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It’s a funny feeling, one that Nico doesn’t particularly relish. He watches him spin her around, blonde curls splaying outwards and laughter echoing all the way through the camp as Percy loses his footing and they go tumbling down like dominoes. The action is almost mirror image of the way Nico’s heart goes spinning and tumbling down, down, down, until it’s sitting at the pit of his stomach, or maybe somewhere near the soles of his feet. But not in the cute, fluttery way; the heavy with lead and anxiety kind of way. He’s sitting by himself on the banks of the river that runs past the strawberry patch and the familiar ache of loneliness grips his heart. Nico walks hand in hand with loneliness like an old friend, he’s done so since as long as he can remember; it’s all he knows. The feeling of a warm hand, a gentle embrace, and kinds words from a smiling face is something quite foreign to him, memories he can’t quite recall if they were dreams. He’s unsure whether he wants to remember them anyway. Usually things like that bring emotions, attachments, and eventually disappointment. Nico has tasted disappointment and doesn’t want to do it again.
(He can’t avoid it though, it comes to him in waves and the smell of the sea.)
In the clear waters of the river, his face stares back at him, blank and emotionless. It shows him who he is, what he has become: a boy in a mask with a heart encased in rock and ice. The mask, though, is something Nico likes; it shields him from things that are painful, things that threaten to hurt him, and he wears it like a second skin, never taking it off, not even to breathe.
(It’s so fragile; it cracks so easily, and Nico is afraid.)
-
Across the campfire, Percy tucks fly away blonde curls behind Annabeth’s ear and she leans into his hands as if it were second nature, a soft smile on her pretty face. The look he gives her, like she had always belonged in his happily ever after, is enough to shrivel Nico’s insides to burnt lumps of flesh. The twinge in his chest so permanent he can no longer distinguish it from the beating of his heart. Annabeth glows in the firelight; her hair like spun golden thread and her eyes twinkle like the stars in the night sky. Nico can see why Percy loves her. In comparison, Nico is shadows and grey, monochromatic in a world full of colour. This is what people see when they look at him. He oozes black and the night, blending in with the dark until he becomes one with it. It wouldn’t be a surprise if he did. Sometimes he feels it when he shadow travels: the tug of the void, the way the shadows are harder to disperse as they stick to his skin like an ugly stain, a mark for all to see, a neon sign saying "Stay Away".
(They creep into his dreams and tint them permanent with darkness. He wakes up sweating every night.)
-
There’s a little part of Nico though that occasionally flares with brief hope like a match head. It happens when Percy grins at him as they fight side by side; or when Nico saves his life and Percy saves his; or when he offers Nico an invitation to his 18th birthday like they’d been friends all along and Nico goes - like a smoker that can't quit - sharing the blue birthday cake like a memory that felt so long ago. But then Percy kisses Annabeth and Nico can taste that disappointment he’s become so accustomed to. Percy is brave, strong, and passionate like the ocean. All things that Nico craves and wants to take for himself, so selfish, so greedy. Nico always wants the things he can’t have, and he can’t have Percy. He knows this just like he knows the sea is blue, the sun is yellow, and the grass is green.
If there were words he could tell himself that would melt his feelings into watery puddles, then he would say them like a prayer. If they could turn the burn in his chest to ash and scatter it on the wind, he would say them like a mantra. For now though, they sit in his mouth dry, leaving Nico’s tongue leaden with the weight of his feelings and he wishes for a glass of water to swallow it all down.
(But he’s choking and wonders if Percy is the cause of it.)