#spiritual successor to my jason and hazel are best friends post

[jankwritten]

Hazel takes a bite of her sandwich and glances at Jason from the side, her eyebrows going up as if she's silently saying, "well?"

Jason sinks his teeth into his own sandwich and pointedly ignores looking at her. It's a good sandwich, has a good crunch. He looks at it while he chews.

"Ahem," Hazel coughs, and elbows him in the side.

"Ow."

The stink eye she fixes on him is impressively frightening. Jason gulps and glances up, finally, to where Hazel was trying to drag his attention.

Nico, seated at the Hephaestus table with Leo, is grinning. Really truly grinning, like, grinning with his teeth, his eyes squinty at the corners, shoulders shaking with genuine laughter.

Jason sighs, his head tilting off to the side.

Gods, Nico is so pretty. He's always been pretty, like, it's just always been a thing Jason's noticed, but he's seen it more and more lately. Nico's been opening up more to different people around camp, and in the process getting more comfortable in his own skin. He glows, genuinely, with this nice, feathery aura around him. A soft, clean light.

"You are genuinely hopeless, you know that?"

"Yeah," Jason sighs again, turning back to his lunch. Nico's grin is, of course, seared into his brain, but it's probably better that way - he won't stare if he has the image in his mind's eye. He takes another bite of his food and elbows Hazel back. "I'm gonna ask him out soon."

Hazel shakes her head, looking up at him with false-wonder. "You are delusional. You know, I've got this running theory that the more often you say that, the less likely you are to actually do it."

"Hey! Be nice to me, I'm still technically your superior."

"Superior pain in my ass, maybe."

Jason scoffs. He shoves her, gently, just enough to make her sway in her seat and laugh all loud and scratchy like she used to only do around Nico, her head tilted back.

A silly little wedge of pride works between his bottom ribs.

Hazel, still chuckling, settles back in close enough that Jason can feel how chilly she is. Just like with Nico, he has to resist the urge to offer her his jacket. She always tells him he worries too much. He tells her it's not too much to want his friends to be comfortable.

He tears the crust off his sandwich and puts it on Hazel's plate when she turns back around to look at table nine. He looks too - Nico and Leo have their heads together over a blueprint, now, pointing out parts of it to one another.

Soon. And he really means it this time. He's gonna ask Nico out soon.