"I know you're not sorry
Why should you be
'Cause who am I to be in love
When your love never is for me
Me..."

Percy sighed, his fist tightening around the wheel. His feet tapped anxiously on the car floor as songs poured from the radio, Billie Eilish's sickeningly sweet sad voice filling the vehicle with heartfelt lyrics.

Rain fell outside his windows, falling on the windshield like bullets. Through the blurred glass, Percy could make out a long line of cars honking underneath the bright red light, standing out like the blazing sun in a blue sky.

There's so much traffic after school, especially on Fridays. It was even more horrible now that schools would be closed for a while. It's bad to the point where it's almost unbearable. But not today, he thought.

The green-eyed boy felt safe nowhere. School seemed like hell, and it was worse now that he had to avoid Nico everywhere. The young brunette fixed him with his forlorn gaze the entire time, and at each opportunity he had, glanced at him furtively with sad yet hopeful eyes.

He knew it was foolish to ignore him, to go out of his way to cut him out of his life. He wasn't even sure of the reason behind the childish tantrum he was throwing.

Yesterday was not a day he had been proud of. He had finally shown some vulnerability, which meant he should be closed off for another few years before an accident like that happened again. He had snapped as easily as a frail twig, showing his true colours to the whole world.

Namely, Nico di Angelo.

"So I think I better go
I never really know how to please you
You're looking at me like I'm see through
I guess I'm gonna go
I just never know how you feel
Do you even feel anything?"

Angry, Percy turned off the radio as the light turned green ahead. He slammed on the accelerator as he weaved his way through the steam.

He wished he had never agreed to go to the hangout. His lone plan had been to show him his favourite spot in the entirety of Manhattan, show him part of his sheathed self.

"Look how horribly it turned out," he muttered under his breath.

He wasn't even sure what to do when the makeup had wiped off his face that evening. Cry? Scream? Hide it? Lie? Percy had laughed it off.

Swallowing down a choked hiccup, Percy gripped the wheel even more firmly as he twisted and turned, trying to be careful, his foot pressing on the brakes every so often.

He felt as if he were submerged in water, his head unable to break the surface. He felt as if instead of breathing fire, he was breathing in water, choking him as his lungs gasped for air.

Nothing he did changed the way he was inside. Broken, useless and numb. Despite wanting to escape school, he did not wish to go home either. If his house even had the right to be called home...

Ever since he were nine, his stepdad had been harsher and harsher towards both him and his mother. He didn't even remember a time before the strict pain on his skin and the crying to sleep.

The lucky nights when he was out poker playing, he and his mother would spend time alone, trying to find a way to weave out of the horrible mess they had been put in. The marriage had always been loveless, his mother had said. He was a family friend, and a wealthy man. 

She and Percy had thought it was a perfect combination of a husband for a widow, a woman who had lost the love of her life to sea.

But he had been so cruel that it had shattered both of them. He remembered the way his mother had cried one night, hopelessly trying to explain to her parents over the phone that she just couldn't tolerate a life with him. But they had retaliated, saying she should be grateful she was with such a powerful man.

How ironic... that had been the first night Gabe had lifted a hand on her.

As a child, Percy had been traumatised. He faintly remembered his biological father's glowing smile. The first time he had met Mr. Ugliano, he immediately had felt something off in his gut, the exact opposite energy of how a dad was supposed to be.

Now, he couldn't even bring himself to call him his that.

He had never been one to him. 

He was rude and disrespectful to his wife, and even in his earliest memories, Percy had only remembered the cold hate radiating off him.

If they tried to call the police, Gabe would eventually find a way to shut their mouth with money.

And of course Percy had already tried defending him and his mother. But he had learned quickly enough that standing up would only get your legs taken out from under you.

How many times had he been relentlessly beaten, hit, bruised because he had forgotten to watch his mouth, or had lifted even the smallest finger...

It wasn't fair.

It had never been.

*   *   *

Nico groaned.

Spread-eagled on his queen-sized bed, he thrashed with the covers, trying to find peace within himself. But there was so much conflict in his mind, so much pain...

He punched the mattress. Pain? he told himself. It's nothing compared to what Percy feels.

His knuckles tightened on the sheets. Stop. He doesn't care about you or what you think. Not anymore.

Tears haven't touched his cheeks yet. After holding them back for so long, Nico simply felt numb as he rolled over, his chest pressing into the soft fabric of his duvet. It was like he had forgotten how to cry.

Percy had not looked him once in the eye the whole day. 

While everybody else was having fun, meeting up at clubs after school, giddily gushing about the last Friday before spring break, Nico had spent the entire time letting guilt devour him from the inside.

So caught up in the tangled web of his own emotions, he had even completely forgotten the two-week vacation supposedly coming soon. Two weeks without Percy's radiant laugh, and the graceful smile adorning the soft curve of his mouth.

Two weeks... Nico hoped Percy would get through it fine, without any more injuries to add to his beautiful, bright, infinite body.

His chest constricted.

He hated feeling useless. He had thought over it multiple times the previous night, how he would fix this all. But he hadn't even gathered the courage to apologise to Percy. What more could he do than read over and over again all the stupid options he had in his mind? His bottom lip quivered as he brought his knees up to bury his face in. Lying on his side, his dark hair falling onto his pillow as if they were weightless feathers.

He hoped one day Percy would find the one he was looking for. One that wasn't so cowardly. One that would treat him right and put an end to his misery.

One that wouldn't just be caught staring at the back of his head in class, one that could apologise when it was needed...

But it wasn't in his nature to think like this, for he couldn't imagine a future without him in it. He was like implanted in his memory, a part of him he could never forget. A part of him he knew would never leave him.

Somehow, as he fisted his hand into his bedraggled shirt, he knew that despite everything, he would never stop loving him.

The crinkles under his piercing eyes, the grace in which his hands picked up things, his soft muffled laugh, even when you haven't even said anything funny.

Twisting, Nico rolled himself off the bed.

He fell with a thump, his chest rising quickly on the floor. His arms and legs joined the other forgotten items of clothing on the rug, including other objects like poetry books and plays he had never bothered reading.

He sighed and picked one of the novels at random, his fingers skidding over the smooth cover of it, folding over the thick spine. Flipping to a page without much thinking, he let his eyes rest upon the first sentences catching his eye.

"And fell so roundly to a large confession, to angle for your thoughts: but you are wise; or else you love not..." he read out loud, murmuring the words escaping his lips as siphoned sighs.

"...For to be wise, and love, exceeds man's might."

He closed the book as dust flied in the air, floating off the pages as clouds would. He groaned as some tickled his nose, and he cringed as he looked at the cover. "Shakespeare, Troilus and Cressida..."

Of course. Only he could write something as unexplainably dramatic and sensitive.

Nico shut his eyes as he let his skin rub over the soft material of the carpet under him. Poems, or any piece of beautiful writing, could get under his skin. They were his safe haven, to escape the brutal, abstract reality of the world. Life had seemed so roundabout before Percy came.

Feelings were in him, that was sure. That was what had made him so interesting to Nico. That he was born with the ability to feel, and he didn't reject it like others did, seeming lifeless as they lived their boring everyday life.

No, Percy had seemed to be the only one living a life. Of course, there were his friends, but... they never shared the same energy the green-eyed boy had.

"If the past year were offered me again / And choice of good and ill before me set / Would I accept the pleasure with the pain / Or dare to wish that we had never met?" he whispered to the evening air, but to nobody at the same time.

Augusta Gregory's "If the Past Year Were Offered Me Again", a poem Nico had randomly decided to remember last summer. How ironic, considering his wishes to turn back time. He went rigid. Yet not to be immortal, no... but to fix what I have done wrong.

The number of paragraphs of writing engraved in his mind was unknown. Probably more than necessary, but sometimes, in times like these, they would randomly rise back into his mind, reminding him of his faults. It wasn't always pleasant, and sometimes the timing would be horribly wrong, but it always added flourish to life.

Not that his life needed any more drama.

He had already broken his and Percy's heart, and he was already having trouble to mend the broken pieces back together.

But he thought, partly, it was because he hoped instead of fixing both of them separately, he could unify them into one altogether.

Edgar Allan Poe's "Tamerlane" came into his mind.

"You call it hope—that fire of fire! It is but agony of desire." he whispered, repeating the words he had once read on paper.

*   *   *

"Percy...?"

Percy closed the door behind him, his breath breaking the eerie silence of the apartment. It was dark, the lights overhead blinking faintly as a soft voice exhaled his name.

The frames on the walls were pictures of what had once been his life. The memories were so distant, Percy felt like he was looking at them through another person. He straightened one of them, that was slightly tilted towards the right.

"Mom?" he whispered back, the question hovering in the air like a silent promise. 

"Percy!" A middle-aged woman, with waves of brown hair tumbling down her shoulders like curtains of quilt, trotted to where her son was standing in the darkness of the hallway.

Wrapping his arms around her, he felt her hand caress over his head. "Mom..." he breathed. "Where's Gabe?"

He had always refused to call him his dad. Sally Jackson smiled at her son's inborn defiance.

"He went out. He probably won't come back until a couple of days. He's staying at that poker place... you know. He'll probably stay over at one of his partner's places." she murmured holding on tighter to her son's slender frame.

It was hard to compare the athletic teenager, with the bruises under his shirt, to the small energetic kid she once had, who's smile used to grace her entire day.

"R-Really? He's out with his stupid friends?" he stuttered, his manly voice sounding like his father's. He buried his nose in his mother's shirt. It still smelled like her everyday perfume. "Thank the gods. We have the apartment to ourselves. Maybe my skin will heal during those days."

Sally fought the tears back. The way Percy so casually talked about the injuries he bore from years of abuse, like it was a normal everyday occurrence to him. And sadly, it was, sometimes.

His voice sounded so broken, so cut at the edges. She held him tighter. "I love you, Percy, you know that, right? I promise you, one day, this will all stop."

He stiffened as he placed his forehead on her shoulder, where a red bruise hid under her sleeve. "I sincerely hope so."

"Oh, Percy."

And a tear silently crossed her face as short termed relief seized them for a moment they would never forget.

✫*ﾟ･ﾟ｡.☆.*｡･ﾟ✫*.･:*

wow i'm definitely not crying
soooo, this filler chapter was probably crap but i need to update so hhhh
also, i'm thinking 14 years of prison for gabe... or a lifetime sentence :)

what do you think? please comment for what sentence he should face!
i did some research online, and it's usually 4 years for domestic violence, and 10 for child abuse, unless it's a very serious case, which results in life in prison.
wow i'm getting shivers at these mature themes... please take care of yourself and call the police if you have ever faced these :((
my dms are open to all.

please point out any grammar mistakes, thanks!

- deniiial