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fandom: percy jackson pairing: valdangelo

“You’re interesting,” Nico murmurs right by his ear, and the compliment shocks Leo to his core, almost enough for him to sober up. “Why haven’t we talked before?” Sitting back, blinking slowly, Leo takes a good look at Nico and tries not to feel an abrupt, overwhelming sense of affection. Because what Nico’s really saying is: You’re interesting. I see you. I want to know more about you.

Three weeks into the semester, Leo walks through the doors of his first college party.

After a while nico just stops trying to make excuses and just curls up like a clingy cat at his side every minute of the day

His favourite thing to do is when leo is dozing off in the middle of the day is stick his evil little popsicle hands up Leo's shirt to scare him awake. Leo both loves and hates it

Also, look at him, look how cute he is

i’m so glad you’re interested in valdangelo! this got a bit long bc i am extremely passionate about these two losers lmao.

to preface, i should mention that i’ve never read ToA so if i reference canon, it’ll mainly be HoO (where nico and leo both appear) and a little bit of PJO.

for me personally, being unsatisfied with the canon ships (solangelo and caleo) is really what pushed me toward considering the valdangelo pairing in the first place. i won’t go into that too much since it’s not what you’re asking, but i think instead of introducing new love interests, it would’ve made for a stronger narrative to focus on characters who were already involved with the prophecy. 

aside from the obvious fact that nico and leo both see themselves as outcasts in some way, they also share A LOT of the same insecurities: scared of being left behind, not being wanted, not having a place to belong. for nico, this stems from bianca going to join the hunters, being the only child of hades for a while until he meets hazel, and coming to terms with his sexuality. for leo, it’s moving around to different foster homes, having difficulty connecting with people vs machines, and when he does make friends (jason and piper) he finds out that those memories were all fake.

so they have similar issues but the interesting thing is how they deal with it and how it involves people externally. nico runs and leaves camp, retreats within himself, being very cautious to open up to new people. leo so desperately wants to be accepted that he comes across as obnoxious a lot of the times, gets dismissed, and even if people realize that he’s putting on a facade, no one really takes the time to get to know him. at the core of it, they’re both hiding a part of themselves because they’ve been hurt before but still want nothing more than to make genuine connections. (there is something very human about that that makes it even more heartbreaking)

as a result, nico and leo both just get it and i think they would understand each other better than anyone else.

another thing is that they actually have a pretty similar sense of humour because dark humour (nico) and self-deprecating humour (leo) will inevitably overlap. it’s not entirely the same (nico is more deadpan, leo probably watches vines/tiktok lmao) but i think there is untapped potential here that could lead to some great banter.

lastly, i know this also applies to solangelo, but there’s just something to be said about hephaestus and hades, fire and darkness, life and death. nico learning that his relationship with hades doesn’t define him, despite the stigma, and leo burning down the house and killing his mom but then also breathing life into machines. the duality... the poetry...