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“Dude, don‘t you have more than three shirts?” Percy asked one day as he watched Nico pull on a worn, black, skull tee.
“Nope,” Nico replied, popping the ‘p’ obnoxiously in a way he’d picked up from Percy. “What are you doing in my cabin, Percy?”
They had become proper friends in the months following the second Giant War, and Nico wouldn’t trade it for anything, even if a small part of him still ached. Friendship with Percy was great, even if it often involved both of them kicking awkward silences under the carpet and stomping down the lumps.
Percy grumbled something about cheeky brats and then hefted a bag of cookies. “Mom told me to give you these.”
Nico blinked, feeling his face soften. Sally Jackson really was a goddess on Earth. Nico held out his hands with due reverence, and Percy chuckled, placing the bag in his palms.
“You should come visit. Stelly misses you.”
“Your sister is six months old,” Nico retorted, unimpressed. He opened the bag of cookies and slowly nibbled on one, enjoying the chocolate chips and the perfect balance of crunch and chew. He didn’t mind the cookies being blue. That was just a Jackson thing, and Nico liked it.
Percy rolled his eyes, crossing his arms and leaning against the doorway. He was backlit, but Nico could still see the lopsided quirk of his lips. “Well, I would say I miss you, but I know that doesn’t move you.”
Nico snorted. After setting the cookies down, he tugged on his worn jacket and adjusted the sword hanging from his belt. “Fine. I’ll drop in when I have time. Now let’s go, I believe we have a sword demo in the arena.”
Percy knocked their shoulders together and grinned. “You’re going down, di Angelo.”
Throwing his head back, Nico laughed. “You’re on, Jackson.”
…
Two days later, Nico shadow-traveled to the fire escape outside of Percy’s room, almost startling Percy off the bed, where he sat cross-legged with a textbook in his lap.
“Would it kill you to use the front door?” Percy asked, but he was grinning as he picked up the fallen book and cracked open the window.
Nico smirked, climbing inside. “It would.”
“Bullshit,” Percy cackled. He poked his head into the hall. “Nico’s here!”
Sally came over with a baby on her hip, “Hi, sweetheart. How are you?”
“Doing well, ma’am,” Nico replied.
Estelle shrieked gleefully, so Percy took her from their mother and leaned closer so the baby could grab at Nico’s jacket, babbling like a brook.
Percy waggled his brows. “Told you Stelly missed you.”
Nico tentatively reached out, and Estelle grabbed his fingers with surprising strength, making him wince. “And we’re sure she’s not a demigod?”
“Definitely not,” Sally said, blowing a strand of hair out of her face. “Percy had already strangled a snake by this age. Estelle is much easier.”
“Gee, thanks,” Percy deadpanned, bouncing his sister.
Nico’s brows crept up his forehead, and he took a second to restrain the buried nerd in him that wanted to mention Heracles. He knew Percy loathed the guy for good reason.
“Noted,” he mumbled.
When Estelle started fussing, Sally took her back, cooing about nap time.
Alone again, Percy ushered Nico to sit on the small bed after he’d shoved some dirty laundry aside.
“Hold on a sec.” Percy turned, rummaging through a couple of cardboard boxes crammed in the corner next to a beat-up skateboard.
After a minute of rustling, he emerged with a victorious noise, holding up an armful of black fabric.
Nico looked at him unimpressed. “Are you taking up tailoring? Last I heard, the Athena kids had banned you from fiber crafts.”
“Ha-freaking-ha,” Percy grumbled, tossing a wad of black at his head.
Nico caught what turned out to be a shirt. He un-bunched it and held it up, taking in the Ramones album cover printed on the worn, but clean fabric.
“What—?”
“I’ve outgrown some of my old shirts, and I thought you might appreciate them,” Percy admitted, scratching the back of his head and then sitting down beside Nico with a lapful of black tees.
Nico hated to admit it, but when Percy wasn’t dressed in neon orange, their fashion senses overlapped by a wide margin. Just like their music tastes, minus the techno garbage Percy enjoyed and the opera Nico indulged in when no one from this century was around to judge.
Swallowing the sudden knot of emotion in his throat, Nico croaked, “Thanks.”
Percy huffed a small laugh. “It’s not much.”
“It is,” Nico said. He knew how tight finances were in the Jackson household. He knew that these shirts must have been Percy’s pride and joy. He could feel the care and maintenance in the fabric. “I’ll wear them until they fall apart,” he promised.
Percy snorted, flopping back on the mattress, making Nico bounce. “As long as you enjoy them, I’ll be happy.” He stretched, revealing a flash of skin at his waist and showing that his growth spurt appeared to be ongoing.
Nico may be inheriting more shirts in the near future.
“Oh, and next time Thalia is around, I’m taking you both shopping,” Percy said around a damned-contagious yawn. “There’s this charity thrift store a few blocks away that always has the best band tees. You two will love it.”
“The Salvation Army?” Nico asked. He’d seen a couple shops and shelters before while wandering the city.
“Nah, fuck them,” Percy spit. “Bigoted, piece of shit, fake charity.”
Nico blinked. “Oh…” Sometimes, in the haze of his past anxiety and the environment he’d been born into, he forgot that Percy was a New Yorker, raised by a punk-activist mother and surrounded by queer neighbors.
Even when Percy wasn’t wielding a sword and saving the world, he still managed to be Nico’s hero.
Clearing his throat, Nico held up a Rage Against the Machine tee and a Rolling Stones one.
Last year, right after the House of Hades, he’d implied that Percy was a bad friend, the kind who forgot about people. As if Percy hadn’t won a war, spent months in a coma, and then been unleashed as a homeless amnesiac on Camp Jupiter where he’d gone from one impossible quest to another and then the Pit and a second war.
Nico wished he could take those words back and burn them like he had the tropical shirt he’d gotten in Puerto Rico. Percy hadn’t deserved his ire.
“Percy?”
“Hmm?
“You’re a good friend,” he said, letting Percy hear the apology, even if it was too late. “Thank you.”
Percy smiled up at him, this expression softer than his usual grin. “Anytime.”