Author's Note: I do not own the characters or world of Rick Riordan, but the plot is all mine. Enjoy!

Will was tired, it was an emotion that he didn't have to deal with too often. In their group of mostly night owls, he was the only one falling asleep during their weekly movie nights and sleepovers but he did wake up at a 'hellishly early' ("7:00 am isn't hellish Percy" "Of course it is, the only thing that wakes up then is Gaea and she's the devil" Will merely rolled his eyes) time every morning.

His friends were sure that he was taking some odd medicine to give him the blessings of Apollo from up above (he couldn't help but laugh then too, yes Percy he was a student with medical aspirations who managed to wake up on time, he must have been blessed). The truth was he religiously followed a sleep schedule that gave him more than enough sleep to be his cheerful self daily without reverting to his high school coffee addiction.

Today was different though, today he was dead tired with no patience to be cheerful in the face of gloom, Percy (his roommate), or his Saturday morning shift at the corner café that was cozy, gave good pay, and usually had pretty annoying joggers. He slumped in front of the register cradling a cup of coffee, eyes focus on the door. The café didn't have any sort of bell or ringer to let the employees know that there was someone there, and even if there was Will probably wouldn't have heard it in the sleep-deprived, coffee focused person that he'd become with the loss of a few short hours of precious sleep.

The lack of sleep wasn't his fault or technically speaking it was, but Will refused to take the blame for it. He'd been forced to attend a party yesterday night and if that wasn't bad enough, he'd realized that he had an English literature essay due the very next morning. All in all, it was fair to say that the blonde being a soggy French fry guarding a rather large cup of coffee behind the cash register did not have quite enough sleep for a normal human being to function.

He looked up to see a person enter the café, instead of the usual annoying jogger, he met eyes with someone who didn't hit Will as either an early bird or a health freak. The guy had attractively (attractive? You just met the guy Will, he mentally scolded himself) messy dark hair with an olive skin that envied the tones of models and chocolate brown eyes that he could feel himself melting in. Will came out of his daze with the person waving their hand in front of his face.

He blinked, "Sorry, uh… how can I help you?" After properly looking up, he could see the gorgeous guy was standing next to a friend who was hiding most of her face with her hand. He narrowed his eyes at her, was she embarrassed - it didn't seem like it. She almost looked amused.

The guy cleared his throat, Will noticed that his cheeks were pinking, and turned to the girl who promptly said their order of a black coffee, a latte, and two cookies. He facepalmed, they must've been a couple. A couple that he was making uncomfortable by checking out a guy that probably wasn't gay. He quickly rushed away to get their drinks and hide his mortification.

"You're right, he's really cute" Nico looked up to see Piper smirking and taking a sip out of her cup carefully moving around a child to avoid a collision. They were in the park, having been there since getting their coffee from the sweet blonde in the café, "He could be the sunshine to your utter gloom, I ship you guys!"

She said this all easily, she was somewhat of a romanticist in their friend group except it went to the length of her being completely accurate with her ships. She was like that, Piper, she had these odd intuitions that were anything but normal. The two of them strolled around the green park talking, their current topic being the blonde who'd caught Nico's eye at the coffee shop.

"I never said he was cute, you know"

"Maybe not, but your face did" Piper grinned victoriously at the return of the blush on Nico's face at the thought of Will

"You've been creepily watching him at the end of every one of his morning shifts like a stalker" she continued, without noticing the darkening blush on his face, "I think it's time for you to walk in that café one day and ask him out"

Nico felt his face immediately whiten at the thought of the blonde, Will – he thought his name tag said, rejecting him, "But"

"He won't reject you," she said automatically as if able to read his thoughts

He looked up at her meeting her eye before quickly meeting them with an interesting piece of grass on the ground, "Would you…"

"No, I think you need to do this by yourself. I mean look how today went – I'm sure both of you will feel more comfortable if it's just you two"

Nico hesitated while twiddling his thumbs, "What about next …."

She groaned loudly, "Niccoooo, you need to this tomorrow so it doesn't set behind the life calendar"

He narrowed his eyes at her, "What calendar"

"The calendar to you and the blonde's-"

"Will"

She smirked, "Ok, you and Will's wedding in Hawaii followed by a plethora of events leading up to your shared tombstone. What d'ya say?"

"We'd be married in Fiji" Piper stopped walking, shock coloring her face before her now grin got even wider. Nico just rolled his eyes and took a sip of his coffee to cover the flush in his cheeks.

Nico wanted to say he was prepared, he'd been practicing in front of the mirror for so long that in the middle of the night, Leo (his roommate) came into his room enthusiastically hitting him on the back and gave him a speech about how everything was going to be ok, how if after all this preparation Will said no then he didn't deserve Nico, and that if worst came to worst, he'd be glad to date him since he knew Nico was only crushing on Will because he knew that he'd be rejected from "Da Bad Boy Valdez". Nico had retched at the thought but the disgusting idea distracted him from worrying too much.

It was early morning, just in time for the opening of the café and Will's shift. He walked up to the door, feeling brave, and walked up to the cash register. Will was doing some sort of work, probably homework for a class that he took, and didn't seem to realize that Nico was hovering by the cash register.

It just occurred to him that maybe Will wouldn't want to talk to him, maybe

He had just made up his mind to walk away and pretend that this had never happened when Will looked up. Nico saw a flair of recognition in the blonde's eyes as brown met blue.

"What can I get for you today" Will threw in a smile at the end which completely threw Nico off his memorized, practiced in front of the mirror a zillion times speech. He looked down flushed and refused to meet the blonde's gaze.

After a pause, Nico decided to throw caution to the wind, met Will's eyes and said just as Will muttered almost inaudibly,

"Your number"

They both looked up red in the face, Will grinning and Nico gave him a shy smile. Before anything else could be said, Will pulled Nico into an unfamiliar yet warm hug and slipped a piece of paper into his pocket.

All in all, Nico was glad to have met his opposite, his warmth, his sunshine.

Review: let me know what you think!