Fic: The Languages of Subterranean Creatures, Percy Jackson
Title: The Languages of Subterranean Creatures
Fandom: Percy Jackson and the Olympians
Characters/Pairings: Bianca/Zoe, Nico
Summary: All girls remember their firsts.
Word Count: 800
Done for the pjo_kinkmeme, prompt: Bianca/Zoe, first.
Bianca is a girl.
(This she is fairly sure of, having lived all her life as one, and it being the number one prerequisite to becoming a Hunter of Artemis and all.)
Bianca is a girl, and as such, she remembers her firsts.
She wraps most of them up within the span of one year, between the summer she turns thirteen, blinking under a Las Vegas sun, and the summer she is fourteen, out in the desert on a Quest, and no one's around to tell her that normal people usually pace that kind of stuff out.
She doesn't forget.
The first time she rides a bike, it's just a couple days after the mysterious lawyer drops them off at a military school in Maine apropos of nothing, and the heat of summer is still heavy in the air like the fat belly of a frog. One of the girls that Bianca's sharing a bunk room with has a bike, brand-new and shiny red. She skins her knees twice, stripes her palms bloody with gravel, but she learns, pumps her legs, and sails across the blacktop for the first time with the wind in her hair, the other students giving chase with whoops and yells that fade when she leaves them behind.
The first time she steals something, it's from the red-brick convenience store that's two blocks down from the school. Eighth graders are allowed to go there after school on weekdays to buy snacks, provided they always go in pairs. Bianca's standing in line behind Lacey with the pigtails, a box of Hershey's bars at her hip, and she doesn't even think. It's just the flash of a thought across her brain, fast as blinking, oh, Nico would like that, and then when she's reaching for her starchy new wallet to pay for her Doritos, it's so simple to slip the Hershey's bar into her pocket, bring out the wallet, smile at the old man behind the counter. She feels bad about it for all of twenty minutes, which is as long as it takes to get back to school and sneak back around the chain link fence to creep into Nico's room. He sits up when he sees her, shoving his comic book under his pillow, and his whole face lights up when she pulls out the candy bar. Unspoken, they split it in half; half the chips, half the chocolate bar, and they eat their treat in silence, Nico a warm weight pressed into her side. The di Angelo siblings have their own language, and in it, brother doesn't mean the obnoxious little kid who leaves the toilet seat up that you have to put up with because you have to. To her, brother means this, Nico's arms around her neck, his sticky mouth pressing a quick, shy kiss to her cheek in thank you, means everything in the whole wide world.
The first time she kills someone, she turns towards the sink without thinking and pumps soap onto her palms, washes the blood from her hands. He made such a mess, she didn't know men could bleed that much, but he shouldn't have -- they were orphans, you can't just -- nobody else was going to protect them, it was self-defense -- and then she's falling apart, dropping next to the corpse, her mind a mantra, "I take it back, I take it back," and when she reaches out, she feels the snap of something inside her like a bone resetting, like a heart remembering how to beat, and the man gasps back to life. Bianca thinks, oh, god, what's happening and did I do that? and the shadows all around her shudder as if in reply.
The first time she gets kissed, it's around the fire in Artemis's camp that first night, and Bianca can't stop shivering. The magnitude of what she'd just done, what she's agreed to, is like a weight around her neck; her whole body trembles with the strain of carrying it, and when Zoe sits down beside her, touches her bare shoulder, and asks her in this gentle voice like stirring wildflowers if she's all right, she looks up and is just struck with how beautiful this girl is, smooth moonlit limbs and bow-curved mouth, almost like a goddess herself. And Bianca's all new to this, this whole idea of wanting something for herself, doesn't know what to do if she's not doing it for another person, that she doesn't get much beyond the want. It must show in her eyes, in her face, clear-writ as stars, because Zoe smiles, leans in, her mouth warm like life.
The first time she dies, she's still in Zoe's arms.
-fin
Fandom: Percy Jackson and the Olympians
Characters/Pairings: Bianca/Zoe, Nico
Summary: All girls remember their firsts.
Word Count: 800
Done for the pjo_kinkmeme, prompt: Bianca/Zoe, first.
Bianca is a girl.
(This she is fairly sure of, having lived all her life as one, and it being the number one prerequisite to becoming a Hunter of Artemis and all.)
Bianca is a girl, and as such, she remembers her firsts.
She wraps most of them up within the span of one year, between the summer she turns thirteen, blinking under a Las Vegas sun, and the summer she is fourteen, out in the desert on a Quest, and no one's around to tell her that normal people usually pace that kind of stuff out.
She doesn't forget.
The first time she rides a bike, it's just a couple days after the mysterious lawyer drops them off at a military school in Maine apropos of nothing, and the heat of summer is still heavy in the air like the fat belly of a frog. One of the girls that Bianca's sharing a bunk room with has a bike, brand-new and shiny red. She skins her knees twice, stripes her palms bloody with gravel, but she learns, pumps her legs, and sails across the blacktop for the first time with the wind in her hair, the other students giving chase with whoops and yells that fade when she leaves them behind.
The first time she steals something, it's from the red-brick convenience store that's two blocks down from the school. Eighth graders are allowed to go there after school on weekdays to buy snacks, provided they always go in pairs. Bianca's standing in line behind Lacey with the pigtails, a box of Hershey's bars at her hip, and she doesn't even think. It's just the flash of a thought across her brain, fast as blinking, oh, Nico would like that, and then when she's reaching for her starchy new wallet to pay for her Doritos, it's so simple to slip the Hershey's bar into her pocket, bring out the wallet, smile at the old man behind the counter. She feels bad about it for all of twenty minutes, which is as long as it takes to get back to school and sneak back around the chain link fence to creep into Nico's room. He sits up when he sees her, shoving his comic book under his pillow, and his whole face lights up when she pulls out the candy bar. Unspoken, they split it in half; half the chips, half the chocolate bar, and they eat their treat in silence, Nico a warm weight pressed into her side. The di Angelo siblings have their own language, and in it, brother doesn't mean the obnoxious little kid who leaves the toilet seat up that you have to put up with because you have to. To her, brother means this, Nico's arms around her neck, his sticky mouth pressing a quick, shy kiss to her cheek in thank you, means everything in the whole wide world.
The first time she kills someone, she turns towards the sink without thinking and pumps soap onto her palms, washes the blood from her hands. He made such a mess, she didn't know men could bleed that much, but he shouldn't have -- they were orphans, you can't just -- nobody else was going to protect them, it was self-defense -- and then she's falling apart, dropping next to the corpse, her mind a mantra, "I take it back, I take it back," and when she reaches out, she feels the snap of something inside her like a bone resetting, like a heart remembering how to beat, and the man gasps back to life. Bianca thinks, oh, god, what's happening and did I do that? and the shadows all around her shudder as if in reply.
The first time she gets kissed, it's around the fire in Artemis's camp that first night, and Bianca can't stop shivering. The magnitude of what she'd just done, what she's agreed to, is like a weight around her neck; her whole body trembles with the strain of carrying it, and when Zoe sits down beside her, touches her bare shoulder, and asks her in this gentle voice like stirring wildflowers if she's all right, she looks up and is just struck with how beautiful this girl is, smooth moonlit limbs and bow-curved mouth, almost like a goddess herself. And Bianca's all new to this, this whole idea of wanting something for herself, doesn't know what to do if she's not doing it for another person, that she doesn't get much beyond the want. It must show in her eyes, in her face, clear-writ as stars, because Zoe smiles, leans in, her mouth warm like life.
The first time she dies, she's still in Zoe's arms.
-fin