AN: Someone asked me to put an eating disorder trigger warning on this, which was something I didn't actually have in mind while writing, but consider yourselves warned.
If you recognise it, it's not mine.
The concert is sold out.
It's a big hall, packed with screaming teenage girls, waving paper banners and phones like battle flags.
The reason they're screaming has just skulked offstage, leaving his microphone and his guitar clumsily leaning against an amplifier.
He's gone for twenty seconds, maybe thirty, and then he's back, clutching a bottle of water as an excuse. He slips his microphone on again and slings the guitar back over his shoulder, and he's off again, no speaking, just the aggressively strummed introduction to the next song.
He starts to sing in a husky tenor like dark chocolate, and nobody notices that the bottle of water is unopened.
This is the second time this has happened tonight, and it happens twice more before the end of the concert.
The fourth time, Will is there waiting. He grabs the musician's shoulder as he slips backstage, ignoring the designer jacket and poisonous glare.
"Are you okay?" he asks, even though he knows it's a stupid question.
"Fuc-" The response is cut off by a choked retch, and Will has to jump back and let go to avoid the splatter of bile and water which lands on the floor by his feet.
Nico di Angelo, one of the most popular teen stars this side of the Atlantic, is clinging to a spare amp and coughing his guts up. It lasts barely ten seconds before he's up and moving back out to the stage.
Will doesn't try again during the concert, but afterwards, when Nico's trying to push his way through the crowd to the car waiting for him, he follows. One of the guards, a girl named Clarisse, gives him a cursory glance and then a nod as he ducks under her arm and takes Nico by the elbow, taking advantage of his skinnier frame to pull him through the crowd and into the car.
Nico slumps against the tinted window, and doesn't seem to notice Will's presence for several seconds. When he does, he jerks upward with a wince.
"What the-" he snarls, then relaxes as he recognises who it is. "Oh. It's you."
"Yep," Will says. "Are you okay?"
"Yeah, of course. I just need... I don't know, coffee or something."
"You need sleep," Will corrects.
"I do sleep."
"On a bus between cities."
"Your point being?"
Will sighs. They've had this conversation before, several times. "People worry about you, Nico."
"Well, they shouldn't."
Will shakes his head and gives up. When Nico's in one of these moods, there's no getting to him.
He'd picked that up over the last couple of months, as the tour had continued. As far as the young star's moods usually go, Will's doing well to still be in the car. When the tour had first started, Nico had thrown some sort of silent tantrum almost as soon as the concert finished. Nobody had been able to calm him down; even his manager, Reyna, had had to stalk off exasperatedly. Will had slipped into the room and shoved a can of coke and a bag of crisps from the vending machine into his hands.
"What the hell am I supposed to do with these?" Nico had demanded curtly, turning his glare on Will. The effect was ruined slightly by the huge shadows under his eyes.
"Eat them," Will had snapped. "You haven't eaten anything all day." He'd left after that, but amazingly, Nico had done as he'd told him, and from then on, Will had gained a reputation amongst the crew as a sort of miracle worker with the boy.
"Have you eaten anything today?" Will asks, glancing at the hollows of Nico's cheeks warily.
"No."
Will sighs, and rummages in the coolbox in the car until he comes up with a bar of chocolate.
"Here."
"I'm not hungry."
Before Will can say anything, his mobile buzzes in his pocket. A text from Reyna flashes up on the screen:
what's he like?
Will taps out a response quickly.
difficult. won't eat.
will he talk? Reyna asks, and Will glances at Nico, slumped against the window, staring out into the night.
probably.
A few seconds later, Nico's phone rings. He ignores it, but Will reaches for it and puts it on speaker.
"Nico?"
Nico grunts in response.
"Look, you've been asked to do an interview tomorrow. We should be able to fit it in just before we have to leave, if you're ready for eleven."
"And what if I don't want to?" Nico mutters, just loud enough for the phone to pick up.
Reyna sighs. "Publicity is publicity, Nico. God knows we need it right now."
"If you're going to bring up the whole Percy thing again-" Nico sits bolt upright, fury flashing threateningly across his face, and Will leans over and touches his arm gently, telling him to calm down.
"I'm just saying, we need whatever we can get right now. We've got Piper in PR working her ass off to smooth things out, so for god's sake, don't screw it up." She hangs up with a sharp click, and there's total silence in the car for nearly a full minute.
"Don't screw it up, Nico," Nico mutters in a scarily good impression of Reyna. He snatches the chocolate out of Will's hand, tearing the wrapper off and taking a savage bite before continuing. "It's like they expect me to be a goddamn poster boy," he says bitterly. "All the time."
Will doesn't say anything; he knows it's safer to just let him vent. Instead he reaches into the coolbox again and offers Nico a bottle of chilled water. Nico ignores him, talking over his head as if he's a piece of furniture.
(Will's heard him doing that before, pacing up and down a hotel room at two in the morning, muttering to himself. Sometimes he considers going in. He never does.)
"Don't screw it up," Nico says again, staring out of the window as the streetlights pass them by, alternately illuminating and dimming his face. He laughs harshly. "We're all completely screwed up here. Some of us just haven't realised it yet."
Will watches as his face goes from light to shadow to light to shadow, and wonders what he means.
They arrive at the hotel late, because of an accident on the bridge, and Will checks in for Nico. Nico's eyes are dark and alert, but his movements are sluggish and stiff. He locks the door of his room as Will pockets the spare key and heads back to his own room.
This is the first night they've spent in a hotel for a while; maybe a week. Usually they're in the tour bus, and while that's a hell of a lot better than regular buses, it gets a little cramped after a while. Plus the bodyguard assigned to stay in there overnight with them snores.
(Will's pretty sure he's really supposed to be staying in crappy motels or whatever like the rest of the regular crew, but the last time someone else tried waking Nico up they ended up with a black eye and a ridiculous fine for the broken lamp.)
Will gets up the next morning at around seven, and waits until eight before unlocking the door to Nico's room and edging in warily. At first he can't see the other boy; the bed doesn't look like it's been slept in, but after a few seconds he sees Nico huddled on the floor, back pressed against a wooden cabinet. There are pieces of paper scattered around him, and a pen clenched in his hand. Will gathers up the papers as quietly as he can; they seem to be drafts of a new song. Then he shakes Nico's shoulder gently, dislodging his position against the cabinet so he falls to his side.
He jolts awake immediately, and even though Will's done this a hundred times before, he still flinches at the sudden stiffening of the musician's body, the way his eyes shoot wide open and stare without seeing for several seconds.
"We need to be gone by ten," Will says curtly. Nico's still dressed in the clothes he was wearing last night, and he smells of sweat and exhaustion. "It's eight now."
He holds out the sheaf of papers and Nico snatches them hurriedly, sending a glare at Will as he retreats back to his own room.
He turns up in the dining hall nearly twenty minutes later, dressed all in black. He hasn't bothered with his hair, seeing as one of the stylists will probably do it for him in an hour or so. He nods wordlessly in response to the sole greeting he gets, from Frank, the nicest of the security guards, and collapses into a chair at the opposite end of the table Will's at.
He's holding the biggest mug of coffee Will has ever seen, and as he raises it to take a scalding mouthful, Will looks him over. His t-shirt is hanging off his shoulders, and his fingers look unnaturally long and thin clasped around the mug. There's dark circles under his eyes.
"Did you sleep at all last night?" Will mutters, just loud enough to be heard.
"Yeah." Nico sounds bitter, as if he regrets it.
"When?"
"Dammit, I don't know, Solace," Nico snarls, (he hasn't ever called Will by his name, and sometimes Will doubts that he even knows it.) "I was busy," he says, and Will remembers the sheets of scribbled words. "I wasn't exactly timing when I slept. Anyway, you know I slept. You woke me up."
Will shrugs, and glances down at the newspaper he grabbed from a corner shop when he went out for a run. The front page has something about a shipping accident somewhere off the coast of Cuba, but a few pages in is an article about last night's concert. Will has to hand it to the media: they're quick, and they've even got a couple of half-decent photos in it as well. He scans the article quickly. The second-to-last paragraph catches his eye.
"Since di Angelo was catapulted onto the music scene barely two years ago, his career has gone from strength to strength. But can the same be said for his health?"
There's a photo of Nico aged around fifteen, from when he was first spotted playing in a charity event. He's still skinny, dressed in a similar way to his current look, and maybe a little shorter, but the main difference is in the contours of his face, which suddenly seem so much sharper. Will frowns and keeps reading.
"Di Angelo has always been thin, but these days it seems to be going too far. Is he simply overworking himself, or is it more serious? There's only so many times he can tighten his guitar strap over his shoulders, and he appears to be reaching the limit. Fans attending recent concerts have noticed his tendency to slip offstage frequently, coming back within seconds looking rather the worse for wear. We here at Oracle Magazine know the signs, and hope that he isn't falling into the trap set for too many young stars, when it all becomes a little too much."
Will sets the magazine down and does his best to look Nico over without staring. He agrees that Nico's far too thin, nowhere near a healthy level. His wrists look like he could wrap one hand around them, all taut white skin and skeleton, and Will wouldn't be surprised if he could count his ribs.
Nico sees him staring and raises an eyebrow. "May I?" he says, taking the magazine without waiting for an answer. His eyes skid over the article, and he flings it down and stalks out of the room without a word.
Will doesn't see him again until they have to leave for the interview. Nico doesn't speak again until they arrive.
The woman taking the interview is named Drew Tanaka. She's very pretty, in a dyed-hair-and-layered-makeup way. She's also, frankly, a complete bitch, and when Reyna tells Nico she's going to be interviewing him, he spits out a curse and looks like he's going to refuse to do the interview at all.
He does, eventually, if only to stop Reyna from carrying on with her 'publicity is publicity' speech again. As he skulks into the room, Will exchanges a glance with Reyna and positions himself out of view of the cameras, but close enough to stop Nico if he tries to leave (it's happened before).
Drew puts on a sickly pink-painted smile, flips her hair over her shoulder, and turns to Nico. "So, Nico. Where do we start?"
Nico glares back at her and doesn't say anything.
"So you're halfway through your first tour?"
"Clearly," Nico grits out. Reyna sends him a warning glance.
Drew smiles. "So how's that working out for you? There have, of course, been recent concerns about your health-"
"My health is none of the media's business," Nico snaps. "None of my private life should have any interest to anybody."
Drew looks taken aback, then pounces. "Has this attitude come about as a result of the rumours currently surrounding you and Percy Jackson?"
Nico's hands clench on the arms of the chair. Reyna closes her eyes as if she has a migraine.
"That is also none of your business."
"Oh, but Nico," Drew says, sugar-sweet as a poisoned berry. "There's so many stories out there, nobody could possibly understand the truth. We're all dying to know."
"You'll all have to die, then," Nico says, with such vehemence that Drew actually looks shocked for a brief moment. She recovers quickly, however, changing tack with brutal speed.
"Let's talk about your songwriting, then," she continues. "Another thing there's been a lot of rumours about is the subject of your latest song, Riptide."
Nico looks like he wants to throw something at her.
"A song about unrequited love, is it not?" Drew asks, eyes glittering. "'Before you know it, you have been swept out to sea'," she quotes. "Was it perhaps written for a specific someone?"
"I don't know what you're talking about," Nico mutters, but his cheeks have flushed pink, and it looks like his hands are shaking.
"Of course, if we pair this with the rumours about-"
Will knows what she's going to say. He just doesn't know how Nico's going to react. Beside him, Reyna starts to bang her head against the wall.
"-Percy Jackson, the heartthrob who has allegedly stolen your heart-"
"Shut up," Nico snaps suddenly. His breath is ragged, and his gaze is darting around the studio as if he's looking for an escape route.
"Looks like things are getting interesting now," Drew sing-songs, glancing into the camera. "Nico, is this correct?" The smile on her face is supposed to look beguiling, innocent, but to Will it looks more like the gaze of a vulture, hovering over carrion which isn't quite dead yet.
"You don't know anything," Nico almost whispers, in a scratchy, shaking voice.
"We can only guess," Drew counters. "Nico, I'm going to put it to you straight, now. Well, straight may be the wrong word to use, but... Are you in fact, in love with Percy Jackson?"
There's a crash as Nico stands up suddenly, knocking over his chair, and Will blinks in surprise as he pushes past him. Then his brain catches up, and he swears softly and begins to follow him.
Behind him, he can hear Drew talking in a hurried, excited tone. "Breaking news, people: have we just witnessed Nico di Angelo coming out? You'll find out after a quick commercial break."
Will does his best to follow Nico through the twisting corridors of the studio. When he eventually catches up, in a dead end leading only to a tiny storeroom, Nico looks cornered and afraid. His hands are shaking desperately, and he won't meet Will's eyes as he backs away.
"Are you okay?" Will asks, trying to keep his voice level and calm.
"Do I look like I'm okay?" Nico snaps. "Get lost, Solace. Leave me alone."
"Would you rather Reyna or one of the guards came after you?" Will points out, holding out his hands in the most non-threatening manner he can manage.
Nico shrugs, still looking at the floor. He tenses as Will rests a hand on his back, propelling him through the corridors. Reyna is standing at the door to the studio, and when she sees them, she sends Will the most grateful look he has ever seen.
"The interview's done," she says, joining Will as they head down the corridor. "I didn't think it would go that badly, Nico, I'm so sorry."
"Yeah, well," Nico mutters. "So am I."
Will is tempted to put an arm round his thin shoulders, but he doesn't. As they approach the main doors, he can hear cameras flashing and people shouting, and with a sinking feeling, he remembers that the interview was live. Every reporter within half a mile will have swarmed here straight away.
Beside him, Nico gives a sort of nervous shudder and begins to back away. Will grabs his elbow in case he bolts again.
"It'll be okay," he says quickly, noticing Reyna texting on her phone, presumably calling a couple of security guards.
A couple of minutes later Clarisse and Frank arrive, and they step out of the door as a group, first Will, then Nico, flanked by the guards. Reyna brings up the rear, giving short statements to a couple of reporters. Microphones are thrust into Will's face, but he bats them away, blinking at the bright flashes all around him.
It seems to take hours to reach the car, and by the time they get there Nico is paper-white and trembling, and Frank ends up almost lifting him off the ground to get him past the last few reporters. Will takes his shoulders gently and pushes him into the car, and as soon as the door closes behind Reyna they drive off.
"Wow," the driver says. "What the hell was that, man?"
"Not now, Dakota," Will replies. He glances at Nico, hunched in his seat, and pulls out his phone.
"Jason."
"Will? Hey! How's it going?"
"Go on any social media site right now, and you'll see."
There's a brief pause, and then, "Oh. Oh, crap."
"Yeah."
"I'll give Piper a heads-up, then?"
Will glances around the car. Reyna's on her own phone already. "Reyna's on it. But Nico's pretty shaken up-"
"Yeah, yeah, I can imagine." Will can picture Jason at this moment, pushing a hand through his hair and knocking his glasses squint as he scrolls through Twitter. "Is he there? Wait, stupid question, sorry."
"Maybe have a talk with him?" Will suggests. "I doubt he'll listen to me right now. I'd call Hazel, but I think she's busy with a hell of a lot of stuff, and Percy-"
"That would be a bad idea," Jason agrees. "Okay, hand me over."
Will presses the phone into Nico's hand, not bothering to put it on speaker.
Nico is completely silent for a few minutes while Jason talks. His expression speaks for him; an anguished look burning in his eyes like scraps of paper in the grate.
"I don't know-" he blurts suddenly, breaking off as if somebody had clapped a hand over his mouth.
"I don't know, Jason," he repeats more quietly. "I think... maybe, yeah, but I don't know what I'm supposed to do." He sighs, looking about three years younger, and again, Will has to fight the urge to give him a hug.
"Yeah," Nico mumbles. "I guess there's no point hiding it anymore." He laughs, a choked, bitter sound. "The media's probably having a field day. Tell Piper I'm sorry. This is going to be hell to clean up. Thanks, though, Jason."
He hangs up abruptly and hands the phone back to Will, leaning his forehead against the window and closing his eyes.
They travel in silence for nearly ten minutes before Nico takes a deep breath.
"I'm coming out at the concert tonight," he says clearly, without opening his eyes. Will jumps; he'd thought the other boy was asleep.
Reyna nearly drops her phone. "We can cancel the concert-" she says, sounding dazed.
Nico sits up straight, looking vaguely irritated. "Didn't you hear me? If I come out tonight, there'll be big enough media coverage to smooth out whatever goddamn rumours are flying around right now, I hope."
Reyna stares at him, then nods. "Right. Okay."
"Wake me up when we have to get on the bus," Nico says to Will more curtly, and Will nods as he closes his eyes again and leans back against the window.
Even asleep, the worried look never leaves his face.
It's a three-hour journey to the next venue. Will's pretty sure that Nico sleeps for most of the way, but he doesn't look any better by the time they finally arrive.
"You sure you don't want to cancel?" Will asks him as they go in through a back entrance. He doesn't get a reply, not that he was expecting one. The stage only needs a little setting up, so they go straight into sound checks. Will isn't normally needed during those, and he goes out for a breath of fresh air once he's done.
It's a mistake, one he should have seen coming. There's an optimistic reporter hovering outside, and as soon as he sees him, he's there.
"Are you with Nico di Angelo?" he says, but continues without waiting for an answer. "Of course you are- you're that guy who's there all the time."
Will frowns and tries to edge away, back inside, but the reporter follows him. He's a little shorter than Will, with greasy blonde hair and tattered, faded clothes.
"Michael," he says impatiently, and Will has a sinking feeling as he realises the guy beside him has a camera, fumbling with it to start filming. "So, what's your name?"
"Will Solace," Will mutters absently, more preoccupied with the way the door's sticking, not letting him back inside.
"And what's your relationship Nico di Angelo? I mean, no offence, but you're hardly bodyguard material."
"I'm..." Will hesitates, and immediately knows he's made a fatal mistake.
The reporter grins and shoves a cheap tape recorder under his nose. "Of course, with the newest rumours around just now, there's another possibility, isn't there? Something more personal?"
Will fidgets with the door handle desperately. "I don't know what you're talking about," he snaps. "I really would prefer it if you all stayed out of Nico's private business, as he's asked you all before." He stares directly into the camera, trying to get the message out to everyone who'll doubtless end up watching this. The moment is ruined slightly by the handle giving at that moment, and his stumbling as he slips through and locks the door behind him.
The last thing he hears is a jubilant: "Was that Nico di Angelo's boyfriend? You saw it first right here on Augury News with me, Octavian-" and then all he can think is how Reyna is going to kill him for this.
He finds her as quickly as possible, which isn't hard, because she's looking for him too.
"There's a problem-" they say, almost in unison.
"We've lost Nico."
"I bumped into a reporter outside."
They exchange identical looks of total despair.
"What happened?" Will sighs.
Reyna shrugs. "He just ran off after the first sound check. Nobody thought to follow him until it was too late. What do you mean, a reporter?"
Will gives her a quick synopsis, and Reyna looks like she's considering resigning. "Right. Okay. That's all we need right now."
"Sorry," Will says hopelessly. "I'll, uh, go look for Nico now, then?"
Reyna sighs. "If he turns up, we'll text you."
Will nods and starts looking.
It doesn't help that he hasn't had a chance to learn his way round the twisting corridors, so before long, he's kind of lost, and it's purely by chance that he hears the coughing from behind a closed door. Tentatively, he pushes it open, and a mixture of shock and worry and pity swirls through his mind.
Nico is curled in the foetal position, arms wrapped around his stomach tightly as he coughs and retches, thin shoulders shaking pathetically, and Will pulls him upright, so that he's leaning against his chest. He's shivering, but his skin is hot, too hot. Almost as soon as the coughing fit finishes, Nico pushes away from Will, still struggling for breath, crouching and glaring like a cornered animal.
Neither of them say anything for a few seconds, Nico because he can hardly breath, let alone speak, and Will because he doesn't know what to say.
"You can't perform tonight," Will eventually says. Nico stands shakily, one hand on the wall, shaking his head, and for a flickering second Will thinks he's actually going to listen to him.
"No," Nico says. "I have to." There's something desperate in his voice, under the tremors and hoarseness, and Will has a sinking feeling as he realises that there's no way Nico's going to listen to anything right now.
The other boy is slowly stumbling towards the door. Will can hear his harsh breathing from here, see the way his hands are shaking, and feels a deep, undeniable sense of frustration. "For god's sake, Nico, you can't keep doing this," he says, and his heart sinks as Nico turns back, dark eyes furious in his pale, sunken face.
"Watch me," he snaps, and then he's gone.
Will barely blinks before following him. He hesitates for a second before wrapping his arms around Nico's chest (he could probably count the boy's ribs and it's terrifying) and lifting him right off his feet, carrying him down the corridor. It's less effort than carrying one of the amps from when he was helping to set up the stage, although amps don't scratch and kick and curse.
"Reyna!" he calls as soon as he sees the familiar long dark ponytail. Reyna whirls round, and she's at their side in a matter of seconds.
"Put me down," Nico gasps, twisting like a scalded cat in Will's arms, and Reyna gives them a curt nod. Will lets him go, and Nico presses himself against the wall, chest heaving and tears in his eyes.
"There's no way you're doing the concert tonight," Will says again, looking to Reyna for backup, but Nico shakes his head.
"I have to," he repeats. "It's too late to cancel, and I need to do this."
He looks at them almost pleadingly, and Will realises that this is less about performing and more about what he'd said earlier, about coming out. He exchanges a worried look with Reyna, and Nico stands a little taller.
"Please," he adds, almost in a whisper, and Will can tell he means it.
There's a discussion. A debate, really, and in the end, Nico wins.
Reyna forces him to go and lie down until the concert, sending Will with him, not that she needs to. He would've gone anyway.
Nico finds a room with a deep red couch and perches on the edge of the seat. "I don't need a babysitter," he snaps as Will closes the door behind them.
"I know," Will says mildly. "Have you eaten anything today?"
"You saw me at breakfast," Nico mutters, slowly lying back against the cushions, seemingly without noticing.
"I saw you with coffee at breakfast," Will corrects.
Nico glares at him. "There's probably a vending machine somewhere," he mutters.
Will accepts this small victory and heads out of the room. When he returns with crisps, cheap chocolate and a bottle of water, Nico is asleep, hunched into a tight ball on the couch.
Will sits in the chair across from him and tries not to stare. It's difficult; now that he's noticed, it's impossible not to see the grey tinge to his skin, the way his cheekbones look like they could slice through his skin. The magazines with their speculations about self-destructive young stars might not have been so far off the mark.
Nico twitches in his sleep, a little shivering motion, and Will stands, shrugging off his hoodie, and drapes it over the other boy as gently as he can. There's a tapping on the door, and he opens it as quietly as the somewhat battered hinges will let him, a finger already held to his lips.
It's Reyna, and she glances at Nico before nodding, her face softening a little, and beckons him out into the corridor.
"What do you normally do during the concerts?" she asks him.
Will shrugs. "I wander around backstage," he says vaguely. "I help out where it's necessary."
Reyna frowns at him, and Will hopes that she isn't going to make him explain exactly what his job is, because these days he isn't quite sure anymore.
"I need you to keep an eye on Nico," she says eventually. "Not backstage, but from the sound booth. You'll be able to see the stage better from there, and it'll be less noticeable if you have to go out." She pauses for a moment, and Will can see that she's just as worried as he is.
"Okay."
Reyna sighs. "He listens to you," she says. "I don't know what it is, Will, but you're different."
Will glances back at the closed door. "I don't know what it is either," he confesses. "It just sort of happens."
"Well, thank god it does," she says quietly.
Will ends up hovering awkwardly in the small booth, stepping on wires as he tries to stay out of the way of the technician.
"Leo Valdez." He introduces himself between crossed wires, hands flying in a somewhat last-minute way across the desk.
"Will Solace," Will replies.
Leo flashes him a grin which makes him wonder if the guy should really be in sole charge of pretty much the entire stage's electricity. "Yep, I've heard of you. There's a seat in the corner there- or, hang on..." Somehow, he spins a swivel chair across the tiny room towards Will despite the mass of wires sprawled everywhere, and Will sits down warily.
"So Reyna's got you on sentry duty? I though the kid had bodyguards for that."
Will shrugs. "He's sick," he says simply. "And I ran into a reporter earlier. I've got a feeling she doesn't want me hanging about too much."
Leo winks at him. "Not really an interview guy, then?" Will winces, and he laughs. "Dude, been there, done that. My chat up lines are legendary around here. Besides, it makes sense. Nobody looks at the sound booth unless something's on fire." He shoots Will another somewhat mischievous grin.
Will swallows hard and changes the subject. "So there's more people usually?" he asks, slightly disbelieving as he glances round the small booth.
Leo dives under a desk, tugging a rope of wires with him. "Yeah," his muffled voice says. "The Stolls- you know, Travis and Conner? They go about taping wires and stuff in the right places up onstage, and I get Cecil to set up mikes and stuff. It's a good team."
He rummages in a drawer and tosses a pair of headphones over to Will. "Plug these in there."
"Where?"
"The blue one."
Will stared at the hundred of points on the board hopelessly. "Um..."
Leo sighs, but not unkindly, and plugs it in himself. "There you go. You'll be able to hear properly now."
Sure enough, when the concert begins, Will can hear every word flawlessly. Nico doesn't go offstage at all during the first half, perhaps remembering what the magazine had said about him. Will hears every catch in his voice as he pauses to introduce the next song.
"So, how's everyone doing?" he calls into the dark mass of the audience, and they all scream back. A crushing wall of noise, of I love you and marry me and just screaming, caught by the light of a thousand camera phones. Nico smiles wanly. "Good," he says, looking tired suddenly. "That's good, I guess."
He hesitates. Sways on his feet a little. Will tenses, ready to move if he has to. Nico detaches his microphone from the stand and wanders over to the side of the stage, sits on an amp with his guitar still slung around his shoulders.
"I'm just gonna talk to you for a bit now, if that's okay," he says, and stage presence swirls around him like a black hole. He's so different to the Nico Will knows, dark and exhausted and so very very close to breaking. This Nico is different, and it shows in his voice, his stance, the way he takes a deep breath before continuing.
"A lot of you will have read the papers and stuff, right?" There's another wave of screams, and he nods. "Yeah, thought so. Okay." He waits for the screams to fade away, and speaks into silence.
Will feels his heart trembling in his chest, beating in time with every syllable.
"Yeah. Okay." Deeper breath than the last one, fingertips tapping against the strings of the guitar before stilling. "My name is Nico di Angelo," he says at last. "And this is me, coming out." He takes another breath, and only now does Will see the tears on his face. The audience is going berserk, and Nico stands up, and Will can see his hands shaking from his seat in the booth. "If you have a problem with this, I don't care," he almost shouts, and his face has tensed until his cheekbones look like they'll pierce through his skin. "I don't care anymore. I'm done with hide and seek." For a second, he looks like he's going to throw the microphone off to the side, but he doesn't. Instead, he slots it back onto the stand and adjusts his guitar. He doesn't say a word, but Will can see the way he's shaking now, and it isn't just from tears anymore.
He glances down at the setlist, and feels a stab of nervousness when he realises the next song is Riptide, the hit which kind of started this whole mess. He doesn't know if it'll seem different at all after this, but there's never any way of knowing how the media will twist things. This, at least, he knows by now.
As it turns out, Nico doesn't play Riptide.
Instead, he reaches for the microphone stand again, but desperately, as if he's drowning, clutching it like a lifeline. He chokes out something unintelligible before his knees buckle, and he slams to the stage floor like a stone.
Will is moving before Leo's even begun to mute the microphones with a series of sharp crackles, but even so, half of the lights are off before he reaches the stage. The audience's screams fade into the background.
Nico is lying in a crumpled heap, chest rising and falling sharply, one limp arm flung over his guitar. Will kneels beside him, tugging the strap from his shoulders and pulling him into the recovery position.
His eyes are still cracked open, glazed and glassy and dark, and in the few seconds before the lights go off completely, they meet Will's, and they are fever-bright, like burning stars.
Reyna comes out on to the stage, high heels tripping against wires, flanked by two medics who are barely with Nico for half a minute before one of them looks up, face expressionless. "He needs a hospital," he says quietly, and Will can feel his blood pounding in his ears. The medics are lifting Nico onto a stretcher, carrying him offstage as the lights come up in the rest of the stadium, revealing the audience as they're shepherded towards the exits.
Reyna puts a hand on his shoulder. "Will."
"I should have noticed," he mutters, fiddling with the pair of headphones still tangled round his neck. He must have yanked them out of the soundboard when he rushed to the stage. "I did notice. I should have stopped him, why didn't I stop him?"
"We tried, and I don't know," Reyna says in a low, firm voice, tugging at his shoulder. "Come on, Will. We need to go. They're bringing the car round to the back instead of waiting for an ambulance or something."
Will stands, stumbling slightly, and she sighs. "I know how you feel about him, Will, and I know you're worried, but you need to focus, and you have to come with me." She tugs him backstage and out to the car, and they somehow get out into the streets before they're clogged with fangirls.
Nico's slumped in the backseat, held up by a seatbelt. Will scoots beside him, lets his head rest on his shoulder. His breath brushes against his neck, shallow rasps like the wind between bare branches.
"It'll be okay," Will mutters, although he knows Nico probably can't hear him.
"Ten minutes to the hospital," Dakota says, tone surprisingly calm for once.
Nico coughs once, and his whole body judders against Will's shoulder with the movement. Then he's limp again, nothing but too-hot skin and gasping breaths. "Faster," Will says urgently, and they arrive in just under eight minutes. (Not that anyone's counting).
The staff at the hospital are crisp and efficient. They whisk Nico away and leave Will and Reyna in a waiting room.
Will doesn't realise he's shaking until Reyna's hands are on his chest, forcing him backwards. "-ill! Will, for god's sake, sit down for a minute." She points to a chair forcefully, sitting in the one beside it. "It'll take a while for them to get back to us," she sighs, and again, Will can see that she's just as worried as he is.
Reyna has been Nico's manager ever since he was signed at fifteen, a pale thin teenager with too much emotion and no way to get rid of it, except his music.
He was playing at a charity event, for cancer research, maybe. Will wasn't there; he only really joined the crew a few months ago, but he's pretty sure he knows exactly how Nico got noticed. Because onstage, Nico practically radiates angst, but there's only one song Will has ever seen him perform with so much raw, real emotion it left everybody barely breathing. The song is called Bianca. It's simple, very acoustic, one of the first songs Nico ever wrote. He plays it slowly, but there's so much in every syllable that it seems to last for hours. And it's the story of his sister, and the way Nico's hands shake as he finishes playing is enough to show how her story ended.
As far as Will knows, he has only performed it live three times.
The first time was at that charity event two years ago. Will's never actually found out if that's true or not, but he's heard a lot of Nico's early stuff, and Bianca stands out like a lone raft on the ocean.
The second time was on a radio interview sometime last year; the system glitched, and the recorded bass and drums backings they'd planned for him to play against wouldn't work, ruling out almost all of his setlist, aside from one song.
The third time was just a couple of weeks ago, on this tour. Will didn't know what brought it on, but Nico had looked out into the audience and signalled something to the band. "I'm going to play you something different now," he'd almost whispered, voice sounding hoarse and exhausted. And he had, and the whole stadium had sat frozen, and there was a single tear frozen in the glare of the spotlights on Nico's face as he finished, and plunged into the next song almost without drawing breath.
Will supposes that was the moment he fell a little in love with Nico di Angelo, if he's going to be precise about it.
He hadn't realised that Reyna had noticed too.
"When did you work it out?" he asks quietly, and she glances up from her twisting fingers.
"Work out what, Will?"
"That I-" He swallows. "I'm in love with Nico."
It hurts his throat to say it, but he can't work out why until the first tear slides down his face.
"Oh, Will," Reyna says, and he can tell she's uncomfortable with this; hell, Will's uncomfortable with this. Nothing about the situation is right, but there's nothing they can do about it.
"I don't know," Reyna says carefully. "I think..." She shakes her head. "I don't know, Will. It just sort of... happened."
There are still tears clinging to Will's face, and they fall to stain the knees of his jeans as he lowers his head. "I'm sorry," he whispers, because he is. He just isn't sure what for.
"Don't be sorry," Reyna says, firm, commanding. "Don't you dare be sorry, Will, because I'm pretty sure that you've saved that boy more times than I can count."
"I've only known him a couple of months-"
Reyna shakes her head. "You don't know just how much better you've made him," she says, voice trembling. "He pretends he can handle it until he can't, and you've been there every single time, so don't you dare sit there and tell me you're sorry." Will closes his mouth and nods, and Reyna's hands are still shaking when a nurse comes in and tells them that they can see him now.
It's like looking at a paper doll, one with creases for bones and ashes for skin. The shadows under his eyes look like bruises next to the spotless bedsheets.
"Goddammit, Nico," Reyna whispers harshly. "How the hell do we fix you this time, huh?"
He doesn't answer, limbs slack and eyes closed. The doctor explains to Reyna, but it's all words to Will, and when he eventually leaves them alone, all Will can think about is the boy who played for a charity event, and wonder what went wrong.
Reyna has to leave after a bit, to help deal with the mass of media coverage currently mutating across the internet.
Will promises to stay.
He doesn't know how long it takes; maybe he falls asleep, drifting in a swirl of streetlights and music and promises he didn't realise he'd made, but at some point, a hand twitches against his, and his eyes refocus to see Nico looking up at him with something achingly unidentifiable in his face.
"Hey," Will murmurs softly.
Nico swallows painfully. "Hey," he replies, and that is how a new chapter starts.
Of course, it isn't that easy, but in some ways, it is.
Nico di Angelo's latest album, Bones, is a far cry from his previous works, Death Boy and his Underworld EP. The opening track, the first-ever studio recording of his early song Bianca, tells the tragic story of his sister, who died when the star was a child. Riptide, which was released as a single earlier this year, was the subject of the biggest scandal in the music world for years; rumours of Nico's crush on actor Percy Jackson are still to die away. Nico addresses his sexuality in a later track: the angry, powerful Ghost King. This, along with the hauntingly named The Bones That Are Here Await Yours, appear to document the seventeen-year-old's career-long struggle with depression. Most of these songs, as well as the rest of the album, were written during the three-month hiatus Nico has been forced to take, but he's now preparing to finish his first tour, which was cut short by his hospital admission last fall. The last song on the album deserves a special mention: Nico's refreshing cover of the classic Here Comes The Sun is touching, and hints that happier times are in store for the young star at last, not least because of his rumoured relationship with Will Solace, the mysterious blonde he's been seen with almost constantly recently. We here at Oracle certainly hope so, and wish Nico all the best for the future.