#lmao that part with the old man who convieniently showed up??

[jilliancares]

All is Fair: Chapter 7

Word Count: 3.1k

ao3 ; wattpad

masterlist ; next chapter

CHAPTER SEVEN:

Sleeping in shifts was exhausting. Definitely worth it, but exhausting.

After waking up to the realization that he’d had a wet dream the night before, Dan had done whatever he could to make sure he didn’t have to spend an entire night sleeping in a bed with Phil again. Just thinking about his dream made his cheeks heat, the skin on skin, the lips on his neck, his hand buried into suspiciously short hair…

It was undeniable, the hard, smooth chest he’d felt pressed against his, the Adam’s apple he’d kissed, the erection he’d rutted against. It’d been a guy in his dream and Dan was having trouble coming up for any kind of excuse for that. He’d liked it in the moment (enough to make a mess of his pants, anyway) and didn’t know how to go about denying it any longer.

He was gay.

And nobody could ever know.

It would be Dan’s terrible secret to bare. He’d keep it hidden, keep it tucked away where no one could ever realize its existence. Gods, how could this have happened to him? Every time his uncle had mouthed off against “the gays”, every time he’d scowled and gotten a twist in his mouth towards anything even hinting at homosexuality, Dan had thought he’d felt indignant solely on their behalf.

He’d always been an understanding and accepting person, of course he wanted everyone to be safe and respected and loved. But now that it was him? Now that he was the problem? It just felt like his whole life was going to shit.

And now that he’d finally realized he was gay, he felt stupid for having ignored it for so long. Deep down, all along, he’d probably always known it. He must’ve, having blatantly ignored every girl everyone thought was cute or tried to set him up with, having shrunken away from the idea of even looking at a guy in any way other than a friendly one.

He knew it was stupid, too. He didn’t hate Phil for being obviously not straight, didn’t think he was disgusting or gross or horrible or any of that nonsense. So why did he feel all of that about himself? Why did it feel like something that was never going to be okay for him? Was it simply because he was the son of Aphrodite? Because of the fact that maybe she would disapprove and want him to love in a more… traditional way?

Well, he could do that. Or he could pretend to, at least. Plus if he pretended hard enough, it just might work out. He certainly couldn’t ever let his uncle know—the mere thought of him finding out left Dan with goosebumps all along his skin.

It was in this same cycle of endless thought, of fear and hatred and unhappiness, that he went through during his shift of not sleeping. He’d been the last shift, Phil having taken Emma’s bed when he woke her up for hers, and now it was the early hours of the morning, soft light just barely beginning to filter in through the edges of the curtain.

It was almost a relief when Phil woke up not too long after that, groaning in his sleep and rubbing tired eyes. Dan tried not to watch him, but it was impossible. His shirt had ridden up in his sleep, leaving much of his stomach bare. And his boxers were riding low upon his hips, letting Dan’s eyes scour all over his exposed hipbones, up to his navel, back down and up and up—to his eyes, which were open, looking at Dan.

Heat exploded throughout Dan’s entire face but he tried to ignore it, tried to pretend like he hadn’t been devouring Phil with his eyes, hadn’t been wanting to touch him all over, to feel his warm, smooth skin under his fingers.

“Morning,” Phil croaked, having maneuvered himself onto a propped elbow. Dan stayed silent, just picked up his hand and waved. He’d been pretty rude to Phil ever since waking up from that embarrassment, and he felt a little bad about it now, knowing Phil had been attacked and overwhelmed by some kind of monster while Dan was busy sulking and deciding he hated him.

Dan felt his eyes follow Phil on their own accord as he stood up and stumbled into the bathroom. When he emerged minutes later, he raised his eyebrows, gesturing over his shoulder. “Breakfast?”

Dan couldn’t say no to food. His stomach had been complaining for the past hour or so, thinking it was actually breakfast time after he’d been awake for so long, and so he clambered to his feet and stretched, groaning as he finally stood after having been curled up in that chair all morning.

Phil pulled on a pair of sweatpants while Dan grabbed the keycard and then they were walking through the hotel halls together. They didn’t say anything but somehow the silence felt comfortable, possibly just because of the lingering sleepiness surrounding them both.

Dan, having had the free continental breakfast the day before with Emma, led the way, turning away from the main lobby and down a short hallway, at the end of which was a small cafeteria of sorts. There, he and Phil split up from each other, Dan towards the small packages of cereal and containers of milk and Phil towards the waffle machine. They reconvened at a small, rickety table, where Phil poured entirely too much syrup onto his waffle and hummed with the first bite.

“Oh man,” he said. “I don’t eat these enough.”

“You could eat them at camp whenever you wanted,” Dan pointed out. He actually pointed his spoon at Phil as he said this, a drop of milk splattering onto the table in between them. They both ignored it.

One of the best things about Camp Half-Blood where the plates, the endless assortment of foods that couldn't appear. It didn’t make sense for Phil not to enjoy waffles whenever he wanted.

“It’s not the same,” Phil finally said, shrugging simply. “My mom only ever let me have them on special occasions.” This seemed a bit strict to Dan, but maybe it made sense. His mother had ended up having Phil with Ares, after all.

“Is now a special occasion?” Dan ended up asking, frowning as he watched Phil pour even more syrup onto his waffle.

“Sure it is,” Phil said with a shrug, looking up at Dan with a smirk. “It’s our first date!”

Dan felt his mouth drop open, felt his cheeks go red, as anger and embarrassment coursed through him like—

Phil kicked him in the shin. “I’m kidding. I just wanted a waffle, okay?”

“Whatever,” Dan muttered, looking back down at his cereal and mushing all the pieces under the milk. They ate the rest of their meal in relative silence, mainly just commenting on the people they saw, pointing out weird things about them and making up stories about why they were here in West, Texas.

Dan ended up grabbing a second serving of cereal to bring to Emma before he and Phil started heading back to their room. A man, tall and (Dan admitted grudgingly) handsome, was standing a little ways away from the elevator. He was talking on his phone, and as he turned to walk towards the main lobby, a scrap of paper fell out of his hand and fluttered to the floor.

“Hey!” Phil called out immediately, the good samaritan that he was. He was already running towards the paper, picking it up as he said, “You dropped thi—!” His voice trailed off as he read the paper, the man already outside the hotel’s front doors. Dan came closer and peered over Phil’s shoulder at the paper.

Meet me in the abandoned warehouse, demigods.

“That’s a trap,” Dan decided.

“Probably.”

Dan scoffed. “Most definitely. Let’s just ignore it.”

Phil was biting his lip, looking as if he was going to suggest not ignoring the ominous paper a mysterious stranger had dropped, somehow knowing the two of them were demigods. Dan groaned, wondering why nothing could ever just be simple.

—

It was a trial, waking Emma up before the sun was even completely above the horizon, something she vehemently believed in never doing. It was even more of a trial trying to convince her to go to an abandoned warehouse because a stranger told them to.

“That’s like, definitely something that’s going to get us killed,” Emma had decided right off the bat.

“I completely agree,” Dan had said. “But Phil made a few good points…”

And he had. They didn’t have any other leads anyway, and they’d only decided to stay an extra night in the first place because they’d been planning to actually look around for some clues (and because their room was conveniently paid for).

And so, a disgruntled Emma munching on dry cereal and a much too cheerful Phil leading the way, they walked down the crumbling streets of West, looking for the abandoned warehouse.

“There can’t be more than one abandoned warehouse in this town,” Phil reasoned, standing on his tiptoes where he stood on the sidewalk as if he could peer over the surrounding buildings right into the warehouse they were searching for.

“Did you say abandoned warehouse?” an old man croaked from directly behind them, having just exited a convenience store they were passing. “Why, there’s only one of them in this town!”

“Convenient!” Emma cheered. “All right, where?”

The old man pointed a shaking finger down the street. “Turn left at the next street and you’ll see it right up ahead.”

With newly equipped directions, they easily found the warehouse. Afraid they would get yelled at for trespassing, they attempted to sneak through the deserted land, ducking behind the fence and strange metal structures scattered throughout the yard. They didn’t get caught, either because no one was around to see them doing it or no one cared enough to say anything.

The door screeched and rust rained from the hinges as they pulled it open, stepping into the dark and dank smelling building.

“Creepy,” Phil commented.

“What did you expect?” Emma scoffed. “It’s an abandoned warehouse and we were invited here by a man who’s probably actually a monster.”

“Well you don’t need to say it like that,” Phil muttered. Dan ignored their bickering and stepped further inside, flicking on a flashlight that’d been stored in his pack. Its beam swept over cobwebs in the corners and long since out-of-order machines surrounding them, all covered with a thick layer of dust. Visible through the dust on the floor were footprints, leading off deeper into the warehouse.

“Ten drachmas says we find a skeleton,” Emma bet in a whisper, her own flashlight joining Dan’s, lighting the path in front of them.

“Nah,” Phil whispered back. “Not enough people come to West to die here.”

“Not enough people come to West to find the people who die here,” Emma countered, and Dan shushed them.

“Ten drachmas says you two get us killed and I annoy you for the rest of eternity in the fields of Asphodel,” Dan hissed.

Emma scoffed. “Asphodel?” she demanded. “We’re totally getting into Elysium.”

There were three different levels to the underworld. After death, every mortal found themselves there, waiting in line to get judged to decide where they would spend the rest of their ghostly existence. Evil people went to the fields of punishment, where their souls suffered for all eternity doing horrible tasks. Ordinary people, living lives full of neither super good nor super bad deeds, ended up in the fields of Asphodel. They pretty much forgot about their existence entirely—just drifting around, thinking and doing nothing, resolved into mere facets of their past selves. But heroes, people who’d done extraordinary good, got to go to Elysium, which was all sunshine and gardens and living but like, while dead.

“Sure,” Dan said sarcastically, before peering around a corner. The next hallway was littered with more broken objects and footsteps leading away from them.

He opened his mouth to say something about how he’d never done anything extraordinary in his life and would surely end up in Asphodel, when a giant cage fell from the ceiling and trapped them all.

“I knew it!” Emma groaned.

Dan huffed through his nose as Phil said, “You didn’t know,” and resigned himself to being captured.

—

“You guys fell right for that,” the man before them commented, breathless. He’d just dragged the entire cage, the three of them still inside, into the middle of the room.

“I said we shouldn’t have come,” Emma said loudly, and Phil scoffed.

“What do you want from us?” Dan asked. The man turned to look at him, his eyes trailing Dan from head to toe. He sighed.

“Well, I’m supposed to stop you guys from getting any closer to the bow,” the man said. He waved his hand flippantly. “Kill you, or something.”

“Supposed to?” Dan questioned, clinging to what little bit of hope they seemed to have. The man shrugged again.

“It’s a lot of work, you know?” he said, and Dan swore he could feel his eyes on him again, tracing him up and down. “And I’m not really getting anything out of it.”

Emma glanced at Dan, her eyes wide. The look was obvious. It was the kind of look that said: this monster isn’t all that enthusiastic about killing us and we can probably get out of it if we talk smoothly enough.

Dan turned to share this very look with Phil, but Phil’s face was saying something entirely different. He was flicking his eyes from the monster to Dan and back again, and then raising his eyebrows twice in quick succession.

“What?” Dan whispered.

Emma was already trying to sweet talk their way out of the cage. “That’s ridiculous!” she exclaimed. “You’re not even going to get anything for doing all the hard work?”

Dan was looking around the room, trying to assess their chances of escape. Even if they got out of the cage they’d still have to escape from the bars that’d fallen to block all the exits.

“I know!” the monster (who really didn’t even look like a monster, just a normal, tall guy) answered. “Like, that’s a bit selfish, right? I only agreed because if you say no to a god they’d smite you.”

“I totally get it,” Emma said, nodding. “We go on quests for gods all the time—no clue what would happen if we said no. Nobody’s dumb enough to try.”

“Exactly!” the man roared. “Man, you guys aren’t so bad. I’m Jeremy, by the way.”

“Phil,” answered Phil, immediately. “And this here is Dan. Son of Aphrodite.” He pushed Dan forward as he said this, almost like he was presenting Dan to Jeremy.

Jeremy smiled at Dan and, feeling confused, Dan tentatively smiled back.

“Who is this god that’s after us, anyway?” Emma scoffed. “You’d think that, being as powerful as they are, they’d have the gall to come after us themselves.”

“Right?!” Jeremy said, shaking his head with a laugh. “I don’t know, though. I mean, if I told you…”

“The god would be pissed if they found out?” Emma said with a sigh.

“Yeah.” Jeremy shook his head. “They’d totally skin me alive or something. But… I can’t kill you guys,” he said, smiling ruefully. “You’re all so nice!” As he said this, his eyes flitted to Dan again. Dan shifted in place, uncomfortably aware of his own skin.

“Maybe you could let us out?” Phil suggested, so boldly that Dan wanted to smack him. They needed to be subtle! “We could sit down and try to think of some solution that benefits us all,” he said with a casual shrug, as if the outcome of this request didn’t really matter to him.

“You know what,” Jeremy said, “that’s a pretty good idea.” With that, he stepped forward and ripped a bar off the cage with his bare hand, creating a hole large enough for them to squeeze through. And so they did—Dan slipped out first, and he stood awkwardly a few feet in front of Jeremy as his friends joined him.

“Would you look at the time!” Jeremy suddenly exclaimed, examining a fancy watch on his wrist. “Alright, you guys wait here; I’ll go get us all some breakfast. You guys like Subway? That’s like, all they have in this town.” They weren’t hungry, having all just eaten themselves, and none of them would want Subway for breakfast anyway, but they said nothing as Jeremy strode across the room to leave. He momentarily bent a few bars to slip through them and waved goodbye as he walked through the warehouse towards the main entrance.

The moment his footsteps had receded entirely, Phil turned to Dan. “You need to flirt with him,” he said immediately. Dan spluttered something incoherent, his voice suddenly going a much higher pitch.

“Did that cage hit your head when it fell?” he demanded. “Why in the world would I flirt with him!?”

“Phil’s right,” Emma said seriously. “It could be our only way to persuade him into telling us which god is commanding him.”

“You’re both insane,” Dan decided. “I’m not—I’m not flirting with him. He’s a guy! Plus Emma should do it, if anyone. I don’t even know how to flirt!” The excuses tumbled out of him so quickly he was sure one of them would latch on and change the mind of his friends.

Phil just shook his head. “That man is gay,” Phil said, pointing his finger towards the corridor Jeremy had disappeared through. “And he was eyeing you up that whole time—that’s probably why he even let us out of the cage. He wants to get in your pants.”

“I’m not letting him in my pants!” Dan squeaked, thinking of the way Jeremy had snapped an entire bar off their cage. He took a step back from Phil, almost afraid he might actually try to wrestle his pants off.

“Of course not,” Emma readily agreed. “You just need to make him think you will.”

“Have you forgotten the fact that I can’t flirt?”

Phil waved him off. “You’re a son of Aphrodite,” he said. “You have charm, even if you don’t realize it. It comes naturally to you.”

Dan bit his lip. He really, really didn’t want to do this. He didn’t want to flirt with a guy, didn’t want to encourage this crush that Jeremy apparently had on him. But… they did need to find out which god had stolen his mom’s bow in the first place. This could very well be their only chance to do so.

“Fine,” Dan finally snapped, crossing his arms over his chest to hide how uncomfortable he really felt. “I’ll do it. But you two’ll owe me for eternity.”

“Deal!” Emma said, now smiling hugely. “This’ll be great.”

~~

next chapter