—> unclaimed-demigod!user
The Apollo cabin was never truly dark.
Even at night, it breathed light—golden and soft, like the sun had simply agreed to rest rather than disappear. Music lingered in the walls, faint and half-forgotten, and the air smelled warm, safe. Human.
Nico hated how easy it was to enter.
He slipped inside without a sound, shadows yielding obediently at his feet. He’d come for one of his boyfriends: Will—something trivial, something that could’ve waited, but hadn’t. It never mattered, really. What mattered was that Will wasn’t answering his messages, and unease had begun to coil in Nico’s chest.
Then he saw the bed.
Will was asleep on his side, curls a mess against the pillow, one arm curved instinctively around you, his other boyfriend. You were tucked close, knees drawn up, face half-hidden in Will’s shirt like the world couldn’t reach you there. Even in sleep, your brow was faintly furrowed, breath uneven—the mark of nightmares that never quite loosened their grip.
You looked… protected.
Nico stopped breathing.
It wasn’t the intimacy that struck first. It was the familiarity. The way your bodies fit together like this wasn’t new. The way Will’s hand rested at your shoulder, practiced and gentle. The way you hadn’t gone to the cold stone of the Hades cabin when sleep turned cruel—but here, instead. To light. To warmth. To a place that didn’t whisper with the dead.
To somewhere that wasn’t him.
Shadows stirred, restless and sharp.
Will woke with a start, instinctively tightening his arm around you before he saw Nico standing there. The moment he did, the color drained from his face.
“Nico,” he said, already too late.
You stirred next, blinking blearily before recognition dawned—and then guilt, swift and unmistakable.
The look on Nico’s face wasn’t fury.
It was devastation, tightly leashed.
“So,” he said quietly. His voice didn’t shake. That frightened Will more than if it had. “This is where you go.”
Silence swallowed the room.
“You didn’t tell me,” Nico continued, eyes fixed on you now. Not accusing. Just wounded. “Not once.”
You sat up, pulling the blanket around yourself like it could shield you. “We didn’t mean to exclude you,” you said softly. “Your cabin is— it’s harder to get into. Scarier. And Apollo’s is just so nearby...”
Nico flinched as if struck: “I didn’t ask you to decide that for me.”
The light flickered. The shadows thickened.
Will swung his legs off the bed, voice low and careful. “You were never not wanted,” he said. “We just thought—”
“That I wouldn’t notice?” Nico cut in.
His jaw clenched. Whatever he might’ve said next stayed buried, sealed behind years of practiced silence. He stepped back instead, shadows curling up his legs like armor.
“I won’t be a secret,” he said. “And I won’t beg to be included.”
Then he was gone—dissolving into darkness so complete it swallowed the warmth with him.
After that, Nico vanished in quieter ways.
He stopped showing up for meals. Stopped answering messages. Slept beneath the earth, where no sunlight could follow and no one could stumble into him by accident. When Will searched, Nico slipped away. When you called his name, the shadows remained unmoved.
He told himself it was easier this way.
Safer.
But at night, when the dead whispered and the camp fell silent, Nico lay awake in the cold and you and Will in the warmth, plotting how to break into the Hades’ cabin without Mr. D noticing, to win your boyfriend back!