greenconverses: (lightning thief)
[personal profile] greenconverses
Title: Death's Dare
Rating: R
Characters/Pairings: Rachel/Nico, with appearances from the rest of the cast and the gods
Disclaimer: I don't own Percy Jackson and the Olympians
Summary: After an attempt on her life, Apollo decides Rachel needs a bodyguard and who better to take the job than a certain son of Hades? Too bad they're not going to make things easy for each other, especially when it comes to their feelings.
Notes: I was hoping to have this finished earlier in the week, but with my laptop taking a dive, it was a little hard to find the time to write.
ETA: This chapter is dedicated to my insane roommate from freshman year who drove me completely crazy and inspired a hefty portion of this chapter. ;)



Chapter Two: Frustrations


“I am never getting on that – that rolling death trap again!”

“It wasn’t that bad – ”

Rachel whirled around, and shoved the helmet into Nico’s stupid, but incredibly well-formed, chest. She glared at him, but he hardly looked affected by it and calmly leaned back against his bike. Of course she’d get the one boy on earth who wasn’t affected by the Look as a bodyguard.

“You know, there are these things called traffic laws that we mere mortals are expected to obey so we don’t get ourselves killed on a daily basis. I think you just violated all of them and some that don’t even exist yet!”

Nico shrugged. “What’s that saying? Rules were meant to be broken?”

“Not when you’re going 75 miles an hour and weaving through Midtown traffic with me on the back!” Rachel shrieked, her voice echoing in the parking garage. Her cheeks flooded with the color she’d left back in the Village when she’d gotten onto that demon bike, and Nico smirked at her. Rachel’s knees did not appreciate the effect his smirk had on them.

“Oh, come on. You know you enjoyed it, Dare.”

If he wasn’t so damn tall, she’d wipe that smirk right off his face. She hadn’t enjoyed it, not one iota, and she usually liked dangerous stuff, so long as it wasn’t the clinging to dear life in a falling helicopter type of dangerous, which riding on a motorcycle with Nico certainly was.

All right, so maybe she’d enjoyed the rush of the ride when they first got moving, but that was before Nico zoomed around his first bus and narrowly avoided getting his head taken off by a mirror. And maybe, just maybe, she liked the way Nico’s muscles flexed and tensed underneath her hands as he rode, but there was no way she was telling him that.

Instead, she huffed at him and said, “You’re supposed to be my bodyguard, kid. The only way you’ll get me on that again is if you drive five miles an hour, you demigod psychopath,” before turning and marching toward the elevator across the garage.

She heard Nico sigh loudly, and his bike creaked as he got up to follow her. His long strides had him caught up to her in no time; she could feel his eyes on her as she walked and it made her flush even more. She shoved the elevator call button in hard, and crossed her arms over her chest, willing herself not to look at him. Because if she looked at him, she’d have the to fight the urge to deck him or do…something else, something she wasn’t entirely comfortable thinking about.

“This looks like some posh digs for a college student,” Nico observed dryly, and she knew he had to be looking at the row of BMWs nearby.

“Yes, well, I stayed in the dorms for a semester when I was a freshman. Then some dumbass had to go and get himself stabbed at a party, and my dad threatened to yank the funding for my tuition if I didn’t move into the stupid apartment he bought for me so I would be ‘safer.’ More like so his trust fund buddies could spy on me, and so he could drop in unannounced whenever he wanted.”

He laughed. “Mine likes to pull the same thing, although I don’t think yours pops out of the shadows with a burst of hellfire and a compliment of skeleton guards when you least expect it.”

Rachel shuddered at the thought. Hades had been creepy enough at lunch a few hours ago when he had been acting like a mortal; she couldn’t imagine him in full-blown Lord of Death mode, let alone as a father. Then again, the thought of an Olympian as any sort of parental figure usually blew her mind, especially when it came to Lord Apollo, who always seemed to be in unnatural flirt mode whenever he was around her.

“I bet he would if he could,” Rachel muttered as the elevator dinged and the doors slid open without a sound. She and Nico stepped in, and she fiddled for her keys before placing a small silver one in the slot next to the button labeled ‘PH.’ She turned it, pressed the button, and the elevator began to move. “Remind me to give you a copy of this later. You’ll need it to get in and out.”

Nico’s blurred reflection shifted in the metal of the elevator doors, but Rachel was most decidedly not looking at him. If she didn’t have to look at his handsome face or his ridiculously built body on that damned motorcycle ever again, she’d be the happiest girl on earth.

“No, I won’t.”

“Yes, you will. There are only two ways to access my apartment, and the elevator is the one that involves less walking and frisking by bored security guards.”

“Only two access ways for you, you mean.”

He forgot to add “you silly mortal” at the end, but she understood sentiment all the same. Rachel could hear the smirk in his voice.

“Unless you got bit by a radioactive spider since I last saw you, there’s no way you’re getting onto my floor without a key.”

“We’ll see.”

Demigods were so damn frustrating! They were all alike, with their cryptic comments and willful refusal to do anything normally. Rachel ground her teeth, and dug her fingers into her forearms as the elevator jerked to a stop. She was out of the elevator as soon the doors slid open, and walking down the hall toward her door. Nico’s boots clomped on the marble tile as he followed her.

“Do you have any neighbors?”

Rachel didn’t answer, reaching for her strand of keys again and pausing in front of her door. She fiddled with her key ring as Nico came up behind her, and hovered over her shoulder. She was hyperaware of how close he was to her, and the treacherous part of her mind was beginning to create some crazy scenarios involving Nico, herself, and her door, and if she didn’t find that key soon –

Aha! Rachel smiled triumphantly and stuck the key in the lock.

“I wasn’t expecting you until later, so sorry if the place is messy,” she explained as the tumbler clicked, and she swung the door open. “If you’ll give me a second, I can have most of it cleaned up.”

“Holy shit!” Nico exclaimed as he crossed the threshold after her. “This is an apartment?”

Rachel was pretty used to this reaction from first time visitors upon seeing her living space, but it still managed to embarrass her every time. This penthouse wasn’t her; it was her father through and through, from the lofty ceilings right down to the china plates in the cabin. She had hoped to get away from him and his influence during college, but aside from that brief, blessed year in the dorms, she hadn’t succeeded at all.

Nico was currently gaping at the sunken living room filled with plush, leather couches and chairs, a fireplace, and a giant flat screen TV with surround sound. The wall opposite them consisted of all glass windows and a door leading out to the terrace where there was a fabulous view of west Manhattan – the view was one of the few things she actually liked about her father’s cage.

“No, I guess not. It’s a $3.5 million penthouse,” she said heavily, hopping down and tossing her bag onto one of the sofas. “Three bedrooms, four bathrooms, a full-sized kitchen with a dining room, a study, and various other smaller rooms plus a terrace with a hot tub and roof access to the pool.”

“Holy shit,” Nico said again, leaning forward to gawk at the TV. “And this is all for just you?”

The tone of his voice made her uncomfortable. She would’ve been perfectly fine with a hole in the wall somewhere closer to her college, but that wasn’t an acceptable living arrangement for the Dare heiress. In fact, going to school for art instead of becoming an empty-headed trophy wife for some investment banker was hardly an acceptable living arrangement in her father’s opinion.

“It used to be one of my family’s other places, but my mom wanted something less…modern for their twentieth anniversary. My dad didn’t want to sell the thing when the market was so bad, so he gave it to me,” she replied, shuffling some papers on the coffee table. She always had excuse herself so her friends would know that she didn’t want this and that she wasn’t a spoiled brat. “So yeah. It’s just for me.”

“You must get lonely.”

Rachel paused, and glanced up from her shuffling. Nico had his hands in his jacket pockets and was watching her carefully. She noticed there was no pity in his eyes, only understanding, and that’s what made her answer honestly instead of denying his statement.

“Yeah. Sometimes I do.”

She held his gaze for a moment longer. Maybe having Nico around wouldn’t be so bad after all.

She turned and waved at him over her shoulder.

“C’mon. I’ll give you the grand tour and show you your room. Hopefully you won’t have to slay any dust bunnies or anything.”

*

Nico tried to school his face into an impassive expression while Rachel took him on a tour of the rest of her penthouse, but it got harder with each room they passed in and out of. He almost lost it completely at the sight of her flawless, gleaming kitchen with the marble countertops, glass covered cabinets, and high priced appliances, and that was before he saw her home gym and got a look from the terrace.

He wished his dad would buy him a place this nice – or care enough to even have a room for him ready in his palace in the Underworld. But the moment he had crossed the threshold of the penthouse, he had gotten the feeling that this wasn’t home for Rachel. Most of the rooms were dusty and the furniture looked as if no one had ever sat on them; the living and dinning rooms felt like impersonal show rooms. The only places that looked like they had been lived in the last few years were the kitchen, Rachel’s studio, which was a messy blur of color and giant pieces of canvas, and Rachel’s room, which she had let him glance in before slamming the door shut and directing him to a set of doors just down the hall.

“This is the second biggest room in the place. You’ve got your own bathroom, plus balcony access,” she explained, pushing the dark oak doors open. “So if you need a quick getaway, Mr. I-Don’t-Need-Keys, you can always scale down the building.”

“You don’t have a balcony, do you?”

“Yes. Is that going to be a problem?”

Nico thought about it briefly. His father had given him very few details beyond, “Apollo’s dratted Oracle is being targeted by our enemies and you need to keep her from dying a nasty death if that’s within your limited talents,” but he had said whoever was after Rachel wasn’t desperate enough to attack her in her home. Yet.

“Once they find out about you, that will all change. Instead of the prize going to whoever kills the Oracle, it will be given to whoever kills the son of Hades guarding the Oracle. So keep your head down and stay unnoticeable for as long as possible if you don’t want to die miserably,” his father, ever a ray of Olympian optimism and sunshine, had said before he had disappeared from his aunt’s villa. “And comb your hair before you disgrace your house further, you miscreant.”

Besides that, her apartment was up pretty high. Nico would probably sense something amiss by the time something managed to climb the building or fly onto the balcony. He’d have to see about setting up some traps just in case though. It wouldn’t hurt to be cautious, after all.

“Not right now,” he replied, glancing around the room. He had to do a double take, just to make sure he was seeing what he thought he was. “All of this is for me?”

His bedroom was three times the size of the little room he’d been staying in for the last few months in Italy and almost twice as tall, so he was in no danger of knocking his head on the ceiling any time soon. A large bed with a black and white bedspread was pushed against one wall, and a flat screen and desk against the opposite wall.

Rachel nodded, crossing the room and throwing open the window drapes to let in the orange glow of the setting sun. Nico tried to ignore the way the sun brought out the gold in her hair, and turned his gaze to examine the bed as she turned around.

“The closet’s over there, so you should have enough space to set up surveillance equipment or whatever you’re going to use to keep track of me,” she said and he glanced up just in time to catch her small smile. “By the way, where’s you stuff? I didn’t notice if you brought bags in or not.”

“I dumped them off at Percy’s place before I picked you up,” Nico replied, flopping on the bed to test the comfort level. He sank into the mattress and had to repress a pleased moan; it was like laying on a piece of heaven. “I should go and get them soon. He doesn’t like it when I use his living room as a storage bin without his permission.”

Rachel leaned over him, her hair dangling attractively over her left shoulder. If there was anything worse than a good-looking girl, it was a good-looking girl who had no idea just how damn good-looking she was and what kind of effect she had on any male in her general vicinity.

“Don’t tell me my demigod guardian of death is going to get his ass kicked by my demigod best friend for breaking and entering before he even starts his job,” she said, smirking at him.

Nico rolled his eyes, and propped himself on his elbows.

“Percy wishes he could kick my ass. Just ‘cause he’s invulnerable doesn’t mean he’s…” Nico trailed off, suddenly realizing how close his last movement had put him to Rachel. Their lips were just a few sparse inches apart, and if he angled his head just right –

Thankfully, Rachel seemed to realize this at the same moment he did and moved her head just enough to remove the temptation.

“What were you saying?” Rachel asked, looking a little flushed.

“Oh. Um…nothing,” he replied, sitting up. “I’ll go get my stuff in a few hours. It’s not dark enough yet.”

Rachel arched an eyebrow.

“Is this one of those demigod things that I don’t want to know about?” she held up a hand as he opened his mouth. “Never mind. I’d rather not know in case it’s something incriminating. I’ll just leave you to get settled. If you get hungry, there’s plenty of food in the fridge.”

Nico nodded, watching silently as she walked to the double doors.

“See you tomorrow,” he said, and she gave him a little wave as she shut the doors behind her.

As soon as she was gone, Nico threw himself back on the bed and cursed out loud.

He had to get this…this attraction under control if he wanted to be an effective bodyguard; most bodyguards didn’t spend more time analyzing the shape of their subject’s lips than how they were going to protect said subject, after all.

Maybe it would get better in the morning, when he wasn’t so tired and distracted from shadow travelling, and Rachel had a case of bed head and morning breath.

“Yeah, right,” Nico muttered, grabbing a pillow and pulling it over his head so it would muffle his frustrated howl.

*

When Rachel awoke the next morning, a part of her was thoroughly convinced that the idea of an incredibly attractive but completely off-limits demigod bodyguard living in her guest room had been the rather pleasant dream of a lonely young woman who liked her fantasizes. She was still entertaining the idea when she walked into the kitchen for her morning cup of coffee and was immediately confronted with the fact that indeed, there was an incredibly attractive but completely off-limits demigod living in her guest room.

Except he wasn’t in her guest room at the moment. No, he was in the kitchen with his back to her, cooking something on the stove.

Shirtless.

Rachel stared for a full moment, made a noise that sounded rather like, “Blargle,” and ducked out of the kitchen before he could notice her.

She leaned against the hallway wall, willing herself not to hyperventilate. All right, so she had just seen Nico di Angelo shirtless. It wasn’t that big of a deal. She’d seen plenty of shirtless guys before – it was rather hard not to when you lived on a coed dorm floor – and had been able to go about her day-to-day routines without freaking out like a complete spaz. Why was her reaction to Nico so different?

Possibly it was because he was the best looking shirtless boy she’d ever seen, the hormone addled part of her brain supplied unhelpfully. Most demigods, she knew, had killer bodies from all the training they did and Nico was no exception. Rachel liked backs and shoulders, and Nico’s back was absolutely, mouth-wateringly perfect with lean muscles and gorgeous definition. If he looked that good from behind, she couldn’t wait to see –

No.

No, she wasn’t going to be perving on her twenty-year-old bodyguard. She wasn’t supposed to be perving on any boys anyway. She was the Oracle of Delphi, dammit. She wasn’t going to lose her head over some stupid muscular demigod just because he was cooking eggs shirtless.

Speaking of which, who on earth cooked eggs without a shirt? He was practically half-naked! Did he not have any shred of common decency? She would never do such a thing if their roles were reversed. It wasn’t like she was in the habit of walking around her huge apartment in her underwear because she didn’t have any roommates to offend, after all –

Rachel glanced down at herself, and had to bite back a shriek of horror. She’d forgotten to throw on a t-shirt before she’d left her room, and she dressed only her bra and panties…and they weren’t even a nice, matching pair! Oh gods, what if Nico had seen her like this? She would have died from the shame…or because Apollo might’ve looked in at that very moment, assumed they had done something bad based on their state of undress, and flash fried her for breaking her vows of maidenhood or whatever.

She scurried back to her room, growing angrier by the second as she snatched her kimono off her desk chair and pulled it on. What was Nico thinking? Was he even thinking at all? Didn’t he know what the slightest hint of impropriety could do to her?

The rational, sane side of her brain said that she wasn’t pissed about the shirtless business because it could ruin her reputation – she was pissed because he was showing off what she couldn’t have.

“Right,” Rachel muttered to her reflection, tying her kimono tight and making sure it covered her from the neck down. “Like I’d want Nico di Angelo, even if I could.”

She repeated that to herself once more, even though she didn’t really believe it, and marched out of her room, determined to give Mr. di Angelo a piece of her mind.

Even though she had steeled herself for shirtless Nico, she really couldn’t help the way her mind went to pieces when she entered the kitchen again. He was no longer at the stove, but seated at the breakfast nook and eating his eggs. Rachel now had a perfectly lovely view of his chest and it was even more wonderful than his back.

“Mornin’,” he said, waving lazily.

Rachel responded to this perfectly nice greeting by proceeding to bite his head off.

“Do you think you could put a shirt on?” she snapped furiously, walking over to the coffee pot, which was thankfully on the other side of the kitchen. “I don’t need to see that so early in the morning.”

“What exactly is that?” Nico replied, sounding both confused and taken aback.

That refers to your…your general shirtlessness!” she said, reaching for the coffee container and snapping off the lid.

“It’s just my chest, Dare. It’s not a big deal.”

Not a big deal? Not a big deal? Did he even know what he was talking about?

Rachel turned and gave him a fierce glare to go with her accompanying snarl of, “Go. Get. A. Shirt. Now.”

Nico held up his hands in surrender.

“All right, all right!” he said, scooting his stool back and getting to his feet. “How about I just go throw on a turtle neck to save you the hassle of staring at my bare arms too?”

“Whatever,” Rachel said as he went stomping out of the kitchen and down the hall. His door slammed shut, and their first week together only went downhill from there.

*

“Dare,” Nico drawled, hanging over the back of the living room sofa and eyeing her warily.

She glanced up from her sketchbook, and Nico hoped whatever crazy had inhabited her this morning had disappeared for the moment. “We need to have a chat about your pantry organization.”

“What’s wrong with my pantry organization?”

“You have twelve bags of opened chips in the cupboard, three of which are Cheetos bags with just a handful left in each of them.”

“So sue me for occasionally forgetting that I have a bag open when I open another one. I don’t see what the problem is.”

“The problem is that you have twelve half-eaten, stale bags of chips taking up room in your cupboard. There’s no reason for it, especially if you’re not going to eat them!”

“I do too eat out of them!” Rachel replied, and Nico arched a disbelieving eyebrow. “All right, maybe they are a little old – ”

“Good,” Nico interrupted, pushing off the sofa and heading toward the kitchen. “I’m tossing them then.”

He heard the slap of Rachel’s sketchbook against the leather of the sofa, and she got to her feet.

“Nico di Angelo, I swear if you so much as touch my pantry, I’m going to – to – Hey! Get away from my cupboards! I have a system, dammit!”

*

“Ow!”

Rachel hopped onto one foot, grabbing for the heel of the other foot that was stinging in pain. She glared at over her shoulder at the demigod standing almost directly behind her.

“Sorry,” Nico replied, although he didn’t sound too apologetic. “You should walk faster.”

Nico had insisted on “discreetly” following her on her walk to one of the little convenience stores a couple of blocks away, and so far, he’d done a terrible job with the discreet aspect.

“Why don’t you take a couple of steps back instead of breathing down my neck? I know you’re supposed to guard me, but invading my personal space is going a bit too far!”

“You say that now, but when it saves your life…”

“I think I’d rather be dead than have you tromp on my heels every five seconds,” Rachel muttered as she hobbled forward. “Ow! You did that on purpose!”

*

Was it bad that everything Rachel did was starting to get on his nerves? Nico had never had a roommate besides his sister for an extended period of time and he knew brothers and sisters were supposed to drive each other crazy, but he didn’t think a roommate was supposed to drive him nuts within a few days of having moved in.

She was just so – so frustrating, for various reasons. Whether it was the week’s worth of dirty dishes piling up in the kitchen sink that she refused to do because the maid did it every Friday or the way she scoffed at all the security measures he put in place or the way she twisted her hair when she was nervous, Nico was getting thoroughly annoyed with Miss Dare.

Today, his main problem was the way she kept tapping her leg when she was sitting down. He didn’t know what caused it – nervous energy or some sort of weird tic – but whenever she was at the dinning room table, one of her legs would just bounce up and down at a rapid pace for no reason at all. Something like that shouldn’t annoy him, but seeing that movement out of the corner of his eye was driving him fucking insane. If she kept that up any longer, he was going to do something rather unpleasant.

Rachel got up from the table, and Nico let out a brief sigh of relief. But then she sat back down and her leg got right back to that anxious tapping. Gods be damned, how he was supposed to read if that leg of hers kept jiggling like that?

“Could you stop doing that?” he demanded at last, unable to take it any more.

Rachel looked at him, a confused expression on her face.

“Doing what? Breathing?”

“That – that tapping thing!” he exclaimed, gesturing at her. She glanced down at her leg, which stopped tapping almost immediately. “It’s bothering me. So will you quit it?”

“No,” Rachel said defiantly, sweeping her bangs out of her eyes. “Not until you stop chewing your nails because that bothers the hell out of me.”

Nico glowered at her, and spent the rest of the evening biting at his fingernails just to spite her.

*

“Oh my gods,” Rachel said as she walked out on the terrace the next afternoon. “What in Zeus’s name are you doing?”

Nico’s handsome, grease smeared face popped up from behind his motorcycle. She didn’t even want to know how he had gotten that thing up to her penthouse without anyone noticing or without getting tire tracks on her nice cream carpet.

“What’s it look like I’m doing, Dare?” he replied, exasperated. That seemed to be his favorite tone to address her with ever since their various spats over the week. Rachel had no idea living with another person could be so taxing. And she was supposed to put up with this for next couple of months?

“It looks like you’re getting bike grime all over the terrace tile,” she said stiffly, crossing her arms over her chest. “Do you have any idea how much those tiles cost?”

Not that she cared about the tile being scuffed up or stained by oil, but it was the principle of the matter. Nico was a guest in her house and he was supposed to treat her things with respect; he clearly hadn’t learned his lesson with the pantry (which he had managed to empty, despite her screaming and shouting at him) and she had to show him he couldn’t walk all over her.

“I’m just replacing a few parts,” he said, standing up. He had grease all up and down his bare arms, and his chest hugging white tank top was dirty as well. It was almost as bad as him wandering around shirtless (which he had done again this morning, just to piss her off). “I’ll clean it up when I’m done.”

“That’s not the point,” Rachel said, and Nico’s brow furrowed in confusion. She clarified, “Ask me before you do something like this again.”

“Why should I have to ask?”

Rachel let out a strangled scream, and whirled on her heel, marching back inside before the urge to rip his shirt off of him and do something really dirty on her tiles was overpowered by her urge to strangle him.

*

“WILL YOU TURN THAT MUSIC DOWN? MY GODS, IT SOUNDS WORSE THAN THE WAILS OF TORMENTED SOULS – AND I WOULD KNOW!”

“GO TO HADES, DI ANGELO! THIS IS MY STUDIO AND MY PAINTING TIME AND I’LL LISTEN TO WHATEVER THE HELL I WANT TO!”

“NOT WHEN IT’S THREE IN THE FUCKING MORNING, DARE!”

“GO SLEEP OUT ON THE TERRACE WITH YOUR DEMON BIKE IF YOU CAN’T HANDLE IT! YOU TOUCH THAT STEREO, AND I’LL – I’LL GET PERCY TO KICK YOUR ASS BACK TO THE 1930s!”

“I’D RATHER BE THERE THAN HERE WITH YOU!”

“FINE!”

“FINE!”

Doors slammed simultaneously, and the uneasy week dragged on.


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