#establisbed solangelo | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

mediumgayitalian · 28 days

Text

Will knows who it is at the first light brush on his shoulders.

He tips his head back back, bumping his boyfriend’s hip, leaning into the hand on his trapezius, his scapula, the base of his neck.

“Hi,” he says, grinning.

“Hi,” Nico says, leaning down to press his smile onto Will’s forehead. His hair tickles his cheeks, and he smells like woodsmoke and citrus, and Will slides his hand across his jaw and tugs him closer.

“Errand done?”

“Yep.”

“Lord Hades pleased?”

“As much as he ever is.” Nico shifts, kissing the corner of his mouth, the curve of his chin, the shape of his jaw. “My ears are ringing from five days of quiet. Even the echoing sound of lost souls cannot compete with your constant blabbing; I hardly knew what to do with myself.”

“Oh, shut up. You love my chatterin’.” He smacks the side of Nico’s head, but it’s hard to play mad when he’s smiling, shameless, wide enough that his teeth nick Will’s cheekbones, that his snickers are muffled into his skin.

“If I wanted to be stuck with someone who yaps nonstop I would’ve stayed down with Cerebus. In fact he might shed less, and he doesn’t drool when he sleeps.”

“…I do not shed.”

Nico plants both hands next to Will’s head, heaving himself up, and scans his camp shirt. Within three seconds, he locates a strand of hair, pinches it off, and flicks it at Will’s face.

“Uh-huh.”

“Oh, for the love of — get over here,” Will demands. Laughing, Nico goes where Will tugs him, curling up next to him on the bench. “You’re such a shit. Normal people are much kinder to the significant annoyances they leave behind for five days, you know.”

“Are they.”

Nico lifts his arm in offering and Will accepts with relish, tucking himself under it and making certain to drag his curls down Nico’s face in the process.

“Yep. In fact I was expecting hand-written letters by day two, honestly, telling me how much you missed me and how the distance was physically painful, et cetera, et cetera. Maybe a sonnet or two. Italian, preferably, Elizabethan are not my favourite.”

“You’re very picky.”

Will sniffs haughtily. “Well, I’m a catch. You have lots of competition, you know. I was fighting them off while you were away but now that you come back and insult me upon reunion, I shall reevaluate my options.”

He feels more than hears the quiet laughter Nico presses in his hair, thumb brushing his collar, dipping onto bare skin.

“Is that so.”

“Indeed. My suitors have even offered a dowry quite handsome. I’m worth twenty-seven goats, didn’t you know.”

“Oh, well then. I might as well return what I brought for you, since I’m not sure I can outshine two dozen goats.”

The cool thing about being a son of Apollo is that Will has range. His dad is the god of arts, generally, up to and especially the dramatic ones. Will knows how to school his face into the perfect mask, how to smile on command and cry as desired, how to deliver a line and bow with a flourish. Playing a part comes as naturally as breathing, as naturally as healing.

“A present?” he asks, checking his nails as if the mere thought bores him. “That’s interesting, I guess.”

Nico doesn’t even bother to indulge him.

“Here, you massive dweeb,” he snorts. He hands over a small paper box, hand-folded and thin. “I can practically feel you vibrating.”

There is only one thing in this world, quite possibly, that Will likes more than proving Nico wrong, and that is letting his boyfriend spoil him. In all honesty it’s a real challenge sometimes, because Nico is really very good at being everything Will has ever wanted even if he has wrong opinions on most movies. Truly Will’s life is a joke at which the gods must howl with laughter.

Eagerly taking the box, he holds it up to his face, carefully inspecting every corner. The paper is regular printer paper, slightly waterlogged (from the Big House printer, then, ‘cause Will was carrying a giant bag of saline in from storage when he was eleven years old and tripped on the shipment of office supplies that someone had left, for some reason, in the middle of the fucking hallway, and the bag had exploded on impact all over four boxes of printer paper holding one thousand pages each) and carefully bent into shape. He recognises Nico’s handiwork from the dozens of origami paper sculptures he’s been gifted over the past few months.

“Open it.”

“What is it?”

Nico rolls his eyes. “What did I just say.”

“No, I mean — it’s not my birthday or anything.”

“So?”

“So you’ve wrapped me up a present! I want to know why before I open it.”

“Just because,” Nico mumbles, pressing a kiss to his temples. “Not everything needs a reason, nosey.”

“If nothing had reason then we would still be premordial soup,” Will mutters, but pops open the lid anyway.

He gasps.

“Oh my gods, Nico, you —”

Nico’s smiling smugly, but Will barely notices. Inside the box is a black chain darker than shadow, so dark it doesn’t even glint in the heavy sun, and dozens of little charms, from polished obsidian to a ball of slowly flickering flame.

“You like?”

“It’s gorgeous!”

He makes a triumphant nose, pumping his fist, and says, “Fuck those suitors, I fucking win,” and the funniest part is that he’s damn serious. There’s a glint in his eye identical to when he wins a sword fight, to when Connor loses a bet to him, to when twenty-odd bets are stacked against him and he’s got a full house. Something dangerous and wild and superior and Will is not an enabler, okay, he is not, but he is only so strong and there is only so much he can do when pretty boys wrap their arms around him and smirk at him and bring him bracelets they made in the Underworld. He’d like to meet someone who wouldn’t fold, actually.

“There were no suitors, you loser,” he says, but he’s flushed, pleased smile stretched wide across his face, and Nico’s grinning that too-wide grin and tilting Will’s face closer with the edge of his thumb, like he barely had to try. And there’s always a little bit of shadow leeching off him when he comes back from a quest, an aura surrounding him like he’s squaring off to the sun, and of course the wild churning in Will’s stomach has nothing to do with that but what’s he to do, really? What is a warm-blooded person with eyes that can see to do when faced with such a look?

“Of course there aren’t. They know I would reap their actual souls.”

“Possessive, much.”

“You’re literally going red.”

“Shut up.”

And he does, but only because Will makes him.

Although judging by the hand he shoves in his hair, he doesn’t seem to mind.

436 notes · View notes

mediumgayitalian · 1 month

Text

“Oh, come on, there’s just —” Will blows an errant curl from out of his eyes, cheeks red with exertion, balancing nimbly on his feet to put both hands on his hips. “There’s no way, Nico.”

Nico, not blessed with such balance, has to hold all footholds with all limbs, staring warily at the lava wall’s snake holes.

“What? I’m just not as good as you.”

Will flops his right arm outwards, narrowly avoiding smacking it against the rock. “But you are!”

Nico shifts his wary gaze from the snake holes to Will’s rope harness. Is it tight enough? It better be tight enough. Will is putting a lot of faith in it, right now.

“You scaled those cliffs in — in the place —” he trips, still, over the pit, on the odd time he mentions it, and it always makes Nico wince — “like it was nothing! And whenever Percy visits and challenges you you’re suddenly the lava wall expert!” He turns stern blue eyes to face Nico’s head-on. “Not buying it, di Angelo!”

A gush of lava forces him to resume climbing, but there’s an aggression to his movements — a specific, stiff, curated aggression, that Nico has learned means anxiety in people known as William Andrew Solace. That, and coupled with the rapid muttering which, in between the roar of molten stone, Nico believes is a a repetition of “dumbass” “always tryna act a goddamn fool” and “I’m gonna kill him before he sends me into cardiac arrest again”, interspersed with random swears in English, Latin, Ancient Greek, and also — gods — Klingon.

“Will.”

Will ignores him, scampering the last few feet up the wall and slapping the top before relaying down. Nico sighs, following him (albeit significantly slower).

“Will.”

“You’re hiding something from me.” He practically rips the harness off his body — do not think about that do not think about that do not think about that — and shoves it on the hook so hard it damn near snaps off. The look he levels in Nico’s direction practically turns him to stone, it’s so frigid, and he has to resist a shiver. “I can tell.”

It takes a good amount of pushing to make Will all testy like this. Sure, his buttons are easy to push, but most of that is for show. He likes to be dramatic. (Especially because he knows Nico will indulge him, more than anyone else ever has. He relishes in it, Nico thinks; he likes that Nico will watch his productions. An Apollo kid through and through.) He’s not usually one to show his genuine frustration.

But, hoo, boy, when he is frustrated.

Nico has a bad, bad habit of making it worse.

(As if it’s his fault that Will’s hot when he’s mad.)

“Don’t know what you’re talking about,” Nico says, forcibly lightly. He sticks his hand out defiantly. “Check me, why don’t you? Not hiding anything.”

He really isn’t. No injuries, no illness, hell, he’s not even tired. Had a full three meals and everything. Even his perpetually achey joints aren’t bad today.

All of this, obviously, is communicated when Will touches him, squinting suspiciously at their joined hands.

“You’re heart rate is high,” he mutters petulantly.

Nico looks at him patiently. “That’s ‘cause my smokeshow boyfriend is holding my hand.”

Grumpy as he’s trying to be, his ears redden. A smile twitches at the corner of his mouth.

“Shut up.”

Nico grins, pulling his hand up to his mouth and pressing a kiss to the knuckles.

“No.”

“Whatever,” Will says, snatching his hand back. His smile spreads widely across his face, now, and he looks away, as pleased as he is exasperated. “You’re still being a weirdo. I should not be so far ahead of you on the wall, Neeks.”

Success — back to nicknames. Crisis averted.

“Have you considered that you’re the camp-wide record holder for a reason, you spider monkey?”

“Still!”

“Yeah, yeah.” Nico gets up on his tiptoes, pressing a lingering kiss to the bridge of his freckled nose. “Stop worrying about me, Solace. I’m fine. Burn off some steam, I’ll watch.”

Will huffs. “Fine. But I’ll find out, y’hear me? Truth can’t hide from me for long.”

“Yeah, yeah.”

He watches as Will suits back up, helping him with his more complicated straps (because Nico was raised to be a gentleman, obviously, why else) and shooing him away when he opens his mouth for more interrogations. He switches to sticking out his tongue, and after a moment of hesitation, bounds back over to his first true love — being a big nerdy jock dork.

Nico settles on the grass several feet away from the wall, pretending to clean his sword. After a few minutes, he hears footsteps, and two people sit next to him on either side.

“So,” says Lou Ellen, ignoring Nico’s suspicious look as she tosses a glowing ball of something around, “how come you’re not climbing?”

Nico shrugs. “Only so many times you can climb before it gets boring.”

On his other side, Cecil makes a loud buzzer sound.

“Nope! Wrong answer. Try again.”

Nico is a dignified grownup who refuses to stoop down to Cecil’s level by responding. Instead, he reaches over and pokes him in his ridiculously sensitive ribs, hard, sending him sprawling with a screech.

“Shut up,” he says mildly, as his friend flails. “I’m trying to be a supportive boyfriend, and I can’t do that with all your whining.”

Will has, in the ten minutes since he started, made it halfway up the wall. He seems to have it programmed to the Super Extra Mega Evil Insane mode that the Athena and Ares kids invented just for him, since he smoked all the other levels. He dodges a shot of lava with a laugh, throwing himself to the side and hanging on with three fingers and one scuffed sneaker poised on the tiniest sliver of rock. His attention is broken when Lou Ellen sticks her face right in Nico’s field of vision, tracing Nico’s eyeline with narrowed eyes.

“Ah,” she nods knowingly. “You’re staring at his ass.”

Nico falters, damn near slicing his own fingers off. “No idea what you’re talking about,” he says blithely. He gestures without looking at his sword. “I’m busy, see?”

She scoffs. “Real busy. That’s why you almost just did emergency surgery on yourself.”

“Exactly.”

Will pushes up a foot, shifting his hips and launching himself upwards. He makes a little shout of victory, plastering himself to the wall to keep balance, every muscle tensed.

From his place on the floor, Cecil makes an appreciative noise. “He does have a nice ass. Can’t blame you for looking.”

Nico frowns. “Hey. Stop objectifying my boyfriend.” He reaches out and smacks a hand over Cecil’s eyes. “That’s my job.”

“You guys are ridiculous.”

Nico reaches over and puts a hand over her eyes, too, ‘cause there’s no missing where they’re pointed.

“Shut up or I’ll literally put shadows into your retinae and blind you forever,” Nico threatens. (Is this a thing he can do? No. Do his friends know this? Also no.)

“You’re a dictator!” Cecil protests.

“Depriving us of basic human rights!” Lou Ellen agrees.

Nico shrugs. He glances back up the the climbing wall, where he has a very perfect view — and a great reason to never even try to climb faster than Will does. He grins.

“Too bad for you guys.”

417 notes · View notes

mediumgayitalian · 3 months

Text

“My back is killing me.”

Nico snorts. “That’s what you get, doofus. Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.”

He doesn’t have to look over to know Will is pouting. He can practically taste it in the air, it’s so potent.

“I don’t know when you stopped loving me.”

“Hm, I dunno.” Nico closes his book and glances down at his dramatic-ass boyfriend, sprawled on the bench next to him, wide-eyed and pitiful. When he notices Nico’s full attention finally on him, those baby blues grow round with hope, and he purses his lips for a kiss. Nico indulges him with a huff of laughter and rolled eyes, holding his hair back as he leans in. “Maybe when I told you not to lift the giant box of bandages by yourself and you didn’t listen. Might’ve been around then.”

“I could’ve handled it,” Will grumbles. He reaches out and grabs hold of Nico’s cheeks, holding him when he tries to pull away. Nico can’t say he minds.

“Mhm. So your back is killing you for unrelated reasons, then.”

“Exactly. You get me, babe.”

“You’re ridiculous.”

Will’s grin is wide and toothy under his own.

“You love me.”

And Nico has never been able to resist him.

“I do.”

#so so so tiny but oh well #pjo #percy jackson and the olympians #hoo #heroes of olympus #pjo hoo toa #nico di angelo #will solace #solangelo #will/nico #nico/will #establisbed solangelo #established relationship #fluff #dialogue prompts #my writing #fic

213 notes · View notes

mediumgayitalian · 27 days

Text

“Oh, fuck.”

The clatter of her practice sword on the ground is almost louder than the crunch that rings out from his wrist. He inhales sharply, biting back a shout — no matter how many times it’s happened, he will never get used to breaking a bone. That shit hurts.

“Fuck, fuck fuck. Fuck, Seaweed Brain, is it broken?”

“Think so,” Percy grits out. He tries for a smile, and Annabeth matches it, small and worried. He leans into the hand she cups over his cheek. “Not too bad, though. If I just dump my water bottle on it —”

“Absolutely not. Water healing leaves you achey when it rains, you know that.” Shifting to wrap her arm around his waist, she helps him stand, shouldering some of his weight like it’s his ankle that’s broken. He lets her, reaching down to squeeze the hand resting on his hip — I’m fine. We’re good. She turns her hand to wrap clasp their hands together — Okay. If you’re sure.

They walk together to the infirmary, taking their time. Aside from the pain pulsing from his arm, it’s not too bad — camp is as balmy as usual, and the spring break energy is practically visible, it’s so potent. The Demeter cabin has plants growing everywhere, flowers and fruit trees blooming as bright as a box of new crayons, and the air is filled with shouts of laughter and teasing. Annabeth’s steps fall in time with his, and she’s a comfortable warmth at his side, pressed from shoulder to hip.

“You still okay?”

“Yep.” He catches her eye, smiling crookedly at her. “Doesn’t even make my top fifty.”

She rolls her eyes, hipchecking him. “Don’t I know it, ya klutz.”

“Not sure I would call being flung from the St. Louis Arch being a klutz. Or exploded in a volcano. Or crushed under the sky. Or slashed by giants. Or chased by —”

“You’re talking, but all I’m hearing is Annabeth, please, please pinch me, as hard as you can —”

“Hey! Get those claws off me, gods you’re worse than an empousai —”

“— and when you’re done pinching me please put me in the tightest headlock you can manage —”

“I am injured! You are beating up an injured person right now!”

“— and then please just bite a chunk out of my shoulder —”

“Cut it out or I’m telling Mom!”

“Wimp,” she taunts, finally releasing him. “I don’t go running to Sally every time I lose a fight.”

“Wha — you do so!”

She ducks through the infirmary door, smirking like she can’t hear him.

“You literally — you snitched on me last week! I got grounded for two days!”

“And you deserved it,” she says primly.

He gapes. “I did not!”

“Anytime you two are done,” Kayla drawls, shoving a clipboard at them. They accept it with matching sheepish grins, cowed at her perfectly arched eyebrow and slowly tapping foot. “I got patients to deal with and older brothers to harass. Let’s get this moving.”

She is shockingly good at humbling people for a thirteen year old. The two of them turn to their clipboard, chagrined, letting her stomp away with an exasperated He’ll be with you soon! Don’t set off the sprinklers again!

“That was one time,” Percy mumbles, ears reddening.

Annabeth pats him on the back. “There, there,” she says mockingly. “The fact that it was one time definitely negates the fact that you flooded the entire Big House because you got jumpscared by a child.”

“Harley can be sneaky, okay. Let me live.”

“Literally no.”

Annabeth does most of the paperwork for him, ‘cause she’s a nerd because his wrist is far too swollen for him to write properly, so it takes maybe half the time it normally would. The infirmary is crowded as Hell, though (he knows, he’s been), so they settle in for the wait, amusing themselves by tearing little pieces off of a blank form, balling them up, and tossing them in increasingly harder places. Percy is winning 7-4, although Annabeth might just pull through if she manages to toss her paper ball into Travis’ wide-open snoring mouth.

“Hey, guys. Sorry for the wait.”

Aw. She missed. Percy was looking forward to that.

“Hey, Will.”

He drags his attention away from the son of Hermes to greet his friend, but frowns before he can open his mouth.

“Woah, dude, you good? You look exhausted.”

Will snorts. “Welcome to spring break, man.” He holds his hand out for the clipboard, scanning it briefly. “Sparring injury? Oh, thank the gods. I could use a break. Here, face me.”

He climbs up onto the minimal left over space on the cot, tucking his legs under his thighs. Percy turns to mirror him, hesitantly sticking out his arm — A break? he mouths to Annabeth, meeting her eyes over Will’s head.

She shrugs.

“Just spent four hours putting Jake’s nose back on his face,” Will mumbles, placing a careful hand on his fingertips and his forearm. Percy flinches — his skin is blisteringly hot. Like someone just dropped a hot stone onto him. “I never want to sing a skin cell hymn again in my life.” He prods at Percy’s wrist for a moment, gentle enough not to hurt. “Okay, hold still, I’m gonna fix ya right up.”

Healing hymns are familiar, by now, but Percy will never get tired of them.

The cool thing about ambrosia and nectar is that as pleasure food for the gods, it’s pleasant. It’s whatever taste you want, whatever you need to have most, you get it. But healing hymns are intentional the way nectar and ambrosia aren’t. Ambrosia and nectar happen to be healing for demigods — healing hymns were constructed to knit you back together, like you mother smoothing a bandaid over a skinned knee. They’re warm and sweet and deeply, endlessly comforting in a way most things simply cannot claim to be. They don’t feel like a medical procedure or a hasty patch job, they feel like someone gripping you tightly and promising you’ll be okay. They feel like getting carried to bed when you fall asleep on the couch. They feel like sitting down after hours of standing, like a drink of water when your throat is drier than sand. Healing hymns draw the pain and sick and ache from your body, and they feel like relief.

But this time, Percy can’t focus on it.

With every word, Will seems to get a little duller. Nothing like the horrible ash-grey he went in the war, dragging the poison from Annabeth’s body, but like his usual sunny disposition was dialed down a few notches. Enough that Annabeth frowns in concern, drumming her hands on her thighs, watching him closely.

“There,” Will says, pulling away. Percy turns his now-healed wrist, noticing the slight pant to Will’s breath, the strain to his smile. The shake of his blistered fingertips.

“You look overworked,” Annabeth says quietly.

Will holds his hands up in a what can you do gesture. “Spring break.”

“You said.”

“It’s just busy, is all.”

“Yeah, but —”

“Guys,” he interrupts, smiling tiredly, “there are two hundred ADHD demigods at this camp right now who have been trapped in a classroom for six months. There are three of us. I’m going to be a little drained; we’re all a little drained. But I’m fine, okay?” He gives them a second to scrutinize his expression, eyebrows raised in amusement. “I have been running my infirmary for years. I know how to pace myself, and I certainly know how to make sure my siblings are pacing themselves. If something goes really wrong, Chiron is a whistle away. I can go longer than you guys without sleep, anyway. Apollo kid health.”

“If you say so,” Percy says reluctantly. “I just — I can wear a wrist brace, man. Not every injury needs to be handled when it happens. You can tell people no.”

“I appreciate that, Percy, and I’ll keep it in mind. Anyways, I’ve got more patients. Stay off that wrist for the rest of the day, okay? It might be tender for a bit.”

Percy turns to Annabeth as Will leaves, frowning. He’s has never noticed the so-called spring break stress before (his camp spring breaks are usually a blast, but now that he’s thinking about it, he can’t think of a single spring break where he spent any time at all with Will, which is odd), but it can’t be good for him. There’s gotta be something they can do to ease some of the bruising under their friend’s eyes.

“I could set off the fire alarms again,” Percy suggests. “That’ll certainly get this place cleared out.”

Annabeth snorts. “I think that’ll cause more harm than good, Seaweed Brain. It’ll just fall in him to clean it all up, after.”

“Shoot.”

Percy counts nine of the forty cots currently unused. Will, Kayla, and Austin are rushing from cot to cot, handing out nectar, wrapping bandages, rattling off hymns at light speed. All three of them look exhausted, squeezing shoulders when they pass each other, knocking hips, exchanging tired smiles. This is so clearly something they’re used to.

Annabeth’s head rests on his shoulder.

“It wasn’t always like this,” she whispers. “When it was fully staffed…”

Percy exhales heavily. Yeah. He remembers. There was a lot less complication, once upon a time. The most chaotic the infirmary would get was when Lee would challenge his siblings to Hymn Karaoke — trying to heal with pop songs. There was a lot more laughter, at one point. A lot more people.

Percy sighs, squeezing his eyes shut. It never does well to dwell, but he — gods, he wish they all had more time. To sit with it, to acknowledge…everything. Siblings. Friends. A camp that’s smaller than it’s supposed to be.

Annabeth squeezes his hand again, and he squeezes back, resting his head on top of hers.

“Hey,” she murmurs after a moment, pursing her lips at the front door. “Look.”

Slinking through the entrance like a criminal is Nico, in all his dork ass black camp shirt glory. He looks around shiftily, like he’s trying to make sure no one sees him, and when his gaze lands on Percy and Annabeth his eyes widen. Annabeth smiles at him, but it does nothing to ease the spooked look to his face, back arched like a startled cat. He turns to leave, but before he can slip back out the door —

“Nico!”

The son of Hades whips back around so quickly he brains himself on the doorframe. Percy ducks his head and bites his lip, hard, because he can feel Nico’s glare at the side of his head like the press of hot coal, and if he laughs as badly as he wants to then the infirmary is about to look like a Spirit Halloween.

Will turns back to his patient, squeezing his eyes shut and rattling a hymn off so quickly it makes a burst of light pop from his whole body, and rushes over to where Nico’s standing. He only trips over two things, which is remarkable for him. Percy would be proud if he wasn’t a little embarrassed on his behalf.

“Nico! Hi!”

“He-ey, Will,” Nico says, voice cracking badly on every vowel. Annabeth shoves her face into Percy’s shoulder, body shaking.

“I didn’t know you were coming! I thought you were in the arena all day.”

Nico shrugs, shoes scuffing the floor. “I am. I just — uh, I got hurt? So. Came to see you.”

Will’s beam is so bright it hurts to look at, a little. Percy squints and realises that’s not just the excitement, actually — he really is glowing, faintly. His hands flap slightly at his sides.

“Well, you’re in the right place, then.”

“Yeah.”

Neither of them say anything for a minute, rocking back on their heels. Will watches Nico closely, biting his lip. Nico looks resolutely at the floor.

“We weren’t this bad,” Annabeth whispers, “were we?”

Percy shakes his head. “Nah, there’s no way.”

“Gods. It’s so — I don’t know whether to smile or take a dip in the Lethe. It’s embarrassing and endearing at the same time.”

“Painful to watch, but I can’t stop looking,” Percy agrees.

“What’d you hurt?” Will asks, finally. “Did you pull your shoulder again?”

A look of panic flits briefly across Nico’s face until he smooths it to something neutral, aloof.

“Yep. Totally. During — sword fighting, I swung — I did this really big thrust, actually. Just — hugely powerful, training dummy exploded on impact.” He clears his throat. “Some might say too powerful. If you can imagine.”

Percy cradles his head in his hands. “Oh my gods — ”

“Don’t laugh don’t laugh don’t laugh,” Annabeth chants, “oh my gods, don’t laugh —”

A light flush dusts Will’s cheeks. He brushes a strand of hair behind his ear, fiddling with his earrings. “Woah, really? I’ve never heard of that before.”

Nico smirks, standing up a little straighter. “Well, it’s not the first time. I tend to go pretty hard.” Remembering his supposedly hurt shoulder, he exaggerates a wince. “Too hard sometimes, I guess. Could you do the — the energy thing?”

“Oh — gods, yeah, sorry. Hold on.” He stares at Nico’s shoulder, hesitating. “It, um, works better with skin-to-skin contact.”

“I have seen crystal vases less transparent,” Annabeth says, aghast. “In two years he’s going to remember this and try to drown himself.”

“I will be counting down the days,” Percy says gleefully.

On rare, rare occasions, the gods answer his prayers. Clearly, both Nemesis and Aphrodite are looking at him kindly today. Percy makes a note to scrape some of the good stuff off his plate for them both today. Hell, maybe he’ll skip the portioning and toss them an entire roast chicken each. Or something. They deserve it.

Will places both hands — interesting, Percy notes, his wrist was snapped cleanly in two and he only needed one hand, wonder why that was — on Nico’s shoulder and closes his eyes, screwing up his face in concentration.

“Huh. I’m not feeling much damage. You said it was your right shoulder?”

“I heal quick,” Nico says loudly. “I mean, some of the damage might have — um.” He clears his throat. His face glows a faint crimson. He clears his throat again. “Y’know?”

Will’s face is a similar shade.

“Right, right. Yeah. Um, brace yourself.”

Instead of starting to sing, Will closes his eyes, holding completely still. After a moment, the tips of his fingers begin to glow; soft, ambery yellow, flickering like lit candles. He opens his eyes again and focuses intently on Nico’s bare skin, tracing patterns around every defined muscle, leaving a trail of light behind. He lingers, for a moment, when he connects the last string of light, waiting until it has faded entirely from Nico’s skin to remove his hands and shove them in the pockets of his coat.

“That better?” he asks softly.

Nico swallows. “Yeah.”

“Good. I’m glad, Nico. It means a lot that you — came to me. When you needed it.”

“I trust you, I guess.” Nico looks away. “You know what you’re doing.”

“I think I just threw up in my mouth a little,” Percy says thoughtfully.

Annabeth laughs, shoving his shoulder. “Don’t be mean.” She pauses. “Me too.”

With a sigh that can only be described as besotted, Will steps reluctantly away.

“I have patients,” he says, in the same tone of voice Percy usually says I have midterms. “So I gotta…”

“Yeah, no, go. Do your —” Nico gestures vaguely. “Doctor thing.”

“Right. Yeah. I’m gonna — go.” He turns, walking back towards a group of Hephaestus kids who appear to be tightly entangled in some kind of net. After a few steps, though, he pauses, biting his lip, then darts back over to Nico, pressing a lightning-fast kiss to his cheek — “Um, bye. Thank you for visiting. Bye,” — and then runs back over to his siblings, shy smile on his face.

Nico’s jaw is brushing the floor of his father’s palace. He stands, still as a statue, for four entire minutes.

“I think he just died,” Annabeth observes, eyebrows climbing higher and higher up her forehead with every passing second “Damn. Survived so much only to literally die because a cute boy kissed his cheek. A true hero’s end.”

Percy, because he is a kind, concerned friend, clears his throat loudly.

“Yo, di Angelo, you alive?”

Nico startles so violently he falls right over. Percy shoves his fist in his mouth to keep from cackling.

“Shut the fuck up,” Nico hisses venomously, scrambling upright. “Both of you, shut the — not a word —”

Percy and Annabeth make the mistake of looking at each other and simply erupt. Percy can’t feel his stomach. His lungs have abandoned ship. He’s glad as hell he’s in the infirmary because he is heaving for breath, tears streaming down his face, entire body convulsing. Nico stands in front of them literally shaking with rage, entire body redder than one of Apollo’s sacred cows, trying and failing to string together a threat that will ease any and all of his suffering. Annabeth screeches, almost falling off the bed as she cackles. Percy cannot even find the strength to catch her, his muscles are so weak.

“I fucking — I hate you! Both of you! You’re dead to me!”

“Your face!” Percy shrieks.

“Percy Jackson, I am going to turn you to fucking dark matter! I despise your very essence! I —” He stomps his foot. “I’m leaving, and I’m going to leave a rotting corpse in your cabin! Screw you!”

“Oh my gods,” Annabeth wheezes, digging her nails into his arm. “Oh my gods, that was —”

Percy wipes a tear from his eye. “I love being alive. I love being alive so much.”

“It really is great.” Composing herself, and biting back the leftover giggles that keep bubbling out, Annabeth looks back towards Will. He stands much straighter, now, smile back to full brightness. His siblings, too, look rejuvenated, snickering to each other and making kissy faces behind Will’s back. “So many beautiful things to witness. I’ve never seen his face go that red.”

Percy sighs. “This is genuinely going to carry me through the semester. I think his soul died a little. And Will just — gods, that kid is bold.”

“Oh says you, Mr. Do I Get A Good Luck Kiss.”

“Hey, I earned that.”

Annabeth grins, punching him in the shoulder. He grabs her wrist and tugs her towards him, chasing the curve of her smile. She laughs into his mouth and it taste like strawberries and freedom, and he presses a kiss to her cheek, to her jaw, and the side of her neck, resting there, breathing against her skin. After a moment her hands come up and slide in his hair, gently untangling the knotted mess.

“He is one thousand percent going to put a zombie in your bed, you know,” she says after a moment.

Percy snorts. “Yeah, I know.” He smiles. “Worth it.”

879 notes · View notes

mediumgayitalian · 3 months

Text

He doesn’t say anything as he sits down.

He makes noise — he doesn’t want to startle him. Not that Will would mind. Of all people, Will is the only one who laughs after he jumps, when Nico pops up next to him. Even his sister, even Reyna, even every other person who has known him forever: they jump, they press their hand to their chest. Maybe smile. Scowl, if Nico is pissing them off on purpose.

But Will laughs.

Every time.

“Hi, Nico,” he whispers into his knees, eyes squeezed shut. The laughter is a little more broken this time, a little more hurt, like it has to push through the tears clogging up his throat.

Nico hums, resting his cheek on his knees, watching him.

He looks good in the sunlight, even when he’s sad. His hair is braided, today, his favourite way to wear it and Nico’s favourite way to see it. Two French braid pigtails. The elastics tying them down have the little ghost charms Nico bought him as a joke last Halloween, that he treasures unironically. He picks distractedly at his dozens of woven friendship bracelets, nervously twisting his anklets around his finger until they’re so tight they cut off the circulation. He’s not wearing shoes. His Head Medic shirt clashes horribly with his hair, as usual, but the orange is — faded, almost. More sunset than neon, like it’s been in the wash so many times the colour has bled. The black lettering has almost completely worn away. The shirt is a size too big.

Lee’s.

He sniffles. “Sorry I wasn’t there for dinner. I hope you didn’t eat by yourself. You ate, right? You should eat. It worries me when you don’t.”

His hand shakes. He slides it into the grass to try and stop it, breathing slowly and deeply. It doesn’t work.

“Hey,” Nico murmurs, scooting closer. “Look at me.”

It takes a minute. When finally he peeks over the swell of his knees, his eyes are red-rimmed, tear tracks staining his freckled cheeks. Nico is reminded of streaks of red clouds of a rapid summer sunset. He tries for a smile, but it’s small, strained, and fades under Nico’s gaze. He’d look away again if Nico’s palm on his cheek didn’t hold him steady.

“You’re allowed to have hard days.”

Will shrugs. “I know.” He glances down. A new wave of wet drops from his eyes, and Nico swipes it away with his thumb, noticing as the action makes Will’s chin tremble.

“Do you?”

Will shrugs again. There’s a glassy look in his eyes that makes Nico ache. Sometimes it’s hard for him to remember how vulnerable Will is, how hurt. He tries so hard to stamp it down, and he has so much practice that he’s good at it. It’s hard to track when his shoulders droop at the end of his shifts, hard to notice the imperceptible flinches when someone tousles his hair, hard to look for the building frustration when his bullseye remains unpierced. Nico knows this is by design.

He wishes it wasn’t.

Swallowing his own knee jerk discomfort, he whispers, “You’ve done so much for me, you know that?” He leans forward and touches their foreheads together. It’s a little ridiculous, meeting his eyes from this angle — after a minute, a small smile twitches at Will’s lips, and Nico grins in victory. “You worked very hard to weasel your way into my life. Lucky for your persistent ass, that goes both ways. You can be sad in front of me. You can miss your brothers in front of me. You can be bitter in front of me. I promise, Will. I can handle it.”

“I don’t want you to see how often it happens,” Will admits in a small voice. “It’ll be harder to keep me around.”

Nico’s heart breaks.

“You are a leech,” he says firmly, pulling back to press a kiss to the bridge if his nose. He shakes Will’s head slightly, palms still pressed to either side of his face, voice stern. “My favourite leech, okay? You are stuck to me. I am keeping you around no matter how often you nag me about cardiovascular health and the perils of deep fried garbage. I am keeping you around even though you barge into my cabin at odd hours and pester me into helping you do stupid things. I am keeping you around even though you keep stealing my socks for reasons I will never understand.”

“They have little skulls on them,” Will mumbles.

“I know,” Nico says patiently. The smile on his face is so fond that he would be embarrassed, were he not full to bursting with affection. “That’s why I bought them, you little shit.”

He waits as Will weighs the words, as he twitches his hands, coming to terms with them. He tucks a flyaway hair behind his ear.

“You really like me even when I’m…like this?”

He stumbles over his words, scared in a way Nico doesn’t see from him. Hopeful, too, like he can scarcely believe Nico is still here, holding him as he cries. Nico vows to sit with him through a thousand more miserable days, until the fear is totally gone.

“I do. I promise.” He presses another kiss to the tip of Will’s nose. This time, it makes his face burn, and Nico grins.

“Okay.”

“Have some faith in me, Sunshine.” He presses another kiss, to his cheek this time, and another. “Okay?”

Will smiles at him, small and sad and absolutely breathtaking, radiant. He leans into the next kiss Nico presses to his temple.

“I have all the faith in the world in you, Nico.”

#i just love will so so much #pjo #percy jackson and the olympians #heroes of olympus #hoo #pjo hoo toa #nico di angelo #will solace #will/nico #nico/will #nico di angelo & will solace #can be pretty relationship or platonic or establisbed relationship tbh #read what you please #solangelo #hurt/comfort #fic #longpost #my writing #dialogue prompts

366 notes · View notes