greenconverses (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
greenconverses) wrote2009-10-12 12:07 am
greenconverses) wrote2009-10-12 12:07 am
Entry tags:
fic: Death's Dare [PJO, Rachel/Nico, 5/?]
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: These chapters just keep getting longer, it's almost ridiculous. This is the chapter where DD begins to earn it's "R" rating, so if you're not a fan of such things, I'd suggest skipping over Nico's scene in the middle -- you won't miss anything too integral to the plot.
Chapter Five: Revelations
“Make sure you stir that more often, otherwise you’re going to burn it.”
“I think I can handle warming spaghetti sauce, Chef Boyardee. Believe it or not, but I have used a stove before.”
“Yeah, for boiling Ramen noodles, I’m sure. I’ve seen the collection in your cupboard.”
Rachel reached across the space between them and swatted Nico in the arm. It didn’t do much to deter him, and he grinned at her as he tore off another piece of bread from the loaf sitting beside him on the counter.
“Sometimes you’re such a brat, di Angelo,” Rachel sighed. “Here I am, making a nice, home cooked meal the night before I go back to school, and all you can do is make fun of me.”
“Well, that’s because you look good barefoot and in the kitchen – hey, I was just kidding! Put the knife down!”
It was almost ridiculous how well she had been getting along with Nico in the days following the visit from the monster at her window. They were still arguing, of course – Rachel didn’t think there were enough monsters in the world to make them get along completely – but it lacked the resentment and rancor from the previous days.
She figured her new attitude had to do with the fact that she didn’t view Nico as an inconvenient hassle anymore; now that she knew without a doubt that someone was trying to kill her and it wasn’t just Apollo being overprotective and paranoid, she practically welcomed his presence. If she had been living alone with this hanging over her head, she probably would’ve gone a little crazy, jumping at every strange sound or sleeping with all the lights on.
Nico’s presence made her feel safe and a little less lonely. She rarely strayed anywhere in her apartment other than her bedroom or studio and it was a little unusual for her to be spending this much time with someone outside of school. She had mortal friends of course, but it was hard to get close to any normal people when she could burst into a prophecy at any moment and lot of them got weird once they found out who her dad was. When she wasn’t on campus, she spent her time with local art organizations or doodling at some café in the Village before heading home to spend the rest of the night by herself.
With Nico around, it was different. He followed her to the cafés and made a big deal about how terrible her wheatgrass smoothie tasted before going off about how much he wished she would pick more exciting places to hang out so he didn’t have to listen to environmentally themed poetry slams. He left signs of his presence all over her place, whether it was a pair of smelly socks on the coffee table or open books scattered in the strangest locations (she’d found one in the bathroom cupboard, for the sake of the gods), and after the monster incident, they tended to gravitate toward each other fairly often when they weren’t in their bedrooms.
Rachel liked having someone around to talk to, even if a good portion of their conversations ended with them screaming at each other and slamming doors, and it was nice doing things like cooking dinner for two…
So long as person number two didn’t dip his hunk of bread into her pot of spaghetti sauce while she was cooking it, that is.
“Gross, Nico!” she said, slamming the cover down on the pot before he could do it again. “Couldn’t you have done that with a piece of bread you hadn’t taken a bite out of?”
“Why? It’s not like anyone else but us is going to eat it.”
“Did you ever think that I didn’t want to be exposed to your corpse cooties?”
He shook his head as he shoved the rest of the bread into his mouth all at once. He made a face of dislike as he chewed and swallowed a moment later.
“Ugh. Please tell me you didn’t use premade sauce.”
Rachel pointed to the empty jar at the edge of the counter. “Sorry, but my family isn’t the type to keep homemade spaghetti sauce recipes.”
“Gross,” he said, imitating her earlier tone well enough to make her frown. “Remind me the next you want to go all domestic to let me make the sauce for you.”
Rachel arched an eyebrow at him, and reached across the stove to check on the progress of the noodles. Steam wafted from the pot as she lifted the lid, and she stirred the noodles around with a fork, pulling a few out to examine them before plopping them back in the hot water.
“You know how to cook something edible? I am thoroughly impressed.”
Besides the children of Demeter, most demigods Rachel knew could not cook to save their lives. She supposed because they were kind of awesome at everything else, they had to be bad at something as simple as cooking. Percy and Annabeth survived on a heavy diet of take-out and Sally Jackson’s everlasting kindness, and aside from the cooking-eggs-shirtless business, Rachel hadn’t seen Nico anywhere near the kitchen since he had arrived.
He shrugged. “I learned how while I was in Italy. My aunt’s kind of up there in years, so I tried to make things easier for her if I could.”
“That was…surprisingly sweet of you.”
“I have my moments,” he said, tearing off another chunk of bread. “Just not around you though.”
Rachel rolled her eyes.
“That figures. You know, you never did tell me why you went to Europe. Were you looking for your family?”
“Not really. I always wanted to go and I didn’t have anything keeping me here, so I just went. I got to Italy eventually and I decided it wouldn’t hurt to see if I had some relatives who were still alive,” Nico explained, biting into his bread. “My grandfather was an ambassador to the U.S. in the thirties, you see, so I figured they’d be pretty easy to look up. Well, as it turns out, the di Angelo family is still very much into politics and they initially thought I was some jerkass trying to blackmail them for money.”
“Lemme guess. Politician’s illegitimate love child?”
“Yeah. It was kind of a mess for a while, but I managed to convince them that Bianca and I had survived the explosion that killed our mother and that I was actually my own grandson…Gods, that sounded so much less fucked up the first time around.”
“You’re part Greek god, Nico. Your entire family tree is one fucked up mess,” Rachel said, lifting up the lid on the noodles again. The water was beginning to bubble, so she switched the heat off and grabbed the handle to pull it off the burner. “Don’t tell me they bought that sad story of yours without some proper research.”
“No way,” Nico replied, moving to take her spot at the stove in front of the sauce pan as she drained the water from the pan in the sink. She heard him rustling around in one of the cupboards next to the stovetop as he continued, “But lucky for me, Alecto forged a bunch of records for me when I tried to go to high school, and they worked well enough when the family did a background check on me. My aunt didn’t believe me at all, and she figured out who really was eventually. It was kind of weird at first because she was born just a couple of years before me, and she didn’t know what to make of me being so young…but after a while, we got over it.”
Rachel listened as she poured the water and noodles into the strainer in the sink, the steam hissed as it rose in the air. She’d dragged Nico’s story out of Percy a few years back, and she’d always found it much more interesting than any of the other demigods. How often did you meet someone who had their entire life and destiny reshaped like that? And it must’ve been so shocking for Nico’s aunt to discover her nephew wasn’t really dead after all and on top of that, a demigod…
“Were you planning on going back soon?” she asked as she moved toward the kitchen island to put the noodles in a serving bowl.
“Probably. I wasn’t planning on coming back to America until this situation cropped up,” he said. He glanced over his shoulder at her, and she felt a little something inside her melt. There was just something so appealing about a good-looking man cooking. All he needed was an apron, and the picture would be complete. “I think you and my aunt would get along. She was a curator at an art museum in Florence before she retired…and she likes bossing me around.”
“I do not boss,” Rachel said, tossing the strainer back into the sink and moving toward the stove. She noticed the spice cupboard was open and Nico had taken several of the containers down. “Hey, did I say you could mess with the sauce?”
This time it was Nico’s turn to roll his eyes. “Sure you don’t boss.”
“I don’t,” she said, bumping him with her shoulder in an attempt to move him from his place, “and I happen to like the way that sauce tastes, thank you very much!”
“What, bland and unappealing?” he said sarcastically. He stirred the wooden spoon around once in the sauce before holding it out expectantly. “Try it now; it’s much better.”
Rachel glowered at him and before she could protest, he pressed the spoon up to her lips. She sighed obligingly, and opened her mouth, letting the spoon slide in. He had tried her wheatgrass smoothie without complaint, so she suppose she owed him a –
“Oh, mmm,” Rachel said, closing her eyes briefly as the taste hit her tongue. It was a lot better, spicier and smoother than it had been before. She wasn’t sure how a few spices could’ve improved the taste that much, but if Nico could do that to all her food, she’d let him run the kitchen however he wanted.
The spoon slid out of her mouth as Rachel’s eyes fluttered open again and her stomach rolled as she caught sight of the look on Nico’s face. His eyes held a dark, hungry look that had nothing to do with food, and he was staring at her lips as if they were the most fascinating thing in the world. Rachel was very aware of how hard and strong the line of his arm pressed against hers was, and exactly how much heat his body was giving off. Percy always complained that Nico had ice cold skin, but Rachel had never noticed and why in the name of Hades was she thinking about Percy when Nico looked like was about ready to ravish her within an inch of her life?
She had a sudden vision of Nico hoisting her onto the top of the kitchen counter and brutally kissing her as she tugged his shirt out of his pants and over his head. Her shirt came off next, and she was clawing at his bare back as his mouth moved lower and lower down her chest –
Rachel wasn’t sure if this was a vision of the future or just an incredibly brief and vivid fantasy, but it made her limbs tremble with want anyway. She bit down on the inside of her cheek, trying to control herself so she didn’t throw herself as Nico to make it come true.
That small bit of movement seemed to be enough to break the spell on Nico’s end as he glanced away a moment later and cleared his throat.
“See what I mean?” He asked, voice a little lower and huskier than before. “A lot better.”
“Yeah,” Rachel sighed, her shoulder slumping in disappointment, which was stupid. Had she really thought that would happen? She was the Oracle, and Nico might be a little prick, but he would never do anything to disrespect her position like that. “Much better…hey, you’re not putting that spoon back in there, are you?”
“Duh. What else do you want me to do with it?”
“Gross, I licked that! Don’t they teach you hygiene in the Underworld?”
“Again, we’re the only one’s eating it, Dare. Seriously, you are such an overbearing freak sometimes – ”
“A freak? A freak? I’m not the one who was talking to the ghost of a window cleaner yesterday, Dead Boy!”
And just like that, things were back to normal between them, although Rachel couldn’t help but wonder later that night if that’s how she wanted things to stay.
*
Nico wasn’t particularly fond of cold showers, but he sure had been taking a hell of a lot of them lately. Mostly because he lived a door down the hall from and spent most of his time a hanging out with fucking gorgeous woman that he couldn’t have, and he just could not stop thinking about her.
Or, more precisely, he couldn’t stop thinking about what he’d like to do with her.
He thought about sex a lot – what horny, twenty-year-old male didn’t? – but never quite as much as he had recently. It seemed like every other thought was something about sex or Rachel and all the combinations thereof. Everything she did caused him to wonder – if he pressed his lips against her collarbone, would she sigh like she had when she’d finished the end of that trashy novel she’d been reading all week? If he ran his hands under her top and up her sides, would she moan like she had when she’d taken her first bite of the fresh chocolate chip cookie from the bakery down the street?
Could he make her gasp his name with pleasure if he took her in the middle of her studio, pressed up against a still drying painting? Could he make her scream if he went down on her out on the balcony for the entire world to hear? Could he kiss her and kiss her and never let her out of his bedroom again?
He could – he knew he could – but fucking Rachel wasn’t his job.
And his job was entirely the problem.
Nico closed his eyes and pressed his forehead against the cool tile of the shower, letting the freezing spray run down his shoulders and back. His skin was full of goosebumps, but it didn’t do much to deter the strength of his erection.
“Fucking morning wood,” he muttered.
Normally, when he wanted to whack off to a particular girl and whatever depraved fantasy he had in mind with her, he didn’t feel like a fucking creep for doing it. It was different with Rachel – it was always different with her.
As her bodyguard, he knew he shouldn’t be having some of the thoughts he did about her. He was distracting himself constantly, thinking about what way he’d fuck her or how good her legs looked in that pair of jeans or number of other things when he should be concentrating on what was going on around him. He had to check himself constantly when he was her, making sure he wasn’t staring at her or touching her for an inappropriate amount of time, or putting himself in a position where he’d be tempted to take her. He’d almost lost control when they had been cooking last night, and she’d sucked on the spoon he’d held out to her like it was the most appetizing thing in the world. And then she’d looked at him like she expected him to ravish her on the kitchen floor afterward…
He’d had a hard on for the rest of the night from just that little moment because Rachel just didn’t know how fucking appetizing she was to him.
And if he was entirely truthful with himself, it wasn’t just her body he wanted. He wanted anything and everything associated with Rachel Elizabeth Dare.
If they were two normal, horny young adults, they would’ve fucked already and gotten it out of their system. As it was, she was the virginal host of the Oracle and he was her bodyguard, and he would continue to be the most sexually frustrated twenty-year-old male on the planet, destined to jerk off in a cold shower every morning.
Nico sighed, cracking his eyes open and frowning in dismay at his continued state of arousal. He’d be cranky all day if he didn’t get this taken care of, wrong or not. Gods, he’d get barbequed by Apollo if he ever found out what dirty thoughts his Oracle inspired in him.
Well, if he was going to get barbequed, he might as well make it worth it…
He slid his hand downwards, grasping himself and beginning to stroke slowly as a fantasy formed in his mind.
Rachel burst into the bathroom while he was in the shower, yelling at him for something or another, and she paused, growing flustered as she realized he was wet and naked behind the frost of the shower glass.
“Dare,” Nico said, opening the shower door and giving her a full, uncompromised view of his body, including his straining erection. “Are you really going to yell at me while I’m in the shower?”
She tried not to let his nakedness bother her, but the flush on her face grew more pronounced and she nervously licked her lips as her eyes darted downward. He could tell she wanted him, and it only made him harder.
“It’s not like you’re doing anything extremely important in there,” Rachel replied coolly, only the crack in her voice revealing how unnerved she was. “Or should I come back in a couple of seconds? I’m sure you’ll be done after a few more strokes – hey, what are you doing?”
Nico stepped out of the shower and reached for her; she took a step back, but it wasn’t enough to escape his grasp. He grabbed her wrist and tugged her into the shower, clothes and all. She shrieked in protest as the cool water hit her body, causing her skin to pimple and her nipples to stiffen almost instantly, and Nico didn’t bother to bite back the groan at the sight of her wet T-shirt clinging to her ample chest and her bedraggled red hair hanging in her eyes.
“Di Angelo, you crazy idiot!” Rachel hissed, slapping him in the chest. “Do you know what Apollo will do to me if he sees me like this?”
“Yeah,” Nico replied, closing the door and backing her against the shower tile. Rachel’s breathing grew strained as he pressed his body against her, and her hand trembled against his chest. But her eyes glittered with excitement and desire as he slid his hand to the back of her neck; she wanted it as much as he did. “This.”
She let out a squeak as he crushed his mouth to hers, but it quickly turned into a satisfied moan and she immediately opened up to him as he slid his tongue along the crease of her lips.
It wasn’t a nice kiss – it was frenzied and passionate, with hands and mouths moving everywhere as they tried to feel everything that had been denied to them. Rachel felt like heaven, her curves pressed against him, his dick buried into the burrow of her stomach and his hands slipping into her wet jeans to mold her ass. Every noise, every little gasp or pant, she made was fucking music to his ears and he thought he’d come from that alone –
The hand that had been on his chest began to slide downward, teasingly slow compared to all of her other touches. Her fingers tangled in the coarse hair just above his dick and paused, waiting…waiting…
“Rachel,” he muttered, licking the line of her neck. He was trembling, he was so close to the pleasure of having her hand on him. “If you don’t fucking move, I’m going to – ”
“Chill, Nico,” she replied, laughter in her voice. “Gotta make those couple of strokes last, you know?”
“Oh, fuck you, Dare!”
“Yes,” Rachel purred, and his knees nearly gave out as her hand finally moved and began to stroke his dick. She dragged her mouth along his earlobe and sucked. “Fuck me, Nico.”
Nico came with a grunt, steadying himself with a hand against the shower wall. He panted as the water from the shower head washed away evidence of his desire, and then reached out to turn the water off.
Rachel’s water bill was going to be horrific if something didn’t change in the next couple of weeks.
*
Nico offered to drive her to campus for the first day of the semester, not so much because he was being nice, but because he liked being contrary. No matter how much she protested that she had been riding the subways and buses of New York City for almost ten years by herself without a problem, Nico had dubbed public transportation as too dangerous (“You don’t know what sort of whackos are going to be waiting for you, monsters or not!) and since accompanying her on campus was absolutely out of the question (“I said I wouldn’t send a skeleton guard to class with you, not that I wouldn’t be there at all!”), they had to reach a compromise somehow.
Rachel would’ve been fine with Nico being her personal chauffer, had the only vehicle in their possession not been the demon motorcycle. After she made him swear not to go too fast and to actually stop at the traffic lights (“You are such a killjoy, Dare.”), she’d reluctantly climbed on the bike and held on for dear life.
The second ride was much less frightening than the first, mostly because she had learned from the first time and kept her eyes closed and face pressed into the middle of Nico’s back throughout the entire ride. It seemed to by much faster that way, and in no time at all, Nico had stopped and was killing the engine outside the Barney Building on Stuyvesant Street.
“You okay?” he asked as soon as the rumbling of his engine died off.
“Fine,” Rachel replied, swinging her legs off the back of Nico’s bike and slipping the helmet off with trembling hands. “Why do you ask?”
“I think I have puncture wounds from your fingernails, that’s why,” Nico said, getting up as well. He glanced down at his T-shirt, as if he was looking for holes. “I can’t be that bad of a driver, can I?”
“Yes you can,” she said with a shudder, running a hand through her hair to untangle it. “Do you want me to call you when I’m ready to be picked up today or…?”
“I’ll be around.” She shot an unhappy look at him and he rolled his eyes. “You know, you wouldn’t even know if I was nearby if I did decide to follow you. I’m good at being unnoticed.”
Rachel thought this might be true for other people, but she’d certainly notice Nico’s presence if he were nearby. She always knew when he was watching her when he thought she wouldn’t notice – his stare always caused her skin to prickle with awareness and a certain other emotion that made her squirm at the thought of it. The boy didn’t know how powerful his eyes could be on a girl.
“If I find out you’ve been following me at all, I will kick your ass,” she said sweetly, handing the helmet to him. “I’ve got my dagger in my bag and Percy’s a couple of blocks away if I really get in trouble. Why don’t you go find a nice graveyard and relax in a coffin for the day or something?”
“That’s the fifth vampire joke you’ve told this morning. You’re slipping with those witty comebacks, Dare.”
She shrugged. “I need at least another cup of coffee in order to start with the zombie jokes.”
Nico sighed impatiently as she was speaking and reached for her. Her breath caught as his hands brushed against her neck, and she felt him adjusting the chain of her moonstone necklace. She gulped as one of his rough thumbs briefly trailed against her collarbone, and her knees wobbled like they tended to do whenever Nico so much as touched her.
He seemed to realize what he was doing after a moment, and pulled his hands away, shoving them inside the pockets of his leather jacket.
“The clasp was showing,” he muttered, looking away from her. “Sorry.”
“Its fine,” Rachel said, just a little breathless. Gods, a little touch shouldn’t unnerve her this much! “Perfectly fine. I’ll…I’ll see you later?”
He grunted in confirmation and turned back to his bike. Rachel watched him for a second, imprinting this image of him in her mind, and then turned, heading for the entrance of the building.
“Rachel?” She paused on the steps, glancing over his shoulder. She hadn’t seen that intense expression on his face since the visit from the monster. “Don’t do anything stupid.”
Rachel rolled her eyes in exasperation, but nodded and opened the door to the building. She heard the rumble of his motorcycle, but it was cut off as the door closed behind her. She didn’t have much time to appreciate the silence and her suddenly Nico-free environment though.
“Rachel Dare, you dirty liar!” Jenna shouted from the circle of chairs in the lobby where she was sitting with Angeline. “I thought you said you weren’t dating him!”
“I’m not,” Rachel said vehemently, walking over toward the chairs so her friend wouldn’t have to shout. There weren’t many people around this early in the morning, but she didn’t want her business to be broadcasted to those who were hanging around. “I told you, he’s just living with me!”
“Oh, come on,” Angeline replied, fixing Rachel with her Don’t-You-Give-Me-That-Bullshit stare. “We saw what you were doing out there – you don’t act like that with guys.”
“Yeah, if you’re not dating him, at least tell us that you’re fucking his brains out,” Jenna added casually, causing Rachel to flush bright red. She’d rather face down another crazy monster at her window then have this conversation with her friends.
“I’m not – no, Nico and I are not having sex!” she exclaimed, trying to fight her growing embarrassment. “And we will not be having sex any time soon!”
“Why the fuck not? Rachel, that boy is walking sex on legs! You are crazy not to get on that – ”
“He’s gay, isn’t he?” Angeline said, nodding knowingly. “It’s always the cute ones who are gay as a maypole.”
“Nico is not gay,” Rachel huffed, glaring at the two of them. They waited expectantly for her to continue and Rachel had to scramble for an excuse. “He’s – he’s just not interested in me, all right? That’s why we’re not dating or having sex or whatever. No interest whatsoever.”
Rachel didn’t know what was worse – the disbelieving looks her friends were giving her now or their embarrassing chatter from before. She needed to escape from this, now.
“I’m going to the vending machines. I’ll see you in class,” she said with a sigh, standing from her chair.
"Don't run from the truth, Rachel!" Jenna called after her. "We'll drag it out of you eventually!"
Being friends with normal mortals was just so hard sometimes, especially when said mortals were pushy like her friends. She wondered what Angeline and Jenna would say if she told him the truth – that she couldn’t date anyone because she was the virginal host of the Oracle of Delphi. Jenna would probably laugh and tell her to come back with a better excuse, while Angelina would just stare at her until she made Rachel so uncomfortable that she recanted the entire thing.
But it wasn’t like she had been lying completely when it came to Nico. He wasn’t interested in her – much.
All right, she had been lying. She’d have to be dead not to notice the way he’d been staring at her lately, and how often they were having encounters like they had this morning. Nico was definitely interested in her…and the terrible thing was, the hungry, frustrated part of Rachel wouldn’t mind at all if he did make a move. She was twenty-four years old, and had only been kissed once – she wanted more than that, dammit.
Maybe when they got home tonight, she’d ‘accidently’ stop the car and corner him in the elevator. She’d hook her fingers into his belt loops and drag him closer to her – he’d protest the entire time, calling her crazy and stupid, but all the protest would go out the window once she got her lips on his and then his big hands would slide down and cup her ass, lifting her so she could wrap her legs around his waist where she could feel –
Rachel shook her head, trying to clear her thoughts.
What in the name of Hades was wrong with her? She wasn’t like this – her job was much more important than some quick make out session with a cute boy who wouldn’t have looked at her twice if she wasn’t off limits. There’d be plenty of time for kissing once she wasn’t the Oracle…which wouldn’t be for much longer. She hoped.
She looked around, as if she could spot whoever was invading her thoughts with the plot of a raunchy Harlequin novel, and to her ultimate surprise, she did.
Standing in front of the vending machines at the end of the hall, biting her full, bottom lip in concentration, was a goddess. Gods and goddesses weren’t that hard to pick out from the Mist, as they tended to have a supernatural glow about them that humans didn’t. This goddess had a soft pink glow from the tips of her toes to the top of her head. Rachel had never seen her in person before, but she’d seen hundreds of paintings of her before – she was the goddess of love, Aphrodite.
Rachel wanted to bang her head into the wall. It was never a good sign when a Greek god showed up in the Barney Building, and it wasn’t like she could refuse their requests. They were giant super beings with magical powers, after all. The last time one of them decided to visit, Rachel had to explain to the dean of the art department why there was a Zeus-shaped hole in the main gallery wall. Apparently, the lord of the sky had been offended when she had she wouldn’t find him a new mortal paramour – she was the Oracle, not eHarmony for Apollo’s sake.
Aphrodite looked away from the vending machine and fixed her eyes on Rachel. She was so pretty, Rachel almost couldn’t stand it
“Do you have a couple of dollars to spare, Oracle? All I have are these dratted gold drachmas, and you just can’t buy much with them these days.”
Apparently, this goddess was just in need of a chocolate fix. That, Rachel could handle.
“Uh…sure,” Rachel said, digging around in her pockets and pulling out some change. She handed the coins to the goddess, who took them and placed them delicately in the machine. Rachel watched her movements with envy – it wasn’t fair that she could make something like putting quarters into a beaten up vending machine graceful and sexy. “If you don’t mind me asking, Lady Aphrodite, but what are you doing here?”
“Nude modeling for the freshmen art students,” Aphrodite said with a giggle, indicating the white bathrobe she was wearing. Rachel hadn’t noticed it because she had been focused on the other woman’s face, and she frowned at the sight of her perfectly toned legs. She’d have to work out at the gym for hours to achieve even a fraction of that tone. “They’re positively adorable when they get all flustered and aroused. Plus, have you seen their professor? Grad student and he’s a total babe. I’m going to try and get a private portrait commissioned later, if you know what I mean. Oh, but I’m talking to you. Of course you don’t.”
Rachel felt her face heating up again. How did she manage to barrel into one embarrassing conversation about her lack of sex life straight into another?
“I know what you’re talking about.”
“You know the technical aspects, but not the real life results, my dear. The heat, the passion, the craving…those are not things you can learn through books,” Aphrodite shot her a secretive smile. “And I’m absolutely positive Mr. di Angelo would be delighted to show you what I mean. You ever think about those hands of his, Rachel? You can tell a lot about a man by his hands, the way he holds things, the way he touches something...it’s so easy to imagine those hands everywhere – ”
“Stop it!” Rachel interrupted, a low fire beginning to burn in her belly. She didn’t know how much of her reaction to Aphrodite’s words was her own or influence by the goddess’s magic. “You know I can’t do anything. Apollo would – ”
“Bah, Apollo,” Aphrodite said, waving her delicate hand. “I taught him everything he knows, and he goes around acting like he’s some divine gift to women. He wouldn’t know love if it came up and smacked him in his pretty face. I don’t know why he insists on this silly charade of needing a virgin when most of his Oracle’s break the rules anyway.”
“And then they get burned to a crisp, so I’d like to keep living, if that’s all right with you.”
Aphrodite shot her a critical look and said, “If you have any imagination in that little red head of yours, you can come up with a way to bend the rules without breaking them.”
If Rachel didn’t know any better, she would’ve sworn Aphrodite was trying to help her. The gods only meddled in mortal lives when there was something in for them, but for the life of her, she couldn’t figure out why getting Rachel laid would be in the goddess’s best interests.
“You just don’t know how good your story would be, do you?” Aphrodite sighed, as if she had been reading Rachel’s mind…which she probably had. “I like you, Rachel Dare, you know that? You were so much fun to play with when I was trying to get Percy and Annabeth together, but what you have going on now with the son of Hades is the stuff of epics.”
Rachel felt her blood run cold.
“Wait, you i>played with me? What’s that supposed to mean?”
Aphrodite rolled on, as if she hadn’t heard Rachel’s protest. She was typing something into the keypad of the vending machine as she spoke. Something dropped and she reached down to pull out a Snickers bar out of the bottom of the machine.
“You’ve got everything you need for an epic romance: a forbidden love between a dark, brooding young man and the virginal woman yearning for his touch…plus there’s this whole assassination subplot and you’ve totally got that ‘will they, won’t they’ tension going on. If I get this romance to work out between the two of you, I will be ecstatic for, like, the next century,” she said with a giggle. She unwrapped the candy and took a demure bite of the Snickers. “Just try not to get killed though, all right? Broken hearts are good, but nothing ruins a good romance like blood. Did you know Shakespeare changed the ending of Romeo and Juliet to spite me? Awful, awful man.
“Anyway, I have to get going, otherwise they’re going to wonder where I’ve gotten off to. Can’t leave mi amour waiting, you know, otherwise I’ll have to work harder to get his attention,” she said cheerily. “See you around, Oracle!”
Aphrodite turned and walked away, disappearing down another hallway before Rachel could even formulate a response. She wasn’t sure what that response would’ve been anyway – a howl of rage? A desperate sob? Perhaps a combination of them both?
The goddess had been playing with her and Nico’s emotion in her spare time, like they were some kind of toys for her amusement. Did that mean everything she’d felt in the last few weeks hadn’t been real? That everything Nico had inspired in her – wanting, annoyance, fondness – had been contrived? And what had been that bullshit about her, Percy, and Annabeth? Had Aphrodite been meddling then too?
Were all the relationships she had formed with demigods in the last few years just one giant lie? Had there ever been anything about her life that wasn’t fake?
Feeling a little weak and drained, Rachel slid to the floor and leaned against her head against the vending machine, wishing, for the first time in her life, that Percy Jackson had swung his stupid sword at some other girl’s head ten years ago.
Next
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: These chapters just keep getting longer, it's almost ridiculous. This is the chapter where DD begins to earn it's "R" rating, so if you're not a fan of such things, I'd suggest skipping over Nico's scene in the middle -- you won't miss anything too integral to the plot.
“Make sure you stir that more often, otherwise you’re going to burn it.”
“I think I can handle warming spaghetti sauce, Chef Boyardee. Believe it or not, but I have used a stove before.”
“Yeah, for boiling Ramen noodles, I’m sure. I’ve seen the collection in your cupboard.”
Rachel reached across the space between them and swatted Nico in the arm. It didn’t do much to deter him, and he grinned at her as he tore off another piece of bread from the loaf sitting beside him on the counter.
“Sometimes you’re such a brat, di Angelo,” Rachel sighed. “Here I am, making a nice, home cooked meal the night before I go back to school, and all you can do is make fun of me.”
“Well, that’s because you look good barefoot and in the kitchen – hey, I was just kidding! Put the knife down!”
It was almost ridiculous how well she had been getting along with Nico in the days following the visit from the monster at her window. They were still arguing, of course – Rachel didn’t think there were enough monsters in the world to make them get along completely – but it lacked the resentment and rancor from the previous days.
She figured her new attitude had to do with the fact that she didn’t view Nico as an inconvenient hassle anymore; now that she knew without a doubt that someone was trying to kill her and it wasn’t just Apollo being overprotective and paranoid, she practically welcomed his presence. If she had been living alone with this hanging over her head, she probably would’ve gone a little crazy, jumping at every strange sound or sleeping with all the lights on.
Nico’s presence made her feel safe and a little less lonely. She rarely strayed anywhere in her apartment other than her bedroom or studio and it was a little unusual for her to be spending this much time with someone outside of school. She had mortal friends of course, but it was hard to get close to any normal people when she could burst into a prophecy at any moment and lot of them got weird once they found out who her dad was. When she wasn’t on campus, she spent her time with local art organizations or doodling at some café in the Village before heading home to spend the rest of the night by herself.
With Nico around, it was different. He followed her to the cafés and made a big deal about how terrible her wheatgrass smoothie tasted before going off about how much he wished she would pick more exciting places to hang out so he didn’t have to listen to environmentally themed poetry slams. He left signs of his presence all over her place, whether it was a pair of smelly socks on the coffee table or open books scattered in the strangest locations (she’d found one in the bathroom cupboard, for the sake of the gods), and after the monster incident, they tended to gravitate toward each other fairly often when they weren’t in their bedrooms.
Rachel liked having someone around to talk to, even if a good portion of their conversations ended with them screaming at each other and slamming doors, and it was nice doing things like cooking dinner for two…
So long as person number two didn’t dip his hunk of bread into her pot of spaghetti sauce while she was cooking it, that is.
“Gross, Nico!” she said, slamming the cover down on the pot before he could do it again. “Couldn’t you have done that with a piece of bread you hadn’t taken a bite out of?”
“Why? It’s not like anyone else but us is going to eat it.”
“Did you ever think that I didn’t want to be exposed to your corpse cooties?”
He shook his head as he shoved the rest of the bread into his mouth all at once. He made a face of dislike as he chewed and swallowed a moment later.
“Ugh. Please tell me you didn’t use premade sauce.”
Rachel pointed to the empty jar at the edge of the counter. “Sorry, but my family isn’t the type to keep homemade spaghetti sauce recipes.”
“Gross,” he said, imitating her earlier tone well enough to make her frown. “Remind me the next you want to go all domestic to let me make the sauce for you.”
Rachel arched an eyebrow at him, and reached across the stove to check on the progress of the noodles. Steam wafted from the pot as she lifted the lid, and she stirred the noodles around with a fork, pulling a few out to examine them before plopping them back in the hot water.
“You know how to cook something edible? I am thoroughly impressed.”
Besides the children of Demeter, most demigods Rachel knew could not cook to save their lives. She supposed because they were kind of awesome at everything else, they had to be bad at something as simple as cooking. Percy and Annabeth survived on a heavy diet of take-out and Sally Jackson’s everlasting kindness, and aside from the cooking-eggs-shirtless business, Rachel hadn’t seen Nico anywhere near the kitchen since he had arrived.
He shrugged. “I learned how while I was in Italy. My aunt’s kind of up there in years, so I tried to make things easier for her if I could.”
“That was…surprisingly sweet of you.”
“I have my moments,” he said, tearing off another chunk of bread. “Just not around you though.”
Rachel rolled her eyes.
“That figures. You know, you never did tell me why you went to Europe. Were you looking for your family?”
“Not really. I always wanted to go and I didn’t have anything keeping me here, so I just went. I got to Italy eventually and I decided it wouldn’t hurt to see if I had some relatives who were still alive,” Nico explained, biting into his bread. “My grandfather was an ambassador to the U.S. in the thirties, you see, so I figured they’d be pretty easy to look up. Well, as it turns out, the di Angelo family is still very much into politics and they initially thought I was some jerkass trying to blackmail them for money.”
“Lemme guess. Politician’s illegitimate love child?”
“Yeah. It was kind of a mess for a while, but I managed to convince them that Bianca and I had survived the explosion that killed our mother and that I was actually my own grandson…Gods, that sounded so much less fucked up the first time around.”
“You’re part Greek god, Nico. Your entire family tree is one fucked up mess,” Rachel said, lifting up the lid on the noodles again. The water was beginning to bubble, so she switched the heat off and grabbed the handle to pull it off the burner. “Don’t tell me they bought that sad story of yours without some proper research.”
“No way,” Nico replied, moving to take her spot at the stove in front of the sauce pan as she drained the water from the pan in the sink. She heard him rustling around in one of the cupboards next to the stovetop as he continued, “But lucky for me, Alecto forged a bunch of records for me when I tried to go to high school, and they worked well enough when the family did a background check on me. My aunt didn’t believe me at all, and she figured out who really was eventually. It was kind of weird at first because she was born just a couple of years before me, and she didn’t know what to make of me being so young…but after a while, we got over it.”
Rachel listened as she poured the water and noodles into the strainer in the sink, the steam hissed as it rose in the air. She’d dragged Nico’s story out of Percy a few years back, and she’d always found it much more interesting than any of the other demigods. How often did you meet someone who had their entire life and destiny reshaped like that? And it must’ve been so shocking for Nico’s aunt to discover her nephew wasn’t really dead after all and on top of that, a demigod…
“Were you planning on going back soon?” she asked as she moved toward the kitchen island to put the noodles in a serving bowl.
“Probably. I wasn’t planning on coming back to America until this situation cropped up,” he said. He glanced over his shoulder at her, and she felt a little something inside her melt. There was just something so appealing about a good-looking man cooking. All he needed was an apron, and the picture would be complete. “I think you and my aunt would get along. She was a curator at an art museum in Florence before she retired…and she likes bossing me around.”
“I do not boss,” Rachel said, tossing the strainer back into the sink and moving toward the stove. She noticed the spice cupboard was open and Nico had taken several of the containers down. “Hey, did I say you could mess with the sauce?”
This time it was Nico’s turn to roll his eyes. “Sure you don’t boss.”
“I don’t,” she said, bumping him with her shoulder in an attempt to move him from his place, “and I happen to like the way that sauce tastes, thank you very much!”
“What, bland and unappealing?” he said sarcastically. He stirred the wooden spoon around once in the sauce before holding it out expectantly. “Try it now; it’s much better.”
Rachel glowered at him and before she could protest, he pressed the spoon up to her lips. She sighed obligingly, and opened her mouth, letting the spoon slide in. He had tried her wheatgrass smoothie without complaint, so she suppose she owed him a –
“Oh, mmm,” Rachel said, closing her eyes briefly as the taste hit her tongue. It was a lot better, spicier and smoother than it had been before. She wasn’t sure how a few spices could’ve improved the taste that much, but if Nico could do that to all her food, she’d let him run the kitchen however he wanted.
The spoon slid out of her mouth as Rachel’s eyes fluttered open again and her stomach rolled as she caught sight of the look on Nico’s face. His eyes held a dark, hungry look that had nothing to do with food, and he was staring at her lips as if they were the most fascinating thing in the world. Rachel was very aware of how hard and strong the line of his arm pressed against hers was, and exactly how much heat his body was giving off. Percy always complained that Nico had ice cold skin, but Rachel had never noticed and why in the name of Hades was she thinking about Percy when Nico looked like was about ready to ravish her within an inch of her life?
She had a sudden vision of Nico hoisting her onto the top of the kitchen counter and brutally kissing her as she tugged his shirt out of his pants and over his head. Her shirt came off next, and she was clawing at his bare back as his mouth moved lower and lower down her chest –
Rachel wasn’t sure if this was a vision of the future or just an incredibly brief and vivid fantasy, but it made her limbs tremble with want anyway. She bit down on the inside of her cheek, trying to control herself so she didn’t throw herself as Nico to make it come true.
That small bit of movement seemed to be enough to break the spell on Nico’s end as he glanced away a moment later and cleared his throat.
“See what I mean?” He asked, voice a little lower and huskier than before. “A lot better.”
“Yeah,” Rachel sighed, her shoulder slumping in disappointment, which was stupid. Had she really thought that would happen? She was the Oracle, and Nico might be a little prick, but he would never do anything to disrespect her position like that. “Much better…hey, you’re not putting that spoon back in there, are you?”
“Duh. What else do you want me to do with it?”
“Gross, I licked that! Don’t they teach you hygiene in the Underworld?”
“Again, we’re the only one’s eating it, Dare. Seriously, you are such an overbearing freak sometimes – ”
“A freak? A freak? I’m not the one who was talking to the ghost of a window cleaner yesterday, Dead Boy!”
And just like that, things were back to normal between them, although Rachel couldn’t help but wonder later that night if that’s how she wanted things to stay.
*
Nico wasn’t particularly fond of cold showers, but he sure had been taking a hell of a lot of them lately. Mostly because he lived a door down the hall from and spent most of his time a hanging out with fucking gorgeous woman that he couldn’t have, and he just could not stop thinking about her.
Or, more precisely, he couldn’t stop thinking about what he’d like to do with her.
He thought about sex a lot – what horny, twenty-year-old male didn’t? – but never quite as much as he had recently. It seemed like every other thought was something about sex or Rachel and all the combinations thereof. Everything she did caused him to wonder – if he pressed his lips against her collarbone, would she sigh like she had when she’d finished the end of that trashy novel she’d been reading all week? If he ran his hands under her top and up her sides, would she moan like she had when she’d taken her first bite of the fresh chocolate chip cookie from the bakery down the street?
Could he make her gasp his name with pleasure if he took her in the middle of her studio, pressed up against a still drying painting? Could he make her scream if he went down on her out on the balcony for the entire world to hear? Could he kiss her and kiss her and never let her out of his bedroom again?
He could – he knew he could – but fucking Rachel wasn’t his job.
And his job was entirely the problem.
Nico closed his eyes and pressed his forehead against the cool tile of the shower, letting the freezing spray run down his shoulders and back. His skin was full of goosebumps, but it didn’t do much to deter the strength of his erection.
“Fucking morning wood,” he muttered.
Normally, when he wanted to whack off to a particular girl and whatever depraved fantasy he had in mind with her, he didn’t feel like a fucking creep for doing it. It was different with Rachel – it was always different with her.
As her bodyguard, he knew he shouldn’t be having some of the thoughts he did about her. He was distracting himself constantly, thinking about what way he’d fuck her or how good her legs looked in that pair of jeans or number of other things when he should be concentrating on what was going on around him. He had to check himself constantly when he was her, making sure he wasn’t staring at her or touching her for an inappropriate amount of time, or putting himself in a position where he’d be tempted to take her. He’d almost lost control when they had been cooking last night, and she’d sucked on the spoon he’d held out to her like it was the most appetizing thing in the world. And then she’d looked at him like she expected him to ravish her on the kitchen floor afterward…
He’d had a hard on for the rest of the night from just that little moment because Rachel just didn’t know how fucking appetizing she was to him.
And if he was entirely truthful with himself, it wasn’t just her body he wanted. He wanted anything and everything associated with Rachel Elizabeth Dare.
If they were two normal, horny young adults, they would’ve fucked already and gotten it out of their system. As it was, she was the virginal host of the Oracle and he was her bodyguard, and he would continue to be the most sexually frustrated twenty-year-old male on the planet, destined to jerk off in a cold shower every morning.
Nico sighed, cracking his eyes open and frowning in dismay at his continued state of arousal. He’d be cranky all day if he didn’t get this taken care of, wrong or not. Gods, he’d get barbequed by Apollo if he ever found out what dirty thoughts his Oracle inspired in him.
Well, if he was going to get barbequed, he might as well make it worth it…
He slid his hand downwards, grasping himself and beginning to stroke slowly as a fantasy formed in his mind.
Rachel burst into the bathroom while he was in the shower, yelling at him for something or another, and she paused, growing flustered as she realized he was wet and naked behind the frost of the shower glass.
“Dare,” Nico said, opening the shower door and giving her a full, uncompromised view of his body, including his straining erection. “Are you really going to yell at me while I’m in the shower?”
She tried not to let his nakedness bother her, but the flush on her face grew more pronounced and she nervously licked her lips as her eyes darted downward. He could tell she wanted him, and it only made him harder.
“It’s not like you’re doing anything extremely important in there,” Rachel replied coolly, only the crack in her voice revealing how unnerved she was. “Or should I come back in a couple of seconds? I’m sure you’ll be done after a few more strokes – hey, what are you doing?”
Nico stepped out of the shower and reached for her; she took a step back, but it wasn’t enough to escape his grasp. He grabbed her wrist and tugged her into the shower, clothes and all. She shrieked in protest as the cool water hit her body, causing her skin to pimple and her nipples to stiffen almost instantly, and Nico didn’t bother to bite back the groan at the sight of her wet T-shirt clinging to her ample chest and her bedraggled red hair hanging in her eyes.
“Di Angelo, you crazy idiot!” Rachel hissed, slapping him in the chest. “Do you know what Apollo will do to me if he sees me like this?”
“Yeah,” Nico replied, closing the door and backing her against the shower tile. Rachel’s breathing grew strained as he pressed his body against her, and her hand trembled against his chest. But her eyes glittered with excitement and desire as he slid his hand to the back of her neck; she wanted it as much as he did. “This.”
She let out a squeak as he crushed his mouth to hers, but it quickly turned into a satisfied moan and she immediately opened up to him as he slid his tongue along the crease of her lips.
It wasn’t a nice kiss – it was frenzied and passionate, with hands and mouths moving everywhere as they tried to feel everything that had been denied to them. Rachel felt like heaven, her curves pressed against him, his dick buried into the burrow of her stomach and his hands slipping into her wet jeans to mold her ass. Every noise, every little gasp or pant, she made was fucking music to his ears and he thought he’d come from that alone –
The hand that had been on his chest began to slide downward, teasingly slow compared to all of her other touches. Her fingers tangled in the coarse hair just above his dick and paused, waiting…waiting…
“Rachel,” he muttered, licking the line of her neck. He was trembling, he was so close to the pleasure of having her hand on him. “If you don’t fucking move, I’m going to – ”
“Chill, Nico,” she replied, laughter in her voice. “Gotta make those couple of strokes last, you know?”
“Oh, fuck you, Dare!”
“Yes,” Rachel purred, and his knees nearly gave out as her hand finally moved and began to stroke his dick. She dragged her mouth along his earlobe and sucked. “Fuck me, Nico.”
Nico came with a grunt, steadying himself with a hand against the shower wall. He panted as the water from the shower head washed away evidence of his desire, and then reached out to turn the water off.
Rachel’s water bill was going to be horrific if something didn’t change in the next couple of weeks.
*
Nico offered to drive her to campus for the first day of the semester, not so much because he was being nice, but because he liked being contrary. No matter how much she protested that she had been riding the subways and buses of New York City for almost ten years by herself without a problem, Nico had dubbed public transportation as too dangerous (“You don’t know what sort of whackos are going to be waiting for you, monsters or not!) and since accompanying her on campus was absolutely out of the question (“I said I wouldn’t send a skeleton guard to class with you, not that I wouldn’t be there at all!”), they had to reach a compromise somehow.
Rachel would’ve been fine with Nico being her personal chauffer, had the only vehicle in their possession not been the demon motorcycle. After she made him swear not to go too fast and to actually stop at the traffic lights (“You are such a killjoy, Dare.”), she’d reluctantly climbed on the bike and held on for dear life.
The second ride was much less frightening than the first, mostly because she had learned from the first time and kept her eyes closed and face pressed into the middle of Nico’s back throughout the entire ride. It seemed to by much faster that way, and in no time at all, Nico had stopped and was killing the engine outside the Barney Building on Stuyvesant Street.
“You okay?” he asked as soon as the rumbling of his engine died off.
“Fine,” Rachel replied, swinging her legs off the back of Nico’s bike and slipping the helmet off with trembling hands. “Why do you ask?”
“I think I have puncture wounds from your fingernails, that’s why,” Nico said, getting up as well. He glanced down at his T-shirt, as if he was looking for holes. “I can’t be that bad of a driver, can I?”
“Yes you can,” she said with a shudder, running a hand through her hair to untangle it. “Do you want me to call you when I’m ready to be picked up today or…?”
“I’ll be around.” She shot an unhappy look at him and he rolled his eyes. “You know, you wouldn’t even know if I was nearby if I did decide to follow you. I’m good at being unnoticed.”
Rachel thought this might be true for other people, but she’d certainly notice Nico’s presence if he were nearby. She always knew when he was watching her when he thought she wouldn’t notice – his stare always caused her skin to prickle with awareness and a certain other emotion that made her squirm at the thought of it. The boy didn’t know how powerful his eyes could be on a girl.
“If I find out you’ve been following me at all, I will kick your ass,” she said sweetly, handing the helmet to him. “I’ve got my dagger in my bag and Percy’s a couple of blocks away if I really get in trouble. Why don’t you go find a nice graveyard and relax in a coffin for the day or something?”
“That’s the fifth vampire joke you’ve told this morning. You’re slipping with those witty comebacks, Dare.”
She shrugged. “I need at least another cup of coffee in order to start with the zombie jokes.”
Nico sighed impatiently as she was speaking and reached for her. Her breath caught as his hands brushed against her neck, and she felt him adjusting the chain of her moonstone necklace. She gulped as one of his rough thumbs briefly trailed against her collarbone, and her knees wobbled like they tended to do whenever Nico so much as touched her.
He seemed to realize what he was doing after a moment, and pulled his hands away, shoving them inside the pockets of his leather jacket.
“The clasp was showing,” he muttered, looking away from her. “Sorry.”
“Its fine,” Rachel said, just a little breathless. Gods, a little touch shouldn’t unnerve her this much! “Perfectly fine. I’ll…I’ll see you later?”
He grunted in confirmation and turned back to his bike. Rachel watched him for a second, imprinting this image of him in her mind, and then turned, heading for the entrance of the building.
“Rachel?” She paused on the steps, glancing over his shoulder. She hadn’t seen that intense expression on his face since the visit from the monster. “Don’t do anything stupid.”
Rachel rolled her eyes in exasperation, but nodded and opened the door to the building. She heard the rumble of his motorcycle, but it was cut off as the door closed behind her. She didn’t have much time to appreciate the silence and her suddenly Nico-free environment though.
“Rachel Dare, you dirty liar!” Jenna shouted from the circle of chairs in the lobby where she was sitting with Angeline. “I thought you said you weren’t dating him!”
“I’m not,” Rachel said vehemently, walking over toward the chairs so her friend wouldn’t have to shout. There weren’t many people around this early in the morning, but she didn’t want her business to be broadcasted to those who were hanging around. “I told you, he’s just living with me!”
“Oh, come on,” Angeline replied, fixing Rachel with her Don’t-You-Give-Me-That-Bullshit stare. “We saw what you were doing out there – you don’t act like that with guys.”
“Yeah, if you’re not dating him, at least tell us that you’re fucking his brains out,” Jenna added casually, causing Rachel to flush bright red. She’d rather face down another crazy monster at her window then have this conversation with her friends.
“I’m not – no, Nico and I are not having sex!” she exclaimed, trying to fight her growing embarrassment. “And we will not be having sex any time soon!”
“Why the fuck not? Rachel, that boy is walking sex on legs! You are crazy not to get on that – ”
“He’s gay, isn’t he?” Angeline said, nodding knowingly. “It’s always the cute ones who are gay as a maypole.”
“Nico is not gay,” Rachel huffed, glaring at the two of them. They waited expectantly for her to continue and Rachel had to scramble for an excuse. “He’s – he’s just not interested in me, all right? That’s why we’re not dating or having sex or whatever. No interest whatsoever.”
Rachel didn’t know what was worse – the disbelieving looks her friends were giving her now or their embarrassing chatter from before. She needed to escape from this, now.
“I’m going to the vending machines. I’ll see you in class,” she said with a sigh, standing from her chair.
"Don't run from the truth, Rachel!" Jenna called after her. "We'll drag it out of you eventually!"
Being friends with normal mortals was just so hard sometimes, especially when said mortals were pushy like her friends. She wondered what Angeline and Jenna would say if she told him the truth – that she couldn’t date anyone because she was the virginal host of the Oracle of Delphi. Jenna would probably laugh and tell her to come back with a better excuse, while Angelina would just stare at her until she made Rachel so uncomfortable that she recanted the entire thing.
But it wasn’t like she had been lying completely when it came to Nico. He wasn’t interested in her – much.
All right, she had been lying. She’d have to be dead not to notice the way he’d been staring at her lately, and how often they were having encounters like they had this morning. Nico was definitely interested in her…and the terrible thing was, the hungry, frustrated part of Rachel wouldn’t mind at all if he did make a move. She was twenty-four years old, and had only been kissed once – she wanted more than that, dammit.
Maybe when they got home tonight, she’d ‘accidently’ stop the car and corner him in the elevator. She’d hook her fingers into his belt loops and drag him closer to her – he’d protest the entire time, calling her crazy and stupid, but all the protest would go out the window once she got her lips on his and then his big hands would slide down and cup her ass, lifting her so she could wrap her legs around his waist where she could feel –
Rachel shook her head, trying to clear her thoughts.
What in the name of Hades was wrong with her? She wasn’t like this – her job was much more important than some quick make out session with a cute boy who wouldn’t have looked at her twice if she wasn’t off limits. There’d be plenty of time for kissing once she wasn’t the Oracle…which wouldn’t be for much longer. She hoped.
She looked around, as if she could spot whoever was invading her thoughts with the plot of a raunchy Harlequin novel, and to her ultimate surprise, she did.
Standing in front of the vending machines at the end of the hall, biting her full, bottom lip in concentration, was a goddess. Gods and goddesses weren’t that hard to pick out from the Mist, as they tended to have a supernatural glow about them that humans didn’t. This goddess had a soft pink glow from the tips of her toes to the top of her head. Rachel had never seen her in person before, but she’d seen hundreds of paintings of her before – she was the goddess of love, Aphrodite.
Rachel wanted to bang her head into the wall. It was never a good sign when a Greek god showed up in the Barney Building, and it wasn’t like she could refuse their requests. They were giant super beings with magical powers, after all. The last time one of them decided to visit, Rachel had to explain to the dean of the art department why there was a Zeus-shaped hole in the main gallery wall. Apparently, the lord of the sky had been offended when she had she wouldn’t find him a new mortal paramour – she was the Oracle, not eHarmony for Apollo’s sake.
Aphrodite looked away from the vending machine and fixed her eyes on Rachel. She was so pretty, Rachel almost couldn’t stand it
“Do you have a couple of dollars to spare, Oracle? All I have are these dratted gold drachmas, and you just can’t buy much with them these days.”
Apparently, this goddess was just in need of a chocolate fix. That, Rachel could handle.
“Uh…sure,” Rachel said, digging around in her pockets and pulling out some change. She handed the coins to the goddess, who took them and placed them delicately in the machine. Rachel watched her movements with envy – it wasn’t fair that she could make something like putting quarters into a beaten up vending machine graceful and sexy. “If you don’t mind me asking, Lady Aphrodite, but what are you doing here?”
“Nude modeling for the freshmen art students,” Aphrodite said with a giggle, indicating the white bathrobe she was wearing. Rachel hadn’t noticed it because she had been focused on the other woman’s face, and she frowned at the sight of her perfectly toned legs. She’d have to work out at the gym for hours to achieve even a fraction of that tone. “They’re positively adorable when they get all flustered and aroused. Plus, have you seen their professor? Grad student and he’s a total babe. I’m going to try and get a private portrait commissioned later, if you know what I mean. Oh, but I’m talking to you. Of course you don’t.”
Rachel felt her face heating up again. How did she manage to barrel into one embarrassing conversation about her lack of sex life straight into another?
“I know what you’re talking about.”
“You know the technical aspects, but not the real life results, my dear. The heat, the passion, the craving…those are not things you can learn through books,” Aphrodite shot her a secretive smile. “And I’m absolutely positive Mr. di Angelo would be delighted to show you what I mean. You ever think about those hands of his, Rachel? You can tell a lot about a man by his hands, the way he holds things, the way he touches something...it’s so easy to imagine those hands everywhere – ”
“Stop it!” Rachel interrupted, a low fire beginning to burn in her belly. She didn’t know how much of her reaction to Aphrodite’s words was her own or influence by the goddess’s magic. “You know I can’t do anything. Apollo would – ”
“Bah, Apollo,” Aphrodite said, waving her delicate hand. “I taught him everything he knows, and he goes around acting like he’s some divine gift to women. He wouldn’t know love if it came up and smacked him in his pretty face. I don’t know why he insists on this silly charade of needing a virgin when most of his Oracle’s break the rules anyway.”
“And then they get burned to a crisp, so I’d like to keep living, if that’s all right with you.”
Aphrodite shot her a critical look and said, “If you have any imagination in that little red head of yours, you can come up with a way to bend the rules without breaking them.”
If Rachel didn’t know any better, she would’ve sworn Aphrodite was trying to help her. The gods only meddled in mortal lives when there was something in for them, but for the life of her, she couldn’t figure out why getting Rachel laid would be in the goddess’s best interests.
“You just don’t know how good your story would be, do you?” Aphrodite sighed, as if she had been reading Rachel’s mind…which she probably had. “I like you, Rachel Dare, you know that? You were so much fun to play with when I was trying to get Percy and Annabeth together, but what you have going on now with the son of Hades is the stuff of epics.”
Rachel felt her blood run cold.
“Wait, you i>played with me? What’s that supposed to mean?”
Aphrodite rolled on, as if she hadn’t heard Rachel’s protest. She was typing something into the keypad of the vending machine as she spoke. Something dropped and she reached down to pull out a Snickers bar out of the bottom of the machine.
“You’ve got everything you need for an epic romance: a forbidden love between a dark, brooding young man and the virginal woman yearning for his touch…plus there’s this whole assassination subplot and you’ve totally got that ‘will they, won’t they’ tension going on. If I get this romance to work out between the two of you, I will be ecstatic for, like, the next century,” she said with a giggle. She unwrapped the candy and took a demure bite of the Snickers. “Just try not to get killed though, all right? Broken hearts are good, but nothing ruins a good romance like blood. Did you know Shakespeare changed the ending of Romeo and Juliet to spite me? Awful, awful man.
“Anyway, I have to get going, otherwise they’re going to wonder where I’ve gotten off to. Can’t leave mi amour waiting, you know, otherwise I’ll have to work harder to get his attention,” she said cheerily. “See you around, Oracle!”
Aphrodite turned and walked away, disappearing down another hallway before Rachel could even formulate a response. She wasn’t sure what that response would’ve been anyway – a howl of rage? A desperate sob? Perhaps a combination of them both?
The goddess had been playing with her and Nico’s emotion in her spare time, like they were some kind of toys for her amusement. Did that mean everything she’d felt in the last few weeks hadn’t been real? That everything Nico had inspired in her – wanting, annoyance, fondness – had been contrived? And what had been that bullshit about her, Percy, and Annabeth? Had Aphrodite been meddling then too?
Were all the relationships she had formed with demigods in the last few years just one giant lie? Had there ever been anything about her life that wasn’t fake?
Feeling a little weak and drained, Rachel slid to the floor and leaned against her head against the vending machine, wishing, for the first time in her life, that Percy Jackson had swung his stupid sword at some other girl’s head ten years ago.
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Awesome chapter, as usual~ Poor, poor Nico. And poor Rachel too - I really like Aphrodite showing up, because we all know how bad it is when the goddess of love takes an interest in you! And I actually like Rachel starting to doubt everything because of what Aphrodite said; it's another layer of depth and it's awesome~
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Broken hearts are good, but nothing ruins a good romance like blood. Did you know Shakespeare changed the ending of Romeo and Juliet to spite me? Awful, awful man.
Oh man, someone needs to write Aphrodite/Shakespeare, or my life will never be complete.
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And I appreciate that you write porn that is porn.