AN: Yay! New chapter :) Don't forget to review, fav, and follow ;)

I STARTED A NEW FANFICTION- It's a collection of random One Shots. It's called Doctor's Orders. PLEASE CHECK IT OUT! xx

DISCLAIMER: NO CHARACTER BELONGS TO ME EXCEPT NERON :P THEY ARE ALL THE WONDROUS CREATION OF RICK RIORDAN (except Neron lol)

NICO'S POV

I get up to leave the room as everyone shuffles out, leaving Will, Neron, and me.

"I'm going back to my cab- " I start.

"No, you're not. You're going straight to the infirmary right now, Death Boy!" Will commands.

"But- "

"Nope, you better be in there when I finish the tour."

"Will- "

"I'll be there in a few minutes. Go. Doctor's orders. Don't even think about anything too hard. Just sit or lie down there"

"I- Okay, fine," I mumble.

He's so annoying! I think to myself. Even more frustrating than Percy.

A thousand angry, frustrated, confused butterflies erupt in my stomach as Will says, "If you're not there, we're going to have a talk." With that, he pushes Neron out the door and they head off on their tour.

I don't have to listen to him.

But I find myself trudging toward the Big House anyway.

"Hey, Nico, where's Will?" One of the boys lying on a bed in the infirmary asks.

"Giving the guy who tried to kill me yesterday a tour," I mutter, not loudly enough for him to hear. I tell him loudly, "Giving a new camper a tour."

"You should tell him to hurry up because my wound started bleeding again," he responds, pointing to a bandage on his knee.

"Yeah, sure," I tell him with no intention of calling Will here right now.

I watch as Will parades around with Neron with a scowl on his face through the window in the infirmary. They go to the volleyball court, where someone passes the volleyball to Will and he spikes it back across the net.

What was it that Thalia had said about Apollo?

He's hot. And Will, with his athletic build and his piercing blue eyes that didn't waver in fear when someone threatened him, was just like Apollo...

I scowl quickly. I shouldn't be thinking of Will. Doctor's orders. I just sit here and wait for him.

But what's he going to do if I don't wait here for him? Suddenly, the tug of adventure pulls at me. Curiosity. Stubbornness.

I sneak out the door, avoiding the volleyball court where Will is still at.

Shadow travel would be the fastest mode of transportation. Plus, it'd make Will the angriest if I used that to get back to my cabin.

I slip into the shadows that aren't of the mortal realm, into the darkness. I feel the shadows pulling at me. Join us, son of Hades! Become one with the shadows. You're always so alone anyway.

I push past the shadows and back into the mortal realm. Luckily, I ended up back in the Hades cabin. The fire from the torches on the walls flicker as I pass by them to sit on my bed. The exhaustion from shadow jumping comes at me in waves. I'm not strong enough yet.

Should I go back to the infirmary? If I do, I'll have to pass Will. And I don't know if I can even make it that far.

Again, the exhaustion pulls at me, telling me to sleep.

Maybe for a little bit...

. . .

"You shouldn't have come here, Nico," a voice whispers in my ear, waking me up. My eyes flutter open at the sound of his voice. Of course, it's Will. He has his surgical outfit going on again. He must have been in the infirmary for a while.

"Really? What could you do to me? / You couldn't harm a tree." Oh no. No way. He didn't- no.

"I can make you rhyme all day! / Told you we'd have a talk; What did I say?" He replies as a big smile crosses his face.

It's annoying and cute on his face. Dazzling. Then I remember he cursed me.

"How could you? / What am I going to do?" I blush fiercely. Luckily, it's relatively dark in the cabin.

"Now the whole camp will know you pissed off an Apollo kid. You promised you'd stay. Don't worry, the Ares cabin had to go through it, too."

"Will Solace! / I never promised!" Anger floods through my body, but Will puts a hand on my wrist, which sets off an electric shock through my hand.

I pull back quickly.

"Okay, I did. / But you don't need to treat me like a kid."

"You shadow traveled again, didn't you Nico? After I told you not to," Will says. His smile melts off his face and instead he looks sad.

I immediately feel like I've disappointed him. I probably should have stayed in the infirmary.

"You still need rest, Nico. Your magic's not going to come back quickly. You're spent. Even though I joke around, you really need to listen to me," He tells me. "I'm going to spend a few days here with you and tell the other people in my cabin to take care of campers in the infirmary."

I can only nod as I watch him leave. I wait for a few minutes.

Blushing in the dark, I think about Will. He's awfully protective of me. But he's probably like this with all his patients, isn't he?

When he returns, he's back in a Camp Half Blood tank top. For once, I notice his muscles through the sleeves. His blue eyes sparkle more in the darkness of the torches in the cabin. With him is an armload of clothes, medical supplies, and a sleeping bag.

"We have beds in here, you know. / Although they seem mostly for show," I tell him, indicating the coffin I'm lying in and Hazel's across the room.

"I know that. I just need to be closer to you," he tells me.

He puts down his supplies on the floor next to my coffin. I really need to change up the decoration in here.

"Now, I don't know if you've looked in the mirror lately, but you are painfully skinny and it kills me to know how sleep deprived you've become." Will doesn't look up as he prepares his sleeping bag on the ground.

"I- "

"Nope, I haven't finished talking," he interrupts. "So you need to just relax. No strenuous camp activities. So you can go canoeing, do minimal archery, but no capture the flag or fighting in the arena."

"F- "

"Still not done," he interrupts again. He stands up and looks down at me lying in my coffin. "Of course, you can watch the activities, though."

"Fine, I'll listen to you. / But lift this curse of, too," I tell him.

He gives me a lopsided smile that shines like the sun. He closes his eyes and mutters for a few seconds.

"Okay, it's gone."

. . .

Over the next few days, Will stays by me. He doesn't spend all his time with me, of course, especially because he has to watch Neron. However, a good amount of time is devoted to me.

I secretly like the attention. I guess I made the right choice in staying at Camp Half Blood.

I enjoy watching him shoot arrows more than anything other activity. He teaches Neron to shoot, but Neron's not exactly the best. He was more prophecy-oriented before the spirit of Delphi stopped speaking to Apollo, apparently, so he didn't learn a lot of the physical activities that most Apollo kids did.

"Nico? Do you want to try archery?" Will asks me after he lets Neron try shooting on his own.

"I've never really tried," I respond truthfully.

He gives me a grin. "There's a first for everything. Come on! Don't worry, I suck, too."

Laughing, he grabs my arm and puts a bow in it. He shows me how to stand, how to knock the arrow, but I have trouble copying his movements.

"Put the bow horizontally. Yeah, like that. Now… No, not like that!" He puts his hands softly over mine and corrects me. My arms keep tingling at his touch, but at least he's not looking at my face to see the blush.

Once the arrow launches and successfully hits the target somewhere, he beams at me.

"I'm not the best at this," I admit. "I'm much better and healing and swordplay. You should get some practice, though. Who knows? You might be good at it."

Will contemplates this and nods. He grabs a bigger bow than the one in my hands from a rack behind us. Next to me, he knocks the arrow and looks at his target. The determined look on his face is stunning. He looks like a real warrior. In the same way that Percy used to stare down gods and giants, Will is so determined to knock down a simple straw dummy. Even if he's normally a healer, he just seems like he's confident. He releases the arrow and it flies to impale the dummy through a leg. He's not the best at shooting, clearly, out of all the Apollo kids, as he doesn't hit the head or vital body part, but it'd be enough to slow an enemy down for sure. Much better than my random shot.

Smiling, he turns to me. "What do you think?"

I bite my lips to hide my grin. "It was okay."

"Just okay?" He throws down his bow and stalks over to me, playfully punching me in the arm.

One of the other Apollo kids yells, "You suck, Solace!"

"Shut up! I bet you can't deliver a baby!" Will shouts back fiercely.

"It was better than mine," I tell him and this time I can't help smiling.

AN: Please review, favorite, and follow if you enjoyed this chapter! The rhymes took a while, but I hope I made it work. Throwback to those rhyming Ares kids! ;) The next chapter is really, really, really exciting, so please check back for updates. I will either be posting later today or tomorrow!

I STARTED A NEW FANFICTION- It's a collection of random One Shots. It's called Doctor's Orders. PLEASE CHECK IT OUT! xx