Disclaimer: I don't own Trials of Apollo

Day 21 - The Sun and the Earth

The by-now familiar feeling of tiredness washed through Nico as he stepped out from the shadows, hand firmly clenched around Will's as he guided his boyfriend back into the mortal world again and he staggered briefly.

Their new surroundings were pitch black, a cavern deep beneath the earth, but as light began to trickle in, illuminating their surroundings, Nico realised that, maybe, he hadn't brought them to the particular cavern he'd been aiming for.

Merda.

Will was going to kill him. Luckily, they didn't appear to have arrived anywhere that was teeming with hoards of monsters ready to launch at them and tear them to pieces – the opposite, in fact, with a complete and utter dearth of any other lifeforms except for the two of them – but it was still Nico that had brought them here, possibly got them a little bit lost, and Will wasn't going to let him shadow travel again until he'd had a nap or three.

Speaking of Will…

Nico glanced over at his side, where he could feel the warmth of Will's hand still in his, to see that the sudden illumination of the initially black cavern was stemming from his boyfriend. Will hadn't shrugged off any clothing, so it was somewhat stifled by the fabric covering his torso and arms, but the brightness more than made up for it. It almost hurt to look directly at him.

That… that was new.

Not that Will could glow that brightly – he could glow brighter still, Nico had seen it in Nero's tower, and when they'd first discovered that Will could glow and he'd turned into a human flash-bang, except mercifully without the bang – but the fact that he was.

"You're glowing," he said, feeling a little bit dumb as the observation fell from his lips. Of course Will was glowing, anyone with eyes could see that.

Will shrugged, the shape of the light rising and falling to accentuate the movement. "Well, duh," he said. "It's dark and I want to be able to see."

"No, no," Nico shook his head. "You're glowing but I didn't tell you to."

"What's that supposed to mean?" Will asked, sounding almost wounded. Nico felt him tug his hand out from his grip, and made an aborted reach to try and catch it again. "Am I supposed to wait for you to tell me to glow?"

Oh.

Nico made another grab for Will's hand, this time not pulling back before he made contact with the warm skin.

"No," he said at the same time. "No, Will, that's not what I meant!"

Will paused in his second extraction of his hand from Nico's fresh hold. "Then what did you mean?" he asked, "because that kind of sounded like you expect me to wait for your permission to use my powers."

Nico winced, well aware that in the light still being emitted by Will his boyfriend could see it clearly. "Not that," he said. "Gods, not that, Will."

Will shifted where he stood, a little fidget that said he wasn't quite sure what was going on – or maybe it was just the ADHD kicking in. With Will, it could be either, or both. "Okay, I'm listening," he said. "What did you mean?"

"You never used to glow until I convinced you too," Nico pointed out, and Will's fingers tensed between his, so clearly he was saying the wrong thing again. "You used to say it was embarrassing, Will."

The tension started seeping away again, which hopefully meant he was on the right track now.

"This is the first time I've seen you glow without needing to be talked into it, Will," he said, his voice breaking a little and going soft, but Will's face lit up independent of his glowing so that couldn't have been a bad thing.

Will's cheeks started emitting a red-tinged glow, the way they usually did when he was glowing and embarrassed. "No-one told me to glow at the Tower," he muttered, and Nico shrugged.

"I wasn't exactly with it then, was I?" he admitted, and watched a flash of something cross Will's face – the sort of something that promised the intended recipient was going to regret crossing the son of Apollo. Nico hoped it was aimed at the long-gone Nero and his minions rather than him. It hadn't been his fault that he'd been knocked out – not really, anyway. Maybe he'd taken on more than he should have done, but Nero had needed to be stopped somehow.

Will squeezed his hand. "No, you weren't," he admitted. "But what's your point, Nico?"

"You're getting more confident," Nico said, and he hoped Will could hear the pride in his voice, because he was proud of Will for it. He'd even called it his powers, instead of mumbling something about how it was just a thing that happened sometimes.

He felt Will freeze. "I… am?" he asked, sounding completely baffled, as though the concept hadn't occurred to him. Knowing Will, it hadn't. Nico didn't say anything else, letting Will think it through, sort through his emotions until he found the answer. "Oh. I am."

But Nico had to laugh at his surprise. "You are," he said, squeezing Will's hand tightly. "Apollo's pep talk finally got it through your thick skull," and he wasn't bitter about that, not really. It was a little frustrating that nothing he had said had managed to convince Will that his powers were both a part of him and something to be celebrated and used, but at least someone had – and who was better suited to be that someone than Will's own father, and the one he'd inherited it from in the first place.

His free hand reached up to catch Will's cheek. "I'm proud of you," he said, knowing he was echoing Apollo's words, but Apollo didn't have a monopoly on being proud of his son. "You're amazing, Will."

The glow from Will's face got a little redder again, but Nico's attention was more taken by the quirk of his lips as he actually seemed to let the praise sink in, instead of deflecting it like he usually did.

Nico got the feeling he owed Apollo several prime sacrifices during dinner for finally getting enough of a chink in Will's armour of self esteem issues that he could actually listen to praise, now. Hades would understand.

He probably wouldn't, but Nico didn't care.

He slipped his hand around the back of Will's neck and lightly tugged him forwards. Will came willingly, with no resistance at all, and Nico pressed a soft kiss to his lips. "I'm proud of you," he said again, keeping firm eye contact.

"Thanks, Nico," Will replied, barely a whisper but close enough that it was easy to hear him anyway. They stayed there for a moment, Nico basking in the warm comfort of Will's presence and glow – which was very much one and the same, right then – before Will pulled away slightly, outside of immediate kissing range, but not so far that he couldn't re-enter it on a whim, if he wanted. "So, did you bring me here just to kiss me where no-one else could see, or was there another reason? Not that I'm complaining, mind you, but this does seem rather excessive when there were several places in camp you could've taken me without exhausting yourself on shadow travel."

Nico winced again, and Will's newfound confident glow dashed any hopes he had of hiding it.

"Nico."

"I… uh. Miscalculated," he mumbled. "This isn't where we were supposed to be."

Will's sigh was his unimpressed one, where Nico was in for a lecture on recklessness with his powers as soon as his boyfriend was satisfied they were in a safe enough location to do it – or more accurately, that Nico was in a state to actually absorb it, because Hades knew his boyfriend had no real situational awareness when it came to dishing out scoldings.

"Well, is there another way out of this cave, or are we stuck here until you're recharged?" he asked. His glow started brightening again, gentle but steady as he lit more and more of their surroundings. Nico still had to look away when he started getting light echoes in his vision, blinking once or twice before he could focus on the now very well lit cavern.

There didn't look like there was any exits. Without letting go of Will's hand, he knelt and pressed his free hand to the floor, feeling through the stone. He wasn't as good at it as Hazel, but maybe…

He sighed. Or maybe not. He couldn't sense anything already there, and Will would go ballistic on him if he started moving rock around while he was already tired from shadow travel.

"We're stuck, aren't we." Will was resigned. "There'd better not be anything in here that wants to kill us while we wait."

Nico couldn't feel anything, but wasn't going to tempt the Fates by saying it out loud. Still, Will seemed to have come to a similar conclusion by himself, because he suddenly sat down, the movement overbalancing Nico enough that he found his rear connecting with the stone floor, too.

"I guess we're waiting," Will sighed. His glow dimmed slightly, enough that Nico could look at him again without risking his ability to see, and a warm weight rested on his shoulder. Nico tilted his own head until his cheek landed on something soft.

"I guess so," he agreed.

This was another prompt that took me ages to figure out, but I've been meaning to practice writing Solangelo for the first time in a while (curse you, TSATS) so have a bit of a snippet of me remembering how to write these two again.

Thanks for reading!
Tsari