Chapter 1 - Travelin' where the wind is blowin'

A/N: Hello everyone! It's been a while, but I am happy to announce that I am finally returning to publishing fanfiction :) I started writing this story months ago and I've nearly finished the first draft, but I haven't uploaded any of it until now because I kept on telling myself that I don't have enough time for writing and editing. However, my school holidays have just started so I should have lots of free time. I'm hoping that the fact that I've already posted the first chapter will spur me into working on it. Fingers crossed!

About this story: It's a university AU about Solangelo, with Nico as the main character, following him as he comes to terms with his sexuality and learns to trust people. It's inspired by the song 'Save My Life' by P!nk and all of the chapter titles are a line out of it. If you listen to the song it should give you a good idea for where I'm going with this story, but I haven't stuck exactly to it - for example I will not be covering topics such as drugs and suicide, so don't worry about that.

I hope you like the story! Please leave me a review to let me know what you think :)

The winter wind kicked up again, biting into Nico's skin even though his many layers of clothes. He shivered and huddled closer to his friends, for once putting aside his hate of physical contact in the name of warmth. "Can't we just go in the library?" Nico groaned. "I'd like to regain feeling in my limbs."

"Come on, Nico." Percy grinned. "It's not that cold. Just move around. Keep your body moving!" Percy started jogging on the spot to prove his point.

"Percy, stop it." Out of the corner of his eye, Nico could see Annabeth shaking her head, half amused, half disapproving.

"What's wrong?" Percy jogged around them in circles, staring at Nico the whole time. "Is there a problem? How about some starjumps, would that help?" He demonstrated to prove his point, and Nico had to focus hard to fight back the smile that always threatened to emerge whenever Percy was being Percy.

"Are you fucking serious right now?" Nico deadpanned, but Percy was undeterred.

"You're the only one being serious around here, grumpy bum. Lighten up!" Nico was struggling to decide if he wanted to punch him in the face or kiss him when Annabeth read the anger in his face.

"Leave him alone," she said, pulling Percy away from Nico and into her embrace. Nico sighed as the scene that was so typical of their friendship for the last few years drew to a close.

The three of them had been friends since they were children, having grown up on the same street, back in the days when making friends was as easy as knocking on someone's door, and all you had to have in common was age. Though they had all changed over the years, they stuck together through everything, no matter what. The last few years had been hard on Nico. He lost his sister and mother in a car crash when he was 10, and for a while he felt as though he had died along with them. The accident had broken his father too. Instead of their shared loss bringing the two of them together, Hades faded away and slipped into the background of Nico's life, spending the majority of his time working and leaving Nico to fend for himself.

At least he'd had his friends to support him through his grief, but the pain of the loss had driven a wedge between him and them that still hadn't completely disappeared. It didn't help that, a few years later, he developed a crush on Percy. At first, Nico had spent a few months hoping that maybe there was a chance that Percy liked him back, but then he started dating Annabeth, and the truth of who he liked became painfully obvious.

The crush still hadn't faded, no matter how much Nico had tried to get over him, and Percy and Annabeth were still together. It didn't help that Nico hadn't been with anyone else. He had just barely accepted his sexuality. There was no chance of him coming out to anyone any time soon. Even Percy and Annabeth didn't know the truth about him.

"We won't be out here for much longer." Annabeth told him, breaking Nico out of his thoughts. "We're just waiting for Jason and some others to get here." Nico frowned, trying to remember which one Jason was. Since the three of them had started university a few months earlier, the other two had become total social butterflies. They had made so many new friends in all of their classes, and now their conversations were filled with names that he didn't know. Nico had met a few of them, but it was so hard to keep track that he gave up trying.

Nico hadn't made any new friends of his own. He wasn't a people person at all. He couldn't bring himself to start a conversation with a random stranger, through a combination of many things: not really knowing how; being afraid of rejection; and just plain not wanting to. Nico got by fine just as he was. He had Percy and Annabeth. He didn't need any other friends.

Nico was saved the struggle of trying to recall Jason's face by his arrival, which then brought on memories of a serious-looking blond guy who had joined them for a study group. "Hey everyone!" He greeted, flinging an arm around Percy. Jason turned to the girl that had arrived with him. "Piper, you know Percy and Annabeth, right?" He barely even waited for her to nod before continuing, turning to Nico. "And this guy is...Nicholas?" He frowned. "Sorry dude, that's not right is it?"

"Nico." He said, staring at his feet.

"Nico! Right. Cool." Jason clapped a hand on his shoulder, and Nico flinched away. Jason backed away, his hands held up in surrender. "Sorry, sorry, sorry, I just-"

"Don't worry about it." Nico told him, still unable to look him in the eye.

In the awkward silence that followed, Nico internally scolded himself for being so socially inept. He couldn't even couldn't even meet someone new without offending them and ruining the mood. "How about we go inside?" Piper said, her voice sounding strangely calming for someone that he had just met, and he followed the group into the library with only minimal mumbling about how they could have just met Jason and Piper inside and not have had to go through freezing their arses off.

They found another group of people that they knew to sit down with. Once Nico's group had settled down, Annabeth pulled out her books to study but the rest of them started chatting to each other. Nico, however. found himself lost in thought again . It happened often when he was in a big group of people. He found it too hard, stressful, and overwhelming to keep up with it all. It was easier to just not try.

He was in the middle of a nice thought when Percy dug an elbow into his side and brought his attention back to the people around him. "What?" He huffed, but he didn't back away from him. Percy was an exception when it came to his no-touchy rule, and even Nico himself couldn't figure out exactly why. It was a mix of him being an old time friend, Nico's trust in him, and – of course – Nico's crush on him. He would rather give more cause for any accidentally touching between the two of them. He hoped Percy didn't notice how different Nico acted around him compared to other people, and that if he did, he assumed it was just because of how long they had known each other.

"Are you coming?" Percy asked him, and then smirked when he realised that Nico had no idea what he was talking about. "To Jason's party." Seeing that he was about to protest, he quickly added, "It's not really a party, it's more of just a casual get together between friends. And we'd all want you to be there with us. Please?" Nico looked away from him before Percy could turn on the puppy dogs eyes that always turned his will to mush, and sought out Annabeth to bail him out.

Unfortunately, on meeting his gaze Annabeth just shrugged. "I think you should come and meet some people. It would be good for you. You've spent too much time hiding away by yourself." Feeling the eyes of everyone staring at him, Nico flushed. It was bad enough that he had to be friends with the two most outgoing people in the world. It was bad enough that they teased him for his completely opposing personality when they were hanging out just the three of them. But for them to bring it up in front of a bunch of strangers was mortifying. He could feel them all judging him, making notes in their heads that he wasn't someone that they wanted to hang out with, that anyone wanted to hang out with, and he absolutely detested the feeling. This was why Nico kept his social activities to a minimum.

He tried to tell himself that he didn't care what they thought. It worked most of the time, but not today. Today he had had enough. Today Nico felt as though he wasn't just embarrassing himself, but he was letting Percy and Annabeth down. They'd probably had enough of his antisocial crap by now. He sometimes wondered why they even bothered to spend time with him anymore. A strange feeling of self-pride rose up in him, and he decided that he couldn't let any of the students around him think any less of him.

"Fine. I'll go. Happy now?" He tried to play it casual with a roll of his eyes, but his words just brought on a new buzz of conversation about the party, telling him all the details and about how excited they all were for him to be coming. He did make an attempt to keep up and show some enthusiasm, but it was hard when they were all talking over each other and not waiting for him to reply before rolling on with their next point. And then there was the fact that a get together meant meeting people, which was something that he rarely enjoyed. But Nico had gotten himself into this position anyway, and he knew his friends too well to think that they would let him make an excuse and back out of it now. He knew that somehow or another he would be dragged into it, and that there was no use fighting it.

And so Nico just sat there letting their words wash over him, wishing that he could grow a backbone and didn't always travel where the wind was blowing. Because most of the time that wind was fucking freezing and he just wanted to take shelter from it.