Okay that last chapter was a piece of crap but I wrote it in a hurry so I could get to this! If you're wondering, Luke is coming up, I've decided to not do Annabeth's POV at all because I hate her in this story even though I wrote it, and Nico and Percy will not die. I don't think. And there will be no more kissing (I'm a Nicery fan too guys, so I'm not doing it cause I'm against yaoi-ness) Um, the last chapter I was suffering from a case of writer's block and it sucks and is mostly just filler. I sort of hated it, but I hope you guys didn't.

I've noticed that I've gotten lots of VIEWS but not REviews, it's slightly frustrating because I need these reviews to make me actually want to write the chapter. So even if it's a corny "this was awesome" one liner, I'll totally take it, and I'm going to start replying to reviews just because the few of you who do review are totally boss and you guys deserve it.

Another thing (this is going to be really long) I am going to do a Maximum Ride fanfiction! It's going to be a lot like this, but it'll deal with cutting more than just all together being fucked up in the head like Percy. Um, also I don't really want a beta. I mean, I like having someone else reading my work but I don't really want a beta just for the sole fact that I like to change everything suddenly, and nothing is ever enough and stuff, so. Yeah.

Gods, in this chapter I think I'm going to introduce Luke, do a time skip, more Nico POV, and also some Rachel. Octavian's going to be in the chapter and we're going to find out some crap about Riley and Nico's crushes and stuff on each other. Right.

On with the chapter!

Chapter 7: Plans

Stella. She was a wild night, all blonde hair like wind and blue eyes like water that I wanted to drown in and arms and legs like vines that wrapped me up.

She drove a convertible, and I drove it to my place. I guess my house was something else to her because we pulled up and she gasped. My mother's BMW and Paul's Lexus were parked out front and their room light was still on, meaning that they were either waiting up for me to make sure I was okay, or on the phone with someone. I wished it was the latter but I knew mom was probably talking to Sharon, her manager.

I kissed Stella again, and yanked her up the front steps. She squealed and giggled and I shushed her with another kiss. We giggled like little kids as I unlocked the doors.

I won't go into the gory details of my night with Stella. All you need to know is that I sent her into the basement and stole a bottle of vodka for the night that ended up empty. We smoked a joint, laughed, and in the morning we both woke up naked and happy. So there.

_Drowning_

"I don't want to go." She whined, her fingers traced up and down my chest and I didn't want her to leave either. Her voice was annoying and her laugh was nasal but she was hot and she made the sexiest noises at night, she was quite the minx in bed.

"I don't want you to leave either, but you've gotta." She rolled her eyes and scowled at me a little. I handed her an Advil but she just scowled deeper.

"No breakfast?"

"No breakfast. C'mon, my mom's gonna be down." I whispered hurriedly. Her eyes widened and she scoffed.

"Your mom? I thought you were worried about a roommate."

"I'm in high school. So get the hell out and I won't call the cops."

So she's gone now. She actually high tailed it out of there as soon as she heard high school, and I wanted to laugh at her for being such an idiot. But then again, I'm stupid my damn self, so who the hell cares right?

I spent the rest of my Sunday drinking straight vodka from the bottle. It made my head hurt but it made my heart numb so I didn't mind at all. I watched stupid cartoons and laughed and threw up some too. I hated this. I hated this. I didn't want to keep touching my lips thinkthinkthinking about how amazing it felt to place them on Nico's. I just got laid last night by some model broad for gods' sake! Why the heck was I thinking about Nico?

He called me twice. I wanted so desperately to answer the phone calls, I wanted to talk to him, to hear his voice, to listen to him laugh and enjoy the sting of his breath through the radio waves. I wanted nothing more than to go back to how things used to be. I wanted us to be close, no matter the cost. I'd kiss him every single day if that got him to talk to me, if that got him to worry about me and think about me and care about me again and not just think of me as something that's been there forever. Hell, dirt's been here forever!

I just needed him, you know? Do you? Do you know what it feels like to totally need someone so completely that it hurt? To need them so much you piss them off just to hear them speak to you? You literally jump off of a building to feel them touch your skin one last time before you gave your last breath, you needed them so much you wouldn't even care if you were romantically involved, you just want them to hug you, to talk to you, to laugh with you.

Am I wrong for feeling like this, about Nico no less?

Nico P.O.V

I have a feeling Percy's going to end up totally screwed for the rest of his life. Not only did he kiss me, but he seemed to want to do it again. I'm not a homophobe, but I'm not gay either and I know Percy isn't. This is just him trying to show me something he's afraid to say. This is him crying. Having sex with Bianca, missing school to get smashed, hiding his arms all the time, this is his version of crying. Hazel said I just have to let him ride this out, like he did when he moved from his little apartment.

But this is different.

I feel like if I don't do something he'll end up drowning himself or something.

So I called him about 1,200 times. He didn't answer any of my calls, which is something weird for me because anytime I called anyone, they answered, especially Percy. I bet he was just sitting around watching Adventure Time, popping Oxy like freaking candy and guzzling down vodka faster than Hummers guzzle gas.

Freaking great.

He claimed he didn't need help. He was stubborn like that. Loyal to a fault, sticking with me even when he just wanted to climb under a rock and die. So I know that he won't go to a therapist or a rehab or even talk to me because he doesn't need help. This is Percy Jackson we're talking about. He probably thinks he's saving someone from falling down the same well that he did. But the thing is, I'd let him kiss me a thousand times more if I got to see him every second of everyday. If I got to make sure he was always okay. I'd kiss him myself if that meant he'd talk to me, if it meant that he'd tell me what was going on in his head, what he was thinking, feeling.

This was driving me insane, not knowing what he was thinking.

I've got this theory. When Annabeth was around, he'd been bright and happy, and she'd been around since we were 12. She'd always been the girl of our little group and so he was always fine with dumping all his emotional crap on her, and as soon as she was gone, out of the picture, it was gone. Everything in his head stayed in his head because his walking talking diary had just dropped off the face of the earth. If that was the case then maybe we just needed to get him a notebook, maybe we needed to force him to a therapist. I don't know, but I do know I want him to be okay.

I sat around on Sunday listening to my guilty pleasure, Ida Maria (some people I've PM-ed would know I absolutely love her) and smoking joints and what not. Hazel says I need to quit smoking weed and for like 2 months I did quit, and I ended up addicted to cigarettes. So. Bianca is so happy it's ridiculous and it's beginning to make me want to strangle the shit out of her. Does she not realize that Percy's so broken we haven't even found all of the freaking pieces? Does she not know that he only used her to forget for a few hours that he'd lost his mind and didn't know where the heck to look.

And that's what gave me the idea.

I immediately called Rachel. She had always been good for helping make sure Percy didn't kill himself while I'm not looking. I guess, lately neither of us have been doing our job very well, because at the rate he's going, he'll die of alcohol poisoning before we could do anything and we were just letting him. He probably went out and got totally wasted and took some bar fly home with him.

"Hello?" she said into the receiver.

"I'll be over your place in ten." I muttered and hung up. I think that annoyed people, when I just say one sentence and hang up, but Rachel doesn't mind, she says it's funny.

I grabbed my keys, a Led Zeppelin t-shirt, and my boots before running downstairs to the garage. I drove through the back roads to Rachel's place with no shoes, and no shirt, not really caring, just needing to see her "average American family" home. I was always more comfortable at her place than I was in my own mansion, and it was stocked full of food and technology and my sister had some seriously hot cheerleader friends.

In retrospect, I guess knocking on her door with nothing but sweatpants and boots on wasn't a good idea. I had bedroom hair, but I always did, and I wasn't wearing a shirt and the pants were low on my hips. I kept trying to wear pants that fit better because Percy had been really distracted by my fucking hip bones, but I'm skinny, so what can we do?

The reason why my choice of no shirttedness was ridiculously stupid was because I didn't know if her parents were home. More importantly I didn't know that her older stepbrother, Octavian, was back, visiting form college.

"Who the fuck are you?" he growled suddenly. I really wasn't expecting the door to just swing open like that. Maybe I should've gotten Hazel's key, or better yet, I should've brought her with me!

"Nico di Angelo." I shrugged, like I wasn't scared, but really I was pretty terrified. He had this long scar running on his neck and I was sure he'd cut the hell out of me without a freaking afterthought. Nice right?

"The fuck are you doing here?"

"Why do you say the word "fuck" so much? It's unbecoming." I squinted at him.

"What do you want, brat?" he grunted, irritated. Okay, irritated I could handle. But not "I'll stab the shit out of you, you little turd, if you don't get the fuck away from me." It actually scared me, can you believe that? Plus, this guy didn't look like he was all there, if you catch my drift.

"I'm here for Rache." I said, pulling my shirt over my head and yanking my pants up in the process.

"Oh my goodness! Are you her friend Nicolai? (I hope that's actually pronounced Neek-o-lie cause if it ain't I'll look really stupid.) That little scrawny kid? Dude, what the hell happened to you?" he gushed as he shoved me into their house. I loved the way it always smelled like cinnamon and nutmeg. It was welcoming. My house always smelled like burning hair follicles, and strong perfume. I guess you wouldn't know that, considering I haven't even let you into one of my arguments with the 'rents but it's not like you care or anything.

"Um, yeah. I go by Nico now. Started working out."

"Yeah, dude I remember you used to look so sick all the time. I mean, you're still really skinny but now I don't think you're anorexic, just small I guess. I'll go get Rachel." He said. I guess he was less insane than I thought. But not totally and completely stable like his sister.

I walked into the family room, where there were muddy shoes on the couch and food wrappers in between the cushions. Persephone would pitch a fit if she saw something like this. I can just imagine that ugly veins in her forehead popping out all weirdly.

Anyway, I sat down on the couch, kicking my boots up, they were heavy as hell, and bobbing my head to the music Octavian had been playing. I think it was Metric or something, but either way he had good taste. Not exactly metal, not indie either or pop. It was something else. So of course, while I'm mumbling along to the words, some blonde kid walks out of the kitchen. He's got salt and pepper hair and blue eyes and he'd be a total 90's Leonardo DiCaprio except for this scar running on his right cheekbone (I don't really remember where specifically) it completely mars the illusion.

"Who are you?" I asked. He was eating peanut butter straight out the jar like a weirdo. I mean, really, who eats that much peanut butter? No one, exactly. Unless they're high.

"Luke. (Yes. The Luke) Octavian's friend." He shrugged, and I nodded suspiciously.

"Oh. Roommates or something?" I guessed and he smirked like he knew something I didn't.

"More like, or something." He chuckled, and I was giving him a weird look, about to give him an even more creeped out answer when Rachel stumbled into the room. She was wearing some of Octavian's old basketball shorts and her hair was up on top of her head. She looked like she just rolled out of the bed, and it was like, 3 o'clock in the afternoon.

"Hey Neeks." She grinned sleepily.

"Did you just get up?" I laughed and got up to hug her. What can I say, she makes me happy.

"Yep. I was up last night fanfictioning." She shrugged like it was nothing, though I knew that meant she was up until like 5 am reading. She's such a weirdo.

"Hey, I gotta talk to you, it's really important." I mumbled in her ear. She looked up at me curiously, and motioned for Luke and Octavian to get out.

She sat down on the couch, Indian style, and patted the spot next to her. I collapsed on the floor instead, looking up at her through my hair. I was dead tired, I have to admit, and the high from the weed was wearing off. I didn't feel laughy and hungry anymore and nothing was as sharp and detailed or as blurry as it was when I was high. This part of smoking sucked. So we probably both looked like some strung out druggies, all super exhausted and malnourished and shit.

"Let's go to the beach." I suggested brightly. Her eyes widened and she looked at me like I'd finally lost it.

"You do realize that it's October in freaking New York, right? It's going to be freezing."

I shrugged, "I'll get us tickets to fucking… California or something."

"Why do you want to go to the beach?" she asked doubtfully, stroking my hair absent mindedly.

"Well, I know Percy. And I know that his whole life fell down the shit hole at a beach, while it was all rainy and suckish. Maybe if we go to a beach while it's happy and full of life, he'll be like "This is why I love life" or some sappy bullshit like that." She seemed to be lost in thought, a little wrinkle forming in her brow as she sat, so I stopped talking though I really wanted her to flacking say something because I was getting nervous.

"You think it'll work? Could- could Hades give you enough to like, rent some space out, make sure no one comes near us while we have a bonfire or something? Sing some songs, we could invite a bunch of people. And we don't even have to go to Cali or anything, maybe just… Florida." She shrugged, and looked at me straight on for the first time.

"If I didn't think it would work, I wouldn't have said it."

"Dude, you are a freaking genius!"

I know I am.