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It took, all in all, about three or four months for Camp Half-Blood to readapt after the war. Readaptations included a new portal to Camp Jupiter, a new statue, and a lot more bureaucracy - and, with as any readaptation process, it came with a few unexpected results; like a troubling rise in the food costs, a sudden drop in the number of campers above 17 (not that there were many to begin with - seriously, was anyone gonna tell them that there were demigods out there having kids or were the Greeks just supposed to keep dying at fourteen?), and the now constant presence of Nico di Angelo, son of Hades.
Drew Tanaka, as expected, had some opinions.
Listen, she didn’t hold anything against the boy - from what she’d heard, he’s got some backstory on him to justify having dropped off the face of the earth after the last War, and he did seem to be making some efforts into getting the whole being social thing back on track - though she certainly didn’t consider his choices for who to be social with the best. No matter what his criteria are, Lou Ellen’s bleached dry hair should have taken enough points off for him to not talk to her. But alas. Drew didn’t even hate him for apparently being the new crush of her ex-boyfriend. Which she totally could without being a bad person.
Her problem with him was one and one simply; he’s off. Offputting, offbeat, his accent is off, his humour is off, he was always off somewhere doing something, love pours off him like old cologne, he looks off. Drew doesn’t like these kinds of things. Nico di Angelo has that kind of face that you feel you’ve seen before, but doesn’t know where. He’s off this fucking century, goddammit, he looks like someone you’d see in a 1950s magazine. And he’s always biting his nails and standing next to one of his fellow weirdos - and Will, always godsfucking William Solace, the sunny boy - like a pool of shadows.
She was wary.
Her cabin obviously didn’t seem to mind.
It seems that, in the four months it took for a whole race of people to gather themselves after a war and a world bending discovery, Nico di Angelo had somehow found the time to get healthier - or at least Drew assumes. He sure looks the part. -, make friends, get a boyfriend, and get absorbed by the Aphrodite kids like they had always been best fucking friends.
Gods, it wasn’t even surprising. Like, come on. Aphrodite children are dramatic, and grave, and they love a bit of doom. Love brought on wars, as the whole cabin will gladly tell you, and it’s about the horror as much as it is about fireworks and sunsets and giving someone your Netflix password. And a Death boy who’s known doom unlike anyone, who’s softspoken, who fucking reeks of love and is getting less skeletal by the day? They ate that shit up from the start.
It obviously didn’t hurt that Nico fucking loves drama. He feeds off of it, and he somehow always knows the itty gritty details that make the whole cabin ooh and aah when he joins them on cabin gossip and self care evenings (because that’s a thing he participates in now. Drew would be much more vocal about her distaste if she wasn’t, admittedly, one of the ooh and aahs). It’s horrendous to see how he’s always on top of the wave when it comes to gossip, from both camps. When asked why, he’ll just say “oh, it came across me.” and give nothing else. Which of course, he’s mysterious in his ways, too. Why not? It’s not like the whole fucking cabin is obsessed with mistery. Drew would probe more, if not for ‘Nico’s gossip’ being on the list of Cabin secrets that they’re all sworn on the Styx to not disclose elsewhere, right between ‘Valentina’s not a natural blonde’ and ‘Mitchel has a crush on Paolo.’ and followed by ‘Yuri’s prep phase photos.’
Really, anyone who hadn’t seen it coming was blind as a mouse. Nico di Angelo being absorbed by the Aphrodite cabin was the least unexpected event to come in the demigod world since the Hermes cabin tried stealing from the Hypnos cabin and ended up with a three days sleep coma that put the whole strawberry picking schedule way behind. Still, she remained stoic, and ungiving, Nico di Angelo would sooner trip and break his neck before gaining Drew’s sympathy.
Okay. Maybe she did have some things against him. Whatever.
And thus, when she finds herself heading to the Big House for her Ancient Greek class at a snail’s pace because it’s 10 a.m. and she’s everything but a morning person and she hates being told where to go to and what to do there and the familiar blur of black that is Nico di Angelo approaches her from the left, all she does is keep looking forward.
“Drew, can we, um, can we talk?”
“Right now?” she asks, sharp.
“I would like to.”
She quickens her pace. “I’m late.”
He quickens his pace alongside her. “Oh. But can we talk?”
“I already said no.”
“You said you were late.” Nico corrects, the Ds and the Ts and the Rs sounding much pointier than they are in English, because he had to have an accent. Of fucking course.
Drew is normally not a fan of accents, exceptions made solely for Nigerian accent and Japanese accent - all the other ones can fuck off. Especially the European ones. But she had to admit, there was some charm to the boy’s Italian consonants and the way the words rolled off his tongue.
“And that means no.” she huffs, rolling her eyes.
“Oh. I didn't know that. Sorry.” he apologizes.
He continues walking alongside her, as if waiting for a dismissal or something. With a groan, she stops on her track and stares at him.
“Okay. Fine, whatever. What do you want to talk about? And be quick.”
“Do you.. uumm.” Nico pauses, eyes screwed a little shut, cursing under his breath, like he’s chewing on his words before spitting them out. Lower, talking to himself, he mumbles “Gods, this is stupid.”
Drew checks on her nails, waiting for him to go on. Like, she may be a bitch, but she's a bitch raised as the youngest and only girl in an immigrant household. She knows it sucks to not be listened to. She can wait - a little.
“Do you have bad feelings for me because of the fact that you and Will used to date?” Nico asks finally. Drew resists the urge to charmspeak him to jump into the lake.
Instead, she screeches. “What?!”
“You and Will used to be in a relationship. Now me and Will are. Do you... Resent me? Or something like that?” Nico asks again, biting the inside of his cheek.
Drew frowns and points an accusatory finger at his chest. Thank Aphrodite she did her nails yesterday, or else she would have had to cross her arms instead, and she does not cross her arms in a long sleeve blouse. “Listen, death boy, I don't know what Will told you, but I'm the one who dumped him, not the other way around.”
“He mentioned.”
“Good.”
“But do you resent me?”
“I don't miss him. I broke it up, not him.” she says again, slower, maybe then the dude would catch up.
“Yes, you said that. It doesn't matter too much, I think.” he says.
Drew’s mouth opens with an astounded click.
“You fucking bitch!” she gasps “It does. I dumped him. He’s the dumpee, I’m the dumper. He should be hung up, not me. I’m over him.”
Nico nods minutely. “Okay. I just wanted to know if that's why you avoid me.”
“Of course not.” she hisses “Not with why I broke it up.”
“I don't know the reason.” Nico says. His frown was so deep the lines between his eyebrows looked like cuts from a dagger. Drew absentmindedly hoped that someone was giving him lots of facial massages, or else the boy would have wrinkles like a grandpa by the time he was 30. If he did reach 30, that is. (because that was a possibility now. Seriously, was anyone going to tell them demigods could reach adulthood?)
“Will didn't tell you?”
“I didn't ask”
“Why? Do you get jealous thinking of your boo’s ex?” She asks, willing her voice to sound as venomous as she feels. Nico, apparently, still didn’t notice it, and his eyebrows soften.
“No. I just didn't think it was my business.” he clarifies, looking up at her through his hair. Gods, he had nice hair.
Drew raises her eyebrows.
“Oh.”
There was a silence, during which Nico’s eyes didn’t leave hers once. Gods, there was definitely a reason people were freaked out by the dude. Too much eye contact - even if his eyes were definitely nice to look at.
“Should I ask again?” he asked. Drew sighed.
“I don't resent you.” she asked, and left it at that.
Nico’s face clears just a bit. Instead of a death glare, he was now sporting a frown. It was minutely better. “Okay. Okay, good. Thank you, Drew. Have a nice class.” he said, turning back.
“Do you not take it? The whole camp does.” she asks, before she was able to catch her own tongue. Fucking impulsivity. ADHD is a curse.
He turns around a little. “No.” he says in Greek. It sounded much better on his tongue than on hers. Not that she would be caught dead saying that. As if. “Chiron dismissed me.”
She nods once, and turns aways, marching to the Big House, where Chiron was already standing with his arms crossed waiting for the late strays to arrive.
Fucking weirdo, with a goddamn weird conversation, and he’s so weird , and she fucking despises that it’s not even weird in a completely horrible way, like Piper, or Lou Ellen, or the Hephaestus cabin (except for Manuel who’s actually her best friend who she would die and kill for, even if he has a mullet.), but just. Just weird. Neutral weird. And, okay, she knows she’s usually a little bitch - which is her Goddess given right, literally - but her thing with Nico is not bitching.
Nico di Angelo is weird, even if his hair is nice. Drew Tanaka, against the will of seemingly the entirety of Camp Half-Blood, is not letting that go because the dude apparently has a really nice face when he’s not starving to death.
She remembers - and seems to somehow be the only one to - how he, for the first week in camp, holed up in his cabin, and they would feel some weird energy coming from it - so much that the Hecate cabin had to perform an investigation to make sure it wasn’t another case of a haunted doll brought by the Hermes kids. That’s weird. Also, he knew about both camps? And didn’t tell anyone? Which should make everyone more suspicious than they were, but she made the mistake of letting a comment on that slide near Piper and Percy Jackson once and you’d think she’d insinuated that their parents were out there fucking each other in a church with the stare they’d shoot her, so she’ll let this one kind of slide. But seriously, what else did he know? What was he hiding? He spent way too much time in the literal Underworld, was he also having meetings with Amaterasu? Did he have afternoon tea with the Christian God?
Call her paranoid, but that’s not something a simple rebranding would let her forget. Even if that rebranding included getting him nicely fitted jeans and getting his cheeks plump and his hair looking a little shinier.
Okay. A lot shinier. Ugh, that boy did not deserve the hair he was blessed with.
Also, did no one else notice how he gets in the Big House, trailing behind Mr. D, and stays there for hours, and then leaves with a calmer face, or sometimes with tear stricken eyes that don’t really show that much because of how fucking dark his eyebags already are (seriously. Will better be giving this boy so many anti-aging treatments. And facemasks.), but Drew notices because she notices everything? She knows the other people (except Manuel. And Annabeth, she’ll give her that) are stupidly unobservant, but that’s too far.
Also, what was Mr. D even doing here anymore? Wasn’t he here in the 50s? Shouldn’t his sentence be up? Ugh.
In her mind, she makes a list. She calls it the Why The Fuck Aren’t We Discussing This list, and it goes:
1- Nico di Angelo is like, 90 years old.
2- Chiron was apparently leaving us to die at 15 knowing we could be going to college.
3- The Hunters of Artemis are all lesbians. 100%.
4- What’s up with that Rachel girl? Is she immortal?
5- Did the fucking Mother Earth die? Did they kill Mother Earth?
6- Is time all weird because of Kronos? Did they kill the physical manifestation of Time, too?
7- When is Mr. D leaving?
8- Why are they letting kids perform open surgeries in a wooden cabin?
9-Leo Valdez coming back from the dead
10- Is that Jason dude going to come out as gay already or what?
She relays her list to Manuel as he finishes welding a motor together. He listens to her attentively.
“I think Mr. D staying is a good thing. So is Leo coming back.” he says in the end “Also, I don’t think we killed Earth herself. Maybe just her personification?”
“Yeah, and then what if the whole world starts getting fucked up like time did?” she bites “Are we causing global warming because we killed the Earth?”
“I don’t think so, babes,” Manuel replies, wiping his forehead sweat with his forearm. Gods, he’d be so hot if he didn’t have a fucking mullet. Maybe she should cut it off when he’s napping. Give him a nice undercut. Would work wonderfully with his jawline. “Also, incoming.”
“Who-” she asks, turning around, but stops at the sight of Valentina, skipping to her with purpose a yard or so away. She doesn’t know. Who even knows what a yard is? Maybe the Athena kids.
“Drew!” she yells.
“Stop yelling, Valentina!” Drew yells back.
“You both stop yelling!” some voice comes from far away.
Valentina halts in front of her, hands in her coat’s pockets, sucking on a lollipop. Gods, Drew doesn’t even want to know what kind of deal she made with the Hermes cabin to get that.
“What do you want?” she asks, rispid.
Valentina takes the lollipop out of her mouth. “Where did you put the trimmer?”
“The nail trimmer?”
“No.”
“The extension trimmer?”
“No.”
“The hair trimmer?”
“Yep.” Valentina replies, popping the P at the end, and stuffing the lollipop back in her mouth.
“It’s on Mitchel’s third drawer.” she asks with ease. Valentine shoots her with a thumbs up, turning away and skipping off. Then, at the last minute - which she didn’t know at the time, but would prevent a tragedy, Drew goes “Wait, does Jason want a buzzcut again?”
Valentina turns around, walking backwards away, and yells something back, but Manuel is back to welding and Drew doesn’t hear it. With a huff, she kicks him in the shin and makes a stop motion with her hand. When he does, he calls again.
“What?”
“I said it’s not for Jason!”
“Who is it for, then?”
“Nico!” Valentina answers, and speeds away.
For a second, Drew’s brain freezes and short circuits.
Nico. With a buzzcut. With his plumping cheeks, and his too narrow neck? With his gorgeous, showstopping, progressively lucious black curls? Oh Heavenly Aphrodite, Drew’s blood boils.
“Valentina, stop!” she yells, voice so full of charmspeak even Manuel stops mid yawn next to her. “He won’t be getting a buzzcut.” she decides. “I’ll deal with him.”
With that, she storms off.
On her way to the Aphrodite cabin, she sees Laila from Hypnos and Elizabeth from Ares making out - called it -, Carlos from Athena looking longingly at Phoebe, Roman, - hopeless -, and Freda from Apollo screaming at Tristan from Hermes - out of nowhere -, but she doesn’t give any of those half a mind. Which is absulutely fucking insane, because ever since she was 11 and learned what sex and love were (much to the despair of her father), knowing other people’s relationship arrangements had been like cocaine to her. What was happening on this day?
She finally reaches the Aphrodite cabin and storms inside, finding Nico di Angelo sitting in a chair, feet propped up, with a towel draped over his shoulders. Behind him, Mitchel held the trimmer, already running. Drew’s heart stops, she swears it does, Gods she needs to go to the infirmary, she’s having a fucking stroke.
“Oh, hey, Drew!” says Mitchel, in a voice too casual for someone who’s about to commit a crime and then be murdered “Did Valentina send you? Don’t worry, I foun-”
“Stop!” she orders, as soon as she finds her voice again “Mitchel George Schmidt, drop that trimmer right now.”
Immediately, the boy drops it to the floor. She sags in relief.
“What’s wrong?” Nico asks confused.
“Move aside.” she says to Mitchel, taking his place behind the boy, and fishing her scissors from his other hand and the trimmer from the floor. “I’ll be dealing with your hair, di Angelo.”
“I just don’t want it in my eyes when I fight.”
“And I’ll be giving you a nice haircut that doesn’t waste this beautiful, beautiful hair. Mitchel, go away now.”
Mitchel squeals, hurrying out of the cabin, and closing the door behind him.
“Why are yo-” Nico starts, trying to look up, but Drew immediately grips his chin and forces it back down.
“Shut up and stay still. she orders, and gets to it.
Nico di Angelo, surprisingly, is quite the good mannequin. He stays still, and only flinches a little when she moves to his neck with the scissors. She was honestly expecting worse - usually, demigods who were active in fighting had a hard time relaxing around sharp objects, especially when it was Drew holding them flush against their necks, but Nico didn’t seem to mind much. At first, she thought of keeping it long, but the boy had a nice nape, one that would be framed nicely with a short-ish cut, but she still keeps the sides longer, working them around her fingers to mould some curls. Even more surprisingly, his hair takes to them with ease, leaving her to wonder just how curly it would be if cared for properly.
Finally, she gives him a tap on the shoulder and moves to fetch her mirror. “All done.” she announces.
“I can sweep the floor for you.” Nico offers, moving to stand up, but she keeps him still with a hand on his chest and hold the mirror - a nice nacre one, that had been in the cabin before her -, holding it in front of him.
“Whaddya think?” she asks.
Nico runs a hand through the curls. “It’s nice.” he rasps out.
She smiles smuggly and puts the mirror down. “I know. I’m great at this.”
Nico stands up, and reaches inside the back pocket of his jeans. “It’s 10 drachmas, right?”
“No,” Drew says before she can stop herself. She thinks of her conversation the other day, and mumbles out “it’s for free.”
“What? What for?” he asks, shocked, and Drew watches as his eyes steel down and his demeanor becomes some weird mix between angry and scared, like cat, hissing and hiding. “What do you want from me?”
She resists the urge to roll her eyes. “Nothing, di Angelo, by Persephone’s garden, I don’t want anything. Just say thank you and scram.”
Nico doesn’t react immediately, holds his cat position for a second, or three, before finally relaxing back.
“Thank you.” he says softly, stuffing his hands in the pockets of his sweatshirt, and leaving in a hurry.
She scoffs, and thinks nothing more of it. She sweeps the floor, content - her dues are done. Nico di Angelo had minded his own business, and Drew Tanaka had given him a cute haircut. Honestly, Will should be thanking her, too. She knew, like, ten people who would kill for their boyfriend to have a haircut half as decent.
But because she’s a nice, great person, she doesn’t hold him accountable for her blessings - love, after all, can be selfless. At least that would be it. No more Nico di Angelo for her - at least until the next Cabin gossip and self care evening, but by then he’d come in with hot gossip, which would kind of make up for it.
Okay. More than make up for it. Drew needs the details on Freda and Tristan. They were, like, seventh on the Aphrodite Cabin’s hottest couples list.
And it works that way - he comes for gossip hour, accepts cucumbers for his eyebags, lets Pamela do his nails, and relays his findings; Freda and Tristan broke up because Freda found Tristan chatting up Cecil ( Cecil! Drew did not see that coming. But she could kind of get why - Cecil was cute, in a stray dog kind of way); Annie B. and Mackenzie are together again. The new consensus is that the rumour about Aneesha was started by Eleanor - it hadn’t. It had been fabricated in that very room as payback for her cheating on Manuel, per Drew’s request. They all giggle about it.
Really, who cheats on literally the only boy under personal Drew Tanaka protection? Aneesha super had it coming.
Things are quiet for a couple of days, and Drew even manages to sneak out of camp with Mitchel to go get their nails done. A delegation from Camp Jupiter arrives, and Drew solemnly adds that Hazel Levesque girl to the top 15 prettiest girls on Camp(s), dropping Katie Gardner off the list. Sad. Between them arriving on Tuesday until leaving on Sunday, Nico is practically out of commission with how he’s being thrown around between Romans like a tennis ball, which makes Mitchel all bitchy with his absence. It also means that Clarisse has to take over his sword fighting lessons, which, if it makes Drew attend them by the bleachers to get a look at her fighting, it’s- it’s none of anyone’s fucking business.
On Saturday, then, it’s time for Capture the Flag. Which continues to be the worst fucking thing in the whole godforsaken Camp.
Drew, as she usually is, is stationed kind of as defense, but with no one really expecting her to hold her own. The most she’ll do is use some charmspeak. Maybe yell. She’s not good at these things, kay? The rest of the camp can have some weird ‘murderous rage’ kind of ADHD but she has the normal one where it takes her 6 hours to sweep the floor, and she’s changing her haircut and haircolour every 3 days, and she honestly felt like dying that one time Manuel told her he was too busy to help her change a lightbulb, and she’s never been capable of being brief, which she will be the first to admit.
She’s standing some 5 meters away from the red flag, walking in circles around a little tree sapling, when she hears shuffling footsteps and murmuring. She looks up, mid cuticle inspection, and looks back at the flag. Georgina from Ares is still next to it, looking prepared and attentive, so she just scoffs and goes back to her nails. Then, suddenly, something grazes her shoulder. She yelps, looking around frantically trying to find what touched her, but finds nothing. There’s a brief moment of silence before the shuffling is back, and something touches the small of her back. She yelps once more, this time louder, and the murmuring starts again.
“What the fuck?” she yells to the trees. She looks back, and Georgina is looking at her, a little amused. She bristles. “Come on, assholes, I’m not gonna stop you. Go bother that Ares bitch. Take the flag for all I car-”
It touches her again, this time on her calves, and she curses, stumbling forward and only barely managing to stop herself from face planting into a tree with her hands. Ugh, she’s going to get so many splinters. The murmuring turns to laughter, and she’s back to yelling at the trees for just a second before a sound comes from above her and she’s looking up-
Before she can even recognize the shape of Connor Stoll perched above her, she’s being yanked into the shadows, and the world is all just a blur of black and cold and a moist sensation in the air for a moment before she’s spit back out under a tree to the left, tumbling to the ground. She gasps and looks up. Next to her, standing up, is Nico di Angelo, armor hung loosely on his torso over a too big purple sweatshirt, Red helmet held under his right arm.
Where she stood is now a mass of fish guts and oil, smelling like absolute hell.
“Nico!” Connor Stoll’s voice rings in Drew’s ears. The son of a bitch is still perched on the tree, holding an empty bucket in his hands “I thought you were on our side!”
“We’re on the same side, stupid!” Drew yells back, though she doesn’t know where the voice came from exactly.
“Sorry, Connor,” Nico’s own, much softer spoken voice says “I owed Drew.”
Connow huffs, jumping off the tree and walking away, Drew and takes the moment to level Nico with her best is that so, bitch? stare.
“You owed me?”
“Yeah.” Nico answers. “For the haircut. I don’t understand why you did that, I honestly just wanted it to stop getting in my eyes.” Nico says, tugging at his sleeves to give him sweater paws. Gods, he’s going to ruin this sweatshirt so quickly if he keeps doing that.
Drew huffs. “If you didn’t like it, just say so.”
“No, I do like it. It’s nice. Hazel says it looks like Spencer Tracy’s.” he says, smiling a little. “I can still pay you, by the way.”
“No, dumbass. That was my… what do you call a positive payback?” she asks, 100% aware that it makes her look like a stone cold, vengeance seeking, heinous bitch. Which she can be - but is not being right now. Character development.
“A favour?”
“Yeah. That was my favour to you.”
Nico’s shoulders drop a little, his eyes widen. Fuck. Why does he have to be so expressive? It makes Drew miss three months ago when all his expressions were rage and rage 2.0. “Oh. What for?”
“For, you know-” she trails off, looking to the side.
“I don’t.”
“Ugh. For not asking Will about why I broke it off with him.” she spits out, frustrated “You mentioned it the other day, before Greek class, and I just thought it was nice of you. So I thought I should give you a positive payback-”
“A favour.” he corrects.
“Yeah, that.”
Drew bites the inside of her cheek. She wishes she could bite her lips instead, but she looks like a bird when she does, and she does Not want bubblegum pink lipstick on her teeth.
“It was nice of you,” Nico says after a moment “but you truly didn’t have to. Whatever you and Will talked about is none of my business.”
Drew squints at the boy, and takes a moment to study his face. Little pimple on his right cheek, eyebrows need some plucking, a lot of expression marks on his forehead and chin for a teenager. Some blackheads on his nose, but - surprising her to no end - no amusement. Not a trace of anything except honesty.
How a boy like him, coming from what he comes from - from the vague stories Drew’s heard around camp - could be so earnest, she could only imagine.
“Whatever.” she says in the end “Now you can stop owing me, and we can stop this favours thing.”
Nico smiles. His face contorts a little, like he was still smiling with the face of a 10 year old and didn’t notice that it had changed since then. “Okay. No favours anymore.”
Feeling particularly merciful, she offers him a tight lipped smile back, and watches him run off.
For the next few weeks, Nico and her don’t trade any more favours, but he’s still part of her day-to-day. He still attends the cabin gossip and self care evenings, and he still has the best gossip, and now, in a surprising development, he’s the one to give them face massages. Those callous infested hands are surprisingly firm, which she can appreciate. Slowly, and believe her, completely unintentionally, she starts hanging out a little more with him.
It’s a weird mix of a few things. It starts with her being forced by Chiron and Clarisse to, and quote, ‘delve into the other aspects of demigod life’ by the first and ‘stop being a prissy bitch’ by the second - which, by the way, Clarisse has a plethora of bad qualities, but she does know how to insult someone, and read a bitch, too, though she’s kept her wits to herself and hasn’t attempted that on Drew yet - and gotten a little beginner swordfighting lessons, which Nico apparently took over, now that Percy Jackson is only teaching canoeing and the advanced ones. She hates it and sucks at it, but Nico teaches her a few tricks that look kind of pretty. Then, the Hephaestus cabin takes word that Nico was the one to forge his sword, and now Manuel is deeply interested in how he did that - something about lava instead of fire or something. And though Drew hates being in the smelly and too hot forge, she’d hate even more to lose her righteous Best Friend time to Nico and his freakish sword that’s too long for his frail and tiny little body. Also, add that to the things that are off about Nico: how is a dude like him so short? He’s way too short. Like, Drew knows she’s tall as shit - a blessing, no matter what insecure guys say -, but even then, Nico should at least reach her head. Instead he tops off at her neck, barely reaching her chin. Maybe it has something to do with Hades and the earth. Maybe the Underworld has a ridiculously small ceiling height. Is Hades himself small? Maybe it’s just because he’s Italian. Either way, now she’s spending like three hours a week in a tiny forge with Manuel and Nico and she hates not hating it.
She will only say it once: Nico is kind of cool. In a quaint, quiet, solemn sort of way. Even when he’s making a joke or being dorky - ugh Drew hates that word. “Dork”. Just say stupid -, he still carries this regal air to him which she adores. She likes regal things. It’s why she refuses to go blonde.
It dawns on her on a Wednesday, the third day of Nico being pulled from his usual seat in either Apollo or Aphrodite cabin to seat between Percy and Jason at breakfast and at lunch and at the campfire and everywhere else ugh do those two need to monopolize their pet Reaper or something? She’s eating her lunch - fish, because she found an article saying that it keeps skin tight and she’s needing a bit of a pick me up - when Mitchel says something about missing him and Drew, absentmindedly, finds herself agreeing.
What the fuck?
Drew doesn’t dislike Nico. She doesn’t- oh, fuck it, in for a penny in for a pound. Drew really fucking likes Nico. Not in the way the Ares kids like his sparring and stories, not in the way the Hecate kids like to observe his shadow control, but in the way that she likes him for him, even with his weirdness and his off-ness. Wow, she’s really maturing, liking a goth.
She looks across the mess hall, at Nico, who’s eating his steamed vegetables - as he does almost every day - in petite little bites, and she knows her expression sours because Michaela is looking at her with a shit eating smile.
“Did you just realise you have a soft spot for Nico?” she asks, squinting.
“Ooh, is Drew having an epiphany about the growing fondness she feels for Nico?” Yuri joins in. Mitchel laughs.
“Oh, choke on it.” Drew spits in return. Mitchel stops laughing with a violent cough.
Three hours later, she’s in the arena, fighting for her fucking life trying to twirl her sword around her torso like Nico did when she stops abruptly, some weird feeling clawing at her throat. Is it- ugh, Gasp. It’s the feeling of willingly letting yourself be vulnerable out of a desire for closeness and trust that it will be handled with care. it smells like Ariana Grande’s new perfume.
“Nico.” she calls. Nico looks up.
“Yeah?”
“I’m a lesbian.” Drew says before she can stop herself. “That’s why I broke it off with Will. I thought that if I really couldn’t like it with him, I couldn’t with any other man.”
Nico stares at her with wide eyes. Her heart is at her throat.
“Oh. Why are you telling me?”
“I don’t know. I think I should try. You’re the second person I’ve told.”
“Manuel was first?”
“No. It was the picture of Manny Jacinto Isabelle keeps next to her mirror. I was a little drunk.” she admits. “Well, technically it was Isabelle. She’s sworn to secrecy on the Styx.”
“Do you want me to swear too?” Nico offers.
“Would you?” she asks, sounding so much smaller than she intended. Heavenly Aphrodite, what is happening to her?.
“Yeah.” Nico respondes, sheathing his sword, probably sensing that there wouldn’t be much more training anymore. “I made Jason swear on it, too.”
“Was he the first?”
Nico swallows, and hunches his shoulders in. “Yeah. It was during the last War. Cupid forced me to so we could get Diocle- it doesn’t matter.”
Drew scoffs. “It sucks that you were forced.”
“It does.”
he says and - okay. Who the
fuck
allowed this boy to have doe eyes?
“I’m glad you weren’t. Thank you for trusting me. Your secret is safe with me as long as it’s a secret. Swear it on the Styx.”
A thunder booms. Drew smiles - the one she’d reserved for Manuel when he gets emotional watching romantic comedies and Valentina when she’s being a child and her siblings back home when they’re being grown ups. Nico returns it.
It’s a nice sentiment, and if for nothing else, she’s glad things went how they did, so she can bask in it for a while. Nico’s the kind of person that you enjoy basking in things with. She tries finding a demigod reason why, but finds none. Maybe that’s just a Nico thing. And Drew knows she’s not an easy person, and that she bitches, and is kind of an asshole, and that she has a hard time making friends because of it, and she knows that Nico is too shy, and awkward sometimes, and that he’s tender and raw. But they stand to fit in some weird way.
She’s glad for that.