Chapter Text
Every single one of my siblings stood frozen in front of the Birthdays Wall like it was an oracle about to deliver doom.
We all knew what was coming.
In exactly one week—January 28—it would be Nico di Angelo’s birthday.
Today was January 21.
And in the Aphrodite cabin, birthdays were not small things. They were sacred. Strategic. Occasionally catastrophic.
It’s our job to facilitate love in all its forms. Romantic, platonic, self-directed, messy, inconvenient, inconveniently mutual, you name it. We keep a master list of every camper’s birthday so no one gets forgotten. We pool our allowance to buy presents for kids whose godly parents are “too busy being immortal” to remember their own children exist. We’re the ones who stocked the infirmary library with actual educational books about sexual health and gender identity, because apparently the Athena cabin thought that was “not urgent.”
We drop hints when campers are too oblivious to confess their crushes. We organize dances so people have an excuse to hold hands in the glow of strawberry fields and pretend the world isn’t constantly trying to kill us.
Some cabins think it’s frivolous.
They see the pink door. The lace curtains. The makeup trays and perfume bottles and assume we’re useless.
Vain airheads at best.
Useless fighters.
Complainers. Meddlers.
Maybe that’s true for a couple of my siblings.
But most of us? We fight just as hard as anyone else. We just fight for different things.
Silena used to say love is the invisible glue that holds Camp Half-Blood together. People roll their eyes at that—especially the Ares cabin—but she wasn’t wrong. In a place built on war stories and trauma, love is the only reason anyone stays human.
And we follow that rule like a prayer.
Which brings me back to Nico di Angelo.
Nico is… complicated.
To the untrained eye, he’s just the emo kid in black who looks like he hasn’t slept since 1942. Pale, quiet, permanently five seconds away from either shadow-traveling away or glaring you into the Underworld. People assume he’s depressed.
Which—okay. Fair. But who at camp isn’t at least a little depressed? We’ve all lost something. Parents. Siblings. Entire childhoods.
We don’t judge by appearances.
We judge by vibes.
And Nico’s vibes are… intense.
That’s why convincing my siblings this could work was a challenge.
“A project?” one of them whispered, staring at his name on the wall. “Drew. That’s not a project. That’s a haunted Victorian child.”
But everyone deserves something on their birthday. Especially Nico.
Mostly Nico.
The guy literally saved all our lives during the Battle of Manhattan. While the rest of us were busy trying not to die, he showed up with Hades himself, and two other gods, like it was the most casual thing in the world. Later, he survived Tartarus. Tartarus. Then he went on a quest to defeat Gaia.
He’s faced primordial evil and lived.
And somehow, the thing that nearly destroyed him wasn’t a Titan or a giant or an ancient deity.
It was a crush.
On Percy Jackson.
Trust me, we all knew. You think the Aphrodite cabin misses that kind of tension? Please. Percy radiates chaos like it’s a cologne. Heroic, yes. Brave, obviously. Also the human embodiment of “I didn’t mean for that to explode.”
He’s got that Greek-statue thing going on. Dark hair, sea-green eyes, tragic backstory, loyalty complex. Who wouldn’t fall for him?
Poor Nico had the catastrophic luck of being close to him.
And then—brozoned.
Brutally.
After everything Nico had survived, that might’ve been the cruelest twist of fate.
Which is why the Birthdays Wall felt heavier this year.
Because Nico di Angelo deserved something more than survival.
He deserved warmth. He deserved someone who didn’t look at him like a ticking time bomb or a ghost.
He deserved—
“Well,” I said, crossing my arms as my siblings stared at his name like it might curse them, “we’re doing it.”
A few of them turned to me slowly.
“Doing what?” someone asked.
I smiled.
“Fixing it.”
The silence lasted exactly three seconds.
That was how long it took for the Aphrodite cabin to spiral into chaos.
“Maybe we could give him a surprise party?” Lacy suggested, already clasping her hands together like she could see the glitter cannon in her mind.
Mitchell snorted. “Yeah, and decorate with skeletons! Very on brand.”
A couple of siblings laughed. Someone muttered something about black balloons and a cake shaped like a gravestone.
“Or,” another girl cut in, practical as ever, “we could get him an actual gift. Ask his friends what he likes.”
Right.
That was… reasonable.
I pressed my lips together. Who were Nico’s friends again?
Percy, obviously. They had that whole complicated-history thing. Leo, occasionally. Piper. Will—
Oh.
Piper.
As if summoned by destiny (or by Mitchell’s obnoxious volume), the cabin door creaked open and Piper McLean stepped inside, blinking at the wall of pink staring back at her.
“What are you guys do—”
“PIPER, HELP!” Mitchell chanted immediately, pointing at the Birthdays Wall like it was evidence in a trial. “It’s Nico’s birthday next week. You’re, like, his best friend, right? What does he like?”
What does he like?
The words echoed in my head, but they twisted into something far more interesting.
What does he like?
Or better yet—
Who does he like?
Now that was the real question.
Because sure, we could give Nico a book. Or a black hoodie. Or some obscure mythological artifact that would make the Athena cabin swoon.
But what if we gave him the best gift of all?
Love.
My pulse quickened. My siblings were still listening to whatever Piper was saying—something about Mythomagic cards and pomegranate seeds—but the idea had already ignited behind my eyes.
Imagine it.
Nico di Angelo, finally looking at someone the way he used to look at Percy Jackson, except this time, the feeling would be mutual.
No brozoning.
Just… something warm.
Before Piper could finish her sentence, I straightened so abruptly that a few of my siblings jumped.
“LET’S FIND HIM TRUE LOVE!” I announced.
The cabin went silent.
A couple of mascara wands froze mid-air.
I cleared my throat, suddenly aware that I might’ve sounded a little unhinged. “I mean,” I added smoothly, coughing into my fist, “hypothetically. If he likes someone. We could… facilitate.”
Several heads turned slowly toward Piper.
“Does he like anyone?” I asked, trying—and probably failing—to sound casual. “We could set them up.”
Because if there was one thing Cabin Ten did better than anyone else, it was turning secret crushes into hot couples.
“I don’t know,” Piper said carefully, her lips pressed into a thin line.
Which, coming from a daughter of Aphrodite, was basically a locked vault.
“And even if I did, I don’t think—”
“Come on, Pipes,” Mitchell pleaded, clasping his hands dramatically. “Let’s give him a nudge!”
“A gentle nudge,” Lacy added. “A loving nudge.”
“A strategically romantic nudge,” someone else chimed in.
Piper did not budge.
She just stood there, arms crossed, looking at us the way Silena used to when we were about to do something both brilliant and catastrophic. Which, to be fair, was most of the time.
By nature, Piper was one of us. She understood the pull of a good love story. The satisfaction of seeing two people finally figure it out.
But she also had that hero streak. The one that said: don’t interfere with someone’s heart unless you’re sure.
“You can try finding out if he likes someone at all,” she allowed at last. “But if I find out you lot did chaos…”
She didn’t raise her voice.
She didn’t need to.
She just gave us the Head of Cabin Look.
The one that said I have fought giants and broken hearts and I will not hesitate to break yours.
Then she turned and left, the door clicking shut behind her.
A long silence followed.
Mitchell grinned slowly. “So… she didn’t say no.”
I crossed my arms, staring at Nico’s name on the wall.
This was going to be delicate.
Nico di Angelo wasn’t the type to blush and stammer if you asked him who he liked. He was more the type to vanish into shadows and reappear three miles away. Interrogation was out of the question. Direct confrontation? Absolutely not.
We’d have to observe.
Strategize.
Read the room.
Which, luckily for everyone at this camp, was our specialty.
“Alright,” I said, turning to my siblings. “Phase one: recon. We find out if Nico likes someone. No meddling. No glitter explosions. No skeleton-themed confetti.”
Mitchell looked personally offended.
“If—and only if—there is mutual potential,” I continued, “then we step in. Subtly.”
A few of them exchanged skeptical looks. Subtle wasn’t exactly our brand.
But this?
This wasn’t just about romance.
Nico had carried the weight of the world—literally—at one point. He’d survived Titans, giants, Tartarus, and the emotional equivalent of…grief. A lot of it.
He deserved something that didn’t hurt.
I glanced once more at January 28 circled in pink ink.
Yeah.
This was going to be a challenge.
But the best love stories always were.