Merry Christmas everyone! I didn't have time to write anything Christmassy, so take this as your present! Sorry about all the angst in the last chapter; there's a bit more fluff in this one.

PS they didn't have credit cards when Nico was born. I posted a tiny outtake in my oneshot story, Be Happy. Read it please!

The Daddy's Favorite Haiku shirt was an idea stolen from TalysAlankil, who wrote the wonderful Solangelo fic A Bleak and Gloomy Sun. I pm'd her to ask permission, but she didn't answer, so I'm just going to take it anyway. Love you girl! All credits to her. Go read her fic. It's seriously cute. Update already! (Like I'm one to be talking.)

As usual, edited by AbbieDabbie, you wonderful girl you.

Spoiled

If there was one thing Will was learning about Nico di Angelo, it was that underneath the hobo clothes, severe life deficiency and general emo/goth/punkness, he was as spoiled and pampered as a little prince.

Only on a purely material level, of course. Will was not going to comment on the obvious emotional and social neglect, because every time he did it made him want to punch the kid in the face.

And somehow, he didn't think that would go over well.

Not that he thought it was entirely Nico's fault. The kid may have risen 'rejecting all things warm, good, wholesome and living' to an art form, but nobody was born like that. Not completely. He hoped.

Will wished he knew more about Nico. He wished he knew where he grew up, what his mom was like, whether or not he got along with his dad, his relationship with his sister. He wanted to know how he became friends with Percy, Annabeth, Reyna, Jason, Piper and Frank, whether he liked chocolate or vanilla ice cream, whether he liked ice cream at all . . .

But this was Nico di Angelo he was talking about. There were only so many random questions Will could ask (in the few moments they were both awake) before he got shut down. The kid spoke so rarely that he had to listen carefully to the few words he did utter, memorize them and store them away for future use.

One of those was the sentence –"For my fourteenth birthday, my dad gave me a French zombie chauffeur."

Which was when Will started to realize Nico had certain privileges even other demigods could only dream of.

It was all because of Will's shirt. He liked any shirt with a funny picture or saying, but one of his favorites was a dark green tank top that said 'Daddy's favorite haiku,' in pink cursive, which he paired with swim shorts, penny loafers and a lab coat.

"I've met your dad," Nico had stated, the second Will had walked in. "That is not a complement."

"When did you meet my dad?" Will asked in confusion.

Nico shrugged and selected several fries from the bag Will had brought along with a juicy cheeseburger (rare) from the Dining Pavilion. "He gave us a ride when Percy screwed up trying to bring me to camp." Nico frowned as he remembered. "He didn't let me drive."

Will was ninety nine percent sure that wasn't even close to the whole story, but he let it go. For the time being.

"It was a birthday present, so shut up."

Nico paused in licking the salt from his fingers. "For my fourteenth birthday, my dad gave me a French zombie chauffeur. So there."

He stuck his tongue out childishly.

Will couldn't help but stare. Nico was all black and white and varying shades of grey. It was odd to see the bit of curling pink against his pale, pale skin.

"What are you doing?"

Will dragged his eyes away from Nico's mouth and shook his head. "Sorry. What was that?"

"Why were you staring at me like that?"

"No reason," Will said quickly. "Just . . . spaced out." He rubbed the back of his neck sheepishly.

"Hmph. Please don't." Will might have been imagining things, but he thought Nico looked a bit embarrassed as well.

"So," he coughed. "You were saying, about your dead French chauffeur?"

"Yeah. His name is Jules-Albert."

Will's mouth twitched. "Of course it is."

Nico ignored him.

"He died in the late eighteen hundreds. He was a motorcar racer in Paris, and now he drives me around whenever I need him to."

"Dare I ask what happens if you don't get shotgun?" said Will delicately.

"Nope."

"Right." Will made a little mark in Nico's patient file. Note - Patient HotAsHades has zombie servants. Must utilize if at all possible. Zombie bath attendants? Consider carefully.

"Any other deadly pets I should know about?"

Nico grinned.

And that was how Will Solace found himself with nothing but a window between him and a giant, slobbering hellhound.

"Holy cattle of the sun!" Will staggered back and almost tripped over another bed. Nico looked ridiculously pleased with himself.

"This is Mrs. O'Leary," he said calmly. "She used to be Daedelus's, but then I killed him, so Beckendorf was taking care of her. Now that he's dead, Percy is supposed to be her owner, but . . ." he shrugged. "I'm in a better position to take care of a hellhound than he is. And Mrs. O'Leary gets along great with Cerberus."

He looked at Will amusedly. "She won't attack unless you give her a reason to. She's actually quite friendly." He tilted his head a little. "Are you okay?"

"I'm . . . fine. Just surprised." Will pressed two fingers to his neck to feel his own pulse and glanced at his watch. It was racing.

When he turned back, Will had already opened his mouth and was fully prepared to start lecturing about the dangers of giving your doctor a heart attack, but Nico wasn't even looking at him. He was kneeling on the bed with his hands pressed against the glass, Mrs. O'Leary's giant head and lolling tongue right outside.

Nico held up one hand and the hellhound immediately sat back on its haunches with a loud thump. The ground trembled.

"Good girl," Nico whispered. He looked over at Will, who sure he didn't mean to have such a pleading expression in his big brown eyes, but that was how it came across. Or maybe Will was just going crazy. He was starting to think that might be the case.

"Oh fine," he muttered. "I suppose you can go outside for a few minutes. And only a few minutes, di Angelo, you hear me?"

Nico didn't even answer as he raced out the door. Will followed, muttering darkly to himself.

Outside, Nico sat on the infirmary steps and Mrs. O'Leary plopped herself down next to him and rested her giant furry head in his lap. Nico stroked her shaggy head and scratched her gently right behind her left ear – exactly the way she liked it.

The scene was so normal, Will wanted to laugh. 'If dogs are man's best friend,' he thought, 'I suppose hellhounds are the same to princes of the Underworld.'

"Do you want to pet her?" Nico was looking at him with his usual bored-bordering-on-grumpy expression, but Will thought he detected a bit of wariness. Did he think Will would refuse?

In answer, Will reached out and rubbed the dog's nose, the way Deffer, his golden retriever back home liked. Mrs. O'Leary panted happily.

Nico looked satisfied. There was a dead leaf in his hair, no doubt shaken from Mrs. O'Leary's coat. Will reached out to brush it away -

- And found himself flat on his back with the wind knocked out of him and a growling hellhound's paw pressing him into the ground.

"NO, Mrs. O'Leary! Bad dog!" Nico, by some superhuman effort, managed to drag the hellhound off Will, leaving him to curl into a wheezing ball. As Nico got a hold on her collar -patterned, of course, with skulls and crossbones- Will caught sight of the dog tag attached to it.

Mrs. O'Leary. Hellhound. If found, please call the Underworld at xxx-xxx-xxxx or Percy Jackson, Upstate New York, at xxx-xxx-xxxx or Camp Half-Blood, Long Island at xxx-xxx-xxxx, or Tyson, Underwater Cyclopes Forges, xxx-xxx-xxxx.

If Will had had any air in his lungs, he would have laughed.

"Stupid dog. Mrs. O'Leary, fetch!" Nico summoned a femur bone from the ground at his feet and threw it as far as he could. It landed somewhere at the edge of the forest, and Mrs. O'Leary bounded after it.

"Sorry about that," he said. He didn't offer to help as Will staggered to his feet.

"'M fine," Will sighed, rubbing his sternum. Looking over at Nico, he saw he had one hand on his bony hip and was looking after his pet monster with an expression that was half annoyed, half amused.

It was so weird, seeing him outside, completely in the sunshine and fresh camp air, not wrapped in blankets and mostly asleep, or in battle gear and mostly dead. He had left his sword inside the infirmary, and was only wearing a thin, long black shirt and sweatpants. His feet were bare, and even paler than the rest of him. He looked relaxed and almost at ease, instead of angry and fighting, shrinking away from the light.

Unconcerned with a current war or a large crowd of people, Nico seemed to hold himself with certain quiet, slouching confidence. Will had to wonder if it came naturally, or was packaged with the knowledge that even without his sword he could easily take on anything or anyone that was stupid enough to bother him, and win without expanding too much effort.

Will had the sudden urge to close the yards between them, to crush Nico's personal space, to wrap his arms around the thin, black clothed body and kiss him.

"Were you trying to touch me?"

"Huh?" Will snapped out of his mental musings to see Nico glaring at him suspiciously. Will swallowed, feeling very hot. "Oh, uhh . . . you just . . ." he gestured to his own head. " . . . had a leaf."

Nico ran a hand through his hair, dislodging the dead leaf. It fluttered to the ground in disappointment. Will knew how it felt.

"So," he said, trying to shake the image of running his own hand through Nico's dark hair, from his mind. "French zombie attendants, giant pet hellhound . . . anything else?"

Nico tapped his chin with one long white finger. "Well, I do have a litter of skeleton kittens that can turn into saber tooth tigers. And there's Cerberus, of course. I can also summon just about any ghost/spirit or skeleton (zombies are harder, because they are a little of both) either from the Underworld or if they are just wandering around . . . oh, a couple years back Percy brought some skeleton monsters derived from drakon teeth to camp and I banished them under the earth, but after the last war I found them again and trained them up a bit."

"Really?" said Will faintly.

Nico nodded. "I named them Marley, Mo, Matt and Max. Frank had one too, at some point, and he came down to the Underworld when his contract was up. His name is Gray. Frank isn't very imaginative."

"Ah."

Will must have been making an odd expression, because Nico suddenly looked away uncomfortably, as if he thought he might have said too much.

"Whatever," he said coldly. "If you're going to freak out, warn me before you do so I can tell someone where to find your body."

"I'm not . . . going to freak out," Will said through gritted teeth.

Nico made a sound of disbelief.

"Oh stop acting so misunderstood," Will snapped. "It just . . . jeez Nico." He slumped onto the infirmary steps and held his head in his hands.

Nico frowned down at him, looking frustrated. "Just what, Solace?"

Will raised his head suddenly and stared at him long and hard.

"Do you ever go shopping?"

"What?"

"Shopping, di Angelo. You know, at a store, or the mall, someplace you go to buy clothes and stuff."

"Of course not," Nico said, deeply offended. "If I need something, I can just send someone to get it."

"What if you're just walking along and you see something in a window that you like. What do you do?"

"Um, get it? I mean, if I'm not too tired I can just shadow travel it to me without setting off any alarms, but sometimes I'll actually buy it."

"And money?"

Nico snorted. "My dad is the god or riches. Money isn't exactly a problem. Plus I still have my card from the Lotus Hotel and Casino . . ."

Will ignored that. He'd hear that story later. "Food?"

"I can put anything I want on my dad's tab at McDonald's."

Will was momentarily distracted. "The Lord of the Underworld has a McDonald's tab?"

Nico looked smug. "He does now." His expression turned thoughtful. "I can buy, steal, or steal from Percy. His mom makes these really delicious blue chocolate chip cookies. They can never figure out why they never last more than a day, even though Percy swears he doesn't all of them."

Will shook his head in disbelief. "Nico, I don't know how to tell you this."

"For the gods sakes, Solace, what?"

Will looked at him gravely. "You're a credit card kid."

"A what?"

"A rich brat whose parents throw around money instead of actually taking the time to do their job."

For some reason, Nico didn't seem that insulted. "That kind of makes sense. My dad was paying for school tuition through a bank account before I even knew who he was."

Mrs. O'Leary came trotting back and dumped the remains of the bone at Nico's feet. He made a face at the slobbery mess and told Mrs. O'Leary to lie down. She did, with a great huffy sigh that smelled like pizza.

Nico scratched her back and she wagged her tail in happiness. Will watched them a little ruefully. Such a twisted sense of normal.

"Hey, Nico?"

"Hmm?"

"When you're all better, I want to meet all your pets, 'kay?"

Nico looked at him incredulously. "Are you kidding?"

Will laughed. "Nope. I want to meet the skeleton cats and Moses and Marvy and the other guys. Promise, okay?"

"I don't . . ." Nico looked like he had no idea how to respond to that. "I . . . sure."

Will smiled at him happily, and Nico had to look away. He buried his face in the silky fur on Mrs. O'Leary's neck.

"Hey Will?"

"Hmm?"

"What's a credit card?"

Temperature

"This is ridiculous," Nico grumbled around the thermometer.

"Standard procedure," Will told him. "No talking."

After almost three days in the infirmary, Nico was completely, 110% solid. His pulse, breathing and heartbeat were almost normal, the werewolf wounds had healed nicely, his reflexes were good and he had stopped feeling dizzy every time he did some small shadow magic.

And then he started shivering.

And Will flipped out.

Now he took the thermometer and pressed the back of his hand to the tip of Nico's nose. "Frozen," he muttered. He squinted at the thermometer.

"NINETY SIX!?"

"Uh oh," Nico thought, leaning away from the son of Apollo.

"WHAT THE ACTUAL HADES, DI ANGELO!? WHAT IS THIS!? YOU'RE TWO DEGREES UNDER!"

"Wow," Nico muttered. "Two whole degrees."

"Shut up!" Will threw the thermometer at him. It went three feet over Nico's head; he didn't even bother to dodge. "Do you know what happens when your temperature drops below normal!?"

"Umm . . ."

"Ninety eight point six is normal. At ninety seven and ninety six you start shivering. From ninety three to ninety five, your emotions go haywire! From ninety one-"

Nico shoved a pillow in his face. "I get it, I get it. Thank you, Dr. Frozen."

Suddenly he was enveloped in a thick blanket. By the time he had struggled free of it, Will was ripping all the sheets and blankets from the empty beds. He then promptly dumped them all on top of Nico's head.

"Solace!"

"Stop squirming," Will scolded him. "We have to get you warm."

"Can you please do that without suffocating me?"

Will vanished for a few minutes, and then reappeared dragging a large bronze brazier. Nico wrapped himself in a few of the blankets like a thick, layered cloak and curled up underneath as Will lit a special no-smoke fire in the brazier and set it next to Nico's bed.

"This is ridiculous," Nico repeated.

"Sorry Death Boy, Doctor's orders." Will held out a mug of hot nectar. "Drink up."

Nico made a face. "No way."

"Way. You need it, unless you want to turn into a Nico popsicle."

"I take unicorn draught ten times a day, I eat everything you give me – including, by the way, some seriously nasty medicine, and yes, I'm talking about the gum - I let you poke me and prod me and stick me like a piñata, and I've taken at least a gallon of nectar already, even though I told you it doesn't work! If I drink that, I'll burst into flames!"

"Then at least you'll be warm." Will held the mug out pointedly. Nico took it reluctantly and sipped.

He stuck his tongue out. "It tastes like hot ash."

Will frowned. "It's not supposed to."

"Yes, I realize that."

"How long has this been going on? It's not just right now, is it?" Will looked at the nectar as if he was accusing it of trickery.

"It started at some point when I was carrying the Athena Parthenos. Nectar and ambrosia haven't worked on me very well since then."

"Nico!" Will looked horrified. "Why didn't you tell me?"

Nico shrugged.

"Ugh." Will slumped forward and banged his head on Nico's knee. "You're killing me, Death Boy. You're really killing me."

"I'm sorry," Nico thought.

Will didn't move, his head still resting on Nico's leg, and after a minute it started to make Nico uncomfortable.

"Will?"

Will mumbled something indistinguishable about heating blankets and didn't move.

Nico was getting annoyed now. "Will."

When Will still didn't move, Nico entertained the idea of kicking him in the head. Not that he'd feel it through that thick skull of his. Will was heavier than he looked, and Nico's leg was starting to fall asleep.

Ugh. Nico glared at the top of Will's head. Stubborn blonde git.

Nico actually did know what happened when your body temperature went below normal. He finished Will's rant in his head:

From ninety one to ninety two, you lose control over your muscles and they stiffen up.

From ninety to eighty nine, you lose all memory capability.

If you get down to eighty six, you lose consciousness.

And then you're gone.

Nico didn't think he was cold. In fact, he was pretty sure ninety six was the warmest he'd been since Bianca died. Since he'd started spending most of his time underground, where it wasn't exactly a friendly environment for warm-blooded creatures. Since he'd rejected human contact and anything even marginally comforting. His body temperature, heart rate, blood pressure and whatever else it was making Will look like he'd sucked on a lemon, could all be attributed to his poor lifestyle, but Nico preferred to think that maybe it was just a part of being a child of the Underworld. He was still functioning, wasn't he? He was used to the cold. Gotten numb to it. The shivering was probably from being so close to a normal temperature, not so far.

Will's head was warm on his leg. Nico could count on one hand how many times he'd been touched in the last few days, but none of them had been this long. His leg was tingling with pins and needles.

Without thinking, Nico reached over and placed his hand lightly on Will's shaggy blonde head. Will turned to look at him with a soft, confused expression.

"Nico?"

Nico ran his hand through Will's hair. It felt dry and soft.

"You know," he said thoughtfully. "You're very warm."

Will turned pink, and neither of them moved.

Favorite

"I'm leaving tomorrow," Nico said. He looked at Will curiously. "You do realize that, don't you?"

Will seemed to freeze for a second, but then he resumed sorting through his various bottles and boxes of mortal medicine. They were only things like aspirin and cough syrup, but supplies were running low and it was still allergy season.

"Yeah, 'course. Three days was the agreement, right?"

He glanced at Nico out of the corner of his eye. Nico pretended not to notice. They had been having a fairly random conversation about some of the arguments Will had been involved in settling, which had led to Will explaining the giant fight between the Apollo and Ares cabin's a few years ago. Will had suggested, somewhat out of the blue, that it would be better for Nico to get some sunlight closer to the source, and maybe he, Will, would take him up in their flying chariot sometime in the next few days.

Having arranged all the packaged medicine in rainbow order, Will stood up and stretched, lifting his arms over his head and sighing happily as his spine popped into place.

"You've been my favorite, you know," he said casually, leaning against the doorjamb. "My favorite patient."

"Oh?" Nico was sitting cross legged in the middle of his bed wrapped in sheets like one of those lame ghost costumes. The sheet was slipping of his head so half his face was uncovered. His dark hair was sticking up all over the place like a baby bird fluff and a single dark eye peered out at Will cautiously.

Will knew that technically, he wasn't cute. He knew that the only reason he thought so was because he liked Nico, and that any unbiased stranger basing their opinions on looks alone would think him a lunatic.

But he wasn't a stranger and he was very much biased, and to him, Nico looked – for lack of a better word – adorable. Adorable and fourteen, much like how he looked when he was asleep.

Although when he was asleep, he couldn't look at Will with those piercing eyes that were constantly giving Will arrhythmias and made him want to search every darkened nook and cranny inside that boy's head to find out what was going on in there.

"What, you don't believe me?" Will grinned at him lazily.

Nico tilted his head consideringly.

"Nope."

"Well." Will deflated a bit. "That's not very nice."

"I'm not a very nice person."

"Hmph. Well it's true." He set his jaw as if readying for an argument. "You're my favorite."

Nico just looked at him, and Will couldn't tell what he was thinking.

"Why?"

"Oh, come on!" Will was grinning again. Nico found it disconcerting. "Because you only made . . . what, like three escape attempts? And you only almost killed me once. That's a personal record for me."

"I though about it a lot more," Nico confessed. He tugged the sheet completely over his head, tunneling his vision so Will could only see wisps of dark hair pressed against his forehead and two dark, heavy lidded eyes that glittered with some unknown emotion.

Will let his head fall back against the doorjamb with a low thunk. "It's twilight."

"Mmm." Nico closed his eyes, but Will knew he wasn't asleep. It was twilight. Those few minutes between night and day had become his favorite time over the last three days. It was the only time when Nico would stop sleeping at every interval he got, and was right before Will usually retired with his Apollo siblings. The only time they were both fully awake and able to talk.

Outside, the sunlight turned rich and gold, and the shadows grew long. To the east, the sky was dark and scattered with stars, while to the west it still glowed fiery red and gold. Campers trailed away from the dining pavilion in twos and threes, sated and full, and looking forward to that evening's campfire.

"You aren't going with them?" Nico asked quietly. The past few days Will had brought him food after eating dinner himself, sat with Nico until it got dark, and then headed out to the campfire himself. Nico had savored that half an hour when everybody was busy. What with over-friendly visitors, and just being in the infirmary, and Will, he had had barely a moment to breathe unless he was asleep. It was almost nice, having the people he cared about around all the time, but at the same time – overwhelming.

"No," Will said.

But that night was different.

It was different in that Nico didn't respond automatically with hostility and cutting remarks. Different in that neither of them made to hurry along the sun, to sleep, to loneliness, to a new day. Different in the way Will looked at him, with a kind of languid, wistful sadness that lingered around the corners of his smile. Different, in that it was their last twilight.

"You know," Will said suddenly, "This doesn't mean you can get away with never seeing me again. I'm not letting you get away that easily." He stared at Nico fiercely as if he could make him understand that by sheer willpower alone.

Nico tilted his head back and let the sheet fall away from his face. He felt slow and lethargic, but wide awake. The warm, buttery sunlight on his face made his skin tingle and relax.

"Yeah." His mouth tilted up ever so slightly into a smile. "I know."

The room filled with their bodies and breaths, with lengthening shadows and golden sunlight.

Thank you for reading and Merry Christmas!