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That smile seared into his side like an old wound, a crescent-shaped burn across worn down skin. He was so loud—murky green eyes, sun-blasted freckles across tan skin, lopsided grin hanging against a single deep dimple. Too much, always too much.
“Nico?” he asked again, and Nico blinked, eyes flashing instead to the shimmering Long Island Sound that felt just as much a part of Percy as the blinding smile.
“I’m tired. Can we do this later?”
“Do—later?” Percy let out a dry laugh, ran a hand through his black curls. “Nah, dude. Don’t worry about it. Didn’t mean to bother you.”
“I’m just tired,” he said again, nails digging into clenched palms.
Percy scoffed. “I get it. It’s fine.”
“Do you?”
“Yeah! You don’t like me, Nico. I get it. You’re miserable and stubborn, and I’ll take the hint and get lost. Okay? Alright.” He turned towards the strawberry fields, dots of red and green dancing in the setting gold sun, summer breeze wafting the smell of sun-warmed berries across soft grass and rolling hills. Nico wrapped a hand around Percy’s retreating wrist, letting it go with the next breath like it burned as much as that smile. It did—branded against his fingers like a stain he’d never wash off.
“Sorry,” Nico said in the same second Percy said:
“What?”
“Sorry,” he said again, softer, cradling the offending hand against his chest.
Percy squinted at him, bent forward like the light obscured some truth he could parse through with naked eyes alone.
“What?” Percy repeated, sharp and short. Sometimes Nico thought he was the only one who got this Percy—the one whose languid smile curled into sour distaste, whose patience and empathy ran dry. It was like the son of Poseidon turned off the tap, realized Nico was an ever-empty cup he would never fill, and Nico always felt it at the back of his tongue—the thick scab of dehydration threatening to choke him.
“I just—I’m tired. I wasn’t—I didn’t mean anything else by it.”
“Sure you didn’t.”
“I’m not trying to be difficult.”
“You are. You always are.”
“I’m not!”
“You’re doing it right now!”
“Because you’re yelling at me!”
Percy ran heavy hands down his face, trampled a small circle in the freshly cut grass, let out a frustrated groan that sounded a lot like an insult. The sun threatened to dip below the horizon, last rays of daylight streaking across the shifting water, the fields, Percy’s frown.
“I didn’t mean to. You just—I don’t know. Is that a son of Hades thing? Bringing out the worst in people?”
The comment sank into Nico’s stomach, curdled.
“Sorry,” Percy said, shook his head, squeezed his eyes shut. “Sorry. I didn’t mean it like that.”
“Sure you didn’t.”
Pink and orange flashed across the horizon, a burning reflection wrapping the camp in warm glows and the first cool breeze of the day, drifting off the water and up Nico’s spine.
“I just wanted to hangout,” Percy said, weak laugh pushing into the stiff air between them.
Nico folded tight arms across his chest, thought longingly of the aviator jacket stuffed under his cabin bed collecting dust in the hot summer months. “You don’t—why?”
“Because you’re my friend? Or—I want us to be friends. I don’t know.”
“You don’t like me.”
Percy crumpled his nose, furrowed his brow. “Who told you that?”
“I’m not an idiot.”
“Nico,” Percy started, and Nico shivered, name catching and flaring in his chest. “I care about you. I wouldn’t be banging my head against the wall trying to talk to you over and over again if I didn’t care.”
“I piss you off.”
“Yeah, well, I’m hoping we can get past that part if you’re ever willing to have a non-confrontational conversation with me.”
Nico looked away—towards the first flicker of a campfire in the distance, towards the darkening sky, towards the long off churning horizon—anywhere but at Percy’s earnest gaze, focused attention melting him into the dirt.
“I don’t know how to do that,” he said, cleared his throat like that would counteract the softness leaking through.
Percy took a step forward like he sensed the weakness, was ready to poke and prod at the thawing pieces until his fingers sunk in, grabbed hold, dug and twisted at Nico’s insides until he’d made sense of them.
“Would you be willing to try?” he asked, eyes so wide that Nico had to look, drawn to the imploring stare like a buzzing thing seeking a new sun at dusk.
“I don’t know.”
“You’re important to me, Nico,” he said, whispered it like the incoming night might overhear. “I wanna be able to spend time with you without it being an argument, right? Don’t you want that?”
Nico stared, that dehydration crawling up his tongue, filling his mouth and clogging his airways. Percy was looking at him, really looking at him, and every point of well worn skin burned—side, fingers, chest. Everything looked like a dream in this light, the in-between of day and night painting the world in blur and blue shadow, and Nico reached out, hand a pale smear darting to grab at Percy’s t-shirt.
His green eyes widened a fraction, lips parting on a word he couldn’t say before Nico crashed them together, warm mouths meeting in the cooling air, unsaid word turning to a hum that buzzed against Nico’s lips.
Percy tasted like the ocean—of course he did.
But before Nico could think to sear this memory into every place they touched, into every bit of skin that wasn’t already mottled and bruised, Percy pulled back, wrapped a gentle hand around Nico’s wrist.
“I—“ Percy started, and Nico felt the cold air slicing off the ocean smash into him full force when he met Percy’s eyes. “I didn’t mean it like that.”
Nico opened his mouth, closed it, let the hand gripping Percy drop like a dead thing between them.
“I’m sorry,” Percy said, looked at him like he hadn’t since he’d broken the news about Bianca years ago. Nico felt sick.
“Right.”
“But it’s—you know—I don’t mind that you’re—or that you—you know.”
“Right,” he said again, took a stiff step back. Another.
“I’m just not—“ Percy said, concern and panic so plain Nico had to look away, towards the deep blue sky, the shadowed forest, the final slash of pink against the horizon. “And you know—Annabeth—“
“Right.” Nico nodded, continued stumbling backwards over dew-slick grass. “Don’t worry about it. I shouldn’t have—just forget that ever happened.”
“Are you sure? We can talk about it if you want to. I mean, like—can we still be friends? Did I ruin it?”
Nico dragged his eyes back to Percy, shoulders hiked to his ears, pout pulling at the dimple in his cheek, dark brows furrowed under a fringe of curls. This wasn’t what Percy Jackson was supposed to look like. Nico didn’t know how he did it—how he always brought out the wrong parts of Percy, like sifting through the shallow waves for sea glass just to pull out unweathered shards instead.
“You didn’t ruin it,” he said, swallowed down the jagged pieces lodged in his throat. “Friends. We can be friends.”
Percy smiled—shaky and slow—and Nico felt it press into that crescent-shaped burn. “Okay. Yeah. I’d like that. Friends.”
The last of the daylight fizzled and sank below the ocean, pink swallowed whole in one final struggle for life.
Friends.