Requesting A Sick Nico? I Don't Care With What, I Just Want To Boy To Suffer. Please And Thank You!

Requesting a sick Nico? I don't care with what, I just want to boy to suffer. Please and thank you!

Hooooo boy I made him suffer. The good news about this is that it’s not likely contagious, but the bad news is that it’s probably bacterial meningitis. Normal flus don’t really cause this level of confusion. Boy was it fun to write this though. I really love the whole idea of “voyeurism” in terms of sickfics, having people watch a caretaker and a sickie, especially if the sickie would be embarrassed about it if they were coherent. Also I’m such such such a sucker for medic Will being a whole-ass medic and taking care of people in a practical way (not just a demigod magic kind of way).

You can probably tell that I’m hmmmm, pretty rusty at this whole “writing” thing.

Warnings: puke and rambling and reaaaaal rusty writing skills

“How long has he been like this?” Will’s voice rang out through the near-silent apartment. Nico was leaning on the back of the couch, either asleep or close to it. Sally sat on one side of him, Percy on the other. The Iris message was beginning to shimmer. Swearing, Percy threw in another drachma. 

“This is the third day,” Sally replied. “Well, the third day of throwing up. He just had a fever and a headache before then.”

Nico’s head lolled to the side on the couch, almost touching Sally’s shoulder. She put an arm up to guide it the rest of the way down, petting his hair and checking his forehead as she went. 

“He’s still burning up.”

“And he’s not keeping anything down?” Will’s voice was becoming tighter, more fraught with anxiety. He shifted on the desk chair he was sitting in. 

“Nothing.” Will’s reaction was making it hard for him to stay calm. After all the danger Nico had dealt with, this was what had Will worried? 

Will paused and looked towards something Percy couldn’t see. He mouthed something, and shook his head. “Uhh, okay. If he refuses to go to a hospital could you bring him here? I know it’s a long drive but I can only assume he’s dangerously dehydrated and—”

“We’ll do it,” Annabeth piped up from out of Will’s view. “It’s only a few hours. And we’ll speed.”

“Haul ass,”  Percy agreed, nodding. 

Will ran a hand through his hair. “Okay. I’ll see you soon.” 

Percy took a moment to think. Nico was in bad shape, still leaning against his mom and looking as pale as Percy had ever seen him. Annabeth was practically vibrating, getting things ready for a two-hour car trip. Paul was standing between the kitchen and the living room, holding a handful of plastic bags in case Nico needed them. Sally, bless her, was running her hands through Nico’s hair with a decidedly worried expression painted across her features. 

Percy caught his mom’s eye across the sofa. 

“I’m coming with you,” she said. Percy was going to protest, but as soon as he opened his mouth she said, “and that’s final. It’s snowy, and I’m a better driver than both of you.” 

For once, Annabeth didn’t complain about having her abilities questioned. Percy stood, and worked on getting Nico into a standing position. He hooked one of his arms around his shoulders and lifted. Nico was lighter than he expected. Between having no excess weight and having vomited for three days, he was rail thin. 

Percy had never been gladder that his parents had moved to a building with an elevator. It made the eight-flight journey while half-carrying a 15-year-old easier for everyone involved. Navigating the snow was harder. Over Christmas, the sidewalks had hardly been plowed, making their trek to the car frustrating for both of them. Nico, who just wanted to lie down, moaned incoherently until he was in the backseat of Paul’s Prius with Percy buckling his seatbelt.

Nico fell asleep almost immediately once they were on the road, his head propped against the foggy window. The peace only lasted the first half hour.

Nico’s bleary eyes cracked open. His head fell to one side and then shot up straight, suddenly alert. 

“‘m gonna throw up,” he murmured, his voice hoarse with sleep and sickness. He put one hand to his mouth and the other flailed, looking for one of the bags Paul had packed for them.

“Fuck! Hold on!” There was a rustling noise as Annabeth tried to free one of the bags from the tangle of them at her feet. Nico made a muffled, urgent sound against his hand and grabbed for the button on the car door. While his window rolled down, Sally slowed to a stop on the side of the highway. Before it was all the way down, Nico lurched. It was the closest to projectile vomiting he had come since he’d been sick. He barely managed to make it out the window while he sprayed sick from his chapped lips. He let his head fall, and it hung limply as he retched, painting the Prius with yellow bile. Between painful sounding retches, Nico gasped for air. The difficulty of simply breathing was audible. 

Percy looked anywhere but beside him, unlike Sally, who was staring at Nico’s back with pursed lips. 

“Pat his back,” she whispered to Percy. Percy was certain Nico was going to recoil at his touch. But then he didn’t. He continued to heave for another few minutes, with Percy rubbing his back. Even through the thick knit sweater (donated by Paul when Nico had started shivering with fever), Percy could feel every vertebra. Most horribly, he could feel Nico’s taut back muscles tensing, and hardly ever releasing long enough for him to relax.

When all was said and done, Nico brought his head back into the car and collapsed against the headrest. 

“Sorry,” he whispered. His voice was broken by the gurgling is his throat. Annabeth passed him a water bottle from the front seat. “It won’t stay down.”

“I know, but it’ll get the taste out of your mouth.” 

Nico fumbled with the cap for a moment before passing it to Percy, who cracked it with ease. Passing it back to Nico, he caught the blush on Nico’s cheeks. The needy, vulnerable Nico was new to both of them. 

With Nico back in the car, they set off again. Nico kept his eyes closed, but Percy was fairly sure he was awake and trying to coax himself into not being sick again. The rapid movements of his Adam’s apple gave him away. 

Percy wished they could turn on some music, or at least that he could join in Sally and Annabeth’s conversation, but they were speaking so quietly he could barely hear. The rest of the drive passed slowly with nothing to do but play games on his phone. Every few minutes, Nico would cough weakly, and Percy could hear the rattling breath in his lungs trying to escape. It was a pitiful sight.

Finally, they arrived at the base of the hill. Getting Nico out of the car was a harder matter altogether, and Percy had to wrap his hand in a plastic bag to avoid touching the bile now frozen to the door. Halfway up the hill, Kayla met them.

“Want some help?” She didn’t wait for an answer before she grabbed Nico’s other arm and helped Percy march him towards the infirmary. Sally and Annabeth were continuing their conversation behind him, though he couldn’t hear what they were saying over his and Kayla’s panting and the groans from the sick boy suspended between them.

Percy wondered idly if Sally had ever seen the infirmary. It had been updated even since Percy had last been there. Nico had told him it now boasted a tv that Will had fought for, claiming that boredom was pushing people out of the infirmary faster than they should be leaving. Percy suspected it was mostly for the staff’s benefit. 

Despite the lack of snow inside the campgrounds, the wind was still biting. Nico had thrown off his coat in the car, and he shivered so violently Percy thought he might drop him. 

Standing in the door of the infirmary was Will, his arms crossed over his chest to shield him from the cold. He wore blue scrubs, as he usually did when he was in the infirmary. The colour of the uniform set off his eyes, as did the red rim around them. The late hour seemed to hit Percy all at once. It was past midnight.

The group trudged over the threshold, and Kayla pulled Nico, and Percy with him, towards a bed. Will followed behind, trying his best to move with purpose and not look like a lost puppy. 

“Hey guys,” Will greeted belatedly. “Merry Christmas.”

There was a chorus of ‘Merry Christmas’ around the infirmary, and Will turned to Sally. 

“I’m Will, uh, by the way.” 

“We iris messaged a few hours ago.” Sally smiled back at him. He looked temporarily embarrassed until Sally said, “but it’s good to finally meet you. I’ve heard so much about you.”

“All good I hope?”

“All good.”

Will didn’t seem to hear the answer. Once Nico was lying in the bed, everything else seemed to fade away from Will’s vision. He strode over to the bedside to pull two rubber gloves from a box against the wall, and pulled over a rolling chair. 

“Kayla can you get, uh, a one litre bag of saline and a secondary bag of acetaminophen drip? I’m going to do an IV.”

Kayla nodded, happy to be bossed out of the room. Behind the curtains was crowded, and she didn’t think she could stand an awkward meeting-the-family moment between her brother and his boyfriend’s aunt.

“Hey,” Will said quietly to Nico. He grunted, but didn’t open his eyes. Will pursed his lips. He seemed all too aware of the eyes of everyone on the back of him, and his neck prickled uncomfortably. 

“Hey,” he tried again. “Can you open your eyes?”

Nico’s eyes fluttered open, and Will rushed to praise him. “Can you squeeze my fingers?”

Will slipped two of his fingers into Nico’s hand. Through the gloves he could feel how clammy they were. “Go ahead, break my fingers.” Nico smiled weakly and gave a watery cough. “There. You got it.”

Will brow was furrowed, but Nico’s was utterly relaxed for the first time since he’d begun vomiting. He pulled his fingers out of Nico’s hand and Nico whined. Everyone in the room, bar Nico and Will, glanced around uncomfortably. It seemed an intrusion to see them like this. 

Will reached a hand into a drawer by the bedside and drew out an infrared thermometer. The infirmary had gained some new toys since Will had become head medic apparently. There was no chance these were Chiron’s ideas. The worry was palpable in Will’s voice when he announced to the room, “104.3. Has he had any fever reducers?” 

“He threw up every time we tried to give him any.” Sally’s voice was taking on Will’s anxiety. 

Kayla came back into the room, holding several clear bags of liquid. She deposited them easily on a tray and slid it beside Will, drawing over an IV pole. 

“Get some cooling blankets.” Will’s voice had become harder, his medic side lashing out. He set to work cleaning the inside of Nico’s wrist and sliding a needle into a vein. His lower lip was held tightly between his teeth as he worked. Nico protested as valiantly as he could, which ended up being another whine and a slight shift of his arm, which was unable to move much in Will’s vice-like grip. He quickly arranged the IV tubing like he had done it a hundred times before which, Percy thought, he probably had. 

“It’s a good thing he’s so out of it for that. He usually fights tooth and nail when he has to get a needle,” Will was saying as Kayla entered the room.

“Usually Will can’t do it himself because Nico needs him to hold his hand.”

“More like break my hand.” 

The group smiled, except for Will, who remained as tightly wound as ever, staring at the tiny body on the infirmary bed. Kayla arranged the cooling blankets around Nico while Will turned to Percy, Annabeth, and Sally, who were still standing at the end of the bed holding their coats.

“Might as well sit down,” Will told them. “He’s going to be here for a while.”

Graciously, everyone sat down. While Will and Kayla debated over treatment options and tests, Sally looked at Nico. He was still sweaty, his eyelids fluttering now that Will was not touching him. She wondered just how long they’d been like this, able to calm each other with only a touch. Given reports by Percy and Annabeth, and vigorously refuted by Nico, it had been almost instantaneous from the moment they were friends. It was no surprise to Sally they had ended up together.

“He seems to know what he’s doing,” Sally whispered to Annabeth, who nodded.

“He’s got a gift. He modernized everything here. He’s doing good things.” 

Sally realized something suddenly and interrupted Will mid-conversation with his sister. 

“Why haven’t you given him any nectar or ambrosia?” She hadn’t meant for it to sound accusatory. Luckily Will, with all his preoccupations, didn’t seem to notice and took the question in stride.

“He shouldn’t consume anything orally until we get his stomach under control. Plus, it’s a fifty-fifty shot if those will work on sicknesses. They work great on injuries, but sometimes it’s not enough. That, and it raises your body temperature. Nico’s brain is already being boiled inside his skull, and to give him anything like that might give him permanent brain damage.”

Him and Kayla looked at each other quickly and without a word she handed him a pen from the pocket of her scrubs. Will pushed himself towards Nico and clicked the pen. For one stupid moment, Percy was sure it was going to turn into a sword. Instead, a bright light appeared on the end. 

“Nico, can you open your eyes?” It was shocking to hear Will speak like that. He was all business, ordering Kayla to fetch him things or telling everyone to sit down, but his voice softened considerably and took on a cooing quality when he addressed his boyfriend.

Nico groaned. He as if he were swimming through hot jello. Every one of his muscles seemed to weight twenty times what it usually did, and the thought of opening his eyes made him want to sob. Gingerly, he opened one eye, just as he had done before. He had done it before, right?

“Are you experiencing light sensitivity?” Will asked him. Nico could hardly respond, so he groaned. Will slid a thumb onto Nico’s eyelid and held it open, shining the light into it. Nico could feel his eye watering from the wasted effort of closing it against Will’s thumb. After what felt like an hour of a knife being pushed directly into his right eye, Will switched to the other one. 

“Pupillary response is normal and equal,” he said to Kayla. He turned to the rest of them. “That’s a good sign. It means that his brain is still responding correctly to certain stimuli, which means that there’s little chance of damage.”

He sat back in his chair, dropping his face into his hands for only a moment before he heard a choking noise. Sally yelped, and stood to help. He looked towards Nico, who was trying (and failing) to swallow back his gags. Acting on a whim, Will grabbed Nico’s shoulder and rolled him towards himself, placing one hand on his back and the other in his hair while Nico’s gags finally became productive. He coughed, splattering Will’s scrubs with bile. After a gasping breath, he heaved again. This time the sick dribbled out of his mouth and onto the pillow below his head, coating his cheek in it too.  He burped sickly and gave a great, groaning cough. 

Will, who had been murmuring encouragements to him the whole time, grabbed a tissue from beside the bed and began wiping his mouth. Nico didn’t seem to notice. He just kept mumbling, “I don’t want to throw up anymore. Please make it stop. Make it stop. Please.”

Percy’s heart broke for him. He shouldn’t mention this to Nico when he was coherent, or he’d probably be turned to stone with a single glare, but despite the awful situation, seeing Nico being looked after filled him with comfort. He had spent so long being alone and uncared for. As long as Will was around, he’d never have to face that again.