ezyl
in
pillowcased
[pjo/lukenico] HUMMING BIRD, PART 1
Title: ハミングバード (HUMMING BIRD)
Pairings: Luke/Nico, Percy/Annabeth, Luke/Thalia, implied Thalia/Annabeth (total l’antithèse, man)
Rated: NC-17
Warnings: It doesn't make sense.
Summary: This is a phenomenon that usually occurs later in the year.
Notes: written for pjo_bigbang. still can't believe i hit 17k. props to wise_stupidity for tackling this potatofuckery, and thank god for the mods at pjo_bigbang. ♥
ハミングバード
She opens her mouth, eyes shine bright like sidewalk puddles on a sunny day. Her smile is beautiful. Shines like a satellite and a star and a superpower at once, makes his heart pound and his breath short and his ears red; glows and glows and glows and glows
(and she doesn’t have to be a goddess to be a goddess)
*
cold outside, today
So they meet for the first time on the sidewalk near the public garden in Fresno, California city not really a California city, cheap streets and dirty playgrounds, probably too many melded layers of asphalt to be considered healthy. Fresh marijuana soaks the air like a semi-precious jewel in the hands of a mafia boss, and somewhere amidst the rusty barbed wire and rundown apartment buildings, the entire world can hear the crack of a whip against bare skin.
There’s a rhythm in the sky. It reminds him of the Senegalese rain sticks they sold at the souvenir shack down the street, three for five dollars (whoever thought of making a profit by selling Senegalese instruments in Fresno had clearly no interest in the stock exchange); these are only different because they’re stocked from the sky. Thick drops of rain roll from the tops of buildings to the tops of parallel-parked vehicles to the top of his umbrella to the tops of the slabs of cement on the sidewalk, right down into the bottom of his heart and then some. In fact, it is raining so hard that, if he’d stuck out his hand two feet in front of him, he’d probably never know where his fingers had gone.
Cold outside, today.
They are both holding umbrellas in the street. His is Very Nearly Beyond Repair, the wires supporting the black film bent at sixty-degree angles and loose at the screws. He is standing in front of an electronics store in which a color television display is airing a variety program; something to do with Japanese Rube-Goldberg machines and capillary action. He shakes his head, and little droplets of rain scatter from his hair like waterlogged lice. Digs a hand into the wet pocket of his jeans and feels cold coins click and stick to his skin. They might’ve jingled on a warmer day.
And he sees Luke the first time that day, in a rain of invisible fingers and Rube-Goldberg machines, while he is young and soaked to the skin, clutching a battered heart supporting a battered umbrella under a battered roof beneath a battered sky.
At the time, Luke has no money. Nico is filthy rich.
He’ll blame it on the gambling parlors, of course. Only so much that years of continuous pachinko and Texas Hold ‘Em will do to the wallet before it bursts and minds turn quisling for creativity and rational thought, neural synapses for criminal tendency in his cerebral hemisphere since fired and connected and re-fired and reconnected, again and again and again and again. So he doesn’t mind the extra cash, not really (who would find that problematic, anyway?), even if he does have to mind the stray hands in the elevator.
A pretty smile, under this rain, he only thinks. He has a really pretty smile.
(At the time, Luke remembers nothing. Nico remembers too much.)
It is around the time when people are ducking under the eaves of cafés to eat grilled-cheese sandwiches, have a bit of liquor and maybe a bathroom fuck (or two) at a hostess club, catch up on the amorous and somewhat exaggerated details about personal life while under the influence of whiskey or weed (take your pick). Around the time when bygone businessmen will sit down to a cup of cream-colored latte instead of the regular black, stack a tidy pile of work papers on the edge of their coffee table and ignore it like there’s no tomorrow and too many yesterdays. Around the time when gossip mongers hang back in the corners, pore over tabloids and jab each other in the shoulder whenever productivity fades (hell no, Actress X cheating on Director Z with Lady Gaga?), and the manager of the café keeps a good head count of the ears listening in.
The first time they meet, it is startlingly sweet and shocking and ultimately Tragic.
Because (at the time), Luke had made a promise. And then Nico broke it.
*
it is a truth universally-acknowledged, that a lonely boy on the brink of suicidal-thought must be in want of another lonely boy, one who will inevitably light up his life
The stage is still wobbly from their first practice promenade. A hostile pothole here, a paparazzo’s camera frame there, pair of silver hoop earrings fallen from grace. Girls give him the once-over by turning around and batting three-inch-long lashes: come-hither or I’ll feel you up myself and maybe file a sexual harassment complaint. Come dress-up time, Luke finds himself at a serious disadvantage when he tries to prevent the dominatrix stylist from rubbing on wildflower-scented mousse in his hair. The woman fiddling with the speaker dials at the sound booth tells him that his tie is crooked, all the while blushing a weird shade of apricot that has Luke nervous and resampling the aftertaste of his lunch. Indirect correlations, defunct social simulations, feeling the crust of last night’s beer and weed foam up under your tongue when you wake up-all common death of the world to him, all beyond expository thought. At least his misery limits any thought process to his hindbrain.
Though at this point, there is no doubt in his mind.
He hasn’t been conscious since last year.
*
he needs a drink or maybe seven
Percy decides to propose to Annabeth on a public park bench. It’s sort of a spur-of-the-moment thing, really, though he’s never been the type to wax poetic-his life has been one sour disappointment after another. Annabeth is sipping strawberry-flavored tapioca, dangling her head in his lap and reciting the construction blueprints of an Indian cultural museum with Byzantine flairs-it’s her brainchild, most likely genius enough to become the next Architectural Wonder of the Century.
“You know the centripetal-styled ceiling beam at the second level -it’s a pure miracle they’d found the right raw size for African oak, seriously- that one? Charlemagne is thinking about switching it to the third level, but that wouldn’t work for shit, because we’d have to carve into the marvelous wood to cater to the dimensional stylists and proportions and shit. Defiling African oak. Can you imagine? What an ass.”
Percy mumbles his agreement.
…So he isn’t thinking about much; it’s a cloudy day and he feels unaccomplished; faith in humanity as diminished and as depressively-manic as he can imagine. He’s only dimly aware of Annabeth’s words; he’s currently in a state of unemployment and he is absolutely sure that, if he hadn’t been dating a girl who exceeded not only his intelligence quotient and his (nonexistent) income but his height, as well, he would not be so dull-brained and much more likely to say something that could possibly entertain his girlfriend. (He’s never tried to share this theory with Annabeth because the last time they’d discussed This Week’s Rent the blonde girl had laughed her silly ass off and then punched him in the face. He couldn’t help finding violent girls attractive.)
He had told her to wait. Wait for him to find a job, wait for the stock prices on strawberry jam to come down, wait for him to start intercepting the water and electricity bills before she found them piled up on her desk, wait for the car insurance confirmations to reappear in the mail and wait for the plants to get watered, wait for me, Annabeth, just wait for me. I’ll show those budget cutters and Wall Street fags, I’ll show them.
(it’s just as well that he knows that, for people like Annabeth, waiting is wasting)
But it is in this moment that the sun comes out, blinding and shiny like a medallion in the sky, and Percy forgets pretty much everything because Annabeth has taken her hand and held it above her forehead to shield her eyes, let a little strip of bright sunlight settle onto her nose and her lips; her eyes are slanted and she’s breathing softly, chin tilted towards the light, and it’s the prettiest thing he’s ever seen since he’d learned what was pretty.
And so Percy does the most sensible thing that any post-adolescent member of the male species would have done.
“Marry me,” he blurts out, “Marry me, Annabeth.”
(marry me. right now. you and me, wedding bells and wedding sashes. don’t have a ring, but I mean every word of it)
The moment he says it, he knows he shouldn’t have waited so long. He kind of hates himself for it, wants to say something to distract her but then her eyes flash and his breath has left his lungs. So she sits up on the park bench and gazes at him under half-lidded eyes, and then says it in the breathiest, sexiest voice in the history of breathy, sexy voices,
“Hell, no.”
The next thing he knows, she’s falling on the ground, rolling like a pig and snorting just as loud.
(because first comes love, then comes marriage, then comes the little girl, the hospital bills and the plastic baby carriage)
*
The boy in the cafe tells him that he’s actually not interested in buying cakes and whatever else you’ve got to offer, and instead Luke finds himself hanging around a rather sketchy section of the city, a paved road and a grassy park next to it, rusty swing sets and teeter-totters lining the banks of a duck pond. There are no children around. The place looks oddly familiar. Fresno, the sign had said? Luke makes a note of it and tries to find a place to sit down and eat his sandwich.
It is half-past nine, and the skies are still light from the midsummer drop zone of misty light and angular shadows lined like coincidences. Geometric values that have neither distinct boundaries nor lack of tangent lines. It’s going to be daybreak soon.
At some point, he starts to believe that it’s all a hoax. A pretty treasure map, handed to him by a pretty boy under a pretty umbrella under a pretty rain cloud. A distinct aftertaste of nostalgia accompanied by the wave of a hand, like sour bread and the petals on a yellow rose, yeast and stigma and walking off the beaten track. Mysterious words and actions that speak for other people instead of himself. What had possessed Luke to take the map? He’d never seen an angel in his life, and for some reason, he’d seriously doubt himself if he’d been speaking to one of God’s messengers.
He must’ve been desperate. He would have probably done anything then, if only to salvage a few more pennies in his pocket. The office had shut him out, he’d gotten dumped by a girl, he’d probably have found the nearest taxi driver and pleaded to give head. He doesn’t know what he would have done to make up for it. He’s honestly not exactly sure what he wants, not anymore, not in a long time.
Discreetly (or perhaps not) he starts referring to the boy as an Angel.
*
Thalia Grace gets off the bus one stop early and decides to walk to the convenience store on the left, the one with the voodoo jingle bells hanging on the door. She’s only smoking menthols, now, and not a single one of the shit-eating bastards at the company is going to stop her. It was enough that they cut out the regular tobacco from the footage, but menthols? It was a goddamn travesty. Jesus, Thalia, you just don’t get it, do you, Mr. Fat-Cheeked Director keeps telling her, the point is to omit the action of inhaling tobacco out of your routine, but fuck that shit, if he couldn’t deal with it, she’ll just have to make him deal with it. Actresses and porn stars. What kind of difference did they make in the end, if she couldn’t chew on a cigarette during the shoot? She would not lobby or proposition, she would not faint and moan and play like a slut, she would not goddamn fuck another impotent asshole if she didn’t get her menthols.
Hell, she might even take pity on the salarymen. Let them get a sweaty hand under her skirt for half-price. She can still go cheap these days and not worry about the price.
*
The first store had pushed Percy away based on appearance alone.
“You’re too handsome,” the manager had told him flat-out, “And we don’t have enough cute girls to match your looks.” He says it like he’s almost wistful.
The next store had done the same, rejecting him based on the grounds that they did not encourage work-based relationships among employees. This wasn’t fair. Percy had done nothing to deserve this treatment. But the thought of Annabeth’s disapproving glare at home, that messy trail of tears bleeding into the stairwell had driven him out of the house. In the next place, he decides to comb back his hair and adopt the look of somebody’s disgruntled butler.
Somehow, this works.
The manager of the corner store takes one look at him and suddenly starts sobbing uncontrollably until Percy starts wondering what he’s done now; he’s flinging thick, hairy arms around Percy’s torso, and now he’s begging Percy to stay, the pay isn’t great but the people are nice, and you are certainly the man of my dreams, I beg of you, this is my request of a lifetime!
What’s he to do except take the job?
(after)
“So tell me about your plans,” Luke says, and Thalia starts frowning, then.
“I don’t really have any,” she says at first, “I mean, I really wanted to give Annabeth a piece of me to take with her when she’d gone over, but now she’s got Percy Jackson and the floor plans of every single building she’s ever wanted to marry.”
Luke laughs, and Thalia just sits there and bites her lip.
“It’s kinda funny, isn’t it,” she says at last.
“It is,” Luke agrees.
And that’s the end of that.
(before)
Bianca comes home the next day with a boy hugging her waist and twirling sweaty fingers in her hair, and Nico is suddenly brought back to his years of adolescence. How the kids in his high school had forgotten his existence. How all of his friends had all found girls and boys to go around with, kissing each other into the lockers in the hallway and finding ways to tease and admonish, laugh with each other, subscribe to loving each other. High school, the proverbial breeding grounds. How he’d wanted someone, back then. How he’d missed all of this.
“D-Dad,” Bianca tumbles over her words, “Dad, this is my boyfriend, Tony. Tony, this is my dad.”
It’s the first time, Nico thinks; it’s the first time she’s called me Dad.
“Hullo, Tony.”
Tony flashes him a neat smile and two fingers raised in salute, “Mr. di Angelo.”
There’s a moment of silence. Nico sizes the boy up, fair hair, slacked eyes, loose pants and all. “Would you guys like to come in?” he finally asks, cracks the door open a little wider, “I was just about to have dinner now, and there’s always room-”
“No, it’s okay!” his daughter says quickly, and he can see a little bit of horror surface in her face, “We’re going to go see a movie, that’s all. I just wanted to introduce you, since I’ve been with Tony for a while, now. He’s wanted to meet you, too. Haven’t you, Tony?”
Tony gives Nico another smile.
“I see,” Nico says. It’s been a while, hasn’t it, he thinks to himself, and lets his eyes narrow into the Protective Father’s Glare. “How long have you been going out, exactly?”
His daughter has the grace to look embarrassed. “T-Two months,” she titters, and Tony’s mixed expression makes it clear that it’s been two months of minimal action. “Actually, I was wondering if-if-may I stay out tonight?”
He draws in a breath, and he sees the teenage boy do the same.
Did he really think he could do this, now? Raising a teenager. Expecting it not to backfire on himself.
“Absolutely not. You’re barely sixteen.”
“But I’ll be with Tony the whole night.”
“That’s the problem.”
“Dad...”
You’ve called me Nico forever, Nico wants to say, you’ve called me Nico and you’ve never had any trouble stuffing words in my mouth and living with my habits, you’ve called me Nico while you were thirteen and learning how to memorize words for the spelling bee, you’ve called me Nico while you were in the shower asking me to grab you an extra bottle of Herbal Essences from the supermarket, you’ve called me Nico forever and a week and now you’re just going to go ahead and call me Dad, like it hadn’t meant anything to either of us. He could be pouting like a child right now. He wants to look back and check; there’s a missing paragraph somewhere, a missing golden rule of parenting and siblinghood, and it’s all bewildering enough to make him start to question his own motives. That he could end up sounding like an overprotective boyfriend. That maybe he’s not ready to give up being a big brother, yet. That, in another lifetime, Bianca could have easily dressed-up as Nico’s older sister and given him a chance for freedom and cigarettes and girls, instead of the other way around.
That it would not have made this any less complicated.
*
The first stop for Luke was Monaco. Second smallest city-state-turned-sovereign-country in the world, the first being Vatican City. Population exceeding 30000, of which a predominant 84 percent were wealthy foreign capitalists; the rest of it comprised of disgruntled natives, hungry beggars on the streets, and the Spanish. He had done a little research at a cyber café before slotting a discount ticket on Air France.
A bit of a cheery place, too cheery for him, but it’s all that’s left going for him, so he drops his bags in the closest motel with spiders in the bathtub and begins his hunt for lost treasure.
(after)
But see, on the topic of traveling, Luke has her captivated in mere minutes. He’s been to Monaco and islands off Crete, Japan and Saudi Arabia, Germany and Australia. Meditating in the valleys of violet mountain peaks, traveling among elephants. Talking to a camel, sitting down with a ghost next to the Berlin Wall. And what he’d found, amidst all of it. How it had made him more supernaturally-inclined than ever before, more likely to believe in fairies and apparitions and shit. The treasure that he had accumulated from the adventure was enough to throw Thalia out of her chair.
“A regular Monte Cristo, you are,” she chuckled, climbed back onto his lap, “and me, I’ve just transformed into a gold digger. Almost unbelievable. This is just like something out of Narnia.”
“You couldn’t imagine,” he smirks, feeling real impressionability at the moment.
He recounts to her the tale of the Greek island then, of witnessing flavor in food and flavor in men and women, flowers in hair, sand in the surf and white beaches. Like keeping to the side of a mosaic, peeling off piece by piece the colorful glass and porcelain hooked onto the rims, tracing fingertips over the edge of a stranger’s fairy story. The Mediterranean and porn stars would mix well, wouldn’t they.
And all Thalia can do is stare, until something lights up in her eyes and she’s off like a firecracker.
“But I was there while you were there!” she throws her hands up in the air and starts giggling, “June, 2007? Fuck, now you’re probably going to tell me that you caught me skinny-dipping, too.”
Luke’s not sure how he’s supposed to respond to that.
(before)
“So when you asked me to marry you,” Annabeth starts, “were you listening to what I was saying beforehand? Like, at all?”
“You were talking about Indian museums, right? And ceiling beams or something for the second level. Right?”
“And that’s all you heard.”
“What else did you say?”
“I’m wearing a new pair of glasses today,” she suddenly says.
He blinks, takes them off the bridge of her nose. “You are?”
“You didn’t notice, after all.”
“Am I supposed to notice these things?”
“…No,” Annabeth sighs, “I guess not.”
She’s trembling, wondering if she’s been assuming too much and keeping too much skepticism under lock and key. He wonders if she’s coming down with a fever. She’s never looked so stressed before. Rubs her forehead in concern, but she shrugs his hand off, retreats back into her drafting room and twists the knob on the door until he hears a click from the other side.
He wonders what he’s done now, and on the other side of the door, she’s wondering what he hasn’t done, and why she feels so goddamn miserable inside.
(it’s like nothing really makes sense anymore)
*
Thalia meets Annabeth at the cafe at four. She sits down at a table, orders a latte and starts flicking through last month’s Vogue on the bench. Passionate fashion, seasonal styles, oh-look-here a fur coat that costs the equivalent of the annual salary of a normal businessman. Perhaps her next conquest will purchase this one for her if she put on the handcuffs.
She looks at her reflection in the glass of the cafe and smirks to herself. She could easily have passed as a movie star (sex tapes notwithstanding). That trip to that Greek island might have done some good, after all. Despite the sand on the beach.
Annabeth arrives five minutes later, wearing a pink scarf that doesn’t match her shirt and day-old mascara, children’s lip gloss. Perches on her seat like a child. Trembling bottom lip-just like a child’s.
“You’re not going to a party in that, are you?” she says first, smoothing a hand through Annabeth’s oil-streaked hair, “What the hell did you do to yourself now?”
“I-I didn’t,” Annabeth whispers, more to herself than Thalia. She starts playing around with her fingers, tapping them against the table and looking around like a criminal, until Thalia finally notices that The Engagement Ring Isn’t There Anymore.
She decides not to make a comment about it.
Says instead, “Hey, you okay?” Examines Annabeth carefully, sips from her coffee cup and filters the lenses of the worldly-girl goggles as much as she can, “You want something to drink? I’ll keep it on my tab.”
And Annabeth nods, but only slowly, scoots forward in her chair with a loud scrape against the tiled floor.
“Thalia,” Annabeth’s lips tremble, “I don’t know what to do any more. I’m so fucked up. And Percy. He’s…He’s not…it’s like he doesn’t even…”
She doesn’t finish. Thalia doesn’t want to listen to her finish, either, so she just looks down at her hands and thinks about the air flow in the room, and how thick it’s suddenly become.
There’s something gross about coffee that she’s never really liked. It’s bitter, like chewing tea leaves; it’s all runny and flat-flavored when she drinks it at home; it leaves a chunky aftertaste in her mouth. Nothing good has ever come out of running on caffeine. Besides, she’d always wanted to be 5’7”. She’d once sworn that she’d never drink coffee, an oath that she’d taken with a bottle of decaffeinated green tea. But then she’d grown up and started living a life, read in a book that a girl stopped growing three years after her first period, and now she’s long-since forgotten all about trying to coerce herself into fitting the height; 5’6” isn’t so bad, anyway.
At any rate, she doesn’t mind it much anymore. She’s a cream and sugar kind of girl.
Annabeth, however, believes in nothing but black coffee. The thicker the better. The thicker and richer and more bitter, the more vibrant she’d feel, the more corporate asses she could kick around. It was Annabeth’s vice.
Thalia wonders what she’d get off calling something a vice, and finally decides that it might be swimming in Greek waters while screaming out her troubles into the sky.
(It was where Annabeth was the mature, adaptable womanly figure, where she won out over Thalia’s peculiar oral fixations and bad habits she’d never corrected since childhood. It was where Annabeth stood tall and glowing and headstrong on the middle ground and where Thalia would slink and stumble behind, trying to nudge her understanding this way and that until it would fit what had been Orthodox a decade ago.)
June, 2007
The next stop is an island sitting in the middle of the Mediterranean, just off the east coast of the island of Crete. It’s a sandy, windy affair with a lot of bikinis and slim tummies floating on its shores, toenail polish glittering between the rays of the sun. Muscle-builders take their girlfriends surfing here in the gentle waves, while pubescent boys ogle at the cleavage spilling out from between scant pieces of swimsuit fabric. Angel’s map tells Luke that what he’s looking for is exactly on the opposite side of the shores he’d landed on, so he decides to go beachcombing and begin the journey the next day. Perhaps he’ll find a few necklaces somewhere, or (if he’s lucky) somebody’s Rolex.
In the middle of the night, Luke catches sight of a girl swimming in the seas.
Unsurprisingly, she isn’t wearing anything, save for a pair of designer sunglasses and a chain around her neck. Looks about as satisfied with her life as anyone could be. She ducks under the waves, picks up seaweed, and tucks it between locks of her hair. Opens her mouth and laughs openly into the night sky, white teeth flashing in the light of the moon. Arms paddle forward and back, nudging the foams of the wave like a sculpture. He thinks to himself that he might just be witnessing a goddess, or perhaps local deity in disguise, come from the heavens to experience worldly pleasure. Another moment and he’s sure that he must be experiencing an epileptic.
Another second, she’s gone.
He’s turned into a complete freak.
Later, he finds the box buried among a heavy pile of rocks, next to a seagull’s nest and a rocky cliff where some famous celebrity had once shot a film about angst-riddled lovers threatening to throw each other off the cliff to profess their undying love.
While he watches the waves lap against the beach, he contemplates joining them in their sojourn into heaven. Heaven or hell, he won’t try to take his pick. He just wants to leave.
(after)
“Actor, huh,” his face twists into a strange smile (it makes Luke’s heart beat faster and faster and shit he’s probably going to get a heart attack if this keeps up), “So you’re an actor.”
“Yeah, I’m an actor. I’ve got actor friends, actor girlfriends, actor drugs, and all that lame shit.”
“Then you don’t want me,” he says, “You don’t want me at all.”
“Yes I do,” Luke Castellan says, whispers it softly and almost inaudibly into his ear, hands on Nico’s waist and a growing hard-on pressed into his thigh, “I want you here, I want you now, and I know you want me. It’s a simple enough question for you, isn’t it?”
(before)
Nico visits the adoption center next-door to the foster home on Wednesday.
When the caretaker opens the door, a puff of disinfectant and talcum powder greets his nose. The room is small and cheerful: pale pastel walls and floral wallpaper-as if the orphans had needed some other vice to cheer each other up. A stack of books surround a commercial-sized suitcase, nylon rope, and plastic buckles.
“So who’s the oldest kid here?”
“Oldest?” Sister Cathy stumbles over her own words, “But-surely, you’d like a younger child.”
“No, ’m fine.”
Not if he isn’t going to live long enough and disappear far enough to see her through high school.
“A-Are you certain? There isn’t…?”
“It’s OK,” Nico tells her.
Sister Cathy tells him to wait by the door and keep himself busy with the baby magazines, and after standing there for a good fifteen minutes, there’s a girl. There’s a girl, dark hair and mismatched eyes, face that brought a sharp memory back into Nico’s mind.
“This is Mr. di Angelo. He’s the kind man who wants to adopt you,” the nun says, making her way back out the door, “Have your bags packed now, dearie, we don’t want to keep him waiting.”
“What’s your name?” he asks her first, taking her suitcase in his hands and feeling a ton of awkward for every second he stood there. He couldn’t have been more than ten years older than her. It would be like adopting a sister.
She bites her bottom lip, and he sees dread in her eyes. Didn’t want to be here either. “Bianca. It’s Bianca.”
“What about your last name?”
“Doesn’t matter, does it? I’m Bianca di Angelo, now,” she says. She tugs the suitcase out of his hands and drags it into the trunk, “And I’m thirteen. I can take care of myself.”
“So you are,” Nico says, “I’m Nico. I don’t really want you to call me father or anything. I’m not much older than you. At least I hope I look that way.”
(Did he say too much? Too little?)
Bianca turns sideways to face him and stare at the ground.
“Thanks, Nico. You’ve really…you’ve really helped me.”
*
Nagano is beautiful in the spring. There are fewer tourists around the urban area, because they are all gathered at the shrines to watch the spectacles and the sakura blossoms, but Luke finds it peaceful. Two blocks down and he finds a tidy, bite-sized inn with a concierge who speaks fluent English. Settled down into a room that had a view directly into the violet-colored peaks far away, he’s able to feel the breeze sway in from the window from across the peaks of the buildings. This is something that he’s never experienced before, this kind of inner tranquility, inner being. No small wonder that there are so many Japanese Buddhists around the world. If Luke could live this kind of life every day, then maybe he’d be at peace with himself, after all.
And suddenly, he’s starved with an urge to meditate. It’s a subtle bit of subliminal messaging, Annabeth had told him once, you miss and you hit and you suddenly know how to do it in the middle of cracking your head open on the wall. Like indirect proofs, whereupon you draw a curved line towards the solution instead of a straight line. Parabolic trajectory magnifying the experience a hundred-fold, currents and constants flooded by incongruity and ultimately, inner stability and full efficiency.
(Yeah, he’s not exactly sure he knows what she’s talking about, but it must be a rewarding exercise, so perhaps he’ll try it, see for himself.)
He sits down, cross-legged on the tatami mat in the middle of the room, closes his eyes and tries to clear his mind. It’s difficult at first; there are too many thoughts in too many places restrained by too much time and too many people telling him to stop, but he presses on.
*
(This is a clear, turquoise lake in the middle of the mountain, at the crux of the mountain peak. The only way to find this lake is if you were to climb up several cliffs and then down a steep wind shaft, followed by the frailest natural bridge in the world. But when you do find it, it’s the best place in the world. There are patches of wildflowers swirled around the eastern corner of the lake, collecting and scattering pollen across the paths of the world; algae and moss climb up the shores like jungle undergrowth. The people who see this place never want to leave it, but the lake disappears and reappears in different places around the world, the hallmark of ephemeral beauty that skips generations and years like a child skipping stones across a pond.
It’s a beautiful place, and he sees it now, as he’s sitting on the tatami mat with his eyes closed.
It’s a very beautiful place.
*
“Grover,” the shorter man extends an arm, “I’m Grover. I’ll be working the night shift. Noonday shifts give me gas, you see, and I’ve already had a bunch of peculiar cases like that.”
Percy grins.
*
Grover, as it turns out, has a whole collection of potentially self-endangering and illicit endeavors that he takes regular interest in. The next time Percy meets him, Grover is sitting on a cardboard box in the back-alley, practiced fingers rolling a heavy joint.
“Weed,” he gives out by way of explanation, “Schmidt told me it was grown in India. You know they always grow the best grass.”
Percy didn’t know. But it was probably a good thing to know, so he nods and takes a draft when Grover passes the joint to him with a happy, half-delirious sigh.
“So who’s Schmidt?”
“Schmidt? Oh, he’s my supplier. Longtime drinking buddy and confidante. What you want, he’ll get you. Good man, Schmidty.”
While Grover rambles on about Schmidt’s particular skill at finding the best phone sex lines, Percy lets the legitimacy of it all stew in his head, feels the slow, aphrodisiacal burn of marijuana soak through his veins. “Does he do housing?”
Grover stops for a second and eyes him under glazed eyes. “What?”
“House hunts. Does he do them?”
“Who, Schmidt?”
“Yeah. I need a new place to crash.”
*
As the days go on, Luke finds it increasingly difficult to concentrate on the photo shoots. He’s still fine with the crazy demands of the directors, but every time another flashbulb settles on him, he starts flinching and feeling his flesh burn underneath the glare of the light. He was shooting a goddamn desert film, and he didn’t have time for this.
Even the makeup artists notice it. One of the girls tells him to quit squirming, and is finally reduced to jabbing the mascara brush in his eye to make Luke concentrate. Another costume designer simply starts sticking pins in all the uncomfortable places until he begs him to stop.
There’d been an earthquake somewhere in the world and someone is dying and all Luke wants to do is go home and find Nico and curl up and sleep. He can sleep. He can only sleep.
*
The new girl at the grocery store is really pretty. She has blonde highlights in her red hair, and she wears miniskirts all the time that show off a delightful slip of skin before thigh-high stockings. And she’s got it in for Percy, as well, which just makes it all the worse.
Another day, she had invited Percy out for coffee during break and he’d gone along, pulling all sorts of excuses out of the box; he’d wanted to be polite, she was the one who’d asked him, she was simply too pretty to ignore, Annabeth hadn’t specifically placed an indiction on this kind of behavior.
She had asked him about his favorite color. Favorite novel, movie, hobbies, type of girl. He had dutifully responded to all of it, stirring in one sugar cube after another and feeling like he’d been put on as the star of some horrendous film about middle-aged singles dating. He’s only twenty-three.
“Percy,” she nudges his wrist with the lip of a tea spoon, looks up at his face from under her lashes, “Are you listening to me?”
“I have a girlfriend,” Percy blurts out suddenly, and now he’s probably ruined the premise of the dating movie on the spot.
He can tell she’s surprised, but she hides it by straightening up her back, “I-I wasn’t going to ask you,” she murmurs, tucks a lock of red hair behind an ear, and God she’s really, really pretty.
(But she does anyway. She’s been asking him if he’d had a girlfriend all along, asking him through smoky eye makeup, cheerful smiles, gentle flicks and tucks of the wrist. She’s asked, she’s here, and maybe she cares.)
After kissing her on the subway, Percy suddenly forgets her name.
*
Bianca learns how to spell “blitzkrieg” and “acquired” and “zephyr” without trouble. It is mostly the ones from the Slavic language that she is having trouble with, and she begs Nico to keep quizzing her, keep asking her how to spell this and that until the yellow booklet full of spelling words has crumbled in Nico’s hands and Bianca has landed herself in the National Spelling Bee.
She says she wants to make a difference. That people who weren’t the extreme nerds could stand out and win prizes, too. She’d make her difference.
The girls at the neighboring high school would sometimes call her a slut for no reason; they’d begin taunting her and giving her a hard time just so she’d fight back, shoot expletives and fists like a shotgun, tell them to go home and fuck their mothers. Bianca had never understood how to hold back, and Nico doesn’t have the heart to tell her to keep to herself, either.
It was different, to have a girl around who could fight for herself.
He wonders if, in another life, he should be allowed to congratulate himself for this.
*
“I’m home,” Percy says, and realizes that he’s speaking to an empty room.
Suddenly it occurs to him that he’s really, really pissed off. That he’s very likely going to start shooting his mouth off at the light fixtures and the sofa cushions. That he might want to start tearing the photographs and posters and those dumb building plans from the walls. That he might, just might want to reach into the medicine cabinet and chock up a dozen aspirin tablets. That he might want to shoot some vodka along with it.
That he might really want cause some severe physical, irreparable damage to himself.
Because he’s suffered enough, he really has.
And he doesn’t exactly know what it is, that really gets into him. Was he expecting her to be home, waiting for him? Was he expecting dinner on the table, candles lit on the windowsill and sweet-smelling flower petals scattered on the bed? A love song on the radio, popcorn in front of the television? (Perhaps he had, but what did it matter now, anyway?) Maybe he’d considered too much while being with her, as if that was anything likely, but there had been no concessions made and no legitimate notes passed in the hall, bills passed through congress.
And tomorrow, he’ll be passing in the deposit for the new apartment.
(before)
Two blocks away from the supermarket, up thirty-three steps and through several rusty gates, there’s the door to the apartment, hanging by its hinges and looking older than the door to God’s house. Inside, it’s reasonably well-furnished. Moth-eaten furniture covered by linen, a set of limp armchairs and Victorian-style poufs standing vigilant guard among the tattered curtains. A wooden bookshelf in the back, a breakfast table and kitchen nook to the left. On the table, he spots a three-inch stack of smiling realtors’ faces in printed business cards. To the left of that, a dusty sign-up sheet that looked like it hadn’t been touched in the recent decade.
“It’s old, but very well-kept, dontcha think?” Schmidt says, stamping his feet against the rug. He stirs up a filthy cloud of dust and starts coughing into the air.
“Mm,” Percy agrees, taking a cautious step forward.
“The water and ‘lectricity’s still running from the last tenants,” Schmidt continues, running a finger over his dry lips, “and there! Fireplace! See it? They just had it cleaned-out by the folks down at the Salvation Army.”
He wants to question the ethics of asking the Salvation Army to clean out a fireplace, but almost instantaneously, he can see it. He can see it all. He can see Annabeth dropping the groceries and the heating bills on the kitchen counter, he can see her flopping down on an old arm chair, lifting her tired legs onto a pouf, picking up a book. He can see her dozing against the cushions on the mossy couch, hair in her face and smile on her lips. He can see himself, watching her and trying to imagine what she could be dreaming about.
He can see a bedstead near the window, linen sheets and wine-colored coverlet; he can see Annabeth perched on the edge of it; jittery and giggly and very much the girl he loves. He can see the curtains next to window. He can see himself, drawing up the curtains and brushing the bowl of tulips sitting on the sill. He can see the two of them eating at the breakfast table, pancakes and maple syrup in the morning, packing turkey bologna sandwiches for lunch, sharing a glass of red wine in the evening and speaking to each other in soft voices, soft voices because Annabeth wouldn’t want to wake the baby.
Their baby.
When did he start thinking about completely crazy shit like this?
(after)
“Change for a fifty,” he says, throws five boxes of Trojans down on the counter as airily as he can manage.
“Shit, you having an orgy or something?”
“Something like that,” he mutters, bounces on the balls of his feet. Examines the candy rack and drops two tins of Altoids in front of the cashier, as well.
“Well, at least you’re being safe about it,” Percy half-smirks, marks the page on his bikini magazine with his thumb and some spit. He scans the merchandise one-handed and enters digits onto the number pad with the other.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
The cash drawer opens with a mechanical wheeze.
“Hey, where’s your girl?” Nico asks.
(Not here. She’s not here, all right.)
“Your change,” Percy says distractedly, shuffles a few quarters out of the cash holes.
The doors of the convenient store jingle shut, and now Percy’s left all alone in the store with Mister the Epitome of Awkwardness leering expectantly over the front counter.
Percy bares his teeth.
Nico shrugs, tugs the plastic bag with the goods and the bit of paper receipt out of Percy’s hands. Gives the cashier desk a smart salute after a little bit of consideration. He’s tempted to check the expiration date on the condoms again.
(so maybe he kind of misses hanging out with Percy; maybe he misses a lot)
(before)
When Nico comes back, Percy is the first to greet him. The meeting is entirely accidental, but extremely cheesy, by anyone’s standards. He gets off the airport shuttle, suitcase in one hand and mind uncharacteristically blank,
Hero’s come back.
“So. How was Barcelona?”
Barcelona? Oh, yes. He’d made a trip to Spain in the first few days. Seen the sights, kissed the women, exchanged a few broken sentences with a street vendor for want of a wooden carving in the shape of a local deity. (He’s still not very sure about what he should do with it.)
“I saw a Bengal tiger at a circus matinee.”
“That’s interesting.”
“And then I quit my job.”
“Big deal,” Percy scoffs, “I lost my job.”
“I quit my job because my superiors somehow found out about…you know.”
“…”
“Yeah. Couldn’t top that one, could you?”
“…Are you sure it wasn’t because you were, you know, gay and stuff?”
“Dang, Percy, I never pegged you for homophobia.”
“I’m not! I swear I didn’t mean it-”
“You’re quite the insensitive prick, aren’t you?”
“If it isn’t the pot calling the kettle black.”
And then suddenly both of them start laughing. It’s crazed and creepy and it makes them both feel like super-villains, but it’s laughter, after all, it’s laughter that he hasn’t heard in a long time, and laughter is always good.
The people at the customs block stare at them both.
(after)
Bianca gets into a fight on her second day at the public high school. Nico receives a message from the unified school district at first; it’s garbled over the line and he doesn’t understand until he hears the door open. Bianca is home, heavy scratch-marks on the undersides on her arms and a band-aid across her nose, tangled hair, cuts and scrapes all over the place. She kicks off muddy shoes on the carpet and collapses on the sofa with a soft groan. It’s not exactly what I’d call the best way to start the school year, is it, Nico’s about to say, but then the phone calls start pouring in. Are you really Luke Castellan’s lover? Have you corrupted him? Devil, you’re the devil. Go back to Russia. Go back to Korea. Go back to Mars. Your daughter attacked several of her classmates during lunch period; she was only stopped by three members of the faculty and the principle. We have suspended her for three days. Please let her reflect on her actions today; we hope we’ll be able to see her in better light upon her reentry on the school grounds.
He’s not exactly sure what he should be saying, at first, because it’s so sudden and Bianca looks so tired, he’s not exactly sure what makes him take action, but suddenly he’s racing for the door, checking the locks on the entry, securing the window frames and drawing the curtains, tacking up the black cardboard they’d used in the bomb threat. Throws a thick blanket around Bianca’s sleeping form and starts barricading the door with chairs, rope, and as many encyclopedias he can carry from the library. This isn’t going to work. He has to feel safer, he has to make sure none of them can come in and attack him, that none of them will find out where he is. He has to pretend that he’s dead. He’ll turn all the electric appliances off. The refrigerator, the television, the radio and the electric heating system. He fumbles with the switches, one by one by one by one, hears the click before he’s satisfied. He’ll turn off all the lights, too; make sure the switch in closet is closed on all its terminals. He’ll curl up on the floor. No, it’s not safe enough. He has to pretend that he’s dead. He has to make sure that he’s died. He’ll stop breathing.
He’ll stop breathing, and it will be all right.
*
They have a lot of sex against the wall.
Luke pushes his belly flat against the cold plaster, grinds until both of them are short of breath and grappling at each other. Fingers hook around waistbands, legs hook around legs. Tease at a nipple, a hot mouth carves a path down Nico’s spine. Red marks down Nico’s back, red marks everywhere, some of them bites and some of them not. The lube drips three drops on the carpet. Drip, drip, drip. One, two, three fingers up Nico’s ass, brush his prostate just a little off the mark until he’s arching his back, whining in the back of his throat and breathing heavily against the wall, and Luke is pressing kisses on his neck, his shoulders, his lips. Fingers hook on the inside and make him curse, gasp something intelligible; fingers ease Nico’s thighs apart, fingers that probe and flicker like the flame of a candle, leave him moaning for more. Touches him there again until he’s trembling and shuddering and scrabbling for the wall. Do you like that? Yes, fuck yes. He’s breathing hard, Luke’s breathing, breathing, just breathing. On his skin, a grin turns cold, and suddenly the fingers retract and he lets out a small pleading whimper that makes Luke hiss and the world spin. He can feel Luke’s hand move and tease the tip of his cock, and now he’s arching into the wall when he feels feathery brushes against the slit. Another short breath, and suddenly he’s full, he’s full up to the top and he knows that this must be what heaven feels like, this tingling in the hollow of his throat, the strangled growl that will burst any minute, the kisses pressed against his skin. And then it’s just fucking. Luke fucking Nico, Nico fucking Luke. Fucking Nico into the wall, fucking Nico against the door, on the sofa, on the rug, over a poster of Director X and Actress Z.
(after)
“Lame fuck,” Luke says.
“Love you too.” He doesn’t lift his head.
(because when I’m waiting for you, five minutes might feel like an hour)
*
And this is what will happen:
Bianca will wake up, and she will throw-up in the toilet and discover that everything in the fridge has turned rotten from lack of a proper electric permafrost isobaric heating system. The particle accelerator in the television will have long died. She’ll check her watch and discover that she’s slept for two full days.
“Nico?” She’ll ask. “Nico?”
So she might wander around the house for a while, turn over the cupboards and maybe pass a wet cloth over the table because it’ll be rather dusty and she’s a bit allergic.
“Nico?” She’ll say again, and she won’t find Nico anywhere.
next part
Pairings: Luke/Nico, Percy/Annabeth, Luke/Thalia, implied Thalia/Annabeth (total l’antithèse, man)
Rated: NC-17
Warnings: It doesn't make sense.
Summary: This is a phenomenon that usually occurs later in the year.
Notes: written for pjo_bigbang. still can't believe i hit 17k. props to wise_stupidity for tackling this potatofuckery, and thank god for the mods at pjo_bigbang. ♥
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She opens her mouth, eyes shine bright like sidewalk puddles on a sunny day. Her smile is beautiful. Shines like a satellite and a star and a superpower at once, makes his heart pound and his breath short and his ears red; glows and glows and glows and glows
(and she doesn’t have to be a goddess to be a goddess)
*
cold outside, today
So they meet for the first time on the sidewalk near the public garden in Fresno, California city not really a California city, cheap streets and dirty playgrounds, probably too many melded layers of asphalt to be considered healthy. Fresh marijuana soaks the air like a semi-precious jewel in the hands of a mafia boss, and somewhere amidst the rusty barbed wire and rundown apartment buildings, the entire world can hear the crack of a whip against bare skin.
There’s a rhythm in the sky. It reminds him of the Senegalese rain sticks they sold at the souvenir shack down the street, three for five dollars (whoever thought of making a profit by selling Senegalese instruments in Fresno had clearly no interest in the stock exchange); these are only different because they’re stocked from the sky. Thick drops of rain roll from the tops of buildings to the tops of parallel-parked vehicles to the top of his umbrella to the tops of the slabs of cement on the sidewalk, right down into the bottom of his heart and then some. In fact, it is raining so hard that, if he’d stuck out his hand two feet in front of him, he’d probably never know where his fingers had gone.
Cold outside, today.
They are both holding umbrellas in the street. His is Very Nearly Beyond Repair, the wires supporting the black film bent at sixty-degree angles and loose at the screws. He is standing in front of an electronics store in which a color television display is airing a variety program; something to do with Japanese Rube-Goldberg machines and capillary action. He shakes his head, and little droplets of rain scatter from his hair like waterlogged lice. Digs a hand into the wet pocket of his jeans and feels cold coins click and stick to his skin. They might’ve jingled on a warmer day.
And he sees Luke the first time that day, in a rain of invisible fingers and Rube-Goldberg machines, while he is young and soaked to the skin, clutching a battered heart supporting a battered umbrella under a battered roof beneath a battered sky.
At the time, Luke has no money. Nico is filthy rich.
He’ll blame it on the gambling parlors, of course. Only so much that years of continuous pachinko and Texas Hold ‘Em will do to the wallet before it bursts and minds turn quisling for creativity and rational thought, neural synapses for criminal tendency in his cerebral hemisphere since fired and connected and re-fired and reconnected, again and again and again and again. So he doesn’t mind the extra cash, not really (who would find that problematic, anyway?), even if he does have to mind the stray hands in the elevator.
A pretty smile, under this rain, he only thinks. He has a really pretty smile.
(At the time, Luke remembers nothing. Nico remembers too much.)
It is around the time when people are ducking under the eaves of cafés to eat grilled-cheese sandwiches, have a bit of liquor and maybe a bathroom fuck (or two) at a hostess club, catch up on the amorous and somewhat exaggerated details about personal life while under the influence of whiskey or weed (take your pick). Around the time when bygone businessmen will sit down to a cup of cream-colored latte instead of the regular black, stack a tidy pile of work papers on the edge of their coffee table and ignore it like there’s no tomorrow and too many yesterdays. Around the time when gossip mongers hang back in the corners, pore over tabloids and jab each other in the shoulder whenever productivity fades (hell no, Actress X cheating on Director Z with Lady Gaga?), and the manager of the café keeps a good head count of the ears listening in.
The first time they meet, it is startlingly sweet and shocking and ultimately Tragic.
Because (at the time), Luke had made a promise. And then Nico broke it.
*
it is a truth universally-acknowledged, that a lonely boy on the brink of suicidal-thought must be in want of another lonely boy, one who will inevitably light up his life
The stage is still wobbly from their first practice promenade. A hostile pothole here, a paparazzo’s camera frame there, pair of silver hoop earrings fallen from grace. Girls give him the once-over by turning around and batting three-inch-long lashes: come-hither or I’ll feel you up myself and maybe file a sexual harassment complaint. Come dress-up time, Luke finds himself at a serious disadvantage when he tries to prevent the dominatrix stylist from rubbing on wildflower-scented mousse in his hair. The woman fiddling with the speaker dials at the sound booth tells him that his tie is crooked, all the while blushing a weird shade of apricot that has Luke nervous and resampling the aftertaste of his lunch. Indirect correlations, defunct social simulations, feeling the crust of last night’s beer and weed foam up under your tongue when you wake up-all common death of the world to him, all beyond expository thought. At least his misery limits any thought process to his hindbrain.
Though at this point, there is no doubt in his mind.
He hasn’t been conscious since last year.
*
he needs a drink or maybe seven
Percy decides to propose to Annabeth on a public park bench. It’s sort of a spur-of-the-moment thing, really, though he’s never been the type to wax poetic-his life has been one sour disappointment after another. Annabeth is sipping strawberry-flavored tapioca, dangling her head in his lap and reciting the construction blueprints of an Indian cultural museum with Byzantine flairs-it’s her brainchild, most likely genius enough to become the next Architectural Wonder of the Century.
“You know the centripetal-styled ceiling beam at the second level -it’s a pure miracle they’d found the right raw size for African oak, seriously- that one? Charlemagne is thinking about switching it to the third level, but that wouldn’t work for shit, because we’d have to carve into the marvelous wood to cater to the dimensional stylists and proportions and shit. Defiling African oak. Can you imagine? What an ass.”
Percy mumbles his agreement.
…So he isn’t thinking about much; it’s a cloudy day and he feels unaccomplished; faith in humanity as diminished and as depressively-manic as he can imagine. He’s only dimly aware of Annabeth’s words; he’s currently in a state of unemployment and he is absolutely sure that, if he hadn’t been dating a girl who exceeded not only his intelligence quotient and his (nonexistent) income but his height, as well, he would not be so dull-brained and much more likely to say something that could possibly entertain his girlfriend. (He’s never tried to share this theory with Annabeth because the last time they’d discussed This Week’s Rent the blonde girl had laughed her silly ass off and then punched him in the face. He couldn’t help finding violent girls attractive.)
He had told her to wait. Wait for him to find a job, wait for the stock prices on strawberry jam to come down, wait for him to start intercepting the water and electricity bills before she found them piled up on her desk, wait for the car insurance confirmations to reappear in the mail and wait for the plants to get watered, wait for me, Annabeth, just wait for me. I’ll show those budget cutters and Wall Street fags, I’ll show them.
(it’s just as well that he knows that, for people like Annabeth, waiting is wasting)
But it is in this moment that the sun comes out, blinding and shiny like a medallion in the sky, and Percy forgets pretty much everything because Annabeth has taken her hand and held it above her forehead to shield her eyes, let a little strip of bright sunlight settle onto her nose and her lips; her eyes are slanted and she’s breathing softly, chin tilted towards the light, and it’s the prettiest thing he’s ever seen since he’d learned what was pretty.
And so Percy does the most sensible thing that any post-adolescent member of the male species would have done.
“Marry me,” he blurts out, “Marry me, Annabeth.”
(marry me. right now. you and me, wedding bells and wedding sashes. don’t have a ring, but I mean every word of it)
The moment he says it, he knows he shouldn’t have waited so long. He kind of hates himself for it, wants to say something to distract her but then her eyes flash and his breath has left his lungs. So she sits up on the park bench and gazes at him under half-lidded eyes, and then says it in the breathiest, sexiest voice in the history of breathy, sexy voices,
“Hell, no.”
The next thing he knows, she’s falling on the ground, rolling like a pig and snorting just as loud.
(because first comes love, then comes marriage, then comes the little girl, the hospital bills and the plastic baby carriage)
*
The boy in the cafe tells him that he’s actually not interested in buying cakes and whatever else you’ve got to offer, and instead Luke finds himself hanging around a rather sketchy section of the city, a paved road and a grassy park next to it, rusty swing sets and teeter-totters lining the banks of a duck pond. There are no children around. The place looks oddly familiar. Fresno, the sign had said? Luke makes a note of it and tries to find a place to sit down and eat his sandwich.
It is half-past nine, and the skies are still light from the midsummer drop zone of misty light and angular shadows lined like coincidences. Geometric values that have neither distinct boundaries nor lack of tangent lines. It’s going to be daybreak soon.
At some point, he starts to believe that it’s all a hoax. A pretty treasure map, handed to him by a pretty boy under a pretty umbrella under a pretty rain cloud. A distinct aftertaste of nostalgia accompanied by the wave of a hand, like sour bread and the petals on a yellow rose, yeast and stigma and walking off the beaten track. Mysterious words and actions that speak for other people instead of himself. What had possessed Luke to take the map? He’d never seen an angel in his life, and for some reason, he’d seriously doubt himself if he’d been speaking to one of God’s messengers.
He must’ve been desperate. He would have probably done anything then, if only to salvage a few more pennies in his pocket. The office had shut him out, he’d gotten dumped by a girl, he’d probably have found the nearest taxi driver and pleaded to give head. He doesn’t know what he would have done to make up for it. He’s honestly not exactly sure what he wants, not anymore, not in a long time.
Discreetly (or perhaps not) he starts referring to the boy as an Angel.
*
Thalia Grace gets off the bus one stop early and decides to walk to the convenience store on the left, the one with the voodoo jingle bells hanging on the door. She’s only smoking menthols, now, and not a single one of the shit-eating bastards at the company is going to stop her. It was enough that they cut out the regular tobacco from the footage, but menthols? It was a goddamn travesty. Jesus, Thalia, you just don’t get it, do you, Mr. Fat-Cheeked Director keeps telling her, the point is to omit the action of inhaling tobacco out of your routine, but fuck that shit, if he couldn’t deal with it, she’ll just have to make him deal with it. Actresses and porn stars. What kind of difference did they make in the end, if she couldn’t chew on a cigarette during the shoot? She would not lobby or proposition, she would not faint and moan and play like a slut, she would not goddamn fuck another impotent asshole if she didn’t get her menthols.
Hell, she might even take pity on the salarymen. Let them get a sweaty hand under her skirt for half-price. She can still go cheap these days and not worry about the price.
*
The first store had pushed Percy away based on appearance alone.
“You’re too handsome,” the manager had told him flat-out, “And we don’t have enough cute girls to match your looks.” He says it like he’s almost wistful.
The next store had done the same, rejecting him based on the grounds that they did not encourage work-based relationships among employees. This wasn’t fair. Percy had done nothing to deserve this treatment. But the thought of Annabeth’s disapproving glare at home, that messy trail of tears bleeding into the stairwell had driven him out of the house. In the next place, he decides to comb back his hair and adopt the look of somebody’s disgruntled butler.
Somehow, this works.
The manager of the corner store takes one look at him and suddenly starts sobbing uncontrollably until Percy starts wondering what he’s done now; he’s flinging thick, hairy arms around Percy’s torso, and now he’s begging Percy to stay, the pay isn’t great but the people are nice, and you are certainly the man of my dreams, I beg of you, this is my request of a lifetime!
What’s he to do except take the job?
(after)
“So tell me about your plans,” Luke says, and Thalia starts frowning, then.
“I don’t really have any,” she says at first, “I mean, I really wanted to give Annabeth a piece of me to take with her when she’d gone over, but now she’s got Percy Jackson and the floor plans of every single building she’s ever wanted to marry.”
Luke laughs, and Thalia just sits there and bites her lip.
“It’s kinda funny, isn’t it,” she says at last.
“It is,” Luke agrees.
And that’s the end of that.
(before)
Bianca comes home the next day with a boy hugging her waist and twirling sweaty fingers in her hair, and Nico is suddenly brought back to his years of adolescence. How the kids in his high school had forgotten his existence. How all of his friends had all found girls and boys to go around with, kissing each other into the lockers in the hallway and finding ways to tease and admonish, laugh with each other, subscribe to loving each other. High school, the proverbial breeding grounds. How he’d wanted someone, back then. How he’d missed all of this.
“D-Dad,” Bianca tumbles over her words, “Dad, this is my boyfriend, Tony. Tony, this is my dad.”
It’s the first time, Nico thinks; it’s the first time she’s called me Dad.
“Hullo, Tony.”
Tony flashes him a neat smile and two fingers raised in salute, “Mr. di Angelo.”
There’s a moment of silence. Nico sizes the boy up, fair hair, slacked eyes, loose pants and all. “Would you guys like to come in?” he finally asks, cracks the door open a little wider, “I was just about to have dinner now, and there’s always room-”
“No, it’s okay!” his daughter says quickly, and he can see a little bit of horror surface in her face, “We’re going to go see a movie, that’s all. I just wanted to introduce you, since I’ve been with Tony for a while, now. He’s wanted to meet you, too. Haven’t you, Tony?”
Tony gives Nico another smile.
“I see,” Nico says. It’s been a while, hasn’t it, he thinks to himself, and lets his eyes narrow into the Protective Father’s Glare. “How long have you been going out, exactly?”
His daughter has the grace to look embarrassed. “T-Two months,” she titters, and Tony’s mixed expression makes it clear that it’s been two months of minimal action. “Actually, I was wondering if-if-may I stay out tonight?”
He draws in a breath, and he sees the teenage boy do the same.
Did he really think he could do this, now? Raising a teenager. Expecting it not to backfire on himself.
“Absolutely not. You’re barely sixteen.”
“But I’ll be with Tony the whole night.”
“That’s the problem.”
“Dad...”
You’ve called me Nico forever, Nico wants to say, you’ve called me Nico and you’ve never had any trouble stuffing words in my mouth and living with my habits, you’ve called me Nico while you were thirteen and learning how to memorize words for the spelling bee, you’ve called me Nico while you were in the shower asking me to grab you an extra bottle of Herbal Essences from the supermarket, you’ve called me Nico forever and a week and now you’re just going to go ahead and call me Dad, like it hadn’t meant anything to either of us. He could be pouting like a child right now. He wants to look back and check; there’s a missing paragraph somewhere, a missing golden rule of parenting and siblinghood, and it’s all bewildering enough to make him start to question his own motives. That he could end up sounding like an overprotective boyfriend. That maybe he’s not ready to give up being a big brother, yet. That, in another lifetime, Bianca could have easily dressed-up as Nico’s older sister and given him a chance for freedom and cigarettes and girls, instead of the other way around.
That it would not have made this any less complicated.
*
The first stop for Luke was Monaco. Second smallest city-state-turned-sovereign-country in the world, the first being Vatican City. Population exceeding 30000, of which a predominant 84 percent were wealthy foreign capitalists; the rest of it comprised of disgruntled natives, hungry beggars on the streets, and the Spanish. He had done a little research at a cyber café before slotting a discount ticket on Air France.
A bit of a cheery place, too cheery for him, but it’s all that’s left going for him, so he drops his bags in the closest motel with spiders in the bathtub and begins his hunt for lost treasure.
(after)
But see, on the topic of traveling, Luke has her captivated in mere minutes. He’s been to Monaco and islands off Crete, Japan and Saudi Arabia, Germany and Australia. Meditating in the valleys of violet mountain peaks, traveling among elephants. Talking to a camel, sitting down with a ghost next to the Berlin Wall. And what he’d found, amidst all of it. How it had made him more supernaturally-inclined than ever before, more likely to believe in fairies and apparitions and shit. The treasure that he had accumulated from the adventure was enough to throw Thalia out of her chair.
“A regular Monte Cristo, you are,” she chuckled, climbed back onto his lap, “and me, I’ve just transformed into a gold digger. Almost unbelievable. This is just like something out of Narnia.”
“You couldn’t imagine,” he smirks, feeling real impressionability at the moment.
He recounts to her the tale of the Greek island then, of witnessing flavor in food and flavor in men and women, flowers in hair, sand in the surf and white beaches. Like keeping to the side of a mosaic, peeling off piece by piece the colorful glass and porcelain hooked onto the rims, tracing fingertips over the edge of a stranger’s fairy story. The Mediterranean and porn stars would mix well, wouldn’t they.
And all Thalia can do is stare, until something lights up in her eyes and she’s off like a firecracker.
“But I was there while you were there!” she throws her hands up in the air and starts giggling, “June, 2007? Fuck, now you’re probably going to tell me that you caught me skinny-dipping, too.”
Luke’s not sure how he’s supposed to respond to that.
(before)
“So when you asked me to marry you,” Annabeth starts, “were you listening to what I was saying beforehand? Like, at all?”
“You were talking about Indian museums, right? And ceiling beams or something for the second level. Right?”
“And that’s all you heard.”
“What else did you say?”
“I’m wearing a new pair of glasses today,” she suddenly says.
He blinks, takes them off the bridge of her nose. “You are?”
“You didn’t notice, after all.”
“Am I supposed to notice these things?”
“…No,” Annabeth sighs, “I guess not.”
She’s trembling, wondering if she’s been assuming too much and keeping too much skepticism under lock and key. He wonders if she’s coming down with a fever. She’s never looked so stressed before. Rubs her forehead in concern, but she shrugs his hand off, retreats back into her drafting room and twists the knob on the door until he hears a click from the other side.
He wonders what he’s done now, and on the other side of the door, she’s wondering what he hasn’t done, and why she feels so goddamn miserable inside.
(it’s like nothing really makes sense anymore)
*
Thalia meets Annabeth at the cafe at four. She sits down at a table, orders a latte and starts flicking through last month’s Vogue on the bench. Passionate fashion, seasonal styles, oh-look-here a fur coat that costs the equivalent of the annual salary of a normal businessman. Perhaps her next conquest will purchase this one for her if she put on the handcuffs.
She looks at her reflection in the glass of the cafe and smirks to herself. She could easily have passed as a movie star (sex tapes notwithstanding). That trip to that Greek island might have done some good, after all. Despite the sand on the beach.
Annabeth arrives five minutes later, wearing a pink scarf that doesn’t match her shirt and day-old mascara, children’s lip gloss. Perches on her seat like a child. Trembling bottom lip-just like a child’s.
“You’re not going to a party in that, are you?” she says first, smoothing a hand through Annabeth’s oil-streaked hair, “What the hell did you do to yourself now?”
“I-I didn’t,” Annabeth whispers, more to herself than Thalia. She starts playing around with her fingers, tapping them against the table and looking around like a criminal, until Thalia finally notices that The Engagement Ring Isn’t There Anymore.
She decides not to make a comment about it.
Says instead, “Hey, you okay?” Examines Annabeth carefully, sips from her coffee cup and filters the lenses of the worldly-girl goggles as much as she can, “You want something to drink? I’ll keep it on my tab.”
And Annabeth nods, but only slowly, scoots forward in her chair with a loud scrape against the tiled floor.
“Thalia,” Annabeth’s lips tremble, “I don’t know what to do any more. I’m so fucked up. And Percy. He’s…He’s not…it’s like he doesn’t even…”
She doesn’t finish. Thalia doesn’t want to listen to her finish, either, so she just looks down at her hands and thinks about the air flow in the room, and how thick it’s suddenly become.
There’s something gross about coffee that she’s never really liked. It’s bitter, like chewing tea leaves; it’s all runny and flat-flavored when she drinks it at home; it leaves a chunky aftertaste in her mouth. Nothing good has ever come out of running on caffeine. Besides, she’d always wanted to be 5’7”. She’d once sworn that she’d never drink coffee, an oath that she’d taken with a bottle of decaffeinated green tea. But then she’d grown up and started living a life, read in a book that a girl stopped growing three years after her first period, and now she’s long-since forgotten all about trying to coerce herself into fitting the height; 5’6” isn’t so bad, anyway.
At any rate, she doesn’t mind it much anymore. She’s a cream and sugar kind of girl.
Annabeth, however, believes in nothing but black coffee. The thicker the better. The thicker and richer and more bitter, the more vibrant she’d feel, the more corporate asses she could kick around. It was Annabeth’s vice.
Thalia wonders what she’d get off calling something a vice, and finally decides that it might be swimming in Greek waters while screaming out her troubles into the sky.
(It was where Annabeth was the mature, adaptable womanly figure, where she won out over Thalia’s peculiar oral fixations and bad habits she’d never corrected since childhood. It was where Annabeth stood tall and glowing and headstrong on the middle ground and where Thalia would slink and stumble behind, trying to nudge her understanding this way and that until it would fit what had been Orthodox a decade ago.)
June, 2007
The next stop is an island sitting in the middle of the Mediterranean, just off the east coast of the island of Crete. It’s a sandy, windy affair with a lot of bikinis and slim tummies floating on its shores, toenail polish glittering between the rays of the sun. Muscle-builders take their girlfriends surfing here in the gentle waves, while pubescent boys ogle at the cleavage spilling out from between scant pieces of swimsuit fabric. Angel’s map tells Luke that what he’s looking for is exactly on the opposite side of the shores he’d landed on, so he decides to go beachcombing and begin the journey the next day. Perhaps he’ll find a few necklaces somewhere, or (if he’s lucky) somebody’s Rolex.
In the middle of the night, Luke catches sight of a girl swimming in the seas.
Unsurprisingly, she isn’t wearing anything, save for a pair of designer sunglasses and a chain around her neck. Looks about as satisfied with her life as anyone could be. She ducks under the waves, picks up seaweed, and tucks it between locks of her hair. Opens her mouth and laughs openly into the night sky, white teeth flashing in the light of the moon. Arms paddle forward and back, nudging the foams of the wave like a sculpture. He thinks to himself that he might just be witnessing a goddess, or perhaps local deity in disguise, come from the heavens to experience worldly pleasure. Another moment and he’s sure that he must be experiencing an epileptic.
Another second, she’s gone.
He’s turned into a complete freak.
Later, he finds the box buried among a heavy pile of rocks, next to a seagull’s nest and a rocky cliff where some famous celebrity had once shot a film about angst-riddled lovers threatening to throw each other off the cliff to profess their undying love.
While he watches the waves lap against the beach, he contemplates joining them in their sojourn into heaven. Heaven or hell, he won’t try to take his pick. He just wants to leave.
(after)
“Actor, huh,” his face twists into a strange smile (it makes Luke’s heart beat faster and faster and shit he’s probably going to get a heart attack if this keeps up), “So you’re an actor.”
“Yeah, I’m an actor. I’ve got actor friends, actor girlfriends, actor drugs, and all that lame shit.”
“Then you don’t want me,” he says, “You don’t want me at all.”
“Yes I do,” Luke Castellan says, whispers it softly and almost inaudibly into his ear, hands on Nico’s waist and a growing hard-on pressed into his thigh, “I want you here, I want you now, and I know you want me. It’s a simple enough question for you, isn’t it?”
(before)
Nico visits the adoption center next-door to the foster home on Wednesday.
When the caretaker opens the door, a puff of disinfectant and talcum powder greets his nose. The room is small and cheerful: pale pastel walls and floral wallpaper-as if the orphans had needed some other vice to cheer each other up. A stack of books surround a commercial-sized suitcase, nylon rope, and plastic buckles.
“So who’s the oldest kid here?”
“Oldest?” Sister Cathy stumbles over her own words, “But-surely, you’d like a younger child.”
“No, ’m fine.”
Not if he isn’t going to live long enough and disappear far enough to see her through high school.
“A-Are you certain? There isn’t…?”
“It’s OK,” Nico tells her.
Sister Cathy tells him to wait by the door and keep himself busy with the baby magazines, and after standing there for a good fifteen minutes, there’s a girl. There’s a girl, dark hair and mismatched eyes, face that brought a sharp memory back into Nico’s mind.
“This is Mr. di Angelo. He’s the kind man who wants to adopt you,” the nun says, making her way back out the door, “Have your bags packed now, dearie, we don’t want to keep him waiting.”
“What’s your name?” he asks her first, taking her suitcase in his hands and feeling a ton of awkward for every second he stood there. He couldn’t have been more than ten years older than her. It would be like adopting a sister.
She bites her bottom lip, and he sees dread in her eyes. Didn’t want to be here either. “Bianca. It’s Bianca.”
“What about your last name?”
“Doesn’t matter, does it? I’m Bianca di Angelo, now,” she says. She tugs the suitcase out of his hands and drags it into the trunk, “And I’m thirteen. I can take care of myself.”
“So you are,” Nico says, “I’m Nico. I don’t really want you to call me father or anything. I’m not much older than you. At least I hope I look that way.”
(Did he say too much? Too little?)
Bianca turns sideways to face him and stare at the ground.
“Thanks, Nico. You’ve really…you’ve really helped me.”
*
Nagano is beautiful in the spring. There are fewer tourists around the urban area, because they are all gathered at the shrines to watch the spectacles and the sakura blossoms, but Luke finds it peaceful. Two blocks down and he finds a tidy, bite-sized inn with a concierge who speaks fluent English. Settled down into a room that had a view directly into the violet-colored peaks far away, he’s able to feel the breeze sway in from the window from across the peaks of the buildings. This is something that he’s never experienced before, this kind of inner tranquility, inner being. No small wonder that there are so many Japanese Buddhists around the world. If Luke could live this kind of life every day, then maybe he’d be at peace with himself, after all.
And suddenly, he’s starved with an urge to meditate. It’s a subtle bit of subliminal messaging, Annabeth had told him once, you miss and you hit and you suddenly know how to do it in the middle of cracking your head open on the wall. Like indirect proofs, whereupon you draw a curved line towards the solution instead of a straight line. Parabolic trajectory magnifying the experience a hundred-fold, currents and constants flooded by incongruity and ultimately, inner stability and full efficiency.
(Yeah, he’s not exactly sure he knows what she’s talking about, but it must be a rewarding exercise, so perhaps he’ll try it, see for himself.)
He sits down, cross-legged on the tatami mat in the middle of the room, closes his eyes and tries to clear his mind. It’s difficult at first; there are too many thoughts in too many places restrained by too much time and too many people telling him to stop, but he presses on.
*
(This is a clear, turquoise lake in the middle of the mountain, at the crux of the mountain peak. The only way to find this lake is if you were to climb up several cliffs and then down a steep wind shaft, followed by the frailest natural bridge in the world. But when you do find it, it’s the best place in the world. There are patches of wildflowers swirled around the eastern corner of the lake, collecting and scattering pollen across the paths of the world; algae and moss climb up the shores like jungle undergrowth. The people who see this place never want to leave it, but the lake disappears and reappears in different places around the world, the hallmark of ephemeral beauty that skips generations and years like a child skipping stones across a pond.
It’s a beautiful place, and he sees it now, as he’s sitting on the tatami mat with his eyes closed.
It’s a very beautiful place.
*
“Grover,” the shorter man extends an arm, “I’m Grover. I’ll be working the night shift. Noonday shifts give me gas, you see, and I’ve already had a bunch of peculiar cases like that.”
Percy grins.
*
Grover, as it turns out, has a whole collection of potentially self-endangering and illicit endeavors that he takes regular interest in. The next time Percy meets him, Grover is sitting on a cardboard box in the back-alley, practiced fingers rolling a heavy joint.
“Weed,” he gives out by way of explanation, “Schmidt told me it was grown in India. You know they always grow the best grass.”
Percy didn’t know. But it was probably a good thing to know, so he nods and takes a draft when Grover passes the joint to him with a happy, half-delirious sigh.
“So who’s Schmidt?”
“Schmidt? Oh, he’s my supplier. Longtime drinking buddy and confidante. What you want, he’ll get you. Good man, Schmidty.”
While Grover rambles on about Schmidt’s particular skill at finding the best phone sex lines, Percy lets the legitimacy of it all stew in his head, feels the slow, aphrodisiacal burn of marijuana soak through his veins. “Does he do housing?”
Grover stops for a second and eyes him under glazed eyes. “What?”
“House hunts. Does he do them?”
“Who, Schmidt?”
“Yeah. I need a new place to crash.”
*
As the days go on, Luke finds it increasingly difficult to concentrate on the photo shoots. He’s still fine with the crazy demands of the directors, but every time another flashbulb settles on him, he starts flinching and feeling his flesh burn underneath the glare of the light. He was shooting a goddamn desert film, and he didn’t have time for this.
Even the makeup artists notice it. One of the girls tells him to quit squirming, and is finally reduced to jabbing the mascara brush in his eye to make Luke concentrate. Another costume designer simply starts sticking pins in all the uncomfortable places until he begs him to stop.
There’d been an earthquake somewhere in the world and someone is dying and all Luke wants to do is go home and find Nico and curl up and sleep. He can sleep. He can only sleep.
*
The new girl at the grocery store is really pretty. She has blonde highlights in her red hair, and she wears miniskirts all the time that show off a delightful slip of skin before thigh-high stockings. And she’s got it in for Percy, as well, which just makes it all the worse.
Another day, she had invited Percy out for coffee during break and he’d gone along, pulling all sorts of excuses out of the box; he’d wanted to be polite, she was the one who’d asked him, she was simply too pretty to ignore, Annabeth hadn’t specifically placed an indiction on this kind of behavior.
She had asked him about his favorite color. Favorite novel, movie, hobbies, type of girl. He had dutifully responded to all of it, stirring in one sugar cube after another and feeling like he’d been put on as the star of some horrendous film about middle-aged singles dating. He’s only twenty-three.
“Percy,” she nudges his wrist with the lip of a tea spoon, looks up at his face from under her lashes, “Are you listening to me?”
“I have a girlfriend,” Percy blurts out suddenly, and now he’s probably ruined the premise of the dating movie on the spot.
He can tell she’s surprised, but she hides it by straightening up her back, “I-I wasn’t going to ask you,” she murmurs, tucks a lock of red hair behind an ear, and God she’s really, really pretty.
(But she does anyway. She’s been asking him if he’d had a girlfriend all along, asking him through smoky eye makeup, cheerful smiles, gentle flicks and tucks of the wrist. She’s asked, she’s here, and maybe she cares.)
After kissing her on the subway, Percy suddenly forgets her name.
*
Bianca learns how to spell “blitzkrieg” and “acquired” and “zephyr” without trouble. It is mostly the ones from the Slavic language that she is having trouble with, and she begs Nico to keep quizzing her, keep asking her how to spell this and that until the yellow booklet full of spelling words has crumbled in Nico’s hands and Bianca has landed herself in the National Spelling Bee.
She says she wants to make a difference. That people who weren’t the extreme nerds could stand out and win prizes, too. She’d make her difference.
The girls at the neighboring high school would sometimes call her a slut for no reason; they’d begin taunting her and giving her a hard time just so she’d fight back, shoot expletives and fists like a shotgun, tell them to go home and fuck their mothers. Bianca had never understood how to hold back, and Nico doesn’t have the heart to tell her to keep to herself, either.
It was different, to have a girl around who could fight for herself.
He wonders if, in another life, he should be allowed to congratulate himself for this.
*
“I’m home,” Percy says, and realizes that he’s speaking to an empty room.
Suddenly it occurs to him that he’s really, really pissed off. That he’s very likely going to start shooting his mouth off at the light fixtures and the sofa cushions. That he might want to start tearing the photographs and posters and those dumb building plans from the walls. That he might, just might want to reach into the medicine cabinet and chock up a dozen aspirin tablets. That he might want to shoot some vodka along with it.
That he might really want cause some severe physical, irreparable damage to himself.
Because he’s suffered enough, he really has.
And he doesn’t exactly know what it is, that really gets into him. Was he expecting her to be home, waiting for him? Was he expecting dinner on the table, candles lit on the windowsill and sweet-smelling flower petals scattered on the bed? A love song on the radio, popcorn in front of the television? (Perhaps he had, but what did it matter now, anyway?) Maybe he’d considered too much while being with her, as if that was anything likely, but there had been no concessions made and no legitimate notes passed in the hall, bills passed through congress.
And tomorrow, he’ll be passing in the deposit for the new apartment.
(before)
Two blocks away from the supermarket, up thirty-three steps and through several rusty gates, there’s the door to the apartment, hanging by its hinges and looking older than the door to God’s house. Inside, it’s reasonably well-furnished. Moth-eaten furniture covered by linen, a set of limp armchairs and Victorian-style poufs standing vigilant guard among the tattered curtains. A wooden bookshelf in the back, a breakfast table and kitchen nook to the left. On the table, he spots a three-inch stack of smiling realtors’ faces in printed business cards. To the left of that, a dusty sign-up sheet that looked like it hadn’t been touched in the recent decade.
“It’s old, but very well-kept, dontcha think?” Schmidt says, stamping his feet against the rug. He stirs up a filthy cloud of dust and starts coughing into the air.
“Mm,” Percy agrees, taking a cautious step forward.
“The water and ‘lectricity’s still running from the last tenants,” Schmidt continues, running a finger over his dry lips, “and there! Fireplace! See it? They just had it cleaned-out by the folks down at the Salvation Army.”
He wants to question the ethics of asking the Salvation Army to clean out a fireplace, but almost instantaneously, he can see it. He can see it all. He can see Annabeth dropping the groceries and the heating bills on the kitchen counter, he can see her flopping down on an old arm chair, lifting her tired legs onto a pouf, picking up a book. He can see her dozing against the cushions on the mossy couch, hair in her face and smile on her lips. He can see himself, watching her and trying to imagine what she could be dreaming about.
He can see a bedstead near the window, linen sheets and wine-colored coverlet; he can see Annabeth perched on the edge of it; jittery and giggly and very much the girl he loves. He can see the curtains next to window. He can see himself, drawing up the curtains and brushing the bowl of tulips sitting on the sill. He can see the two of them eating at the breakfast table, pancakes and maple syrup in the morning, packing turkey bologna sandwiches for lunch, sharing a glass of red wine in the evening and speaking to each other in soft voices, soft voices because Annabeth wouldn’t want to wake the baby.
Their baby.
When did he start thinking about completely crazy shit like this?
(after)
“Change for a fifty,” he says, throws five boxes of Trojans down on the counter as airily as he can manage.
“Shit, you having an orgy or something?”
“Something like that,” he mutters, bounces on the balls of his feet. Examines the candy rack and drops two tins of Altoids in front of the cashier, as well.
“Well, at least you’re being safe about it,” Percy half-smirks, marks the page on his bikini magazine with his thumb and some spit. He scans the merchandise one-handed and enters digits onto the number pad with the other.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
The cash drawer opens with a mechanical wheeze.
“Hey, where’s your girl?” Nico asks.
(Not here. She’s not here, all right.)
“Your change,” Percy says distractedly, shuffles a few quarters out of the cash holes.
The doors of the convenient store jingle shut, and now Percy’s left all alone in the store with Mister the Epitome of Awkwardness leering expectantly over the front counter.
Percy bares his teeth.
Nico shrugs, tugs the plastic bag with the goods and the bit of paper receipt out of Percy’s hands. Gives the cashier desk a smart salute after a little bit of consideration. He’s tempted to check the expiration date on the condoms again.
(so maybe he kind of misses hanging out with Percy; maybe he misses a lot)
(before)
When Nico comes back, Percy is the first to greet him. The meeting is entirely accidental, but extremely cheesy, by anyone’s standards. He gets off the airport shuttle, suitcase in one hand and mind uncharacteristically blank,
Hero’s come back.
“So. How was Barcelona?”
Barcelona? Oh, yes. He’d made a trip to Spain in the first few days. Seen the sights, kissed the women, exchanged a few broken sentences with a street vendor for want of a wooden carving in the shape of a local deity. (He’s still not very sure about what he should do with it.)
“I saw a Bengal tiger at a circus matinee.”
“That’s interesting.”
“And then I quit my job.”
“Big deal,” Percy scoffs, “I lost my job.”
“I quit my job because my superiors somehow found out about…you know.”
“…”
“Yeah. Couldn’t top that one, could you?”
“…Are you sure it wasn’t because you were, you know, gay and stuff?”
“Dang, Percy, I never pegged you for homophobia.”
“I’m not! I swear I didn’t mean it-”
“You’re quite the insensitive prick, aren’t you?”
“If it isn’t the pot calling the kettle black.”
And then suddenly both of them start laughing. It’s crazed and creepy and it makes them both feel like super-villains, but it’s laughter, after all, it’s laughter that he hasn’t heard in a long time, and laughter is always good.
The people at the customs block stare at them both.
(after)
Bianca gets into a fight on her second day at the public high school. Nico receives a message from the unified school district at first; it’s garbled over the line and he doesn’t understand until he hears the door open. Bianca is home, heavy scratch-marks on the undersides on her arms and a band-aid across her nose, tangled hair, cuts and scrapes all over the place. She kicks off muddy shoes on the carpet and collapses on the sofa with a soft groan. It’s not exactly what I’d call the best way to start the school year, is it, Nico’s about to say, but then the phone calls start pouring in. Are you really Luke Castellan’s lover? Have you corrupted him? Devil, you’re the devil. Go back to Russia. Go back to Korea. Go back to Mars. Your daughter attacked several of her classmates during lunch period; she was only stopped by three members of the faculty and the principle. We have suspended her for three days. Please let her reflect on her actions today; we hope we’ll be able to see her in better light upon her reentry on the school grounds.
He’s not exactly sure what he should be saying, at first, because it’s so sudden and Bianca looks so tired, he’s not exactly sure what makes him take action, but suddenly he’s racing for the door, checking the locks on the entry, securing the window frames and drawing the curtains, tacking up the black cardboard they’d used in the bomb threat. Throws a thick blanket around Bianca’s sleeping form and starts barricading the door with chairs, rope, and as many encyclopedias he can carry from the library. This isn’t going to work. He has to feel safer, he has to make sure none of them can come in and attack him, that none of them will find out where he is. He has to pretend that he’s dead. He’ll turn all the electric appliances off. The refrigerator, the television, the radio and the electric heating system. He fumbles with the switches, one by one by one by one, hears the click before he’s satisfied. He’ll turn off all the lights, too; make sure the switch in closet is closed on all its terminals. He’ll curl up on the floor. No, it’s not safe enough. He has to pretend that he’s dead. He has to make sure that he’s died. He’ll stop breathing.
He’ll stop breathing, and it will be all right.
*
They have a lot of sex against the wall.
Luke pushes his belly flat against the cold plaster, grinds until both of them are short of breath and grappling at each other. Fingers hook around waistbands, legs hook around legs. Tease at a nipple, a hot mouth carves a path down Nico’s spine. Red marks down Nico’s back, red marks everywhere, some of them bites and some of them not. The lube drips three drops on the carpet. Drip, drip, drip. One, two, three fingers up Nico’s ass, brush his prostate just a little off the mark until he’s arching his back, whining in the back of his throat and breathing heavily against the wall, and Luke is pressing kisses on his neck, his shoulders, his lips. Fingers hook on the inside and make him curse, gasp something intelligible; fingers ease Nico’s thighs apart, fingers that probe and flicker like the flame of a candle, leave him moaning for more. Touches him there again until he’s trembling and shuddering and scrabbling for the wall. Do you like that? Yes, fuck yes. He’s breathing hard, Luke’s breathing, breathing, just breathing. On his skin, a grin turns cold, and suddenly the fingers retract and he lets out a small pleading whimper that makes Luke hiss and the world spin. He can feel Luke’s hand move and tease the tip of his cock, and now he’s arching into the wall when he feels feathery brushes against the slit. Another short breath, and suddenly he’s full, he’s full up to the top and he knows that this must be what heaven feels like, this tingling in the hollow of his throat, the strangled growl that will burst any minute, the kisses pressed against his skin. And then it’s just fucking. Luke fucking Nico, Nico fucking Luke. Fucking Nico into the wall, fucking Nico against the door, on the sofa, on the rug, over a poster of Director X and Actress Z.
(after)
“Lame fuck,” Luke says.
“Love you too.” He doesn’t lift his head.
(because when I’m waiting for you, five minutes might feel like an hour)
*
And this is what will happen:
Bianca will wake up, and she will throw-up in the toilet and discover that everything in the fridge has turned rotten from lack of a proper electric permafrost isobaric heating system. The particle accelerator in the television will have long died. She’ll check her watch and discover that she’s slept for two full days.
“Nico?” She’ll ask. “Nico?”
So she might wander around the house for a while, turn over the cupboards and maybe pass a wet cloth over the table because it’ll be rather dusty and she’s a bit allergic.
“Nico?” She’ll say again, and she won’t find Nico anywhere.
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