Barely Breathing ~ 3 Days In The Infirmary Fic

Day One / One

I drag him to an infirmary bed, tugging him along by the sleeve of his overly torn up floral print shirt. No contact-the kid's a little emo, I can absolutely tell that he doesn't want to be touched unless necessary, and so I will do no such thing.

"Injuries?" I ask simply. He blinks, seeming to have to count them mentally-which is extremely concerning already-and seeming to make circle motions with his hands, which I'm sure is totally helping.

"The mains ones are werewolf scratches, across my chest and arm. Work on those first." He answers. Not exactly what I asked, but good to know nonetheless.

"Got it. Sorry to say, I kinda have to touch you, so if you're not okay with that, you're gonna have to suffer for the time being." I'm only half joking, because that's the truth, I have to touch his arm and he's going to suffer.

"I expected that." He tells me. Very talkative, this one.

"Figures." I look him up and down quickly before noticing something, "Can you breathe?"

"Yes?"

"That was more of a question than an answer, my man. Breathing is good, start actually doing it normally."

"Breathing is good? I never would have guessed." Nico sasses.

"Smartass. Eat up, slowly. It should fix whatever the hell's messing with your breathing. It's probably just how deep the gash on your chest is." I toss a small square of Ambrosia at him, working on gathering the other shit I need to heal him.

"Thank you." He mutters.

"Yeah. I'm forcing you to be here to heal you, bud, no need to thank me. I'm gonna be re-stitching your arm, and then try and heal it magically." He has little reaction-rude-as I simply explain my plans. Well, fine, Mr. Ghost King, I was mainly saying it for myself.

"If this hurts... Well, I'm pretty sure it hurt more to get the scratches anyway, you can deal with it. It shouldn't, though." I put some numbing cream around the wound-huge wound, absolutely terrifying looking-and then start, slowly, stitching the large gashes back up.

"Will, he is radiating death." A sibling of mine comments as they walk by. I grab their arm before they can actually walk off.

"Excuse me, say that again?"

"He's radiating death. Is it particularly safe for him to be here?" They sort of half-whisper. I glance at Nico, who looks down shamefully.

"I don't think it's "particularly safe" for an idiot to be working here, yet here you are. Nico has to be here, he's hurt, you know, in the infirmary." I tell the kid off, who just looks slightly offended before walking away again.

"Nice." Nico says simply.

"Yeah, never listen to anything Jeffery says, he's not all that smart." I go back to actually working on stitching him up.

"I thought you'd be nicer."

"I'm the kid that argued with you about exhaustion, during battle, and the fact I'm forcing you to be here, I think, says that I'm kind of not. I figured you'd assume I was an asshole, frankly."

"You're a child of Apollo, the sun god. I thought you'd be... Sunshine-y." He puts eloquently.

"Bold assumption, because most of my siblings are also assholes. And I'm pretty sure dad is one, too. Now, I'm quite sorry to say, I'm going to start quietly singing at you."

"Why are you sorry? And why would you do that?"

"Because I don't think I really got my dad's singing talent like my siblings did, and it's how I heal. Ancient Greek hymns to great ol' daddio. Don't judge my skills, I'm obviously more versed in healing than anything else." I grab his hand in both of my own suddenly, making him seem to jump-and uh, blush? He did that last time I held his hand too. He obviously hasn't had physical contact other than fighting in a while. Anyway-I start muttering the hymn.

a/n the chapter titles were just gonna be fillers but. I kinda like what they are so. suffer.