I haven't edited much of this. Sorry for any errors.
"Iris message incoming from Perseus Jackson, San Francisco. Accept?" The automated message coming from a fabricated rainbow on the window of the Hades cabin was too loud for the son of Hades. Too loud for anyone at 4 in the morning, really. With a groan, he tried to mutter 'decline' into his pillow, but it came out as a mumbled mess of a syllable. He tried to pull the blanket over his ears as his eyes remained to be glued shut, but the blankets were being tightly clutched around him already.
"Iris message incoming from Perseus Jackson, San Francisco. Accept?" As it began to repeat again, he groaned louder. He froze as his pillow began to shift and yawn. Turns out, the pillow was his boyfriend's tattooed chest. Will sleepily tugged on the blankets wrapping the 2 boys together, and sighed happily as tanned arms snaked their way around the Ghost King.
"You gonna deal with that, death boy?" Said death boy scowled to himself as his boyfriend's warm and welcoming embrace immobilized him with the message still going. With a grunt, he pushed himself up to try and swipe away at the rainbow, but found it to be too far for him to reach while Will clung to his waist. Once again trying to decline the call, he let out a grumpy and gravelly voice.
"Nico, what did you just try to say?" Thinking back on it when his ray of sunshine questioned it, Nico realized that what actually came out was a mixture of 'no' 'fuck off' 'go away' and 'decline' in Italian, English, Latin, and Ancient Greek. With another groan, he slumped back onto his boyfriend's chest to sigh in exasperation.
"Aw, my bilingual little zombie." Will giggled, sending joyful pulses from his chest straight to Nico's heart. The previously mentioned zombie hid his smile by burying it into the healer's face. When he went to try speaking again, he double checked to speak in English only.
"I refuse to accept that-"
"Nico! Thank gods, I had to call." Percy's frantic voice filled the small cabin, causing Nico to shoot into an upright position with Will hidden behind him, but immediately squinted and winced at the light. Percy was in his usual attire: blue t-shirt, brown shorts, messy hair and perfect green eyes. Stupid green eyes.
"I had a nightmare, except it wasn't a nightmare, it was a memory. I remembered when Athena said that my fatal flaw was loyalty, and that it could get me killed one day, but then I remembered how I just let you leave after Bianca, and if I were truly loyal I wouldn't have done that to you. And it flashed to when we found you in the Labyrinth, and you had changed so much, and I wanted you to come home, but you hated me, but Annabeth convinced you, then you left again and I didn't want you to, but you still did, and I didn't look for you. Then when you figured out I had to take the Curse of Achilles and I just got so angry with you when Hades tricked me, but I didn't even consider how he tricked you as well! I blamed you for something Hades had done when you rescued me and kept your promise! I hurt you! I watched in the dream what happened when you came to get me out and I just..." Percy's words were traveling at light speed as the slowly slipped into his mind's view. Nico was left speechless, not sure how to respond or what to feel at the moment. As he stared on to the distressed son of Poseidon, Nico realized that he had tired eyes, and the way his voice shook with heaved breathing suggested that he was on the verge of sobbing.
And sob he did, openly only for a few moments, but when he lifted his face from rough hands to look Nico in the eye, all the son of Hades could see was guilt. With a sniff, Percy continued slower, at a more normal rate of speaking. "I never thought about how much I hurt you in that moment, and then how much I had been hurting you for all those years and done nothing to try and help." Nico's face had turned from whatever expression it was before to a sad frown now.
"Annabeth told me that when Hera took me, you were looking for me too. I remembered how you acted when we met in Camp Jupiter, and I just... how was I such an idiot? How did I miss so much emotion in the way you spoke. The way you moved. Then I left again, and you left to help us with the doors... and I just-" Percy was choking on his own tears as the rolled down his face. Nico was more concerned for Percy right now than he was about anything else.
"You don't know what it was like; seeing you slide out of that jar, looking like a skeleton with skin that belongs on a drowned sailor. I thought you were dead, Nico. I thought that you were gone for good, and that I was too late, but what hurts now, was why. I just looked at you and saw a son of Hades. I saw the person who lied to me in New Rome, and the key to helping us with the quest to the doors. I didn't see you for what you really are. Then, I made you promise to be the leader, even after I broke my promise. Then... Jason told me what happened with Cupid. I saw in all the memories that it wasn't you that hated me for everything, it was that you were afraid because you loved me, and didn't know what to do. You cared for both of us, Annabeth, I mean. You kept your promise, you helped us, even though we caused you so much pain. Even though I caused so much of it."
"I've done so many things that I wish I never did. I told everyone what happened with the crack in the dining pavilion," Nico remembered that. The hurt and anger that forced his powers to life (or death) split the ancient ground that had been there for years. The dead of the Fields of Punishment crawled out, ready to attack anything in sight, and Nico remembered being afraid. He felt the tug in his heart, but he didn't know if it was from Percy or from the call of the dead. "and I didn't even mention how scared you were. I made everyone see you just as the son of Hades who summoned skeletons. I told everyone that you betrayed me to Hades, and made them think that you were untrustworthy even though I had forgiven you, which I never should have blamed you." Nico remembered that too. He had been so happy and excited to be receiving a cabin after the Titan war, yet when he tried to settle, the word traitor kept coming back. It was the point where he had concluded that he would never belong at Camp Half-Blood, even if those who did doubt him were few in numbers. "I told the 7 only that you were a powerful ally with connections to Hades and the Underworld, and that you had betrayed me to Hades. The 7, who were supposed to save you. If they weren't the good people that they are, it would have single-handedly been my fault for making them see you as something you're not! Did you know that Jason and Leo suggested not going to save you? Because of me."
Nico was close to crying himself, with tears threatening to form in his eyes, but Percy kept going. He wiped his tears and nose, not able to look at Nico in that moment. "I've never truly appreciated all you've done for me, Nico. I saw it tonight. I saw you protecting Mom and Paul in Manhattan, convincing Bob that Thalia and I are friends in case we ever needed help in the Underworld, reading up on the Styx's history to get me the Curse of Achilles, looking for me and trying to comfort Annabeth when you could, not telling me the truth in New Rome because you couldn't interfere with our Fate, searching for the Doors of Death and braving Tartarus on you're own, reassuring the Argo II that we were alive in Tartarus, confessing to Cupid because you needed the scepter to help us, sleeping up on the mast instead of my cabin to remind the 7 that I was alive, volunteering to take the Athena Parthenos to camp, saving the camps from each other even after everything that's happened!"
"And I rarely ever said sorry, for all of the nightmares I made you live through. I barely even thanked you." As silence set in, Nico was once again frozen in place. He had never heard Percy vocalize anything so emotional in this way without it being about Annabeth or Tartarus. Nico himself felt as if he should be guilty, and he didn't know why. It was true. Percy had hurt him many times, yet Nico couldn't stop loving him. That's why he brought Hades' army of the dead even after Percy basically said that he hated him for being a 12 year old kid. It's why he set out to protect the demigods from Gaea and each other, even though Annabeth and Percy had ostracized him by telling the Greeks he was a son of Hades. It's why he forced himself to admit the single biggest secret he had kept for years, in front of the son of his mother's killer, to get the scepter. That day in Croatia, he knew that things would change. He would either have to leave forever after everything came to close, or find acceptance and move on. It was the point where he couldn't endure any longer. He had known as he said it, that Jason and Cupid could tell everyone that he was gay and had a hopeless crush on someone who would never love him back.
"I'm so, so sorry for everything that I've done to you, Nico. I've been so blind all these years, and I'm sorry that I can't love you the same way you loved me. I'm undeserving of the love you've shown me, and I hope that... I hope that we can start over. Please. I'll live with this guilt my entire life if I have to, but I can't move forward knowing that I never showed you just how much you've done for me." Nico knew that he had to speak at some point, but he didn't know how to.
With a sigh, a final tear dripped from the sea prince's eye. "I promised Bianca that I would look after you, Nico. I've failed both of you, over and over again, but I'm ready to try and be the brother I should have been when she died. And it's long over-due for you to be allowed to be the little brother I met 4 years ago." Nico allowed himself to smile, and Percy's face contorted in a pained yet overjoyed grin. His tears had dried, and left his sea green eyes red.
"Percy, I know that it wasn't you're fault. I don't blame you for Bianca's death; it was a prophecy. And you had more important things to be doing than checking in on the Underworld. You've saved my life too many times for... everything else to make me hate you. I'll never forgive myself for almost getting you trapped in the dungeons, and not all memories of you are great, but I just... you made it very hard to hate you. And I don't, for the record. Hate you, that is..." Percy looked like he wanted to run through the rainbow projection and tackle Nico with kindness, and Nico would have allowed it in that moment. Or so he thought.
With an exaggerated and obnoxious yawn, Will Solace sat up behind Nico and stretched his arms out to the side. The smug look on his face hid mischief as he put on an innocent front. As he pulled Nico, who had just realized that both of them were shirtless, into his lap to rest his chin on the top of Nico's head, he could hear Percy's face go red.
"As fun as this all is, I personally gotta say that I'm a bit sad that my boyfriend didn't introduce me to his big bro. I'm glad we can now, but I'd prefer when we both had more clothes, and-" Nico pushed him back flat onto the bed, and stole the covers to bring them up to his chest. He looked back to Percy who was grinning like an idiot. Before he could speak or cut off the call, Percy winked to Will's smug smirk behind him.
"Be good to my little bro, Solace. And Nico?" Percy's voice turned serious, and Nico drew his eyes to meet Percy's.
"Thank you for staying loyal to me, and I'm sorry let my grudges take away you're family. Thank you, Nico, for letting me be a part of you're amazing family."
Review and let me know if you want a second chapter where Nico and Will visit Nico's family.