The following have been accepted, but not all have responded so spot may become available again.
Writers:
lovefadesminehas021 (cannot be tagged)
demigodsanswer (confirmed)
castorandpollvx
Two writing spots remain!
Artist:
bitterbiracialbibliophile
kneel-mortals
Three artist spots remain!
Head canons:
spiralgalaxyfart
One head canon spot remains!
Exceptional Talent:
deseraesdestiny
viva-la-fucking-pluto
Neither have responded so I can’t confirm this position filled!
Aah, I’m sorry, was I supposed to receive a message in my inbox about this? If so, I never received one according to my inbox. It likely got eaten if there was a message I needed to respond to. ;u;
It's interesting to see that someone has the same head cannon as I do about the bandages (in the respect of what they're used for). I haven't really seen many other people mention it, yet.
I've been honestly meaning to write this for a while now to tie me over while I try to find inspiration for the other fic I'm supposed to be writing, and a recent post by malkuthehighwind finally motivated me to write this little one-shot up.
TRIGGER WARNING: Self Harm
Ace bandages. To be perfectly honest, Will Solace hated them with a burning passion. Day in and day out, someone always needed to be healed. Someone always needed a wound concealed or an ointment protected. In a way, that made Will feel good about himself. But whenever he would have to step aside and reach into that medicine cabinet, he found himself internally screaming at the mere touch of an Ace bandage. He’d put on a smile and laugh and wrap up his patient as if nothing was wrong. As if he couldn’t feel the itch.
Will described the itch as the type of itch that lurks underneath the skin. One that doesn’t go away no matter how much you scratch it. One that the more you try to ignore it, the more it starts to itch. Will didn’t let the itch bother him most of the time. He could go about his day without even relatively thinking of it. Sometimes, inside the infirmary, however, he was reminded everywhere he looked of that painful itch.
Ace bandages were strewn about. Some littered trash cans; others lined the counters waiting for a chance to be used. Waiting for a chance to heal someone else’s wound. Only, they didn’t heal wounds. They only hid them. At times, Will appreciated their usefulness. Other times he wanted to toss them into the campfire.
Okay, so maybe Will didn’t hate them too terribly bad. They worked extremely well when he needed them to. It was just that damn itch that put them on a rung only second to Hades’ realm. Nico had asked once, during the early days of he and Will’s budding friendship, just what made Will compare them to the Underworld. To that, Will responded with only a slight laugh and a shake of the head.
To which Nico replied, “What’s so funny?”
Will could only hide his sick humor with a playful smile. “Well, they’re incredibly itchy. Sometimes I think they do more harm than good, but they do keep people from picking at their wounds. I guess it’s sort of ironic. You know, how something good for you can also be bad.”
Nico had raised his eyebrows in confusion. Literally nothing Will had said made a bit of sense. In that moment, his eyes flickered down to the bandage Will always wore around his right wrist. “If they’re so itchy, why do you wear one? Just because you hate them?” He’d meant it as a sarcastic comment, but Will seemed to take him seriously.
“Every hospital has them. I’m only really good at healing people, and Ace bandages are pretty cheap. It just makes sense for me to wear one as a staple of being the main healer here. Everyone knows who I am because of the bandage. Even the little kids who have only been here a week. If they have wounds, they know which one will heal them properly.”
A little voice inside Nico’s head screamed that Will was talking in bullshit-tongue, a language he’d learned to pick up on over the years, but he didn’t feel the need to pry. He hated prying. If anything, he could see Will being the person to make a fashion statement out of medical bandages. He already had medical insults down pat; next was clothing, he supposed. Nonetheless, he never did stop staring at those bandages after that day.
Will would sometimes absently sit around the campfire and poke at his bandages, adjusting them in whatever way he wanted to – an act that made no sense to anyone around him. It’d become a widely accepted thing that Will just happened to be really into Ace bandages, a misconception Nico wouldn’t actually realize until later.
No, for the time being, Will’s bandages remained as they were: a symbol of his healing power. His siblings typically tattooed themselves with bows and arrows. Will stuck to the Ace. Occasionally someone would make a joke about Will’s refusal to ever remove them just out of the sheer curiosity of the other campers. Jason suspected once that Will’s skin beneath the bandages must be five shades lighter than the rest of his tanned skin. The comment led to a laugh and some more jokes about how the bandages should just be replaced with a hyper-realistic tattoo. Will went along with them and snickered at each one.
Among the others, Will was a pretty regular, good-looking son of Apollo whose obsession with Ace bandages set him apart from everyone else. Alone, Will’s obsession with Ace bandages turned him into a heaving mess. Late at night, when his siblings slept and dreamed of whatever it is Apollo children dream of, Will would finally let the bandages fall to the floor. He’d force himself to not leap for joy when his skin looked pretty normal beneath the bandages.
Chiron had warned him once about over-usage of his own powers. Back during the days of the first war, when Will healed Annabeth, he’d become incredibly tired after using his power. Sort of like Nico with shadow-traveling, he assumed. But over time he’d grown accustomed to them. They worked in his favor now more than ever.
The bandages never once revealed anything by the time night fell. Even on most days, they didn’t. Truly, the bandages had no real purpose for weeks to maybe even a month at a time. They were just a symbol, after all.
Unfortunately, the time would come for someone with a nasty wound to stop by the infirmary after practicing his or her sword fighting. Will would repeat the same process he always did. He’d reach into his cabinet, hold back a scream, and wrap the wound snugly. Send them off with a smile, he told himself.
The rest of that type of day passed slowly. The itch gnawed at his flesh and his bones.
Feed me, it wailed.
Pay attention to me! It commanded.
Will ignored the itch, as he typically did. Only, the problem with the lurking itch was that it only got increasingly painful. Each new patient sent a new, blood-curdling feeling through his stomach. The sight of their wounds, the wrapping of the bandages, the miniscule scratches and cuts and scrapes and bruises that required nothing more than ointment clawed at Will’s mind.
And then the shift would end. Just like that. It’d all be over, or so Will would believe. He would believe it was over with every fiber of his being until the time came to remove his bandages. When he slowly unfurled them from his wrist, the images kept resurfacing in his thoughts. Every sentence he’d ever read out of a medical book replayed in a dramatic scene before him.
Bandages help prevent infection in the case of an open wound.
Bandages aid in the healing process, as they can keep ointments in place when wrapped around a cloth.
Bandages keep bacteria and other potentially irritating substances, such as dirt, out of the…
Bandages are meant to be wrapped just tight enough that they remain…
Bandages should not be used to bind…
Bandages make sure…
Bandages.
Bandages.
Bandages.
Bandages were meant to cover wounds, correct? They help heal.
They help heal.
And thus the vicious cycle would repeat itself. Away the bandages went for a moment. Out came the cloths Will kept stashed under his bed from Gods knew how long ago. Down rushed red.
A healer. A healer and nothing else, Will often reminded himself.
After all, the bandages were nothing but a symbol.
The gang decides to redecorate Nico's cabin while he's away at Camp Jupiter. There are slight implications of Solangelo later on. (:
Will Solace took one look at the interior of the Hades cabin and knew his father would have had a heart attack. If Gods could get that sort of thing, of course. He wasn’t any child of Aphrodite, who would have fainted at the sight and immediately demanded a complete remodel upon waking up (excluding Piper, obviously. She was different.), but he did know a thing or two about horrible design. The Hades cabin was full of it.
The completely obsidian walls he couldn’t do much about. It wasn’t like he could summon an army of zombies and skeletons to tear down the exterior so he could have Annabeth redesign it. Nico di Angelo would only be gone for a week at most, visiting his sister and Reyna. Tearing the cabin down would unfortunately have to wait. In the meantime, Will was determined to make the inside of the cabin much more home-like.
He didn’t blame Nico for hating the place. To be honest, he could imagine why Nico never actually spent much time in it before the war with Gaea, which was almost a year ago, now. The cabin sucked. The coffin-shaped bunk bed needed to go flying off a cliff. Maybe it would grow wings and take to the skies or burn in the daylight – Will didn’t know. Nico’s personal shrine to Hades could stay. Will figured it was best to leave that one there, but the table looked like it’d been installed in the twenties, perhaps to represent Nico’s last-century vibe.
The blond shook his head. Nope, it was definitely heading off the same cliff as the bed. The rest of the room was a blank canvas. There weren’t any picture frames or memories of friends and family littering the walls, probably because Nico hadn’t really been focusing on that in the past few years.
It’d been Jason’s idea to rally the troops and fix up the son of Hades’ cabin before he returned home, something Will now wholeheartedly agreed with. He could already envision the perfect place for some legitimate lamps and an overhead light. Heck, even a sunroof. Maybe that would brighten the place up a little. Flames the color of vomit were not a good enough light source, Will decided.
Just as he was deciding where a sun-shaped night light could go, Piper and Jason popped in, approximately ten minutes late. The three of them had agreed to get started on taking down the bed early while Annabeth drew up some layout designs and assumingly kept Percy as far away from interior design as she possibly could. Everyone was very aware of how Percy’s cabin looked nowadays.
“You’re late,” Will stated, pursing his lips. “We were supposed to get a move on at nine.”
Jason really should have let Piper do the talking, but he opened his mouth instead. “Yeah, sorry, there was an accident in the Aphrodite cabin – makeup was everywhere – we’re guessing the Hermes cabin had something to do with it – there was a huge clean up.” Piper could have definitely worded that better.
It wasn’t that Jason was intimidated by Will Solace. Really, he wasn’t. He could easily zap a lightning bolt to his face if he wanted to, which he wouldn’t, because Solace was a pretty cool dude. They’d gotten off to a rocky start, though. Will had some serious jealousy issues he needed to sort through, at least, that’s what Piper had told him the second he asked her about why the son of Apollo kept shooting weird glances his way whenever Will saw him hanging out with Nico. Piper had also said that Jason and Will looked similar in some ways. It wasn’t a particular secret that Will spent most of his time with Nico, so Jason sort of figured it out on his own what the deal was. They’d grown closer to being friends in the past few months, nonetheless. It didn’t stop the onslaught of awkward conversations, however.
Piper smiled, rolling her eyes. “Maybe you should tell him the real reason we were slowed down. You know, how you just had to take down Drew’s makeup, too, since hers was left untouched.”
Jason scoffed like he’d never do such a thing. “Puh! That’s absurd!” He lowered his voice when Piper laughed and murmured, “It’s not like you stopped me, anyway.”
Will arched an eyebrow. He’d never been one for tearing apart people’s things, but sometimes Drew kind of deserved it. He wouldn’t argue that. “Well,” he began, “I guess we should get started. Unless you’d rather play Pretty Princess dress-up, Jason.”
Piper placed a hand over her mouth to keep herself from giggling. She could almost see it now – Jason, the beautiful damsel, awaiting rescue from the fashion police.
“Hey, I would rock a mini-dress,” Jason declared, smiling. At least Will had a sense of humor.
The next two hours held a lot of confusion. Jason learned it was harder to take a bunk bed down than he’d thought. He’d also learned that if you try and unscrew the top screws first with nothing to support the higher bunk, you’re probably going to get a gnarly knot on your head. Good thing Will Solace could administer pain killers to those in need.
Jason glanced over now and took a moment to think.
When Will worked, he aimed to get things done. He didn’t take many breaks. Jason noted his tendency to take charge of the given situation without actually taking charge. The younger blond didn’t exactly bark out orders, but he certainly let you know when you weren’t unscrewing something right. Jason decided he was the guy on t.v. that delivered reality checks to the singers on stage who couldn’t hold a note worth anything, despite not being able to actually sing, himself. He understood in that moment why Nico allowed him to get so close to him in such a short amount of time. Will wouldn’t put up with Nico isolating himself again. In a way, that was good, but in another way, that was bad. Jason made a mental note to make sure Will didn’t push his luck with Nico’s personal contact issues.
Piper let out a long breath as she finished the last section. “I think we’re finally done,” she announced, wiping beads of sweat from her forehead. When the room was only illuminated by fire, it tended to get very hot very quickly.
Will sighed in relief. “One awful bed down, four hideous lamps and a table to go. Shouldn’t be that hard,” he mused.
Jason shook his head. “I don’t know about that, Will. Nico said those flames never go out. They burn eternally.”
“Great,” the son of Apollo replied, “so we have another pyrotechnic at camp. Wonderful.” He’d meant it as a joke, but he could see the flicker of anguish pass over both Piper and Jason’s faces. Leo had never returned to camp; not a trace of him was found. “I didn’t mean to offend you,” Will apologized. He mentally cursed himself for not thinking that the guy’s two best friends would still be mourning over him.
Piper waved it off. “No, you didn’t, don’t worry. Leo had a knack for bursting into flames.” She smiled apologetically, herself, and Will didn’t dare mention the fact that Leo had also gone out in a burst of flames. Though, he had a feeling Piper caught the butt of her own joke, too. All three left it at that and continued their work.
Will gathered up the remaining pieces of the top bunk while Jason took care of the bottom. Piper carefully placed Hades’ shrine on the floor before grabbing hold of the table and preparing to chuck it out the front door. Levelheaded or not, Aphrodite’s sense of faux pas had rubbed off on Piper in more ways than she’d probably ever know.
Outside the door, Will formed a large pile. They could haul it off later, assuming a certain pair of brothers didn’t steal the bunk bed’s bars for torturing the other campers when they least expected it… He decided not to give it much thought because Annabeth happened to be strolling towards them at that second, hands gripping the all-powerful floor plan she’d agreed to draw.
