Chapter Text
No one sulks quite as spectacularly as Percy Jackson.
Nico squints up at the roiling mass of clouds rapidly eating up what had started out as a perfectly fine blue sky. A cacophony of shrieks ripples across the grounds of Town Halfblood (ugh), and Nico supposes it says good things about the world that the kids living there thought that a little bit of rain was worth screaming about.
He sticks his arm out from the Hades cabin overhang, and is instantly drenched. All right, a lot of rain. But the sudden disappearance of the sun has cast a pall over the grounds, and Nico can trace a path of huddled shadows right to the beach.
The surf is in full riot mode, thundering up the beach in waves taller than him, a statement that is pretty terrifying now that Nico is seventeen and several growth spurts past the shrimpy period of his life. The rain is brutal and immediate, the figure slumped on the sand barely visible through the downpour.
All in all, it’s very dramatic.
“I really don’t want to talk,” Percy says, not turning around as Nico approaches.
“I am very wet,” Nico says back, because he is, and Percy should know that. The rain is getting everywhere, colder than it has a right to be, plastering hair and clothes to his skin. It’s not like drowning, but it’s not pleasant either.
He flops bonelessly into the sand next to him, not thinking too hard about the way their shoulders knock together. Definitely not noticing the way Percy doesn’t stiffen, or try to pull away.
“What?”
He has the gall to look startled, all parted lips and wide eyes. They’ve gone the same green-grey as the water rushing in towards them, not that Nico is paying attention.
“You’re driving every meteorologist on the East Coast insane right now.”
He swirls a finger around to indicate the uh, weather, because he suspects that Percy’s brooding has carried him somewhere beyond paying attention to the world around him. Arrogance isn’t his style. Oblivious suits much better, and so does the flush working up his throat as he takes in the manifestation of his bad mood.
“Shit.” The tide sweeps in towards them like a dog on a leash, desperate to jump up on Percy’s lap; he lets it, even as the water diverts around Nico, leaving him - well, no wetter than before. “Shit, hold on--”
Nico is powerful. Nico can raise an army of the dead if he needs to, can split the earth and command shadows and strike fear into the hearts of his enemies with barely a glance. After all this time in the world of gods and halfbloods, he’s grown to have a certain appreciation for what he can do. He likes it.
But none of what he does is beautiful.
Percy’s gaze goes distant, like he’s staring straight through Nico. He’s dry, of course, but the wind rakes through his hair and the sea howls in protest as he coaxes it down, reels the clouds back in, soothes the downpour into a drizzle before the sky finally clears and the sun blinks dazedly down at them like it’s not sure what just happened, but is willing to roll with it.
And then there’s Percy Jackson sprawled in the sand next to him, thrumming with the sort of power that terrifies gods, pressing his forehead into the knee drawn up to his chest and breathing very softly. His hair is a little longer than usual. Nico very carefully curls his fingers into his palm.
“Sorry,” Percy mutters. “I guess I got carried away.”
There are a lot of things Nico could say in response to that. She’s just gone to school you big lump is at the top of the list. She’ll be back and the two of you will get over yourselves and be disgustingly happy together.
Will broke up with me is in there somewhere as well, but Percy has never really been his confidant, and Nico knows the older man will definitely feel the responsibility to ask are you okay and also why?, neither of which Nico is prepared to answer.
I’m probably still in love with you doesn’t feature at all. Honest.
“Really,” he says flatly.
Percy shifts his head to scowl at him, only to lose the expression to a snort of laughter when he catches sight of Nico.
“You look like a drowned rat.”
“Whose fault is that?”
“Whoever made you walk onto a beach in the middle of a storm, probably.” But he reaches out, curls a hand around Nico’s bicep, wicks the water away until it’s like the last ten minutes never happened. “Better?”
“Great.” Nico ignores the way Percy’s hand lingers, the heat of him. “Love having my own personal towel.”
“I mean, I can throw you right into the sea if you’re that mad about it.”
“I didn’t say I was mad.” Percy still hasn’t stopped touching him. “Are you done sulking, or do you need some more time?”
That does it, Percy jerking his hand away like he’s the one burning. “I wasn’t--”
Nico leavers himself to his feet. “Yes or no, Jackson, I don’t have all day.”
“Y’know, I thought you’d grow out of it one day.” Percy lurches up after him, spraying sand everywhere. “But the jerk thing’s just a personality trait, huh?”
It’s a comment that probably would have devastated him a few years ago, but he’s a little older, a little wiser, and a lot more aware of the way this guy works. It’s not that Percy’s a saint, but Nico knows that if he’d meant to be cutting, he wouldn’t be so casual about it. Knows that the circumstances where Percy actually means to hurt someone are few and far between, and usually well deserved.
He holds a hand out to him. ‘I need some help with some horses.” And you need a distraction.
Percy raises both eyebrows at him, but doesn’t hesitate in taking his hand. Nico chooses not to read anything into the way their fingers thread together. “What are you doing with horses?”
“You’ll see,” Nico says, and wraps them both in shadow.
*
“YOU DIDN’T MENTION A GHOST.”
Nico laughs, too-loud and delighted as a mare charges by with Percy clinging to her mane, barely seated. She whinnies irritably and twists to bite anything that looks like it might be in reach, but the terrible shrieking and white eyes that had greeted Nico the last time he tried to deal with this haunting are nowhere to be seen.
“Why did you think they called me the Ghost King?” he pants back, exchanging another flurry of blows with the indistinct shape that had roared out of a nook in the stables.
“I DIDN’T THINK IT WAS BECAUSE LITERALLY EVERYTHING YOU DO INVOLVES GHOSTS.”
“Sounds like a - you problem.”
Nico bends backwards to avoid a too-long strike from what seems to be a riding crop, feeling a sickly wave of fear wash over him a beat after. If it's that bad for him, he feels real pity for the horses it's directed at, even though the animals have nearly kicked his head in more than once.
It's almost enough to make him just take control of the taraxipus, to destroy or dismiss it. But Nico is trying to be softer with spirits these days, to treat them less as tools and more as--
Well, minor annoyances. But the point is, he could rip the ghost into nothingness and be done with this and he doesn't. Ethically, he's happy with that.
The horses protest again, but as Nico rights himself and fends off another strike with the crop - that thing hurts - he can tell they're starting to calm down. Percy is talking nonsense, half-frustration and half-soothing and Nico can’t help but grin at the absurdity of the situation. Sure, he’s fighting a ghost, but this is the sort of thing that makes him feel alive like nothing else. Adrenaline pumps through his veins, sweat tracing fingers down his spine, the stretch and pull of his muscles satisfying rather than stressful.
“You’re not going to win,” Nico points out to the spirit, whose form is starting to fray at the edges from pure rage. Something that might be a head twists around wildly to scream at the horses that have broken free of their stalls, but Percy has them well in hand at this point. “You’re exhausted, and we’re not trying. Come peacefully, and it’s going to be a lot easier for you.”
A voice like the sound of a hundred screaming horses pulls itself together long enough to tell him, “Victory is never easy,” and Nico is resigned to just dragging the thing to the Underworld after all when Percy speaks up.
“What if we raced?”
“What,” Nico says.
“Whargarble,” the spirit says. Nico translates that as ‘also what’.
Percy, wind ruffled and pleased with himself, reclines on the horse like some kind of indolent prince, and Nico is too recently out of a breakup to be looking at him like this. “A daughter of Notus got thrown during a race she should have won like, six months ago. I don’t know what ingredients go into making ‘angry horse ghost’, but that sounds pretty close, right?”
“R...ight.”
Nico knew that. The confusing part is why Percy knows that, and what else he might know about dead demigods, and he has a vague suspicion that he’s standing on the yawning edge of something tragic that he’s desperately unqualified to address, especially when they’re trying to subdue an angry taraxippus.
He drags his focus back to the ghost. “Would that work? You race him, you lose, you come quietly and I make sure you get a fair hearing. You win, this place is yours.”
He can buy it if he needs to. Children of Hades were never hurting for cash. Relocate the horses - taraxappoi were powerful, but they were tied to a location. At least, that’s what he tells Percy later when they’re back on the beach, idly watching the sun sink below the horizon.
There’s a nasty scrape across Percy’s cheek from the spirit’s riding crop, but he’s smiling in true Jackson style - soft, distracted. Nico likes the wildness of him, the laughter that had burbled out on the track as he whipped past the ghost on its terrified steed - but he likes this more. It’s not hard to see him as powerful, after all.
Catching him vulnerable is another thing entirely.
“You were going to buy the whole stable if I lost?”
“Children of Hades don’t exactly hurt for cash.”
“Still.” Percy leans back on his hands, tipping his head back. Nico examines the line of this throat and decides that he’s lucky the older guy is so oblivious. “That’s a heck of a bet to put on me.”
“Not really.”
He’s taken his boots off wriggled his toes into the sand. The water is just as eager to rush them as it was in the morning, but it’s playful now - splashing around their ankles, eager to reach out but careful of where Nico’s rolled his jeans up to. It takes him a second to register the sharp look Percy is levelling at him, because Nico is an idiot and have let his guard down.
Story of his freaking life.
“Well,” Percy says slowly, “thanks. I know I haven’t exactly been deserving of that kind of--”
“Hey, Jackson?”
Percy falls silent, raising his eyebrows instead. Night crawls up the beach, and Nico resist the urge to let the shadows swallow him.
“No one likes a martyr.”
It’s a bit of a crapshoot these days, what’s going to trigger the son of Poseidon’s copious anger. But Percy just snorts, flopping back into the sand. “You never let me get away with anything, do you?”
Once upon a time it might have been bitter. Once upon a time, Nico would have read it that way regardless of intention. Now, though? It’s contemplative now, and that’s more deeply terrifying than any other option.
Run, his inner twelve year old screams. Get up and go!
Nico pulls his hands out from under him, lies back until the sand crunches under him and the warmth of Percy’s body radiates down his right side.
“Friend’s don’t,” he says simply.
He doesn’t look at Percy, but he knows he’s smiling.
*
The break up doesn’t really come as a surprise. It’s hard to be taken off guard by something you’ve spent the whole relationship half-expecting.
“Okay.” Nico nods like he gets it, like his brain is processing anything other than the word ‘ouch’ right now. “Sure. Hey, don’t worry about it.”
Will sighs, a habit that that Nico had found endearing up until about two seconds ago. He reaches for Nico’s shoulder, and Nico lets his hand land because his body has not yet transitioned to a life where Will’s touch is a bad thing.
“I love you,” Will says simply, easily, earnestly. It doesn’t really go with ‘I think we should see other people’. “And I know you care about me. But we’ve been together since you were fourteen.”
“And you’re - what, tired of me?”
“Don’t be stupid.”
“Well fuck, Will, what do you expect?” He shrugs the hand off, backing away. Run, his brain screams. R u n. “Sorry I’m not taking being dumped with grace and intelligence.”
“Shit.” Will looks stricken, which - fairly or not - drains all that rage out of Nico just as quickly as it had risen up. He doesn’t want to fight Will. He doesn’t know what he wants. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m going about this all wrong. I just didn’t want you to think that I minded.”
Minded that you’re leaving me?? But despite his hurt, Nico still knows the other boy. Knows his kind heart and his good intentions, knows that when he says I love you he means it with everything in him. It doesn’t match up with everything else happening right now, but it’s enough for Nico to ignore the screaming in his brain, to cross his arms over his chest and wait.
“We’re still really young. And you’re - Nico, you’re still really in love with Percy Jackson.”
Nico can’t be sure, but he thinks the world ends right about then. Somehow Will keeps talking, but Nico has definitely left this plane of existence and travelled straight to Tartarus.
Well, at least he can’t argue that this isn’t fair anymore.
“...fine! Like I don’t think that anyone should be limited to only having one big love in their life, and I don’t think that feelings just turn off because you’re with another person. But I think you deserve some time to figure things out, you know? Without any pressure from me, or any guilt from you.”
Nico licks his lips, looks intently at one of the many skulls decorating Hades cabin. Chiron had offered him land for an actual house and Nico had accepted but...what does he know about making a home?
Easier to stay here.
“So you just made that decision for me, huh.”
“No.” Will’s smile is gentle, but strained at the edges. It occurs to Nico that the other boy is trying very, very hard to hold back his own pain here. “I made it for me.”’