August 21
Nico
Nico left his cabin, freshly showered after an afternoon in the forge. He headed toward the infirmary, hoping that Will was working. He had gotten a burn earlier from Percy and Jason messing around and bumping into him right as he was holding a sword-in-progress over the flames. The burn wasn't bad but he might as well get it looked at...
He saw Will as soon as he came through the door. He was sitting with Kayla at the main desk sorting through some large boxes. Will looked up and smiled.
"Hey! We just got this huge shipment - it was supposed to come a few days ago but the tracking got rerouted or something. Did you stop by to visit or did you impale yourself and just need a band-aid?"
Nico held up his arm, "A bit of both."
"That's it?" Will said, laughing. "The great Ghost King can't handle a little burn?" He took Nico's arm and looked closer.
"Hey, I'm just trying to keep Reyna from having an excuse to show up with the Roman Army," Nico said, rolling his eyes. "You're welcome."
Will just smiled, held his hand over the burn, and started chanting. A few seconds later there was nothing left.
"All set. Free to go."
"Well, actually, I wasn't kidding about the visiting part," Nico said, absently rubbing where the burn had been. "The rest of my afternoon is free - do you need help with those boxes or anything?"
He hadn't seen Will much in the past couple days. The most recent game of capture the flag had gotten about half of the Ares cabin stuck in the infirmary, so Will had been pretty busy. Being a third - or fifth? - wheel around Percy, Jason, Annabeth, and Piper had gotten old.
Kayla glanced up, "You know, Will, I told Austin I'd listen to some new song he wrote, so if you two want to finish this…"
She gave Will a meaningful look and he sighed. "Yeah, sure, no problem."
She flashed them both a huge smile and pushed the packing list and a pencil into Nico's hands. "Perfect, enjoy!"
Will watched her leave and shook his head. "Sorry, you have no choice now. We were just matching the contents to the packing slip, and then we'll put it all in the storage closet. It shouldn't take too long."
"No problem, really." Nico honestly couldn't think of anything else he'd rather be doing. He'd gotten pretty comfortable in the infirmary during this three days there, and the company wasn't too bad.
Ok, fine. He had a crush on Will. Piper was right, Hazel had already figured it out, and Jason probably suspected as much. Nico figured he might as well accept it.
Will started counting out different types of bandages and creams as Nico checked them off. Once they'd gotten through each of the boxes, Nico helped Will shove them toward the open storage closet.
Will paused and glanced inside, then seemed to blush. Nico looked in too, "What? Something wrong?"
"What?" Will said, turning around. "Oh, no. Just… a stupid joke Kayla made. So, this is the storage closet," he said as he dragged the first box inside. "There should be one or two of each of the things we just got still up on the shelves, so just look around and line up the new stock behind those. And Kayla will poison you in your sleep if you put something in the wrong place, so if you don't see it's spot just let me know."
Nico nodded and grabbed some boxes of gauze. "Oh yeah, my TV got here today. Jason helped me set it up after lunch, so it's ready to go for movie marathons."
"Seriously? Awesome. Well, I'll grab that stack of DVDs from my cabin and we can see what's in it?" Will said excitedly. Then he hesitated, "Or, I mean, you can pick whatever you want and just hold onto them, I didn't mean to invite myself or something."
"No, I don't even know where to start, so you can help me pick something that's come out in the last decade, at least. If you aren't doing anything tonight maybe we could watch something?"
"Yeah, that sounds great. Great," Will said, blushing again. They fell back into silence as they worked their way through the next box.
After a few minutes Nico spoke. "So, crazy capture the flag, huh?"
Will laughed. "Yeah. It was like everyone was so happy they survived that they decided to almost kill each other. I spent most of the game ranking who would need treatment first in my head."
It had been the kids of the big three plus the Aphrodite cabin plus the Athena cabin against everyone else. Basically, Chiron was letting the rest of the Seven get away with a few more things before they left for the summer. Percy and Jason decided Nico, Piper, and Annabeth were helping them get one final win.
"Yeah, the Athena kids really went all out. You should've seen Annabeth's battle plans. Dry erase boards were involved. I was surprised at the Aphrodite cabin's ruthlessness too, I thought most of them didn't care about fighting."
"All is fair in love and war, right?" Will said, suddenly bitter. "I guess they've gotten better since Piper took over that cabin, but for a while… well."
Nico looked over at Will. He wasn't used to seeing the other boy angry, but Nico was honestly a little worried that the boxes in Will's hands would burst into flames from the way he was glaring at them.
"What happened?" Nico asked quietly.
"Well," Will started, glancing up, "they used to have this initiation thing, you see. When new campers were claimed, Drew made them seduce someone and then break their heart before they'd be off bathroom duty or something stupid like that. I don't think many other campers knew about it. I didn't, at least."
Nico could tell where this was going. Some girl had probably tricked Will. Nico was already plotting what sort of half decomposed dead animal he would send into her bed.
"Well, at a campfire one night, right in front of everyone, my boyfriend - or who I thought was my boyfriend - outed me and broke up with me all at once. It was horrible. I mean, looking back, everyone forgot about it in a week or two because one of the other Aphrodite kids did basically the same thing but hetero and with way more yelling. But still. They all pretty much sucked for a long time. Piper seems nice, but… they still aren't really my first pick, you know?"
Nico understood, he wouldn't be able to let go of something like that very easily either. But most of his focus was on the fact that Will was actually gay… he had thought Piper was just being nice and encouraging because it was Piper, not because she thought he legitimately might be an option for Nico. He didn't really think that he had a chance for anything, but he hadn't actually been friends with anyone else not straight before. That was something, at least.
After a few minutes of silence while both boys stared at nothing, thinking, Nico looked over, "Me too."
"What?"
"Not about the Aphrodite kids. I mean, Piper is great but I don't care about the others, whatever. But I'm… I'm gay too."
"Really?" Will looked back over at him. "I mean, cool."
"I just… I'm just not used to it being a thing, you know? That people know."
"Yeah, totally. I won't say anything. I get it."
Nico nodded and grabbed the rest of the jars out of the box at his feet.
"I was sort of outed too, but by Eros. And it was just Jason there, so, not as terrible as Drew and everything."
"Yeah, just an immortal god bullying you instead, whatever."
Nico looked up at Will, immediately defensive, but then realized he was joking. They both smiled.
"So," Will kicked one of the boxes aside. "I think we got through all of it. I'll clean these up tomorrow. Thanks for helping."
"Sure, no problem," Nico said, feeling shy.
"So -" they both started to say at the same time.
"Sorry, you first," Will said, awkwardly.
"Um, still up for a movie later? Your pick."
"Yeah, for sure. I'll find something good."
"Cool."
"Cool."
"Yeah, well, I should go, uh - see you in a bit."
"Cool."
Nico managed to leave the infirmary without actually running into a doorframe, but just barely. Once outside he wanted to melt into the nearest shadow so he could immediately die from how terribly he'd ended that interaction but settled for almost skipping the whole way back to his cabin instead.
He spent the next few hours trying to pretend he wasn't nervous. He cleaned his cabin, changed shirts twice, made sure he knew how to work the tv, and moved all of the pillows and blankets to Hazel's bed as a makeshift couch. He finally ran out of things to do and sat on the edge of his own bed trying to read. Really, he was just staring at the page and running over every interaction he and Will had in the past couple weeks with the new filter of Will being gay.
Will was just his friend, right? Surely there hadn't been anything that suggested that he wanted to be anything else … right? Nico wasn't sure which answer he wanted. On one hand, Will was gorgeous and smart and funny and totally easy to be around and probably really nice to cuddle with. But with Jason, Piper, Percy, and Annabeth leaving soon, did Nico want to risk it? If Will found out how Nico felt and didn't feel the same way … Nico wouldn't be able to even look at him, much less stand being at camp all on his own. Just because Will was the only other gay kid his age that Nico knew about didn't mean they had to get together. Will had dated people at camp before, it wasn't like he was desperate. Plus, Will had … dated people before, and Nico could barely say he was gay out loud. Will probably saw him as the emotional equivalent to a toddler or something.
Before Nico's thoughts could spiral any more, there was a knock on the door. He jumped and shook himself, and opened the door to Will standing there with a few DVDs, a freshly popped bag of popcorn, and some candy.
"Hey, figured we can't do movie night without the appropriate snacks," he said as he walked in and dumped them on Hazel's bed. "So, we have the first Lord of the Rings, which is from more than 10 years ago but very essential high fantasy, Dawn of the Dead if you want something scary, or Moonrise Kingdom, which is by this director Wes Anderson who's another son of Apollo and all of his stuff is like, sort of surreal and melancholy but also really beautiful. Your call."
Will turned and looked at Nico, who tried to ignore the butterflies and a little bit of panic and just focus on picking out a movie. "Uh, the first one is fine."
"Cool," and Will went over to the TV and popped the DVD in the internal player.
Nico looked around, realizing that they would be sitting really close - twin beds weren't exactly roomy - and in the dark and all by themselves. Suddenly Nico was hyper-aware of literally every movement he made. Was he blinking too much? Not enough? His lips were chapped. Did Will just see him lick his lips? Was that weird?
"Ready?" Will said, leaning against the wall in the middle of the bed.
Nico just nodded and curled up in the corner, wedged between the headboard and wall. Will started the movie and handed him the open bag of popcorn, smiling at him. "If you like this, there are more that come after it and they're based off of books, so…"
The movie began with the prologue and Will fell quiet. Nico had a hard time concentrating on whatever had happened with the elves and some rings and a little demon guy that Nico was pretty sure he'd seen in the Underworld. Once the story got moving, though, Nico got wrapped up in it and started to relax. Every so often Will would hand him the candy or popcorn or look over and say something like "this is the best part, just wait."
Around the time that the fellowship made it to Rivendell, Nico realized that it had been a while since Will had nudged him to tell him 'the best part' was happening. He looked over and Will had fallen asleep against some of the pillows. Smiling and taking the last of the popcorn from him before it could tip over, Nico stretched out a bit more and reached for a blanket, his movements causing Will to shift in his sleep and lean toward him.
There was a pillow between Nico's shoulder and Will's head, but he still counted it as basically cuddling. Nico finished the popcorn and made it just until the Gates of Moria before he fell asleep too.