🌸🌺🌹🌻🌼

i was looking for a specific panel and i feel so dumb but like

tyler’s contact photo of aiden

and then the actual panel when it happened

i just realized we can actually see tyler taking the picture. i can’t tell if this was intentional or if red was like “oh tyler had his phone out during this part put might as well use that as aiden’s contact photo” ?? its a nice little detail i think

this is gonna turn into a “things i noticed in sbg that i probably should have noticed before that was super obvious but i was too dumb to figure it out” type of account. just to let you know…

Bothersome beast, comforting friend

Kosmo is a Klance shipper for sure.

it's getting crowded in here

I really want to redraw this✨️☠️

PSA TO YOUNG ARTISTS

or artists who aren't used to people commissioning them.

NEVER trust someone who comes into your comment section asking for YOU to DM THEM about a commission.

99% of the time they are scams and they will try and take advantage of you. An actual commissioner will DM you directly or ask you about a price sheet.

Also!! double check that they are following you, and if they aren't, that's a big red flag. It's SUPER fishy when it seems like this person is willing to pay real human money for art that they don't regularly enjoy. A follow is free.

DO NOT FALL FOR THIS!! It's a common scam. Stay safe lovelies!

"Oh Iris, Goddess of the Rainbow, show me Will Solace."

Show him, she does.

It must be steamy in Texas. Nico has been informed that the heat that way south is often desert dry, but there is nary a bath or tap in sight -- only Will, shirtless, right leg bent, lounging on clean white sheets, and humming to himself. He is covered in a thin sheen of sweat, as if he's been glazed in oil. Nico's breathing gets a little heavy.

"Wha...oh! Nico!" Will clamors upright, tucking his knees up, leaning forward on his hands. Nico can tell from his voice he is smiling. He can tell from his own eyeballs that the way he is sitting presses his chest together, just so, and then out, and boy is that a scene he has not observed in years present. "Hey!"

"Hey," Nico says, completely incapable of feeling his tongue. He drags his eyes upward, meeting Will's sparkling eyes and raised eyebrow. He clears his throat. "Uh, hi."

Will watches him. He tilts his head, ever so, observing through the staticky film of the mist, scanning his eyes across Nico's face, the set of his jaw, the raise of his shoulders. The corners of his pink mouth twitch.

"Hi," he indulges. Both eyebrows rise, now. "Everything okay?"

Nico uncrosses his arms. He recrosses them. Will giggles. He uncrosses them again, face flaming.

"Everything is -- good here in the hood," he says, then vows to kill himself. Percy first, as this whole thing -- it always is -- is his fault, but then he is stabbing himself straight through the eye. Will's giggles turn to outright laughter. "I am -- holding down here at The Fort. Word." He makes a hang-tight motion with his hand. It spasms. He tries to yank it back down to shove deeply into his pockets, but in his urgency he just kind of shakes it a little. Can you die from too much blood to the brain? Nico is pretty sure you can die from too much blood to the brain.

"What is wrong with you, weirdo." The fondness drips from his voice -- which has become a little more twangy in the weeks he's been gone, Nico is noticing -- and Nico wants to lap it up like chocolate syrup. He wants to -- swallow it, him; he wants to dive through the screen and devour him.

That was not the purpose of this call.

The purpose is long gone, however.

"Nothing is -- wrong," he defends, defensively. It would be a better defense if Will were not fucking shirtless and if he could fucking think. As it is all his brain is doing is recalling the exact flavor of Will's clavicle when it is sweaty in that way and his mouth floods with saliva. He has to check that he is not drooling. "Everything is -- groovy. Can I not call to say hello."

Will grins indulgently. "You can." He moves, slowly, and were Nico not laser-focused on the very twitches of his muscles he may not have noticed. Alas. "But you said so, already. What's next?"

He has slowly moved back into a reclining position, hands tucked behind his head. This way Nico can see the flex of his biceps, the strain of his pectoral; the blonde, curly hair under his arms and trailing under his pierced belly-button are on full glimmering display, and Nico's teeth ache. He's going to die. He's going to die.

"Next. I." Will draws a leg up, bending it thoughtlessly to the side. Nico trails off.

"Next you...?"

It's on purpose, is what it fucking is.

Look, Nico is -- a man. Okay. Despite the running jokes of his ancestry and his lower-than-normal temperature, he is indeed warm-blooded. And warm blooded men do this thing when there is six-foot-two of lean and hot stretched out and teasing in front of them and that is called suffering. Will is no fool. Nico is no subtle person. There is a reason all his fucking volleyball shorts are three sizes too small and that he goes for a run every day. He doesn't actually like it as much as he claims he does. His throat fucking closes every time he lies about it. But he does it every fucking morning because he takes his sweet fucking time stretching beforehand and his 'laps' are in direct fucking view of the one Hades cabin window and he is a sgualdrina, okay, he is his father's fucking son, and he knows damn well what he is doing and knows damn well why half the camp gets up early to watch. He is an attention-hungry little fuck and he knows Nico by the ridges of his fingertips and nothing he does is fucking accidental.

Nico's brain cells are gone. Kaput. One hundred fucking percent of his blood is concentrated around his flaming face and his genuinely painfully hard cock. Thought is difficult. When he is face to face with his boyfriend again he is going to strangle him, and it is going to do nothing, because the horny fucker will like it and then Nico is going to be blue-balled to death all over again. He can't fucking win.

"Talk to me, Nico. So I know you're alive."

"I hope you fucking explode," Nico grits out. He keels over, a little, desperate to alleviate. "I hope you --"

"Hands up."

Nico freezes.

It is rare that Will gets that sort of tone.

Rarer still that he gets that look in his eyes, that dark-brazen belligerence. He meets Nico's gaze head on and he is smirking, openly, hand tracing down his chest, circling the dark splotch of his own nipple. Will is a lot whinier, usually; he's needy, and he likes that, he likes it when Nico pushes him around, when he presses his buttons and crowds him against the headboard, the supply closet corner, the bathroom stall of the bodega. He likes that Nico can put his hands on his hips and he will crumble, he will sink into Nico's touch; he likes the sharpness of Nico's grin and the sharper edge to his teeth. He likes that Nico wants him. That Nico gets him.

But Nico can't get him, here. Not eighteen hundred miles away. And there is a spark in his eye, at the reigns he has here, a gleam he gets like when his siblings are on the third and final warning he'll give them, like when a new horse comes trotting into the stables, self-righteous and cocky. A lax to his muscles and a tension in his big, steady hands.

"You can touch yourself," he says, quiet, "when I say so."

Nico scowls. "And how are you going to stop me?"

Will shrugs. He ducks out of view for a moment, and Nico's heart stops -- he cranes his head around, for a second, like that will magically work, like he's be able to see outside the screen. Will's voice is muffled, interrupted by the wheels of a pulled drawer and the rustling of it's contents.

"Well --" He huffs, audibly, off screen, humming when he finds what he's looking for and crawling back on his bed --

"I'm going to finger myself, regardless, but if you're good I'll let you watch."

The grin he shoots in Nico's direction is goading and devilish. He is under no delusions that Nico is going to up and walk away -- his cock is actually straining in his pants, and his balls are starting to ache -- and no matter what, he gets off. He wins. And gods, Nico does not mind in the slightest.

"I hate you," Nico mutters, voice muffled in the palms of his hands. Will laughs, smug and airy, and it shoots right up his spine, right down his dick. His hands strain to touch -- not only his cock, but across the IM, across the distance; he wants to run his hands up and down that warm chest, he wants to slide those ridiculously tiny boyshorts down with his teeth. He wants to bite him so hard they can hear his shout across oceans, he wants to stuff him full of cock so relentlessly that his eyes roll back in his head and he forgets his own fucking name.

"Mm, too bad for you," Will singsongs. "All you get to do is sit there on your big, lonely bed, my pillow in you face, as I edge myself so hard I lose my voice. Unfortunate!"

Nico stifles a shout, incapable of stopping his hands from diving down his pants. The half-second of relief is divine -- as his heated skin of his cock cools in the cabin air his head calms, for just a moment, and he can focus on the weight of his dick in his hand, the sensitive glans by the head. Fuck. He gathers precum in his palm and rubs it up the shaft, closing his eyes for a second and imagining it's Will's saliva.

"Strike one."

Nico's eyes fly open. "Hey, wait --"

Will shifts, carefully dragging a pillow under his hips, drawing his knees as far up as they will go and arching the length of his broad, freckled back; the fabric of his boyshorts stretches over his ass, so thin Nico can see the shape of each cheek, dead center of the screen in front of him. Will looks over his shoulder, eyebrows raised, mouth pulled into a thin, mocking line.

"Three and you're out, di Angelo. I mean it. I don't need you watching to finish the job." He winks. "Certainly ain't bad, though. Somethin' special about havin' eyes on me."

Heat flows through Nico like hot oil.

"I better be the only fuckin' eyes."

"Yeah? Or what?"

"I'll make you howl, pretty boy. I'll jump all two thousand miles and rail you, don't think I fuckin' wouldn't. In front of all your little admirers, too."

That makes Will moan, thighs quivering like Nico is actually there between them. It takes him time to recover, panting, and it would be gratifying if it did not make every one of Nico's nerves sing, if it did not make him have to sit on his own hands to avoid wrapping them fist after fist around the length of his cock.

"We're -- exploring that," Will says, breathless. "Later, when you can -- make good on your promises."

"I can make good on them now," Nico says darkly. He watches as Will inches his shorts down the tanned globes of his ass, resting the -- fuck, resting the elastic right under the bottom of his ass, pushing the fat and muscle up from the crest of his thighs. It looks like glazed dough, and the want of it makes Nico buckle, makes his chest swim with it. His fingers twitch like clawed nails.

"You're shadow-banned."

"I think your ass would be a fine last meal."

Will laughs, shoulders flushing. "Shut the fuck up."

Nico smiles softly. "Never."

Will rolls his eyes, but Nico can tell by his breathing that he's pleased; he recognizes the hitch in his inhale, the little sound in the back of his throat. He needs to hear it and Nico loves to say it: he wants him. Not for what he can do, not because he is tall, or because he looks like his father. Because every part of him from the bend of his biteable shoulders to the curve of his -- and Nico is an entirely objective observer in this department -- fat ass is the most addictive, mind-ruining, lust-brewing thing imaginable. He is beautiful, and he is breathtaking, and he is capable, and he is clever, and he is unbelievably, unbeatably smart: all things Nico will tell him. All things Nico will drill into him, eventually. But he can show Will that he is sexy without even trying. And it is his most favorite guilty pleasure to indulge in.

Without meaning to -- and without even thinking -- his hand drifts to his cock, kicking off his jeans and socks and settling back onto the headboard, watching. Will pants, shifting side to side, and his ass shakes tantalizingly with every little movement, with every little mewl from the back of his throat. His lubed-slick fingers are quick and skilled and bely some recent, skillful practice -- Nico mourns every viewing he's missed -- and Nico is completely mesmerized by the crook of his long fingers, the stretch and give of his pretty pink pucker. Nico has his fingers squeezing the base of his cock and his palm against the seam of his balls before he is even aware that his hands have moved. It's like pure, magnetic instinct: Will is fingering himself, and Nico is jacking off to it. They have been there before, too many times to count.

"Hey, are you --" Will huffs, bleary eyes narrowing. "Strike two, you shameless motherfucker."

Nico inhales sharply, glancing down at his own traitor hands with as much frustration as he throws across the screen.

"I'm -- I'm the shameless one, how am I supposed to --"

He throws his hands up, aghast, and Will does nothing but huff at him, pausing his scissoring fingers -- no -- and sticking out his tongue. Nico, mournfully, wants to suck on it.

"You remember that time? Early December?"

Nico tilts his head, paying slightly less attention than he means to. (He has one-mind focus. Okay. It's battle reflexes. In the demigod handbook and everything.) "No?? I can't remember breakfast --"

"When you handcuffed me. And ate me out 'til I lost my voice and then rode me so hard I actually lost consciousness!"

Nico pauses, shoulders stilling. A slow, heady grin speads across his face.

"Oh," he says, settling back. He holds his hands up in faux surrender, drinking in Will's lidded eyes. "Yeah, I remember."

"You fucker. I told you I'd get you back for that."

"Did you? 'Cause me personally I remember a lot of Nico, Nico, please and don't stop, don't stop, I'm gonna cum --"

"See, this is why you don't get to touch yourself. 'Cause you're an asshole."

Nico blows him a kiss. He rolls his eyes, hole visibly clenching around his fingers.

"An asshole whom you seem to enjoy."

"Nobody asked you."

"I'm always asking me." For all his attitude, Will is working mighty hard to keep in frame. It does not escape Nico's notice. "And you like it when I tease you."

"Shut up," Will grumbles again. "I'm trying to focus."

"Alright, alright." Nico waves a hand. "By all means."

But he can't quite pull off the playful disinterest he goes for. Will knows it, because he exhales, stretching, and shakes his hips ever so slightly, smirk coming back in full force. He's easy to rile up -- Nico hopes and suspects he always will be -- but one thing about Will is that he will always finish what he started, and finish hard. In minutes, he has a third finger slipped through his ring, then a fourth, and just when Nico has his head against the wood of the headboard, breathing heavy, there is a sound from the other end, a tiny, frustrated grunt, and then a slick pop noise, like a dropped-open mouth. Nico whips his head over so fast he damn near twists his neck.

Will has all five of his fingers in, just above the knuckles.

"Please tell me you are not," Nico begs, jerking forward with the effort of keeping still. A low, groaning kind of shout fights its way out of him, a sound he's never made before, and he fears for a moment he's actually lost control of his body, astral-projecting his soul to wherever Will is so there's half a chance more he can touch. "Will, I swear to the gods, if you fist yourself when I'm not there and I can't touch my dick will actually explode off my body. Jesus fucking Christ."

He's joking, a little bit. But not really. His cock twitches hard and it genuinely hurts, like a fresh, bone-deep bruise -- which, fascinatingly, seems only to make the hard-on that much harder. Will sees, and huffs a laugh.

"'M not," he promises, words a little slurred. There's a little cloudiness in his blue eyes, and on reflex Nico softens, hands twitching out to him. "I didn' -- 'm not prepped enough, baby. It'd hurt."

Nico files that edge to his voice away for later. For now he nods, exhaling long and slow, and lets his face crumple into something shameless, something pleading.

"C'mon, Will. Please. Let me -- let me touch myself, okay, I want to feel it when you finally find your --"

Will moans so loud, suddenly, that Nico pauses and frantically glances at the window to make sure it's shut tight. And then every nerve in his system lights on fire. There's something dissonant about watching Will cum but not being there. He's usually on Nico's cock, see. Or tongue, or hands, or anything, really; if Nico has half a chance to get him panting and red-chested and shouting his name in place of his own, Nico will fucking take it, obviously, because when Will comes he is beautifully, blissfully loud, and every insistence that he can't sing or hold a tune is shot into the stratosphere because he sounds like roaring flame, like whipping race cars; when he cums he rakes his nails down Nico's back and the burn is so heady Nico's eyes roll back into his head. When Will cums his chest burns bright red and his face glows golden, when Will cums he is heat to the point of intolerance and sunburn. And Nico dreams of it. He dreams of the moment he brushes against that tiny little nub -- because that is all it ever takes, sensitive as he is -- and hears him beg and plead and howl, hears his voice crack on Nico's name like the gods with jealously for their own praise. It is like wind roaring, when he comes, like swords clashing.

Across the screen, Nico only gets to see it.

It is breathtaking.

Nico watches, mouth open, hands loose and rested palms up on his knees; when Will cums, apparently, his toes curl, and his back dips low; when Will cums, apparently, his pretty cock twitches just so as it spurts up his flushed chest; when Will cums, apparently, the freckles along his shoulder blades glow in perfect constellations; when Will cums, apparently, his lips mouth Nico's name, once, as he pants, in the small, nano second before the shouting begins and the euphoric twitches flick up and down his arms. Nico thought he had him memorized. He is thrilled, from the stiffness of his nipples to the end of his weeping cock, to know there is more to learn.

"Please," he begs, as Will comes down from the aftershocks, "please, sweetheart, let me --"

"Go," Will nods, and his voice is hoarse, wrecked, and Nico wraps his hands around his shaft like a drowning man grips a rope.

He is used to his own callused hands, although his rough spots are in different places than Will's. As he drives his palm up and down his length, gathering leaking spend from the tip, he hears Will's raspy, road-gravel voice:

"Waited so long, didn't you, darlin'. Listenin' so good to me. If I was there I'd be kneelin' at your feet, tongue out; you could paint my pretty face how I know you like --"

Nico groans, curling in on himself, and spurts into his hand, eyes screwed shut, imagining ropes of cum decorating Will's face, his long, straight nose, his mussed hair. He hears Will giggle tiredly and it adds to the image, making him think of the way his nose always scrunches, freckles disappearing in the folds of his skin.

"Stop being cute when I'm thinking unholy things about you."

"I'm not trying to be cute, I am cute, and you're an innocence-ruining deviant."

Nico pops his eyes open, snorting. "Sure, real innocent, Mr. Paint My Pretty Face."

"Exactly, exactly. Glad you agree."

Will grins at him, wide and soft. Nico memorizes the shape of his teeth, the outline of his frame; his wide shoulders, the jut of his hip. The shapely curve of his legs.

"I miss you."

Nico exhales. "I miss you too, my lifeline."

"Hm. Lifeline. That's new."

Nico watches the shy, pleased curl of him and aches with the need to touch, to press soft kisses to his warm, flustered skin. To wipe the sweat from his belly and shoulders and stroke his hair until he can't keep his eyes open, until he snores into the crook of Nico's neck.

"Not new. Not for me."

Will sighs, eyelashes fluttering. "Y'r my lifeline too, you know." He presses a heavy, tired hand to his lips, extended it out in Nico's direction. "S'pecially when I'm lonely."

Nico swallows. "Good." He leans back into the pillows, careless of the spend on his stomach, on his hands. He'll deal with it later. "You sleepy?"

"Little. Was gonna take a nap 'fore you came bargin' in and seduced me."

"Oh, is that how it happened."

"Mhm."

The tiny little smirk on Will's face makes Nico's chest burn something heavy. He feels the phantom press of it along the web of his thumb.

"Go ahead, Will. I'll wait 'til you're out."

"'Kay." He doesn't need the permission, half-out anyways; but he curls in on himself, hands tucked up to his chest, and hands twitch where Nico usually holds them. "Love you."

"And I, immeasurably, you."

He watches Will sleep and drinks in the glow of his smile.

Was curious how far Ithaca was from troy today while listening to epic the musical and rereading the illiad and I found this map

I think odysseus would have been better just to walk😭

ranking the best things I have heard surgeons say mid-surgery:

1. "Five second rule!" while scrubbed, after dropping a sterile scalpel on the floor (no they did NOT pick it up again but I swear everyone's buttholes puckered)

2. (spoken during the closing of a particularly long and difficult case) "Nurse - my tunes." :heavy metal starts blasting:

3. Gently to a fretful patient, pre-anaesthesia: "It's going to be okay. I promise, I've dealt with worse." As soon as the patient is unconscious: "This is literally the worst thing I've ever seen."

4. [okay this one was a med student] "Wowwww, that's so gross!!" Reg: "Please remember that [patient] is awake for this procedure." Student to patient: "Oh my god. I am so sorry, that was really unprofessional - " Patient, cheerfully, also engrossed with what's happening inside them on the screen: "Nah - it's, like, super gross, right?"

5. [another procedure where the patient couldn't be put under GA] Patient: *starts singing country roads midway through the procedure* Surgeon: *shrugs and joins in with surprisingly good harmony*

Nico doesn't notice it, at first.

Most of the day his eyes are just blue.

Pretty blue, of course. Most of Will is; pretty that is. He sounds it, especially, rolling r's and loud lovely laughs and a lower voice that's right on the edge of raspy. He matches it, too, his voice, he has the wild golden curls and veritable spattering of freckles that match the paint-spatter splash of his very being. He is pretty the way dandelions are pretty, bright and explosive and covering hills as far as the eyes can see.

Nico doesn't talk as much as he does. Most people don't, honestly, if there's one thing about Will it's that he's got something to say. Nico likes it when he talks, he likes to walk along and listen or track the waving of his arms as he rants during breakfast. When he watches he can see his big big eyes widen and narrow with every raised and falling pitch of his voice, he can see them sparkle with something secret every time a tripwire gets pulled and someone blames the Hermes cabin. When he watches he can see the shimmery, sky-blue catch in the sunlight, glowing with the pride of his father.

It takes a morning on the silent Apollo cabin veranda for Nico to catch the difference.

It is a Sunday, and he's awake by force of habit. He's been out of his time-distant past longer than he's ever been in it, but ten years of waking up at the crack of dawn, or before in the winter months, to slide on a starchy shirt and squeeze into pinchy shoes he hated, dutifully if grumpily holding onto Mama's left hand and making faces at Bianca around the curve of the pews, has made its mark. He's yet to spend a single Sunday morning anything but groggy but conscious, glaring out the lone Cabin Thirteen window.

One morning, he catches movement across the common.

The way the cabins are set up puts Nico on a small hill. It's interesting, really, and Nico doubts it was on purpose -- what with the disastrous design of the cabin before Nico renovated it -- but nothing venerating Hades is ever looking down on anyone else. His father is quite pleased with it, he knows, and for it the cabin is always pleasantly warm, and smells slightly like turned dirt. Garden dirt, thankfully, not grave; Nico cannot be sure and will never ask but sometimes he suspects his stepmother might have something to do with it. Either way Nico has a clear view of the entire camp from end to end, including the line of cabins gently curving from his down to Zeus's. Three doors down, and smack at the crux of the curve, is Apollo's: in the warming, rising sun, the gilded walls glow, making the red cedar beams holding up the roof look warm and lively, like there's life still growing inside. On the rickety, camper-built porch sits Will, up earlier even than any of his siblings, curled up in the corner of a porch swing. He rocks it ever slightly with one bare foot.

Unthinkingly, Nico walks over to join him.

It's harpy time still, technically. They have reign until the sun is high and clear in the sky, even in the lazier winter months. They glare at him, now, some more restlessly than others, but they know better than to come at him. Nico's sword is dark and obvious from its spot at his side, hands twitching towards it. Besides that his death aura clears him for a solid radial mile.

Will smiles, when he sees him coming.

"Mornin', sunshine," he says, voice soft in the barely-daylight. He taps the cushion next to him. "Come sit?"

It's pleading, almost, Nico notices. Not will you come sit, or wanna come sit. But come sit, as in here is your spot. Come sit as in I want you to.

Nico flushes and joins him.

"Yer up early."

His accent is thicker this early in the morning. Nico almost wants to shiver when he hears it, words short and vowels long. He looks like it, too, eyes closed and face mirroring the sun, tipped up to meet it. Long limbs curled up but bent, like the awkward ends of a sweet-tea straw. He bleeds warmth, from the foot of space between them.

"Sunday," Nico admits, just as quiet. He watches as Will drags a hand through his messy hair, smile tugging at the dimpled corners of his mouth. "Habit, I suppose."

"Yeah? Were ya up with them church-goers, once 'pon a time?"

Nico nods, suddenly restless. He sits on his hands to keep them from reaching out, to keep them from brushing along the bob of Will's Adam's apple.

"My abuela -- my mama's gramma, that is -- was Catholic, too. Crack'a dawn every week."

"Oh."

Nico forgets Will has a mortal life, sometimes. He seems so cornerstone to camp, mentioned in passing in every other story, a part of the schedule from breakfast's daily mental health check-ins to sing-along at ten. Even the infirmary bears his name -- never you should probably head over to the infirmary, but go on and get Will. Nico tries to imagine him without the backdrop of the strawberries, or in the empty desert, and comes up blank.

"Y'seem surprised."

"I am, I guess."

"How come?" He cracks an eye open, grinning. "'M too much of a sinner for it?"

Nico snorts, thinking of the thundering of the Ares cabin last night, coming home after campfire -- where Will has been suspiciously and conspicuously absent for all but his little number at the end -- to each and every bunk and possession attached to the ceiling. As far as Nico is aware, they spent the night on the cement floor.

"Something like that, you menace."

Will smiles, a self-satisfied little thing, and settles back onto the cushions. He exhales as it rocks and all tension melts from his broad shoulders; his extended hand rests limp and tempting in the cushion between them and every cell in Nico's blood itches.

The run rises, slowly. It takes its time by the measured sound of Will's breathing, warming the cracking calluses of his bare heels to the wind-rustled hem of his shorts. With every inch of sunlight he gets brighter, and Nico gets warmer, and warmer, and warmer.

When more than half of it has pushed its way over the crest of the horizon, he shifts, stretching, turning to face Nico fully. He opens his mouth to say something or make a comment and Nico does not hear it, in fact his ears go long and ringing, because his --

His eyes.

For the first time that morning, he faces Nico head on, elbow off the curve of his forehead, blond eyelashes catching in the warm rays. For the first time that morning, eyes fully open, Nico can see -- not the languid spread of him, or the endless, summer-dark freckles, but the width of his irises, the shine of his pebble-sized pupil: in the bright, early-dawn morning, Will's eyes are endless.

Blue is no longer the right color for them. Desperately, Nico searches around the porch roof, above the chimney of the Big House, and there they are, reflected in infinity: Will's eye are every jealous painter's deepest desire, they are the exact makeup of the morning sky from the pale blue at the rounded top to the golden clouds reflecting the flares of the gentle yellow sun. There are even lines, cutting straight through, of pure, gentle gold; like the angular rays of Heaven looking kindly on the spinning Earth, so stretch the lines in Will's infinitely expanding irises. Layered in between the blue and the gold is the color Nico has never been able to name, the color like pillow softness, the color like soft hands on a fevered forehead, the color like coming in from the biting cold. The color like welcome on in and I got you, darlin'. The color like a long, easy inhale that sits soft and easy in your tired lungs.

"You're starin'," says Will, quietly.

Nico swallows. He doesn't even know what to think in response.

"Everythin' alright?"

Nico's hands twitch, again, and this time he doesn't have half to strength to stop them; unbidden they move slowly up the curve of Will's cheek, pinky lingering on the prominent tendons of his scarred neck. He rests his palms on the softness of his jaw and his thumbs on the dips under his eye, hands cupped like before the holy Eucharist. He waits, mouth dry, tongue poised in anticipation of the I believe.

"Your eyes," he breathes, finally. Its mirrored in the hitch of Will's chest. "My God above."

"Ain't nothin' special," Will argues, or tries to. Heat begins to bloom under the curl of Nico's palm, and Will's voice as gone reedy and thin. "I'm -- they're just blue, darlin', what have you --"

"They're not." Nico stops himself from becoming vehement, barely, but can't slow the firm shake of his head, the whip of his rapidly warming hair. "They're -- they're sky blue Will, gods." He tilts Will's head, slightly, and he goes, swallowing heavy. "This is the kind of thing artists dream about."

That makes Will blush, heavy and hard from the tips of his forehead to below the collar of his shirt. Nico smiles, fond, something heated along the bridge of his own nose, but he cannot help but notice that Will's eyes are still shifting, even as he narrows them, even as he cringes away from Nico's words; the golden along the bottoms spreads, now, past half his irises, like sunlight on shoreline.

"You're -- full'a somethin, di Angelo," he accuses, only his pretty voice cracks. "I dunno what's got you smoother than a polished river stone, but cut that right out, y'hear me?"

Or what, Nico wants to challenge. He is emboldened, now, by Will's embarrassment; as much as he squirms he does not move away. But as the sun crests higher and higher the gold begins to fade, irises smoothing bright and blue and reflective of the sky, still. Robin-egg pale at this exact moment. But familiar enough that Nico exhales, obedient, and drops his hands, scoots way.

"You got possessed," Will mumbles, still curled in on himself. But he smiles slightly to himself and Nico mirrors it, drinking in his shy, shocked pleasure. When he looks over and huffed there is a brazenness in his teeth, a sudden realization of what Nico has been seeing this whole time: he is pretty, and quite obviously so. Even in the neon of his Head Medic shirt. "Oddball."

Nico says nothing, knocking him gently across the shoulders. He settles back in the cushion right next to him, and together they rock, on the creaky old swing, watching lights flick on, shadows move across curtained windows.

Nico looks up into the brightening sky and finds it familiar.