He hears him four cabins away. At minimum.
The thing about Will is that he is not a sneaky person. He tries to be — gods does he ever try — but it is so antithetical to who he is as a person that it never works out. He breaks out into hives if he lies, for Hades’ sake. Sometimes even when he withholds the truth. It’s hilarious.
Anyways, he wakes Nico up.
He hears the cream of the opening window and shoved his face into a pillow. There’s a way to open them without so much as a peep — Piper knows how, and Percy, and probably ninety-two percent of the rest of camp — but Will, in all honesty, probably can’t even hear it, as high-pitched as it is. The scuffle of his shoes on the smooth obsidian walls are equally as loud, somehow, and the oof he lets out as he lands on the marble floors face-first echo all the way to the lake.
It’s a wonder the harpies haven’t come squawking, honestly. Or maybe good karma.
“Psst,” Will actually, genuinely hisses. “Psst, Nico. You up?”
“No,” Nico lies. “I am sleeping ever so peacefully and ignoring the obnoxious intruder of my space.”
“Well, get up.” His feet have started to tap. Nico smothers his stupid widening grin into his hand — it’s not cute, it’s not. It’s dumb and embarrassing and ridiculous. Gods. What a freaking theatre kid.
Nico peeks one eye open, and Will is standing, shirt on backwards, scratching his calf, staring at the faintly-glowing altar in the back corner. His pupils are dilated.
“I want ice cream.”
Nico does not, technically, have much to do tomorrow.
There’s training. But there’s always training, really, and also he went to Tartarus, so how much worse can it get, really? What else is he training for? Tartarus Two: The Torture Trudges On? And there’s of course his afternoon class, but he can definitely sleep-walk his way through that one. He’ll wear sunglasses and tell the kids he’s evaluating them based on the level of maliciousness he feels in their energy. It has worked for him before.
He can go out for three in the morning ice cream.
But the principle of the thing.
“It’s witching hour, William.”
“You like witching hour.”
Fair.
“Plus! Ice cream.” He turns to face Nico, and he still can’t see, that at least Nico knows for sure, but he tilts his head and cocks his hip like he can. “Ice cream, Death Boy. Three a.m. bad decisions. Look me in the eye and tell me you’re not frothing at the mouth.”
Nico makes a show of patting down his dry face, just to bother him, except he realises he was in fact drooling in his sleep and has to then resist the urge to throw himself off a building. Gods. Will is lucky it's blacker than actual night in here or Nico would genuinely have to kill him and then himself.
"Fine," he says hastily, rolling off his bed and slamming onto the floor. "Begone. I will meet you outside."
“You have two minutes,” Will warns, tapping at his watch. He turns resolutely around. He pauses. He turns again, sighs, then turns, or at least tries to, back to Nico’s general direction, but where he is actually staring, hands on his hips, is the wall, this time Nico does not even bother to hide his smile in his hands. “Could you maybe point me in the direction of the door, Mr. Vampire Freak?”
Nico puts gentle hands on Will’s shoulders, guiding him towards the ornate doorway. He offers absolutely no resistance, leaning into the pressure of Nico’s palms as he stumbles forward.
“Calling me a freak is going to restart my trauma,” Nico says loftily.
“Shut up.” A beat. “Sorry.”
“I’m teasing, you doofus.”
“Still. That was uncalled for.” He nearly brains himself on the doorway trying to turn around to face him. Nico darts out and tucks a protective hand over his forehead, just in time. Will butts his head into the hold affectionately. “You are not a freak.”
Something gross and gooey and soft melts in Nico’s sternum, and his lips twitch, and his chest warms, and fondness bleeds from him, from his pores, wrapping Will’s shoulders like shadow and blinking like gentle flame.
“I know that,” Nico says, shaking his head. “You are so strange. Get out of here. I need to put pants on.”
Will blinks. Nico counts four seconds. Will glances down, and his face heats something awful.
“You!!!” he whisper-shouts, over Nico’s snickering. “I’m going to!!!” He waves a hand. He waves again, ending in somewhat of an accusing point. “Ah!!!”
He rushes out the barely-open door, tripping over the front step and sprawling on his ass on the porch. Nico leans against the doorway, grin widening, arms crossed over his chest. Will stays curled on the floor, face in his hands, muttering to himself. It is so loud it — echoes. Right across the common. Two separate lights turn on.
He does not notice.
Nico loves him so much he envisions grabbing his pillow and beating him to a coma with the force of it. Instead, he rushes inside and pulls on the first pair of jeans he sees.
“Okay,” he yawns, nudging Will’s prone form with the toe of his shoe. “Let’s go.”
“Finally,” Will mumbles. He stays in his ball of misery for five seconds. He gets up. He pauses, breathing in, breathing out. He, realisinf Nico has left him behind, scrambles to catch up, tripping over a rock and very nearly pitching right down Half-Blood Hill. “I want — soft serve.”
“No,” Nico says easily.
“It’s better! It’s — smooth!”
They reach the road. Nico raises a hand as if summoning a taxi, barely managing to grab Will’s collar and yank him back from the road before a shiny, shadow-black SUV melts into existence at the speed of Fast and kills him dead.
“It’s a disgrace, William. It is an abomination of modern hubris.”
“You’re — you’re just like your father, you know that, you —”
Nico’s jaw drops.
“That’s is an evil fucking thing to say to me —”
Will is so loud, he can’t help it, everywhere he goes, he stumbles through doorways and trips over air and whistles as he walks and tap tap taps his ever-moving fingers. Will is loud, he is lively, Will is life, personified, every inch of him glows golden.
The issue is that Nico is loud when he’s around him, too. Like he forgets to keep quiet.
“—that’s that, Solace.” He yanks the sliding door open, hovering in the frame. “Hard ice cream or no ice cream for you. That’s that.”
Will huffs. It’s just barely bright enough outside — there’s moonlight — for him to be facing the right direction, this time, back to Thalia’s tree, as he crosses his arms and taps his foot and pouts like that will get him anywhere.
Nico stares right back, back to the SUV, ignoring Jules-Albert’s grumbling.
He will not give in this time.
He will not.
“I really just think soft ice cream will help the homesick,” Will mumbles. He kicks at the too-long grass. “It’s — tour season. Mama and I always went to DQ during tour season.”
“Oh —Jesus fucking Christ.”
Will has won and he knows he has, because he can muffle a smile but he’s never been able to fight back that victorious little giggle, because he is loud, and Nico hates him.
Toujours il te déjoue, et toujours, tu lui permets.
Nico scowls.
“Your job is to drive, Jules-Albert; if I wanted a critic I would have summered Ebert.”
Jules-Albert smiles at him. Due to the rotting flesh and tooth decay, it is horrifying, but unfortunately not horrifying enough to distract him from Will’s smug lean, his bright smile.
“If you don’t stop humming We Are The Champions I’m going to fucking gut you,” Nico threatens.
“Mhm. Perhaps. But then you would have no one to bully you, and you will be miserable.”
Jules-Albert barks a laugh, and offers Will a high-five.
“I will crack a chasm open onto this road! I swear to the gods! I will blow up this car!”
———
It takes twenty-two minutes to get to the nearest Dairy Queen.
Nico practically flees out of the car.
“I thought you were too tired for ice cream,” Will teases, jogging after him.
Nico scowls at him. “I am never doing anything with you ever again as long we both shall live.”
“Sure thing,” says Will absentmindedly. He links their arms together, humming at the menu. Nico’s lungs shrivel up and retire. “I’m only friends with you for the infinite credit card, anyway.”
“Oh, shut up.”
The Dairy Queen is silent at nearly four in the morning. Even the machines hold their breath, sole employee communicating entirely in nods and slow blinks.
Will’s laugh is like rolling summer thunder.
Nico feels like he is suffocating, like the humidity of the air churns solid in his chest.
———
In the cold of the late-night DQ air, table sticking to his elbows, a flip-flopped foot kicks his ankle.
“Hey.”
“What,” Nico grumps, shoving a spoonful of Oreo Blizzard Extreme into his mouth. It is mediocre.
There is a dot of ice cream on Will’s nose. Unrelated, there has been an endless loop of anguished screaming yearning in the back of Nico’s mind for the past seven minutes.
“Thank you.”
“Hmph.”
Will smiles. His nose scrunches with it, and the ice cream smears across his freckles. Nico’s heart explodes, just like that. Probably due to the ice cream. Sugar clogs arteries, or something like that.
“I mean it. Thank you.”
“You’re just saying that ‘cause you need a ride home. And because I paid, you broke pain in the ass.”
He smiles wider. His blue eyes shine darker than midnight, darker than Oreos, and for a desperate breathless moment Nico drowns in his pupils.
“True. But also.”
He kicks Nico’s ankles again.
“Thank you for coming with me.”
The half-frozen brownie lodges in his throat, and Nico swallows, and swallows, and swallows. Will’s eyes ger brighter, and brighter, and brighter.
“Yeah,” he says, reedy. He swallows. Will ducks his head. “Anytime.”
