Chapter Text
“What do you mean by ‘infiltrate the government’?” Nico exclaimed, throwing his arms up.
“Dude, it’s pretty self-explanatory,” Travis said calmly stuffing his face with more chips. Nico glared at him, causing Travis to shrink back. Good, he should be scared.
“Nico,” Annabeth said, crossing the room of the big house and then putting a calming hand on Nico’s shoulder. “We need you to do this because you have the best powers to do it with. You know how to blend in and you can get in and out without anyone really noticing.” Nico glared again, only this time Annabeth didn’t even flinch.
To be fair, he wasn’t really expecting her to flinch, it IS Annabeth after all.
“It’ll only be for a short time,” Percy added. “It will be over before you know it.”
“Why can’t Lou Ellen just go!? They have freaking magical powers!” Nico exclaimed pointing at the child of Hecate that was currently pelting a sleeping Clovis with balls of whipped cream (magically conjured of course).
“Because I’m the only one that is keeping the mist going and keeping the barrier up around this camp. If I left, this whole entire place would be destroyed in seconds, and all the mortals would know about us,” they explained without looking up from conjuring yet another ball of whipped cream. “Also, I’m on a wanted list in like 10 different states…so it probably bests that I don’t go.”
“Well technically I should be dead,” Nico grumbled under his breath and slunk down in his seat, banging his head on the table.
This annual counselor meeting was not going the way Nico had expected. Nico knew that the camp was having problems with the barrier and that the mist was acting wonky. More Half-Bloods where getting attacked daily. The infirmary was overwhelmed with patients, and that means Will was busy as well. Which sucked. A lot.
Nico hadn’t been able to get in a conversation of more than 2 minutes with Will before he had to go help yet another patient. The Hecate cabin was also desperately trying to keep the barrier up and figure out why their mother had suddenly disappeared off the face of the planet, and that was hard to do when there were only 5 people working on it. Then one of the five being new and having no idea how to control his magic. The gods were also being unhelpfully silent because Hades forbid them to be helpful for once in their lives.
“You’re sure that whatever I’m going to steal will solve this problem?”
Annabeth nodded. “100% certain, or at least Lou Ellen is.”
“Wait, why can’t a child of Hermes go?” Nico tried one more desperate plea to get off the weirdest quest he had ever heard of.
“We can’t phase through solid matter,” Connor supplied and seeing Nico’s ‘why in the name of my father would that ever matter’ face, he continued. “The object is guarded by 6 walls of vibranium. It’s impossible to blow up, cut through or disarm in any way. Sooo you just do your underworldy voodoo and shadow travel through the wall.”
Nico sighed, the reasoning made sense. He was the fittest for the job. He knew everyone was stressed about the problems. Hades, Reyna was stressed, and you know things are bad when Reyna is worried.
“Can I leave after the Romans get here?” Nico asked, thinking that it wasn’t a completely unreasonable request.
Most of the Romans in New Rome had decided to gather at Camp Half-Blood, safety in numbers and all that. Nico hadn’t seen Hazel in a good 3 months and he was starting to miss her.
Annabeth nodded again, “Reyna wants to help with the strategy to get you in and I know Hazel wants to see you again.”
Nico nodded before realization struck him, “wait a minute, you mean Reyna knew about me doing this!?”
A small smirk fluttered over Annabeth’s face, “Yeah, almost everyone knew about it. You just haven’t been paying attention.”
“Oh.” Nico paused. “She didn’t tell me.”
Percy let out a laugh that sounded more like a bark than an actual laugh.
“Nico, like everyone thought you knew this was a thing. I even knew what was going on.” Nico felt a blush spread across his cheeks, yeah, he should really pay attention more.
“Okay,” Clarisse said standing up and rubbing her hands together. “Now that we got all the boring parts out of the way, let’s get started on the fun parts.”
When no one said anything, she groaned. “C’mon guys the killing part! The so-called ‘plan B’ that actually involves a battle because we all know that the first plan never works!”
“Yeah that’s probably smart,” Katie sighed pushing her hair back away from her face. The room then erupted in very unhelpful suggestions of a plan B. Nico sighed for what seemed to be the 100th time that day and pushed his chair away from the table. No one stopped yelling, he tapped Annabeth lightly on the shoulder.
“I’m going to go find Will,” he left before she could respond. Nico let the big house door shut with a satisfying bang.
The camp was unusually quiet, usually, it was full of screaming kids, exasperated teenagers, and a very displeased Chiron. Now camp felt like a cold tomb, silent, cold, and with an unmoving body (or bodies in this case). Chiron had left for his annual party ponies get together (that he only went to after the party ponies had threatened to ransack the camp if he didn’t go...Chiron left surprisingly quickly after that), and Mr. D was holed up in his office bitching and moaning about not having wine...again.
He pulled his aviators jacket tighter around him, even though the camp was protected by a barrier, Mr. D still let the weather be the same as the outside (mostly because he wasn’t paying attention), and the November weather in New York was starting to get to Nico. Fortunately, he had a son of Apollo for a boyfriend and Will was always handing out free hugs.
He pushed open the door to the infirmary and was met with a blast of warm air and his nose was assaulted by the smell of cleaning products.
Nico sighed heavily wrinkling his nose, he had decided a while ago though, that he would put up with the smell to see Will. Will was worth it. Will was always worth it. Damn…he was getting sappy.
“Hey Nico!” a voice called cheerfully and a person came bouncing towards him. Immediately his eyes were assaulted with bright neon pink and orange hair, belonging the one and only Stella Vance. One of Will’s most cheerful half-sisters. She was a character, that’s for sure.
“Hi Stella,” Nico said peering around her. “Is,” he started to say but was interrupted with a giggle.
“Will is in our cabin. Hopefully sleeping, he just finished a 26-hour shift.” Stella said, still giggling.
“How did-“ he was cut off again.
“Whenever you come in here you're either injured of looking for Will. And I don’t see blood anywhere and no obvious broken bones, so Will it is.”
“Am I really that predictable?” Nico muttered mostly to himself.
“Yep!” Stella said cheerfully popping her gum.
“Thanks, Stella,” Nico sighed and turned to go find his boyfriend.
“No prob!”
Nico eventually found Will in his cabin past out on the floor.
“Oh you poor thing,” Nico muttered softly to himself. Will murmured softly and then rolled over so that his face was flush with the carpet and he was slightly hanging off of Nico’s shoes.
“C'mon you big lump,” Nico began picking up Will, awkwardly hanging one of his boyfriend's arm around his neck and scooping him up.
“Hmmphhhh,” Will groaned and nuzzled his face into Nico’s shoulder.
“Oh my gods, you literally are a cat,” Nico snorted, rubbing his hair affectionately.
Nico swore that Will outright purred.
Eventually, Nico had Will changed and in bed. That was not as creepy as it sounded, he swore.
“G’night,” Nico whispered, kissing Will on the forehead smile softly. “I love you.”
Nico turned to leave but was stopped when Will grasped his wrist tightly.
“Please stay,” he murmured, his eyes barely open. Nico didn’t need to be told twice, quickly he shrugged off his jacket and slid in next to Will.
Sleepily, Will turned on his side and gazed at Nico, a soft smile fleeted across his lips. He reached out and tousled Nico’s hair.
“You’re freaking adorable,” his words slightly slurred despite that Nico felt his cheeks heat up. Playfully, he pushed Will back into the bed.
“Shut up.” Will let out a laugh.
“Goodnight Neeks, I love you,” and then he turned on his side and his eyes closed, his face going peaceful and lax.
“I love you too,” Nico whispered, slipping the covers over his and Will’s shoulders, falling into a surprisingly peaceful and dreamless sleep.
“Agghhh,” Tony screamed, powder blowing up in his face, covering his precious goatee and seemingly crawling up his nose.
“You okay Mister Stark?” Peter asked, no concern whatsoever showing on his face, instead, a smirk was planted fondly across his lips.
“Yes,” Tony gritted out, teeth clenched as he wiped the powder out of his eyes. “Just a minor explosion.”
“Minor explosion?” A voice cut in, “with Tony Stark? Who would have thought?”
Peter and Tony both looked up to see Natasha Romanoff leaning casually against the door frame, she had the nerve to be smirking.
“How did you get in here?”
“Oooo, talk about spy powers. I didn’t even hear you come in!”
Peter and Tony spoke at the same time and there was a beat of awkward silence as the two stared at each other.
“Well,” Natasha spoke clapping her hands together, “Fury has requested that we do an emergency meeting. Something came up. Meet up in 5.” With that, Natasha turned on her heel and left the room.
Tony turned to Peter shrugging. “C’mon Underoos let's go see what the big scary pirate has in store for us this time. It’s probably another charity fund. I’m betting it’s another charity fund. Or Shield wants an upgrade on their coffee machine. Or both. Probably both.”
Tony continued talking as he guided Peter up 2 floors and into a meeting room where the rest of the Avengers and Bucky and Rhody (even though they essentially Avengers they officially weren’t) were already there.
“Okay, we are all here, where’s Fury?” Tony asked plopping down on one of the swivel chairs and propping his feet on the table.
A cough behind Tony caused him to jump and Fury stood there, a disapproving look flickered over his face before it went back into a neutral mask.
“What’s this all about?” Steve asked as Tony tried to recover his breathe (and whatever was left of his dignity).
“Yeah especially at this hour,” Clint grumbled, a yawn escaping him.
“Clint, it’s 3 in the afternoon!” Bruce interjected, disbelief in his voice.
“Exactly, way too early.”
Fury coughed again, gaining everyone’s attention.
“Can I start or are we just going to complain and not just get any work done?”
Everyone shuffled awkwardly and pulled out seats, everyone except for Thor who plopped eagerly down on the ground and crossed his legs.
“Out of everyone here, Thor is the most familiar with this new threat,” Fury began before he was cut off with a loud thud of Clint headbanging his head in the table.
“This is a terrible way to start the morning,” he groaned, his voice muffled from the wood.
Fury ignored Clint and kept talking. “These threats are not from Asgard or even from space. These creatures have been on earth for a long time, but with new problems occurring in their part of this world they have become an even bigger threat to our kind, “ Fury paused and glanced at the crowd, his one eye sweeping through them. He seemed to be calculating something before continuing. “It is important to remember that these creatures are not human even though they look human. They are a great threat to the rest of humanity.”
“Get to the point,” Tony cut in, one leg bouncing up and down and his fingers fiddling together.
“I was getting there,” Fury gritted out. “First of all there is one thing you all need to know, but this information doesn't need to leave this room.” He glared at everyone one more time only Natasha not flinching again his glare.
“To the best of our knowledge, Norse mythology is not the only myths that are real. Thor is living proof of that. Roman, Greek, and Egyptian gods also exist.”
Peter’s eyes went wide as Fury kept talking. “And these gods sometimes have children with humans making these children Demigods, and the one barrier separating our world from theirs is fading.”
Fury stopped, his shoulders squaring as he turned to the Avengers
“They don’t know we know, they suspect nothing. We have a slight advantage but we still need to keep our guard up.”
“Sir, what are you implying?” Steve cut in, a baffled expression over his face.
“What I’m saying Captain, is that we need to do whatever it takes to protect our people from these creatures. From the Demigods and from the monsters and the dangers that follow them. We need to keep on guard,” Fury’s eye pierced through Steve but he kept his gaze.
“Fury you said they were children!” Wanda cut in. Her voice escalating.
“Children with powers that they can’t control well and have no idea what to do with. And these children are after the infinity stones.”
With that Fury turned, his coat billowing and left the room. Leaving everyone else with a confused expression, even Natasha.
“Dude, that’s so freaking cool!” Peter exclaimed, his face bright and a huge smile plastered across his face.
Tony groaned and buried his face in his hands.