Just a cute, possibly angsty Leo and Nico friendship fic. No one is in Tartarus and Nico is on board. There may be spoilers for the books so if you don't want any spoilers than you probably shouldn't read this. Canon pairings will be mentioned (including Calypso later on) but the story will focus on the friendship between Leo and Nico.

Disclaimer : I sadly don't own Percy Jackson or any other recognisable franchises.

Leo was not having a good day. There had been a problem with the engines last night and he'd missed breakfast to fix it. Then, he'd finally emerged at lunchtime coated in sweat and grease to find the ship being attacked by a nice assortment of monsters. Not exactly his idea of fun. Especially as he'd obtained a nasty looking scratch on his arm. He had taken care of it himself, at that point he had been dying for a shower and Jason (as per usual) was suffering from another concussion. So no one had noticed the lowly mechanic slipping away. They also hadn't noticed his absence at lunch either, apparently.

The wound had taken a little longer than usual to wrap up, so Leo had gotten to the dining room just as the others had finished up. He didn't feel like eating alone so he went below deck instead to work on his "secret project" in the walls. He was just so close to finishing it that he had almost missed dinner as well. The lack of food didn't bother him too much, but the fact that his friends had seemingly forgotten about him kind of hurt.

He'd spent the entirety of dinner in silence. No one had questioned it. Hazel and Frank were too busy flirting, Percy and Jason talking about the previous attack and Piper and Annabeth were discussing female warriors from the past. At first, Leo almost didn't notice Nico lounging in the corner, half shrouded by shadows as usual. Leo frowned at the thought. Nico was a child of the big three like Jason, Percy and Hazel yet he never seemed to try and draw attention to himself. A bit like Leo, Nico always seemed a little out of place. Sure, the other boy intimidated him slightly (the dude had survived Tartarus alone) but Leo made a decision to try and get to know the other boy a little better. The worst that could happen was the other boy using his power as the son of Hades to kill him then re-animate him as an eternal slave, but Leo was going to look at the positives instead.

He got his chance a few hours later. It was getting late, and Leo was giving Festus a quick check up, when he noticed the other boy slinking over to the railing. Leo decided to take a chance and joined the other boy in staring into the waves. Nico nodded in greeting but silence still prevailed. They stayed like that for a short while, and Leo started shifting uncomfortably. Nico glanced over at him, and sighed. He turned so that he was leaning on the bar and faced Leo.

"Did you need something?" Nico sounded fed up, and Leo wondered if it would be really awkward if he just apologised and ran away. His cheeks flamed (though thank the Gods it wasn't literally this time) but then he noticed something in Nico's dark eyes. Was it curiosity? Or maybe Nico actually did want to talk to him. Leo found a smile growing on his face and Nico stared at him in confusion and maybe a little impatiently.

"Well as we aren't currently being attacked by some random monster and the my spanking hot war machine is sailing fine, I thought that I could finally talk to you." Nico appeared surprised by that.

"Why?" That emotion was still hidden in Nico's eyes so Leo pulled himself onto the bar and began swinging his legs to formulate a proper reply. Sure, he could speak to machines with ease, but give him a conversation with a living being and he would often mess it up within seconds. And something seemed to tell him that saying you seemed lonely and I am lonely wouldn't exactly cut it with the other boy.

"You're the only person on board who I haven't managed to annoy in some way yet." Leo almost face palmed at the stupid comment that he had just made. However, a very faint grin danced across Nico's features for a moment.

"So you came to me to get a full set then, have you?" Leo snickered.

"Oh no, if I was going to try annoying you then I would have done it in a place were I could hide behind someone else." Nico joined him in sitting on the bar, though his legs remained still unlike Leo's. The boys once again sat in silence, but it didn't feel as oppressive this time. Suddenly, Leo felt a sharp pain in his leg and realised that maybe swinging it wasn't going to do any good for the cut. He let out a small gasp of pain. Maybe all the work he had been doing hadn't helped either, he'd just gotten so caught up in his project that he'd completely forgotten about the cut. He could see blood starting to slowly stain his jeans. And he had really thought that he'd have been able to have an uninterrupted conversation with Nico. The Fates hated him.

Nico's P.O.V

Nico was still a little unsure on why the other boy was talking to him. It wasn't as if the fire user was mean or anything, but he was always rushing around fixing or making something. This was probably the first proper interaction that they had ever had. Nico didn't know what to make of the fire-user. Whenever he was with the others he laughed and joked and clowned around, yet Nico could always see something in the other boy's eyes. Something that looked very familiar to Nico. Pain and loneliness. That was probably the only reason that Nico had remained talking with the other demigod.

Leo had been silent for a short while, and from what Nico knew of him, that was quite unusual. He flicked his eyes over to the tanned teen and frowned when he noticed that Leo was staring at a steadily growing dark patch on the leg of his jeans.

"That doesn't look good." Nico spoke simply, though he couldn't help feeling concerned that Leo was injured and no one had thought to stop him from working. In fact, Nico hadn't seen Leo at breakfast or dinner and none of the others had seemed to mention it. Had the fiery Latino fell out with the others?

"Tis but a scratch." Leo laughed gently but Nico was even more befuddled than before. Horror appeared in Leo's at Nico's apparent ignorance.

"You've never seen Monty Python?"

"I did spend quite a bit of time stuck in a casino." Nico's words were a little bitter, and the other boy gave him an odd look. Thankfully, he seemed to shrug off the statement, as demigods he'd probably heard stranger things.

"Well you'll have to come to our next movie night so I can educate both you and Hazel at the same time." Nico couldn't believe that Leo was completely ignoring the blood on his leg in favour of coercing Nico into joining in on movie nights. Nico slid of the bar and turned to the other.

"If you'll come with me to fix up that wound than I'll consider coming to movie night." Leo appraised him for a moment as if trying to ascertain Nico's sincerity. Eventually though, he joined Nico in standing on the deck. And promptly almost fell over due to what must have been a stabbing pain in his leg causing the aforementioned limb to buckle.

Nico quickly reached out and steadied the unsteady son of Hephaestus. Leo flashed him a sheepish grin and Nico found himself rolling his eyes. He laced Leo's arm over his shoulder, ignoring the faint heat that the other boy constantly emitted.

"Thanks." Leo muttered. Nico just guided him down the stairs and headed towards the infirmary. A little voice in the back of his head reminded him that this was the longest he'd touched someone in a long while and he quashed that thought viciously. After all, if one of the others had came across Leo bleeding out on the deck and found out that Nico hadn't helped him, he doubted they would be pleased. Even if they did seem to be ignoring Leo a little bit lately. Nico ignored the voice that was now cackling about the fact that Nico wanted to be friends with the loud, annoying mechanic. Nico was just doing his part to help the quest. The fact that he couldn't even say that in his head without his voice wavering was disappointing. Valdez didn't need anymore friends and Nico was simply in a convenient place when the boy was bored.

Leo's P.O.V

Once they had reached the infirmary, Leo settled himself onto the bed with a slight sigh. He reached down to roll up his pants leg, but Nico's cold hand stopped him. Leo was going to question him when Nico started lifting his pants leg in a gentle way that Leo hadn't known Nico was capable of.

"It'll be quicker if I take care of it." Nico's voice was a little rushed and his cheeks were tainted ever so slightly with red. Leo nodded and relaxed as Nico unwrapped the bandages with nimble fingers. He heard Nico take in a sharp breath when the bandages were fully of his leg.

"Why didn't you tell anyone that you were wounded like this?" Nico's voice was shrill as he fumbled in the cupboard for some more bandages and a square of ambrosia.

"It's not exactly a life threatening wound." Leo almost laughed, but the dark look that Nico gave him stopped that laughter in it's track.

"You still should have taken some ambrosia." Nico bandaged the wound swiftly and broke a small piece of ambrosia off and returned the rest to the drawer before trying to hand the piece to Leo.

"There's no point in wasting any ambrosia on this." Leo refused to take the ambrosia from the paler boy who snorted in annoyance.

"It's not wasting it, it's using it for what it's meant to be used for, healing demigods."

"Yeah well this wound will heal in a couple of days anyway so there really is no point in using it." Leo crossed his arms stubbornly but found himself looking away from Nico's stare which had suddenly became a lot more intense.

"How do you know how long a wound like this takes to heal?" Leo shrugged and Nico sighed in exasperation (Nico seemed to have sighed a lot this night".

"Take the ambrosia and I promise I'll watch Minty Python or whatever it was." Leo grinned massively and decided that taking the ambrosia was a small price to pay for getting Nico to attend one of the ships movie nights. He took the godly food and ate it slowly, savouring the taste of his mom's tacos. Then he looked up at Nico who was currently looming over him.

"So ... what do you want to do now?" Nico remained staring at him in a deadpan manner. Yep, becoming friends with Nico was going to be a challenge. And what could Leo say, he loved a challenge.

So, hopefully I didn't screw Nico's character up too much (I've never written from Nico's P.O.V before). I hope you enjoyed it and feel free to leave me a review.