Guest, you read a book with a few hundred pages of Jesus hanging out with tax-collecters, prostitues and that's all you get from it? That's, um, wow. Someone clearly has a problem here and somehow I don't think it's the ones who happen to experience same-sex attraction. Also, last time I checked, we don't even follow Leviticus-unless you want to take off your "mated fabrics". (Leviticus 19:9) But what do you mean you have an entire closet full of exactly that? That's hypocrisy, and, last I checked, the parts of the bible we do actually follow have countless verses on that. (Matthew 7:5; Isiah 32:6 ; Luke 18:11; there are literally 23 others, take your pick)4

Disclaimer: this message has been canceled due to a scheduling error

"Yeah, Nico di Angelo."

"di Angelo? As in the wife of my old business competitor?"

Nico must've looked extremely confused, because he elaborated.

"Oh, I owned hospital just across the road from Hades' Funeral and Embalming."

"You ran Apollo and Co?"

Will gave him a look like, what did I literally just tell you five minutes ago?

"You're looking at Apollo himself. But you can call me Fred," he winked,"I'm going incognito."

Nico blinked.

"Careful, dad, I don't think he fully grasps the concept of any form of joking that doesn't involve sarcasm."

"Really? Then why are you even dating him?"

"At this point, I don't even know."

"WOW," Nico said. Will just grinned unapologetically.

"I feel a haiku coming on."

"Dad, please no."

"Ah, come on, you knew one about your relationship was inevitable."

Nico counted out syllables on his fingers while they bickered. Was it five then four then five again? He took out his phone and searched it, then counted again.

"He is annoying,

uses me as an armrest,"

After having a first-hand experience of how violent Jersey Shore could be, Nico decided it best to end off with a;

"But I love him anyway?"

Will looked at him with an expression of complete and utter betrayal. Nico shot him what could only be described as a shit-eating grin.

Will's father (Nico decided to just go ahead and call him Apollo) nodded extremely approvingly, first at his son (probably for his good taste in men), who'd taken up pinching the bridge of his nose and looking extremely done with both of them, then at Nico.

"The last line is six syllables though. How about -" he carried on to himself for an impressive amount of time.

Solace finally looked up, only to glare at Nico," I blame you for this."

He shrugged," that's fair."

Apollo finally stopped after a while and Nico quickly spoke up before anything else happened,"Wait, before you said 'business competitor'?"

"Well, having a funeral home right across from my hospital didn't really give off the right idea to my patients' families."

"Oh, right..."

A pause.

"So, the name Maria di Angelo ring a bell?"

"Yup," he popped the p at the end, "that was her."

Apollo opened his mouth to say something, probably along the lines of " 'Was?'", when Will spoke up.(which Nico was immensely grateful for)

"Hey, dad, if you don't mind, I'm going upstairs. It's been pretty long couple of days, what with the drive and everything."

Apollo shut it, opened it again, only to inhale, then close it. He settled for just nodding. Nico decided to awkwardly go on ahead while Will stayed back and talked for a few minutes. He padded up the stairs and set his suitcase down in a random part of the hallway; hoping he would find it again, but not willing to put any actual effort into preventing that problem. He then proceeded to poke around in doorways until he found a shower. It would probably be considered rude, but hey, he'd devoted his entire life to being less than polite and now was not the time to rectify that. A couple minutes later and the hot water was running, he unwillingly groaned it was so good to have hot water after days of the freezing showers he'd had to take in the motel. All too soon, he had to turn it off to change into his old clothes (there was no way in Hades he was doing the alternative of just a towel) to go hunt down his luggage again.

Later, in a fresh set of clothes; after the days on the road, that was basically heaven. All he needed next was to catch up on many,many hours of sleep, and he'd be able to die happy. And in that line of thought, Nico went back to looking in doorways, this time until he could find Solace's room. Hey, two could play at that game. He dived starfish-style backwards onto the duvet duvet covers printed in sunshine yellow, (really Solace, really?) crawled under the covers, and was out in about the same amount of time it takes for a light to go out after you flip the switch.

"I'm surprised you didn't opt for the 'face-down on a laptop keyboard' sleeping option this time."

Nico pulled the covers over his head and hoped that the annoying and suspiciously Californian-accented noise would go away if he ignored it hard enough. Sadly, it did not.

Instead, it managed to shrug and say, "Character development, I guess."

He tried the approach of blocking his ears with a pillow and wondering what the source of annoying sound was doing bothering him at godsforsaken hours of the morning.

"Come on, Death Boy, we have things to do. You haven't even had In-n-Out and that needs to be fixed."

"Golden Retriever," he mumbled to himself.

He decided to just get up, because he'd already said something, which was basically just admitting defeat. Solace looked at him like he'd just realised something.

Nico was suddenly very interested in the digital alarm clock on the bedside desk. Apparently, it was the godsforsakenly early hour of two pm.

"Did you just call me-"

"No, it was in Italian, you don't know what I said."

"But I-"

"Nope, Italiano."

He splayed his hands in defeat, but he didn't lose his his wide grin, which Nico had a bad feeling about.

"So, 'we have things to do'?" he prompted.

The grin grew even more, along with Nico's distrust.

He pulled his ridiculous sun hat even lower over his eyes. "I hate you."

"No you don't, you love me- that's why you came on this trip with me. Besides, you already professed your undying love-"

"Well, I wouldn't say undying, more-"

"-for me in Haiku form. Ily too, by the way," Will cut him off in the midle of his interruption. Rude.

He made a valiant effort to kiss Nico on the cheek, despite the layers of clothing he'd put on specifically to cover up from the sun. Nico sunk his face even deeper into his jacket.

He sat in the shade for what seemed like forever while Will- who seemd insistent on fufilling all Californian stereotypes- surfed the waves. He wasn't very good; he lost balance and capsised more times than Nico cared to count, but the view was definitely nothing to complain about. And it was quite endearing to watch Will emerge completely soaked, push the drenched bangs out of his face, and give Nico an adorable grin and two thumbs up.

Well, the first couple times, anyway. The Californian had done just that for the umpteenth time.

"Sgobbone," Nico mouthed. Will had long since heard that enough times to put two and two together and worked out what it meant.

He just rolled his eyes in response, and then swam over to where his board had landed. This time, it happened to be right next to what looked like a woman and her two tweens, where it had floated right over thwacking the woman. Will grinned apologetically. After the mother had scolded him for a few minutes, he gave what was probably a sincere apology. The woman just smiled and shook her head after him. Leave it to Solace to get on everyone's good side.

Nico was too busy searching the waves and trying to figure out where Will had gone to see him approaching-until he was a few feet away. Oh no.

"You can't just spend the entire time at the beach sitting in the shade, sweetheart."

"One, I beg to differ, and two, okay, do not call me sweetheart."

"What about Sugar?"

"Definitely not."

"Honey?"

"Nope."

"Pumpkin?"

"Negative."

"Milk?"

"Okay, wha-"

"Preheat the oven to three hundred degrees?"

He looked extremely pleased with himself for that one, which made Nico even more reluctant to smile at that.

"Well, in that case, I'm using all of those from now on."

"Two can play at that game, Polpetto."

"What?"

"It literally means meatball."

"And that's a term of endearment?"

"Mhmm."

"Italian is weird."

"Hey, you can call people food items in English without it being weird."

Will shrugged.

"Cucciolo," he added.

"Hmm?"

"Nothing."

Stop distracting me on purpose.

He sighed," Fine, I'll go," Will grinned, "But on the condition that I am not doing that," he gestured at the surfboard.

He would have liked to say that it had been fun. But it really hadn't, even before it had happened. It was wet, it was sandy, it was cold. It just wasn't that amazing. He was fine standing on the shore with just the occasional wave making contact with him, but Will dragged him out to waist deep. Well, Nico's waist deep, and Solace's halfway up his thighs. It was then that Nico was fully convinced that the ocean hated him, because there was a sudden pain wrapped around his calf. At first, he thought it was just a piece of fire coral or something, but that in itself was enough to send him limping back to the sand to check it out. He made it about half way there.

"Seriously, Nico, is ten minutes all you can take?" he stopped himself and then continued, "It's fine if you want to go back home though."

"Actually, I'm pretty sure I just got stung."

"By what- Oh, that."

"Can you walk?"

"Yeah."

He very convincingly took two- well, steps was a strong word, more like short limps- then yelped and stopped. Will nodded, then picked him up, bridal-style.

"Seriously, Solace, I-"

"Oh, please. With that act, you can't even convince yourself that you're fine."

He carried Nico over to where they'd left their stuff, bundled it up, and handed it to him.

He cursed in Italian, "Pretty sure their are some tentacles still on there," he inspected his calf, "yup, defnitely."

Will looked up from typing on his phone," Well, now I know half of what you say in Italian- you really seem to like that word. Anyways, I'm just taking you over to the lifeguard tower. There should be a first-aid kit there."

Solace set him down carefully on a towel once they were inside the building. He absently took things out of the kit box in between glances at his phone.

"Sorry, can you wait here for a sec? Says I need seawater."

He spent the next few minutes treating it, Nico didn't even pay attention to what Will was doing, all he knew was that it stung (no pun intended) all the way through.

"Can you hurry it up?" Nico snapped, and then winced," sorry, tempermental at the best of times."

He got an unaffected grin, "Don't worry about it."

The med student carried on with things like vinegar and hot water. Nico found himself surprisingly unsurprised that Will had managed to get hold of that at a beach. Finally, he put a cold soda bottle on the reddened area.

"You did great, you deserve a lolipop."

"Thank you?"

"Not you, me. You did nothing."

"Excuse you, I did all the panicked limping to shore."

"My apologies, you were the true hero of the day."

"Exactly."

Will carefully lifted him up off the towel. "Guess that wasn't exactly best start for you, huh?"

"It wasn't all bad."

"Aww, 'cause I was there?"

"Actually, I take it back, it was terrible."

Solace grinned.

"Well, don't you worry because tomorrow is going to be much better. Partly because I don't think it could be any worse than that and partly because you can't go wrong with In-N-Out."

Translations

Cucciolo- term of endearment meaning puppy/cub

Sgobbone- dork/nerd

A couple of you will probably be able to pick out the dialogue I stole from a tumblr text post. *Unapologetic shrug*.

Negativity aside, I just really wanted to thank all of you for 80 follows, 60 favs, and all the positive reviews! This was one of my first proper fics, so I really appreciate all of the love both my readers, old and new, have given this.

Until the next update,

He beauty out!