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jankwritten · 4 months

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Jasico Bingo Challenge: Comfort Food

Jason has just managed to slump onto the bench at table one for lunch when, seemingly from thin air, a brownie materializes before him.

He stares down at it. It is smooth along the top, ribboned with cracks like all the best brownies he’s ever had in his life.

He imagines this is how Tantalus feels. To be so close to something he wants so bad, knowing that he won’t be able to reach it, not really. That he can try all he wants, but surely wherever the brownie appeared from, it will just as fast disappear if he reaches for it.

Jason, unfortunately, has a lifetime’s worth of training in not reaching for it.

Moving over so the temptation isn’t directly before him, Jason pulls forward his empty plate and, with a pitiful sigh, summons the lunch he’s eaten every day since he turned ten.

The brownie follows him.

Jason tries not to notice, because, frankly, admitting he’s being haunted by a pastry is a step too far, even for his standards. He does not notice when a brownie shows up on his nightstand after he’s had a hard time breathing in a normal pattern. (It’s not a panic attack.) He does not notice when a brownie appears beside the ambrosia one of the Apollo kids tried to give him. (He doesn’t need it, he’s fine.) He looks the other way when a brownie shows up on the napkin he’s handed for s’mores at the campfire. (He can’t eat the s’mores either.)

He can handle it. He can handle the constant, demanding temptation. He will not succumb to it, gods dammit, he’s stronger than whatever fucked up test the fates are throwing at him. If this is one of his Herculean tasks, so be it. Jason will endure.

Nico throws himself to the ground at Jason’s side. Peleus, around the other side of Thalia’s Pine, snorts.

Jason simply shuts his book and directs his attention to the dramatic lump of Hades spawn at his hip. “Yes?”

“You keep disappearing,” Nico mutters. “I’m exhausted.”

Something warm and fluttery beats into Jason’s chest. “You were looking for me?”

Nico lifts his head up just enough to give Jason a flat, dead look. Then, he flops back over.

Jason tries not to be too pleased. Nico was looking for him, which means Nico was actively seeking him out, and by his lack of urgency, it doesn’t seem like it was for anything more than hanging out. They’re friends now, or to the point where Nico will admit they’re friends, but Jason is still getting used to Nico showing up around him to just…be around him. Sure, with the others it makes sense - Percy loves getting attention from his friends, and Piper and Leo demand his attention so they can all three silently sit together in a room doing their own thing. Nico is more distant, to put a name on it. He’s fiercely loyal and everything, Jason knows Nico’s always got his back, but he’s not really the kind of guy who likes to hang out.

When he does, though, of his own volition? It feels pretty damn nice.

Which is why Jason feels so awful when he looks down to his book on his plaid picnic blanket, and spots a fucking brownie, innocent and perfect on a pristine napkin.

His stomach turns. He closes his eyes immediately and tilts his head up to breathe.

Gods. Not a fucking second goes by that he’s not being tested.

“What’s wrong?”

Jason reopens his eyes to the foliage overhead - the pine needles are lush and thick, dappling the sunlight enough to create comfortable shade. He inhales, and exhales. “You ever get the feeling the gods are screwing with you, specifically, on purpose?”

Nico scoffs. “Yes. All the time.”

Jason peeks down at him and, though he does smile, it fades fast. He sighs, tilting his head all the way back to the tree trunk.

The tone of hanging out shifts and Jason feels pathetic about it. Nico sits up.

“What’s going on?”

“It’s nothing.”

“It is not nothing, you- tell me.”

It really feels like nothing, compared to what Nico’s been put through. A stupid brownie sitting in his peripherals for the last three days has nothing on walking through Tartarus, getting kidnapped by Giants, and being held prisoner in a fucking jar.

Nico puts a hand on his shoulder. Jason feels infinitely worse.

“Whatever it is, you can trust me, Jason, seriously. I’m here for you.”

Burying himself alive sounds like a decent option. “You could just open up a crack in the ground, frankly,” Jason says.

Nico, unfortunately, only looks more concerned.

Jason supposes if there’s anyone to begrudgingly admit the brownie haunting to, it would be the boy who can summon ghosts. Who is unfortunately also the most likely to be offended that Jason sees this as a fucking trial. Gods dammit.

“Jason-”

“Brownies keep showing up everywhere I go!” Jason blurts out, before Nico can start any more well meaning, heart rending shit. Jason buries his face in his hands. “Which would be fine because I like brownies, but I can’t- it’s like they’re trying to trick me, like someone’s got a sick vendetta against me, or, like, the gods are trying to teach me to not give in to what I want!”

Nico’s stretching silence is, frankly, not reassuring in the slightest.

Jason hunches down further and waits for the retreat. For Nico to say something soft but cutting about how he has to handle real problems while Jason gets chased around by fucking dessert foods.

This is it: the most humiliating moment in his life.

“You…can’t eat brownies?”

“No,” Jason says, muffled. “I’m allergic to fucking tree nuts.”

More horrific silence. Here he is, Jason Grace, whining that his hardest trial in life is a fucking nut allergy.

Nico’s hand moves from his arm. Jason’s stomach sinks to the pits of the Underworld.

“I had no idea,” Nico says, under his breath. “Since when?”

Jason lifts his head back up, though he refuses to open his eyes. His face is hot like a sunburn. “I think since I was a kid? I-I forgot, y’know, with the amnesia, but I would get these awful stomach aches after eating stuff, and I’d feel like I couldn’t breathe right and- I talked to Frank about it a few months ago and he told me I was probably allergic to something. Reyna confirmed it.”

“Oh,” Nico says.

Jason, hating himself deep in his lungs, looks at his friend. One of his best friends. Likely about to be ex-friend.

Nico looks…constipated.

“I know, it’s stupid,” Jason says in a rush. “I made it sound really serious and it wasn’t, it’s nothing like, you know, bad, it’s only annoying. I mean- it really sucks, y’know, this thing I love keeps appearing but I don’t know if I can trust it to not make me sick, and it’s like- like some god out there knows all that. It just sucks.” He’s such a loser, isn’t he.

“Jason,” Nico says, again in that soft, almost pitying tone. “It’s- It’s not a god.”

“What?”

Nico swallows, and shuffles around on the blanket. He folds up his legs, and then tangles his hands together and looks down at them.

If Jason didn’t know better, he’d say Nico almost looked…

“I’ve been the one sending you brownies. I know you like them, uhm, and I wanted to help you feel better. Cheer you up, I guess.”

…guilty.

Nico looks back up at him, through his eyelashes, then immediately back down. “I didn’t know you were allergic,” he says. “I-I’m really- I’m so sorry.”

“You’re the brownie ghost?”

This time, Nico looks up with fluttering eyelids, a confused wrinkle to his brow.

Jason stares back at him as his stomach launches back up from underground, as his chest squeezes and his shoulders lift, “you’re the brownie ghost!”

“I, uhm, sorry?”

There was no god taunting him! No awful portent of an oncoming apocalypse! Just a misguided friend trying to do something nice, oh, gods, Jason could touch the clouds right now.

Nico was being sweet! To him!

“Are you mad at me?” Nico asks.

Jason only barely refrains from bear hugging him. “No! Nico, gods, no, I-I thought- I mean, you heard what I thought, but- you were trying to cheer me up?”

“I really didn’t know.”

“No, I know you didn’t. I know you wouldn’t do that. Oh my gods, that is such a relief, you don’t even know. I was so freaked out-” Jason stops himself, catches the pinched up look on Nico’s face. “It was a really, really nice thing, with context.

Nico doesn’t look totally convinced, but he drops his shoulders, relaxes his fingers. “I’m still sorry.”

“Already forgiven.” Jason looks down at the brownie again, and laughs. “You’re incredible, you know that?”

He doesn’t have to look to know Nico’s ears are red, to know he’s shaking his head to himself either in disbelief, or an attempt to shake off the compliment. But it’s true, no matter what Nico tells himself. He’s incredible.

“Whatever,” Nico mutters. Then, after a moment, he slumps all the way back to the ground, and sprawls.

Jason tosses the brownie to Peleus and dusts the crumbs off on Nico’s shirt.

When Nico cracks an eye open to glare at him, Jason grins, with one last petty swipe of his hand.

(Later that night, after the campfire, Jason settles into his cabin, still smiling about how silly he’d been. When he rolls onto his side, there is a brownie on his nightstand, lit by the yellow glow of the only lamp.

Written on the napkin, in shaky, unpracticed handwriting, it says, “no nuts. I triple checked.”

Jason has never eaten anything faster in his life.)

#jasicobingochallenge2024 #comfort food #fanficiton #tw food aversion #but it's due to allergy so does it really count #LISTEN!!! I just thought it would be silly and cute. nico noticed when Jason is feeling down and tries to do a small thing to cheer him up #something that he doesn't have to take credit for and can make Jason happy in peace #which backfires HORRIBLY because Jason doesn't talk about himself and Nico doesn't like long conversations at all #so allergies never came up #and Jason thinks he's just. cursed.#when in fact. his best friend is just learning how to love him #frankly i'm just taking these prompts and doing my best to subvert them I guess LMFAO #like this is supposed to be about comfort foods. which for Jason would be brownies.#but instead i made him unable to eat them. so they are discomfort food. >:)#angst food #anyway #jasico #jason grace #nico di angelo #pjo #hoo

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