"That's good," he says hopefully, but he doesn't sound quite as sure as he had when he was also just making guesses earlier. He falls silent for a second, watching water sluice over the the pink tips of his fingers, because he doesn't actually want to move away to get a Fluid but he also doesn't want to mess this whole process up just because he's feeling clingy over a dream-not-dream.
He sighs against Lev's shoulder, sheepish, and his thumb trails down to rest in the cup of Lev's palm. "Do you know anyone who actually knows medicine stuff? I only really know how to make things worse, not how to make them better."
Lev says like the comment is offhand but it's anything but. He can sense... something between Abby and Nico. Not quite like tension, but the sense of being out of sync and unable to figure out how to be in ryhtm together around Lev. It's not unnerving but a little disconcerting.
He leans against Nico's shoulder as he curls his fingers around Nico's thumb. "You made it better. I didn't even notice."
Nico winces slightly, before he can stop himself, something he realizes is probably going to be obvious given how close they are. It's just, he thinks that if anyone is going to be really mad that he gave Lev frostbite, it'll be Abby.
"Okay," he says, wanting to intertwine their fingers and just go lay back down or something, but not sure if they're done here yet. Which is why, "I'll call her." He should pull his thumb free, but he just curls it slightly in Lev's grip for another few seconds at least. "Stay under the water, okay?"
"You don't have to." He'll give Nico an out here. He presses his face into Nico's shoulder again, trying to grip his thumb with his stiff fingers. He doesn't want Abby to get involved and he knows he's being foolish. He suggested it after all. But at the same time, he just wants to be here with Nico, alone. "We can just sleep. Maybe it will be better in the morning."
Nico is sorely tempted even though he knows it's a really bad idea, but when Lev can't even fully grip his thumb he knows he has to let go. Mental images of ghosts with missing fingers and toes, blackened ears and noses float to the forefront of his imagination, even if he knows what's happening to Lev isn't as serious. He just! Wants Lev to be okay!! And who is gonna make sure of that, if not Abby?
"I'll just be a minute," he says, reluctantly pulling away to go figure out where they last discarded their Fluids.
Lev's door is open. Abby doesn't knock but only because they're both expecting her– she's not entirely sure of what's waiting for her behind the door. Lev, frostbitten along his hands (he needs those, what if he can't hold his bow again?) and Nico, potentially injured too, but keeping it quiet for Lev's sake; the fucking pair of them. She should knock their heads together, but she won't. She recognises too that they probably only called in an adult at the very last minute, and she is, begrudgingly, glad that they did.
"Hey," she calls, and slings her pack off of one shoulder. She brought her first aid kit, just in case.
Nico hovers guiltily in the doorway to the bathroom, looking a bit like a ghost haunting the premises even in the jaunty ocean lighting of Lev's sweet aquarium window. "He's in here," he replies immediately, because he'd just been pacing while waiting for her to arrive. He's afraid if he went back to the bathroom to wait, she'd have walked in on them practically cuddling while standing up, which would probably be extremely weird for all of them.
Well, Lev was very much enjoying cuddling while standing up so he's a little sulky and put out that Nico was waiting outside! When Abby enters, Lev leans out as far as he can from the bathroom while still having his fingers under the water like a good boy.
Abby feels better already from glancing up to see him crane his head around the door frame of the bathroom, his mouth in a line. His neutral expression. He's just fine.
"Okay." She trusts him to know this; he understands his own body better than anybody else ever could, he's proven it time and time again. But– "Can I look at it anyway?"
Nico looks guilty for some reason. Abby is going to process that second. Lev's got his hands held in a basin of water when she comes to check, and the temperature isn't too hot when she tests it, which is good. His fingers are pink. She doesn't try to touch them, though. "Are they sore?"
Nico lurks just outside the bathroom, holding onto the doorframe. When Lev catches his eye he manages to relax, but only a little bit. When Abby checks the water and seems okay with it, he relaxes a little bit more.
Okay. It'll be fine.
He shuffles slightly closer, twisting a ring around one of his fingers in a tense little fidget. "He couldn't feel anything before," he pipes up, for context. Being a little bit sore is an improvement, right?? Please reassure him of this, someone.
Yeah, it will. Besides, Abby really isn't sure what to do past 'heat the afflicted area but slowly and don't rub it'. So she's really of no help at all, and– Lev is so calm that she isn't worried. He knows how to handle himself, and, in any case, he also knows exactly who to yell for when he wants somebody to come running.
So she isn't really here for him then, huh. She's here for Nico.
Not because he's hurt. He looks alright, from the few glimpses that Abby's got of him since she entered the room, but– he's nervous. Upset about something. Fidgeting, and shooting little glances up at Lev every now and then.
"Yeah, but he can now. It'll take a little time for it to thaw out, that's all."
And then, as she's drifting back toward the door, "Can you come help me make him a hot drink?" Because she wants to talk to Nico for a second but she doesn't want to make a huge deal out of it, either.
Nico casts another glance at Lev, hands in the water, and then nods. "Yeah. Okay." He's not stupid, he knows it doesn't take two people to make a cup of hot chocolate or whatever, but obviously Abby is gonna have questions and if he's going to get in trouble it might as well be now. Why put it off?
He sticks his hands in his pockets to make them stop moving, and shuffles over towards the little kitchenette that's on the opposite side of the suite from the bathroom. It strikes him when he gets there and looks up at the cabinets that he hasn't actually touched it yet even though he spends about half of his nights in here, because there's room service! And also occasional kitchen robbing with all the other rowdy teens. "If I try to explain it it's not going to make a lot of sense," he starts with, bluntly. Abby has, in his experience, not taken magical stuff very well.
Okay, Lev doesn't know what a shakedown is but he does think that Abby's definitely being strange asking Nico to help her make a drink. Why would she need help with that.
He scowls a little, sorely tempted to leave the bathroom but he knows both Abby and Nico would yell at him to go back and take care of his fingers.
So instead, he tries to lean over as far as possible, while still keeping the tips of his fingers in the water, to try and overhear what they're talking about.
Why you think she needs help with it, Lev. It's so she has space to talk shit; now stay in the bathroom.
"Good," she calls back, before she draws Nico around the corner and out of sight. He's immediately defensive, and he's got his hands shoved into his pockets like he doesn't want her seeing them and getting a read off of his body language. What is he expecting, for Abby to shout him down? These fucking kids. She squints, and sighs, and retrieves a mug from the cupboard, placing it down on the bench between them.
"It's alright, Nico. Shit happens." Especially in this place. She saved him from a fucking sea monster like a week ago, there's space for Lev to have some how received frostbite today. She's looking at him, and– she knows there's every chance that he'll just shrug her off and answer in a way she'll simply have to accept. Abby still wants to ask, though.
Lev complaining from across the room makes it hard for Nico not to smile, but he manages to suppress it after a momentary struggle, considering what he thinks the circumstances are.
At least until Abby starts actually talking.
He looks up at her like he'd been avoiding until now, surprised. Despite being, you know, fourteen, he hasn't spent much time around adults (who weren't gods or similarly mythical, and therefore similarly blasé about the health and safety of teenagers) for the last few years, and the last time he was regularly around them he'd been in military boarding school where hollering was basically the only form of communication. Even if Abby hadn't done that so far, he'd assumed this would start it.
Instead, she's trying to check up on him. He sits down onto the bench next to the mug like his strings have been cut. "I was dead?" he says like it's a question, even though it's not. He just has no idea how to actually feel in the aftermath of it, other than guilty because Lev got hurt. "But I made myself... manifest. As a ghost. But that's too cold, for uh— mortals, I guess." Probably for other demigods who aren't children of the Underworld, too, but that's needlessly complicating the issue.
Abby feels like sitting down next to him. It felt like a nightmare, walking into that funeral home and being handed a pamphlet with Lev's name and photo emblazoned over the front cover. It hadn't felt real. Honestly, she'd had to tell herself in the end that it hadn't, just to keep that sharp edge of grief from lingering in the back of her mind afterwards. Lev hadn't actually died, so she didn't need to dwell. Right?
She rests her palms on the bench and leans into them for a second, puffing out her cheeks before she exhales.
"And he touched you?" She can imagine that. Lev had tried to touch her, too. He hadn't hurt her, though. Even when he was finally solid again he was warm, and alive. That must have been difficult, for the both of them. They're close, Abby knows at least that much.
Nico hunches in on himself, a little bit. He'd been really leaning on that it-was-a-dream thing too, until they woke up and held hands and Nico realized that whatever had just happened to them, it happened physically.
Anyway, he's back to staring at the floor. "I made it possible." That's not actually an explanation at all, but it's not like there's an exact science to any of the stuff he can do. He certainly hadn't known he had the could before it happened, he just hadn't wanted to go. Lev had been like an anchor and Nico had been so desperate to feel something warm again. In a sudden rush: "What if he can't shoot his bow anymore? Or climb things? Or draw?" You know, quintessential Lev Things.
She watches him, his nervous gaze bouncing around the room to rest steadily on the floor. He's plainly afraid of hurting Lev, in any capacity. It's why Abby wouldn't yell at him for this even if it were worse, because it's so clear that he's already weathering criticism from himself. He doesn't need it from her, too.
"He'd find a way to do all of those things even if something happened to his hands." Abby has no doubt; she's thinking of Yara now, as fierce and as strong as ever even after her arm had been injured, "He's a survivor. It's what we do. But–" she hastens to add it, because she suddenly realises she's not helping, "it won't even come to that. Okay? He'll be fine."
Nico doesn't really trust people, as a rule—certainly not when they come bearing good news, which always feels like a trap (because he's very jaded and extra cool xoxo.) But he wants to believe her badly enough that he stops fidgeting and looks at her again. "Okay," he says after a moment, deciding that he doesn't think she'd be so calm if she wasn't telling the truth about that. Lev was chill the whole time, but Lev is chill about a lot of things that he probably shouldn't be. He's been through too much.
After a moment, Nico can't stop himself from tacking on: "You're not mad?"
She snorts. "I'm not mad, kid. You'd know if I was."
Kettle has boiled. Of course Lev has hot chocolate powder in his room, it's probably his favourite thing in their house back home and this hotel caters to every need, so. Abby puts a very generous couple of spoonfuls into a mug for him, and makes up the drink. She fixes Nico with a look while she does it, like she can figure him out that way.
"Did you really think I was going to yell at you? I know you wouldn't ever hurt him on purpose."
Nico has spent so long under constant suspicion by the people whose side he's been on literally the whole time that he almost doesn't know what to do with the clear trust in his motives. Lev trusts him, sure, but Lev also never even heard of Hades, and never thought Nico was creepy and secretly plotting everybody's demise behind their backs. You know, like most people do. Like he's pretty sure Abby did for at least awhile. Maybe still does, he doesn't know, adults are strange and mysterious creatures to him and he has no idea how to read them most of the time (unless they're dead.)
"I don't know." He says instead of yeah, he did think that, because he's a teenager and he can't just admit to being wrong. Impossible. He stands up when he sees that she's done with the drink that he didn't contribute a single thing to, looking pretty sheepish about the whole thing. "He's going to be so annoyed," Nico predicts, though at least he isn't predicting that Lev's hands are going to fall off and ruin his life anymore, so that's progress!!
"Probably," Abby agrees, and rolls her eyes. She nudges the mug across the bench toward him. "Here. If you take him the hot chocolate, he can only be annoyed at me."
Lev life hacks........ besides, she's used to him being titchy at her. Nico can get a pass for now. Abby realises she has an opportunity before they rejoin Lev to ask Nico what exactly they mean to each other, even opens her mouth to say something, but she abruptly realises that Lev won't appreciate her prying. That if she wants him to trust her, she has to let him come to her instead, just like with everything else. That's okay. She's getting good at waiting him out.
So instead she shrugs, and gives Nico a good natured thump on the arm with her fist, before she pushes off the bench to trail back down the hall. Lev's probably thirty seconds away from yelling for one of them, anyway.
"Are you guys finally done talking?" Lev scowls and leans out of the doorway as he hears them approach closer. Okay, he's not mad that Nico and Abby are talking. Actually, it makes him really happy. But they are NOT ALLOWED TO TALK ABOUT HIM WHILE HE IS RIGHT THERE. Surely, that is illegal? Banned across the world.
"Can I take my hands out of the water now? They're all wrinkled." He says like he's suffered an extreme injustice. Which one of you will apologize?
He should probably let her take the hot chocolate, in that case, but he definitely does not. Conveniently that means he's too busy struggling to keep all the liquid inside of the cup when she gets him in the shoulder to get too weird about being touched.
And then Lev is complaining, which is extremely cute. He fights the urge to grin valiantly. "Um, probably?" It's not much of an apology, given that he sounds pretty relieved about it. Wrinkles mean that his fingers can't be frozen at all anymore, right? Nico glances to Abby to see if she agrees even as he sidles up to Lev's side and peers down at them, still hanging onto the mug of hot cocoa. "Let me see. Are they back to the regular color?" That's what she'd said to look for on the Fluid!
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He sighs against Lev's shoulder, sheepish, and his thumb trails down to rest in the cup of Lev's palm. "Do you know anyone who actually knows medicine stuff? I only really know how to make things worse, not how to make them better."
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Lev says like the comment is offhand but it's anything but. He can sense... something between Abby and Nico. Not quite like tension, but the sense of being out of sync and unable to figure out how to be in ryhtm together around Lev. It's not unnerving but a little disconcerting.
He leans against Nico's shoulder as he curls his fingers around Nico's thumb. "You made it better. I didn't even notice."
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"Okay," he says, wanting to intertwine their fingers and just go lay back down or something, but not sure if they're done here yet. Which is why, "I'll call her." He should pull his thumb free, but he just curls it slightly in Lev's grip for another few seconds at least. "Stay under the water, okay?"
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"I'll just be a minute," he says, reluctantly pulling away to go figure out where they last discarded their Fluids.
i want to
"Hey," she calls, and slings her pack off of one shoulder. She brought her first aid kit, just in case.
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"It's really not that bad."
He tries to make eye contact with Nico.
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"Okay." She trusts him to know this; he understands his own body better than anybody else ever could, he's proven it time and time again. But– "Can I look at it anyway?"
Nico looks guilty for some reason. Abby is going to process that second. Lev's got his hands held in a basin of water when she comes to check, and the temperature isn't too hot when she tests it, which is good. His fingers are pink. She doesn't try to touch them, though. "Are they sore?"
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"Just a little."
He can almost feel Nico's guilt in the air like a miasma. Lev wishes he could tell him to calm down without causing Abby to ask questions.
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Okay. It'll be fine.
He shuffles slightly closer, twisting a ring around one of his fingers in a tense little fidget. "He couldn't feel anything before," he pipes up, for context. Being a little bit sore is an improvement, right?? Please reassure him of this, someone.
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So she isn't really here for him then, huh. She's here for Nico.
Not because he's hurt. He looks alright, from the few glimpses that Abby's got of him since she entered the room, but– he's nervous. Upset about something. Fidgeting, and shooting little glances up at Lev every now and then.
"Yeah, but he can now. It'll take a little time for it to thaw out, that's all."
And then, as she's drifting back toward the door, "Can you come help me make him a hot drink?" Because she wants to talk to Nico for a second but she doesn't want to make a huge deal out of it, either.
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Nico casts another glance at Lev, hands in the water, and then nods. "Yeah. Okay." He's not stupid, he knows it doesn't take two people to make a cup of hot chocolate or whatever, but obviously Abby is gonna have questions and if he's going to get in trouble it might as well be now. Why put it off?
He sticks his hands in his pockets to make them stop moving, and shuffles over towards the little kitchenette that's on the opposite side of the suite from the bathroom. It strikes him when he gets there and looks up at the cabinets that he hasn't actually touched it yet even though he spends about half of his nights in here, because there's room service! And also occasional kitchen robbing with all the other rowdy teens. "If I try to explain it it's not going to make a lot of sense," he starts with, bluntly. Abby has, in his experience, not taken magical stuff very well.
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Okay, Lev doesn't know what a shakedown is but he does think that Abby's definitely being strange asking Nico to help her make a drink. Why would she need help with that.
He scowls a little, sorely tempted to leave the bathroom but he knows both Abby and Nico would yell at him to go back and take care of his fingers.
So instead, he tries to lean over as far as possible, while still keeping the tips of his fingers in the water, to try and overhear what they're talking about.
"I know you guys are talking about me."
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"Good," she calls back, before she draws Nico around the corner and out of sight. He's immediately defensive, and he's got his hands shoved into his pockets like he doesn't want her seeing them and getting a read off of his body language. What is he expecting, for Abby to shout him down? These fucking kids. She squints, and sighs, and retrieves a mug from the cupboard, placing it down on the bench between them.
"It's alright, Nico. Shit happens." Especially in this place. She saved him from a fucking sea monster like a week ago, there's space for Lev to have some how received frostbite today. She's looking at him, and– she knows there's every chance that he'll just shrug her off and answer in a way she'll simply have to accept. Abby still wants to ask, though.
"Are you okay?"
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At least until Abby starts actually talking.
He looks up at her like he'd been avoiding until now, surprised. Despite being, you know, fourteen, he hasn't spent much time around adults (who weren't gods or similarly mythical, and therefore similarly blasé about the health and safety of teenagers) for the last few years, and the last time he was regularly around them he'd been in military boarding school where hollering was basically the only form of communication. Even if Abby hadn't done that so far, he'd assumed this would start it.
Instead, she's trying to check up on him. He sits down onto the bench next to the mug like his strings have been cut. "I was dead?" he says like it's a question, even though it's not. He just has no idea how to actually feel in the aftermath of it, other than guilty because Lev got hurt. "But I made myself... manifest. As a ghost. But that's too cold, for uh— mortals, I guess." Probably for other demigods who aren't children of the Underworld, too, but that's needlessly complicating the issue.
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Abby feels like sitting down next to him. It felt like a nightmare, walking into that funeral home and being handed a pamphlet with Lev's name and photo emblazoned over the front cover. It hadn't felt real. Honestly, she'd had to tell herself in the end that it hadn't, just to keep that sharp edge of grief from lingering in the back of her mind afterwards. Lev hadn't actually died, so she didn't need to dwell. Right?
She rests her palms on the bench and leans into them for a second, puffing out her cheeks before she exhales.
"And he touched you?" She can imagine that. Lev had tried to touch her, too. He hadn't hurt her, though. Even when he was finally solid again he was warm, and alive. That must have been difficult, for the both of them. They're close, Abby knows at least that much.
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Anyway, he's back to staring at the floor. "I made it possible." That's not actually an explanation at all, but it's not like there's an exact science to any of the stuff he can do. He certainly hadn't known he had the could before it happened, he just hadn't wanted to go. Lev had been like an anchor and Nico had been so desperate to feel something warm again. In a sudden rush: "What if he can't shoot his bow anymore? Or climb things? Or draw?" You know, quintessential Lev Things.
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"He'd find a way to do all of those things even if something happened to his hands." Abby has no doubt; she's thinking of Yara now, as fierce and as strong as ever even after her arm had been injured, "He's a survivor. It's what we do. But–" she hastens to add it, because she suddenly realises she's not helping, "it won't even come to that. Okay? He'll be fine."
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After a moment, Nico can't stop himself from tacking on: "You're not mad?"
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Kettle has boiled. Of course Lev has hot chocolate powder in his room, it's probably his favourite thing in their house back home and this hotel caters to every need, so. Abby puts a very generous couple of spoonfuls into a mug for him, and makes up the drink. She fixes Nico with a look while she does it, like she can figure him out that way.
"Did you really think I was going to yell at you? I know you wouldn't ever hurt him on purpose."
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"I don't know." He says instead of yeah, he did think that, because he's a teenager and he can't just admit to being wrong. Impossible. He stands up when he sees that she's done with the drink that he didn't contribute a single thing to, looking pretty sheepish about the whole thing. "He's going to be so annoyed," Nico predicts, though at least he isn't predicting that Lev's hands are going to fall off and ruin his life anymore, so that's progress!!
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Lev life hacks........ besides, she's used to him being titchy at her. Nico can get a pass for now. Abby realises she has an opportunity before they rejoin Lev to ask Nico what exactly they mean to each other, even opens her mouth to say something, but she abruptly realises that Lev won't appreciate her prying. That if she wants him to trust her, she has to let him come to her instead, just like with everything else. That's okay. She's getting good at waiting him out.
So instead she shrugs, and gives Nico a good natured thump on the arm with her fist, before she pushes off the bench to trail back down the hall. Lev's probably thirty seconds away from yelling for one of them, anyway.
YEETS BACK IN HERE.
"Can I take my hands out of the water now? They're all wrinkled." He says like he's suffered an extreme injustice. Which one of you will apologize?
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And then Lev is complaining, which is extremely cute. He fights the urge to grin valiantly. "Um, probably?" It's not much of an apology, given that he sounds pretty relieved about it. Wrinkles mean that his fingers can't be frozen at all anymore, right? Nico glances to Abby to see if she agrees even as he sidles up to Lev's side and peers down at them, still hanging onto the mug of hot cocoa. "Let me see. Are they back to the regular color?" That's what she'd said to look for on the Fluid!
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gross... skin.. stuff.... mention (??)