fics I read in 2024 that made me go crazy
wherever he is, is where I'll go (what if I said he's down below?) by Caora / @curseofdelos [T, 68,790, 4/4]
When Will ventured into the underworld for the first time, he was hoping to find his sister. He did not expect to find Nico di Angelo.
After the tragic death of his sister Gracie, Will Solace hatched a plan - go to the underworld, seek an audience with Hades, and lead her out of the underworld just like Orpheus had tried before him - but his attempts were immediately waylaid by Hades’s mysterious son, Nico. What started off as a rivalry shifted into something more, and soon Will found himself dropping by the underworld every week to spend time with the boy who stole his heart - and whose heart he may have stolen back.
There was just one problem: Nico couldn’t leave the underworld and Will couldn’t stay. Despite the insurmountable odds, Will was determined to make a relationship between them work - if only he could find a way to get Nico out.
(Canon Divergent AU in which Nico grew up in the underworld. Solangelo star-crossed lovers. Witten for the Solangelo Week AUctober prompts light/dark/boundary.)
When The Day Bleeds by Wrish / @espritwrish [M, 85,780, 6/6, MCD]
There's not a lot left in a world ravaged by monsters, and yet Nico still somehow finds himself face to face with possibly the most infuriating boy he's ever met.
--
Nico stared at the wheelchair in disdain, looking for a sign that Will was joking. “Seriously?”
Will nodded, a grin forming on his face, “Could not be more serious.”
Glaring, Nico couldn’t help the childish urge and flung his arms out, gesturing to the others in the room, “No one else needs one.” He challenged, irritation thoroughly sparked in his chest.
“No one else needed to be handcuffed to a gurney.” Will deadpanned, eyes still sparkling with mirth, “Chair, now. Doctor’s orders.”
--
How the hell had his life ended up this way?
Sour by Skitty_chii / @icravestrawberryflavoureddeath [T, 91,646, 14/14]
(part one of the Tasteless series)
“Hey, I’m a gay man. The only things that scare me are God and the government, I just don’t understand all of that,” he said as he gestured to Piper.
She rolled her eyes, but was still smiling.
“But hey, at least you can listen to Olivia Rodrigo’s album and really feel it now.”
Piper let out the loudest laugh she could, her entire body was shaking as she doubled over. Nico couldn’t help but copy her. They had joked about her and Jason breaking up just so she could listen to the album to the fullest about a month ago, but now that joke was a bit too real.
“Oh, god. You’re fucking right.”
Nico decided that he could keep making jokes as it seemed like Piper was starting to feel a bit better.
“God, I wish I had someone to break up with to listen to it. We could go through this together,” he joked, but Piper just grinned and raised a brow.
“Why don’t you just ask someone to date you and then break up.”
“What the fuck?”
“Seriously,” she started, “I think that would be so fucking funny.”
“Who would I even ask to do that?”
“Why not Will?”
Olympus Detective Agency, Inc. by hello_blue_moon / @hello-bluemoon [T, 44,496, 12/12]
“Will saved the contact to his phone, then swiped back to the message and stared at the words written there. P. Jackson & A. Chase: Olympus Detective Agency.
And that was how it began.”
Or: the modern detective AU that nobody asked for.
Falling With You by emi @thelordofshrimp [T, 1,635]
They’d watched their way through genre after genre, with the notable exception of any movies strictly about romance. Will’s third suggestion of the Princessbride, though it was technically a love story, had made the list because the action outweighed the “kissing parts.”
It hadn't been a spoken decision, but when Will scrolled through online lists of movies, he’d read all the titles, except for the rom-coms. Nico never pointed it out.
Delilah by daniearnest / @softhearted-dani [M, 6,585]
“I don’t understand,” Jason said, swirling his straw in his milkshake without looking.
“What’s so hard to understand about he isn’t my boyfriend?”
love is like ghosts (few have felt it but everybody talks) by Caora / @curseofdelos [T, 38,447]
Nico had a timer on his forearm that counted down to the moment he met his soulmate. It did not, however, tell him what he was supposed to do once he met them.
Nico di Angelo hated the concept of soulmates. He wanted to choose who he spent his life with, and he certainly didn’t trust a stranger not to break his heart. True love was something that happened to other people; it did not happen to him.
If given the choice, Nico would have gone the rest of his life without ever meeting his soulmate, but no, the universe just had to pair him with Will Solace, a hopeless romantic he had nothing in common with and who thought Nico’s approach to soulmates was cynical and pessimistic.
It couldn’t work. It shouldn’t work…
…but Fate had a plan for him, and Nico was about to learn that falling in love was a long slow descent.
(Solangelo soulmate AU. Written for Solangelo Week Day 4 - AU.)
put your hand in mine through space and time by myileo / @onion-dishwasher [T, 8,671]
It was an hourglass.
Simple, practical, portable. As tall as his hand was long. Fine golden grains trickled down. Whatever length of time it counted was halfway passed.
“What’s it counting down to?” Will asked. “The end of the world?”
Nico’s hold on it was gentle, as if he were holding a glass flower that would shatter from the smallest breeze.
“Something like that.”
.
In which Will meets Nico in every universe.
Salvage by MuffinLance / @muffinlance [T, 127,145, 20/20]
Mid-Season-One Zuko is held for ransom by Chief Hakoda. Ozai's replies to the Water Tribe's demands are A+ Parenting. Hakoda is… deeply concerned, for this son that isn't his, and who might be safer among enemies than with his own father.
good old-fashioned lover boy by brainrot247 [G, 2,338]
“I swear to the gods if you touch that door handle, Solace,” Nico threatened, opening his own door and climbing out quickly.
Kayla and Will watched Nico round the front of the car before Will turned to look at her, humor dancing in his eyes.
“Watch,” he said. He reached for the door handle and cracked open the door just as Nico made it to his side. Without pausing, Nico threw his hand against the door and shut it again.
____________________
or, five things nico is a little romantic about