Work Text:
Nico was lucky that dreamwalking didn’t take a lot out of him. He was asleep when it happened, after all, so he was already resting, and what was the worst that could happen? He’d wake up still tired? As if that would be any different than his usual.
It was also one of his powers that he had the least under control.
Once he’d started being able to navigate through the dream space, it was a difficult switch to shut off. It had been at its worst when he was just a kid - even while conscious, he managed to suck dreams toward him, and he’d accidentally given Percy Jackson a front row seat to Mount Othrys before the Titan War. Now, as an adult, he could at least keep the dreaming within his own subconscious, but the feelers went out almost the same second his brain officially shut itself off.
With so much of his time spent with Reyna, he didn’t have to worry about it. Between his dreamwalking and her strength-sharing, there really weren’t any secrets left to keep. The only way to stop the dreamwalking when the two of them were out on a quest was to simply not sleep at the same time - easy enough for just the two of them. But when they did end up passing out next to each other, either intentionally or through sheer exhaustion, their proximity always seemed to make the problem worse.
It was as if Nico’s subconscious could take a hop, skip, and a jump into Reyna’s brain, and they’d be running through dreamland together, two sets of nightmares and demigod dreams merged into one colossal horror fest. But still, just as in the waking world, at least then they had each other.
But Reyna’s current injuries weren’t conducive to sleeping pressed up against Nico’s side. Her leg had to stay in one position, and her concussion required a lot to sleep - restful sleep, at that. She couldn’t take the pressure of monster fighting in her dreams, and she couldn’t spend half the night waking up to Nico’s thrashing body beside her until she could manage to shake him out of his own dream.
Nico had fully agreed with the professional medical opinion that Reyna deserved to have the guest room to herself. He did not feel comfortable with the way she looked at him, deviously, as she closed the guest room door on Nico and Will, then left to debate the remaining bed in the house.
Nico was grateful for his own healing mind and body, too exhausted to raise so much as a wishbone, unable to even find a dream let alone walk into someone else’s, especially when Will’s sleeping mind rested only a pillow’s length away from his own, their bodies both tucked under the same blankets. If Nico’s leg stretched out too far, he’d find Will under the sheets. And Will, a self-proclaimed kicker, would probably spend a lot of time startling Nico out of his tumultuous sleep without even realizing.
The first time Nico dreamt in Will’s bed, he thought he was safe from walking. All of the internet-approved sigils and wards throughout each and every room, all of the medicinal plants meant for fending off spirits that supposedly fought off what Will considered hallucinations - Nico thought they’d been enough to keep him within his own subconscious. It helped that this dream wasn’t horrifically vivid, as his tended to be - mostly fuzzy around the edges, a strangely-familiar man in front of him with tan skin and blond hair and tattoos that disappeared under the short sleeves of his t-shirt. Nico wanted to be wrapped up in those arms, held protectively, guarded and healed. Not much of an image was conjured for him, but he felt that his wish had been fulfilled, and he was enveloped in such an emotional warmth that he was disappointed to have woken up only moments later.
“Rise ‘n shine, sleepy head!” Will called out cheerfully once he’d noticed Nico’s eyes slowly blinking open. “I was just about to go check in on Reyna. Meet me in the livin’ room in a few, would ya? I gotta get into work a bit earlier today, so I gotta be quick about y’all’s checkups this mornin’.”
Nico gave a hum of agreement, sitting up in bed as Will made his way out of the room. It took time for Nico to follow after him, muscles still sore and limbs stiff from moving far less than usual. It was going to take a lot of training to get himself feeling normal again once he made it back to camp.
He found Will and Reyna in the kitchen, Reyna seated on a barstool at the island and Will standing across from her, appearing to be packing a lunch for himself.
“How are you feeling otherwise?” Will asked, on the tail-end of the morning checkup.
“Still tired,” Reyna answered, pressing two fingers into her temples on either side of her head, “but I’m sick of sleeping. I know I should try to enjoy as much dreamless sleeping as I can while it lasts, but it’s boring.”
Will hummed, nodding. “Y’all get a lot of stress dreams, too?” Reyna’s eyes darted toward Nico for a split second, another check off their mental list. “Mine usually ain’t all too pleasant either - and sometimes… strangely almost prophetic? Like, I tend to get some nasty cases of deja vu shortly after a really clear dream. That ever happen to folks like you?”
This time, Reyna’s gaze slid toward Nico’s more slowly, like she was trying to fit puzzle pieces together before presenting her findings. “I can’t say that it has,” she answered.
Will shrugged. “Well, dreams are just the brain’s way of processing, or whatever they say, so maybe all that deja vu is a sign that I need to get out of the hospital a little more often. Besides, I actually had a pretty nice dream last night,” he added, a soft smile uncurling on his face as his hands paused on the sandwich he was making. “I don’t even know how to describe it. It was so…”
He glanced off to the side where Nico was still lurking in the entryway, their eyes meeting in the same way that they usually did with Reyna, like a secret message was being transferred between them. But Nico hadn’t dreamwalked since their arrival, and Will couldn’t possibly know about that power anyway. Nico stood like a deer in headlights.
Will aimed that smiled back at his sandwich as he pressed the two halves together. “Very vivid, I guess you could say. Very real, but in a… tender kind of way.”
Nico could feel Reyna’s eyes burning into the side of his head. Suddenly, he was very interested in the field that stretched for miles outside the nearest window.
“But enough about all that,” Will said, quickly wiping his hands on a dish towel before stepping toward Nico. “Let me get a look at those bandages.”
Nico leaned back against the cabinets as Will lifted the hem of his shirt, the pads of his fingers pressing lightly to the skin around the bandage a second later. He hummed, then peeled back a corner of the gauze to get a peek at the wound underneath, then pressed the tape down again. “You’re healing,” Will stated. “Definitely faster than the average bear, but not as fast as I’d like to see. You know, considering the whole… whatever y’all’ve got goin’ on.”
As Will started to step away, Nico had the sudden, unreasonable feeling that Will was going to leave - and of course he would, he already said that he would be leaving for work - and Nico blurted out the first thing he could think of that might get Will to stay: “I can make breakfast.”
He knew what look would be waiting on Reyna’s face should he choose to glance over - something halfway between humor and pity - but he was too focused on the way Will turned back to him. He seemed surprised at first, in a pleased way, which melted into a relaxed smile. Will set a hand on Nico’s shoulder, his thumb barely brushing over Nico’s collar bone through his borrowed t-shirt.
“That’s awfully kind,” he said softly, “but I want you to rest. You’ll never heal if you push yourself to do more than you’re ready for, and I can feel that you’re almost ready for a nap.”
Nico wanted to huff and roll his eyes, but a memory stopped him: a figure standing close in front of him, tan skin and blond hair, tattoos circling their arms that disappeared under the short sleeves of their shirt. The warmth that seeped into Nico’s skin through the palm of Will’s hand reminded him so much of what he felt in that dream that he wanted to tip forward into Will, to be wrapped up in those arms, to be held so protectively, like he was something that deserved to be cared for gently.
Nico’s stomach dropped.
He had absolutely walked himself into Will’s dream.
There was never much Nico could do once he found himself inside another person’s dream. Sometimes he could wake himself up, but falling back asleep only led to the same fate. His nightmares always did their best to manifest, and he was never much help in making them go away once he’d appeared. Overall, it was the best for everyone involved if Nico tried his hardest not to fall asleep at the same time as anyone around.
Will was, unfortunately, very pushy. He was surprisingly persuasive, even when tired. He was a strong advocate for a healthy and regular sleep schedule (despite choosing a career that forced him to work twenty-four-hour shifts on occasion) and he was insistent that sleeping in the same bed meant that the two of them needed to at least go to bed together if not wake up around the same time as well.
In the week since Nico’s realization that he was strong enough to start dreamwalking again, he hadn’t been sleeping very well. He tried as hard as he could to stay awake well into the night, and he woke himself up as soon as he could once he caught on that he’d started dreaming. It wasn’t easy to stay awake, though, when he was sharing a bed with a person who seemed to be able to sense a sudden uptick in his pulse, or the minute change of his brainwaves.
“I can hear you thinking,” Will grumbled into his pillow, not for the first time that week, his words almost too garbled to parse between his accent and the way the pillow left minimal space for his mouth to move. “Go to sleep.”
Fighting to keep his eyes open, Nico replied, “I’m not tired.”
A hand dropped against his cheek, causing Nico to startle at the unforeseen touch. “Liar,” Will said, the word somehow being smushed into a single syllable. “You’re barely staying awake. Close your eyes and relax.”
As if Will had uttered a magic word, Nico felt a soothing pulse that emanated from the warmth of Will’s palm on his cheek, and the fight drained out of him.
It was like he blinked, and woke up on a cliffside.
The location was deeply familiar to Nico. It was a short trek through the woods on the north side of camp to reach the small clearing and overlook of the Long Island Sound, far enough away from all of the chaos that all he could hear was the sound of waves crashing against rock and birds chirping overhead - as long as the woods hadn’t been recently stocked with monsters, that is. He frequented the space when he needed time alone but was sick of hiding away and his cabin full of doom and gloom. It was his favorite spot at camp, and easily one of his top five in the world.
“Oh, beautiful.”
Nico jumped at the sound of Will’s voice, and turned to watch as Will dropped onto the ground beside him, kicking out his feet until his flip flops were in danger of tumbling over the edge. Nico had never seen Will sporting flip flops, and the cargo shorts and t-shirt combination seemed equally out of place, and yet somehow just right for the location. Nico soaked in the sight of him: long legs crossed at the ankle, strong arms propping him up as he leaned back, face tilted toward the sun, basking in the warmth and light.
Nico bit his tongue to keep from saying anything stupid, but then again-- This was a dream. They both knew it was just a dream.
“You’re beautiful,” Nico said, the words coming out as close to a whisper, nearly drowned out by the waves crashing below.
Will turned toward him, smile brighter than the sun and eyes bluer than the sky above and water below, and he tipped closer. Nico felt his breath catch as he realized what was coming next, as Will’s hand came up to brush featherlight fingers against his cheek and as Nico’s eyes began to flutter shut in anticipation.
The gentle puff of breath against his skin, then the slightest sensation of touch against his lips, and Nico felt something slice against the wound in his side. He snapped away with a gasp, hands clutching at his reopened wound as he started to babble, “No, hang on, we can’t do this--”
“It’s alright, darlin’,” Will assured him, his hand hovering between them. He didn’t seem to notice the way that blood had started gushing between Nico’s fingers. “We can do whatever we want.”
This was a dream, Nico reminded himself. It was his dream - he was here first, and there was no way for Will to have known about this location - and he was skilled enough in dreaming that he was no longer pulling other dreamers off-course into his own nightmares. (Even if he did sometimes drag his nightmares along with him into other peoples’ heads.)
Will was probably enjoying his own, private dream, safe from Nico’s internal panic. The Will sitting in front of him was probably a figment of Nico’s imagination, a copy made up by his subconscious to process the previous day’s events, as Will had explained. He could probably kiss this dream-Will to his heart’s content without any repercussions in the waking world - aside from being unable to look Will in the eye for the first few hours of the day, most likely.
Probability was not certainty.
“There’s something I need to tell you first,” Nico said, his mind reeling as his hands started growing colder, sticky with blood. Will needed to know this was more than a dream - but how much could Nico explain without hinting at Will’s true parentage?
“We don’t have to do anything you’re not comfortable with,” Will assured him, and his hand changed course, nudging Nico’s out of the way and pressing lightly over the wound. When Nico looked down, the blood was gone. The wound no longer stuck from the recent reopening. He no longer felt the approaching presence of death. “But do you think you could wait to say whatever you need to say until after we wake up?”
Nico’s pulse spiked. How could he know whether this was the real Will? What if it was, and he’d already discovered Nico’s ability to dreamwalk? How could Will know that what Nico needed to tell him was just as important for them in the waking world as it was to them in that moment of dreaming? “What do--” Nico’s tongue twisted, causing him to stumble over his words. “What do you mean?”
“This is a dream, right?” Will asked. His thumb started stroking gently over Nico’s abdomen, making it much harder to think straight. “If whatever you have to tell me is really so important, then you should tell me when we’re awake. You know, if this is real at all, which-- Ha! Of course it isn’t - this is a dream. But what a lovely dream it is.” His smiled softened, studying Nico for another moment or two before he turned toward the scenery, his hand falling away from Nico’s side. “Do you recognize this place? I’ve never seen anything like it until I walked out of those woods and found you here.”
This was real, Nico realized with a crushing sense of anxiety. This was the real Will, and he’d pulled him into his dream the second they’d both fallen asleep. If Will hadn’t been touching him, this may never have happened.
“This is the place where I go when I want to be alone,” Nico told him, choosing his words carefully. “But I’m okay with not being alone right now.”
Will knocked his shoulder into Nico’s. “You don’t even come here with Reyna? It’s hard to imagine y’all ever being apart.”
Nico snorted. “We live on opposite ends of the country. It’s more rare that we’re ever together.”
“Really?” Will’s head snapped toward him. “Well, that just ain’t right. The two of you are like a bonded pair - do not separate.” He bumped Nico’s shoulder again. “Tell me more.”
“About what?”
“You and Reyna. This place,” Will suggested. “Anything. Everything.”
Nico was the first to wake, a contented smile on his face and a sense of calm over him that he so rarely felt first thing in the morning.
Beside him, Will startled awake with a gasp.
Nico had forgotten what it was like for others to be launched out of his dreams after he’d accidentally pulled them in. Whenever it happened to him, Nico was jerked awake by the sensation of falling - he was sure Will had just felt the same.
“Are you good?” Nico mumbled, too early to find his voice.
Will blinked a few times, his eyes searching the room like he couldn’t remember falling asleep in that spot and didn’t understand why he was waking up there. After a second, he turned toward the sound of Nico’s voice, and his surprise melted away into a smile, his entire body seeming to relax with the motion. “Yeah,” Will said softly, “I’m good now.”
As Will laid back against the pillows, Nico asked, “Bad dream?” He hoped the question sounded innocent - but how could Will know that Nico knew his dream?
Will’s head turned toward the ceiling, watching the fan circle lazily above them. “Really, really good dream, actually. I kind of didn’t want it to end.”
He turned his gaze toward Nico, who froze. It was like Will was trying to read him, though whether he was trying to figure out if it was the real Nico that had joined him in his dream or if he was trying to discern any feelings Nico might have been hiding, Nico couldn’t tell. After a moment, Will turned away and climbed out of bed, the doctor switch flipped to on.
“Alright, time to get up, but take it easy, y’hear? I’m going to check on Reyna, and by the time I’m done, I expect you to be up and in the living room so I can see how things are looking underneath that bandage.”
Still lying back on the pillows, Nico gave Will a weak, two-fingered salute. He sat up as Will started to leave the room, but hadn’t managed to swing his legs out of bed before Will was spinning around in the doorway.
“Hey, um,” he started, suddenly sounding almost shy, “you know I really don’t want you to push yourself, so say no if this is too much, but…” Will’s fingers tapped nervously against the doorframe. “Do you think you could make that breakfast thing you did yesterday? With the--” He gestured with his other hand, some nonsense movement that meant nothing to Nico, but he knew what Will meant anyway.
“Oh,” Nico said, feeling warm down to his toes. “Um, yeah. Sure.”
Will lit up. “Great!” Then, turning on his heel, he called back, “Five minutes, di Angelo, and I’m changing those bandages!”
As he headed out to see Reyna, Nico rose from the bed slowly, giving his body as much time as it needed to adjust. He flinched at the stitch in his side, something he’d forgotten about after a nearly painless dream - at least post-miraculous healing - and tugged up the hem of his t-shirt to take his own peek under the bandage.
He worried that he might have popped a stitch in his sleep, given how real the pain had felt at the time, but when Nico peeled back the edge of the gauze, he didn’t see any sign that the injury had worsened - quite the opposite. He had to peel the bandage off the rest of the way to get a clearer look at the whole picture.
Portions of the wound appeared to have healed more than others, fresh scar tissue already forming in odd stripes through the middle of the injury, where other places still looked in danger of reopening. Nico lifted a hand to poke and prod at the site, and splayed his fingers over the wound, evenly spaced and perfectly aligning with the healed marks.
His mind flashed back to the dream, early in the night when Will had reached out and stopped his bleeding with a single touch, his own fingers splayed over Nico’s side, evenly spaced.
Did this mean Will had reached out to Nico in his sleep? Had he felt Nico’s distress so strongly through the dream that he’d sought to comfort him? Had his touch alone been enough to heal Nico almost completely?
His stomach became a twist of giddy butterflies at the thought that Will could want to care for him, could want to grow closer to him, intermingling and beating against the burning nausea he continued to feel about Will’s still-unknown demigod status, and the guilt he already felt knowing he might be the one to tear Will’s entire world into two.