Nico's Cabin

“Actually, no, we’re not going to my cabin.”
“Nico-”
“What’s wrong with your cabin?”
“Too many people. What’s wrong with your cabin?”
“It’s dark, black, and made for corpses. People always seem to assume the children of the dead are the dead.”
“Perfect.”
“What about the-” Nico fidgeted. He twitched. He suddenly felt his mouth go very dry. “What about the rule where, uh, two non-siblings aren’t allowed to be alone in the same cabin?”
Will Solace had been itching to get away from the campfire the second they sat down, for no apparent reason. Not that Nico really had a fond desire for singing camp songs. Actually, on normal campfire nights, when Will nudged him to join along in the songs, Nico would protest- loud and clear- that he didn't like using his vocal chords in such a manner. He was just confused as to why it was tonight especially that Will also suddenly came to this realization.
The second this question came out of Nico’s mouth, though, Will’s itching had stilled. Something twisted inside the son of Hades. What? Had Nico done something wrong?
The opposite, apparently. A smile truly worthy of the son of Apollo lit up the camp.
And he began to drag Nico’s hand- yanking along with the rest of him- towards the Hades cabin.
“Okay,” Nico announced, his heart hammering through his skin, annoyed and flustered at the same time. “You know. There’s that answer. That answer where you don’t answer at all.”
“I knew it,” Will Solace insisted, very unhelpfully. His gaze was set forward, his thumb rubbing the inside of Nico’s hand. Something fluttered in that very hand. Will quirked the tiniest of smiles.
Nico suddenly became very self-aware. He realized that Will, being a medic, could feel- and probably measure- Nico’s rapid heartbeat. He wanted to pull his hand away. He wanted to stop them in their tracks. And he tried. But Will continued to tug.
“There’s also t-that,” Nico stuttered on a word and cursed himself. Very macho. Very suave. “Where you say vague things and then refuse to elaborate? Makes for, uh-”
He swallowed. Will was grinning back at him, almost sarcastically. The Cabin of Hades loomed before them, suddenly scarier than it’d ever been before.
Nico forgot what he was going to say.
“Yeah, actually, you’re right.” Will noted distastefully, lacing his fingers through Nico’s fingers as he glanced at the Hades cabin. Nico didn’t even know what was happening. He didn’t know what was going on.
“I know,” Nico said automatically, grasping onto any part of his mind that was working. He honestly wanted to kick himself in the face right now. He was a complete wreck. “But… what am I right about?”
“Your cabin is pretty Underworld-y.” Will glanced at it again.
Nico stared in complete shock at the guy next to him, in his Apollo shine and glory. “I know,” he said in absolute disbelief, unable to think of anything else to say. “It’s a cabin of Hades.” Did Will think Nico’d been exaggerating when he said it was dark and gloomy?
Will shrugged and began to walk up the steps to go in, with Nico (of course) following behind in a stupor.
“And you’ve even been to my cabin,” Nico threw his hands up, regaining some of his old balance. He slipped into a more comfortable Nico, with Will’s hand not distracting his own by, like, touching it, and stuff. He started to remember how to act again. “You know what it’s like! If you were surprised just by the outer appearance, you might be in over your-”
But once Nico walked in, it wasn’t Will that was in over his head.
It was Nico.
Every bit of comfort that Nico’d regained washed away in a simple few seconds, because he was up against a wall, and there were hands in his hair, and he immediately panicked and reached blindly for his sword before realizing just exactly what was happening.
And even after the realization settled in, he still couldn’t process it.
“I-” Nico tried to function. His brain was melting. His heart was melting.
“Dude,” Will glanced down at him, highlighted by the warm amber light, raising his eyebrows. He ducked down to give Nico another pressing kiss, pushing his body against the obsidian walls. It was still and deep, and Nico’s heart spiked up his throat, gasping for air.
“I-” he said again.
Foreheads touched. Nico had to cross his eyes to look at Will’s- pale blue and bright. They narrowed a little. “Can you not talk?”
Nico was clearly and fully aware of the heat creeping up his throat. He couldn’t speak. He just narrowed his own eyes, in self-defense, while Will laughed and put one hand on Nico’s back and another hand in the guy’s shaggy black hair.
This was a first kiss… The first time he’d done anything like this… And Nico could barely believe it. He was almost numb, not really understanding, repeating over and over in his head this is really happening this is really happening thi sisreal ly happeNINg
“Wait,” a thought seemed to occur to Will Solace. He pulled back, into the moving golden lights that threw themselves onto his white-blonde hair and played with the shadows on his face. He laced his hands through Nico’s, again. He asked, almost casually, as though he knew the answer, “You do want this, right?”
And automatically, with his heart soaring and his hands tickling and his brain melting and his throat wanting to sing (and Nico Di Angelo didn’t sing) and his body warmed with a happiness he couldn’t contain, with all his feelings catching up with him and overwhelming him in this giant mess, Nico stupidly said, “No, I don’t.”
It was instinct. He’d been ready to deny any crush-feelings to Will for a couple months now, just in case the subject ever came up, so Will wouldn’t ever have to feel uncomfortable. It’d be a little painful, sure, but he’d much much muchrather have Will as a friend in his life than have him not be there at all.
Will stared. His cheekbones and face were all soft, but angled. Smoothed edges, but edges nonetheless. For once, he seemed at a loss of words. “Your pulse. It was fast. And you were nervous about us being alone together. And people said you got over your crush on Percy Jackson.”
Nico was so stupid he was so stupid he was so stupid he couldn’t talk he couldn’t find the words to save himself, save this why can’t he speak what was wrong with him why is it that he can only manage to say, “I-”
Understanding settled in Will’s pale eyes. “Oh. You were nervous because you didn’t feel that way about me. You didn’t want me to get the wrong idea.”
The pause was awkward, and tension was thick. Nico still couldn’t find his voice what was wrong with him-
“Oh, my gods. I’m so sorry, man.” Will winced, stepping back, his hands leaving Nico’s. Immediately Nico began to feel the loss. He felt the light leave him. He felt the sunshine drain away. He felt like something needed to be in his hands, in his hair, on his lips. Now that he’d gotten a taste of it, he knew what he was missing out on, and he still couldn’t find the words to say what he needed to say!
“Nico,” Will’s voice was impossibly kind, so different than it’d ever been before. It wasn’t how he talked regularly- that was more sarcastic, carefree. It definitely wasn’t how he normally talked to Nico, with biting remarks and rolling eyes and a firm, infuriating stubbornness. And it wasn’t even like how he talked to sick people- very soothing, very calming, very firm, very sure of himself.
Will, right now, was so vulnerable and so understanding that it threw Nico off balance even more than he’d been before. “It’s okay. It really is okay. I understand. I shouldn’t have gone so crazy like that. I,” Will laughed, some color tinting his cheeks. “Just kind of went with my instinct. Gods, Nico, I’m so sorry.”
“No, it’s okay,” Nico said automatically. He groaned out loud, putting his face in his hands, shaking himself to get a grip. That’s not what he should have said. ‘No, it’s okay’ means an acceptance to an apology. There should have been no apology in the first place. What he should have said was ’No, Will, don’t be sorry, because I’m not sorry, and I want to make out again.’
So he set his thoughts straight, and looked up, but when he looked up, Will was wincing even more. He thinks I’m embarrassed, Nico realized, wanting to kick himself more than ever.
“Nico. Again, I’m- but you know I’m sorry. Here, I’ll just give you a couple of days to recover, I guess? And we can talk about it later. We can still be friends, Nico- I’ll never pull anything like that ever again, I swear- But we can talk about that tomorrow- anyways. I’m just making things worse, aren’t I?”
And Will waited for a second. One last chance, one last chance for Nico to answer. One chance for Nico to fix it all. He opened his mouth, but it was too slow, and Will was already waving from the door, embarrassed, red, and the second Will was gone Nico’s mind snapped back to place and time wasn’t slow and his mind wasn’t sluggish and he realized what had just happened in his gloomy little Hades cabin and suddenly Nico was running and he knew what he had to do and Will had already started jogging and Nico barrelled himself at him and spun the guy around and stared at his wide eyes face-to-face and took a deep breath and forced himself not to get unfocused and say the damn words-
“Will Solace, you piece of crap, you threw me off guard and almost made me screw everything up back there-oh-my-gods-do-you-know-how-close-I-was-to-letting-you-walk-away-all-because-of-my-stupid-malfunctioning-mouth?”
And Nico grabbed onto the stupid idiot’s shirt and pulled him down with a savage force that almost made him rip the fabric and it was Nico’s turn to put his hands in someone else’s hair and gods it was fun-
“I’m the piece of crap?” Will’s face began to stir again, awakening from its shock. The words moved against Nico’s lips.
Nico really wished Will would start to move like he did back in the Hades cabin. It was Nico’s first (well, second, now) time kissing. He was a little rusty at it. He brought his hands down to the soft curves of the boy’s face.
“Yes. Shut up.”
But of course Will didn’t. He pulled away, glaring. “What was that heart attack you just gave me? Why did you tell me you didn’t want this?”
Nico groaned. He wanted the sunshine hair fluff back, so he could tangle his hands in it some more.
“I don’t want to say I’m an idiot,” he grumped grouchily.
“But you’re an idiot?”
“I’m not going to answer that.”
“I don’t understand why-”
“Solace.” It was crazy how an act of speedy insanity gave Nico the courage to admit these next words, “I was scared, and it was my first kiss, and I was overwhelmed.”
It only took a beat for Will to laugh out loud, outrageously. He doubled over, and Nico soured. “You were overwhelmed by the heat? Of the kiss?”
“Solace-”
“I didn’t realize I was that good.”
“I’m going to kill you.”
“So good I almost ruined the relationship itself.”
“Do you want to make out or not?”
The words seemed foreign to Nico. Make out. Him. Nico Di Angelo. And Will Solace.
But the son of Apollo took the offer. He laughed, happily, leaning down to bump noses with Nico before tugging on his belt loops. Lips crashed, a hand firmly placed itself at the back of Nico’s neck, and the other intertwined ten fingers together- five from the boy of darkness, five from the boy of sunshine.
A clawing happiness made Nico smile uncontrollably through the kiss, and Will smiled also, and Nico snaked his arms around the other boy’s waist, and Will closed his eyes and gave the tiniest breath of air.
And after a while of kissing, they rested, standing, hands woven firmly together, tight at their sides, rooted in a kiss, foreheads leaning into each other, unmoving, eyes closed, smiles on their faces.
“We really almost messed that up,” Will murmured, barely. Nothing else except his lips moved.
Nico laughed. He was giddy, high on life, high on sunshine-
“I told you,” his words fell from his lips in the smallest puffs of air- it was scarcely audible. “Not to go to my cabin. It’s cursed.”
Will snorted softly. He thought about it.
They stayed motionless, again, for another while.
“Well,” Will said, at last. “We should test that theory out again sometime.”

Notes

I miss fan fiction. I haven't been doing a story in what, two months now? I'm still "working on my novel", although I gave myself a pretty good chunk of a break from it, and now I'm going to get into writing some short stories. I don't want to take on a huge fan fiction story like The Rebirth again because it'll probably be really sucky and cast aside a lot. So if anyone wants to do, like, a small, simple collab or something, hmu. :)

love you all. even though everyone seems to have disappeared from this site for the holidays.
<3