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greenconversesTitle: 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'm so glad I decided to split the original Chapter Six into to parts because it would've ended up being well over 10,000 words. Death's Dare will also be put on hold throughout November since I will be participating in NaNoWriMo; sorry for the inconvenience!
Chapter Seven: Resolution
Note to self, Nico thought as he tore through the patch of wilderness, ducking under tree branches and jumping over roots in his haste. Next time you need to check on a disturbance in the Force, remember to bring your sword!
Probably about five seconds after the gigantic monster had started chasing him through Central Park, Nico had realized he’d left all of his weapons in his bedroom at Rachel’s place. To be fair, he hadn’t thought the disturbance he’d felt would try to eat him once he had found it, but he really ought to have known better by now. He hated to admit it, but he was so out of practice with this whole getting attacked by monsters business; there hadn’t been many in Europe and those that he did encounter gave up pretty quickly once they found out whose son he was.
The monster let out a roar, and there was a loud crack! a moment later. Nico glanced behind him for just a moment – the monster had just punched a hole through one of the trees and was in the process of uprooting another.
Yeah, he didn’t think this guy would be too impressed by the, “I’m the son of Hades, the ghost king!” line. He’d probably think that meant he’d taste extra delicious or something.
With something this size, Nico didn’t have a lot of options in the fighting department without his sword. Hand-to-hand combat would be absolute suicide, and he didn’t have the necessary time to summon skeleton soldiers. He needed concentration to do that correctly, and if he stopped now, he’d be monster chow. Besides, he didn’t think the soldiers would do much besides get stomped on –
Nico let out a yell and skidded to a stop as large chunk of tree crashed through the canopy of branches above and landed in front of him.
“I don’t like to chase my food, demigod!” the monster shouted, a vicious laugh in his voice. “Stop now, and I promise to keep you in one piece!”
“Shit, shit, shit!” Nico muttered, skirting around the tree trunk and changing directions.
Did these damn trees ever end? It was Central Park, for Zeus’s sake, not a damn forest! If he could just get out of here and into an open area, he’d probably stand a better chance. Maybe he could summon some rocks to box the monster in long enough to find a weapon, but damn, he wasn’t going to die because of this thing! His father would never let him live – er, haunt? – it down.
Thankfully the trees began to thin, and Nico burst out of the wilderness onto one of paths in the park, right in front of a large expanse of baseball fields.
Unfortunately, he promptly managed to smack headlong into a jogger passing by and the force sent both of them sprawling to pavement in a mess of limbs and curses.
“Ow, what the hell!” the jogger who sounded an awful lot like Percy Jackson shouted.
Nico accidentally smashed his elbow into the other man’s nose, and yelped, “Sorry!” as he was shoved off a moment later.
“Nico?” the jogger demanded, sitting up and revealing that he was, indeed, Percy Jackson. “Man, what the fuck are you doing?”
Nico had never been more relieved to see the son of the sea god in his life, even if Percy looked like he wanted to clobber him.
“Percy!” he exclaimed, grabbing the other man by the neck of his T-shirt. “Do you have Riptide on you?”
Percy’s forehead wrinkled, and his eyes narrowed suspiciously.
“Of course. Why…?”
Nico didn’t even have to answer him. The ground shook under them and the tree line exploded as the monster burst out of the forest. Nico ducked, covering his face with his arm to avoid getting splinters of wood in his eyes. When he looked up again, the monster was hovering over them.
It had grubby brown skin, covered in patches of wiry dark hair that climbed all the way up to its head. Its legs and arms were the size of tree trunks, and it had a pot belly that hadn’t seemed to slow it down any while it had been chasing Nico. Sharp, dirty claws extended from its fingers and his mouth was stretched into a grin that bared all of its impossibly sharp and yellow teeth. Like most monsters, it didn’t have a pretty face, but that only meant it would have even more of an attitude problem.
And it didn’t look very happy about having to chase its snack across the park.
“Half-blood! I will tear you apart!” it shouted and let out another roar, spittle flying everywhere.
“That’s why,” Nico said, scrambling to his feet.
He yanked insistently at Percy, hauling him up just before the monster smashed its fist on the path where they had been sitting. The pavement cracked under the pressure, leaving a sizeable impression in the ground. Oh, the park supervisor was not going to be pleased with them tomorrow…
“Holy shit,” Percy replied, pulling a pen out of the pocket of his sweatpants as the monster advanced a few feet and they backpedaled toward the baseball fields. “What did you do, Nico?”
“Me?” Nico demanded, dodging another swipe from the monster. A few feet from him, Percy clicked the top of his pen, and Riptide appeared, the Celestial Bronze glowing in the gloom. The monster snarled at the sight, and advanced. “I didn’t – I’m not you, Percy! I just stumbled across this thing!”
“Where’s your sword?” Percy demanded, glancing in his direction. “You can’t expect me to fight this by myself!”
“I left it at home!”
“Oh, you’ve got to be kidding – ”
Percy’s next words were cut off as ducked as the monster swung a claw at him, and he thrust his sword upwards, stabbing it in the palm. The monster howled and backed away momentarily, but the wound only seemed to enrage it further because the next thing it did was grab the metal bleachers from the baseball field and toss it at them.
Nico yelped and dived in one direction, while Percy did the same in the opposite direction. The bleachers slammed down in middle of the field, kicking up a cloud of dust and missing him by a few feet. Nico rolled away, coughing, and caught sight of a giant shadow moving toward him in the dust. He had to do something to give them more time, otherwise they’d both get smashed…
He reached out and laid his palm on top of the dirt, forcing all of his concentration on the ground below him.
Please, he pleaded, calling out to the minerals of the earth. The ground trembled beneath him as the monster approached, and Nico pushed back his fear, concentrating. Come forth. Lend yourself to the son of Hades!
“NICO!”
He glanced up just in time to see the huge palm crashing toward him, and he had just enough time to move so he could avoid the brunt of the blow. He couldn’t avoid it completely though, and the monster swatted at him like a particularly annoying fly, knocking him the pitchers mound. Nico’s head smashed into the ground and he lay there, face down in the dirt, ears ringing and gasping for breath. He could feel something warm trickling through the back of his head, and he was pretty sure at least one of his ribs was broken –
He could only lay there, helpless as his senses recovered, and the monster grabbed him by the legs, hoisting him off the ground, upside down. Percy was shouting something at him from down below, but he couldn’t focus enough to understand what it was.
A gust of hot, moist air blew against his face. Nico didn’t want to, but he looked down anyway and, once his gaze cleared, he groaned out loud. He was dangling above the monster’s gaping mouth, and he could see all the way down its slimy throat.
“One demigod down,” the monster gurgled, moving Nico closer to his mouth. “One more to go!”
In the split second before he was dropped to his untimely doom, Nico closed his eyes and reached out toward the ground, praying with all his might.
PLEASE HELP!
He felt something tugging at his gut, pulling upwards and upwards and…
The ground underneath the monster split open, and Nico swayed in the monster’s grip as it trained to regain its footing.
“What – ”
“Sorry,” Nico said, feeling the power of the earth course through him, “but the sons of the Underworld really don’t digest well.”
He had enough time to savor the monster’s wide eyed look of horror, before Nico yanked his hand upwards. The ground followed his movement, surging forward and impaling the monster from the bottom up. The monster’s grip slackened on Nico’s ankles and its eyes rolled back in its head just before it burst into dark smoke.
Nico didn’t have time to congratulate himself for a job well done, for as soon as the monster disappeared, so did the support keeping him suspended in the air. He dropped like a stone, and probably would’ve broken several more important bones, had he not landed on top of Percy.
Again.
Gods, he was going to be hearing about this for ages.
“Nice improvisation, but I am not your stunt mat, di Angelo,” Percy grumbled, sounding fairly disgruntled. “Could you please stop falling on me?”
“You’re invincible, like it could hurt that much,” Nico wheezed, rolling off of Percy and kneeling on all fours, his head swimming. “Oooh, the ground isn’t supposed to swirl like that, is it?”
“You’re lucky that thing didn’t knock your brains right out of your head,” the older man said, the dirt crunching as he got to his feet. He grabbed Nico’s arm and tugged him to his feet, despite his protests to the contrary. Percy threw Nico’s arm over his shoulder and started dragging him away from the scene. “C’mon, we’ve got to get moving. The cops will be here in a couple of minutes, and I really liked not having my name on the evening news the last couple of years.”
Percy was telling the truth – Nico could hear the distant wail of police and emergency vehicle sirens coming ever closer to the park – but Nico was pretty sure he had a concussion on top of all his injuries and that walking up right was not going to do him any favors right now.
“I’m going to hurl if you jostle me like that again!”
“Well, we’re going to walk unless you have enough focus to shadow travel to my apartment…”
Shadow traveling while he was injured and tired probably wasn’t the best idea in the world, but it sounded a whole lot better than walking around with his brain knocking against his skull every few seconds.
“Stop moving and hang on,” Nico mumbled, wrapping his other arm around Percy’s waist and concentrating.
He felt the shadows reach out for them, and a moment later, the feel of the cool night air and the sounds of the police sirens had faded into the hot, stuffy space with the sounds of the humming refrigerator that was Percy’s apartment kitchen across the city.
“Nice,” Percy said. “Although could you maybe aim a little to the left next time? My leg’s in the garbage can – hey, Nico!”
Nico’s legs buckled under him and he dropped to the floor. Percy dropped down beside him a second later, overturning the garbage can in the process.
“Oh shit, your head’s bleeding. Dammit, Nico, you’re such an idiot – ”
Percy’s curses were the last thing Nico heard before the darkness claimed him and he passed out.
*
Awareness came back to him slowly. Nico regained feeling in his limbs first, realizing that his body ached a little less than he thought it should. He was lying on something soft and slightly lumpy, and he shifted restlessly. He moaned and heard someone’s footsteps move closer to him.
He opened his eyes, and was immediately greeted with a pair of green orbs hovering anxiously above him. Nico groaned in misery.
“Go away, Dare,” he mumbled, throwing an arm over his face. “I don’t want to see your ugly face right now.”
A moment later, ice cold water was dumped on his face and Nico sat up, spluttering and fully awake. Percy was standing over him, a glass of water in one hand and an irritated expression on his face.
“Percy,” Nico said stupidly, realizing he was lying on Percy’s sofa in the middle of his apartment. “What…?”
“I’m glad you think I’m pretty enough to be confused with Rachel, but I don’t think she’d think of it as a compliment,” Percy replied, setting the glass down on the coffee table. “Other than confusing the two of us, how are you feeling?”
“Uh… a lot better, actually,” he replied, touching his head experimentally. It was a little tender, as if he’d had the wound for a few days and it was nearly finished healing. “How long was I out?”
“Maybe about an hour. Your head injury was more superficial than anything, but you did have two broken ribs. The ambrosia should’ve cleared that up for you, and you should be back to normal if you hang out for a few more minutes,” Percy said, sitting down on the coffee table in front of him and crossing his arms over his chest. “Like I said before, you were really lucky that that thing didn’t bash your brains out all over that baseball field. What were you thinking, trying to take on a monster that size without a weapon?”
Nico felt himself blush in embarrassment; it’d been a long time since he’d been lectured by Percy and he suddenly felt like he was twelve years old again, playing his first game of Capture the Flag at Camp Half-Blood.
“In case you didn’t notice, I was running away from it, not fighting it,” Nico clarified a little indignantly. “I felt something weird and I went to go check on it. I wasn’t expecting to find the monster. I mean, you felt it, didn’t you? That’s why you were in the park, right?”
Percy shook his head.
“I jog in Central Park on Wednesday nights. I didn’t know anything was wrong until you showed up,” he replied. Nico frowned at this, and he hastened to add, “That doesn’t mean you didn’t feel something. You’re loads better at sensing that sort of stuff than I am…besides, what was that thing?”
Nico’s stomach turned, and this time he was sure it wasn’t because he was about to throw up.
“You didn’t recognize it either?” he asked, and the older boy shook his head again. Nico sighed and ran a hand through his hair. “Well, shit. That’s not good.”
Percy leaned forward, his brow furrowed in thought. “Do you think this monster has anything to do with whoever is trying to kill Rachel?”
He hadn’t had time to contemplate something like that, but he wouldn’t put it out of the realm of possibility. After all, strange monsters just didn’t show up in Central Park, very close to the hub of Olympian power, without a seriously good reason…
“Probably? I dunno, it seemed more interested in eating me more than anything else,” he replied. “Although I don’t think I’d be too upset if that thing tried to eat Rachel right now.”
“Oh? What’d she do to you now?”
Nico sank back into the sofa, his frustration from earlier coming back to him. He glanced away from Percy, staring at one of the pictures on the wall behind him.
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
“That bad, huh?” Percy got up, walking the five or so feet into the kitchen. “Do you want something to drink?”
“Water, please,” Nico said, even though it was the last thing he wanted. He was on the job, after all; he couldn’t go back drunk if he needed to protect Rachel later on, although he was sure the alcohol would improve his attitude greatly.
Percy tossed a bottle of water at him, and Nico caught it deftly – it was probably the only thing he had done right all night.
“Well, you better get over whatever she did to piss you off by Friday night, because I’ll make other plans if the two people I’m supposed to hang out with won’t even talk to each other.”
Nico frowned in confusion.
“What are you talking about?”
“Rachel didn’t tell you?” Nico shook his head, feeling stupider than normal, and took a long drink from the water bottle. “Oh, it’s no big deal or anything. It’s just one of our stupid, going back-to-school traditions. We get together at someone’s apartment, watch a movie, and get ragingly drunk. It’s fun.”
“I’m sure it is. I don’t think I’ll be participating, though, since as of today, I have been relegated to the status of the help,” Nico replied dryly, finishing off his water and crumpling it up. He tossed it into Percy’s recycling bin by the door.
“She told you that? You must’ve really pissed her off,” Percy said, sitting down on the coffee table again. “Now I want to know what you did to her.”
“I didn’t do anything. I just said some things she didn’t want to hear, that’s all,” he said. The older man motioned at him to continue, and even though he’d rather be doing a million other things – including being digested by that stupid monster – than confessing his failure of a love life to Percy Jackson, he let the story flow out of him anyway. “She was upset, I tried to get her to tell me what was wrong and somehow that all led to me confessing that I kind of sort of like her, all right? I was already mad because she called me the help, but then she didn’t even acknowledge that I’d said something like that important, so it pissed me off even more.”
Percy looked at him like he was a particularly stupid and slimy slug attached to the bottom of his shoe.
“What was she supposed to do? She’s the Oracle, Nico. You know – ”
“I know, all right!” Nico said, lashing out and kicking the coffee table’s leg. Percy caught his leg before he could pull it back in and glared daggers at him; Nico tugged it out of his grasp and then leaned back into the sofa petulantly. “I know I like her and I can’t have her, but it’s not about that. It’s about the fact that she doesn’t even think of me as a friend…”
Percy pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed loudly.
“Look, I’m going to be straight with you and if you kick any of my furniture again, you’re getting your skinny ass booted out of this apartment,” he said, his expression intense. “Technically, you are the help. You’re not there to be Rachel’s friend – you’re her bodyguard, remember? Your job is to keep her safe, no matter how much it makes her hate you. You can’t protect her to the best of your abilities when you’re more worried about whether or not she likes you, after all.”
What Percy was saying wasn’t anything new to Nico. Hadn’t he thought the very same things after the monster had visited her apartment almost a week and half ago? What had he done to change any of that? He’d only grown closer to Rachel since then, grown more attached to her, to the point that he could no longer separate his personal feelings from his professional.
Hearing Percy say this out loud only reconfirmed that. He shouldn’t be trying to be Rachel’s friend; he shouldn’t be trying to be Rachel’s anything.
And yet…
Nico thought Rachel needed a friend more than a bodyguard right now, just like he needed more than a fruitless job. Just because he was the son of Hades didn’t mean he didn’t have emotions or didn’t feel like everyone else – he wasn’t some robot and he didn’t want to be one. He knew could be both a friend and protector for Rachel if he tried, and if she wanted him to.
If only she would let him prove that to her instead of pushing him away – truly, this was the real reason he was so angry with her.
“I know,” Nico said miserably. “I just want more than I can possibly have.”
Percy smiled sadly. “Don’t we all?”
*
All the lights were on in the living room and kitchen, and the TV was on full blast when he got back later that night. Nico frowned at this, noticing that Rachel wasn’t in either of the rooms. She could be such a damn hypocrite about all of her stupid environmentally friendly rules, and he wasn’t going to miss a chance when he could yell at her, especially since he was still vaguely mad at her.
“You left the lights on, Dare!” he shouted, toeing his boots off and throwing them in the corner by the terrace doors. “And I’m not turning them off for your lazy ass!”
There was no answering reply, which made Nico’s frown deepen and his uneasy feeling grow. He wandered through the living room, and into the kitchen where he was met with a disconcerting sight. The refrigerator door had been left wide open and a bottle of wine had been shattered on the floor in front of it, the red liquid pooled on the floor and spattered on the edges of the counter, looking an awful lot like blood.
The hairs on the back of Nico’s neck stood up. No, this is not what he needed after he’d just recovered from a monster fight…
“Rachel?” he called, walking toward the main hallway. The hallway was dark except for the light streaming out of the open doorway to Rachel’s studio. If he hadn’t been alerted by everything else, that sight alone would’ve been enough to tell him that something was wrong – Rachel never kept her studio door open.
He glanced into her studio. He couldn’t see her among the forest of canvases and papers in front of the door, but he heard rustling further in and he quietly moved into the room.
Nico let out a perceptible sigh of relief when he finally caught sight of Rachel in front of canvas, seated with her back to him and painting so furiously that her movements were nearly a blur.
“Dare, you left a big ass mess in the kitchen in your hurry to be the next Monet, and I’m not going to clean it up,” he said, pausing behind her. She said nothing, continuing to paint and he cocked his head, trying to see if she was wearing earbuds – she wasn’t. “Unless you want that to be part of my duties as the help now or something, but since I’ve already fought my monster quota for the week…”
Once again, she didn’t respond and Nico’s uneasy feeling returned. He reached out to touch her shoulder.
“Rachel?”
Her spine stiffened as his fingers brushed her shoulder, and she whipped around. Nico bit back a gasp and stumbled backward in shock: Rachel’s expression was twisted and fierce, made even more so by the streaks of paint across her face and her terrible, glowing green eyes. Nico had only seen Rachel like this once, right after she had accepted the power of the Oracle, and it had scared him witless then, just like it was doing now.
“I,” the Oracle of Delphi said, her voice deep and echoing. The sound caused a chill to run down Nico’s spine, “am not Rachel Elizabeth Dare, son of Hades.”
Nico nodded dumbly, finding it hard to speak.
“I can see that,” he rasped, his throat tight with fear. He was more frightened of this woman in front of him than he had been of that stupid monster in the park.
“Do you wish to speak to me?”
“Um…” he squeaked. “No?”
She stared him down with her glowing eyes, and he could feel something in her gaze compelling him to ask her a question. He could find out everything he ever wanted if he just looked into her eyes and asked one simple question…
Nico tore his gaze away from her, panting from the effort. He didn’t dare look at her again until he heard the sound of the paintbrush sweeping against the canvas and he sneaked a peek to make sure she wasn’t paying attention to him.
“Well,” Nico said, clearing his throat after his voice cracked. “I’ll just leave you…to your painting then…uh…Oracle.”
As he backed a few steps toward the door, she suddenly stopped moving and her body went slack. She slipped sideways off her chair, landing with a loud thump on the floor. Nico let out a yell in alarm, and scrambled through the canvases to get to her side.
“Oracle?” he whispered, dropping beside her and pulling her carefully into his arms. “Can you hear me?”
He gently touched her face. Her skin was cold and clammy, and he quickly moved to check her pulse at her wrist. It was sluggish, but steady, and her breathing was a little too shallow for his liking. He gave her a tiny shake; she groaned and stirred in his arms. Her eyes fluttered and when she opened them, Nico let out a breath he hadn’t been aware that he was holding – her eyes were back to normal.
“Nico?” Rachel whispered groggily, trying to move. “What…?”
“Don’t move,” Nico said, cradling her closer to him to keep her still. “I think you bumped your head.”
“What happened?” Rachel asked faintly, her eyes tired and glazed. “Why am I in my studio? I don’t remember…”
“The Oracle. She…uh…she decided to take your body out for some midnight painting, I guess.”
Rachel groaned, closing her eyes and reaching up to rub her temples with one hand. She pulled away after a moment, making a face as she glanced at her paint-covered hand.
“That explains the splitting headache then. I haven’t blacked out like this in a long time.”
His throat went dry with fear. “This has happened before?”
“When I was still getting used to hosting her power, yeah. I’d wake up somewhere, usually the art room at Clarion, and I wouldn’t remember how I got there. Everyone thought I had a drinking problem or was doing drugs…” Rachel shrugged, a humorless smile crossing her face. “That’s why I started painting late at night. The Oracle can work subconsciously and if I give her the time and space, she’ll do it without this taking over my body bullshit.”
Rachel’s eyes moved away from his face and scanned the room. He followed her gaze, finally taking note of the circle of paintings surrounding them. They were crude, hurried scribbles painted with dark and frightening colors, not at all like Rachel’s other paintings. It was almost as though they had been painted by someone else’s hand entirely.
Nico glanced at the one Rachel – the Oracle – had been working on when he had walked in, and he had to do a double take. It was a painting of the monster he had just fought, right down to its squashed nose, the drool dribbling down its chin and the fierce expression on its face. How had she…?
Oh right. She was the Oracle. She knew everything.
“What’s wrong?” Rachel asked, twisting so she could look over his shoulder. She wrinkled her nose, a movement which looked rather intriguing with all that paint on her face. “Oh, ugh. She never paints nice things.”
She continued to chat aimlessly, and Nico tuned her out as he took a closer look at all the other paintings. They were glimpses of bloodied teeth and gangly limbs with sharp claws attached; terrifying faces with red eyes and cunning, cruel expression – it was a portrait collection of monsters.
Nico had never seen any of these before, not even in the darkest pits of the Underworld, just like he had never run across anything quite like the monster tonight.
It worried him, more than he would admit out loud. How was he supposed to protect Rachel from something he didn’t know how to fight? And did the appearance of these monsters mean that the real enemy was someone they didn’t know either?
He started in surprise as he felt fingers graze the side of his face. He turned his gaze back to Rachel. Her brows were scrunched with worry as she traced the scratches on the side of his face, one of the few physical remnants of his fight with the monster.
“Nico?” she asked, seeming utterly exhausted. “How’d...how’d you get this? And why are you so dirty?”
He repressed a shudder at the feel of her fingers. He couldn’t deal with this now, not after the conversation he’d had with Percy.
“We can talk about it later. Can you stand?”
“Maybe.”
Nico stood and gingerly helped her to her feet. She only stayed upright for a few seconds before her knees buckled and he caught her, wrapping an arm around her waist to steady her.
“Not being able to walk seems to be a common theme for you, Dare,” Nico grumbled, dipping so he could sweep her up and carry her out of the studio.
She was light and warm in his arms, and she pressed her head against his shoulder. It was a little disturbing about how compliant she was being about the whole thing, but she probably just didn’t have the energy to be difficult, he reasoned. He’d exhausted himself using his powers more times than he could count, but unlike her, at least he had the choice to use them.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered into his neck as he moved into the hallway and toward her bedroom.
“You don’t have to apologize for that, Dare. That was out of your control.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
Nico glanced down at her briefly. The fear from the Oracle’s appearance and the panic after her collapse had replaced Nico’s rage and frustration from earlier tonight, and he had forgotten he was supposed to be mad at Rachel right now. He tried to summon those emotions again, and found that he couldn’t. It just wasn’t worth it.
“Just forget about it, Dare,” he said, opening her bedroom door. He reached out and flipped the light on. “I’m so used to rejection, it could be my middle name by now. You don’t have to apologize for not being attracted to me – ”
“That’s the problem, though,” Rachel said, her voice stronger than before. “I’m kind of ridiculously attracted to you.”
Nico stilled, his annoyance overcoming the little flutter of his heart almost instantly. Oh, so now she was attracted to him, huh? How and when had she decided that? She might be able to boss him around and make him do everything else for her, but Rachel would not be allowed to play with his feelings like this. They were too precious for him to let her play with them on whim.
“No, you’re not,” he said, setting her down on her bed a little rougher than he had intended. He stepped away from her, and she sat up, her legs dangling off the edge of the bed. “You’re not really interested in me, and the sooner you stop deluding yourself, the happier we’ll both be.”
“Oh, we’re so not having this stupid argument again,” Rachel sighed, reaching out and grabbing a handful of his shirt.
With a surprising amount of strength, she tugged him forward and before Nico quite knew what was happening, his mouth was on Rachel’s and she was kissing him. It wasn’t very good and it was kind of sloppy, but holy shit he was kissing Rachel Elizabeth Dare and she was kissing him back and this was possibly the best thing that ever happened to him and oh shit, Apollo was going to murder him –
She pulled away before the full force of what just happened could hit him. Under all the paint, her cheeks were pink, eyes gleaming like emeralds, and lips wet, and she was honestly the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen in his life. And she had just kissed him, without provocation. What did this mean? What…how was he supposed to respond to that?
“You taste like paint,” he blurted out, unable to help himself.
Rachel’s brow furrowed in confusion, but then her face split into a beautiful smile and she began to laugh.
“You’ve got paint all on your face now, Nico,” she said, wiping tears of laughter from her face with the back of her hand. It only served to smear the paint on her face some more, making her look even worse. “You look hilarious, I wish you could see it.”
Nico wanted to join her in her laughter, but the confusion in his heart and the other emotions rolling through him prevented him from doing so. He couldn’t tell if he was angry or happy or if this kiss had completely terrified him out of his mind, and he didn’t know why she had done this to him after he was so sure she could never return his feelings…
“Why’d you do that, Dare?” he asked suddenly, and she stopped laughing immediately.
“Because I think you’re handsome and funny and brave, and I wanted to kiss you. You weren’t going to believe me if I told you…so I decided to show you instead,” she said, meeting his gaze evenly. “You know I wouldn’t risk my position like this if I wasn’t sincere…if I wasn’t sure about how I felt about you in the slightest.”
Nico stared at her for a long time, trying to unnerve her and make her show her true feelings in some way, but his scrutiny only seemed to make her bolder and more confident. She wasn’t wearing her moonstone necklace, so he couldn’t tell what she was feeling and if it was anything like what he was feeling right now…
It took him a very long time to say something in response, he was that flabbergasted by the turn of events.
“So,” he said at last, running a hand through his hair. “We like each other, then?”
“I’d say so, yes.”
“But we can’t do anything? Like date or whatever?”
Rachel’s expression fell just enough to confirm Nico’s fears.
“Yeah. I’d imagine I really pushed it with that kiss,” she said slowly, running a hand through her hair. “What we just did…it can’t happen again. I don’t know what you were – ”
Nico didn’t let her finish, moving in and sealing his mouth over hers. If he wasn’t going to get to kiss her again anytime soon, he wanted to make sure the one kiss she had from him was something worth remembering, not that sloppy little peck from before. He deepened the kiss, sliding his hand into her hair and pulling her close to him. He wanted to memorize every bit of her – her taste, the warmth of her lips, the feel of her against him – so he’d always remember what this moment had been like.
“Oh wow,” Rachel sighed, breaking away and looking a little dazed. She reached up to touch her lips with her fingers, and then looked at him. “You’re…you’re way too good at that.”
He grinned, leaning a hand on her bed beside her. “I know.”
She rolled her eyes at him. “Someone’s sure full of himself.”
“For good reason,” he whispered against her lips, and kissed her for a third time. She didn’t protest, and returned his kiss with equal fervor. She was a quick study, and she knew just how to respond to him. Nico imagined she’d be as a quick in similar areas of study, and that thought stoked the fires of desire within him to new heights. He wanted more of her, much more than this…
Before he could lose his control and do something that would ruin them both, a distant rumble of thunder sounded overhead warningly, and Rachel pressed a hand against his chest. He pulled away reluctantly, shooting a glare at the ceiling. Damn Olympians, always sticking their nose in places where they didn’t belong.
“We should stop,” Rachel said breathlessly, and Nico felt a rush of pleasure as he took in her mussed appearance.He had done that, not anyone else, and she had let him do that.
“We’ve already stopped,” he said unnecessarily, and she leveled a glare at him.
“You know what I mean. We can’t do this ever again. And I mean it this time.”
“Otherwise I’ll get barbequed.”
“Yes,” she said, her fingers still entwined within the material of his shirt. They were still fairly close to each other, close enough to be in danger of another kiss or two, and Nico found he really didn’t care much at all about being barbequed so long as he could just stay like this for a little longer.
He knew that at this moment that Rachel wasn’t thinking of him as her demigod bodyguard or that annoying kid from camp. He was just plain, old Nico to her – the man she was willing to break vows to kiss – and that’s all he had ever wanted from her.
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: I'm so glad I decided to split the original Chapter Six into to parts because it would've ended up being well over 10,000 words. Death's Dare will also be put on hold throughout November since I will be participating in NaNoWriMo; sorry for the inconvenience!
Note to self, Nico thought as he tore through the patch of wilderness, ducking under tree branches and jumping over roots in his haste. Next time you need to check on a disturbance in the Force, remember to bring your sword!
Probably about five seconds after the gigantic monster had started chasing him through Central Park, Nico had realized he’d left all of his weapons in his bedroom at Rachel’s place. To be fair, he hadn’t thought the disturbance he’d felt would try to eat him once he had found it, but he really ought to have known better by now. He hated to admit it, but he was so out of practice with this whole getting attacked by monsters business; there hadn’t been many in Europe and those that he did encounter gave up pretty quickly once they found out whose son he was.
The monster let out a roar, and there was a loud crack! a moment later. Nico glanced behind him for just a moment – the monster had just punched a hole through one of the trees and was in the process of uprooting another.
Yeah, he didn’t think this guy would be too impressed by the, “I’m the son of Hades, the ghost king!” line. He’d probably think that meant he’d taste extra delicious or something.
With something this size, Nico didn’t have a lot of options in the fighting department without his sword. Hand-to-hand combat would be absolute suicide, and he didn’t have the necessary time to summon skeleton soldiers. He needed concentration to do that correctly, and if he stopped now, he’d be monster chow. Besides, he didn’t think the soldiers would do much besides get stomped on –
Nico let out a yell and skidded to a stop as large chunk of tree crashed through the canopy of branches above and landed in front of him.
“I don’t like to chase my food, demigod!” the monster shouted, a vicious laugh in his voice. “Stop now, and I promise to keep you in one piece!”
“Shit, shit, shit!” Nico muttered, skirting around the tree trunk and changing directions.
Did these damn trees ever end? It was Central Park, for Zeus’s sake, not a damn forest! If he could just get out of here and into an open area, he’d probably stand a better chance. Maybe he could summon some rocks to box the monster in long enough to find a weapon, but damn, he wasn’t going to die because of this thing! His father would never let him live – er, haunt? – it down.
Thankfully the trees began to thin, and Nico burst out of the wilderness onto one of paths in the park, right in front of a large expanse of baseball fields.
Unfortunately, he promptly managed to smack headlong into a jogger passing by and the force sent both of them sprawling to pavement in a mess of limbs and curses.
“Ow, what the hell!” the jogger who sounded an awful lot like Percy Jackson shouted.
Nico accidentally smashed his elbow into the other man’s nose, and yelped, “Sorry!” as he was shoved off a moment later.
“Nico?” the jogger demanded, sitting up and revealing that he was, indeed, Percy Jackson. “Man, what the fuck are you doing?”
Nico had never been more relieved to see the son of the sea god in his life, even if Percy looked like he wanted to clobber him.
“Percy!” he exclaimed, grabbing the other man by the neck of his T-shirt. “Do you have Riptide on you?”
Percy’s forehead wrinkled, and his eyes narrowed suspiciously.
“Of course. Why…?”
Nico didn’t even have to answer him. The ground shook under them and the tree line exploded as the monster burst out of the forest. Nico ducked, covering his face with his arm to avoid getting splinters of wood in his eyes. When he looked up again, the monster was hovering over them.
It had grubby brown skin, covered in patches of wiry dark hair that climbed all the way up to its head. Its legs and arms were the size of tree trunks, and it had a pot belly that hadn’t seemed to slow it down any while it had been chasing Nico. Sharp, dirty claws extended from its fingers and his mouth was stretched into a grin that bared all of its impossibly sharp and yellow teeth. Like most monsters, it didn’t have a pretty face, but that only meant it would have even more of an attitude problem.
And it didn’t look very happy about having to chase its snack across the park.
“Half-blood! I will tear you apart!” it shouted and let out another roar, spittle flying everywhere.
“That’s why,” Nico said, scrambling to his feet.
He yanked insistently at Percy, hauling him up just before the monster smashed its fist on the path where they had been sitting. The pavement cracked under the pressure, leaving a sizeable impression in the ground. Oh, the park supervisor was not going to be pleased with them tomorrow…
“Holy shit,” Percy replied, pulling a pen out of the pocket of his sweatpants as the monster advanced a few feet and they backpedaled toward the baseball fields. “What did you do, Nico?”
“Me?” Nico demanded, dodging another swipe from the monster. A few feet from him, Percy clicked the top of his pen, and Riptide appeared, the Celestial Bronze glowing in the gloom. The monster snarled at the sight, and advanced. “I didn’t – I’m not you, Percy! I just stumbled across this thing!”
“Where’s your sword?” Percy demanded, glancing in his direction. “You can’t expect me to fight this by myself!”
“I left it at home!”
“Oh, you’ve got to be kidding – ”
Percy’s next words were cut off as ducked as the monster swung a claw at him, and he thrust his sword upwards, stabbing it in the palm. The monster howled and backed away momentarily, but the wound only seemed to enrage it further because the next thing it did was grab the metal bleachers from the baseball field and toss it at them.
Nico yelped and dived in one direction, while Percy did the same in the opposite direction. The bleachers slammed down in middle of the field, kicking up a cloud of dust and missing him by a few feet. Nico rolled away, coughing, and caught sight of a giant shadow moving toward him in the dust. He had to do something to give them more time, otherwise they’d both get smashed…
He reached out and laid his palm on top of the dirt, forcing all of his concentration on the ground below him.
Please, he pleaded, calling out to the minerals of the earth. The ground trembled beneath him as the monster approached, and Nico pushed back his fear, concentrating. Come forth. Lend yourself to the son of Hades!
“NICO!”
He glanced up just in time to see the huge palm crashing toward him, and he had just enough time to move so he could avoid the brunt of the blow. He couldn’t avoid it completely though, and the monster swatted at him like a particularly annoying fly, knocking him the pitchers mound. Nico’s head smashed into the ground and he lay there, face down in the dirt, ears ringing and gasping for breath. He could feel something warm trickling through the back of his head, and he was pretty sure at least one of his ribs was broken –
He could only lay there, helpless as his senses recovered, and the monster grabbed him by the legs, hoisting him off the ground, upside down. Percy was shouting something at him from down below, but he couldn’t focus enough to understand what it was.
A gust of hot, moist air blew against his face. Nico didn’t want to, but he looked down anyway and, once his gaze cleared, he groaned out loud. He was dangling above the monster’s gaping mouth, and he could see all the way down its slimy throat.
“One demigod down,” the monster gurgled, moving Nico closer to his mouth. “One more to go!”
In the split second before he was dropped to his untimely doom, Nico closed his eyes and reached out toward the ground, praying with all his might.
PLEASE HELP!
He felt something tugging at his gut, pulling upwards and upwards and…
The ground underneath the monster split open, and Nico swayed in the monster’s grip as it trained to regain its footing.
“What – ”
“Sorry,” Nico said, feeling the power of the earth course through him, “but the sons of the Underworld really don’t digest well.”
He had enough time to savor the monster’s wide eyed look of horror, before Nico yanked his hand upwards. The ground followed his movement, surging forward and impaling the monster from the bottom up. The monster’s grip slackened on Nico’s ankles and its eyes rolled back in its head just before it burst into dark smoke.
Nico didn’t have time to congratulate himself for a job well done, for as soon as the monster disappeared, so did the support keeping him suspended in the air. He dropped like a stone, and probably would’ve broken several more important bones, had he not landed on top of Percy.
Again.
Gods, he was going to be hearing about this for ages.
“Nice improvisation, but I am not your stunt mat, di Angelo,” Percy grumbled, sounding fairly disgruntled. “Could you please stop falling on me?”
“You’re invincible, like it could hurt that much,” Nico wheezed, rolling off of Percy and kneeling on all fours, his head swimming. “Oooh, the ground isn’t supposed to swirl like that, is it?”
“You’re lucky that thing didn’t knock your brains right out of your head,” the older man said, the dirt crunching as he got to his feet. He grabbed Nico’s arm and tugged him to his feet, despite his protests to the contrary. Percy threw Nico’s arm over his shoulder and started dragging him away from the scene. “C’mon, we’ve got to get moving. The cops will be here in a couple of minutes, and I really liked not having my name on the evening news the last couple of years.”
Percy was telling the truth – Nico could hear the distant wail of police and emergency vehicle sirens coming ever closer to the park – but Nico was pretty sure he had a concussion on top of all his injuries and that walking up right was not going to do him any favors right now.
“I’m going to hurl if you jostle me like that again!”
“Well, we’re going to walk unless you have enough focus to shadow travel to my apartment…”
Shadow traveling while he was injured and tired probably wasn’t the best idea in the world, but it sounded a whole lot better than walking around with his brain knocking against his skull every few seconds.
“Stop moving and hang on,” Nico mumbled, wrapping his other arm around Percy’s waist and concentrating.
He felt the shadows reach out for them, and a moment later, the feel of the cool night air and the sounds of the police sirens had faded into the hot, stuffy space with the sounds of the humming refrigerator that was Percy’s apartment kitchen across the city.
“Nice,” Percy said. “Although could you maybe aim a little to the left next time? My leg’s in the garbage can – hey, Nico!”
Nico’s legs buckled under him and he dropped to the floor. Percy dropped down beside him a second later, overturning the garbage can in the process.
“Oh shit, your head’s bleeding. Dammit, Nico, you’re such an idiot – ”
Percy’s curses were the last thing Nico heard before the darkness claimed him and he passed out.
*
Awareness came back to him slowly. Nico regained feeling in his limbs first, realizing that his body ached a little less than he thought it should. He was lying on something soft and slightly lumpy, and he shifted restlessly. He moaned and heard someone’s footsteps move closer to him.
He opened his eyes, and was immediately greeted with a pair of green orbs hovering anxiously above him. Nico groaned in misery.
“Go away, Dare,” he mumbled, throwing an arm over his face. “I don’t want to see your ugly face right now.”
A moment later, ice cold water was dumped on his face and Nico sat up, spluttering and fully awake. Percy was standing over him, a glass of water in one hand and an irritated expression on his face.
“Percy,” Nico said stupidly, realizing he was lying on Percy’s sofa in the middle of his apartment. “What…?”
“I’m glad you think I’m pretty enough to be confused with Rachel, but I don’t think she’d think of it as a compliment,” Percy replied, setting the glass down on the coffee table. “Other than confusing the two of us, how are you feeling?”
“Uh… a lot better, actually,” he replied, touching his head experimentally. It was a little tender, as if he’d had the wound for a few days and it was nearly finished healing. “How long was I out?”
“Maybe about an hour. Your head injury was more superficial than anything, but you did have two broken ribs. The ambrosia should’ve cleared that up for you, and you should be back to normal if you hang out for a few more minutes,” Percy said, sitting down on the coffee table in front of him and crossing his arms over his chest. “Like I said before, you were really lucky that that thing didn’t bash your brains out all over that baseball field. What were you thinking, trying to take on a monster that size without a weapon?”
Nico felt himself blush in embarrassment; it’d been a long time since he’d been lectured by Percy and he suddenly felt like he was twelve years old again, playing his first game of Capture the Flag at Camp Half-Blood.
“In case you didn’t notice, I was running away from it, not fighting it,” Nico clarified a little indignantly. “I felt something weird and I went to go check on it. I wasn’t expecting to find the monster. I mean, you felt it, didn’t you? That’s why you were in the park, right?”
Percy shook his head.
“I jog in Central Park on Wednesday nights. I didn’t know anything was wrong until you showed up,” he replied. Nico frowned at this, and he hastened to add, “That doesn’t mean you didn’t feel something. You’re loads better at sensing that sort of stuff than I am…besides, what was that thing?”
Nico’s stomach turned, and this time he was sure it wasn’t because he was about to throw up.
“You didn’t recognize it either?” he asked, and the older boy shook his head again. Nico sighed and ran a hand through his hair. “Well, shit. That’s not good.”
Percy leaned forward, his brow furrowed in thought. “Do you think this monster has anything to do with whoever is trying to kill Rachel?”
He hadn’t had time to contemplate something like that, but he wouldn’t put it out of the realm of possibility. After all, strange monsters just didn’t show up in Central Park, very close to the hub of Olympian power, without a seriously good reason…
“Probably? I dunno, it seemed more interested in eating me more than anything else,” he replied. “Although I don’t think I’d be too upset if that thing tried to eat Rachel right now.”
“Oh? What’d she do to you now?”
Nico sank back into the sofa, his frustration from earlier coming back to him. He glanced away from Percy, staring at one of the pictures on the wall behind him.
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
“That bad, huh?” Percy got up, walking the five or so feet into the kitchen. “Do you want something to drink?”
“Water, please,” Nico said, even though it was the last thing he wanted. He was on the job, after all; he couldn’t go back drunk if he needed to protect Rachel later on, although he was sure the alcohol would improve his attitude greatly.
Percy tossed a bottle of water at him, and Nico caught it deftly – it was probably the only thing he had done right all night.
“Well, you better get over whatever she did to piss you off by Friday night, because I’ll make other plans if the two people I’m supposed to hang out with won’t even talk to each other.”
Nico frowned in confusion.
“What are you talking about?”
“Rachel didn’t tell you?” Nico shook his head, feeling stupider than normal, and took a long drink from the water bottle. “Oh, it’s no big deal or anything. It’s just one of our stupid, going back-to-school traditions. We get together at someone’s apartment, watch a movie, and get ragingly drunk. It’s fun.”
“I’m sure it is. I don’t think I’ll be participating, though, since as of today, I have been relegated to the status of the help,” Nico replied dryly, finishing off his water and crumpling it up. He tossed it into Percy’s recycling bin by the door.
“She told you that? You must’ve really pissed her off,” Percy said, sitting down on the coffee table again. “Now I want to know what you did to her.”
“I didn’t do anything. I just said some things she didn’t want to hear, that’s all,” he said. The older man motioned at him to continue, and even though he’d rather be doing a million other things – including being digested by that stupid monster – than confessing his failure of a love life to Percy Jackson, he let the story flow out of him anyway. “She was upset, I tried to get her to tell me what was wrong and somehow that all led to me confessing that I kind of sort of like her, all right? I was already mad because she called me the help, but then she didn’t even acknowledge that I’d said something like that important, so it pissed me off even more.”
Percy looked at him like he was a particularly stupid and slimy slug attached to the bottom of his shoe.
“What was she supposed to do? She’s the Oracle, Nico. You know – ”
“I know, all right!” Nico said, lashing out and kicking the coffee table’s leg. Percy caught his leg before he could pull it back in and glared daggers at him; Nico tugged it out of his grasp and then leaned back into the sofa petulantly. “I know I like her and I can’t have her, but it’s not about that. It’s about the fact that she doesn’t even think of me as a friend…”
Percy pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed loudly.
“Look, I’m going to be straight with you and if you kick any of my furniture again, you’re getting your skinny ass booted out of this apartment,” he said, his expression intense. “Technically, you are the help. You’re not there to be Rachel’s friend – you’re her bodyguard, remember? Your job is to keep her safe, no matter how much it makes her hate you. You can’t protect her to the best of your abilities when you’re more worried about whether or not she likes you, after all.”
What Percy was saying wasn’t anything new to Nico. Hadn’t he thought the very same things after the monster had visited her apartment almost a week and half ago? What had he done to change any of that? He’d only grown closer to Rachel since then, grown more attached to her, to the point that he could no longer separate his personal feelings from his professional.
Hearing Percy say this out loud only reconfirmed that. He shouldn’t be trying to be Rachel’s friend; he shouldn’t be trying to be Rachel’s anything.
And yet…
Nico thought Rachel needed a friend more than a bodyguard right now, just like he needed more than a fruitless job. Just because he was the son of Hades didn’t mean he didn’t have emotions or didn’t feel like everyone else – he wasn’t some robot and he didn’t want to be one. He knew could be both a friend and protector for Rachel if he tried, and if she wanted him to.
If only she would let him prove that to her instead of pushing him away – truly, this was the real reason he was so angry with her.
“I know,” Nico said miserably. “I just want more than I can possibly have.”
Percy smiled sadly. “Don’t we all?”
*
All the lights were on in the living room and kitchen, and the TV was on full blast when he got back later that night. Nico frowned at this, noticing that Rachel wasn’t in either of the rooms. She could be such a damn hypocrite about all of her stupid environmentally friendly rules, and he wasn’t going to miss a chance when he could yell at her, especially since he was still vaguely mad at her.
“You left the lights on, Dare!” he shouted, toeing his boots off and throwing them in the corner by the terrace doors. “And I’m not turning them off for your lazy ass!”
There was no answering reply, which made Nico’s frown deepen and his uneasy feeling grow. He wandered through the living room, and into the kitchen where he was met with a disconcerting sight. The refrigerator door had been left wide open and a bottle of wine had been shattered on the floor in front of it, the red liquid pooled on the floor and spattered on the edges of the counter, looking an awful lot like blood.
The hairs on the back of Nico’s neck stood up. No, this is not what he needed after he’d just recovered from a monster fight…
“Rachel?” he called, walking toward the main hallway. The hallway was dark except for the light streaming out of the open doorway to Rachel’s studio. If he hadn’t been alerted by everything else, that sight alone would’ve been enough to tell him that something was wrong – Rachel never kept her studio door open.
He glanced into her studio. He couldn’t see her among the forest of canvases and papers in front of the door, but he heard rustling further in and he quietly moved into the room.
Nico let out a perceptible sigh of relief when he finally caught sight of Rachel in front of canvas, seated with her back to him and painting so furiously that her movements were nearly a blur.
“Dare, you left a big ass mess in the kitchen in your hurry to be the next Monet, and I’m not going to clean it up,” he said, pausing behind her. She said nothing, continuing to paint and he cocked his head, trying to see if she was wearing earbuds – she wasn’t. “Unless you want that to be part of my duties as the help now or something, but since I’ve already fought my monster quota for the week…”
Once again, she didn’t respond and Nico’s uneasy feeling returned. He reached out to touch her shoulder.
“Rachel?”
Her spine stiffened as his fingers brushed her shoulder, and she whipped around. Nico bit back a gasp and stumbled backward in shock: Rachel’s expression was twisted and fierce, made even more so by the streaks of paint across her face and her terrible, glowing green eyes. Nico had only seen Rachel like this once, right after she had accepted the power of the Oracle, and it had scared him witless then, just like it was doing now.
“I,” the Oracle of Delphi said, her voice deep and echoing. The sound caused a chill to run down Nico’s spine, “am not Rachel Elizabeth Dare, son of Hades.”
Nico nodded dumbly, finding it hard to speak.
“I can see that,” he rasped, his throat tight with fear. He was more frightened of this woman in front of him than he had been of that stupid monster in the park.
“Do you wish to speak to me?”
“Um…” he squeaked. “No?”
She stared him down with her glowing eyes, and he could feel something in her gaze compelling him to ask her a question. He could find out everything he ever wanted if he just looked into her eyes and asked one simple question…
Nico tore his gaze away from her, panting from the effort. He didn’t dare look at her again until he heard the sound of the paintbrush sweeping against the canvas and he sneaked a peek to make sure she wasn’t paying attention to him.
“Well,” Nico said, clearing his throat after his voice cracked. “I’ll just leave you…to your painting then…uh…Oracle.”
As he backed a few steps toward the door, she suddenly stopped moving and her body went slack. She slipped sideways off her chair, landing with a loud thump on the floor. Nico let out a yell in alarm, and scrambled through the canvases to get to her side.
“Oracle?” he whispered, dropping beside her and pulling her carefully into his arms. “Can you hear me?”
He gently touched her face. Her skin was cold and clammy, and he quickly moved to check her pulse at her wrist. It was sluggish, but steady, and her breathing was a little too shallow for his liking. He gave her a tiny shake; she groaned and stirred in his arms. Her eyes fluttered and when she opened them, Nico let out a breath he hadn’t been aware that he was holding – her eyes were back to normal.
“Nico?” Rachel whispered groggily, trying to move. “What…?”
“Don’t move,” Nico said, cradling her closer to him to keep her still. “I think you bumped your head.”
“What happened?” Rachel asked faintly, her eyes tired and glazed. “Why am I in my studio? I don’t remember…”
“The Oracle. She…uh…she decided to take your body out for some midnight painting, I guess.”
Rachel groaned, closing her eyes and reaching up to rub her temples with one hand. She pulled away after a moment, making a face as she glanced at her paint-covered hand.
“That explains the splitting headache then. I haven’t blacked out like this in a long time.”
His throat went dry with fear. “This has happened before?”
“When I was still getting used to hosting her power, yeah. I’d wake up somewhere, usually the art room at Clarion, and I wouldn’t remember how I got there. Everyone thought I had a drinking problem or was doing drugs…” Rachel shrugged, a humorless smile crossing her face. “That’s why I started painting late at night. The Oracle can work subconsciously and if I give her the time and space, she’ll do it without this taking over my body bullshit.”
Rachel’s eyes moved away from his face and scanned the room. He followed her gaze, finally taking note of the circle of paintings surrounding them. They were crude, hurried scribbles painted with dark and frightening colors, not at all like Rachel’s other paintings. It was almost as though they had been painted by someone else’s hand entirely.
Nico glanced at the one Rachel – the Oracle – had been working on when he had walked in, and he had to do a double take. It was a painting of the monster he had just fought, right down to its squashed nose, the drool dribbling down its chin and the fierce expression on its face. How had she…?
Oh right. She was the Oracle. She knew everything.
“What’s wrong?” Rachel asked, twisting so she could look over his shoulder. She wrinkled her nose, a movement which looked rather intriguing with all that paint on her face. “Oh, ugh. She never paints nice things.”
She continued to chat aimlessly, and Nico tuned her out as he took a closer look at all the other paintings. They were glimpses of bloodied teeth and gangly limbs with sharp claws attached; terrifying faces with red eyes and cunning, cruel expression – it was a portrait collection of monsters.
Nico had never seen any of these before, not even in the darkest pits of the Underworld, just like he had never run across anything quite like the monster tonight.
It worried him, more than he would admit out loud. How was he supposed to protect Rachel from something he didn’t know how to fight? And did the appearance of these monsters mean that the real enemy was someone they didn’t know either?
He started in surprise as he felt fingers graze the side of his face. He turned his gaze back to Rachel. Her brows were scrunched with worry as she traced the scratches on the side of his face, one of the few physical remnants of his fight with the monster.
“Nico?” she asked, seeming utterly exhausted. “How’d...how’d you get this? And why are you so dirty?”
He repressed a shudder at the feel of her fingers. He couldn’t deal with this now, not after the conversation he’d had with Percy.
“We can talk about it later. Can you stand?”
“Maybe.”
Nico stood and gingerly helped her to her feet. She only stayed upright for a few seconds before her knees buckled and he caught her, wrapping an arm around her waist to steady her.
“Not being able to walk seems to be a common theme for you, Dare,” Nico grumbled, dipping so he could sweep her up and carry her out of the studio.
She was light and warm in his arms, and she pressed her head against his shoulder. It was a little disturbing about how compliant she was being about the whole thing, but she probably just didn’t have the energy to be difficult, he reasoned. He’d exhausted himself using his powers more times than he could count, but unlike her, at least he had the choice to use them.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered into his neck as he moved into the hallway and toward her bedroom.
“You don’t have to apologize for that, Dare. That was out of your control.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
Nico glanced down at her briefly. The fear from the Oracle’s appearance and the panic after her collapse had replaced Nico’s rage and frustration from earlier tonight, and he had forgotten he was supposed to be mad at Rachel right now. He tried to summon those emotions again, and found that he couldn’t. It just wasn’t worth it.
“Just forget about it, Dare,” he said, opening her bedroom door. He reached out and flipped the light on. “I’m so used to rejection, it could be my middle name by now. You don’t have to apologize for not being attracted to me – ”
“That’s the problem, though,” Rachel said, her voice stronger than before. “I’m kind of ridiculously attracted to you.”
Nico stilled, his annoyance overcoming the little flutter of his heart almost instantly. Oh, so now she was attracted to him, huh? How and when had she decided that? She might be able to boss him around and make him do everything else for her, but Rachel would not be allowed to play with his feelings like this. They were too precious for him to let her play with them on whim.
“No, you’re not,” he said, setting her down on her bed a little rougher than he had intended. He stepped away from her, and she sat up, her legs dangling off the edge of the bed. “You’re not really interested in me, and the sooner you stop deluding yourself, the happier we’ll both be.”
“Oh, we’re so not having this stupid argument again,” Rachel sighed, reaching out and grabbing a handful of his shirt.
With a surprising amount of strength, she tugged him forward and before Nico quite knew what was happening, his mouth was on Rachel’s and she was kissing him. It wasn’t very good and it was kind of sloppy, but holy shit he was kissing Rachel Elizabeth Dare and she was kissing him back and this was possibly the best thing that ever happened to him and oh shit, Apollo was going to murder him –
She pulled away before the full force of what just happened could hit him. Under all the paint, her cheeks were pink, eyes gleaming like emeralds, and lips wet, and she was honestly the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen in his life. And she had just kissed him, without provocation. What did this mean? What…how was he supposed to respond to that?
“You taste like paint,” he blurted out, unable to help himself.
Rachel’s brow furrowed in confusion, but then her face split into a beautiful smile and she began to laugh.
“You’ve got paint all on your face now, Nico,” she said, wiping tears of laughter from her face with the back of her hand. It only served to smear the paint on her face some more, making her look even worse. “You look hilarious, I wish you could see it.”
Nico wanted to join her in her laughter, but the confusion in his heart and the other emotions rolling through him prevented him from doing so. He couldn’t tell if he was angry or happy or if this kiss had completely terrified him out of his mind, and he didn’t know why she had done this to him after he was so sure she could never return his feelings…
“Why’d you do that, Dare?” he asked suddenly, and she stopped laughing immediately.
“Because I think you’re handsome and funny and brave, and I wanted to kiss you. You weren’t going to believe me if I told you…so I decided to show you instead,” she said, meeting his gaze evenly. “You know I wouldn’t risk my position like this if I wasn’t sincere…if I wasn’t sure about how I felt about you in the slightest.”
Nico stared at her for a long time, trying to unnerve her and make her show her true feelings in some way, but his scrutiny only seemed to make her bolder and more confident. She wasn’t wearing her moonstone necklace, so he couldn’t tell what she was feeling and if it was anything like what he was feeling right now…
It took him a very long time to say something in response, he was that flabbergasted by the turn of events.
“So,” he said at last, running a hand through his hair. “We like each other, then?”
“I’d say so, yes.”
“But we can’t do anything? Like date or whatever?”
Rachel’s expression fell just enough to confirm Nico’s fears.
“Yeah. I’d imagine I really pushed it with that kiss,” she said slowly, running a hand through her hair. “What we just did…it can’t happen again. I don’t know what you were – ”
Nico didn’t let her finish, moving in and sealing his mouth over hers. If he wasn’t going to get to kiss her again anytime soon, he wanted to make sure the one kiss she had from him was something worth remembering, not that sloppy little peck from before. He deepened the kiss, sliding his hand into her hair and pulling her close to him. He wanted to memorize every bit of her – her taste, the warmth of her lips, the feel of her against him – so he’d always remember what this moment had been like.
“Oh wow,” Rachel sighed, breaking away and looking a little dazed. She reached up to touch her lips with her fingers, and then looked at him. “You’re…you’re way too good at that.”
He grinned, leaning a hand on her bed beside her. “I know.”
She rolled her eyes at him. “Someone’s sure full of himself.”
“For good reason,” he whispered against her lips, and kissed her for a third time. She didn’t protest, and returned his kiss with equal fervor. She was a quick study, and she knew just how to respond to him. Nico imagined she’d be as a quick in similar areas of study, and that thought stoked the fires of desire within him to new heights. He wanted more of her, much more than this…
Before he could lose his control and do something that would ruin them both, a distant rumble of thunder sounded overhead warningly, and Rachel pressed a hand against his chest. He pulled away reluctantly, shooting a glare at the ceiling. Damn Olympians, always sticking their nose in places where they didn’t belong.
“We should stop,” Rachel said breathlessly, and Nico felt a rush of pleasure as he took in her mussed appearance.He had done that, not anyone else, and she had let him do that.
“We’ve already stopped,” he said unnecessarily, and she leveled a glare at him.
“You know what I mean. We can’t do this ever again. And I mean it this time.”
“Otherwise I’ll get barbequed.”
“Yes,” she said, her fingers still entwined within the material of his shirt. They were still fairly close to each other, close enough to be in danger of another kiss or two, and Nico found he really didn’t care much at all about being barbequed so long as he could just stay like this for a little longer.
He knew that at this moment that Rachel wasn’t thinking of him as her demigod bodyguard or that annoying kid from camp. He was just plain, old Nico to her – the man she was willing to break vows to kiss – and that’s all he had ever wanted from her.
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