Archive of Our Own

Nico realised it on the last day of summer. 

He’d stuck it out at Camp Half-Blood for almost a full month at that point and only wanted to bolt a few times, a fact he was justly proud of. Nico wasn’t quite sure about calling the place home yet, but settling back into a routine, putting all the pieces back together after the war, seeing the same faces every day… Something about it was comforting. Stagnancy wasn’t a thing Nico had allowed himself since Westover Hall, and even then it was only because he had no choice. Now, after years of running from everything in an attempt to run from himself, he’d somehow found, if not a home, a place to rest.

And then there was Will Solace.

Will Solace, who, from the first time he laid his eyes on Nico, had taken him on as a kind of charity case. At least, that was what Nico had thought at first.

That theory made sense to Nico for all of August. First, there were the three days in the infirmary that Will had demanded, which turned into about a week after Nico had woken up the second day almost translucent, feeling terrifyingly ephemeral not for the first time since Tartarus.

“Oh, no,” Will had said, leaning over Nico as he opened his eyes for the first time in twelve hours. “You are not fading on me now.” 

Nico didn’t say anything, partly because he wouldn’t know what to say, and partly because of the fear working its way down to the centre of his bones. He always thought he wouldn’t be afraid to die. He might have even welcomed it a few months ago. But now that he was so close to the edge, not even in any real danger, he felt paralyzed. 

In a state of disassociated confusion, Nico lifted one hand to look at his fingers. Through them, he could see Will’s scrubs, still too close to him. Will tried to grab his hand, but his hand slipped through Nico’s own, and Nico felt his heart drop. This was it, then.

But of course Will wasn’t going to let that be the end of it. Working together with a host of prayers, unicorn draught, and Apollo-related powers that Nico didn’t quite understand, the transparency issue had been resolved, and by the end of the week, he had been cleared to return to his cabin. 

Then there were the checkups.

First thing in the morning. Whenever Will would pass by the Hades table in the dining pavilion. When Nico was training. Once, horrifyingly, when Nico was taking a canoe out on the lake with a visiting Hazel and he got so startled by the sudden shout of, “Nico, did you take that restorative I gave you?” from the docks that he toppled the canoe, and he and Hazel had to swim for it. Pulling himself onto the docks, sopping wet and fuming, in front of Will, who was laughing so hard he was doubled over and crying, was not one of Nico’s proudest moments. 

It was distracting. And even more importantly, Nico didn’t need it. He didn’t need another person breathing down his neck, worrying about what he was eating or whether he would fade away into nothingness overnight. He did enough of that himself. But he took it with a grain of salt, because Will was the closest thing to a doctor the camp had, and if he felt like he was obligated to make sure Nico was okay, Nico didn’t mind indulging him.

That would’ve all been fine and normal, if a bit overbearing, if not for Will’s genuine desire to spend as much time with Nico as he could manage. 

Nico had taken Will up on his offer to help out in the infirmary after he was released, mostly as a distraction and as a get-out-of-camp-activities free card-- sure, he may have agreed to stay, but he wasn’t about to jump head first into music lessons and lava wall climbing. Then they’d walk to lunch together before splitting to go to their respective tables. They’d meet up again after dinner to walk to the night activities together. And after the night activities, Will would walk Nico back to his cabin. That wasn’t something he’d asked to do, or anything they’d talked about. It just started one night after a campfire; they’d gotten into a conversation about some of Nico’s redesign ideas for the Hades cabin and somehow, when Chiron had announced that it was time to wrap things up, the conversation just hadn’t stopped.

“I’m just saying,” Will said as they stood up together. “You can’t go wrong with some lighter neutrals. A beige, maybe?” 

Nico busied his hands with folding up the blanket they’d been sharing. “I hate beige.”

“Okay, but it wouldn’t hurt to add a few lighter shades right?” Will bumped Nico’s shoulder. “Your cabin is seriously depressing.”

Nico moved away from him instinctively. “The point of me redesigning isn’t to make it colourful . It’s to make it less like a morgue.”

If Will’s spirit was dampened by Nico’s movement, he didn’t show it. “One way to make it less morgue-y is colour. Or are you allergic to that, too?”

“What?” Nico asked. With the light of the dying campfire on their backs, Nico couldn’t really discern Will’s expression. “I don’t have any allergies.”

“Yes you do,” Will said, and Nico could hear the laugh in his voice. “You’re allergic to the sun, to healthy food, to physical touch--” he emphasised that point with a playful squeeze of Nico’s arm-- “and now colour.”

Nico rolled his eyes. He found himself doing that a lot around Will; his humour left a lot to be desired. “I’m not allergic to physical touch, I just don’t hug people. That’s normal.”

“No, it’s not.”

This was something they talked about often, for some reason. Nico had shown such a blatant and aggressive distaste for Will’s habit of casual touch during his time in the infirmary that it became something of an inside joke between them. Will insisted that, biologically, people needed to be in contact with others, and while Will was the medical professional, Nico wasn’t inclined to agree.

By this time, they’d made their way halfway across the cabin green. Nico wasn’t sure why Will was still walking with him, as the Apollo cabin was on the opposite side from the Hades one. But Will was still talking about the benefits of having a brighter living space, so Nico let him ramble until they stood in the eerie light of the Greek fire torches by his front door.

“Okay, well…” Nico said, not quite sure what to do next. Will was just standing there and looking at Nico, with his usual resting smile in place. Why was he still there? 

“Oh,” Nico realised. “Here.” He pushed the blanket toward Will.

Will looked down, eyebrows furrowing in confusion. “Wha-- oh. Yeah.” He accepted the blanket and shuffled his feet, like he wasn’t sure where to go.

Nico raised his eyebrows. “See you tomorrow?”

“Yeah,” Will said, his smile quickly returning. He started walking backward, away toward his cabin. “G’night, Nico! Remember to--” 

But whatever health reminder Will had planned on giving him never got out, because Will was tripping over his own feet and sprawling on the grass. 

Nico couldn’t help it. He cackled. “Maybe I’m not the one who needs constant medical attention!” he called. “Good night!” 

Then, Nico had promptly slipped inside his cabin, slamming the door shut behind him, and slipped down to the floor with his back up against the door. He put his head in his hands and tried to stop his heart from beating so fast. He couldn’t figure it out exactly, but he knew it had something to do with how close Will had been standing and how unabashedly he had smiled. And when he’d handed the blanket back-- Nico looked down at his hands, which were shaking slightly-- yes, their hands had touched for a long moment. 

Realistically, he should be used to it by now; Will had a habit of holding Nico’s hands unnecessarily. But it was starting to take a real toll on Nico’s nervous system. And though he hadn’t figured it out at that point, he was starting to connect the dots as to why.

Then it started happening almost every night. Chiron would tell the counsellors to start ushering campers back towards the cabins, and Will, having deputised one of his siblings, would walk with Nico all the way back to cabin thirteen, take far too long to finish their conversation or say good night, and make his way slowly back across the green towards cabin seven. 

It wasn’t that Nico disliked spending time with Will. In fact, he was glad to have a close friend that he hadn’t gone on a life threatening quest with, and he found it surprisingly easy to keep up with him in conversation. He just thought it was strange to have such an adamant friend; Will was always nearby, always had something to talk about, and always made an excuse to stay with Nico as long as he could before reluctantly heading off to his other obligations. 

Things didn’t really click in Nico’s head until the last day of summer. 

The annual Hephaestus cabin fireworks show was in full swing, and Will and Nico were watching from the docks with some of the older campers. Nico was swinging his legs over the water, and Will, cross legged next to him, was inching closer by the minute. By that point, Nico just assumed Will needed physical validation from a friendship, and he’d long since started allowing hugs and more proximity. If not fully initiating such physical intimacy yet, he was starting to get used to it, expect it, and even appreciate it.

But this was more than that. As the final scenes of Hercules’ last labour played across the skies, Will’s knee was fully pressed into Nico’s leg, and his arm was around Nico’s shoulders. And Nico was just sitting there, taking it. Absolutely not leaning in to enjoy the warmth. 

Then the show ended and the night was over too quickly. They were getting up and walking back towards the cabins with the rest of the campers, and Will was still close, too close. Neither of them said anything, just basked in the low chatter of everyone around them. Will’s arm brushed against Nico’s as they walked, the backs of their hands touching for a moment.

That was when Nico looked up, meeting Will’s eyes. The moonlight glinted off of them, giving Will’s face an odd, ethereal glow. He didn’t break eye contact. And Nico thought, oh.

Oh, no.

It hit him like he had just shadow travelled across the country. He stumbled, lost his footing. Will grabbed his arms, because of course he did, and knit his eyebrows in concern. And Nico thought again, oh no.

Will liked him.

It should have been obvious, given everything that had happened since the battle on the hill. Since Nico first arrived in that gods forsaken tropical shirt and insulted Will for not knowing how to camouflage himself. The hovering. The touching. The excuses to spend time with him. Nico may have been out of touch with being a normal teenager, but he knew what it meant. At last.

He couldn’t help wondering how long this had gone on. And what he was supposed to do about this. And, most importantly, why? The word ran through his head over and over as Will walked him back to his cabin. How many times Will had done that, and Nico hadn’t realised.

Why?

“I’ll see you tomorrow?” Will looked uncertain, and a sudden thrill ran through Nico as he wondered if Will knew that he knew.

Why?

“Yeah,” was all Nico said. “See you.” 

Will looked a little deflated. “First day of not-summer. You’ll get to see all the year-rounders!”

Why?

“Yeah,” Nico said, still too distracted by Will’s earnest face in the moonlight and the questions pounding against the inside of his skull. “Looking forward to it.”

“Alright, well,” Will said, mouth twisting like he had more to say.

Please don’t say anything, Nico pleaded silently. Not now. Not ever, preferably. 

“I’ll, uh, go.” 

“Okay.”

Will turned and started trudging across the green. Nico wasn’t sure he’d ever seen him look so dejected. He was confused. What had just happened?

“Will?” he called. 

Will looked back, expressionless.

“Uh, good night,” Nico said, because now he had to say something. He struggled to think of something else, mind still reeling. “See you at breakfast?”

The smile that spread across Will’s face made Nico’s stomach do a cartwheel. He nodded and waved, before walking back towards his cabin, his steps looking considerably lighter.

Why me?

Summer ended without fanfare. The camp cleared out, leaving sparse numbers and a kind of emptiness that Nico hadn’t expected to feel. Daily activities still went on, chores were still assigned, campfires still happened, but with a more subdued, melancholic tone. 

It would’ve felt lonely, but this new toned-down dynamic opened Nico up to the potential for new friends. It was a lot less intimidating to meet people when there were fewer of them to interact with. Unintentionally, Nico found himself drifting closer to Chiara, a child of Nemesis who had found out he spoke Italian and been delighted to have someone to practice with, and Cecil, who he came to find out he had met years ago, during his first stay at camp in the Hermes cabin. The first time Cecil had mentioned that particular fact to Nico, he couldn’t help but feel a little ashamed. He had, after all, abandoned the cabin and the camp after only a few days, but he remembered Cecil being just as wired and hyperactive as he had been as a ten year old and felt an immediate friendship with him because of that. More or less accidentally, Cecil became one of his closest friends, and Nico was grateful to have someone who’d never been the centre of a world-ending prophecy. A normal friend, for a normal teenager.

And then, as always, there was Will Solace.

“I can’t do this anymore,” Cecil groaned, sliding into the seat across from Nico at the dining pavilion, staunchly ignoring warning glances from Chiron as usual. “I don’t care if I’m betraying my best friend’s confidence. Will has the biggest crush on you and I need you two to get together.”

“I know,” Nico said.

“And he’s always moping when you’re not around, how are you both so-- wait,” Cecil cut himself off. “What?”

“I know,” Nico repeated. He felt his face getting hot. “I know Will likes me.”

Cecil leaned forward across the table. “What do you mean you know? You’re just choosing to torture all of us with this will-they-won’t-they thing?”

“Don’t be dramatic,” Nico said. His face must be really red now. “I mean, I’ve known since the summer, I just don’t know what to do about it.”

He thought back to Will’s late August birthday. It hadn’t been anything special, but it meant Nico had had an excuse not to sit alone at dinner: he was invited, along with a few other non-Apollo friends of Will’s, to sit at the sun god’s table for dinner, a muted but still celebratory affair that ended with cake and the few meagre presents his siblings were able to pull together. After dinner, Will and Nico took a walk down to the creek to check on some naiads Nico had saved from a particularly friendly hellhound the previous week. Nico knew by that point that it was an excuse to hang out more before curfew, but accepted when Will asked to sit for just a minute by the water. 

Will, normally bolstered and high energy after spending time with other people, was unusually quiet before revealing to Nico that he’d hoped for a visit, some kind of message, anything from his father. Apollo’s silence was louder than ever. Unsure of how to comfort him and wishing he had Hazel or Jason around to help, Nico provided a few less than inspiring words of comfort, but Will looked at him with shining eyes and gave him a hug that revealed a bit too much. Nico, for the first time, had stopped overthinking and leaned in to enjoy the warmth. When Will pulled back, Nico had thought suddenly, intensely, stop looking at me like that . The panic had set back in. Stop looking at me like I’m worth something, like I’m helping you. What am I supposed to do with that?

“It’s easy,” Cecil was saying. “Just, like… tell him.” 

“That I know?”

A classic Hermes kid roll of the eyes. “That you like him, obviously.”

Nico blinked. He hadn’t considered that. “That I… like him?” 

Later that night, in his cabin alone, Nico laid back on his bed and considered the fact of liking someone. His experience, he found, was generally minimal, and always painful. There was Percy, of course. But that wasn’t enough. What did it mean for someone, a boy, to like him back? What did it mean to like a boy in a way that wasn’t anything like hero worship, or simple admiration? Percy was his favourite stories come to life, the proof that all the suffering in his life had an explanation, a reason. There were no freak accidents or random tragedies, because people like Percy Jackson were real. But a crush? Just a normal, teenage crush? Nico was out of his depth with that one possibly even more than with Percy. 

Nico groaned and pressed his face into his pillow. He didn’t walk through Tartarus to be confused by Will Solace . 

The next day, Nico found Cecil by the archery range fiddling with some of the bows. 

“Hey, Cecil, I—”

Cecil startled so violently that Nico made a mental note to not use any of the bows until they’d been retested and restrung by Chiron himself. 

“Oh, hey, Nico, didn’t see ya there,” Cecil said, with a forced casual strain to his voice.

Nico raised an eyebrow.

“Don’t tell Chiron,” Cecil pleaded. “Or Mr. D. Seriously, this is important.”

Nico made the conscious choice to not ask any more questions. “I need your help.”

With obvious relief, Cecil smiled. “At your service.”
“Do you like anyone right now?” Nico demanded, probably with a little bit too much force.

“Nico, Nico, I’m flattered, but we literally just talked about how you’re into Will—”

“Shut up,” Nico said, face aflame and ready to shadow travel away at his own earliest convenience if things got too uncomfortable. “I’m not asking that. How do you know?”
“What?” 

“How do you know ?” Nico said, a hint of the desperation he really would rather hide edging into his voice. “If you like someone, how can you be sure that you do?”

Cecil blinked. “Uh… as far as I can tell, you just sorta… know?” 

This was incredibly unhelpful to Nico, but he noticed Cecil was starting to back away from him and realised his stare might be a little too intense, given the circumstances. He took a few cooling steps backward and tried to lighten his tone. This is your friend, Nico, he told himself. This is someone you have built a relationship with and can trust. 

“Okay, um, imagine you’re me, though,” Nico tried. Equally unhelpful, Cecil immediately affected a grim expression and crudely pantomimed raising skeletons from the ground, and Nico smacked his arm. “Not like that, you idiot! Imagine you’ve literally never had the chance to be a normal kid, to go through pu— puberty—” at this, he and Cecil both shuddered— “or to even know what a normal crush feels like. Just… describe it to me, I guess.”

To his credit, Cecil managed to hide most of his obvious desire to melt through the grass and out of the conversation. Nico didn’t feel much different, but there was no other way to resolve this problem. 

“Well,” Cecil courageously forged forward, “you feel sort of— sort of nauseous, in, like, your stomach? But in a good way. And you want to spend all of your time with the person, even if they annoy you or do gross things like chew with their mouth open. Like certain counsellors do, like, oh I don’t know, that guy from the Apollo cabin. But you still want to see them all the time, and do— do things like kissing them, or whatever.”

As Cecil kept talking, Nico’s stomach descended from somewhere around his sternum down to his feet. It sounded too familiar. Nico couldn’t even remember the last time he’d nagged Will to shut his mouth while chewing at dinner, even though he distinctly recalled doing just that the first time he and Will had shared a meal in the infirmary. And, to his own abject distress, he did want to be with Will, even right now when he was on call at the infirmary for the next two hours, and how did he even know that—

“—and you keep track of what they’re up to without even meaning to, like Damien will totally deny that he has Chiara’s training schedule memorised, or how Connor always knows when Mitchell’s on cleaning duty,” Cecil steamrolled on, unaware of Nico’s growing crisis. “And it doesn’t really matter that you come from super different backgrounds or that—”

“Okay, thanks Cecil!” Nico nearly had to shout over what was quickly becoming an unstoppable tangent. “This has been…” Nico had been planning to say ‘helpful,’ but that didn’t feel quite right. Cecil looked at him like he’d forgotten Nico was there. “Thanks,” he finished lamely.

“Oh,” Cecil said, blinking back to reality. “Well, yeah, no problem. Anything to help out a fellow ‘normal teen,’ right?” His face stretched in a sideways grin before he turned back to the rack of bows. “If you feel even a couple of those things, it’s probably a sign. And if all else fails, just imagine kissing him, and if you’re not totally grossed out, you should go for it.”

That advice didn’t prove to be… entirely helpful. Intellectually, somewhere in the back of his brain, Nico knew there were strong feelings for Will. He wasn’t even sure why he’d talked to Cecil in the first place, although in hindsight, maybe even the fact of asking him about it proved that there was something there.

Not to mention kissing . That definitely was out of Nico’s depth. Sure, he’d considered it, but only as an objective thing that people do sometimes. The particular life he’d lived had never left room for thinking about actually doing it with someone. But now that Cecil had told him to think about it, he had to actively try not to think about it, which of course made him think about it more . He thought about it when he was brushing his teeth in the morning, he thought about it at the weekly counsellors’ meeting, he thought about it during training and meals and before he fell asleep every night. He couldn’t get the stupid idea out of his head.

“What’s up with you?” Will asked, sliding into the seat across from Nico at the dining pavilion a few days after his conversation with Cecil.

Nico dragged his eyes up from his plate. “What?”

“You’ve been totally distracted this whole week. We literally haven’t hung out once. Is something going on with your dad?”

“Oh,” Nico said, flushing. Apparently, his crisis was now witnessable. And that the crisis wasn’t even anything as serious as his dad. “Just a weird week, I guess.” 

Will hummed and started to pick at his food. Nico considered him, objectively. Will was right; it’d been at least a week since they’d last spent time together, and while nothing monumental had shifted, it still felt to Nico as if there’d been a serious change between them. Even though Will looked the same as always: overworked, excitable, warm. Unconsciously, Nico’s gaze zeroed in on Will’s mouth, soft-looking and suddenly available for appraisal. What might it feel like to lean over and just…

“I swear, everyone’s gone crazy,” Will said, rolling his eyes. “You’re spacing on me, Cecil’s being all giggly every time I try to talk to him, Austin won’t get off my back about—” He cut himself off abruptly.

Nico raised an eyebrow. “About…?”

A blush rose high on Will’s ears. “Nothing, just infirmary stuff.”

I’m infirmary stuff, Nico realised with a stupid little tug in his gut. And for once, he didn’t chide himself out of the feeling. He let the unfamiliar warmth swallow him up, and basked in the knowledge that not only did Will like him, he wanted Will to like him. For the first time in his life, a crush felt less like a life sentence and more like a possibility.

It took another month before Nico was prepared to even think about saying anything, and they were fully in the throes of autumn. Apart from a few side trips to rescue local demigods and one disastrous attempt to set a quest to find Apollo, absolutely nothing had changed. 

When Will returned from that very attempt desolate but altogether unharmed, Chiron and a few of the head counsellors decided that it might be time for a bonfire to raise spirits. It didn’t exactly work, as the flames remained a resolute purple colour and never broke a few feet in height, but the night air held the promise of frost and with it, a kind of new beginning. Will and Nico were crammed together on a log as usual, flanked by Will’s siblings. Kayla had fallen asleep halfway through what Nico knew to be Will’s third retelling of the events of his quest, even though it could barely be called that, and was leaning heavily on Nico’s shoulder. Will was shooting him apologetic glances as he fielded interrogations from the other campers as best he could, but Nico was only glad he could be by his side, helping to shoot down the most insensitive of the questions. Chiron was hovering by the edge of the flames, obviously discouraged that this had turned into another failed quest recap rather than the morale boost he’d intended.

“Alright, I think that’s enough,” Nico interjected as Valentina asked for the third time whether they’d checked Staten Island. If there was one thing he’d learned during his time being an actual, participating camper, it was how to read the room. “I think we should all probably head to bed. It’s been a long day for some of us.” He glanced toward Will, checking that he wasn’t overstepping, and was taken aback by the pure and shining gratitude in his eyes. He shot a quick half smile back, and got to work prying Kayla off of him.

It took a few more encouraging words from Chiron for the campers to leave Will alone, but before long, everyone was traipsing back to their cabins, and Will was turning to Nico. “Walk you to your cabin?”
Nico felt a bite of that familiar, now welcome warmth. “Sure.” 

After shooing Austin and Kayla back to Cabin Seven, Will let out a huge sigh and turned back to Nico. “Let’s hit it.”

The walk was silent for so long that Nico was worried Will would stay silent altogether. He stared out into the trees surrounding the arc of the cabins, wondering if any of the answers they were looking for were hiding out there. Why hadn’t they been able to find anything yet? Why wasn’t Will talking to him? Nico couldn’t decide which conflict should take priority in his head.

“Hey, uh, I wanted to say sorry,” Will said suddenly. They’d reached Cabin Thirteen, and Nico unthinkingly took one step up to the door, putting him exactly, intimidatingly at eye level with Will.

“What?”

“I just… I know things have been weird lately,” Will continued, pausing slightly. “But—”

“Will, you don’t have to apologise,” Nico said, bemused. “It’s a lot, all this stuff with your dad, and not being able to do a quest because Rachel’s been silent, and these demigods turning up on top of all your regular duties. It’s a weird time. We’re on the edge of another Great Prophecy or something, gods forbid we have one moment of rest—”

Will stopped him by putting a hand on his shoulder, then seemed to think better of it and brought it back down to his side. “Nico, I… that’s not really what I meant.”

“Oh,” Nico said. Now he was really confused. Without gods and quests and impending doom, what was there to talk about? 

“Well, um.” Will was shifting foot to foot, clearly uncomfortable. Suddenly, he wasn’t meeting Nico’s eyes anymore. “You can’t make fun of me for saying this.”

“No promises.”

“Seriously.” But there was a glint of a smile there now, too. “Okay. I don’t know why I’m saying this now, except I’ve just gone on this quest that was barely a quest, and we’ve pulled all these demigods out of life threatening situations and I’m realising how fragile a relationship, or whatever, can be, so before all this becomes another Great Prophecy like you said, I wanted to get this out of the way, so we’re both on the same page. Because I care about us, and, like, the wellbeing of our friendship.

“So, um. I wanted to say that… I just really like you, Nico. Like, so much. And I know you’re not stupid, you’ve probably figured it out by now, I’ve been told I’m not subtle.” Here, a small huff of a laugh before more shifting glances and twisting hands. “But I get it. I can pick up a signal. So I wanted to let you know that I’m going to back off, and we can just be friends, and that’ll be that.”

A deafening silence. For the first time, Will’s eyes flicked up to meet Nico’s.

“Oh,” is all Nico can manage to breathe out. 

Awkwardly, Will seemed to come to some conclusion in his head. He nodded. “Okay, well… good night, Nico. I’ll— I’ll see you tomorrow.”

He was halfway across the lawn before the meaning of his words caught up to Nico. Oh. The hugs, lingering looks, the… flirting? It all went unsaid, but of course Will had to make sure he was well within his rights to continue. Of course he would be looking for any and all signs that Nico wanted it to stop. He was a caretaker first and foremost, a good friend, a good person, someone who cared so much about Nico that he wouldn’t even consider his own feelings if it infringed on Nico’s comfort. He was— he was—

“Will!” And Nico was sprinting unthinkingly toward him, catching up with him in the middle of the green, grabbing his hand to pull him around, and not even giving the surprise on Will’s face or his own self doubt a second thought before leaning in to press his mouth to Will’s.

Nico’s heart immediately dropped down to his feet as his self consciousness caught up with him and he pulled away, but Will didn’t let him get far, pulling him back in to connect their mouths again. Nico tried to process the sensation, something totally new, but something he’d wanted for so long he hadn’t let himself even think the thought, and now it felt already familiar, like it was the natural conclusion they’d been headed to all along. They just both had to choose it first.

As first kisses went, it wasn’t spectacular, not much more than a press of lips on lips. But Nico never wanted it to end. He pushed up onto his toes and let himself fall into Will’s lead, the gentle opening and slotting of mouths, the hands cupping necks and grasping onto waists and shoulders.

And then it was over and Nico was stumbling back and Will looked rooted in place, fingers over his mouth, and Nico just wanted to kiss him again and again, just to get that stupid smile back onto his face. How had they managed to wait so long?

“Good night, Will,” Nico said, almost unable to control the grin spreading across his face. “Um, see you tomorrow?” He started to walk backward to his cabin, knowing the harpies would be out for blood if they stayed up any longer. 

Will, though, wasn’t moving, just looking at Nico with the same shine he’d had in his eyes at the campfire. “Okay,” he said.

“You should go back to your cabin,” Nico called, almost all the way back to his own porch. 

“Okay,” Will said again, still smiling dopily. 

“Go to bed, Will,” he called again, certain Will’s expression was mirrored on his own face.

Finally, Will turned and walked back to his cabin, skipping every other step. Nico let out an honest-to-gods cackle at the sight. How had he managed to wait so long? He turned back to his own door, heart pounding and palms sweaty, but so, so ridiculously giddy with the new memory of the kiss, and the promise of what might be to come at breakfast, the next week, the next year. 

Now that was a feeling he could get used to.