On Board {A Solangelo Pirate AU}

21: Mm, Yes, Two Hours Of PTSD

NPOV

I wanted more than anything to watch him as he walked away, but I couldn't bring myself to. Instead, I straightened once I could no longer hear his footsteps, and I wiped the tears off my face, and I turned back towards my crew. "Alright. I guess we'll just do the same groups as last time. Percy and Piper find out the weather again. Hazel, Frank and Leo stay on the ship—"

"Why don't we send out Hazel to figure out the weather?" Percy offered. "I don't want to do it again."

I shot him a glare. "No. Percy, I swear to God, if you're plotting to kidnap someone again—"

"I'm not, promise," he said. "Hazel and Piper can ask commoners for the weather. No seduction involved. I've been wanting to talk with you, Nico."

Hazel squinted. "So there is normally seduction involved. Nico, you told me there wasn't."

I groaned. "Fine, fine. Hazel replaces Percy. Everyone else is the same."

They agreed to that. Percy took me by the shoulders and led me to the side of the boat. "I just wanted to unpack some of the trauma we've faced these last few months."

"Um, okay, but can't we do that once we're sailing again? We're kind of in a hurry."

"I think I have PTSD!" He blurted. "And, uh, I want to talk about it. Now. For like a minimum of an hour."

Leo shouted from across the ship, "Two hours, Percy!"

"Ah. Correction. I want to talk about it for a minimum of two hours."

I gave him a bored look. "This is a distraction."

He looked slightly discouraged. "I take it you're not super distracted?"

I rubbed my eyes. "Is your plan going to hurt anyone?"

"No."

"Promise?"

"Promise."

I sighed, "Then I'll deal with you distracting me for two hours. Are the others in on this?"

Leo joined us on my left side. "Yeah, most of them. Anyone who has to do any stealing had to know to take forever and not to get caught this time."

"I feel like we're getting off track. Remember how we were going to talk about my PTSD? I've still got an hour and fifty-eight minutes of material to go over, bucko." Percy really did talk about PTSD, but only for the next twenty-five minutes before he ran out of things to say.

After that, Leo dragged me to the crow's nest to check out "a leak in the system" which then led him down a rabbit hole of complaints about everything we needed to fix on our boat. This went on for another half an hour, before it was apparently Percy's turn again.

He took me into my cabin and made me teach him how to draw a map "because you'll never know when there will be an emergency and I won't know how to draw a map."

"I already promised not to go anywhere until you were ready," I mumbled grumpily.

He poked me with the pencil. "The maps, Nico. Show me."

I sighed and went with it. I was showing both him and Leo the backwards C shape of the Silver Bay when Leo checked his watch. He tapped Percy and they both told me that they had to pee, then left my cabin. Percy opened the door after a second and said, "By the way, don't come out here. I'll come get you."

I leaned back in my chair. Sometimes my crew was heartwarmingly thoughtful. Sometimes they kidnapped random medical students. Hopefully today would not be the latter.

Word count: 573