"The moment I met you,
I held my breath.
And you've been taking
it away ever since,
Nico di Angelo."
[ NICO DI ANGELO x MALE OC ]
[ PERCY JACKSON SERIES ]
[ HEROES OF OLYMPUS SERIES ]
cover by @humaneity !
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0026. | DON'T BE LIKE THAT, NOT TO ME
Vela's face was aching. Well, aching was perhaps a kind word for it, but it was all he could measure it to. His whole face ached and throbbed with agonising pain, but it wasn't as bad as the first time he experienced the pain, the time it was originally inflicted, so that must have counted for something. He could feel it like the starlight blade was still in his head, piercing his eye and stabbing his brain and cracking his skull. The pain wasn't just there at his eye, it expanded to the whole of his face, aching, throbbing, excruciating.
The pain was also more concentrated as he was left without vision. He had panicked, he wasn't afraid to admit, when it had all gone black. Vela had thought that the thing he counted on most, the thing he relied on in battle and in war, might've been his swords, a weapon, his hands, his arms, his feet, his legs—never his sight. In hindsight that was foolish, obviously his sight would be most valuable to him. But Vela was a foolish boy.
Now, without his sight, he was reliant on his other senses, and with Nico pressed close to him, so close they could be mistaken for one, and with the ferocious burning of Hera's divine fire scratching needles into his skin, he felt desperate to keep him safe. Nico's fingers dug sharper into his back than the divinity and no longer wrought pleasure with his fierce grip, instead he wove a desperate fear into Vela's skin like the mortal thread of the Fates sewing into his skin and knotting in his mind with a horrible fear that he hadn't caught Nico in time, that maybe Nico had looked upon the reckless immortal.
He hugged Nico closer to him, winding the mortal thread of fear tightly around them both as they pressed against each other as if it were the end of the world.
When the searing stopped, when the divine needles ceased to pierce his cheeks and the dreadful phantom of starlight silver in his head was gone, and when the darkness of his vision began to lighten, hazing to vague figures, Nico's fingers dug deeper into him. "Vel, are you alright?"
Vela looked down at him, a foggy outline of black and cream, but most certainly him. "Are you?" He asked, for if the answer was no, Vela would spend the rest of his immortality in sorrow.
His blurry figure shook and as Vela's vision focused, he assumed it to be a nod. "I'm alright." He assured. "Vel?" He prompted once more, his dangerous hands baring closely to Vela's cheek, by his eye, brushing over something hard and crusted that didn't feel like a proper part of him. The effects of his fading black scar that had returned in place of his vision. "Your eye..." He felt the harsh rigidity of the black scar fade even as Nico spoke. Nico's fingertips no longer felt distant, separated by volcanic scarring, and now rested on his smooth cheekbone, clear of any marking nor marring. His vision focused finally and he was met with the singular concern of Nico. "What—in my father's name—was that?"
