I don't own Percy Jackson or Boulevard of Broken Dreams by Green Day.

Chapter 1

"I can't believe this."

"I saw you with her, Nico. You're never around, you lied to me, and now you're hanging around with that slut!"

"Thalia, she's a cheerleader, they practice on the field at the same time we do. I'm not cheating on you!"

"It's a fucking big field, you don't have to talk to her!"

Nico ran a hand through his hair and turned around, looking for something to throw. Drew had cornered him at the water cooler after football practice. Thalia had come along when Drew was standing just a little too close, her hand on his arm, and Nico had been smiling out of courtesy. He knew it had looked bad, but he thought Thalia would trust him. He'd been wrong.

He turned back to her. "You know what, I'm done. This isn't working." He opened the door and left, slamming it behind him. Thalia didn't try to stop him.

Seven Years Later

"Coffee," Reyna announced as she walked into Nico's office. She put the styrofoam cup on his desk and took a seat across from him.

"You're a goddess." Nico picked up his head from where he'd been resting it against the back of his chair and took his feet off the desk.

Reyna shrugged. "I thought the best detective in New York deserved something better than the shit they have here."

Nico took a sip and chuckled. "What do you want, Reyna?"

"Can't I just spend some time with my best friend?"

"You got me coffee, you called me 'the best detective in New York', which is true but not official, and you called me your best friend, which isn't true and we both know it. What do you want?"

Reyna gave him a sweet smile, which immediately put him on guard. "I was wondering if you'd do the paper work for the last case."

Nico leaned his head back and chuckled. "Please, Nico, I have a date tonight, I don't have time."

"So, you want me to do all the paperwork for a case so that you can go out with my sister."

Reyna paused and thought for a moment. "Yes."

Nico rolled his eyes, but leaned forward again and took another sip of his coffee. "You're lucky I like you."

"And we both know how rare that is."

"You owe me," Nico warned.

She nodded. "Okay."

"And you have to work on it while you're here today."

"Of course."

Nico opened the file folder on his desk.

"It's not like there's a lot to report, anyway. It was an easy case."

He laughed. "Easy for us. Not so easy for the guy who got killed."

Reyna picked up a picture from the file. It was of a pretty blonde girl with blue eyes. She was smiling like there was nothing wrong. "She looks so normal, too. You would never expect her to be so psychotic." She dropped the photo. "She murdered her boyfriend. What kind of a fucked up childhood would you have to have to do something like that?"

Nico laughed. "I can think of a couple exes who would love to take a swing or two at me."

"Yeah, a swing. Not a bullet." Nico picked up his pen and started writing. He'd always preferred to do this on paper, even though it was fine to do it on the computer. "You never talk about your exes."

"They aren't important," Nico muttered, not looking up from the paper.

"Yeah, but I'm your friend. Isn't this what friends do? Bitch about their exes?"

Nico looked up and sighed. "Fine. But my exes are pretty boring."

Reyna raised an eyebrow, and Nico cursed her for being able to raise just one. He'd never been able to pull it off.

"You just told me that some of them would like to take a swing at you," she deadpanned.

"They would. That doesn't make them interesting."

She grinned. "Does to me." Nico rolled his eyes. "Come on, just one story. I'll tell you one of mine."

"You first."

"Fine" She thought for a moment. "There was this one guy who had three piercings in his bottom lip and one on his top. And two of them were spikes. My best friend thought he was abusive 'cause I always came to school with cuts on my lips."

Nico glanced up at her and smirked. "I can beat it." She raised that damn eyebrow again. "Remember Addy?"

"That creepy goth girl from two years ago?"

He nodded. "Did I ever tell you why we broke up."

"No."

"I found out she pierced her…" he cleared his throat awkwardly and glanced down.

"Her what?"

Nico gestured vaguely at her. "You know."

"I don't know."

He cleared his throat again. "Her lady parts," he mumbled, and gestured again.

Reyna's face twisted into an expression of disgust and Nico began to laugh. "God, I didn't need to know that. Damn it, di Angelo, she goes to my gym. Do you know what I'm going to think now when I see her on the treadmill?"

"We didn't last long after that," Nico said, still laughing.

"If that was two years ago, I'd love to hear about the girlfriends you had in high school." At Nico's apparent confusion she rolled her eyes. "Oh come on, everyone knows that your worst relationships are always in high school. So let's hear it."

Nico looked down at the paper again, trying to hide his scowl. "Don't go there, Reyna."

He'd only had one relationship in high school, and look how well that had turned out.

"My shadow's the only one that walks beside me; my shallow heart's the only thing that's beating…"

Thalia groaned as she felt her phone buzzing in her pocket. A homeless man across the street gave her a dirty look, the phone had woken him up. She stuck her tongue out at him and he hid his head under his dirty blanket again, grumbling.

Juggling her coffee in one hand and making sure her bag didn't fall off her shoulder, she pulled out the phone from her pocket. When she saw the caller ID she nearly groaned again.

"Hey, Annabeth," she said.

"Don't you 'Hey Annabeth' me. Where are you?"

Thalia closed her eyes briefly. It was nearly eleven on a Wednesday night, and she'd been working since nine that morning. Her feet hurt and the only reason she was still awake was the giant coffee she was holding in her left hand.

"I'm walking home."

"You're walking home?!" Annabeth yelped, and Thalia winced and held the phone away from her ear. "What are you thinking?! Don't you know who comes out at this time of night?!"

"Homeless guys who can't mind their own damn business," Thalia answered, glaring daggers at the homeless man across the street again. He had come out from under his blanket again and was listening to half of their conversation.

"Where are you? I'll come pick you up."

As much as she didn't want to walk, she disliked the idea of getting driven by Annabeth even more. Four blocks in a car with nowhere to run to while she was getting lectured. At least at their apartment she could hide in her room.

"I'll be fine, Annabeth. It's just a few blocks."

"It's dangerous!"

No more dangerous than living with you sometimes, Thalia thought. "It isn't dangerous. I'll be right there, I promise. Besides, the fresh air is good for me."

Annabeth gave a nervous laugh. "Fresh air? You realize where we are, right?"

Thalia laughed too. "I'll be home soon. Don't eat all the Chinese, okay?" Wednesday was their Chinese food night.

"Promise."

"Bye, Annabeth." She hung up before Annabeth could respond. She sighed. She needed a shower. The restaurant business might make enough money to pay for the apartment, but she wasn't so sure about the water bill. She always came home smelling like fried food.

Thalia heard something behind her and turned around. The homeless man was still there, hiding under his blanket, but there was no one else. It must have been him, she decided.

She kept walking. A few minutes later she heard the sound again. Glancing over her shoulder, she walked faster. This wasn't a good neighborhood.

The sound became louder, and just when she had realized it was footsteps something hit her on the head and everything went black.

Hello! I finally have the first chapter of this story up, and the second one is half done. I've been trying to get this up for a few weeks now.

If you've read my other stories, welcome back. If you haven't, I'm Jez, nice to meet you. I update on Mondays, so if you don't have an account and you can't follow the story, just check back on Mondays. Unlike Roses On Your Grave, this isn't a pre-written story, so I might not be able to update every Monday, but I will try.

For anyone who is confused, Reyna is bisexual. If you have a problem with that, I'm not forcing you to read this story.

The sister Nico is talking about is Hazel, not Bianca. Jason, Piper, and Leo will make an appearance, but they won't be the same age as Hazel and Reyna.

I started a Quote of the Week last week, and it will be the same on all my stories. It's something that I've heard around the house that sounds really weird when said by itself (and usually in context, too).

Quote of the Week: "Once again, I have onion ring in my cleavage." Thank you so much for sharing, mom. I needed to know that. She also felt the need to take the onion ring out while we were in the middle of a restaurant.

Review!