Bonds

Percy Realizes He's Kind of An Ass...

The alarm's shrieks were loud enough to wake Percy from the nightmare of his dreams to the nightmare that was reality. A reality that seemed to grow worse with each passing day but seemed to bottom out with the alarm ringing at four-in-the-fucking-morning. Oh, he had thought that getting up for school at six was terrible, heinous even, but the two-hour difference was made even worse knowing that this was soon going to become an everyday occurrence. Weekends would no longer denote sleeping in, only his yet to be announced work schedule would do that.

I should have stayed in school...

Percy slowly sat up in his bed and tried to rub the sleep from his eyes. A fool's errand as he had been up only three hours prior with Estelle; his sister deciding that sleep did not suit her interests that night. But because of that, he now realized why coffee was such a big deal to his mom and Paul. Because there was no way in Hades he would be able to stay awake for training without caffeine. He let out what felt like the loudest yawn of his life and swung his legs off the edge of his bed.

What has my life become?

Yet another question that cycled through his mind on a never ceasing loop. Oh, he had been asking that question since he was eleven, but it had taken on a whole new meaning as of late. The girl he loved, possibly the only girl he would ever love, had turned abusive for no reason whatsoever, and was just barely functioning because of it. He was a big brother now to a beautiful little girl, but with such an age difference he could have been her father (scary thought). His mom and Paul were now constantly disappointed in him the bad choice he made following his breakup and he felt like curling up in a ball and dying every time they gave him one of those forced reassuring smiles.

Everything is changing. Too much too fast.

He rose from his bed and his eyes nearly bulged out of his skull when his left knee popped loudly.

And apparently, I'm getting old now. Yay...

He stretched his arms over his head and took a step forward-

Only to immediately trip over a cocoon of blankets and faceplant it hard on the wooden floor.

Oh yeah... That's still a thing...

"Damn it, Perseus! Watch where you're walking!" Nico growled as he clenched his stomach.

It had been six days since Nico di Angelo barged into his life. Six days of constant mood swings and bickering. He had thought that they were past his little accusation with his apology before dinner Friday night. He thought it was a moment they shared and that they could develop a real friendship. But he had been wrong. Every little thing he said or did pissed off the son of Hades, making him either snap at him or going quiet for long periods of time until his mom smoothed things over. It was just so frustrating! The only time they didn't fight was when they were watching Estelle or when his mom assigned them some task, and that was only because they rarely talked. He had thought that the only way for them to truly get along was for him to be mute, but that was eventually disproved by Nico snapping at him for breathing too loud!

"Sorry." He rolled his eyes knowing that Nico couldn't see him in the dark.

"Doesn't sound like it," the son of Hades grumbled as he sat up. In the dark room Percy could just make out the younger teen's outline. A wicked case bedhead that made him look like an anime character, a large T-shirt that exposed one of his shoulders, and a tangle of blankets hiding his legs from sight. In a weird way, his silhouette kind of looked like a mermaid from the 80s. "We really need to get a new mattress," Nico sighed, running a hand through his hair. "That, or I need to wear armor to bed."