A/N: This was requested awhile ago... It took some time to figure out because Nico is tough and doesn't cry over small injuries. But here it is :)

Nico was learning to live at Camp Half-Blood. He was still getting used to waking up for breakfast, though he would usually skip it if he really didn't want to care that day. He was still trying to figure out why people enjoyed singing obnoxiously at the camp fire every night.

The one thing he knew he'd always like was training. Any kind of training made Nico feel good. He felt useful and active, and he didn't have to talk to anyone unnecessarily. Nico's favorite sparring opponents, besides Jason and Percy, were the Ares kids. They had the most fire and trained just as much as he did. Those who were all talk and had little skill Nico enjoyed putting down quickly, the only way to tell a child of Ares that tact and training was actually important.

Any of the older Ares campers usually liked to spar with Nico. They were mature enough to appreciate all that Nico did in the wars and were only slightly afraid of him. Today, Nico was sparring with Chase, a son of Ares that was bigger and stronger than Nico. Not that that ever stopped him before.

"Pretty good, Di Angelo," Chase said while wiping sweat off his forehead. They had been going at it for a bit, both enjoying the burn in their muscles.

"Same to you." Nico was probably a bit more tired than Chase, seeing as he had to use his speed to move around quickly. He couldn't overpower Chase even if he tried, so dodging and jabbing had been his strategy. Unfortunately, that left him tired, and his sword arm had already been hurting before training, probably from avoiding treatment in the infirmary. It was only to spite Will, who had been particularly overbearing that week. Or maybe Nico had just had a bad week and couldn't take the nagging. Hard to tell.

As Nico and Chase did their dance for a bit longer, Nico's weariness began to slow him down and caused more and more close calls. At one point, Chase slashed down at Nico, an easy enough move to parry. Unfortunately, Nico couldn't move fast enough to counter or dodge, so the sword ended up making contact. He more saw the sword slice his arm than felt it as it cut into his skin. Dammit, was really all Nico could think in the moment.

Nico fell back onto the ground as blood gushed out of his wound. Chase almost seemed surprised that Nico fell, standing above him for a moment in shock.

"Oh shit," is how Chase cleverly reacted. Then he noticed the wound. "Oh shit."

"Nice battle, Chase." Nico cringed at the tightness in his voice. He didn't usually outwardly show his pain, and he had a high pain tolerance anyway, but his arm currently felt like it was on fire. The moment he hit the ground, the wound began stinging and throbbing and burning all at once. He'd had his fair share of sword training-related injuries, but this one hurt the most by far for some reason. It had a lot of blood coming out, but generally it looked pretty typical. Nothing out of the ordinary in the training arena.

"Dude, are you okay? That's a lot of blood there." Chase looked slightly concerned, probably because he wasn't used to winning against Nico di Angelo, let alone landing a hit.

"Uh, yeah, no, it's fine. It's just a surface wound. Looks worse than it is." Nico could barely pick up his sword from where he dropped it and put it back in its sheath, but whatever. He struggled to stand for a second before Chase offered his hand, which Nico gratefully accepted. Once on his feet, a few black spots danced in his vision with the amount of pain in his arm, but he managed to stay upright.

"You need help going to the infirmary?" Funny how Chase assumed he'd be going there. Nico guessed any sensible person would. He probably should.

"Nah, I'm good. Thanks for the spar." Nico stumbled over to a shadow and disappeared before anyone could do anything.

—

Nico landed with a thud on the floor of his cabin.

"Ugh," Nico mumbled into his floor, "This isn't the infirmary, Nico."

In hindsight, he probably shouldn't have shadow travelled. Now his head hurt and he felt even dizzier than he had at the arena. He momentarily forgot about the injury and moved his arm to sit up. Unfortunately, he was painfully reminded as a new wave of blood began to flow from his wound, accompanied by a sharp sting shooting up his arm. It was so bad, Nico actually felt tears prick the back of his eyes.

He attempted to stand, but he was in too much pain and his muscles were still tired from sparring.

After lying on the ground for minute, Nico readied himself to move. He carefully pushed himself up with his good arm and crawled over to his bed. Using his bed frame, he pulled himself to his feet and stood there for another minute. His head was still spinning and his muscles still burned, but he somehow made it to his bathroom. He was vaguely aware of blood dripping down his arm onto the floor, but he didn't have the mind to care at the moment.

When he looked up at himself in the mirror, it wasn't a pretty sight. He looked paler than usual, making the dark circles under his eyes stand out. His black hair was sticking to his face from sweat. And his arm. It looked horrible now. It had fresh red blood all over and some yellowish liquid as well, which didn't make Nico feel better. He couldn't actually see the wound due to the blood, so he knew he had to wash it off.

Nico carefully moved his arm under his sink faucet, wincing as he did so. He slowly turned the water on, letting it run over the part of his arm without the wound. He lightly rubbed off the blood around the cut, finally putting it under the water. He hissed, pain shooting up his arm. Tears sprung from his eyes as he attempted to clean away the blood. He was surprised at how much it hurt since it really shouldn't be this bad. He was only sparring after all.

When most of the blood was gone, Nico finally saw the cut - it did not look good. It was an angry red color and swollen. Along with the redness, it looked yellowish white inside the wound. Really it just looked gross and Nico had no idea why.

Then he noticed the other marks around his wound. His scars and stitches Will gave him for the scratches from Lycaon were red and reopened. Which probably explained why it hurt so much.

Well. Will was going to kill him.

As if on cue, Nico's cabin door burst open and the son of Apollo marched right in. When he got to the bathroom, Nico looked up and made eye contact with him. Will saw the tears spilling from Nico's eyes right away and knew that this was more than a typical sparring injury. Will's expression change immediately from anger to concern. His eyes landed on the wound and Doctor Mode™ activated.

"That wound is infected. It needs to be treated right now." Will's stern doctor voice told Nico that the injury was worse than he thought.

"I know, that's what I'm doing, Solace." Nico's voice was shaky and not as strong as he had hoped it would be. He didn't even know why he tried to pretend he was fine. His arm felt like it was on fire and he was sweating profusely, not to mention his dizziness.

Will took two strides to reach Nico, his eyes never leaving the wound. "You need more than water, idiot. You need medicine. You need to come to the infirmary. Now." Then he looked up into Nico's eyes. Nico could see that, behind the doctor concern, there was real concern for Nico's well-being. He suddenly regretted getting himself into this situation and upsetting Will.

"I—" Nico began to say something, though he wasn't sure what, but got cut off.

"The infection is in your blood stream. Your immune system can't handle it without help." Will reached forward to put a hand on Nico's forehead before Nico could even react. He didn't seem to mind that it was wet with sweat. "You're already running a fever. And I can feel some darkness in you. You shadow-traveled here didn't you?" Nico opened his mouth to reply, but Will didn't let him get a word in. "You're getting weaker every second. We need to go, now. Can you walk?"

Nico nodded, which made him dizzier, and took one step before swaying and almost falling over if not for Will's steady hand on his good arm.

"Never mind." And with that, Will scooped Nico up in his arms, told Nico to hold his injured arm steady, and walked quickly to the infirmary. Nico didn't dare complain, one because Will was in Doctor Mode™ and nothing would sway him, and two because he was weak and tired and this was nice.

When they got to the infirmary, Nico would've immediately passed out on the bed, but Will said, "Nico, please stay awake for a bit longer. I know you want to sleep, but I need to make sure you're good before you rest."

Will gently rubbed a salve on Nico's arm that made it go numb. Then he set to work, doing things Nico didn't care to keep track of. He felt a dull pain, but he was so sleepy and feverish that he didn't care anymore. Nico vaguely remembered Will saying that he could sleep before his eyes were finally too heavy to keep open.

—

When Nico came to, he felt gross. With his eyes still closed, he could tell that his bed was a bit damp from all his sweat. He felt cold now, so the fever must've broke while he slept. That was good.

He reflexively moved his arms to shift in bed and found that his injured arm felt okay. It wasn't perfect, there was still dull pain, but nothing like what it was. He did feel something weird on his arm though, so he finally cracked his eyes open.

It was probably afternoon time, meaning he slept for a while. That happened pretty often when he was sent to the infirmary for legitimate reasons (Nico doesn't consider Will's little check-ups legitimate). Nico looked down at his arm and found it had this plastic thing on it, almost like a dog cone.

"What the..." Nico mumbled as he sat more upright. That's when he noticed Will slumped in the chair by his bed. He must've stayed to make sure Nico woke up. It was both endearing and annoying to Nico that Will put himself through these things for him.

At that moment, Will stirred, his eyes slowly opening. When he registered that Nico was up, he bolted up out of his seat. "Nico! Oh gods, are you okay?" He looked Nico up and down, assessing his health quickly. He put a hand on Nico's forehead. "Oh good, your fever is gone. How do you feel? You've slept for like a day. Are you hungry? Does your arm still sting? Does your head hurt?"

Nico was used to this little freak out thing Will did. As a doctor, he's usually calm, but for some reason Nico always got frantic doctor-Will. Probably because he always had bad injuries. "Will, I'm fine. Thanks to you. But why do I have this thing on my arm?" He lifted his arm slightly, glad that it didn't hurt to move it.

"Oh, that. You were scratching your arm in your sleep, so I had to cover it so you didn't reopen the wound. Or should I say, wounds." As if Will suddenly remembered why Nico was this injured in the first place, his demeanor changed into the upset but caring friend that he was to Nico. Not Nico's favorite side.

Nico only smiled sheepishly, awaiting the lecture he'd known was coming.

"Nico di Angelo. First of all, you didn't come to the infirmary yesterday morning, or the mornings before that, for your check up on your summer injuries. I told you that they're almost, but not completely, done healing. This thing might not have been so infected if you had come in." Will put his hands on his hips, his anger rising a bit as he reached the next part of the lecture. "Second, why in Hades didn't you come straight here after the match? I know that you know that you should have. A wound this bad must have hurt a lot pretty quickly." Nico hated it when Will was right. "You wouldn't have felt like shit if you'd come quickly. Or accepted Chase's help in getting you here. Yeah, shadow-traveling when you're not totally healed was a way better idea." Will rarely swore, even mildly, and used sarcasm with patients, so Nico knew he was in trouble. Will just looked at Nico, waiting for him to say something. Probably the wrong thing.

"In my defense," Will quirked an eyebrow at him, "I had kinda meant to shadow-travel here. I just… missed." Nico wasn't trying to justify his actions. That was the only thing that came to mind.

"You're an absolute idiot. Want to know why it hurt so much?" Nico nodded. He was wondering about that. "It's because you reopened the Lycaon scratches. Let me remind you that Lycaon is a very dangerous and powerful being, and fighting him could have easily killed you. So, having reopened those with a dirty sword was not very good for your health. The infection spread quickly, which is why you had a fever and were dizzy. And that's adding on to the dizziness you already feel from shadow-traveling." Will sat down after all that, sighing as he said, "I'm just glad you're better now. Chase had come to me and told me what happened right when you disappeared. He probably knew you weren't coming here."

When they made eye contact, Nico could see that Will's sharp gaze had softened. He felt bad for causing such a fuss. He really had no good reason to, it was just his natural tendency to deal with his own problems. Now, people actually cared and wanted to actively help him. It was still relatively new to Nico.

Nico looked away from Will. "Sorry. I didn't mean to worry you. I swear I wasn't avoiding you or anything, I really don't know why I didn't come here… I just… I don't know." Nico was looking down at his hands in his lap. Will reached out and gently placed his hands over Nico's, causing Nico to look up at him. Will understood that Nico was still learning to trust others. Will gave him a small, understanding smile. Nico returned the gesture and continued. "But thanks for healing me. So, I'm good now?"

Will stretched and stood up. "Uh, no. You're stuck here for three days, Death Boy. This is to take care of that wound, which you will NOT be reopening ever again, and to punish you for your idiotic actions. I swear, I'm gonna have to start monitoring you at all times soon enough." Nico didn't really think that last part sounded too bad, but he kept that too himself.

As Will walked away to get food, Nico sighed, settling back into his pillows. He was going to be here awhile. But, as long as Will was there, he guessed it wouldn't be too bad.

A/N: HAPPY BIRTHDAY NICO! Also I don't know how infections work *shrugs*