Author's Notes: Welcome to my latest project, the epic Rachel/Nico romance fic! Yes, the summary and the title are supposed to be a little romance novel-esque, and the content of this fic will get steamier in later chapters, so please take the "M" rating seriously if you're not old enough to read this. Rachel/Nico is my pet pairing, but The Last Olympian kind of put the kibosh on it with the whole Rachel-as-the-Oracle thing. This is my way of fixing it, and I hope you enjoy it.

Disclaimer: I don't own Percy Jackson and the Olympians.

Chapter One: The Assignment

“He’s going to be my what?”

Usually, Rachel Elizabeth Dare’s acidic glares could make grown men whimper and run screaming from the room. Even her father, who had once stared down the President of the United States and made him blink, had been known to back down once she turned the evil eye his way. But the two grown men – well, almost grown in one case – sitting across from her in the restaurant booth remained cool and unaffected by it. Probably because they’d been on the receiving end of glares from furious mortal women for the last few millennia.

Stupid, immortal Olympians.

“Rachel, babe,” the younger man said, adjusting his aviator sunglasses and leaning back against the padding seating in the booth. The waitress passing by did a double take and almost spilled her tray on the neighboring table. Rachel really hated going anywhere with Lord Apollo when he was in his hot, teenage model form. “I’m only looking out for your best interests. I can’t be around to protect you all the time, and since locking young maidens in distant temples isn’t en vogue any more, this is probably the best option for you.”

“I don’t need anyone to protect me. This is the twenty-first century and I’ve taken more than my fair share of self-defense classes,” Rachel said venomously. She was probably the only person (except Artemis) who could get away with such a tone around him; Apollo adored his Oracle far too much flash fry her.

The older man next to Apollo snorted in amusement. He was exactly the opposite of the other god in both looks and tempermant, with his crisp, dark suit and slicked back hair. He could’ve passed for Apollo’s father if he really tried, but Rachel didn’t dare tell him that because she liked not existing as a pile of dust, thank you very much. They made a bizarre combination, for sure, and she wasn’t sure what had caused them to team up to come and talk to her beyond the obvious reasons.

“Because your mortal self-defense classes will serve you so well the next time a monster tries to jump you on the subway. You were lucky this time, Oracle Girl, and I would know better than most,” Lord Hades replied, matching her glower with a cool, self-assured stare.

Really, the two of them were blowing this out of proportion. She’d known that monster had been following her for ten city blocks, and she’d just had to wait until it snuck up on her to give it a good stab in the stomach with her Celestial bronze dagger. It hadn’t been a very big monster either; nothing like the ones she’d seen during the Battle of New York.

“One monster attack in the last seven years is not bad enough to warrant a 24/7 bodyguard,” she said, reaching for her glass of lemonade. “You know, you should’ve asked my dad about the time he tried to get a bodyguard for me in second grade. That didn’t work out so hot.”

As she sipped from her straw, she noticed the two gods exchanging a look. Rachel didn’t have to be an Oracle to understand what that meant.

“Please don’t tell me monster attacks are going to be a new trend for me because this is not what I need while I’m finishing my senior showcase and applying for grad school.”

“Fine. We won’t tell you, will we, Apollo?”

Apollo ignored the other god, and pushed his sunglasses up into his hair. His eyes were unusually serious.

“We on Olympus have reason to believe that someone is trying to kill you, Rachel, and that monster was only the beginning,” he said. “We’re not sure who it could be at the moment because plenty of our old enemies have come out of the woodwork to challenge us since Lord Kronos fell, but they’re not going to stop until they have you out of the way. You haven’t seen anything, have you?”

Rachel shook her head, sitting back in the booth. She was sure she would’ve remembered prophesying her own doom in recent days.

She wasn’t shocked by this, not at all. To be truthful, she was a little surprised that it had taken this long after the Battle of New York to get on some sort of immortal hit list. Percy and Annabeth had been fighting monsters in the mortal world constantly since then, but she hadn’t heard a peep from the enemies of Olympus.

“But why me? I’m an art major, for cripe’s sake.”

“They kill you, we don’t have an Oracle, and very bad things happen,” Apollo said matter-of-factly. “You’re like our early alert system. You get taken out and we’re pretty much fighting blind. No heroes go on quests, no tips and tricks, no nothing. You understand why we have to up your security now?”

Rachel sighed and nodded reluctantly. She supposed she should’ve been grateful that her duties as the Oracle of Delphi hadn’t conflicted with her mortal life as much as they could have in the past seven years. Yes, she had to spend her summers at Camp Half-Blood, but that wasn’t exactly a death sentence and it definitely got her away from her father’s watchful eye. She’d lived a rather normal life since she became the vessel of the Oracle, and there was some part of her that was itching for a change.

“All right,” she sighed, giving in. “But why does it have to be Nico? Can’t I have a Hunter or someone?”

Hades stirred in his seat. “Do you have a problem with my son, girl?”

“Besides the fact that he’s a boy and boys are off-limits for the Oracle?”

Truthfully, Rachel didn’t know all that much about Nico. She’d seen him hanging around Percy at Camp Half-Blood and heard some of the stories about him, but she’d rarely talked to him alone during their time at camp. He was younger than her and was a bit of a dweeb if their one conversation about MythoMagic was to go by anything, but other than that, she had nothing to pass judgment either way.

“We’re making an exception to rule in this case,” Apollo said hastily, as if he could sense Hades’s growing ire. “Lord Hades owes me for putting the curse on my last Oracle – ”

“Bah,” Hades said, waving his hand dismissively, as if dooming a young girl to a horrible fate as a mummy in outdated clothing was a trivial matter.

“ – and who could be a better bodyguard than someone who can see death coming? Besides, his kids are known to be pretty asexual anyway. Something about being around death all the time that kills off the sex drive, plus they're not the most attractive people in the universe…no offense meant, Uncle. I don’t expect to have any problems with him.”

There went the last excuse she had to avoid getting a bodyguard. She was sure the two gods wouldn’t be moved by tears, and she wasn’t desperate enough to pull that card.

“I suppose I’ll have to make my couch ready for habitation. When can I expect him?”

“He’s in Italy at the moment with some of his mortal relations. I told him what was expected of him, and he should be arriving sometime tonight,” Hades said, and then he frowned. “And surely you can afford better accommodation than a couch. He’s my son, not the brat of some low-class minor god with limited talents.”

Rachel sighed. If Hades’s attitude was anything to judge Nico by, she was in for a long, exhausting term.

*

After her lunch with the two gods that morning, Rachel decided to spend some time with her normal friends in the Village. Well, normal in the sense that they were mortals, because her friends were definitely not normal in any other sense of the word. They’d have to be pretty weird to hang out with her on a daily basis anyway, what with all the random prophesy spewing moments she had.

She’d thought about visiting Percy and Annabeth first to tell them the news, but she figured they’d hear it from Nico eventually. Besides, the last time she’d visited without advanced warning, the two of them had been otherwise engaged in the bedroom, and lately Percy had been looking at her like he wanted to know the answer to when he should propose to Annabeth and Rachel did not want to be caught spewing lines about poetry about that.

She and her friends were gathered around a table at an outside café – Jenna and Monique were arguing about the latest political stunt while Angeline was listening to them with one ear and a Podcast on surrealism in the other. Rachel was just trying to catch some last minute summer sun when a shiny black and silver motorcycle pulled up to the curb. The rider, wearing a black helmet and faded leather jacket, glanced over at their table and killed the engine.

A prickle of awareness ran down Rachel’s spine, the same kind of prickle she got when she could feel a monster nearby or a gap in the Mist. She pulled her sunglasses away from her eyes and pushed them up into her hair to get a better look at this person. Whoever the rider was, he didn’t look like any sort of monster she could remember, but then again, they usually didn’t at first glance.

The rider got of his motorcycle and walked toward them, reaching up to take off his helmet. Jenna, Monique, and Angeline had also noticed him and fell silent, their full attention on the biker.

The helmet came off, revealing a familiar scowl, dark eyes and messy brown hair. It took a moment for Rachel to recognize him, and when she did, her jaw dropped.

He definitely wasn’t the awkward little kid she remembered from Camp Half-Blood. He was tall – taller than Percy and with a broader chest that his gray t-shirt stretched over nicely. His black jeans, slung low on his hips, hugged his long legs like they had been made for him and the boots on his feet completed whatever badass look he was trying to go for.

“Oh my god,” Jenna, who had a thing for bad boys, whispered. “Hottie, dead ahead.”

If Apollo thought Hades's kids were unattractive, he apparently hadn't gotten a good look at Nico recently. Rachel fought off a growing blush as he approached her and said in a deep voice she wasn’t expecting, “Rachel Elizabeth Dare?”

He had a bit a scruff on his face, and a jaw line that she’d kill to sketch in several positions. The only thing that hadn’t changed about him was the intensity of his eyes.

“Yes?”

He stuck out his hand. He was wearing fingerless biking gloves and a tarnished skull ring.

“Nico di Angelo.”

Rachel took his hand, and felt a different sort of prickle going up her spine. Not of fear or revulsion, but the slightly unfamiliar prickle of attraction.

Oh, this was going to be a problem. A big problem.

*

Nico di Angelo was fucked. Big time.

When his dad had appeared at his aunt’s villa in Italy a few days ago and demanded that he get his skinny, ungrateful ass back to Manhattan so he could guard Apollo’s Oracle, Nico had been less than thrilled. Hades had elected to (mostly) stay out of Nico’s business since he turned eighteen, and Nico had gotten used to his freedom and had been tempted to tell his dad where he could shove his crazy demands.

Then again, Nico rather liked not being dead, and this was probably the easiest request his dad had ever thrown at him. Protecting the Oracle from monster attacks? Cake compared to talking Cerberus for a walk, interning with Charon for the summer, or surviving a Christmas dinner with Demeter and Persephone without being turned into a blooming plant.

He didn’t remember who the Oracle was until he pulled up outside the street café where she was hanging out with a bunch of mortals, and it took him exactly a second after laying his eyes on her to realize how many ways to Sunday he was fucked.

Rachel Elizabeth Dare.

During his early teenage years, Nico’d had an enormous crush on Rachel. It had something to do with the way she threw blue plastic hairbrushes at Titan Lords, had enough confidence to tell her over-demanding dad where to shove it on a daily basis, and was generally a pretty nice girl to everyone she met. Plus, she was cute, but totally off-limits due to the whole being four years older business. And that Oracle thing too, he supposed, but he really hadn’t understood the limitations of it at the time.

It didn’t stop his crush on her, though, because it was completely harmless. Nico had been terrible with girls then – still was in some aspects, actually – and the only time he had ever gotten up the courage to talk to her by himself, he had talked to her about MythoMagic, of all things. The look on her face had made him want to crawl under the nearest rock and disappear.

It was after that point that he’d realized how pointless going after Rachel was. Not only couldn’t she date, but he definitely was her type of guy. She had been after Percy – all-around American teen guy – before she became the host of Delphi. Nico was nothing like Percy now, despite all of Annabeth’s grumbles to the contrary, and certainly hadn’t been anything like the hero of Olympus when he had been fourteen and going through growing pains.

And then there was his problem of being the son of the god of death, which put the kibosh on most romantic liaisons – except for with girls who were totally into the death scene and some really crazy Europeans he’d encountered during his year overseas.

Even though his crush on Rachel had never really gone away, Nico hadn’t expected it to come roaring back at the sight of her sunning herself at the café table. She wasn’t pretty – she was gorgeous.

Her creamy white skin glowed in the afternoon sunlight, and her long red hair was as bright as a flame. Her lips were full, pink, and utterly kissable, and she had still had the smattering of freckles across her nose and cheeks that he’d always found absolutely delectable. It didn’t help that she was wearing a blue tank top that clung to her soft curves or a short skirt that showed off her long legs too. He could already imagine –

Fuck, fuck, fuck. This was not good. He was supposed to be her mature and capable bodyguard, not some twenty year old kid who couldn’t keep it in his pants for more than a minute.

Nico took a deep breath, prayed that the sudden tightness in his jeans wouldn’t be visible, and got off his bike. Rachel’s eyes didn’t flare in recognition until he took his helmet off, and then she got a weird expression on her face, like she couldn’t believe what she was seeing. Nico hoped his dad had at least told her that he was expected otherwise this was going to be one awkward exchange.

One of her friends leaned over to whisper something to her, but her green eyes were only concentrated on him for once. He stopped in front of her and held out his hand; he wasn’t sure why he felt the need to introduce himself. It wasn’t like she didn’t know him, after all.

“Nico,” Rachel whispered, and the sound of her voice made his knees just a little weak. “Um…hi. I – I wasn’t expecting you until later.”

She probably hadn’t been expecting him to ambush her in front of her mortal friends, but Nico’s timing had sucked for all but one event in his life. She was lucky he hadn’t popped into her apartment while she was showering –

Oh gods, if he wanted to last a week in this job, he had to stop thinking of her naked.

“Sorry, my…flight got in early,” he said, and that was more or less true. “I probably should’ve called at first.”

“No, no, it’s fine. I’m just finishing up here, and we can go back to my place – ”

“Rachel,” the short blonde and pink haired girl across the table said, leaning forward and batting her eyelashes. “Who is your cute friend?”

Nico couldn’t help the flush that flooded his cheeks. He still wasn’t used to girls – especially older girls – paying him any attention that wasn’t met with a wrinkled nose and a huff of disgust, and his usual quick tongue got tongue tied pretty fast. He noticed the two other girls at the table were eyeing him like a piece of meat for sale, and it was making him vaguely uncomfortable, but in a good way.

“Jenna, this is Nico di Angelo,” Rachel said, gesturing at him as she picked up her cup and reached for the bag slung across the back of her chair. “He’s going to be living with me for a while.”

“What, like living living with you?” one of the other girls blurted out, her eyes going wide. “Oh my god, Rachel. When did you get a boyfriend?”

“I’m not – ”

“He’s not my boyfriend,” Rachel replied shortly, glaring at Nico as if this was entirely his fault. “He’s a kid from a camp I used to go to who needs a place to stay for a couple of months, all right? Gods know I have more than enough space at my place.”

Nico couldn’t help but feel a bit slighted by her tone. Of course, she would still think of him as an annoying little twelve year old – that’s probably he’d ever be to her, except maybe as the annoying bodyguard she didn’t want around. It wasn’t like he wanted to come back to New York to babysit her either; she could at least be grateful that he was going to keep her predictive ass safe for the next few weeks.

“Whatever you say, Rachel,” Jenna said with a laugh. She turned her gaze to Nico. “If you need another space to share, Nico, my place is more than open. I love the Italians.”

“Um…okay,” Nico said, earning himself another laugh from Jenna as she flipped her hair over her shoulder.

Rachel stood abruptly, shifting her bag onto her shoulder.

“Bye girls. Call me about going for a bar run later this week, all right?”

Rachel didn’t wait for their reply and grabbed Nico by the arm, whirling him back around toward his bike. Nico glanced over his shoulder and waved at the three girls, who giggled and ducked their heads together. The red head at his arm gave an insistent tug.

“Don’t pay any attention to them,” she said. “They’re miserable flirts.”

“Like they’d want to date me now. ‘Just a kid from camp’? Lame,” Nico said, glancing at Rachel. “Couldn’t you have at least said I was your demigod bodyguard of death? It sounds much more exciting.”

“Unfortunately, my friends don’t know I’m freakish enough to warrant a demigod bodyguard of death, so you’re going to have to live with being a brat from camp,” she paused and glanced at his motorcycle. “Do I really have to ride that?”

Nico bristled. His motorcycle was pride and joy. It was a vintage Harley he’d rescued from a scrap heap, and had spent two years rebuilding and customizing with some kids from the Hephaestus cabin. Didn’t she know how hard it was to make inanimate objects as large as a motorcycle shadow travel and look this good at the same time?

“Better get used to it. This is going to be your primary mode of transportation for however long I have to be here,” he said, swinging himself onto the bike. He noticed she was eyeing the skull he had airbrushed onto the side, and grabbed her wrist as she reached out to touch the glittering ruby eyes. “I wouldn’t touch those if I were you. They’re cursed.”

Rachel snatched her hand away from his as if he had burned her. “Do I even want to know why you have cursed rubies on your bike?”

“Keeps the thieves away,” he said with a shrug. “They were a birthday present from Persephone. I think she was hoping I wouldn’t know what they were and would put myself in a coma for twenty years. I’m starting to think she likes me a little better.”

“And here I thought my family was messed up. You demigods always known how to show a girl up,” Rachel sighed, eyeing the bike again critically. “So how do I get on this thing?”

“Right leg first. You can put your hand on my shoulder if you need to balance,” he directed, turning to watch her get on. He made sure to keep his eyes focused on her face and not on the skirt that was inching higher up her thighs as she moved. He felt her settle behind him, shifting until she got comfortable. “All right. Now, make sure your feet are on the foot pegs and not anywhere near the muffler – just a little to the left there, okay, you’ve got it.”

“I’m not going to fall off this, am I?” she replied, looking squeamish. She reached back to tie her hair behind her head, and Nico admired the long line of her neck for a brief moment.

“Nah. Just hold onto my hips and lean when I lean, and you’ll be fine,” he said, handing his helmet to her. “You’ll probably need this too. I don’t have an extra yet, so it might be a little big.”

Rachel slipped the helmet over her head without complaint, adjusted herself on the bike once more, and then reached out to put her hands on him. Nico repressed a shudder as her fingertips brushed against a section of bare skin between his jeans and t-shirt, and nearly jumped out of his skin when she pressed up against his back after he started the engine. It figured the first girl on his bike in months would be both hot and completely unavailable.

If this was any indication of how the rest of this assignment would be going, he was so, so screwed.

Thanks for reading! Chapter Two will be up soon.