The Power of the Chopstick

Jason liked Nico. A lot. He thought the guy was great, aside from his habit of tidying absolutely everything up into pinpoint precision. He wasn't irritating, or rude, or mean spirited. He slotted neatly into Jason's life as Leo or Piper did, even though Jason hadn't known him as long. And despite his powers, he seemed oddly normal, as he made them seem natural and effortless.

Except when he was doing crosswords on Sunday mornings.

"You're such an old man," Jason said fondly, Nico perched on the back of the couch and using Jason's head as a table for his newspaper. "And I'm pretty sure that's still cheating.

Nico taps his head and Jason stops moving obligingly. "My mother did these religiously."

"Really?"

"No, but it's better than nothing." Jason felt a little scratch on the crown of his head as Nico filled in another answer. "I'm dyslexic. When I was little, Bianca encouraged me to do crosswords to improve my reading and writing."

"You're dyslexic?"

Nico stopped writing then slid down to sit next to Jason. "A little. It's not so bad anymore now that I've worked past most of it. It still trips up occasionally, but it's easier."

Jason could only just wrap his head around this. The idea of Nico (Geeky Nico, well-read Nico, bookshop Nico, author Nico.) being dyslexic was alien. He supposed it made sense. Nico's handwriting had never been neat; he scrawled and scribbles until he ran out of space.

Jason's writing was vastly different. He was neat, tidy, legible. He had a tendency to write slowly, paying careful attention to the amount of space on the page and his choice of wording. He liked having an end result that was perfectly written, aesthetic and content wise.

He watched Nico's pen move, then turned back to his book. It was required reading for one of his classes, sadly, and as dry as the Sahara on the summer solstice.

They were quiet for a long while, until eventually Nico let out a tiny sigh.

"Are you okay?" Nico asked, shifting and glancing up at Jason a little awkwardly. He was always slightly reserved when it came to emotional conversations.

"I'm fine?" He hadn't meant for it to sound like a question.

Nico swirled the pen around in his fingers. "You can talk to me, if you want. I don't mind."

Jason smiled reassuringly and shook his head. "It's okay, I'm really alright."

"I want to know."

Jason eyed him sideways, and he met his gaze earnestly. "It's just some family trouble, don't worry. It's fine."

Nico smiled, humourlessly. "I'm the president of the shitty family club. Do tell."

"It's nothing big."

Nico let out an exasperated huff and threw his hands into the air. "Jason. I like you a lot. I hope you like me. So trust me, I know what it's like to bottle stuff up and not want to bother people with it. But when you do that, it bothers people even more, because they want to help you but you won't let them; and it hurts, because it means you don't trust them."

"I trust you," Jason assured him. "But it really is nothing important."

"Then it won't bother me if I know about it." Nico put down his pen and newspaper, moved to hug his knees to his chest, and looked at Jason with gentle eyes. "Sometimes… it does actually help to tell people. You may think it won't, but it does."

Jason sighed, then smiled at Nico, who to his credit just nodded encouragingly and smiled back.

"My sister Thalia's moving further away," Jason said. "We haven't seen each other in ages, and we don't see each other a lot anyway, but…"

"Thalia?" Nico frowned. "Thalia Grace?"

Jason nodded, and Nico sighed. "I knew her. She went to the same school my sister went to. Where's she moving to?"

"I don't know. She wanders a lot, but I get the feeling she's going out of the States." Jason shrugged. "I only met her again when I was seventeen. I liked being able to see her if I wanted to, you know? But I guess that's just the way the cookie crumbles."

"You're not that blasé about it," Nico said flatly. "It's… it's okay to be angry."

Jason just shook his head. "I can't."

Nico blinked, evidently taken aback. "Why not?"

"Because," Jason said, then broke off, struggling to define exactly why he couldn't articulate his emotions. "I just can't. I shouldn't."

"Why not?"

Nico wouldn't let Jason abandon the subject, and he found himself uncharacteristically bothered by it. "Because it's not right. I've got better things to be doing."

"Better than your emotional health?"

"I'm healthy."

Nico crossed his arms, but his gaze on Jason's was incredibly kind. Jason sometimes forgot how caring Nico was, despite his harsh exterior. "Are you? Or have you just been repressing things for so long that you've forgotten what truly healthy is?"

Jason opened his mouth to answer then stopped, thinking. "I…"

Nico let him think until Jason sighed and leaned his head back onto the back of the couch. "I don't know. I've never really thought about it."

"Take some time," Nico said, picking up his pen and fiddling with it. He didn't look at Jason, just capped and uncapped the decorated pen, and Jason found himself missing the weight of his dark eyes. It felt like Nico was dissecting Jason, peering into his mind and taking him apart piece by piece. Nico's eyes were hypnotising, even if the rest of him originally seemed disconcerting; anyone with such unfathomable care in their eyes must be someone to trust.

So Jason took time. He sat next to Nico on the sofa, holding his book in one hand and his other running through Nico's hair. Occasionally he would turn a page, just for appearances, until Nico called him out on it and rolled his eyes, reaching over to turn back to the previous page.

"I know how fast you read," he said, "and it's definitely slower than that. Let me finish the page, at least."

"You know my reading speed?" Jason asked amusedly. He was used to Nico reading his books over his shoulder.

Nico flushed, swatting at Jason and taking the book from him, pen returning to its habitual position behind his ear. "I've been watching you read for a good six months, Jason."

Jason blinked. "Six months? It feels like longer."

"You idiot," Nico said, but he couldn't quite hide the fondness in his voice, although Jason could tell that he was trying to.

Much later, Nico was just opening the door to leave when Jason said, "I'll call you later, if that's alright?"

Nico turned to look at him, then nodded and simply said, "Okay," before shutting the door quietly.

Jason went to bed in the futile knowledge that he wasn't going to be getting much sleep tonight and he knew it.

Jason wasn't an introspective person. He tended to care and worry more about other people than himself, because while he did need to be in a good condition to help others – whether it be on the football team or in his classes or just on the street – he didn't really think about it. He had his habits, his routines, and so far they had all worked to keep him fit and healthy. Theoretically, he knew that mental and emotional health were important as well, but he just assumed that he was fine. He didn't have any mental illnesses, thank God, and he was happy, so therefore he was healthy.

Nico didn't appear to believe that to be the case. And that worried Jason, because not only was Nico very rarely wrong, but he also spoke with authority. With the air of someone who knew what they were talking about.

It made Jason wonder, and not just about Nico. It made him wonder about himself, and he really was not used to that. He didn't know how to evaluate his emotional moods, and Jason liked knowing things.

Eventually, he gave up. He reached over to the bedside table, unlocked his phone, and called Nico.

"Hello?" Nico asked, possibly even more awake than Jason was.

"Hi."

"Hi."

Jason was silent for a while. "Anger is a secondary emotion, right?"

There was a shuffling sound on the end of the line, and then Nico's voice came clearer. "Pretty much. You only get angry because it's triggered by something else, like hurt or frustration or sadness."

"So is it good if I don't get angry? You know, about stuff."

"Only if you're expressing the emotion that the anger would stem from, I would think. If you're sad, and you express that you are sad, then your friends can help you move on and deal with the sadness. If you're sad and you don't tell anyone, or you don't fully recognise it, then I think it's unhealthy."

Nico spoke in a matter-of-fact manner that reminded Jason of a doctor, which made sense given Nico's major.

"How can I fully recognise something I don't even realise I'm feeling?"

"Don't think about it," Nico advised. "Close your eyes, let everything go, and just feel. It could be overwhelming or underwhelming, depending on what you're expecting or how strongly you feel other things, but my advice would be to just sit back and try to feel as naturally as possible."

Jason took a few deep breaths and tried to do as Nico said. It felt odd, trying to dredge up feelings that he subconsciously repressed, but as he slowly let out breaths, little things began to slot into place. He felt calm when he heard Nico's breathing across the line; he felt amused when he saw the posters taped to his ceiling; he felt stressed when he saw the beginnings of an essay on his desk.

He closed his eyes, and listened as Nico prompted him.

"Your sister is leaving. How do you feel?"

Sad. Betrayed.

Frustrated. Resigned.

"I feel lonely."

Free. Scared.

Lost. Angry.

"And it's not fair."

"Why isn't it fair?"

Angry.

"Because I just found her again. Fifteen years of silence, and then we found each other again. And now she's leaving."

"Are you angry?"

"Yes."

"Why are you angry?"

Helplessness.

"Because there's nothing I can do to change it."

"Then what are you going to do?"

Jason sighed and opened his eyes, rolling over and letting the anger wash away. A faint sense of serenity replaced it, and the answer occurred to him in a sudden flash of brilliance.

"I'm going to write, and you're going to help me."

He could practically hear Nico's smile across the phone. "Not at twelve o'clock at night. Go to sleep. I'll see you tomorrow."

"I'll hold you to that."

"I don't doubt it," Nico said, and then ended the call.

True to his word, Nico turned up at Jason's door at nine in the morning, carrying a brown paper bag. At first, Jason was a little reluctant to know what was inside it, but then Nico withdrew several A4 sheets of Styrofoam.

"What…"

"I'm assuming you have a chopstick somewhere?"

Jason nodded and moved off to get one, returning just in time to see Nico arranging the boards out over the dining table.

"Quick and easy engraving," he explained, and Jason was impressed. It was a clever solution to an otherwise useless power. "I thought you might want to try writing on them."

So they sat down at the dining table, Nico showing Jason exactly what it meant to be a wordsmith. It was about recognition, about realising that words held power, and then using that power in a means that suited the wordsmith. Jason's engraving was precision perfect; his handwriting made it all the more easier, and he wondered idly if it had been a subconscious alert.

After half an hour, Jason had six boards all engraved with different words; how he was feeling, why he felt that way, what he could do about it, things he would say to Thalia. It was therapeutic, in an oddly invigorating way.

Nico had relaxed after a while, occupying himself with a deck of colourful cards. Whenever Jason had a question, or stopped writing, or put his head in his hands and trembled, Nico would look up and rest a hand on his forearm. The touch helped, for some reason, and Jason found himself calmer and able to focus on what he was doing.

(If Nico occasionally got shocked, well, that was just Jason's frustration.)

"That helped," he said, leaning back and stretching. "How…?"

Nico shrugged. "Emotions are weird. Sometimes it's easier just to put a pen to paper and see what comes out."

Jason stared pointedly at the chopstick and the Styrofoam.

"You know what I mean." Nico looked mildly exasperated for a moment, a look which was actually quite attractive on him. It could just be because it was his go-to expression for anything unexpected, though. "Did it help?"

"Yeah," Jason said. "Yeah, it really did."

A/N: I just wanted to write fluff sue me.

- Bronwyn