Notes: Written for Aeron Thana's Color Challenge. And I adore things with short word limits because that means I can actually post stuff. Even if my inner writing person calls out for more space. XD
Character: Nico di Angelo
Mood: Love
Color: Yellow
Word Count: 481
Westover was a dismal, dull place. In her more morose moments, Bianca darkly compared it to the land of the dead. Personally, Nico thought the whole Castle With Instruments of War Mounted on the wall thing was kinda cool, but Bianca tended to walk past the display muttering under her breath in Italian. She'd become really cranky lately.
Which was why Nico intended to make the most of the day. Which was why he had sneaked into the girl's side of the dormitories (he'd always been good at sneaking around, for some reason) and woken her up early in the morning with a cheerful rendition of Happy Birthday.
Ten minutes, multiple pillows thrown at him and a red-faced Bianca dragging him out of her room by the elbow later, he wondered if he could have done it some other way.
But whatever. Bianca was awake, right?
"What did you think you were doing?" she hissed at him once they were out of range of the pillows (man, some of those girls had an arm) and in one of the gazillion or so corridors in the place.
"Wishing you Happy Birthday," Nico told her, even though it should have been obvious.
"At five-thirty in the morning?"
"I wanted to be the first one to wish you." Which should have been obvious too.
Bianca opened her mouth to say something, sighed and settled for rubbing her forehead instead. She tended to do that a lot these days. Which reminded him-
"And I got you a present."
She blinked at that.
"How?"
"Traded my extra Athena card for it. Well, it and a couple of Cyclopses and a Dionysus. Cyclopses are always good, and everyone thinks Dionysus is weird but I think-"
"Nico."
"Oh, okay. Right. Here," he finally found it buried under a few extra cards in his pyjama pocket, "Happy Birthday. Again."
She gingerly took it from his hand and stared at it.
"Seriously?"
"Yeah."
"Why-"
"Because you could seriously use a smile," he told her solemnly. And he was serious about that. Bianca should smile more.
"And a yellow smiley pin is going to cheer me up?"
"It should cheer anyone up," Nico told her (it was a cute smiley pin), "But even if it doesn't, you'll still have a smile. Which doesn't make much sense, I know. But it's symbolic, or something. See- you're smiling already."
"I'm not!"
He grinned at her.
"Fine! Maybe a little, but no more five am wake-up calls, okay?"
"Okay," he told her, and grinned again, "So, you have any idea what you want to do till breakfast? I'm thinking we should go to the east wing and try to find the dungeons again because Theo Porter thinks Dr. Thorn has prisoners there and stuff."
Bianca sighed at him again, but he could tell she didn't mean it. The smile sort of gave her away.