"It Reminded Me Of You."

"It reminded me of you."

Will looks into his cupped hands. He purses his lips. He opens his mouth. He closes it. He opens it again.

"This is, uh." He clears his throat. "It, being this fish skeleton?"

Nico nods. "Yes."

Will waits for an explanation. With none forthcoming, he looks up, intent on asking for it directly, but his tongue does completely numb in his mouth, jaw softly unlocking. From the late afternoon sun behind him golden rays shine directly into pools of what has become spun copper and amber brown; spools of shining wire surrounded by shining white. It takes him time uncountable to register the wide, round soporifics in front of him are in fact Nico's eyes, cradled in the light, watching him.

"What," Will tries, mouth dry, "uh, what? Why. I mean." He holds up his hands. They're shaking. "Fish?"

"That's you," says Nico, crowding into Will's space. Will makes a noise that can be registered only by bats, dolphins, and bush crickets.

Nico's callused hands encircle Will's wrist and his soul ascends, exiting from his body, floating away gayly away until Will snags it by the ankle and yanks it back to his mortal body. Dad, if you can hear me, I cannot stress how much you owe me and how badly I am calling in that favor. SOS. SOS. SOS. SO --

"It's small, see. Delicate."

"I'm -- six two?"

"Yeah, physically." Nico pokes at the tiny little spine. "But you're, like." He makes a squishing motion with his hand. "Crushable, you know? You just go around feeling your feelings at full force. All over the place. Delicate."

Will is pretty sure he's ghasting. Is that what it's called? Flabbering one's ghast? When you just -- kind of stand there, slack jawed, wheezing like a doofus? Maybe he is a fish. "Nico, I've got --" He makes a swooping gesture in front of his nose, trying and visibly failing at indicating a plague mask. "You know? I could poison you."

"Yeah, that's why I picked one that died from whirling disease."

"How...thoughtful?"

"Thanks."

Nico returns to the fish skeleton. He points out the eye sockets. "See here? The fish had shallow orbits so it probably had big eyes like you."

"I have big eyes?"

"Duh. You are ninety percent eye. Everyone looks at you and it's like bam. Blue. All you can see."

Will begs the red to recede from his cheeks. He can hear the echo of his father's cackling, all the way from his stupid dork ass nerd ass lame tryhard chariot, and the red continues to rise.

"You -- like my eyes?"

"Yeah."

"Oh."

"Hey, look here. You can see its -- are you looking? -- you can see its heart cavity. Cool, right? Your heart is going really fast."

A high-pitched noise comes out of Will's throat, sourced from somewhere in his kneecaps, probably. They're wobbling enough.

"Yeah, I -- uh, best believe I noticed."

"Are you okay?"

"I'm vibing. Chilling, even. One could even say I'm maxing, relaxing, acting all cool. If there was a basketball net outside of a school I would be totally shooting right now."

"You're acting weird," Nico accuses.

Will laughs out loud. No, like, really laughs, it comes out of his stomach and then his knees give out and he barely manages to catch himself, hunching over, veins hot rod boiling and stomach writhing and face the color of a gently polished tomato. He may have passed.

"Oh, my gods, something kill me."

"Whatever, weirdo. Come back over, I want to show you why the rib cage is representative of your repression issues."

"Okay."