How Not to Keep a Boyfriend
Disclaimer: I don't own PJO or its characters. I do however reserve right to the general plot just because it happened to my friend. I was Jason and I very much enjoyed it. Sadly though, it was only the one guy and he passed all our tests…I was a little disappointed.
After Jason, the first person who knew about his sexuality was Sally Jackson. Actually, she had conveniently found out about it when she and Paul ended up in the same restaurant as he and his date. Nico knew he was doomed as soon as Sally dragged her husband over and feigned surprise at finding him at the table next to them. Daniel never called him again.
Through much subtle begging, she graciously promised not to mention the date to her son. They both knew that he had a protective streak a mile wide, and it did not help matters that he was very overprotective of the Hades child, as if to make up for the years lost to war.
It had been a nice day when the truth finally came to light. Percy's conversation with Sally had begun with "Hey mom" and ended with "I'm going to kill him".
So the moment he stepped into his dorm room and saw Jason, Percy, Frank, and Leo all crammed onto his bed and desk, he turned around and made his way back to the door. Unfortunately, they must have foreseen that response, because Jason selfishly used his powers over the air to cause a draft to hit the door and the bolt for precaution.
"What do you guys want?" he turned around, glowering.
Percy and Jason both grinned freely. The son of Poseidon jumped off the mattress and made his way to his cousin in four short steps. Man, did he really need a bigger room.
"So, I heard from a very reliable source that you had a date two weeks ago."
Nico snorted, "Very reliable? Don't bullshit me Percy. When did your mom spill?"
"About an hour ago."
"An hour ago?" Nico looked bemused. "Leo was in New Jersey! How the hell did you manage to get him here?"
"Our resident shape shifter is very fast when he's motivated. But he's not very comfy when he's going over 300 miles an hour. Not at all…" the mechanic trailed off, muttering about portable saddles.
Percy looked at his younger cousin, with a very bright you-should-be-proud-of-me look. Nico returned it with a very dark scowl.
Jason stood up and stretched. Having the tact to muster up some guilt-even though he was not at all so (for Gods sakes it had been torture keeping it a secret for almost six years!)-he walked over to Nico and gently patted his back. "Don't you feel better knowing that they all know now though?"
"No, I don't."
"Wait!" Percy made a large X with his forearms, "You knew about this and you didn't tell me?" he pointed accusingly at the child of Jupiter.
"He told me not to!"
Percy turned on a puppy dog look at Nico, "Nic, why wouldn't you tell me?"
"That what, I'm gay?" Nico said bluntly, "It didn't seem necessary to any of our conversations."
"But I spent so much time trying to set you up with the girls at camp!"
"You WHAT?"
Percy grinned again, "I thought you were just being oblivious."
"No one, I repeat not a single person, is that oblivious except for you, Seaweed Brain," Nico taunted.
Frank pushed Percy and Nico away from each other before it could go any further, "Okay, back to the subject, about that date…"
"Nothing to tell Zhang. It was one date. There wasn't a second one."
"What happened?" Leo asked, "Did he find out you're emo? Did he see you chanting to an empty pit full of McDonald's, 'cause I know for a fact that is creepy no matter how many times you see it."
Nico scowled again. He grabbed his jacket from its hook and opened the door. Backing up, he pointed out. Slowly the quartet filed out and Nico locked the room, grumbling about getting a new lock. "Now, go bother someone else!"
"Wait, Nico!" the rest of the words died on Frank's lips when he saw the other male turn to pin him with a glare before stalking off.
Jason and Percy waited, craning their necks to make that he was gone from hearing range before bending their heads together and proceeding to come up with a plan to find out about his dates.
"Shouldn't we leave it alone?" Frank commented. "He didn't want us to find out about this date, let alone all of them."
They looked up and spoke in perfect unison, "We are going to help him."
Leo and Frank exchanged glances. This was going to end so horribly.
Thus began OPERATION: PERFECT GUY, otherwise known as keep Nico single for the rest of his natural born life.
The first date under this accordance was a simple getting to know kind, where they were set to meet at a local coffee shop that they both frequented. They planned to meet around five, so when his watch slowly inched towards the six mark, Nico stood up and marched out with his extra-large black coffee, making sure that the barista knew to charge it to the asshole that stood him up.
"The jackass is the one who asked me out and he didn't even bother to call to say he wasn't coming," Nico huffed when he spoke to Rachel via Iris Message.
Rachel made a sympathetic face and got him to promise the next weekend with her so they could hang out. After clearing the air of mist, she whirled on Percy who was sitting across from her. She had seen his smile throughout the call. "What did you guys do?" she asked.
Percy bit his lip, "I may have had a little chat with him."
"Percy!" Annabeth shouted.
"But, it was just a talk! I just wanted to make sure he was worthy, what if he was a total douchebag?"
Annabeth crossed her arms, "What else did you do?"
He completely crumbled. "I may have possibly, kind of, just a little, roughed him up. Just so he got the message."
Rachel looked over at Annabeth, "May I?"
"All yours."
The redhead gave him a hard punch to the arm.
"Hey, ow, pain. Why would you do that?"
"Stay out of Nico's love life. If he finds out you're meddling in it, he's going to kill you and we aren't going to stop it."
Needless to say, they didn't stop. The second date was with a tall blond sporting a winning smile and clear hazel eyes. Nico wasn't much of a conversationalist, but even he felt the usually comfortable silence become wrung with tension.
There were no words exchanged the entire night and he dropped Nico off without the slightest regard to him.
"So," Piper began one morning. "I heard from Annabeth that Nico's date ignored him the entire night, even though he's apparently a great speaker. How do you think that happened?" she asked.
Jason shrugged, looking up from his cereal.
"Jason," Piper sighed, "You know he will kill you, right?"
Jason let out a snort, "If that moron was too much of a wuss to go out with Nico after one chat with me, he doesn't deserve him."
Really, it had not even been that bad of a conversation. He had been completely polite throughout it and hadn't even touched the guy. All he did was smile and cheerfully warn him in perfect detail what would happen to him in the middle of the night if he looked at Nico the wrong way.
Really.
The third date was actually enjoyable. Nico felt that there was a decent amount of potential in the brunette he had met in his mythology class. The brunette had been polite and amiable and hadn't even made any cliché type moves while they were watching the new action blockbuster at the theater.
However, when Aaron picked him up the second time, he had stumbled over his words, been obnoxious to the waiter and at the end of the terrible night told the Ghost King it wasn't going to work out.
Nico was grumbling about it the next day during training. He was usually at least a little kind to the newer campers (not really, he was much harder on them than anyone else and the campers knew it) but he was horrible to them. He did not hold back in the slightest.
Calypso looked at the younger warrior and then back at her fire-loving boyfriend. He had come back to camp two nights ago with a smile on his face and an empty box of matches. Leo looked especially proud of himself. She sighed. She could only hope that the Gods have mercy on his soul when Nico found out.
The fourth boy had black hair and sparking blue eyes to rival the sky before a storm. He was an up and coming star on the basketball team that had boundless energy and even more gentlemanly traits. Nico had to (grudgingly) admit that he might have actually been pretty close to his idea of perfection.
The relationship went past two, then three dates, heading quickly into two-week anniversary territory before it abruptly ended.
Frank patted Nico's back awkwardly when the younger had bitingly admitted that his latest boyfriend dumped him the day after their cheesy two-week anniversary date. Inwardly, however, he smiled to himself as the ferocious animals inside roared triumphantly.
"Hey, that guy wasn't that great anyway. He's stupid if he thinks dumping you was a good choice."
Nico's eyes narrowed lightly. He and Frank weren't really all that close, but had become so due to their relationships with Hazel. But, still, this was really strange. When had Frank ever started a conversation with him about his life?
Frank waved a hasty goodbye and hurried back to his girlfriend, whose whereabouts he had supposedly not known about. Frank sneered to himself. He had seen the mortal walking around with his buddies bragging about his new conquest last Friday and when he realized who it was, made sure to make his point clear. The Mars demigod shook his head disgustedly; Nico was not a toy. He was definitely not something that Jake could just do and then move on from.
He looked back at the younger demigod who was making his way to the training arena. He should really tell Hazel to buy her brother pants that didn't look so tight or hug him so well.
All four boys actually gave a little bit of a sigh of relief when Nico began dating another halfblood. So much easier to keep an eye on. The brown haired male was a tanned, 6'1" Apollo kid that was three years older with twinkling dark amber eyes. He was extremely well versed in medicinal healing and even better at archery.
All four boys kept a close eye on him for two weeks that slowly turned into a month. Percy and Jason gave him their own versions of the shovel talk, Leo put up threats followed by sparks of fire, and even Frank got into it by 'accidently' losing control of his shape shifting ability every now and then.
The quartet finally began to relax around two months. Ben was seen now and again kissing up to Katie in the Demeter cabin to get free bouquets, as well as serenading the thin Hades halfblood. He often tucked Nico into his side during bonfires and he even took the four boys demands in stride.
In general, he was perfect, and though Nico was angry-and absolutely mortified-about Percy, Jason, Leo, and Frank butting into his life, he was contented that his boyfriend accepted them as a cohesive part of their relationship.
It was an average July day when Nico sat down with Hazel and stared ceaselessly into the distance. Hazel gently touched his arm and asked why he wasn't with Ben, to which he closed his eyes and buried his head into his elbows propped up on his folded up legs. She just barely managed to discern the words mortal and cheated. She stayed with him the rest of the day and managed to turn his silent anger (which had caused an eruption of cracks and skeletal field mice to sprout up randomly accompanied by high pitched shrieks) into a much more manageable seething irritation (which had still resulted in shrieks emanating from Leo's workshop).
Percy, Jason, Leo, and Frank all marched up to the Apollo cabin, ready to tear apart Ben. The cabin counselor gave them a knowing look-their protectiveness was legendary after all-before telling them that Ben never came back last night and he had assumed he was with Nico.
All four of them headed over to the dining pavilion to ask their girlfriends to help with the search when they passed a large crowd on the first hill to the strawberry fields. Annabeth waved them over to where she, Piper, Calypso, Hazel and Rachel stood watching the spectacle.
Ben was wearing little pink Barbie bows in his hair, with a shirt that had little gems woven in a pattern that spelled out CHEATER blinking on and off, emanating heat. The finishing touch was a series of large winged contraptions circling him and intermittently attacking him, not leaving any space for him to escape from.
"What did you guys do?" came a voice behind them. They all turned to look at Nico, who took one look at his ex-boyfriend and muffled his snickers.
Percy and Jason guffawed. "Annabeth," Percy looked at his girlfriend, "You are absolutely evil."
"Hey, don't give her all the credit, we did a lot too." Rachel smiled. "You're welcome Nico."
Nico shook his head. "I cannot believe you did that." But he was smiling. They took the unspoken thank you.
He would just have to get used to his personal army.
EXTRA:
"Hey, um, Nico," the auburn haired swimmer bit his lip.
The demigod looked up from his spread out work. "I'm just going to give you a heads up, I have four extremely overprotective older brothers and four insane older sisters who enjoy seeing my boyfriends in misery."
Neal blinked. He had heard the rumors about the attractive Italian, but coming from his mouth, it sounded a lot more daunting. Nico lifted his head and smiled lightly. "You wanna ask anyways?"
Neal smirked. This guy was definitely more trouble than he was worth.
"How's seven o' clock sound?"
That little extra is the follow in to the accompanying piece "My Big Fat Italian Family Dinner". Let's see how our dear Neal will fare!