Chapter 1: Will's POV
I sighed and leaned back in my chair, propping my feet up on the infirmary bed in front of me as I closed my eyes. In the darkness behind my eyelids, my gaze was met by equally dark, sad brown irises set into a pale face beneath tangled black hair. I opened my eyes with another sigh. Nico di Angelo had been haunting my every thought ever since his forced three day stay in the infirmary after the war with Gaea. I felt strangely protective of the gloomy son of Hades, and if I was honest with myself, the odd attraction scared me. On the other hand, I didn't know if I was scared for me or for him.
Recently, Nico's father had been sending him out to round up the more unruly spirits that had escaped from the Doors of Death and were giving him and Thanatos some trouble. Of course, that meant that Nico was shadow-traveling a lot, sometimes all over the world. And, the last couple of times, his injuries had been bad enough to warrant the use of a bit of my Apollo healing magic. For some strange reason, I was worried that I had said or done something to make him upset and throw himself recklessly into danger.
I was jerked violently from my reverie by the sound of the infirmary door crashing open, followed by a solid-sounding thump. I turned around, expecting a minor injury being played up by an over-dramatic camper, or maybe a not-so-minor injury. Either way, I didn't think it would be anything urgent or life-threatening. I was so wrong.
Nico di Angelo was collapsed in the doorway, face up in a slowly growing pool of his own blood. He was obviously unconscious, but that's not the reason my heart clenched in terror. What scared me most was that, in the bright light of the midday sun, he looked to be partially made out of shadows, giving him a half-transparent, smoky appearance.
My healer's instinct took over, tearing through my panic. I lurched to my feet and rushed over to him, kneeling down. I barely felt the warm, sticky blood that was soaking through the knees of my jeans. All I knew was that Nico looked mostly dead, and that panic was making my heart pound at what felt like a million miles an hour.
I gently laid a hand between Nico's shoulder blades, a fresh wave of terror washing over me as my hand sunk about a centimeter into his back, like it was air. I swallowed my fear and shook him slightly, looking for a response. He whimpered, and a breath I hadn't realized that I'd been holding whooshed out in relief. At least he was still alive and if he was alive, and if he was alive, I could save him.
Being as gentle as I could, I slid my arms underneath him, one cradling his head and the other beneath his knees. I slowly lifted him up, flinching slightly as he gasped in pain, his eyes fluttering slightly. Slowly, so as not to accidentally jar and of the injuries he may or may not have had, I walked over to the bed I had been using for a footrest earlier and placed Nico on it, biting my lower lip worriedly as his blood almost instantly began to stain white sheets. I took a pair of scissors and carefully cut open the front of his shirt, hoping that the blood-drenched cloth wasn't the only thing keeping him together as I pulled it away from his bare chest.
A cursory glance told me that the wound wasn't going to be fatal right off the bat because if hadn't gone through anything vital. On closer inspection, though, I realized by the amount of blood that there was more than one injury. I rushed to the cabinet across the room and grabbed a bottle of water and a dry rag, then went back to Nico's side. By now I knew that the bleeding had slowed, but that could've been either a good or a bad thing.
I soaked the rag in water from the bottle, then began to slowly ring it out over his torso. Blood, light pink and diluted by the water, ran off him in sheets, but it wasn't replaced by fresh, dark crimson fluid. As the blood cleared, my throat tightened at the fear of seeing the four long, inch-deep gashes that ran from his collarbone to his hip. I looked at his shirt, cursing myself for not noticing that it was practically shredded in the front.
After cleaning the wounds, I pushed the jagged edges of the wounds open gingerly to make sure that there was nothing embedded in them. They had not been clean cuts, jagged and torn as they were. I winced slightly as I imagined how painful they must have been. On the plus side of the situation, they looked less than a day old, so infection hadn't had a chance to set in. On the other hand, the edges of the injuries—which I assumed were claw wounds—were beginning to turn green with what was obviously poison.
Steeling myself, I gently laid my hand over Nico's chest, palm down and fingers splayed. I took a deep breath and closed my eyes, concentrating. A golden glow coated my hand as I began to sing softly, pouring all of my energy into the healing. The glow curled into thin golden tendrils that wove their way into the tears in the son of Hades' flesh, probing gently. After a few seconds, the green coloring began to fade from the edges of the claw wounds as my healing magic drove the poison out of Nico's body. It took about five minutes to remove all of the poison, which was surprisingly strong. By then, I was drained of my magical capacity, and there were still four gaping tears across his torso. It looked like I was going to have to stitch them shut and let nectar, ambrosia, and natural healing do the rest.
As I began to stitch the wounds shut, being as careful and gentle as I could, Nico chose that moment to wake up. His eyes flew open and his back arched, his jaw clenching shut on what I knew was a scream of pain. I dropped the needle and cupped his face in my hands, holding his head still.
"Death Boy! Nico! Stop! It's alright! You're safe!" I looked him dead in the eye as I spoke. I tried to make my voice soothing and calm, but panic choked it and it sounded strangled even to my own ears.
Slowly, recognition dawned in his eyes and he calmed down, relaxing back down onto the bed. He was still tense, though, and he was breathing heavily. I could tell that he was in a lot of pain.
"Will," my name escaped his lips as a gasp and I nodded, stroking his cheek soothingly.
"It's alright, Nico. You can't move, though, or it's going to hurt worse. Do you understand?" I spoke in the calming, gentle voice I only used for small animals and the wounded. He nodded slowly, his beautiful brown eyes never leaving my face.
Oh gods, my face. It was at that moment that I realized that I was so close to him that our noses were almost touching. I felt a blush heat my cheeks and I pulled away, disguising the moment by grabbing a water bottle full of nectar from the table next to the bed.
"Nico, do you think you can drink some nectar?" he nodded again and I uncapped the bottle. I put a hand beneath his head, tilting it up slightly and putting the neck of the bottle to his lips. As he drank slowly, I found myself blatantly staring at the way his mouth moved.
I mentally slapped myself for noticing something like that when his life was in danger. When Nico's breathing slows and evened out, the nectar lessening the pain, I gently pulled the bottle away, screwing the cap back on and setting it back on the bedside table. His eyes closed and he fell back to sleep.
Sighing in relief, I went back to stitching the claw wounds shut. Hopefully, next time he was awake I would be able to ask him what had happened. I knew Nico was an insanely powerful demigod, and an amazing fighter to boot, so if there was a monster out there that could incapacitate him like this with one swipe of its claws… I shook my head, shoving the thought to the back of my mind. Right now my focus was on keeping Nico alive and stable, not the fate of the world in the probably-not-so-near future.
After I finished with the stitches, I carefully wrapped bandages around Nico's torso, trying not to think too much about how intimate the gesture would be under normal, everyday circumstances. When that was finished, I sat back, my eyes drawn to Nico's face. In his sleep, he looks sweet, angelic—like his last name, di Angelo: of angels in Italian.
He's definitely something angelic. I thought, then grinned at how ironic it was that I thought that about the son of Hades, when his father was about as far from an angel as you could pretty much get.
I sobered then. I shouldn't be having thoughts like that at all… especially not about Nico di Angelo, for the love of the gods. But… I sighed, putting my face in my hands. I didn't know what it was that drew me to the child of the Underworld, but, somehow, I didn't think I wanted it to go away.