Hey friends (mainly Elizabeth) (known to the greater world as notmyname numbers etc. or something)! I'm sorry for taking so long. I live in the boonies, so our wi-fi is often a bit spotty. But I've been working on this chapter for a while now, so hopefully it's good. It's pretty difficult to keep Nico... Nico-ish because I (a very not-Nico-ish person) don't really know anyone with his personality. I hope I did a halfway decent job. P.S Cat is a tweaked O.C from an unfinished/previous story of mine.
Chapter Two:
Nico woke up in a cabin so unfamiliar, he wondered for a moment if he finally managed to get laid. He checked to see if he was still wearing underwear.
Then he remembered he was in his own cabin—Hades' cabin.
He was the only person who slept (was supposed to, anyways) in there—his biological sister, Bianca, was dead, and his sort-of sister, Hazel, slept in a person-filled army barrack in Berkeley, California. He had the cabin all to himself, which he supposed would be kind of cool if it was anything but Hades.
The walls were solid obsidian, and the floors were made out of blood-red hardwood. Sconces filled with green fire burnt during the day, but at night, it was pitch-black—except for an Avengers night-light Leo had snuck in as a prank. Nico had never seen that movie, but he knew one of the heroes got frozen in an iceberg or something for seventy years. He could relate.
There was one bed, and it was large and cold. It had a headboard made out of lifelike skulls.
There was one window on the south wall that was almost constantly shrouded with a thick, dark curtain.
Even though Nico was tasked to build and design it, he hated the Hades cabin like Daedalus did the Labyrinth. So he never stayed, unless he absolutely had to. And if he did, he always left early. Percy had the annoying and endearing habit of checking up on him in the morning. The thought of having dried drool on his face, morning breath, and the son of a bitch so close to a giant, highly usable bed was unendurable.
Nico rubbed his bleary eyes, breathing in the morning's bouquet of scents—dust (normal), cigarette smoke (not normal), Bud Lite, (definitely not normal), and marinara sauce (what?). He kicked off the covers and was mildly surprised when he saw that, although he was missing his jacket and Black Sabbath shirt, he still had on his shorts, socks, and sneakers. His boxers were pulled up to his waist. He wasn't the least bit embarrassed.
Nico attempted to untangle himself from his black, sweaty, beer-scented sheets, but could do nothing but thrash about like a sentient burrito that was trying to walk upright. He yelped as he hit the floor with a loud thump and winced, because the involuntary loud noise did nothing to help his befuddled brain.
The door flung open and Nico quickly discovered that bright light didn't help either. He squawked, winced at his squawking, and rolled on his side so his back faced the door. ShitshitshitgoawayPercyno.
But Percy would've knocked. The door swung closed, and Nico's visitors made themselves known.
"I told you I could find his cabin!" whispered the uncharacteristically raspy voice of a certain annoying smoker.
"WHAT?!" shouted the other, unfamiliar visitor. Nico curled in the fetus position and groaned. "I—COULDN'T—HEAR—YOU!"
Nico heard a second thump on the floor and supposed Dmitri had just collapsed. "Bitch…"
He felt a poke between his shoulder blades. "Mornin'."
"Uuuuuuuuuuuuggggggggggggghhhhhhhhhhhhhhh" was the other's reply. He heard a girl's laugh.
"Right?" Nico rolled over and blinked wearily. Dmitri was lying on the floor, wrapped in a printed blanket and wearing a pair of dark sunglasses. He looked like a blind Navajo.
Nico wondered what he looked like. He guessed he likened an idiot who had been suffocated in his own funeral shroud.
He was about to ask why Dmitri was even in his cabin when he interrupted Nico's sluggish thoughts.
"Mr. di Angelo, do you remember my absolutely anal friend, Cuntherine O'Whorelly?"
A short, freckle-faced girl squatted next to Dmitri. She didn't look the slightest bit tired: she wore black hiking boots and a pair of torn tights under rolled up shorts. Nico had seen her talking to Piper and Leo before, but never asked her name. He never asked for anyone's name.
"All right, sunshine?" she said. "My actual name is Catherine, but if you call me that, I'll have to kill you."
It's hard to tell when demigods are joking about killing or serious about killing, so Nico decided to just roll with it. "What do you prefer?"
"Cat."
"Meow," Dmitri muttered.
"Oi. Shut up, Miley Cyrus." Catherine, er, Cat, smacked the side of his head. She had a vague accent. Scottish, maybe? He couldn't place it.
Nico closed his eyes. "I'm Nico."
"I know." He opened them.
"You were at the party last night, right?" Nico's throat felt dry and cracked.
Cat smiled, showing slightly crooked front teeth. "Yeah, but I don't DRINK SHITTY BEER,"—both guys winced—" smoke, or, as the kids say, 'frick-frack', which explains why I'm the one who's in clothes and you're the one who's wrapped up in a sheet."
Nico was too tired to think of a scathing remark, much less say one.
He was concerned, however, about the "frick-frack" remark.
"Dmitri," he rasped.
"Yo."
"What happened last night?"
The blind Navajo smiled grimly and began to ramble. "We drank beer that didn't really taste like piss, and hooch that tasted like rubbing alcohol and you wanted to dance to that one song by I think it was like Bruno Mars or maybe Kaskade or some other cat (Cat with a capital-C didn't actually perform although it would be so amazing if she did),"—Cat with a capital C smiled haughtily—"I don't e'en know so we did and wow you were like Michael Jackson and Joey Ramone combined and I still dunno if that um turns me on or not like the fuck and I dunno I kind of blacked out after seeing your nipples also Yates started calling you 'Mario' for some reason so I guess it's a thing." Dmitri rolled onto his stomach, placed his bedhead in his arms, and conked out. Reminiscence over.
Nico could barely comprehend any of what he said, except for "rubbing alcohol" and "nipples". He whimpered. "Please tell me he's wrong and still intoxi—intalk—whatever..."
Cat folded her legs, criss-cross applesauce. Nico didn't dislike her immediately. She seemed tolerable, except for the screaming when they were so…ugh. "Well, Wednesday Addams, you were mostly appropriate until Kenny—"
"Kenny?"
"Short, blonde hair, spotty, Hermes?"
Nico shook his head slowly.
"Uh…" Cat snapped her fingers. "He spikes his hair like 90s Timberlake?"
He was still clueless as to who he was, but he said, "Oh…" anyways.
"—You were perfectly fine until Kenny started playing Snakehips. Then you and Dmitri and Yates were all hype. I think this one black girl was trying to hook up with you. I have never seen her before. Heh," she grinned. "Mortals at a celestial shindig. Heh."
Nico made a lame attempt to string all of his questions together. "Hype? Snakehips? Black girl? Yates?"
"Black girl was probably a confused mortal. Snakehips is like, the best groovewave artist of all time. 'Hype: noun; a pumped up, titillated, or otherwise excited person slash group of persons who in turn pump up, titillate, or otherwise excite a different person slash group of persons'. And holy-shit-how-do-you-not-remember-Yates-McConnell- he-is-my-half-brother-and-the-bomb-dot-diggity-Don key-Kong-com," she answered.
"What does 'titillate' mean?" grumbled Nico.
"Means you're ready to stick that pecker of yours into any warm crevice you can find."
"What's a pecker?"
Cat sighed. "It's your penis, sweetheart." She pronounced it like "it's ya pee-nis, sweet-art."
"Oh." Nico rolled onto his stomach like Dmitri had done. "Why are you guys here?"
"Dipshit here wanted to check to see if you were as bunged-up as he was. Guess you win the award for most hungover. I'm surprised you haven't thrown up. Jared had some pretty strong hooch and DI IMMORTALES WHY DOES IT SMELL LIKE POT IN HERE?"
His head gave an enormous throb. "Be quiet," he hissed, covering his ears.
Cat gave no indication of hearing Nico. She stood up and paced the room, scanning the floor. He felt slightly intimidated, watching her combat boots slam against the hardwood floors so purposefully.
While the ginger searched for whatever it was that was making his room smell weird, Nico pressed his nose against the dusty floor and attempted to get his head in order. He didn't have friends. He always fucked up friendships by creeping people out, being kidnapped and held in Tartarus, or falling in love with them. So who were these guys?
The party was starting to come back. There were an awful lot of girls there, so Nico felt really awkward and weird around everyone. Then Dmitri, being the one who gave Nico his first cigarette, passed him his first SOLO cup. It was filled with golden beer. Nico had four of those, two Dixie cups of what Cat called "hooch", and a couple of red Sour Patch Kids. Dmitri tugged him onto the "dance floor"—basically the dusty space behind a beaten pickup truck—and introduced him to more girls (some of which were dryads or nebulae) and a lot of guys (some of them with hooves). They all seemed nice, although some pounded him on the back a little too hard and one guy with a tie-dyed shirt and a beard gave him a small, white button of "candy". Tie-Dye Guy told him it was something like LCD or some other weird name and Nico didn't understand but the hard look on Dmitri's face made him drop it and crush it like a cigarette as soon as Tie-Dye Guy turned away. And then Dmitri stopped introducing him to people and dragged him with him to go negotiate with the DJ, a.k.a a guy sitting in the driver's seat controlling the music system. He and Nico leaned into the window and requested songs the latter had never heard of. He was certain they asked for a song called "Bitch", and another one by a band called the Kings of Lee-aw or something, and he didn't know if Dmitri explicitly asked for a song called "Bubble Butt" but he wouldn't put it past him: Dmitri liked weird music. And then the song by the Baltic Monkeys came on and his new friend taught him how to dance, 21st Century-style, which Nico thought was slightly less graceful than humping chimpanzees. So he taught Dmitri what little dances he'd picked up as a kid. A swing song came on: then, he paired off with this Asian girl who wore blue lipstick and they danced and afterwards she kissed him and—
"Cat?"
She looked over at him. "What's up, Nico?"
"Do I have blue stuff on my face?"
Cat knelt down next to him. Nico turned his face sideways, and his right cheek squished up against the floor. Cat examined his face with the kind of intensity reserved for the study of Elizabethan literature. Then, her concentration broke, and she laughed. "Why, yes, you do. I suppose you met Carly Johnson?"
He blushed. "Uh, yeah, I guess."
"Okay."
"Do I have to date her?" he blurted out.
She chuckled. "Oh my gods, you clueless innocuous bastard." Cat stood, sniffed deeply, and walked to the window. "Carly is the warm crevice into which all the titillated are sticking their peckers. Don't even worry about it."
"What does—?"
"'Innocuous: adjective. Harmless, not offensive'," she explained. She shoved the two halves of her hoodie together and shivered. "Don't you have, like, a thermostat? It's effin' Baltic in here."
Nico was about to ask if she was a daughter of Athena, and if so, if she could smack one of her half-sisters upside the head for him, when Cat interrupted his sluggish train of thought with a cry of triumph.
"AHA!" Cat smiled, and from behind the black curtain pulled a large glass vase—or at least, Nico thought it was a vase.
"I'm guessing someone needed a new smoking hole," she said. Dmitri burst out in loud, loud laughter. Cat with a capital C rolled her eyes. "Do you ever lock your doors, Wednesday?"
He had to think about this for a few seconds. "No. Why are you call—"
She cut him off. "Unless you want another visit from the Bong Fairy, a.k.a Jared Woolworth, you might wanna start doing that."
"Febreeze, if you please, or my nose will tease and I will sneeze," Dmitri sang softly.
Nico wanted to kick him (so he would shut up), but he was still an idiot burrito. So instead, he finished the rhyme on a feeble note, "Cheese?"
Cat rounded on the blind Navajo. "If you want Febreeze, go get some from the camp store."
"I can't. There's people out there."
"So?"
"And there's people out there." Dmitri stuck out his lower lip.
"UGH." She snatched a pillow off of the cold, vast, empty, skull-decorated bed and tore the pillowcase off of it. She stuffed the vase-thing into the pillowcase, and then tossed that into a large laundry basket that was lying by the Hades Cabin closet. The fitted sheet and other blankets joined it shortly thereafter. Soon, she was climbing over the cold, vast, empty, skull-decorated, and bare bed.
"Nico, I'ma need you to unroll yourself."
"Do I have to?" he replied. He felt warm and secure in his burrito. He also didn't feel like displaying his scrawny chest or boxers to a pair of strangers.
"Yeah."
"But if you're gonna hide the thing inside the other things…"
Cat sighed, grabbed the edge of the sheet, and yanked it upward. The occupant zipped across the room and straight into the blind Navajo, who screamed. They landed in a massive pile of limbs and sleepy jitters.
"Good. Got these horrid sheets here, gonna break this bong over Jared Woolworth's head, and aw," Cat smirked. "You two are all snuggled up."
Nico attempted to scramble off of Dmitri, but only manage to roll over him and onto his other side. He breathed heavily, and his ears rang as he tried to roll his waistband down so they wouldn't see his plaid underwear. "Shit, Cat!" he hissed.
Dmitri shivered, then croaked like a bullfrog. "Thanks for playing Mom."
"Use better grammar next time. 'There's people out there'… Jesus." Cat hefted the basket onto her hip. She walked out, closing the cabin door with a snap.
Meanwhile, Nico felt exposed without his sheet and was all too aware of the arm-to-arm contact with this guy. He attempted to pull himself to his feet, but his vision went dark and his head pulsated. So he settled for rolling away like a log across the hardwood floor. Goosebumps sprang from his green and ivory skin.
"Dude," Dmitri's muffled voice said from behind his blanket. "What's with you and physical contact?"
"I don't like it and I'm freezing and my head hurts and I'm missing my shirt and why are you even here oh my gods."
Dmitri was silent for a minute. Nico shuddered with chilliness and wondered if he fell asleep again. But then, he made another speech:
"Number one: Everyone in this camp knows of Nico di Angelo and his shitty time in Tartarus. I understand you are still edgy four years later. I would still be edgy like forty years later. I am very sorry, Nico, that you hate touching. But, however, I am not sorry enough to give up my blankie, which shall be addressed, hmmmm, now."
"Number two: I have a blankie and it is warm. But I refuse to give it up so I can freeze in your stead. To be warm under this blankie, it may require physical contact with a homosexual male that has a 35% chance of having a crush on you. No. I lied. 39% chance. But I get that you're straight— are you?" Silence. "Uh, 'kay, anyways… I swear on the River Styx I won't force myself on you or anything douchey like that." A rumble from overhead sealed this covenant. Nico's eyebrows crept up his forehead.
"Number three: of course you have a headache. If you got any more hammered last night, you'd be stuck in a two-by-four.
"Get it? Like… like nails?" Dmitri chortled. Nico rolled onto his side and watched him clap his hands and shake with spasmic and utterly silent laughter. "Cuz, cuz, you know, you get hammered, and hammers hit nails, and—"
"I get it; I'm just not laughing." Nico interrupted.
"Screw you, I'm hilarious.
"Number four: for future reference, don't ever drink moonshine again if you wish to keep your clothing, Oh, man, this one time, Connor and Travis took me out to a rave in Brooklyn in like, January, and we were freezing by the time it was over.
"Number five: I am here because I enjoyed your company last night, Mr. di Angelo, and I wished to be in your pleasurable company again." Mr. di Angelo rolled his eyes. Dmitri seemed to be switching from illiterate druggie to British nobleman every alternating moment. "I would like to make your acquaintance when I am not drunk or totally hungover, and the best way to ensure this is to hang out with you while we're both drunk or totally hungover. Another thing known about Nico di Angelo is that he doesn't really have friends, except for Percy Jackson and Annabeth Chase, those at whom you were glaring last night." The son of Hades blinked. "It's not my bih-niss, but I guess things are not going as well nowadays. What matters is that we're hombres now. If you wanna be, I mean, whatever's cool."
Nico laid silently for a full sixty seconds. Then he crawled over to the closet, pulled out the only thing in there—a too-small orange tee that said "Camp Half-Blood" on it—and pulled it over his head. He then crawled back to Dmitri, muttered "scoot over", and settled himself in a space where he could be blanketed and warm but also apart from Dmitri's skin. He allowed their calves and toes to touch (Dmitri in socks, Nico still in sneakers) and he fell asleep, feeling exhilarated, exhausted, terrified, and, strangely enough, pleased.