PJatO || Nicercy || PJatO || Nicercy || Counting on You || Nicercy || PJatO || Nicercy || PJatO

Title: Counting on You – Phoe's Tumblr Drabbles

Fandom: Percy Jackson and the Olympians / Heroes of Olympus

Disclaimer: All rights reserved to Rick Riordan. Aside from the Gods, they belong to the old Greeks. This fanfiction and its OCs on the other hand are entirely mine. No money is made with this, though reviews are more than welcomed.

Tags: m/m, soulmates AU, hurt/comfort

Main Pairing: Nico/Percy

Percy Jackson Characters: Perseus Jackson, Nico di Angelo

Summary: Prompt: Counter on your body that counts down to your first meeting. Both Nico and Percy came out of the Lotus Hotel with their timers run out and no memories of meeting their respective soulmate, the hotel's magic leaving their memories too fuzzy.

Counting on You

Phoe's Tumblr Drabbles

Every person was born with a counter on their wrist, counting down the hours, minutes and seconds until they would be meeting their soulmates. Nico di Angelo was sure that his timer was broken though. His nonna did the math for him and his timer still had over seventy years to go. That just could not be right at all. Nico would be so old by the time he met his soulmate! And he himself had done the math on that one, learning he would only meet his soulmate in 2006. That was the next century, that was so, so, so far away! That was a nightmare, it was unfair.

/break\

Percy had never really questioned his timer. He would be twelve years old when he met his soulmate. That was exciting, that was like super early! Most people had to wait until they were adults to meet their soulmates. So Percy spent all his life looking forward to 2006, because it was going to be his year. The year he was going to meet his soulmate and be happy forever.

2006 was not his year. At all. His mom revealed that she'd lied to him all his life, and then proceeded to get nearly killed by the Minotaur and did get abducted by Hades, and Percy found himself stranded at a summer camp for demigods, because apparently he was a demigod.

Percy barely even had time to think about his soulmate, but when he did, he considered that, oh, yeah, this made sense. The year he learned he was a demigod, a whole new world was opened to him, a world he would be part of from now on. Of course that would be the year he met his soulmate, because his soulmate was probably also part of this world. And there were so many campers, so when his timer was still going by the time him, Annabeth and Grover left for the quest, he was sure there were just campers he hadn't met yet, he would meet when returning to camp.

And then they were stranded in the Lotus Hotel, the whole visit kind of a blur once they left. The only thing that truly stood out was the fact that Percy's counter had run out. While he had been in the Lotus Hotel, he must have met his soulmate. Percy wanted to return as soon as he realized, but he also had to save his mom and they had a pressing deadline and his soulmate would be safe and okay in the hotel until then, right?

/break\

So many more things happened after that. It felt like everything was happening at once. The visit to Hades, the fight against Ares, returning the helmet and the Master Bolt, the reveal that Luke had been the traitor, and Luke nearly killing Percy. Honestly, a lot.

He wanted to return to the Lotus Hotel afterward, but everyone told him not to. It was dangerous, there was always the danger of getting lost. The trio had been lucky to find their way out as fast as they had. And everybody kept telling him that soulmates were destined to meet, that if they met once, his soulmate would find their way back to him. But how was Percy supposed to know? If the counter didn't count anymore, how was he supposed to know when he actually met his soulmate again? This was stressing him out. He knew they were right that going back, he would also not know which one was his soulmate, but still. This was so frustrating.

For the most part, the ongoing war distracted Percy from fretting about the soulmate he had met and forgotten. Between going to the sea of monsters, going to retrieve the di Angelos and ending up losing Bianca and having to free Annabeth and Artemis from a kidnapping, getting lost in Daedalus' labyrinth and stranded on Ogygia, all the way up to the battle of Manhattan.

It was like Percy barely got a moment to breath between quests and battles. And if he wasn't busy with those, he also had school and his mortal life to deal with. Plus, looking for Nico di Angelo, because he had run away in anger after Bianca had died and Percy felt so guilty. Despite blaming Percy, Nico still came to try and save Percy in the labyrinth, which was just confusing. Either way, Percy wanted to make it up to Nico, wanted to bring the son of Hades to the safety of camp.

Even when the war ended, Percy didn't manage either. Not bringing Nico back to camp – even though Nico had gone and found the Achilles Curse, which ultimately saved Percy's life during the war, even though Nico had rallied Hades into joining the Olympians during the final battle, despite all of that, Nico still refused to come to camp. And Percy also failed to find his soulmate. Damn it. But hey, at least he saved the world. That was something, right?

/break\

Percy Jackson was frustrating. He was so pretty and so impressive. He had also promised to keep Bianca save and then Bianca had died. And even though Nico wanted to hate him for it, he just… couldn't. Despite not even really knowing Percy, there was a part of Nico so attached to Percy already that he could not hate the son of Poseidon. In fact, he kept risking his life for Percy. Why. Why was he doing that. Why was Percy making him act like that, so irrational.

All of this, the loss of Bianca, of his sister and only family, the reveal that monsters and gods were real, the chaos and isolation and fear and anger, it was so overwhelming and very distracting from the one thing he had always looked forward, all his life.

Because him and Bianca had been freed from the Lotus Hotel in 2007. Which meant he had met his soulmate a year before they got out. Who was it? Were they still in the hotel? Or had they left by now too? This wasn't how it was supposed to go. Him and Bianca, they should have gotten to go looking for Nico's soulmate together. Instead, he was all alone now. No Bianca, no mamma, no soulmate, nobody. Just Nico and his anger and frustration and the boy he was chasing for no reason.

Until he found Hazel. He had a sister, a half-sister, and he could help her. He put all his focus onto Hazel, onto getting her out of the underworld, bringing her to the Romans – because she was a Roman demigod, Romans were separate from Greeks, they had their own whole city and all of a sudden, Nico had a whole new world to explore. He kept going there, as the ambassador of Pluto, and though the Romans detested Pluto, in a weird way, Nico felt at home in the Roman city. More so than the American summer camp where kids were supposed to live. What even was that.

This could have been good. He could have made a home there, with Hazel. Get a new start. Move on with his life. And then Percy Jackson disappeared and Nico's life came to a halt again.

Why was he so hung-up on this stupidly pretty boy. There were other pretty demigods! And besides, Percy was probably soulmates with Annabeth anyway. What was the point pining for him, just because Nico had no idea who his soulmate was? This was getting embarrassing, really.

So of course did Nico spend near every waking hour trying to find Percy. He got his first lead when Jason Grace disappeared from New Rome. These two had to be connected. Nico was right on the money, as proven by Percy just… appearing at Camp Jupiter. Without his memories.

The two got introduced to each other. Percy, the new camper, and Nico, the ambassador of Pluto. Only that Percy was looking at him with recognition and wide-eyes. Why? How?

"You…" Percy's voice was a soft, awed whisper. "You're my soulmate."

/flashback\

Percy was in the Lotus Hotel and he'd gotten separated from Annabeth and Grover. He got distracted by a cool looking game, which was the whole concept of this hotel, he guessed.

"Hey. You wanna play with me? My sister ditched m-"

Someone had spoken to him and then stopped mid-sentence. Percy turned toward the other person, who had a hand resting on Percy's shoulder to get his attention. When he was facing the other boy, with dark eyes and messy curls, Percy noticed him staring stunned at his own wrist. Following his line of sight, Percy saw that the other boy was staring at his own counter, on zero.

"It's you," the other boy whispered before rambling in a foreign language at too fast a speed.

Percy's own eyes dropped to his own counter and. It was on zero too. He hadn't even. How had he not been obsessively staring at it, if it was this close to zero? But then time worked differently in here, they had been here for days even though it felt like hours at most.

"You're my soulmate. We're soulmates. I can't believe-" the other – Percy's soulmate – interrupted himself. "I'm Nico! I'm Nico di Angelo. What's your name? What do you like?"

"I… I'm Percy Jackson," Percy blinked in awe at his very excitable soulmate. "Hi."

Lame. So lame. He cringed at himself, but his soulmate didn't seem to care. He just threw his arms around Percy, pulling him into a tight hug. Oh. This was nice.

/flashback|end\

Percy's mind had been wiped by Hera, all memories gone. This blank slate allowed other forgotten memories to be triggered again and as he looked at Nico di Angelo, he was overwhelmed by a memory he didn't even know he had. Of meeting Nico in the Lotus Hotel. Nico had run off to find his sister and introduce her to Percy, but then the hotel's magic had made them forget and distracted them and then Percy had left the hotel again with Grover and Annabeth.

"In the casino. You wanted to play a game with me. And then you noticed your timer had run out."

Nico looked as overwhelmed as Percy felt. Of course did he know he must have met his soulmate at the casino and technically, he knew Percy had been to the casino – the Lightning Thief quest was famous at this point. Percy Jackson was his soulmate. The boy he couldn't hate, the boy he couldn't help love, the boy he kept risking his life for over and over again.

"Of course you are," Nico whispered before he started laughing, relieved and hysterical at the same time. "Of course you are. This is the only thing that has ever made sense."

The next moment, Percy found himself swept into a hug just like he had the first time they met. This was the happiest Percy had ever seen Nico. And he hoped he'd get to see it many more times. He felt overcome with happiness too, because he had finally found his soulmate.

~*~ The End ~*~

Author's note: It was fun figuring out an angle under which they wouldn't just, you know, immediately know when they meet. I like my soulmate AUs with angst and a delay ;D