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mediumgayitalian · 9 months ago

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Twenty minutes later, Solace hurries out of his cabin in cowboy boots.

And jeans.

Nico gapes at him.

“Go go go go go, questions later,” Will hisses, herding him behind the Apollo cabin. “We are on a time limit, we gotta —”

“You’re wearing close-toed shoes.”

“Yes, yes, sometimes I wear the clothes that I own. Wild. Let’s go.” Will tugs, uselessly, on his arm, but Nico’s half-certain his jaw has taken root in the ground, cementing him in place, because what the actual shit.

“Solace, you wore flip-flops to the snow-smothered bus stop in January. I thought you had, like, a condition!”

“I do have a condition. It’s called You Are Not Hurrying, Death Breath, let’s go —”

This time when he pulls, Nico stumbles after him, ducking under windowsills and inching around flower gardens. Every time someone so much as looks in their direction, Will plants both hands on his chest and shoves them into a corner somewhere, craning his neck to watch until they move on. Every time he does, another piece of Nico’s soul breaks away from his body and descends into hell. There is an actual trail of bones and tilled earth and dead grass behind him. Will doesn’t need to worry about being stealthy — the death aura of Nico’s dignity is large enough to scare off anything within a four mile radius.

“In here!”

Undeterred by the death aura, for some reason, Will seizes his bicep and shoves him in a crack between the Hypnos and Dionysus cabins. He slips in a millisecond later, crowding him against the warm bricks, forearm pressed awkwardly next to Nico’s head.

“Hnggh,” Nico gasps, mournfully wishing his last sliver of self-respect goodbye. Rest in fucking peace. “Do you have to be so — close, Will, gods —”

“Shhh!”

“If you shush me again I am going to rip your throat out —”

“Go, go, go!”

Yanked forward again, Nico doesn’t have the time to finish his threat. This time, at least, they sprint the final stretch to the shed without any more hiding and shoving.

Thank all the fucking gods. One more second of Will’s stupid torso — since fucking when does he wear polo shirts, huh, what the shit fuck is up with that — pressed against his and Nico’s bronchitis was going to come back. And this time he’s going to succumb to it.

“Okay,” Will says. He stands in front of a tarp-covered lump, gripping one side and jutting his chin out at the other. “On three, we tear this off and start pushing. We need past Thalia’s tree in under thirty seconds. Got it?”

“No,” Nico says stubbornly, “you still haven’t explained what the rush is —”

“One two three go!”

Will, unfortunately, has been tricking ADHD teenagers into doing things they don’t want to do for years, so Nico’s ripping off the tarp and shoving the chariot out of its stall faster than he can register what he’s doing. He practically sprints to keep up with Will, chariot wheels creaking happily as they rush over stones and sticks and forgotten weapons.

“We’re leaving now, Chiron! Bye!” Will hollers, moving too fast to give him a second to respond. Luckily, Chiron is similarly busy, galloping after a speeding Harley without more than a backwards wave and a sharp don’t die, please!

“That dynamite I gave Harley’ll only keep everyone distracted another thirty seconds,” Will mutters, ignoring Nico’s alarmed the fucking what you gave Harley, “so we need to move, let’s go.”

“Will — slow down a half fucking second, Christ, not everyone is seventy percent leg — we don’t even have pegasi!”

“Will you keep it down.” Will looks back and forth, eyes wide, like he’s worried someone is going to pop up with a pack of the winged animals. “Just — stop asking questions! We’re almost home free!”

“You’ve gone insane. It’s finally, actually happened, after all these years, who woulda thought, fully bonkers at age sixteen —”

“Oh, shut up.”

Muttering his complaints, Nico helps him push the infernal chariot down Half-Blood Hill. Among his grievances, he makes it abundantly clear that 1) this is stupid, 2) he did not agree to physical labour, 3) he would not have agreed to come if he had known about the physical labour, and 4) this is stupid.

“Just a few more yards, then we can —”

“Okay, no, that’s it.” Nico lets go of the chariot, letting the wheel dig into the soft ground and send the whole thing halting. He meets Will’s pout head-on; arms crossed, jaw set, foot tapping, refusing to give into those big blue eyes.

“C’mon, Neeks.” A faint explosion sounds off in the distance. Will’s eyes get more pleading, more hopeful. “We won’t have much time after the diversion wears off…”

“You have three seconds before I turn the hell around, Solace.”

“Please?”

“One.”

He pushes uselessly at the chariot. It spins a sad little circle without someone pushing the other side. “Neeks!”

“Two.”

“Alright, fine! Help me push again and I’ll explain on the way down.”

“Much easier when you just do as I say,” Nico grumbles, starting to push the stupid (horseless and therefore useless) chariot again. “Isn’t it?”

Will, predictably, rolls his eyes, although he can’t quite help the smile that pulls at his lips. Nico tells the butterflies that go buck fucking wild in his stomach to go to hell. This does nothing.

“How much do you know about the chariot?” Will asks eventually, after a couple minutes of shoving the stupid thing past a deep trench in the soil, leftover from the war. (Nico is going to set the fucking thing on fire. It’s a flying chariot — shouldn’t it be lightweight? Why is he suffering?) They’re nearly three quarters down the hill, and it takes everything Nico has not to risk it all and shadow travel the last couple dozen feet. Yeah, it might kill him, but then his problem would immediately go away. Tempting does not begin to cover it.

“Uh, big source of drama, right? Apollo and Ares worked together to seize it, argued over who got to keep it?”

He cuts a careful glance over to Will, well aware it’s a sensitive topic. He knows the question isn’t a trap — Will would never do that to him — but it’s probably best to tread lightly. As far as he’s concerned, this is a sore point that’ll take more than a couple years to heal.

Luckily, there’s no tension to Will’s face. “Mhm. I wasn’t there for much of the planning, ‘cause I was busy in the infirmary and also, like, twelve, but it took a lot of time on both sides. When Michael and everyone seized it, though, it glowed gold.”

“…Ah.”

Will snorts at his awkwardness, nudging his shoulder. “Yeah. Sure made it hard for the Ares cabin to claim, as dicey as it may be. Here, help me park it on the side of the road.”

There’s a thatch of weeds and undergrowth separating the road from the base of the hill, so dragging the chariot over is a struggle and a half. Nico can’t help but think that this task would be very easy if the chariot was harnessed to a couple pegasi and flying over the fucking thatch, as it is meant to do. When he voices this very valid thought, Will does not respond.

He does walk into a thistle, though, so Nico feels considerably better about the whole ordeal.

“The thing about the blessing —” Will grunts, yanking the chariot onto the gravel shoulder with one final tug — “is that it’s not that big of a deal. My dad blesses shit all the time. Our cabin is blessed. The infirmary is blessed. Hell, half my scalpels are blessed, and I throw those things out all the time ‘cause they’re dangerous when they get dull. Just because my dad blessed it doesn’t mean we actually have to keep it.”

“Okay…” Nico says slowly, “then why was it such a big deal?”

“The blessing on its own wasn’t.” Will’s voice gets fainter as he lowers himself onto the pavement, dragging himself under the belly of the chariot. Nico is confused for a full three seconds before a particularly rough patch of asphalt snags Will’s shirt and drags, and wow, are those jeans low rise. His throat is suddenly very dry. “Blessing a chariot on the other hand…”

Will makes a dorky little noise of success, crawling back from under the chariot. When he resurfaces, he’s grinning, carved piece of wood the same material as the chariot clenched in his hand. There’s soot smeared across his left cheek, his curls have tangled themselves into more of a mess than usual, and there are three separate scuff marks on his nice jeans.

Nico ducks his head, hiding a smile. What a dorky loser. Even dressed up as he is (boy, has Nico fallen low, if he’s calling jeans and cowboy boots dressed up), he still manages to look like…Will.

A really, really hot version of Will, but. Whatever. Details.

“The hell is that?”

“This,” Will says grandly, feeling around the wall of the chariot until he finds a specific spot, “is the reason my brother gave a fuck about a dumbass chariot.” He sticks the edge of the wooden tool in a tiny groove, wedging it open to reveal a hidden panel and a small, golden button. Nico meets Will’s grin with raised eyebrows, impressed.

“What do you know about Michael?”

“Uh, not too much.”

“You think he, in any reality, would have had that much interest in a hunk of wood?”

Nico had scarcely met him more than a couple times, but Michael Yew made an impression, that was for sure. For someone who was shorter than Nico when he was ten years old, he sure took up a lot of space. In the few times Nico remembers seeing him, he’d been concerned with his bow, his camera, or showing any given person who so much as blinked at him wrong just how quickly he could turn their ass concave. If Nico is correct, actually, the one time he and a pegasus had been in the same vicinity, they’d hissed at each other. Nico didn’t even know pegasi could hiss.

He tries to find a delicate way to say this.

“He seemed more interested in other endeavours,” he says politely.

Will laughs loudly. “He would rather shove an arrow in his eye than race a chariot!” His bright smile is impossible not to match, and Nico is relieved to find him totally comfortable, relaxed; hell, even excited. Usually, any talk of his siblings, even fond, makes him quiet. He’s glad for this change, however unusual. “Man, I loved my brother more than anything, but he was the most ornery motherfucker I’ve ever met in my life. He taught me every swear in every language by the time I was nine, just because he knew it would drive Lee batty. He didn’t care about some spoil of war.”

He smirks, wide and devilish, and Nico’s knees go weak. Dimples like that should be illegal.

“He was smart, though. And he figured, if dad’s blessing made this chariot anything like his own…”

He reaches out and presses the golden button with his thumb, letting go and standing back once he registers a faint click. After a couple seconds, the chariot begins to glow, soft at first, then brighter, then Nico has to squeeze his eyes shut to avoid the stinging burn, and then when he opens them, it —

He gapes. Will grins.

Where the chariot used to be, is now a shiny, brand-new, black and yellow motorbike, two helmets gleaming on the sparkling leather seat.

“…Then it might be a little more than some lousy chariot.”

Without waiting for Nico to pick his jaw off the floor, Will rushes forward. He tosses one of the helmets to Nico — which he barely manages to catch, still working on processing what the fuck just happened — and tucks the other under his arm. Nico happens to notice how his biceps flex with the action, and then vows to have his father bankrupt the entire polo shirt industry, because he can never be caught lacking like this by any mortal soul. It’s humiliating.

There’s a click as Will unlatches the seat, lifting it up to access the compartment under it. He pulls out a bundle mass of black fabric, and with a flick of his shoulders reveals it to be a fucking leather jacket and oh, gods, Nico takes back the polo shirt complaints, he can live with the polo shirt. This is too much. This is —

“Any time you’re done ogling at me, you can climb on,” Will calls out. He doesn’t even have the good grace to look in Nico’s direction, instead sliding on the seat facing resolutely forward, amused smirk on his face. And because he wants Nico to die, actually, he straightens his jacket, making sure it fits his shoulders right (by the gods does it ever) brushes his hair backwards (there is no genuine reason for someone’s hair to actually shine in the sunlight) and slides his helmet on. When he finally does look back in Nico’s direction, through his raised visor, the combined sight of his sparkling blue eyes and the cut of his face under the angular helmet actually gives him tachycardia.

“I hate you,” Nico croaks. “Not joking.”

Will throws his head back and laughs, baring his long, tanned throat. Nico follows the bob of his adam’s apple like Tantalus does the forbidden fruit. It’s horrible, and what’s worse is that Will is visibly preening like the fuckin’ peacock he is. Someone should remind him he’s basically a dressed up turkey. Or something. Nico’s brain is operating at twenty percent capacity, his ability to metaphor properly is a secondary concern.

“Just get over here, you goober. We’re on a time limit, remember?”

Shoving his helmet on to hide his flaming face, Nico does, sliding on with a healthy four inches of space between them.

“Mm, not gonna work, ParaNorman. This thing’s enchanted, we’ll be going well over a hundred. Hold on properly.”

Praying to seven different gods for strength, at once, Nico scooches the agonizing few inches closer.

“Hands around waist, Death Boy.”

“I’m fucking — I’m getting there, you asshole, gimme a goddamn second.”

“Do you need help?”

“I need you to shut the fuck up so I can focus.”

Maybe it’s the healer in him, or maybe there actually is a god looking out for Nico and they decide to have mercy. Maybe it’s a third option. Either way, Will reaches back and wraps his callused hands around Nico’s wrist, tugging them gently forward and resting them on the narrow curve of his hips. Nico holds them there, along with his breath, until some of the panicky tension starts to loosen in his chest, and he relaxes forward, resting his chest against Will’s back.

“There,” he says quietly, humming with approval when Nico’s arms link properly around his waist. He squeezes his clasped wrists once — a silent you good? — and waits for Nico’s minute nod, face buried in the back of Will’s neck, before starting up the engine, revving it twice before leaning forward, body flush to the bike. Nico can practically feel his grin, it’s so clear in his mind’s eye, in the delight thrumming through Will’s entire body, that he can’t help his own smile, too, can’t help but feel the thrum of the machine, the sharp smell in the air. He tightens his hold and Will lets out a loud, whooping laugh.

“Let’s ride, baby!”

With a push off the ground and a twist of a thrusters, they’re off, leaving behind only the echo of the roaring engine and the joyful, startled sound of Nico’s shriek.

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