Author's Note: Okay, I could give some bum excuse about my being away but I won't. I trust you guys realized I'm human, life gets in the way, I really want to have like ten updates to bring to the table to beg for forgiveness but at the moment every new chapter for my other stories are under construction.

So, as sort of a peace offering, and as a bit of bait so you guys know I'm still trying to work on fan stuff, I'm giving you this preview/introductory chapter to my next story. The title is really cheesy, but it just sort of sticks. Don't expect an update for this one for a little while, put it under the alert tag because I'm going to focus on my other stuff before I start this one off properly but I got this done and wanted it read.

It's short by my standard writing length, but its done. I hope you guys like the sort of polish I put on their personalities, I know you're all used to a certain something with my versions of Percy and Nico but I changed them a bit, as this thing goes on. If you stick with me I think I'll give you something in this story that I haven't been able to in any of my others.

At least, I hope so.

Summary: Percy Jackson had gleaned a couple of things from the return of Nico di Angelo in his life: One, everything is better when you're drunk. Two: cigarettes taste bad but could be worse. And three: he might possibly be the teeniest-tiniest bit unequivocally homosexual.

Chapter One

Take a Summer evening in the rural outskirts of New York, Keene Valley, New York to be more specific. Eventually you'll find a cabin filled to the brim with two families on vacation, the Jacksons and the di Angelos. Both, at the time, are a relatively young couple and both have children. The Jacksons: Don and Sally, have one boy named Percy; the di Angelos: Maria and Hades have a boy and a girl.

Tonight was a semi-special occasion, Don—whose full name is Poseidon—had been recently promoted at work. He was now a CEO for Fulton and Barns shipping company and to celebrate they had all decided to take a small vacation, a reprieve really. In a few days they would all be back home going about their individual lives again. Sally was a customer consultant for Nording Electronics, a job she insisted on keeping no matter how much money her husband made. The domestic life had never suited her much, even as a girl she had always preferred to make her own way through life instead of relying on others. Maria, however, was a homemaker—which she felt was just as important as being a woman of independent means; her husband Hades, a tall, slim, private sort of man with eyes darker than black diamond and a gaze sharper than a razor's blade, made his living as a writer. He had a small bit of celebrity, his books had won some inconsequential prizes here and there and he made more than enough on royalties to keep his family fed.

Currently Don and Hades, who would not accept any form of nickname that anyone tried to come up with, were smoking cigars in the sitting room while their wives sat in the kitchen discussing current events and drinking wine.

Their children, however, were upstairs. That's where the real story begins.

Perseus (Percy) Jackson was nine-and-a-half years old. Actually, he was nine-and-three-quarters, his birthday was in a few months but his dad told him not to split hairs about it and to stop bringing up the much wanted Gameboy Advanced or he wasn't going to get it; so he had stopped talking about it, at least with the grown-ups anyway. Percy was one of those kids who some might label as "rambunctious" or even "obnoxious" but underneath all of his debauchery he was relatively sweet. His smile, though missing a front tooth, could melt even Hades' standoffish demeanor to some degree, like the time he had broken the di Angelo's window with a baseball that had gone awry after an awesome swing from his Louisville Slugger. To be fair the wind had been awfully blustery that day and everyone knew Ethan Nakamura couldn't pitch worth a dime, still, that window had been at the right place at the wrong time; not that it wasn't always there; it was just a particularly more wrong time that day.

Percy's face was beginning to slim, his cheeks had lost some of their incredible rosiness and he was slowly transforming into the young man he would soon be. His brown hair was cut short thanks to his dad's obsession with keeping it that way, something about him looking "presentable" whatever that meant, and his eyes were as blue as a crisp October's morning. Currently Percy was talking to Bianca, Hades' and Maria's oldest. To Percy Bianca was a strange, wonderful creature who spoke her mind and did what she wanted anytime she wanted. In reality this was true to some degree, she was strong willed and intelligent, she was also quite mindful and respectful of her parents and other adult and to a boy who was almost ten this was unfathomable. She was very withdrawn, but refused to stay silent when things needed correcting, like Percy's improper use of certain words. There was obviously never a such person as Vlad the In-Frailer, no matter how much Percy believed it to be true. Impaler. Vlad the Impaler.

Bianca, who took to her father's stance on nicknames, was indeed a strange girl, by the standards of the nine-year-old community. She wasn't taken to playing with dolls, nor with sports, nor much of anything really. She liked reading, mostly her father's books—the ones he deemed her old enough to read—but occasionally she could be caught with a Charlie Bone or a Pendragon here and there. She wasn't inherently bookish but she preferred it to stupid things like make-up and Barbie Malibu Houses. She was a thin girl with eyes much too big for her face and a quick scowl that would present itself anytime an adult tried to talk down to her as if she did not understand something. She hated being babied.

Her hair was wavy, it was a shade darker than night itself and sat choppily against her head cut to the nape of her neck by a pair of green safety scissors. Her mother had not been happily about the impromptu change in style, but Bianca thought she looked better with shorter hair—even if Sissy Jenkins called her a tomboy everyday at school. It probably didn't help that she wore clothes that were about a size too big for her because they were more comfortable. Her mother also didn't appreciate that she didn't think much of pretty dresses and fashions, but Bianca would shrug her shoulders and dive back into her stories.

"I'm gonna get a Squirtle, 'cause water Pokémon are the best." Percy was saying to her, "That is when Dad gets me a Gameboy for my birthday, do you wanna watch Pokémon with me? I got some tapes in here we could put in the VCR?"

"No thanks," Bianca replied, "I only have a few more chapters left in this stupid assigned reading," She held up the yellow colored book. "I don't even like Nancy Drew." Then she blew a strand of hair out of her eyes and turned the page. Percy looked a bit crestfallen, only because he really liked Pokémon and he wanted his friend to like it too, but she seemed more inclined to being boring.

"I'll watch it, Percy." A timid voice spoke up, it was younger than even their young voices by two years and Percy hardly ever heard it. He looked up at Nico di Angelo, who some might call "precious" and others might call "adorable" but underneath it all he was really very shy. Nico, like his sister, had gigantic eyes and like his sister's they were incredibly brown, stupendously brown even. They were the same brown as the sand of the Sahara desert, an ashy, breathtaking sort of pale. But, they looked browner by comparison to his ivory white skin. Nico was not a boy who liked stepping outside a lot. His hair was unusually shaggy since his father didn't take much stock in forcing him to cut it if he didn't want to, and fell like inky rivulets all around his hair. It was wavy, like Bianca's, but without the frayed edges thanks to dull scissors. Across his small, button nose was a sea of freckles that spanned from one cheek to the next without breaking.

Nico was also not prone to smiling, though when he was amused his eyes would sparkle brightly and he would, for a time, become much more extroverted.

"You like Pokémon?" Percy asked, sounding obviously surprised considering that Nico never really seemed to like anything. He just sat behind his sister, or watched them play outside when Percy could drag Bianca away from the nook she read in. Nico nodded, his shoulder-length hair bobbing with the movements. Then Percy grinned, "Cool. I'll go get the tapes!" Then he was scampering to the hall closet where his mom forced him to keep his VHSs because he had a tendency to leave them strewn out all over the place if he didn't. When he returned he popped the movie in and was forced to rewind it since he had not done so last time he watched it. "Who's your favorite? I bet it's someone stupid like Jynx?" Percy said with a teasing, snaggle-toothed grin.

Nico, who was unused to teasing, immediately reddened in the face, "Nuh-uh! I like Gengar," He said, sounding triumphant to have overturned what he had perceived as an insult. Percy conceded this as the tape stopped and immediately began to play. Bianca rolled her eyes and muttered "Boys." Then she continued on through the harrowing adventures of Nancy Drew.

That Summer, when they came back from the cabin, Percy made sure to make more of an effort to hang out with Nico, since Bianca seemed more and more loathe to be fun. "Girls." Percy said sitting in the fort they had built in which to watch television. It was a Saturday and Nico had slept over, they were still in their pajamas considering that it was morning time and were currently trying to catch up on Dragon Ball Z, a show Sally deemed too violent but Don had told her boys would be boys and so she let them have it.

"What about them?" Nico asked, taking a bite of his cereal with more marshmallows than actual grain shaped 'o's.

"I don't know, I just don't get 'em." Percy replied in an almost exasperated voice, as if he had been thoroughly researching "girls" and could not, for the life of him, figure them out.

"What's to get?" Nico wondered tearing his eyes away from a wonderfully intrepid fight scene wherein Goku, the main character, was battling Captain Ginyu, a decidedly bad guy.

"Well…" Percy sighed. "I mean, my Dad says I'm gonna start liking 'em soon and that I better be extra nice to Bianca 'cause she's going to be really pretty like your Mom, but I don't think I care about them being pretty. I wish they just wouldn't giggle so much, you know? They're always giggling." Giggle was a word Percy had recently learned. "I mean what's to giggle about? There's nothing funny about the way I walk, they always giggle when I walk by."

"Mom says if a girl laughs at you she likes you," Nico interjected, stuffing his mouth full of sugary cereal. Percy pulled a face at that remark.

"Gross." He said.

"Yeah," Nico agreed, though the word was slightly muffled around a spoonful. "I'll never like 'em."

It was the start of a new school year, Nico—who was showing signs of being rather intelligent—had been promoted to the sixth grade a year early, putting him just behind his sister and Percy, whom he considered to be his best friend.

His only friend, really.

It worried Maria and Hades, who were both a bit older now, that their son didn't seem to make friends well but they hoped spending time with Percy in junior high would do him some good as Don and Sally's boy was a social butterfly. Nico stepped off of the bus where Bianca quickly told him to have a good day and made her way to her class and he was left alone in the mass of other students who all seemed much bigger than him. He had been attending now for a good two months, which was just long enough to earn him a nickname. "Hey, look, it's The Baby!" Luke Castellan, a tall, athletic seventh grader smirked as he came closer.

"Baby need his diaper changed?" Someone else in Luke's group of boys chided in a purely childish voice.

"Don't you know you have to be this tall to get into our school, little baby?" Travis Stoll, another towering seventh grader, grinned, standing behind Luke. He was holding his hand just barely above Nico's head. Nico, in turn, blushed furiously, embarrassed, and trained his eyes on the ground. The first bell rang, but Nico realized that his antagonizers were not going to part for him to walk by.

"Go home, baby, we don't need you in our school." Maybe it was because he was the smallest kid in school, or maybe it was his otherwise innocent appearance with his flushed cheeks and his watery eyes, but Nico was an easy target for them. He was near tears as they advanced on him; he wanted to tell them that he was not a baby. That he was really smart and that they let him skip a whole grade to be there. But, his mouth was twitching as he desperately held back a pathetic sob and his eyes itched with unshed crying. Still, they marched on. This wasn't the first time Luke and his friends had bullied him and he knew it wouldn't be the last. He had the bruise on his arm to prove it.

"Hey, leave him alone!" Nico looked up; standing behind him now was Percy.

"Or what?" Luke asked, sneering.

"Or I'll tell everyone about the time your Dad caught you wearing your sister's skirt, Princess Luke." Percy threatened, to which his opposition seemed thoroughly dissuaded. Luke set his face in an unfriendly frown and crossed his arms though his embarrassment was apparent as his cheeks became increasingly red. The other boys around him were looking at him with questioning glances but he paid them no mind.

"We'll see you later, little baby, when your boyfriend isn't around." His group of flunkies laughed and they made it inside as the second bell rang, signifying that Percy and Nico were now late. Nico was stock still, he dared not look up at Percy, for some reason the word "boyfriend" sat on his chest like a heavy weight. He was eleven now and he knew what it meant. Was Percy his boyfriend? A fluttery feeling took the pit of his stomach at that thought, not an unpleasant one but one that made him more anxious than anything. He wanted to asked, but he was afraid to.

Percy's hand landed on his shoulder. "You okay?" He wondered, growing taller every day. Nico swore that if Percy kept growing he'd leave him behind in the dust and shoot all the way to the moon. Percy was thirteen now and he looked it. He was athletic and strong, his limbs were thin but shapely, unlike Nico's own wiry arms and legs, and he was starting to get the faintest dusting of hair underneath his chin. Nico always noticed when Percy's voice cracked.

"Yeah, I'm alright," He replied, wiping at his eyes that were still threatening tears. But, Percy smiled and put an arm around him and Nico's fluttering stomach did a back-flip. He had never had that reaction when Percy touched him before and his cheeks grew more flush, but he didn't move away.

"Come on, I'll walk you to class, tell the teacher you didn't feel well." Nico felt a tightness around his heart and an uncontrollable giddiness at that grin and he nodded, mirroring it. Percy was the only one who could make him smile, not even his mom could get him to do a full-fledged one.

"Yeah, okay," He said, breathlessly. After a moment of deliberation he looked up at Percy again, "Thanks." His voice was still timid and barely there and when Percy's sea-green eyes swept over him he felt his heart stutter. He knew his face was growing hotter, presumably redder, but he couldn't look away.

"Anytime, Nicky, you know I'll always be there for you." Percy returned, giving him a good, healthy squeeze.

A few days after Nico's twelfth birthday party he and Percy found themselves in their old tree house at the Jackson's Summer home. Nico liked his birthday because it always fell a month and a few days after Percy's but also a month before school started. The sun was setting and he and Percy were sitting extremely close. So close that there was no space between them, so close, in fact that his nose was filled with the smell of the general outdoorsy scent from the other boy beside him, they had been out all day and were in desperate need of bathing as boys normally are.

Bianca didn't hang around much anymore; she had other friends, friends that were into poetry and writing and boy bands, all of which were things Nico did not particularly care for. Sure, his father was a writer but he just didn't feel the call to it. Instead he had been steadily noticing colors more. Like the color of Percy's lips which was a nice muted pink—especially in the setting sunlight.

"Hey, Perce," Nico said, leaning against him fully. It was times like these that Nico wished Summer and birthdays would never have to end.

Percy had recently discovered girls. Alright, well, he had always known about girls but recently he had discovered that they could be used for things like kissing, which was kind of important to him now that he was fourteen. "Yeah, Nicky?" He wondered, his Yankees baseball cap pulled just barely over top of his eyebrows.

"Are we always going to be friends, you and me?" Percy found this an odd thing to wonder, but then again Nico was odd some times. When Percy tried to tell him about how much fun kissing Miranda Gardiner had been the boy hadn't seemed at all interested, in fact he had seemed slightly irritated by it.

"Of course, buddy. You and me, we're like the Three Musketeers." He smiled.

"But there's only two of us," Nico said.

This was met with silence while the other boy thought of a comeback. "Well, that's even better; a third guy would ruin it." Percy finally said after a few seconds, he laughed and patted Nico on the back. They lapsed back into silence again and Nico was beginning to realize that the unsteady beat of his heart wasn't from how fast they had been racing around earlier on their bikes, if it had been then the incredibly quick ba-dump, ba-dump, ba-dump! tempo would have been over by now. But, he didn't pay it much attention, instead he sank further into Percy's side, not minding that his best friend was a little musky since Nico had started using deodorant too and understood that it was a pain to put it on every day. "So forever?" He asked, looking up into those eyes that shone like stars and his breathing became arrested.

Percy looked down at him like he was accustomed to doing, smiling widely, and said, "Forever, Nicky. I promise."

Percy was shocked for several reasons. One, he had a girlfriend now and she let him do a little more than hold her hand. Breasts, he found out, felt pretty nice. They didn't incite the same sort of tingling below the belt as kissing did, but they were nice enough. Two, when he told his best friend Nico this new, most fascinating discovery the younger boy seemed to get incredibly angry for absolutely no reason. And three, after shouting for a good fifteen seconds about how Percy had no idea what he was going through and that he was oblivious to everything Nico had then proceeded to kiss him thoroughly, on the lips, for about fifteen more seconds.

Shock, however, had turned to fear and fear quickly turned to anger. Why would Nico do that, he wondered? There was no just cause for it and he was suddenly very upset, minutely though his lips felt like tickly. "You—you're gay, Nico! Ew! Get off of me!" Percy accused, pushing the other boy away. Nico, who had taken to brooding and dark moods whenever Percy wasn't around, seemed to become severely afraid. His eyebrows drew together and his bottom lip quivered. It reminded Percy of the time back in seventh grade when he saved Nico from Luke, but he couldn't take back what he said, and something in his mind told him not to.

"I…I really like you, Percy." Nico confessed suddenly the words spilling out of him as if rehearsed but said still quite shakily, he wouldn't meet his friend's eyes. "You've been my best friend for all these years and I didn't mean to start liking you, but it just sort of happened and I'm sorry."

"Ugh!" There was an alarm blaring in the back of Percy's head. He didn't want to hear that, not because he found it disgusting but…there was something he could not understand that made Nico's confession so horrible. So very horrible. There was a sliver of ice in Percy's throat, his fear he realized, and he tried to swallow it down but he couldn't. He couldn't be forgiving about what Nico had just done. It was wrong. Wrong. WRONG. "Get out of here Nico. I don't think we can be friends anymore."

"Wait—Percy, no, I didn't want that, I love you—"

"Just go home, Nico! I don't want to be friends with a fag!" Percy shouted, his stomach clenched and that fluttery falling feeling like when he road rollercoasters made him feel dizzy. They had fought before, thrown punches at each other, once they had even broke one of Maria's vases during a scuffle, but there was no playful banter to be had after something like that, no parents around to make them apologize to each other. Nico left, obviously very close to crying. It usually took him five minutes to get home if he was walking slow; when the call came Percy decided the boy must have been sprinting because only two had passed.

"He what?" He heard his father's voice float lividly through their living room and up to his bedroom; Percy couldn't imagine going back to their Summer home now. Not with all of his memories of Nico tainted. "Perseus!" Don screamed, Percy sighed, thinking this was inevitable, and trudged slowly down the stairs. "Tell me right now: did Nico kiss you?" He didn't know what else to say, so instead he nodded. "Fuck." His father just barely whispered, though he still heard. "I knew that kid was a pouf." Then he held the phone back up to his ear. "No, Maria, I don't think Percy should apologize. I'm sorry that Nico's inconsolable right now but he can't just go around kissing other boys. It's disgusting." Don paused, Maria must have been speaking. "I don't give a damn, okay. I don't want your son around Percy anymore; I don't need him infecting my kid. Yeah, okay, and a big fuck you to you too." His father hung up the phone unceremoniously, slamming it down on the receiver. Then, he looked up and Percy was reminded that his dad was a large man; tall, foreboding, scary even sometimes when he yelled. "You didn't…I mean, there's no way that you possibly could have…you didn't like it did you, son? When he kissed you?" His eyes were almost pleading, and his voice was unashamedly so.

"I—"

"No, 'course not." Don blew a sigh of relief. "Hey, I've got an idea, you want to go hit a few at the cages, buddy? Take your mind off of this whole traumatizing ordeal?" But again Percy didn't have time to answer. "Get your helmet and your bat; I'll be in the car."

"Yes, sir," He responded and then headed back up the stairs.

After that Percy didn't see a whole lot of Nico, especially since he was going on to high school next year. It was probably best that he just swept this whole thing under the rug. He was starting to feel really bad about what he said and all he wanted to do was call Nico back and say he was sorry. He never got that chance that Summer.

Nico moved away during Percy's ninth grade year. His parents told him it was because Mr. di Angelo had found a nice job in California and that they all wanted to go, but Percy knew Nico. New York City was in his bones, he would never voluntarily move away. His dad told him he couldn't go wish them a happy trip, couldn't go see them at all really. The Jacksons and the di Angelo had been estranged for almost a year now, there were no more bonded family outings, no cook-outs, no impromptu movie nights. Nothing.

Percy missed Maria and Hades, they were like an aunt and a very cold, cynical uncle to him, and his missed Bianca—who wasn't so bad anymore, not that he understood what she was saying half of the time because she had moved on to Libertarianism and he didn't really get politics, still he missed her. But, most of all he missed Nico, he realized, and he had not really gotten an opportunity to apologize for the hurtful things he had said. Nico wouldn't stop and talk to him in the hallways, his IMs were ignored and then one day Nico's screenname had disappeared completely from Percy's AIM screen. He had even tried to sneak over to the di Angelo home but when he did Nico always seemed to be "out."

So instead Percy, who had decided a long time ago that getting any older than fifteen was just gonna suck, was sitting in his window watching the moving truck being loaded up. He caught a glimpse of hair that had gone from waves to untamable curls almost overnight and knew exactly who it was, but he dared not venture outside. He watched as the truck drove away, and then finally as the di Angelo's familiar four door sedan pulled out of his neighborhood. Percy felt forlorn and for a long time his eyes stared at the window that used to be Nico's where they would write messages to each other back and forth, or make stupid faces at each other and he missed Nico all the more.

"Percy! Dinner!" His mom called up to him and he wiped at the tears he hadn't realized were falling out of his eyes. Lately his parents had been fighting a lot, Percy knew it was about the kiss but they wouldn't admit it. They wouldn't even talk to each other for long portions of the day. Percy didn't move from his spot at the window, instead he sat his head against the cool glass and wished that sedan would turn back around and that that furniture would just magically move itself back in.

For the first time in a while he cried, but he did it silently so his father didn't hear him.

Author's Notes: Introductory chapter all done! I think I like the idea of starting a story much better than I do the concept of finishing it. Anyway, the subsequent chapters will most likely be a mix of Percy's life and Nico's, but of course they'll be third person 'cause changing from third to first is lame. Folks, I've been wanting to write this one for a while now, so glad I finally did. It's nothing like you're expecting it to be, or if it is you need to get out of my head or you'll ruin it for everyone else.

Anyway, hope I caught your attention. I wanted to establish a timeline for their friendship and falling out and I think this has done just that. I'll be updating again soon, hopefully. I have internet now, after all, but don't hold me to it.

With love,

Jermaine