Hell And High Water (Percico boyxboy)

XII

The sun rose in short time and Percy seemed to sense it because he woke up not long after it made its appearance. The first thing he did was stretch out, like always, before he rubbed the sleep from his eyes and sat up. He looked around the room for a few moments before his eyes shifted to Nicos bed. The son of Hades was sitting up, watching Percy. He had been ever since he received the phone call the night before.
Percy blushed madly but managed to hide it behind a yawn and hands to cover it. Nico never once tore his eyes from Percy as the son of Poseidon did any of this. Percy was starting to feel a little awkward about Nico watching him and he wondered how long the son of Hades had been...
"How'd you sleep?" He looked at Nico as he asked.
"I didn't."
Percy blushed again, thinking that Nico had stayed up all night watching him. But, once he looked closely at the son of Hades' face, he realized that was far from the truth. Nicos expression was pretty grim, like it had been a few days earlier when he learned Percy would be sent to kill an old friend. This look was a bit worse, though.
"What's going on?" Nico could feel the fear already radiating off of Percy.
Nico looked at the son of Poseidon intensely. "I know things are complicated right now, and we have a lot to think about, but they just got worse."
Percy scrunched his eyebrows in confusion and shook his head, his mouth hanging slightly open. "What are you talking about?"
Nico stood from his bed and paced around the room a little, wondering if he should really tell the son of Poseidon. But he had already brought it up, it would be stupid if he didn't tell him.
"You remember Typhon and the Manticore?" Nico looked at Percy and saw him nod slowly and barely enough to actually be seen.
Nico took a deep breath. "I got a call from Apollo last night. He told me something. Something not very good."
Percy waited for a second. Nico was starting to really scare him with what he was saying or, rather, what he was not saying. "Nico?"
Nico stopped pacing, making sure he was facing away from Percy, and hung his head. He lifted his hands to run his fingers through his hair before he turned back around. His hands were still clinging to the nape of his neck, fingers interlocked, facing the ceiling, when he sighed and began to speak again.
"We already knew that the Manticore was threatening that you would end up with him. You remember that, right?"
Percy nodded, fear rising even more as he realized there was a chance this could be about him.
"He and Typhon are the kind of guys that will stop at nothing to get what they want."
Percy stared blankly at Nico, still not understanding what was going on.
"They found us, Percy. The call from Apollo was to tell me that he saw them at a gas station not far from here."
Percys eyes shot open in terror. His expression turned more fearful than anything Nico had ever seen before. Even when he was about to kill someone, and they knew it, they didn't hold expressions like Percys.
It took a few minutes for Percy to process. As soon as the words left Nicos lips, Percy knew things were bad. But, once he began to let it sink in, it had made him get this feeling... a very bad feeling. But, as he continued to think about it, as well as the possibilities of what it could mean, he felt a new kind of feeling welling up inside him. It was fear mixed with something that was making him nauseous. He had originally thought Nico had stayed up to watch him sleep. Now, he felt stupid that he would have ever thought that. Originally, he thought that would have been creepy. Now, he was kind of wishing that would have been the case.
As Percy finished his final thought, he realized that both he and Nico had much bigger things to worry about. He looked at the son of Hades, who had resumed pacing the floor, and studied him for a second. Back at Camp, Nico had been, for the most part, pretty relaxed. Even on the Argo, he wasn't as tense as he looked now. Even before, when he found out people knew he had Percy, or when Percy had been hired, or when they found out the hit was a friend. In those instances, Nico had seemed stressed. Looking at his state now, the way he paced the floor and wrung his hands, the way he would sigh shaky  breaths, how pale his face was, it almost made it seem like he was in a celebratory mood before.
Percy sat and watched Nico for the few moments it took for him to stop pacing again. He opened his mouth to speak and the words left as shakey and breathy.
"What are we gonna do?"
Nico pursed his lips for a moment and then nodded before speaking. "You, are not gonna worry. You're going to call Apollo and the two of you are going to plan. You're going to leave everything else up to me."
Percy tried to protest and tell Nico it wasn't fair for him to have to do it on his own. He tried to tell him he had to let Percy help.
"Stop!"
Percy froze.
"I don't want to hear another thing about it come out of your mouth, understand? Get my phone and call Apollo." Nico headed off to the bathroom after that. Percy wasn't about to not do what Nico had told him. Despite what had happened the day before, Percy was still afraid of Nico. Actually, if anything, he was more afriad for some reason.
Percy took the son of Hades' phone off the table and went to his contacts. He wasn't sure if Nico would actually have names saved as contacts but he was about to find out. The first name that appeared was Apollo and everything under that were either initials or just numbers. Percy stared at the small piece of technology questioningly as he wondered why. He didn't spend too much time thinking before he pressed Apollos name and the dial tone began to sound.
'Hello?'
"Apollo?"
'Nico?'
Percys voice went a little quiet. "No... his friend."
'Oh. I didn't expect you to call so early.'
Percy looked for a clock and started to feel guilty for calling Ares at that time of morning. "Do- do you want me to call back  later?"
'No. No, it's fine. Anyway, if you give me a second to get my computer running...' Percy could hear something ruffle in the background of the phone call. He heard quiet words that sounded like a woman... "'Who is it?'" 'No one, baby. Go back to sleep.' "'I don't wanna go to sleep.'" There were a few small sounds then and a moan. 'Baby stop. I'm busy. When I get off the phone I am all yours.' "'Make it fast.'" Percy blushed lightly, realizing what was going on and wondering what he had interrupted.
'Sorry about that. Alright, you said you had a little bit of a plan. Tell me.'
It took Percy a few minutes, in which Nico had come back out of the bathroom, but he managed to tell Apollo about what he and Nico had put together.
'A sword? How the hell do you know how to use a sword?'
"It's a long story."
Apollo coughed a little and made a few noises as he typed on his computer and scrolled through what he found. Percy was quick to grab the notebook and write all sorts of things as Apollo spoke. He asked plenty of questions about some of things that he was told about Horme. Most everything was pretty easy to grasp but there were some things Percy had a hard time understanding. Like how, even with a gun, he was still running the risk of losing his life.
"I don't get what's so dangerous about him."
Apollo chuckled dryly. 'Did you read the profile Nico has?'
"Yes."
'Then that should tell ya.'
Percy sighed. He was begining to feel really stupid and Apollo was not helping. "I don't understand what that stuff means."
Apollos end of the line went silent for a moment and Percy thought he had either hung up or gotten distracted by something. He could hear a soft moan and a deep laugh in the background a few seconds before Apollo picked the phone up again.
'Sorry about that. You said something before, what was it?'
Percy sighed in agitation. "I said I don't understand what that stuff means."
Apollo leaned back in his chair and Percy could hear a squeak as he did. 'What the hell are you doing on a hit if you can't even figure out how that stuff is important?'
Percy was quiet for a moment.
Apollo sighed. 'I'm sorry, kid. I don't usually deal with... beginers. But, I will try. I owe it to Hades.'
Percy nodded, although he knew Apollo couldn't see him. "Can you just explain some things to me? I think it'll help."
Apollo coughed and began speaking with slight reluctance in his voice. 'Well, he will do anything to save his ass. He has no shame and I don't think he's afraid of anything. He has more skills than almost anyone out there and it's creepy.'
Percy sat, still as confused as he had been before. It seemed like it was a waste of time to be talking to Apollo.
After a few moments of Percys silence, Apollo sighed. 'You still have no clue, do you?'
"No."
'What do you want to know?'
"What I got myself into."
Nico perked up when he heard Percy say that. He was wondering what kind of conversation he was having with Apollo. For a split second, he thought that the phone call had turned to being about him and he swallowed hard as he thought of Percy being worried or afraid to be around him. The thought made him angry because, if Percy was really scared, it had to be because Nico had to be stupid enough to think it was okay to kiss him...
For quite a while, Percy and Apollo talked on the phone. Nico was a little worried, for a moment, that there was a chance that the call could be traced and tracked. He scoffed at the thought because he knew Apollo wasn't stupid and that he would have taken precautionary measures to prevent something like that. He shoved his ear buds in and just tried to lay back and relax, with obvious difficulty.
As the phone call between Percy and Apollo continued, the son of Poseidon was begining to feel a little more at ease about the whole thing than he had been before. At one point, he managed to stand and grab some leftovers from the hotel fridge as he and Apollo talked. He had thought he would be too nervous to eat, until things began to slowly fall into place.
As they talked, Percy felt like he was really making progress. He was learning some of the terminology that had to do with hitting and weapons and other things of the sort. He was getting the hang of how to bait someone, how to draw them in, how to distract them and how to make that all help lead to a solid hit. Then came the time to talk about the hit itself. Percy began to get a little nervous thinking about the act of murder again and wished he could have been anywhere but his current situation. Apollo could tell and he remembered what he had told Percy at the start of the phone call about not dealing with beginners. He had to remember that the kid he was talking to was indeed a beginner.
'You alright, kid?'
Percy took a second to take a breath and think "Yeah. I'm good. Keep talking."
Apollo wasted no time in following what Percy told him and continued to talk. He wanted to take things as slow as he could manage and he spoke in simple sentences and tried not to use too many words he thought might confuse the kid he was talking to.
Apollo went through a detailed plan that Percy had a hard time keeping up with. It was a little bizarre at times but it seemed to tie in with what he already had pretty well. Most of what Apollo said was just ways to perfect what Percy already had. It was helpful, for the most part.
Percy was able to manage with Apollo talking about ways to kill using a blade. Sort of. As the man spoke, Percy began to picture the images of what it might have looked like to kill someone in the ways the Apollo was describing. The son of Poseidon did pretty well with it all until Apollo used that one word: decapitation. That put Percy over the edge and he instinctively gagged at the thought of removing someone's head with Riptide.
Nico had been watching Percy lazily from between his eye lids and he sat up and pulled his ear buds out when he saw the son of Poseidon gag. He couldn't hear what Apollo was talking about but, he kind of wished he could so he would know what had made Percy react in such a way. Instantly, without knowing what had been said, Nico wanted to jump through the phone and strange Apollo for being such an ass and not thinking before he spoke. Soon, though, Percys demeanor went back to as normal as Nico figured it could be and the son of Hades allowed himself to relax.
Percy and Apollo talked for longer than any of them had expected. Nico had tried to stay focused and keep an eye on the son Poseidon as he and Apollo spoke to see any other reactions but he ended up slipping into his dreams. Dreams he would rather not have.
Nico hadn't had a nightmare in over six months. He had thought they had actually gone away. But, like most things in his life, that was too good to be true.