The Tale of the Strange Thoughts and Unceremonious Fish Facial Expressions

Fandom: Percy Jackson and the Olympians

Summary: Maybe Percy isn't always as oblivious as everyone believes him to be. Maybe, just maybe, he knows something that he should have known all along. Written while listening to I Love You by Avril Lavigne and Lost In You by Three Days Grace and a mix of other songs. Not a songfic. Oneshot. Read and Review please!

Pairing: Nico/Percy

Disclaimer: I don't own any of these characters or their personalities. They belong to the amazingly awesome Rick Riordan.

A/N: So, this is a prompt I got. Written to I Love You by Avril Lavigne and Lost In You by Three Days Grace and a whole lot of other songs that I couldn't keep track of. I'm going to dedicate this to a really awesome author. To likegallows, you're the bomb!

Percy's POV

Everybody gets those days where they just need to think. Days where they can just stop and take the time to figure shit out. Today was one of those days for Percy Jackson. He had been having these thoughts. Thoughts that had troubled him. Thoughts that seemed to scream at him to get figure them out. These thoughts were about Nico di Angelo. Percy just couldn't seem to make sense of him or the way he acted. He said that he didn't hate him, yet he pushed him away at every chance. He said that he would leave the minute the Athena Parthenon had been delivered to the grounds of Camp Half-Blood, but he didn't. And no matter what had happened, Nico always seemed to have his back. Maybe it wasn't awfully obvious. But Percy knew it. And he clung to this. He needed to make sense of his thoughts. Why was Nico like this? Why was he still here? These thoughts ate away at Percy's brain like acid ate away at the support structures of a building.

His thoughts would eventually lead him to come to the conclusion that there was something more. And that something seemed to be enough to make him take a risk he wouldn't ordinarily take. He took this risk the day he felt that he could not and would not deny it anymore.

He had begun by knocking on the door of the Hades cabin. He knocked again. No answer. So he did something that most of the campers would probably not do. He went into the Hades cabin without permission. Sure, maybe Hades would curse him, but Percy found himself not caring. The interior of the cabin was much like the exterior. Black. There was little furniture- only a single bed drowning in even more black, a small desk with an orb filled with swirling Greek fire, a small black couch that had Nico's black aviator jacket thrown across the arm, and a strange looking mirror that seemed to be engulfed by mist. Percy approached the mirror. And as he did, he did the mist moved violently and swirled before slowly retreating to the edges, revealing an image of a boy with hair as dark as night, sitting on the slopes of the lake. Percy's eye widened as he realized that it was Nico. Mesmerised, Percy reached out. But as his fingertips touched the surface of the mirror, the mist hissed and quickly covered the surface again. Percy pulled back quickly, thinking maybe that wasn't the brightest idea. So that was where Nico was hiding out. Percy knew exactly where he was.

Walking out of the Hades cabin with renewed purpose, Percy quickly covered the distance to the lake. Coming over the hill, Percy spotted a lone demigod sitting there, overlooking the calm waters. Slowly, he walked over to Nico. He stood there for ten seconds before Nico turned his tortured dark eyes on him, expression unreadable.

"Hey," Percy said.

"Hey" Nico said before turning back to look at the water. Percy took this as an invitation to sit down next to him. They sat there in silence for a while. Being in such close proximity to the water seemed to help calm Percy's nerves. What he was about to do was enough to make his insides tie themselves in knots. Eventually, the younger demigod, it seems, grew uncomfortable by the other's presence.

"What do you want, Percy?" His voice was smooth and velvety, but it held a note of uncertainty. Percy turned to look at him, his sea green eyes seemed to be about to overflow. They sparkled in a way Nico had rarely seen. Then Percy smiled and looked back at the lake before he spoke.

"So, I've been thinking these strange and insane thoughts lately. And they all have one thing in common. You." Nico wasn't sure he'd heard right, but before he had time to voice his confusion, Percy began to speak again.

"You see. These thoughts have all been very strange to me and I can't seem to get them to go away even if I wanted them to. And believe me, I don't want them to go away because I think I actually like them. You see, my brain seems to have gone the extra mile and thought beyond its usual endpoint." Nico suddenly became nervous and tried this time to interrupt.

"Percy- " Percy just held up a hand, silencing him

"Let me finish. Okay so, I've drawn to the conclusion that you don't hate me. Quite the opposite actually." Nico tried to get up but was suddenly pulled back down by the other demigod. He tried to glare and look as menacing as possible, but it was all overwhelmed by his fear at what the older boy was about to say.

"I said let me finish. So, I drew to the conclusion that you might like me. And then," Percy leaned in, his eyes looking straight into Nico's, moving his hand down to squeeze Nico's smaller hand lightly, "I came to the conclusion that I think I like you too, a lot." Dark, long lashes framed glittering sea green eyes as they said this. Nico, to say the least, was surprised. He knew how this must look, a sexy son of Poseidon, and then a pale son of Hades just sitting there with his mouth hanging open unceremoniously like a fish.

Then, almost as if the puppet strings attached to his limbs all snapped, his eyes looked at Percy's lips and then back at his eyes, before he hooked his other arm around Percy's neck, and kissed him, hard, on the lips. The kiss, though, actually not very much, spoke volumes. Pulling back just enough to see Percy's whole face, which was grinning, he whispered,

"What took you so long, Seaweed Brain?" Percy's answering chuckle was all Nico needed before he leaned in to kiss his Sea Prince again.