Chapter 8, biotches! Woo! Well, since it's summer, I feel like I owe you guys a speedy update... This one is pretty short, it's just a little piece that I wanted to connect to the end of that last chapter but was too lazy.

Chapter 8

Nico's POV

"Agh!" I woke up in cold sweat and out of the corner of my eye, I see Percy fall out of bed. I look around and I'm back in the bedroom that I share with him, and everything's back to normal. Thank gods.

"Nico, what's up?" Percy says with a groggy voice as he pulls himself up from the floor and shakes the sleep out of his eyes. His hair is messed up, and beneath his concerned tone I can sense that he's a little annoyed at being woken up this early. "What are you screaming for?"

"N-Nothing," I quickly say, although I know that Percy can clearly see that I'm hyperventilating, and I've probably got a wild look on my face. Like I guessed, Percy didn't buy my explanation and shot me a look that made me know that I wasn't fooling him.

"Bad dream?" he asked and then he yawned.

"I said it was nothing."

"That's a load of crap, Nico, and I'm not buying it. Something must've happened that made you scream in your sleep."

"Oh, trust me, you probably wouldn't wanna know."

"Mhmm, sure. Let me guess, does it involve Bianca?"

"How do you know?"

"I know," he answered. He sat on his bed again, but he faced me. He didn't look too sleep anymore. "Nico, if you're still kinda mad about her dying for me and all, I understand, buddy, but it's been-"

"I know! It's been... a long time. And that wasn't what my dream was. Besides, Bianca already straightened everything out for me before. I'm not mad anymore, Percy. Just-" I stopped there.

Percy studied me, studied my face, and I suddenly knew what a goldfish in a bowl felt like. The right corner of his lip pulled up into an almost-smile.

"You just miss her," he said. That one hit it home.

"So what if I do?" I said.

"If you miss her it's ok to say so," he insisted. "If you keep in you, it'll just eat away at you."

"What are you talking about?"

"You know what I mean. What I'm saying is if you don't admit to yourself that you miss her then you won't be able to move on. You get me? I mean, you've got friends and all, like me and the half-bloods and stuff, but apart from us-"

"Percy, what's with the speech?" I said. "You been watching your Dr. Phil or something?" It sounded like he had the whole thing planned out in his head.

"No, I was just saying what came to me. Now, don't interrupt," he said. "Unless, of course, you want to tell me what your dream was about?" He grabbed his blanket and wrapped it around his shoulders like Harry Potter's invisibility cloak and sat Indian style on his bed. He looked at me, waiting for me to speak.

"Ok, yeah, it did have Bianca in it."

"Knew it," he said with a triumphant smile on his face. You'd think he just won the lottery or something. "Go on."

"C'mon, Percy-"

"Go on, go on. I know half-blood dreams are always a little bit weird, so go on. There's probably some kind of weird revelation or something. You are the son of Hades so I bet you've probably got some really interesting things going on in that head of yours in the night. So tell me, Nico."

"You're so annoying, jeez. It had Bianca in it, I heard her screaming, I looked for her-" I debated in my head whether to tell him about Posy and the tall brown-haired boy. "I, uh.. there was a boy there and I ran into him when I went to get Bianca and we collided. Then I woke up. Happy?"

"Who was the boy?"

"I don't know, I've never met him before."

"Interesting," he said. He rubbed his chin like he was genuinely interested in who the brown-haired boy was.

"You know I was reading this book about dreams and it says that if you have recurrent dreams - well in your case it's not recurrent - but Bianca is pretty recurrent, it might mean your depressed or something or you have a hard decision to make that you've been putting off-"

"I'm not depressed! I just a stupid dream with Bianca in it and yeah, I miss her, there's nothing for me to decide! I'm not putting off anything!"

Percy shrugged. "I was just saying whatever, you know. It was probably just my ADHD talking anyway. Sorry."

I looked side to side and tried to look like I was looking around. "Are we done here?"

He shrugged again. "Sorry. Didn't realize it was such a touchy subject for you. I mean, I'm just the guy who got woken up at 3 in the morning by a piercing scream from his nightmare-stricken roommate-"

"It wasn't a nightmare!"

"Whatever, dude," he continued as he laid down in bed again."I just didn't realize that your problems were this huge and that you just really didn't care. But I'll let you call the shots tonight. See ya in the morning, then." He turned on his side, away from me.

"I'm sorry, Perce," I said. "What else were you going to say? If your ADHD is still up for it, that is."

"He turned and looked at me again, and snickered a little.

I smiled, but not really. "What?"

"Nothing, it's just that.. you're sort of funny, that's all."

"I'm funny?" That's a first.

"Yeah. I mean, I know you and Bianca were really close and all, you guys were good friends. But, I mean besides Tyson, I've never had a rebellious annoying kid brother relationship with anyone."

I raised an eyebrow. "You mean like I'm your kid brother?" Another first.

"Yeah, that's what I mean," he said with a smile. "Kinda reminds me of when we first met at that dance thing. Gods, you were annoying as hell, with your stupid Mythomagic cards and your annoying little questions. I was about throw you in a sack and feed you to the wolves."

"I'm annoying?" I said with genuine disbelief. I didn't consider myself really annoying, but I suppose from a different paradigm, I was. "You're the one who's always screwing up. Or at least according to Annabeth."

"Hey, you don't drag her into this, this is a discussion between you and me."

I threw a pillow at him. He threw one at me and then I tackled him and pretty soon he was pushing my face into the carpet. Sally walked in after that and told Percy to get off me. He was using his hands to keep my face down and his knees were on my arms and it hurt like Hades.

"Boys," she said. "It's almost 4 in the morning, don't you think you could have your wrestling match after the sun comes out? It's Saturday tomorrow anyway. And I understand, Nico, that you have a date tomorrow?"

"A date, Nico? You didn't tell me about that," Percy said. He tried to ruffle my hair but I pushed his hand away.

"It's not a date, Sally!" I yelled. She put her hands up in surrender.

"OK, so what is it called when a girl and guy go out for a special appointment on a weekend?"

"Just don't talk about it, ok? And again, it's NOT a date. I know this whole 'not a date' thing is pretty over-used, but that's the truth."

She smiled. "Whatever. Alright. Well, get some sleep you two and I better not hear another word from this room. I mean it. Percy, bed, young man. You, too, Nico. Good night."

"Night. Love you," Percy says and then he gets back in bed.

Sally leaves and then turns off the light. I go back to bed, too, and have an undisturbed sleep until the morning.

To be continued...

OK, and chapter 8, done. Review...