Nico

It was weirdly nice, being able to talk about it and not have it be weird because it's somebody that found out not by choice.

Plus, Leo gets it. He likes Frank, who's probably straighter than Percy and is also taken.

At least he didn't have a thing for my sister. I was glad for that.

But anyways, he talked about Frank and got to ramble on about how cute he was and how nice and sweet and like Canadian he was, in a good way. And then I got to kind of talk about Percy and the things I don't dare tell Jason. Like how hot he is.

And how I was really worried about him now.

"What happened?" Leo asked me and I shrugged. "Is he okay?"

"I don't think so." I was honest about it because there wasn't a point in lying. "I stopped by today and he like lost his shit before he even realized I was there. Punched his wall, made a hole in it. Started crying. Of course he like cut it out when he saw me. He had cut marks and shit, I had to help him with bandages but he said it was normal so I don't know. He like freaked out on me, told me to leave. So I don't think so, but I don't think he's like suicidal, so..."

Speak of the devil.

And he appears.

We're not even fucking Christian and the saying still applies.

My phone went off. A text from Percy.

"Oh, shit, sorry," I didn't want to drag Leo into this, though. He has his own problems, you know? "Will and Allie want me down to help at the infirmary. I'll talk to you later. If Will ever let's me leave his side again."

He chuckled and said it was fine, so I left. Went to my cabin and opened up my texts.

Percy: hey Nico, are you there?
Percy: sorry about earlier, I kind of lost my cool. It's been a shitty week.
Percy: hello?
Percy: Nico, please. I'm sorry. I need to talk to you.
Percy: nico
Percy: I need help. Please.

My anxiety of the whole thing went up and I sent a quick response, laying on the couch.

Nico: hey, sorry, I was walking back to my cabin. It's fine, I'm not mad about this morning. Shit happens.
Nico: are you okay?
Nico: did you get in a fight?
Nico: did somebody hurt you?
Nico: what's wrong?

For a minute or so it just shoved the dots that he was typing and it killed me. It was really nervous. A lot more worried that I probably should be.

But I just talked to Leo about this for almost an hour. I love the guy, I have the right to be concerned.

Percy: I uh... I don't know how to explain it and I don't want to send a photo
Percy: it's super late and I'm sorry, it's like an asshole move I guess but I don't really know
Percy: but could you come over? I get it and you don't have to, it'd just be a lot nicer if you could. Normally there's like somebody around that can help but...
Percy: please.

Nico: hey don't worry just breathe
Nico: I'm on my way. Be there in 5.

Percy: thank you

So I threw on a shirt again and put on my shoes before shadow travelling to his place. Inside already. And quickly found his room again.

He was past the emotional breakdown. That must've happened earlier. After I left. Not too long ago.

But the thing was, his wrists were bleeding and he had a camp issued gun on him. Like one we'd use to fight if you wanted a gun even though we never use them because it's harder and yeah. Less reliable.

He had it in his hand. Pointed at his head and I knew what this was as soon as I saw it.

Percy was going to kill himself. But he couldn't.

So he texted the person he thinks hates him. Probably thinking I'd encourage it and give him that final push.

"Percy, what are you..." This time I at least had words. And he looked terrified, but he looked lonely. Desperate for me to do something. Whether that be to push him to do it or stop him, I wish I knew. But I knew where I stood in my mind. "Oh my gods..."

He started going on about how it doesn't matter. How it's the same old time every fucking day and every gods damned summer. How he's tired of it and how everything would be so much better this way.

And instead of agreeing, I fought it. Something I doubted he expected of me. But after opening up to Leo. After talking to him and setting some shit straight, I was really fucking tired myself. Of lying about this bullshit every. Damn. Day.

Slowly, I approached him. I talked to him.

And I took the gun away from him. Unloaded it and threw it out the window.

I wrapped up his wrists and we sat down on his bed for the second time today.

"Why do you care?" Percy asked me, obviously tired. "I thought you'd tell me to shoot myself."

"I don't know," I was honest. "I have for while, I just got tired of lying about it. When did... This.... Start?"

"I don't know," he repeated my answer and shrugged. "I just uh... Started feeling like shit one day and it got worse. Now that I have time to grieve and think it's weird. I mean, it runs on my mom's side. She had it bad when she met my dad apparently. But um... It's just shitty and all. Sorry if I like scared you or..."

"Oh, don't worry, you terrified me." I insisted and saw how bad he felt when I said that. So I pulled him into a hug. "But really, Percy, I'm glad you texted. I'm here, no matter how mentally fucked you are."

"I uh... Thanks."

I think that confused him. That I wasn't mad. Or upset. Or confused.

I just went with it.

"Seriously." I was trying to get through to him and like make him see that I'm not joking. "Percy it's... It's dumb. Not that you're depressed. But the situation between us. I've been acting like I hate you for 3 years. Ignoring you and whatever. And it's really shitty of me, but like... I don't, okay? I do care. I do think of you as a friend. Alright?"

He nodded his head, understanding what I was telling him.

"So," I figured, grabbing his hand as moral support. "What's been going on?"

He shrugged.

"It just sucks, Nico, I don't know." My long-term crush admitted. "It just hurts and... I'm mad and I'm frustrated and I have been for a long time it just, now I can pay attention to it and now there's nothing to do but think about it and what happened and... And yeah. It hurts and I'm mad and frustrated and I don't know what to do."

"Well let's get you patched up, then we can talk about it over a cup of coffee."

⏭️⏭️⏭️

In the end, he never did tell me much, but he seemed to feel much better after he said what he did. Just that it's been hard for a lot of reasons that he can't really figure out. I assumed that was a lie, of course. But I wasn't going to push him on it.

A few months went by, and I mean, life moved on. Percy and I still weren't talking, and that's probably not the best thing. It's bound to make summer awkward. But soon enough we all got an invite to go watch him at State for swimming. His parents invited us. And by us, I mean Annabeth wasn't invited.

Frank

For no real reason was I excited to watch Percy swim, but I was fucking elated. Hazel was, too. We came together, but we'd have to explain what happened to the others.

That we sort of broke up.

Yeah, it's kind of a long story. We don't go to school together. Her being at Camp Jupiter, me in Canada, it doesn't really work that way. But we still talked. Jason and Hazel would visit Camp Jupiter and they'd all send an IM to me after school and it was nice. So they do know we broke up, but nobody else.

Here, that is. People at my school know. But that's different.

I go to school with this one guy, and we've known each other for a long time. We weren't really friends, but we tolerated each other and it was normal.

Well, when I got back from New York, he had changed a bit. He used to be extremely popular and one of the first things I saw walking into school was him getting slammed into a locker. When I asked Amalie what the big deal was, she told me that he came out of the closet while I was gone. He's gay. He sits with my friends at lunch now.

So I went with it after going to French (I hate it), Algebra (which is going to fuck me over this year), Biology (which is surprisingly easy), and English (ugh.) After English, we head to lunch and my friends uh... Didn't recognize me, to say the least. School started two weeks before I had gotten back, so I appeared to be a 'new' kid.

When, in reality, I just actually have a build now.

Amalie was able to convince them it was me and I got close to Tim, the kid who was shoved in the locker. Emotionally, not physically. And we uh... I mean, he was cute.

After about a week, I realized that I liked him. There was something there that wasn't the puppy love I felt with Hazel that had faded over the summer.

So we talked. For like two hours. I talked to Hazel and I told her what had happened. I said that, as weird as it was thinking I'm bi and may be gay, I could try to push through and see how long it'll last. But by then, it had been a week since I started crushing on him and it wasn't going well.

After a few days, we agreed that breaking up was a good idea. We did it on peaceful terms, and I asked Tim to the dance. And I mean, I got rejected.

But he said he was flattered. He just already had a boyfriend from another school. At first I thought it was bull, but he brought the guy to the dance and a few people tried jumping them.

It's weird, a moose did some damage to one of the guys car. So they never got through with it. Car damage distracted them.

Of course, after that moose did some damage a few times to anyone that tried to hurt any gay couple in our school, it like stopped happening. That moose is called the gay mascot of Canada.

Weird, right? Hazel laughed when she heard about it.

But I'm here in New York. Sally and Paul paid for the ticket to get here, and we got everything else. We were finding our seats for this. I was alone, of course. Hazel, Jason, and Piper would fly in together.

And shit, I stalked Percy's Instagram the other night along with his swim teams Instagram and it's kind of embarrassing to say about somebody I know how I do.

But Percy's kind of hot. And he's swimming today. Their best swimmer.

It was November. American Thanksgiving is next week. So it's kind of cold, fall sports are dying down, winter ones are starting. There's a bite in the air here, back home we already have half a meter of snow.

It was Nico, Leo, and myself sitting down. Annabeth was invited, which was... It was interesting. But the three of us were there and Percy ran up to us, thankfully the bleachers below us are for swimmers and weren't occupied yet.

"Frank! You made it!" I was smacked with his accent that I still can't place, and it sent chills down my spine. "Oh mein Götts, that's great! Where's uh... Where's Hazel? I thought that you two come together?"

Yeah, for unknown reasons, Percy's English has always been sketchy. Nico told me it's always been that way for as long as he's known him. It's good, just doesn't sound natural to him.

"Oh, uh, no." I corrected him, shrugging. "Being I'm in Canada, we don't exactly go to the same airport. Plus, she didn't even fly. She took the train. Being Pluto's kid and all. Piper and Jason are with her, though."

Leo looks at me weird.

"What?" I asked him, and he put his water down.

"Your accent," Leo pointed out and I rolled my eyes at that. I don't know what he's talking about, he's had a Spanish accent for as long as I've know him. "It's really strong. I'm not used to it. Percy's, too."

"Ja, that's what's happens when you like, go home." Percy countered what Leo told the two of us. "Your accent is still very uh... What's the word? Well, whatever, you still have it. Nico on the other hand, you'd never be able to see that he's Italian."

To prove his point, Leo speaks.

"You're Italian?"

"Mhm," Nico nods his head, sounding nothing like the place of his birth. "I was born in Italy. We lived there until was a toddler, and then we came to America and my mom died and I mean we lived in a very European area and it was a lot of Italians and Japanese, actually. Until they were taken away. But between being born there and being around it until I was like 9, not to mention Bianca, I had an accent for a long time after we moved."

"Ahh, got it." I said, nodding my head. "Yeah, Hazel still has the New Orleans sound. It's not bad, though."

"Oh, yeah, speaking of that," Leo hops on what I said. "Còmo uh... How are you guys? Sorry, now that we're talking about accents, I'm thinking Spanish."

"It's all good," I assured him and sighed. "I mean, were fine. We broke up, but it was peaceful terms and we still talk all the time, so. Not like we fought or anything. It just... Died."

"That's not fun to hear." Percy said as an odd combination of words. "what uh... No wait, you answered that. Duh. But I get it. Annabeth and I broke up this last month. She heard some things and it's whatever, yeah? We talk a little. She still helps me with school, that's really nice. She didn't want to uh— to come today, though. Do you speak French? French, yeah?"

"Yeah." I confirm for him as Hazel, Jason, and Piper show up and join us at our 'seats' which are just like kind of long stairs. Nice enough. "I like never use it, though, it's really dumb. Everyone speaks English most of the time in my town. We have a lot of Americans visitors. I take German, too. I mean, I suck at it. But..."

"German is really hard," Nico commented. "I tried to learn it a few years ago and I couldn't even tell you how to ask where the bathroom is."

Percy gives him a weird look and we look at him in return. Percy, not Nico.

"Wo ist die Toilette?" Despite his shitty English, Percy knew German. "You forgot 'Wo ist die Toilette?'"

"I said it's hard to learn. So yes, I did."

We assumed he took German and continued talking. Jason talked about how he knows some Latin, and then Percy's multilingual ass jumped in and had a conversation with Jason in Latin.

He also knows enough French apparently to talk to me and Piper about like simple stuff. Which also means he can common sense Spanish.

Like, I wish I could do that.

And then somebody that looked sort of like him said something and I didn't understand it. Nico seemed to have an idea, though. Percy understood it clearly.

"Nein," Percy told this kid, motioning for him to go away. "Ich weiß nicht wo Mutti und Papa sind. Gerade... Setz mit sie. Du kannst mein Mutti Anrufen, es ist nicht hart. Okay? Ich kann mit du später sprechen. Aber für jetzt, geh mit mein Mutti."

We were so fucking lost. He said something about Mom and Dad. That's all I got our of it.

But the kid understood him and left. Went and sat by Sally.

"Tut mir Lied," Percy said, sounding apologetic. "My step brother. He's nice, but he can be a uh... A real Blödmann when he wants to be. But I should get in some practice laps. I might be back. It's debatable, though. I will see you guys afterwards, yeah?"

"Yeah!" We all agreed at once and hung around until his heat.

Heading down right before his heat, Percy was stripping real quick being they had like shirts and everything again. But he took the shirt off and I thought it looked off.

Something seemed off with his body, but I couldn't place it. It was probably not a good idea that I was staring, but I wasn't the only one. We basically all were.

Jason and Nico are the only ones strictly into girls here. Leo and I could look all we wanted with the girls at the shirtless swimmers.

"If you keep looking, people might start thinking you're gay, Frank." Leo pointed out to me as Hazel, Nico, and Jason we're getting everyone food from concessions.

I shrugged it off, still looking after glancing at Leo.

"I mean, I'm bi, so it's not totally wrong." I point out to him. "I mean that's not how it works, but you're bi. You know what I mean."

"Oh," I don't think he was expecting that from me. Then again, I wasn't expecting, it either. The longer I looked at Percy and his competitors, though? I definitely wasn't straight, and the more I'm around Percy, the more fucked I am. "Yeah. I get it. Sorry, I didn't expect that. Does... Does Hazel know?"

"Oh, yeah, she knows." I promised him as I noticed Percy's arms were weirdly red. "She was the first person to find out. We talked about it for like two hours. Decided to break up. That wasn't why. It just like made me have feelings for other people and that was why we broke up. Yeah. Whatever. But do Percy's arms look weird to you?"

"Yeah!" Leo agreed and we examined them for a few minutes before his smaller shirt came off, exposing his chest.

It was also red. Not like blood. But red. Not bleeding.

And then the trunks came off and he was in a speedo and it would've been serious eye candy if my eyes didn't fall to the red on his thighs and after a few seconds I realized what they were. Why they looked so weird.

It looked like he had been attacked by something with claws. Cuts were everything. Healing. Some were fresh, but he had a few what looked like scars.

He was really pale compared to normal. A lot of small things just we're weird.

And then it hit me.

They were cutting scars. I had seen a few on Tim a while ago. He said he had stopped within the first week of school, but of course he was still healing and it looked an awful like what Percy has right now.

Cutting marks.

Self harm marks.