Oneshots, Short Stories, and Poems

🌊 - Roles Reverse | Nico di Angelo x Will Solace | Fluff Drabble

!!Slight spoilers for Heroes of Olympus!!

Just a small section of what I picture to be Nico and Will's love story in between HoO and ToA. Essentially, Nico gets out of his bed while he's supposed to be sentenced to bed rest and finds Will sleeping uncomfortably in a chair. Nico insists on making Will more comfortable. Will resists Nico's efforts. But y'know, it works out eventually :D

It's been a while since I read Blood of Olympus or The Sun and The Star, so pardon any inaccuracies

~~~

Tick. Tick. Tick. Tick.

In the dark, Nico squinted at the clock, trying to make out the positioning of the black iron hands. 3 am. Amazing. Ugh.

He wasn't sleepy at all. Yes, he had been over-exerting himself and on the verge of death when he was sentenced to bed rest two days ago, but since then, he'd been lying in bed for hours with an ambrosia IV tube feeding into his arm(granted, it had been removed yesterday.) He felt restless and nervous, trying to avoid the torment of his brain. 

Nico sighed. In an attempt to stop his thoughts from literally and metaphorically trailing into Tartarus, he decided to get up. Will would have no idea. Surely he was fast asleep in his cabin, right?

Nico pushed open the shutters around his bed, realizing with a jolt that hospital curtains were not designed to be quiet. He also realized that Will was, in fact, asleep, but not in the Apollo cabin. From the bit of outline Nico could see in the dark, Will appeared to be slumped in a chair, resting his head on his arm in a way that made Nico wince. Nico recalled the time he spent in the Labyrinth, the bronze jar, Tartarus, and the Argo II where, aside from other things, he frequently slept in positions like that, and let's just say - it was not fun. For his back. Or his neck. Or his anything. 

Why was Will asleep like that?

Why do you care?

Nico looked around. Just a few weeks ago, he would've ignored Will and gone back to bed. Will wasn't his problem. But Will had been trying to look after him during the battle, and even ordered him to stay here because Will wanted Nico to recover. Who was Nico to ignore Will now? 

Even if Nico didn't care about Will, what was he supposed to do? Walk around and stare at the other patients? He was certainly not going back to sleep.

Quietly, Nico walked over to Will and bent down to examine Will's state. Will stirred a little, probably from Nico breathing on his face, but Nico really couldn't see him well otherwise, even with the limited ability he had to see in the dark. 

Nico leaned down a little more, looking at Will more closely. Will was wearing a doctor's scrub - Nico couldn't make out the color - and some kind of pants. For a split second, Nico lightly touched Will's knee. The pants were jeans.

Nico blew his cover when he saw the bags under the other party's eyes.

Granted, Nico had seen worse. By that, he meant he had been worse. But still, Will's eye bags were off-putting and startling. Two dark creases under each eye, looking like someone had utterly failed at putting on smoky eyeshadow. How had Nico not seen Will's exhaustion during the battle with Gaea? Over the past two days, it had probably gotten worse.

Nico's reaction was not much. Just the smallest intake of breath. But the change in the wind had been enough to get Will's attention. Will stirred and blinked a little, and Nico jumped back, realizing with a flush just how close he had been to Will's face. 

After a few tense seconds, Will opened his eyes. Even in the dark, Will's blue eyes seemed to glow, just a bit. Half-asleep, he registered Nico, and furrowed his eyebrows. "Death Boy? Why are you out of bed?"

Nico rolled his eyes. "Totally fair of you to say that. Come on, what are you doing sleeping like this?"

"Patients... someone needs to be there if there's an emergency at 1 am."

Nico pinched his nose, wishing he didn't understand Will's predicament. "I thought you especially would know that sleeping like that is bad for your neck."

"Come on, go back to bed. Or do I need to put the IV back in so you don't do something stupid like this again?"

"At least let me give you a pillow!"

They were starting to make a bit too much noise, so Nico left to get a pillow before Will could respond. He went back behind the curtains and grabbed the pillow from his own cot. On second thought, he decided to take his aviator jacket that was under the cot as well just in case Will was cold.

He returned to Will's chair, lifting Will's head in an attempt to put the pillow in a comfortable position. Will looked at the pillow, then looked at Nico, raising an eyebrow.

Nico gave him a deadpan stare. "You need it more than I do."

Will pushed the pillow away. "I can't use your pillow!"

"You want Drew Tanaka's, then?"

"...Are you insane?"

Nico sighed. "I have a mattress. You are sitting in a wooden chair. You clearly can make better use of-"

"Death Boy. I. Am. Not. Taking. Your. Pillow."

Nico made a face. "Fine." He dropped the pillow and took his aviator jacket out from under his arms, then placed it under Will's head so that it would serve somewhat the same purpose as a pillow. Will looked at the white flaps of the jacket, a bit confused. Nico decided to leave before Will said anything else.

"..."

Okay, it felt kind of wrong to take Nico's jacket, but would Nico let Will have a say in that? Not likely. When Will thought about it, he felt somewhat pleased that Nico liked him enough to take care of him like this. Yeah, they had fought together, and it didn't seem like Nico didn't want to be around him, but it sometimes felt like Will cared more about Nico than Nico cared about him. Maybe Will was wrong, though, he thought, as he snuggled into the jacket.

Will could feel himself getting drowsy again.

The jacket smells nice, Will thought. Smells like him.

With that in mind, he promptly fell asleep.

~~~

Just to be clear, it did not take me almost two months to write this 1000 word ficlet. I've been struggling with a much longer oneshot that at the moment is already over 5000 words and has a pretty complicated plot. I was also working on another oneshot that is extremely intense and while it's not that long, it's just hard to write. I literally just wrote this fluffy drabble yesterday.

I have no idea when those hard-to-write oneshots are gonna be out, but hopefully this is an acceptable snack in the meantime :)