➵ Marked Out With Greater Brightness • Will/Nico

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Will/Nico | 5264 words | darklight rebirth of This Treaty of Inviolable Friendship

Not everyone got to spend Valentine's Day riding a triceratops, but then, not everyone had a son of Hades for a boyfriend.

Of course, Will would be pretty pissed if they did - he was almost certain that Nico was the only one. And he was not interested in sharing.

•
"I can't believe you did that," he said, breathless, something in his chest going thump at the sight of those dark, dark eyes focusing on his face. Not that he wasn't breathless every goddamn time the son of Hades deigned to look his way, because Nico had this particular way of looking at someone, like he was looking through them, like he hated them, like there was no one else in the world. It was beautiful. Shut up, Will, he told himself, not for the first time. He just told Percy he had a crush on him, for the love of Dad, shut up.

And that was the thing. Here, now, after that stunning fucking revelation - Nico was looking at him, yeah, but he was smirking, and oh god, he was going to be the death of him. Which was not even remotely supposed to be as literal or hilarious and who thought getting a bunch of ADHD teenagers together in one room was a good idea? Shut up, Will!

It's just - Nico looked like a weight has been lifted off his shoulders. He looked like he was free, like that thing in his chest had finally been set free and he could breathe, he didn't look like the lost little boy in the darkness, he looked... round, and whole, and Will wanted to hold onto him and never let go.

"I had to," Nico murmured, and Will belatedly remembered that he'd actually said something, ha ha. He let out his breath in a whoosh and answered the smirk with a smile, knew from experience that it was bright enough to be blinding. He couldn't count the number of times his friends - mostly the ones from other cabins, and by that he mostly meant Katie and the Stolls - had shoved him and told him to can it, that he was too goddamn happy for his own good. But whatever, they could go... do whatever it was that straight people did with each other because one of them was a thing and he still actually couldn't tell the twins apart even though they weren't twins ha his head was kind of rambling again.

"You do realize what you actually did, right?" Definitely spending too much time with those curly-haired idiots. He had zero control over his mouth right now.

"Yeah."

"Like, that was Percy Fucking Jackson. You just - "

"Yeah, I know." He was still smirking, though it was closer to a smile, though there was wonder in his eyes, though he looked as breathless as Will fe;t. "So, did I earn a zombie raising?"

"Absolutely not," Will snapped, his doctor-mode taking over and he should really be concerned at how easily Nico pushed him there, made him say all sorts of horribly pretentious things like you, here, now but on second thought, Nico did also just tell Percy Fucking Jackson that he wasn't his type, that he was over it. Maybe this was working for him. Was it working for him? Was it finally getting through that stupid, thick, (adorable) skull that Will was hitting on him, and had been hitting on him for oh, years? "Bed rest. Three days. Doctor's orders."

"I am really going to need to get used to you saying that, aren't I," Nico murmured with a twist in his grin, and Will felt his heart soar.

•
Will had taken to Jules-Albert instantly. He was an absolutely impeccable driver, and, most importantly, didn't give a single flying fuck about boys making out in the backseat.

Which the weren't doing, actually, because making out in the Fields of Asphodel would be pretty weird! All those ghosts, just sort of... watching. Milling around. Will was both fascinated and mildly disturbed.

"Would 'are we there yet' be an incredibly insensitive thing to say on Valentine's Day?"

"Yes," Nico shot back, and before he even finished getting the word out, Will was talking over him.

"Sooo, are we there yet?"

Nico shoved him and Will shoved back and Nico's laugh rang out like a ray of sunshine, cutting through the barren gray of the wandering spirits. Will could swear he saw several of the spirits dissipate in such pure, shining happiness.

I did that, Will thought. I did that, I made him smile like that, all dimpled and stretched with crinkles at the corners of his eyes. Gods, I'm so in love with him it hurts.

He hadn't told him yet. He had honestly wanted to avoid the totally lame cliché of dropping the l-word on Valentine's Day, but his willpower was eroding. He just didn't want to keep it back any longer. He didn't want Nico to go another day without knowing how loved he was.

He was about to open his mouth when something caught his eye on the horizon - a glow, in the distance, almost like sunlight peeking through layers and layers of clouds - but that was impossible, wasn't it? They were past the gates of Tartarus, the sunlight in Elysium had been left far, far behind.

Besides, this light looked... different.

"Floor it, J-A!"

The ghosts around them blurred, and lengthened, and it almost felt like they'd taken on a life of their own, swirling in shapes that should have been impossible at this speed. The glow grew brighter and brighter. For a split second, it was like shadow travel - the impossible rush, the enormous amount of energy, even though the gray gave way to white instead of black - and then, just as suddenly, they were at a standstill.

Will felt his lips part, his jaw dropping as far as it would go. "Holy. Fucking. Shit."

They were in a jungle. A jungle like nothing Will had ever seen, or even imagined - even the smallest of the plants were almost as big as the car, the trees soared higher than skyscrapers and the very air itself was thick and heavy with humidity and timelessness.

"...So you're telling me, that somewhere in the Fields of Asphodel, there's a secret pocket universe full of dinosaurs."

Oh. Yes. There were also dinosaurs. Lots and lots and lots of dinosaurs.

Nico smirked, utterly full of himself. "Yes."

"And you brought me here, for Valentine's Day."

"That was the plan, yes."

It wasn't the right time, but it was. It so was. Will blew out the breath he'd been holding in a rush. "Have I told you lately that I love you?"

"Not yet you don't." Nico just shook his head and shoved him over towards the car door, their zombie chauffeur holding it open. "Just wait until you ride one."

•
"You do know you can't actually keep me here?" Nico called out from behind the thin hanging separating the infirmary bunks, as Will changed shirts. This was totally one hundred percent not because he wanted to get naked in the presence of said person. Not at all!

Lies, it was totally that. And also he did try to wear scrubs while in Doctor Mode™. He leaned out around the curtain with his shirt half-on (hello yes I have archery shoulders, observe my naked shoulders at once!) and smirked. "Oh, just you wait and see."

He was pleased to note that Nico flushed a little around the ear region before turning away with a very disgruntled huff. It was almost as adorable as That One Time He Actually Smiled.

Dinosaur-print scrubs on, finally, Will came back around and folded his arms, grinning down at his surly charge. "Are you going to behave?"

"Hell no," Nico bit back, but before he could get too into it, Will simply - sat down. On him.

"Yeah, you're not going anywhere, Zombie Dude."

Nico froze. "Don't call me that."

•
Nico rolled his eyes and poked at the fire - he was, as usual, a good five feet away from anyone else and glaring like he just dared anyone to try and bridge the gap. They were talking about Percy Fucking Jackson's unfortunate nickname habit, and how the whole Seaweed Brain/Wise Girl thing was totally disgusting and also totally adorable.

"He called me Zombie Dude, once," he said, muttered quietly at the ground as if he didn't expect anyone to hear him, but Will did. Will was always listening, and it just - it hurt him, okay, to see Nico flinch away from any and all overtures of friendship. He just wanted to see him smile. Just once. At least once.

"Yeah? That's cute as frick," he said, and Katie leaned into him and made cooing noises (because she was a goddamn harpy lady who knew too much).

Nico didn't respond, just glared. Like it wasn't funny, and wouldn't ever be funny, and at the time Will had figured he just really hated it, but when he had enough information to piece it together, he understood why it made him so mad. It was the same kind of mad he felt, every time...

Well, every time Nico thought that Will's smiles were his way of making fun of him. Every time someone said something about Percy, and Nico retreated a little further, his long lashes casting shadows on his cheeks. Every time that Will had wanted him to just... see him, for once. Every time he felt invisible.

•
Will's face went serious. "I did that on purpose," he said, flatly, and Nico's eyes flicked up with a ghost of hurt in them, but mostly it was curiosity, confusion. "You know what makes me angry? I asked Percy about it, once. I asked him if he remembered calling you anything, and he thought about it, shrugged, and said he couldn't remember anything in particular. He didn't... care, about you, the things he said were just his dumb stupid Percy remarks and he didn't even get that he was your fucking... lighthouse, your anchor. Because he's a complete fucking idiot, that's why. So no, I'm not gonna let you hang onto that memory, okay? Because it doesn't matter. It wasn't his special name, it was literally a moment that passed through his head and out his mouth and he never thought twice about it. But you mentioned it once and I remembered because it was adorable. You're adorable. Do you get it, now?" He grabbed for one of Nico's hands, laced their fingers together with a sigh of utter frustration. "I am into you, Nico di-goddamn Angelo. You're not alone, you've never been alone but you've felt alone and I get that but I've always seen you, I've always - "

Nico cut him off, surging up into a kiss. It was clumsy and new and uncoordinated, but it was scorching, something soul-dark and hot like... like...

Like the sun, Will thought. You've always been my little dark sun, Nico. Beautiful from far away, terrible and intense and heated up close.

They stopped to catch their breath, both of them panting, and rested their foreheads together.

"You can call me whatever you want," Nico muttered, his voice raspy and breathless.

"Butthead, I think," Will whispered back, and when their lips came together this time, they were both stretched wide with laughter.

•
And that was how it came to this - wandering through the late Cretaceous period, perching in the crook of a triceratops's horn, one hand gripped tight to the edge of its neck frill. Will could not fucking contain himself. The skin under him felt pebbled and leathery and cool, and the triceratops - whom Will had affectionately named 'Pokey' - seemed completely unconcerned about having a passenger.

Several dino-lengths away (accurate medical terminology, trust me I'm a doctor), Nico was sitting crosslegged on the back of an ankylosaurus, which Will had officially renamed 'badassasaurus' when he was, like, twelve. Its entire back was plated in thick pebbly scales, harder than rocks, and a line of enormous spikes marched around its sides like the edging of a shield. Imagine if we'd had those at the Battle for Olympus, he thought, and it made him smile from ear to ear. He could see it so clearly - Nico in his bloodwashed black armor, a red cloak billowing out behind him, sword in hand, terrifying and beautiful.

"Penny for your thoughts," Nico called out, and the smirk was back, like he'd just caught Will staring. Which, well, he sort of had.

Will grinned and leaned his head back against Pokey's frill. "Just thinking how great it would be to ride these into battle."

"I think about that all the time," Nico said with a laugh (and they came so easily now, they weren't so jagged and hard-won). "Can you imagine? The monsters wouldn't know what hit them."

That provoked the mental image of one of those horny centaurs (the ones with horns on their heads, obviously, since otherwise it would be totally redundant) going head-to-head with Pokey, and Will laughed himself, bright and easy. "Right? Imagine the look on Octavian's face if we'd shown up on one of these babies."

It was a huge testament to their relationship (oh my gods, it still made his stomach do somersaults) that they could just laugh about it, now. Nico had felt guilty for a long time, but gradually came to realize that he was only feeling guilty because he thought Will would hate him for it - which, what. No. Octavian was creepy and Will had buried enough of his friends to feel perfectly fine with burying an enemy, instead.

So the image of Octavian versus a triceratops provoked only laughter, loud and freeing, until finally Nico slumped over backwards and lay spreadeagled over the ankylosaur's back. Will stared up at the sky, completely entranced. It looked like blue that had been washed in gold - so faded that nothing but the memory remained. Even the sun, something he was usually all too aware of, seemed distant and unreal. This light wasn't Apollo's, so it wasn't his, but that, too, was beautiful. It made him feel wonderfully small, just another thread in the massive tapestry of life. When their world was just a memory, too, the sun would somewhere still shine.

He stretched a hand up, watched the light stream through his spread fingers. "How does this even..."

"...exist?" Nico's voice sounded as faraway and entranced as Will felt. "This is the First Afterlife. It's the foundation on which the entire Underworld is built."

"Dinosaur Heaven. I like that."

"Mmhm."

They lay there for a long time, watching the trees and birds scroll by, as their dinosaurs lumbered on. The words rose up in him again and he didn't stop them, couldn't even bring himself to try. "Nico?"

"Hmm?"

"Can I love you yet?"

"Nope." Nico gave him a sly, deliberate smile, that never failed to set his heart pounding a little faster. Then he rolled forward and smacked the ankylosaur on the shoulder, which it absolutely did not feel. "Come on, Spikey! Just a little farther."

•
Despite Nico's claim that Mythomagic was totally lame and he wasn't into that kid stuff anymore, the look on his face when he saw Will's figurine collection was priceless.

"Oh my gods," he breathed. "You have Ganymede, no one has Ganymede, it was a limited edition and he doesn't even have a base attack so no one cared and oh my gods that's Pelops with his chariot. Oh my gods."

Will smiled the smile of the eminently self-satisfied. "You do not want to know how much of my soul I sold for that one."

"..." Nico's eyes fell on Hyacinth next, and his eyebrows went up. "Okay, I'm sensing a bit of a theme here. Did you go out of your way to..." he trailed off.

"Collect mythological boytoys? You better fucking bet I did." He hunted down his Hylas figurine, another one that was mostly useless for actual gameplay but who the fuck cared when you knew the backstory? "I burned a bunch of hyacinths for my dad and he came down to personally give me the gay sex talk. In iambic pentameter, I might add. It was totally and completely worth it."

Nico frowned, his long fingers brushing the top of tiny Hyacinth's head. "Didn't he kill him, or something?"

"Or something. Yeah." Will's voice had gone soft. "He still beats himself up over it, too. I think that's one of the big differences, between them and us."

Nico lifted an eyebrow, but waited, patiently, for Will to continue.

Not actually used to people listening to him when he got like that - weird and introspective - Will sort of cleared his throat and blushed, looking down. "Gods change, but it takes years, centuries even, and it's just on the outside. Just because society changes. But us - demigods, humans... we can change. We can become something better and when things happen... we can forgive ourselves. We can move on."

He wasn't actually thinking about Nico - about Percy and Bianca and all the people he'd lost, about how he smiled more now, about how drastic it was that he let himself be cared for. He was thinking about Lee Fletcher. Michael Yew. He still missed them, but it didn't hurt like it used to, he didn't feel it like a hole in his chest. Remembering them made him smile.

But Nico's face was troubled, gaze turned inward and not particularly liking what it saw. Will swallowed and grabbed his hands, squeezing them. "Hey," he murmured. "Zombie dude. Look at me."

He did, and his eyes were wide and dark, pools of hope and longing and so many things that Will wanted to take into his heart and keep there forever. He smiled.

"You're healing," he said, his voice a soft, intimate whisper. "You're going to be okay. I'm going to make sure of it."

People can change, he thought, because Nico smiled, and stood up on tiptoe to drape his arms around Will in a tight, warm hug. People can change, because it may have taken Will years to find the courage to speak his mind, but he had. And here they were. Together. Finding, like his namesake, Solace.

•
"You can love me now," Nico said, just on this side of too quiet to be the joke he was trying to pass it off as.

But for the moment, Will was lost for words. They'd broken free of the trees, emerging in a soft, sunlit meadow - where a picnic blanket had been laid down, classic red and white check, with a full basket holding down one corner (and wrapped in iron chains, because Nico was smart as well as gorgeous, making him actually completely unfair).

"This is the most stupidly, adorably, heinously romantic thing I've ever seen," he mumbled, and realized that he was tearing up. "You got me dinosaurs and a picnic, I hate you so much."

"No you don't," Nico said, but bit his lip instead of adding 'you love me', because - well, because. Because they both knew where this was going.

"Yes, I do. I hate you terribly. But not even a fraction as much as I love you," and he could see it, see the words hit Nico's ears and head and the way his face crumpled and ducked and then smiled, his breath coming in a shallow, happy gulp.

Will realized that Nico was crying about the same moment as he did; and they were just as equally surprised. "Oh," Nico said, and Will's thumb came up and swiped through the cool wetness, smearing it gently over his sun-warm cheek. "But I... I knew it. I did know. I would have been pretty dense not to know, why am I..."

Will laughed wetly and pulled him in close, buried his face in the perfect soft curve of his neck and breathed in until he could taste the hollow gold of dead sunlight, something that could have been creepy but instead just felt timeless and warm. "Sometimes, there are things that are important to say out loud, in words," he muttered. "And I should have said it ages ago. I love you, you dumb idiot, I love every skinny perfect inch of you, I want to fold you into my chest and never let you leave."

"I've got a lot of sharp edges," Nico said, his voice shaking but his arms holding tight and steady.

"I don't mind," Will murmured. "I've got space enough for all of you, dark star."

They ate sandwiches and laughed and moved smoothly from nerdy babble about the awesomeness of dinosaurs to the arcane beauty of this eternal sun, then right back again when a pterodactyl cut across the sky and they both immediately started to make dumb screechy noises. They laughed until they couldn't breathe then laughed some more, and when Nico rolled over and pinned Will to the picnic blanket, bracketed in sharp elbows and bony knees, the heat from his black clothes felt burned into Will's skin. His eyelids fluttered.

"Stay," he whispered, unable to think of anything more coherent to say.

Nico smiled into his lips. "I love you, too."

•
They passed through the palace of Hades on their way back, because Nico wanted to drop their leftover picnic stuff in his room. Having never seen this fabled room, Will was all too glad to tag along - it's not like mortals get a free pass to the underworld too often, so.

He didn't actually expect the room to be literally papered in skulls.

"Okay, I know that's like, your thing, but this is..."

"Don't ask," Nico said with the groan of the long-suffering. "It's an old joke that died before it was even funny, so obviously my dad can't let it go. Just... ignore them."

Oh hell no. Will rolled his eyes at his boyfriend (heeeeee) and set about personally giving each of the skulls names.

"You are such a dork," Nico moaned, and Will laughed in delight.

"Yeah, well, you love me, so. What does that say about you?" They grinned at each other for a giddy moment, still getting used to the word, getting used to saying things out loud. Nico still looked sometimes as if perfect moments were a limited resource, that he'd only get so many of them in his life, that happiness would run out. Will considered it his singular goal to change that. To make him see that the more light you have, the brighter it grows. Love, he thought, was like that.

"Let's go for a walk," he said.

•
This was the place that the boy of your dreams fell in love.

It's a cold place, dank and dark, and the water of the Styx is black and unforgiving. You don't really see how anyone can fall in love under such circumstances; but on the other hand, you can. Because this was Nico's life, before. This was his world, dark and empty and cold and alone, and he'd worked in the shadows with the singular purpose of trying to keep his only light alive.

Nico looked still and quiet, his angular face losing what little color it had. "I had this thought," he whispered. "And I've never - no one's ever known. But." He swallowed, and Will ached to touch him, but he didn't reach out just yet. He knew Nico wasn't done, and this was another stage of the purge, of the journey to recover himself, a journey he'd be walking his whole life. Will didn't mind. He just wanted to make sure Nico didn't have to walk alone.

"I thought... if he doesn't come up, I'll be joining him."

It was a huge thing to admit, and Will's restraint snapped - he wrapped his arms around Nico, this boy, his boy, who'd gone through so much, and so much of it on his own.

"Percy Jackson is a fucking idiot," Will hissed, and he hadn't meant it to sound so angry, but it was, he was angry.

Nico shook in his arms, and it took Will a second to realize he was laughing. "Yeah? What gave it away?"

Okay, point, but that wasn't what he meant. "He's an idiot for never noticing you," Will muttered. "He's an idiot for a lot of things, but fuck. You did so much for him, and it makes me so angry."

"Hey, don't be," Nico murmured, and his dark head tipped back into an embrace that was starting to become familiar enough to be necessary. "Don't be, mio solino," and terms of endearment from Nico were rare enough to begin with - usually they were more along the lines of 'hey dickprince', which was actually pretty endearing and Will questioned his sanity daily - but in Italian? That was pulling out the big guns. "If he'd noticed, if he'd been the one here instead of you... I would've been worse off, I think."

Will felt, acutely, the meaning of the word 'poleaxed'. He felt transfixed, in this moment, as Nico - Nico di Angelo, the boy whose world had once consisted of darkness and a boy who didn't know he was there - as Nico said that he was better off, now. That he was better.

Will let out a soft, trembling breath. "I can't exactly impress you with my language skills, but Italian is the language of music, you know."

Another tremble of a silent laugh passed through him. "I know."

"And if I'm your little sun, well. You're the stars. You lit up the night you walked in; that was all you. And I feel like you're the bright one, even after everything you - we - have been through. You know?"

Nico nodded. He got it; he understood.

"So, um. Would it be… stella luminoso? Bright star?"

He could feel the way Nico's breath hitched, the little whimper that caught in his chest. He could feel the way he bit his lip, caught between laughter and tears. "Your adjective would have to agree with the noun. Stella luminosa."

Will's nose wrinkled. "But you're a boy."

"Well, yeah, but star is a girl word. That's just how Italian works."

"That's lame."

"You're lame."

"Your face is lame."

"Your - "

"Boys!" A bright, cheerful voice cut through their bickering, and it took Will a second to realize it had actually been spoken in Greek. There was a ghost leaning on the edge of the Styx - all wispy purple-gray, except around the eyes, which were bright and real and summer-sky blue. "Nico, long time no see."

Nico's grin hadn't faded. "Hi, Catullus."

Will felt a distinct moment of oh dear god why - Catullus wasn't one of Apollo's, which the god felt very strongly about, according to Camp Jupiter. Will had of course set out to memorize as many of the dirtiest carmens as he could, because they were hilarious, but he was still sort of a blasphemy to the name of poetry, so.

More interestingly, though, was the look he was giving Nico.

He looked... suspicious, judging, and Will had seen that look before. It was the one that said I know you, and usually you look half a second from actively murdering someone, and you're smiling. Why are you smiling? It usually made Will want to punch things, because people were dumb and Nico deserved to be happy.

"Well, I was going to regale you with poetry about cocksucking, but since you seem perfectly capable of exploring that topic on your own, maybe I should just..."

"Stay," someone interrupted. Will was shocked to realize it was himself.

Catullus looked just as perplexed. "I'm sorry?"

He felt his ears going red, and the back of his neck. Nico didn't twist around to look at him, but only because he surely knew the expression perfectly well by now. "I know your poetry," he said, quiet and sincere. "I'm not musical like most of my siblings, so. I guess I've been drawn more to words. And I guess what I'm saying is, there's one that kind of stands out to me, today."

Catullus's ghostly lips turned up in a smile, and he propped his chin on his hands, looking expectant. "Well? Go on, then."

Oh, hell. What had he signed himself up for? Nico wriggled around in his arms, looped narrow wrists around Will's neck and grinned. "Yeah, come on. I'm waiting."

Undoubtedly, they were expecting to hear one of the raunchy ones.

Welp.

"If anything happens to one who desires it, and wishes, and never expects it, it’s a special delight to the mind. Likewise, this is delight, dearer than gold, to me, that you would come back to me, in my longing. You come back, desired and un-hoped for, give yourself back to me. O day, marked out with greater brightness! Who exists more happily than me, or can say that he wishes for any life greater than this?"

He held Nico's eyes through all of it, watched as they widened and darkened and slowly misted over.

"Butthead," Nico said, and his voice cracked.

"Shoddy translation and you left out her name, but clearly, I'm intruding on your moment," Catullus said with a soft, put-upon sigh. "If you're not going to free me tonight..."

"He wants you to free him?" Will cut in, surprised.

Nico nodded. "He's been down here for a long time."

They were both quiet, and Will was thinking of a different carmen - one that spoke of unbreakable treaties, of love, and of forever. Some things were meant to be eternal. This was not one of them.

"Set Catullus free," he whispered, and Nico nodded.

"Yeah. Yeah, I think it's been long enough."

•
Will's mom was named Laura Solace, and she had sort of accidentally ended up running a home for lost demigods. February wasn't all that snowy in Maryland, but the air was crisp and chill as they stumbled in the door, laughing and windblown, buzzing with love and the gritty aftertaste of ozone that shadow travel had a tendency to leave. Immediately, they were pounced on.

"Did you get to ride a dinosaur?!" Lou Ellen shrieked.

"Did you find the picnic okay??" said Cecil.

"Tell us about the plants!" and that was obviously Katie Gardner, who totally had a place to live with her dad in South Jersey, what was she doing here? Oh gods no that meant the Stolls were probably close by.

Also, apparently the whole dinosaur picnic thing had been some sort of group project.

"You love us," Connor said later, as they dueled over nachos in the living room and Nico helped Kayla stack the dishwasher.

Will sighed. "Unfortunately," he said in a mournful tone. "I'm stuck with you, and worse yet, you're all stuck with me. It's a treaty of inviolable friendship!" he shouted, and the other Apollo kids snickered loudly, knowing exactly what he was referring to.

Nico rolled his eyes. "I'd as soon have a day marked out with greater brightness, thanks."

And it was. Not the rest of it, that was all well and good, but this, here, was what made it special. That Will wasn't the sum total of Nico's world, but merely the center of it, and the two of them stood side by side like a pair of binary stars, and the universe was wrapped around them, ready to be explored.

"How was your date, loves," Mama Solace asked, and Nico smiled up at her with a brightness that lit up the room.

"It was perfect."