The rainbow seekers guide to seeking rainbows

Will

Will was tired, but he wasn't going to sleep for another two hours, like Nico tended to do in the mornings.

It was nine.

He had an early-bird reputation to maintain.

With a sigh, Will went to make himself some breakfast. Waffles sounded like a treat that would wake him up. He didn't care if it weren't healthy - just put some fruit on it and that would do. It didn't matter.

He yawned.

When he passed Nico, the boy's colours still startled him. Or non-colours. Will had had a couple of days to get used to this, but...he couldn't.

Will hated the black hole.

What was it? This emptiness? First Nico's colours had simply disappeared, and Will had gotten over that, but what the hell was this? He didn't think he could deal with this change. Not having colours was one thing - Will could think of many explanations for that which actually made sense - but he had no idea what could drive his synaesthesia to put a fucking hole in Nico's chest.

What kind of dark tricks was his mind playing on him? What did his subconscious detect in Nico?

Shaking his head, Will went to make himself some waffles.

Food always helped.

- - - - - - -

Food didn't help as much as he had liked.

When Will walked back to where the couch was - Nico should be awake soon, so he had made some waffles for him too - the black still startled him like it always did. It was weird. Seeing a hole of nothingness in the person you loved most.

Not for the first time, he wondered what it meant.

Nico woke up and rubbed his eyes, before suddenly jolting into an upright position. He blinked rapidly, before turning his clearly-still-dazed eyes on Will.

"I smell food. Good food."

"I feel like that wasn't what you woke up to say, but thank you all the same." Will went into the kitchen and grabbed the plate of still-warm waffles he had prepared for Nico. "Made just for you."

"At least you didn't add some stupid pet name after that," he grumbled. "Any chance of a fork?"

Will tossed a fork in his direction, before realising he could've stabbed Nico in the eye by accident. He hadn't, but it had been a possibility. Forks were extremely dangerous objects - Will remembered one of Professor Chiron's anecdotes in which a patient had swallowed the prongs of a plastic fork. He didn't know how it had happened, but Will had tried to avoid plastic forks ever since.

Luckily, Nico had caught it quite perfectly, and was now stabbing at his waffle with a vengeance.

"Got work today or did Piper force you to take a break?"

With a mouthful of waffle, Nico blinked. "Mrrmgff." He swallowed. "Piper said that according to Jason, I've accumulated enough days of leave to go on two cruises back-to-back." He shrugged. "Not that I like cruises."

"Never been on one."

"Really?" Nico scoffed down everything else on his plate. "Maybe I didn't like it because of my father." He spoke that word with a heavy vehemence. "He makes everything terrible."

Will flopped onto the couch the moment Nico drew his legs into a cross-legged position. "That's gotta be some superpower."

"A lame one."

He laughed and rested his head in his boyfriend's lap. Will loved it like this. Everything just felt like it...fit. It felt perfect.

"Speaking of my father..." Nico trailed off, his words stoppering with a burst of grey. Will frowned inwardly at that, but didn't interrupt. Grey words were something Will had never seen before. He would've thought that it would be common, but strangely this was the first time words had actually been grey. "I called him yesterday."