It is considered a sport to tease Rachel and Nico about their relationship. They are never amused. When the seven friends go together at camp to re-group, they exchange tales, and the one of Rachel and Nico's first Christmas together is always requested. Sometimes, Rachel thought she could recite it in her sleep. Nico rarely added his input on the tale. No, he thought she told it best. Stupid son of Hades. As they sat around the fire, talking and reminiscing, Rachel waited for someone to ask her to tell it. It had had five hours since they had arrived at camp; it was bound to happen soon.
It was Chris this time. It was just after Clarisse had finished telling about how their son had beaten up a kid at school—she was so proud. You can imagine Chris was hasty to change the subject.
"So, Rachel. How did your and Nico's first Christmas go, again?"
Nico groaned. Rachel just sighed. "Did you not get it the first twelve times, Chris?" She looked at Nico. "Maybe we should write a book about it? Have it published? Then we could just give them copies to read whenever they wanted!"
Fail attempt at humor, Rachel. Fail.
Nico looked at her darkly. "Don't even joke like that, Rachel."
Percy apparently thought it'd be funny to make his presence in here. "Come on, Nico! You could name is A Tale of Two Tacos. Hungry people might buy it."
"Hungry people might punch you in the face, too," Nico countered. This shut Percy up. The skull ring of Nico's could do some damage. Percy had personal experience on that subject.
"So, Rach, are you going to tell us or not?" Annabeth cut in, before her husband had to have plastic surgery.
Rachel pursed her lips. "I vote not."
As if she was going to get away with that.
Her friends just glared at her, before she settled down to tell her story for what seemed like the billionth time.
"It was my and Nico's first Christmas together. It was what, four months after we got engaged?" she looked to her husband, who nodded. "We had just moved into the new apartment. Daddy was not happy that I was moving in with 'that di Angelo boy,' but I finally convinced him to come visit. Of course he had to come while I was at my Art History class; my professor ended up keeping us late that day, anyway. So imagine my horror when I came home to see Nico and my dad chatting, I don't think I've ever seen Nico so stiff — my dad, either, for that matter. It wasn't a very happy day that day, you know. Daddy was already upset because Nico decided to not go to college right away, so I was scared to find out what they were talking about. It turned out that Daddy had talked Nico into letting them come have Christmas dinner with us, sort of as a 'breaking in the new house thing.'"
It was here that Nico decided to cut in. "Have you ever met your dad? He's very persuasive, you know."
"Of course he's persuasive," Annabeth interjected. "He's a business man. He kind of has to be."
"You've never felt his persuasive side before, Annabeth; he likes you," Nico said.
Percy was just looking on, laughing, while Chris and Clarisse were thinking of ways to keep the argument going.
Before Annabeth could respond, Rachel said: "Did you want to hear the story, or not? I'm perfectly fine with the latter." That made everyone shut up, and sent Nico into a grumbling fit.
"Anyway, I was a mess trying to plan this thing. It had to be perfect so I could convince my parents that I had made the right decision in moving out of the penthouse. I would hate to move back into that stuffy thing with them.
I had everything planned perfectly, if I do say myself. Don't interrupt, Nico; it's not like you helped. So, anyway, it was Christmas day and I woke up early to start the preparations. I started cooking the turkey in just enough time and I started cleaning up around the apartment and setting everything up for my parents' arrival. They got there just on time; they were always very punctual.
We all went to sit in the media room and talked and caught up with one another. The conversation was very awkward, but very distracting. Before I knew it, the smoke alarm ws going off and the turkey ws burnt, and I had nothing to feed my parents. Nico ended up volunteering to make tacos, and everyone decided on beef and fish tacos. He made a huge mess in doing so, which I had to clean up."
Nico was about to interject, but a look from Rachel shut him up. Percy stifled a laugh and whispered something that resembled the word "whipped." Nico punched him, and Rachel slapped Nico.
"Moving on. The evening was uneventful, full of slightly interesting conversation, for a while, then my mom started acting funny. It turned out that she was allergic to something in Nico's tacos and we had to rush her to the hospital.
We all spent the night of Christmas in the emergency room, and ever since then, my parents have been convinced that Nico is out to poison them. You wouldn't believe the chewing out I got because of that, and I totally blame Nico."
She finished and looked at her friends, eyes shifting from Nico to Percy, next to Annabeth, then Chris, followed by Clarisse. None of them looked as amused as they should be for the amount of trouble they put into forcing her tell it to them.
She paused for a minute to swallow, because her throat was quite dry after the story she'd just told to her friends. After her mouth was thoroughly wet again, she opened it. "So, why do you guys like that story again?"
Clarisse, Annabeth, Percy, and Chris all shared a glance, before Annabeth spoke.
"We don't; we just like making you tell it. It's a little different every time, so we know it's fake."
"Well, if you want an interesting tale, why don't you go create one yourself?" Rachel asked.
"Yours are better. It must be your inner Oracle."
Rachel debating storming off but settled for another taco. Why not?
This was written for the Deck the Halls challenge on Veritaville.
This is also a latelatelate Christmas gift for Musafreen, because she is one of the people who made me love Raico. Merry Christmas!
(Thanks so much to Aventine Hill for betaing this at the last minute. I procrastinate. :P)