fic: boner (pjo; nico/annabeth - rated T)
Title: Boner
Rating: T (for language and adult themes)
Word count: 2609
Characters/pairing: unrequited!Nico/Annabeth
Warnings/spoilers: Post-TLO
Summary: Nico plays hero in Annabeth's hour of need... in a shower-room. Confessions are made. Awkwardness ensues.
Notes: Set maybe two years after the end of TLO, with no real reference to the events in the Heroes of Olympus series. It's an experimental sort-of piece, and even though it says Nico/Annabeth, it's more an exploration of teenage!Nico going through some pretty teenage changes and having some pretty teenage thoughts. Sort of inspired by Mark/Juliet in Love Actually. Enjoy.
*~*
He’s just sliced about three dozen dummies into tiny worthless pieces and kicked some serious simulated monster butt, and he’s feeling pretty damn heroic as he’s heading back to the Hades cabin (if he does say so himself).
So when he hears a high-pitched scream coming from the direction of the girls’ shower-room, he’s in knight-in-shining-armour mode and ready to rock (metaphorically).
He’s in there like a flash, skidding around the corner on the wet floor (power slides. They’re intentional power slides), following the sound of the girl’s voice crying out for help over the thunder of the water in the furthest stall.
And he’s about to burst in, all Stygian Iron and mad son of Hades skillz, when it suddenly occurs to him he’s in a girl’s shower room and the damsel in distress currently languishing in terror just feet away is probably going to be totally head-to-toe naked - and suddenly he grinds to a squeaky and sudden halt.
One part of his brain is thinking how he really probably should not be here because if Bianca were ever to find out, she’d be beyond horrified - and the other part is thinking cool, naked girls in a shower room.
He bites his lip, because he can feel a smile brewing somewhere in his lower facial region, and chooses instead to call out a hesitant, “Hello?”
“Get your ass in here and help me!” cries the female voice, and she sounds like he’s pretty sure she’s as close as can be to freaking the fuck out.
He hesitates: “Are you - um -”
“I’m wearing a towel, for the gods’ sakes - just get the Hades in here before I - oh, holy shit!”
He makes a momentary executive decision, and bursts into the stall with his best bad-ass-mother-fucker roar and sword raised aloft, ready to send the unknown foul beastie to Tartarus the hard way -
“I -”
There’s no monster. At least, not a visible one.
“What the -?”
The voice, much closer now, screeches: “Over there!”
He looks up to see Annabeth Chase, in nothing but a towel, dripping wet and pointing to something a few yards from her bare feet and he’s pretty sure his jaw is scraping the floor right about now.
Hades have mercy -
“The spider!” she exclaims, terrified - she’s cowering against the tiling, eyes wide with fear. Bewildered and totally bemused, he blinks, trying to take it all in - the pounding of the water, Annabeth’s shudders, the spider lurking somewhere in the tiny stall -
His eyes linger a little too long on one particular aspect of his surroundings.
holy shit holy shit Annabeth in a towel
“Nico, come on!”
He manages to just about tear his eyes away from holy shit holy shit Annabeth in a towel long enough to spy a tiny black creature stood motionless a little way away.
Careful not to look anywhere remotely near holy shit holy shit Annabeth in a towel, he takes a few steps forward and tries really really hard to breathe as he flicks the spider wordlessly down the drain with the tip of his sword.
The water from the shower head grinds to halt, and suddenly it’s quiet; the only sound being the two of them panting, gasping for air. He hears Annabeth breathe a steady sigh of relief.
He swallows - hard.
He steps back into the corridor and stows his sword with a shaky hand back into his pocket, adrenaline still coursing through him with frightening tenacity.
There’s a silence for a beat, maybe two, before -
“Thank the gods...”
- and that’s where he makes the mistake of looking up again.
She’s adjusting her towel a little as she tries to compose herself, dragging it slightly higher up her chest- her hair, darkened and dishevelled, is cast haphazardly over one shoulder as she shivers slightly from the damp. Her skin is a light, perfect bronze, pockmarked only by miniature water droplets like freckles and a hazy scar a little below her neck; he spies delicate tan lines at her shoulders and lower thighs, and his eyes trace the curves of her calves, her collar bone, the gentle depression that stops just as the towel starts, with the slope of her -
Oh, fuck fuck fuck -
He turns, abruptly, because a certain part of his anatomy has suddenly awoken and he’s acutely aware that something is happening downstairs that really shouldn’t be happening right about now.
- fuckity fuck fuck fuck -
“Nico?” He squints, screwing his face up while desperately trying to think of something else, like dead rats or - or fermented cheese - or - “Thanks. Sorry for... freaking out.” She sounds ashamed, breathing slowly returning to normal, but he’s kind of got other problems going on right now that require his immediate attention (shit, why do I insist on wearing skinny jeans why for the love of God -)
“Are you... okay?”
“Mmmerghhhh -” He winces, filled with a sudden, burning self-loathing, and suddenly tenses as he hears her footsteps move a little closer to him. He imagines the concern etched onto her (fucking perfect) features and it’s killing him, one tiny miniscule little cell at a time, as he attempts moves awkwardly and abruptly away, his back to her in the corridor of the shower room.
Just got a boner looking at my friend’s half-naked wet girlfriend.
He’s seriously considering drowning himself at this moment in time.
“Nico, seriously, you’re - you don’t look okay, do you need me to call for somebody?” She’s anxious, worried about him and the fact that he looks like he’s in agony right about now, and if anything that makes it all the worse.
“I -” He steadies himself against the wall with a quivering hand, eyes shut tight. She’s coming closer and closer, wanting to check if he’s okay - “No, I - I’m just -”
“Are you hurt? You look -”
“- I’mjustkindofmaybehavingabitofaguyproblemrightnow, okay?” he half-shouts, and his face burns a fierce, ferocious red...
“Because I can get one of the Apollo kids to - wait, what?”
He shakes his head, trying to recover, to gain control and steady himself, a little bit. Hey, dad, if you want to do the whole ground swallow me up thing anytime soon, that’d be great.
The silence that follows is beyond excruciating.
He forces himself down onto the bench on the opposite wall with his fists clenched tightly, his head in his hands as the tightening in his pants seems to slowly lessen - he mutters inaudibly to himself and wishes he was somewhere far away or possibly dead because either way he wouldn’t be here at this exact point in time which would be really rather fucking fantastic.
Except he is here, and it’s like awkward city.
A minute passes before she sits, a little way down from him, and he can feel her gaze burning into him.
“...Nico?”
Pretend you’re not here.
“Did you - um -”
He’s not too sure what the appropriate response is, so he sort of nods into his hands.
“Oh.” It’s all she can say. He doesn’t really blame her.
And now he’s guessing he’s not the only one thinking ground swallow me up thoughts right about now.
It comes out muffled: “Um, could you maybe leave me alone?”
She doesn’t budge.
There’s another pause, just as tense. Everything’s back to normal, downstairs, but something has suddenly changed between them that’s painfully obvious.
He sighs into his hands. “Mmsorry.”
It’s pretty obvious she’s thinking of a tactful reply.
“It’s okay,” she says gently. Well chosen, he thinks bitterly. “It’s... y’know. A human thing. It’s not something you’ve got any control over.”
You have no idea.
Her foot makes a squeaking noise as it traces over the wet tiling. “How about we just pretend this never happened? You never came in here. There was no spider. End of. A one-off.”
It’s possibly the worst thing she could’ve said - and he knows, at this precise moment in time, that this is his window, and that if he doesn’t say something now then he’s probably going to regret it for a really long fucking time.
She’s standing and straightening up, going to reach for her clothes because she’s expecting him to leave. He looks pointedly away as she changes.
Now or never.
He takes a deep breath -
“Annabeth, I -”
- and bottles it.
He can hear the rustling of clothing. “Yeah?”
Quick pause. “Nothing.”
“Oh, come on, I’m not in the mood to play games. You said my name. And then I.”
“I was just... saying,” he mumbles. “What?”
“What d’you mean, what?”
“You said and then I.”
She scowls. “I was repeating what you said.”
“Oh.”
He wipes his sweaty hands on his jeans.
“So I’m going to go -”
“Wait! You haven’t told me what you were going to say?”
“When?”
“The thing! The thing you were going to say when you said Annabeth, I !” He glances over as she appears over the top of the stall, her arms folded over her chest, affronted; her expression is one of sheer exasperation.
It’s kind of pretty exasperation, though.
He sort of stands there like a tree (or something else that stands), and says nothing, feeling his insides withering under her piercing glare.
“Fine. Whatever.” She sighs as she turns back away from him, grabbing the rest of her possessions - a knife, a pair of sneakers (and fuck, is that a bra?). “See you around, Nico.”
She’s steps out into the corridor, trying to sort her hair out with one hand as she lowers herself to the ground, and starts scrambling around with a bunch of soap bottles and shampoo. Completely inelegantly and with no grace whatsoever, of course. Her hair sort of falls haphazardly to one side as she slips and curses on the wet floor.
It sort of slips out.
“I kind of love you.”
She’s having trouble lifting about five bottles up off the floor in slippery hands; it’s evident she’s only half-listening, but he’s acutely aware of everything from the blood pulsing in his forehead to his fingertips quivering nervously. “What?"
“I just - I’ve just been in love with you every day since I was eleven and I thought I should probably tell you.”
He tucks his hands in his pockets and sort of rocks on his heels, and he’s not feeling very heroic anymore. In fact, he’s feeling the total opposite.
And she’s still pissing about with the damn shampoo bottles - they clatter about on the floor as she tries to snatch them all up, dropping one as she goes to pick up another and balance one more in the crook of her elbow.
“Not like it matters, or anything,” he adds, a little louder. “I just thought it was something I should probably get off my chest at some point and now seemed like a good time, y’know? Because our friendship is kind of ruined for the rest of eternity now anyway because I got hard when I saw you nearly-naked so there’s really no more damage I could do by telling you all this. So... yeah. Just. For the record. I like you, a lot. And kind of always have.”
Three bottles fall to the floor simultaneously and she curses: shit!
“So... that’s about it.” His hair’s sort of falling in front of his eyes again, but his hands are kind of jammed into his pockets so he can’t wipe it away. Plus they’re shaking too much to be any use to anyone. “If you want to... add something, that’d be... cool.” Rock-rock-rock, backward and forwards.
Finally, she manages to lift all five of the damn bottles and straighten up, her back to him.
“...Annabeth?”
Now she responds, glancing over her shoulder at him as she holds her belongings tightly to her chest. “Yeah?”
“Did you - um, listen to anything that I said?” he asks.
She looks down to check she’s got everything. “Yeah. I did.”
Casually. Like he hasn’t just stood in front of her and admitted that he falls asleep thinking about what it’d be like to kiss her on the lips and if she has a freckle on the small of her back and if so if he could kiss that, too.
“And did you...” Don’t gulp, he thinks. He gulps. “...did you have anything to say?”
She sighs. And pauses. And places the big pile of her possessions on the bench slowly, carefully.
“You’re not in love with me, Nico,” she says, a little sadly
.
He imagines this is what a knife wound to the heart must feel like, and imagines the blood dripping onto his shoelaces.
He hates that he sounds like a child: “I’m not?”
“No.”
“Not even... a little bit?”
She shakes her head.
Relief. Irritation. Confusion. All flooding his consciousness, in equal measure. “...are you sure?”
“I’m sure.”
“...”
He wonders how rich he’d be if he’d had a dime for every awkward moment in the last eight minutes, and if he’d have enough money to buy a really cool car, like a Ferrari or one of those big, black shiny Aston Martins.
She’s looking at him funny, like there’s a Sudoku puzzle in his pupils or something.
“D’you... get what I’m saying?”
He shakes his head.
She frowns a little, light eyebrows furrowing slightly. “...Look at this way. You know how you feel about Bianca?”
Flummoxed, momentarily, followed by an immediate urge to hurl. “...I’m not in love with my sister.”
She rolls her eyes. “No! That’s not what I... no , that’s not what I meant. But love is love, whether it’s romantic or... for family. I was just going to say that... what you feel for your sister; that’s love. You love her. You’d throw yourself off a cliff without a moment’s thought for her. You’d take a bullet without any consideration for yourself for her. When she died.... there was this void in your life that’s never going to be able to be filled, even if everything turns out okay in the rest of your life... right?”
He nods. There’s a tiny aching in his chest.
“That’s loving someone. That’s what it feels like.” She tucks a curl of hair behind her ear. “And if you’re honest with yourself... That’s not how you feel about me.” A half-smile. “Is it?”
He’s not sure.
“And a boner in the girls’ shower room isn’t going to change that,” she says softly, reaching for her belongings once more, and even though his face burns a familiar red he knows it’s not meant as an attack, as a jibe.
Stil hurts, though.
She moves closer, and he’s pretty sure he could count her tiny eyelashes. They’re about the same height - maybe he’s a tiny bit taller, but he can’t really bring himself to give a fuck right now when she’s that close to him, smelling fruity and soapy and good.
“Don’t tell Percy,” he mumbles.
She nods. “Okay.”
And then she leans forward and presses a single kiss to his lips.
Her forehead is resting against his as he takes a deep breath, eyes closed. He can hear her smile. That’s weird.
And he can hear her hesitate, like she’s going to say something else, but she doesn’t - and before he knows it, she’s slipped away and he’s opening his eyes to an empty shower room.
The silence is creepy.
He watches as a tiny spider crawls from the drain onto the tiles and across the width of the corridor.
“Fuck me,” he mutters.
And he sort of wishes there’d been a damn monster in the shower room, after all.
*~*
Rating: T (for language and adult themes)
Word count: 2609
Characters/pairing: unrequited!Nico/Annabeth
Warnings/spoilers: Post-TLO
Summary: Nico plays hero in Annabeth's hour of need... in a shower-room. Confessions are made. Awkwardness ensues.
Notes: Set maybe two years after the end of TLO, with no real reference to the events in the Heroes of Olympus series. It's an experimental sort-of piece, and even though it says Nico/Annabeth, it's more an exploration of teenage!Nico going through some pretty teenage changes and having some pretty teenage thoughts. Sort of inspired by Mark/Juliet in Love Actually. Enjoy.
*~*
He’s just sliced about three dozen dummies into tiny worthless pieces and kicked some serious simulated monster butt, and he’s feeling pretty damn heroic as he’s heading back to the Hades cabin (if he does say so himself).
So when he hears a high-pitched scream coming from the direction of the girls’ shower-room, he’s in knight-in-shining-armour mode and ready to rock (metaphorically).
He’s in there like a flash, skidding around the corner on the wet floor (power slides. They’re intentional power slides), following the sound of the girl’s voice crying out for help over the thunder of the water in the furthest stall.
And he’s about to burst in, all Stygian Iron and mad son of Hades skillz, when it suddenly occurs to him he’s in a girl’s shower room and the damsel in distress currently languishing in terror just feet away is probably going to be totally head-to-toe naked - and suddenly he grinds to a squeaky and sudden halt.
One part of his brain is thinking how he really probably should not be here because if Bianca were ever to find out, she’d be beyond horrified - and the other part is thinking cool, naked girls in a shower room.
He bites his lip, because he can feel a smile brewing somewhere in his lower facial region, and chooses instead to call out a hesitant, “Hello?”
“Get your ass in here and help me!” cries the female voice, and she sounds like he’s pretty sure she’s as close as can be to freaking the fuck out.
He hesitates: “Are you - um -”
“I’m wearing a towel, for the gods’ sakes - just get the Hades in here before I - oh, holy shit!”
He makes a momentary executive decision, and bursts into the stall with his best bad-ass-mother-fucker roar and sword raised aloft, ready to send the unknown foul beastie to Tartarus the hard way -
“I -”
There’s no monster. At least, not a visible one.
“What the -?”
The voice, much closer now, screeches: “Over there!”
He looks up to see Annabeth Chase, in nothing but a towel, dripping wet and pointing to something a few yards from her bare feet and he’s pretty sure his jaw is scraping the floor right about now.
Hades have mercy -
“The spider!” she exclaims, terrified - she’s cowering against the tiling, eyes wide with fear. Bewildered and totally bemused, he blinks, trying to take it all in - the pounding of the water, Annabeth’s shudders, the spider lurking somewhere in the tiny stall -
His eyes linger a little too long on one particular aspect of his surroundings.
holy shit holy shit Annabeth in a towel
“Nico, come on!”
He manages to just about tear his eyes away from holy shit holy shit Annabeth in a towel long enough to spy a tiny black creature stood motionless a little way away.
Careful not to look anywhere remotely near holy shit holy shit Annabeth in a towel, he takes a few steps forward and tries really really hard to breathe as he flicks the spider wordlessly down the drain with the tip of his sword.
The water from the shower head grinds to halt, and suddenly it’s quiet; the only sound being the two of them panting, gasping for air. He hears Annabeth breathe a steady sigh of relief.
He swallows - hard.
He steps back into the corridor and stows his sword with a shaky hand back into his pocket, adrenaline still coursing through him with frightening tenacity.
There’s a silence for a beat, maybe two, before -
“Thank the gods...”
- and that’s where he makes the mistake of looking up again.
She’s adjusting her towel a little as she tries to compose herself, dragging it slightly higher up her chest- her hair, darkened and dishevelled, is cast haphazardly over one shoulder as she shivers slightly from the damp. Her skin is a light, perfect bronze, pockmarked only by miniature water droplets like freckles and a hazy scar a little below her neck; he spies delicate tan lines at her shoulders and lower thighs, and his eyes trace the curves of her calves, her collar bone, the gentle depression that stops just as the towel starts, with the slope of her -
Oh, fuck fuck fuck -
He turns, abruptly, because a certain part of his anatomy has suddenly awoken and he’s acutely aware that something is happening downstairs that really shouldn’t be happening right about now.
- fuckity fuck fuck fuck -
“Nico?” He squints, screwing his face up while desperately trying to think of something else, like dead rats or - or fermented cheese - or - “Thanks. Sorry for... freaking out.” She sounds ashamed, breathing slowly returning to normal, but he’s kind of got other problems going on right now that require his immediate attention (shit, why do I insist on wearing skinny jeans why for the love of God -)
“Are you... okay?”
“Mmmerghhhh -” He winces, filled with a sudden, burning self-loathing, and suddenly tenses as he hears her footsteps move a little closer to him. He imagines the concern etched onto her (fucking perfect) features and it’s killing him, one tiny miniscule little cell at a time, as he attempts moves awkwardly and abruptly away, his back to her in the corridor of the shower room.
Just got a boner looking at my friend’s half-naked wet girlfriend.
He’s seriously considering drowning himself at this moment in time.
“Nico, seriously, you’re - you don’t look okay, do you need me to call for somebody?” She’s anxious, worried about him and the fact that he looks like he’s in agony right about now, and if anything that makes it all the worse.
“I -” He steadies himself against the wall with a quivering hand, eyes shut tight. She’s coming closer and closer, wanting to check if he’s okay - “No, I - I’m just -”
“Are you hurt? You look -”
“- I’mjustkindofmaybehavingabitofaguyproblemrightnow, okay?” he half-shouts, and his face burns a fierce, ferocious red...
“Because I can get one of the Apollo kids to - wait, what?”
He shakes his head, trying to recover, to gain control and steady himself, a little bit. Hey, dad, if you want to do the whole ground swallow me up thing anytime soon, that’d be great.
The silence that follows is beyond excruciating.
He forces himself down onto the bench on the opposite wall with his fists clenched tightly, his head in his hands as the tightening in his pants seems to slowly lessen - he mutters inaudibly to himself and wishes he was somewhere far away or possibly dead because either way he wouldn’t be here at this exact point in time which would be really rather fucking fantastic.
Except he is here, and it’s like awkward city.
A minute passes before she sits, a little way down from him, and he can feel her gaze burning into him.
“...Nico?”
Pretend you’re not here.
“Did you - um -”
He’s not too sure what the appropriate response is, so he sort of nods into his hands.
“Oh.” It’s all she can say. He doesn’t really blame her.
And now he’s guessing he’s not the only one thinking ground swallow me up thoughts right about now.
It comes out muffled: “Um, could you maybe leave me alone?”
She doesn’t budge.
There’s another pause, just as tense. Everything’s back to normal, downstairs, but something has suddenly changed between them that’s painfully obvious.
He sighs into his hands. “Mmsorry.”
It’s pretty obvious she’s thinking of a tactful reply.
“It’s okay,” she says gently. Well chosen, he thinks bitterly. “It’s... y’know. A human thing. It’s not something you’ve got any control over.”
You have no idea.
Her foot makes a squeaking noise as it traces over the wet tiling. “How about we just pretend this never happened? You never came in here. There was no spider. End of. A one-off.”
It’s possibly the worst thing she could’ve said - and he knows, at this precise moment in time, that this is his window, and that if he doesn’t say something now then he’s probably going to regret it for a really long fucking time.
She’s standing and straightening up, going to reach for her clothes because she’s expecting him to leave. He looks pointedly away as she changes.
Now or never.
He takes a deep breath -
“Annabeth, I -”
- and bottles it.
He can hear the rustling of clothing. “Yeah?”
Quick pause. “Nothing.”
“Oh, come on, I’m not in the mood to play games. You said my name. And then I.”
“I was just... saying,” he mumbles. “What?”
“What d’you mean, what?”
“You said and then I.”
She scowls. “I was repeating what you said.”
“Oh.”
He wipes his sweaty hands on his jeans.
“So I’m going to go -”
“Wait! You haven’t told me what you were going to say?”
“When?”
“The thing! The thing you were going to say when you said Annabeth, I !” He glances over as she appears over the top of the stall, her arms folded over her chest, affronted; her expression is one of sheer exasperation.
It’s kind of pretty exasperation, though.
He sort of stands there like a tree (or something else that stands), and says nothing, feeling his insides withering under her piercing glare.
“Fine. Whatever.” She sighs as she turns back away from him, grabbing the rest of her possessions - a knife, a pair of sneakers (and fuck, is that a bra?). “See you around, Nico.”
She’s steps out into the corridor, trying to sort her hair out with one hand as she lowers herself to the ground, and starts scrambling around with a bunch of soap bottles and shampoo. Completely inelegantly and with no grace whatsoever, of course. Her hair sort of falls haphazardly to one side as she slips and curses on the wet floor.
It sort of slips out.
“I kind of love you.”
She’s having trouble lifting about five bottles up off the floor in slippery hands; it’s evident she’s only half-listening, but he’s acutely aware of everything from the blood pulsing in his forehead to his fingertips quivering nervously. “What?"
“I just - I’ve just been in love with you every day since I was eleven and I thought I should probably tell you.”
He tucks his hands in his pockets and sort of rocks on his heels, and he’s not feeling very heroic anymore. In fact, he’s feeling the total opposite.
And she’s still pissing about with the damn shampoo bottles - they clatter about on the floor as she tries to snatch them all up, dropping one as she goes to pick up another and balance one more in the crook of her elbow.
“Not like it matters, or anything,” he adds, a little louder. “I just thought it was something I should probably get off my chest at some point and now seemed like a good time, y’know? Because our friendship is kind of ruined for the rest of eternity now anyway because I got hard when I saw you nearly-naked so there’s really no more damage I could do by telling you all this. So... yeah. Just. For the record. I like you, a lot. And kind of always have.”
Three bottles fall to the floor simultaneously and she curses: shit!
“So... that’s about it.” His hair’s sort of falling in front of his eyes again, but his hands are kind of jammed into his pockets so he can’t wipe it away. Plus they’re shaking too much to be any use to anyone. “If you want to... add something, that’d be... cool.” Rock-rock-rock, backward and forwards.
Finally, she manages to lift all five of the damn bottles and straighten up, her back to him.
“...Annabeth?”
Now she responds, glancing over her shoulder at him as she holds her belongings tightly to her chest. “Yeah?”
“Did you - um, listen to anything that I said?” he asks.
She looks down to check she’s got everything. “Yeah. I did.”
Casually. Like he hasn’t just stood in front of her and admitted that he falls asleep thinking about what it’d be like to kiss her on the lips and if she has a freckle on the small of her back and if so if he could kiss that, too.
“And did you...” Don’t gulp, he thinks. He gulps. “...did you have anything to say?”
She sighs. And pauses. And places the big pile of her possessions on the bench slowly, carefully.
“You’re not in love with me, Nico,” she says, a little sadly
.
He imagines this is what a knife wound to the heart must feel like, and imagines the blood dripping onto his shoelaces.
He hates that he sounds like a child: “I’m not?”
“No.”
“Not even... a little bit?”
She shakes her head.
Relief. Irritation. Confusion. All flooding his consciousness, in equal measure. “...are you sure?”
“I’m sure.”
“...”
He wonders how rich he’d be if he’d had a dime for every awkward moment in the last eight minutes, and if he’d have enough money to buy a really cool car, like a Ferrari or one of those big, black shiny Aston Martins.
She’s looking at him funny, like there’s a Sudoku puzzle in his pupils or something.
“D’you... get what I’m saying?”
He shakes his head.
She frowns a little, light eyebrows furrowing slightly. “...Look at this way. You know how you feel about Bianca?”
Flummoxed, momentarily, followed by an immediate urge to hurl. “...I’m not in love with my sister.”
She rolls her eyes. “No! That’s not what I... no , that’s not what I meant. But love is love, whether it’s romantic or... for family. I was just going to say that... what you feel for your sister; that’s love. You love her. You’d throw yourself off a cliff without a moment’s thought for her. You’d take a bullet without any consideration for yourself for her. When she died.... there was this void in your life that’s never going to be able to be filled, even if everything turns out okay in the rest of your life... right?”
He nods. There’s a tiny aching in his chest.
“That’s loving someone. That’s what it feels like.” She tucks a curl of hair behind her ear. “And if you’re honest with yourself... That’s not how you feel about me.” A half-smile. “Is it?”
He’s not sure.
“And a boner in the girls’ shower room isn’t going to change that,” she says softly, reaching for her belongings once more, and even though his face burns a familiar red he knows it’s not meant as an attack, as a jibe.
Stil hurts, though.
She moves closer, and he’s pretty sure he could count her tiny eyelashes. They’re about the same height - maybe he’s a tiny bit taller, but he can’t really bring himself to give a fuck right now when she’s that close to him, smelling fruity and soapy and good.
“Don’t tell Percy,” he mumbles.
She nods. “Okay.”
And then she leans forward and presses a single kiss to his lips.
Her forehead is resting against his as he takes a deep breath, eyes closed. He can hear her smile. That’s weird.
And he can hear her hesitate, like she’s going to say something else, but she doesn’t - and before he knows it, she’s slipped away and he’s opening his eyes to an empty shower room.
The silence is creepy.
He watches as a tiny spider crawls from the drain onto the tiles and across the width of the corridor.
“Fuck me,” he mutters.
And he sort of wishes there’d been a damn monster in the shower room, after all.
*~*