Percico: Stories to Be Rewritten

Chapter 3

Nico looked up into the starry sky, the moon hanging low and full over the lavender field. A soft breeze caressed his exposed skin as he laid in the purple flowers next to Percy. Everything was perfect, the quiet peacefulness, the time away from camp to just be themselves, their hands curled around each other's with their fingers interlocked, everything. Looking away from the sky, Nico let his eyes stray to his secret lover. He blushed when his dark auburn eyes met deep swirling whirlpools of blueish green, a smile forming on his lips.

"Have you been staring at me the whole time?" Nico asked, already knowing the answer to that.

" Well, how could I not?" Percy said with a charming smile. Nico sighed, laughing a little under his breath. Percy rolled on top of Nico, the moonbeams glistening off his sun kissed skin, making him look godly. "After all, you" He started to say as he leaned down to kiss his partner on the lips. "have captured my heart."

Nico blushed as Percy's lips brushed his teasingly, the tangy sea salt sweat taste still on his lips from the hundred and ten degree hot flash during practice today. Nico always loved that taste, for some odd reason. "That was the most cheesiest thing you have said yet." Percy smirked, taking Nico's statement as a challenge, opening his mouth to spew more horribly cheesy pickup lines. Nico took advantage of this and flipped them, so he was on top of Percy. "But," He sat up a little, his marble skin gleaming like ivory in the moonlight. "I think that you have swept me off my feet."

"Oh and that's not cheesy either?" Percy laughed, the sound like a drug to Nico, infecting him so suddenly that he broke out into one of his genuine and rare smiles. Both of them stared into each other's eyes, like silent communication between the two men, Nico's hand resting on Percy's bare chest, and Percy's sliding up Nico's arm as he leaned up to kiss his lover.

"Well, look at this!" Nico groaned, and Percy falling backwards into the flowers in annoyance. The Aphrodite girl was standing in the far side of the field, and slowly coming closer, holding a new note book decorated with pictures that seemed to have been hand drawn. "I knew I would find you two here!"

" Elizabeth, really, this is getting annoying." Nico said, crossing his arms over his bare chest and shooting her a dark look. "You can't keep stalking us like this."

"I'm not stalking you two!" The burnet girl stated, falling into the flowers gracefully beside them. " I am just trying to annoy you into coming out of the friggen closet! It's been three weeks for Aphrodite's sake!" Percy laughed a little, watching Nico's facial expressions turn from annoyance, to rage, to sudden understanding, then finally resting on a kinder scowl.

" Elizabeth, you don't understand." Nico started, knowing Percy was not going to explain this at all to the young girl eagerly writing in her note book as she spoke to them. " If we come out to the camp that we are gay, what will they think? Sure the Aphrodite cabin would be behind it but what about the others?"

" I know the Hermes cabin would be five hundred percent behind you." Elizabeth stated, her pencil flying across the paper like nothing as she spoke. "Most of them are gay, and the one's who aren't are totally awesome with it. I know that the other cabins are fine with gays, even the Ares cabin has an open lesbian couple! They are so cute, in a bloodthirsty, Attack on Titan way."

"Attack on Titan?" Percy asked, genuinely curious.

"A very sad anime series. Do not watch if you value having a heart and not crying through the night." She stated. "But that's beside the point! You two would open the door to the campers to actually admit to being attracted to the same sex and equality in the camp!"

"Sounds like your making us the poster children for gay rights in Camp Halfblood." Nico said dryly.He never liked being used, even by a girl with a pretty face.

Elizabeth sighed, her eyes looking down at her notebook pages with a sad expression. " I... I know, it sounds like that....I just-I thought...." Taking a deep breath, she stood up. "I-I'm sorry. I'll just leave." Then, before either of them could get up to stop her, she was gone like the wind.

"We just screwed up, didn't we." Nico said, now really concerned.

"Maybe." Percy said with a slight twinge of guilt. "We can talk to her tomorrow though. Don't worry, angel." He kissed Nico's hand gently. Nico looked back to where Elizabeth had set herself up, and noticed the notebook lying open to a page.

On that page was a sketch of Elizabeth with another girl, laughing. It looked so real, it was like it was a black and white photograph, Nico had to pick it up and look closer to see it wasn't. Turning the pages, he saw more drawings of her and the same girl, some of the Ares girls laughing or after a bloody battle, and then a small section on Percy and Nico. They were so lifelike it made Nico wonder if she WAS stalking them. Then he came to the last used page, and froze. It was Nico and Percy, in the same position that they were in when she was talking to them, only they were looking lovingly at each other.

And right underneath, was Elizabeth holding up a sign and what it said made Nico's heart hurt. The detail was surprisingly grim, with a orphan's pleading eyes, dirt covered and bruised, with a quivering lip as tears streamed down her face. The picture reminded him of when he was alone, after losing Bianca when he was thirteen- fourteen years old. But what really got him was what the cardboard sign said.

'I am lesbian, and I am proud. But I don't want to be bullied anymore.'