#note to self: stop making references to everything u enjoy in these fics no1 cares

[willandlyra]

fall back into place

requested by anonymous: nico asking jason for relationship advice. warning: this went off in a completely random direction, but i hope u still enjoy!

::

Jason has a big, dumb grin, which suits him, as far as Nico is concerned, because he is a big, dumb guy.

“Stop looking at me like that,” Nico grumbles, but nope. The big dumb grin appears to be scowl proof.

“I just can’t believe you came to me!” Jason says, and he sounds genuinely excited and happy about it. It’s kind of weird.

Sometimes, the amount that his friends make him roll his eyes back into his skull makes him long for days of being alone with his thought and feared by the ghost of one thousand year old entities.

But those days were sad. These ones are much better.

Nico rolls his eyes. “Yes, okay, I finally took you up on the agony aunt offer. Are you happy now?”

“Ecstatic,” Jason says. Nico doesn’t doubt it. “Now, what can I help you with?”

“Okay, no, we are not doing this if you’re gonna act like this is some kind of therapy session. And don’t even think about asking me to lie down.”

Jason sighs. “Well, you’re no fun. But seriously, what do you need. It’s about Will, right?”

It’s ridiculous – Nico and Will have been dating for what feels like forever now. Everyone and their great aunt Agnes know that the two of them are together, and Apollo keeps dramatically declaring that he’s going to dedicate the two of them a sonnet. But still, when someone just puts it out there like that, Nico can’t help but flush red.

In part, he supposes it’s embarrassment, but mostly it just makes him think of Will. Even more ridiculously, after all this time, the kid can still make Nico blush without doing anything at all.

“Um, yeah,” Nico says. “Will. Me and Will.”

Jason gives him a big, dumb grin again. A very dopey smile. After he’d got himself over the whole, ‘I have unofficially adopted Nico as my tiny goth brother and if you hurt him I will condemn you to the skies’ thing, he’d very quickly become their number one fan.

“I just really love you two together,” he’d said once, and Nico had looked at him weirdly, and asked why. “I dunno,” Jason had told him. “It’s just, Will is a good guy, and you deserve a good guy. I mean it, Nico, you really, really deserve a good guy.”

That had made Nico blush a little too. Gods, he missed the days where his deathly complexion was unshakeable.

It had, however, affirmed Nico’s suspicions that if Will did turn out to be the world’s biggest asshole, Jason would keep pretty tightly to that condemn you to the skies promise.

“Thought so,” Jason continues, now in the moment. His eyes are still twinkling though, and Nico wishes he had the capability to be annoyed. He is so over this shit, but also, he kind of hopes nothing ever changes. “I can’t believe you came to be for relationship advice. Bite me, Piper.”

“Don’t tempt me,” comes her voice, singsong from… presumably elsewhere in the cabin. Honestly, Nico doesn’t even want to know.

Jason beams. “She’s definitely jealous. Anyway. What’s up, bro?”

Wincing but choosing to ignore Jason’s questionable choice of pet names, Nico decides to get on with it.

“I don’t know what to get him for his birthday.”

Jason blinks.

“Excuse me?”

Irritably, Nico repeats himself.

“…You’ve been together for-”

“Yeah, I know,” Nico says, rubbing at his neck a little awkwardly. “But on his last birthday we’d only just started dating, like, officially, so I panicked and got him a card and Shrek 2. The Deluxe Edition. He loves that movie. Anyway, the problem is, for my last birthday his present was so thoughtful and so now I have to do way better, don’t I?”

“I guess,” Jason says. He looks a little taken aback. “I mean, if he put a whole lot of thought and effort into your present, maybe don’t get him Shrek 3. Even if it is the Deluxe Edition.”

“He’s already got it,” Nico groans. “That was my original plan.”

“It’s Will though, Nico,” and that’s not Jason. That’s Piper again, from wherever the hell she’s hiding out. Nico is mildly concerned that her voice is coming through the ceiling. “He’s not going to care.”

“I know that,” Nico sighs. “I could get him, like, a sticker set. Or a colouring book. And he’d be loving it. He’s so annoying.”

Jason’s eyes twinkle, as if his brain has literally translated annoying to mean: delightful, majestic, the love of my life.

Nico means it, okay. Will Solace is a pain in the ass, and several other body parts. Especially if he’s giving you routine injections.

“Hmmm,” Jason contemplates for a moment. “I don’t think I can help you really, Nico. You don’t have to get him something extravagant, or especially fancy. Just put some thought into it. Like he did for you. So he knows that you love him.”

He’d know that with his eyes closed, Nico thinks. But that’s lame, so instead he says okay.

::

A couple of days later, Will Solace is blindfolded by his siblings and brought along, stumbling, to the campfire where the Hermes cabin proceed to make his life a misery with what apparently constitutes as Camp H-B tradition.

Nico could interfere, he supposes, but watching Will have 17 marshmallows stuffed into his mouth at an alarming pace is quite an incredible sight.

It’s a fairly normal night at the campfire, but with added additions in Will’s honour. They sing a dumb happy birthday song that makes his skin go scarlet, and Lou Ellen and Cecil and a couple of the others of his closer friends give him presents. Percy, seemingly unaware of the marshmallow incident, keeps shoving s’mores into Will’s mouth until he transforms from red to green. Jason gives him a bone crushing hug. Tyson also gives him a bone crushing hug.

Nico saves his present until a bit later. When the singing and the joking has died down a little, and it filters down to fewer and fewer demigods lounging around in the wooded area, Nico takes Will by the wrist and pulls him along deeper into the shadows and away from the others.

Not far away enough to miss the glow of the firelight though – it sparkles from a distance like stars.

“Hey,” Will says.

“Hey,” Nico says.

Then Will grins and splutters, laughing, and Nico is too even as he shakes his head like he’s not.

This boy has changed everything about his life. Nico considers this, sometimes. ‘Better’ was always the direction his life was going to go in, but he’s glad that it swerved into this particular story.

“What’s up?” Will asks. He waggles his eyebrows like an idiot. “Couldn’t wait any longer to kiss me?”

“No,” Nico says. “You’re an idiot.” It’s kind of true though. “I just wanted to give you your presents away from everyone else.”

Will raises his eyebrow. “Presents?”

“Duh,” Nico tells him. First of all, he hands him a CD – an album, pretty standard and probably nothing special, but he knows that Siamese Dream by the Smashing Pumpkins is one of the ones missing from Will’s collection.

He follows this with a postcard book full of an artist’s impression of Darth Vader as a devoted father to Luke Skywalker. Nico will never forget that gods-forsaken day that Will made him marathon each and every movie. To this day, Jar Jar Binks haunts him.

And finally, he drops a little card into the palm of Will’s hand.

Will shakes his head. “Too much, Nico,” he says. “You shouldn’t waste your money on me.”

Nico rolls his eyes. “Because I have so much else to spend it on. Shut up, Will. It’s your birthday, and I love you.”

“Even more than all the McDonalds breakfast you could’ve bought for this?” Will grins, wickedly, and Nico lets out a long-suffering sigh.

“I guess so,” he says. “I never said I have good judgement.”

But Will’s eyes flicker back down to the little card in his hand, and then he looks at Nico for a minute. Burning blue, strangely serious. And then he flings his arms around Nico’s head, and pulls him close, tight against his chest.

He mutters, voice muffled, against the fabric of Nico’s shirt, “I love you too. I love you a fucking lot, actually. Thank you.”

Nico feels oddly touched.

“Hey, that’s okay,” he says. “It’s nothing, really.”

“Yeah,” Will says. “But it made me happy.”

He removes his face from melting into Nico’s skin and black t-shirt, and he looks at Nico again, holding his gaze just for a few moments. And then he leans forward, meets his lips. He kisses him slowly and gently, and softer than anything.

The kiss deepens a little, and they fall into each other, and a small piece of paper falls out of the palm of Will’s warm hands. Flutters to the floor and lands in the shadowy grass, but if you squint, you could still read the scrawl written in messy handwriting:

Will Solace – IOU

3 more days in the infirmary.

fin

note: the postcard book will receives is real. it is called vader and son and is my favourite thing in the world also, ive had super bad writers block lately, so if this is a lil stiff or weirdly written, i do apologise