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"Nico has skeletons in his closet," Will blurts the moment Cecil shuffles through the infirmary door, the other boy still bleary-eyed and very much struggling to balance the two trays laden with breakfast that he's brought along. Sometime in the past two weeks, his friends had cottoned on to the fact that Will, during his morning shifts at the infirmary, has the tendency to forgo breakfast entirely. Now, Lou and Cecil had made it their mission to keep him fed despite Will's protests.
Will knows that there are proper protocols for greeting your friends—typically a 'hi, how are you? ' goes a long way—especially when they're going to the effort to bring you food (even if it's Cecil and he's decided to experiment with flavour combinations; last week he gave Will a pop tart dipped in orange juice). This, though, is far more important than any pleasantries, and Will can't hold his tongue.
Cecil stops mid-step, blinking confusedly because, well, Will can admit he sounds a smidge insane. But this is Cecil, and nothing Will could say would ever really phase him, so he quickly recovers. "So, what kind of dark secret did you dig up on your boyfriend? Because I've got money on him secretly being a taxidermist."
All thoughts of the aforementioned skeletons promptly flee Will's mind because what?
"He's not—I don't—I'm sorry, what?"
"He's just got that vibe, you know?" he says as he deposits the trays of breakfast onto Will's desk, plucking a grape from its bunch and tossing it cleanly into his mouth in a trick that might've been impressive had Will not seen Cecil practicing it in the mirror since he was eleven years old.
Will hopes the look he sends Cecil translates to some combination of 'What the fuck? ' and 'Watch it, that's my boyfriend you're talking about!' .
"Well, it's mostly the whole…Son of Hades thing. But I dunno, I can just see him scraping some poor roadkill off the asphalt and stitching it up."
"I–Just stop, no ."
It's in times like this that Will regrets discontinuing the behavioural management strategy he and Lou had implemented last year when Cecil's lack of filter had gotten him into trouble with the Ares Cabin (that spray bottle really had been one of their better ideas).
"Not taxidermy then, roger that. Ex-child assassin? An emo boy with a tortured past—he'd fit the profile."
The bridge of his nose pinched between his fingers, Will shakes his head. "I'm talking about Afonso."
He spits the name with as much vitriol as he can muster.
"Who's Afonso?"
"A skull," Will laments, "A fucking skull of some dead Portuguese guy that now lives in Nico's closet."
"Afonso?"
"Afonso."
"Fuck, okay. Cool, I guess?"
Will's eyes pop in disbelief, and he takes the fork off the breakfast tray just to stab it into a slice of bacon, pointing the fork and the attached meat at Cecil with an air of drama only fitting of a child of Apollo. "No. Not cool."
"Will–"
"No, I won't allow you to normalise , Afonso. It's weird, okay? It's weird to have a gods-damn skull in your closet," Will argues through a mouthful of bacon. "It stares at me."
"It has no eyes!"
"Spiritually, it stares at me spiritually. "
It's true; the damn thing has a presence to it, an eerie Underworld-y aura that is all too sentient for Will's comfort. On the nights Will sleeps in the Hades Cabin—and this is purely hypothetical if Chiron asks—he swears he can see its eyes glowing through the slats of the louvred door.
And it's not like Will didn't know what he was getting into dating a son of Hades. He'd seen skeletons literally build the cabin itself, and his boyfriend talked to ghosts on the regular. But he has to draw the line at sentient skulls.
Will thinks that's a fair boundary.
Nico disagrees.
"Where'd it even come from anyway?" Cecil asks.
"His dad."
And therein lies the problem. Because Afonso was a gift from Hades. Will, a mere mortal, would never think to question a god's judgement, of course. He just wonders if perhaps Lord Hades isn't very practised at giving gifts. Like, has anyone sat down and told him that human remains don't really scream 'congratulations on surviving the war' ? Couldn't he have sent a blood ruby or something? They're morbid sounding, and at least they're pretty!
Poor gift etiquette aside, Hades did send Afonso, which means Will can't just dig a hole in the woods and bury the skull six feet deep to be rid of it. Not unless he wants to be smote and sent to the Fields of Punishment. No, Will couldn't dispose of Afonso…but Nico could.
Nico, who probably had the best relationship with his godly parent out of everyone at camp, they literally sat down for family dinner every fortnight. Hades wouldn't smite Nico, and yet Nico still refuses to dispose of the skull.
'It's a gift,' he'd say whenever Will brought it up, and the boy can't even hold back his own grimace, yet still the skull remains.
'It's a dead guy,' Will had on more than one occasion argued back.
"So, what are you going to do?" Cecil asks, stealing another grape from the bowl.
Something incredibly stupid, it turns out.
* 💀 *
"William Andrew Solace!"
Di Immortales, full name—that's not good.
"You failed me?" Nico hisses.
And yep, there goes the lovely green lawn, stained brown with decay, as Nico's anger leeks out of him. Will winces, thinking about the earful Miranda is going to give him later. She'll probably have him water the damn thing with that special fertiliser that smells bad enough to gag a maggot as if he has any control over his boyfriend. Nico barely listens to him as is— he carries around a damn apple to shove in Will's face whenever he gets 'too mother hen-y' —he is certainly not going to pay him any heed while spitting mad.
It takes several steps for Will to escape the radius of the browning grass; he's going to need a lot of fertiliser this time.
"Nico, darlin' , love of my life," Will grovels, his smile turning tight at the pure fury burning in his boyfriend's eyes. "How are you?"
"Not good, Solace."
Right, Will should have assumed that given the anger and all…
Nico continues before Will can get another word in edgewise. "Do you know what I've had to do all afternoon?" He doesn't wait for a response, "No? That's alright, I'll tell you… I've been shovelling pegasi shit for hours. "
"I–"
"–I'm not finished!"
Will snaps his mouth shut with an audible click . Nico is seething, glaring daggers all menacing-like, and Will is sure the younger campers looking on are wide-eyed and more than a little fidgety at the rare sight of the angry Son of Hades. Will, contrastingly, wants to kiss him.
Which is, frankly, devastating because Nico won't let Will kiss him right now. It's a crime because Nico's cheeks are all pretty and flushed. He's got that endearing glint in his eyes that makes them sparkle—the spark that appears when his boyfriend is contemplating murder (Will thinks it's adorable, not that he'd ever say it aloud).
"I spent a whole afternoon with those ungrateful beasts—who despise me, may I remind you—and do you know what I find out when I go looking for my lovely boyfriend to comfort me?"
Trick question, don't answer.
"–that it's your fault."
Now, one might think that putting the blame on poor, innocent Will might be a bit of an overreaction on Nico's part. After all, how could Will have any control over Nico's chore schedule or the attitudes of mythical creatures?
And that's a nice sentiment, truly, except it is entirely Will's fault. (Well, not the pegasi's attitudes; Will can't help that his boyfriend smells like grave dirt.)
In Will's defence, it's been an awful week. Genuinely terrible. Some geniuses in the Hephaestus Cabin decided to reroute the climbing wall's lava to experiment with it as a renewable energy source.
'Because, Will, climate change,' was the answer the healer had been given when he'd asked why they'd chosen to mess with the volatile and dangerous liquid. Will is all for sustainability, don't get him wrong, but couldn't they have made a wind turbine?
No, instead, they outfitted the showers with a new hot water system—complete with molten lava—which was effective for a grand total of three hours before the celestial bronze-plated pipes collapsed from the sheer heat and released a flood of burning liquid upon the shower block. Will had spent the next two days treating the superficial burn wounds of very incensed Nemesis kids who'd been taking their showers. When he wasn't treating blistering skin, he was trying to discourage their rather vicious revenge plots.
His attempts were unsuccessful, and upon their discharge, a jar of Lethe water from the Hypnos Cabin was stolen, put inside a diffuser, and unleashed via a light mist inside the Hephaestus Cabin. Like it was a damn essential oil and not water from a mythological river. Experimenting with Lethe water is highly discouraged—should be banned if you asked Will, but at a summer camp that plays war games for fun, he's learnt not to expect wise prohibitions in the name of health and safety—and for good reason, because Will went two days without sleep having to research how to reverse the induced short-term memory loss half the cabin acquired.
It's no exaggeration to say he was exhausted and snappish. So, when he came to realise he was rostered for cabin inspection duty after all that…he may have acted rashly.
"You failed my cabin inspection which meant I had last pick of chores. All because I have a gift from my godly parent, and it creeps you out."
And yes, Will had written on the inspection form: ' The skull freaks me the fuck out'. Again, he wasn't in his right mind. That's not to say he doesn't stand by what he said; Afonso was creepy, and Will would very much like for it to go rot in a grave very far away.
"I'd argue it's creepier to keep the skull hidden in your closet, actually."
"Oh, would you prefer it on my bedside table?" Nico snarks.
Will pales at that because, well, wouldn't that be one sure-fire way to kill the mood? He really didn't need a sentient skull reporting back to Hades exactly what Will and Nico get up to. No, thank you, he'd like to keep his dignity intact.
"I'd rather you dug it a grave, actually."
"And you'd still love me if I were a dandelion? Because that's what Hades will have my stepmother do to me for rejecting his well-intentioned gift. "
"You'd make a lovely dandelion," Will says, reaching to brush aside the midnight curl that affixes itself to the curve of Nico's lashes with the shake of the other boy's head. He gets a harsh swat for his efforts.
"Flattery won't get you anywhere."
"You're hot when you're angry."
Ah, there's that beautiful blush. It's not visible amongst the fury-induced crimson of his cheeks, but in the way Nico ducks his head a little like he has to shake off the comment. Lovely.
"No!"
"No?"
"You can't smooth-talk your way out of this one."
"Can I kiss you? I'd really like to kiss you right now."
He wants to feel the heat of Nico's skin, burning with anger and warm beneath Will's hands. He wants to bite Nico's bottom lip, pull it from where it's trapped beneath Nico's teeth and kiss the broken skin there. This is, of course, wishful thinking—a pipe dream, as punctuated by the glare Nico sends his way.
And then, Nico is walking away, a warning look sent over his shoulder that reads 'don't follow me' and a trail of shrivelling grass under his soles.
So yeah, Will is having a downright awful week.
* 💀 *
Nico is refusing to talk to Will. Worse than that, Nico is refusing to look at Will or even be in his general vicinity. He's mastered the art of actual silent treatment to such an extent that if Will hadn't caught a glimpse of him slipping out of the dining pavilion yesterday, he might have thought he made the boy up.
It's been three days without Nico. Three days since what Will has dubbed ' The Pegasi Incident' and his bad week has turned into a terrible ten days.
Three days without Nico and Will has become insufferable.
That's what Kayla says anyway, Will actually thinks he's been rather put together about the whole thing (if you ignore all the longing glances he's been sending towards the Hades Cabin). He misses his boyfriend is all, and he misses being able to walk up to the Hades Cabin without a skeleton erupting from the ground to chase him off.
It's all very dramatic.
Nico can hold a grudge; Will knows that, though it's never long until he goes soft as a marshmallow and lets whatever happened go. Will likes to tease him about it, his supposed 'fatal flaw' that Nico has too much heart and loyalty to actually abide by. Except Nico isn't going soft this time, and Will is at the end of his rope.
He misses his boyfriend. He misses nights curled up together, Nico's arm slung across Will's waist and laid so close together that Will could feel the rise and fall of Nico's chest against his back. (He misses not having to listen to Austin's obnoxious snoring all night from his bunk in the Apollo Cabin)
So what if Will is having boyfriend withdrawals? He thinks it's justified.
"For fuck's sake, save the kicked-puppy look until I'm not around, wouldya?" Kayla says when she finds Will—as he has been for the past few days—watching the infirmary door and inevitably being disappointed when it opens to reveal just another idiot who thought a wood nymph wouldn't care if they built a tree house in their tree.
"I miss him," Will bemoans.
"Yes, you've mentioned," she says, "no less than a hundred times today."
"I just want to see him, you know?"
"Gods, he's not dead. You could go shout at his cabin from across the lawn right now if you wanted to."
Will had honestly considered it. The only thing stopping him was the threat of yet another skeleton chasing him off—the last one had hounded him into the canoe lake, and he wasn't looking to repeat the performance. He almost says this to Kayla before deciding that he doesn't want to be teased about it for the rest of his life.
He says instead, "I can't. He's in the Underworld today: family dinner."
She sends him a look at how miserable he sounds before reaching over and plucking a yogurt pouch from Will's pile of breakfast—the tray brought over by Lou this morning, who has a fascination with necromancy and thanked him profusely for pissing Nico off enough for him to exercise his powers over the dead (at least someone is happy in all of this). Kayla pops the cap and begins slurping obnoxiously, but Will pays her no mind. She doesn't get it, not the way he craves to run his hair through Nico's curls, to have his knuckles caught in the tangles and gently comb them through. Not the way that Nico would tuck Will into his side, knowing from just a single glance that his thoughts had grown too loud.
"Gods, the two of you are so dramatic."
* 💀 *
There's a bird inside the Apollo Cabin.
It takes a few seconds for that fact to really set in because it's still an hour until dawn, and Will's brain hasn't properly awoken, but yes, that's a bird cawing at him from the end of Will's bunk. It stares at him with lightless eyes, just watching him dead-eyed, and Will stares right back because, well, what the fuck?
It's a massive bird, at least triple the size a normal crow—no , raven, with its wedge-shaped tail — is supposed to be. Its big, beady eyes do not leave Will's form as it releases another mighty 'CAW!' .
Will groans, dragging his pillow over his head and contemplates smothering himself rather than deal with whatever this is. He'd finally managed a lick of sleep without being woken to Austin's snores or one of the younger kiddos shuffling their way to the bathroom in the middle of the night, only for his sleep to be rudely interrupted.
He lifts the pillow away from his eyes after a few minutes of quiet. The bird is still there, head tilted and watching Will, its beak open as though prepared to release another ungodly squawk in its endeavour to wake the entire cabin. The column of its throat moves when it sees Will watching him.
"Don't you dare–" Will hisses at it, pushing himself upright.
'CAW!'
Will hears the tell-tale creaking of the bunk across from him, suggesting Kayla has been awoken by the racket.
"Now you've done it," he chides, shifting forwards to shoo the bird away. The creature doesn't flinch, doesn't move, looking the picture of unimpressed at Will's half-arsed attempt to liberate it from the cabin. Now closer—and more awake—Will notices what he didn't before, a scroll tied neatly to the raven's clawed foot and an undeniable godly aura emanating from its fathomless black feathers.
"What the fuck?" Kayla has sat up in her bed, head just about brushing the ceiling as she peers down from the top bunk.
" Language ," Will reprimands half-heartedly, knowing that none of their younger siblings are awake yet by some miracle. Kayla rolls her eyes before her gaze returns to the stupid bird that still has eyes only for Will.
"There's a bird in our cabin," she notes.
"Apparently so."
"Why?"
"Dad sent it."
Sitting this close, Will can feel the faint signature of his father's blessing; a warmth that is almost unbearable when the night air already hangs heavy with summer heat.
Kayla's brow furrows at that, but she must decide it's not exactly out of character for their father, and she doesn't care enough to lose any more sleep because she disappears back into bed without further comment.
Will is not so lucky; he's pretty certain if he tries to ignore the bird and sleep, he will be in for another rude awakening, so with a mournful glance towards his pillow, he reaches forward to untie the message the creature is carrying. Thankfully, the raven doesn't put up a fight—it still manages to look down its beak at him distastefully, but it sticks out its leg all the same.
The message is short, courtesy of Apollo's ongoing, and rather unfortunate, haiku phase.
'Gift war with Hades—
I give pets; he gives gross skulls.
Classic me, I win.'
The bird croaks out a sound of what Will interprets as dismay when he dutifully informs it that it's apparently Will's new pet. He chooses not to be too offended by the bird's displeasure when Will himself isn't exactly gleeful about this new arrangement. How does one even look after a bird? A godly raven, at that. Did he need to feed it, or could it photosynthesise thanks to its connection to Apollo?
He couldn't just set it free, could he? No, his father would probably assume he didn't like his gift, and he'll end up with a pet dolphin next. Which means he's stuck with the damn gift-bird. And yeah, Will thinks he gets it now—if Afonso was Hades idea of a gift, he really didn't want to know what he'd try to send Nico next.
Will sighs; this has Nico's meddling written all over it.
* 💀 *
The bird wakes him up every night without fail. Will's already abysmal sleep schedule has become a collection of mere minutes of restfulness—power naps if you will—before he is woken again by the bird's squawking. Neither Will nor the bird—Pepper, the younger campers have affectionately named it—are very pleased with the situation. Still, the raven has taken it upon itself to make its discontent known loudly.
A quick trip to the Athena Cabin left him with a list of Raven-appropriate food—eggs, seeds, fruits (dead carcasses, but Will ignored that suggestion)—so the bird is at least not going hungry. The downside of this arrangement is the animal has started bringing things back for Will.
Dead things. Little skulls and bones of woodland rodents that Will has found left on his pillow or inside his shoes or littering the sill under the window that now stays permanently open for Pepper to slip in and out.
Will is aware of the irony; this all started with a skeleton, and now he's tripping over them on the regular.
Long story short, the bird is a menace. Will's at the end of his rope, and he'd hug Afonso if it got him a whole night's sleep. All of his siblings—aside from the youngest and Austin, who sleep through anything—are equally fed-up, tempers short, and the bags beneath all their eyes pronounced.
The only bright spot in all of this is the reappearance of Nico, who has taken great pleasure in Will's apparent suffering and sends smug looks across the dining pavilion. And Will soaks up Nico's attention eagerly, call him pathetic (Kayla certainly does,) but he'll take what he can get.
The Apollo Cabin fails its next inspection; 'bird poop everywhere' is the comment left in familiar cursive taught by tutors in the Italian countryside. The worst part is, it's not even a lie, and Will spends his Sunday afternoon cleaning up after a resentful bird.
"You are an evil, evil man," Will accuses when Nico appears in the infirmary doorway ten days after ' The Pegasi Incident' , apparently deeming his silent treatment concluded.
Nico just laughs, slipping into his usual chair beside Will, kicking his shoes up onto the classroom-table-turned-reception-desk. Usually, Will would make a fuss of it, citing some argument about hygiene, but Nico raises an eyebrow that says, 'Try it, I dare you' and Will ain't about to test his luck.
"You could always get rid of the bird," Nico says snidely, "What was it you said? 'Dig it a grave'? "
"It's a gift," Will groans, and that's the closest he'll ever get to admitting defeat. "How'd you do it?"
"Do what?" Nico asks, eyes wide with faux innocence that might've been believable if not for the self-satisfied curve of his mouth.
"The damn bird that won't give me a minute of sleep."
"Hmm, I might've brought up how jealous you've been of Afonso at family dinner and hinted that Hades should brag about it to your dad." Nico smiled, letting his feet slip off the table's edge and back to the floor. "And then I sacrificed some food to Apollo, told him we weren't talking, and I thought you could use a companion—maybe a pet, to keep you company."
"Clever," Will concedes. Privately, he thinks, he'd have preferred Apollo had sent him a dog, but of course, his dad had to choose something more exotic (Nico was probably betting on it).
"I know."
"You're cute when you're vengeful." Will leans in, chin propped up on his fist and admiring the flush that climbs its way up the side of Nico's neck and sprawls across his cheeks.
He scoffs, "And you're sweet when you're sleep-deprived and desperate."
Nico pushes Will away gently, his fingers splayed across Will's chest but Will traps them there with his own hand, pressing down so that Nico can feel the drum of his beating heart.
"I missed you," Will says.
"Like I said: desperate. "
But Nico allows Will to pull him into a kiss. The taste of Nico's lips is familiar, and Will drinks it in hungrily. His hand on Nico's jaw has the other boy's breath hitching, and Nico presses ever closer. He can feel the slight smile still playing Nico's lips, smug and secretive like he knows he won this round, and Will can't find it in himself to care. Warmth is bubbling in his chest, and there's a good chance he's literally glowing . He's so grateful that Kayla is canoeing right now because she'd never let him live it down.
They pull apart eventually, too soon if you ask Will, and he makes an embarrassing noise of protest that has Nico chuckling.
"I still hate Afonso," Will says for dignity's sake.
"I know, I moved him to my Underworld bedroom."
Good riddance, Will thinks.
"I still have a stupid pet bird."
"I'll adopt it. We can tell Apollo it's a joint-custody situation," Nico says easily, "Pepper likes me; I keep giving it bones."
Will gapes at him, thinking about the sheer pile of tiny bones that had found their way into his cabin in the past week. "Of course, that was you."
Nico grins. Silence settles between them; Will just happily sits in the presence of his boyfriend, idly drawing lines between Nico's freckles and daydreaming about finally getting a good night's sleep. One without Austin's snoring or Pepper's screeching, or seeing a creepy skull staring at him from the closet.
"Hey, you're not like a taxidermist or ex-child assassin, right?" Will asks.
"Uh, no?"
"Cool. Just checking."
Will takes pleasure in the knowledge that Cecil has definitely lost a fair amount of money in bets. Nico rolls his eyes, unimpressed with Will's antics, but laces their hands together all the same.
Will sleeps well that night in the Hades Cabin, but not before confirming for himself that there are no more skeletons in the closet.