He could sit on the beach now without going numb. Waves lapped at his bare toes, and he fiddled with the laces of his boots, stashed between his upraised legs.
"I'm starting to like someone," he told the sea, because he couldn't tell Percy. "He's not really like you at all. He's sarcastic and flirty and kind of geeky and he remembers everything about people, even people he hasn't seen for months or years. Everyone likes him." He sighed, fingers worrying at his shoestrings. "I don't know how he has room for all those people, in his heart."
Nico was more of a loner; he only had time and energy for a few people at once. He didn't believe that everyone could be special, and it was making him insecure, because he certainly wasn't special. Not even to Will.
"You like me, don't you?" he mused. "You don't like everyone, but you like me. Even if it is because we're cousins."
There was no reply, of course. The ocean whoosh-whooshed, and the sky started to look a little less gray and a little more blue, and Nico was still alone, but it didn't feel as bad as before.
Jason plunked down next to him, unexpectedly. "There's a car up at your house. It isn't Will's," he informed the younger boy.
"Leo and Piper are here," Nico said absently. "It's April, isn't it?" Leo and Piper always came up from Texas in April; they used to rent a beach house with their parents, until they befriended Percy and he insisted they stay at the cape. Nico didn't have any particular feelings about either of them, but hearing they had arrived made him melancholy. It meant that spring had officially arrived.
Jason leaned backwards, resting his arm on one bent leg. "Man, when I first met you, I thought you looked like some ghost kid. Pale, thin; hardly there at all. You lived up in that drafty old house all by yourself. I figured you'd been through some tough shit, so I let you be, and you started to look better, these past few months, with Will. But now you look like shit again, so I'm going to ask, even though you don't want me to. What's up?"
Nico glanced at him, but it wasn't for long. His gaze was drawn back to the sea. It always was. "Summer is coming," he said simply. "And Percy won't be here."
And he was starting to like Will, more than he should, and he was starting to love Hazel and Jason and even Frank and the gable house like he'd loved the cape and Percy. And Thalia had started giving him knowing glances whenever she saw him with Will, which was next to always those days, and Will was-Will was always in his head. And Percy wasn't. Percy wasn't anywhere.
Nico closed his eyes.
Jason, whether he understood what was going on or not, slung his arm around Nico's shoulders companionably. "I'm here for you, like you're my own brother. You know that, right?"
They were the same words that he'd always wanted to hear from Percy, because deep down, wasn't that all that his crush was? A need to be recognized, kept, loved? It was ironic that, when the statement finally came, it was from the wrong cousin.
Nico swallowed.
"It's weird, isn't it?" Jason went on, oblivious. "I mean, what are the chances that I'd come here, on a totally unrelated mission, meet you, befriend you-and it turns out that we're . . . you know, family, the whole time?"
"You think it means something?" Nico mumbled.
"I think everything happens for a purpose," Jason replied. "And mine is to make sure you don't get mired in this shit."
Maybe, Nico thought, he wasn't the wrong cousin after all.
a/n-this is nonsense. Skip it.
Lately, I've had this masochistic need to check how many people are viewing each chapter. Obviously, there are a ton of people who click on chapter one and then never go on to the rest of the story, but the sometimes I'll have, say, 63 views on a chapter, and then 73 views on the next one. Where'd those extra 10 people come from? Did they just skip to that chap? Am I the only one who's obsessed with reading chronologically and missing nothing?
It's totally been bugging me.