Hey guys! I wrote this because i need to practice my english. Hope you like it :)
***
It was a usual sunny day, the kind that often comes in summer. Sunlight streamed through the thin curtains and faded on the warm brown floor. James, sitting next to Harry at the dinner table, tried to be the best teacher in the world. That wasn’t so difficult, by the way, since he was the only teacher Harry had ever had.
Harry was six. He was a very curious child. That’s why any distraction could be catastrophic when it was time to learn something new. A bird singing outside? He wanted to see. The wind shaking a little tree? He wanted to see. A rainbow crossing the sky? He definitely wanted to see.
So James did everything he could to keep Harry from being distracted. He found the most beautiful pictures and some glittery letters, which he hoped would make Harry want to learn the alphabet. For the past hour, he had been showing Harry a little picture of an eagle and kept repeating the sound of the letter “e.” But Harry refused to pronounce it. He made faces and laughed, jumped on the chair and slapped the table, grabbed another card with a different letter, but still didn’t even try to say “e.”
“Harry,” James looked at his son. “Let’s make a deal. You say the sound, and I’ll buy you your favorite ice cream. Extra chocolate.”
Harry blinked. A wide smile spread across his face. He nodded and took a deep breath, as if he were about to dive underwater. He grabbed the card from his dad’s hand and glanced at it. Then his lips shaped strangely, and a sound similar to “e” finally broke free. Just as James was ready to sigh with relief, Harry stretched it into “eagle” again.
“Fuck!” James groaned, pressing his forehead to the table.
He was tired. He was exhausted. He didn’t even know what to do to make Harry remember the letter instead of the word.
“How’s it going?” Regulus asked, walking into the kitchen. He had a book in his hand and went straight to the fridge for a bottle of water.
“Daddy promised to buy me extra-chocolate ice cream!” Harry said excitedly.
“Ice cream?” Regulus looked at Harry with the happiest expression. “Would you share it with me?”
“Of course!” Harry yelled. Then he turned to James. “Can Reggie come with us to eat ice cream?”
“Sure,” James said — and in the next moment he realized this was his chance to make Harry learn one more letter. “But first, you should tell me what letter this is.”
He picked up the next card with a glittery “F.” The card showed flowers of different sizes, shapes, and colors. Regulus stood by the fridge, waiting. Harry frowned. He stared at the card, looking as if he had no idea what it was — as if he had never seen any flowers before, not even the ones growing in their garden.
“Tell me, Haz,” James said warmly. “I know you can do it before the ice cream shop closes.”
Harry narrowed his eyes. He bit his lip, glanced first at Regulus, then back at his father and the flower card. James believed in his son and was ready to praise him, but this time he decided not to rush.
“F—” Harry began.
“—uck,” he finished. And then he repeated it proudly, syllable by syllable. “Fuck.”
Regulus burst out laughing. Harry grinned.
“Did I do it right?” the boy asked, looking at Regulus. “Will you go with us?”
James, sitting there with a stone-faced expression, could only say one word. “Sure.”
Harry clapped for himself and jumped on the chair with a triumphant yell.
The graceful dome and white walls hid a faint room behind, which looked like a lecture hall with a semicircle of tiered seats and a podium for very important guests. It was the dullest part of the whole delightful building. It always seemed to Percy that Senate House was the most interesting building in New Rome, but only from the outside. The dome shined with gold. White walls resembled columns of bright light, bursting straight from the ground. Some silver glowed in it. However, the most aesthetic part of this architectural masterpiece was the stairs Percy was sitting on.
A marble step pattern reminded him of the sea. In blue curves, bordered by silver lines, he saw the waves rolling under the sun. The silver as though a sea foam shimmered in a warm light, and for the moment, Percy seemed to be moving, as if waves hit the coast stones with a splash. Staring at one of the blue-silver waves, he concentrated and clenched his hand into a fist once again. Waves, hidden in the marble, didn't obey him.
He liked to be the son of Poseidon (but not as much as he liked to be Sally Jackson’s son). Percy accepted this fact of parenting as the lesser of two evils, and, when he faced monsters, he was glad to have the ability to make any kind of water do what he wanted to. He didn’t boast this his powers and used it at full capacity only in the most extreme case, but for his lack of luck, every demigod sees the world in their own way.
Sitting on the steps of Senate House for a few hours at a stretch and trying to understand how his superpowers worked, Percy was testing himself. He was spinning his arms like a madman, he glanced at thin lines of the pattern and tried to use his powers on them but failed — the marble sea didn’t obey him. He did it only for his own moral support. He wanted to create a delusion of control to understand himself, and finally stop analyzing Annabeth’s act.
As soon as he relaxed a bit, her frightened face in tears floated in front of his eyes and the sounds of sobbing escaped from his memory like unleashed dogs in freedom. Percy said to himself repeatedly, that at that time he hadn't had a choice and he'd had to cross the line to stay alive. However, he immediately started arguing with himself if was it as necessary as he thought? Does he really need to deal with the trash in Annabeth's head, fight her fears and prove to himself that he did everything right?
There was no selfishness and no a desire to assert himself in his action, he just gave in to his one and greatest weakness, which the gods loved to remind him about. He gave in to his dark side, as Annabeth called it, just because he wanted to save her and other’s lives. But if Annabeth really believed that he could betray her as Luke once did and join the enemy's side that she didn't notice what his goal was when he was poisoning a deity with their own poison?
He shuddered as he heard peaceful, sneaking footsteps, but continued sitting on the stairs. New Rome had a good security system, and not any demigod could sneak in, let alone monsters. Deep inside, he hoped that somebody, who had become a reason for his passing anxiety, would just walk by, but the next moment he noticed a figure, wearing all black, who was sitting down next to him on the step.
Nico smelled of damp earth and some kind of flowers. Their flavour came Percy back to the Persephone's garden, which he had never been to, but once had seen this world-famous place from far. The sleeves of Nico's black sweatshirt were rolled up to his elbows. The jeans glowed as if they had just taken off a mannequin, which decorated the display window of Forever 21. His little regrown hair was pulled back into a small ponytail. The corners of his lips rose a bit, as if he was glad to see Percy, but understood that it wasn't the right time for sharing such feelings.
"Hazel told me the story", Nico said quietly. Percy waited for him to say something else, to feel sorry for him, as everyone had already done, but the son of Hades didn't seem to be going to sympathize with him. "Honestly, I didn’t even know that you can do something like that."
"You can raise the army of the dead and now you're surprised that I can do?" Percy asked, perplexedly. Nico giggled.
"After a such trick I'm not a big difference from the dead." The son of Hades was smiling now. "You’re lucky that after you don’t turn into… You know… or don’t transform into a sea foam. It’s an advantage."
"I scare people." Percy reminded him, showing that this aspect was vital for him with his voice. "And I make them feel disgusted."
"Feel disgusted?" Nico wondered. He looked at Percy from head to toe, squinted then and pretended to be astonished. "It is stupid."
"Guess Hazel didn’t tell you all the details."
Nico grunted, smacked his lips in a funny way, and it seemed he was going to say something, but in the end he stayed silent. Just glanced at Percy, at his hand clenching into a fist and smiled as if he could see something that no one else could. There were not so many people who could look at him in that way: directly into the eyes and without any hint of why he did that and what this gaze meant.
However, Percy tried to guess. At first, he thought that it was the way for Nico to show his mercy. Not with words or action, but with a smile and a look. Then one more thought flashed in his mind: what if Nico, as Annabeth earlier, just was scary by him and his powers, but just didn't want to show it as obvious as the daughter of Athena had done. Percy decided to turn away, because he didn't want to be a witness of Nico giving up and demonstrating his true emotions.
"You still didn't get it, did you?" The son of Hades asked suddenly. Percy shuddered and shook his head.
"What should I get?"
Nico's cheeks blushed. He stood up, put his hands into the pockets of his sweatshirt and raised his shoulders slightly, like he was posing for a photo in front of a fashion photographer.
"Fear is an irrational feeling," he began, trying not to look too worried. "I can understand why Annabeth is afraid of spiders and even don't connect her fear with Athena's children's curse. But I can't understand why she doesn't trust you and is scared of you when you're so... powerful."
The last Nico's word sounded so quietly that Percy barely heard it.
"What do you mean?" The son of Poseidon asked.
"I mean you're not a villain, Percy. You're not a cyclops which would do anything for dinner making of demigod. You are not a spitting the fire and turning into a chimera school teacher. You and Annabeth had been together for so long and now she broke up with you without any worthwhile reason."
Percy sat up straight and glanced at Nico. His face and his ears got red. But he was still smiling as if nothing had happened and wiggling on his toes.
"There is a reason," Percy said dubiously. "I broke my promise not to do it anymore. At that time in Tartarus, I scared her out of a year's growth. At this time I broke my word."
"If you had killed a deity with his own poison for me," Nico swallowed, but then continued without any hesitation, "I wouldn't have doubted my feelings. Also, Hazel said you had looked incredibly hot, when you used your power in full force."
When Nico mentioned his sister again, Percy realized that despite the fact she was an unwitting witness to his act, which he wasn't proud of, she didn't even make a noise and was not frightened at all. She just stood and watched Percy with the same admiration as young Nico had looked at him a long time ago. That Nico, who-
Fuck.
Before Percy could have said anything, a terrible ringing bell went through New Rome. Nico smiled and then walked away from the Senate House. Looking after him, the son of Poseidon repeated his words in his own head and remembered the one love confession, which Nico made after winning Gaia.
The silhouette of the son of Hades already seemed very small and far away when Percy suddenly stood up and called him by his name. He ran after Nico and soon noticed that he had already stopped and looked at him. The son of Hades was wiggling on his toes, when Percy finally overtook him. Nico's hair was blown by the wind, a shy smile touched his lips, his pale face was still blushing.
Taking a deep breath, Percy asked him a question that sounded stupid even in his head. But it was the only thing it seemed to him could sound appropriate in this situation.
"So, you think I'm incredibly hot?"
Nico giggled and rolled his eyes.
"It was what Hazel said, not me."
"But you didn't answer my question."
"I'm not going to. It sounds like a trap."
"What if it is a real trap?" Percy asked. "Would you like to, you know, fall into it?"
He felt as stupid as he did that day when Annabeth had said proudly that he drooled in his sleep. Nico stood still, not smiling and not blinking. His fingers had a tremor. The thought that it was because of he made Percy shiver. As if he would get crazy with excitement.
"What if we have dinner first?" Nico asked nervously. "I heard a rumor that there would be serving lasagna in the camp today."
Percy nodded without thinking. Maybe Nico wasn't ready to fall into his trap right now, but Percy, tired of delusional thoughts, Annabeth's accusations and the pity of the whole camp, was ready to surrender if Nico di Angelo would be his captivator.
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Do you know this feeling when you're into a fandom almost 25 years, but start writing only now? i know and it's great. Thanks #jegulus, now I can write something new
