#nicobaster

"WHY WONT YOU FUCKING LISTEN?!"

"WHY WONT YOU LISTEN?!"

"Can you- can you please question yourself for a moment?"

"Perfect. Bravo. Intelligent."

And also the fucking Alabaster gif that I love so much when I made it

Sea-green eyes shut, as if his ears can’t make out what’s actually happening. Percy shouldn’t be here, shouldn’t be eavesdropping no matter how curious he is, shouldn’t be suffering such self-inflicted heartbreak.

Nico was clear earlier this night. He has moved on; he has healed. And—as it should be obvious enough—he is ready to love someone again.

Someone that’s not Percy.

His musings are broken by a soft thud. “Damn, you’re still as strong as ever,” Alabaster pants softly. Percy recognizes him now: one of the most favored children of Hecate, powerful swordsman, his once enemy turned ally.

Although he personally hated Percy and blamed him for the death of his siblings, he set all that aside so they could work together to defeat Gaea. After the war, Percy wanted to thank him, perhaps to even offer whatever he could to make it up to him.

He didn’t think it would be this. Has Alabaster known all along? Is this the reason why he changed his mind about killing Percy?

Though if Percy is being honest, there isn’t much difference between the feeling of dying and losing Nico.

How he wishes it were Alabaster’s sword plunged in his chest instead of the regret eating him from within. Alabaster’s incantations would have been more welcomed than the soft declarations of love Percy isn’t strong enough to unhear.

“Can I steal you for a moment?” the son of Hecate teases, and it takes all of Percy’s self-control to not think of other ways he must be teasing Nico under the dark of the night.

Nico snorts, and Percy feels bad about being happy at the possibility he’d deny Alabaster. “Don’t think you can trick me, Torrington. My shadow-travel is still faster than your mist-travel.”

“Race you there?” A fire of challenge in Alabaster’s tone.

“Oh, it’s on.” Percy had a brief moment to imagine the responding fire in Nico’s eyes, before there’s a significant drop in temperature and a faint green light from where the two must be.

Percy is left there, his hand still at the knob, about to open it. He gets inside and sees his friends already in different sleeping bags, sprawled in varied states of sleep.

As he closes the door, it feels like he’s also closing another chapter of his life. It will take a while, he knows, but there’s no denying it.