The Wants of a Young Demigod Heart (Nico di Angelo, Leo Valdez x OC)

Aphrodite Strikes Again

Nico POV

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"This is terrible, why must everything be so unbearable?" Merrily frowns. Chey begins snickering and so does Ryan. Leo is trying to hide a smile behind his hand and Abigail's face is twitching with amusement. I'm trying to hold in my laugh because I'm fairly certain, my girlfriend will kill me if I started laughing.

"I'm going to kill you all and make you bawl

And If you don't stop, I'll hit you with a laptop

Be glad you're my friends, or you'd have to make amends" By that point, we are all busting a gut laughing and Merrily looks utterly murderous. "That's it, I'm done singing, don't you all start whinging." She then glared at all of us and tossed the lyre to me. I deftly caught it and she stormed upstairs.

"Your room is in the same spot honey," her grandmother calls up to her. We just hear an enraged grunt.

"I think she's still mad," I guess.

"No, she said thank you," Leo counters.

"Obviously she's still mad Einstein," I snarl.

"No, she literally said thank you," Leo protests. "She's not ticked off at us, she's just mad at the gods." We all jump as Merrily's stomps come into the living room and she grabs her tea. Then she looks at Leo and nods.

"She says I was right," Leo grins. Merrily nods. Then she turns to me and gives me a constipated look. "She says...." Leo starts laughing. Merrily glares at Leo. "Sorry. She thinks you were being a smartass."

"Hey!" I gasp, pretending to be offended. Merrily smiles lightly.

"But she still likes you, she guesses," Leo finishes, sounding a little glum. Merrily turns and heads back upstairs, tea in hand.

"I guess you're our translator then," Chey shrugs. "Anyway, we should probably get out of here."

"Why would you do that?" Mrs. Evans asks us.

"Bec ause monsters and--" Mrs. Evans cuts her off here.

"Don't worry, I'm prepared," she smiles and pulls out a Celestial bronze dagger. "Now, I'll set up the guest rooms. I suppose the baby can stay with her mother...." Mrs. Evans looks at Abigail.

"Oh, um... she's not..." Abigail turns a cherry red.

"It's my kid," Ryan mumbles, his face going splotchy. Mrs. Evans looks surprised.

"Well, then she can stay with her father," she continues. "The two girls in one room and you boys will just have to squeeze in with the baby."

"Ryan can have the bed," Leo says graciously. "If that's okay with you." He turns to look at me, a calm, even look on his face that clearly said 'I'm trying to be civil.'

"Yeah, sure, whatever," I mutter.

"Good, now that you all have figured that out, most of the family will be out for the rest of the day, so we have a playset and a tree house in the backyard and a gaming system in the basement," Mrs. Evans explains.

"You have a gaming system?" Chey and Leo ask at the same time.

"Downstairs." Chey and Leo high five and race down the stairs in a hurry.

"Can I take Taylor outside?" Ryan asks. Mrs. Evans nods.

"I'll go too,"Abigail offers. "Nico, do you want to come?" I shake my head no. I really need to be alone right now. I've been getting sick and tired of people in general and I could already tell it was making me kind of irrational. I knew I'd been being really unfair to Leo; he wasn't doing anything wrong. He hadn't tried to move in on Merrily since we'd gotten together, but I couldn't help but believe that he was going to get her anyway.