Archive of Our Own

Percy Jackson has always liked to think that life flows like the ocean. Sometimes raging and tempestuous, sometimes calm and healing, but always, always predictable. Even in its unpredictability, he likes to think, you can always be reassured by the never-changing constancy of the tides. You can always believe that, no matter how hard the storms rage in the night, the morning always brings with it the promise of relief. Peace. A chance to start over. 

Percy’s managed to hold onto that belief through a lot of shit. Through years and years of quests and gods and wars and trauma. Sometimes he thinks the real reason he’s managed to hold onto it is more out of a sense of desperation than genuine conviction. Sometimes, he thinks it’s the only reason he’s stayed alive this long. 

Sometimes, though, a belief in something isn’t enough. Life has proven, time and again, that sometimes you don’t get consistency. Sometimes things happen that you can’t predict. And sometimes, there are no do-overs. 

“I’m sorry ,” she had said. He hates thinking about the look in her eyes, something more weighted than iron, an exhaustion that comes from more than just too many sleepless nights. He hates thinking about the way her voice had cracked as she tried to explain —as if any amount of reasons could have made the whole situation any less devastating. “It’s just, things aren’t the same as they used to be. You’re different. And I’m different. And I think we’ve been trying too hard for a fairytale that doesn’t exist. And I think we’ll never be able to heal as long as we’re dragging each other down. ” 

But Percy had heard what she really meant. You aren’t the same as you used to be, and I can’t live with who you’ve become. I’ll never be able to heal as long as you’re dragging me down. 

In retrospect, it had been a long time coming. Because they aren’t kids anymore, wide-eyed and filled with the conviction that they could take on any monster, any god, as long as they’re together. They aren’t kids, believing that eventually, the universe will finally conspire to give them what they want. A happy ending. A fairytale . 

And he understands. Because he knows that Annabeth is right: he’s not the same as he used to be. He knows that he’s darker, knows he bears more scars than his heart is capable of healing. And Annabeth can’t fix him. He never should have put that expectation on her. It wasn’t fair. 

Still, he thinks about the way she had said, “I’m sorry, ” and he thinks about what they once had, and he thinks about that image in his head that’s always been there, of that fairytale ending they had both wanted, once. And he wonders why they can never just be happy . And he wonders if happiness is something that’s truly real, or if it’s just a useless concept made up by the gods to persuade mortals into doing their nasty, pointless bidding. 

_____

The day after Annabeth broke up with him, Percy had quit all of his classes and packed his bags. 

“ I think you’re making a mistake,” Hazel had told him with a tense, worried set to her brow. “ I know that breakups are hard, but you’ve also worked so hard to find your place here. You have friends here who will be sad to see you go.” 

But Percy couldn’t stay: there’s not a single thing about New Rome where Annabeth isn’t , and thinking about Annabeth made him think of, “ I’m sorry,” and he felt like he was suffocating—like the earth hadn’t quite given up after the last time, like Gaea was rewaking only long enough to add in her share to his current pain. He couldn’t stay. He wouldn’t. 

Hazel understood it, even though he never really answered her in so many words. She let him go with a sad smile, a hug, and a threat so saturated with concern that it almost hadn’t sounded like a threat at all, “ You will call.” 

He goes home. Home is his mother and Paul and Estelle; home is the smell of fresh-baked cookies and the old worn couch he falls asleep on after too many nights of movie marathons. He falls into his mother’s arms and his stepfather’s smiles and his three-year-old sister’s unquestioning adoration, and thinks: maybe this is all I need. 

He hadn’t taken into account that she would follow him there. He hadn’t considered what it would feel like to wake up on Saturday mornings, look over to find the other end of the couch empty where she would normally be. And he hadn’t realized how heavy his mother’s stare would be, the weight of her own sadness intermingled with the hesitant, careful way she handles him. In those first days, she and Paul both treat him like something fragile, like he might fall apart if her name is even spoken out loud in his presence. And he can’t stand it: can’t stand the understanding pain in his mother’s eyes; can’t stand the sympathetic turn to his stepfather’s warm smile; can’t stand how they’re probably right to treat him this way. 

In those days, Percy can’t bring himself to feel much around the slow numbness spreading out from his core, icy flowers blooming along the vines of frozen veins. But what he knows, even through his sudden inability to feel, is that he doesn’t want his family to see him this way. And he knows that what he isn’t feeling right now is coming, is forming beneath the surface, and once it emerges, it will consume. It will be volatile and angry and desperate and hopeless. And he doesn’t want his mother to see it . 

So he goes, again. And Camp Half-Blood, though it isn’t quite the same home it once was for him, is still home in its own way. Nearly everyone he had grown up with has gone, moved on to lives and families in the mortal world, and it is winter. The valley is a blanket of seeming solitude, with barely enough campers to fill a small school. It’s lonely, but it’s also good in its way, because it means there’s no one around to get the play-by-play as he deteriorates. 

And he can feel it happening: that untethering, that steady slip of his hands on the reality he has built up—the one he had built with her. The one that won’t work without her. The one that is falling apart, crumbling, a tower built by unwise and careless hands. Not one of hers. When she builds a tower, she builds it to outlast even the gods. 

He wonders: how can I possibly live without her? 

He thinks: I can’t, I can’t, I can’t. 

He sits on the shore of Long Island Sound, watches the waves lapping onto the shore and wonders what it might be like to let himself go. To give in to the tides, allow them to pull him out to sea once and for all. It should be a scary thought, but it isn’t. It fills him with a sort of peace he hasn’t felt for a long time, now. He thinks that must be the scariest part, really. 

He lays back in the sand, closes his eyes and breathes in the salt, and allows the sound of the ever-constant waves to lull him into sleep. 

_____

He wakes to a bang, a rush of cold air, and the sight of Nico di Angelo standing over him on the floor. 

Behind him, two skeleton lackeys are holding onto the corners of his comforter. Percy registers the fact that he remembers falling asleep in his bed last night, and sluggishly puts two and two together. 

Just in time for his old friend to say, “I didn’t want to have to do this.” 

“What the hell?” Percy mutters. Then, “Why am I on the floor?” 

“Are you seriously asking me that unironically?” Sometimes, looking at Nico di Angelo stirs up this old nostalgia in Percy, like he’s reprocessing all of the ups and downs (admittedly, mostly downs) of the tentative friendship they’ve rockily cultivated over the years. It’s the kind of feeling that makes him want to sit down, wrap Nico in a blanket, and ask him how his day was. This is not one of those times. 

“People have been calling me, nonstop, for the past two weeks. First it was Hazel and Frank. Then Grover. Rachel Dare. The entire Aphrodite cabin. Chiron . Honestly, it’s kind of impressive, since I’ve been in the Underworld working for my father this whole time, and reception down there is pretty much nonexistent. I’m more popular now than I’ve been in my entire life , and I’ll give you one guess why that is.” 

“I’m guessing it’s the reason why I’m on the floor, miserable and uncomfortable, instead of in my bed, miserable but at least comfortable . There, I win. Do I get my prize now?” 

“Ha-ha,” Nico replies drily. “You’re a funny guy. Which is why I’m assuming there’s a funny reason why you smell like death.” 

This, coming from the son of the god of the dead. It sobers Percy up real fast. “What do you mean?” 

Nico levels him with a look that makes Percy’s throat feel tight. His eyes glint like dark obsidian in the low light of the Poseidon cabin. He says, “You’re not as stupid as you pretend to be, Percy. We both know exactly what I mean.” 

Those eyes are too intense, too heavy, too knowing to be able to hold for long. Percy draws his gaze down into himself, to the sweatpants he hasn’t changed in maybe a week and his bare feet. His voice is hoarse when he says, “You didn’t have to come from the Underworld just to check on me. I’m sure what you were doing was probably important.” 

“My father will forgive me for taking time off. He owes me, anyway,” Nico dismisses. The way he says it is almost casual; he’s trying for aloof, but something in his voice is just off enough for Percy to catch. The thing about Nico is that he’s not really as enigmatic as he likes for people to think he is, and he’s not the greatest at hiding his emotions. It’s evident when he speaks again, when his voice scrapes and crackles and he says, “I’m not about to lose another friend, Percy. I swear to all the gods, if you make me go through that again, I will never forgive you.” 

“It’s not like that.” 

“Don’t feed me that bullshit. I can feel your energy. Last night it dropped , out of nowhere, and for a minute I couldn’t breathe because I was so afraid. So don’t tell me it’s not like that, Percy.” 

Percy clenches his hands into fists, then closes his eyes just as tightly. “I’m just tired .” 

“I know. I get it. But you can’t just lay down and give up.” He hears shuffling as Nico moves, settles onto the floor by his side. He doesn’t touch him, but he’s closer; closer than anyone’s dared to get since he came back to camp, anyway. Softly, he hears him say, “You’ve gotta wake up, Perce.” 

“The world doesn’t need me anymore. Annabeth doesn’t want me anymore.” 

“No. But . . . but maybe that’s a good thing. Maybe now you get to live for yourself .” 

And isn’t that a novel concept? Living for himself. No one’s ever quite propositioned the land of the living as being quite that opportunistic before. He thinks that if he were sixteen, it would sound like the sweetest, most liberating idea in the world. 

Now, he’s twenty-one. He’s survived two wars and the depths of hell, and his entire future is on the other side of a chasm, only reachable by a single bridge that is rapidly fracturing and collapsing into something completely uncrossable. He thinks about living for himself, and what that means. And he thinks, really, that he’d much rather lay down on the cold stone floor of his cabin and go back to sleep. 

_____

They don’t talk about it. Percy doesn’t want to think about it, doesn’t want to try to give a name to the swelling, forceful feeling that’s been lying dormant inside for gods know how many years. And Nico, for all he claims not to be good with people, somehow senses that this is not the time to push. 

So they don’t talk about it. As a compromise, Percy takes a shower. Then they go to dinner. 

It’s the first night Percy’s gone to a camp dinner since he returned—which, according to what Nico tells him others have told him , was nearly a full month ago. Mainly he’s been subsisting on the hoard of protein bars beneath his bed, when he’s remembered to eat at all. 

They sit at the Poseidon table and Percy ignores the stares of the other campers directed at them. Or him, he guesses. Nico’s not really considered so much of a cryptid around camp anymore—hasn’t been in years—and probably the only reason why anyone would give him a second glance would be because, technically, he’s breaking camp rules. But then, he’s also been doing that for years. 

Nico tells him about the work he’s been doing for his father, lately. Evidently, there’s some sort of zombie rebellion that’s been going on for a while now, which is the reason why he hadn’t been back to camp sooner. “It’s been a while since I’ve been gone that long, anyway. Normally, Will would have me skinned alive for being in the Underworld for so many weeks. But I mean, unless he wants the apocalypse to happen in his lifetime. . . .” 

By the time dinner is over, Percy has already reached his mental limits, and he’s exhausted again. Nico drops him off with the promise to come back for him in the morning, and bids him goodnight.

Nico comes through on his promise. In the morning, they clean his cabin from top to bottom. Nico opens the windows to let in the fresh January breeze (only mildly chilly, thanks to the camp’s weather management system). And they go for a walk, and much like the previous night, Nico does all the talking. But there’s never a single ounce of strain in the younger demigod’s voice, like he doesn’t really mind shouldering the weight of filling the silence, and Percy finds that where he lacks in conversational contributions, he’s pretty alright at listening. He lets the sound of Nico’s smooth voice mingle with the sound of the waves, and he thinks, for the first time in weeks, that he doesn’t feel entirely miserable. 

Once Nico is back, he doesn’t go again. And they settle into a sort of routine, where the days begin and end in the same way: Nico di Angelo on his front porch, dark eyes and bruised orange skies and the quiet buzz of the camp around them coming alive, settling down. 

Part of Percy just wants to ask him: why? Why are you doing this? Why are you here? But then he thinks of those dark eyes when he had said, I’m not about to lose another friend , and decides he’s not ready for that conversation. 

He’s nearly always tired, these days. There’s a part of him that thinks he’s been tired like this for a long time, but he’d just never let himself think about it before. Now, it’s all he can feel, and it’s almost all he can think about. On the hardest days, no amount of Nico’s insistence or skeletons can drag him out of bed. Those are the days when Nico doesn’t insist. He puts the skeletons away for another day, sets a glass of water on the bedside table, and sits himself at the foot of Percy’s bed. 

Nico tells him it’s a gradual process, and even though he wants to, Percy doesn’t tell him that it can’t be a gradual process when no progress is being made. And he knows, knows that he must be so difficult to deal with right now, knows that there are probably a thousand other places Nico would rather be than with him, and sometimes Percy can’t even bring himself to be grateful that he’s here in spite of those things. It’s one of those things that makes him believe that he really must hate himself, because he doesn’t think he’s ever been so disgusted with himself in his life. His brain tells him: get up, you need to get up , and he just pulls the covers over his head and tries to pretend the world outside doesn’t exist. There’s no correlation between the Percy Jackson who fought the Minotaur at twelve years old and faced down titans and giants at sixteen and seventeen years old and the absolute, broken mess he’s become today. 

Nico tells him it’s a process, and Percy doesn’t believe him. 

But the days pass, and some of them are better. On the days he can get out of bed. On the days he trails after Nico to the sword-fighting lessons he teaches, watches him correct twelve-year-olds’ stances and encourage eight-year-olds who either look far too excited to be holding a dangerous weapon, or about five seconds away from a meltdown. On the days when sometimes, Nico will say something funny over breakfast, and Percy will crack a small smile in answer. 

He still thinks about her, far more often than not. He can’t walk past the canoe lake, can’t make eye contact with any of her siblings without feeling like this impossible weight is pressing down on him, like Atticus has suddenly sloughed off the sky back onto his shoulders. And he can’t close his eyes without seeing her own sad gray eyes looking back at him as she lets him go; and he can’t close his eyes without wondering what it might be like to never open them again. 

But it’s a process, Nico says. And really, he supposes Nico really would know best. 

_____

When Nico was fifteen, he showed up in the Jacksons’ apartment as the seasons were beginning to evolve from blooming spring into sweltering, suffocating summer. 

“I broke up with Will,” was all he had managed to choke out before he broke down, heartbroken and heartbreaking sobs ringing out in Percy’s living room while Annabeth dropped her mug in the kitchen. All Percy was capable of doing, through the alarm building in his chest, was reaching out to draw his younger friend into his arms, holding him and meeting his girlfriend’s grave eyes over Nico’s mess of inky, unwashed hair. Neither of them really understood, at first, what was happening. Nico and Will had been happy . They had been good . Will Solace was the person Percy would sometimes find himself looking at with this complex concoction of gratitude, relief, and regret: he was the person Nico had needed all this time, the one Percy was never able to be, that no one else had ever gotten close enough to be. 

Nico loved Will. Maybe not quite yet as a romantic partner—they were, after all, only fifteen, and had known each other at that point for less than a year—but absolutely as a friend. There was no way he would have broken up with him without a good reason. And he did have his reasons, but that didn’t mean it didn’t hurt. His reasons were, precisely, why it had hurt so much. 

He had crashed on the Jacksons’ couch for two weeks after that, more due to Sally’s insistence than Percy’s own invitation. They had all watched him go through the agonizing process of falling apart, then trying to piece himself back together, by some strength that can only be given by some unseen, benevolent god. By the time he no longer felt like the heartbreak was going to kill him, he had carved this permanent place into the Jackson household, and Sally refused to let him leave until he vowed to visit more often. 

To the best of Percy’s knowledge, Nico has kept up with that promise. Every now and then, when Percy had been in New Rome, his mother would bring him up somewhere in their weekly Iris-messages. “ Nico, the dear, babysat Estelle last weekend so Paul and I could go to a movie. What a sweet boy. Have you spoken to him recently?” (And sometimes Percy would say yes, he had, but usually he would say no, he hadn’t. Nico split most of his time between Camp Half-Blood and the Underworld, only dropping by Camp Jupiter when he had no obligations in either of those places. Hazel was always getting on his case about not visiting more. Nico was always grumbling about being far more popular than he’d ever asked to be.) 

It’s because Nico knows exactly what he’s dealing with that Percy doesn’t find himself trying to push him away like everyone else. Nico doesn’t treat him like a cracked piece of fine china, and he doesn’t look at him like there’s a death sentence hanging over his head. Either Percy can get out of bed or he can’t, but it’s nothing worth throwing a party or planning a funeral over. Even if Percy knows it’s everyone else’s concern that brought him here in the first place. (Even if he knows it’s more than that, really.) 

He thinks about Annabeth, and he thinks about Nico and Will. And they’re sitting by the shore of the Sound when Percy lets himself wonder out loud, “Do you think I’ll ever stop feeling like the world has ended? Like, I dunno, it actually happened when I dripped my nose blood all over the Earth and we’ve just been living in some weird sort of purgatory since then?” 

He can feel Nico looking at him, even though his own gaze is fixed firmly on the glittering horizon. “I think there’s a part of you that’ll probably always feel like the world has ended. In a way, losing what you and Annabeth had . . . it’s like someone dying. There’s always going to be a part of you that’s empty. But you’ll grieve, and then you’ll learn to live again.” 

Percy tries to hide the way he flinches at her name. He knows Nico catches it anyway. “That’s not what I wanted to hear, you know.” 

And it’s not funny—nothing about this conversation is funny, nothing about Percy’s life recently is funny—but he can hear the slight lilt in his friend’s voice, can almost see the forming smirk on his face without even turning to catch him redhanded, when he says, “Well then, what did you want to hear?” 

“I guess I was hoping you’d offer to give me amnesia. Maybe hit me in the head with a frying pan. I hear those are gaining popularity among the demigod community.” 

“You can thank Cecil and Ellis for that one. They host movie night once , and suddenly everyone’s throwing out their swords and daggers for kitchen utensils. Do you know how many kids dropped out of my class after that?” 

“So what you’re saying is, I could ask any random tiny child in this camp to hit me in the head, and they’d do it?” 

“ Would being the operative word. Chiron banned frying pans at the last counselor meeting.” 

“Damn it.” He finally turns to face Nico: takes one look at the grin on his face and bursts out laughing. It’s a good feeling, the first laugh after too many weeks of sad, lonely emptiness. It’s a feeling that makes him believe that maybe his heart can be full again. It’s hope. 

_____

Winter is just beginning to peel away at the edges when Percy calls his mom for the first time since he’d taken refuge at camp. He tells her that he’s doing okay, promises that she doesn’t need to worry. He’s fine, he’s going to be fine, his friends are helping him get better every day. 

She cries anyway. She tells him to please stay safe and to tell Nico hello for her, and she cries . Percy knows her tears are the product of too many nights worrying about him finally bleeding out, and his throat feels tight when he tells her goodbye. He feels so revolted by himself that he can’t breathe, and his fingers itch, for the first time in a long time, for a fight. 

He walks in on Nico’s class with Riptide twirling between his fingers, with a snide smile and a heart that’s beating too fast and too hard to be healthy. “Mind if I join in today?” 

Nico simply raises an eyebrow in response to the challenge before he turns to his group of twelve-and-under students, “How do you guys feel about a demonstration?” 

The decision is made unanimously, kids dropping their swords—and, in one Hermes kid’s case, a contraband frying pan—in a dash to fill up the seats around the arena’s perimeter. They watch in rapt attention as Nico and Percy circle each other once, twice; Nico’s eyes are dark on him, filled with the silent, curious question, are you sure you’re up for this? 

Percy doesn’t answer, in words or sentiments. He lunges. 

They fight the way you’d expect any children of the Big Three to fight: vigorous and dirty. Mainly in Nico’s case, who can shadow-travel and summon hands from the ground to grab Percy’s ankles whenever the son of Poseidon catches him off guard. Percy doesn’t really have the advantage until a kid tosses him a large bottle of LIFEWTR, but then it’s on . 

He may be a few months out of practice, but sword-fighting is still, and will always be, his niche. The water is all he really needs to get the advantage over Nico, considering the kid’s already expended most of his energy on his copious shadow-jumps. The fight ends with Nico doused in water and pinned beneath him, shaking in what Percy at first worries is a coughing fit but then realizes is laughter. 

“That’s cheating,” he accuses, making no move to get up as the kids cheer in the background. Percy is pretty sure they’ve attracted more of an audience than they started out with, but in the moment, he can’t really bring himself to notice one way or the other. 

“Says the boy who summoned zombie hands twenty-three times just to trip me up,” Percy shoots back. He thinks he’s smiling, can see that Nico is, where he’s looking up at him from the ground. He tilts his head, eyes glittering with mirth, sounds only a little surprised when he says, “You counted?” 

“Of course I did. Gotta be aware of your enemy’s strategies at all times.” And this is the moment when Percy realizes that his heart is beating just as fast as it had before, only now, all of that anger has been leached away. He only has half a second to wonder what the hell? before Nico rolls out from under him, bows to the crowd, and announces: “And there’s your lesson for today, kids: always be aware of your enemy’s strategies.” 

Someone calls out, sounding sly, “Yeah, I bet you’re aware of Jackson’s strategies.” Percy’s still putting together that that was meant to be a lewd comment when Nico rolls his eyes and calls back, “Shut up, Cecil!”

He looks down at Percy, who’s still sitting back on his elbows, and grins. 

Percy, who is suddenly a little bit confused but a hell of a lot helpless to that smile, grins back. 

_____

“I vote that we disband the summer volleyball tournament,” is the first thing out of Lou Ellen’s mouth when the next counselor meeting is called into session. Mitchell from the Aphrodite cabin nods his agreement automatically. 

Will Solace, who is tending to Sherman Yang’s pencil stab wound, whips his head up to glare at them with an extremely vicious animosity. “Abso- frickin’ -lutely not! My siblings look forward to the volleyball tournament the way your cabins look forward to New York fashion week.”

“Yeah, well, as far as I’m concerned designer dresses don’t put the entire camp in the infirmary,” Lou Ellen shoots back. “Will, the number of injuries sustained over the course of the tournament has exponentiated over the past two years. Your cabin is out of control—” 

“Oh, now you’re insulting my cabin? Do you want to be stabbed with a pencil?” 

“I don’t remember counselor meetings being this . . . volatile,” Percy murmurs to Nico, who’s looking on disinterestedly with his hand in a bag of pizza-flavored Goldfish. 

The son of Hades shrugs. “Since we aren’t spending every day planning and fighting wars against immortal deities and megalomaniac scarecrows, we have a bunch of energy and nowhere to direct it. So usually we just spend meetings fighting over dumb cabin stuff. You won’t believe the amount of inter-cabin rivalries going on right now.” 

Chiron, seated at the head of the ping-pong table, allows the squabbling to go on for a few more minutes while he finishes his New York Times crossword. By the time he sets down his pen, the fight has escalated to the point that Cecil has been forced to assume the role of reluctant mediator. “Enough. We will table the discussion of the volleyball tournament for further discussion at a later date. I am afraid I have some urgent news.” 

A hush settles over everyone. Nico sits up in his seat to listen. Nyssa from the Hephaestus cabin tensely says, “What’s up, Chiron?”

“Yeah, there’s not like, a new prophecy or anything, right?” Cecil chimes in. Everyone gears up like they’re all going to start talking over each other, but before they can, Chiron douses that fire. “No, no, heavens, no. I apologize for my wording. It is simply, ah . . . well, no, I suppose it is not simple. It is—” 

“I am issuing a quest,” someone says from the door, in the drawn-out, dry voice that can belong to no one but Dionysus. And then he points right at Nico. “You. You will go on a quest for me.” 

“Uh, I will?” Nico blinks, glances around the room as if someone’s going to jump out with a camera and announce that he’s on an episode of some trashy reality show. When he realizes no one is coming to his rescue, he slumps in his seat and exchanges a wary look with Percy. “I mean . . . sure, I will. Mr. D. Um, what exactly am I doing?” 

“I’ve got a daughter in Washington state, and she’s right at that age where you start smelling like fine wine for monsters. I want you to go get her.” 

“Oh.” Some of the tension leaves Nico’s shoulders at that, but this is Mr. D he’s talking to, so he’s still waiting for the other shoe to drop. “Sure, I can go to Washington. Is that all?” 

“Actually, she’s no longer in Washington. So you should probably just start wherever the latest natural disaster on the West Coast occurred and go from there.” 

Nico’s slump turns the slightest shade morose. “Great.” 

Percy’s not quite sure what insanity comes over him, what ancient Greek demon possesses his body in that moment. All he knows is that the idea of Nico tracking down the troublemaking offspring of Mr. D is unnerving at best, upsetting at worst, and that he has no idea how long it’s going to take and thus, how long Nico’s going to be gone. And this does not sit well with him.

“If it’s a quest, that means he can bring someone with him, right?” he blurts. Nico swivels to look at him in surprise. Dionysus raises a brow skeptically. 

“It’s of no importance to me whom the Underworld brat takes with him, Patrick. Just as long as you get my child here, preferably in one piece.” 

Percy turns to Nico then, flashes a tentative smile even as he asks himself: what the hell are you doing, Jackson? “What’d’you say? It’ll be like old times, except, you know, not as shitty. Plus I hear I’m pretty good in a fight.” 

Nico snorts. “You bring the fight, Jackson. Having you along is like sending up a solar flare to monsters. Between the two of us, we’ll likely attract every single one in the states.” 

“Is that a yes?” 

The son of Hades gives him this contemplative look for a long time. Then, when that time passes, he shrugs. “Well, it’s not like I had any other plans for this weekend.” 

After the meeting disbands and he and Nico separate to pack their demigod survival kits, it hits Percy that this is the first time in three years that he’s going on any sort of quest. ( Can it be considered a quest when there’s no prophecy? he wonders. Mr. D had called it a quest.) Last time Percy adventured anywhere was on a flying ship with his friends while the Earth threatened to swallow them whole. He and Annabeth had been together then, so relieved to be reunited after all those months apart, even in the midst of everything else going on around them. 

Jason had still been alive, then. 

And that thought hits him out of nowhere. It punches like a celestial bronze cannonball to the stomach. 

“Percy?” Nico’s voice is like a splash of cold water to the face, carrying from the open doorway of his cabin to snap Percy out of his ruminations. “I figured it would be best to head out before the sun sets here, give us a few extra hours of daylight to find the kid. You almost ready?” 

Five minutes and a rushed shower later, Percy emerges from the bathroom to the sight of Nico lounging casually on the bed across from his. He looks up at Percy, then just as quickly looks away, face immediately burning a shade of unmistakeable pink. At first Percy is confused, then looks down at himself and realizes, oh . 

“You know, you’d think you would’ve lost your ability to be scandalized by bare-chested men by now,” he says, offhand, as he reaches into his dresser and blindly pulls out the first T-shirt his hand lands on. “I don’t think anyone at Camp Half-Blood knows what a shirt is.” 

“Don’t remind me,” Nico grumbles into the pillow by his head. “No one cares about the lonely, suffering gay boys here. It’s miserable.” 

The younger demigod’s wording makes Percy pause in the middle of tugging his shirt down over his torso. He cuts his gaze over to Nico, who doesn’t seem to be giving a second thought to what he just said. 

“Are you lonely?” he blurts softly, before he can stop himself. 

It’s no secret that Nico hasn’t dated anyone, even casually, since Will. It’s also not a secret that this is to the distress of many, many people within both Camp Half-Blood and Camp Jupiter. Three years after making the tentative decision to stay is all the time it’s taken for the son of Hades to grow into himself: gone is the skinny, ragged kid who looked like he needed a decade-long nap and about twenty thousand hugs. Now he’s all long-limbed, olive-tanned, comfortable within his own skin. Because Percy does have eyes, he can admit that Nico’s grown up to be a pretty attractive guy, if you’re into Tall, Dark, and Overdramatic-Prince-of-Hell. And if talk around camp and the many melancholic sighs that follow wherever Nico goes are any indication, that is absolutely what people are into.

Percy’s never asked before why Nico’s never tried stepping back into the dating pool. It’s kind of a touchy subject for the younger boy, considering both his history with Percy and, well. The reasons he’d broken up with Will. But still, Percy had figured that his reasons for never going out were out of personal preference and that, eventually, Nico would, when he wanted to. If he wanted to.

He’s eighteen years old, young, with his whole life ahead of him. Percy thought he was happy being by himself for now. 

Nico shrugs now, adopting this nonchalant air that falls just short of being convincing. “I mean, aren’t we all lonely in a way?” 

“We don’t have to be. You don’t have to be.” Percy frowns, hesitates. “You know, if you ever wanted to talk about . . . anything. . . .” 

Nico won’t quite meet his gaze, but he thinks his small smile is genuine, at least. “Yeah, Percy. I know.” 

“I mean it. You don’t have to pretend there’s nothing going on with you just because I’m having a hard time. Anytime you need an ear, I’m here.” 

This causes the other boy to snort, and in one swift motion he’s moved from laying down to standing by the foot of the bunk, slinging his backpack onto his shoulders. “While I appreciate it, this definitely isn’t the time. C’mon, we’d better go before Mr. D chases us out.” 

Percy shudders at the mental image that produces. When Nico holds out a hand to him, an amused glint lighting up his obsidian eyes, Percy takes it without a second thought, and they melt into the shadows.

_____

They do end up taking Mr. D’s advice, unfortunately. They follow the latest news headlines to an earthquake in Helena, Montana. Various sources state that the earthquake was evidently mild enough that none of the locals really felt it, and no one was really hurt, but it was inexplicably strong enough to completely lay waste to some historic place called Reeder’s Alley. 

Percy and Nico take one look at the destruction and then at each other before determining that they’re definitely off to a promising start. 

Nico talks to a couple of the local ghosts, who confirm that demigods were definitely here. “ A boy and two girls,” the apparition of a woman tells them, “ and a ghastly number of cyclopes.” 

They spend all morning following breadcrumbs after that. But, considering these are demigods they’re tracking, they find that it doesn’t take quite as long as they anticipated to find the apparent trio. They only have to follow the sound of explosions as far as Yellowstone National Park. 

Percy sighs upon arrival, the sight of park rangers shouting for everyone to remain calm while gryphons swoop all over the place, stealing peoples’ lunches as three kids run around with weapons, screaming. “Something tells me these kids are going to be a handful,” he says. Nico only hums in agreement before jumping into the fray. 

When the horde of gryphons is reduced to nothing more than a cloud of feathers in the air, one of the girls turns a purple-eyed gaze up at them in admixed surprise and awe, and Percy thinks: found the Dionysus kid . “Woah, that was awesome! You just came in and destroyed those catbirds like wham! Thanks, dudes!” 

The boy comes up behind her, looking to be about thirteen. He has the perpetual scowl of teenage angst engraved on his face and the youngest girl’s hand in his, along with what appears to be a kitchen knife in the other. He’s bleeding profusely from a nasty gash in his left shoulder. “Rose, be careful. These guys could be dangerous.” 

“Of course they’re dangerous. They destroyed those monsters like it’s their job ,” Apparently-Rose says, before turning her gaze back up to Percy and Nico expectantly. “So you guys can see them too? Everyone else just screamed and called them psychotic eagles.” 

“We can see them,” Nico reassures her. Then he introduces himself and Percy, gives the generic so-you-found-out-you’re-a-demigod spiel, and tells them that they need to go, now , before the mortals call the cops. 

“Okay, but why should we trust you?” the boy asks, with that same level of skepticism lacing his tone. Percy personally doesn’t appreciate it very much; he and Nico did just save them from a group of iron-clawed death birds. Evidently, Rose shares the sentiment, because she huffs and rolls her eyes. 

“Oh my gods, Mateo— gods ,” she whispers this last word to herself, as if in awed disbelief, “They just saved our lives! You know that we weren’t going to be able to defeat all of those on our own.” 

Mateo doesn’t seem to like having that fact pointed out. He crosses his arms over his chest and scowls off into the distance. 

The littlest one begins to cry. 

“Oh, oh no,” Nico says worriedly, and crouches down to her level. She looks to be about five or six. “Hey, what’s wrong?” he asks softly. Years of teaching sword-training have made him pretty much the expert when it comes to handling crying children. The only crying child Percy’s ever been particularly good with is his little sister, so he steps back and watches somewhat helplessly as Nico quietly speaks to the girl, eventually wheedling a small, wobbly smile out of her. He doesn’t appear to be at all surprised or alarmed when she launches herself bodily into his arms and then seems intent on staying there.

“She’s tired,” Nico explains to Percy as he rises back to his feet, situating the girl on his hip. Rose makes a noise of agreement. “We’ve been running all day,” she reports. “Well, technically I’ve just been on the run for the past three days. I found Mateo and Elliot in Helena yesterday, and we uh, kind of blew up the historic district.” 

“We know,” Percy says, lips twitching as he fights back an amused smile. “We saw this morning. Honestly, it was pretty impressive.” 

“Yeah?” Rose blinks, as if taken aback by the strange compliment. She recovers quickly, drawing herself up to her full height. “I mean, yeah , it was.” 

“Percy,” Nico says importantly, with a glance over his shoulder. “We really need to go.” 

Percy follows his gaze to find a group of security guards approaching. “Right,” he says, “Everyone, hold onto Nico.” 

“I’m not gonna—” Mateo starts, indignant, and is cut off when Rose seizes his wrist. “What’re you gonna do?” 

“Just hold on,” Nico instructs. He pulls the shadows in around them, and when they’re spit back out, there’s a copse of trees at their back and a lake stretching out in front of them. Nico takes one step before he has to sit down in the grass, woozy. Elliot squirms out of his grip to ramble back over to Mateo.

“You alright?” Percy asks, and he nods, though the action only serves to make him look more dizzy. “Too many jumps in one day,” he mutters. Percy frowns worriedly, and reaches into his bag to pull out his flask of nectar. “Drink.” 

Nico does. Meanwhile, Rose is chatting away in the background. “Holy crap, what was that? Where are we? Did you teleport us?” 

Percy does his best to answer her questions, giving Nico a moment to catch his breath. Unfortunately, he also has no idea where they are. 

“Spring Meadow Lake,” Nico supplies. He looks better after two sips of nectar and half a bottle of water, but Percy can tell by looking at him that they’re going to be staying put for a little while. 

He suggests Nico take a short nap. “I’m pretty sure I can handle three kids for, like, two hours,” he promises. Nico immediately takes him up on it. Mateo frowns deeply (put-off by the kid comment, if Percy had to guess). 

While Nico sleeps, Percy sits the kids down and passes around his stash of protein bars and Pop-Tarts. Rose seems to be the most willing to divulge any kind of information, keeping up a steady stream of conversation while Mateo alternates between silently glowering at Percy and handing broken-up pieces of Pop-Tart to Elliot. 

From Rose, he learns that she’s been seeing monsters for as long as she can remember, though none tried to attack her until a few months ago. She ran away when the monster attacks began to grow more frequent. “I didn’t want my family to get hurt,” she tells him quietly. That’s the only serious bit of information she shares. Mostly, she bounces from question to question like she’s just drank a gallon of super sugary Kool-Aid. It takes him a minute to realize that she reminds him almost exactly of Nico, when he was her age. 

He looks at Nico’s still, sleeping form, then at the hyper ten-year-old wanting to know if he can do that cool pen/sword trick again, and his heart aches with something that he doesn’t want to give a name. A name means he’s acknowledging it; a name means power. It’s one of the first things he’d learned as a demigod. 

But it’s distinctly there , something that pricks and itches in the back of his mind. Something nearly forgotten by that dusty quality time casts over all things, but that will make itself undeniably remembered later—probably in the darkest part of the night reserved for the things that should not be unpacked when the sun shines so brightly overhead, when it reflects on the water just right and Nico is right beside him, asleep but safe. He’s here now, he thinks to himself, hoping to assuage that dormant-but-waking feeling, that should be enough.

When Nico wakes up, he takes a moment to self-assess and decides that they’re probably better off road-tripping the old fashioned way for a little while. Rose is disappointed to learn that they won’t be making another shadow-jump for the short, nearly-nonexistent amount of time between Nico saying, “Sorry, not this time,” and summoning Jules-Albert. 

“You have a zombie. A personal zombie Uber.” Her eyes are glowing. “I call shotgun!” 

Torn between bemusement and amusement, Nico and Percy shrug at each other and let the girl have her way. Sitting in the very back of the SUV, Nico frowns thoughtfully as Rose fiddles with the radio and jabbers away to his unspeaking Underworld-employed chauffeur. “She reminds me of someone,” he says, in the same pondering way a person speaks when there’s a word at the tip of their tongue but they just can’t recall it from memory. 

Percy snorts. 

In the grand scheme of things, it’s probably the mildest trip Percy’s ever been on in his life. They manage to get in a full three hours of driving cross-country before they run into trouble again. It’s more gryphons (gryphons, apparently, love Montana), and the only reason why Percy can figure there are so many is because, as Nico had pointed out before, two children of the Big Three are like magnets for monsters. By the time they fight off the latest swarm, they’re sweaty, covered in gryphon dust and feathers, and most pressingly, they’re starving. It’s a sentiment apparently shared by the kids. 

They stop for food and to freshen up—garnering some strange looks from the mortals around them, but thankfully no one approaches to ask questions or kick them out. Mateo at first refuses to order anything, but at Nico’s pointed look and the flash of a black credit card, the teen’s eyes widen almost comically. Nico doesn’t lift his gaze from him until he mutters out an order for the largest burger on the menu to the confused-looking waitress. Percy doesn’t blame her; Mateo sounds like he’s delivering a eulogy at a dear friend’s funeral. 

The girls, thankfully, don’t share quite the same resistance as the oldest child. Rose does, however, try to order a glass of wine. “My mom let me have it,” she grumbles under her breath when Nico tells her absolutely not . 

Elliot is an angel. All she needs is to be pointed in the direction of the kids’ menu, a little bit of help with the reading, and she turns a blue-eyed gaze up at their waitress to solemnly request, “A grilled cheese with extra fries, please.” 

Elliot is Percy’s favorite. Why can’t the other two be more like Elliot? 

A little while after they get back on the road, they all start to get a little stir-crazy—Nico and Percy included. “I think maybe we should stop for the night,” Nico decides without tearing his gaze from the window. “It’s getting late, anyway, and the kids probably haven’t slept in actual beds in a few nights.” 

He has Percy go in to actually get the room, shadow-travels the kids inside when Percy returns with the room number and the key. Small jumps aren’t so draining, he says, and besides, he really doesn’t want to deal with the receptionist questioning what two adult men want with a single room and a group of kids. 

Mateo questions it, brows furrowing in a pensive scowl. “Why can’t we have a separate room?” 

“In case monsters attack in the night,” Percy says casually, and Mateo looks at him like he’s messing with him, though it is actually true. Percy can think of a number of times where he’s run into trouble with hotels. 

There are only two beds, a fact that Percy worries will be a problem until Mateo flops down onto one and is immediately joined by the girls dog-piling on top of him. Nico gives the couch a significant look, and then points to the one remaining bed with an equally pointed look at Percy. “I’ll take first watch.” 

Percy goes to protest, because Nico’s spent far too much energy on shadow-travel today, and he definitely needs it more than Percy does himself. But he also can sort of feel that fighting with Nico over this is kind of useless, because he can already feel the draw on his eyelids as he realizes that this is the most energy he’s spent in a single day in a while, too. It’s still nothing compared to the strain on his friend, but it is enough so that when Nico nudges him, he falls backwards onto the too-soft surface with eyes already sliding shut. And he thinks again: fighting is useless. 

This is by no means a typical quest: but in typical quest fashion, his dreams are turbulent and impossible to detangle from one another.

He dreams of the last time that he had seen Annabeth: of heavy gray eyes, regret and aching sadness. And she’s saying, “ I’m sorry. Things aren’t the same as they used to be.” And then—maybe because he had been thinking about him earlier—Annabeth morphs into the eternally-sixteen form of Jason Grace, gray bleeding into blue that pierces and freezes like an ice dagger pressed to his throat. And he’s saying something he’d never said to Percy in life, but he can hear so easily in his voice that it’s almost like he had: “ Change is a good thing, Percy. Don’t be afraid. Just don’t let him down this time.” 

“ Who ?” Percy wants to know, but before Jason can answer, he disappears. And then Percy is falling; he braces himself for the impact, for the inevitable multitude of despairing voices and broken glass, sulfurous air and endless suffering. 

He hits the ground and Akhlys materializes out of the fog, her brief moment of delight turning to sudden, agonized terror as Annabeth begins to scream, “ Stop, Percy, STOP!” but he can’t, he can’t—the poison is closing around her heart and his own beats with a fury that is unrestrained and as monstrous as the crippling spirit before him. “ STOP!” Annabeth screams again, and then he’s coming awake with a start, with a gasp: hands clutching sheets, sweat slicking skin, heart galloping away like one of Poseidon’s prized horses. 

It’s been a while since he’s relived that particular moment from his trip to hell. He keeps his eyes shut, just trying to breathe, trying not to remember the acute degree of desperate fear in Annabeth’s voice, trying not to think about how right she had been to be afraid. It’s four years later and he can still so easily recall the immense anger that had painted everything red, and it still bubbles and simmers like an active geyser just waiting for the right moment to burst. 

He hates himself a little whenever he remembers, because he knows that it’s not really the anger that scares him. 

When he opens his eyes, he finds Nico looking at him from his perch on the couch. The darkness of the room just seems to be sucked in by the even darker black of his eyes, but Percy finds that, somehow, his gaze isn’t creepy or unnerving. In a strange way, it’s comforting. 

“You want to talk about it?” Nico says in a quiet, rasping voice. He cuts his gaze over to the still-sleeping pile of children in the other bed, and then to the doors that lead out onto a balcony. And there’s a loud part of Percy saying that no, he does not want to talk about it, he never wants to talk about this, thanks . He had never even talked about it with Annabeth, after. 

He wonders if that’s one of the reasons why their relationship began to fragment, in the end. Too many shared memories, but nothing ever said to relieve the burden of them. 

So the quiet part of Percy wins, for once: he murmurs a hushed, “Yeah,” that has Nico blinking with some surprise, as if he hadn’t expected that answer. Still, it doesn’t stop him from falling easily into step with Percy until he’s sliding the glass door shut behind them. 

They sit, and for a long time, neither speaks. Percy gazes down at the dark parking lot below them, up at the not-quite-as-dark sky above them. He can see the stars here, bright and twinkling the stories of all the ancient Greek heroes and monsters across the heavens. It’s as his eyes find his namesake, Perseus, that he finally speaks. 

“She was afraid of me, did you know? Annabeth. She never said it, but I know she was. I hate that. I hate that I made her afraid.” 

He can feel Nico’s dark eyes on him, a burning presence on the side of his face. It’s less of a burning wildfire and more of a gentle flame, contained within the confines of a candle jar or a lantern. “Why?” he asks in a voice just as soft, without the doubt or the shock Percy realizes, then, that he had been expecting. 

He thinks, with a sort of rekindled hope, that if there’s anyone out there who might understand, it’s Nico di Angelo. 

And so he tells him the whole story, with what feels like a single lungful of air to depend on to make it through. The anger, the poison, the desperation to keep Annabeth safe and then just the primal desire to make Akhlys suffer . He tells Nico that there’s a part of him that’s afraid he’s capable of such hatred, but moreso that he’s afraid it will drive everyone he cares about away from him. And at the end, when silence falls from his lips and he turns to ascertain if Nico really could understand, he finds eyes that glow not from horror or judgment, but from a keen sort of resonance. 

With a quiet sigh that dissipates on the air, Nico turns his gaze up to the sky. “I killed someone, once,” he confesses, and then purses his lips. Shakes his head. “No, I—I more than killed him. I turned him into nothing. But he was . . . he threatened to hurt Reyna, and I just . . . I snapped.” 

Percy doesn’t speak while Nico replays the scene for him. The way he spins it, it almost sounds more like a story than something that really happened. There’s a sort of detached horror to it, the way you might feel when you watch a horror movie and a character is being brutally murdered onscreen. Still, Percy had heard about what a cruel, vile person Bryce Lawrence was. He can’t bring himself to feel any sort of sympathy for the guy. 

“You were protecting Reyna and Coach Hedge,” Percy says when Nico runs out of words, and the world around them begins to go quiet again. Too quiet, for a night filled with confessions like these. “You shouldn’t feel bad for doing what you had to do.” 

Even as dark as it is, Percy’s pretty sure he detects a slight trace of humor in the other boy’s face when he turns to look at him. “I know I shouldn’t. I still do , though, at least a little, and I think that’s kind of the point. Sometimes we have to do horrifying things to protect the people we love. It’s not something that many people can understand. It’s not something that many people ever have to understand.” 

And Percy just looks back at him for a long moment. And then he says, voice rasping in a way he doesn’t quite manage to control, “So, you aren’t afraid of me, then?” 

“Of course not. I think it’d be kind of hard for me to be afraid of a guy who once cried tears of joy on pizza night.” 

At that, Percy cracks a small, reluctant smile. He plays along. “Pizza night is the only night at camp where we’re allowed to put any sort of unhealthy carbs into our bodies.” 

“ Tell me about it. Remind me to stop at like, every McDonalds we pass tomorrow, before we have to return to the life of salads and portion control.” 

“Will do,” Percy promises. And then he takes in how the shadows seem to cling most to the circles beneath his eyes, and he’s reminded of how exhausted Nico must be, and all at once he feels guilty for keeping him up so late. “You should sleep now,” he suggests. 

Nico hums, a wordless acknowledgment. Then he glances out, once more, at the parking lot void of life, and he glances back in at the trio still snoring away. “You probably should too, you know. Something tells me we’re not in any immediate danger here, anyway.” 

The wise, quest-hardened part of him wants to turn down Nico’s suggestion. That part of him is left out in the open air as he follows Nico back in, sleep calling his name. He makes for the couch, thinking it’s only fair for Nico to get the bed for a few hours himself, when he’s stopped by a hand on his wrist. 

“There’s no way you’re sleeping on that couch,” Nico says, his attempt to sound authoritative ruined by the yawn that follows. “Just sitting on it is an uncomfortable experience no one should ever be forced to live through. The bed’s big enough for two.” 

Percy thinks his brain is glitching then, from exhaustion—he thinks Nico’s probably is too, to offer that solution in the first place—, but he finds himself crawling back under the covers without protest while, on the other side, Nico does the same. 

When sleep comes for him again, it distinctively does not bring the dreams with it. 

_____

Something Percy had learned early on his demigod career is that, if by chance on a quest you happen to get a good night’s sleep, it’s all-but-guaranteed to be ruined in the worst possible way. 

As is the case when he is brutally, rudely awoken to Mateo dumping a bag of Reddy Ice over him and Nico with not a hint of an expression on his face. 

Now, Percy is the son of Poseidon . So if it had been a bucket of water? Fine, cool, whatever. But there’s a significant difference between gentle, liquid water splashing into your face, and frozen pellets of it slamming into your closed eye-sockets . 

“Was that necessary?” he sputters, launching upward while the two girls giggle in the background. Traitors, he thinks with a deep-seated feeling of betrayal, all of them . 

“We could have been attacked by monsters in the night,” is all Mateo says, in a high-pitched voice that Percy is pretty sure is meant to mock him. Beside him, still somehow buried in his pillow, Nico lets out an unattractive snort. 

This is when Percy decides he’s done with this quest. 

Unfortunately, the quest isn’t quite done with him. 

Percy and Nico spend the next hour gathering up all their stuff, while the girls order every breakfast item from the room service menu and Mateo sequesters himself in the bathroom to take the world’s longest shower. When they finally make it out, they’re cutting it close to their actual check out time, and the sun’s already rising high in the sky. 

They get back on the road for a while, partially because the jump back to Long Island will be somewhat less strenuous with a couple more hours of distance eliminated, and also partially because Rose begs. “Jules-Albert is the best conversationalist,” she says, and Percy honest-to-gods can’t tell if she’s shitting them or not. 

It’s when they run into their next nest of monsters—a nasty clump of hydras that Percy just does not feel like dealing with—that Nico decides they’ve driven enough. One moment, they’re standing on the side of a highway while the hydras stomp all over their SUV in the midafternoon sun; the next, they’re rematerializing in the dusky shadows of the dining pavilion. 

Nico wobbles on his feet, and then proceeds to pass out. Percy catches him before he hits the ground. Rose is immediately torn between wanting to gush about her surroundings and wondering about Nico’s health. 

Percy looks up to find the entirety of Camp Half-Blood’s year-round populace staring at them with their own admixed curiosity and concern. Finally, Will Solace stands to make his way over to them, muttering something under his breath that Percy doesn’t catch. 

His eyes catch on Dionysus at the other end of the pavilion, looking on with an expression of fixed boredom, though he notices the way his gaze lingers on Rose for a single moment, the way it softens there before he snaps back to Percy. As soon as he has the god’s attention, he fixes him with a bland sort of smile. 

“We’re back,” he announces, as if it’s not already apparent enough. Then he helps Will carry Nico off to the infirmary. 

The next few days are fueled by a sort of leftover adrenaline from the trip. That first night back, while Nico is still snoozing away underneath a sun lamp, Elliot is unexpectedly claimed by Hermes at the bonfire and Rose is, of course, claimed by Dionysus. She spends the whole night peppering him with questions until he looks physically weary in the way that immortal beings shouldn’t be capable of. It fills Percy with a sort of satisfaction he’s rarely ever experienced in his life. 

Mateo sits at the edge of the amphitheater, alone in a kind of way that tugs at Percy’s heartstrings against his will. He’s not quite sure what it is with these kids reminding him so much of Nico, but in his dark clothes, with his dark hair and aura that just radiates I know I don’t belong here , he’s nearly the spitting image of who Nico had been, once. 

He takes a single moment to let himself be eternally, overwhelmingly grateful that people had been there to help Nico, where he himself had failed. Then he steels himself, excuses himself from his conversation with Juniper, and makes his way over. 

Mateo looks up through narrowed eyes as he approaches, only to scowl and look away again. He has his knees curled into his chest. “What do you want now?” he grumbles. 

“Just to check up on you,” Percy answers easily, not rising to the bait. “You do know that I’m not your enemy here, right?” 

Mateo doesn’t say anything. He picks at a thread in his black jeans and shrugs. 

Percy hesitates. “Listen, if I did something to make you not like me, I . . . I’m sorry. Really. But—camp is a good place. My favorite place in the world, actually, and it’s the same for a lot of demigods. I think you’ll fit in well, here.” 

Mateo mutters something that sounds a lot like, “I don’t belong anywhere.” Then he looks up at Percy, eyes dark and burning. “How can you expect me to just accept this? That—that a bunch of pagan gods are actually real? I was . . . I’m supposed to be Catholic .” 

Oh. Well that’s a revelation that Percy wasn’t prepared for. Percy was never raised religious, and he’s never really known anyone at camp who was. He’s not sure how the whole other religions/being a child of a god or goddess from the Greek pantheon works. 

Still, he has to do his best. “I know it’s confusing,” he says gently, “Honestly, I don’t think it ever starts to really make sense. But . . . you’ll figure it out. Part of being a demigod is learning to accept that some things just never make sense, and learning to make sense of them anyway.” 

The teen doesn’t look like he’s convinced. But he does, at least, uncurl from his tense ball. “Whatever,” he says, “I won’t be convinced that any of this is real until a magical sign starts glowing over my head.” 

The next night, he’s claimed by Aphrodite. 

Nico’s there beside Percy to witness it, pulling his lower lip pensively between his teeth as they watch the startled distress that washes over the boy’s features as he’s pulled in by Mitchell and Lacey. “I’m worried about him,” Nico confesses quietly. “Something about him . . . doesn’t feel right. Do you think he’ll be okay?” 

Truth be told, there’s a part of Percy that worries a little, too. But he looks at Nico, at the concern sitting heavy on his brow; at Mitchell and Lacey with their welcoming smiles; at Rose and Elliot, launching themselves over the seats to give him hugs that can only be described as warm sisterly affection, and he’s confident when he says, “It might take some time. But, yeah, I think he’s going to be okay.” 

_____

When the adrenaline high finally fades, Percy finds himself crashing. 

He wakes from a night of dreaming to find that he can’t muster the energy it takes to pull himself out of bed. It’s as bad as it hasn’t been since right after he came back to camp; it’s how Nico finds him, the mid-morning light filtering around him to give him a sort of halo as he stands over him. 

“We need to talk about this,” he’s saying, a few fuzzy minutes after somehow coaxing Percy into a sitting position, pressing a glass of water into his hand. He’s looking at him with an expression as deathly serious as a grave, and even though Percy wants to argue with him, he knows that Nico is right. But, “but not right now,” his friend decides, and Percy feels as if a weight he hadn’t realized was there is being lifted. He thinks, then, that Nico must really understand: must understand that it’s hard to hold his head up, it’s hard to look at him, it’s hard to speak. Everything feels as if it’s been dipped in twenty coatings of celestial bronze, and the simplest movements feel as tormenting and difficult as if he’s trying to hold up the sky again. 

“I’m sorry,” he tries to speak anyway, around the lethargy and the heaviness. “I’m sorry I’m—like this. That . . . that . . .” 

“No,” Nico says, his voice like a double-sided coin in the way he manages to sound both authoritative and gentle at once. “Don’t apologize, Percy. This isn’t your fault. Just finish your water, and we’ll go from there, okay?” 

It’s a painstaking process. Percy thinks there’s some kind of irony to be found there; he’s the son of Poseidon, and water has always been something that can immediately give him that undeniable rush that comes from being really, truly alive. Today, it only spares him enough strength to help him cross the floor from his bed to his bathroom. 

He takes a shower, and when he comes out, he finds that Nico has stripped all the sheets and blankets from his bed and taken them off to the Big House’s laundry room to be washed. This has the negative/positive result in that Percy can’t just fall back into bed the way he had wanted; he and Nico sit on the steps of his cabin instead. 

They don’t talk. He thinks it’s another one of those things that Nico can just somehow sense: he always knows when Percy needs the background noise to keep him from focusing too heavily on the things in his own mind, and when he just needs to sit in silence for a little while and let himself think through them. Nico does let him rest his head on his shoulder, his arm coming around Percy’s shoulders as a lithe support beam for the little while they sit there. He leaves once to transfer the load to the dryer, and then again to bring it back to the cabin, and while he’s gone, Percy feels a cold sort of emptiness carve itself out from the space where Nico was. 

When he’s finally able to settle back down into clean sheets, that emptiness threatens to engulf him as Nico begins to pull away again. And all he can think is: how can I be sure he’ll come back next time? And he reaches for his hand and holds him there and with the most strength he’s capable of gathering, he requests, “Don’t leave.” 

His eyes are shut, but he can somehow hear the way Nico goes still. It’s so quiet that he can hear the twin symphonies of their breaths on the air, Nico’s quiet exhale as he sits down to perch at the side of the bed. 

“Alright,” he agrees, in a voice so soft that it’s almost swallowed by the silence. And then, right there in that in-between place where Percy is, the waves of his mind slowly pushing him out to sleep, he feels the mattress dip slightly as Nico lowers a hand to the bed, propels himself forward just enough to press a feather-light kiss to Percy’s forehead. 

He’s far enough gone that he thinks he might be dreaming. He thinks he must be. And the twined feelings of warmth and security that spread from the imagined point of contact are the last nudge he needs to let the tide carry him out: a lost puzzle piece finally clicking into place, a full image materializing only to be unraveled by the undulating blackness that rises up to meet him. 

_____

He says, “I think you should see a therapist,” and if it was anyone but him, Percy thinks the comment would have stung. 

In a way, it does anyway. Percy doesn’t really get why, but something about having someone who cares about you point out something about yourself that you aren’t quite ready to accept yet just hurts . So Nico says this and he immediately wants to negate it, to insist that he doesn’t , because it makes him feel kind of pathetic to be told that his problems are so obviously colossal that he can’t even deal with them on his own. 

But Nico has seen him at his lowest in a way that Percy’s never let himself be around anyone else before. Percy thinks Nico’s earned the right to be as honest with him as he wants—even if it hurts. 

So, Nico thinks he should see a therapist. That brings up the issue, though, of what therapist could possibly help him work through all of his shit. He imagines walking into a mortal therapist’s office and spilling every sordid detail of his life from the past nine years. “Well you see, it all started when I found out I was the son of a mythological Greek deity and also that there was a prophecy that predicted I might destroy the world.” 

But of course, because he’s Nico, he already has an answer at the ready. “Will has a sister in the city who’s a pretty successful psychologist. She helped me work through a lot of stuff. And she gives a demigod discount.” 

Oh, goody, Percy thinks, but doesn’t say. He doesn’t want Nico to think he’s not listening to him, or taking him seriously. But it’s just . . . it’s a lot. And he says so. 

“Can I think about it?” 

“Of course.” Nico squeezes his hand, drawing Percy’s attention to where their fingers had evidently tangled together at some point. When had that happened? “Take all the time you need. Just . . . don’t dismiss it right away. Therapy doesn’t mean you’re weak, and no one will think you’re weak for it. You’re one of the strongest people that I know.” 

And Percy thinks: maybe Nico is right about therapy, but he’s not right about him . The truth is, everything Percy’s ever accomplished throughout the entirety of his demigod career is really just the combined effort of his friends’ achievements, maybe with a huge added dosage of pure good luck. There’s a part of him that wants to tell Nico that he’s not really that perfect character that his ten-year-old mind had made up, that he’s not and never has been a hero, and that sometimes he’s not even sure what the definition of strength is . 

But he doesn’t say any of those things. Instead, he squeezes Nico’s hand back, where it’s still held in his. And he just thinks. 

_____

In the end, he goes where he always goes when the rest of his life begins to feel too heavy. He goes to see his mom. 

Well, really, Nico takes him to see his mom. And then after exchanging pleasant greetings, he disappears into the living room to keep Estelle occupied while Percy sits down at the kitchen table to have the long-awaited conversation with his mother. In a way, he feels like all of the storms in his mind have been building up just to be calmed by his mom’s hand, by the curve of her smile and the comforting sea-green of her eyes. They’re the mirror that he thinks he’d like to see the entire world through; they make all of the pain and confusion of the past months ebb into something not so entirely ugly. “Everything has a purpose, Percy,” she likes to tell him. He thinks, now, that he’d really like to believe that. 

“Nico thinks I should go to therapy,” he tells her, staring at the place on the table where her hand covers his. She brushes her thumb across the back of his hand, a gesture that he’s known to be nothing but soothing for as long as he’s been alive. 

“Nico is a very smart boy,” his mother tells him. She smiles, and he’s sure that entire oceans of emotions and thoughts live behind that smile. “But only you can make that decision. And you’re a very smart boy too. So what do you think you should do, Percy? And what do you want to do?” 

They’re two questions that he’s still thinking about that evening when they return to camp after staying for dinner. Neither he nor Nico are quite ready to go to bed yet, so they take a walk along the Sound. Percy’s head is reeling from his conversation with his mom. Nico, at his side, is oddly quiet himself. 

Percy finds himself thinking not just about himself, but about Nico too. About how he could be anywhere else right now, with anyone else right now, but instead he’s here, with him. He thinks about all of the people at Camp Half-Blood who would be more than thrilled to have a moment alone with him, and he thinks about Nico saying, “ Aren’t we all lonely in a way?” 

And he can’t stop himself from blurting, when the words come, “Why are you letting yourself be lonely?” 

Nico stops in his tracks, turns twin intricately dark eyes up at him. Furrows his brows, asks, “What?” 

“You said, a while ago, that you’re lonely. But you could be with anyone, Nico. Anyone you want. And it’s been . . . a long time since you’ve let yourself have someone. Since you’ve let yourself be happy with someone.” 

He’s half-expecting Nico to get angry at him for asking. After all, they don’t talk about this kind of stuff. Nico is, and always will be, a very private person when it comes to his feelings and his reasons. But tonight, for whatever reason, Nico decides that he’s an open person, and that they do talk about things like this. 

He fixes his gaze on some point in the distance while he thinks. And then he says, “There’s a difference between being happy with someone and just being happy. And the past few years, where I haven’t worried so much about relationships or my place in them, I have been happy. I think that a little bit of loneliness is a sacrifice I’m willing to make for that.” 

“Do you think you’ll always want that? Are you just—done for good with dating, then?” 

“I wouldn’t say that, no.” Nico purses his lips. “I guess I don’t really know, Percy. Back with Will, things ended badly. And it was my fault. I got scared and—and so hurt after Jason. . . .” They both let his name hang in the air for a moment, the presence of their friend still an ache even now, though it’s carried more with nostalgia than pain. “Anyway, and I ran. I just left, and when I finally came back, I asked Will if he thought he could ever take me back. And he said as a friend, of course, but as a boyfriend, never again. Because Will isn’t the kind of person who waits around for people—he doesn’t play games when it comes to emotions. And I understood that, I did, but what I also understood then is that I . . . I do get scared, Percy. And I run. And I’m selfish enough to want someone who will chase me when I do.” 

He shrugs, a sort of self-deprecating laugh pushing past his lips to escape on the sea breeze. Percy watches, feeling almost as if he can see the sound of it. It echoes in his ears long after it’s gone. A background soundtrack to when Nico says, “The problem is that there aren’t many people who would be willing to chase me, and I don’t want to waste anyone’s time. I don’t want to hurt anyone else the way I hurt him. So, I guess unless I can find someone who’s willing to put up with that . . . then yeah, I’d rather be alone. It’s just better that way.” 

Percy thinks about that for a long time. He thinks about how heavy it must be to know something like that about yourself, to carry that with you everywhere you go, to have that in your head every time you meet someone new. It sounds nearly as difficult as holding up the weight of the sky—which Percy knows is enough to cripple over time. 

Nico is one of the strongest people Percy’s ever known, and while he’s always known this, suddenly it feels like the light has shifted. And there’s Nico in the center of it, this brilliant light at the heart of so much darkness. He’s breathtaking. 

And then Percy catches himself in this swirl of his thoughts, and he wonders what exactly he’s thinking. And he wonders why it is that when he’s with Nico, it’s like the rest of the world goes so strangely still. Even the waves seem to crash onto the shore with more gentleness, as if they can sense the calm acceptance that Nico carries in each step across their sands. Acceptance of the world around him, of the people he loves, and—most importantly, most impressively —of himself. 

Nico di Angelo is a mystery that Percy thinks he will never understand. This, he’s always known. 

But he hadn’t known before this moment that he is also undeniably beautiful, too. 

It’s sudden, the realization that he has no idea what he’s thinking anymore. And he wonders if it’s possible to understand everything and nothing, all at once. 

_____

Percy thinks that, in the end, there were a lot of reasons why things were always going to end with Annabeth. 

And a lot of those reasons have to do with him. Even if she hadn’t broken it off they would have ended anyway, because he thinks that eventually, he would have been forced to come to his senses. He was going to wake up and realize that everything is not fine at some point or another: the truth of it all is that Annabeth breaking up with him was just a catalyst to something that was always going to be too heavy for their already-strained relationship to be able to shoulder. 

For a long time, Percy’s felt like there’s this dark, swirling hole in the core of his being: something heavy and infused with all of the pain and too-powerful emotions that he’s been too afraid to acknowledge. With Annabeth, it was easy to let himself be shielded by her, to pretend that those feelings didn’t exist. Annabeth is strong and brave and Percy had thought that maybe she could be strong and brave enough to protect him from himself. 

But that’s not something Annabeth should have to do, or could do. It was never fair of Percy to hope that she could. Because in the end, he’s the only one who can deal with these deep, buried feelings. With the memories that accompany them, that follow him through his dreams like real-life nightmares. 

He wishes that he didn’t have to deal with them at all. He wishes that he could keep on pretending—or really, that he didn’t have them in the first place. 

But then he thinks of all the good things he still has: he thinks of his mom, of his family. Of all of the people who worried about him so much that, when he wouldn’t let them in, they called the only person they all knew who could push his way in, who could knock down the walls of Percy’s self-constructed prison of isolation. 

And he thinks about Nico, about how he never feels like he has to pretend with him, about how Nico expects him to be honest, and believes that he’s strong enough to handle it. 

He thinks of the three kids they crossed the country together to bring home, of how every day, home is more and more what Camp Half-Blood is becoming for them. And they can be safe here, happy , because a generation only a little bit older than them helped to make this a place where all demigods can be safe and happy. 

They all made a lot of sacrifices, and they still bear the scars. But when Percy asks himself: was it worth it? there is no hesitation when his mind replies, with not a single trace of regret: yes, yes, yes.

The way Percy sees it, he has two options. He could choose to let that darkness consume him: let himself be swallowed up by the weight of enemies fought, battles barely won, friends lost, aches that will never fully go away. He could let the heavy, lonely emptiness take over everything he is and everything he could still be. Let the despair blot out the light of the sun, forever. 

He doesn’t like the idea of that option very much. Not anymore. 

He thinks about his mother telling him, “Everything has a purpose, Percy.” He thinks about safety and happiness, and about a future that is brand new, a blank canvas for him to paint new hopes and dreams across. 

He thinks: I’m not done living yet. 

So in the end, he realizes that there was really only ever one option, after all. 

_____

It all comes together when he’s sitting in the top row of amphitheater seats, looking on while Nico tries with growing despair to get Elliot to stop holding her sword upside-down, and realizes that he can’t quite stop himself from fixating on the subtle slope of his friend’s neck even from this far away. 

And then Mateo slinks down beside him, follows his gaze and says gravely, “You know, you’re a real idiot.” 

Percy snorts, but doesn’t take his eyes off of his friend. “What makes me an idiot today, then?”

“You somehow got the best guy in this stupidly insane place to fall in love with you, and everyone knows it—you’d have to be an idiot to not know it—and you’ve done nothing about it. Idiot.” He tacks on the extra idiot as if that’s the point he really wants to drive home. But Percy’s more focused on everything else. 

“What are you talking about?” He knows he sounds clueless, but in this case, it’s because he is . “Nico and I are friends. Good friends. But he doesn’t . . . feel like that. About me.” 

The very idea is almost implausible. Nico had had a crush on him once, a long time ago—but he was just a kid then. From Percy’s understanding, that time hadn’t exactly been a good or pleasant experience for him. He had been put through a lot of shit because of his feelings, and there’s no situation that Percy can think of that would make Nico go: you know what sounds like a good idea? Re-developing feelings for my friend who made my life hell for a good chunk of my adolescence.  

And besides—even if there was a scenario where that happened, it would quickly be doused out by just being around Percy on one of his bad days. It definitely squashes out romantic daydreams when the object of your affection can’t muster up the energy to answer you when you speak, let alone take you out somewhere. 

Nico isn’t in love with him. Percy is sure of this. 

But then Mateo blandly says, “Look, dude. I’m the child of a love goddess, which means that I’m obviously an expert now. Every time Nico looks at you, he gets this super gooey look on his face that kind of makes me want to vomit. Trust me, I know—he’s always looking at you.” 

There’s an undercurrent of . . . something in the younger boy’s voice; something that, if Percy didn’t know better, he would say is bitterness. Envy? 

Realization clicks into place. He turns to look at him, takes in the tight set to the son of Aphrodite’s jaw, the simmering glint to his eyes as he gazes down into the center of the amphitheater. At Nico. 

“Hey,” he says, hoping that he sounds gentle and not like someone completely out of their element. “You know, it’s okay if you like him—” 

“Of course I like him,” Mateo snaps, then rolls his eyes. But by the way he picks at his nails, Percy can tell that he’s not entirely comfortable with the shift in this conversation’s direction. “Anyway, I’m working it out. Apparently it’s not a big deal here. That’s what he told me, anyway.” 

Percy blinks. “He told you . . .  what’s not a big deal here?” 

“Boys.” Mateo frowns—not unhappily, just like he’s thinking deeply about something. “Look, where I come from, my family was expecting me to be normal , but I wasn’t. I’m—I’m not . Not to them, anyway. But here, everything is different. Lacey’s got a girlfriend, and everyone knows it and nobody cares . And Nico is in love with you, and you at least like him, and it’s pissing me the hell off to see you not do anything about it. Because you can be together, but you’re not . Why aren’t you?” 

“I . . .” Percy doesn’t know what to say. He’s not quite sure there’s anything you can say, in the face of so much fed-up, prickly teenage boy. But it does get him thinking. If Mateo thinks Nico is in love with him—that’s not coming entirely out of left field. Because Mateo, regardless of his own feelings, is a child of Aphrodite. They tend to be pretty intuitive about things like this. 

This whole time, whenever he’s asked himself why Nico has stuck around for so long, the answer has always been a variation of the same. Because Nico is a good friend; because he cares; because he’s loyal to a fault. 

And all of those things are true, regardless. But it’s the first time that Percy lets himself wonder if that’s really all there is. 

The unexpected longing that lances through him, the sudden hope that springs up from the very moment he considers it, is dizzying 

Down on the floor, Nico finally just takes the sword away from Elliot. He looks up, immediately finding Percy to fix him with a not-really exasperated shrug that says, what can you do? and an easy smile that carries all the way to him. Breathtaking , he thinks. It’s becoming his go-to word when it comes to describing him. 

“You see what I mean?” Mateo says from beside him, interrupting his revelation. Or maybe just nudging it along. (Mateo seems to be like Nico, in that way—helping others even when it might hurt himself, wanting others to be happy even if it would be like torture for him to admit it. Percy can tell that he’s got a good heart, buried deep underneath all that snark.) “You two could have something really good if you’d stop being stupid for two seconds and just kiss him. Because for some reason, you could make him really happy. And if I was you, I wouldn’t take that for granted. There aren’t a lot of people like him in the world.” 

Percy, though he says nothing, can’t help but disagree with the younger demigod. It’s not that there aren’t a lot of people like Nico. It’s that there is no one like him. 

But he’s got to admit that Mateo is right on at least one count. If Percy would stop being stupid for two seconds and just kiss him, he thinks that he and Nico could have something really, really good. 

It’s a knowledge that settles deep into his chest, roots itself in his mind. And once it’s there, he knows that it’s never going to leave. Not until he does something about it—and even then, it might stick around. 

(He hopes , prays to every god and goddess he’s ever had a kind experience with, that it will stick around.) 

It’s midsummer now, with long and high-energy days. Camp Half-Blood is packed full of kids, teenagers, and old campers alike. Many of his own old friends have returned as summer counselors, and it’s been nice to see them. It’s nice to see camp full, the way it should be. Even if that does mean the feuds just keep intensifying by the exponent. 

(The summer volleyball tournament is ongoing and as brutal as ever. So far, the Apollo cabin has had to patch up members of every opposing cabin they’ve gone up against. Will is unapologetic of the fact that his campers are in the lead for the most-loathed-cabin award this year.) 

Nico, Percy thinks, looks nice in the summer. Nico looks nice all the time, of course, but—Percy finds that there’s something especially nice about the way the summer light catches on the tops of his cheekbones, on the way the humidity causes his hair to frizz into cinnamon-twist curls. They’re walking together, away from the action of the camp’s center, out to the shore of the Sound. Nico’s going on about the kids, saying that he loves them, really, but he’s glad there are other counselors for the summer to take off some of the load. And it’s definitely a good thing, because his father gave him a call the other day, and evidently there’s some evil spirit that’s escaped the Underworld and has been terrorizing people by embodying some urban legend, and Nico has no idea how long it’ll take to chase this guy down—

“Wait.” Percy blinks, snapping out of his daze of watching Nico talk with his hands long enough to actually process what he’s saying. “You’re leaving?” 

Nico gives him a funny look. “Well, yeah. This spirit is killing people. Weren’t you listening? People are summoning him by playing some game from this social media platform, and then he’s—” 

“Right, yeah,” Percy says hastily, not wanting to hear Nico run down the sordid list of details a second time. “But—do you think it will take you a long time? To catch him?” 

“I don’t know.” Nico keeps looking at him, concern beginning to make itself present on his face. “Why? Is something wrong?”

“No, it’s not—nothing’s wrong. It’s just . . . I’ll miss you.” 

The admission seems to catch him off-guard, a little. Nico blinks. And then he smiles, and Percy can’t help but notice how it also catches the light, how all of the light seems to catch on him. It kind of doesn’t make any sort of sense, seeing as he’s the son of Hades and he can control the darkness as easily as he can flick his fingers, but the light just suits him. “I’ll miss you too,” he says. 

They walk in silence for a few moments, and in those moments, Percy can feel two parts of himself going to war. One part of him wants, with an intensity that almost aches, to ask him how he feels. To tell him how he feels. He wants, more than he can remember wanting anything in a very long time, to reach across the three inches between them and take Nico’s hand. He just wants . 

But another part is rising to tell him how stupid that is; how this can only end in misunderstanding or hurt feelings, in Nico either brushing it off or sweeping it under the rug. He wonders: what if I’m wrong? He thinks: even if I’m not, it’s not the right time . He doesn’t want to scare Nico away by speaking too soon. Most importantly, he doesn’t want to lose him as a friend. 

But the desire and the curiosity, the need to know—that’s what wins out, in the end. Percy’s never been very good at practicing self-control. 

“Mateo said that you’re in love with me,” he blurts out. And immediately wants to sink into the sand and let it bury him. However he was planning on starting this conversation, it was not like that. He was aiming for a bit more tact, and a lot less sounding like a thirteen-year-old. 

He regrets it even more when he sees the way Nico’s shoulders stiffen, the weariness that enters his eyes when he looks at him. “Percy,” he says. “Don’t do this.” 

“Do what?” Percy asks. His heart is beating in his throat. There’s your answer, he’s thinking. But he’s also thinking: now how can I stop it from going up in smoke? “Can’t we talk about it? I—I want to talk about it.” 

“I don’t .” Nico looks away, an aggressive scowl beginning to pull at the corners of his mouth. It’s not so much that he seems to be angry at Percy—it’s more like he’s frustrated. And . . . defeated. “Look, we don’t have to talk about it, ever. I didn’t mean to, okay? I’m sorry . But it doesn’t have to change anything. And you don’t have to be weird about it, or—feel bad, or anything—” 

Percy hates the defeat in his voice, hates the way he’s holding himself so defensively, like he’s bracing himself for some terrible tragedy. Like he’s already lost something. “Nico,” he says, not caring that he’s interrupting him when he’s so wrong , and decides, screw it. He takes Nico’s hand, stopping him in his tracks. And he says, “What if I want it to change things?” 

Nico blinks at him, blank-faced, as if the question isn’t computing in his head. He shifts his gaze to their hands, linked between them, something solid, real . They’ve held hands before, but this is different. Percy is all-too-aware of the dips of Nico’s palm, the callouses of his fingers, the way their wrists brush against each other. And the warmth that spreads from them, something that should be sweltering in this summer heat, but instead just feels nice . 

And then Nico’s expression shifts, but it’s not what Percy was hoping for. He’s not quite sure what exactly he was hoping for, but he knows it’s not the sadness that fills his face. 

“We talked about this,” he says, and each of his words sounds weighted with leaden regret. “There’s a reason why I’m alone. I can’t—” 

“You’re not a waste of time.” Percy knows he should stop interrupting, but he can’t help it; no matter what his relationship with Nico looks like, these are things that he needs to know. “I always want to spend time with you, I always want to be with you, because you make a room lighter just by walking into it, and I love the sound of your voice when you talk. You make me believe that I can get better—and it’s not that I think you can fix me, I don’t, you can’t and that’s okay, I know I have a lot of shit I need to work through on my own—but you remind me of all the reasons why I should work through things instead of letting them destroy me. You’re one of my best friends, and sometimes when I look at you it’s hard to breathe because of how beautiful you are, and I—I think I could fall in love with you, Nico. I am going to fall in love with you, whether you want me to or not, and if you don’t want me that’s fine, I understand. We don’t ever have to talk about this again, if you don’t want to. But if you do . . .” 

He falters, breath catching, because Nico’s looking at him like he’s trying to hold back his emotions but he can see it, he can see that there’s hope there too, that Nico can feel it too. He’s trying not to, but he can . “If you do,” he continues, “Then we can make this work. You understand me in ways that no one else does—and I understand you too. So . . . if you need to run, then run. I can keep up. I won’t let you leave me behind. I’ll follow you wherever you want to go.” 

For a long time, Nico doesn’t say anything. He stares down at their hands, interlocked, with this conflicted look on his face like he can’t decide what emotion to settle on. Like he doesn’t know what to feel. 

And then he says that. “I don’t know, Percy.” And he looks up at him, his oil slick eyes turned the color of coffee in the golden summer light, glistening like sunlight on water. And Percy thinks then that he looks like a painting, something devastatingly ethereal, beautiful and sad in ways that make Percy believe he could stare at him forever and still never comprehend the depth of them. But he thinks that he would spend his whole life trying to. 

“Just tell me you’ll think about it.” All he is aware of is the press of Nico’s hand, the way he’s looking at him, the way it makes his heart beat all at once too fast and slow in his chest. And all he can think is: we’re good, like this . We could stay like this . “You don’t have to have an answer today, or this week. And even if you do think about it and you decide you don’t want anything to change, then nothing has to. I just wanted you to know how I feel. It just feels important that you know.” 

He looks into dark eyes and finds that suddenly, they’re smiling back at him. Still sad, still uncertain, still a million other things—but those things aren’t so eclipsing, now. And Nico tilts his head up at him, a matching smile slowly curving up the corner of his mouth. “So, a week? That’s how long you’ll wait for my verdict, huh?” 

Percy smiles back, even as he shakes his head. And then, because he’s brave, or maybe just a little too reckless, he lifts Nico’s hand in his so that he can turn it, press a lingering kiss to his palm. “I’ll wait for however long you ask me to.” 

He thinks, by the way Nico squeezes his hand tightly, by the way he holds on for the rest of their walk back to their cabins, that he must have said something right. 

_____

The sky has fallen to a dusky twilight when Percy returns from the nightly bonfire to find Nico sitting on the steps of his cabin. 

“You’re back.” Percy’s not prepared for the rush of relief that floods into him; it’s only when he sets eyes on him for the first time in two weeks that he realizes that, sometime during the time that Nico was away, he had begun to worry that the son of Hades wouldn’t come back. 

An irrational fear, maybe, when he catches the light in Nico’s irises, a reflection of the stars that are just beginning to make their nightly appearance. He smiles when he notes, “It’s been longer than a week.” 

“It has,” Percy agrees. When Nico pats the space next to him on the steps, Percy goes to him. He can feel his pulse thrumming in his veins, setting him on edge. It’s a strange sensation: in that moment, he doesn’t feel like a twenty-one-year-old adult. He feels like a teenager, all fluttery nerves and building anticipation. He had forgotten how nice it can be, in a way. Even if he does kind of want to throw up. 

Nico turns his gaze up to the sky, and for a moment it takes Percy back to that night in Montana, when he’d first really thought about how Nico gets him, how he understands him in a way that Percy doesn’t think he’ll ever find in anyone else. 

(He doesn’t want to find it in anyone else. He wants to spend every night under the stars with him, wants to live every day with him, wants to share everything with him.) 

Nico says, “I think it’s important for me to say that I know I’m never going to be Annabeth. And if that’s what you’re expecting me to be, then this won’t work.” 

Percy nods. He understands. There’s a part of him, he thinks, that’s always going to be taken up by Annabeth: she was such an integral piece of his world for so long; she was his best friend. He did love her, and there’s a part of him that always will. 

He thinks, though, that that might be one of the most beautiful things about the relationships you build. Even when they end, you still carry the feelings and the memories with you: reminders that, at one point in time, you were that person’s world , and you mattered. And even when they end, it doesn’t mean you don’t matter anymore—just that you get to matter in a different way, and you get to matter to others in a different way. 

Nico is not Annabeth. Percy doesn’t want him to be Annabeth. “I don’t want a false expectation. I just want you to be you.” 

Nico smiles, like this is the answer he was expecting. “And the fact that I’m—well. Really not like Annabeth?” 

“I’ve dealt with too many strange things in my life to get hung up on sexuality, Nico. I like you. I mean it.” 

When Nico reaches for his hand, it’s the easiest thing in the world to give it to him. They sit like that, hands clasped between them, existing in each other’s space in the same way that they breathe: unconscious, unforced. They just are . 

“You know, your mother says this thing to me a lot,” Nico says after a while spent in comfortable silence, watching as the other campers begin to head inside for the night, lights going out all around the commons. He’s limned in shadows but still somehow catches the light of the hearth in the commons’ center, and Percy thinks that maybe this will be his new constant. Even in the dark, Nico always knows exactly where to find the light. “She says that everything in life has a purpose. Do you believe that, Percy?” 

For a long time, Percy thinks that his answer to that question would have been a flat, instinctive no . Because the truth is that as a demigod, witnessing first-hand the unapologetic apathy of the gods is enough to make you question if there really is a point to any of this nonsense. That on top of everything Percy has been through—well. A lot of times it’s felt pointless. Most of the time. And Percy had wondered what it was he was fighting for if there was no reason to, in the end. 

And then, slowly, that answer had changed to maybe . Maybe purpose was what you made of it. Maybe everyone’s idea of purpose is a little bit different—maybe it’s just that you have to find what yours is. And maybe purpose, to some people, just looks like finding the strength to clean your room and take a walk on the beach with someone you care about. And maybe that’s okay. 

But now Percy thinks of everything he’s come from, and everything it’s led up to. He thinks about a camp filled with safe, intact (for the most part, anyway), sleeping demigods: a place he has fought for, and would as many times as it needs him to. And he thinks about how there has to be a reason behind all of this love, a reason why it feels like even after everything, he still has so much to give. 

He thinks about how at the start of this year, he had felt like his world was crashing down around him, and he was powerless to stop the end from coming. And then he looks at where he is now, with Nico, like this. It’s something that shouldn’t make sense, but it does. 

He thinks again about how he still has a lot of living left to do, even after all this time. And how there’s no one he wants to experience it with more than he does with the boy at his side. 

Silence has fallen completely over the camp when he speaks, and he likes to believe that when he does, his voice carries on the breeze across the Sound, off towards some distant place where maybe it will fill a void, will glue together broken pieces and create something new and beautiful. Somewhere, it’s a new day. Percy thinks he’d like to believe, from now on, that this does mean something. 

“Yeah,” he tells Nico, and smiles up at the stars, and believes that new days are coming for both of them. And he finally feels like he’s ready for them. “I really, really do.”