This is my prompt fic for Proud to be Plug's Easter Fic Exchange. It was set up on his forum The Association of Crazy People and participated in by many people from The Ghost Writers' Headquarters, another PJO forum.
My prompts belonged to CelesteMarshmallow, to whom I think I owe my sincerest apologies and to whom this fic is dedicated.
i. "Did you just quote Taylor Swift?" ii. "You're an idiot, but I love you anyway." iii. The cake just sat there looking absolutely delicious, then it exploded.
I don't know how good it is but I did the best I could under pressure. Enjoy?
As usual, I own nothing. This is all for fun.
Now, to paraphrase Marie Antoinette: Let them throw cake.
Marzipan.
Chocolate Surprise
Nico gave the heater a vicious kick. It was already pretty beat up; his boots had left numerous scars on the front of it. Black rubber scuffmarks were trophies of his previous success with getting the stupid thing to work but this time it looked like a no go.
He expertly put his thumb over the mouth of the bottle of whisky he was holding in one hand (the other hand was busy clutching a blanket around his shoulders to stave off the Arctic air blowing around his apartment) so he didn't spill he tried one more time, a vicious back kick with his heel.
The heater clunked and gurgled; the pipes clanged and gave a mournful death rattle before a jet of steam shot out of a valve on the side, beating him back from the heater into the centre of his apartment. He tripped over an abandoned pizza box and fell on his ass, the impact making his thumb slip off the top of the bottle. Whisky sloshed out into his lap.
Nico swore fluently and picked himself up off the floor, walking over to the radiator and using the blanket to shield his hand from the steam as he fought to twist the valve. It eventually came off in his hand although apparently that was sufficient to keep the steam where it belonged: inside. He glared at the valve darkly, weighing it in his hand before throwing it across the apartment. That was probably the last heat he'd ever get now.
The super of the building didn't care that the heating never worked and didn't care that there were roaches the size of hippos; in fact, he barely spoke any English so Nico didn't think that he could have made the guy care if he'd wanted to. However, the super also didn't care about the loud thumps and crashes that shook Nico's apartment and didn't seem overly fazed by Nico's front door being beaten down by monsters on a semi-regular basis so really it all balanced out.
The super also didn't care that Nico wasn't old enough to even have a driving licence in the first plate, let alone one that said he was old enough to rent an apartment. Therefore, Nico put up with the roaches you'd need an elephant-calibre rifle to kill and the lack of heat purely for the fact that the alternative was living year-round at Camp (he liked his Cabin but considering he couldn't just stay in there permanently no thanks) or living in some weird boarding school dorm with, horror of horrors, other people and once again that wasn't something that was anywhere close to being on his bucket list.
A wave of self-pity washed over him and he tried his best to push it away. No matter what false bravado he provided, no matter how strong the front he put up, sometimes it came down to the fact that you were sitting alone on the floor of your apartment, whisky in hand, listening to the rain methodically pounding outside.
Alone.
The heavens had opened a couple of hours ago and it didn't look like it was going to let up any time soon. The distant, light roar of the driving rain was wrapping him up safely in a little cocoon of white noise but it didn't really do anything to enhance his mood.
He was cold and feeling acutely alone. Just because he wanted to be alone most of the time, found it easier, especially with the way people treated him, didn't mean that he always wanted to be alone. Especially not today.
Sighing, Nico caught a whiff of the whisky on his clothes and wrinkled his nose. He just reeked like a lush. Nico discarded the blanket, stripping off his shirt to change. He was rifling through the clothes on the floor (he didn't care what Annabeth said: he had a system for distinguishing between the clean and dirty laundry that covered the floorboards) when the phone rang.
Nico's head snapped up and he glanced at it apprehensively. The problems with monsters and demigods and technology hadn't gone away and there were risks involved even with using the rotary dial, Bakelite phone from the 1950s Nico had plugged into the landline. He was probably one of the last people in the city who actually paid to keep a landline active for the phone but considering that he couldn't have a cell phone it was necessary, as it was for most demigods.
He pulled on a new shirt and crossed the room. The phone was on the windowsill and he took a glance out at the rain coming down in one grey sheet, obscuring his view out. Overhead, thunder rumbled maliciously, the storm revelling in its attempt to drown New York.
"Speak fast," he said briskly, his voice authoritative, hoping that it obscured the fact that he'd flinched nervously when lifting the receiver, expecting a monster to come crashing in through the window and try to gut him.
Nothing with claws made itself known though… yet.
The caller obliged with a clipped, "Drop everything now."
Nico snorted, taking in the weather again, and replied automatically, "What, and meet you in the pouring rain?" He winced, mortified, putting the hand that wasn't holding the phone over his face. How the hell had that slipped out? He prayed to whichever deity that cared to be listening right now that the caller hasn't noticed that but—
"Did you just quote Taylor Swift?" Rachel demanded. "'Drop everything now, meet me in the pouring rain'?"
Nico's mouth worked open and closed for a few seconds as Rachel's disbelieving silence clamoured on for an eternity on the other end of the line. "Look, I can't fly, okay?" he eventually blurted crossly. "Zeus won't let me and it was a long drive that one time. There were no other CDs in the glove compartment and the CD player was the only part of the stereo that worked! What was I supposed to do, drive all those hours listening to nothing but my heart beating and the sound of tyres on the road? I would have gone insane. A gibbering wreck. Taylor saved me from that. We bonded."
Having to haul ass cross-country without flying was another way in which his fake driving licence came in handy.
"Uh-huh," Rachel said dryly, although Nico could practically see her eyes glittering with amusement.
"I don't like that tone. Don't give me that tone," Nico said, scowling down the receiver.
"What tone?" Rachel asked innocently. "I'm not giving you any tone. This is just my voice."
Nico snorted derisively. "Yeah, the voice you use when you're calculating how many guy points to take off."
Rachel made a sound that sounded like a vague agreement. "Well, you do moisturise."
Nico growled, his grip on the phone tightening so that his knuckles whitened. "It's sunscreen!" he bit out through teeth ground tightly together. "I can't help it if one of my demigod powers happens to be the ability burn and freckle under a freaking hundred watt bulb, can I? I'm a son of Hades. It goes with the territory and it's not a pretty sight. Sure, it would be great if we could all be Percy and go all surfers' tan and whoop de doo for him but I need my sunscreen."
"Uh-huh," Rachel repeated in the exact same tone.
Nico breathed in deeply through his nose, filling his lungs in an attempt to regain calm, his nostrils flaring. "You're doing it again," he said, his tone silky smooth but almost trembling with an undercurrent of anger.
"Who, me? I'm not doing anything," Rachel said, as if butter wouldn't fucking melt in amongst all that expensive orthodontistry, the price tag of which would probably pay for the rent on Nico's apartment for a year.
"What do you even want?" Nico demanded brusquely.
"Oh, right," Rachel said blandly, unable to keep the slight snigger out of her voice. "Yeah. I think I need to borrow you."
"I'm busy," Nico said shortly.
"Yeah, how's drinking alone and screwing with your barley-formed, child's liver going for you?" Rachel asked pointedly. Nico could almost see the Oracle folding her arms disapprovingly.
"How do you know I'm drinking? And I might not be alone," Nico said defensively, throwing the whisky-stained shirt he was still clutching onto the floor.
"You always drink when you're feeling lonely," Rachel said. "And I'm sorry, I forgot you weren't alone. How are the cockroaches?"
Nico's eyes moved to the fridge; underneath was a particularly favoured hangout for the roaches. "I think the existing ones have invited some long-lost cousins over from Europe. Even bigger and hairier than I'm used to. And hey, I never said anything about being lonely."
"That's completely and totally gross," Rachel informed him bluntly. "I don't think I'll be visiting your apartment any time soon without an exterminator present. Also, lonely is what you do, Nico. So are you going to come over or what? What if I told you that my life depended on it?"
"Are you in trouble?" Nico asked, suddenly raptly attentive.
"I could be," Rachel said slowly, drawing the last syllable out.
"Uh-huh," Nico said, throwing Rachel's earlier comment right back at her and letting the sudden grip of tension he'd felt melt away. "You know, it might solve all of my problems if you were. You could take all of my secrets to the grave with you. Especially the Taylor Swift ones."
Rachel laughed. "Please. It's like you think I'm an amateur or something. When I die, there's a key to a safety deposit box taped to my will with instructions that it be opened and the contents be published after my death. That's where I store all your secrets. Everyone's secrets, actually. My wake will be nothing if not interesting."
Nico blinked. "Wow. I don't even… wow. You're a little scary, you know that?"
"Maybe," Rachel said nonchalantly. "But forewarned is forearmed. Although… Why forearms? I've never got that. Anyway, whatever that expression is. I don't know."
Nico rolled his eyes. "You're the Oracle of Delphi. You think you of all people would know the ins and outs of expressions about forewarning."
Rachel scoffed. "Please. You drink underage and alone in an apartment full of scary European roaches. You of all people don't get to judge me." Nico had no comeback for that and so she took the opportunity to plough on with, "You know the next line to the song is 'Kiss me on the sidewalk take away my pain', right?"
"Wow," Nico said, leaning against the wall and closing his eyes. "I'm not going to kiss you anywhere, let alone on the sidewalk where everyone can see. I mean just to start with I don't really feel like getting all smited by Apollo..."
"Smote," Rachel corrected.
Nico growled in the back of his throat. "What are you now, an English teacher? I should mention that my second reason is that I don't want to be seen in public kissing you, Red. Kind of embarrassing, you know?"
"Just get your pathetically undersized ass here, okay?" Rachel snapped. "Before a monster sniffs out this call and tries to play 'Find the Pancreas the Hard Way' with me. Again."
Nico sighed. "Will you really die if I decide not come?"
"Maybe," Rachel said cryptically. "Whatever happens will be all on your head. How will you live with the guilt?"
"You know, I think I'd find a way," Nico said. "I'd make peace with it."
"Kind of hurtful," Rachel said.
"You were expecting me to jump into the grave after the coffin, beating on the lid and tearing out my hair as I wailed?" Nico said, pretty sure she could hear the eye roll in his voice.
"You could look to the sky and ask why it wasn't you instead as well," Rachel suggested. "And then when they pull you out of the grave so they can bury me you could fall to your knees. And maybe throw up."
That got a single raised eyebrow from Nico. "Grief vomiting?" he asked sceptically. "I don't know. I've been doing this son of Hades gig for a while now. No one's ever puked on me in their grief."
"Well, you'd probably be drunk," Rachel said. "Spiralling even further into alcoholism than you are now, devastated at my death. That could explain the puking."
"When did this conversation get so weird?" Nico asked, his forehead wrinkling in consternation. He had no idea how it happened but whenever he talked to Rachel things always got weird quite quickly. They bounced off each other, sometimes in the strangest of ways. "We're talking about puke."
"You know what would make me stop talking?" Rachel said.
"If I came to your apartment?" Nico guessed tiredly.
"Yes!" Rachel said. "Ding ding! We have a winner!"
"Why should I?" Nico asked, although by this point the trip was already inevitable. He just didn't want Rachel to think that the visit had been too easy to cajole out of him. Even if he was feeling lonely, the last thing he needed was for people to work that out from the fact that he bit their hands off whenever they invited him anywhere.
"Uh, because I said so?" Rachel said, scoffing. "You really think you need a better reason than that? It's at my behest, dummy. Now hop to before I start painting pictures of you rocking out to Taylor Swift and hang them up around Camp."
"You're kind of a bitch," Nico said.
Rachel snorted. "Wow, yeah. No one's ever told me that before. How will I cope? Oh, wait, that's right. I don't care."
"Five minutes," Nico muttered darkly, rolling his eyes as he trapped the receiver between his ear and his shoulder so he could undo his belt buckle and step out of his jeans to change into new ones.
"Make it three," Rachel said, abruptly hanging up on him, as was her wont. The click of the call disconnecting and the long, mournful bleep telling him she was no longer on the other end of the line echoed in his head.
When Nico shadow-travelled into the living area of Rachel's vast apartment (it was so big that it was spread out over two storeys, for Zeus's sake) it was completely dark. He frowned, shoving his hands in his pockets. Even for Rachel, this was a little weird.
He tried to remember where in Hades the light switches were kept amongst the bazillion square feet of space she had here but wasn't sure he'd ever found out. Something as common and mundane as light switches were probably only to be seen and used by the poor, so perhaps they had an entire room dedicated to light switches. Of course, it would probably still be called something fancy like the second lesser parlour even if it was just full of labelled light switches.
Right. Trying to figure out what was going on. A bigger priority than the floorplan for Rachel's apartment.
"Hello?" he called into the dark. "Anyone home?"
His answer was a series of spotlights flaring to life around the room, their piercing beams sweeping the apartment until they focussed entirely on him. Their heat was already palpable after just a few seconds and he hissed, shielding his eyes from the light with his hand. After the dark of the apartment, he was totally blind now.
A roar went up around him. "SURPRISE!"
He almost fell over in shock; squinting past the bright pool of light he was in he made out several figures standing around the room.
"What the fuck?" he gasped, feeling out for the nearest shadow to disappear into but finding none close enough or strong enough to use thanks to the spotlights. He was stuck.
"Oh, nice attitude to take," he heard Rachel say as she stepped into the light next to him. "After all the effort we've— Zeus's sandals, this is like being blind!" She made a slashing motion across her neck and the spotlights died and were replaced with the general lights of the apartment coming up.
"Tell me about it," Nico muttered, spots dancing in front of his eyes as they adjusted again to yet another light level. Slowly, the rest of the apartment came into view. All around the room people were standing with drinks in their hands, all looking at him with rapt attention.
He spotted Percy and Annabeth and Sally and Paul at two different points in the room. Percy had his arm around Annabeth's shoulders and she had both hands tucked around his waist; they were both smiling at him. Sally and Paul were standing by the fireplace, where a glitzy silver metal installation was spewing roaring flame up the chimney. They were both positively beaming at him.
The rest of the guests in the room didn't look as happy to be there, though. He spotted Clarisse standing on the stairs and leaning on the railings, drink in hand and looking like she'd rather be in an honest-to-gods hair salon. A group of Aphrodite kids were huddled together in a corner, whispering to each other and acting as if their herd mentality was going to protect them from something. Out of all of them, only Piper looked comfortable in being there but even her smile was a little less than genuine.
He spotted Malcolm shifting from foot to foot awkwardly and polishing his glasses on his shirt and Katie Gardner liberating a remote control from Leo's restlessly moving hands, which were almost instantly engaged again in a blur of motion involving a rubber band and a bolt.
He almost didn't recognise the Stoll brothers; they were dressed in matching bright yellow sou'westers complete with hats. Their faces were almost hidden by all the waterproof fabric but from what little he could see of their expressions they were grinning widely. Both of them were waving wildly at him; Travis's sou'wester was too long in the sleeve and it flapped like he'd had his hand replaced with a canary-yellow flipper. They looked bizarre but they were the Stoll brothers after all. This probably didn't even make the top five weird things they did and so Nico let his eyes shift over them, as had everyone else, apparently.
Although there were people spread out all over the room Nico recognised from Camp he couldn't say he counted many of them as particularly good friends. He knew that between Rachel, Percy and Annabeth each guest had probably been coaxed or bullied to within an inch of their life to be there tonight. After all, he was the son of Hades. Despite everything that had happened, the wars they'd fought in together, old habits apparently died hard. He was somewhat isolated from most demigods, just like his father was mostly isolated from the other Olympians (granted not as much now as in previous millennia but still).
"I didn't think I'd ever find you speechless," Rachel said, pressing a drink in a cut glass tumbler into his hand and smiling widely at him. "Flighty, yes, which is why we had the spotlights to stop you travelling back out, but not speechless."
Nico took a grateful gulp from the glass; it burned on the way down but tasted like the confidence he needed to face the room of people in front of him. "Hey, I already asked what the fuck," Nico pointed out. "You didn't tell me you had company."
"Yeah, because you so would have come over if you'd known," Rachel said, beckoning to a waiter who swooped in and refilled Nico's glass and swooped back out again like a surgical strike.
Nico gratefully drank some more before answering. "I don't get it," he said. "What's going on?"
"It's a surprise party," Rachel told him, nudging him in the ribs with her elbow. "Duh. We figured it was about time. What with all the wars and not being able to pin you down we haven't had much of a chance. So… Happy sixteenth birthday, Nico."
Something odd rushed through Nico at Rachel's words. His glass had been halfway to his lips and he forgot to take a drink. He took another look around the apartment, at all the people gathered and looking at him, at the table laden with food and a huge, multi-tiered chocolate cake, and tried to take it all in. People were here to celebrate with him? Did he actually matter enough to warrant this? The feeling in his chest began to bubble, although not unpleasantly, and he had to fight a smile.
"This is weird," he said eventually, managing to keep his feelings inside. "Just thought you'd like to know."
Rachel narrowed her eyes. "It's not weird," she said, her voice sounding a little dangerous, "it's a surprise."
"You say potato…" Nico muttered under his breath, but he was already being taken by the arm and dragged in the direction of Annabeth and Percy.
"Come on. Mingle," Rachel said on the way, clomping and wobbling as she inexpertly managed her heels. People had started talking again and from somewhere music started up, filling the silence that had greeted his entrance.
"People don't want me here," he said quietly so only Rachel could here.
"Bullshit," she snapped. "It's your party. They're here for you."
Nico barked a humourless laugh, casting a wary eye at the assembled people and wondering if each cabin had drawn lots of members past and present and sent the unfortunate loser to celebrate with him. "Uh-huh. This is all really nice of you, Rachel, but I don't think it's very—"
"Told you I'd get him here," Rachel cut in with as they reached Percy and Annabeth. She was bouncing on the balls of her feet, her face the very definition of smug.
"I thought I was going to have to send Percy to tie him up and put him in a sack," Annabeth said dryly.
"You could try," Nico snorted, folding his arms.
Percy grinned at him. "Sounds like a plan for the next time you drop by the training arena for a sparring session."
"Sounds like a plan that ends with you getting your ass kicked," Nico countered.
"No shop talk," Rachel said severely, fixing both Nico and Percy with a green glare each. "Tonight is about having fun. Celebrating!"
"My birthday," Nico said, still trying to get his head around the fact that that was the reason everyone was gathered.
"You deserve it," Percy said. "Just as much as anyone else here."
"Couldn't have said it better myself," Rachel said.
"Happy birthday, Nico," Annabeth said, smiling and placing a hand on Nico's arm as Rachel moved to drag him away again.
"Thanks," Nico said, trying his best to put genuine appreciation into his voice. Even though he was thinking demigods should replace 'Happy birthday' with 'Congrats on making it another year' he did mean it and he wanted Annabeth to know that he meant it.
"You thought we'd all forgotten, didn't you?" Rachel said as she took him across the room.
"Sort of," Nico half-admitted reluctantly. "I guess I thought you'd forgotten about my birthday but I didn't care. I mean, not much reason to celebrate after all. Just another year…"
"Stop it, Nico," Rachel said. "I know you've got a reputation to keep up, oh brooding, sulking one, but knock it off. You matter. Your birthday matters. Got it?"
Nico looked up from the carpet and into her face. Her eyebrows were raised and her head slightly cocked, both in warning. They had stopped in the middle of the room for her to stare him out; it worked and he went back to looking at the carpet.
"That's better," Rachel said, pulling him along again in the direction of Sally and Paul.
Eventually, Rachel gave up steering him around the room and left him to his own devices. Despite himself, he had to admit that the evening didn't totally suck. As it went on the more music played and more drinks were poured, everyone assembled loosened up considerably and the awkward atmosphere that hung over the place when he'd first travelled in was all but gone.
He was sitting in an armchair by the fire, with Percy and Annabeth sitting on the couch opposite him, when the lights went down again. Everyone looked up and around, their eyes catching on the glow of the birthday cake. Rachel was buzzing around it with a lighter shaped like a canon, lighting the candles.
The Stoll brothers were the first to start to move towards the cake. They were nudging each other, their grins still almost the only parts of them that were visible underneath the sou'westers which they still hadn't taken off. It was starting to rank on the weirdness scale, even for Travis and Connor, but still not that high up in the grand scheme of things.
Taking their cues from the Stolls, the guests also began picking their way across the room towards the cake. Rachel paused before lighting the last candle, her eyes finding Nico. The lighter was still alight, hovering before she lit it.
Nico closed his eyes momentarily but got out of the armchair anyway, compelled by Rachel's beckoning eyes. Apparently, it was time to blow out his candles.
Gods. Had he really become that conventional?
The cake was huge. The improbably large slabs of chocolate cake were supported by spindly white columns. The chocolate icing gleamed in the candlelight; as Nico made his way towards it, he saw 'Happy Birthday Nico' written across the bottom tier in white icing. The rest of the cake was adorned with white chocolate skulls, each one scarily lifelike.
Rachel smiled at him and lit the last candle. "You better make a wish," she threatened, brandishing the lighter at him menacingly. "Don't just say you have because you don't think it's cool."
Nico rolled his eyes but smiled back, taking a deep breath and squaring off against the cake, staring it down. The cake just sat there looking absolutely delicious, and then it exploded.
The explosion was a wet splat. It flung cake and icing and some kind of liquid centre in all directions, spattering everyone in the room liberally. The apartment was filled with gasps and cries of shock for a few moments before the lights came back up again.
Around the apartment, mouths were hanging open in shock. People were swiping cake from their eyes, blinking. The carpet Nico had been staring at earlier was going to be unsalvageable. No one had escaped; everyone looked like they'd been front and centre at some kind of chocolaty massacre.
Well, that was with the notable exception of the Stoll brothers, however, who were jumping up and down in the middle of the room, sou'westers dripping with whatever liquid had been in the cake. The brothers' laughter rang around the room, as did their wet-sounding high five.
"Happy birthday, Nico!" Connor yelled, giddy with laughter.
"Hope you liked the cake!" Travis added, wrenching the waterproof hat off his head and tossing it up into the air. Underneath their waterproofs, the brothers were, of course, be completely dry.
The explosion was still ringing in Nico's ears as he turned, wiping his face with his hands and then flicking the mess onto the carpet. He licked a finger experimentally.
"Tastes good," he said with a shrug, scooping a large blob from the front of his shirt. "Thanks guys. Wanna try some?" he asked, flinging the handful of chocolate goo straight at Travis' now unprotected head.
It hit the son of Hermes full on in the face and he stopped jumping, sputtering for a few moments before, "Oh you are going down, di Angelo!" He grabbed a chunk of cake from the front of his coat and flung it back at Nico, who ducked, sending the missile splattering onto the wall behind the cake.
It was a cue the assembled guests had been waiting for. Pandemonium broke loose; chunks of cake were being hurled as if they were snowballs. The air was thick with flying chocolate sponge.
Through it all, Annabeth and Percy weaved, crouched double, fingers interlaced, running as best they could in the position. At the last minute they both threw themselves backwards and slid, baseball-style, behind the couch and to relative safety.
"What the hell was that?" Annabeth demanded immediately. "I ask you to do one thing for Nico's surprise party. All you had to do was get a cake. What happened?"
Percy rubbed at the back of his head sheepishly. "Uh… Well, I may have outsourced the cake thing to the Stolls," he admitted. "Hey, I had a lot to do what with inviting people who weren't that happy to come and when I mentioned that I needed a cake they were happy to help. I guess… it had a detonator in it."
Annabeth shook her head. "You're an idiot," she said, grabbing a globule of cake from the floor and tossing it at his chest, feeling laughter bubble up as she did it, "but I love you anyway." She leaned forward and kissed him. All she could taste was chocolate.
Across the room, Nico was using a drinks' tray as an impromptu shield. Cake thrown by Clarisse pounded on the tray and when he peeked over the top, she nailed him between the eyes. Nico waited until she was crowing in victory and distracted before making his retaliation, catching her full in the back of the head.
Rachel had been right all along, he realised. If he'd known birthdays could be this awesome, he'd have started celebrating them sooner.