PJO: The Age of Heroes | CODETTA (I Love You)
Look! A bonus feature! This isn't quite long enough to be a chapter (well, it kind of is, but shush); it doesn't fit with the next chapter though, and it's a bit stand-alone-ish. So I am going to label it a sort of codetta (since there is still more to come!) to this section and let it be its own thing. Regular numbering, etc., will pick up with the next chapter. We're getting towards the end! :D
Warning: this is so totally mushy it's not even funny. XD; And rated R.
Ahaha Winamp might be trying to tell me something. XD
“Okay, so how hard is it for you to keep this bubble going?”
Percy glanced sideways at me, tilting his head quizzically. “What do you mean?”
“Well,” I said, stepping a little closer, “like, do you have to think about it all the time? Or is it just something that you can do without really having to try?”
Percy’s features began to register understanding, and he glanced at me slyly. “Why do you ask?”
“Because,” I said, moving to slip both arms around his, “I think I’ve had a hard-on since you first kissed me in that cell, and I don’t know how you deal with all of these hormones all the time but I don’t think I’m doing it very well.”
Percy laughed then, soft and low and I couldn’t help it - I kissed him, hard and deep like he’d kissed me, and he returned it with just as much fervor.
But then he stopped, pushing me away a little. “What?” I asked, wondering what was wrong. We were actually alone and safe, at least for the moment. Maybe not completely safe, but being alone at the bottom of a dark river with no one and nothing else around you but junk that’s been tossed over bridges and out of boats counted enough for me. No more monsters had come after the first assault, and any others that did come could be taken care of as easily as the first. Now the plan actually called for us to sit and wait.
Well, I didn’t intend to be bored doing it. We’d just won a battle, and adrenaline was still coursing through my body. My heart was pounding and my limbs were tingling and I really, really wanted Percy. Watching him fight like that underwater had only made me realize how amazing he could really be.
Part of me couldn’t help but wonder if he was pushing me away now because of what had happened to me, but I didn’t want to think about that so I squashed that part down and reached for Percy again. “Nico!” he laughed, swatting away my hands. “No! I know what you’re thinking. No sex on the bottom of the Charles!”
“What?” I blinked. He didn’t seem angry or uncomfortable, so what was it? Seriously, we hadn’t been alone alone since we’d gotten back from the Underworld. Despite the fact that I had more hormones coursing through me than I’d ever had before, this wasn’t just about satisfying a momentary urge. I wanted Percy, and I wanted him to know that. “Why not?”
“Because it’s gross down here!” he said, gesturing to the garbage all around us. “And just because I don’t have to think too hard to keep this bubble going doesn’t mean I can do it if I can’t think straight at all!”
He was half-grinning and I knew he meant it playfully, but it still struck something with that horrible feeling of worry I’d been carrying with me ever since I’d woken up in a body that had been all wrong. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t get rid of that feeling. Just because Percy didn’t seem angry or awkward didn’t mean he didn’t feel that way inside. What if this really had ruined everything? We’d kissed, and it had seemed fine, but... What if I was overreacting - or, worse, what if I wasn’t?
I sighed, sitting down in the silt and pulling my knees to my chest. “Well, I guess I understand. It really is kind of weird.”
Percy glanced down at me, his brows knitting. “What is?”
I gestured to myself less than enthusiastically. “This. I mean... I dunno, I guess when you grow up normally you have time to get... used to stuff, right?” I shook my head, not really sure I wanted to talk about this, and definitely not sure I should make a big deal about it. But the words still came out. “It’s just... I feel like a stranger in my own skin. I don’t feel like I belong in this body and everything feels the same but totally different all at the same time and I hate it - ”
“Nico,” Percy slid down beside me, “you’re still you. I know that as well as you do. The rest... well... I can’t promise it’ll be easy, but I’m sure you’ll get used to it.”
“I guess.” I had to admit, I did feel less clumsy than I had the first few hours after I’d woken up like this. But there was still that cold pit of worry in my stomach, that feeling that said that maybe Percy didn’t want what I was now. I didn’t really know what he’d see or how he’d react when he finally saw me naked, with nothing to hide behind and in a body that I still wasn’t sure was mine...
“Nico,” Percy said again, a little more forcefully and I realized my mind had been wandering. He looped one hand around my waist and pulled me close, sliding the fingers of the other up and into my hair. “Nico, I don’t care what you look like. I want you to know that. I liked you when you looked twelve and I’ll like you when you look a hundred and twelve.” He paused, and even in the darkness I could see his cheeks turning red. I couldn’t fault him - even after everything we’d been through and done for each other, it was still utterly strange to share your deepest feelings with someone else, even when you knew they felt them right back. I could feel my face getting warm in tandem with his.
“But I want you to know,” Percy continued, and pulled me even closer so that our chests were flush and his lips were almost touching mine, “that you are absolutely hot like this and I hate Medea for doing this to you but I can’t say I’m not the tiniest bit grateful that I didn’t have to wait four years to see you grow up.”
“... Uh,” was about the most intelligent thing I could come up with to say to that, and Percy chuckled again, deep in his throat and then he leaned in the rest of the way and kissed me. This time it wasn’t hard but it was soft, slow, and it reminded me of that night maybe a week after his birthday when I’d first told him I wanted to have sex.
The day leading up to that night had been pretty awful - my father had appeared before us and it had shaken me more than I’d wanted to admit. He’d told me that Percy was going to betray me, that he was just like everyone else and that Hades and his kin would always be shunned and alone. I had spent the rest of that day thinking long and hard about it and I’d wanted to believe, desperately, that Percy wasn’t like that. Percy was different - Percy wouldn’t turn on me. Percy loved me.
I guess I hadn’t quite been ready to think it quite in those terms yet, but nonetheless that was what I had wanted to believe. All my life the only kind of love I’d known had been Bianca’s - I couldn’t remember our mother and I didn’t even know if she’d loved us in the first place. Bianca had loved me but she’d also left me, dying in the desert somewhere without me, never to come back. But Percy... I had just bared a large part of my soul in even admitting that I’d liked him, and he’d accepted me for it. He’d taken me in and let me sleep next to him and he’d touched me and kissed me, and that night I had needed him to go even further. I had needed him inside of me, like that would prove above all else that he was the one thing that belonged to me and I belonged to him and no one would ever change that.
That night when I’d asked him to have sex with me, his face had gone red and blank and for a minute I thought I’d messed everything up. It had been just like the time I’d told him I liked him - he’d been completely blindsided, but that was always when he was at his cutest. It was also when he was at his most frightening, because in those moments he’d held the power to break me and he probably hadn’t even known it.
But I could see his mind working behind his eyes, and a few breaths later he’d said, “I do too,” and I could tell that he’d meant it. He had wanted to be as close to me as I wanted to be to him, and he had proven that he was what I wanted him to be - he was mine. He wasn’t like what my father or anyone else thought he was like. In fact, he wasn’t like anyone else in the world. And he wanted me.
Here, in the darkness and the cold at the bottom of the Charles River, I could see that again in his eyes. I could taste it as he kissed me. He’d meant every single word he’d just said - that he didn’t care what I looked like, or who I looked like, so long as I was me and I was his. And I was.
To Hades with “no sex on the bottom of the Charles”, I thought, and I grasped his shoulders, leaning back and pulling him down on top of me. He followed, not breaking the kiss, like he didn’t care about what he’d just said either - like he knew that I needed this as much as I had the first time. Except this time I might have needed it even more.
It was about as awkward as it had been the first time, too. I felt like I was in someone else’s body, like Percy was touching me for the first time every time his fingers brushed against a patch of newly revealed skin. My legs and arms were suddenly too long and I wasn’t sure where to put anything, but Percy just brushed my bangs aside and took the lead, pulling my arms and legs around him until we fit together as perfectly as we had before - maybe even better. It hurt, but I didn’t care and I wouldn’t let him stop until we’d both reached the edge and blown past it, falling together until we were just a tangled, tired heap underneath the river as it flowed over and around us.
It was then, afterwards, that I realized that Percy’s air bubble had in fact vanished. We were no longer cocooned in air and the river was tickling right up against my skin. I didn’t know when it had happened. I hadn’t even noticed until just then. Somehow it just felt so right...
“Percy,” I said quietly, not wanting to scare him - after all, there wasn’t any cause for alarm. I wasn’t drowning.
“Hm?” He lifted his head off of my chest enough to touch my face, grinning down at me as he propped his chin up on one arm.
“The bubble popped.”
A second later he shot up off my chest, sitting astride my waist and staring at me with wide, frantic eyes. “Nico! I told you - I just - I...” He trailed off, as though he’d just realized that I wasn’t drowning like I should have been. And then he stared at me again, but this time with less alarm and maybe more awe. “Nico?”
“I don’t know,” I conceded, raising my arms in a half-hearted shrug from beneath him before I placed them on either side of his waist. “I just... it’s okay. I’m okay. I can breathe.”
He touched my face with one hand, this time searching my features like he was looking to see if anything had changed. I didn’t feel any different - still awkward and sore and tired - but I could take as many breaths as I wanted, as deeply as I needed, and never did my lungs fill with water.
“This is...” He trailed off, like he was looking for the right word. “Cool,” he finally said, his mouth twisting into a wry sort of grin as he leaned closer, chest to chest. “I don’t know if I should be feeling as excited as I do, but...”
I grinned right back up at him. “Maybe we should do it the other way around, see what happens then,” I teased. After all, that must have been what had happened. The closer we got, the more we... well, did this, the more our powers intertwined.
He snorted. “What, so I can call up dead lab rats too? I guess that’d be useful...” He paused, touching my hair and my face again as he held my eyes with his. “Nico...” There was a moment of silence, where I could feel both of our hearts beating at the same time, just slightly out of synch but together and strong nonetheless.
Finally he spoke again. “There’s no one else I ever wanted to share my powers with more,” Percy said quietly, still looking at me. “Nico, I love you.”
The words sent a small shock through my system, like a jolt of warm electricity. I slid my hands up his sides until they were around his back, sliding my right hand around and pressing my fingers to the white scar on his chest, directly over his heart. The scar he had gotten for me, when he’d paid the highest price any mortal could pay in order to bring me back from the dead.
I curled my fingers against his skin and swallowed around what felt like a lump in my throat. “I... I love you, too,” I said, though it suddenly felt like the words alone would never be enough to tell him what I felt. I’d said them inside my head hundreds of times before, but I’d never told him out loud. Suddenly I wondered what had taken me so long. “Percy, I just... I love you too.”
Warning: this is so totally mushy it's not even funny. XD; And rated R.
Ahaha Winamp might be trying to tell me something. XD
“Okay, so how hard is it for you to keep this bubble going?”
Percy glanced sideways at me, tilting his head quizzically. “What do you mean?”
“Well,” I said, stepping a little closer, “like, do you have to think about it all the time? Or is it just something that you can do without really having to try?”
Percy’s features began to register understanding, and he glanced at me slyly. “Why do you ask?”
“Because,” I said, moving to slip both arms around his, “I think I’ve had a hard-on since you first kissed me in that cell, and I don’t know how you deal with all of these hormones all the time but I don’t think I’m doing it very well.”
Percy laughed then, soft and low and I couldn’t help it - I kissed him, hard and deep like he’d kissed me, and he returned it with just as much fervor.
But then he stopped, pushing me away a little. “What?” I asked, wondering what was wrong. We were actually alone and safe, at least for the moment. Maybe not completely safe, but being alone at the bottom of a dark river with no one and nothing else around you but junk that’s been tossed over bridges and out of boats counted enough for me. No more monsters had come after the first assault, and any others that did come could be taken care of as easily as the first. Now the plan actually called for us to sit and wait.
Well, I didn’t intend to be bored doing it. We’d just won a battle, and adrenaline was still coursing through my body. My heart was pounding and my limbs were tingling and I really, really wanted Percy. Watching him fight like that underwater had only made me realize how amazing he could really be.
Part of me couldn’t help but wonder if he was pushing me away now because of what had happened to me, but I didn’t want to think about that so I squashed that part down and reached for Percy again. “Nico!” he laughed, swatting away my hands. “No! I know what you’re thinking. No sex on the bottom of the Charles!”
“What?” I blinked. He didn’t seem angry or uncomfortable, so what was it? Seriously, we hadn’t been alone alone since we’d gotten back from the Underworld. Despite the fact that I had more hormones coursing through me than I’d ever had before, this wasn’t just about satisfying a momentary urge. I wanted Percy, and I wanted him to know that. “Why not?”
“Because it’s gross down here!” he said, gesturing to the garbage all around us. “And just because I don’t have to think too hard to keep this bubble going doesn’t mean I can do it if I can’t think straight at all!”
He was half-grinning and I knew he meant it playfully, but it still struck something with that horrible feeling of worry I’d been carrying with me ever since I’d woken up in a body that had been all wrong. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t get rid of that feeling. Just because Percy didn’t seem angry or awkward didn’t mean he didn’t feel that way inside. What if this really had ruined everything? We’d kissed, and it had seemed fine, but... What if I was overreacting - or, worse, what if I wasn’t?
I sighed, sitting down in the silt and pulling my knees to my chest. “Well, I guess I understand. It really is kind of weird.”
Percy glanced down at me, his brows knitting. “What is?”
I gestured to myself less than enthusiastically. “This. I mean... I dunno, I guess when you grow up normally you have time to get... used to stuff, right?” I shook my head, not really sure I wanted to talk about this, and definitely not sure I should make a big deal about it. But the words still came out. “It’s just... I feel like a stranger in my own skin. I don’t feel like I belong in this body and everything feels the same but totally different all at the same time and I hate it - ”
“Nico,” Percy slid down beside me, “you’re still you. I know that as well as you do. The rest... well... I can’t promise it’ll be easy, but I’m sure you’ll get used to it.”
“I guess.” I had to admit, I did feel less clumsy than I had the first few hours after I’d woken up like this. But there was still that cold pit of worry in my stomach, that feeling that said that maybe Percy didn’t want what I was now. I didn’t really know what he’d see or how he’d react when he finally saw me naked, with nothing to hide behind and in a body that I still wasn’t sure was mine...
“Nico,” Percy said again, a little more forcefully and I realized my mind had been wandering. He looped one hand around my waist and pulled me close, sliding the fingers of the other up and into my hair. “Nico, I don’t care what you look like. I want you to know that. I liked you when you looked twelve and I’ll like you when you look a hundred and twelve.” He paused, and even in the darkness I could see his cheeks turning red. I couldn’t fault him - even after everything we’d been through and done for each other, it was still utterly strange to share your deepest feelings with someone else, even when you knew they felt them right back. I could feel my face getting warm in tandem with his.
“But I want you to know,” Percy continued, and pulled me even closer so that our chests were flush and his lips were almost touching mine, “that you are absolutely hot like this and I hate Medea for doing this to you but I can’t say I’m not the tiniest bit grateful that I didn’t have to wait four years to see you grow up.”
“... Uh,” was about the most intelligent thing I could come up with to say to that, and Percy chuckled again, deep in his throat and then he leaned in the rest of the way and kissed me. This time it wasn’t hard but it was soft, slow, and it reminded me of that night maybe a week after his birthday when I’d first told him I wanted to have sex.
The day leading up to that night had been pretty awful - my father had appeared before us and it had shaken me more than I’d wanted to admit. He’d told me that Percy was going to betray me, that he was just like everyone else and that Hades and his kin would always be shunned and alone. I had spent the rest of that day thinking long and hard about it and I’d wanted to believe, desperately, that Percy wasn’t like that. Percy was different - Percy wouldn’t turn on me. Percy loved me.
I guess I hadn’t quite been ready to think it quite in those terms yet, but nonetheless that was what I had wanted to believe. All my life the only kind of love I’d known had been Bianca’s - I couldn’t remember our mother and I didn’t even know if she’d loved us in the first place. Bianca had loved me but she’d also left me, dying in the desert somewhere without me, never to come back. But Percy... I had just bared a large part of my soul in even admitting that I’d liked him, and he’d accepted me for it. He’d taken me in and let me sleep next to him and he’d touched me and kissed me, and that night I had needed him to go even further. I had needed him inside of me, like that would prove above all else that he was the one thing that belonged to me and I belonged to him and no one would ever change that.
That night when I’d asked him to have sex with me, his face had gone red and blank and for a minute I thought I’d messed everything up. It had been just like the time I’d told him I liked him - he’d been completely blindsided, but that was always when he was at his cutest. It was also when he was at his most frightening, because in those moments he’d held the power to break me and he probably hadn’t even known it.
But I could see his mind working behind his eyes, and a few breaths later he’d said, “I do too,” and I could tell that he’d meant it. He had wanted to be as close to me as I wanted to be to him, and he had proven that he was what I wanted him to be - he was mine. He wasn’t like what my father or anyone else thought he was like. In fact, he wasn’t like anyone else in the world. And he wanted me.
Here, in the darkness and the cold at the bottom of the Charles River, I could see that again in his eyes. I could taste it as he kissed me. He’d meant every single word he’d just said - that he didn’t care what I looked like, or who I looked like, so long as I was me and I was his. And I was.
To Hades with “no sex on the bottom of the Charles”, I thought, and I grasped his shoulders, leaning back and pulling him down on top of me. He followed, not breaking the kiss, like he didn’t care about what he’d just said either - like he knew that I needed this as much as I had the first time. Except this time I might have needed it even more.
It was about as awkward as it had been the first time, too. I felt like I was in someone else’s body, like Percy was touching me for the first time every time his fingers brushed against a patch of newly revealed skin. My legs and arms were suddenly too long and I wasn’t sure where to put anything, but Percy just brushed my bangs aside and took the lead, pulling my arms and legs around him until we fit together as perfectly as we had before - maybe even better. It hurt, but I didn’t care and I wouldn’t let him stop until we’d both reached the edge and blown past it, falling together until we were just a tangled, tired heap underneath the river as it flowed over and around us.
It was then, afterwards, that I realized that Percy’s air bubble had in fact vanished. We were no longer cocooned in air and the river was tickling right up against my skin. I didn’t know when it had happened. I hadn’t even noticed until just then. Somehow it just felt so right...
“Percy,” I said quietly, not wanting to scare him - after all, there wasn’t any cause for alarm. I wasn’t drowning.
“Hm?” He lifted his head off of my chest enough to touch my face, grinning down at me as he propped his chin up on one arm.
“The bubble popped.”
A second later he shot up off my chest, sitting astride my waist and staring at me with wide, frantic eyes. “Nico! I told you - I just - I...” He trailed off, as though he’d just realized that I wasn’t drowning like I should have been. And then he stared at me again, but this time with less alarm and maybe more awe. “Nico?”
“I don’t know,” I conceded, raising my arms in a half-hearted shrug from beneath him before I placed them on either side of his waist. “I just... it’s okay. I’m okay. I can breathe.”
He touched my face with one hand, this time searching my features like he was looking to see if anything had changed. I didn’t feel any different - still awkward and sore and tired - but I could take as many breaths as I wanted, as deeply as I needed, and never did my lungs fill with water.
“This is...” He trailed off, like he was looking for the right word. “Cool,” he finally said, his mouth twisting into a wry sort of grin as he leaned closer, chest to chest. “I don’t know if I should be feeling as excited as I do, but...”
I grinned right back up at him. “Maybe we should do it the other way around, see what happens then,” I teased. After all, that must have been what had happened. The closer we got, the more we... well, did this, the more our powers intertwined.
He snorted. “What, so I can call up dead lab rats too? I guess that’d be useful...” He paused, touching my hair and my face again as he held my eyes with his. “Nico...” There was a moment of silence, where I could feel both of our hearts beating at the same time, just slightly out of synch but together and strong nonetheless.
Finally he spoke again. “There’s no one else I ever wanted to share my powers with more,” Percy said quietly, still looking at me. “Nico, I love you.”
The words sent a small shock through my system, like a jolt of warm electricity. I slid my hands up his sides until they were around his back, sliding my right hand around and pressing my fingers to the white scar on his chest, directly over his heart. The scar he had gotten for me, when he’d paid the highest price any mortal could pay in order to bring me back from the dead.
I curled my fingers against his skin and swallowed around what felt like a lump in my throat. “I... I love you, too,” I said, though it suddenly felt like the words alone would never be enough to tell him what I felt. I’d said them inside my head hundreds of times before, but I’d never told him out loud. Suddenly I wondered what had taken me so long. “Percy, I just... I love you too.”