Nico awoke to the feeling of a warm blanket with a pounding in his head and a throbbing in his arm. Trying to blink the sleep out of his eyes, he attempted to sit up- and immediately decided that it was a bad decision. The second that he tried to sit up, a wave of nausea hit him hard, and he completely lost his sense of balance. Squeezing his eyes shut, he flopped back to where he had been laying, trying desperately not to throw up. After he calmed down, he counted to ten and hesitantly cracked one eye open, waiting for the queasiness to return. When it didn't, he opened the other eye and took in his surroundings.

He found that he was laying on a bed wrapped in a yellow fleecy blanket that smelled familiar to him, like cinnamon almost, with a hint of something else- citrus, maybe? He couldn't exactly place it, but he knew he had smelled it somewhere before. He looked around the room he was in, and noticed that it was relatively spartan. The walls were painted a sky blue color with golden highlights, which went well with the sunlight streaming in from each of the two windows in the room, one of which was directly alongside the bed. The other window was over a desk across the room from the bed. The other furniture in the room was only a dresser and a bookshelf filled with books that looked like they hadn't been opened in a very long time. All in all the room was spacious, airy and bright- not exactly Nico's personal style, but he found that a part of him liked it.

As he was looking around, the door next to the bed opened and a small blonde kid crept in, a mischievous smile on his face. Quietly shutting the door behind him, the kid snuck over to the desk, completely ignoring Nico, and scribbled something on one of the papers there. Looking very pleased with himself, the boy turned around and froze, seeing Nico for the first time. Feeling pretty self-conscious, Nico self-conscious waved at the kid, wondering who he was. The boy, who looked like he was in about the fourth grade, just looked at him, which did nothing for Nico's self-consciousness. The boy inspected the son of Hades for a moment, and then without taking his startlingly blue eyes off of Nico, yelled (Nico thought unnecessarily loudly), "MOM! THAT GUY IS AWAKE!"

Nico winced at the sudden noise, the pounding in his head reaching new levels. He groaned softly, squeezing his eyes shut again. As he tried desperately to fight against his headache, he heard the footfalls of two people enter the room. A woman's voice began scolding the child, "Marcus, what have I told you about going in your brother's room? Especially when we have a guest staying there?! Go wait in your bedroom, I'll come deal with you in a minute."

"Ok, mom," the kid's voice replied, sounding completely unashamed. Nico heard the sound of small footsteps leaving the room, and then of the door shutting behind them. The woman sighed. "I'm sorry, hon, I've tried to talk to him about it. He's just curious about his brother, that's all." A second voice replied in a soft tenor, a voice that Nico definitely recognized. "Don't worry about it, mom. He wouldn't be as curious about me if I was home more often." Nico cracked open his eyes again and saw the one person he wanted to see more than anything right then.

"Well, that kid definitely has a set of lungs on him," he said, attracting the attention of the other people in the room. Nico grinned slightly, his eyes fixed on the son of Apollo in front of him. "You must have taught him a lot about noise projection, Will."

The tanned healer turned and looked at him, a concerned look in his eyes. He quickly walked over to Nico and started to fix his bandage and fluff his pillow, fussing over him like a mother hen. "Nico, what the Tartarus happened to you?! You show up at my door at eleven o'clock at night, all pale and bloody and barely blurt out a 'hello' before passing out on me! It took me a good three hours of healing to make sure that you wouldn't die while you slept! I had no idea what might have happened to you, because I have had no idea what you have been doing! Why haven't you written me letters, or Iris-messaged me, or tried to contact me at all? Do you have any idea how worried I have been?!"

This last statement was accompanied by an accusing glare and a finger poking Nico in the chest, neither of which phased the Ghost King. Nico half-smiled up at the irate teenager in front of him. "It's good to see you too, Will." And it was true. Nico had missed the energetic son of Apollo since he had been in the Underworld. He hadn't quite realized how much Will had grown on him since the end of the Giant War, but once he wasn't part of Nico's everyday life, there had been this void slowly growing in Nico's stomach that had once been filled with skeletal butterflies.

Will huffed slightly at the grinning demigod, a smile threatening to break through his angry glare. "Damn it, di Angelo, I'm trying to be mad here. Stop that infernal smiling at once." The woman, who had been silently watching the interaction between the two teens, giggled quietly. When both boys turned to look at her, she covered her mirth with one hand. "Oh, please, don't stop on my account," she said, her velvety green eyes glittering with laughter. "Go ahead arguing like an old married couple, it's pretty entertaining."

Both boys blushed slightly, glancing at each other when they thought the other wasn't looking. Will cleared his throat and spoke. "Nico, I'd like you to meet my mother, Addison Solace. Mom, this is Nico di Angelo, son of Hades and the most stubborn guy I have ever met in my life." Nico swatted at Will's teasing and turned his attention toward the woman. "It is very nice to meet you, Mrs. Solace. Will has told me an awful lot about you." Actually, Nico didn't know much about Will's mother besides her name, but figured that in situations like this, there were protocols that needed to be followed.

Apparently Will's mother had no such illusions. She ignored Nico's proffered hand and went in for a hug. "Oh please, Mrs. Solace makes me sound like an old lady. Call me Addy, everyone does," she said, wrapping her arms around Nico's neck. Nico stiffened slightly at the unexpected embrace, but slowly reciprocated, using his good hand to awkwardly pat her on the back. He didn't really hug that often; in fact, he had only ever hugged about three people in his life, and most of those happened when Bianca was still alive. He considered the feeling of having someone hold you like that, and decided that it was nice.

It stopped being nice when Will's mother pulled away from the hug and her hand accidentally brushed up against his bandage. It was a gentle touch, all things considered, but it still caused enough pain to make Nico clench his teeth and hiss in agony. The pain had been mostly gone when he woke up, but they returned with a vengeance as soon as Addy touched his wound. Will was by his side in an instant, a look of determined concern etched on his chiseled face.

Will had fully entered his healer mode, looking the wounded demigod in the eye and speaking in a calm, clear voice: "Nico, I need you to tell me what exactly happened to you. For whatever reason, your arm isn't healing the way it should. When I tried to clean it last night, it just seemed to get worse. What happened to you?"

Nico used his good hand to rub his temple. In his slightly rough baritone, he told Will what was going on. "When Father called Hazel and I back to the Underworld, he told us about some... issues in his kingdom that worried him, to say the least. Apparently, the things that live in Tartarus have become restless since the war ended, and that made Father really, well, uneasy. He called Hazel and I back to set up a guard around the rim of the Pit. I thought that it was kinda unnecessary at the time, but apparently he made the right call. I was on my shift for the guard when I got surprised by this weird bug-looking monster. I killed it pretty easily, but it managed to sting my arm before I sent it back to Tartarus."

Will nodded solemnly, a small shadow of worry flashing across his face. "I figured that there was some sort of venom in the wound that kept me from healing it. Luckily, I managed to contain it just to that shoulder, so it won't spread to the rest of your body. If you hadn't gotten to me by the time that you did..." He looked away, his normally grinning lips compressed to a thin unsmiling line. "Let's just say you would be spending a lot more time with your father."

Nico looked even more grim than usual at that prospect. His normally bright amber eyes had narrowed, and an aura of gloominess descended over him. Will noticed this immediately, and his heart broke for Nico a little. The son of Hades had been through so much, and it killed Will that he wasn't able to just protect his friend from all the dark parts of the world. Leaning down, Will grabbed Nico's good hand and held it, meeting Nico's surprised look with a bright smile on his face. "Buuuuut thanks to your quick thinking and my excellent (if I do say so myself) healing skills, we don't have to worry about that," Will said, a bright twinkle in his eye.

Nico met Will's sky blue eyes and felt his melancholy mood and worry melt away like snow under the spring sun. He smiled back up at the son of Apollo, a familiar feeling of skeletal butterflies echoing throughout his core. "And thank the gods above for that," he whispered huskily, unconsciously rubbing his thumb against the side of Will's hand. Will blushed slightly at the affectionate contact, but did not pull away. Seeing the romantic tension between the two demigods, Will's mother smiled slightly and cleared her throat, causing both Will and Nico to jump slightly and release each other, blushing madly.

Addy smiled at the two boys, a teasing twinkle flashing in her dark green eyes behind her round glasses. Will groaned inwardly at the look on his mother's face. She is going to say something embarrassing, I know that look! Nico is going to get pissed at me and things are going to get awkward... Resigning himself to his mother's good natured but unhelpful ribbing, Will gritted his teeth and waited for the inevitable comment.

Which was apparently completely evitable. The antagonistic comment that Will expected never came. Instead, Addy just grinned and said, "Well, I don't know about you boys, but I am hungry. How does grilled cheese and tomato soup sound?" The normally eloquent healer stood speechless for once, surprised at his mother. He knew the look that he had seen in her eyes, and it nearly always preceded some sort of off-the-wall comment or slightly humiliating joke. Apparently this time was an exception to the rule.

Nico, slightly uncomfortable in the silence after Addy's offer to make lunch, decided to speak. "That'd be very nice, Mrs. Sola- er, Addy. For some reason, I feel like I haven't eaten in days." The ghost king's stomach rumbled slightly at this statement, as if in agreement. Nico, slightly ashamed of the noise, turned red and mumbled an apology, which Addy laughed off. "I'll take it as a compliment," she chuckled, smiling warmly at him. "Will, why don't you come help me in the kitchen and let your friend relax a bit? I'm sure after all that has happened, he's pretty exhausted." Nico tried to protest; he wanted Will to stay and talk with him for a while, and he was feeling fine, really, but Addy would hear none of it. All but pushing the also-protesting Will out of the doorway, she turned and spoke again to Nico. "We will be in with your lunch in a while, hon. For now you just try and rest, ok?" And without waiting for a reply, she ducked out the doorway after Will, leaving a bemused Nico to try and figure out what just happened.

Nico had very rarely met someone who had been as accepting of his presence as Addy; he supposed that Will must have gotten his kindness as stubbornness from somewhere. Still, it was very new to him that an almost complete stranger would take in a random and slightly bloody boy from the street, let him sleep in her house and then make him grilled cheese. Shaking his head slightly, Nico flopped back on the bed, being careful not to touch his cut, and snuggled into the brightly colored blanket. As he breathed in the pleasant cinnamony-citrus smell that the fleece exuded, he realized why it was so familiar to him. The blanket smelled just like Will did. This newfound piece of knowledge brought a slight smile to his face, and he wrapped the blanket even tighter around himself, sighing in contentment. He fell asleep dreaming that he was in Will's arms.

End Chapter 2

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