Midnight Coffee (Solangelo AU)

Skulls

My face felt roughly 10 pounds heavier than normal and ever so slightly sticky. "Do I need this much makeup on Dare?" Naturally, Rachel Elizabeth Dare was the girl doing everyone's make-up. And, of course, she just laughed at me like I was stupid.

"Nico, I'm bringing out your skull and making you whiter than Frosty the Snowman. Of course, you need this much." I sighed and let her continue. It was a very cartoonish skull, like the kind you see painted on people during Dia de los Muertos. Leo and I were the two selling tickets and he had insisted that Rachel did his festive skull first. 

His was far more colorful than mine, and somehow my skull looked more tired and dead than his did; like they matched our personalities. In all fairness, mine was more realistic and my face is much more sunken than his is but still. "Wow, Nico your make-up looks amazing."

Unlike me, Annabeth was actually one of the scare actors so she had a realistic dead body look. Despite that, I didn't even turn around to look at her. I was still ultra pissed at her, but Rachel had no trouble taking the compliment. "He does, doesn't he? Now once I'm finished I'll mess with his hair and find him something to wear."

"Actually, Rachel, can I talk to him for a second?" She looked between us as I crossed my arms. I saw her nod from the corner of my eye and she left the little set-up room. "Nico?" I just turned further away from her and I heard her sigh. "You have every right to be mad at me but everything turned out okay didn't it?"

Before I knew what I was doing I was out of my chair and grinding my heels into the ground as I faced her. "That doesn't matter Annabeth! You told someone that I wasn't ready to tell! That's not ok ever! I don't give a rat's ass how it ended, I'm not open so you shouldn't have said anything. I know you didn't mean to but gods; sometimes you reek of privilege."

She shrunk away from me and stared at the floor. I couldn't even bring myself to feel bad for her. "All I can do is say I'm sorry. I know it won't fix what I did but... I really am. I still want to be your friend Nico. Is there anything I can do to make it up to you?"

I thought about it for a second. There wasn't much she could do but there was one thing I could think of. "I'll get back to you on that. In the meantime, I'm glad you know you messed up. Because you really, really messed up. And things could have gone so differently for me Annie." She nodded a little.

"I get that. And again, if I could go back and change what I said I would." I nodded. I already knew she would. The guilt had been on her face since she slipped up last night. I knew she felt beyond bad, but feeling guilty didn't make the action okay.

"I'm gonna bring Rachel back in here. You should go back to whatever you were doing." She nodded and went to leave. I went looking for Rachel but I ended up bumping into Piper who was dressed up like a lunatic in a psych ward outfit. "Oh, McLean sorry."

She laughed and shook her head. "Don't worry di Angelo. The worse I look the better." Honestly, if that were the case, they chose the worst person for this character. Piper is effortlessly beautiful no matter what you do to her. Sure I'm gay, but I still have eyes.

"Regardless, I do have a question for you." She raised an eyebrow. "Are you looking to make one of our friends uncomfortable for being rude, and possibly get to experiment with a woman?" Her eyes went wide and she looked around but there was no one there. It was just us. I wouldn't do that to her.

She calmed down after a second and shrugged. "I mean I guess I wouldn't turn down the opportunity but I'm not gonna go looking for it you know? Also, that's very specific."

I nodded a little. "Yes. I'm just wondering because I might have an opportunity for you to fool around with a really pretty girl, but I doubt it would go further than flirting and max making out." She looked very very confused.

"What are you talking about?"

I just laughed a bit. "Well, Annabeth owes me a favor now, and I want to see how far I can push her straight guilt. Of course, she would never actually do anything because she's so in love with Percy but I want to freak her out."

Her eyebrows came together and her nose scrunched up before she laughed slightly. "You are insane Nico. You should be in this costume... but I do like your idea. Besides, I am sort of in love with her... I think. It's hard to tell. Does that go away?"

I shook my head a bit. "I wish. Now, do you know where Rachel is? I need her to finish my make-up before I start greeting people." She directed me to where Rachel had gone. I followed her very unclear directions and found the redhead artist. After 19 minutes she had finished with me and sent me outside.

Leo was already out there handing out tickets as people came in. We opened our doors at eight and it was 7:57 but the line was already impossibly long. All the chairs in the lobby were full from the tickets Leo had already sold.

I took my spot at the other money box and the line began to split, but I still couldn't see the end of it. It was absolutely crazy. Sure, we had done endless promoting inside and outside of the school but this was still more than I expected.

After three hours and 46 minutes, my aviator jacket was tight around me and I wasn't sure we would have enough tickets for everyone who wanted to get in. We weren't gonna be able to be open until 2 A.M. at this rate. We would need to close down everything early. But for some reason after midnight struck the number of people showing up dropped drastically.

I didn't mind, the fewer people I had to deal with the better. "Dude, look at all the money we made! Can you believe it? We'll need more tickets for the rest of our nights!"

I just nodded a bit as Leo babbled on and on. I really wasn't listening. We were out there for 58 more minutes before a face I know all too well came up to us. "Nico, I didn't know this thing was starting tonight! I expected to see a friendly face when I walked into that coffee shop but instead, I saw some stranger." Will Solace.

"...you think my face is friendly?" I know I focus on the wrong things but I can't help it. He rolled his eyes like it was the most idiotic question he'd ever heard.

"Obviously, we're friends after all." I had a hard time wrapping my head around the idea of my face being friendly to anybody. "But that's not the point. You could have told me this was starting."

I just shrugged a bit. "Sorry? I didn't realize you needed to know my schedule." He clearly didn't know what to say to that so he just handed me some cash.

"Well, can I at least go through the haunted house?" I took the money being very careful not to accidentally brush his hand and handed him a ticket, where he made it clear that he had no such reservations about touching mine.

"Go nuts." He thanked me and went inside. Leo looked at me and raised a brow. "What?"

"Dude, he is so into you."

Hey guys gals and non-binary pals! How are you guys?

This chapter was more for fun than anything but things are really about to pick up after this chapter!

Also, I've never been to a Dia de los Muertos celebration before but I know an ungodly amount about them thanks to hyper fixations and my school/the area I live in

...I wanna go to one so bad :')

 By the way, if Will calling Nico's face friendly seems a little clunky I'm really sorry, I wanted to include it because it was in the actual series but it's very hard to do smoothly

Have a great day/night!