“Hey. You.”
The most beat up pair of purple Chucks he’s ever seen enter his line of sight. Following them up the person they are attached to, he squints, trying to make out a face in the backdrop of the bright midday sun.
“What,” Nico says flatly.
Kayla is unbothered by his attitude. “I need your help.”
Now that is a sentence Nico does not often hear. He waits for a following because someone has died and I need you to handle it, or perhaps a more interesting because there is a ghost terrorizing camp that you need to take care of, but no explanation is forthcoming.
“Because…?” Nico prompts, eyebrows raising. Kayla huffs.
“My dumbass older brother has been working for seventy straight hours. Every time we try to drag him out he just — I dunno, talks around it. He’s fast and disorienting and none of us have managed, but if he doesn’t sleep soon he’s going to collapse. Again.”
Nico blinks. He’d wondered why he’d been having so much peace over the last couple days — there has not been, in hindsight, even one knock on his door at an obnoxious hour, nor has he been bagged about missing breakfast or lunch or dessert or whatever else. He has, for the most part, woken up well past noon and spent his time wandering the woods.
…Huh.
No wonder he’s been so bored.
“Don’t know how I’m supposed to help you with that,” he says shortly. “Knock him unconscious and drag his body back to bed.”
Kayla shakes her head. “Tried that. He has a very thick skull. Just made him mad.”
Nico was kidding, mostly, but the idea of Kayla tiptoeing behind a distracted Will and walloping him upside the head in the name of sisterly love makes him smile despite himself. Just as quickly, he twists it into a scowl, because he does not like the teasing expression that has wormed itself across the daughter of Apollo’s face.
“Well, then, pray, I guess.”
“Just talk to him,” she says, exasperated. “He listens to you.” She turns and strides off before Nico can say no, actually, Solace is a stubborn pain in the ass who delights particularly in ignoring everything I say, not sure where you got that from. And somehow, Nico feels like this is not something that’s just going to go away.
He groans, and curses at the heavens, and stomps towards the infirmary.
———
The infirmary is, when Nico walks in, surprisingly crowded.
It’s never really empty, not at camp, but it’d been a lot quieter the last time Nico had been dragged in (he got a papercut. Well, a sword gash to the artery, but nothing a square of ambrosia couldn’t fix, and definitely nothing worth a forty-straight-minute lecture from Will, that was for certain). Then, maybe a third of the cots had been occupied, and most patients where lucid enough to be complaining. Medics were either actively arguing with difficult campers, or chatting amongst themselves.
Now, not a single cot is free. The infirmary swells with pained groans and sounds of retching. Medics and medics-in-training rush from bed to bed; none of them as hurriedly as Will Solace, who might as well be a blur of movement.
“Woah,” Nico says, darting his arms out to catch the aforementioned blur of movement as he rapidly approaches the ground, having tripped on a supply cart. “Slow down, Solace, or you’re gonna end up on a cot.”
“Sounds good,” he mumbles. His eyes are bloodshot. “Gimme ten, and I’ll come check you out, okay? Unless you’re dying. Are you dying?” He frowns, concentrating. A familiar glow comes from his hands, but it’s — weak, almost. More of a flicker than anything. “No, you’re not dying. Good. Be back soon.”
Despite his parting words, he doesn’t move.
“Did my legs stop working?” he wonders, and promptly goes fully limp. Nico yelps, scrambling to keep from dropping him.
“Um, help?” he yells. “Medic down?”
“Cot!” someone yells back. “Be there soon-ish!”
Nico glances side to side, but, as he expected, everything is occupied, and every medic is busy. Several people, he is now noticing, are covered in the same, pulsating red welts, clutching bowls and buckets to their chests, faces green with nausea. Some kind of outbreak. Austin, Will’s brother, is sprinting from bed to bed, checking fevers, firing off hymns. Kayla ducks in from the back doors, throwing on a scrub shirt, and rushes to help. A few other people Nico recognises as regular volunteers are doing what they can to keep people upright and as comfortable as possible, until one of the healers can get to them.
Will is still unconscious.
Nico ducks into the nearest shadow, and disappears.
———
part two
246 notes
·
View notes