Fic: Kiss a Boy in Tokyo Town, Percy Jackson [Part 5/7]

[antistar_e]

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

Annabeth only looks amused when he returns to the apartment empty-handed.

He shrugs, makes some excuse about finding the vending machine only to remember he hadn't brought any yen with him, something about having other things on his mind, making him more scatter-brained than usual, and Annabeth laughs like he's complimented her, leaning into him for a kiss. If she can taste Nico on his mouth, if she can tell anything's different at all, well, Percy might be imagining the tiny frown between her brows. Or maybe she's just jet-lagged.

He watches her sleep that night, curled up on the mattress next to him, facing the wall. He traces the smooth, freckled curve of her shoulder, kisses her shoulder blade just to hear her mumble something about sea monkeys and shift her weight backwards a little bit, trying to find him.

Taking care not to lie on her hair, he presses his face into the nape of her neck. "I love you," he tells her, because it's true, it's true and it's a miracle she's even here at all, and he doesn't know what he's going to do.

By the next morning, the reality of it has faded, just far enough that he doesn't look at it too closely and can pretend it doesn't exist, cooking them some rice for breakfast in an absent-minded way. This earns him a funny look (which he's missed,) a long-suffering sigh (which he's missed,) and Annabeth taking over his kitchen and making them pancakes instead (which he hasn't missed, but could definitely get used to, and he didn't even know he had pancake mix in his cabinets.)

He takes her the long way to camp, his hand in hers, letting her see the strangeness of a foreign country firsthand -- the cars on the wrong side of the street, the different languages floating from open windows, the spindly writing and even the curbs are shaped differently enough from American curbs to be noticeable.

He introduces her to the young men at the gates at Camp Half-Blood, and there's a moment of fumbling between bowing and shaking hands and everybody laughs it off, their ears tinged red with embarrassment.

Inside the camp, Annabeth is an instant celebrity. To Percy, who is used to the hero-worship, it's almost funny to watch Annabeth flounder, unsure how to approach the attention of everyone who all seem to know her name, but she is easily forgiven -- everyone wants news from home, even the dryads in the trees and the naiads in the lake. Everybody has left somebody behind. Everyone's family is split. For a moment, when they each have a new detail to cling to, the separation isn't so painful.

Dionysus does, eventually, break it up, shooing them all off with a, "don't you have chores to be ignoring?" and a "let the lady have some room to breath, you're all animals." He glances back at Annabeth and mutters in a much softer voice, "It's good to see you safe, Angelica."

"Thank you, sir." He grunts something and wanders off.

Boss! It's Blackjack, making a low swoop over his head, his voice a high whinny of excitement. He lands close by, cantering a few strides to kill off his momentum as he circles back around. Boss, you have to come see it, my filly, she's growin' up so big -- oh! He stops, spotting Annabeth, and nickers in surprise. Lady boss! He-e-e-e-ey, long time no see!

"He's happy to see you," Percy translates for the perplexed Annabeth, as Blackjack does a little dance in place.

She flashes a quick smile. "Hi, Blackjack."

The pegasus gives a sudden toss of his head. Hey! Lady boss hasn't seen my baby girl, yet, has she? Oh, man, she's gotta! There's no better time -- her wings are comin' in all fluffy cute. C'mon! He turns around with a swish of his tail, trotting off across the field.

"He wants you to meet his daughter," Percy says to Annabeth, and adds low for only hear to hear, "I'd go with it if I were you. Every sneeze she takes is a miracle to Blackjack, don't try to tell him otherwise."

Annabeth, to her due credit, only lifts her eyebrows, politely surprised. "Blackjack has small pegasus children? My, they grow up so fast, don't they?"

"Oh, I know," says Percy with a mock sniffle of regret.

They trail after Blackjack to the stables, where they introduce Annabeth to the filly, whom Percy has to admit (after much prompting from Blackjack to the point where he knew it had to be unavoidable) is named Poker Face.

Annabeth's eyebrows jump up her forehead. "Really?"

Blackjack snorts, correctly identifying the sarcasm in her voice. Hey. I like Lady Gaga, okay? She's a fine dame. For a human.

"She's beautiful, Blackjack," is all Annabeth can say to that, possessing far more self-control than Percy ever has.

Poker Face, if anything, seems just as patiently long-suffering with her father as they are. She scuffs her hooves against the stable floor as Percy translates for Blackjack, embarrassed by the attention but still eyeing Annabeth with shy curiosity -- it's the exact same expression she gets from the half-bloods, those that fought in the battle for Olympus and those that didn't, and it's a little strange to see it on a pegasus.

He sees movement in the corner of his eye. He turns his head, and goes cold all over. Nico's standing there, surrounded by the shadows; they bleed off his shoulders in long strips like ragged bits of tissue paper and catch around his legs, giving him the appearance of a disembodied phantom.

He glances sharply over at Annabeth, but she hasn't noticed.

He looks back, and Nico raises an eyebrow, daring, waiting.

Before he knows it, he's turning back around, catching Annabeth's elbow. "Hey --" he goes, voice contrite and foreign to his own ears. "I forgot -- I need something for practice this afternoon and I left it at home. I'll be right back, all right?"

"Sure." She flashes him a brief smile, then goes back to admiring the fluffy appendages that Blackjack swears are Poker Face's wings, though they look more like tribbles that have latched onto her shoulder blades like giant, feathery ticks. She's unassuming, not doing anything more than taking the words for face value.

When he looks back, Nico is gone, the space where he was nothing but a lengthening shadow, but the weight of his presence settles heavy in Percy's stomach. He says good-bye to Blackjack -- who doesn't even pause in his rendition of some story that's been totally blown out of proportions, and doesn't even seem to notice the loss of his translator -- and leaves the stables feeling like he can't feel the feet he's putting down in front of him. It's like he's not even in his own body anymore -- wherever he is, it's where Nico's at, and he's just waiting, impatiently, for his body to catch up to them.

He doesn't remember the walk back across camp, or if he says anything to the young men manning the gates or the woman who stops him in the lobby of his apartment building to tell him he has mail. When he unlocks the door and pushes it open, twilight has settled in his apartment; the lights are off and the maple syrup from breakfast is still on the folding card table. He toes off his shoes, shutting and locking the door behind him, and steps around the folding partition.

Nico's eyes snap up. He's a dark figure perched on top of the kitchen counter, too small in his bomber jacket and his legs crossed at the ankles, the orange and the green of his mismatched sneakers peaking out from underneath the cuffs of his jeans. He sits up slightly when Percy walks in, and he's wearing a t-shirt that says, "Greece Lightning!" with the emblem of Zeus throwing a thunderbolt.

"Nice shirt," Percy says, going for jovial or weakly joking and just coming out hoarse and a little lost.

Nico laughs shakily. "So."

"So?"

"So. What -- what are we going to do?"

Percy stares hard at the faucet. "What do you mean?"

"What do you mean -- what do you mean, Percy, what -- how are we going to --" his voice drops to a mere whisper. " --can you even look me in the eye?"

Percy does, instantly, and doesn't look away. Can't look away.

"Were you serious?" Nico says, still unable to raise the level of his voice.

"About what?"

"About still wanting me."

"I don't think so. No."

Nico's smile is as thin and brittle as bone. "Liar, liar, pants on fire."

"Yes," Percy breathes. Thinks of Nico, that very first day, laughing and saying, if you can't stand the heat, get out of hell. "Gods, yes."

"Annabeth. Are you -- what, are you going to break up with her?"

Percy closes his eyes, swallows hard. "I -- I -- Nico, her sister. She came all this way while her sister is sick -- I can't do that to her."

"You have to. You have to."

"I know." His eyes open again, catch on Nico's, and holds.

The look continues, Nico's eyes dark and fixed unblinkingly on him as he takes one step forward, then another, reaching out to nudge Nico's knees apart. One more step has his knees banging into the cabinets, but he scarcely notices because his body is flush against Nico's, the boy's legs locking around his waist and dragging him in like he never wants to let him go, arms coming up to wrap him up in a mirroring hold, clinging like a child lost in a storm. He buries his face in the long, tough line of muscle where Percy's neck meets his shoulder. Percy's breath comes out in a stuttering exhale, and his hands settle low on Nico's back, pushing in so hard it's as if he can press them into each other's skin, Nico's fingers scrabbling and fisting hard in the fabric of his shirt.

Nico's lips drag up his jaw. "Gods, this is so stupid --" he breathes out, voice shuddering. "So stupid, I can't believe I'm here, can't believe I'm about to say this because -- because -- oh, gods," his fingers fly up, involuntary, to clutch at Percy's hair, his hips shifting an inch forward as Percy leans him back, his spine bumping against the windowsill. "-- who says stuff like this, but -- but --" his nails scrap across Percy's scalp, bringing his face close enough to bite his chin, his bottom lip.

"But what?" Percy prompts, returning the favor with a series of kisses to the line of Nico's throat.

The words are murmured into his hair, fast and tumbling over each other. "But I tried to, Percy, I tried to go back home, back to the Underworld. But I couldn't. I can't help it, but I need it now -- I need it, I feel it in my bones, like earth, like death, that I need to be wherever you are, and I need to get there as fast as I can."

Percy looks up at him, the familiar red-flushed mouth and inky eyes, and responds, "Yeah. I know," and pulls their mouths down to meet.

And after that, it's a mess of things; Nico's jacket sliding off his shoulders (and straight into the sink; he whines, later, about how it took a week to get the smell of dishwater out) and Nico's fingers fumbling with his belt, their movements desperate, clumsy, and wanting in a way that only comes with the knowledge that your time is limited.

| --- | --- |

So it continues.

It's a strange sense of deja vu, standing with Annabeth at the automated ticket machines at the train station, helping her count out which coins she needs, watching her scowl at the maze of interconnecting train lines and rub at her temples, but when he's with her, it's so easy to forget he'd done this before, not even a month ago -- Annabeth is different, acts different, wants to see different things, looks at him different, and he forgets about Nico entirely, just reveling in being there with her.

Then, when she's off somewhere with her brother, Malcolm -- who, Percy is sad to admit, is more suited to showing off the kinds of things that a child of Athena would be interested in seeing, like the museums and the strange buildings in downtown Tokyo -- or up on Mt. Olympus, that's when Nico is there, in his home, and Percy has no idea how he could have ever forgotten this, how he could have ever thought he could live without it.

The days pass, slow and hazy and suspended, and Percy feels like he's on the top curving arch of a ferris wheel, just before everything starts to descend but you have a moment in which you forget that it is, when you feel nothing but yourself, high up in the air. Everything feels so strange -- Annabeth leaning into his side, her teasing laugh and bright grey eyes; Nico, catching him by his belt loops and pulling them together so their hearts pound against each other like relieved friends -- like he isn't really a part of it, like it's happening to someone else.

The first week of Annabeth's vacation slides away like this; her in the day, her at night, his world spinning on her axis, dizzy with remembering how it goes, and in the lull, the quiet moments, it's Nico in the silence of her absence, crashing into him like tides to the rocks, becoming more and more reckless.

One occasion, he comes out of the bathroom, toweling his hair dry, and finds Nico in the kitchenette, digging into a carton of ice cream as casually as if he'd been there all along, and Percy startles at the sight of him and goes "-- gods! Nico -- what are you --" his voice drops into an incredulous hiss. "She's right outside. She won't even be gone ten minutes, what --"

"Mmmm," interrupts Nico around the spoon in his mouth, eyebrows high. He sets the ice cream to the side and in an easy lope, crosses the room to weave his arms around Percy's neck, and licks a stripe up his Adam's apple with a chilled tongue. "It won't take that long, will it?" he points out, lips a surration against his jugular.

Yes, yes, he really is that easy. Percy gives in with a groan, spinning them around so he can shove Nico up against the bookcase and chase the flavor of vanilla and raspberries back into his mouth.

When Annabeth comes back, pretty much exactly ten minutes later, he's in the bathroom, and when she hears the water running, she calls, "You're still in the shower?" And teases him the rest of the day for being such a girl.

Another time, she shakes him awake too early in the morning and says, "Hey, listen, Malcolm's downstairs. We've got something we're going to work on on Mt. Olympus, okay? It'll probably only take a couple of hours for us, but time runs differently up there, remember, so don't panic if I'm not back for awhile, all right?"

"Why would I panic?" he mumbles, voice sleep-slurred. "You're Annabeth. You take care of yourself better than most other half-bloods I know."

He doesn't bother opening his eyes or turning over, but he can feel her rolling her eyes behind him. "True," she says, matter-of-factly, and he listens to her shuffle over on bare feet to the shoe cubby. "But I'd still like to pretend that you'd be worried if I went missing."

"You did that before, remember?" he tells her, too caught in half-sleep to check what he's saying. "Long time ago. I ran away from camp, joined a Quest I wasn't supposed to, let Nico's sister die, and bore the weight of the world on my shoulders, all for you. Still have the silver streak in my hair from that, y'know. Dye it, though. Don't you?"

"Yeah, I do," she replies, tone soft and a little wavering. "Have a good day, Seaweed Brain, and try not to say so many endearing things. I don't know what to do with you when you do."

The apartment door clicks shut behind her, and Percy falls back to sleep without thinking about it too hard.

When he wakes up, later, the curtains in the kitchen are open and he can see the sunshine, streaking through the cracks in the folding partition and catching on the seashells. He rolls out of bed, stretching, wondering for a second at the quiet of the apartment and then remembering, oh, right, Olympus. Annabeth. And takes a moment to be pathetically glad she takes her responsibility as the rebuilder of Mt. Olympus so seriously.

He's expecting it, but it still sends a hot thrill of surprise straight into his stomach when he sees Nico in the kitchen, half-bent to study the fridge door. There isn't much on there -- a pamphlet or two from nearby Vietnamese take-outs, a political satire cartoon that features a bright blue Empire State Building that he brought from home, and a post-it from Annabeth with the number of her mystical, monster-invisible cell phone.

He steps up behind him, wrapping his arms around Nico's scrawny chest, laughing huskily when he jolts in surprise.

"I was just --" he starts, turning his head, but Percy doesn't stop to see what he was just; he kisses him; the angle is awkward and he can't do much more than suck at his bottom lip and his tongue when it darts out to lick against his. Nico turns around in the circle of his arms and the kiss deepens, going straight into thorough and filthy without passing go or collecting $200.

"All day?" he murmurs, pushing them impatiently through the strings of shells, destination immediately obvious when Percy feels the backs of his legs hit the mattress.

He catches Nico's bottom lip between his teeth and holds onto it, pointedly, just to feel the way Nico's weight sinks into him bonelessly. "Yeah," he manages, muffled, and licks away across his teeth.

Nico pushes him backwards, severing the contact abruptly. On his elbows on the mattress, Percy frowns up at him questioningly, but the look fades away into something else entirely when Nico crawls over him, pressing him back into the warmth of the sheets that hasn't faded yet. "Good," says the son of Hades hoarsely, as Percy hooks a leg over his hips. "Because I think today I'm going to make you flood the place."

Percy laughs, and Nico falls into him like a body into a grave.

| --- | --- |

And there are other moments, even quieter, darker moments, when there isn't even the whisper of one or the other beside him, when Percy remembers that things cannot go on like this. Pretend all he like, he's going to have to tell her -- he's going to have to break her heart. And how the hell, exactly, does one go about doing that? She's going to need an explanation, need rational and maybe even a Venn diagram and he doesn't have one. He can't even explain it to himself.

It'll flip on him the other way, too. Unbidden, he'll think of Annabeth, the way their hands fumble together when she gets her long hair caught in the zip of her jacket, the way she all but climbs the wall when she finds a spider, or the simple way she'll just lean into him when they're walking that last bit of distance from the train station to the apartment building, weary from a long day out and limping from the blisters on her feet, and he thinks that Nico doesn't stand a chance, not against what he has with Annabeth.

One week after she arrives, she sits with him in the waiting lobby at the dentist's, and the receptionist laughingly chides Percy on taking better care of his fillings -- it's not like his teeth are invincible and can take endless abuse, and if Percy could die of the irony of that remark, he totally would.

He's brought a book with him -- it's one of the Harry Potter variety, and probably one of three books that he owns, total, and Annabeth curls up in the chair beside him, resting her head against his upper arm as he cracks it open and tries to start reading. He gets as far as the second paragraph before he notices the presence of someone small and probably under school-age, nimbly climbing into the chair on his other side. They look at each other for a long moment before he asks, "What's that?"

The boy's mother, on her cell phone with something that sounds incredibly important, notices where her child's gotten off to and rushes over, apologizing profusely, but Percy laughs, tells her it's no problem at all and shows the book to the boy, explaining how in Western novels, the text moves side-to-side, left-to-right, contrary to how Japanese novels work; up-and-down, right-to-left.

It entertains the kid for all of about fourteen seconds.

Annabeth scoffs something along the lines of, "you're absolute crap at this, Percy," and takes the kid to where they have a block set available in the corner, and whereas she's pretty good at making a replica of the Brooklyn bridge, the boy's mostly just good at knocking it down.

And he braces his elbows on his knees and watches her, her long hair trailing across her shoulders and back to pool on the carpet, her grey eyes bright as she echoes the little boy's nonsense words.

"Will you stay?" he asks her, later, after he's gotten the same lecture from the dentist he did from the receptionist, and they're on their way home again, weaving the long way through the neon strip of Atsugi: the same path he took the night he ran into Chris Rodriguez. "I mean, will you stay in Japan?"

She sighs, bumping his shoulder with hers. "I want to, Percy. I want to. You can't ask for anything more from me right now."

She wants to pick up a Japanese culture magazine or two for her stepmother, who likes collecting things like that, and it's an easy thing to take her to the 7-11. When he walks in with one arm looped around her shoulders, the girl cashier -- whose name he should really know by now, and who apparently works twenty-four seven because he rarely ever sees anyone else -- gives him a dry look and says, "You certainly didn't wait very long before moving on, Jackson-san."

And he laughs at her and replies, "You are so lucky my girlfriend has no idea what you're saying."

Her eyes double in size and her voice flies up to that impossible pitch Japanese girls have, "Ehhh?! You mean she doesn't know about the boy you were kissing back by the sushi and the onigiri the other day -- yes, I saw you, you were very rude about it."

He gapes at her. "And you really need to get a life outside of this store."

To his amazement, she sticks her tongue out, and then flips her phone open to reply to a text.

"What was that about?" says Annabeth, bemused.

"This town is too small," he answers, and he wonders, with a cold swoop of his stomach, just how many people knew about him and Nico, and if one of these days, Annabeth will understand the remark.

Gods, he doesn't want to do it, but he also doesn't want someone else to do it for him.

The rest of the walk home is done in silence, Annabeth's steps in easy tandem with his own. Her hand fits into the small of his back, her fingers brushing ever-so-lightly on that single place on his spine that tethers him to mortality; just resting, just saying, I know you.

"Oh," she stops suddenly. "Crap. That's Argus's car."

Percy looks around. They're maybe a block away from home. "What's up?"

"Nothing. It's -- oh, crap. I completely forgot." She rubs at her face briefly. "No, hey, listen, I'll be right back, okay? I just have to -- it's nothing, it won't take long at all, okay?"

"Okay," goes Percy, bewildered.

"You don't mind, do you?" she looks up at him anxiously. "Did you have any big plans for today?"

He holds up the book he brought with him, his finger still bookmarking the third or fourth page. "I'll probably see if I can get any farther in this," he tells her, tone light, saying simply, I don't mind. You're the one who fixes disasters these days, not me. Go fix the plumbing on Olympus or whatever's gone wrong now.

She chuckles, stretching up on tiptoes to kiss his cheek. "I have my cell phone if anything happens."

"Mhhmm, because I foresee myself facing all kinds of incorrigible foes today -- maybe even some four-syllable words."

"Exactly. Your brain might explode," she agrees amiably, and he elbows her in the side in playful retaliation. "So take care of it. I like it too much."

And she turns around, trotting off down the street where Argus waits in a nondescript Japanese-made car -- which is roughly the size of a BMW bug if it had eaten a size-down mushroom from Super Mario. Again with the economical theme the Japanese have going.

He heads back up to the apartment, shuffling around aimlessly for a couple minutes: he brushes his teeth, picks up some laundry and wonders if he has enough dirty clothes to warrant a trip to the laundromat, thinks up a lesson plan for the next practice he has at Camp Half-Blood, and then -- for lack of anything better to do -- winds up doing exactly what he told Annabeth he would, and drops into the armchair to read. It's about as entertaining as it sounds; the words all appear to be doing some synchronized swimming routine on the page, and he's too busy listening for the sounds of someone sliding into existence out of shadow to try really hard at deciphering them.

The soft squeak the hinges on the front door make as it opens is so unexpected that he doesn't place the sound for a moment, and by then, it's closed again. He looks up, but yes, it's Nico, already shrugging off his jacket.

Percy blinks at him. "Did you just come in through the door?"

Nico shrugs, his shoulders hunched moodily up around his ears. He toes off his sneakers, kicking them into the cubby. "Yes. I even walked in the front lobby and came up the steps."

"Wow, really?" The sarcasm is layered thick on his voice. "You know, if you really wanted to try it like a human being, you would have knocked."

This just earns him an exasperated, raised eyebrow. "I am sneaking up here while your girlfriend is away. I don't think you get to complain."

"True," nods Percy, and decides that's enough with the small talk. He puts his book somewhere, it might have been the floor, he doesn't know, it's just that his hands are empty when he pushes himself to his feet, circling around the sofa to get to him. Nico's eyes are blazing, his arms already half-raised by the time Percy reaches him, so that he can fist his fingers in his hair as their mouths collide.

He licks his way in past Nico's teeth without waiting, hands at his waist, pulling at him urgently.

"What's the rush?" Nico's laugh is lost to a few muffled noises as Percy kisses him right through it, backing them up a few steps.

Percy replies, "I just got tired of waiting."

There's a blaze of something in Nico's eyes, and he goes, "Me too," as he tangles their ankles together, uses this to spin Percy around and shove him up against the wall. Something about the way he says it tells Percy he should pay attention, but his lips are already trailing across Percy's jaw, and with each slow drag, a few more of his brain cells fry up and become absolutely useless.

His hands scrabble at the natural-made handholds of Nico's face, dragging it up to his mouth so he can kiss him again, deep and thorough, letting Nico hum approval into his mouth.

He wants nothing more than this, for as long as he lives.

They pull away from each other, long enough for Percy to stroke his fingertips across Nico's cheekbones, admiring the blotchy flush that spreads from his mouth up to his ears and down his neck, disappearing underneath the collar of his shirt. His blushes always take so long to fade, and secretly, Percy really likes this: it gives him a semi-permenent look of having recently been ravished.

Nico looks at him intently, leaning in again to kiss a path down his neck, and Percy sucks in a breath when he feels Nico bite down, and it's so distracting that it takes him a moment to realize what Nico's doing, and by then, Nico's already doing it again to a spot just below it, rolling the skin between his teeth and sucking. He is going to have a hickey, he totally is.

"Hey!" He fists his hands in Nico's hair, wrenching him back far enough to give him a good shake, trying and failing so hard to ignore the hooded, dangerous look in Nico's eyes. The blood throbs across his skin, searing where his teeth had just been. "What are you -- Nico! That thing is going to be colossal! How am I going to explain that to Annabeth?"

A snort. "Dude. I am not telling you how to cover up your affair from your girlfriend." The flat of Nico's tongue licks a lazy stripe over the mark, before he bites down again, hard enough to make Percy hiss, his spine arching. Nico uses this to corner him further up against the wall, hips pressing hard into his and their hearts beating skittering fast like dragonflies underneath their clothes.

Percy gives up, letting his head fall back against the wall, feeling desire cloud hazily across his mind, fingers absently stroking the bones at the curve of Nico's neck.

He catches a flash of movement in his peripheral, a faint blur of yellow and blue and it's curious, because he's pretty sure it's not supposed to be there. Even with Nico licking across his collarbone, he manages to put his head on straight to look.

Annabeth is standing in the doorway.

Sobriety is immediate and as sudden as a slap to the face. Percy's fingers clench down hard on Nico's arms, pushing him back. Nico makes a soft noise of protest, tipping his head to the side to nip, ever so lightly, at the underside of Percy's chin, and Percy hisses, "Nico --! Nico! Nico, stop!"

He obediently straightens up, a movement that slides their bodies together in a way that seems over-the-top obscene, which is ridiculous because they both still have their clothes on (and, for the record, "at least we still have our clothes on" should never be the best recommendation he could give.) He turns his head, sees Annabeth, and blinks in a very slow way like a lazy fox, but he doesn't look surprised, and Percy should take note of that, perhaps, if his brain hadn't shorted out, because Annabeth is in the freaking doorway, wearing her favorite, worn pair of blue jeans and one hand still on the doorknob, and a look on her face unlike anything he's ever seen.

And Nico -- Nico is not moving away. Does he really have no clue that complete annihilation is about thirteen seconds away, unless they can come up with a convincing way of explaining this?

"Annabeth --" he starts, falters, and oh, gods, where is his ability to bluff his way out of things, he would really, really appreciate its help right now!

"Yeah," is what comes out of Annabeth, who can't seem to tear her eyes away, not even when Nico swirls the tip of his finger over the smooth button on Percy's jeans. "Yeah, I hate those days when you wake up on the wrong side of your sexuality."

"No! It's not like -- I'm not --"

"Not what?" cuts in Nico suddenly, snapping him a sharp look, index and middle finger hooking easily into his waistband. "Not gay?" He rocks forward, forcing Percy's heels to thunk against the wall and their legs to scissor together like the teeth of a comb. Percy's throat bobs, and Annabeth's eyes, if possible, go even wider. "Somehow, I call bullshit."

And then, as pleasantly as you please, he sends Annabeth a cocky smile and says, "Hey there, Annabeth. It's been awhile."

"Yeah, you could say that," she replies, voice faint, and it clicks, then, the way she is looking from Percy to Nico down to the cell phone in her free hand and back again. He remembers Nico, bent to study the number on the fridge. Remembers him, just now, saying he had come through the front lobby -- where there was a phone.

The chill is sudden, hitting him with the force of absolute certainty, and Percy isn't sure if his knees won't buckle if he pushes Nico away, so he just grips his shoulders tight enough to see him wince and he goes, "You. You called her. You -- you ... you meant for her to find us. You wanted her to find us!"

Nico has the decency to avoid looking him in the eye. "Well, of course I did," he snaps, sounding exactly like the bratty thirteen-year-old who once tried to beg him to understand why he had to sell him out to Hades. "Face it, Percy. You weren't going to tell her. What else was I supposed to --"

"I wasn't --! That's not fair, I was trying to..."

"Right, right," Nico says, brittle as ice and venom bright in his eyes. "Sure you were." He grabs the fistfuls of Percy's shirt, yanking them both off the wall and spinning him towards Annabeth. "Do it, then!" he spits. "If there's ever a time to do it, do it now! Tell her you don't love her anymore, you don't even love her enough to stop seeing me. Tell her it's over!"

Percy backpedals, hard, hands up, because Annabeth's just staring at him -- still standing in the doorway, in the stupid doorway, the door's still wide open, this cannot be happening -- and the look in her eyes makes him want to crawl underneath the linoleum and live there and eat worms for the rest of his life.

"I -- I --" he flounders, and he can't say anymore, because he lives life by just a few rules, and one of them is don't hurt Annabeth. Don't ever hurt Annabeth, and he won't. He can't. He can't be like Luke. He can't.

Nico says coldly, "That's what I thought." And releases him, taking two steps back. Percy sways on the spot, stuck between the two of them: Annabeth in the doorway, Nico by the bed.

Nobody says anything. Annabeth's breaths are shallow, short and angry. Percy's neck aches where Nico had been sucking at it, and it will strike him, later, a little deliriously, that this was his biggest concern at the time: that yes, it was going to bruise.

He remembers the feeling, like being on the top of a ferris wheel, knowing the fall had to come but willing to suspend disbelief for a moment, hang it in the sky with the stars -- and now here's the fall, the slide back down with gravity.

Finally, after what seems a long enough time that Percy is pretty sure he's died on the spot three times, Annabeth blinks once, slowly, like a doll.

"Nico," she says, with nothing in her voice. "How long?"

"A month," Nico replies immediately, and Percy wonders just how much his afterlife is going to suck if he kills the only living child of Hades right now. "Though, if it makes you feel better, before me, he was completely celibate."

"Yes, thank you, that makes me feel loads better," says Annabeth with enough sarcasm to scrape paint, which Nico, who has the tact of a polka-dotted elephant, is oblivious to.

And this is exactly what Percy didn't want. He never -- "wanted you to find out like this," he finds himself saying out loud, his voice different, strange even to him, like a creature lost in the dark and reaching. "I never --"

"-- wanted you to find out at all," says Nico, sharp enough that Percy closes his eyes, pain shooting bright everywhere inside of him. "Thought it would ruin your vacation, you know, announcing it to you. Always thinking of Annabeth's well-being, our Percy." He bares his teeth. "Selfless little savior of the world, isn't he?"

"Stop, Nico."

"I almost would have rather he dropped me like a hot potato when you got here, you know," Nico's words tumble faster, Annabeth watching him like she'd watch something with fangs or eight legs. "A month of sleeping together, I think I'd've been happier if he just called it quits then, you know? But I'll take him -- ha, I'll take him even sneaking around, I'll take even half of him if it means I can have him, I thought. Maybe I'm the selfish one, in the end, to not want to share him with you. Everyone has to share him with you, you know -- I just want him."

"I never asked for any of this," Percy puts in, desperate. "If there had been an easier way ... any easier way --"

"Oh, right," cuts in Nico, lightning sharp -- the bleached-bone glint is back in his eyes, the same out-of-control fury he had that day in the bike park, when Percy didn't know who he was dealing with. "You never asked for this. Is that what you said to Charles Beckendorf right before he died for you?"

Annabeth gasps, "Nico!" because even in her shock and her anger she wouldn't cross the line that Nico just crossed, Nico who just says things like that sometimes, and Percy has gone so completely still it's like someone has caught him on freeze frame.

"You tell me," he replies, astonished to find that his voice slips out whisper-quiet, for all the roaring that's inside of him, a great, whirling vortex of noise, of horror. He feels like he could scream and it wouldn't come out any louder than the rustling of the pages of a book. "You're the only who can only make friends with dead people."

"I didn't have a lot of options, as I recall," fires Nico, like he can't help it. "Considering my social circle pretty much collapsed after my sister died for you and your stupid quest to save her!" He jabs his finger at Annabeth, who's quickly draining of color. "It seems to me that everything I love, everything I've ever wanted, I lose to you and your stupid girlfriend!"

The echo of his roar rings in the walls for a long beat. Annabeth makes a noise like she's been stepped on.

Abruptly, all the fight just disappears from Nico's face, like it's been wiped clean, as if by using Bianca to win an argument, he overstepped a boundary within himself that he swore he'd never cross. Now, he's done it, and it's because of Percy. There's sullen resentment in his bony face, but no surprise.

He casts one long, blank look at Percy, like he has no idea who he is, and without a word, he slides sideways into the space between the bed and the bookshelf, disappearing into shadow as if he'd been smudged away by a great eraser.

In the silence that falls, Annabeth releases a shaky sigh, and with it goes all her fight as well.

Wearily, she lifts her head, her eyes flicking back up to his briefly. "There's nothing in your head but kelp," she says to him, and there's no affection in the remark, only a vague kind of disappointment. "I don't know what you were thinking when you tried to get away with this, but you've made a right mess of things."

And then, she's gone too, leaving Percy alone in the quiet of his apartment, the door still -- stupidly -- wide open.

Above his head, the lights buzz. The fridge hums.

It's exactly as it was before the morning he woke up to find Nico standing over him, just him and Tokyo town, only now, somehow, it's a thousand times worse.

Invincibility, Percy finds, doesn't stop his chest from feeling like it's cracked right down the middle, his lungs tight and burning with each breath, everything in him sharp and fragile and glittering painful. He touches his fingers to his sternum, and doesn't understand how it cannot be broken in two pieces like a china plate.

Is this what it's going to be like, being invincible, letting his heart walk off without him in two different directions and not die from it?

He lets his hand fall.

He stares at his tiny, empty apartment for maybe all of thirty seconds before he goes, "Ah, no, crap to this," grabs his keys, and stalks out the door.

| --- | --- |

He isn't sure what he says to the guards outside Camp Half-Blood; it might have been "good morning" or it might have been some compliment on their aunt's choice in tube socks, but the Japanese are unerringly polite and neither of the young men call him on it, merely bid him good evening and let him through the gates.

Camp Half-Blood is well-lit at night, rushes hanging from the trees and the pathways lined with torches; the play of soft, flickering natural light is jarring after a brisk walk through the florescent neon of Atsugi, and sometimes it's enough to make his head spin like whiplash, the smell of grass and the distant whinnying of the pegasi hitting him when he walks in, when he's gotten so used to the omnipresence of the Tokyo metropolis. Where everything else in his life has changed, the camp remains the same, and Percy thinks he might understand why the gods are so fond of keeping everything the way it's been for centuries: even this little bit of familiarity is comforting.

The tightness in his chest eases off marginally.

He's not so distracted that he doesn't stop by the pit fire at the very heart of the camp to say hello to Hestia, who looks for all the world like Little Orphan Annie in her bare feet and matchstick dress, poking at the fire. Her returning smile is bordering on sympathetic.

"They're just finishing up dinner, Percy Jackson," she informs him, and he bows and heads for the dining pavilion.

Campers are trickling out in groups of twos and threes when he jogs up the last bit of incline to the hall, and he spots the two familiar tall figures as they leave.

He grins.

When Justin Petrowski found out that Justin Corner was his brother, he'd only been at the camp for a week. It was a warm June night in the middle of Thursday's mystery meat dinner, and he'd very famously stood up, turned to a stunned quiet cafeteria, and (although he will deny it until his dying day) said, "What the hell? He and I look nothing alike! This is crap and I demand a refund."

Because it was true. Whereas yes, okay, Justin P. and Justin C. both are dark-haired and blue-eyed, so are thirteen gazillion other boys on the planet, and while it might work in books to walk up to someone who has similar features to you and declare instant familial connection, it certainly doesn't work like that in the real world, and with the exception of their first names, a Y chromosome and, apparently, an Olympian parent, there's nothing Justin P. and Justin C. have in common.

You couldn't have picked two different boys even if you went to the farthest possible reaches of stereotype.

"Hey, man!" Justin P. is the first to notice him; he's fourteen, with limbs that haven't yet gotten the message that they're not supposed to grow so long, and he walks with a hunch to his shoulders like a wire hangar that's been bent out of shape. The only person he doesn't address as "man" or "dude" or "doll" is Dionysus, who once turned him into a chameleon for doing exactly that and made him spend three humiliating days clinging to a branch in the Big House terrarium, eating crickets and sleeping upside down. He's been a vegetarian ever since, which actually wound up working in his favor; he's been going out with a girl from the Demeter cabin for a couple months.

He comes towards Percy, bumping his fist in greeting, and he manages to school his face into something that only moderately approaches hero worship. Percy gets that a lot.

"Justin," Percy nods in return.

"Justin," he adds to Justin C., who's half a step behind his brother, skateboard tucked underneath his arm. He tosses his long, shaggy hair out of his eyes long enough to spare Percy a friendly smile. He's one of the oldest campers who was living year-round before the move, and as far as Percy knows, still the one who had to come the farthest to be here. He left behind an enormous extended family in Hawaii, none of whom understood why it had been so explicit in his mother's will that he go to this camp when she passed on. Sure, strange things always happened when he was around, and he didn't seem to be too quick in school -- unless quick to get in trouble counted -- but Hawaiians look out after their own and it took all the fight Justin C. had in him to get them to let him go, and it's left him probably the most laid-back, mellow half-blood Percy has ever met. He's never seen him in an actual battle outside the camp, but he bets Justin Corner could deter any monster just by sheer chill-factor.

"Man, what brings you here this late?" goes the first Justin, shoving his hands into his pockets, shoulders high up close to his ears. His hair has recently been buzzed close to his skull, and nobody's had the heart to tell him that it wasn't really the fashion anymore.

Percy shrugs and offers them a self-deprecating smile. "I kind of had a crap day," he says, and although he trusts them to uphold the law of brotherhood that says no man shall be forced to confess his troubles while in the presence of other men, he knows they'll be curious. So, what the hell, he can't really muck it up any more. "I had a dentist appointment. And then my girlfriend found out about my boyfriend."

Their eyebrows hit their hairlines in exactly the same way, but to their due credit, they react how he was hoping they would. Justin P. gives him a sturdy, manly clap to the shoulder with a startled laugh of, "Dude, that sucks. Hard. Are we talking about Annabeth here? And -- oh, hey, that Nico kid? Holy Hades, man, how are you still walking around?"

"Grace of the gods," says Percy so dryly he could use his words as flint.

Justin C. lets his skateboard swing down so the back wheels struck against the path. The decal on the bottom of the board is a riot of colors and designs, most of them variations of the logo from his mother's surf shop. Percy gave him a holographic trident sticker for his fourteenth birthday, and he smiles now to see it catch with the torch light. "So are you going to stay with us in cabin three tonight, then?" he asks.

"If that's cool with you guys, yeah, that'd be great."

"Sure thing, man! We'll make it a party." To his brother, "Hey, do we still have that boombox the Hermes cabin nicked from Chiron?"

"I think so," answers the other Justin, smiling tolerantly, and Percy feels some of the tension drain from him. This is something he doesn't ever want to get used to, he decides, as he finds himself with an arm thrown around his neck from either side. Doesn't want the novelty of this to wear off. One Justin's laughing, saying something about going down and putting Dionysus's heart-print boxer shorts on some of the practice dummies and beheading them, and the other snorts, making it sound surprisingly fond, and Percy's content to just stay there, a son of Poseidon on each side of him.

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