Based on the chapter called angels in my drabble collection.
{ the best-laid plans of mice and men / often go awry. } —Robert Burns
Apollo says, "I found a girl." His eyes are bright, brighter than usual, at least, it's almost but not quite infectious.
Rachel replies dryly, "Replaced me already? Eighteen isn't ancient."
He rolls his eyes, but he is perfectly serious when he asks, "Will you meet her?"
She sighs.
The girl orders hot chocolate instead of cappuccinos like them.
Her name is Leah, and she's fifteen. Dark brown hair and almost too-far-apart hazel eyes. She's an artist, too, she notices, from the charcoal covering half her right hand. Rachel glances sideways at him on the pretense of adjusting her scarf and wonders if that's his type.
"So…Apollo said there was a certain job I'd be good at?"
Rachel stirs her coffee. "He told you about the Mist, right?" Leah nods, looking eager. "Well, since you can see through it and you're human, you're…eligible. Apollo's got this lovely curse that makes you spew cryptic prophecies when someone asks you a question."
He throws her a look that says you could have worded that better.
"And you have to—" she begins.
Apollo cuts her off, standing up. "Rachel, can I talk to you for a minute?"
She stalls. She drinks more coffee and adds more cream, and all the while he's waiting by her chair, arms crossed. Leah looks puzzled, but thankfully she doesn't comment. Rachel gets up at last and follows him fifteen feet away, their backs facing the table.
"Afraid I'm going to scare her off?" she says, not a question.
"Yes," he says, surprising her. "Look, I just found her, and we need her; you can hold off on the, er, minor details."
Rachel sighs. "What's your plan, then?"
"She lives at a really bad foster home; they won't notice she's gone for Winter Break—"
"You seriously want her to live with me? For two weeks?"
Apollo grins. "I don't believe you when you insist you can't read my mind, because that is exactly what I was thinking. Minus the incredulity, of course."
Rachel rolls her eyes and presses a kiss to his cheek and concedes, "Two weeks, fine."
Leah can't enter camp because she's completely human, so all the half-bloods on various quests come to Rachel's house to get prophecies, much to the displeasure of her father, who's already disgruntled with her "friend" staying over.
They read Homer and study a little ancient Greek and for that first week, she's promising.
Then it's winter solstice, Christmas is four days away, when Rachel opens the door of the guest bedroom to ask Leah whether she'd like cream of mushroom or chicken noodle for lunch, and she finds her and a certain son of Hades.
When Nico's put his shirt back on, Rachel drags him out of the room and outside, one shoe untied. She doesn't speak until they're two blocks away, him shivering slightly without a jacket. "What the hell do you think you're doing?"
He swallows, colors a little. "Rachel—"
He's fifteen now, but when she looks at him all she can see is the twelve-year-old boy who told her she died. Even though he's a couple of inches taller than she is now.
"You can't pull the innocent excuse like she can," she says. "You know that once she's the Oracle you can't have her."
"Leah isn't the Oracle yet," Nico says. "You haven't even told her that tiny detail. And I find it hypocritical that you're the one saying that, when everyone knows you're messing around with Apollo. That's the only reason you want her to take your place, isn't it?"
She's pretty much speechless.
He continues (Rachel really, really wishes he wouldn't), "He's a god. He's not going to stick around forever." As if she hasn't thought of that already.
"This isn't about me, okay? I mean, I didn't drag you out here so you could criticize me."
He starts to speak, but his voice trails off and his eyes move past her. She turns and expects it. Across the street, Apollo and Leah are laughing and lacing up grey-white ice-skates; the rink is already crowded with people in bright pea coats and dark gloves.
The sky in backdrop looks like it's waiting for someone to paint it blue.
"It's the solstice; he's supposed to be at the council of the gods and instead he's here. Reliable, don't you think?"
"Like you haven't skipped school," Rachel returns, because she doesn't want to focus on the fact that he's right and she should probably listen to every single thing he says.
Nico grins—but it's weak and hardly counts, the color of his face is close to matching their skates. "Never."
Rachel seriously wants to draw him, then—the contrast is lovely: dark hair, tinged-blue skin, whiter teeth. She ignores his answer, pulls him into the nearest department store, and says, "I'll buy you a coat."
"Where's Leah?" Rachel asks, but she couldn't care less. Not anymore.
His face is tinted bubble-gum pink, but his eyes are dimmed. "She left," Apollo says. "I told her the one big condition of being my Oracle and she said thanks, but no thanks."
Rachel wonders if that was before or after they went ice-skating. "There goes your brilliant plan," she says matter-of-factly.
Apollo doesn't look as disappointed as he should about it. "It very sincerely pains me to say this, but it wasn't even close to brilliant. Now, brilliant was—"
"—you've already told me all about what you did to Cassandra, if that's what you were going to say," Rachel interrupts. "You knew it wouldn't work, didn't you? You knew she would say no."
He doesn't bother to deny it. Rachel sighs. "Put your coat back on."
Apollo raises his eyebrows, but does as she says. "Are you throwing me out? Because for the first time, actually, I don't blame you."
"That's a good idea," she says. But she takes his hand and guides him out the back door. It's not snowing, for once, and he looks maybe half bemused as she lets herself fall backwards into the twelve inches of untouched snow.
His expression makes her laugh instead of making her feel childish. There's powdered sugar dusting her curls as he helps her up.
"Don't you want to make one?" she asks, the green of her eyes washed out by the overcast sky.
He answers, "Gods don't make snow angels." Like it's rule number fifty-five in a book called how to be a Greek deity.
"Pretend you're not a god, then," Rachel says.
So he does. She tries not to smile as the snow melts around him. Apollo stands up without the help of her outstretched hand and they look down at themselves plus wings. "I saw what would have happened," she forces herself to tell him. Familiar green smoke and blank eyes and a girl screaming.
He says, unconcerned, "Of course you did."
Rachel ignores him, because she needs to say this. "Don't look for another girl, okay? I chose this, and I can't force it on someone else three years later because you want to sleep with me. And whether I want to is beside the point, anyway—"
He's a god. He's not going to stick around forever.
She's decided she would rather be the oracle (and a virgin) her entire life than be his for five years at best. Not that it isn't tempting.
"I think I preferred it when the Oracle was a corpse," he sighs theatrically, but Rachel knows even the fact that he's the god of truths doesn't mean he can't lie. He slides an arm around her waist, she leans up to kiss him.
"Are you ever surprised at anything?" she asks. Apollo winks and doesn't answer her.
It's inevitable that she'll get old and he'll get bored, but she's tired of plans.