Daffodils

Summary: The flowers blooming in Will's lungs were poetic, really, if not for the fact that they were killing him. And the cure? To surgically cut out his unrequited feelings for one Nico di Angelo. Real poetic, huh?

Notes: I wrote this bc I was super writer's blocked for Ballad of the Sun Prince, and I thought I'd go back to the basics. So here's some canon-verse Solangelo set before the Trials of Apollo. Flower language here is not super accurate bc there's always different interpretations from different cultures etc. Also, I'm not a trained flower arranger either.

There it was: a bright yellow blemish mixed with the splatter of his blood clots, like a single flower blooming in the acrid red soil, where its very presence should have been snuffed out before it reached maturity.

Will stared at the sink, remnants of his blood clinging onto the corner of his mouth when he had coughed it out. He reached a hand down in the sink, picking up the yellow…thing that was covered in splotches of blood. The thing was featherlight and about half the length of his finger, with a waxy sort of feeling when he rubbed it in between his thumb and index finger.

A flower petal; it was a flower petal.

It had all started a few days ago, when the end of summer finally approached after the events of the Gaea War. The Roman demigods were long-gone, back to Camp Jupiter, and most of the other demigods were packing up, preparing to return to the mortal world for another boring year at school. Will was standing over at his bookshelf in his cabin, reorganizing the mess someone else left for him.

"You heading home, Will?" his half brother, Austin, asked, throwing an arm over his shoulder. "That means I'll be the head counselor until you come back next summer, yeah?"

Will chuckled at his way of asking for the position. "You wish," he said with a shake of his head. "I'll be here all year."

"What? Really?" He let his arm fall off Will's shoulder in surprise. "But I thought you said you were heading home this year! What happened to staying on track for medical school?"

"Um," Will said, a hand on his chin in thought. There wasn't a real reason why he was staying at Camp Half-Blood instead of returning to high school in Texas like he usually did. He hadn't known what possessed him when he IM'ed to his mom about staying at camp, but he had a feeling that he would find the answer if he dug just a little deeper. A feeling that it had something to do with a certain scowling boy. "Let's just say I'm still on track for medical school to take a gap year," he offered with a smile, hoping that the answer was enough.

Austin sighed, looking only half-disappointed. "Well, there goes my ploy for making Kayla do the bathroom cleaning."

"Hey!" Kayla shouted from deeper inside the cabin. "I heard that!"

A grin snuck its way onto Will's face despite himself while his two siblings bickered, and he continued to reorder the bookshelf. Where was I? he wondered. Oh right, the 'N' section –

There was the sound of someone knocking on the doorframe. Will spun around to face the open front door of the cabin, immediately switching into work mode. Usually when someone came knocking at the Apollo Cabin, there was some sort of medical emergency. He scoured through his brain for today's schedule and a list of possible accidents that could have happened: a case of nonstop nose bleeding, bad poetry curses, or a limb being hacked off in today's combat training. It was safe to say that Will was prepared for anything.

Well, anything except for this.

Nico di Angelo, shadow traveling extraordinaire and the captor of Will's heart, was standing at the door, his knuckles resting on the door frame where he had knocked. Despite having seen him just yesterday, Will felt like he had the breath knocked out of him at Nico's unexpected appearance. He stared with his mouth half-opened a little too long before he scolded himself with a sharp Act normal.

"Medical emergency?" Will asked, taking a step away from the bookshelf and toward Nico.

"Uh," Nico hesitated, his hand sliding off the doorframe. He shook his head. "No. I was actually looking for you."

And there was that breathlessness that Will felt again, like something was bubbling up in his chest and suffocating him. It wasn't exactly a bad feeling, even if he did feel like he was slowly losing his composure around Nico.

"Um, yeah. I'm free right now," Will said, glancing back at Austin and Kayla. His siblings exchanged a look, and Kayla shot him a thumbs up, both of them grinning knowingly. Will bit the inside of his cheek, hoping the flush creeping up his face wasn't noticeable. He turned his attention back to Nico, who now had his hands tucked in the pockets of his black aviator jacket.

Nico nodded. "Great. Could we, uh, talk someplace else?" he asked, glancing behind Will. He could almost hear Austin and Kayla snickering at the implications, and Will felt his heartbeat pick up despite himself. Act normal. Act normal.

"Sure," Will said, following Nico out of the cabin and making sure to close the door behind him. They walked in silence past the dozens of campers out in the morning light doing their daily routines. After tomorrow, most of them would take the bus straight out of dodge. Will would be on that bus too, if he hadn't decided to change his plans last minute. He could admit it now: he just wanted to spend more time with Nico after he had promised to stay at Camp Half-Blood. It was pretty much a once in a lifetime chance, considering that Nico always disappeared for months on end and only hung around Percy's group when he reappeared. He couldn't let this chance slip by.

They had reached the strawberry fields by the time Nico stopped walking. Since it was still the morning and most campers were preparing for their departure, the fields were practically abandoned.

A perfect place for a confession, his mind whispered to him, and he wished he could physically stop himself from blushing. Thankfully, Nico didn't seem to notice anything amiss.

It was true that they had been a little awkward around each other recently, stumbling over words and sentences filled with um's and uh's, and Will took this to mean that they were nearing something. Something that would push them over the edge of friendship into something more. Or at least, he hoped that was what it meant. Will had been planning to do something about it soon, but it looked like Nico had taken hold of the reins today. Would it be too bold for him to hope for a kiss or some hand holding at the end of this conversation?

"So, did you want to tell me something?" Will asked, wincing at how breathless he sounded. Gods, he was acting like he was being confessed to for the first time. Well – actually, that was correct. If his instincts were right, he was going to be confessed to for the first time in his life.

But…there was something…off.

Nico looked nervous, but not the kind of nervous that Will was feeling with the butterflies floating in his stomach and left his hands tingly. He kept twisting the skull ring on his finger, and his eyes were darting back and forth, refusing to meet Will's like he was about to deliver from bad news.

"I have some bad news."

And there it was.

"I'm leaving Camp Half-Blood. Today."

Will emotions did a perfect one-eighty, crashing down from a giddy nervous high into a devasted low. He opened his mouth, but he couldn't find any words. Nico was looking at the ground, twisting his skull ring even harder. A silence stretched out for a second. Then thirty. And then a minute. Will finally found his voice.

"But…you said you were staying."

He hated how hurt he sounded, but he couldn't keep the emotion out of his voice. Right after the war, Nico had promised him to stay. Of course, he could do whatever he wanted to, but Will had thought that it…meant something. He thought that he meant something to Nico.

Apparently, he had thought wrong. He felt a tight squeezing in his chest.

"I'm sorry," Nico spoke quietly. "But there's something…I have to do. Something by myself. I can't stay here. I don't –" Nico paused and then carefully reworded his sentence. "I wanted to tell you because I knew you'd be worried if I disappeared without a trace, and I don't want you searching for me."

Each sentence was like a punch to the gut. Had Will really misinterpreted everything, even when he thought himself to be a good reader of situations? "When will you be back?" he found himself blurting out. Usually he would immediately begin bickering with Nico, but he stopped himself this time. He would feel just short of being a heroine in a tragic romance novel, chasing futilely after someone who had already decided to leave.

Nico looked at him, his eyes clouded with regret. "I don't know."

They exchanged a few more words after that, but Nico was purposefully vague about where he was going and what he needed to do. The conversation between the two of them afterward was stilted and stale, nothing like the easy camaraderie or the playful bickering they used to do. A gaping hole tore itself open in Will's chest, and the only thing he could do to mask the ache was force a smile.

So, it turned out that he was wrong about everything from the beginning. Nico and Will hadn't developed anything special. The past few days were only awkward because Nico didn't know how to bring the subject up after promising to stay in Camp Half-Blood. Okay, Will could live with that, but it didn't mean that it didn't cut into his core. When he said it hurt, he meant that it hurt. A lot. All of his feelings had been laid bare in the summer, and this was the rejection he got.

Soon after the rejection, Nico disappeared, leaving Will alone at camp.

So, naturally, he started coughing up blood.

With flower petals in it.

At first, he thought it was just internal bleeding. Maybe he was smacked a little too hard last night by the blunt end of Paolo's spear when he insisted on sparring. A bit of ambrosia and nectar would cure that. But when he woke up the next morning to cough up more blood and flower petals, he knew that there was something seriously wrong with him.

As a healer, he had seen all sorts of maladies, but nothing like this before. The first thing he had to do was identify what disease he had, and all signs pointed to internal bleeding if not for the flower petals. That meant that he had to identify the strange flowers. He gathered and washed the petals from his latest coughing session and brought them over to the Demeter cabin for inspection.

Billie ended up cracking the case.

"Those are pretty banged-up daffodil petals," she said while crouching over the flower beds in front of the cabin, digging with a trowel. "But they don't grow around here, except…" She paused and then gave him an accusatory look. "Did you steal them from our cabin?"

"Of course not!" Will denied vehemently. "Do I look like the type to steal?"

Billie gave him a once over and grimaced, giving Will a clear answer to his rhetorical question. He pouted, but he didn't exactly want to tell her that he coughed it up. "So, did someone leave you a daffodil petal trail or something? Seems kind of weird to me."

He could tell she was about to launch into an explanation of flower language, which he already knew about. He didn't see why it was so important anyway, but he indulged her. "Why's that?"

"Flower meaning and all," Billie said with a wave of her hand like she didn't expect him to understand, and he almost laughed at how accurate his prediction was. "Daffodils can be used as love flowers. You know, true love, only love, blah, blah, blah. But they also mean unrequited love." Will flinched at that part. Unrequited love. Yeah, he knew what the flower meant, but he hadn't really thought about it until Billie put it in words. He could feel bile rising up his throat. "I'd say if someone was leaving you a trail, you've got a pretty sad secret admirer. Nothing to worry about, but you'd better shoot them down fast before they send you an evening primrose, and trust me, nothing gets creepier than someone who doesn't know when to give up – oh my gods, Will!"

Will covered his mouth to stifle his coughs, letting the warm, sticky blood and waxy yellow petals splatter onto his palms. A knob caught in his throat, and he coughed harder until the thing made its way out, leaving a daffodil head on his hands. It was soaked in blood and crushed from its time in his windpipe, but, broken as it was, the flower was still recognizable.

"Now will you believe I didn't steal the daffodils?" Will said weakly, a trail of blood connecting his lips to the blood that was now all over his hands. He should have known that the coughing sessions were going to rear its ugly face in public at some point. At least now he could prove to Billie that he hadn't even stepped in the Demeter Cabin.

Billie had her hands over her mouth in horror. Her trowel was stuck upright in the dirt she had been tending, and she'd fallen down on her bottom in shock. "Oh my gods, Will," she whispered, staring at him and his bloody palms with a mixture of revulsion and pity. "That's – that's the Hanahaki disease."

Will Solace, medic extraordinaire, had never heard of the Hanahaki disease before, much to his embarrassment. His siblings were scouring his bookshelf for medical books that described the disease, but he already knew they weren't going to find anything. After all, he owned those books, and he couldn't remember a single page talking about the elusive Hanahaki disease.

Luckily, Billie Ng turned out to be all kinds of expert on said disease.

"There are flowers growing in your lungs," she said when she showed up to the empty infirmary where he was staying. It was an ironic switch of positions. Usually he would be the one standing over his bedridden patient with a deadly diagnose to impart. This time, he sat propped up against his pillows while Billie stood at the foot of his bed with a folder of papers she was messily sorting through. Will bit back a comment about the necessity of organization when dealing with medical records.

"Sounds fantastic," Will said, unable to keep the sarcasm out of his voice at the news. "How long do I have, doctor?" He faked a wheezing cough.

Billie didn't look amused, and he could almost imagine Nico in her place scowling at him. He grinned for a moment before he remembered the rejection again, and a sharp pain stabbed at his chest. He reworded his question. "Flowers in my lungs, check. How do I get them out? Assuming that's what's making me, you know." He motioned to the plastic bucket at his bedside, streaked with blood and yellow daffodil petals.

She sighed, continuing to flip through her pages. "Well, there's surgery –"

"I'm the only one in camp right now who can do surgical removal," Will protested immediately. "I can't operate on myself. And no offense, but I don't trust Austin or Kayla with that kind of stuff." They were good at Apollo's other aspects: music and archery. All his other siblings who had inherited the healing talent had gone back to the mortal world. He was practically the camp's sole healer.

Billie bit her lip. "Chiron said he could do it."

"Chiron?" Will exclaimed, but it sort of made sense that the centuries old centaur had medical expertise under his belt. Still, Will wasn't so sure he wanted Chiron cutting into his lungs to uproot a bunch of wayward flowers. "How did the flowers get there anyway?" he wondered out loud.

He saw Billie's expression turn into one of sympathy. "Do you really want to know?" she asked. She spun into an explanation before he could ask. "It's unrequited love," she said with a sigh, shaking her head morosely.

"Unrequited love?" Will asked, surprised. His heart thumped a little faster, mind racing back to Nico's farewell. Surely that wasn't the cause of it all, but he couldn't deny that the timing matched up.

"It's an East Asian urban legend," Billie explained, flipping to the appropriate page on the folder she held. "It happens when you develop particularly strong romantic feelings for someone and realize that they're unrequited."

"Uh," Will started to interrupt, not sure that he wanted her to put it in words. He could feel embarrassment tinging his cheeks red.

Billie waved off his meek protest. "Come on. We all know you've got it bad for someone since day one," she dismissed like it was nothing. Will gaped at her, wishing that the floor would swallow him up. Had it been that obvious? He didn't even know when day one was. Gods, he must have been a big source of gossip for the Aphrodite kids. "The flowers take root in your lungs after a bad heartbreak." She looked over the top of her papers knowing, waiting for Will to give her an explicitly detailed answer about what went down. "So, what was the bad heartbreak?"

"I plead the fifth," he replied, refusing to shrink into his blankets like he wanted to.

She huffed. "Fine. Anyway, the flowers will keep growing until they manage to kill you. But," she said, turning a page over to read from the back, "you can cure it by either cutting out the roots via surgery or by have your feelings reciprocated."

Reciprocation? That was a pipe dream that Will had personally killed the moment Nico left camp. Sure, right after the Gaea War he was hopeful. He was hopeful when Nico agreed to stay at the infirmary and let Will take care of him, even when nothing more had happened except the occasional accidental brushing of their hands. He was hopeful when he caught Nico stealing glances at him during the dinner pavilion and the sing-alongs. He was hopeful up until the day Nico finally left.

Will would admit he was still recovering from the pain of realizing that his feelings weren't returned, but to have flowers growing in his lungs because of it was completely ridiculous. However, the evidence of its existence lay in the bucket on the floor beside him. It only meant one thing: he had to go through with the surgery.

"Surgery it is then," Will muttered, crossing his arms over his chest. "When can I get started?"

Now Billie looked hesitant to divulge more. "You should know about the surgery, Will," she said. "Um, well. Removing those roots… Well. It kills your ability for romantic love, and possibly…removes all feelings and memories you've ever had for the person that caused it."

There was a long silence.

"Are you sure this isn't one of Aphrodite's schemes?" Will asked suspiciously. This kind of tragic love story sounded exactly like her MO. Now all that was left was for Will to go through with the surgery and for an imaginary Nico to come running back with a love declaration only to find out that the Will he knew and loved was gone. He almost scoffed at the thought of Nico running back to confess his love. There was no way that he would do that, he thought with a twinge of pain.

She shook her head. "It's impossible. They're different pantheons of beliefs," Billie explained, but she seemed deep in thought. "Even I don't know how you would have gotten it. Must have been a bad case of heartbreak to trigger something like this." Billie gave him another expectant look.

Will didn't want to answer that. "I'm going to have to do the surgery anyway," he said, resigned to his fate. Being incapable of romantic feelings forever… Well, as long as Will didn't remember what it felt like to be in love, it would be fine.

Right?

His memories of Nico would be at stake too, and Will clenched his hands against the blankets at the thought of it. Even if Nico never returned his affections, Will wasn't so sure he wanted to let go of his own feelings. The surgery sounded so clinical, like his feelings could be pruned right out of his lungs along with the daffodil roots. Well, maybe that was the point, but he didn't want to think that his feelings could be expelled like a parasite. His affection for Nico wasn't parasitic, it was…his. The sudden possessiveness over his own feelings gave him a headache. He exhaled, rubbing his face tiredly and wondered when his life got this complicated.

Billie picked up on his distress. "But the legend states that you could develop the Hanahaki disease if you think it's unrequited love," she offered, but even she seemed to know that it was the weakest compensation in the world. "It's possible you don't have to go through with the surgery if you made a mistake. All you'll need is a confession back from the person you're in love with."

"That's impossible," Will replied immediately without thinking. "Nico doesn't –" He cut himself off too late, and Billie's eyebrows shot up.

"Nico di Angelo, huh," she said, unable to hide the growing grin on her face like she had just stolen candy from a baby. Will bit the inside of his cheeks, turning his head to avoid eye contact now that he had just given away his biggest secret. "Now that I think about it, you always seemed interested in what he was up to –"

"The point is," Will interrupted, emphasizing every word. His face had to be bright red at this point. "Nico doesn't think of me that way. We're just friends, okay?" His chest squeezed painfully at his own words. "And even if he did like me," he said, trying to flit back to a lighthearted attitude, "Nico's not around camp anymore. He said he had something to do." Will shrugged, attempting to sound casual about it. "It's not like any of us can contact him. He never answers IMs anyway, and he –"

Will didn't have time to come up with more self-pitying reasons about Nico's lack of affection when he felt the flower petals in his throat. He hurriedly grabbed his plastic bucket, coughing violently into the soiled container.

"That was a bad one," he said as he coughed out the last bits of the daffodil petals. "So how much longer do I have, doctor?" he asked once again, more seriously this time.

Billie pursed her lips. "One week."

One week. Considering that Nico just left camp two days ago, he would never make it back in time if he was off on a quest or visiting Camp Jupiter. Of course, not that Will thought Nico returned his feelings, but a small piece of hope still clung desperately to his heart. If Nico made it back and found out about the disease then maybe, just maybe…

No, he couldn't think about things that would never happen. "Alright then," Will said, nodding his consent like he was the lead surgeon. He knew he was going to lose a part of himself after the surgery, but he didn't see a way out of this besides dying, and Nico would definitely be angry if he heard about that. He sighed heavily in resignation, and he could almost feel the individual petals of the daffodils growing in his lungs, clamouring for his life. "Commence the operation."

He'd tell Nico sorry after the operation. If he even remembered him by then.

Stupid, stupid, stupid!

Nico wanted to kick something over or, better yet, fight an angry monster. He could barely contain himself as he stalked the empty halls of Hades' palace. He had promised Will that he wasn't going to leave, and yet here he was, as far away from Will as he possibly could be.

If this were months ago, he would have gladly spent the rest of his sad, demigod life sulking in his father's palace, but things were different now. For once in his life since Bianca's death, he felt like he belonged. And now his stepmother had snatched it all away.

"Think about it before you steal things from my garden," Persephone had lectured him. It only took a day of her being in the underworld to call Nico back from Camp Half-Blood. Now, he was to serve her in compensation for what he took. Six months for six seeds, just like her legend proclaimed.

"I needed the pomegranate seeds to survive!" Nico had argued.

"You should have asked," Persephone launched back, cool and collected as ever, and Nico was left fuming. Their relationship had always been like this: indifferent one moment and contemptuous the next. Nico knew his stepmother was possessive about her personal garden, but he had genuinely needed the pomegranate seeds to survive his ordeal in Rome. He should have known that taking them without her knowing was going to come back and bite him. He sighed, twisting the skull ring on his finger.

He didn't even want to know what Will thought of him when he left; he kept seeing Will's crestfallen face when he told him that he had to go. Nico hadn't even explained the reason behind it because he was afraid Will himself would come marching down into the underworld and demand Nico's freedom. The last thing Nico needed was Will to be turned into a daffodil or something in Persephone's garden.

Nico made his way to the garden for his daily duties of tending to the flowers. It was stupid but stabbing viciously into the dirt with a trowel helped to take his mind off the situation. Somewhat. He still couldn't believe he was going to be stuck here for half a year.

Unfortunately for him, Persephone was there when he made his way into her garden. He barely stopped himself from turning on his heel and marching out.

"Persephone," he said monotonously. His mind added a sarcastic, to what do I owe the pleasure?

"Nico," Persephone greeted back, her lips pulled into a smile. He couldn't tell if it were genuine or mocking. When Nico only glared at her, she sighed. "I thought that you'd appreciate a reason to be away from both camps, but it seems like you're infuriated instead."

Now that was unexpected. "What?" Nico asked, staring at the goddess, anger forgotten.

Persephone returned to watering her flowers while she spoke. "You have said that you never enjoyed being around the other demigods, so I thought you'd prefer having a reason to be in the underworld," she explained.

Her tone sounded genuine, but Nico was never sure with gods and goddesses, but he did remember Persephone huffily promising that she'd try to be nicer to him in the future. Was this her way of being nice? Nico wasn't sure if he should feel frightened. "Thank…you," he said, struggling with the words. For now, he was going to assume she was being genuine. Persephone was always straight to the point with him, so it wouldn't make sense to act two-faced now. "But things have changed. I want to be at camp now. There's…people there that I want to be around." Will Solace, for one.

Persephone looked at him with one raised eyebrow. "Oh?" she asked, a mischievous tone to her voice. "Is there a certain demigod that you're thinking of?"

He couldn't believe that he was about to say this to his stepmother – a stepmother who had always hated the sight of him because he reminded her of Hades' affairs. Maybe being around Will had turned him into a more trusting, positive version of himself. He wasn't so sure of how he felt about that. "Yes," he muttered, looking at the ground and shuffling his feet. "He… He's special to me."

Why did he say that? Why? But now that it was out there, he couldn't take it back.

"A Roman or a Greek demigod?" Was Persephone actually interested?

"Greek… Um, one of Apollo's son." He thought of Will's smile and the warmth Nico felt when he touched Nico's wrist to feel his pulse all those days ago back in infirmary. He shivered a bit, rubbing his wrist and wishing he could feel that warmth again.

"Hmm… one of Apollo's," she pondered out loud. Then with a whisk of her hand, vivid flowers sprouted from the soil, splashes of colour against the pale landscape. Nico watched her pluck them prettily, quickly arranging them into a bouquet. She procured a string from seemingly nowhere, tying the stems of the flowers with a large ribbon before she held the bouquet out toward him. "Go on," she urged when he didn't move. "Take these to him. It's a good selection. Daffodils, primroses, and tulips," Persephone described.

"What?" Nico asked again, dumbfounded even when Persephone all but shoved the bouquet in his hands.

"They will convey your feelings quite clearly," Persephone said. "After all, I'm sure any son of Apollo would be poetic enough to understand the language of flowers."

Nico looked at the bouquet in his hands, staring at the flowers and hoping the meaning would spell itself out for him. It didn't. He hadn't studied flower language, so he had no idea what any of them meant. "Why…are you doing this?" Nico asked confusedly.

Persephone gave him a half smile. "I know I haven't been a very good…stepmother," she said, and Nico winced at the thought of the dandelion incident. Those days were the opposite of fun. "And it seemed that my invitation for you to stay in the underworld has backfired."

Invitation? From the way he got the message from Hades, it had almost seemed like a threat at the time. Nico had almost torn up his room in a fit of anger.

"But now I understand your feelings. You're in love, aren't you?" Persephone continued, tilting her head to give him an inquisitive gaze. Nico shuddered, feeling like she could see right through into his core even if she wasn't the goddess of love.

Still, he couldn't stop the blush coming onto his face. Will Solace popped up in his mind, and Nico remembered him brushing Nico's hair back from his face when he was in the infirmary. He remembered how he wanted so badly for Will's fingers to linger on his forehead just a little longer and maybe even caress his cheek. He turned his head away, hands tightening around the bouquet. "I – I'm not –"

Persephone gave a lilting laugh. "You don't need to deny it. Consider the agreement with the pomegranate seeds null and the bouquet as a gift. You may leave the underworld whenever you wish." She turned back to her plants, continuing to tend to them while Nico stared with his mouth agape.

"Are you, uh, serious?" Nico asked, just in case Persephone was dangling him along.

"Of course," Persephone replied, not even glancing at him now that she was occupied with her work. "I only get to see my husband six months every year. It would be a shame if you were to suffer a similar fate before you've even confessed."

"But the stealing part –"

"It was part of the excuse. Now, are you going to head back to your lover or not?"

Nico wanted to protest at the word lover. It sounded archaic and way, way too intimate, but Persephone's words felt promising enough, and Nico found himself muttering more thanks before he exited Persephone's garden, feeling all the more confused whether his stepmother was just having a good day or if she was genuinely trying to be nice to him.

If she was trying to be nice to him, it didn't seem so bad, he thought.

And that was how Nico found himself back at Camp Half-Blood a few hours later.

"Are you sure about this?"

This was about the hundredth time Kayla had asked and Will grumbled another, "Yes, I'm absolutely certain."

"But Nico might –"

"I'm certain," Will said, cutting her off. He had only slipped up the name once to Billie, but that was enough for word to spread around the entire camp in just three hours. He couldn't stand the looks of pity that people gave him when they visited him in the infirmary.

Kayla sighed. "Is there anything I can say to convince you not to do this? We could still contact Nico, you know, and tell him what's happening."

"I don't need a pity confession," Will argued. "It makes me feel like a charity case. Plus, we don't know where he is, and he's probably busy."

"Who's busy?"

Kayla squeaked and nearly jumped five feet in the air. Will almost fell off his bed when he saw him.

The demigod in question himself was standing at the entrance to the infirmary, looking a bit sheepish and holding a bouquet of flowers in his hands. The three of them stared at each other for a second too long, and Nico cleared his throat.

"I just forgot! I have something to do!" Kayla rushed out the infirmary, slamming the door behind her and leaving the two of them alone.

This was quite the development, Will thought. He wondered if someone had contacted Nico and informed him of Will's situation. The thought made him want to hide under his bedsheets, but Nico appeared to be mostly confused.

"People told me you were in the infirmary, but why are you here? Did something happen?" Nico asked in concern, walking over to Will's bedside.

"I'm fine," Will said, waving him off, but just his luck, the daffodils in his lungs were relentless in their torture. He hurriedly grabbed the bucket, sitting up and coughing more blood and flower petals out with a groan. Vaguely, he was aware of Nico's reassuring hand on his back. "Just peachy," he coughed.

"Will, what happened? Did you get in a fight or something? Do you need some ambrosia and nectar? Because I can go get some right now –"

"It's fine," Will said, grabbing onto Nico's wrist to stop him. "I just caught something bad. I'll be fine after the surgery tomorrow." The surgery that would make him forget Nico and all of his feelings for him. He quickly switched topics before Nico could linger on the surgery part. "What made you come back so fast? Did someone in camp contact you or something?"

Nico looked away now, his eyes refusing to meet Will in a bashful way that he couldn't help but find endearing. "Let's just say the underworld told me to return to Hades' Palace only to kick me out. Long story."

"The underworld?"

Nico muttered something so quiet that Will didn't catch it. "What was that?" he asked.

"I said, that's why I didn't want to tell you where I was going," Nico said. "You'd probably think it was a hostage situation or something."

"No, I wouldn't!" Will said, rolling his eyes.

"You and I both know you would," Nico replied. He wanted to pout, but he knew Nico was right. If he had caught wind that Nico was forced to return to the underworld, he would have gone on a quest to bring him back, as unadvisable as that would be. "But Persephone, my stepmother… Uh, she had a change of heart. And…"

Was Nico…blushing?

"Here." Nico all but shoved the bouquet in Will's face. "It's, um, a gift. From the underworld. Courtesy of Persephone – well, courtesy of me. But –"

As Nico continued to ramble inanely, Will took the moment to examine the flowers. Yellow daffodils – his lips quirked up – golden primroses, and red tulips. The underworld flowers were pristine and crisp, and Will felt like they were shivering in his hands when he touched the petals. In flower language, he knew what they meant, and all the meanings were romantic. He held back a laugh at the irony of Nico giving him this bouquet without knowing the meaning behind it.

Unless he did know, a hopeful voice whispered in his head.

He snuck a look at Nico, whose face was now a pleasant shade of pink as he continued rambling about the story behind the flowers. Will put a hand on Nico's wrist, and the boy quieted down immediately.

"Do you know?" Will asked quietly even when his heart was racing. "Do you know what these flowers mean?"

"Not really," Nico admitted, and Will's hope began to wilt. It was just a coincidence, then. Nico didn't have any special feelings for him whatsoever. He nodded, about to tell Nico to leave him be so he could rest for his surgery tomorrow, but Nico continued talking.

"I can guess, though," Nico offered, almost shyly.

Will raised an eyebrow at him, wondering if he would have to mask another heartbreak all over again after this. He hoped that it wasn't going to sprout another set of flower roots in his lungs. If it did, he hoped they weren't roses. The thorns on rose stems were bound to cause some serious internal bleeding, and the last thing he wanted to deal with were collapsed lungs. "So, you don't know what they mean."

Nico made an indignant sound. "I said I could guess, but don't laugh if it's wrong!" he added at Will's large grin. He pointed at the primroses and took a deep breath. "L-love," he declared, and Will thought his heart was going to stop. He had expected Nico to say something like slaying monsters and being good at it. Maybe…maybe Nico was actually serious about this. His finger made its way onto the tulips. "Love," he said again in a softer voice that made Will's heart race. Now, he was resting his finger against the largest daffodil bloom. "Love," he repeated, almost a whisper this time. His eyes flitted over to Will's and Will could only stare back, enraptured by the confused vulnerability that Nico was expressing.

He could break this moment, he thought. He could make a joke and tell him it was all wrong, but he didn't want to do that.

"Actually," Will said, keeping his voice just as low. His finger hovered over the primrose. "I can't live without you, love," Will said while looking Nico in the eyes, a line that would have had him rolling on the ground in embarrassment had it not been for this tense moment. Nico was also not wholly unaffected from the way he took a sharp intake of breath at Will's words, and Will wondered if his unrequited love wasn't so unrequited after all.

Now he was on the tulips. "This one is true love," he said, stroking the red petals. Of all the colours that Nico could have picked up, red couldn't have been a coincidence, could it? The bright yellow daffodils now brushed against his fingers. "Unrequited love, my only love, or," he trailed off, and in a spur of the moment, he placed two fingers on top of Nico's over the daffodil bloom. "Hope."

Nico's tongue darted out to wet his lips, and Will found his eyes following the movement. "Hope for what?"

There was no turning back now. With the hand that was resting on top of Nico's over the bouquet, he brought their hands together and entwined their fingers, feeling a spark run through his body when their fingers fit together. "For this." His voice was breathless and shaky, and he hoped that he wouldn't break into a coughing fit and destroy the moment.

There was a moment of silence where they both stared at their entwined fingers. "This is a love confession, isn't it?" Nico asked.

"You were the one who brought the bouquet here." Will couldn't help pointing the fact out.

"That was…!" Nico didn't finish the sentence, cheeks aflame at the implications. He nearly expected Nico to immediately run of the infirmary without another word, but Nico sighed instead. "Yeah, I did. And I kind of knew what they meant so yes. It's a…love…confession from me." He let go of Will's hand, almost slapping him away in his haste to exit. "Sorry for embarrassing you. I'll see myself out."

"Wait!" Will called out, pulling the blankets off his legs and stepping out of bed to grab Nico's wrist. He was not going to let it end like this. "I never said that it wasn't my love confession either."

Nico was staring at him like he wasn't quite sure what was happening. "Wait, what?"

"I'm in love with you," Will confessed breathlessly. He had the most absurd desire to drop on one knee and hold out the bouquet between them like he was doing a marriage proposal. "I even got flowers in my lungs to show for it," he rambled.

"What?" Nico exclaimed again.

"Hanahaki disease," he said, like the words meant anything to Nico. He then elaborated on the details of the disease, only to leave Nico's jaw hanging wide open.

"Are you idiotic?" Nico asked, punching him lightly on the shoulder. "And you didn't think to contact me? I could have been in the underworld for six months! Then what would you do? Go through with the operation?"

"I wasn't sure you'd like me back –"

"Of course I like you back! I only left because I had to! I wouldn't break my promise to you like that!"

The amount of anger Nico was showing was almost cute, and he was reminded of the time when he came raining down on Nico back during the Gaea War, when Nico planned to sacrifice himself for a noble cause. He remembered how frustrated he was, and how much he wanted to throttle him and confess his feelings right then and there even as inappropriate as it was. Now the roles were reversed, and Will was the one getting a stern talking to.

"But I'm sure it's cured now that we've, um, you know, confessed. I'll just get Kayla to run some tests, and Billie can confirm – mmfph!"

Nico had tugged Will forward by his shirt, planting his lips straight on Will's. He barely had the time to take in the shock of Nico's soft lips on his own when Nico pushed him back, his face scrunching up. "There's a metallic taste."

"Hmm, maybe that's because I just coughed up blood," Will said sarcastically, even though his lips were tingling. He kind of wanted to try again, but he didn't want to subject Nico to the bloody aftertaste. "Let me wash up first."

"Wait, are you planning to kiss me all evening?" Nico asked, sounding both scandalized and taken by the thought of it. Will burst out laughing at Nico's enthusiasm. He hadn't had that in mind in particular, but now that Nico had said it…

"It doesn't sound like such a bad plan now that I'm fully cured, does it?"

Nico's cheeks flushed pink again, and he looked away with a scowl. "Don't act so confident. For all you know, those flowers are still growing in your lungs."

"What a poetic way to die, huh?" Will mused.

"You don't even do poetry, and you definitely can't die on me just yet," Nico said with a scowl. In a moment of what must have been boldness, Nico leaned forward and seemed to be going for his lips before he averted the direction and pecked him on the cheek. "Also, you need to wash the blood out. There's no way I'm kissing you like this."

"Alright, alright, I'm going," Will said with a laugh as he headed to the sink, his cheek burning at the feeling of Nico's lips pressing against his skin. His heart thumped with excitement at his affections having been returned, and he couldn't wait to entwine his hands in Nico's again and kiss him until he fell asleep and then wake up in the morning to do it all over again.

And in his lungs, the last of the daffodils withered away, leaving nothing behind that ever indicated its presence.

-end

Notes: (I'd be planning to write a hanahaki disease fic for a long time, and surprisingly, this was actually supposed to be Nico getting the disease, but I switched it up. I write in Nico's POV way too much anyway) come find me at beauregardance on tumblr for posts about pairings and solangelo au's!

also tag me if you write a solangelo hanahaki fic :3c