Chapter Text
Percy burst into his room, only to trip over Nico, who was sitting cross-legged on the floor. He fell with what he hoped was the grace of someone who has plenty of experience falling from much higher heights, and somehow managed to land on Annabeth who was thankfully on a pillow. Groaning, he rolled onto his back and tried to peek through his eyelashes and hair at, luckily, the only two occupants of the room to have witnessed the spectacle.
Annabeth and Nico both fired terrifyingly identical looks of amused annoyance at him, and Percy was 90% certain that they had been secretly practising together to maximise the scare factor of the Look. He attempted to untangle his legs from Nico’s with as much dignity as he could.
And then the box of condoms fell out from under his shirt.
Percy flushed, and desperately trying to make sure no one managed to read the incriminating label, he launched it into his bathroom before slamming the door shut. The silence that followed ensured they all heard the unmistakable splash. Panicking, Percy concentrated on making the toilet water violently pound the box into a soggy mush, before all evidence magically disappeared from existence with an unhappy gurgle from an overworked cistern.
Satisfied, Percy pointedly avoided looking at the faces of his friends, and dropped onto a pillow on the floor.
“Shall we begin?” he said nonchalantly.
Annabeth raised a deadly eyebrow, and Nico looked worryingly confused. Percy carefully chose to ignore both of them, instead peeking at the website open on Annabeth’s laptop, catching a glimpse of a cheerful-looking blog titled ‘How to Get Over It’. Maybe if he pretended nothing just happened, the others would forget about it.
“Are you trying to pretend that nothing just happened?” Nico asked incredulously.
“What just happened?” Percy frowned.
“There are going to be fish dying because of you tonight, Percy. When I hear the ringing in my ears, I’m going to find you and tell you exactly how many poor souls have choked on plastic.” Nico continued, determined not to let Percy get away with this.
Percy’s eyebrows knitted. “That’s not going to happen, I’ll fish the thing out of the sewers myself.”
“I hate to ruin your show of impressive dedication to the fish, but condoms are made of rubber, and they’re going to float, so all you’ll need to do is fish them out of the toilet.” Annabeth injected, her mouth twitching. “And if we get a good enough explanation, maybe Nico and I will be very considerate and try to not use the bathroom until you take care of it.” Percy considered this for a few seconds, before he realised that Nico had stood up.
“You are an actual child.” Percy glared threateningly at Nico, who was already halfway to the bathroom.
Nico shrugged. “Hey I’m not you, I can’t control fluids.”
Percy was truly regretting several recent life choices, as he reluctantly dragged himself into the bathroom, and focused on making sure an air bubble was around his hand at all times.
“So Jason ambushed me on the way here, and gave me this updated version of the talk,” Percy started, “He was so prepared, and he even showed me this little colour-coded chart of the time I spend in my cabin when Annabeth is also ‘suspiciously unavailable’. I couldn’t exactly tell him to cross-reference it with the graph he probably has of Time Nico spends somewhere, probably brooding.”
“I don’t brood.” Nico muttered.
“You were made for brooding.” Percy said. “You have a resting brooding face. It looks like you’re contemplating the meaning of death when you’re sitting next Will at the camp sing-a-long, and that’s pretty much the only time I know for sure that you’re not actually thinking about death.”
Nico stuck his tongue out at Percy.
“This has Piper written all over it.” Annabeth said frowning, “I’ll convince her that she’s got the wrong idea before…”
“It’s too late.” Percy interrupted dramatically in a tone of utter despair, causing Annabeth to look at him in alarm. “The whole camp has the wrong idea now.”
“Wait a moment are you telling me that you two have not done the deed yet? Guys come on, Leo’s running a bet, and the whole camp is in on it.” Nico cut in. “And there is little more I hate than giving money to Leo.”
“Nico I expected better from you.” Percy tried to look disappointed. Annabeth looked worse, and Percy noticed Nico refusing to glance in her direction. Smart boy.
“Wait so have you, or have you not?”
“That’s not the point. The point is when Jason tried to smoothly pass this box to me, he made it look so shady everyone thinks they witnessed a drug deal.”
Annabeth lightly punched Percy in the arm. “So in conclusion, no one thinks you’re high, and no one thinks that we are reproducing like rabbits, you’re just a melodramatic, unreliable narrator.”
“I like to imagine that a book narrated by me would be filled with my incredible humour and special brand of sarcasm.”
“Your humour consists of jokes during the worst times possible and self-deprecation.” Nico retorted. “And it’s going to get you killed.” Everyone fell silent for a while, dragged back to the reality of how Nico had already been brushed or really attacked by death so many times at fourteen, how Percy and Annabeth had probably already lived more than half of their lifetime, and that surviving this long was a miracle created by themselves, and not the gods.
“The ‘We Survived Tartarus’ Squad Cult Society” sign (Sorry Nico, but Annabeth’s scarier than you, and he who wields the sparkly blue glitter pen has the power to meekly agree with his all-knowing girlfriend) is hung on the wall, as it is twice every week, because looking at it always made Percy feel like the raging void inside him was halfway normal and that he wasn’t the only person to have literally gone through hell and dragged his broken self out of it. There were other ways of being reminded of this, like the haggard faces of his Tartarus buddies, under the skin deep disguise of ‘I’m fine’, but Percy preferred looking at all the possible misspellings of Tartarus in the world.
“Are we going to do good things? Because I don’t really have good things, but I’m in the mood to try and make some things that happened sound good.” Percy asked finally.
“I have a good thing.” Nico said quietly.
Annabeth looked pleasantly surprised. “Sure, go ahead Nico.”
“Will asked me if he could take me out for dinner tomorrow.”
Percy sighed, “I ship you guys so much.”
“That’s great Nico,” Annabeth encouraged, “Just- put my mind at rest by telling me that you guys are not going to McDonalds.”
“I have literally fed it to dead kings before, and if they liked it, it’s good enough for me.” Nico pointed out with a shrug.
“Okay, but can we just consider the fact that a Happy Meal has the nutritional value of a leather shoe, and that while this may not necessarily matter for dead people, it does for you?” Annabeth countered.
“They have little apple slices though, surely that must count for something?” Percy asked.
“Not if you opt for fries instead of apple slices, and can you really look me in the eyes and tell me that you’re going to pick apple slices over French fries?” Annabeth stared at Nico intently.
“Annabeth, if I genuinely chose apple slices over fries, I would admit myself to a mental asylum.”
Percy allowed himself a moment to just feel happy for Nico, because he could see the difference that Will Solace made, it was as clear as the sun rising after a what seemed like an eternal night, and simultaneously killing truckloads demons with its light. They hadn’t officially become a couple yet, but already, the whole camp was buzzing with anticipation, and the rumours were growing by the second. A couple of days ago, Percy had heard someone saying that they were about to run away and elope in Scotland to the sound of authentic bagpipes and live out their days to the eternal song of sheep.
“My good thing is that I finally managed to get a decent sounding octave on my kazoo.” Percy said with excitement. He didn’t expect a Nico to violently thrust a pillow at him, barely managing to dodge at the last second. Annabeth buried her head in her arms with a groan.
“If I hear another ghastly buzz of that torture device, I will end you.” Nico warned with his hands braced over his ears.
Annabeth looked like she was praying for Apollo to wake up one day, and finally take mercy on her, by smiting every last kazoo on earth into a smoking pile of ashes.
“I’m so sorry Nico.” She muttered. “I have created a monster.”
Percy felt for a moment as if he couldn’t breathe, as if an invisible hand was pressed against his face, and he could almost hear the voice of the pit snarling in his ear. It sounded like his own voice. He had once choked Akhlys, and now he was choking himself.
He did his best to wrestle a smile onto his face as fast as he could, but Annabeth was just too damn smart sometimes, and he could see that she had narrowed in on the mere seconds in which his expression turned vacant. It had always worked like this, it was the way of the world. Although everyone else’s concern bounced off his shield of lies until they were convinced and smiled kindly at him, Annabeth was always tearing through the walls he had hastily thrown up in those moments of unawareness. This wall, like the others, came crashing down. He could breathe again.
“I’m fine,” He gasped, “I’m fine, I’m fine.”
In the moment, he had felt as if his heart had stopped beating, and that his mind couldn’t handle anyone else, especially Annabeth, thinking what he thought of himself almost every night. That he was a monster, he was an abomination, and that maybe the universe would see a time when his hands are soaked with the blood of his friends. Percy was sometimes certain that he could feel a darkness rising up his throat, and was only slightly comforted when he retched into the toilet and it was merely his lunch that came up. He hadn’t tried to use his powers in weeks because the idea of so much power in hands as unstable as his, made him cringe away from the thought. Staring at his trembling fingers right now just cemented that decision.
Warm hands suddenly covered his shaking ones, and Percy looked up hesitantly at Annabeth’s eyes. I’m so sorry, they seemed to repeat over and over and Percy understood that. Sometimes things were more powerful and less contained as thoughts, and other times, you just couldn’t bear to say them out loud.
“It’s fine, I’m really good now.” Percy said finally, trying to copy Annabeth’s steady breathing until he felt he could face the world on his own again.
When Percy looked at Nico, he saw that he was glaring at the wall with enough hateful energy to send it to the Underworld, which was impressive considering it was an inanimate object.
“Nico? Are you okay?” He asked carefully.
Nico exploded. “Am I okay? You’re the one that just had a flashback to literal Hell, and Annabeth’s the one that looks like she wants to hurt herself for making a joke, and the gods are the ones who still don’t care that there are three demigods falling apart and losing the pieces in here.”
Percy knew that Nico was furious at the gods sometimes, how could he not be, and Percy’s thoughts often got lost down the same burning path of anger. That’s why when someone bust out the hard topics like this, it was hard for any of them to fix the atmosphere before it sucked them all into what was starting to seem like rebellion against the gods 3.0.
“We are trying to glue ourselves together with friendship, and random pieces of advice from the Internet, and it’s not working.” Nico continued, his eyes red, “And I just need everyone else to care for once.”
“That’s not true.” Annabeth said, her voice thick, “We could be a lot worse.”
“How much worse, because the majority of the time, I feel like dying in the War wouldn’t have felt as shitty as still being alive like this is. At least then, I could know for sure that the gods were saying, ‘you’ve done enough. Rest now’.” Nico’s voice cracked. “I’m just so tired, I’m so tired.”
“Nico, being alive is-” Percy started, and then felt silent. He couldn’t finish the sentence, because he could feel exactly the type of pain Nico was in. The emptiness in his chest seemed to amplify in the presence of two other beings that had the same hole, as if they were all feeding on each other’s darkness, and gradually being eaten up all at the same time.
Percy knew what Nico meant. It’s the feeling when you’re so tired, each blink takes longer as it gets harder and harder to wrestle your eyes open, and everyone else is screaming at you to stay awake, but their voices never matter as much as the temptation.
“It’s…It’s worth it sometimes.” Percy finally finished.
Nico laughed bitterly. “Thanks a lot Percy that makes me feel a lot better. Pep talks were never really your strong point.”
“Don’t you think that we need to live for those moments though? Those tiny points in time where you just sigh and think ‘I’m glad to be alive.’” Annabeth said quietly. Nico just shook his head and stared at the Tartarus Society sign. He smiled so morbidly, Percy had to turn his head and look away because he couldn’t bear it.
“It’s not enough. They’re just not worth it.” Nico said. He stood up, and walked to the door. Neither Percy nor Annabeth moved to stop him. “Meeting adjourned.”
Percy didn’t even notice when Annabeth left, but when he looked out the window the sun had already set, and that was another day, slipping out of his fingertips.
He collapsed onto his bed, and prayed to Poseidon for help.