The Colours Of My Love

Proud

"Godsdamnit!" Nico angrily tugged on the ends of his hair and let out a frustrated sigh. The bathroom mirror normally showed his charcoal locks, messed up from sleeping, and his -as Percy had so lovingly nicknamed it- depressed morning face. He had of course responded to this remark by saying that he was always depressed, morning or not. But, I digress. The aforementioned mirror now showed a pretty disgruntled Nico with, not charcoal, but rainbow hair. Gee, he'd have to thank the concept of soulmates for that one. His usually deadly pale face seemed more alive, as if the rainbow on his head had somehow managed to drag him out of his permanent emo phase. (Which he was actually pretty pleased with, thank you very much. Black suits him.) When ignoring the boy's obvious discomfort, his involuntary new look would actually seem quite fitting to an outsider. Noticing this particular fact made Nico even more fed up with whoever his soulmate may be.

For years, nothing peculiar had happened, not that he minded. Unlike most things about himself, he liked his hair, for multiple reasons. The way it fell just past his eyes and never needed any actual maintaining was one of them. Another was that some heavenly factor decided every so often to remove all light from around his head, resulting in a pitch-black shade in both his hair and his eyes. (At least, that's how Percy described it once, Nico hit him afterwards.) Then, once he turned seventeen, weird things had started happening to his hair. Once, he woke up with deep blue highlights. He had managed to disguise them by putting his hood up just so, but the darkness of his hair appeared to soak up most of the colour anyway. This -what should he call it- atrocious mistake, however, was not one that a black hoodie and dark hair would be able to fix. Sighing once more, he made his way back to his bedroom in search of a beanie, or something of the kind.
Oh, he was going to kill his soulmate...

----

After aggressively pulling a black beanie (courtesy of Reyna) over his hair and throwing on an equally black hoodie (courtesy of his local charity shop), Nico made his way out the door. He checked for his phone and wallet one last time and started down the road to the coffee shop a few blocks away. He'd found that, for some reason, the coffee there cheered him up more than any other. Or maybe that was just the cute barista who winked at him that one time.

Anyway, when he turned the final corner, he was greeted by what could only be described as utter pandemonium. Everywhere around him people dressed in rainbow, yelled, sang, ran, cheered and laughed. The scene would have been nice enough from a distance, but Nico had been caught in the middle of the ruckus, immediately getting squished between a boisterous woman in a pink dress and a boy in a blue jumper and ratty sneakers. He quickly apologised to both of them, stumbling over his feet and over his words. He finally freed himself from the largest crowd of people, after an unusual amount of bumping into partially shirtless people.

Nico stopped in the middle of a sort-of-clearing and looked around him, taking in his surroundings properly for the first time. Most people walking around appeared to be holding flags, and some even had bright smudges of colour all over their faces. Nico stared at them in wonder. Somehow, weirdly, he felt like he belonged here. The redhead with paintbrushes in her ponytail could dance into his living room in the same way she was now dancing on the pavement. The girl with coloured streaks in her hair looked as much as home here in the streets as she might somewhere in a coffee shop with Percy and Annabeth. The boy dressed in pink and green (Boy? Girl? he wasn't too sure, but they looked amazing) could most likely fit in immediately if Nico's friend group were to meet up somewhere. All these people shared some kind of instinctive bond, and Nico was pretty sure he shared it with them. the pure energy radiating from the happy faces around him lifted him off his feet and made him want to laugh along with them. It felt like the kind of energy that rises in a group of people when they're united for a common cause, the rush of knowing you're not alone. This kind of energy could forms bonds so strong they withhold the hands of time. The ever ticking clock on the wall would wither and fade against the raw force of all these voices. A brotherhood was formed inbetween these shouts, and then, without another moment of hesitation, Nico added his own voice to the mix.

Soon, evening came, and the colours of the sunset added an ethereal glow to the dozens upon dozens of faces around him. The pure joy of the afternoon had carried Nico into a peaceful state of bliss. A ray of light caught on a banner someone still held up, their fingers tangled with the people next to them, and so on and so forth. All of them, united in the middle of the street, there was something so unreal about it, and yet everything made perfect sense. Holding hands with strangers in the city, his own rainbow locks, the flags and banners and signs around him, all of these things were puzzle pieces that now fell into place into a huge colourful puzzle. To his left was a girl with her brown hair in braids, arm draped over the shoulder of a much smaller girl at her side. She looked into the distance contentedly, at ease. When he turned to his right, however, his breath caught and he stammered out something unintelligible.

There, messy curls framed by the golden light from the evening sky, stood a boy with blue eyes and a radiant smile. Nico could have sworn the boy had white angel wings coming out from behind his back, that's how perfect he looked. The freckles dusting his cheeks were like a thousand constellations. But the most beautiful thing about him, however, weren't his eyes, or his curls, or his freckles. No, the thing that made this boy so perfect, was the fact that his messy curls weren't blonde, or ginger or brown or black. They were a bright rainbow. He turned around and when his eyes met Nico's, they both felt an utter sense of belonging. He smiled.

"I'm Will. You're cute, I like your hair", the boy said, beaming at him.

Nico, of course, smiled right back. And in that moment, everything felt exactly right.