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***
“I myself in summer hours wove together flowers” – Sappho
“The conscious mind allows itself to be trained like a parrot, but the unconscious does not — which is why St. Augustine thanked God for not making him responsible for his dreams.” – Carl Jung
***
Sure, this wasn’t exactly what Nico di Angelo had in mind when, a few days earlier, he had pondered, Huh, so Will Solace. No, he had been thinking, perhaps a pleasant stroll down by Canoe Lake; trouncing the Camp rules about Cabin-restricted table-sharing at breakfast. Maybe finding themselves a little hidey-hole during a game of Capture the Flag where he and the son of Apollo could kiss. (The idea of kissing Will Solace made his heart skip and his dick spring in his briefs.) Four days of this, however, and the fantasies were running a bit wilder than Nico had originally allowed himself to entertain.
He was back in the Hades Cabin, of course: it was the middle of the night. The torches still shone with low, onyx light from their sconces on the walls; the dressing screen, which Hazel had erected in a scandalized bout of privacy-seeking, still bisected half the living area. Nico was posted in front of the bathroom mirror, door ajar, studying the glass as he had for four—no, three—nights previous.
Will Solace stared back at him. No, not the actual Will Solace, head medic and counselor of the Apollo Cabin; for all Nico knew, the sunlit khaki-clad doofus, disarming and annoyingly handsome, was sleeping in his bunk, drooling from a pair of pretty lips, his stupid luscious blonde curls somehow still bright with sunbeams at 2 o’clock in the morning. In his mind’s eye, Nico could see Will’s tee ridden up, baring his tanned stomach and belly button, idly scratching as he dreamed. It made Nico lick his lips.
But, nope, not that Will Solace. This Will Solace was, inexplicably, undeniably, Nico himself. Like an oversized sweater, sweaty and coma-inducingly hot, Nico had been wearing the son of Apollo’s appearance for four nights now—for a couple of hours, without fail—down to the last detail. Nico moved his arm to pinch Will’s left nipple, the perky tender nub, between his fingers and squeaked as he tweaked it, the whole gesture all Solace, thoroughly and visibly Solace, in its performance, even his moan sighed out in the melodic tenor of Solace’s voice. For nearly a week now, Nico had spent the darkest part of the night as somebody else.
***
At first, Nico considered maybe he had sustained a head injury. Sure, the son of Hades was fresh from the infirmary; under Will’s fervent and implacable insistence, Nico had volunteered a full three days in the medical tent, below its harsh lights, fetching bandages from the supply closet or steadily bracing injured limbs, as Will yapped orders and Nico watched the healer work. During breaks, they had talked, even joked—Nico resisting the urge to throw off, cracking, then finally welcoming the easy arm Will would snake around his neck. The closeness, the familiarity, perhaps an errant box dropped from a shelf, something in that infirmary had clearly bonked him on the head, leaving Nico fevered and seeing things.
Roiling about in the covers, convinced he’d fallen ill, patently refusing to get out of bed, Nico paled and pouted—more than usual, at least—insisting he was imagining the eerie sensation that his limbs had grown longer and somehow more sun kissed. That first evening, he sweated, suffering under Will’s higher-than-normal body temperature, ignoring the desire to tug off all his clothes and doze in some threadbare boxers.
Except the feeling of strangeness returned the next night. And, rather than ignore it, Nico had climbed down from the mattress and padded to the Hades Cabin bathroom to piss, rubbing his eyes the whole journey. When Nico glanced in the mirror, cock in hand, the nape of his neck prickled and he screamed at the sight of Will’s face staring blearily back at him; the noise was so loud, Hades himself might have heard it. (And a number of shades in Asphodel definitely turned their heads.) Nico’s terror and surprise so complete, he pissed all over the floor, gaping with Will’s icy blue peepers and shaken by the mess of freckles on his (no, Will’s) shoulders. He nearly slipped on the wet marble, tumbling away from the bone-white vanity, and half-crawled, half-bounded back into the relative safety of the living area.
On the cold stone, Nico attempted to recover himself. His thoughts raced ahead of him, piecing together whatever vague impressions from the previous night he could grasp and trying to puzzle out some reason or solution he could land on. Nico came up short, shivering from anything but the chill, and noticed (sidelong, no peeking) that he was kneeling on the ground with Will’s dick still dangling out. His breath caught, like Nico had swallowed a hiccup, and he shoved the offending thing back inside his underwear, his mortification absolute.
How the son of Hades got through the remaining hours, even now, Nico couldn’t say. An onlooker, if any poor soul had chanced to encounter him, would have seen the teenage boy bundled in half a dozen Camp Half-Blood sweatshirts, buried in his velvet bedclothes, trembling and mumbling incessant about whichever minor god or unrepentant monster had managed to curse him this time. He looked like a deranged orange marshmallow.
***
Daylight wasn’t much better. Nico wandered the Camp Half-Blood grounds in an agitated fog, as himself, but with the comportment of a pissed-off ventus. Food, he pushed around the well-used plates with his knife and fork, the scrape of metal on ceramic unnerving any unfortunate too foolish or friendly to sit nearby. He strode—no, tromped—through the woods. He gaped sullenly at chirping sparrows, couldn’t regulate his emotions, spit so abruptly in frustration at a hornbeam tree that he upset one of the drowsier Dryads.
Other things were amiss, too. Nico’s Stygian iron sword lay unused in the arena training circle. His aviator jacket remained hung up in his closet—Nico’s bare skinny arms drawing perplexed stares from the kids who knew him; the son of Hades being so rarely seen without his signature fashion accessory. Nico mulled over the infirmary constantly. His promise, what felt like a promise to Will, that he would stay, was staying, sent those same scraggly arms into a fit of frantic grabbing, enfolding his chest so tightly it ached afterwards.
Nico was accustomed to unfairness, true. Hadn’t he just carted a mislaid, glaring, godly relic across both a continent and an ocean to stop a celestial war—on his skinny little back, no less—with only a friend, a Hawaiian shirt, and a baseball happy satyr for company? Hadn’t he nearly died in the process, multiple times? Nico let out a lengthy string of curse words, a truly beautiful list, something he’d thank Leo for later, only to flinch as he remembered where Leo might be right now. He huffed out a breath, kicking a stone with his shoe. Sighing grandly, he thought, Leo would have found this hilarious. But he also thought of Jason, of Cupid, and chuckled gloomily that even the god of Love hadn’t been able to conjure a torture this universally preposterous. Nico was facing down his crush, literally. In the mirror.
And there it was, the final insult. The son of Hades had been compelled to admit, again, that he had a crush on a fellow demigod. Nico wanted to kick himself almost as badly as he was kicking the dirt beneath his feet, almost as much as he wanted to kick Will Solace’s pretty, pert, freckled and dimpled ass. (Not that he’d noticed.)
***
Ironically, the third night was made worse by how casually Nico approached it. He presumed, correctly, a pattern had been set; and his existential dread relaxed into a sort of disconnected and weary self-pity. The son of Apollo was an eerie (and frustratingly hot) overlay, a theoretical problem to solve.
Back in front of the mirror, Nico hauled off his clothes, studying Will in the glass, black socks, shirt, pajama pants pooled around the sun-kissed slender ankles. Experimentally, Nico winked Will’s eyes one after another, wiggled the boy’s ears, shrugged the lax and (almost) prissy shoulders, so that the mop of dirty blonde curls fluttered in an invisible wind. With each motion, Nico’s control was absolute, proving his hypothesis that Nico was Will and Will was him, mind and body in tandem.
Internally, however, Nico’s discipline didn’t extend to what he was witnessing. Not at all. Instead, the sight before him was proving difficult to manage. A test where all the variables kept changing. Will’s chest heaved with lungfuls of air; Will’s features luminous and distinct, despite the medic’s frisky and lanky sleepiness. Even as he pretended to study, Nico’s gaze wandered over the puffy brown nubs of Will’s nipples, down the graceful hardness of Will’s belly, slim without being skinny; no bone jutted at his hip like Nico’s own, but instead was a soft slender curve. An irresistible craving to bite and suckle filled him, and so Nico tore himself to look away, not daring to glance any lower. His hands flailed about, uncertain, Nico possessing no idea where it felt natural, or safe, to consign them.
It wasn’t a conscious choice, the apperception of his sense of self simply stepped aside for a moment. The words left his lips, a runaway train, before Nico could even think to claw them back: “Hey, Nico,” he said into the mirror, tone sultry. Will’s voice. His brain skipped, his stomach a pool of liquid.
Will’s blush was pathetically rosy, goosebumps budding down his arms. Little gold hairs on the nape of his neck stood on end. Will’s, no, Nico’s mouth, fell open and keened into a whine more thready and animal than any squeak he might effect himself, alone. His calm broke, detachment no longer possible.
Nico’s first impression of Will was that he kept a miniature sun inside him. And possessed the ability to light the star within others with the power of a kind word. Now, this blaze heightened and exploded outward, as Nico began to understand that brightness wasn’t some pocket flashlight but that Will could be, was, the sun itself. Nico saw in the mirror a son of Apollo in his element, a paradoxical mix of aristocratic grace, feline calm, and stark ardent beauty. The sensuality of it dazzled him, stopped him cold and clammy, and made Nico want to orbit Will forever. Oh, he was down so bad.
Then, unbidden, images of Will—in sex, with him, like that—flooded Nico’s head. The real Will. Pinning him, arched over him. Turned on, self-conscious and hot, yet smiling his absurd, annoyingly goofy smile; somehow still looking like an obvious vision. Their hard dicks rubbing together in a slick of sweat and spit and want.
The fantasy lasted only a few seconds, then Nico’s humiliation flared. Shame knotted in his belly. His eyes screwed shut, blacking out the phantoms like Nico was pulling a screen. Gods, he was so horrible. The son of Apollo was so foxy. This was so fucked up. Nico’s thoughts swarmed, racing to square the circled fact that this wasn’t Will Solace standing in front of him but himself. What would Will think, if he knew? Would he ever return to, be, normal?
That was only yesterday.
***
Somewhere along the way, Nico bumped into Austin Lake.
Another son of Apollo, Will’s brother, and an incredibly skilled musician, the modish teenager was a feature in Nico’s three-day stint at the Medical tent. Austin’s songs had mended cuts, healed bruises, and soothed the ragged spirits of many an injured camper. Austin’s wild string of modern-day references had bemused and befuddled Nico, but Austin was so hip and charming, that Nico couldn’t help but like him anyways. It helped that Austin was merciless in his teasing of Will Solace, an art form Nico had recently discovered he enjoyed practicing as well. Right now, though, his mind was not set on teasing.
Like an angry gnat, furtive and relentless, Nico cross-examined Austin outside the Amphitheater, probing for any hint that Will was experiencing any symptoms akin to what was happening to Nico himself. No, Solace had just been at the infirmary; why don’t you go by and see him yourself? Yeah, he was sleeping fine. No, nothing out of the ordinary. Nico, just what exactly are you on about?
Nico had retreated just as soon as Austin asked him the following: “You sure you’re OK, di Angelo? Eating enough? You’re looking a little peaky. I could… Should I go get Will?” In response, Nico shoved half a dozen pancakes onto the dish, sopped them with syrup and a pad of butter, then glared at Austin before bounding towards the Hades Cabin with a mopey pout.
***
This brought Nico to Night Four.
He scowled into the reflection, Will Solace’s face staring back at him, watching as Will’s brow and lips repeated the same scowl back at him in perfect mimicry. Nico had been expecting this, of course. He wrinkled his nose again; tanned skin, so unlike his own pallor, with an infuriatingly cute dusting of freckles, wiggled in return. He wondered, Was there even a point to figuring out how, why, this was happening?
Dully, the week’s wild thoughts and half-formed notions drummed in his ears. In the padlocked dark of the cabin bathroom, Nico’s skin felt sweat-slicked, his limbs too big for his body, sticky and awkward after a race of thin fire. Four days! Four days of this! Nico chewed the inside of his cheek, the blurry thrum of pain clarifying—even as Will’s answering wince in the glass made his throat seize, like a coin he couldn’t swallow.
Truthfully, Nico had already given up. When he pictured it, marching up to the Big House, cornering Chiron or Mr D to plead for help, he couldn’t see any satisfactory explanation produce itself. Nico balked even considering it; they’d mark him as a creep or worse, probably had already marked him as-is. After all, half the Camp was afraid of him, and the others believed Nico a certified weirdo already. Imagine waltzing up to the Oracle, Rachel Elizabeth Dare, and expecting for a quest for this. Apologies, but I need to figure out why I’m transforming into the Apollo Cabin’s sexy head counselor. Can you assist? His mind rejected the whole idea outright.
No, Nico was alone. Utterly lost, and no closer to understanding what was going on, no matter how much interrogating he rung back on himself. Nico wanted to grasp hold of the mirror on both sides, shake it, and demand that Will Solace return his body to him…
Instead, Nico had startled awake and rushed into the toilet, long-limbed and languidly beautiful in a way he never was himself; too-big feet smacked the marble floor. And freckled arms braced the bone-white sink, peering past Will Solace’s pearly blue eyes into the glass beyond. Haunted, still a bit turned on. For someone as commonly conversant with ghosts, the situation very nearly made him chuckle.
He’d grown increasingly accustomed to other things being out-of-whack as well. Normally, Nico ran cold; whether too long in his favorite places, underground, or too many hours spent amongst the drifting shades, his whip-light body naturally struggled to stay warm. He had the pallor and internal temperature of chilled milk. As the son of Apollo, everything was too hot. Bedsheets twisted and wound him like prison shackles, and his clothes scratched like hoary rope. Over the last few days, as Will, he had stripped unconsciously in his sleep, all the way down to his briefs; and those felt too tight, meant for hips knottier and thinner, small even, unequaled by the hard bowstring curve of Will’s masculine softness. He was a boy—gods, they were both boys—but Nico seemed positively runty by comparison. When he thought of this, Nico crackled with desire, frozen with guilt that he felt inexplicably like he’d earned.
It was absurd. Nico felt himself getting hard, ridiculously, felt Will’s penis stirring to rise in his—his own—underwear. Oh, no. Not this, not now. He let out a panicked hiccup, his heart, skimming a mile a minute. Hades, I can’t— The needy ache in his gut from earlier, low and thready, was threatening to rise alongside Will’s appendage.
Yesterday had been dizzying enough. Nico woke at sunrise, shivering, to find his pale torso and scrawny legs folded together naked atop the sheets—his cock rigid and trapped between his milk thighs like a pressed flower. Precum dribbled from the tip of his hooded glans, messing his sheets with the nectar of “nightly emission.” That’s what his old schoolmaster had called it once, wet dreams, the sinful evidence of a deranged and wicked mind. Even the memory of Doctor Thorne and his vaguely Catholic chiding, however, wasn’t enough to halt Nico’s yearning. It was a sharp tug at Nico’s stomach, an arrow shaft hitched in his center, drawn from needle to fletching. Like an arrow, it cut him and tickled him both, tart and feather-lite; Nico could taste the desire on his tongue, candy and piping blood.
That’s why he’d hurled himself to the bathroom today, too-big feet smacking the marble floor. His briefs tented obscenely, the air prickling the soft skin of his inner thigh; the foreign throbbing thing poked the side of the sink on its pedestal. Horny again; furiously annoyed again, at being horny, Will’s imprint fingered all over him. In Nico’s fluttery head, the image of a pink dickhead kissing the porcelain gently—as he bumped into the sink—practically made him short-circuit with lust. He still didn’t dare to glance below.
There was only so long a guy could hold out. Thirteen (nearly fourteen) year-olds, needed more release than this. Especially when the object of their affection was standing right in front of them!
Unsteady and hot, Nico hobbled back into the main room of his Father’s Cabin, attempting to ignore Will’s erection angled out like a maypole. Nico scanned the darkness; his eyes crawled over the obsidian walls, the brass and marble accents, the velvet blood of his sheets. How perfectly fitted he seemed, son of Hades, cradled in all that red—his pale limbs, his black hair—and how strange it felt to lay there as Will Solace, all the sunlight of the son of Apollo having nowhere else to go. His restlessness made total sense, waking up as this. As if it had been prodded, Will’s dick jolted in his briefs; it seemed to be saying, Hey, you can’t help out a friend? Nico rolled his eyes, sighing.
Last, Nico gazed at the sad little pothos plant Jerry had brought over. Short and tiny, obsessed with West End musicals, Jerry was another of the Apollo kids, Will’s sibling. The plant had been a sort-of “thank you” from Will after their three-day stint in the infirmary; it was a miracle the creeper had survived this long, given Nico’s penchant for killing green things. His stepmother was the only person in the family with any skill to grow anything. Of course, Will had given him a plant. There was some lesson wrapped up in the gift as well, some reminder with rapped knuckles that Nico di Angelo, too, required sunlight and a regular watering. Will, stupid Will.
Nico sat on the corner of the bed, weight sinking more than usual. Absentmindedly, Nico peeped down and instantly regretted it: Will’s dick was there, hard and straining his underwear, farcically, the fly parsed to one side, so that Nico could see half his spongy head and the length beyond. Circumcised, Nico noted; he had wondered, an almost furious curiosity he’d refused to give in to for the three nights previous. Now, he groaned in frustration, splaying out his (Will’s) gangly legs.
The truth is, Nico considered, turning away, this would be a whole lot easier if I understood anything about Will’s real feelings. He had enjoyed the infirmary, enjoyed Will more than he ever thought possible. Sure, Nico wanted to kick Solace half the time still. The bright, jaunty disposition was enough to make him stab Will clean-through with his sword, the healer was so incessantly cheerful. But Nico had been impressed, deeply, by the cone of calm that Will could cast over literally anybody.
“Almost anybody,” Will had responded, when Nico paid him this exact compliment in the Medical tent a few days ago. Secretly, Nico’s respect for Will had only intensified by this response, the death of Octavian still hanging in the air unspoken between them. Nico’s sense that the son of Apollo had shadows within him, buried and lawless ones, that Will was afraid or too guarded to show. Nico understood that impulse better than anyone.
Nico wanted to kick himself, too. For not saying anything whenever their fingers brushed over a bandage or vial or that one pair of medical shears. The stilled, tongue-tied manner in which he had immobilized when Will had snaked an arm around his waist on the final day. His tactless inability to mutter even the smallest apology for shrugging off Will’s hand. Or how Nico had discovered, afterward, alone with his own brain, the crumpling in his chest whenever Will pressed his tongue to his front teeth in concentration over a task. Will was enchantingly, annoyingly pretty. Friend, friend, he had intoned in repeated whispers; and the very word summoned up Will’s voice, sure and musical, branding him “a friendly face” after the battle, Nico’s insides shrieking to not even consider overstepping those bounds. He scoffed at himself, from the relative safety of the Hades Cabin, As if he’d even want you enough to like you. You don’t even know if he’s gay!
The bizarre transformations had begun the next night.
***
At the edge of the bed, the hardon poked incessantly out of his underwear. His breathing was heavy, shaky. His hand, Will’s hand, suspended inches from the half-open fly. For the last time, he considered what to do.
As he so recently had reminded himself, it’s not as if Nico di Angelo never jerked off. Nico could even call up the specific terminology from Catholic School, “the sin of Onan” he smugly remembered, vague smile ghosting his features as he rattled off the verbiage in his head. This feat would have earned him an epic eye-roll from Will, and no doubt a lecture about the benefits of healthy masturbation, Nico was certain of it. (His friends, Leo, Percy, even Annabeth, would have probably had a laugh at his expense, too.) Nico understood, intellectually, how ridiculous it was for a Greek demigod, a son of Hades—in the flower of his adolescence, in the midst of a whole colony of demigod heroes—to be worried of being struck down over a private wank. The irony wasn’t lost on him, not in the slightest.
Yet shame was shame, profound and yawning as the Pit of Tartarus. Waves of guilt washed over Nico, anytime he surrendered and rubbed one out. Sometimes the tide was small, the barest hiss of wrongness; other times, Nico found himself swept under a deluge, battered by inner accusations, his pupils wide. Litanies of Catholic guilt rattled off old lines, errant, between his ears: the bites of the apple, the dangers of the flesh, the sin committed in his heart as damning as if already committed them in broad daylight. Shame mapped the meridians of his frame like a veiny tendril, woven into his joints or else laced round his internal organs; its reach was impossibly deep, more insistent and stubborn than his waking sense. This instant, it was Saint Paul’s epistle to the Corinthians, another pet of Doctor Thorne’s, biting like a mangy dog: “Every sin that a man doeth is without the body; but he that committeth fornication sinneth against his own body. What? know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost…” Almost by rote, his hand, Will’s hand, moved to make the sign of the cross…
It was the gesture that snapped Nico out of it. More than seeing Nico’s own expressions played out on Will’s face, more than Nico’s tics or nervous gesticulations stamped on this sun-kissed beach bum vision, the utter foreignness of Will Solace raising his limb in the picture of religious sacrament halted Nico in his tracks. He couldn’t imagine any universe where Will would perform this ritual and mean it.
Almost before Nico knew what he was doing, Will’s arm recoiled, his fingers shaping a fist. He blinked, sighing out the air he hadn’t realized he’d been holding in, strangely satisfied.
For the first time in almost a week, Nico di Angelo’s head felt clear. He was himself. Sure, he looked like Will Solace; on the surface, from the dusty toes to the annoyingly flawless curly-blonde hair, he was an exact facsimile of the son of Apollo. He folded or fidgeted with Will’s healing fingers, pursed or pinched the bowstring of Will’s lips, for a few hours each night huffed Will’s freckled chest with each and every breath. But his mind was his own, all its internal workings as familiar as they ever were—for good or ill. Nico thought of the boats on Canoe Lake; you had to climb inside one to steer, otherwise they just bobbed there. The hard dick poking halfway out of his briefs was Will’s, truly, but it was Nico’s thoughts making it hard.
It was good he’d confirmed that Solace, apparently, had no idea this was happening. That made things simpler. Nico shoved aside the “WHY?!” of it all and admitted, Yeah, OK, so Will Solace. When he’d told Percy, “You’re not my type,” maybe Nico’s subconscious had already decided whomever else fit the bill instead.
Tentatively, Nico drew aside the underwear’s fly, as if unwrapping a present. Will’s cock was free from its confines now, the tip ever so slightly pinked where the cotton had chafed; the skin of his shaft, less tanned by a few shades than the rest of Will, seemed soft as silk. In the window of the open fabric, downy dirty blonde pubes peeked up at him; Nico wanted to run his fingers through the neat little bush. The dick hopped, unconsciously, begging for attention. He watched as a single bead of precum suspended on the piss slit, Nico chewed the inside of his cheek again and hummed.
Gentle, shyly, he wrapped his fingers around the length. He let loose another sigh, the mumble of a moan. All his senses his own again, Nico became sharply aware of how different and the same it was, touching Will’s cock. Softer somehow, less slippery, thicker and a little shorter than his own paler, longer one. Will’s balls were bigger, too, sweatier and looser. Yet Will’s hands were larger, and Nico kept misjudging the grip as he began to jerk slow and deliberately. Pinpricks of feeling awakened across his body, blossomed into a sputtering fuzzy warmth. Pleasure pooled in his belly.
Committed, Nico needed more. He lifted up on the bed, creaking the boxspring, and slipped his underwear off with a yank. Will’s penis flopped wildly, half-caught and strained in the fabric. Nico heard himself giggle, very uncharacteristically, then balked at his own delight. I swear on the Styx, I’ve gone nuts, he thought. Dad better not be seeing this.
Banishing that particular fear completely, Nico scooted toward the center of the bed, on his (Will’s!, another thrill ran through him) freckled butt, now naked.
As he looked down at Will’s body this time, he let his eyes wander unhurried. He planted Will’s feet at either side of his hips, splayed like a frog on its hindquarters; it was a favorite position for his own wanking off, Nico relishing the way it opened his frame, the pleasant stretch of his asshole and how he could grind down against the bed. It was startlingly obscene, seeing Will like this. Nico saw himself take hold of the cock again, lazily pulling it, shuddering at the tickle of the velvet sheets against Will’s taint and balls.
Other details struck him, holding the sight of Will—things he’d allowed, in his shock and nerviness, not to penetrate before. The cluster of freckles at Will’s left shoulder blade, the rough calluses on his finger pads, the lithe wiry agility of Will’s muscles, another hidden strength under the unruffled grace of Will’s exterior. Lazily, he left his wrists to dip lower as he continued jerking, brushing the blonde bush of Will’s pubes.
Stuck halfway between a want to cum and the desire to drag this out as long as possible, Nico whined deeper. In Will’s voice, the pitch sunk lower, less cracked and more musical—as if Apollo himself only permitted his children moans in faultless baritone. The sound reverberated through him, and Nico flung the reins on his fantasies like a pegasus.
It was erotic, albeit inexpert. To an outsider, someone more versed in the conducts of sex between men, Nico’s fantasies probably seemed frightfully plain. Will’s cock, not in his fingers, but laid out on his tongue, which swirled around the tip hungrily; Will’s face broken into a blush, glowing with pleasure. Nico’s dick, cradled in Will’s loose fist, thumbing Nico’s foreskin in exactly the right place. Or else coltish kisses, pressed like pomegranate seeds, up Nico’s neck till Will found his mouth, the both of them sharing breath. Most of all, Nico saw himself settled in Will’s lap, leaned into him, the sweaty girth of Will’s shaft trapped beneath his bum, and Will’s fingers teasing his asshole. Nico’s blood pumped and sizzled, his throat choked and keening; his hand moved on Will’s shaft like a fury.
It didn’t matter that he—still—had no idea why this was happening. For the minute, he forgot that Will would probably end their friendship immediately, if he got even the slightest inkling. It didn’t matter if Will was gay, or straight, or ever inviting him back to the infirmary for help. Their shoulder might never bump awkwardly again, right now Nico compartmentalized things enough not to care. Nico set down the question, Is he even capable of loving somebody like me?, and picked up a different one: How quick can I cum, using Will’s cock, with Will’s hands?
The answer was, in fact, pretty fast.
Nico bucked against the sheets, rhythmic and forceful. His brain was fuzz. Will’s other arm, distracted and preoccupied, had palmed his butt cheek, wrenching Will’s hole partway to stretching; every swish of fabric along the winking rim sending shivers up his cock, sparking darkened starbursts behind his vision. Will’s natural temperature made Nico feel like he was burning, sweat in his curls, running down his temples or stinging the corner of icy blue eyes; he swiped his tongue across Will’s upper lip, tasting the tang of it. A frayed whimper tore from him, and Nico’s back arched unnaturally, unbalancing him.
He collapsed back into the velvet sheets, fisting Will’s cock, out of breath but undeterred. His head nested into the pillows, twisting and wordless, Will’s throat bared. The pressure was unlike anything he’d felt himself, Will’s ringed grip firmer and somehow more elegant. As Nico felt the orgasm bubbling in him, Will’s pretty butt lifted of its own accord, the body an Apollonian string drawn taut. Velvet in his fingers, silk in his limbs, Nico reared up and came.
Spurts and spurts of cum spilled from him in a fountain, Will’s tip gushing with his spunk. Unlike Nico, whose seed might land in his hair (if he wasn’t careful), Will spit and dribbled, his fluids getting all over Nico’s hands—running down the side of his wrist, dirtying Will’s pubes and sliding down the bronzed inner thighs. Nico strangled, seeing it. Will’s cum. Evidence of Will’s satisfaction and contentment, Nico did that. He exhaled through it, drinking in the pool of his happiness, savoring the lightness in Will’s limbs, the tingling thrum of bliss sated. He let Will’s hand, a bit tired, drop the spent cock—which was already shriveling in the puddle of semen on Will’s belly—and stretched his arm behind his head. Will’s curls tickled gently against the skin, and Nico felt himself burying Will’s face into his pit. Without thinking, Nico sniffed hard, the sour of sweat filling his nostrils sweetly. Will was all over him, in him, as he returned back to himself.
***
Some minutes later, Nico di Angelo was just Nico again, nobody else. The transformation over, he lay atop the bedsheets covered in the leavings of Will’s load. His breathing had normalized; his awareness piqued, noting how the cum was already starting to crust in his dark pubes, near his belly button. The chill of deep evening flitted at his edges, robbed now of Will’s warmth; and he quivered.
Nico’s soft cock, thin and pale, coiled like a question mark on his tummy. In the cool air, his asshole twitched, bared and sweaty, itchy for another finger. Idly, he wondered what it would actually be like for Will to touch him there—then wagged his head, banishing the thought. He considered getting up, or tugging the covers about him, only both actions seemed like far too much effort. His skin clammed. Night or exposure, or embarrassment finally rearing its head again, made his nipples harden. Nico sighed, groaning.
Just as guilt began to lick the edges of his consciousness, the post-orgasmic high dissipated, the torches in the Cabin blazed in black fire. Nico jumped out of his skin, flinching at the sudden flash of light. He scrambled for his clothes, thinking, Shit, Dad—nearly tripping and spilling onto the marble floor, as he tossed away the pajama pants and dove for his jeans instead. As he struggled to pull them up his calves, Nico caught the slightest crinkle of paper sounding nearby.
It was an envelope, unaddressed and unsigned. Inside on cotton-rag and onyx ink were two slips of paper, each with something written on them in a stately cursive scrawl. On the first was a strange list of ingredients, mortal and monstrous, alongside small units of measure; a recipe or magical formula, maybe. On the second, the words, “Really. I shall need to make a house-call, if you cannot be more cautious...”
Shit, shit, shit, Nico thought, panicking for real.
When he got the tee-shirt over his head, threading his spindly arms through the proper holes, the air had surged with the cloying scent of pomegranates and he barked out, “Dad?”, in a reedy tone of confusion. The tone was off. Squinting, he peered more closely at the note.
It continued:
“…but for now, your Father and I will continue to respect your privacy, as a healthy, growing teenage boy. We endeavor to allow you the distance to sort out your own affairs. You must know, unquestionably, how proud we are of your relentless tenacity, the courage you have shown in facing yourself, and the sense of justice, right and wrong which you possess. We have not always seen…eye to eye. Nor was I as welcoming as I could have been, at first. It was not easy for you, Nico, as it was not easy for me. Nevertheless, I have come to realize just how much roils and thrives beneath your surface, not only bones but precious stones and seeds, perhaps even the building blocks of stars.
“It is your responsibility to find out, as it is my responsibility to watch over you while you discover it.
“To that end, please find the enclosed. Take it to your healer boy, this William Solace. It will solve the problem. Rest assured, I’ve not told Hades of your little indulgence here. Best nip it in the bud and seek out the real thing instead. Mom.”
Nico blinked back a few tears, letting his hands fall to his side. The paper, a little crumpled, he clutched in his fist gently. Nico let out a sigh. Relief, embarrassment, warmth, even a wince or two, it was surprising to feel every emotion pass and settle inside him. For the first time in a great while, he felt strangely lucky to be a demigod. Like he was just where he needed to be, and also maybe dodged the fiery pitch of a Roman siege weapon.
Another glance at the letter, and Nico snickered shabbily at the two postscripts, each sillier than the other, down at the bottom:
“P.S. – Of course I am not trying to replace or supplant your mother.
“P.P.S. – It’s quite curious, really. Some of the sorceresses serving Gaea grafted thornapple with an North American butterfly, the pipevine swallowtail to be specific, whose caterpillar young often ingest poisonous plants, in the hopes to extract some usefulness from it in the recent war; and the cynocephali warriors, who do enjoy coating both edge and claw with any variety of toxin they might get their grubby little hands on, well, they seem to have acquired a number of phials prior to the battle. You were lucky it was not lethal, whatever weapon might have grazed you. Although the side-effects were quite unusual.”
He huffed out, laughing again. It was over, or would be tomorrow, at any rate. Nico would go see Will, hand over Persephone’s elixir recipe, avoid any follow-up questions, and finally be returned to normal. Mystery solved, crisis averted. And at the Dining Pavilion, he’d be sure to drop his Stepmother’s favorites into the offering fire for a week straight, at least.
Nico stripped off his jeans again and climbed into bed. Another shiver ran through his skinny frame, making his teeth chatter. Although, he thought, Nico pursing his lips. Will’s body heat was pretty nice. And that jerk-off session felt pretty good. Maybe giving things one more day before…
There was a second flash of light, as the sconces on the Cabin walls blazed brightly with their dark fire. Nico di Angelo groaned, getting the message. He said aloud, to nothing and nobody in particular, “Alright, alright, I got it. The real thing.” Then he shut his eyes, hugged his arms around his own body, and went to sleep.
***
fin