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mediumgayitalian · 1 year ago

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Will wakes up to Pierce the Veil, this morning.

He buries his head in his pillow and screams as loud as he can.

Of course, it does nothing. The music is playing inside his head, because his father is the most annoying being ever to pop into existence. Apollo’s children get whatever song suits their father’s current mood — not a good sign that it’s emo today, fuck — blasted directly into their cranium as the sun crests over the horizon, every single day, just so they know how much their dear papa is thinking of them.

Will, however, is head counsellor. And as head counsellor, he gets his daily brain torture exactly one half hour before the sun rises, because fuck him, apparently.

Has he not been through enough.

He screams again, quieter this time, conscientious of his still-sleeping siblings. The song does not go away. It will not go away until he is on his feet, any chance of unconsciousness having swiftly betrayed him.

The creaky floorboards groan in protest as he slams onto them, not bothering to remove himself from his blankets before rolling onto the floor. He considers remaining there, in the fetal position, strangling himself in his tangled sheets, for twelve point three seconds. Then he remembers he has a stupid shift in the stupid infirmary that he stupid runs, and forces himself to get up.

“Being alive is a prison,” he laments hoarsely. It has, tragically, considerably less effect when there is no one awake to hear his complaints, because it is four forty-two in the godsdamn mcshitting fucking morning.

His father is not getting so much as a grape as an offering today. He’s going to scrape an entire plate for Auntie Artemis.

He takes an extra-long time brushing his teeth, spitefully determined to be two minutes late for his shift. No one will notice, because no one is awake. The thought soothes him.

Nine minutes to his shift, he forces himself out of the bathroom and pads over to his dresser. He has no surgeries planned, today, so he’s not gonna bother with the scrubs, and he’s gotta do inventory, so he needs pockets. He picks out his head medic shirt and his lucky cargo shorts and starts to dress himself, squeezing his eyes shut to try and force his muscles into keeping him awake. He can do this. It’s fine. He’s got training with Nico today, so that’s something he can look forward to. If he can distract Kayla and her teasing mouth with training Gracie, he can ogle all he pleases as the son of Hades attempts, for the ninetieth time, to teach him how to use a sword without beheading himself. It’ll be great.

He barely manages to swallow back a shriek when he misses the leg hole for his shorts and goes sprawling.

Fuck mornings. This is an omen. He should go the fuck back to sleep.

As if hearing his thoughts, the stupid song in his head blasts louder. It’s hard to make out the words with all the screaming and drums and all, but he’s almost certain he hears the lyrics, don’t you dare!

“Al-right,” he snaps, scowling. “I’m going, I’m going. Lemme get my damn shirt on, yeesh.”

It takes him a second to find the head hole in the dark — because the godsdamn sun is not up yet — but after a minute of fumbling he manages.

He realizes, the second he tugs it over his chest, that something is wrong.

“What the —”

Now, Will orders his shirts in bulk. He has to. He’s the only one wearing them, after all, and the sheer amount of times per day that he is covered in bodily fluids is a number he chooses, for sake of his sanity, not to count. He is well used to the process of ordering his shirts along with other linen and infirmary supplies. Every fortnight, without fail, he orders a set of orange Head Medic t-shirts one size too big, because it gives him a little breathing room without being too baggy.

When he pulls on this shirt, however, it practically clings to his skin. He can practically feel the fabric groaning as it stretches over his broad shoulders.

And, worst of all — the hem barely brushes the edge of his ribcage.

“Austin,” he growls, practically lunging for his drawer to inspect the rest of them.

As he suspected, each one of them has shrunk. If it weren’t for the Head Medic decal printed across them in bold, Will would assume his laundry was mixed up with Yan’s.

“Why do I still try to assign him laundry duty,” he hisses, cursing himself for his oversight. He’s been busy lately — he didn’t do a very thorough job writing this week’s chore chart. He must’ve put Austin on laundry, and Austin is never allowed to do laundry, because for whatever reason, no matter what he does, he ruins someone’s clothes.

“Fuck!”

His watch beeps at him, LED display reading five o’clock. His shift has already started. All of his shirts are shrunk, and he’s out of time.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck.”

He shoves his feet into a pair of flipflops, sprinting for the infirmary. Hopefully, today is on the warmer side, or else he’s going to freeze, on top of looking ridiculous. Fuck.

———

Thankfully, the first couple hours of his shift are blissfully empty and quiet. With no one to distract him, he manages to finish the laundry list of chores he’s been putting off the last week — nectar and ambrosia restock, cabinet reordering, file sorting, et cetera. He has the place spick and span in under ninety minutes.

Unthankfully, he starts to get bored fast.

Feeling an awful lot like his father, which is unfortunate, he begins to slip into what his siblings call “the dramatics” (and what Will calls rational emotional responses, but, take some, lose some). Without his permission, he begins to glance at the door every few minutes, disappointed every time no one is there. He spins around his desk chair, kicking half-heartedly at the desk. He sighs, once or twice, with a tone that he would call tastefully bored and Lou Ellen might label as histrionic. After a half hour, there is on his face, Will cannot deny, a pretty big pout.

In his defense, he can hear the sounds of the rest of the camp waking up through the open windows: laughter, cursing, yawning, Drew chasing her siblings around the camp with her knife, shrieking, promises to return stolen hair straighteners, begging for mercy. Morning sounds. Familiar sounds.

“Ugh,” he mumbles, sinking back into his chair. Then, for good measure, he frowns harder and repeats with more feeling: “Ugh.”

As if summoned by his yearning, disparaging loneliness, the little bell by the door rings as someone stumbles in. Will brightens, jumping to his feet.

“Hi!

“Hey, Will, could I get some ambrosia, Sebastian stole Drew’s straightener and she — woah.” Mitchell freezes. “Um. Woah. Huh?”

Will rushes over to the supply cabinet. “Yeah, of course! I heard the screeching, did she stab him fully or just slash him? Should I come over? Should he come here?”

“Hnngh,” Mitchell says.

Will frowns, hands stilling on the ambrosia. “Mitchell? Are you okay?” He tilts his head. “You’re — really red, dude, maybe you should —”

“I! Hngh! Am fine!” Mitchell shouts, scrambling back from Will’s outstretched hand. He won’t meet Will’s eyes. “Actually, Will, you know what? Sebastian needs to learn, actually, and he’s barely even bleeding, so I’m gonna —” He stumbles backwards, knocking his head into the doorframe. “I’m just going to! You keep that, Will, I’ll chest you — see! I will see you later! Goodbye!”

He turns away and flees, leaving Will alone, again, with a container of ambrosia hanging limply in his fingers.

“That was weird,” he mumbles, and turns to put it back away.

———

Mitchell is far from the first Incident — capitalised, because they are indeed Incidents — of the day.

Maybe a half hour after Mitchell leaves, two more Aphrodite campers walk in. Will smiles, turning to greet them, but before he can even say anything, they shriek in unison and sprint off. As silly as he knows it is, a bubble of hurt begins to bloom in his chest — is everyone actually avoiding him today? Or does it just feel like they are?

(The ADHD makes it hard to tell. He gets his feelings hurt really easily, and constantly has to remind himself what is and isn’t rejection. It doesn’t help that he sometimes feels trapped, as one of the only campers with vitakinesis and therefore constantly in the infirmary. It’s hard not to feel a little isolated. But usually, he’s got his friends and his siblings to remind him he’s not alone. Hopefully, today is just a fluke.)

Nobody else comes into the infirmary during breakfast. Will eats the oatmeal one of the nymphs brings him, smiling at her and thanking her profusely — he hadn’t realized how hungry he was. She leaves pretty quickly, too, but a lot of the nymphs are kinda squeamish around the infirmary, so Will doesn’t think too much of it. In fact, he‘s put most of his shitty morning behind him until Kayla walks in for the start of her shift.

“Huh,” she says, after a solid minute of staring.

Will shifts defensively. “What?”

“Oh, nothing, nothing. Just preparing for our day, brother dear, pay no mind.”

“You are so strange,” he mutters, but he’s long since given up on trying to understand her.

For the next hour, things are almost normal. He and Kayla chat as the freshen up the linen on the cots, treating the odd camper who comes in for lava wall burns or sword scrapes. The infirmary is rarely ever empty once the camp activities start, but in terms of numbers, today’s a pretty slow day. Will starts to feel fidgety pretty quickly.

“Oh, ho ho ho.”

Will grins when he hears his friend’s voice, shoving his clipboard aside and standing to greet them. Lou Ellen and Cecil linger by the door, matching grins on their faces. (Which, usually, would be cause for great alarm, but Will is so bored and so happy to see them that he decides, just this one time, that whomever they’ve just robbed will just have to be an unfortunate victim. Hopefully it wasn’t anything too valuable.)

“Hey, guys! Please tell me you can stay for a bit. I’ve still got a few hours left of my shift and I feel like I’m going to lose my mind.”

“Of course we’ll stay, Willy,” Cecil says innocently. “How could we refuse with such a wonderful view?”

Will is too happy to bother correcting him about his name.

There’s not much to do, so the three of them sit by the nurse’s station and chat. If anyone asks, they’re talking strategy for the upcoming capture the flag game, but really, Lou Ellen heard Damien White from Nike and Chiara Benvenuti from Tyche arguing behind the canoe shed again, so they’re talking shit.

“I honestly don’t get what she sees in him,” Lou Ellen whispers, and Will is nodding fervently, “Right? I mean if she’s happy then good for her, obviously, but come on —”

“Hey, Will?”

Will leans around Cecil, looking for who called him. A group of maybe nine campers crowd around the door, all standing behind one of Cecil’s sisters, Julia. Many of them are giggling.

“We, uh, totally need your help.”

“Here we go,” mutters Cecil. Lou Ellen starts snickering.

Will hardly hears them, absentmindedly grabbing his stethoscope and toolkit.

“What happened? Was there a fight, do you need —”

“Rosamie’s leg is, like, super sprained.” Julia gestures to a younger girl behind her. “We got her this far, but she needs you to lift her to a cot so she can rest.”

“Hermes’ fucking wings,” Cecil says under his breath.

“O….kay,” Will says slowly. “Did you…all need to come for that?”

“My heartbeat is all weird,” pipes up a boy from the back. “I need you to look at that.”

“And I need a band-aid!”

“I broke a nail.”

Their voices start clambering over each other, rapidly getting louder. Will holds up a hand, silencing them.

“Okay, okay, I hear you. If you’re fine to walk, head on over to a cot, I’ll be with you in a minute. Julia, can you help Rosamie —”

“Can’t,” blurts Julia quickly. She holds up her arm after a beat if hesitation. “Totally pulled a muscle. You’ll have to carry her.”

Will furrows his brow. It’s Mitchell all over again.

“Okay, I guess.”

Unwilling to have a group of campers loitering by the doorway any longer, Will gets it over with, scooping up Rosamie with a hand under her knees and behind her back and carrying her to the nearest cot. Will knows that everyone experiences pain differently, but she seems awfully giggly for someone whose leg is apparently sprained.

A cacophony of giggles erupt as he sets her down.

“Gods, Will, do you work out?”

Will flushes. “I do the same training as everyone else, I guess.”

“Cool.”

Will looks at them strangely. How is that cool? He glanced back at his friends, eyebrows raised, but they’re hunched over the station, badly biting back laughter.

“Maybe everyone’s got the flu, or something?” he mutters to himself, even though he knows that’s not true.

He makes quick work of healing the group of campers. Most of them are fine — he couldn’t even find a sprain on Rosamie, but wrapped her knee anyway in case there was more pain. They left as quickly as they came, giggling to each other and running down the porch.

Without even a minute between, another group of campers barged in, just as giggly as the first.

The rest of his shift is chaotic. People practically pour into the infirmary, all with minor, barely there injuries — and all of them demand Will’s help.

Will is no stranger to busy days, but this is nothing he’s ever seen.

“I don’t get it,” Will remarks to his sister in a rare minute of calm, totally bewildered. “It’s like everyone’s suddenly got glass bones.”

Kayla blinks at him. He stares back at her, wide-eyed.

“Yeah,” she drawls, after a minute. She looks him up and down. “What a deeply confounding mystery this is.”

Twelve campers rush in before he can ask her what she’s talking about.

By the time Will manages to escape, it’s an hour past the end of his shift, and he’s crawling out the window in the back office of the Big House to avoid the crowd of people at the front door.

“Solace? What are you doing?”

Will yelps, losing his delicate balance and falling face first into the flowerbed. Low, raspy laughter curls around the air, and Will goes bright red.

“Just let me pass away,” he mutters, curling around a crushed daisy.

Nico snorts. “You are such a drama queen. Here.”

After another quick second of wallowing, Will takes his offered hand, letting him pull him to his feet. His shorts are smeared in dirt and there are flowers in his hair. Frantically, and uselessly, he tries to brush himself off.

“…Damn,” says Nico slowly. When Will chances a peek, he finds his friend looking him over, slowly dragging his eyes from head to toe. If at all possible, he goes even redder. “So it is true. You are walking around half-naked today.” Nico grins, wide and wolfish and teasing, and Will genuinely has to grab the wall behind him to keep upright. “No wonder the rest of camp has been so empty.”

“Is that what it is?” Will cries. “The infirmary has been — packed! All day! And no one has been hurt! They’ve been — they came for —”

“I think they came to watch the show, Solace.”

Will lets out an agonised wail. Alongside the flush so bright it puts his father’s cows to shame, he feels himself start to glow, like an flaming beacon of idiot.

“They’ve been demanding I carry them around places!” He looks at Nico, aghast. “I’ve been doing it!”

For a moment, Nico tries bravely and valiantly to keep a straight face. But then Will remembers the camper who told him he lost feeling in his hands and asked Will to hold his biceps to try and get them back, and his face must absolutely crumple in mortification, because Nico loses it.

“Zeus, Hera, and Hades,” he gasps, doubled over. “Oh my gods, Will, your face, you —” He cracks up again. Genuine tears pour down his face. Sometimes he manages to calm himself down, but then all he has to do is look at Will’s horrified grimace and he breaks down again, until he is literally writhing on the ground, holding his stomach.

“Oh — oh gods, I’m gonna — I think I’m gonna throw up —”

“I hope you choke on it,” Will says hotly. “I won’t help you. I will let you die. You’re a horrible friend.”

Nico shrieks again. Will has never seen him laugh this hard, ever, which is wildly unfair because he’s been practicing jokes with Piper in an attempt to see him smile more often, and this is what finally gets him?

“I hate you.”

“No you don’t, Solace,” Nico sighs, finally starting to calm down for real. The smile on his face doesn’t go anywhere. “Help me up.”

Will pouts. “Whatever.” He should leave Nico there to rot, but he reluctantly clasps their palms together and yanks him upright. He goes to pull away, but Nico squeezes his wrist, holding fast.

Will stares at him with wide eyes. Slowly, his wide smile thins into a crooked, downright dangerous smirk.

Will goes weak at the knees.

“I know you’re going to go get a bunch of new shirts immediately,” he murmurs, and honestly, who gave him the right to a voice like that? Huh? Who did Will piss off? What does he need to do to make amends? “But, well.” He glances down, then back up, smirk widening. “If you wanted to wear that shirt when you’re ogling at me during training, I wouldn’t mind. Might even the playing field.”

And then, because the gods actually hate him, Nico winks. He lets go of Will’s wrist and saunters off without another word, idly swinging his sword as he whistles.

Will crawls back into the flower bed, face plants in the dirt, and yells for ten whole minutes.

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