Sometimes, it’s hard to interact with Nico. Even Hazel has to admit that. No, it’s not his father, no, it’s not how he chants the names of the dead, well at least not for Hazel, no. It’s how the souls cling on to him, like he is the anchor in the wild sea.
When he laughs, sweet as nectar, it is like you can hear the joy of the spirits with him, as if they’ve heard that they can return just one more time, to apologize, to say their goodbyes, to say “it’s not your fault” and “I love you”
When he sobs, you hear the wails of the souls in the Lethe, alone, forgotten. You can feel the pain of the tormented, the Acheron spilling from his mouth.
His rage is unkempt, rage like the souls in Punishment, rage like Achilles who sits by the Styx, rage of the many souls who never got a life they truly lived.
It’s not his fault. You know that. Hazel knows that. Everyone does. But when he speaks, and his voice mixes like wine with the voices of the ones you loved, the ones you cherished, you have to turn away.
No wonder the boy stopped speaking. What torture would it be, to hear his sister when he spoke? Or his mother when he cried?
How painful.
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“Thought you might like this.”
Nico turns the thin plastic casing over in his hands. It catches the limited light from the one open window, refracting a burst of rainbow across the shadowy ceiling.
“What…is it?”
“Mixtape.” Will rocks back on his heels, hands swinging slightly at his sides. He hums idly, flicking his gaze across the room faster than Nico can track. Distracted. “Songs ‘n stuff.”
Contrary to popular belief, Nico knows what a mixtape is. CDs as well, for that matter. In fact he distinctly remembers when they came out — the transition from cassette to CD was a triumphant one. Way easier for him to save his game processes and transfer to new machines as they came. (He wonders, idly, what happened to his stack of CDs left at the Lotus. Are they still there, standing alone in his half of the room? Next to his dresser, across from Bianca’s coin and token collection? Is there enough dust in that standstill place to cover the entire living space in a thick blanket of forgotten memory?)
“I can see that, Solace. I meant — why.”
“Because!” Solace gestures grandly, hands fluttering in some particular way that means nothing, really; just accentuates his wide grin, his twinkling eyes. The rocking he’s constantly doing, back and forth, back and forth, the twitching of his fingers. Electrons on a wire. “It’s been a while since you’ve had a radio or anything, right? Figured you might have a couple years to catch up on. Might be fun.”
Nico turns the CD case over again in his hand, peripherally aware of the shifting rainbows, still, reflecting off Will’s hair now, dying it redgreengold. There’s sharpie scrawled across the surface, completely illegible except for the plethora of exclamation points, the doodle of a cat, and the chain of flowers drawn carefully around the edge.
Will is smiling so, so brightly.
“Thank you,” Nico says quietly. He clears his throat, looking away. “I’ll, um. I’ll listen to it. Tonight.”
“Great!” Will chirps. “I got lots more, I’ll stop by after my shift and you can tell me what you liked. That way you can have more input on karaoke night.”
“Oh, I’m not gonna —”
“See you tomorrow! Write down what you think!”
“— do that.”
Nico returns his parting wave helplessly, watching as he sprints down the stairs and then, for no discernible reason, cartwheels three times on his way across the common. Immediately upon righting himself he walks into a (thankfully unlit) brazier and goes sprawling, calling out, to no one, I’m okay! and bounding back off.
“How are you alive,” Nico mutters to himself. He turns back to the CD case, running his thumb across the edges. He notices, for the first time, the hearts that have been drawn along the clasps. A smile pushes its way across his face no matter how hard he tries to fight it back.
When he plays it that night, lying on his bed with his headphones tucked over his ears and his Walkman resting on his stomach, the first song is Walking on Sunshine.
He can’t fight back a smile then, either.
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The crooked, creaky door of the cluttered infirmary storage room pushes open and slams shut in the span of a second, just barely allowing someone to dart through. Nico jumps, banging his head on the shelf he’s hiding under, chomping full force on his lip to bite back a shout. The shadows, on lucky reflex, bend around him and shroud his face. The rest of him he tucks further into the forgotten corner between two filing cabinets, holding his breath.
Under the unflattering light of the single swinging lightbulb, Will looks dull.
A thin headband attempts to hold back his frizzy hair, although it does very little. Curls stick out oddly and many shorter hairs are plastered to his temples and the back of his neck. His skin is unusually lacklustre, even pale, except for the high flush around his cheekbones. The bruising under his eyes rivals Nico’s. He has been wearing the same scrubs for the last two days.
With one last look at the closed door, nothing but garbled voices filtering through the heavy wood, he slumps. He drops his face into his chapped and bleeding hands, heels pressed into his eyes, and holds them there for ten seconds, twenty. Slowly, with trembles so minute they are at first glance unnoticeable, his shoulders begin to shake. The long fingers flexed and tensed around his forehead curl tightly, and he twitches, whole body trembling, teeth sunk hard into his bottom lip to stop his chin from quivering.
It does not work.
The first sob is quiet. He catches it quickly, forcing it back down, breathing heavily through his nose and out his mouth to beat it back. The second follows quickly, though, and it’s harder to choke down. When his face crumples, his resolve goes with it, and his knees hit the floor, sharp crack swallowed by the stillness of the room. He curls forward until his nose nearly hits his knees, hands sliding through his hair and over his ears and settling finally clutching together in the dip of his chest, bouncing with every heave of his chest. It’s quiet, his crying, enough that every dropped tear can be heard as it hits the dusty floor. The only time his sobs are ever audible is when he opens his mouth, trying desperately to soak up enough air to catch himself, to carry himself through.
Mute horror holds Nico’s tongue hostage.
He’d escaped in here the second Will had been called away this morning, dragged for the umpteenth time to handle a crashing patient or a complicated hymn or to soothe someone’s nerves. For the past two days he’s been doing his best to monitor Nico and a handful of other front liners who’d exhausted themselves in battle, but his focus has been split and the infirmary has been crowded. Whenever he runs off to put out whatever fire had cropped up — sometimes literally — the whispers start, the glances, the skin crawling up Nico’s back. Nico can hardly tell anymore what’s the shadows and what’s the people around him, watching him out of the corners of their eyes like they’re waiting for him to bust out a scythe and a black hooded cloak and start reaping.
The storage room is supposed to be an escape. Out of the way and forgotten as it is, it is supposed to be the place he can hide for an hour, escape the heavy gaze of the rest of the camp, collect himself before braving it all again.
Clearly, though, he’s not the only one who thinks so.
There’s something disorienting about seeing Will Solace cry. In the few times Nico has spoken with him during his visits to camp, he’s been a barely-contained explosion of energy, whether talking Nico’s ear off with updates about people he barely knows and references he hardly understands or cussing him out for overextending himself. He’s used — as much as he can be to someone he’s only beginning to really get to know — to his wildly flailing hands and widely playful grin, his loud drawling voice, his painful, constant brightness.
His hands, now, clench until they’re bloodless, trembling. There is no hint of his wide smile or twinkling eyes, because his face is hidden by all the hair that his given up on the pretence of the hairband, and the only sound from him are his gasping breaths and swallowed-back sobs. Nico watches him because he cannot look away. He flinches because every cry, every rough, scraping inhale, sounds like shattering rock, like an iceberg breaking off a glacier.
A quiet beeping startles them both.
For a stretch of time Will is motionless. The beeping continues, steady and soft, bouncing off the cluttered shelves and fading before they echo. After the third round — and Nico counts, if anything for something to do besides watch the chafed skin on Will’s hands crack and bleed with every flex — he drags himself upright, nails drawing lines in the thick dust of the floorboards, and rests back on his heels. He breathes for a moment, shuddering, hands pressed flat to his face; in, beep, beep, beep; out, beep, beep, beep. None of his breaths are ever steady, but he wastes no more time, swiping under his eyes and pinching his cheeks to restore his face to some of its usual colour. He grips onto each board of the shelf to his right as he yanks himself upwards, hand over hand, until he’s stretched, finally, to stand, although there remains a slouch to his broad shoulders.
The beeping continues, emanating from the watch on his left hand, growing softer or louder as he trails his fingers over the shelves from one end to the other, from the first, the second, the third. He pauses finally on a collection of bottles, turning them carefully to read the labels, then tucks them each gently into his already bulging pockets until he is left with what he must carry between his fingers.
The shadows bend to cover Nico again as Will turns, unknowingly facing him, and pulls himself suddenly straight-backed, chin set high, shoulders squared. He smiles, wide, fractured, squinting his eyes deliberately. The beeping stops. He breathes, in, smile, out, nod, and turns, striding, back to the door, opening it with flourish and swiping the dust off his clothes.
“Found them! Sorry it took so long, I really had to look —”
The door swings shut behind him, cutting off the rest of his sentence.
Nico stares at it with bile churning in his too-empty stomach.
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