Chapter Text
Piper
Piper was headed to the infirmary, feeling slightly ill. Not the reason she was headed there – well, not directly – but more of a symptom of it. The past few days, she’d had a hard time getting the image of Nico throwing up, struggling against her charmspeak, out of her head. He’d looked so...fragile.
Piper was not generally one to feel guilt about people she wasn’t close to. She’d gotten pretty good at repressing it whenever she charmspoke employees into giving her stuff – probably getting them fired in the process – or when her father inevitably found out, and she saw the frazzled look on his face. The look he got when he wondered where he’d gone wrong. Of course the anger she felt at being pushed onto the secretary helped, but perhaps she’d fallen further than she realized. She’d barely given the son of Hades a second thought back on the Argo II, even when he was obviously in pieces from his stay in Tartarus. She’d felt his pain, and she’d done nothing. Perhaps she was more like her self-absorbed mother than she thought.
The emotional turmoil of these thoughts was uncomfortable to say the least. The memory of Will Solace furiously putting himself between her and his patient just added fuel to the fire. So when she saw the blond healer on the porch with the son of Hades, she stopped dead in her tracks, quickly ducking behind a nearby column to conceal herself from view. One apology at a time, she told herself.
She expected Will to go back into the infirmary, leaving Nico alone for her to accost, so she was surprised when instead, the son of Apollo started ambling after the other boy. They appeared to be having a pretty intense discussion. And Will kept inching closer. The cogs in Piper’s mind started turning.
Two days ago, Chiara Benvenuti, the head counselor of the Tyche cabin, had stopped by Aphrodite’s. Piper generally tried to steer clear of any gossip, but she hadn’t been able to help overhear when the son of Hades was mentioned. When she’d discretely glanced over from where she was braiding her hair with some eagle feathers Jason had given her, she saw her siblings had surrounded the poor girl like a bunch of hyenas eying an injured gazelle. A particularly fitting description, given the daughter of Tyche’s doe eyes and bandaged foot. In any case, she looked uncomfortable. Piper’s siblings Aidan and Drew were leaning up on either side of her, shooting each other sidelong glances while the former tapped away on his phone and the latter filed her nails. Piper could practically see the rumours floating out in little speech bubbles from her brother’s device. Once the girl finally hoisted herself back on her feet, offering Mitchell a smile when he gallantly held the door for her and closed it again, the children of Aphrodite looked for a moment at each other, then collapsed into giggles.
“What’s going on guys?” Piper ventured.
Perfectly plucked eyebrows raised in surprise all around her.
“You...want to know about gossip?” Drew sounded both shocked and euphoric. Though her tone quickly took a turn for the scheming. “What have you got to offer?”
“Drew,” Mitchell protested. “She’s our sister, shouldn’t she be allowed in on cabin gossip?”
“I don’t see why,” Aidan pouted, rolling onto his back on his bed, still typing. “She never does any work on it.”
“Yeah, she practically looks down on it,” Drew agreed. “So why now? Still got a conscience about torturing di Angelo? Don’t worry, sweetie, keep charmspeaking and the guilt will go away, eventually.”
“Drew!” Mitchell protested, though halfheartedly at most.
Their sister just shrugged. “You know you agree with it, Mitch.” Looking back at Piper, she narrowed her perfectly made-up eyes, shaking the file. “So what’s it gonna be, counselor?”
Piper looked helplessly at Mitchell, who just shrugged.
“What’s the usual going price?”
Drew smiled like a cat that had caught the canary. “Why, information, of course. Which you’d know if you ever bothered to involve yourself in anything your siblings actually like.” She shuddered delicately. “Maybe then you’d know better than to insist on morning runs too.”
Piper winced. The idea had been to get her charges up and moving before breakfast was half over. It had not been a good idea. Nail polish still coated the wall from the attempt.
She took a breath and sat down in front of her sister.
“Fine. What do you want to know?”
She saw Mitchell quietly shaking his head in the background, but it was too late. In for a penny…
Drew stretched out a hand and snapped her fingers imperiously.
“Aidan. The Notebook, if you please.”
Dropping his phone, their brother slid open a drawer on one of the dressing tables that lined the back of the room, and reverently pulled out a book. A pink, fluffy one, with hearts and glitter, to be exact. Piper winced and Drew smirked.
“Last thing anyone snooping would look at, right?”
Piper tilted her head, surprised. “I’ll admit, I hadn’t thought of that.”
Drew shook her head. “Of course not. You’re all about rejecting girlishness. You don’t even pause to wonder about the finer mechanisms of it.” Flipping open the book, she pulled out a much slimmer one, elegantly stitched in red leather. “Aphrodite is not just beauty and lovey dovey feels, you know. Our mother knows more about deception and manipulation than Athena ever will. How do you think Silena got away with treason for so long?”
Flipping through the book, she and Aidan started muttering to themselves, as Mitchell and Piper watched nervously. Finally, they seemed to settle on a page. Pulling out a pen with blood red ink, Drew looked up smugly.
“Now, until last Tuesday, I would have been asking you about the size of your boyfriend’s...member, but thanks to Sherman Yang’s crush on me and that day’s unfortunate slipping towel incident in the showers...we’ve got that covered.” Even Mitchell smirked a little, and Piper held back a grimace. This was not going to be fun.
“So really, we’ve settled on backstory. Tell me, is it true the bitch queen herself chose you as the perfect little girlfriend to her perfect little hero?”
Piper swallowed. “Hera chose me and Leo to give Jason fake memories about our friendship, yeah.”
Aidan leaned forwards. “But she specifically went out of her way to make you his girlfriend.”
Piper nodded, keeping her face blank. Her siblings made no such effort. Mitchell winced, and Aidan snorted.
“Can I lower my estimate in the betting pool? If Hera thinks they make a good couple, that romance is as good as dead.”
“Now, now, Aidan” Drew chided smugly. “Just because Hera poisons whatever relationship she touches, and just because the original Jason cheated on Medea, does not mean that they’re going to break up.”
Piper set her jaw mutinously. “All right, that’s enough. Now tell me what Chiara said about Nico.”
Aidan waved his hand dismissively. “Oh, you know Chiara. Will broke up with her, so now she’s going around saying he’s fucking Nico. I mean, it would be really cute, with the whole Light and Night thing they have going, but we’ve already checked with Damian from Nemesis. He’s in the infirmary with the so-called lovebirds. He says it’s just a revenge thing.”
“Yeah, by the way,” Mitchell interceded. “Isn’t there totally something going on with him and Chiara anyway? I heard Frieda from Hypnos say – he dropped his voice, kneeling next to the bed, and Piper found herself leaning forwards in spite of herself – they’re having pretty hot dreams about each other.”
“Ooh,” hummed Drew, flipping through the book. “Ms Lucky and Mr Karma. Now we’re talking.”
At the time, Piper had brushed the rumor about Nico into the back of her mind. Her siblings’ insinuations about Hera had wholly occupied her, but now that she saw the two boys together, the thought returned. And when she peeked at them from behind the Hebe cabin, standing at the door to Hades, her suspicions grew. Will seemed unwilling to leave, starting and stopping several times. Finally, he raised a hand to Nico’s face, brushing his knuckles against his cheek, and headed off back towards the infirmary. Nico leaned on the door and stared after him.
Nico
“And by the way, I’m off duty this afternoon, so I’ll be at the shooting range, then back in the infirmary tonight. So if you feel sick or nauseous or like you’re about to pass out, come find me.”
Nico rolled his eyes, trying to ignore the butterflies making themselves at home in his chest.
“Yeah, yeah, Will, relax.” He stomped up the steps to the porch of the Hades cabin, and when he turned, Will was right there, like, right in his face.
The son of Apollo smiled guiltily. “Yeah, sorry. I just worry.” He moved forwards, making Nico take a step back.
“But, just to make sure, promise me?”
Caged against the door, Nico blushed when the healer winked, then nodded. Will smiled his thousand-watt smile again.
“Great!” He leaned forwards, slowly raising his hand, and Nico felt like he was burning up when long fingers brushed along his jaw.
“Good to see some color there,” Will murmured, before turning and bounding off, leaving Nico to stare after him.
A couple of minutes later, he shook himself, and went into the Hades Cabin. Compared to the brightness of the outside and the infirmary, the dark came as a shock. The first thing he did, almost instinctively, was rip down the blackout curtains. It wasn’t like he managed to get to sleep before it was dark out anyway, he reasoned, knowing full well that he was probably going to be getting most of his rest from short naps during the day, bathed in sunlight.
The sheets on the beds were the next to go. Most of them were so dusty from lack of use, he had to cough when he bundled them up. Likely they hadn’t been moved since the first time the beds had been made. He worked his way through the cabin systematically, opening the windows and brushing dust off the dressers with the already dirty sheets. The torches of Greek fire needed to go, he decided, they reminded him too much of the Pit. Good old lamps would do. They were also less likely to blow up. The bathroom was a nice surprise. It looked like Hazel had used it before leaving, and she had done a cursory cleaning of the shower, toilet and sink. To his pleasure he noted there was a bathtub as well, not as large as the ones in the infirmary, but encrusted with precious gems instead. Quickly ripping up one of the sheets for rags, he set about giving it a thorough scrub.
While he cleaned, he couldn’t help but let his mind wander. Back to the infirmary. Where Will was probably still working, leaning over patients, changing bandages, putting away the fresh stock of ambrosia that Hermes had finally dropped off. Even when the son of Apollo was forbidden from using his powers, he was hanging around the place, helping out, gently guiding his siblings, soothing patients. The way he’d soothed Nico, holding him, petting his hair, confessing undying love to him. Nico found himself tentatively smiling as he scrubbed.
Once he’d finished with that, he gave it a longing look as he wiped the sweat from his forehead. Later, he promised himself. First, he had to turn his ire on the idiotic coffin beds. He wasn’t dead yet.
The metal hinges showed little resistance when he hacked at them with his sword, but when he tried to lift one of the coffin lids from where it had fallen, he almost broke his back, and had to drop it, cursing.
A tentative knock sounded from the door.
“Need a hand?”
Piper was looking around the door he’d left ajar. Her hair was perfectly done up with feathers, and her face was flawless as usual. Nico’s gut tightened, part jealousy and part intimidation. Piper was beautiful. She was everything a guy could want. Should want.
“It’s fine,” he huffed, turning back to the coffin lid.
But since it wasn’t like anyone ever listened to him, he heard footsteps as he struggled, until she picked up the other end of the lid. Grunting out a grudging thanks, he started manoeuvering them out the door.
“We dumping it with the dry wood for the fire?” she asked tentatively. Nico grunted again.
“Right,” she tailed off. “Should make good firewood.”
Her tone made Nico feel bad all over again. Piper was probably one of the nicest, most popular people in camp. If he couldn’t even get along with her, how long till he started training alone, spending Capture-the-Flag in his cabin, hanging on the edges of the campfire, forgotten?
But he had Will, he reminded himself. Will, who had saved his life and confessed undying love to him. Will wouldn’t ignore him. Would he?
“Look, Nico,...”
Nico abruptly dropped the lid of the coffin next to the stack of wood, making an unnecessarily loud crash that had a nearby dryad scowl at him.
“It’s okay, ” he told her. “Thanks for the help.”
Piper reached out for him when he strode past, and he instinctively flinched back. He sighed.
“Look, I don’t know what you’re doing here, but...”
“I’m here to apologize,” she interrupted.
“Oh.”
“And also to get to know you better,” the daughter of Aphrodite rushed on. “I mean, Jason really likes you, and I do want to be friends. I know I’ve sort of ignored you, or gone about helping you completely wrong, but let me make it up to you. Please?”
She smiled at him apologetically, and for a moment, Nico let himself bask in the thought of a future where he wasn’t a feared outcast, but one of the popular kids, someone people looked up to, with friends...with a boyfriend even. A future, life had taught him again and again, that could never be more than wishful thinking.
He hesitated.
“Help me with the other coffin lids?” he asked tentatively.
“So tell me about Will.”
They were sitting on the floor of the Hades cabin, using the remains of the old sheets to polish off the gems and skulls of the shrine. Piper was surprisingly easy to talk to, once she’d told him about her rebellious days. It helped to see the stunning daughter of Aphrodite in a light that wasn’t so pure. It made her seem more human. They’d both been pushed away by people they loved, and had done dumb shit with their powers in a futile attempt to get them back. It struck a chord with Nico.
Though apparently, they’d now moved on to other topics.
“What about him?” Nico was finding it increasingly hard to control his blushing, when had that started?
Piper rolled her eyes, nudging him with her elbow so he almost dropped the ruby he was polishing.
“Come on. I saw the two of you walk over here. He looked like leaving you was causing him physical pain.”
Nico shrugged, putting the stone back on the shrine and picking up a skull. Guy in his thirties, died in 1902 on a bet he could swallow a live fish.
“He’s just worried I’m going to kill myself stupidly.”
Piper shook her head, placing a femur carefully back on the altar and picking up a crystal.
“Will worries everyone is going to kill themselves stupidly. There’s something else going on, isn’t there,” she wheedled. “Come on, you can tell me.”
Nico shook his head, smiling as he took the skull of an old lady who’d lived on a nearby farm. It didn’t feel like he was being charmspoken, but nevertheless, he had the urge to spill. It would be nice to share with someone, and it wasn’t like he had many options. Hazel would probably faint, Reyna or Jason would storm over to the infirmary to threaten Will, like Nico was some weak little flower that couldn’t take care of himself. Percy would...Nico stopped his thought process there. He’d spent too much time wondering what Percy would think, or do. It was a habit he needed to break, especially if he wanted this...thing with Will to work out.
“I promise I won’t tell anyone. Seriously. Swear on the Styx.”
Outside, thunder rumbled, and Nico looked at the daughter of Aphrodite disbelievingly. “Did you just take one of the Underworld’s most solemn oaths for some gossip?”
She shrugged, smiling down at the crystal. “Maybe. I’ve learned recently that gossip is a more serious matter than I thought. In fact, not to scare you off, or anything, but there was already a little of it swirling around the Aphrodite cabin about you and Will. ”
Nico paled, and Piper rushed on, clearly trying to pacify him.
“Not that anyone believed it, of course, the source was pretty unreliable. But even if they did, Nico.” She put a soothing hand on his knee, and he forced himself not to flinch. “It’s okay. Nobody minds. In fact, they think you would make a really cute couple.”
Nico forced himself to breathe.
“Really?”
Piper nodded, moving her hand to rub his shoulder.
“Yeah. Aidan is really into the whole “Opposites attract” theme right now.”
“So...they don’t think I’d just...tear him down?”
The daughter of Aphrodite stared at him for a second, before suddenly pulling him into her arms. Nico tensed at first, but once he got used to it, he started melting into her embrace.
“Nico, no. You could never tear anyone down. The very fact that you worry shows that.”
Nico blinked away tears. “He said he was in love with me. That he’d been for years. If I’d just seen that, instead of stupidly chasing after Percy, maybe I wouldn’t be so...so messed up right now.”
Piper held him more tightly as he sobbed onto her shoulder, rocking him gently. Absently, Nico realized he was up another person who knew about his crush on Percy. Pulling himself together, he leaned away and rubbed at his eyes with the rag he was holding.
“So what did you say?”
Nico shrugged, cradling the old woman’s skull on his lap. “That I needed some time. And he said he’d wait for me.”
Piper smiled, putting down the crystal again. “That’s good. You take all the time you need. And if you ever need someone to talk to – she held up another skull – you know where to come.”
That night, after a healthy dinner that Kayla served him sternly, and that he mostly tipped into the fire when she wasn’t watching, Nico curled up in his newly dusted cabin. Piper had lent him some cotton candy pink sheets and a small lamp that bathed his surroundings in rosy light. He’d been laying on his side, staring at it for at least a few hours now, tired, but unable to get to sleep. One time, he even dozed off a bit, but then he was falling, falling into the dark, his heart beating faster and faster and suddenly, as if to protect him, his body jerked awake again before the nightmares could set in. Eventually he sat up, sighing. He was about to resign himself to a sleepless night, when a thought struck his groggy mind. Still not quite lucid, he slipped off his bed and to the door. The air was cool out, and he could hear the distant shriek of the harpies over by the Poseidon cabin. Quickly and silently, he moved across the green and up to the still shining infirmary.
When he reached the door, he hesitated, but a much closer shriek pushed him into entering to seek shelter.
“Nico?”
Will was there, just like he’d said, dozing off on one of the many unoccupied beds. His eyes widened when he saw the son of Hades, and Nico suddenly realized he was in nothing but a T-shirt and a pair of boxers (he really needed to go shopping once he could shadow travel again). He was about to apologize and slip back out, when Will wordlessly held out an arm to him. Gratefully accepting the invitation before he could lose his nerve, Nico crossed the room and slid into the healer’s embrace.
“Nightmares?”
He nodded, yawning, and Will squeezed him tight.
“Gods, you’re freezing.”
Nico made a discontented sound when Will shuffled them around until the blankets were tucked around him, but then he could safely burrow into the other boy’s warm chest and finally find sleep.