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illumnis · 5 months ago

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₊⊹⁀➴ hey, lover (my one and only) !

pairing — jason grace x child of victoria!reader

synopsis — twelve years of badgering and beating each other up with jason grace (you've been a long time coming)

contents — gn reader, childhood rivals to lovers, non-linear plot, no use of y/n (nickame: ace)

notes — just when we thought it was over WE R SOOO BACK!! one of my favs ever written, rivals with romantics always has my back

ONE —

It’s sunny when you see him again.

The golden rays punch holes through the clouds, the heavens threaded in each sunbeam, gilding the carved city with light.

You can see it through the hole in the senate dome; a bright, football shaped mass of bronze plating breaking through a large nimbus, refracting white like a second sun—wait. The warning horns echo deep in the valley, vibrating between the hills; around you, the senators clamors nervously.

You look up to the sky again, scooping your helm under your arm—from the edge of the massive flying warship stands Jason. He looks as if the months haven’t passed for him.

Still buff, still tall, still squinting and still blond, although it looks like he’s finally gathered the courage to grow out of his regulation cut.

And then you catch a little white figure behind him, a stout marble bust without arms and legs; he’s nearly thrown back by a small explosion—you lock a laugh behind your teeth—and Terminus begins to scream about Greeks in the Pomerian Line.

Victoria. You learn her name when you’re young, spell it and know it better than your own. Victoria is strong. Victoria, the goddess of victory, wreathed and haloed in gilded laurels, Midas-touched and unattainable like the cookie jar atop your grandmother’s cabinet.

You learn her name and learn to hate her, how her divine patronage had burrowed so deep into your very being that it’s been engraved in every action and thought produced by your mind.

( It’s raining when the goddess leaves you on your grandma’s doorstep. She tells you that lightning had streaked across the sky, a race of electricity under the heavy, pounding droplets—a good omen, a blessed sign from Jupiter.

You think of it as stupid then, your entire two-year-old body heaving with the roll of your eyes. What a big, scary man in the sky, surely he could afford to descend the heavens and allow himself to be humbled every once in a while. )

They tell you about Victoria, and then they tell you about Jason Grace.

He must be the ugliest toddler you’ve ever seen. The son of Jupiter looks exactly like what you imagined: blond, blue-eyed, and stumbling stupidly over his own feet like the daddy’s boy he is.

He doesn’t even properly serve in the legion; he hangs about in the barracks after dinner and snaps crayons between his chubby fingers instead of joining the war games; you know this because you’re stuck in the barracks too, babysat by the Lares who wave their ghostly swords around and tell tall tales about Caesar's days.

Granted, you’re also a kid, the little lead probatio tablet too big for your neck that still hasn’t lost its babylike rolls of fat, and the chain it hangs from is so long that the lowest point brushes your belly button.

“I don’t like the war games,” Jason mumbles, words impeded by the gnarled scar on his lip. He’s still learning to speak with it. “Why can’t they just talk?”

You sink deeper into the mess room’s couch, shoulders hunched and facing away from him in annoyance.

( Even Lupa had told you about him, the son of Jupiter who lived against all odds. Unlike with your grandmother, you didn’t roll your eyes in fear that the wolf will snap your head between her jaws and feed you to her pack.

She says that he is strong and capable and quiet, a good boy, something she hasn’t seen since Romulus, and she let you know that you fight weak and have a brittle spirit but make up for it by being the fastest child she’s ever seen.

Lupa thinks you could be a praetor’s champion and you swear to yourself that you’ll only be the equal of Jason Grace and never under him. )

“Hey,” he calls softly, an offer to converse, and you hear the sound of his brittle crayons scratching against paper, “hey, you.”

( Just you. He doesn’t even calls you properly by your name, although later you learn that he actually had not known who you were at all. )

Snotty little shit is a phrase you learned from the seniors in your cohort—though you don’t know better about the meaning—shouted broadly in the barracks and accompanied by raucous laughter.

“I think you’re a snotty little shit, Jason.”

You hear a small gasp from behind you, a pause in the crayon’s scratch, and there’s a sharp sound, the little column of colorful wax snapping under the boy’s shocked grip. A sharp and quick clack of projectiles hits your turned back and you see red.

Not unlike a lightning bolt’s strike, you find yourself swinging around and launching towards the boy. He meets you with chubby, balled fists and cuffs you at the shoulder, pinches your ear lobes in his short fingers and tugs. Hard.

You cry out sharply, thread your hand into his soft blond hair and pull just as hard, if not harder. The Lares, ghostly and purple, transparent bodies superimposed on the walls of the barracks, cheer loudly and make no move to stop your fight.

Jason catches your shoulders and locks you into a wrestle, both of your arms like the trapped horns of two stag beetles, feet slipping to find a grip on the polished floor. You knock your forehead against his and he doesn’t budge despite the ringing in your ears from the impact.

“Yield,” he tells you unsurely, his irises warbling at the edges.

“You don’t even know what that means!”

“Yes, I do!”

( He’s lying—you know this later because he tends takes a higher vocal pitch whenever he’s not truthful. )

“No, you don’t! You just copied it from the big kids!”

You tense your leg, the bare sole of your left foot sticking to the polished floor and keeping you in place as you raise your right knee. Jason wails in pain when your shin makes contact with his crotch and kicks you in the stomach before he backs away.

You double over but crawl towards his writhing form on the floor regardless, pressing him under your elbow and grappling with his hands that try to claw at your skin.

“Yield!” ( You don’t know exactly what it means either. )

Jason snaps his jaw at you, blunt baby teeth gleaming white and almost straight when he bares them—there’s a pout to his lower lip that you could have found endearing if you weren’t trying to beat the living daylight out of him—and you can almost see Lupa’s ferocity superimposed on his face.

It scares you, a fear that awakens deep from where it had seeped in the marrow of your bones, and he seizes the advantage, pushes up against your weight—your head hits the floor and now he’s the one pinning you down.

You cry, kick, scream; you even manage to land a hit between his legs again but Jason holds fast. He’s strong for a toddler who always looks like he’s about to cry with his stupid watery eyes and chubby, fidgeting fingers.

You sniffle amidst your struggle, the weight of your incoming admission to loss tying your windpipe into a knot, and the chain of your probatio tablet starts to feel like a noose. “I hate you.”

His snarl would have sounded almost feral if his voice had been any lower than the whiny toddler register. “I hate you more.”

There’s the crack of footfalls on gravel and the door to the barracks flings open. The centurion of the Fifth Cohort—Chang, you think her name is, the medal on her armor sharp at the edges with novelty—pulls the son of Jupiter away by the ear and apologizes deeply to your superior officer, Adam.

He’s seventeen, imposing in the dusk-lit doorframe, brassy armor battered and scorched, eyes thin, tired, and heavy. A tuft of his black hair smokes lightly, embers caught in the short strands. You’re fast, but he’s faster.

Adam grabs you by the back of your purple camp shirt like how a mother would bite a kitten’s scruff and drags you off to the ranks of the Second Cohort to watch the medal ceremony without a word.

You look over your shoulder from your standing at the back of the group to see Jason at attention in the front line of his cohort; envy wraps a barbed wire around your heart and shreds it bloody. He must see you too because he frowns and thumbs at the jagged scar on his lip, a nervous habit that’ll die early on.

When you continue to eye him, he sticks his tongue out at you just before the ranks break—Adam places a still, firm hand on your shoulder before you can retaliate and you know that you’re really in it this time.

Punishment day comes too soon for you. As the dawn splits open like an egg, the yolk of the golden sun coming free from the brittle chassis of clouds, Adam flings open the barrack curtains to a symphony of bemoaned complaints.

( “Five more minutes, mom.”

“Alright, which one of you snotty little shits stole my helmet?” )

The moment you try to scamper out of the space for breakfast, the centurion is already waiting at the doorway, catching you once again by the scruff of your shirt. He picks you up easily enough, two battle-worn hands cupped under your armpits like you’re a human Simba, and you hang there with your feet dangling a good foot off the ground as he takes you to the basilisk nest. You groan and fuss and kick your feet to no avail—a little kid obviously has no chance against a teenaged centurion.

“You’re such a crank,” he sighs, the stride of his long legs smooth and quick, as typical of a son of Mercury. He’s fast, if not the fastest demigod at camp and you often watch his races like an annoying little sibling looking up to a big brother.

“He started it!” A vain protest—you’ve already resigned yourself to your fate. You know that the centurion wouldn’t make you do things that’d put you in real danger.

“Really? Reticulus told me that you called Jason a snotty little shit first.”

“Addie,” you draw out the vowels of his nickname, “he didn’t even try stopping us! Everyone calls him Vitellius the Ridiculous for a reason.”

Adam lowers your feet to the ground, pulls a kid-sized Hazmat suit from his pack and dumps the headpiece of it unceremoniously over your eyes. The centurion helps you into the gear, tugging the gloves firmly over your small hands.

“You gotta learn to respect the house gods, ace,” he says, turning you around to face the basilisk nest. Adam places a gentle, forgiving hand between your shoulder blades and nudges you forward. “They’re wiser than you think.”

The nest is cradled between four white walls and a red tiled roof, sticks and straw packed together to form a squishy carpet that crackles with each tentative step you take. It’s warm inside, heat threading through your suit and around your nerves.

You start to sweat before a whiny, familiar voice breaches the protective fabric of your headpiece.

“You’re here too?”

The heat of the nest ebbs away and replaces itself with a chilled annoyance.

“No, I’m not.”

“Am too,” battles Jason, the blue of his eyes shining through the transparent shield of his suit. You’ve never quite noticed until now that they gleam crystalline like the shallows of a babbling, sun-drenched creek.

“I don’t like you, Jason,” you tell him, glaring through your own eye shield. His brows crease, mouth pinching into a pout that flaunts the scar on his lip.

“I don’t like you either, what’s-your-face.”

You ball your fists and rest them on your hips in offense. “You don’t know my name?”

“No,” the boy admits, tone morphing once again to a guilty one. He looks down to his fabric-covered feet and reaches up to touch his scar before remembering that he’s wearing a hazard suit. It’s big on him, and you too, so you both look like little apocalyptic snowmen. “But my name’s Jason Grace.”

You huff lightly, a breath that condenses into a wet cloud on your eye shield. “I know that already,” you say flatly.

“I heard the big kid call you ace.”

“That’s not my name,” and something crackles to life in your chest, a spark between two live wires when he takes you by the hand and starts walking to the corner of the nest.

“Okay, ace,” Jason blurts, shrugging. He smiles politely, the scar on his mouth pulling along with it, and grabs a bucket. “We have to finish cleaning before lunch.”

( You suffocate the urge to kick at his fabric-covered knees and start a fight in a nest of deadly snakes. )

Jason hadn’t shed a tear when his probatio tablet was taken and replaced with the mark on his pale arm. He shows you the eagle and single bar burned into his skin after your chores and you poke at the pinkness of it. He sniffles but does not cry.

You don’t cry either, not until later. The brand had seared you to the bone, a divine reckoning burned into your soft flesh. A reminder that you, body and brittle soul, belong to Rome and its senate and its people.

It itches until it bleeds and Jason washes your boiled skin with cold water, pastes a eagle-patterned plaster over the laurel wreath cradled in the crook of your elbow as tears drip into the folds of your mouth.

He tells you not to scratch it; you say that he’s stupid for being worried about a weakling even though he shouldn’t because he’s stronger, that you’ll beat him one day, be it a fight or a race or being the first to become centurion.

Jason pinches your earlobe and accepts your challenge on the terms that you’ll promise to be as strong as he is at the end of it.

Never in your entire three years as a legionnaire had you ever been shut into the detention brig.

“What is your problem with me?” Jason whines, kicking at the enclosed flagstone walls. He’s still as short and chubby as ever, blond hair sheared to fit within the confines of regulation. “You always get us in trouble.”

“Maybe if you hadn’t been followed when you sneaked off to the ring, we wouldn’t be here,” you retort, back pressed into the opposite wall. You slide down the surface dejectedly, settling on the surprisingly clean floor to glare at his turned back.

“You said at noon behind the stables, how was I supposed to know that it was an illegal fight club?” he nearly shouts, throwing his hands up in frustration. “Wasn’t even worth it, your form was sloppy.”

Your knuckles, bruised and nearly bloody, crack from the tension in your palm.

“And you think you’re better—” you sputter for an insult “—sparky? You don’t use the proper breathing tech-techni—tech-nick when you run.”

“You can’t even say it correctly!” He’s whipped around, pointing a short, accusatory finger at you.

“Not fair, that’s a big kid word!”

“Well, I’m not big kid either, but at least I can say—er, tech-techni—technique!” Jason’s embarrassed blush creeps down to his neck, scar flexing when he pinches his lips in realization.

“You can’t say it either!”

The son of Jupiter huffs, collapses himself down onto the floor—the cell is so small that when he stretches his legs, the soles of his shoes come in contact with yours. You make no comment on it, continuing to give him a cold, hard stare.

He flares his nostrils when he sighs. “We’re acting like babies when we shouldn’t be.”

“I think you’re the biggest baby of them all,” you blurt, the words bubbling free and uncontrolled. Jason pulls back one of his legs by the knee and kicks the sole of your sneakers. “…Sorry.”

Surprise blooms on his face, brows raising incredulously. They’re browner than his light hair—noticeable now that you’ve calmed—thick and straight and serious. The light that streams in from the cell’s barred window paints him near-white, an almost divine figure haloed by the sun, marred only by the little jagged strip of skin on his mouth.

( No wonder that group of elementary girls from the inner city follow him around in giggles when he visits on off days. )

Jason pinches his lips again, this time in remorse, cheeks puffing out in reluctance. The tip of his shoe taps against yours apologetically.

“‘M sorry too.” He lurches forward with his fingers splayed, eyes shining wide and crystalline, the sky painted in them. “Truce?”

You blow a raspberry, lips fluttering—he laughs quietly at the sound and face you make and you swear that the jitter in your stomach is only from the cold.

( It’s summer, sweltering and dry in the way only California could be. )

“Fine.” His palm is already blistered and calloused from constant training but you find that the back of his hand is still soft like a baby’s. Jason doesn’t say anything when you hold it for a second too long.

Your truce lasts a whopping four days until the siege game, when you fire a water cannon straight into Jason’s squad, the swirling ball of green and blue and white foam absolutely decimating the front line.

He stands from the muddy crater with pink, watered-down blood trickling down the side of his face. The hairs on your neck stand straight up and the battlements are torn down without warning by a curtain of lightning.

Jason wins his first Mural Crown and gets thrown into the brig for reducing the fortress wall to rubble. You’re already there for briefly abandoning your post during the game to take a piss—the lemonade at dinner had been particularly good that day.

You snap a square of ambrosia in half to share and serve it with a side of toe stomping and an eagle-patterned plaster when the cut on his head doesn’t fully close; he tells you that the divine lemon bar tastes like the brownies from his favorite bakery in the city and you say that he’s lying because to you, it tastes like soft-boiled eggs soaked in soy sauce.

TWO —

Reyna calls forth the centurions, spine rigid and shoulders tense beneath her breastplate. You join the senior officers, the medals on your armor gleaming gilded in the afternoon rays. A chill snakes its way up your back, climbing the thirty-three ridges of your spine to settle at the base of your neck; you recognize the weight of another’s gaze.

The praetor begins to issue orders right as Jason catches your eye over her shoulder, and the meaning of every word—hell, the entire dictionary for all you care—dissolves into oblivion.

You furrow your brows, wrinkle your nose in the way you know is unnoticeable to everyone but the son of Jupiter. He sneers right back at you, a cheeky toddler flashing through the cracks of his otherwise perfectly composed façade.

From behind you, the augur Octavian whines about letting Greeks into camp. Reyna cuts him off and you take the opportunity to shift your heel back and stomp on his toes; Octavian darts his head around the gathering to seek the perpetrator. Jason laughs softly from where he stands behind the praetor and something untangles from you in a breath, the rigid tautness of a braid that only ties itself back to him.

The centurions break rank when Reyna dismisses them, going lax from their posture at attention—you’re no exception, pulling off the heavy shell of your plumed helmet and tucking it into your elbow. The dyed feathers tickle at the slice of soft, exposed skin between your purple shirtsleeve and spaulder.

The son of Jupiter brushes past Reyna to greet you, lips curling at the corners. He gives you a once-over, taking the senator’s toga pinned between your armor and camp shirt.

You grin, lips peeled back to show your teeth, palm outstretched and splayed for a dap. “Grace, sparky, whatever.”

“Hey, ace—” His mouth twitches, scar trembling in a poor attempt to contain his smile. Still buff, still tall, still blonde, although he isn’t squinting as much now that he’s only a foot away; your palm closes into a fist.

And then you sock him in the stomach.

“After so many years, it’s finally your chariots debut, ace,” Adam claps his hand on your shoulder, rattling your helm. The thick leather cap sitting atop your head is half a size too loose, the edge of it slipping over your eyes—the centurion says you’ll grow into it eventually, but for now he’s strung a piece of yarn under your chin to hold it in place. “Excited?”

“Why can’t you just do it instead,” you complain, hand curled into the hem of his camp shirt. “You’re the fastest, dude.”

“I only race on foot now, silly. Remember I quit chariots because I hurt my shoulder?” Adam laughs, runs his fingers over the seam of your helmet, the soft cap sliding over your eyes again. He kneels down to tighten the string cupped under your jaw. “But Victoria’s your mother, so I know you’ll get it.”

You look to the clear sky dubiously, the blue of it spinning lazily in the glassy reflection of your irises.

“I don’t like my mother.”

“Well, let me tell you a secret, comrade to comrade,” he puts a hand over his mouth but does not whisper, “I don’t really like my father either.”

You giggle, smile splitting across your face. The gummy lining of your cheek tingles when it pulls back, missing the familiarity of your molar—you’d lost it just recently, the last of the baby teeth to go.

The centurion taps his knuckles on your leather cap, tracing the seam absently, eyes glimmering with a bitter fondness. “This was my old helmet, ace. Take care of it, okay?”

You salute to him, spine rigid. He laughs, the sad gleam in his irises evaporating; he pushes the helmet down over your eyes again in playfulness and scoops you into his hands by the armpits to lift you onto the beam between the axles.

Adam helps you secure the reins around your waist—use your full weight to steer, he advises—and you tug on the hard leather straps to draw them taunt for a sixth sense so deeply engraved in your bones that it just felt right to do so. They dig into your flesh, leaving marks with every movement you make.

He smiles, kind. If he weren’t centurion and instead your real brother, you would’ve bitten his ankles by now. “See what I mean? You’re a natural.”

“Addie, I needa pee.” You draw out the syllables and pump your knees, head bobbling as if you weren’t a civilized preteen, but a whiny toddler.

“The race’ll be halfway done by the time we strap you back in, ace,” Adam sighs, exasperation in the wrinkles that form when he drags his hand down his face, “Jason’s racing for the Fifth…but I guess if you really need to go, I’ll ask Larry to—”

“Uh, I don’t need to go anymore.”

He grins knowingly, crouches to pull out the block of wood that stops the chariot’s wheels from turning. The vehicle lurches forth when you lean back on the reins.

Adam keeps in step with the slow drag of the horses and presses a long dagger into your palm, telling you to cut yourself free if ever you feel something wrong. The chariots—lightweight wooden things splattered with poorly drawn eagles and war paint—line up in the circus’ long oval track, the walls of which are padded with airbags.

The crowd of spectators, legionnaires and civilians alike, are thunderous in their roars and cheers, the sound of them crashing over you like a two-ton wave.

You turn your head to look at Jason—he’d forgotten to cut his hair, the length of it toeing dangerously at regulation. Blond tufts feather from the edge the leather cap that sits against his skull and dance lightly in the evening breeze; his pale skin is lit warm and bright by the braziers lining the stadium, scar flickering in and out under the guttering torches.

Something sparks behind your chest, an urge to smile at him, shake his hand, say good luck with a hug on the side.

( The longer you gaze at him, the ruddier his face gets beneath the sputtering braziers that line the walls. )

“Good game, Jason.”

( In the temporary moment between this breath and the next, he’s stopped being sparky to you and became Jason. )

He smiles, lips tight against his teeth. “You’re supposed to say that after, dummy.”

Your teeth bare in a grin, mouth peeling back with a wicked-sharp confidence. “I know I’m gonna win, that’s why I said it.”

You do win, and take every race after that too. You’ve a collection of medals now, years worth of identical rows of Victoria’s gilded wings lining the wall by your bunk—the first win is pinned onto your armor, dented and scratched at the corner from when Jason had tackled you in a congratulatory hug.

“Ace,” the son of Jupiter breaks through your thoughts. His voice is already a familiar song to you. “Hey—” he snaps his blunt fingertips together “—we’re on the same side for Siege. Offense.”

You bite your tongue, miffed. Now you’ll have to compete for the Mural Crown. “The cohort teams haven’t been announced yet.”

“The praetor told Reyna who told me,” he says casually, as if it were just a commonplace thing, a puffball’s spore in the wind. “First Cohort privileges, I guess.”

Your teeth grit for a pressure building wrathful in your jaw—the sound of it makes your ears ache.

“That’s great.”

( It is great. You end up saving his ass and winning the Mural Crown. )

“Hey, kid.” Adam strides up behind you, lips set in a bittersweet line. His armor is dented, concave marks gleaming warped in the sunset, hair smoldering at the edges and the soles of his shoes scuffed. He looks old, now that you’ve grown up, every one of the seventeen years as legionnaire etched into his face. “You did good out there.”

You smile, gummy, adult teeth fully set in—you remember that he’d helped you pull out the first one you lost. It had been quick, bloodless; you’d caught him sneaking denarii under your pillow that night, fake fairy wings strapped around his shoulders.

“I know I did,” you boast, fists balled and propped on your hips. “I finally won the Crown.”

Adam’s lips wrinkled with the smile he tries to hold back. He tugs at the straps of your breastplate, reels you in by them for a hug, and holds on tight like you’ll leave him.

“Raised you right,” he says, the edge of his vambrace digging into your shoulder. You don’t know when you start to cry. “You’re a proper Roman, ace. Get ‘em for me, okay?”

You blubber, bottom lip trembling in a pout, oxygen set alight in your throat. “Huh?”

“I’m retiring, kid.” He smiles sadly, eyeline liquifying like the horizon of the ocean. “It’s already been over ten years—missed out on a lot and it’s time for me to catch up.”

“You’re leaving me?” You sob then, the grief tearing you asunder, rib cage cracking with the weight of it. “You’re just gonna quit the legion? What about the cohort? The newbies?”

Saline runs down your cheeks, dribbles from your chin. Your cries are guttural, near screaming—you think that if you cause enough of a ruckus, Adam would see how much everyone needed him and maybe he’d stay.

“We need you. Who’s gonna teach us how to aim the water cannons and say don’t kill anyone? You’re centurion, no one’s as good of a leader as you.” And then, quieter, so soft that if it were a leaf, it would not make a single wave in a still pond, “No one’s a big brother like you.”

His smile has long disappeared, the corners of his lips wilting, the petals of a flower crinkling in the face of adversity. There’s a punching sensation at your chest, a pinprick in your armor—he’s pushing a medal through the hard shell of it.

“Ace, look at me.” You do so through the heavy shutter of your eyelids, drooping and nodding with the weight of your tears. “Ace, hey.”

You sniffle and grunt, weak.

“I need you for this.” He holds out his index finger, jabs the point of it into the chassis of your breastplate, rattling the badges that hang there. His touch goes from medal to medal, connecting them in a constellation of gold. “You’re the next senior officer in our cohort. I trust you to be there for them.”

Adam stops at the medal he’d just pinned onto your armor. “You carry everyone with you now. Me, and the centurion before me, and the centurion before him, all the way back to the founding of Rome.”

“I’m thirteen,” you croak, grit and gravel rasping in your voice box. “Fourteen in a week.”

“I know,” he says, quiet and rueful. “Being a demigod forces you to grow up. It’s not right and I’m not doing anything to change that with this, but I know you can. I know you’re meant for great things, ace, I believe in you.”

“Okay.” It comes out small, short, a click dampening on your tongue. “I’ll miss you.”

Adam laughs, lips stretching wide and handsome. You think that whoever gets him will be lucky, assuming that you don’t scare them off first.

“You’re acting like I’m about to die, kid.”

“But you’re leaving forever…?”

“You silly, just the legion,” he flicks your forehead hard, the spot tingling numb. “You can still visit me in the city. I’ve got an apartment and a pension and a degree at the uni waiting there.”

Your eyes lift, the weight behind them dissipating as your stupidity begins to sink into reality.

“Oh.”

“Yea,” Adam laughs, rubbing his knuckles into your skull, “oh. Y’know, I think you have a problem with assuming the worst.”

Your fists find the plates of his armor weakly, heated embarrassment creeping up your neck. “Shut up, shut up, shut up. I hate you so much….”

He bellows, shoulders shaking, lungs hollowed for a wheeze. Adam pats—slaps—your back, tears prickling at his waterline when you choke on a punched-out breath.

“Why don’t you go tell Jason? I think you finally got a solid one over him,” he says, stomach heaving in an attempt to regain air; the former centurion’s face is split wide, a smile carved deep and joyful below the blunt cliff of his nose, cheeks stained red. You manage to land one more weak punch on his armor before bounding off.

Jason is nursing an ice pack for the fat welt on his forehead when you catch up to him, pins jangling against your breastplate. He doubles over in surprise when your fist strikes the ridges of his back, his armor long gone with the end of the battle.

“That hurt,” he complains, voice splintering at the edges, revealing something deep. “Sneak attacks aren’t good form, ace.”

“I win,” you blurt, words wispy between your pants, “I win the challenge, I’m centurion now.”

The son of Jupiter’s brows draw together, face set in a scowl. It would have been convincing if he wasn’t smiling, scar pulled tight against his teeth, crow’s feet crinkling prematurely over the swell of his soft cheeks.

“That doesn’t mean anything,” he says, betrayed by the glimmering sheen in his crystalline eyes. You can see yourself in them, painted blue and silvery, and think that your reflection looks rather nice in his irises. “I’ll get the praetorship and beat your ass.”

“Ooh-ooh,” you jeer as if you weren’t a civilized teenager, “I’m telling Chang that Jason ‘Sparky’ Grace said the a-word.”

“Hey!”

THREE —

Jason doubles over immediately—you relish in the way your scabbed knuckles sink into the soft flesh of his abdomen for a splintered second before his instincts catch up to him and he tenses his muscles, recovering quickly from the impact. He laughs deep just like how you remember he did, smiles big and you can see that his lower lip still has that pout to it, albeit nearly gone with the loss of baby fat.

Jason coughs, still grinning. “I take it you missed me?”

“Not you particularly,” you turn your nose up in false disinterest, although you don’t miss the way his arms flex against the seemingly soft material of his orange shirt—he looks so out of place in it, the toga and cloak that he wears on top doing little to assuage the foreignness. You make a note to ask the Greeks about workout regimens—Jason must have gained another few pounds of muscle with them. “I definitely missed leaving your ass in the dust, though.”

He frowns, scar tracing the movements of his face. “I have more Mural Crowns.”

“And I’ve more Wings of Victoria.”

“I became praetor first.”

“Our deal was for the centurionship.”

He huffs, scar sputtering and eyes wandering around your face. He looks kind still, gentle and forgiving despite the twelve years you’ve spent badgering and beating each other up.

“I really did miss you, though,” Jason says, quieter, voice dipping low. It sends a shock through your nerves, neck prickling when he slings his arm over your shoulder and jostles you close into his side. “You’re pretty much my best friend, ace.”

“Ew,” you shudder, shaking away the warmth creeping up your spine, “you talk to all your long-term rivals like that?”

He quirks his brow—still darker than his fair hair—in confusion, drawing your eyes to his blue ones. They gleam, watery in the way they always have been, like he’s about to cry. The sky spins in them, capturing every cloud and bird and all.

“But you’re my only rival.” He says it like it’s a question and not a statement of fact. “Like, singular from the start.”

You blow a flustered raspberry, bones melting into your muscles, and you have to consciously will your knees to stay in place. Your voice warbles, “Okay. Wow. That’s amazing.”

Sliding out from under his arm—heavy and muscled and warm, you might add—you scamper off stupidly with your joints stiff to make pointless small talk with your fellow centurions, exchanging fleeting words and dapping up every other legionnaire with a complicated handshake that would always end in ‘S-P-Q-R!’

( “What the hell’s up with that?” Reyna asks, a shadow sliding silent up to the son of Jupiter.

He sighs, shoulders dipping with it. “No idea.” )

“I think small talk is stupid,” you say one day, brownie crumbs flecking the seam of your mouth. Your fingers hover like buzzards circling over his box of goods from the bakery, the scent of them heady and rich. “How’s the weather, what’re you up too, stuff like that. I hate people who skirt around the topic and don’t get straight to the point.”

“But how do you think the weather is today?” Jason says, sky spinning lazily in his brilliant irises. His lash line is filled to its watery brim because his eyes can’t take the brightness of the California sun. You gawk but can’t find the will to make a derogatory comment.

“I think it’ll rain soon—” he holds out a finger peppered with chocolate dust to gesture at some clouds on the far-off horizon “—because the bottoms of those ones are wispy. Depending on the wind, we might have some showers in the valley.”

He stays gazing enamored at the sky for a good five seconds before you speak again.

“I think you have a serious problem and need to get your selective hearing checked out.”

“And yet, you’re talking to me and eating my brownies.”

He leaves for Charleston on a rainy dawn in late July, clouds whirling thick and dark, a watercolor sky painted in a burgeoning greyscale. IVLIVS pinched between his fingers, he tosses it—a quicksilver thing, it lands in his palm as a lance. Jason looks every bit of the centurion he is.

Your teeth grit, a pressure digging into your ears. Something jaded turns your heartstrings crystalline when you spot Reyna in her gilded armor behind him, praetor’s medal gleaming in the cold light.

“Don’t die,” you tell him, curling your fingers into a fist, knuckles pressed into his sternum. You can feel the faint pulse of his heart there, warm and slow. “I’m supposed to be the only one who can beat you, so I’ll kill whoever did it and then you.”

“I don’t think you can kill a dead person,” he says cluelessly. For a brilliant solider who can out-maneuver any strategist, he still has his dumber-than-a-kindergartener moments.

After, you get berated for having the hem of your jeans sit just below the ankle by Terminus as you put your weapons on a tray and cross the Pomerian Line. It’s a path you know all too well, a turn at the corner where Jason’s favorite bakery stands, straight until the lemonade stand and up a flight of stairs.

You unlock the door, knob squeaking when you turn it, and the hinges cringe with rust. Kicking off your shoes, muddied with the light rain, you crash on the couch.

Right as you settle into the cushions, Adam comes wheeling out from his bedroom brandishing a toothbrush in a threatening manner, hair longer and sleep-mussed, a new pair of glasses askew on his nose.

“What the fuck,” he mumbles, rubbing at the pillow marks on his face, “I thought I was being robbed or something.”

“Those are new,” you say, gesturing with two finger circles over your eyes. “Now you look like a proper nerd. What did Chang say?”

Adam blushes furiously at the mention of the former Fifth Cohort centurion. They’d retired around the same time, being barely cordial in the legion and then ‘friends’ at the university. You’d taken his spot, and Jason hers.

( He had become centurion the next week and they’d combined your promotion ceremonies. Adam and Chang were both there to officially step down—you didn’t miss the way he smiled at her when she slung a medal around Jason’s neck. )

“That is none of your business,” he sputters in a fluster, red staining his neck. Adam scratches at the stubble that’s starting to line his cupid’s bow, a little goatee forming under his mouth. You make a face and scratch at your side.

“When’s the last time you shaved? No way, does she like guys with beards?”

“Oh my fucking god,” he grumbles, splashing his face in the kitchen sink. You wonder why he’s not washing up in the bathroom. “I’ve been cramming for finals, give me a damn break. And no, she doesn’t like beards.”

“I told you that the physics professors suck ass, Adam,” warbles a faint voice from another room, sweet but deceiving, for you’ve heard it screaming wrathful on the battlefield. The toilet flushes, light footsteps shuffling against the floor. “Of course, you didn’t listen to me and applied anyway.”

You make a wheezing noise, fist pounding at the couch cushions and howling further when Chang emerges from the doorway, kissing your brother-in-arms on his stubbled chin.

“Hey, ace.” She greets you with a solid dap before walking behind the island counter to operate the coffee machine.

“Cramming for physics, was it? Find any new hands-on ways to exert force?” you ask, devilish grin carved onto your lips, to which Adam grabs a battered pillow and hurls it roughly at your face. You cough, spitting out a stray feather, sliding off the couch and onto a high-chair at the island.

The summer’s heat in your bones bends under the gentle hand of the countertop’s coolness, a wane in the unbearable tide. Chang takes notice of your melting into the marble slab, arms akimbo and torso draped limp on the smooth surface.

She reaches to touch your hand briefly, a light touch that’s gone as quick as it comes. “Something wrong?”

Adam glides by, nonchalant with the way his palm cradles the curve of Chang’s waist when he reaches over to fill his coffee mug. His cheek brushes hers, a miniscule tilt of his head scraping his lips across the side of her face.

“Ace gets pissy and then starts heating up,” he mumbles, neck twisting to place a soft kiss at Chang’s temple. You wrinkle your nose at him. “Are you avoiding centurion duties to freeload off my AC?”

“It’s humid ‘cause of the rain,” you complain, twisting back your arm to flap the hem of your shirt, sticky with sweat and the drizzle from outside. The syllables stretch on your tongue—long, thin, and weak. “No one told me that you got together. And I have boy problems with Jason.”

The retirees do a number of things in the following seconds. The mug in Adam’s hand slips, hot coffee scalding his skin pink; Chang sputters at the lip of her cup, droplets dribbling, splashes echoing in the basin. Your brother sandwiches his girlfriend between his front and the countertop in an attempt to flick on the water and ease the shock of his burn; she blushes deeply.

“Okay,” Adam breathes out once the mishap is sorted, cheeks still high on a pinkened fluster. He holds out his hands palms-out to you, fingers curled lax in a half-point to the sky. “Boy problems? Jason?”

Chang smiles, sweet and cloying, eyes curved crescent. “Tell me where he is and I’ll beat his ass for you.”

“Not that, it’s just,” your shoulders dip with your frustrated sigh. “I hate him but now it feels like it’s getting stupid and ridiculous and—”

And you tell them everything. The words spill endlessly, flowing from your lips and fluttering off like a flock of birds set free. Over a decade of thrown hands and half-truces, all revealed in a ten minute spiel.

At the end of it all, Chang and Adam share a look, thoughts cycling between irises, messages sent from deep, dark pupils with many an eyeroll and reluctant head tilts. The former centurion of the Second Cohort clasps his hands together gingerly, lips cracking into a smile that makes you squirm in unease.

“How do I put this,” he starts, knuckles twisting together. “Ah. You are completely—”

“—enamored with Jason, my dear comrade,” finishes Chang. You know the way Adam looks at her, the stars gleaming in his eyes, crinkled with premature crow’s feet. Now that he’s pushing twenty-eight, you sometimes forget that he’d only been about ten when he joined the legion.

You manage to blow a weak raspberry, the revelation sinking deep in your gut.

“That’s stupid. It’s not like you’re psychologists or something.”

( There’s no way in hell you’ll admit that the thought of loving Jason simmers at the bottom of your stomach like a pile of warm, fuzzy, glowing coals. )

“That’s my major,” Chang says.

“Fuck,” you let out under your breath, pressing your face into the marble counter, nose bent against the flat surface in defeat. And then, resigned, “I think he and Reyna like each other.”

“I think Reyna likes me,” Jason tells you once he comes back, perched atop the low fence around the sparring ring. Your surroundings are empty, save for nature and a few faun scavenging for any loose denarii.

His mission to cart Imperial Gold back to camp from Charleston had taken a week; reappearing over the crest of Caldecott tunnel, gilded weapons gleaming bright and refracting across the valley, he looked like a god bearing riches.

He continues, “She never makes eye contact with me, even though she can stare at someone else forever when they’re talking. It might be nothing, but….”

You huff, air slipstreaming out of your lips as you hook your elbow around your outstretched forearm. “Well, do you like her back?”

( Your pulse begins to run, the thunderclap of racing feet gaining ground. )

Jason looks at the dirt, kicking up small plumes with his battered shoes; his fingers twitch occasionally, pulling winds along the ground that whirl in small dust storms. His scar puckers with his lips. You find that you like these little things about him.

“I think she’s a good friend.”

( Heart stilling, calming, the wane of a tide. You let out a breath and take another back in. The world isn’t over. )

You grasp your lance that’s sticking out from the ground, spearhead deeply embedded within the earth. You pull it free with ease, doing a spin to shake off the dirt—is it your imagination, or did his Adam’s apple bob? Maybe he’s impressed by your dexterity; maybe he needs to swallow his saliva like normal people do.

“Something wrong?” he asks, kind, gentle, low. You think he’d gotten his compassion from Chang. There’s a nondescript breeze sweeping through camp, twining with his hair, strands curling with the late July heat. He had it trimmed recently, but it’s still long enough to toe at the boundary of regulation. “You’ve been quiet. I haven’t been jumped since I got back.”

Your chest aches—you find the urge to pull your ribcage apart, bare the bloody, bloody mess he’s made of your insides—snipped heartstrings, holes in your lungs, knots in your stomach—this is all your fault, you want to say. Now, you recognize the spark that had churned behind your chest years ago, gazing at him under the guttering flames in the circus.

“Nothing,” you say, dismissive, voice hollow. “It’s just hot. Not that you care, sparky, you have your own personal fan with those special wind powers from daddy.”

Jason is dubious, one perfect, straight, thick brown brow arching, lips puckering and pinched like it’s the dam holding back a rush of words. Fuck, he’s hot, hisses the voice in your head as you flap the hem of your camp shirt.

“Okay,” he agrees quietly, tongue clicking damp in his mouth. He digs his hand into the pocket of his jeans—were his fingers always that long? That veined, blue and green lines snaking under his pale skin? For how long have his arms been that big? IVLIVS, his golden coin, glints Midas-touched under the midsummer sun, starry refractions dancing before your eyes. “Let’s go. Loser treats like always?”

You don’t think you can do this anymore.

“Actually,” you blurt, a little too breathy, a little too faint. You stab your lance back into the earth. “The heat’s really getting to me. I think I’ll go find some AC instead, we can do this after it cools down.”

The son of Jupiter catches your wrist in his callused palm when you try to brush past him. You feel like there’s an electric current running up the length of your arm, a windswept coolness radiating from his skin. His eyes are kind, gentle, glimmering with a hollow sadness in the way they’re always moistened with a thin layer of watery tears; he could hold an ocean in them and never spill a drop. You think you’d be glad to drown if it’ll always be Jason.

“I’m serious.” His breath smells like the spearmint toothpaste from that corner store in New Rome, the one with the broken AC and cloudy windows and a graffiti-battered alleyway that you’ll always know like the back of your hand. “We can talk, y’know. Being rivals doesn’t mean we can’t be there for each other.”

You steel yourself—tenacity, whispers Victoria, brave the storm. “It’s just the weather,” you tell him again, jaw tense, the iron will of a bough that stands firm amidst a gale. “Heat stroke’s serious. You should find some shade before you burn, too.”

FOUR —

Sometimes, you feel like everything’s too much. The itch of your brand, the flow of the wind, the chatter of the faun and wind spirits in the Forum. Everything has a weight, a warping dip in the fabric of spacetime like how the Sun’s mass exudes gravity and pulls in the objects orbiting it.

Jason is the Sun to you.

( Did you know that when a star collapses, it can form a black hole if it’s large enough? Sometimes, you feel like you’ll get buried under it—infinite mass condensed into an infinitely small space. Singularity point. )

He’s sitting beside you at the short table, legs crisscrossed on the cushions of the low couch, popping grapes into his scarred mouth casually.

“How’s your cohort?”

“Worse than yours. The Fifth carried our asses at Fortuna—half of us are still out of commission.”

Jason chuckles, soft and deep, lips splitting wide and wrinkled with lines at the corners. The afternoon light plays gentle on his face, shadows burnished and warm.

The shiny strip of skin on his lip flickers white in the brightness. “Well, that was Percy, not me.”

The mention of Neptune’s son irks you. “Hm.”

You both reach for the same thing at the same time, fingertips crossing like tangents over some insignificant sandwich—the bread and filling of which you can’t even remember. Jason unfurls his palm in invitation.

“All yours.”

From his other side, the girl with the braid and swirling eyes—Piper, you think her name is—laughs a little too loudly at something in the distance.

You bite your tongue, blunt teeth sinking into the muscle. Pulling your hand back, you brush the invisible crumbs off your fingers and pick up your cup and plate to move to another table, face pinched and sour.

You know this feeling. It’s the empty bitterness of loss.

There’s always strife brewing on the horizon. You know this now, standing armed in the temple of Bellona, goddess of war. Reyna, praetor’s cloak swimming crimson around her feet, stabs a lance into the soft dirt at the foot of her mother’s statue. It’s a vow to destroy your enemies.

The centurions stand in a half-circle around her when she issues battle stations on a map of Mount Tamalpais, playing out the siege on the Titan stronghold. Third and Fourth cohorts in the rear, First at the front lines of the offense with the Second and Fifth as the second wave.

Jason bumps his spaulder against yours, a dull clinking echoing from the contact between your armors. Silence follows—you haven’t said much since you cancelled on him in July. His hair and medals glimmer, sharply illuminated by the oculus at the pinnacle of temple’s dome.

( He’s the Sun. )

“Reyna says that war is inevitable,” he whispers in the car, one of the many black SUVs belonging to Camp Jupiter. His breath tickles your skin, spearmint toothpaste, close enough that you can almost taste petrichor on your tongue—he always smells like rain and now is no exception. “We’re Romans. Fighting is in our blood.”

“So?” You’re the only ones speaking in the otherwise silent car. Like this, it feels like he and you are the only people in the world.

“So we’ll win this battle, and the next. If we lose, we’ll just get back up again to fight some more. At least, that’s what she said.”

“And what if there’s nothing left to fight?” you hiss, words struggling to free themselves from behind the cage of your teeth, “Rome fell because we conquered everything and got lazy.”

“Rome fell, but it wasn’t completely destroyed—we’re still here.” He smiles, sending the corners of his mouth crinkling; his hand is warm, rough-hewn, when he places it over yours. “You’re still here. And…after this—”

One of the older centurions sitting shotgun slides open a little door in the privacy screen separating the passengers from the front seat. One minute, goes her mouth; the words swim distorted, out of sync with her movements. Jason’s hand goes tighter over yours and the world becomes alert again.

Keeping his palm on yours, he balances his helmet between his knees and lift his other hand, tapping the Mural Crown and Victoria’s Wings pinned onto your breastplate.

“Of all the champions of Rome, I think you’re my favorite, ace. Let’s get ‘em.”

The car jerks to a stop, engine guttering before it’s cut. Jason slides away with the other officers, helm already sitting over his ears; his hair peeks out from over his darker brows, strands of star-spun gold gleaming in the fading light.

The first part of the siege is an operation by night, using the dark to cover the legion’s advance until Reyna gives the call to ride at dawn. Jason stands to face the sunset, painted with the bruising watercolor sky; he looks stupid when he holds his hands up to the heavens and draws a blanket of thick clouds to shut out the moon.

The legion sets up camp a half-mile off from the Titan stronghold, tents rising on the slopes and small, dim fires guttering within them—you keep the flames small, barely rising above embers, just enough to stay off the radar while still being able to walk around the centurion’s tent.

Jason splays on his sleeping pack, still wearing the camp shirt and cargoes that were under his armor. His arms are tucked behind his soft head of blond hair—you swallow when he shifts, biceps rippling beneath the thin parts of his skin.

“Nervous?” he asks once everyone else is asleep. You’re laying on your stomach, face half obscured by the flannel lining of your bedroll.

“Why would I be,” you respond, monotone and muffled, punched-out with the way your weight presses against your lungs. You aren’t nervous, but your insides tingle anyways; from here, sleeping bags crammed next to each other in the small space, you can count every single one of his eyelashes. “We trained for this anyways. It’ll just be like the war games.”

Jason springs on you then. “Why are you more mad at me than normal?”

“I’m not,” you snap.

He huffs. “There it is again. We haven’t been the same since I got back from Charleston.”

We. He says it like—you don’t actually know, but it sets something in your stomach alight.

“It’s fine. We’re fine. In fact, you should enjoy the peace because after this, I’ll just get right back to kicking your ass.” You roll over sharply as Jason lets out a quiet, deep laugh. He shuffles in his bedroll, warmth creeping closer and closer to your turned back.

You find that the ridges of his spine fit against yours neatly like shards of pottery long broken apart and finally reunited.

( You think you remember a story about humans who were split in two. )

“Sleep tight, ace.” His breathing starts to deepen after some time, ribs following a slow rhythm against your shoulder blades.

You wait for a few breaths, the push-pull of his lungs pressed flush to your back. “Night, sparky.”

He’s beautiful, captured in the lens of rage. Jason goes absolutely ballistic once the First Cohort decimates the stronghold’s defenses, zipping up and down the fortress.

Haloed in lightning, he spins IVLIVS, form fluid between lance and gladius. They could say that he’s a god of war and you’d question nothing.

Krios stands before the Black Throne, swatting away arrows and javelins like flies. It’s like the world around you is only illuminated by a single line of light. You’ve heard of things like this, children of Victoria entering a state of total clarity—the victory path.

You know where to step and when to lunge like the back of your hand, a map only you can read, dodging arrows before they come, wind whistling in your ears like a familiar song.

The lance in your hand is too long to be used as a javelin, but still you find yourself trotting forward and throwing all of your weight into the sharp-tipped pole. It sails away, cutting through the air in an arch; light shines through the ruined ceiling and refracts off the gilded head, spattering the walls with color.

Krios lets out a trembling cry that shakes the stronghold’s foundations. Ichor pours from his eye—you can barely see the blunt end of your lance in it. The Titan of Stars sweeps his hand blindly, a gale peeling from his palm and knocking you into a nearby column. You slide pathetically onto the floor, the strength evaporating out of your bones.

You can hear a guttural bellow from deep in Jason’s chest. Next thing you know, the throne room is being sucked into a vacuum—bright threads of lightning crawl up the marble walls and explode in a sea of stars.

The demigod descends from the nebula—his cuirass splits to make room for a white toga, hair shorn and crowned in gilded laurels. His spaulders shine, the corners of a deep purple cloak rippling like wine clasped under them. Jupiter’s blessing.

Slowly, he staggers over, shadow stretching over your face, scratched and beaten all over. Oh, his shirtsleeves are in tatters; you can see the soft burnishing outline of his biceps, overlaid white with the light filtering in from the crumbling ceiling.

He tosses your lance at your feet, eyes crackling electric with life, chest heaving.

“Hey,” he gasps out between tired pants. “I think you dropped that? Sorry, it kinda melted when I blew Krios up.”

You only stare at him blankly, ribs barely opening for a breath. Jason’s brows knit, scar furrowing with concern; he kneels down, and oh, his hand is freakishly warm when it comes to your face. It leaves a soft heat in its wake when it comes away, slick and red.

“Ace?” he whispers, voice dipping so low that it cracks. “Hey, can you talk? Ace, please, you’re scaring me.”

Your ribs finally let up, lifting off your lungs for a rattling inhale. The wind had been literally punched out of your body by Krios.

“I hate,” you rasp, grit-gravel and jagged, “your hair now. Everyone can see that dent in the side of your head. Didn’t I give you that? Whatever, it’s better long.”

“Ace, please, you’re bleeding,” he rasps, something in his voice shattering. “I can’t find where.”

Jason sniffles, nose pink and eyes shimmering like the sky after rain; he looks pretty even when he cries.

“Probably not mine. Besides, if I’m bleeding, it’s probably internal—that’s where all the blood’s supposed to be.”

He looks like he needs to break some very tragic news to you, tonguing at the hollow of his cheek; it’s more attractive than it should be.

You continue, “Dude, your eyes are borderline radioactive—eons of immortality and daddy still hasn’t learned taste.”

He kicks up a dust storm as he swoops down to sidle up against you on the ground; the warmth of his arm is electric, sending your nerves in a frenzy.

“I’m truly hurt by your opinion.” He’s smiling, the scar on his lip making the barest brush against the shell of your ear.

You press the hotness of your cheek into his bicep. “Your scar’s stupid. I bet it’d be a bald spot if you ever grew a beard.”

Jason’s neck cranes, the tip of his nose grazing yours like a compass’ point. He smells like clothesline wind and petrichor and ozone, the promise of a storm.

“Really?” He drawls it out, low and deep and spearmint toothpaste breath and all; his irises are cerulean and endless under the shadow of his lowered lashes, lips chapped pale pink.

You let in a shaky inhale, sharing breaths with him. “And, uh, you were built like an oversized sausage as a kid. I heard Larry call you blond Superman after you got jacked.”

“I see that as a win,” he says, shrugging. His arm under your cheek flexes hard—you have to hold back from embarrassing yourself and sinking your canines into the his soft skin until they reach bone.

“Yea….”

You feel your eyelids begin to droop, nodding with the weight of fatigue. Jason pries the gilded crown off his golden hair, gently setting the laurel wreath onto your own head; the snake of his arm around your waist feels too familiar to notice immediately, like a phantom limb returned.

“They’ll come for you with shields,” you tell him, speech slurring, vision already darkening. “Just make sure I don’t get trampled, ‘m gonna take a little nap. Wake me up once you’re praetor.”

Jason’s hold around your waist tightens; you think he’s saying that you have to stay awake, fear slithering into the edges of his words.

You blink a few times as you settle, gazing at him—the ceiling is barely there, sun coming through to halo him in white gold. “Relax, Jason. ’M not planning on dying soon, not in my sleep at least. I know you can’t live without me anyway and—well, that’s an even shittier way to go.”

He blushes, a sunset blooming over the constellation of freckles on his cheeks. It’s the last thing you see before you drift off, and even after, his silhouette is still burned into your eyelids.

Jason carries you out of the throne room, your arm held tight over his shoulders, strong hand never leaving your waist. He’s so steady that the laurels on your head never shift, sitting firmly around your skull until it clatters to the floor when you’re put on a stretcher.

And still, he bends down despite the crack in his back to pick it up and fold the crown into your palm with a small smile. The metal is warm with his touch for minutes.

“Why do you hate me?” he asks on the ride back. You’re sprawled out over a row of seats, him on the floor of the SUV. The son of Jupiter has his palm over your clasped hands, fingers brushing with the wreath.

“I don’t,” you tell him, sleepy, eyes closed. “I’ve just been pissed for fifteen years. Not at you, though.”

You can hear his jaw strain. “Then who?”

You sigh, air slipstreaming from your nostrils. “Victoria. I thought we’d be friends, the strongest to the strongest, y’know? Then I heard you got an offer to join the First Cohort. You chose the Fifth. The highest I could get was the Second—you can guess how my inferiority issues reacted.”

“Oh,” he breathes out, wispy with revelation. “I’m sorry.”

“It doesn’t matter anymore,” you grumble, fidgeting in your makeshift bed. “‘Twas but a long time ago.”

He chuckles, and your heart does a backflip. “No one talks like that.”

“Shut up before I deck you with your laurels.”

“Your laurels.” The heat of his hand is nearly unbearable, but you push on, brave the storm.

You bite the smile growing from the inside of your mouth, scoffing. “Then shut up before I deck you with my laurels.”

FIVE —

Jason catches you at the edge of the city, touch still electric even though he’d been gone for nearly three-quarters of a year. He grins disarmingly, an awkward little piece of lettuce caught in the corner of his mouth.

“You’re moody,” he gasps out, hair decidedly tousled and lips cherry pink. “Why?”

You let a laugh rip out of your throat. “Did you fucking fly here?”

He shakes his head, frustrated. “See? Half the time I think we’re really friends until you start acting like you want nothing to do with me.”

“Well,” you manage, heat creeping up your neck, “being friends doesn’t mean we can’t be rivals.”

“We.” Jason scoffs it out like something dirty. “We’re not rivals. It’s just you.”

The statement sends a lance arrowing through your chest; it travels up, choking in your throat as tears begin to burn in your vision.

“Well,” you sputter again, tongue heavy. “I mean—”

You don’t mean to start crying, but the tears come anyway, spilling hot and embarrassing down your face. Jason’s stupid orange tee comes into view before dimming out to a dark shadow as he comes forward to embrace you.

Clothesline wind and petrichor and ozone, the eye of a storm, a familiar tapestry of him. His nose presses flat against your temple, apologetic nothings lost to your skin. He sighs and you find that his breath no longer smells of spearmint toothpaste, but of strawberries. A weak sob forces itself from you like a broken winged bird set free.

“I’m tired, Jason,” you say between hiccups. “I feel like I’m losing everything.”

Jason holds you tighter like you’re going to evaporate at any moment. “You still have me.”

“Not for eight months.” Your fingers twist in his toga. “God, I even got on an eagle every week and circled around the country for you.”

“You hate the eagles,” he reminds you, knuckles coming up to dry your tears. “They smell—”

“—like wet blankets,” you finish with him, sniffling wetly. Jason smiles wide, laughs deep, and you can feel it rumbling alive in the barrel of his chest.

He turns his head, pressing the compass point of his nose behind your jaw, arms drawing tighter still. His voice is muffled by your neck when he says, “I missed you too, ace. More than you know.”

“Careful, sparky,” you warn, the last of the tears running off your chin. You let your fingers travel up to twine with his soft, flaxen hair—you think it better like this, longer and wavy, no longer spiky or rough. “People might think you’re flirting with the enemy instead of practicing for your crush.”

He hums absently, but the heat that rises on the side of your neck is telling. You twirl a curl of his hair around your finger, feeling the skin of his nape prickle.

“What do you mean crush?” he asks, nerves laced high into his voice.

“Jason, you moron: Piper,” you answer, like it’s a duh fact and not something that rips your arteries apart. “Can’t believe you pulled before I could.”

He stays hugging you, fingers tapping against your waist. “I don’t—we’re just friends.”

“That’s what all guys say,” you drawl, lengthening the syllables, “until they get the girl.”

“It’s not like that,” he whispers, quiet and honest into the silent temple behind your ear. “I thought it was, but Hera—Juno, she did something. Piper and I, we’ve sorted it out. It’s….”

Jason leans back to look at you, mouth set kindly and eyes watering with a sad blue. The scar that cuts through his lip is muted coral, gnarled and old—you want to run your tongue over it and pour your love into his mouth like wine.

His mouth crinkles nervously like the opening of a drawstring bag, melancholy knitted in his brows.

“It’s just you,” Jason murmurs, words carried slow by the nondescript breeze sweeping through the city. “It’s always been you.”

It’s everything and nothing like you expect. You’re sharing breaths and orbitals, Jason’s nose crawling forward to slot hesitant against your own and you take the last millimeter for yourself.

He moves soft, gentle with purpose, lips chapped pale pink and tasting of fresh-baked bread; hands firm, steadying, he wraps you impossibly closer into him. Everything, nothing; nebulas colliding and a summer’s heat bending under the gentle hand of a cool breeze, a sea of stars and this world alone and out of the eight billion people on Earth, it’s only ever been him.

( Ambrosia squares and brownies and eagle-patterned plasters on a wound you’ll always have. It’s the light under a guttering brazier and a dented medal and two spines that fit together like pottery reunited. )

Something in the distance rattles the city right as you pull apart for an inhale, smoke flaring above the rooftops. Jason’s eyes are glassy, the sky in them dazed, out of focus. You catch your air, greedy, wind and petrichor and ozone oozing into every pore in your body.

“I have to go,” he says in a rasp threaded with hesitancy, lips still brushing yours.

“I’ll give you a head start, sparky,” you tell him, pressing a kiss to the edge of his scar. Your hand finds its way to his sternum, knuckles curled and poised above his heart. The drumbeat of it matches your own, warm and slow. “Go be a hero.”

This time, he’s messy, heavy, tongue laving at where his teeth land on your lip. It’s like he’s trying to commit all of you to memory and knit the shape of you around his nerves before he has to leave again. You’re just as bad, fingers tangled in his hair, tugging occasionally for an inhale and diving right back in. Needy, like he’s air bubbles to a drowning sailor in desperate need of oxygen.

Breathless, still in intimate orbit, “It’s always gonna be you, ace.” And, oh god—

It feels like winning.

post script — have u ever yapped so hard bc in februrary i told myself that this was gna be maybe 4k and the final wc is nearly 3x that,, + pleaseee lmk ur thoughts, i need more jason friends, he's my og one and only crush

feedback and shares greatly appreciated ₍⑅ᐢ..ᐢ₎ ᡣ𐭩

jason tags (open) — @supercutszns @pariahsparadise @lovebug0 @leo-lvr

#dude.#ascended and was reborn #THIS IS SO GOOD #theatre: encore! ✨

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