How Do You Say Gods- Sea of Monsters

11: CLARISSE BLOWS UP EVERYTHING

"You guys just sit back and chill-ax," Will told, tugging on Nico's sleeve hopefully. "Magnus has been getting snacks, so we'll just grab some of everything and bring it back too!"

"Is that what those jokes about a buffet were?" Percy asked, he was the least motivated to crawl out of his beanbag as fatigue was already setting in again. Whoever said words don't hurt had never read this book!

The others gave it no passing thought as Thalia lounged back comfortably too, staring up at the shadowed ceiling and twirling her bracelet around with a pensive look. Jason went over to see Hearth, Magnus, and Alex were already having one of their ASL talks.

Nico waited until he was sure Percy was out of earshot in the first room with a fridge before asking, "so did Zeus really go from denying Kronos is coming back to blaming it on Chiron in the span of a year?"

"No, Kronos is his dad," Will admitted with a sad smile, already pulling out a whole pizza with different toppings every other slice. "He doesn't like to talk about it much, but, yeah. That's why they blamed Thalia's tree on Chiron instead. Messed up, huh?" He pulled out a pile of perfectly gooey, melted s'mores next.

"I'll say," he scowled for the friendly enough centaur, even if the head of activities had always given him the same uneasy look as everyone else in that camp about what to do with him, at least Chiron had never been outright rude to him.

In this short time, Will had already pulled out a wide assortment of food, practically covering the bed with as many options as he could think of, watching Nico intently the whole time. He hadn't once reached for anything though, so Will asked just to be sure, "anything specific you're going to want?"

Nico resisted the urge to roll his eyes as he plucked up a singular french fry. "This'll do." He tried to smile like he was hoping Will would laugh it off. He should have known better at this point.

"You've got to eat down here," his scowl seemed to have more weight than anybody else Nico had met, perhaps because it set so firmly into his face, an effort to keep it there instead of his natural smiles.

"No, I don't," he said back without concern. "Child of Hades thing, I don't need to eat as much as-" the lie was passing easily from his mouth, he could barely remember a time he wasn't lying to somebody after Bianca's death.

"Bullshit," Will called out at once, and Nico stopped dead, the french fry fell from his fingers. He felt such a shock rock through him he glanced over his shoulder to make sure Thalia hadn't appeared.

He didn't ask how Will knew he was lying. Instead, he threw him a bone, the least he could do after Will had been so friendly to him. "It, it's for practice," he finally relented. Couldn't tell him to much, it was still weird to him why Will was asking at all.

"Practice," he repeated, drawing the word out uncomfortably like a hiss, but it didn't even cross Nico's mind to mock him right now.

"Yeah, I'm going on a trip, and might not get food around every corner. Relax, I'll eat something small later." Tartarus probably didn't have magical refrigerators to quench his every desire, he actually needed to make a pit stop to find those seeds just in case this took to long-

"Nico," Will sounded so angry he startled and looked around for a monster before those piercing blue eyes kept looking right at him. "You're always off on some trip! You need to come back to camp, ask for a quest to do this right, let me, somebody help!"

"I don't need your help!" He instantly snapped back, but there was no force to his words for the touch of concern still resonating in him Will had said that at all. "You, you don't even know what you're asking for."