#i’m in my shakespeare nerd will truther era btw

[mediumgayitalian]

“Happy birthday!”

“Still not my birthday, Solace.”

“Eh. One day I’ll say it and it’ll be right.”

The flowers he’s holding — pretty, ruffled deep red, although Nico doesn’t recognise them — remains extended between them, clutched fist unwavering. Nico rolls his eyes, biting the inside of his cheek, and takes them.

“Of course, you could also just tell me when your birthday is.”

“No.” A pause. He brings the flowers up to his face, pointedly ignoring Will’s wink, and inhales. They smell almost identical to the shampoo Will wears. “You’re such a loser.”

“And yet you spend all your time with me.”

“Not — all,” Nico protests, cheeks burning. “I spend —”

Time with others, he was about to say, and while it is indeed true that he does, in fact, socialize with more than one person, he realises with startling clarity that Will is almost always there.

Will grins, wide and cheeky and knowing. “Having some thoughts, there, Neeks.”

“Shut the fuck up.”

Will gasps dramatically, and when that is not enough he holds up a hand, digs a string of plastic pearls out from his many pockets, clasps them around his neck, clears his throat, and gasps even more dramatically, clutching said pearls.

Nico laughs.

Unfortunately.

But he chokes it back last minute and turns it into a weird horse noise instead, so he’s victorious, basically.

“How dare,” says Will, indeed dramatically, “how dare, di Angelo, deride me, your closest friend, in such a way —”

Nico deliberates his options. Should Will have the space unimpeded to continue on than he shall do so, with increasing gusto. At the six minute mark he will graduate to elevating himself on whatever surface makes itself available, from an infirmary stool to An Actual Roof, and project his voice to make sure that everyone suffers his Elizabethan histrionics, not just Nico (or Kayla or Austin or Lou especially Cecil or Mitchell or Piper or or or or). At the nine minute mark he will be accompanied, magically, by intense background music, because Apollo deserves all of his trauma. Nico doesn’t know what the ten minute mark will bring, but frankly he’d rather walk on hot coals with open sores on his feet than find out, so.

“— good friends, sweet friends, from this group I hail, and to such a sudden flood of mutiny! To bend to the leadborn suffering —”

When Nico gestures he is graceful, obviously. And poised. When Will gestures he narrowly avoids smacking himself square in the face nine times out of ten, and sometimes, like now, he actually does smack himself in the face, but for some reason this does not deter or embarrass him. Perhaps because he, like most Apollo children, does not actually have the part of his brain that produces shame, and such gleeful shamelessness shows in his devastatingly wide eyes. Which are, Nico notices, beginning searching for the nearest climbable surface.

Ah. Level one has been exceeded.

“Hide not thy poison with such sugar’s words —”

Drastic times, drastic measures; in time of theatre kid, regress to caveman instincts. Et cetera. Nico knows the drill. He’s a twice-adorned war hero. He understands sacrifice. He understands betrayal. He knows timing, knows difficulty. He knows the burden of doing the right thing to prevent further tragedy.

He sets his flowers delicately on the ground beside him, ties his hair back out of his face, does a couple stretches, exhales peacefully, and tackles Will to the floor.

“Shut up,” he grunts, over Will’s screeching. Will, predictably, does not shut up, moaning instead about his spleen, his spine, pausing to yell, loudly, et tu, Brutus?!, moaning about his kidneys, and then once again wallowing about Brutus and betrayal.

“Someone should take away your Riverside,” Nico says solemnly, pinching Will on the arm one last time for good measure before crawling off him.

Will remains on the floor, arm thrown over his eyes. “I would sooner live without the lungs in my chest.”

“It’s gonna be me. I’m taking away your Riverside.”

Will lifts his arm, searching to meet Nico’s eyes before pouting. It is a remarkably well-planned strategy, because he has very pretty eyes, and Nico is a flaming homosexual who is openly weak to Will’s wiles. Will, who is a shit and judging by the smirk he is barely fighting back in favour of a quivering lip, knows this.

“Don’t you love me?”

“No,” Nico lies. He forces himself away from Will’s gaze, ears burning. “Go away, you walking annoyance. I never want to see you or anything about you ever again.” He scoops up his flowers and stomps off, smiling as Will cackles.

He carries around the flowers for the rest of the day.

#this is so corny and cheesy and ridiculous #i’m in my shakespeare nerd will truther era btw #pjo #percy jackson and the olympians #hoo #heroes of olympus #nico di angelo #will solace #nico di angelo/will solace #nico/will #will/nico #nico di angelo & will solace #solangelo #pining nico di angelo #whipped nico di angelo #fluff and humour #dramatic will solace #my writing #pjo hoo toa #100 ways #100 ways to say i love you #longpost