A/N: So… this took forever to write… because I don't even know why… But I'm all inspired now, I've got my fully charged laptop and my Disney music, I'm ready to finally finish this chapter. And hopefully soon this fic can actually move along in its plot (because there is a plot, I promise, I just got sidetracked from it because Nicolas Angel)
So, yeah, here's chapter twelve. I hope you guys like it. I want to warn you, the reason I'm forcing myself to update today is because I start school tomorrow, and I'm not sure how much time I'm gonna have to write. I'll try as hard as I can to keep up with this fic, because I love it, and I love you guys, and I have so many plans for this fic and I don't want them to get lost in the depths of my mind. So if weeks go by and I haven't updated, please review and yell at me to get my act together, because I will find time to write if I feel I have to. It's just when I feel I don't that I get caught up in other stuff.
So here's the update, hopefully I'll be able to update again soon, but again, I really can't know for sure. But I will try. I swear on the River Styx.
Review replies:
taberune: I'm so glad you like the fic! There's some more Nicolas Angel in this chapter (though not a whole lot) and I'm sorry if Adrianne's reaction to Nico being the look alike is a little anti-climactic. Jeannine reacted more. Thanks for reviewing!
creamtherabbit77: I'm glad you liked it :D Being a fangirl myself, as well as a writer, it was pretty easy to imagine what Percy would think of us. Thanks for reviewing!
ThePercyJacksonOracle: OMG I loved your review so much. It was kind of extremely confusing, but I loved it. Thanks for reviewing!
ObsessedwReading: Glad you liked it. Thanks for reviewing!
kittyhawk09: Yeah, Nico gets pretty gut-punched. He and Percy talk it out. I have seen Supernatural, and I totally agree with you about the whole fan-actor thing. Thanks for reviewing!
CRL: I DIDN'T EVEN MAKE THAT CONNECTION. THANK YOU FOR MAKING IT. THAT WAS BEAUTIFUL. Thanks for reviewing! :D :D :D
countingmoons: I love angst too lol. Thanks for reviewing!
ImmortalMystery: I'm so glad you like it :D Sorry I took so long to update, I won't next time, I swear (well, you know, I'll try :P) Thanks for reviewing!
kthulu: There is definitely a need to force myself to write. That's how stuff gets written. But thanks for trying to make me feel better about it lol. And thanks for reviewing!
ThaliaNicoPercy: I wish Nicolas Angel was a real series too lol. But that would require me writing it and so much effort… Thanks for reviewing!
Wolf girl13: I'm glad you like it. Thanks for reviewing!
ApolloCamperGirl: I'M GLAD YOU DIDN'T WANT TO WAIT BUT I'M SO SORRY I MADE YOU ANYWAY. Thanks for reviewing!
Guest: I wouldn't call myself pure evil… Maybe a little evil…. Thanks for reviewing!
Disclaimer: I don't own PJO, I only technically sort of own Adrianne and Co, and I pretend I own Nicolas Angel, but who am I kidding, I really don't.
Please review!
Chapter Twelve
Adrianne would feel bad about it later, but she wasn't exactly excited for Percy Jackson's book signing.
Even people who hadn't read the Nicolas Angel books knew that Mr. Jackson wasn't one for public appearances. He had no confirmed contact information, his wife controlled all his social media accounts, and he had scheduled only one other Q&A session in the twelve years he'd been writing, and it had been canceled at the last minute because of "family issues."
Adrianne had started reading the Nicolas Angel books after all ten of them had been published, when Kerri had insisted that "ghosts were the new vampires" and "she just had to read this book so they could die of feels together." Adrianne had loved the books, of course- they were kind of amazing- but she'd always been just a little bit uncomfortable with them, especially the scenes with Nicolas's sister in them.
For whatever reason, Bi's character just gave Adrianne serious déjà vu. It was disconcerting, to say the least.
When she and her friends arrived at Fordham University for the book signing, Adrianne noticed two things- one: Percy Jackson looked scarily like Mr. Johnson from the building next door. And two: Jeannine was looking for someone.
Meaning there was someone there that Adrianne didn't know about.
Her thoughts first went to Nico, her creepy stalker from the other day, but she soon realized that that was ridiculous, considering her friends had no way of contacting Nico, and therefore couldn't have invited him there. Then again, Adrianne had stayed late at school yesterday for musical auditions, so it was fully possible that Nico had been there and had conspired some crazy plan with Jeannine for them all to meet up at the book signing and-
Adrianne sighed and shook her head. What was she even thinking? Even her friends weren't that insane.
Still, she kept a lookout for Nico as they filed into the lecture hall.
The first hour or so of the Q&A was uneventful. Adrianne sat with her friends, listening to the varying degrees of fans ask Mr. Jackson varying degrees of questions. It was a fun experience, hearing the author talk about his own books in such a nonchalant way. Percy Jackson didn't seem to have any real opinion of his books; he talked about them like they were just things that happened, like they were real.
It was interesting.
After a while, Adrianne started to think that maybe this was going to go normally. Maybe her friends weren't crazy, and maybe she was going to get through a full day without something insane happening.
But then she asked that question, and everything changed.
As soon as Mr. Jackson finished answering, he glanced into the wings of the stage and immediately shot to his feet, as if he'd seen something horrible waiting there for him. He turned to his wife and said some brief words, then ran off into the wings.
The audience stirred, confused by the sudden urgency in a previously calm environment. Mrs. Jackson tried to calm down the crowd, hastily explaining about "technical difficulties" and "a short delay". Adrianne was confused, but accepted these answers and settled back in her seat, content to wait until the event was resumed.
That is, she was content, until Jeannine cursed under her breath and jumped up from her seat.
"Where are you going?" Adrianne asked.
"Nowhere," Jeannine insisted. "But you should probably come with me."
She grabbed Adrianne's hand and dragged her through the aisle, away from their friends, and out of the lecture hall into the rest of the school.
"J, what are you doing?" Adrianne demanded as she reluctantly followed.
"Okay, so you know how I really wanted you to be friends with your hot stalker?" Jeannine reminded her.
"Yeah…?" Adrianne was starting to get scared.
"Well, he's here. And I think he's in trouble. So don't hate me, but we're going to go help him."
Adrianne groaned as Jeannine started running faster. Why was she friends with these people?
Percy turned out to be extremely lucky and found Nico just outside the building, leaning against a fence at the bottom of the steps. Percy approached quietly, not wanting to surprise his cousin, but really not wanting him to run away.
"If it weren't so bright out here, I'd be gone," Nico told him without turning around.
Percy sighed and gave up trying to stealthy, descending the stairs fully to face his cousin. "Nico, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to offend you in any way. In fact, I don't… really know what I did wrong…"
Nico stared at the ground, refusing to meet Percy's gaze. "I figured out… from reading the books… that you… knew… I talked to Jason about it, he told me how you found out… but just… when you were talking… about Nicolas's… extreme feelings," he practically spat out the words, and Percy couldn't help but flinch. "It just… it sounded like… I mean, you made it seem…" Nico sighed and finally looked up at Percy. "The way you said it made it sound like you resented me… for ever liking you that way…"
"Nico," Percy sighed. "It's not like that at all. I mean… I don't think you did anything wrong for… for feeling that way… Of course, I can't… I can't ever… I mean-"
"Yeah, I know," Nico interrupted, blushing slightly. "You're married and straight, I get it."
Percy chuckled. "Yeah, pretty much. Look, I'm really sorry. I really didn't mean to offend you when I answered that question. I just meant-"
Again, Nico cut him off. "Please, Percy, don't try to explain yourself… We'll talk about it later, you've kinda got stuff to do."
Percy nodded and stepped away from his cousin. "Yeah, you're right, we should probably-"
"Nico!" a voice suddenly called.
The demigods looked up in surprise to see Jeannine running down the stairs leading out of the building, Adrianne a few feet behind her.
Nico frowned. "Jeannine?"
"Who's… this?" Percy asked slowly.
"Uh, Bianca's friend," Nico answered quickly before turning to the girls. "What are you guys doing?"
Jeannine took a minute to catch her breath, then said, "We wanted to make sure you were okay."
Nico could see Percy smirking at him from the corner of his eye, and resisted the urge to punch his cousin in the face. "Uh, thanks, but I'm fine…"
"You sure?" Adrianne asked as she reached them. "I didn't even know you were here, and then Jeannine kinda… freaked out and dragged me out here."
"I had a feeling something was wrong," Jeannine explained. "Luckily, I guess not."
Nico glanced nervously at Percy. "Uh, yeah. There was… we just… no, I- I'm fine."
It was then that the two girls seemed to notice the son of Poseidon standing next to them. Adrianne's face took on a look of surprise and awe, while Jeannine dropped into a full-on curtsy.
"Mr. Jackson," she said respectfully.
Percy raised an eyebrow in amusement. "Uh, hi. Nice to meet you guys."
"Nico, how do you…?" Adrianne began as Jeannine stood back up.
"Oh, uh, Percy's my…" Nico trailed off as he realized that he and Percy being first cousins wouldn't make any sense with their age difference. "uncle," he awkwardly finished. "I live with him and his wife."
Adrianne frowned. "But I thought you lived in the building next door."
Nico nodded.
"You didn't know we were neighbors?" Percy asked. "Sorry, I don't get out much, and Annabeth pretends our last name is Johnson so people don't ask questions."
Adrianne nodded slowly, still looking shocked.
Nico glanced between his sister, Percy looking at her awkwardly, and Jeannine who was staring at Percy like he was a god (which no one needed, ever). Desperate to end this circle of awkwardness, he quickly said, "We should go inside now."
"Right, yeah," Percy agreed. "Probably a good idea."
Nico rolled his eyes and led the way back inside the university and through the school towards the lecture hall.
As they approached the door, Percy pulled him aside. "Hey, I'm gonna answer a few more questions, and then it's show time, okay?"
Nico nodded. "Yeah, okay. I'm, uh… post-book ten, right?"
"Right," Percy confirmed. He patted his cousin encouragingly on the shoulder, then went back into the hall.
"What was he talking about?" Adrianne asked.
"Oh, uh, I'm the… Nicolas Angel look-alike," Nico explained.
The girls both frowned at him for a moment, then a look of recognition crossed their faces.
"I imagined him taller," Jeannine said, sounding disappointed. Adrianne laughed, while Nico glared at her.
"Hey, J, why don't you go back in, and I'll catch up in a minute," Adrianne suggested.
Jeannine shrugged, frowning slightly. "Yeah, okay." She looked between Adrianne and Nico for a moment, then nodded and reentered the other room.
Adrianne exhaled thoughtfully, before turning to Nico. "Look," she began.
"No, wait," Nico interrupted. "Sorry. About all this. I didn't mean for Jeannine to drag you into all my… drama… I told her I'd be here with Percy, but we were just gonna meet up afterwards, so I could…" He searched for the right word. "explain," he eventually continued. "Apologize…"
His sister frowned. "Apologize for what?"
"For… being creepy," Nico said, nervously fiddling with the zipper of his jacket. "For hanging out on your fire escape and then disappearing whenever you looked out the window."
"Yeah, I'd kinda like to know why you did that…"
"The fire escape of Percy's apartment is right across from yours," Nico explained, only 75% sure that that was true. "Sometimes I get… annoyed with my folks. I need some escape. And, it's not hard to make the jump…"
Adrianne nodded slowly. "So… your aunt and uncle are being annoying, you climb out your window and… just, jump over the fire escapes to mine?"
Nico shrugged. "They never think to look that far. I never realized how… awful it looked, I'll stop."
For a minute or so, there was silence, as Nico awkwardly avoided his sister's gaze, but feeling the heat of her staring at him.
Eventually, Adrianne broke the silence. "Or, you could just come inside."
Nico looked up, frowning in confusion. Adrianne shrugged. "We're friends, I think, by association. My friends seem to like you, anyway. The window's not locked, so… next time you need to escape, just… come on in."
Nico nodded slowly. "Okay."
Adrianne smiled at him, then turned away and walked into the lecture hall. After a few minutes of standing in shock, staring after her, Nico followed.
Once he could once again see Nico waiting in the wings for his cue, Percy suddenly became a lot more comfortable talking to his fans.
"So… that one scene in book five where Leo and Nicolas dress up as pirates…" one of them said into the microphone. "What's up with that?"
Percy could see Annabeth laughing at him, and Nico rolling his eyes, but before he answered, he thought back to exactly what was up with that scene.
"PERCY JACKSON, WHAT THE HADES."
Percy looked up as his bedroom door burst open, revealing Leo Valdez, fresh from one of his age-long vacations to visit his girlfriend-type-thing, wearing fire resistant clothes and a pirate's hat.
Percy frowned. "Hi, Leo, it's good to see you too."
"I'm gone for, like, two weeks, and when I come back, you're a writer?!" Leo exclaimed.
"You were gone for almost four years, man," Percy told him. "How was Ogygia?"
"Amazing as always, but that's not important. Why didn't you tell me you wrote a book?" he demanded.
"Dude, it's not like we can really talk to you when you go visit Calypso," Percy pointed out. "And you were gone for a long time, I mean, did you even age?"
Leo looked down at himself. "Maybe. I don't know. Slowly. Not the point- ten books, why was I not in them?"
"There's only four books."
Leo rolled his eyes. "Come on, Perce, I know you. There will be ten."
Percy chuckled, and looked back at his laptop, where he was currently writing Bianca's funeral scene. "Whatever you say, Leo."
The son of Hephaestus came fully into the room, taking a seat at Percy's desk. "But seriously, why don't I have a character? Everyone else has a character."
"You have no reason to be in these books," Percy explained. "You barely ever talked to Nico."
"That's not true!" Leo insisted. "He and I had some great bonding moments on the Argo II."
Percy raised an eyebrow. "You did?"
Leo shrugged. "Well, you know, I steered while he yelled pirate words at me from the crow's nest. But you could totally write about that."
Percy rolled his eyes. "I'm kind of at a serious part in the book, Leo, I don't think it would really be appropriate to put you in there now."
"No, it'd be perfect!" Leo tried to convince him. "The people reading are gonna be all depressed, and then BAM! Comic relief. Hot McShizzle Valdez. Everyone'll love it, it'll be great."
Percy stared at his friend. "Okay, first of all, please don't ever call yourself that again. Second, what would I even call you? There's not really any variations of Leo."
"You don't have to change my name," Leo told him. "No other name can accurately portray my awesomeness."
"I'm pretty sure that's illegal, Leo, I'm not really supposed to be writing about real people."
Leo frowned. "You barely changed what's-her-face Hunter's name."
"That's cause Zoë's dead," Percy explained. "I can more or less get away with it."
"Oh, come on," Leo pleaded. "Just change my last name or something. Let me keep the awesomeness of Leo."
Percy sighed. "Yeah, okay, fine. I'll see what I can do."
Leo waited while Percy finished up the scene he was working on. Then, the son of Poseidon looked back up at Leo. "So… pirates, huh?"
"The point of that scene," Percy told the fans, "is that the readers are all depressed because of Bi's funeral, and then suddenly BAM. Comic relief. Hot McShizzle Valdez and all that."
The fans looked pretty confused at that answer, while Annabeth was giving Percy a disapproving look, and Nico was silently cracking up backstage, but Percy was lost in his mind again, thinking back to that one particular scene.
When Nicolas was seven, his mother took him and Bi upstate to her family home for their aunt's funeral. Nicolas remembered the trip as being full of awkward silences and people pretending to be sad, because apparently Aunt Espa had been disowned sometime during her college years and so her dying in a mysterious fire wasn't much of a tragedy to anyone.
Except, of course, her son.
Nicolas often regretted knowing Leo, because he was pretty much a living disaster waiting to happen. Unfortunately, because he was Nicolas's cousin, he was also always around when Nicolas specifically did not want him to be.
"Leo, I'm not wearing this."
Nicolas glared into the mirror at his entire ensemble of an outfit, but most specifically the pointed velvet hat he held in his hand, a bright red flower poking out of the side. Leo was grinning, which Nicolas really hated, because seven years of almost getting arrested had proven that when Leo grinned at him like that, Nicolas ended up trusting him, and that never ended well.
Also it had been fifteen hours since his sister's funeral, so Nicolas was already kind of vulnerable.
Leo reached forward to straighten Nicolas's collar, his mischievous grin melting into an evil smirk. "You had no problem with the ruffled shirt, or the tight pants with a sword through your belt, but you won't wear a tricorn hat?"
Nicolas clenched his fists around the hat, resisting the urge to punch that smirk right off Leo's face. "Leo, I usually have a sword through my belt anyway, so your argument is invalid. And this isn't even a real pirate's hat, it has a flower in it!"
Leo shrugged. "I couldn't find any feathers."
Nicolas sighed and stepped back out of his cousin's reach, tossing the hat onto his bed before sinking into his desk chair. "Leo… my sister just died. I don't want to play dress-up with you."
"What are you talking about?" Leo demanded. "That's the point of the dress-up. To cheer you up. To lift your spirits. To watch the entertaining event of your weird friends struggling not to laugh at you because they know your life is hard."
Nicolas glared at him. "My friends aren't that weird."
Leo laughed. "But you admit they're a little weird."
Nicolas shrugged.
"Come on, little cuz," Leo tried to convince him. "I'm dressing up, too, we'll just go walk around town, talk like pirates. It'll be fun. Get your mind off of stuff."
Nicolas stared at his cousin for a moment, as Leo grinned hopefully at him and teasingly waved a fake hook around.
He sighed. "I don't know, Leo."
Leo's grin disappeared. "Well, what's your other option? Accepting condolence cards from people you've never met while trying to control your emotions so your ghosts don't attack everybody? Nicolas, I've been through this too, you know. Twice. I really think you need this."
Nicolas thought about that. Bi did have a lot of friends he didn't know, most of whom he'd seen at the funeral. He really hated to talk to people, especially about this. And Leo was right- if he got too angry, the ghosts wouldn't stay under his control.
"Fine," he spat. "But I get to wear the hook."
Percy couldn't help grinning to himself for the next few minutes, as he answered stupid questions about Nicolas's favorite restaurant (McDonald's, of course) and Jace's perfect woman (not any of you). His stupid Leo scenes just seemed so much better knowing that Nico was alive to read them.
Roughly an hour and a half into the event, Percy told his fans that he was done answering questions, and would they please welcome the one and only, Nicolas Angel.
Nico winked at him from the wings and disappeared into the shadows, reappearing dramatically on stage in a swirl of darkness.
Percy's grin widened. Having Nico back was proving to be really, really great.
A/N: I love Leo. Hope you guys liked this, again, I'll try not to be a stranger to this fic, but I really don't know how brutal my schoolwork is gonna be. Please review and I'll try to update soon!