Fic: Kiss a Boy in Tokyo Town, Percy Jackson [Part 4/7]

[antistar_e]

Part 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7

The answer is -- quite a while.

He isn't sure how it happened, but it stops being Saturday and starts being Sunday, and stops being Sunday and starts being Monday, and to be fair, there probably isn't a lot he could tell you about either day that doesn't involve Nico.

It has been almost a full twelve months since he's done anything like this, been able to do this, that it takes the whole weekend before he stops hesitating that little amount before he kisses Nico, as if to ask, is this okay? Can I do this? And he does kiss Nico a lot, because he can, because it's nice -- it's more than nice, it's amazing -- to be able to come up to a person no matter what they're doing, get right into their personal space, watch their pupils dilate in order to focus on you, and know you can kiss them and they'll kiss you back, and do so.

And Nico -- Nico does the same thing. Stripping the keys from his hand that first day, after they get home from Hase, fisting his hands in the fabric of Percy's hoodie and dragging their mouths together, to straddling him in the armchair while he's trying to watch a dubbed version of SpongeBob Squarepants, to slipping up behind him while he's shaving, making him jump.

"The hell -- Nico, watch it!"

"What are you going to do?" Nico murmurs against the shell of his ear, spreading his hands flat against Percy's chest, and even through the cotton of his sleep shirt, he can feel each finger, separate and distinct and too warm. "You can't cut yourself. Now get that stupid stuff off your face -- I want to stick my tongue down your throat and I'd rather taste you than the shaving creme."

As far as he's concerned, they'd never leave the apartment if they didn't have to -- the Japanese have this miserable idea that kissing should never be done in public, which Percy is okay with on some level, because it means keeping Nico inside with him, his fingers around the back of Percy's neck and their mouths twisting around each other, but Nico has other ideas.

"Oh, come on," he laughs, pulling back the seashell strings as Percy rummages for something microwavable out of his freezer. "You haven't taken me to any good Japanese joints yet, dude. I thought that was supposed to be part of the culture experience."

Percy gives him a strange look. "Are you telling me to take you out on a date?"

The tips of Nico's ears go red, but he doesn't drop Percy's eyes and grins wider. "Yes. It's an order."

So they go to this nice dim sum place (and when he says that, he means that it's the only dim sum place that he's ever tried, so by 'nice,' he really means that he has nothing to compare it to) that Percy usually passes on his way to the laundromat, and Nico only manages to make an idiot of himself half the time, which is an improvement over normal. He makes Nico pay ("you are a lousy date!") and then, when they're standing outside under the eaves, Percy gives him a thoughtful look and goes, "You haven't had a Japanese crepe yet, have you?"

"Do I want to?"

"Yes," Percy nods firmly. "Yes, you do."

There's a creperie in the department store where all the campers do their shopping, and Percy sends Nico to a table in the back corner of the tiny, fast-food like place, and cheerfully chats up the bored-looking college kid behind the cash register.

"Holy crap," is Nico's comment when Percy comes back with a Japanese crepe and hands it over to him, his eyes nearly as wide as the portrait of Minnie Mouse behind him. "I thought crepes were, like, this pancake-thing with some Nutella or sugar filling or something. What the hell is in that thing?"

"Ice cream, what looks like some whipped cream, maybe, strawberries, bananas, chocolate sauce, a graham cracker, and I think there's some cereal in the bottom, too."

"Holy crap," says Nico again. Then, more logically, "How does one go about eating these things?"

Percy grins, undaunted, and proceeds to wait while Nico figures it out. It takes about four minutes and just as many bites before the crepe tries to fall apart, smearing chocolate sauce all over the side of his mouth and his cheek and spilling strawberries onto the paper wrapping.

Happy that his brilliant idea and his patience have been well-rewarded, Percy moves in, pulling his wrought iron chair to the other side of the table so that he can lean in, dragging his tongue up the side of Nico's face.

Nico looks at him wide-eyed, his breath hitched in his throat and a dollop of whipped cream smeared across his upper lip. "Did you just -- did you just lick chocolate sauce off of me? By the gods, do people actually do that?"

Percy says something, he isn't sure what, it could have been anything, because he's planting a hand on the edge of Nico's chair and leaning the rest of the way in. The kiss is messy and involves way too much confectionary, but there's nobody who can see them and it goes on for awhile.

Monday afternoon, Percy has to run practice at Camp Half-Blood. He does so poorly in combat that even Kitty Lane, who hates handling swords in case she'll break a nail, manages to land a direct blow to his chest, which surprises her more than it does him: he feels silly, weightless, and disconnected in a way, like he had put his shirt on and his shoes on and then forgot to take himself with him on his way out the door, leaving it instead with Nico, napping like a cat in the armchair. And the strangest part about it is that he doesn't even have to explain himself: Harry Farlander from the Hebe cabin goes, "Dude is so getting laid," and everybody else nods and responds, "ahhhh," which is proof that way too many of the campers are growing up and need to stop it, it's creepy.

Nico meets him when he comes in the door: he tosses his keys somewhere to the side, doesn't even bother to see where they land, just as Nico's fingers curl around the hem of his shirt -- it's so easy to just let it slide up over his head, to sway back into Nico's center of gravity as his shirt joins his keys, wherever they may be.

"How was practice?" Nico asks, hands coming up to cradle his face.

"I have no idea," Percy replies, and pushes him up against the door.

On Wednesday, they go back to going places -- never quite as far as Tokyo, or as Hase, because Percy isn't so worried anymore that he'll turn his back and Nico will have slipped back to the Underworld, so he doesn't feel like he needs to show him the best parts of Japan first. But he takes him around locally, all the little places he's seen by simple osmosis of living here, but never really had an excuse to see, not until he had company to show it to.

Weeks slide by like this, with Japan spinning and whirling all around them, a storm of neon lights and crowds and the click-clack of chopsticks and trains coming and going. Nico spars with Percy at practice at Camp Half-Blood, bone clubs against Riptide, until they're both panting and exhausted, and it's easy, then, to fall into each other in the quiet of the armory, laughing and trying to catch their breath.

Nico makes a few more cracks about Percy being a lousy host who never takes his guest out to eat, but it becomes a moot point when Nico discovers onigiri. They pick some up from the 7-11 by Percy's house as a quick-type lunch on their way somewhere else, and Nico immediately decides he doesn't want anything else as long as he lives. Percy doesn't get it, personally: it's just rice with filling of some kind.

"Weren't you just here earlier today?" goes the girl who mans the cash register one evening, forgetting her role momentarily as Nico stomps back to the refrigerated section with the air of someone about to uncover buried gold, and startled by the unexpected show of personality from her, Percy laughs, which makes her grin.

"You know," he says later, watching Nico put the 7-11 bag in the fridge. "I like that you would probably sell your first-born for tuna onigiri. In fact," he steps closer, and instinctively, Nico turns to meet him, flattening his back against the fridge door, his eyes inky bright and curious. "I think I like everything about you. Especially the way you kiss. I really, really, really like the way you kiss me."

And it's the fact that Nico looks at him then, his eyes flashing and his expression so completely wrecked, naked with want, for him, and Percy hasn't even put a hand on him, that finally breaks him.

They have days, weeks yet to go in which to learn this, long, hazy nights on Percy's pull-down bed, in which they will learn how to undo buttons and slide out of boxers without tangling their hands in each other's, how to kiss and move and twine legs and arms without awkward bumping or elbowing each other in the stomachs or hips, how to made it so, absolutely, ridiculously, shudderingly good.

But not right now. Right now, they need to fumble, take their time, clumsy with wanting so much. He moves slowly, so slowly, fingers stroking the line of Nico's hip as he kisses each bit of skin exposed, reveling in the fact that he can, that Nico is here, with him, and he doesn't want to do a thing to spook him. He wants so desperately not to disappoint.

He's felt like this once before -- just the once.

He remembers, not so long ago, when he really wasn't much younger than he is now, the first time he did anything like this with Annabeth. When, out of the blue, while they were kissing in the quiet of his room some Saturday afternoon, she just slid a hand down her body and started undoing the buttons of her jeans, and he was struck dumb and blind and wondering what on earth had he done or said that day that would make him worth this, and he remembers being so careful, as attentive as he could be to everything, wanting to make it good for her, so that maybe she'd think this, with him, this wasn't so bad, and she'd want to maybe do it again sometime, or as often as possible.

And this is different, but the need is the same: the desperate, focused instinct to not screw this up, to keep this person here, with him, as long as possible.

"All right?" he murmurs at some point, combing his fingers through Nico's dark hair.

Nico turns his head restlessly, looking at him like he's a moron. "All right?" he echoes, and pushes himself up, looking down, his mouth wet and his eyes glittering like beetle shells. "This, this, this -- you are better than all right," and there's something in his voice that Percy thinks he recognizes, thinks maybe he's heard before. He wraps his arms around Nico's waist and pulls him close, wondering if really, really, there was anything more worth living for than this.

| --- | --- |

Percy knows he's asking for it when he takes Nico to the arcade, knows he's been putting this moment off, and when Nico sees what their destination is, he pumps his fist into the air and crows, "I will own you at this!"

And Percy says, "A little cocky there, aren't you?"

And Nico laughs, a glint in his eyes when he says, "Yes, but you're forgetting. I grew up in the Lotus Casino. My earliest memories are of arcade games -- you don't stand a chance."

And Percy puts up a best a fight as he can give. The Japanese are absolutely king when it comes to competitive gaming -- anything that could possibly be turned into pixels and a scoring platform, they've done it, and they spend the entire afternoon moving from one console to another. For about an hour, they get caught up in a dance competition with a couple of eleven-year-olds, and at the end, they console each other with the fact that it's okay, the kids have been playing this since they were old enough to tail their mothers to the department store and they're obviously just masquerading as human -- any other circumstances, and Percy and Nico wouldn't have been completely owned by a couple fourth graders. Totally.

At one point, needing to rest their trigger fingers after a particularly exhausting round at one of the first-person shooter games, Nico finds the whole assortment of claw machines.

He turns to Percy, his eyes bright and his eyebrows raised.

"-- What," goes Percy, not liking this look at all.

"I should win you some kind of prize from one of these," drawls Nico with slow thoughtfulness. "Something like --" he looks around, and points, "That."

Percy looks over at the carefully-arranged assortment of Stitch plushies, each one bigger than his television and dressed in little outfits that vary between cute and faintly homicidal, and shoves at the side of Nico's head, laughing, "Lay off, man, I'm not your girlfriend."

Nico flutters his eyelashes mockingly. "You mean you don't want me to win you a token of my affection?"

"Oh, gods, get me out of here."

Nico does wind up winning the Stitch, which Percy flatly refuses to carry under pain of death (har har, says Nico), but they also wind up successfully knocking down a box of candy, a few novelty finger puppets, and an anime figure from a show they've both watched (they might have used their powers for that one.) It is, all in all, a good day in the eyes of a claw machine pro, even if it does cost Percy a week's salary.

"Okay, okay, last one," goes Nico, picking a game close to the exit that at first glance looks a lot like Rock Band, only with great big bongo drums. "Last one. If you win, you get my loot and official bragging rights. If I win --" he glances around the arcade, trying to find a suitable punishment. He grins, predatory. "Dude. If I win, we have to get our picture taken in one of those photo booths."

"You're on!" laughs Percy, because -- banging things with sticks? How hard can it be?

He really has nobody to blame but himself when he loses spectacularly.

Nico, of course, chooses the girliest-looking photo booth he can find: the one with bright, glittering pink customizations for each picture, designed to offend anyone that doesn't have the sensibilities of a four-year-old girl; sparkles and fairies and promises that it can make them look like pretty princesses.

"Is this how you get into the pants of all your dates?" Percy asks him, sarcasm layered on thick, as Nico drops the coins into the machine a little too gleefully.

He grins up at him, cheeky. "I dunno. I've never taken anyone out on a date before."

Percy blinks at this. " -- never?" he goes, surprised, because Nico's kisses have been bold, confident, and possessing from the very beginning, like Percy's mouth and hands and hips have always been his, like he's already comfortable with the stubble on his chin and the curve of his Adam's apple and the flat panes of his chest -- all unfamiliar territory to Percy before this.

"Never," Nico confirms with the kind of look on his face that makes several wires in Percy's brain fizz. "I mean, I figured out what I was when I was thirteen. Didn't really have anybody to come out to, so I was saved that whole awkward deal, and also found out there's a very narrow pool of living queers in the Underworld. As in, I am the only one."

Percy's fingers catch at the hem of Nico's shirt, rolling it between his fingertips. "So what did you do?"

Nico's grin broadens. "What do you think I did?" he asks, and when Percy splutters, leans in to wrap his arms around his neck, adding in a low murmur, "It wasn't as lonely as it sounds. After all, I've had you ---" A touch, the pad of his finger feather-light against his lips. "-- it's been just you, actually, since the day you crawled out of the River Styx. That's when it clicked. And you -- you've been in every fantasy since I knew what a fantasy was." His breath stirs the hairs at his temple. "Do you want to hear the things I've wanted to do to you?"

Percy draws in a shaky breath, a throb of lust dizzy between his temples. "By the gods, Nico, don't say things like that," he whispers, and pushes him backwards into the photo booth.

They wind up not being able to print any of the photos they take, which is okay, really.

| --- | --- |

It's easy, sometimes, to forget that he's a son of Poseidon and Nico is a son of Hades, and that they're not just two boys heady with the idea of each other, fumbling around like teenagers, careless enough with their want to steal kisses in the dark corners of rooms and on the platform at the train station when they think no one is looking.

It astonishes him, just how easy it is for him to forget that they're not like everyone else.

The first Saturdays of every month are field trip days at camp: those who have managed to complete all their chores and stay out of trouble long enough to actually have some points stored up can cash them in and go with Percy on an excursion somewhere -- to the movies, to a festival, to a concert, wherever they vote to go just to get out of camp.

This time, they pick karaoke, and since the attendance is determined by who's behaved best, pretty much the entire Hermes cabin has to sit it out, while every single member from Athena is present, and it's really only the kids from Athena who can go to a karaoke bar and promptly sit down at a table and pull out their calculators. Percy passes them, catching bits and pieces of "and the radian of," "damn, I missed a calculation somewhere," and, "hey, guys, do you think we can download porn onto these things yet?" and takes a moment to appreciate how truly bizarre his life is.

Busy chaperoning, he doesn't notice that Nico's disappeared until Jennifer Matsueda sidles up next to him, going in her most icy sweet voice, "Where's your boyfriend?"

Up on stage, Miranda Farlander and her older brother Harry are shamelessly belting out some old Katy Perry ode to lesbian exhibitionism, to enthusiastic cheering from the audience.

Percy scowls. "He's not my --" And realizes it's a moot point.

But Nico isn't lingering around the drink bar, nor is he in the restroom, and when he passes Jennifer again in the crowd, she gives him a knowing look that makes him want to elbow her into the nearest burly-looking person, but he always wants to beat up a child of Ares, so this impulse is easy to ignore.

He checks outside, but only finds Kitty Lane, standing on the curb, smoking a cigarette with her boyfriend from Sagami Ono. "Everybody smokes in Japan!" she reacts, defensively, when she sees him. He scowls at her to let her know what he thinks of that, but lets her, because she got mail from home the day before -- a "return to sender" with government postage, regretting to inform her, recipient deceased. Her eyes are red-rimmed, and he doesn't think it's from the smoke.

He does find Nico, eventually, in the back hallway that leads to a storeroom, crouched down next to a girl who's taking in great big, shuddering sobs and trying to muffle them into her knees. She cannot be over the age of thirteen. Nico looks awkward, but determined, stroking her hair where it tumbles out of her headband. Percy can hear him murmuring, "It's okay, it's not your fault. He didn't -- he didn't -- you couldn't have saved him, and he's sorry, so sorry. He didn't realize how much you'd miss him,. He wanted me to tell you that."

Even with the language barrier, some of this sentiment must have leaked through, because she stops trembling quite so hard.

Percy leaves them there, the anonymous Japanese girl and the boy who can talk to dead people, and returns to chaperoning the other campers.

| --- | --- |

The fact that Nico is a boy should concern him more than it does. He's had to solve the riddles of the Oracle five years in a row, get his mother's blessing on sacrificing his mortality, and conquer a Titan wearing the face of a friend -- that Percy is a boy and Nico is a boy doesn't seem like much of a problem in comparison.

It's at around this time that he stops introducing Nico as, "and this is my cousin."

My friend, Nico, from America, he tells the head chef at the take-out place that does fantastic potstickers, when he says, "Oh, Jackson-san! Who's your company?" and they joke for a few minutes about American tourists, and how Percy was just the same when he first came, doe-eyed and stumbling over the proper forms of address, while Nico stands to the side, looking perplexed and uncomprehending.

My friend, he thinks, as they stop at a railroad crossing and, impatient, Nico picks apart the knot holding the take-out bag together, and Percy grumbles, can't you wait until we get home? and Nico pops a potsticker into his mouth and goes, Are you kidding? and doesn't even have the decency to offer Percy one, so Percy has to step in close, hand snaking into the bag to fish one out, and at his proximity, Nico's nostrils flare and he feels dizzy with it, the boundless affect he has on this man, that this man has on him, and he almost doesn't notice when the railroad crossing lights stop flashing and the arms go up.

My friend.

How did that happen?

And what changed? Me, or him?

| --- | --- |

All of this happens around and in between the days where they do nothing, go nowhere; days that just happen, when one or the other just sleeps on through until it's noon and kind of too late to really make plans for a day-trip anywhere, so one or the other shrugs and they go back to bed, where they can trace each other's skin with lazy fingers, roll around until all the sheets have been pushed to the floor and the only thing covering them is the other's body, lips, hands, and Percy, bent to the lines of Nico's skin and mouthing into the jut of his hip bone, would you lose control of your powers if I begged you to, would you bring this building down, mortar by mortar, if I asked? We could, you know -- you'd drive me to drown us all, just with this, just like this. Could I do the same to you?

Nico waves him off, dismissive, his eyes a gleam of white in the darkness and his voice all but a purr, telling him that sex with him isn't that impressive.

The challenge thrills all the way down into his gut, and some of it must show in his face, because Nico's beginning to grin, slow and feral, and Percy hooks a hand under his ankle and drags him across the mattress.

And he's invincible, right, took a dive in the River Styx, yada yada, but he swears, sometimes, when nothing much is happening -- he catches a glimpse of Nico, head thrown back, laughing at some commercial on television he can't even understand, when he's arguing vehemently that he definitely did not double-dip with the chips, or when he's absently fingering the beads of Bianca's name at his neck -- that he feels like maybe his heart's been torn from his chest, because he's sure, he's so sure he can feel it beating between the ribs that's opposite his.

"Most monsters are too stupid to realize that your head is your weakest target," he tells the half-bloods at practice, striking out lightning-fast to cuff -- gently -- at Kitty Lane's skull. "They barely have any brains, so it doesn't occur to them that you do. Therefore, they will nearly always go for the heart." Another strike, and Harry Farlander of the Hebe cabin staggers back a step. "So. Whatever you do, never leave your heart open, or chances are you'll wake up dead."

And yeah, he thinks, somewhere when late has started to become early, and Nico's weight is drowsy and pliant and pressing him back into the mattress. It goes something like that.

It goes something like that, and Percy feels hopeless and homeless and a little like he's been struck blind, and he thinks everyone should see it, should stare at him when he walks down the street and see the way everything's rushing all around him like waves crashing upon the rocks, and then Nico does something -- raps a knuckle to his forehead, or slips his hand into his back pocket absently, like he can't tell the difference between his own back pocket and Percy's and even if he does, knows it doesn't matter -- and everything straightens out again nicely, leaving nothing in him but the want, as clear as water.

He curls his hand around the back of Nico's neck, kissing him until their mouths taste the same, and all he wants, all he wants, is to be able to do this, again and as often as possible, for the rest of his life.

| --- | --- |

"You can get there from here, right?" he asks, for what is probably the third time, when Nico comes up to him after haggling extensively with the ticket teller machine -- to no avail, of course, because no matter how the son of the god of wealth insists, it will still be 450 yen to where he's going -- weaving through the crowd to where he stands, out of the way by a pillar.

Nico rolls his eyes, stuffs his change in his back pocket. "Yes, mother," he says dryly.

Percy reaches out to give a playful slap to the side of his face, resisting the urge to tease him again about insisting on taking the train ("Why can't you just shadow travel?" "And arrive tired out of my skull? Great first impression that'll make.") "You know you can still stay with me as long as you want, right?" he goes, nonchalant.

"Yeah, right, because that's exactly what I want to do with my life -- slum off the savior of the world."

He grins. "I thought it was lame to use the 'savior of the world' schtick."

"You're lame," Nico retorts, instinctive, and they snort themselves into a laugh.

"Don't kill anyone, yeah?" And Nico shoots him an incredulous, disbelieving look, like that shouldn't be the first thing that Percy should caution him about. Their lives are absurd, yes, but. Really. "No, man, I'm serious. Well, unless the whole thing turns out to be a trap and your potential employer is actually some kid of Echidna. Or Dick Cheney. In which case, go right ahead."

"Sure, and then I'll just ring you up and be like, 'hey, want to bring a shovel? No, don't ask questions.'"

"And why would you be asking me to bring a shovel? You are a shovel."

"Gee, thanks. Flattery will get you everywhere."

Percy knows he has to be grinning wide and vaguely idiotic, but he can't help himself. He flicks at Nico's forehead with a finger. "You should go. The rapid express will be here in five. You know your stop, ri--" he stops when Nico goes, "Really!" and reaches out, fisting the lapel of Nico's one and only nice suit and dragging him close for a kiss.

"Don't forget to bow," he mumbles, and kisses him again. "Always make sure you address the interviewer as -san." Another kiss, lingering this time. "Talk to him, not the interpreter." One more, until the chill of Nico's mint toothpaste is his as well. "And for gods' sake, don't act like a jerk."

Nico laughs into his mouth. "So, don't act like myself, then."

"Oh, hell no. That's for me to handle. Pretend not to be a jerk with everyone else, okay?"

"I have to go!" Laughing, Nico disentangles himself from Percy's hold, and gets a few steps before he turns back with a "oh, hell," grabbing Percy by the face and kissing him soundly. Then he's gone, waving a hand behind him and a, "I'll see you at dinnertime, yeah?" shouted over the noise of the crowd, and he disappears through the turnstiles.

Percy shakes his head, amused, his mouth wet, and heads off down the escalator.

When he gets home, he climbs the stairs with a vague kind of lethargy, wondering in an idle way if there's anything good on television -- and by good, he means something simplistic enough for him to understand.

He unlocks the door to his apartment and steps in, only to immediately come to a halt. There's a suitcase sitting right by the door, blocking the cubby-holes for his shoes. He stares at it for a couple heartbeats, as if that will make it disappear, or suddenly stand up and explain itself. Slowly, he closes the door behind him. When he does, there's a noise from the kitchen, like someone flipping the pages of a book.

His head jerks up, and he steps up, lifting the strings of seashells that make up the fake-door to the kitchenette, keys still in his hand and the other going for the pocket with Riptide, only to freeze half-way there.

It's Annabeth -- leaning against the kitchen sink, head tilted to one side as she absently combs her fingers through her hair, the other hand holding a folded-back magazine in front of her face.

Noticing him, she lowers the magazine.

"Did you know that geisha used to fashion their hair to mimic the Pagoda in Kyoto? It says so right here; it would take almost half-a-day to complete some of them. Architecture! In hairstyling!" She scoffs, incredulous, and tosses the magazine down onto the counter. "I never would have thought of it."

"-- I, what," Percy manages, and then, a heartbeat later, "Your hair! When did your hair get so long?"

Bemused, she grabs a handful of it, pulling it away from her body so she could inspect it. The ends are ratty and a little ragged, but it flows, straight and long and blonde, down the slender curves of her body; the ends hanging a mere inch or so above the hem of her sweatpants. It looks thinner than it actually is when it's down, which Percy supposes is because it's so long (and when did that happen?) "Yeah, I suppose," she says in a particularly patient voice, like she's used to dealing with idiotic questions from him, which -- he remembers with a jolt -- she is, because it's Annabeth.

Annabeth. In his kitchen.

In his kitchen, in Japan.

"I've been thinking about cutting it, actually," she comments idly. "I thought ... I dunno, I guess I thought they could make a wig out of it or something. For my sister," she shrugs, offhand.

He blinks at her. "So, wait. Your sister, she's --" and he stops, awkward, not sure how to finish the sentence. He doesn't want to admit that he really, truly assumed that the only way for Annabeth to come to visit him would be after a funeral. When there stopped being anything to stay in America for.

She gets what he's saying though, and smiles. "No, no, she's fine. Well, fine. She finished treatments two weeks ago and now I guess we get to bite our nails for the rest of her life and hope she doesn't relapse." She sounds weary at this, and Percy's heart gives a throb of sympathy for her; he knows what it's like to love someone so much that you're in fear for their life every minute of every day -- it had been his entire existence from the time he was eleven until his sixteenth birthday.

"Right," is what he says out loud. "That's good."

Silence falls between them for a long, awkward moment. Percy shuffles his weight to the other foot, not sure what to do, and there it is -- that familiar flash of exasperation in Annabeth's eyes.

"Seaweed Brain," she goes, and his heart gives one great leap in his chest. "You do realize I was just on an eleven-hour flight, right? And I haven't slept in longer than that and the entire way, I sat to this noxious woman who insisted that I listen to every horrible travel experience she's ever had, and I had to dip into my college savings to afford this trip to see my stupid hero boyfriend, who can't even be both--"

She cuts off, because he crosses the kitchen in one great bound, snatching her up into his arms and spinning her around. She laughs, bright and happy and a little too loud in his ear, but he doesn't care, because her arms are around his neck and when he puts her down she crushes herself to him like she can hug herself into his bones.

"Gods, I missed you," she breathed into his neck.

"How long are you here for?" he wants to know, a little breathless -- his lungs are constricted against his ribs, his heart feels so big.

"Just two weeks," she goes, and at his expression, barks with laughter. "Not all of us can just up and move to the other side of the planet, Seaweed Brain. See, some of us can string more than two thoughts together occasionally, and we need more time to consider these things --"

"Oh, shut up," he says, and kisses her.

He has just enough time to think, her mouth isn't as big as -- before he forgets how he was even going to complete that statement, because she's kissing him back, and the absolute, sheer familiarity of it sweeps everything out from under him like a tidal wave.

This is Annabeth, and he has kissed her hundreds of times -- once when he was fourteen and about to die, once on his sixteen birthday when he happened not to die, and then with increasing frequency from there -- and he hasn't had this in over a year, her chasing his smile across the bow of his mouth and into the corners, the feel of her hair underneath the flat of his hands, long and silky, with the small kink in it close to the nape of her neck where she usually has it up in a ponytail.

This is the girl he gave up immortality for -- not once, but twice, turning down both Calypso and then the whole pantheon of Greek gods in their turn, and being with her is like having a dozen warm, fuzzy childhood memories all wrapped up in his lap, purring. It's a favorite threadbare blanket, or some silly thing you won at a carnival when you were little sitting on a shelf, or being able to open the pantry doors and know immediately what you're going to find: all the things that make coming home like a holiday in and of itself, and trip to a time when everything was so much easier.

Percy hasn't realized how homesick he is until this moment, and just how much of his idea of home is Annabeth.

The kiss is beginning to shift into something that's long, breathless, made with lazy movements and silly noises -- all the things a good kiss usually is -- when they're interrupted, strangely, by something that lights up and begins to play a jingly, cheerful little tune from the pocket of Annabeth's sweatpants.

He pulls away, frowning, saying, "Is that what I think it --"

And that's whens she does the unthinkable, and pulls a cell phone from her pocket.

Percy leaps back with an exclamation of horror, his arms pinwheeling, and she immediately reaches out, seizing a hold of the front of his shirt and going, "No! No! Percy, chill out, it's all right -- monsters aren't going to come swarming, I promise! This cell phone -- we built it ourselves, it blocks the signal."

"Bwah?" goes Percy eloquently. "What? How?"

Quickly, because the phone is still buzzing in her hand, she says, "Do you remember Jake Mason -- he was the head of the Hephaestus cabin for that real short period before he stepped side to let Pearl take it, you know; right after Beckendorf --"

"Yeah," Percy jumps in when she begins to flounder, because Charles Beckendorf is someone that is still really painful for anybody to bring up around him: out of all the people that died that summer, Beckendorf is probably the one he feels the worst about, because the dude literally died for him, and Percy had paid him back for that sacrifice by being absolutely clueless to what was wrong with Beckendorf's girlfriend until it was too late. Totally not heavy stuff or anything, right?

"Right," says Annabeth, grimacing. "Well, he lives with his mom in Silicon Valley, which is -- quite literally -- about forty minutes away from San Francisco, so we meet up every now and then, and we came up with this idea to plate the microchip inside the phone with a celestial bronze alloy to try and deflect the monsters --" The chirpy little ring starts all over again, a little more impatiently than before, and she concludes, "And anyway, we put it all together and it worked. So far there's only this one, which isn't all that great because we still haven't figured out how to void long distance cell phone charges, but -- hello, this is the half-goddess Annabeth Chase speaking."

This last is delivered cheekily as she's flipping the phone open and bringing it to her ear.

She grins, "Hi, Daddy! Yes. Yes, I got here fine. And no... no, it really didn't -- Dad, it's a commercial flight, not a bomber plane, I'd be surprised if we deviated off the pre-approved course by three feet."

Percy watches the expressions flicker across her face -- polite disinterest, fond exasperation, each look more familiar to him than the last, and he leans in close to the mouth piece to say, cheerily, "Hello, Dr. Chase!"

"Yes, Dad, that was Percy. .. He is -- No, what, no, I'm not going to -- oh, fine," she puts the phone on her shoulder and informs him, "My dad wants you to know that it's only because you have proved yourself capable by saving the world from an evil Titan overlord bent on the destruction of peace and democracy that he's even considering letting me spend two weeks with you in a foreign country, and that the riot act he read you at senior prom still applies."

Percy's grin, he's pretty sure, is now so wide he's in danger of cracking his face in half. "Of course," he agrees, compliant, as he bumps her hip backwards, planting his hands on the kitchen sink, one on either side of her.

She narrows her eyes at him, daring him, and he leans in, brushing her cheek with a kiss on his way to her ear, where he places a longer, wetter kiss to the soft spot of flesh just behind her jaw.

"Sorry, Dad, wait -- what was that?" she goes, distracted, and he grins, beginning a slow trail of them across the tense tendons of her neck. "Oh, okay. No, that's good! Hey, do you guys want anything while I'm here -- .... no, Dad, I don't think they make those available to the general public, but if you want me to break in -- yeah, didn't think so -- !" She pushes at his chest suddenly, eyes warning, and he obediently lets go of the collar of her shirt, which he'd been trying to drag across her collarbone. He grins at her, biting his lip pointedly. "Yeah, Dad. Got it. I love you too. I'll be back soon. Uh-huh, take care."

She hangs up, lifting her hips up into his long enough to push the cell phone deep into her pocket and laughing against the shell of his ear.

"So," he says, voice a throaty murmur against her neck, fingers sliding just under the waist band of her sweatpants, and the faint gasp this elicits from her is enough to drive him to his knees, lips dragging down her sternum. "Now that you're here in Japan, what would you like to do?"

"Well, you could feed me." Her fingers thread into his hair, body curling around him like a comma, and they tighten compulsively when he presses his lips to the top-most rib right underneath her breast, where he can feel her heartbeat -- feel it begin to skitter, quick and in time with the shortening of her breath, all for him. "Considering the last thing I had to eat was that sad excuse for lunch they served us on the plane."

"I suppose --" a kiss to the fabric of her shirt, right below her navel. "I could make you something nice and fatteningly Japanese."

She levels a dry look down at him. "Hello, oxymoron, how are you?"

He thinks about it, thinks about what he has in his fridge, thinks about how she's looking at him, and then he's nodding and saying, "We'll feed you later." And walks her backwards towards where he hasn't even rolled up the bed.

| --- | --- |

In the end, they come to a mutual agreement that they really have no interest in cooking anything, not even a quick fry-up or something microwavable from the back of Percy's freezer, and eventually, he pulls himself from the bed with a last, lingering kiss to her hip, saying he'll go grab them some tea or soda or something from the vending machine half-way down the block, and maybe some fries from First Kitchen.

She waves him off with a loose, satisfied flap of her wrist as he tugs his rumpled jeans on over his hips, snatching up a t-shirt and tugging it on. It gets caught on his elbow when he tries to pull the door shut behind him at the same time, making him do a graceless little hop like a beheaded chicken. Finally, he pulls it down and heads out into the early twilight.

Just outside the front door, leg propped up on the bike rack and face obscured in shadow, is a boy in a well-pressed suit, tie tucked in, looking like he'd just come home from work. When Percy comes out, leaping down the steps in an easy bound, he pushes himself off, melting out of the darkness like he'd been etch-a-sketched, his lips quirked humorlessly.

Percy starts, surprised, stumbling over a crack in the sidewalk.

Then --

"Nico!" he goes, stupidly. "Hey."

And. Half a heartbeat later, "Oh."

"Yeah, oh." Nico's voice is soft, silky, which immediately makes all the hackles rise along Percy's shoulders in warning. "Remember me?"

"Nico..."

He doesn't wait, stepping in closer, his feet braced under his shoulders, the way you do when you're about to swing a sword. "How's Annabeth?" he asks, and the calm cracks only slightly, only in the faintest catch in his breath on the name.

Percy searches his face, over all the features as familiar as the ones in the mirror, and thinks that he doesn't look a thing like the Nico who uses the same knife for the peanut butter and the jelly, who jokes with dead people, who sometimes sits on the toilet seat and twists his death's-head ring so that the emblem pressed into the flesh of his palm, where he couldn't see it.

He shifts his weight, tense, abrupt. This is a Nico that's angry. Really, truly angry, not just childish and annoyed and easy to pacify like a disgruntled cat. He is furious, in a way that has every nerve in Percy's body on edge in a way it hasn't been for a long time.

This is Nico the ghost king, watching him with eyes inky and bright, whom he completely forgot the instant he saw Annabeth standing in his kitchenette, pulling her fingers through her hair in absent thought. This is Nico, the only living half-blood child of Hades the ultimate Judge, god of the underworld. Nico, who makes his sudden, powerful reintroduction into his consciousness, complete with every memory.

The gravity of what he's done hits Percy with all the weight of falling bricks.

"Hmmm," acknowledges Nico, when he says nothing. "That's what I thought." He spins on his heel, stalks away into the chain-link bike park with short, angry movements, his shoulders so tight in place that he's sure if he strikes them just right, Nico's whole body will shatter from the tension. He follows without meaning to, steps slow, hypnotized.

This is someone Percy barely knows. And yet -- and yet -- he knows his throat will heave if he licks it, and he makes the most wonderful, ridiculous noise when Percy kisses the sweat-damp curve of his spine. It's the same body, and an entirely different person inside, someone he hasn't provoked in years.

He wants to, and it's the same sharp, focused want he had that day the Amida Buddha told them they could move continents if only they worked together.

Nico chooses that moment to look over his shoulder, his eyes still as bright as bleached bones. At the expression Percy knows is all over his face, he goes still, suddenly wary.

Nico blinks. Percy moves.

"What are you -- no!" He blinks again, his voice a startled hiss, taking a staggering step backwards, too late, as Percy closes the distance between them in a single stride. "Don't you dare!"

And then Nico is against him, the whole long, skinny length of him, burning heat through his clothes, his muscles tight with anger, and Percy pushes into the lines of his body, pushes back, all knees and pressing thighs and Nico's chest like a bound drum against his own.

"Get off me --!" Nico's fists come up with inhumanly quick reflexes, but Percy knows those reflexes because they're his as well, and he snatches Nico by the wrists, and uses this leverage to shove him with straight-forward intensity against the wall of the building, sliding against him in a smooth, snake-like movement. All the breath goes out of Nico's body in a gasp. He writhes, but Percy is the same height and possesses more muscle mass and he knows this body, knows its weak points, and he uses his knees to pin his legs against the wall as well, so he's trapped, unable to escape.

Nico pants, his skin flushed from ears to neck, his eyes darting fast like a hummingbird between Percy's own, so he sees the moment the steel enters them.

His thighs move, locking one of Percy's legs between his own, and pulls their hips into place in a slow drag. Distraction shatters into Percy's eyes, and the look on his face intensifies.

"Ah," he all but purrs, and rolls his hips into him again, and involuntarily, Percy lets his weight sag against him. "Ah, yes. This. Is this all you wanted from me? Wanted me for the things your girlfriend wouldn't do for you? Still want me to do them?" He laughs, a breathy exhale against Percy's lips, but his words are ugly and sharp. "I can do things she wouldn't even --"

Percy kisses him, mid-word, catching his bottom lip, his teeth, the tip of his tongue. With a muffled noise of righteous indignation, Nico surges forward, a movement that in intention is meant to throw him off, but in execution only shifts his balance completely into Percy. His kissing back is less of a kiss and more of an attack, teeth scraping hard against Percy's mouth. The moan is helpless, caught somewhere between their tongues and breath, so that neither of them is sure who it issued from.

After a long, breathless moment, Percy retreats, his mouth raw and red and spread, and he can handle this fact, because Nico looks even worse. He breathes deep, listens for the sounds coming from the street, the parking garage, the front lobby.

He turns his eyes on Nico in the answering silence, and says, with a sweep in his gut like a choir falling, "Is that all right with you?"

He releases him, never breaking eye contact, and slides to his knees.

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