He's Back (Percico)

Chapter Three

Percy

It was nice to be able to talk him again. To just kind of start fresh.

I don't know, I've just wanted a break from my 'image' at camp, I guess, and I'm hoping this lets me do that.

He didn't tell me who he liked, but I really didn't care that much. He told me that the guy was straight, so it was pointless. Which is understandable.

I mean, I've liked plenty of straight guys before. I was very surprised when I found out Lee wasn't straight. I miss him, but I have to move on with my life. We made a pact that if one of us died, we wouldn't let it hold us back from doing stuff with out lives. Being with other people.

And for a it while, it held be back. In school I struggled a lot. I actually got held back between being gone and just struggling when I was there.

I miss him, but I can't bring him back and I have to live with what happened.

Sometimes I have a dream and he's still here and we're out and life is good. But those are few and far in between now. Now I have nightmares. About Tartarus. About all my friends dying. About everything I'm going to therapy for.

I'm getting help, though. And so far, I think it's good.

Afterwards, though, I was in my room. Really, I don't know why. But I just started to cry.

Maybe I was thinking too much. There was a lot of mind and there's still stuff I'm ignoring and it's not healthy and having to still do everything here and at home just is a lot.

To be honest, I'm not sure if Nico came in here because he heard me crying or if he needed something else. But either way, he saw me in the middle of a breakdown and he got worried. But like, I couldn't respond to him. I was out of it.

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Nico

I didn't fucking know what to do. He was having like an emotional breakdown and I don't know what happened and he isn't talking so like...

For a while, I just sat there and tried to get him to say something until I realized he probably was too far gone to listen to me.

So after that, I sat down next to him. I'm not good at this sort of stuff, I'm not the most stable person, either. But I just sort or rubber his back and gave him a weird side hug that he seemed to appreciate. He leaned towards me when I hugged him.

But for a while, Percy just cried. Started to shake, and when he ran out of tears, he had some sort or like anxiety attack. It was a full on emotional breakdown.

The only way I knew he had stopped was when his breathing kind of leveled out. He was shaking a little, but it wasn't too bad.

Knowing I was there and that I saw the whole thing, Percy just looked down. In shame that he, the like perfect demigod and camp leader, had a melt down.

I'm pretty sure he was just waiting for me to leave without saying anything. Never bring it up again because this didn't seem like him. But I guess we were like friends now. I think we we're. I could actually be concerned and it wouldn't be we're anymore.

"Hey," I said, rubbing his back again. "It's fine. You're more than overdue for one anyways."

He didn't say anything. Percy crossed his arms over his body, almost like he was curling up into a ball.

Percy really was unstable.

"What happened?" I asked, knowing that things like this normally have triggers. But he just shrugged.