Chapter Text
“This is a bad idea,” Annabeth hissed.
“This was your idea,” Nico whisper-yelled from the ground, right below where she stood on the roof of the county center.
“Why didn’t you stop me?”
“Are you kidding me?” Nico gawked up at her. “Try to stop you? When you’ve got a plan? ”
“Okay, good point,” she reasoned. “Get up here.”
Nico grabbed the rope and started climbing, fairly sure Annabeth was doing most of the work of hauling him up.
He’d barely made it up onto the roof when Annabeth tied his rope to a pipe and instructed him to climb back down.
“Why am I climbing back down if I just climbed up?” Nico scowled. His arms were tired, it was cold, and he just wanted to be inside eating store-bought cookies and making fun of whatever god-awful sweaters Will, Percy, and Leo were wearing, because all of them owned multiple ugly holiday sweaters.
Annabeth smacked the back of his head. “Stupid.” Nico struck back and missed, resulting in a slap fight that almost sent both of them toppling over the edge. “We’re going to rappel halfway down, because swinging in will be easiest from there.”
“Got it.” Nico did not get it.
Hanging precariously off the side of the building, his rope the only thing keeping him from falling flat on his back on the ground below, Nico found himself agreeing with Annabeth’s earlier statement. This was a really, really bad idea .
“Three, two, one, posted!” Annabeth stuffed her phone back into her pocket. This was the one part of the plan Nico actually understood. The two of them had taken a photo earlier that day, drinks in hand, to pretend as if they were doing something that was not breaking and entering, and Annabeth was posting it as a diversion, because Octavian would, without a doubt, rush to his phone to be the first to like it. He did that with every post, which Will claimed was some kind of weird power play to get good luck and be on everyone’s mind, all the time.
It was strange, and more than a little disturbing, but it worked in their favor this one time.
“He’s looking at his phone! Go, go go!”
At Annabeth’s signal, Nico pushed off of the wall, angling himself so he would swing towards the window Will had opened earlier that night. With his eyes on the entry point, he didn’t notice Annabeth hurtling towards him until she let out a surprised squeak, and then everything went to shit.
Their lines tangled together, Nico took an elbow to the forehead, and he felt the unmistakable twang of his rope snapping somewhere above him. The collision had somehow propelled him backwards and Annabeth forwards, so she tucked and rolled through the window, exactly as planned, landing gracefully on the other side, while Nico fell with zero coordination onto the grass with a thunk .
With his brain yelling Shit! Shit! Shit! on a loop, he got up, ignoring the pain in both his pride and his tailbone that came from such an undignified fall, and ran to the window, climbing in as quickly as he could without making too much noise.
Annabeth was already hidden behind a corner, and Nico ran to join her, wincing at the sound his boots made in the hallway.
“I think we’re okay,” she whispered, risking a glance. “Why the hell did you go when I was going?”
“You said go!” Nico whispered back, so tense his voice cracked. “I heard ‘go,’ so I went!”
“That was my signal!”
“Why the hell would you tell yourself to go?” Nico let out a huffy breath. “It’s fine. We’re fine. We made it in. We should have just gone in the way I did in the first place, but it’s fine.”
“Wha— If you had a better idea, you should have shared it back when we were planning, genius!” Annabeth spluttered, her voice getting a little too loud for a heist.
“ Shut up ,” Nico muttered, slapping a hand over her mouth, only to pull it away seconds later with a bite mark on his palm. “OW.”
“ Shut up ,” Annabeth taunted.
Safely inside with Octavian’s back to them, the only thing left to do was sneak down the hall to get to the bathrooms, change, and then enter the party so nonchalantly that nobody realized they were technically criminals at this point. The sneaking part proved much easier than expected, though they did step on each other’s toes almost constantly.
Once in the bathroom, Nico had a hell of a time trying to reach the vent to stuff his clothes in, and very nearly considered giving up and flushing them before settling on hanging his bag in the very last stall and hoping nobody stole it. Annabeth had not accounted for height when making this part of the plan, apparently.
His Christmas sweater was fairly understated, as far as ugly sweaters went, with little skulls in Santa hats and zombified reindeer forming a repetitive pattern, but it was Christmas-y enough. Annabeth’s had some sort of computer code on it that Nico wasn’t even going to try understanding.
“Oh thank goodness you made it.” Will met them at the door, cookie in hand. Does he ever stop eating? Nico wondered, knowing full well the answer was no. “I was worried.”
“No need, it all worked out perfectly,” Annabeth lied. Nico nodded along, too preoccupied with the elbow-shaped bruise he was sure would form on his forehead.
“That’s awesome! I’ve been pretty sneaky myself, you know. I fixed the chanukiah earlier when nobody was looking.” Will’s proud smile was almost worth falling on his ass. Almost.
The party was a lot smaller than Nico had expected, with only about twenty people standing around the room. Nico recognized almost everybody there, except for a few people he was sure Will would drag him around to meet later in the night.
Everyone looked friendly, except for the very last person to enter the room, a greasy-looking blond with “a smile that begs to be removed with violence,” as Will had so aptly described his cousin before Nico had first met him months ago. Unfortunately for Nico and Annabeth, that smile came with eyes like a hawk, and he zeroed on them in no time.
"This party is invitation-only," Octavian sneered. Nico decided he really did have the most punchable face of all time.
"Aw, c'mon, everyone here knows them." Will shot his cousin a smile, drawing his gaze before Nico could turn his face inside out. "Let them stay."
His voice was light, but he wasn't blinking, and Octavian's eyes glazed over.
"Yeah, sure," Octavian mumbled, not turning back to face Nico and Annabeth.
"Go get yourself a drink," Will offered. As if in a trance—he probably was—, Octavian turned and drifted towards the refreshments.
“What was that? ” Annabeth asked, her jaw nearly scraping the floor. “I thought we were done for, honor codes be damned!”
Will’s cheeks reddened. “I don’t advertise it much, but I can be pretty convincing if I need to be.”
“You’re not part siren, are you?”
“Oh, no, I’m not nearly that good. I mostly just redirect people’s attention, nowhere near as big as what Piper and Percy can do.”
“Interesting.” The look in Annabeth’s eyes told Nico she wouldn’t be forgetting this information any time soon. “Wait a minute, why didn’t you tell me you could hypnotize people while we were planning? That would have been so useful!”
“You never asked.” Will shrugged.
Annabeth rolled her eyes. “I am surrounded by idiots. This is why none of my plans ever work.”
“Maybe you’re just bad at making plans,” Nico teased.
“Maybe you’re just bad at following instructions!” Annabeth took a deep breath. “I’m going to find my own idiots. Where are they?”
“Probably by the snacks. That’s where I left them.” Will turned to look, and Nico got his first good look at the party. There were hardly any decorations, and most of them were hung up with duct tape. Aside from the snack table, which looked kind of good, none of the other tables had anything particularly interesting. Jason was rapidly losing friends in a game of UNO, but other than that nothing was happening.
"This kind of sucks," Annabeth pointed out, crossing her arms. "I can't believe we schemed for this. I drew a blueprint !"
Nico elbowed her in the ribs. Sure, the party was underwhelming in every way imaginable, but there was no going back now. They'd worked too hard for this, and Nico was not about to admit that it wasn't worth all their effort, even though it so, so wasn't.
“I’m going to go make sure Percy doesn’t get into a fight he can’t win,” Annabeth sighed, walking off to where Percy and Tyson were having a staredown over the last peanut butter cookie. Piper was not-so-subtly egging both of them on, using her powers for chaos as usual.
Will slung an arm across Nico’s shoulders, and Nico let himself lean into the surprisingly comfortable ‘Festival of Lightsabers’ sweater his boyfriend was wearing. “Now that you’re here, what do you want to do?”
“Sit, maybe.” The stress of climbing up, rappelling down, and then falling off of a wall had finally caught up to him. They found a seat at one of the empty tables, but it wasn’t empty for long.
“Nico! I’m so glad you made it.” Hazel slid into the seat beside him, a little wobbly and unsurprised by his presence. Nico took the cup out of her hand, sampled it, and immediately knew why.
Frank sat on her other side, wearing reindeer antlers that Nico had to double check were really fake. “Hey, happy holid—” he caught sight of Will’s sweater— “holi— hannu— something. Happy something.”
Will grinned. “Happy something to you, too, buddy.” He stood and turned to Nico. “D’you want anything? I’m getting myself a drink, because they look like they’re having way more fun.”
“Sure, what the hell. Get me a cookie while you’re at it.”
“On it.” Will pressed a kiss to Nico’s forehead and left.
Whoever had spiked the eggnog had not held back, and Nico felt himself get warm after barely half a cup. No wonder everyone else was having such a good time in such a boring room. Annabeth eventually returned, dragging Piper and a cookie-less Percy by the sleeves. More people joined them, and they ended up shoving all of the tables together to fit everyone.
“Now’s as good of a time as any.” Reyna dropped a huge box onto the table and started passing out BINGO cards, prompting raucous cheers from the group. Nico stared down at his square of letters and numbers and leaned over to Will.
“How the fuck do you play BINGO?” he whispered.
“You’ll figure it out.” Will grinned.
Nico did not figure it out until the third round, when his first five numbers all lined up and Will started excitedly slapping at his arm.
“BINGO? BINGO! BINGO! ” he yelled, standing up just like Drew and Leo had in the first two rounds. A chorus of groans erupted; most people barely had two or three of their spaces marked. Nico claimed the third white elephant gift basket, hoping for something good, but the thrill of winning was enough to make him not really care all that much.
“What’d you get?” Leo climbed over Jason’s lap to get closer. “I’ll trade you for stuff.”
Nico tossed him a dog bone. Leo passed it to his boyfriend, who looked more than a little offended. “Wolves and dogs are different, you know.”
“Tell that to the squirrels.”
Jason crossed his arms and sank into his seat, pouting while everyone around him laughed.
Nico and Leo dug through the rest of their baskets, throwing things at the people who would hate them the most, and saving the good stuff for himself. Annabeth stole a set of earplugs, but Nico couldn’t blame her— sitting between Percy and Piper as they both dared each other to do increasingly more ridiculous things was torture enough.
With the gifts distributed, even though that was not their intended purpose, the room settled into several comfortable conversations, interrupted only by a stumble to the refreshments table for more snacks.
“Wait a minute.” Jason blinked and leaned forward, toppling the stack of plastic holly leaves Leo had been building on top of his head. “How did you two get in here?”
Nico and Annabeth exchanged looks. “Long story,” they answered in unison.