#this is so dorky and random u can tell i haven’t slept LMFAO

[mediumgayitalian]

Nico is pretty sure, at this point, that something has gone wrong. A chasm has opened up, a trap went haywire, an explosion went off and blew up half the camp. Something drastic has to have happened to make everyone go quiet.

But the rocks of Zeus’ fist are sun-warmed. A sweet-smelling breeze ruffles brand new leaves, musses his hair, although it’s hot enough that he’s rolled up the cuffs of his jeans and forgone a sweater. Will is on guard duty next to him, and no one has come to bother them in hours, and he cannot bring himself to care.

“Found one!”

“No way,” Nico protests, leaning over to see. “It’s been ten minutes!”

In the palm of the cupped hand Will holds out between them, held loose so as not to crush it, is a four-leaf clover. One of the more picturesque ones, too; emerald green, heart-shaped leaves, delicately crimped, and a thin curling stem tapered perfectly down the middle.

Will shrugs, smiling. There’s enough bitten-back teasing in his expression that it looks more like a smirk. “I guess I’m just lucky.”

“Lucky I don’t smite you, maybe,” Nico grumbles. “Go away. Your bad vibes are hindering my success.”

Snorting, Will does, shuffling back over to let Nico comb through the clover thatch in peace. He stretches out on the grass — he ditched his shoes and helmet and armour the literal second the rest of the team ran off, the dork — and shifts ‘til he’s comfortable, ankles crossed, hands behind his head, eyes closed. Nico pictures him with a piece of straw sticking out of his mouth and a cowboy hat resting over his eyes and giggles to himself. The image is so clear he’s half-certain it was a vision.

“Though you were tryin’ to focus,” Will mutters, cracking one eye open.

Nico sticks his tongue out. “I’m trying, derpface. All your shifting around is distracting.”

“I’ve moved maybe three times.”

“Yeah, in as many minutes.”

Will, without looking, plucks a blade of grass and flicks it at him. “Stay focused, Death Breath.” He stretches his arms above his head, sighing. “I’m gonna nap.”

He doesn’t move when Nico flings a handful of (regular) clovers at him, infuriatingly serene. He’s trained himself to fall asleep anywhere, anything to catch up on the sleep debt he’s been wracking up for years, and the sunny patch of clearing in the first they’re in is one of the nicer places Nico has found him passed out. At least here he can stretch out, sit in the sun — Nico found him tucked in between the camp washer and dryer, once, curled under a stack of laundry baskets. He’d made a valiant effort to hide himself from accident-prone younger siblings and best friends who invite mortal wrath, but his snoring had given him away. Nico’d heard him outside the building.

Here, though, no one is bothering them. Chiron’s playing field medic, the infirmary has been stocked, the Ares kids were cursed by Clovis and co. last week and have been asleep since. There haven’t been any echoing screams of agony. No desperate IMs. Nico, even, makes sure to keep his sword within reach, armour still firmly strapped, quietly on guard so Will doesn’t have to be. For once, he can take up as much space as he likes, bare skin absorbing the sun that has outshined the clouds perhaps for the express purpose of keeping him toasty even without a blanket.

Nico drags his eyes back towards the clovers, smiling. He’s cute when he sleeps. Sometimes he mumbles, nonsensical ramblings of the half-conscious, too slurred for Nico to make much sense of it. He catches bits and pieces of words and phrases as he picks through the soft leaves; lemme try, twice, as he watches a ladybug hop her way over a stone; careful with that, as he tosses a handful of regular, three-leaf clovers into the air; and notably diphenhydramine as he digs his hand through the soft dirt to yank out a worm.

Nico turns to face him. “You’re a nerd,” he says solemnly.

Will snores in response.

“Sleep quieter, why don’t you.”

The thing about Will is that he is like a tapeworm.

Nico means this in the best possible way. They start out invisible — sure, you might feel the irritation of something new burrowing its way into your person, but it’s not your most pressing concern. You’ve maybe got other things on your mind. You’re not focused, intensely, on how tiny changes are happening to you; you’re eating more, moving more, sleeping weird. Sometimes this happens. It’s nothing notable.

Slowly, though, you start to change. There’s this…cavern, inside of you, that you’re suddenly aware of. Maybe it was always there. You’re struck, more and more each day, with the need to fill yourself. To consume. You are aware, for the first time in years, that you have not had enough. There has been an emptiness inside you. And now there’s this driving force making home inside you instead, pushing you to take enough to not just survive but to thrive. You’re capable, now, in a way you weren’t before, to feel your needs, your wants. To listen to them. There is something that has worked it’s way inside you and grown and grown and grown and forced you, alongside it, to care about yourself enough to maintain its life inside you.

Will would probably not appreciate being compared to a parasite. It might be funny to tell him anyway, though. Watch his eye twitch as he tries to find a diplomatic way to ask Nico what the fuck his deal is. He’ll have to tell him when he wakes up.

A quiet groaning noise has him looking up again; the sound of rustling clothes and twisting grass.

“Y’r smirkin’.”

Speak of the devil. Or parasite.

Nico picks at a tangled stem. “What are your thoughts on tapeworms?”

“Generally bad,” Will says, yawning. He doesn’t seem fazed at all by the random question — he usually isn’t. People ask him a lot of strange things, generally. Like, how many consecutive concussions are medically unsound? (any, dude, please), or what is the recommended liquid amount of iron to swallow to fortify your blood? (none, please don’t fucking swallow liquid iron), or perhaps most notable are you up for learning how to un-do cerebral paralysis within the next ten seconds? (no, Jesus Christ, get off the fucking roof and set down the wax wings, do you people learn nothing ever).

“What about tapeworms as a metaphor for friendship?”

“…That’s a new one, I’ll give you that.”

Hell yes. Point to Nico.

“D’you find one, yet?”

Nico’s face drops into a scowl. “No.”

He doesn’t understand how Will found a four-leaf so quickly. Nico’s been looking for much longer, and the clover patch is huge — statistically, he should have found one by now, right? It just makes sense.

Will hums, dragging himself to his knees and then somersaulting over. He lands legs sprawled over a smattering of pebbles, head by Nico’s knees. Nico reaches out and flicks his temples, just to watch him wrinkle his nose in protest.

“Whattaya so bent on getting one for, anyway?”

Nico shrugs, looking away. “Luck.”

“Duh.” Will pokes his thigh. “What for?”

“None of your business, nosy.”

“Well, that just made me a thousand times more interested. I was going to let it go, before, but now —”

“You’re so full of shit,” Nico huffs, grinning. Will matches his look with a shameless smile, placing his hands under his chin in a caricature of cherubic innocence.

“Why, whatever do you mean.”

“I mean —” he punctuates every word with a pinch — “that you have to know every detail —”

“Ack! Stop!”

“— of everybody else’s lives —”

“Hey! Derek Hale! Put the claws away!”

“— at any given time —”

“I am going to scream!”

“— or you’ll die.”

He acquires, finally, to Will’s screeching and writhing, pushing him away with one last poke. He pouts, looking at Nico with round, wounded eyes.

“You’re so mean to me.”

“You invite it, honestly.”

“By caring about you, you butthead.”

Nico rolls his eyes, fighting back a smile. “Yeah, yeah.”

Looking for the four-leaf is different with Will watching him. Different, somehow, even though he’s quiet, chin resting on his knees, eyes following Nico’s searching hands. Every shift has Nico’s breath catching, fingers twitching at his minute hums, his tapping fingers. He’s distracting. If Nico was struggling to find the lucky clover before, it’s hopeless now. Will drags his attention like the core of the Earth drags everything towards it.

“Hey,” Will murmurs, poking Nico with his toe. “Take mine.”

Nico glances up to find his hand, again, outstretched between them, four-leaf clover centred in the palm of his wide hands. His eyes watch every minute shift of Nico’s form, his stuttered breath, sweating palms. Bitten lip, shifting eyes.

“…You don’t know what I need it for.”

“I don’t need to.” Blue, blue, blue eyes. Ridiculously so, really. An exact match for the sky no matter what time of day; olympic blue, now, an perfect reflection of the late afternoon. “Take it.”

He thrusts his hand out farther. Heart pounding, Nico does, lightly pinching the stem between his thumb and forefinger, keeping his hand curled on Will’s.

He promised himself. One to ten thousand chance — if he found one, he’d do it.

It counts.

“Hey, Will.”

Blue widely above him, encroached by the canopy. Blue flapping in the wind behind him, perched on Zeus’ fist. Blue on the plumes of his helmet. Blue in the lavender, in the grape hyacinth, in the cornflowers.

Blue, blue, blue eyes, meeting his, flicking down. Flicking hastily back up again.

Nico tugs, gently, on his wrist. He moves where Nico directs him. Easily.

Up. Down. Up again. Perfect rings, thinning against a growing expanse of black.

Nico darts forward and kisses him. He sighs into it, immediately, hand going limp in Nico’s hold. The clover flutters to the ground between them, disappearing once again in a sea of green.

“You didn’t need luck for this,” Will mumbles.

Nico tilts their heads to rest closer together and kisses him ‘til he’s quiet.