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happyk44 · 8 months

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"I think I'm in love with you."

Annabeth paused for a breath. Then immediately started laughing - a high pitched shriek of a laugh that had Nico startling in his seat across from her. His eyes went wide, then narrowed.

"It's not funny," he grit out when her laughter died down to subtle giggles.

She covered her face with both hands. "No," she breathed. She pulled her hands back to her cheeks. "No, I know. I'm sorry, it's just-" She gestured loosely with one hand. "You know - before, everyone thought..."

Everyone thought he was attracted to her. That he wanted her, not Percy. She heard the musings after that first war, when her and Percy's relationship was new. Nico wasn't avoidant or mean to Percy, not at that point. But he was definitely warmer to her when Percy wasn't around. And seemed a little disgruntled, bothered, when Percy would pop up and sling his arm around her.

Everyone thought it was because he had a crush on her. Not the other way around.

And now...

She leaned back and shook her head. "Why do you think-"

"It's the same," he cuts in. She arches an eyebrow. He glares at the table. "Like with Percy. Before. I... You..."

She let him breathe. Find his words.

Nico usually spoke clear, deliberate. He wasn't ever really without words. If he didn't have anything to say, he wouldn't speak. If he did, he got his point across as cleanly as possible. The few times he did trip up, people tried to help him through it and it only sought to agitate him. Though he tried not to show it, feigning politeness.

Hazel, Jason and Percy were the few people who didn't try to figure out what he was getting at before he could.

Sometimes she wondered if he practiced his words in his head in advance. Or if it was just situations like these, sudden, emotional, that caught him off guard no matter how much he recited. Either way she understood - he knew what he wanted to say. He just couldn't get it out.

When she was younger, she felt like that a lot too. Especially in the early days of living with her dad and step-mom. When everything she said always went wrong and people got mad. Eventually the words got stuck. Especially the more frustrated or upset she was.

It was hard work to come across as someone smart and capable, logical and driven - not some silly emotional girl who had nightmares of spiders biting at her in the night and an evil step-mom who got angry when she cried and mocked her for stumbling over her words.

She wouldn't push Nico to explain himself. They could spend all night in this cafe if he needed to find himself.

"Thank you," she said quietly as the waitress dropped off her iced coffee and Nico's piping hot espresso. Nico mumbled a similar remark. His eyes remained trained on the table. She watched the waitress walk off then breathed shallowly. "She's pretty."

"It's not-" Nico closed his eyes. "I don't find other girls attractive, Annabeth. It's just you."

She sipped at her drink. Sweet caramel - too sweet. Percy always kissed her after she took her first sip. He didn't like overly sweet things, but he always joked that he liked them on her.

"I-" Nico's elbows dropped onto the table. His head hung in his hands. His shoulders rose up to his ears and didn't drop. "It's weird." His voice was but a whisper. "I don't understand it."

The ice clinked in her glass. Condestation dewed against her palms. She chewed her lip. "You know, aesthetic attraction-"

"It's not-" He exhaled shakily. Then slowly slid up and back.

His eyes were somber, sullen. Sad. It made her want to reach out and stroke his head like a frightened kitten, soothe him into her arms and assure him that all was okay. Take him home, clean him up, and make him warm.

"I want you. And it's terrifying."

An alarm blared at the back of her head. A visceral reminder - hubris. Don't be prideful about this.

Still she couldn't help but lean closer and whisper, "How do you want me?"

There was something intoxicating about the way his eyes seemed to darken as he stared at her. They were already obsidian black, but now they'd graduated to a heated void. That he couldn't care about any other woman in the world but her. Gay as the day was long, and she was the night that broke him.

She needed to know. It was as imperative to her life as it was dangerous to her ego.

He was silent. All noise ceased to exist around them as they stared at her each other. Then he leaned forward, his breath cold as it puffed across her face.

"I want you naked. I want to touch every bit of your skin. I want to eat you out until you're soaked down my chin." Heat slid from his lips and burned across her skin. "I want to feel what it's like when you come on my fingers. I want to know what you feel like on my dick." His voice cracked. "And I want to know what it feels like to kiss you. To wake up beside you, to hold you, to have-"

He pulled to a harsh stop. Words still lingered on his tongue, in the back of his throat, she could feel it.

And it made her nearly delirious with a heady sense of power.

"Lots of people have those feelings," she said. "It's normal, nothing to be scared of, Nico. You're not the type of person to force your emotions on everyone else."

At least not willing, she thought. The nightmare episode just a few days after the second war - Nico fallen asleep in the sun and grass, Hazel and Frank beside him. A few kids playing nearby. One of them tripped over him in their haste to grab a ball that had gone over their head.

It had only lasted a few seconds. Just moments between Nico being startled awake and realizing he was safe, but the things he expressed left everyone feeling nauseous and on edge for days. It was so vague - no real memory or sensation behind it. But the power, the strength, the misery...

He dragged a hand through his shaggy curls. Then sighed. His bag - a black messenger with a lavender logo embroidered on the front - plonked onto the table. He opened it up and tilted it towards her.

It was organized for a messenger bag. A notebook in on pocket, some pencils, a granola bar, a baggie of ambrosia squares, his wallet. She frowned, leaning in closer. Then swallowed dry when she noticed a set of vials in a small boxed container in the center of the bag,

Dark blood-red liquid swirled inside each one. She could almost taste the bitter tang on her tongue.

She liked the taste of pomegranate. She didn't care much for the whole chewing spitting thing, and didn't like to swallow the raw pulpy seeds. But she did like drinking it.

The first time she'd tried it, she'd been eight, holding her goblet and wondering how sweet it must've been to be worth burying yourself for six months with the man that stole you. The sour earthy taste caught her by surprise. This, she had wondered, is what Persephone was so willing to consume in her hunger?

It didn't really make sense at the time. The story she'd been told made it clear that Persephone had caved to her self-imposed hunger. Surely there were other things to eat - if she was starving, why would she choose this one? Why would she choose this acrid difficult thing to seal her fate?

If Annabeth was going to cave to her starvation and eat something that would imprison her some place for half the year, she'd go with a lamb dinner. Not a sour fruit that made her gag when it first crossed her tongue.

Later on she considered the story again. Persephone was a goddess eternal. Eating was not a necessity, it was a pleasure. Why would she eat if she didn't have to and she knew better? She must've been tricked then. But tricked into eating a pomegranate of all things? Was that even something that could happen? Did she not know how it tasted? Did she think it was sweet?

Or did she know it was acidic? Did she slice the fruit in half and scoop out its seeds, feeling the sticky red juice trail down her thumb and know she was going to bite into something that would make most people gag and frown?

Did she choose her descent? Her, the goddess of nature, biting into a bitterness she always longed for?

Annabeth had poured into books on nature after that - she had been maybe 10 or 11. She wanted to know what it was that would captivate a goddess of spring to go below. Agriculture and grain were her mother's ideals, but nature and simple vegetation - those were all her own choices.

So what was the difference?

And in the dead of the forest, in the middle of capture the flag, she found her answer. It was a lush patch of grass. It didn't fit the usual nymph spots. Not to mention the nymphs tended to live around the edges of where the games would play. Neither they nor the satyrs enjoyed having bothersome demigods running back and forth across their homes, carrying swords and arrows and loudly swearing captured "enemies".

Naturally she approached. This area of was typically overrun. The grass was mostly downtrodden, but here in this little patch it was standing tall. Curiousity got the best of her, as it always did, so she dug it up. Maybe one of the Demeter kids had planted a trap there.

But no. It was just the decaying body of a fallen bird. Being consumed by the earth it landed on.

It hit her hard then. How life worked before people, before farming. Animals died and the earth ate them. Then produced the very things that those animals needed. So they came back and ate and died and ate and died. Each time they'd fall and take their last breaths. The bugs would come and pull them apart. The grass would spread across their bones. The plants would flourish from the nutrients left behind.

Wasn't that the point of manure and tilling the soil? To renew what had been taken away? That didn't happen in the wild. So it had to be cultivate by nature.

By death.

And in that moment, she understood why the goddess of nature would allow herself to bite into the bitterness of the fruit of the dead, and why the king of the underworld would be so taken with her at first sight, he just had to steal her away.

She stared at the vials. Then up to Nico's utterly distressed face.

He would never do that to her, to anyone. She knew that. He'd rather die than bound someone to him without a reason to force his hand.

But he wanted to. He wanted to bind them together, pierce her soul to his beckoning, make her obey him while she was living, as if she were dead.

She wondered if he'd ever wanted to do that with Percy.

"You know," she said slowly, "I wouldn't technically belong to you if you dosed me those."

He snorted and closed the bag. "I grew them myself." He was quiet as he tucked the bag into his lap, and folded his arms across it, gripping it tight like he was afraid if he didn't, the vials would jump out and fall down her throat. "So you would."

"Ah."

"I didn't..." He closed his eyes. "I thought about it once. With Percy. But I never got close because he was with you and I couldn't... I couldn't take him from you. Not like that. It wouldn't be fair. But now..."

When he didn't finish his trail of thought, looking off to the side instead, she crossed her arms over the table and gently prompted, "But now?"

His smile was sad, a little quirked thing she never liked seeing on his face. "I still want him, Annabeth," he said. He tilted his face ever so slightly towards her. "I always have. I probably always will. And now I want you. So there's nothing to stop me from taking you both, except my own morals."

"Morals are good."

He caught her eyes. "They're breaking."

Her breath caught in her throat. "Oh."

"That's why I wanted to tell you," he stressed, "in public. Where someone would notice if I..." He glanced down at her forgotten iced coffee. "If I did something to your drink."

"Okay, well." She bit her lip. "We just won't accept any drinks from you."

"No."

She frowned. She did not like that word when it came from someone else. "No?"

"No," he repeated. "I'm not risking it. I just wanted to tell you so I could explain why I won't be coming around anymore." She stiffened. "If you could tell him - Percy." His Adam's apple bobbed. "I didn't want him here for it because I didn't want to make him-" His face pinched inwards. "-mad at me."

Never, she thought. Percy's anger could stick around like the shattered remnants of life after a storm, but not with Nico. In the moment, distress and anger, but it would quickly fall away with the misery on Nico's face.

"My father never kidnapped my step-mom," he said. "People think she was stolen or that she sauntered down of her own free will, but truth be told, they just met." He sighed, frustrated and fisted the canvas of his bag. "He brought her home because he loved her and she followed him because she loved him. She doesn't even have to stay below if she doesn't want to."

"And you think you'd keep us prisoner?" She laughed. "Nico, you would never do that."

His eyes glistened. "My father told her not to eat it. He knows who he is, but having power over another person that way... it's always a risk." A wispy breath and he leaned back. "I know I wouldn't. I can't even fathom it, but if something happened and I changed..." He shook his head. "Why risk it?"

He stood up sharply before she could say anything else. A handful of bills fell on the table in a neat little pile. The price of their drinks, plus tip.

"Bye Annabeth."

She jerked backwards. Her chairs skidded against the tile, loud, as she hopped to her feet. "Wait!" she called out, but he was already gone. She held still for a second, thinking maybe he heard her, maybe he'd come back.

But he didn't.

Deflated she slowly withdrew back to her seat, pulling up forward to the table. Her drink - too sweet caramel - sat in front of her. Nico's espresso in a dainty white teacup sat further across, completely untouched. She wondered if he would chase the sweetness off her tongue like Percy did. She wondered if she would chase the bitterness off his tongue, like Persephone biting into the seeds. Would Percy?

If he had given them the choice to fall below, in the depths of darkness and dirt, would they have taken it as willing as nature took to the dead?

#nicobeth #percicobeth #more or less implied but yeah #annabeth chase #nico di angelo #happy talks pjo #my writing #my fanfic #i'm on a kick baby #anybody who bitches about nico being into annabeth is getting BLOCKED bc fuck that shit. he's still gay - she's just hot #like a twink kissing a lesbian bc both of them think the other is something else lmao

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