Everyone was glad to see Grover was back- all twelve of them, together again, even if he'd only been gone for a few days.
Everything felt changed, though. There was something more- peaceful about the friend group. Maybe Hazel was the only one to notice it, but everyone suddenly seemed a whole lot more comfortable with each other.
The atmosphere changed, too. It was getting colder outside, showing signs of a lot of snow. There were Christmas lights everywhere. The school council had to decorate, too, which is what they were doing after school. Hazel couldn't wait.
At the end of the day, she met everyone in the student council. That included Octavian, unfortunately. She tried not to care, though. She had her friends and boyfriend, why would Octavian bother them?
• • •
Hazel and Nico had to go and get some of the decorations out of the storage room. The tree was massive.
"We're not going to be strong enough for this, are we?" Hazel asked.
"Hey, I'm super strong!" Nico said, tried to move part of the tree, then sighed. "Yeah. We're gonna need help."
"Frank!" Hazel called.
"William!" Nico shouted at the same time.
• • •
They decorated the tree together, using ladders to reach the top. Mr Blofis and Mr Brunner were supervising, but thankfully they weren't too strict. The worst thing? No one would let Hazel play Taylor Swift. They put on Christmas music instead, though, which kind of made up for it.
"So," Nico whispered to her, putting some baubles on the tree. "When were you going to tell me about Leo and Jason."
Hazel almost dropped an ornament. "Wha- uh- you know?!"
Nico smirked. "Yep. No thanks to you."
"Uh well-"
"I'm kidding. I get it. Jason told me. Not about him and Leo, but the gay part."
"Jason told you?"
"Yep. I guess I'm just cool. I better go help Annabeth with the lights!" Nico walked off, leaving Hazel extremely confused. She wished Leo was there to ask about it, but since he wasn't on the student council, he couldn't stay.
• • •
Everything was going fine until Octavain decided to be.. Octavian. It only took a few minutes for Hazel to realize that Octavian knew Jason was gay.
She could literally see Jason getting paler the more Octavian talked. It was only subtle hints but Hazel understood what he meant.
It started with Annabeth and Reyna joking with Frank.
"Hey, girls can carry heavy things too! Do you think men are superior to women?" Annabeth asked.
"No- I just-"
"Come on, Annabeth. Let's show these boys how it's done!" Reyna smiled.
Together, they moved the archway- at least eight foot tall, decorated with holly berries and covered with 'snow'.
"We're still better!" Percy shouted.
"Sexist much?" Annabeth glared at him.
"No, I love girls."
Everyone glanced over to him.
"...I think they're very nice."
"Pity some can't relate, Ja-" Octavian coughed. He didn't say it too loud, but loud enough for a good few people to hear. No one seemed to understand him. At least, they pretended not to.
The small remarks continued- nothing extremely obvious, but still noticeable.
Travis and Connor were messing around on one of the ladders, when Connor fell off. He wasn't high up, so he didn't get hurt, though Mr Blofis looked like he was about to have a heart attack. Katie got it on video, though. She laughed and showed everyone about ten times, while Malcolm helped Connor up.
"Actually, now that you mention videos," Octavian said. "I have one. Well, a voice recording, more so."
"Octavian," Gwendolyn walked over to him quickly, Dakota following. Did they know? Or was the recording something else?
"Let's not," Nico shrugged.
"Do you want me to skip to a certain part, di Angelo?"
"I have better things to be doing than caring."
Hazel's eyes darted back and forth between her brother and Octavian. Nico looked terrified. Okay, yeah, he was pretending to be okay, but it wasn't hard to tell he wasn't.
'You okay?' Will mouthed to him. Nico didn't respond. Octavian laughed.
When he was distracted, Dakota grabbed the phone out of Octavian's hand.
"How much did it cost to repair this the first time?"
"Dakota, give it back,"
"And delete. Here you go."
Nico still looked terrified, though. Whatever was on that recording, Octavian still knew.
Octavian was about to say something else but Gwen somehow shut him up with a simple glare.
About five minutes later, Nico approached Hazel.
"We should go home," he said.
"Already?"
"It's decorated. Let's go."
"Not completely-"
"Jules-Albert is waiting on us."
Hazel frowned. "Alright."
She said bye to her friends, Nico strangely anxious to leave. When they got outside, Jules-Albert hadn't even arrived, even though Nico said he was waiting.
"Maybe we should put up our Christmas decorations," Hazel suggested, crossing her arms to keep warm.
"We don't have Christmas decorations."
"What?"
Nico shrugged. "No point."
To Hazel it sounded like Thanksgiving all over again. She didn't talk to Nico for the whole car journey home. No Thanksgiving, no Christmas. Probably no birthdays.
Nico sighed his loud, dramatic sigh. "Fine. We'll buy Christmas decorations. But we are not putting lights everywhere. They're so bright and flashy and-"
Hazel smiled. "Okay, okay. Deal."
They walked inside.
"Okay, so I was thinking some tinsel here-"
"No. No extremes." Nico groaned.
"Just a little bit!"
"A little bit. I've already said not too much."
"You're the best!"
"I know."
———
Word Count: 913
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A/N: a really short dumb chapter. I've not been that motivated lately. BUT I handed up an art project today that has been taking up a lot of my time so hopefully I'll have more time. I hope to have more important and actually enjoyable chapters soon. Thanks to anyone who has managed to stick with this fic so far. I've started rewriting it, but it's tricky. 12 main characters with extremely complex backstories is NOT easy to write.
Maybe I'll start earlier than senior/junior year, though I don't really want to do that. Don't worry though. RACHAEL always has a plan. Ahah, Athena