This is Mute!Nico/Deaf!Will. All other canon applies.

This is a homosexual pairing. If that's not your thing, I can't help you, because I am the gayest pan person ever.

.

.

.

Darkness…

Alone…

I can feel the hunger…

Anger…

Powerlust…

It waits…

Beckons…

Stalking its prey…

AND YOU CAN'T STOP ME, LITTLE HALF-BLOOD…

.

.

.

Nico awakens, clutching his sheets in cold terror. (Dark Pit seeds jar monster power hurts hungry powerless power STOPSTOPSTOPSTOP.)

When you've been through an ordeal like Ta – the Pit, people understand that you're not really open to talking about it.

Nico isn't open to talking about anything.

Ever.

Will says (signs, actually, because he can't actually make coherent speech escape his lips without hearing himself, and, well, he can't do that either…) that he has trauma-induced mutism. He offers to teach Nico more sign language than just the alphabet, an invitation which the younger boy reluctantly accepts because the thought of speech takes him back. (Dark cold cramped I want out IwantoutIwantoutIWANTOUTIWANTOUT!)

Under Will's instruction, Nico flourishes not only in sign language but in relaxation as well. He supposes it's the son of Apollo's easy-going, laidback disposition. He's opened up a little with him, and for the first time since Bianca died, Nico allows himself a friend.

But the nightmares persist (cold dark power anger hunger LET ME OUT) and people are getting frustrated. Hazel blames herself, says that she feels useless, can't even help him, which Frank and Nico will deny until their dying days. Jason and Annabeth and Percy say they're there for him. Piper and the others give him sympathy. Sherman Yang cusses at him for a full two minutes and calls him a waste of space (he threatens to tell Crotchkicker McCaffrey and the stocky Asian goes white as a sheet). No one gets it. No one understands.

Will is blissfully patient. He doesn't tell Nico that he wants the younger boy to start speaking again because, while a sign of recovery, it's kind of futile to use an auditory language to communicate with a deaf person. (Fun Fact: Will sucks at reading lips. He couldn't do it if his life depended on it.)

Nico and Will get progressively closer. Nico feels more relaxed around the older boy, more himself than he's been (than he's allowed himself to be) since Bianca. Will's eyes are as blue as the sky, seeming to pierce into your soul, almost always full of joy. He has a lot of freckles everywhere, and, surprisingly, sunburns very easily. (His medical knowledge and SPF50 are the only reasons he's tan instead of lobster-red.) His blonde hair is thick and curly, and Nico longs to run his fingers through it.

Two months later, he works up the nerve to ask Will out, getting a fabulous blush (sunburn-red) and a "yes".

They have a habit of signing "I love you" spontaneously, usually in the mornings, when Will knows Nico sobbed after a nightmare and he couldn't hear him and make it better.

Nico will have nightmares his entire life. He will always have the nagging depression, the irrational anxiety. After an experience like Ta – the Pit, you can't really blame him. He will never speak again.

But that's okay.

Because he has Will.

And he really couldn't care less which language they love in.

A/N: I love my disabled gay sons. Seriously, though, reading lips is hard. For clarification, the times when I start "Tartarus" and change to "the Pit" are to show that Nico can't call it by name. It brings back too many bad memories.

Fun Fact: My family sign "I love you" (think the rock on symbol but with the thumb up, so the pinky is the "I", the index and thumb make an "L" for "love", and the space between the pinky and the index make a "U") a lot because my grandmother knew sign language.