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Eskimo Kiss - when noses rub together -> An indication of affection, often playful, and shared between children, family, and those who equal importance.
Nico couldn’t exactly remember how they’d gotten into this strange arrangement. Or if ‘arrangement’ was even the correct word to use. But perhaps that wasn’t quite right either; he remembered, yet it still left him with a giddy, unbelieving, feeling in his chest when he recalled.
It had been several years since the war with Gaia and Nico had opted to finish high school on line and start taking classes at the BMCC. He had been stumped at first on what to do because 1) the college was too far from Campy Half-Blood 2) Will had told him in no uncertain terms that- child of death or no- he would kill him if he got wind of Nico shadow traveling multiple times everyday to and from school on a college style sleep schedule(or rather lack of one) 3) Since he really couldn’t get an apartment closer to school as a 16 year old he had supposed he would just have to take online classes and maybe do some jobs for his dad. That was when an unexpected option 4 came along in form of Percy and Jason who were searching for a third roommate to help with the rent since Leo had recently moved out.
At the time, he couldn’t decide whether fate was being cruel to him or if he was incredible lucky.
Still though, he hadn’t been expecting anything much to change. After all, he had gotten over his- admittedly unhealthy- crush on Percy long ago and he was on fairly good terms with both him and Jason. However, somewhere in the middle of cooking projects that would nearly burned the building down, movie nights spent in a lazy pile of bodies, battling monsters that were acting like professors and professors that acted like monsters, shouted half conversations of ‘Jason, stop pretending you’re not the one using my razor; none of the rest of us have sunshine stubble’ ‘at least I can grow a beard Jackson’ ‘Oh yeah? Betcha I can grow a better one, Grace’ ‘Don’t even think about it you two; I refuse to be seen in public with you two looking like vagabonds that have never used a mirror’, and just simple gestures of dragging him out for midnight runs to McDonalds when he was upset or picking up his favorite caffeinated drink of him when one of them were out… somewhere in there Nico’s feelings had changed once again.
It didn’t really hit him until he had been living with them for a little over a year and a half(and honestly he blamed how focused he had been on school for not noticing how absurdly happy he had become). He had just gotten his acceptance letter for a scholarship for State University of New York. Nico had been too stunned to do much of anything but gape at the paper, but his housemates hadn’t had that problem.
When Percy had leaned of his shoulder to read what the letter had said he had given a jubilant shout and proceeded gather Nico up into his arms and twirl him around the room with a chant of ‘You did it! You did it! I knew you could do it!’ Jason of course had also quickly caught on and had scooped the two of the breathlessly laughing boys off their feet together in a crushing bear hug and breathing out a ‘Nico I am so so so proud of you!’ into his ear with a giddy laugh of his own.
And right there, in that moment with the steady reassuring warmth of Jason’s chest against his back and Percy giving him dozens of affectionate little Eskimo kisses as he laughed, it had hit Nico how much he loved both of them. Not in the I-have-crush-on-you-two kind of way(because, been there done that, he was an expert on what crushes felt like) but in a I-have-so-much-love-and-affection-for-you-two-I-have-no-idea-how-it’s-supossed-to-fit-in-my-body. Then Jason had let them tip backwards and they had all tumbled together on the couch in a quite uncomfortable mass of limbs and amidst the playful swearing and shoving that resulted Nico remembered thinking that- even though he was a young man now- he had felt so young, so light, and so incredibly loved and happy