Doctor's Orders, Sunshine

Nico

"You need to tell himmmm!!" Jason cried. It was a rather quiet cry, thankfully, so no one else heard it. "If I tell him, will you shut up?" Nico asked. Jason had turned from supportive friend/ brother-ish person to full on fanboy-shipper in the course of about an hour. "Of course." Jason replied solemnly. "Fine." Nico said. Jason promptly lit up. "But." Said Nico. Jason's face then promptly fell. "I'm going to tell him tomorrow, at the end of the day. So when I tell him, and he inevitably starts to hate me, I won't be trapped in an enclosed space with him for a whole day afterwards."

"Okay, I'll hand it to you. That does make a lot of sense." Jason replied. "But he's not gonna hate you." "You have zero proof of that." Nico snapped. Jason shrugged. "Think what you will but I need to get going. Annabeth's made a slideshow running me through the basics of architecture." Nico nodded. Jason was already planning the shrines he'd promised to Kymopoleia under the sea and was quite preoccupied with it.

Jason walked out, and Nico collapsed back on his bed. What did he just agree to? Stop panicking, genius. He told himself firmly. Okay, fine. Better question: How the Hades was he gonna do this? He couldn't exactly walk up to Will and announce that he liked him. There was a 99.99999% statistical chance that he would die of embarrassment the second those words left his mouth. And that would be sub-optimal.

Most of the rest of the day went by in a haze. The only clear bits were the times Will came to check up on him. At the end of the day, he watched Will put everything away, then walk off bickering with assorted siblings. 

He let out a sigh. How the hell did Will manage to tie his tongue in knots just by glancing at him? Okay, woah. Waaaaaay too sappy there, Di Angelo. Stop it. Try to go to sleep, and never think anything that sappy again. 

Almost robotically, Nico lied down. His midnight stroll had more of an effect on him than Nico realized until he was going to sleep again. He submitted to sleep immediately. His dreams were all of the usual. Tartarus, those spirits in Puerto Rico, Apollo falling- why was he falling? Was that symbolic of something?

He woke up, panicked and disoriented. As usual. It took a few seconds to register that he was still in the infirmary. He glanced over at the clock. 3:37. Great. He wasn't dissolving into shadow, good. He did actually seem to be recovering from the strain of the shadow-travel. Huh. 

He collapsed back onto the pillow, and fell back asleep almost immediately. And he actually had a nice dream for once. It was the time with Reyna and the Coach where they'd had a genuine heart-to-heart. That was about the time he'd started to see Reyna as an older sister. 

He woke up the next morning feeling refreshed, thankfully. Today was the day he was going to confess to Will Solace and he was already starting to freak out.