I posted this as a separate story, but I'm adding it to this collection because it fits here :) This one is about Nico's crush on Percy, set before The Last Olympian.
The thing about Percy that drives Annabeth crazy is also the thing that Nico di Angelo is infinitely grateful for. It's that he's oblivious. Percy's not stupid, Nico knows that, but he can be less perceptive than a rock when it comes to certain things. Things like crushes. Well, that's what Nico wants to call it. A crush. That sounds a whole lot safer than what it might be.
But who is he kidding, really, because Nico knows he's in love with Percy Jackson and there's absolutely nothing he can do about it.
Love. He loves him. He hates him, too, with the intensity of someone who doesn't quite know how to hate but does it anyway, like wanting to run before learning how to walk. He hates Percy for reasons that are too muddled up to pick apart, and he likes it that way, because if he looks at those reasons too closely then Nico's pretty sure he won't like what he finds. He's knows it has something to do with the way he feels whenever he sees his own reflection, that tight, painful feeling in his gut, the wash of shame and self-disgust that makes him want to melt into the shadows for good. How easy it would be, to slip into the Underworld and not return; who would notice?
But he's not ready to make that jump. He doesn't have the will to cut the strings that are tethering him to a world he doesn't belong in. Every time he sees Percy – from a distance, usually, as Nico seems to have a knack for getting around camp without anyone noticing he's there – his heart jumps up into his throat and lodges there. Percy with his easy off-kilter smile, with the faded scars that show briefly when his shirt rucks up over his stomach as he stretches, with the mindless way that his hand rests on Riptide whenever he's getting restless. The feeling of wanting fills Nico's body so completely, if only for a moment or two, before subsiding under a wave of hatred.
On the rare occasions that Nico talks to Percy, he's always laser-focused on keeping his own feelings under wraps. Be nervous, be angry, be irrational - just don't let him see, don't him see, don't let him see. He lets the hate drift to the surface, lets it mask everything below, as well as it can, anyway. A defense mechanism as good as any other. It's not perfect and there's no doubt that any child of Aphrodite worth their salt would take one look at Nico's eyes and pin him down as hopelessly in love. But around Percy? Works just fine.
Hey, Jackson, don't you see the way that I look at you? Don't you see that I've wanted you to want me since I met you? Don't you see that I wish you would be gone but not dead, never dead, because if you died that would break something in me?
It's unfair. Damn near everything is, but this seems especially cruel. Nico never stood a chance. Not from the time he was a little boy whose mother looked at him with love and worry, wondering to herself what she was going to do when he was older, hoping against hope that she was wrong about him. For his sake. Then he was ten, for gods' sake, only ten, a scrawny Mythomagic geek who saw his first real-life hero illuminated by the glow of a Celestial bronze blade.
Percy, who's pretty much blind to Annabeth Chase making heart-eyes and flushing red at him, whose fatal flaw is being too loyal. Percy and Annabeth, the way it should be, the golden couple.
Nico doesn't need a prophecy to see his future. It's all written on Percy's face, in the way his handsome features soften whenever he sees her, in the way Annabeth moves closer to him without even realizing she's doing it, like she's staking her claim (Nico wants to scream that he doesn't belong to her just yet but oh he does). Percy is going to go on thinking that Nico di Angelo hates him. And he'll be right.
Children of Hades don't get what they want.