shadows and sunshine (solangelo)

olympics au part 1

So this again, isnt my story, it's by buoyantsaturn. it's an olympics au and it has 3 parts but im gonna put them all separately. 

https://archiveofourown.org/works/33998395

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Nico was ten when his father was awarded joint custody of his children. That meant that, for a few months out of the year, Nico and Bianca lived in America with their father, and spent the rest of their time in Italy with their mother, where they went to school. Nico always wondered why his father fought for joint custody, because he never seemed to care about spending time with his children, meaning that Nico and Bianca were often left to their own devices in an unfamiliar city. Luckily for them, New York City was home to thousands of immigrants, many of whom spoke in broken English like the di Angelos, which helped them feel less out of place.

They started spending a lot of their time at the YMCA, at first because there happened to be a swimming pool there - Bianca loved to swim - and then later because that was where they had made friends. By the end of their first summer, Nico spent more time tagging along after a boy named Percy who spoke in Spanish with his mom and English with his step-dad, and Bianca got to be left alone to make her own friends.

Percy had been twelve - just about to turn thirteen - when he first told Nico about his dream of becoming an Olympian. He had handed Nico an old stopwatch, barely even showing him how it worked and certainly not taking the time to explain why Nico was timing him, before he drove into the pool and swam its entire length underwater. When he finally returned to the pool's edge after swimming a few laps, he ripped the stopwatch out of Nico's hands to see his time.

Percy had huffed in frustration when he saw zeroes flashing back at him. "You're never going to get to be my coach if you can't even use a stopwatch."

Nico had tipped his head to the side in confusion. "Why would I want to be your coach?"

"So that you can go to the Olympics with me," Percy had replied with a grin. "My mamá can't pay for me to have a coach, but if you can run the stopwatch, then you would be good enough!"

"But why should I be your coach?" Nico had asked. "Why can't I swim with you? Maybe I want to be in the Olympics, too!"

"You can barely tread water," Percy had replied with a laugh, splashing at Nico as he drifted away from the wall. "You should find your own sport. Then we can cheer each other on."

Nico had nodded in satisfaction. "Deal. Now show me how this thing works, again."

At the end of the summer, when Nico and Bianca returned to Italy, Nico informed his mother of his new passion - or what was going to be his new passion, at least. His mother, Maria, helped him to research all of the different sports that he could take up to help him qualify for the Olympics. Percy had tried to get him into football - soccer, as he'd called it - when they were both still in New York, but Nico had never been that coordinated with his feet. He tried a few different styles of martial arts, though they all felt stiff and unnatural. It was after attempting nearly ten different sports that Nico finally found one that stuck.

By the time Percy qualified for his first Olympic games, Nico was a junior champion fencer.

Nico flew back to America by himself - Bianca had reached the age where she no longer had to visit their father if she didn't want to - and he was excited to hear all about the Olympics as soon as he saw Percy. When his flight landed in New York, though, the flight attendant in charge of him - seeing as he was still a minor - directed him onto the next plane to California. Nico had called Percy, almost in tears, from LAX, telling him how his father had moved across the country, so the two of them wouldn't be able to spend their summers together anymore. Percy had calmed him down almost instantly. Sure, they wouldn't see each other that year, or even the year after that, but Percy knew they'd meet again once Nico reached the Olympics.