Solace Through Darkness (Solangelo One-shots)

Wish You Were Here

Nico had lost count of the times he'd cried.
When he first heard the news, he hadn't cried. He had simply sat, looking up at Kayla with big brown eyes, asking her to repeat the two word sentence, monitoring her face to see any hint of humor, to test if she was faking the horrified expression, to see if it all was just a mean prank his boyfriend had arranged, just for fun. But it wasn't. And how quickly he had become accustomed to that expression. He had seen it before, many times. Those times, he hadn't cared. He had walked by without a second thought, passing by weeping people in hospitals or churches or, daresay, graveyards.  He wasn't involved, so he had no sympathy. All of the sudden, he was the one asking for some trace of regret on his behalf from an impartial party. All of the sudden, he cared.
Kayla had gotten tired of repeating that same, terrible sentence over and over. It wasn't fair of Nico to make her go through that kind of torture over and over, doomed to watch Nico's usually angsty face flood with an emotion that she didn't think there was a word for. She had given up and simply collapsed onto Nico's chest and sobbed and shook until her eyes ran dry and she was left hiccuping.
Nico had only lost a sibling once, after all. This was Kayla's thrid time.
And Nico didn't know what to do.
Of course, Nico had tried to communicate with Will. Of course he'd tried to sneak into Elysium. Unfortunately, Will seemed to be pulling A Bianca. A year later, Nico was no better than he had been at the funeral. Soon after, he had left camp at age 18 to start going to med school. Hey, he wasn't planning anything for his life, and someone had to do it. Still, it almost felt like he was stealing Will's future.
He had settled into a dorm room with some random mortal named Todd. Todd once asked Nico if he was a druggie after peeking inside Nico's mirror cabinet. It was suspicious. Most people didn't have a dangerous amount of antidepressants in their bathrooms.
It was around that time when Nico started to wonder if nectar could heal a broken heart.
Maybe one and a half cups a day isn't healthy. Maybe two cups a day is practically flirting with death. Maybe Nico didn't care. Maybe he liked the burning sensation. Maybe he liked hurting himself.
A month or so after he's started, Todd told one of the teachers he was concerned for Nico. Stupid Todd. His assessment of the situation was wrong, so wrong.
"I'm fine," Nico had said. "Don't worry about it."
Not only was he wrong, he earned Nico a trip to the school psychologist. This trip turned into two, turned into three, until Nico was told twice per week to go see the shrink. They tried sleep therapy once. Nico woke up to Dr. Renold asking who Will is. Nico didn't correct the verb tense. He had simply replied through a choke, "My boyfriend."
But he couldn't help but feel like Will was disappearing, disappearing into that bright light that movies and songs always talk about but no one ever seemed to see, and Nico was just a shadow, trying to push back the sunshine to get back to Will.
Nico didn't even notice when he clutched his own had under the table at resturants, the same way he used to hold Will's hand back when they were still in the closet, nor did he find it strange when he started scrawlling notes during seminars, crossing the T' s from left to right and forgetting to close the O's, something he had teased Will about. Once, he had subconsciously signed his name at the top of his notes "Nico Solace". When he notice, he didn't erase it. He had gone over it in pen so no one could.
Sometimes, the teacher would drone on about something that Will had lectured Nico about, so Nico would write a copy of his own notes. Afterwards, he would stick it in an envelope and address it,
Will Solace
DOA Recording Studios
Los Angeles, CA, 323
And then he'd toss it to the wind and hope Hermes would take care of it from there.
"Just carry it home, okay?"
It was three years when one of Nico's uni friends convinced him to sign up for Tinder. Nico went on a few dates, usually to outrageously gross restaurants. The only way that Nico could make it through the night was imagining his date was Will, playing some kind of lame game where the pretended it was the first far again. Except Will had taken Nico to Broadway for their first date. Freaking Broadway.
He never went on any second dates.
"I'm sorry, Will," Nico once said, mumbling when he was home alone. "I've been cheating on you."
Nico wasn't sure when was the first day he woke up and his first thought was, "It's a lovely day," undead of, "Today would be better if he was here." Maybe he was twenty three at the time, working towards his Master's degree. But that day came, and slowly, little by little, Nico let his memories go to peace. Will was probably tired of getting letters anyway.
Nico got approved of an entire two years of his PHD by helping out as a medical assistant for a few months. In that time, He's managed to save seven lives because he knew when a person was dying, and he knew why, and he knew how to fix it.
At age 28, Doctorate at hand, Nico became a surgeon at Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Chicago after Cecil mentioned there was a position open. A few months after starting, a letter showed up in his mail box. It read the following:
Hi, Nico,
Have you forgotten me? I hope not, because I'm coming to visit soon.
XOXO,
Your significant annoyance.
Ironically, he had forgotten who his "significant annoyance" was.
That July, he performed an especially tricky C-section. The baby was beautiful, and Nico couldn't help thinking the father was a horrible person for not coming to witness the birth of this incredible baby boy.
"He's perfectly healthy, ma'am,"Nico reported, handing the baby back to his mother.
"Oh," she replied, looking down at her son with a look of pure love. "Oh, he's beautiful, isn't he?"
"He is," Nico agreed, looking down at the child. "If you don't mind, where is his father?"
The young woman (probably early twenties) shook her head. "You wouldn't believe me if I told you."
Nico laughed at the thought of something being outlandish enough for him, of all people, to doubt its existence. "Trust me, I've heard a lot of crazy things."
The woman hesitated. "His father is a god."
"Oh, really?" Nico couldn't day he hadn't been expecting that. "Which one?"
"Apolo." The lady cradled the baby. "You aren't going to diagnose me with hysteria or something?"
"No," Nico shook his head. "I have a lot of crazy stories about the gods. I'm the son of one of them."
"Really?" the mother shifted her gaze to him. "Which one?"
"If I told you, you'd be worried about your son's wellbeing," Nico admitted. A second of silence went by.
"I haven't named him yet," the woman confessed. "Do you have any recommendations?"
Nico didn't hesitate before replying, "William. Name him William."