Fic: Kiss a Boy in Tokyo Town, Percy Jackson [Part 6/7]

[antistar_e]

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

And things are okay.

Things are blessedly simple, and it's okay.

He stays with his younger brothers in cabin three, and they don't ask questions or pry and it's pretty much just like any other summer at camp, when the biggest thing they have to worry about is whether or not they're going to serve real beef at dinner.

They beat up practice dummies with swords. They cheat in the chariot races and get away with it. They play fetch-the-Greek-warrior with Mrs. O'Leary and get yelled at when she pees on the grass roof of the Demeter cabin. They sit on the balcony of the Big House and watch the Aphrodite kids implement a long-proposed plan of ambushing Jennifer Matsueda, the only Ares girl -- she walks around the rest of the day with little hearts draw on her cheeks and pink and purple ribbons strung through her hair, just daring anyone to comment. They take a swim, which for children of Poseidon means messing around at the bottom of the lake for a couple hours, playing hacky-sack with an incredibly unamused polyp.

At seventeen, Percy had been surprised when he came late into the dinner pavilion one summer and found Justin Corner sitting at the Poseidon table, not a day older than Percy had been when he got claimed, and he was a little miffed that he'd missed the actual claiming, but he couldn't say he hadn't been expecting it.

Next summer heralded the arrival of Justin P., who'd been less than pleased to find he didn't even get the novelty of being the first child of Poseidon to be claimed post-termination of the pact, and downright pissed that he didn't even get to have a different first name.

"Most people just call them by their last names," Percy told Poseidon the first time he and Tyson could arrange to be in the same underwater castle at the same time. "But I don't -- it's fun watching them both turn around at the same time when you say their name. They're only a couple months apart, you know, which -- not going to lie -- was pretty dick of you," he added off-handedly, and his father gave him a half-startled, half-amused look that said invincible savior of Olympus or no, he is not above vaporizing him for insolence. "But both of them, Justin? Really?"

Poseidon scratched the end of his nose, embarrassed. "That was purely coincidental," he said. "Also ... ahh ..."

"Don't worry," Percy rolled his eyes, because really. The Olympian gods can be such wussies sometimes. "I haven't told my mom." She knows who you are, he didn't add, because Sally Jackson had already let that ship sail.

"Ah. Yes. Right. Thank you."

One day becomes the next, and then the one after that, and Percy doesn't see hide, hair, or any sign of existence of Nico or Annabeth. Most of his time he spends with his brothers and Serena, Justin P.'s girlfriend from the Demeter cabin, or else doing extra sparring practice with anyone who wants to.

"I think they just need time to cool off, Percy," Serena tells him as he helps her tend to the flower boxes on her cabin's windowsills.

"Or they've put their heads together and are coming up with a plan on how best to chop you in your sleep and hide you in the walls," puts in Justin P. unhelpfully, and the rest of the afternoon dissolves into a tussle that winds up including Serena and the other Justin, plus about 2/3 of the Hermes cabin, two pegasi, and an inner tube.

And he's fine. He really is. Except for the part where when he says he's fine, he means it in the way that he'll say he's full when really he's just not hungry, or when he knows that he'll have an impressive bruise and trouble breathing for a week, but he's alive, so all of that's okay, all of that he can handle.

It's an empty comfort.

| --- | --- |

Back in the old days, the Stoll brothers set up a couple deck chairs by the lakeshore, mostly as a prank for new campers -- nothing presented a bigger target than a half-blood just kind of lying out in the open like a sacrificial lamb. The Stoll brothers elected to stay behind when Olympus moved to Japan, saying that America was going to need a sense of humor to get them through, and they were more than happy to deliver, and nobody had the heart to take the deck chairs back to the Big House. There aren't as many monsters stocked in the forests at camp anymore -- not now that most people are there year-round, because going for a walk with Mrs. O'Leary and having to fight off a dozen giant spiders gets obnoxious after the sixth time -- so when Percy plops down on one of the chairs and leans back into the sunshine, the only thing that bothers him is one of the naiads from the lake, who slinks close to the shore and squirts a stream of water at him when she thinks she'll catch him off guard. Percy lazily deflects each attack, and eventually she gives up, muttering about how boring Poseidon kids are.

And that's how he is, half-drowsing in the early afternoon with a souped-up mp3 player he nicked from the youngest Hephaestus kid, when a shadow falls across him and a voice says -- loud enough to be heard over his music, "So! Half-blood! I hear you've been star-crossed in love."

He cracks an eye open, and groans half-heartedly; Rachel Elisabeth Dare is standing over him, leaning over the back of the chair, her face large and upside-down in his vision. The sun haloed behind her head makes it look like her red hair is made of glowing paper machete. An engineer's cap sits on top of all of this at a jaunty angle.

"Hello, Rachel," he says in as mild a tone as he can manage, hoping it's sufficiently discouraging without coming off as unfriendly.

Rachel, of course, ignores him, coming around to drop heavily down on the deck chair beside him, chin propped up on the heel of her hand, fixing him with an expectant look. This, he decides, is how he knows who his real friends are -- they're the ones who completely disregard the subtle hints that he wants to be alone.

He gives Rachel a lazy once-over. Per usual, she is impeccably dressed; the clothes cutting smooth across her sharp curves are the type he doesn't see anywhere outside of the runways of Tokyo or on the racks of the most expensive stores in the Shibuya 109. She always manages to stay one step ahead of the latest fashion trend -- which, he supposes, duh.

"That's what Aphrodite told me when I was thirteen, so yeah, I guess it's true. But what --" he needles, "-- does the virgin Oracle of Delphi care about my love life?"

"Absolutely nothing!" she says brightly and sarcastically. "Since, as you say, she is a virgin and therefore knows absolutely nothing about love, the poor thing. Give me a break." She leans forward, steepling her fingers together; he almost expects her to ask him to call her "doctor." "You're no fun when you're moping."

"I am not moping!" he says indignantly. "I am going through a break-up and am being suitably depressed about it. I am so sorry if this inconveniences you."

"Yes, well, your little brothers seem to be under the impression that they should be worried you're going to step in front of the fast train."

"I -- what," he splutters, yanking his headphones out of his ears and sitting up. "No! No, not at all! First of all, that wouldn't even work. Look, if there's anything that's really depressing, there you have it -- even if I wanted to kill myself, which is stupid anyway because how does that solve anything, I wouldn't be able to do it. My Achilles' heel isn't anywhere that makes it really convenient for me to off myself."

He sees her run quickly through all the places that implies his vulnerable spot is, and lets her, because she blushes almost as furiously as Nico does.

She manages a half-hearted leer, though, and then says, softly and seriously, "I know that, Percy. I've seen your death," she looks at him steadily, her eyes as blue as the sky beyond her head, focused and clear. "And you don't kill yourself."

"Thank you. I'm glad that narrows it down so much," Percy replies dryly, but he returns her look, and he knows they're both remembering the last time she said that exact same thing to him; the first and only time he'd ever felt that maybe, maybe, if he really tried, he could. The autumn after the fall of Kronos and the death of Luke, when the long, lazy joy of summer and surviving was wearing off and he was looking at many, many, prophecy-less years ahead of him and realizing he had no idea what to do with himself. That was the autumn Annabeth returned to San Francisco, when her sister first started getting sick more often than usual. That was the autumn he met Charles Beckendorf's mother at La Guardia, and until the day he dies he will remember her face when she realized that it was true, it was true, her only son was dead, remember how she just started collapsing inwards, like everything inside of her that had held her up was coming undone. That was the autumn he went around feeling like he'd swallowed a razor blade; he could feel it, tearing his throat apart with grief, with guilt -- knowing that people like Beckendorf, like Silena, like Ethan, died because they believed he was worth dying for, and he was only then starting to realize that no, no, he really wasn't, he really was nothing special at all.

Rachel had showed up unannounced on his doorstep mid-September, eyes some hazy mix of blue and gold, saying, Percy. I've seen your death. It's not here. It's not now. You don't kill yourself. Now come on, pick up your sword. Let's go lop heads off monsters or whatever it is you men need to do to work out your feelings.

He leans forward, too, so that they're in each other's space. "How have things been with you, though?" he asks, a lot more gently. "I can't imagine it's been easy."

She smiles thinly. "They ask me to keep my eye on a lot of things, Percy. A lot of the time, I feel like I'm in two places at once -- the gods ask me, quietly but urgently, what's going on with their enemies and whether or not I see them striking while we're still settling in. They ask me how their children are doing, back in the States, if they're safe. Half-bloods here ask me how their parents are, their friends, their siblings -- the people they left behind in that place. I don't know if you've been listening, Percy, but things are bad there, and only getting worse, and I can scarcely control what I do see."

Percy closes his eyes against the exhaustion in her voice, thinking, unbidden, of his mother, the morning his plane left, and the tremble in her hands when she held his face and kissed him good-bye, and he hopes with a kind of hope that's threadbare from use that the next letter he gets with a Manhattan zip code isn't from the government, regretting to inform him.

When he opens them again, she's still smiling at him. "So, in comparison, the petty drama of your love life is a very nice change."

He laughs at that. "Yes, well, don't tell Aphrodite her plan at making things difficult for me is going so well. She'll probably go right on over to her friends at CLAMP and tell them all about it and I'll never hear the end of it."

Her lips curve into a wicked grin, "I would die to see you the tragic hero of a CLAMP manga." Ignoring his spluttering, she turns her head and stares at something in the middle distance. He's about to follow her gaze to see what's got her attention, when her eyes flare gold, and then she stands, saying, "Well, your time of reckoning is coming up, Percy, so don't screw it up, all right?"

And then she's gone, leaving him still leaning forward part-way next to the lake, mp3 player in a pool of wire next to him.

That's how Justin P. finds him, a little while later; sitting there, looking faintly bemused and trying to figure out what the heck just happened. When he looks up, his brother's standing in front of him, hands in his pockets and shoulders bunched uncomfortably close to his ears. "Um," he goes, trying to look sympathetic and mostly just coming off relieved, like, hey, your problem now, man. "There's someone you ought to talk to. They're back by the cabin."

"... Right," is all Percy can manage, and he pushes himself up off the deck chair, collecting his shoes and heading off. Behind him, he hears the naiad pop her head out of the lake in order to squirt a stream of water at Justin P., whose indignant yelps follow him until he's out of sight.

When he rounds Zeus's cabin and almost trips over a peacock that's pecking despondently around Hera's, he wishes heartily that he'd just stayed by the lakeside, Rachel Elisabeth Dare and overfriendly naiads or no, because Annabeth is leaning against the cabin door, her arms crossed and her head down, but he'd recognize the worn Yankees cap anywhere, placed just barely on top of her head but not pulled down, making her still visible.

He gulps.

She looks up, and he forgets, immediately, about everything else.

Her hair is gone.

She takes a step towards him, lifting her cap up off her head and twisting it between her hands like she's trying to wring something out of it, and he approaches slowly, blinking and trying to reconcile the familiar face with the hair; whole feet of it severed off so that it feathers against the tops of her ears. It's like whole features of her face have changed; he notices, now, just how many freckles pepper her nose and cheeks, just how thin her mouth looks when she has her lips pursed -- things her hair hid before.

"I did not --" she begins, haltingly, and then looks annoyed with herself. She puts her hands on her hips, glares at him, and says in a much stronger voice, "I did not come all this way to see Japan by myself."

"-- Okay," he says, brilliantly.

The annoyance becomes more pronounced, and he's all right with this: he's used to identifying about seven different kinds of annoyed-Annabeth, so at least he's in familiar territory. "So," she says. "So come on. Put a shirt on. We're going somewhere."

"Okay," he says, thinking he might have agreed to sign over his firstborn or something if it meant she wouldn't run him through with his own sword or castrate him. "Where are we going?"

She hops down off the steps of cabin three. "I," she announces. "Want to see the maids in Akihabara."

| --- | --- |

It's surprisingly uncrowded for a weekday afternoon, and when they pass the tall, willowy Japanese girls dressed up as French maids handing out promotional fliers on the street corners, Percy can get away with half-turning around as they walk away, watching the girls without being afraid that he'll mow some little old lady over. Besides. It's Akihabara. You can't come to Akihabara and not turn your heads for the maids, especially when in heels, they're as tall as Percy is, only Percy has never looked that good in a pinafore and stockings.

When he faces front again -- just in time to stop himself from making a very personal introduction to a bike rack -- it's to find Annabeth looking right at him, an eyebrow ironically arched. He almost forgets it's her, with the short hair, and he scowls preemptively. Her point is immediately obvious, and he'd been wondering the entire walk to the train station -- making stilted conversation about what there all was to do in Akihabara, besides staring at the maids -- and the silent train ride, when this moment was going to come.

He digs the heels of his hands into his eyeballs. "By the gods," he goes, grimacing. "Are all my actions suddenly suspect, and is there any possible way I can delay this conversation?"

"Which conversation?" replies Annabeth, with the acid bite she'd once used to tell him he drooled in his sleep, way back in the beginning, when they were, like, eleven. "The one where you try to explain to your girlfriend that you'll ogle the maids in Akihabara like any other guy, and she'll smack you upside the head, and you both laugh about it and pretend that there was never a boy at home, and you've kind of seen him naked and oh, yeah, kind of like having sex with him a lot. No, by all means, let's go on not talking about that."

He continues making unpleasant faces, feeling suddenly very small. "Are the Justins right? Are you two plotting to chop me up into little pieces and feed me to the first monsters you can find?"

"Don't think I didn't consider it, but even I don't hate monsters enough to subject them to that."

Percy gives her a look, and her eyebrows come down. "Don't look at me like that," she scowls. "That kicked-puppy look. That doesn't work on anyone above the age of sixteen."

"Is this the only reason you wanted to go to Akihabara?" he demands, veering into her slightly so that they'll change direction in order to casually circle the block again. "So you could yell at me in public?"

"Yes," she answers instantly, eyes darting impulsively to the side as they pass a kiosk selling solar-powered cell phones -- a thoughtful look crosses her face, before she remembers that she's supposed to be yelling at him. "Because you've got a sea sponge for a brain and you deserve a good, long rant. But I also did kind of want to see the maids." He blinks at her, and she shrugs. "What? They're stronger women than I am, to stand around in an outfit like that all day."

"Japanese women are built like Mack trucks," he remarks. "They do the physically impossible, like, every day. I've seen one hike a mountain in high heels, it was ridiculous."

She can't seem to help the smile she flashes him at that, and oh, it shouldn't make him feel as good as it does, like something off-kilter is beginning to straighten out, and if he's never known before just how much Annabeth's opinion means to him, here's a very good reminder.

"Percy," she goes, more seriously, and okay, good feeling's gone. "I wanted to hear your side of the story. I think I deserve to know why, all things considered."

"Just so you know, if you try to make this one big, long discussion about feelings, I will step off the curb into oncoming traffic, don't think I won't."

"The only way you're going into oncoming traffic is if I push you," she returns, deadpan. "Stop trying to change the subject."

"I'm not!" he goes indignantly. They've gone four-square around the block again; they both slow their stride so they can amble casually past the maids for a second time. "I just -- I don't know what you want from me, Annabeth."

"Well, I wanted a faithful boyfriend, but failing that, I want an honest friend. Why did you do it?"

"Why I'd do what? Sleep with Nico di Angelo, after having not seen my girlfriend in over a year and not knowing if I'd ever see her -- all while living alone in a foreign country? Yeah, why would I possibly do that?"

She glances away, sharply, tilting her head like she's trying to shake her hair into her face to hide it, but it doesn't work and she just kind of winds up staring blankly at the sidewalk. She doesn't look surprised, like she'd maybe been expecting that, but now that she'd heard it, she wasn't sure if she could take it. Then the familiar Annabeth look sparks in her eyes and she says, "In no way is this my fault. Okay, I get it, Percy. I can understand why you'd start it. I have been off the face of the earth. But what hurts me the most is that you continued it after I got here. You strung both of us along, for what? Just because you could?"

"No --" he starts, helpless in the face of a train wreck.

"Then why!" she cries. They aren't even pretending to stroll anymore -- they've stopped outside a five-story anime and manga shop, with pedestrians just flowing around them, eyes politely averted from the colorless palor of Percy's face and the red fury on Annabeth's. "You can't have both of us, you selfish prat, not even if you're Percy-stinking-Jackson, okay! I can't speak for Nico, but I came here in love with you, and loving Japan, and loving that you loved Japan, and thinking that maybe I could work something out, and meanwhile, you're playing both me and -- and -- and, Percy, it's Nico; he fought with us in New York -- just like ... like, what, you're trying to figure out which one of us you like better? Just trying us on like we're socks and you're trying to match us to an outfit, what --"

He holds his hand up sharply, cutting her off before she can start, feeling ill. "Don't even ask me to compare the two of you. Gods, no, I don't want to start that."

The surprised look is back, her grey eyes flinting with it. "You mean you don't think about how the two of us are different?" she goes in a flat voice, inviting him to take a step back and look at the ridiculousness of that statement.

"Of course I do," he snaps. "It's impossible not to. I mean -- gods, really? -- I don't exactly have a lot to compare you with, now do I? Like, you're different, duh, of course, but it's not like I'm cataloguing every single thing you do that Nico doesn't. Or visa versa. I'm not sizing you up." It's out before he can stop it, and he can feel the color working itself up his neck, because, no. Is he really talking about this? "It's just -- you're Annabeth, you know. And .... and he's Nico."

She blinks at him owlishly. "You don't have a lot to compare it to," she echoes, almost questioningly.

The red spreads across his face. He can feel it, and he might just step out into traffic, he really might. "No." And, hell, what pride has he got to lose anymore? "It's kind of always just been you." Well, except that one time with Clarisse, but both of them still have decades to go and about ten levels of maturity to reach before they'll ever admit to it, and wow, is he really thinking about that right now?

She blinks again. And stares.

"And Nico," he adds eventually, because yeah.

"And Nico."

He nods. Thinks about it for a second. "And Grover, too, I suppose, though we've kind of drifted apart lately."

She looks at him, blank-struck with horror.

He hastens to correct, "Not that he and I were -- no! Crap -- urk, ack -- no! I mean, he was really, really important in my life, too, but not like that. Um, no. For one, Juniper would do something unspeakable to me if I tried it, like -- I don't know -- trim my hedges into sexually suggestive shapes. If I had hedges. Second, issues with gender aside, I like to stay in my own species --"

And with that, Annabeth pivots and steps deliberately into oncoming traffic.

Granted, she steps into a zebra crossing on the walk sign, because she's a daughter of Athena and they have impeccable timing like that.

| --- | --- |

All in all, it kind of sucks all the fun out of a day trip, and they poke around in the massive anime shop for something for Annabeth's half-brother, sure, but after that, they both kind of agree they've had enough, and even though it's barely even afternoon, they head back for the station

The train sways over the tracks, the people swaying right along with it. Percy counts the stops in his head. Annabeth's bag is in her lap, her head the lightest weight on his shoulder. He smiles and debates telling her just how many young, Japanese girls are coveting her blonde hair while her head is down and she's not paying attention.

But before he can, she asks him, softly, like she doesn't want to disturb the waters anymore, "What are you going to do?"

"What do you mean?"

Her voice is quiet and almost lost under the automated announcement, telling them in three different languages what the next stop was. "You can't hide out in cabin three for the rest of your life, Percy."

He opens his mouth, and then closes it, because he knows what she's telling him and he's put an incredible amount of effort the past few days (okay, who he is kidding, this choice has been hovering over him since Annabeth showed up) into ignoring the fact he's going to have to choose. It could be any choice -- a big one, a small one, one as simple as deciding if he's going to talk to Nico if he sees him again, a choice as simple as asking Annabeth if they're broken up yet, or if maybe he can be forgiven.

Instead of answering, he pulls on her sleeve as the train slows to a halt. "Come on, we have to transfer to another line."

They step out onto the platform with a wash of other Japanese people, and he leads them through the underground warren of tunnels. Behind him, Annabeth is expectantly silent, and when they pass a small, slimy-looking scorpion monster crouched under a drinking fountain, she shoots it a glare, simply daring it to try and attack them -- she was going to have this conversation now, dammit, and gods help anything that tried to stop her.

The monster clicks its pincers nervously and skulks back into the shadows in a nonchalant manner.

When they join the small crowd of people waiting for the next train, he catches her wrist in his hand. "Can I ask you something?" he asks her with calm seriousness.

Her eyes flicker over his face. "Percy?" she answers in that "I am a daughter of Athena and if you're going to ask me some really dumb question, kelp head, I will smack you" voice she uses with him often.

"When we were younger, would you have given me a second glance if you weren't so obsessed with the Great Prophecy? If the half-blood in the prophecy hadn't been me, would you have even cared?"

Annabeth snaps a fierce look at him, insulted, but it softens almost imperceptibly, seeing something in Percy's face that throws her off, some clue that tells her he's thought about this, thought about it before, thought about it often. It's been bothering him for a long time. "That's not fair," she says quietly.

He nods. "No, I know. You're my best friend --" best friend, not girlfriend, comes out before he can stop it, and he can tell by the flash in her eyes that it doesn't pass her notice. "It's just. Sometimes I wonder, you know." Would Annabeth had been his best friend (his girlfriend!) if she hadn't sworn on the river Styx that she would fight her hardest at the side of the half-blood from the prophecy? Would she have chosen him, if he'd been any other half-blood? If Luke hadn't died?

Would she have loved him, if she hadn't needed him?

She continues to look at him, her eyes shadowed, and he squeezes her wrist gently and lets go. "Sorry. I didn't mean to hurt you by asking." Here, he huffs a laugh. "I don't know, man, maybe I am gay. Boys take a hell of a lot less figuring out."

"Not from this side, it's not," she remarks, tone dry. "Is that why you did it? Seeing both of us at the same time, I mean. Because you don't know?"

He sighs. "You know, I think I'd rather tap dance naked in front of my fifth grade class than have this conversation."

"Tough," she goes, unsympathetic, but her lips are twitching.

"I don't know, Annabeth. Maybe. Is it so hard to believe that I didn't know what I was thinking? Maybe I just didn't want to give either of you up. I still don't." The last is said quietly, to the concrete at their feet and the broad yellow line that marks where they should stand when a train is approaching.

She regards him thoughtfully for a moment. "It's not that hard to figure out," she ventures, and when he blinks at her, she elaborates, "Which you like better, boys or girls. It's not that hard."

"Oh?"

She steps in, and his body reacts without his conscious thought, so used to her it doesn't need to be told, turning so that her hips fit into the cradle of his, their sides companionably pressed together. "Kiss me."

He swallows. "What?"

She smiles, still, but her eyes are dead serious. "It's as easy as that. Kiss me, Percy."

She lifts a hand, fingers coming to rest on his shoulders, and in return, he grips her waist. He doesn't mean to, but when she leans in, he leans back, and yes, it is as easy as that, and their mouths are sliding together, and then they're kissing, tongues gingerly tracing the outline of each other's mouths.

Screw the Japanese, he thinks, pulling her closer. Screw them and their silly notions about PDA, I don't care, and Annabeth licks against the roof of his mouth and he fists his hands in her hair, the ends short and spiky against his knuckles. He moans, gripping harder and pulling her head to the side so he can kiss down her jaw to her throat, dragging his teeth across the point where her pulse beats out at him. The skin is smooth, her neck a pale column, and it's jarring for a moment: her hair is short like a boy's, but this is a girl's throat, and in that second-long pause, she pulls away, stepping out of his arms.

Her eyes are knowing. "See?" she says, reaching up to brush her hair back into place, her mouth curved in irony at how short it is, and he thinks he knows, now, why she cut it. Her eyes are wide and glittering hard.

"I --" he tries, helpless, but she quells him with a look.

They stand together in silence. A train comes and goes; it might have been the one they wanted, he has no idea. A train claiming to be heading right for the Elysium Fields could have trundled right up playing Here Comes the Sun and he wouldn't have noticed a thing.

People move around them; men with briefcases banging against their knees, boys weaving effortlessly between people with eyes never flickering from the screens of their phones. Women standing on the platform, animatedly bobbing their heads, shopping bags clustered at their feet like puppies. Schoolchildren balanced back on their heels in clean black shoes, backpacks sitting in front of them. He envies them for one impossible moment, and then he doesn't. He's wanted a lot of things in his life, but normal hasn't been one of them.

He forces out a strained laugh. "You know, I think this makes me the first famous queer hero. I wonder if they'll make an action figure of me."

"Don't be ridiculous," she replies, sounding equally strangled, and doesn't say what's ridiculous: the queer part or the action figure part. "You haven't read the uncensored version of the Illiad, have you? I found a copy once in a box in Dionysus's closet that had been labelled 'knitting patterns.'"

That's just ... what "-- were you doing in Dionysus's closet?"

She gave him the patient look all half-bloods have patented, the "don't ask if you really don't want to know the answer" look, and his jaw clicks shut. She sighs, "It doesn't matter, Percy."

"What doesn't, the fact that I'm queer or that Dionysus has ye olde pornography in his closet? Because that is horribly disturbing, not going to lie."

Her face takes on that particularly exasperated twist it does when she thinks he's being thick-headed. "We're Greek, Percy. We'd run the whole line of disturbing and kinky before disturbing and kinky had even been invented, okay. Unspeakable vice, and all that. You're not the first, not by a long shot, and you're certainly not the last. No one's going to judge you too hard."

Abruptly, it's too much. It's that thought -- the idea that he's going to have to tell other people, and suddenly Percy wants to be very, very far away. Just to not be here anymore, not in his own skin, but his skin doesn't seem inclined to listen to him, and when he pivots on one heel and strides off, it comes with him, willful as a lamb.

As far as dramatic exits go, it's pretty pathetic, since Annabeth ruins it by giving chase immediately, planting herself firmly in front of him so he can't go anywhere.

"Look, you dolt," she says, hands held up to stop him, the shopping bag from Akihabara swinging from her wrist. "All I'm saying is that there's no rush. I'm not expecting you to suddenly start marching in the Gay Parade or come out to your mom --" Percy closes his eyes in horror, because that's something he wants to do around the time of oh, never. "Just ... isn't it better to know?"

He says nothing, still desperately wanting to be elsewhere, and it's a cold rush of relief when the next train pulls in. His aborted attempt to flee means they've given up any chance of getting a seat, and they wind up having to hold onto the rungs, standing over a group of tiny, toothless old ladies who have absolutely no problem staring covetously at Annabeth's blonde hair, even when she's staring right back.

Eventually, after a long while of just swaying with the train, watching housing complexes and businesses glide past the window with the clattering of the tracks, he says into her ear, "You know, Annabeth, sometimes... oh, crap, I don't know, sometimes I think that I just want something for myself, something that has nothing to do with me being a half-blood or savior of the world."

"Savior?" she echoes. "That's a little much, don't you think?"

Please don't tell me you actually refer to yourself as the savior of the world, echoes Nico's voice in his head.

"You helped. A little," he allows, rather generously.

Slowly, she sets her bag down between her feet and turns to face him, still holding onto the rung with one hand. "So... are you trying to tell me that you just want something that makes you happy? That's all you need?"

Percy nods, and it stays there, unspoken but as obvious as if it has a foam finger and its own marching band, that that something just might be Nico, who has wanted Percy since he was thirteen years old, and doesn't hate Percy because he's a half-blood, or a son of Poseidon, but who hates him because he's an idiot.

Annabeth keeps on looking at him. "Since when did you start being wise?"

It's enough, suddenly -- not exactly a white flag, a truce, or permission, but it's close enough, and he wraps an arm around her shoulders. "I learned from the best."

| --- | --- |

Nico doesn't come to Camp Half-Blood.

Hestia hasn't seen him in weeks.

Rachel just gives him a hazy, mysterious smile, and he doesn't even bother finishing his question. When he turns to stalk out of the Big House, feeling like there should be a little cartoon scribble of frustration hanging above his head, she calls after him, sweetly informing him that next time he goes for a hike at Mt. Fuji, he should take a water bottle with him -- it's important to stay properly hydrated.

Chiron attempts to give him a knowing look, but Percy stares deliberately at some point below and a little to the left of Chiron's ear and just nods when told that he is as free to teach as many combat courses as he thinks he can handle, and not to worry, most young people go through something similar, it was probably to be expected that it would make a late start in -- and he doesn't listen to a word beyond that.

Nico hasn't been to the apartment, either. Percy only stops in long enough to make sure the milk still smells all right, to water the neglected-looking plant they got in Hase, and to check. Just in case.

He's not even home for five minutes before he turns right around and goes down to the front desk. Borrowing the lobby phone, he calls Chris's house and gets a faintly puzzled, "-- Percy? Are you okay?" in reply to his questions. He hasn't seen Nico, either, but he'll keep an eye out, and finally Percy gets so fed up with the concern that he hangs up without saying thank you.

On a whim, he goes so far as to go down to the 7-11 where they got the tuna onigiri that Nico had been so fond of and asks the cashier girl if she's seen him. She blinks at him several times, so he pauses, thinks about what he's saying, and this time his Japanese doesn't come out so jumbled and dyslexic. By the time he's gone through it again -- "Please, please, it's important to me that I find him, have you seen him?" -- he's roped the other cashier and four of the costumers into the saga. Even with the base nearby, white boys are not a common occurrence in this neighborhood and nobody remembers seeing one fitting Nico's description.

"You should e-mail him," goes the cashier, holding up her cell phone. Percy's not sure if he's ever seen her without it glued to some part of her anatomy. The others all nod. "Yes, you should use your phone. If he doesn't answer his calls, text him. Send him an e-mail. Look his address up. You're not out of options."

"Do it now," suggests one of the costumers, and again, all the heads around him bob like flowers disturbed by a breeze.

"I would if I could, trust me, but I don't actually have a cell phone," he shrugs, and they all look at him like he's announced he'd been born without a cerebral cortex, but it's okay, the empty space is only a little drafty, really.

He rolls his eyes. The Japanese are incredibly attached to those things, but Percy is personally more attached to his head, which is what he'll lose if he uses one. (There's Annabeth's super-mystical one, of course, but that plan only actually worked if Nico had a cell phone, too.)

If Nico wants to be found, he's sure not making it easy, and Percy leaves the 7-11 no better off than he was yesterday.

He has no idea where to find him. The thing is, he never asked. He never considered he would have to know.

It kind of feels like he's drowning in the River Styx all over again -- not so much the blinding, overwhelming pain, more the feeling that there's nothing there, forward or behind him, and he's reaching out for that lifeline he made for himself, but it's not there, and he keeps pulling into nothing.

| --- | --- |

Percy doesn't know Nico all that well, not really, not when he thinks about it. That's part of the reason he was in this mess, he supposes -- there are facets of Nico he never knew existed, and he's been catching glimpses of each one. Every time they're together, he sees something new, some messy, kaleidoscopic part of him, dark and bright all at once, and he doesn't know enough to put the entire mosaic together, but he knows enough.

He knows Nico wouldn't say please or thank you if his life depended on it. He thinks he has to be recklessly brave, not understanding that courage doesn't equal being stupidly and blindly confident -- not because he wants to be a hero, but because he wants to prove that he's not a coward like Hades was -- he wants to prove that if the prophecy had been about him, that he could have made the right choice.

And when he disappears, leaves, goes off to be alone, it's not because he wants to be alone. Nobody wants that; it's stupid, backwards, and probably the most human thing he knows of, to run away from people when you're actually kind of fond of them. It's wanting to know who's going to come after you.

"I'm trying, you idiot," he mutters to the ceiling of cabin three one night, shadows long and stretching between the beams. "But you need to give me something to go on."

| --- | --- |

Just the once, he dreams of Nico, standing knee-deep in field of tea leaves, Mt. Fuji white-capped in the background. His shoulders are bare, half-crescents from Percy's fingernails dark against his pale skin. He's shouting at a woman whose back is to him, "I won't, I won't do it, I can't leave it alone!" And the woman just sighs, gathering the folds of her kimono into her arms as she picks through the field.

He wakes up, the details retreating and strange in a way that makes him think that maybe it was just a normal dream, and not the voodoo-sleepwalking dreams he gets as a half-blood.

He's at lunch, scraping off a quarter of his sandwich into the fire, offering -- as always -- to Hestia, who still keeps his hope close and warm in the hearth, and to Poseidon, and -- this time -- to Aphrodite, which is less a prayer and more of a heartfelt and disgruntled plea for her to stop screwing with him, when he hears sandals coming flip-flapping up the aisles between the tables. It's almost sad, he thinks, that he can recognize Annabeth by how she runs.

There aren't a lot of people in the cafeteria, and Annabeth dashing up to him can't compete with the pet tarantula Kitty Lane, daughter of Aphrodite, just got from her boyfriend who works at the pet shop one station down in Sagami Ono, so she only merits a couple vanity glances as she stops, panting, next to Percy at the fire pit.

Percy takes a bite out of his carrot stick and waits, and when she anti-climatically just stands there, catching her breath, he offers, "Sorry. Were you waiting for an 8-bit choir?"

"Oh, shut up," she bites out, and steals his glass, asking it to please be cherry coke (it doesn't, however, stop being blue, and he doesn't know if that says more about him or about her.) She downs it.

"You all right now?"

"Shut up, Percy, before I change my mind and run you through with your own sword."

"You wouldn't dare," Percy says loftily. "You'd miss me."

"Not as much as I'd appreciate the peace and quiet," she retorts. "Now. Listen. I just got a call from Malcolm, and he was just on Olympus, and he said that Persephone was just there, reporting to Zeus about the escape of a fear demon from the Underworld, and that it's running around on the slopes of Mt. Fuji. And when I say demon, I mean imminent destruction of mortal life kind of scary big monster, rawr. Likes chewing on people, or cooking them extra crispy."

This is all said really fast.

"Okay?" Percy blinks at her. "Rachel hasn't announced a Quest."

"No, you idiot, because Malcolm said that Persephone told her dad that Nico's already been dispatched to take care of it."

"And you ran all the way here to tell me this?" Percy inquires, but he's standing up straighter, unthinkingly putting his plate somewhere to the side -- it disappears into the fire with a great whoosh, and he takes a brief, unrelated moment to mourn it: he hadn't even gotten to enjoy his sandwich.

Annabeth looks exasperated. "Percy, the fact that Malcolm came down to the mortal world to call me to tell me to get my ass over to camp as quickly as possible to tell you that Persephone sent Nico to Mt. Fuji to single-handedly slaughter a demon doesn't say anything about how much we care and want you to be happy?"

"Er," goes Percy, because there were way too many steps involved in that. "No, but thank you, I guess."

"Ugh, you are such a boy. Percy, you and Nico are probably the worst-kept secret at camp, if you're even that. Do you know how many people have come up to me and asked me if I know that you're dating -- oh, don't flinch, you pansy, you totally are, I saw the big Stitch plushie. The boy is harder to find than good shoes after Labor Day, so if you don't take this chance to talk to him now, we will find some suitable way to make you pay."

"What, you want me to go ... what, hash-out our problems while he's on a Quest?"

"Well, what were you going to do instead? Send him a carrier pigeon? Fighting monsters is probably the best way to get to him."

"You know, Paris said something similar about Helen, and look how that turned out."

"The difference is, Nico does not have the face to launch a thousand ships. Or a dress." They grimace in the same instant at that mental image. "And most of the half-bloods here don't even know him, but if he's important to you, then he's important to them." The look she gives him, then, tells him she has not forgotten the conversation they had in Akihabara -- that Nico just might be the thing that makes him happy. "They love you a lot here, you know."

Percy scratches at the back of his neck, because really, what was there to say to that?

Annabeth's eyes soften. "I don't want to go home knowing that you're here, unhappy."

Oh. That's right. His eyes snap up. "When do you leave?"

"Two days from now." She looks annoyed, like she expected him to already know that, but it's perfunctory at best, and it fades quickly into something else. "Jake told me to bring home some Japanese cell phones so we can work on constructing blocked-signal phones for you guys, but I don't know how I'm going to swing that -- importing stuff into the United States is hell these days."

"Take model ones," says Percy instantly, after remembering -- oh, yeah, Jake Mason, son of Hephaestus, lives close to Annabeth, and he ignores the jerk in his stomach, because he forfeited his right to be jealous. "Er, 'borrow' model ones with no intent to return. You know the ones they have out on display at the kiosks and stuff? They don't actually work, but they're the real thing. Take one of those -- it's very easy to do. We can hit up the department store if you want."

"We are not," Annabeth replies, though she looks thoughtful. "You, mister, need to go right now and help a son of Hades vanquish a fear demon. I did not just run all this way here just so you could turn me around to go steal cell phones from a department store."

Percy opens his mouth to retort, but is struck, abruptly, with what she's doing for him. The girlfriend he cheated on is helping him find the boy he cheated on her with.

He stares at her one long moment, then another, and then -- unable to help it -- he rocks forward, grabbing her face between his hands and kissing her square and flat on the mouth. "You are the most amazing person I know," he tells her, and though he means it as a simple statement, it comes out sounding a lot more complex, like he's saying a dozen things all at once.

"Yeah, yeah," she waves him off, looking pleased, color high on her cheeks. "So you owe me, Seaweed Brain. What else is new?"

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