It All Started With The New Students... And The Murder

Chapter 9 : Doctor Solace

Will's POV

Will rolled across the pale white floor of the nurses office on his office chair. He'd started helping out at the office pretty much the moment he'd joined the school.

He'd wanted to become a doctor almost his entire life. Being able to help someone without killing or ruining someone else's life was always something that inspired him.

He was reorganising the medical supplies when he began smiling uncontrollably, hearing the all too familiar, almost silent footsteps approaching him.

The first few times Nico had visited him in the nurses office, he had often sent Will jumping due to his incredibly quiet steps. After a few months though, Will had learned how to decided Nico's footsteps.

"You know, if I didn't know you better, I'd say you like me." Will said with a smirk, looking up at Nico.

"Now why would you say that, Solace? You know I don't have a heart." Nico replied with a small smile, which caused Will's heart to thump slightly faster.

Ever since Nico had started visiting him, about half a year after they had met, Will had started to slowly but surely fall for him.

Will spent an hour after school in the nurses office every other weekday, and it had become a tradition for Nico to visit him every Monday, which always brightened up the day.

"You coming to the basketball tryouts later?" Nico asked after a few minutes of comfortable silence.

"You know I'm not the type for sports, Neeks." Will replied.

"You think I play basketball?" Nico asked in response with a laugh. "It's the tryouts for the girls team dumbo."

"Maybe my gaydar needs some work. I could have sworn you were gay." Will muttered jokingly.

"Shut up Solace, I'm only going to support the girls." Nico slapped him on the shoulder lightly. "Reyna's trying out as well."

Will arched an eyebrow. He'd never seen Nico care about someone as much as Reyna, with the exception of Hazel of course, and what was even more interesting was that he'd never mentioned her before.

Nico also seemed to care a lot about Percy, which annoyed Will slightly, but he was never going to show it. He didn't want to ruin his friendship with Nico.

"You seem to like the new kids a lot." Will noted.

"Don't get jealous now, Solace. I've been friends with them for ages, hell, I had a crush on Percy for a while." Nico admitted.

Will nearly jumped at how casually Nico threw the fact he had feelings for another person around as if it was nothing.

"My relationship with Reyna is an interesting one I must admit, seeing as I call her "mom" sometimes." Nico continued talking. "She helped me a lot when I was in a bad place. There was a time when she was the only one I talked to. I call her "mom" because she can become the stereotypical "mom friend" sometimes."

"What about Percy?" Will asked, trying his best not to sound jealous. "You just casually said you used to have a crush on him like it's nothing."

"Percy... it's complicated. He broke a promise he made me a long time ago and I was so pissed off at him, and then at myself for having feelings for him... but it doesn't matter anymore. He's been making up for his mistake ever since and he's actually a really great guy." Nico replied. "Plus his mom made me gay pride flag chocolate chip cookies when I came out to her." he added with a laugh so genuine it melted Will's heart.

"Wow, she seems really cool." Will chuckled.

"Yeah, Sally's amazing. She's so kind and accepting and is a great mom, Percy is proof of that." Nico replied. "According to her, adopting Reyna was just to make it legal. She always saw Reyna as her own daughter anyways. You should've seen her when Reyna called her "mom" for the first time."

"Let me guess, the cliche bursting into tears of happiness?" Will asked.

"Nope. She just turned to her and said "about time you started calling me that"." Nico replied.

Will almost fell off of his chair with laughter, not believing a word of what Nico had just said.

"Really?" he asked.

"Nah, she just acted like nothing had happened but smiled at Reyna. Like I said, to her Reyna was already like a daughter anyways." Nico replied, laughing as well.

"How is it that everyone seems to have a more interesting life than me? I mean, I literally have the standard white boy childhood of literally nothing interesting happening, ever." Will complained.

"Be thankful. Percy and Reyna haven't had it easy at all. In fact, I'm willing to say they've had it worse than me. Sally's the only person they've always been able to count on since the day they met, which means she's also probably the safest person on the planet." Nico replied.

"Huh? How do?" Will asked, not fully understanding why or how a mother of two high school students was the safest person in the planet.

"You saw what Percy and Reyna can do during P.E., and they aren't afraid to use their combat training either. Last time someone tried robbing them at gunpoint, the robber was rushed to hospital with two broken arms, a shattered wrist and a stab wound."  Nico answered with a laugh.

Will sighed quietly. Only Nico could laugh when the topic was someone being hurt, brutally.

"You're not really making a good campaign for me liking them by telling me that." Will said.

"Look Sunny, I know you don't really like violence, but Percy and Reyna are both children of soldiers, and they've been growing up around violence their entire lives." Nico said softly, putting a hand in Will's shoulder. "What I was trying to say is, they care a lot about Sally, so if anyone even dares to look at her in a bad way, they've got hell to deal with."

Will felt his face heat up at the contact between the two, and hoped that Nico didn't see anything.

"If she's as nice as you say, I hope we all get to meet her one day." Will said.

"Oh I'm sure you will. Percy has a knack for introducing people he likes to his mom." Nico responded. "And her blue cookies are to die for."

"Blue?" Will asked, wondering if he'd gotten something stuck in his ears.

"Blue is Percy's favourite colour and his ex stepfather once said there was no such thing as blue food, so she started making some." Nico explained. "She even makes purple ones when it's a special day for Reyna and made black ones for my birthday last year."

"Right... because that's logical." Will muttered, wondering how healthy those cookies really were.

Then again, Percy and Reyna looked to be in perfect physical shape, so the cookies couldn't be too bad.

"Well I've got to get home." Will said after another 15 minutes of comfortable silence. He got up and picked up his bag, ruffling Nico's hair up slightly and smiling."Don't miss me too much at the tryouts."

"Yeah well maybe if you didn't spend all of your free time playing doctor then you'd have time to come watch." he heard Nico mutter.

"I'm going to pretend I didn't hear that, Neeks." Will said as they walked out of the door.

"Ok... see you tomorrow then?" Nico asked, his voice sounding almost hopeful, which sent Will's heart into overdrive.

"Uhhh, y-yeah, t-t-tomorrow. See you t-then." he stuttered in reply, mentally slapping himself after waving goodbye.

Why did he always have to become a stuttering mess whenever Nico asked him where he was going or what he was doing? And why did he always hope Nico would ask something else afterwards as well?

And most importantly, why were there now rays of sunlight shining around the skull tattoo on his chest?