, on a mission with another camper. It's nothing major of course, what with the giants gone and Kronos sulking in the way that golden powder sulks, but Nico still worries. Actually, he feels a little like the wives left behind when their husbands go to battle in old stories of knights and castles, but he puts that thought out of his mind, because he sounds like a poet again.
It's night, his favorite time of day, when there's no new campers staring at him uncomfortably and no old one's with their pity or their own nervousness. The sky is clear and he can see the stars. Nico stands on the beach next to the ocean, but the saltwater isn't what calms him. The waves are mesmerising but they remind him of too many things he'd like to forget.
"Percy, then," a familiar voice says behind him. Nico whirls around in a way reminiscent of the time Will had started this game during sword practice.
"Will!" he exclaims in surprise. "You're early. And here," he adds. There can't be two boys who like to stare angrily at the sea in the middle of the night.
"There was a lone, dark looking figure on the beach, so I figured it would be you." He grins, and Nico lets out a loud bark of laughter.
"Fair enough." There's a moment of silence, and Nico watches Will's feet trace random patterns in the sand.
"So Percy, huh?"
"Shut up."
Will's smirk only lasts for a few seconds, because then it's smothered by another set of lips.