I don't want to be here.
The meeting was planned to go from eight in the morning to twelve in the afternoon, which cuts directly into my sleep schedule. Besides, I'm still extremely tired from my night in Jason's cabin. Was nobody going to tell me that Frank snores? It is bad enough that I had to listen to Percy sleep talk for half the night.
Percy, Annabeth, Piper, Jason, Hazel, Frank, and I are all sitting in the Big House trying to think of ways to somehow help Leo. Annabeth thought putting me to sleep by a Hypnos kid to try contacting Leo would be the best idea, and it was, but Percy and Jason always try to one up each other when thinking of other things.
"Here me out, I do what I did last time and reach Ogygia to help Leo and Calypso make it back here?" Percy suggests.
"That is the stupidest thing I have ever heard," Annabeth groans in frustration, then turns to kiss Percy on the cheek. "You're lucky I love you, Seaweed Brain." He blushes.
During this time, my eyes becomes very hazy and weird. It feels like I can't focus on anything in my room, like the room is spinning in many different directions. Hazel must have caught on, because I felt her hand touch part of my arm in comfort. I draw my arm away and scowl at her slightly.
Jason continues talking. "Like I said before, if you guys would let me fly across the world until I found the island, I could find Leo and Calypso."
"That is not how it works, Grace," Percy bites back. The two begin arguing at the table and nobody dares too try and stop them. The son of Zeus and Poseidon fighting? There is no stopping them (unless you are Piper).
I continue to fight my own battle with my body. The hazy feeling is getting worse, and I can tell. These little spots start to appear in my vision, they are like stars. They got so bright that my vision blacked out and I felt my body tump against the table in front of me.
Wow, I love my life.
Waking up isn't any better either. The room is really dark and the sound of a ukulele is playing softly in the room. I don't think I've ever heard such a wonderful medley before.
My eyes open to see (any guesses?) Will Solace in a chair next to my bedside. There is a blue ukulele in his arms and he is strumming it gently. I don't completely understand how he is able to do this in the dark, but whatever he is doing is working.
"Will," my voice rasps out.
The instrument stops and a very flustered Will stands up from the chair to walk over to me. "Did I wake you?" he asks softly. His hand comes up to my face, brushing some of my hair out of my face. I have enough strength to shake my head. Will only smiles in return. "We have to stop meeting like this."
I make an inaudible noise and turn over in my bed to face away from Will. The pounding of my head is quick to start and it makes me want to vomit. Will laughs as I dig my head under the mountain of blankets. It feels like Will's heated blankets, the infirmary sheets, and my infirmary blanket is all stacked on top of me.
This interests Will. He stops laughing to walk over to the other side of the bed to inspect my wellbeing. His body crouches down in front of me and lifts the blanket to see my face. By watching his reaction, I don't think I look good.
"Nico, you look like you're about to . . ."
I nod my head.
Will takes that as a sign to run over to the nearest trashcan and hold it out in front of me. For the next few minutes, I'm spitting up this morning's breakfast and coughing my lungs out. After a while, Will lets me hold trashcan so he can rub my back.
When I am confident in my stomach, I pull the trashcan away from me and close my eyes. "Can you give me a hair tie?" I hold open my hand and wait. It takes a second, but Will rushes over to the counter and returns with an elastic band. I take a fist full of my hair and wrap it into a bun on the top of my head. Only lately I have been able to do this. I learned it the other night when I need to keep my hair out of my face in my cabin.
I feel the bed dip down beside me. Will's hand comes back to rubbing my back again. "Do you want to try eating or drinking anything?"
"No."
"Let me try this again, you should eat or drink something," Will repeats.
My head slowly turns towards Will and I open my eyes. "Do you want me to puke on you?"
"That won't happen if I give you ambrosia or nectar." Will taps the point of my nose and smiles at me. "Which do you prefer, Sweetheart?"
I cross my arms over my chest and fall back onto the bed. "I want the unicorn draught."
Will gets up from the bed to leave the room with the trashcan. I half expect him to leave me alone to die in this room, but he comes back with a small bottle. He sits right back in the same spot on the bed and unscrews the cap. "Are you going to take this or will I have to force it down your throat?"
I snatch the bottle from his hands. In a quick second, I drink the whole bottle of unicorn draught to spite him. Will takes the bottle from my hands and places it back on the counter. "After Jason brought you in here, you began to fade slightly. I was really worried and started to sing a hymn to my Father, and even though nobody has heard from him in weeks and the hymns aren't working correctly, he still answered me. At least, I think he did, your body could have naturally healed itself, but I like to think I did the work."
"That's cute, Solace."
He sighs. "You're not listening to me. I worry about you, Nico, I don't even know what is wrong with you this time. I'm really hoping the unicorn draught will help you, but you can't scare me like that. Promise me, Nico di Angelo, don't use your powers until I tell you. At this rate, it could take you multiple weeks to recover."
It is my turn to sigh, "I promise, Will Solace."
A very playful grin appears of his face. Will leans down over my face until he reaches the top of my forehead. Slowly, he places a kiss along my hair line and smoothes more of my hair back. "Get some sleep, Death Boy."
I sit there in stunned silence. Will Solace kissed my forehead and I'm actually aware of what's going on this time. I shove the imitate thoughts out of my head. "Please," I shout, "don't leave me."
Will responds with a single nod. His body slumps back into the chair with the ukulele in his hands. "I apologize if I sound bad, I didn't exactly get my father's musical abilities."
Falling asleep felt easy next to him. The music didn't always sound the best, but it was the best to me. Will really does make me happy.
---
I find Will the next morning stuffing his face with waffles. His face is like a deer caught in headlights. Will's eyes are wide, there is whip cream on his nose, and I can clearly see a coffee stain on his shirt.
"I've had a rough morning," Will comments, finishes the rest of his waffle.
"I can see that," I reply. Taking my time, I sit up in the uncomfortable bed and stretch my arms over my head. Whatever happened yesterday has clearly passed, because I feel great for someone who just threw up last night. "Can I have waffles?"
Instead of giving me a plate of waffles, like I thought he would, Will cut off a piece of his breakfast and held it in front of me on a fork. I look at him skeptically, but he pushes it a bit forward in an encouraging way.
In the end, I eat the waffle off of his fork.
"It needs more syrup," I say in between chews. The son of Apollo rolls his eyes at me as he sticks his fork into another chunk of waffles with extra syrup this time. Will holds out the fork again, careful to not let the syrup drip onto the floor. "I swear to gods-"
Will giggles. "Here comes the flying golden chariot." A really weird noise escapes from his mouth, it sounds like a train and plane hybrid. It was stupid, but I ate the waffles.
"So, when do I get to leave?" I ask, swinging my legs over the side of the bed.
"As soon as I know you are one hundred percent better," Will says with a triumph smile. He takes the last piece of waffle on his plate and holds it out for me once more. "Eat up, we are going to do some arts and crafts."
My eyes bug out of my head. "No way." The forkful of waffle sits in my mouth as I watch Will put the plate on the counter. I don't know about him, but arts and crafts is awful. Glitter gets everywhere and glue is literally so sticky. Besides, arts and crafts projects are meant to get thrown away after being made. They never look good anyways.
"Come on, I need to make a new dreamcatcher and I think one might be very beneficial for you." Will leans back on the counter and crosses his arms over his chest.
"You don't know anything about me."
"That is where you are wrong, Sunshine, I know a lot about you," Will walks forward to stand right in front of me, which is quite intimidating. I know I am short, but sitting on a bed with Will standing overtop of me makes me feel even shorter.
"Sei fastidiosa," I stare down at our feet in frustration.
"I hope you said something nice, di Angelo."
I give him questionable glance. Will doesn't need to know that I called him annoying. That is for me to know and him to never find out. "I'll go do your stupid arts and crafts project."
Will does a little jump with joy, grabbing onto my hands. "Stay here, let me go grab the arts and crafts supplies." Just like last time, he darts out of the room and down the hallway. That is so cute.
It doesn't take long for Will to come back with an overflowing box of art supplies. He sits down at the end of the bed and takes a deep breath. Will gets right into sharing explaining everything in the box starting with the circle we are making the dreamcatcher with and ending with the glue gun.
We start with wrapping yarn around the circle to make it colorful (or at least that is what Will claims). It shouldn't be a surprise, but I chose black while Will chose yellow. Will got done with his yarn first, so he brought out the book of dreamcatcher patterns.
"Some of them are more complicated than the others, like this sun one I am going to do. I think you would be good at the star or one of the flower like ones." Will points to pictures of finished dreamcatchers. The star one does look pretty simple to do, but I don't do simple. The pattern I decide on is one of the flowers that remind me of my step-mom. Well, all flowers remind me of Persephone, but this one just feels different to me.
Will works with me on the first few steps to help me get started. The pattern is much more complex than I thought. It doesn't take long for the strings to become a mess in my hands. I even tried fixing it multiple time, and yet, it still wasn't looking the way I wanted it to.
"This is impossible," I mumble under my breath. A shaky laugh comes from Will. He carefully puts down his own dreamcatcher and takes my hands into his own. Will moves our hands together in the weaving pattern, which actually starts to make a picture. I don't even understand what I did wrong the first time. "Thank you," I blush.
"No problem, Death Boy," Will says with his equally flustered face.