#used to be obsessed with Percy but HAVE YOU SEEN HIS GIRLFRIEND | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

takaraphoenix · 3 years

Note

Ship game!! What about Nico and Will?? It’s pretty popular, but I don’t think I’ve seen you write much of it…

That's an interesting one in that I have vocalized my reasons for disliking it way back when it first became popular but instead of just linking that, it has been years so I think it's time for an updated version.

Firstly: This post is gonna be properly tagged and not crosstagged so if any shipper comes across it and feels the need to bitch about it, just don't; your lack of curating your own tumblr experience is not my problem! ;D

Now, there are three key factors that play into my dislike of this ship: How it was written, what it represents, how the fandom around it acts.

1. It’s rushed and uncomfortable

In BoO, it was incredibly rushed. They had literally five sentences of interactions before they walked into the literal sunset together. Five. It was just entirely born from Riordan's Noah's Ark Complex, where he just can't let people be single. The series was ending and he needed Nico to have an endgame so he rushed into some random romance with zero build-up.

The way their interactions went down was also severely uncomfortable for me. Will was acting so offended by Nico not wanting to go to camp and be friends in an entitled way that he had no right to be, he downright guilt-tripped Nico about how he had wanted to be friends. Nico has been just so severely traumatized at such a young age and his coping mechanism, as unhealthy as it was, was to run away and hide. Will acted like Nico not wanting to form attachments to people who could potentially leave him again was somehow just an Edgy Emo Decision and not a direct reaction to his trauma. His entire approach to Nico was basically all these hippie posts of "Don't have depression!! Just go out into the sun and stop being depressed!", which is already a bad take with non-medical people but he's supposed to be a doctor (and let's not get into the shadiness of him technically being Nico's doctor).

There is also an inherent "I can fix him" angle to this ship and to me, only few ship dynamics are more uncomfortable than that. If you want to fundamentally change a person's behavior and personality, you... don't actually want to be with this person.

Now, here's where my points overlap, because the following parts of their writing that bothers me also stand for what this ship fundamentally represents.

2. Solangelo is a queer ship written by and for straights

I'm a queer woman and as a queer woman, I want queer wish-fulfillment, not what straights want out of queerness. I'm kind of tired of that, I've been sitting through it for enough decades now. That's, of course, not to say that no straight writer can give proper queer representation, but far too often do straight writers - even the most well-meaning ones - project straight desires of queerness into their queer representation.

Let me explain that closer through this ship.

Nico's been in love with Percy for years and I'm going to do my best to not hijack this post with some Percico agenda; that's not what this his about, this isn't some "my ship is better than your ship" ship-war nonsense. It's simply a canonical fact that Nico has had romantic feelings for another character for years.

A character who, in this medium, is heterosexual. And if you're queer, you've been there. In love with your straight best friend. It's a cliche, but it's a cliche for a reason.

We have also all been well-meaningly rejected by said straight friend.

And here's the straight desires for you: The queer person who was in love with a straight person just immediately stops having those feelings and will then as quickly as possible fall in love with the next queer person they meet to be happy and no longer uncomfortably in love with a straight person, because that thought makes the straights uncomfortable.

Queer wish-fulfillment would be for Percy to return those feelings, for the queer character to get his first love, to not be rejected. That thing queer teens always dreamed about for themselves.

Aside from the wish-fulfillment angle, the pacing is another problem. Let me repeat, Nico was in love for years. But a five sentence conversation with Will once causes a crush on Will and we see him physically turn away from Percy and toward Will just immediately to rebound and actually fall out of love with Percy and in love with Will. Anyone who's ever been unlucky in love will attest to just how unrealistic and ridiculous the pacing here is.

It's also straight queerness in another respect; Nico has been the first ever queer character we meet in that world. He loves a straight guy - and to get over that, we introduce the second queer character. Because heaven forbid there are multiple queers to pick from. No, in straight-written queer romances, there is always that one main queer and then they introduce a second one and the two just immediately hit it off and develop a romance like all a queer person needs to form attraction to someone is the confirmation that the other person shares your sexuality.

Also the notable gay guy on gay guy ship here, whereas the more queer-wish-fulfillment option would have also included more nuance to the queer experience, because Percy doesn't have to be heterosexual just because he has only been with girls so far. It's a very old-fashioned - think 90s and early 2000s - kind of straight-written queerness that there are only exactly two homosexuals and that those two homosexuals then pair up.

And, listen, I'm not immune to these outdated straight-written queers entirely, I have many such ships that I grew up with that I am still fond of because they were groundbreaking at that time and they weren't outdated yet back when they happened in said 90s and early 2000s. I am however a grown woman now and just like I have grown, so has queer rep so I am not as easily baited into falling onto my knees in gratitude for canon rep. You have to go with the times. And this ship, by all that is given to us, is just entirely outdated straight-written rep.

Which, I mention earlier that even straight-written rep can be good. If the author tries. Riordan doesn't really try though; he does the bare minimum when he writes any of his rep - and there have been many, many more qualified voices being very vocal about his depiction of people of color and, as a woman, I've been vocal about his depiction of women. I don't want to derail this post with all of that, but I do think that it bears mentioning that Riordan doing rep but only doing a bare minimum and not putting in the necessary work to deepen the representation he wants to give is a repeating pattern that has been pointed out many times by now.

(I’d also like to point out that no, it is not just the ship and not just the listed instances that make it straight-written rep for straights. It’s Nico’s entire queer arc, starting with his forced coming out. A severely traumatizing event that is completely brushed over because the straight author doesn’t understand the impact this has on queer people. Not to mention the framework; Nico’s coming out isn’t Nico’s story, it happens in Jason’s POV, it is given to us through the POV of the straight bystander who gets to be Best Ally by assuring Nico that being gay is okay. This kind of coming out is not a queer wish-fulfillment, it’s a straight wish-fulfillment of getting to be the straight savior, the ally to show the gay the light of acceptance. And, additional to the ridiculous pacing of how fast Nico gets over his love for Percy, Nico also gets over years of internalized homophobia just because of, I don’t know, Jason’s few encouraging words and the fact that Will paid attention to him? For a gay kid who was in the closet all his life, the nonchalant way in which he publicly confessed his crush to Percy at the end made absolutely no sense and was written as basically a joke, finished off with Nico literally high-fiving Percy’s girlfriend despite those two never having seen eye to eye before but this is straight wish-fulfillment so all straights are Super Allies, because that’s the way straights want to see themselves, even though Annabeth has shown before just how jealous she can be and she most definitely wouldn’t go around high-fiving people who confess to her boyfriend. Nothing about Nico’s queer arc in HoO felt natural or queer or satisfying.)

Sure, Solangelo on a surface level is big because it's a canon queer couple in a YA book-series and kudos for that and yay for the kids who get to grow up seeing queers in YA books, but I actually do think that kids growing up with books written in the 2010s shouldn't grow up with 1990s levels of representation, because the 2010s overall are actually at a far more nuanced and better level of representation when it comes to queerness. And I do reserve the right to quit on too straight-written and too outdated queer rep in a landscape where I can get more satisfying representation elsewhere; we don’t live in times anymore where you necessarily have to love every bit of rep because it’s the only one you get.

Now that we've gone through my first two gripes, let's wrap this up with the final point, because it also directly ties into this.

3. The new wave of antis hiding behind this ship

A huge part of the fandom is so busy kissing Riordan's ass solely for giving them queer rep at all they think that both the author and the ship are beyond flawless and that kind of attitude is not good. Just because an author includes rep doesn't make either perfect. Absolutely no one is beyond critique - especially not when said critique comes from the very people the author is representing. And even beyond any "valid" critique on the ship, quite frankly, someone should also be allowed to just not like it, without any reasons given at all.

But there is a certain... protective obsessiveness about this ship that doesn't allow a not liking. Very similar to how PJO bore this mindset around Perc/abeth already. It's okay to have OTPs, even OTPs that you have a blindspot for and just don't want to see any flaws in. It is however not okay to then go around attacking people who don't like the thing and mind their own business.

Solangelo's bred a new generation of antis in this fandom. And, particularly with the fact that this post too receives an "anti" tag, I feel like there needs to be a clarification (because tumblr likes to forget what actually makes an anti). Not liking something doesn't make you an anti, venting in properly tagged posts doesn't either; it's the people who harass others, who seek out the content they dislike to then complain that it even exists and who actively try to make others stop creating for it - those are antis.

And with Solangelo's popularity, there was a high rise in Percico antis, who sought it out, were unnecessarily nasty about it, harrassed creators and tried to enforce some kind of "Solangelo supremacy" that won't allow other ships for the characters.

I've been in fandom long enough to be perfectly aware that not all Solangelo shippers count into this category and that there are completely normal and nice Solangelo shippers, but this is a Venn diagram where the overlap between Solangelo shippers and antis is too large to not widely associate the nasty people with the ship itself. (I've been there myself, shipping the very ship behind which a fandom's antis all hid. The second-hand embarrassment of having these people give the ship a bad name is horrendous and I do feel bad for all the normal Solangelo shippers.)

The more often I encountered these people, who made Percico bad (sometimes in wildly ridiculous manners that bent and deliberately misinterpreted canon) and who in the same breath praised Solangelo high, the more tired I grew of that ship. It's a simple game of association, really. You see that linked to the gross and nasty behavior and you start associating the ship itself with that gross and nasty behavior - and with all the things I said before that already weighed into my dislike of the ship, this just was the final tipping point, really.

And that's it. That sums up why I dislike Solangelo. It was hastily rushed, uncomfortable in its execution, it is outdated rep that very much feels as straight-written as it factually is and it does not feel aimed at me as a queer person but rather at the straight audience and it has gathered a cult following of quite uncomfortable people who on their own would be reason enough to avoid it so you can avoid them.

Send me a ship and I will explain why I do or don't ship it

#Anti Solangelo #PJOverse #Riordan Critical #Shipping #Ship Ask Game #send me asks #it IS both a positive AND negative game #and I gotta admit #it is nice to put these things #into proper words #every once in a while

261 notes · View notes

forevfangirlwrites · 2 years

Note

Heyy!! I wanted to tell you that i think youre an amazing writer and that im obsessed with all of your work!! And i was wondering for your actress au if there was ever a fight that percy and annabeth had that was kinda bad and if one of them was scared that they would break up or something. Love ur writing soo muchh!!!

Having worked in the service industry for as long as he has, he’s certainly developed somewhat of a thick skin to all the bullshit that comes with the job. Of course, that doesn’t mean that things don’t get to him.

Especially when it’s been one shitty thing after another.

Earlier in the week, the precarious oven door (that admittedly had a tendency of getting stuck) decided to fling itself into its own proverbial flame and had stopped working all together. And though he can still use the stove (he’s got no idea how that’s happening but it’s better not to question it) he’s unable to bake.

Which, for Percy, is an imminent problem as his supply of blue chocolate chip cookies is dwindling.

So after five attempts he finally gets in contact with his landlord about it, only to hear that it’s going to take a week. And with that happy news, he proceeds to go to work and deal with some of the worst customers he’s had to face since moving here.

Suffice to say, Percy has had a very not-good day that’s compounded into a not-good week at this point.

Trying to shrug off his irritation, he flips through the channels on his TV in hopes that something can distract him from this mess.

A familiar voice puts an end to the channel shuffling. “—we wanted to make it like a fairytale.”

On screen is none other than his girlfriend. She’s smiling at the interviewer who’s asked yet another question about the photoshoot that Percy doesn’t hear nor cares to.

The camera once again focuses on Annabeth as she replies. Oh, and there’s another thing. He hasn’t seen his girlfriend all week since she’s been on said photoshoot (and evidently doing interviews about it too) which certainly hasn’t helped matters.

He stares at the screen despondently, not hearing a word of the interview, all too consumed with how shitty his life has been.

A knock on the door jolts him out of it. What was that?

He gets up and looks through the peephole. A hooded figure is standing there, looking down. Immediately, he opens the door.

“Annabe—?” His question is halted as she enters the apartment and flops down on his couch. Closing the door behind her, he watches her take note of what’s on the screen.

KEEP READING ON AO3

A/N: Thank you so much for the prompt! It’s an important aspect that I wanted to cover for their relationship, so I appreciate it! Sorry for the wait, I hope you like this! Thanks again!

#percy and annabeth #percabeth #percabeth fic #actress annabeth #barista percy #how to handle fame #percabeth au

20 notes · View notes

perseabethj · 3 years

Text

i don't really have an explanation (i.)

When Percy started his senior year in yet another school, he promised himself he would try his best to make sure nothing strange happened; sure, it wasn’t really up to him monster-wise, but he could at least try not to say anything strange to his new classmates or curse in ancient Greek. Besides, the last two years had been a mess and, with his kidnapping, it was not like he had much to say when he was told to introduce himself the first day of class -‘’hey, my name is Percy Jackson, my dad is a Greek god, and I was kidnapped last year and my memories were erased; oh, and I like blue food!’’. Yeah, that probably wouldn’t work.

Thus, Percy was known as the quiet and reserved kid in his school. This was a first for him; sure, he’d never had many friends, but he was always causing trouble. This time, however, he knew that Annabeth would kill him if, for any reason, he messed this school year up and he couldn’t go to New Rome University. He made friends -a first, excluding Grover and Tyson, who didn’t really count if you kept in mind that, well, they were his protector and his brother, and a satyr and a cyclops. He didn’t tell his friends much about him -his step-dad was an English teacher, he had been expelled from way too many schools, he had ADHD and dyslexia, he was very athletic, and he was going to try and join the swim team. He made sure to exclude everything that could be linked to his other life -he didn’t talk about his summer camp, his other friends, his huge dog, his father, or his girlfriend; Percy liked how both things didn’t go together, and he felt like it made everything easier. Whenever he talked, he sounded like a normal seventeen-year-old, and he was glad about that. He had had enough of monsters for a lifetime and, even if a hydra or a hellhound bothered him every other day, he could truly say that he could see a future for him and Annabeth that didn’t include them dying in the next five months. All in all, things were good.

When his school organized a homecoming football game, however, he did invite Annabeth; she was in a boarding school in the city, but it wasn’t that hard for her to sneak out with her New York Yankees cap, and he did want her there; it was a milestone for them. After all, Percy wasn’t supposed to reach senior year. They had agreed on meeting at the school; Percy had told Annabeth he’d meet her at the entrance once she texted him that she was close, since he was already at the bleachers with his friends. He wasn’t used to having a phone yet, however, which, in his opinion, gave him an excuse as to why he wasn’t checking his texts. Moreover, his ADHD tended to slow time down for him, so he was pretty sure that he still had thirty minutes before Annabeth was supposed to arrive.

‘’I swear, man, she was the most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen,’’ his friend Matthew said, leaning over Kayla so he could see him.

‘’You say that about every girl you meet.’’

‘’I don’t say that about you,’’ Matthew told Kayla, who elbowed him in the ribs and, promptly, shut him up.

Percy couldn’t help but laugh at Louis’s mocking expressions behind Matthew. He’d only known these people for less than a month, but they had accepted him into their little club as soon as they’d met him and he was infinitely grateful. As Louis opened his mouth to, probably, laugh at Matthew over his ability to fall in love at first sight everyday, Matthew and Kayla stopped laughing when they looked at Percy. Percy tensed up, his hand moving to his pocket to make sure that Riptide was with him in case he needed to kill a monster, but, when a pair of arms linked themselves around his shoulders from behind, he tensed up for a whole different reason.

‘’I didn’t think I’d see you here, Jackson,’’ a female voice said playfully close to his ear.

Percy disentangled himself from her arms and turned around to stare Mary in the eye.

‘’An athlete at a football game. Who would have though, right?’’ he ironically said.

Mary rolled her eyes and rested her hand on his shoulder. Percy had to resist the urge to slap it away, but he didn’t want to cause a scene -he knew a lot about causing scenes and, with his luck, slapping her hand away would lead to a monster trying to kill him, and he didn’t want to be expelled before he could even take his first test. He didn’t know what he’d done to gain her attention -she was popular and decidedly pretty, and he was an outcast. He knew he wasn’t bad-looking -if Piper described him as a Greek god once more, he might die; Annabeth telling him that he looked exactly like his father also didn’t help, since the two times Poseidon had shown up in the past year while he was with Annabeth had always led to Percy wondering whether his girlfriend found his father attractive-, and he spent so much time swimming that one would have to be blind not to notice that he had a nice body. However, the whole school knew about his experience with being kicked out of school, since some teachers had made sure to remind him to behave during the first week of classes, and the swim team wasn’t regarded as highly as the football or the hockey team. All in all, he wasn’t a mess -unlike thirteen-year-old Percy-, but he was guarded and serious enough not to attract the attention of preppy girls. Mary, however, seemed to be obsessed with him from the day he got her phone out of the swimming pool after she dropped it while flirting with another guy in his team -‘’keep it wet, keep it wet’’, he’d had to remind himself-, and he regretted being a nice guy ever since then. Honestly, if his mom hadn’t raised him to be such a good kid, most of the problems in his life wouldn’t have happened.

‘’You could sit with us if you wanted,’’ Mary told him, signaling to her girl friends.

Percy knew the invitation only extended to him and not to his friends, who were quiet during the conversation. They had been at that school for three years, so they knew Mary and her gang, and Percy knew they sometimes wondered why he didn’t drop them for the popular kids. He also knew that he would rather face the Minotaur again than sit with the popular kids.

‘’I’m quite happy where I am, thanks,’’ he politely answered, trying to end the chat before he said anything rude.

‘’But you would have more fun with us, I’m sure,’’ Mary insisted, running her finger down his arm.

In moments like this, he almost missed being the young kid he was when he first arrived to camp, skinny and short and with a voice way too high for anyone to consider him a man.

‘’No, thanks,’’ he said again, using his other arm to take his phone out of his pocket, hoping Annabeth wouldn’t take much longer. ‘’Besides, I’m waiting-‘’

‘’Perseus Jackson!’’

‘’Man, I am going to need a massage after this’’, he though as he tensed again. He noticed his friends drive their attention away from Mary, who had also looked towards the origin of the voice with furrowed brows, her finger still on Percy’s arm. Before turning around, Percy quickly looked at the time on his phone, silently cursing in Greek as he saw the multiple texts and missed calls that he clearly hadn’t heard.

‘’Why is there a beautiful blonde goddess walking towards Percy, yelling his full name and looking like she wants to kill him?’’ Matthew quietly asked, forcing Percy to stifle a laugh.

He turned around slowly, half-expecting her to have a dagger at his neck. She was still far enough for him to be able to think of a few excuses, but he knew that wouldn’t work. Man, he had been offended the first time she’d called him Seaweed Brain, but she’d really hit the nail on the head.

‘’I can explain,’’ he said while she was still a few metres away.

‘’Explain, then,’’ she told him, now standing in full height before him. He was quite taller than her, but a standing Annabeth with folded arms and a stormy look in her eyes before a sitting Percy who knew he’d messed up was definitely scary.

‘’I…’’ he started. ‘’I didn’t think I’d get this far, honestly. I think this might be the first time you let me explain and I’m not ready for this responsibility.’’

He knew that was the right answer -her eyes were now shining with mirth and he could tell he was holding back a smile. She still had her arms crossed, but he figured she wasn’t going to kill him in front of so many people, so he tugged at them and forced her to sit next to him before he could regret it.

‘’I really thought it was earlier. You know how I am with the time, and I’m still not used to the phone.’’

She finally unfolded her arms and shook her head as she smiled softly, and Percy knew she wasn’t mad any longer.

‘’The fact that I have experience navigating labyrinths doesn’t mean that I want to navigate your high school, Seaweed Brain,’’ she told him.

‘’Completely understandable, Wise Girl.’’

He threw his arm around her shoulder, all his previous conversations forgotten, and he was about to ask her about her day when another voice interrupted him.

‘’Excuse me, Percy, but who is this?’’ Mary asked from behind him.

Annabeth turned around, a fake smile on her lips as she took in the brunette girl sitting behind her.

‘’His girlfriend,’’ Annabeth said. ‘’Nice to meet you.’’

She offered Mary her hand, though still wrapped around Percy’s arm, and Mary took it automatically, a shocked expression on her face. Her friends looked back between her and Annabeth, equally confused.

‘’His girlfriend?’’ Matthew whisper-yelled.

Both Louis and Kayla nudged him with their elbows, earning a laugh from Percy, which made Annabeth look at them with a raised eyebrow.

‘’Guys, this is Annabeth, my girlfriend,’’ Percy introduced. ‘’Beth, these are Kayla, Matthew and Louis.’’

‘’You’ve mentioned them,’’ Annabeth said, extending her hand and offering a real smile. ‘’It’s nice to meet you. Anybody who manages to put up with Percy deserves to be admired.’’

‘’Hey!’’ Percy whined.

His friends sat there, flabbergasted, but he didn’t really mind. Sure, he could have told them in advance, but he also didn’t think it was that important that he had a girlfriend; he was not the first guy in school to have one, and he definitely wouldn’t be the last.

He didn’t have time to talk any more before the game started, but he did manage to hear Matthew whispering to Kayla and Louis as the players made it to the field.

‘’So not only is Percy the hottest guy at school, but he’s also dating the hottest girl in New York? How is that fair?’’

Percy smiled softly and pressed Annabeth closer to him, enjoying her warmth and having her next to him. This was how things were supposed to be.

#percabeth #my writing #percy #annabeth #percy jackson #annabeth chase #percabeth fanfiction #i don't really have an explanation

27 notes · View notes

themadhatterofficial · 3 years

Text

Eyes, Bodies, and Potions

The Golden Trio was always meant to take down Voldemort.

Perhaps, if things happened a bit differently, if the pieces managed to link together in another way...

(Dark Golden Trio AU)

********************

Harry Potter only knew violence growing up.

The young boy hidden away in the cupboard under the stairs would sit in fear and anticipation as heavy footsteps pounded above and rattled the dust onto his tiny bed. He had a single mirror in his cupboard that Aunt Petunia had given him as a Christmas present after his uncle had slammed his head into it hard enough to cause cracks to run through it like an overzealous spiderweb.

No matter how many times he tried to avoid it, Harry always ended up watching himself in the dingy glass. In anything remotely reflective, really.

Everywhere Harry went, people commented on his eyes. On how pretty they were, how they made him look respectable, how much they stood out against the darkness of his skin and the heavy bangs that resembled a rat's nest at the best of times.

It had jump started Harry's obsession.

Everywhere he went, Harry would stare at eyes. Brown ones, blue ones, grey ones, green ones, and every mix you could think of. He liked the emotions that ran through them, how they told stories that faces and bodies would never reveal.

He could see the happiness when a couple held hands.

He could see the fear when a man gripped his girlfriend's arm a little too tight.

He could see the joy in a father's eyes when his baby snuggled further into his neck.

The fear was nice sometimes. When it was someone who deserved it. Like when Dudley's friend Henry punched Harry hard enough to take out his baby tooth and split his lip. Harry had launched forward and kept hitting and hitting and hitting until Henry was crying too hard to make noise and he was covered in reds and blues that never blossomed on Harry's deep skin.

(Henry's eyes were grey. They were scared. It was nice.)

(Henry's parents also moved their whole family far away from the neighborhood the very next week. Harry chalked it up to coincidence.)

Harry liked the happiness a lot more than the sad or scared ones. He liked sitting in the little park far from the Dursleys' and letting the long cuffs of his torn hand-me-downs scrape below the swing, watching the happy families laugh and jump and run around with one another without caring about anything else.

For as long as Harry could remember, he had wanted that. He longed for it. He would sit in his tiny cupboard on the last night of July and beg and plead whoever was up there for someone to find him. At first, Harry wished for someone to take him away. Now, Harry would be content with someone approaching him to just talk. It was a far-fetched dream, something he only dared to dream of in the quiet darkness when he pretended that his parents weren't worthless drunks who cared for the bottle more than their son. That he had a mother that took the time to tame his bird's nest of a head and read to him at night, that he had a father who taught him how to play chess and cook breakfast for his mum in bed, and maybe even an uncle that bought him secret ice creams that ruined his dinner and taught him how to talk to pretty girls at school and maybe even a sister who laughed too loud and grinned too wide and let him wrap her up in soft blankets when she was too cold to ask for it.

But for now, Harry would settle for their eyes.

********************

Ron Weasley, in Ron Weasley's opinion, was not very special.

He was the sixth child of seven in his impoverished family. He got hand-me-down everything, and was expected to do as well as his brothers, if not better. It was nothing special if he could do this, because Percy could too, and if he could do that, well, Bill already had years before.

Sometimes Ron wished he was an only child, if only for the attention he would have.

(He never wanted his siblings dead, Merlin no. He loved them all and wished them the best, even if he was a bit jealous of them.)

Perhaps this was why he was often seen hanging on Harry or Hermione's arm, spending every bit of his free time with the first things that were his, and only his.

They weren't things, and Ron knew this. He knew that they were people, and he knew that they were their own people. He never claimed them aloud, and especially didn't hint at it to Harry. He was already treated like a Thing by his muggles. They locked him away and took him out when he was of use. Ron wanted to be with him all the time, even when he didn't listen and remained as stubborn as an ass.

But they were still Ron's. He didn't like when Fred or George or Ginny would try to covet Harry's attention, or tease Hermione until all the blood rushed up to darken her cheeks to a deep blue. She would hide behind her massive hair that curled around her wildly in a way that she wasn't.

Later, Hermione would shyly admit that she'd never felt wanted, and that she quite liked the way Harry and Ron so openly expressed their need for her. Harry would say the same.

Ron Weasley liked watching people.

He saw everything he needed to from a distance, even if he wanted to get closer. He liked watching quidditch especially, how their bodies moved so gracefully and held no hesitation in their gestures. (This did not extend to his brothers and sister. He actually didn't like watching them in particular, even if he could never pry his eyes away from Harry twisting and turning and reaching as far as he could.)

Every quidditch match was exciting. Ron would emulate certain things, ever since he could remember. Bill's easy-going swagger. Charlie's big hand movements. Percy's chin tilt he did when he was trying to make a point, or the seamless weaving and bobbing Fred and George had mastered together. He'd mostly out grown it before Ginny came along, but sometimes he even ran his hand through his hair like she did. His dad did it, and it was a small thing the three of them shared, and Ron coveted it.

The most ingrained thing about Ron was probably his tactile nature. His mum was the same way. They were probably the most expressive, always ready to give out a hug and kiss on the cheek or just to hold someone.

This came in handy later in life.

Hermione likes to stand on her toes.

It's a small thing that he's sure she isn't really aware of. She'd mentioned offhandedly that her parents had forced her to do ballet when Ron mentioned it, and it became more and more clear. When she stretched she pointed her toes perfectly, and when she turned to speak she'd often spin around on the tips of her feet. It was endearing, especially even when she went on her long winded tangents about anything and everything.

When she talked, her smile lit up the room and her hands flitted about excitedly. When she saw something that caught her eye, Hermione would stretch out her neck and raise her eyebrows high into her uneven bangs.

Hermione was also very awkward. She hid behind her big kinky curls, which Ron soon learned were in that weird frizzy stage because of repeated failed attempts at straightening it. (He quite liked her hair just the way it was, but Hermione didn't, which was disappointing.) Ron would shake his head and teasingly pull on one of her coils so it bounced tightly. She would flush, and when they first met she absolutely despised it. It wasn't until they'd known each other for so long that she would allow him to do so. He was the only one other than Harry that was allowed. Soon after she began to grow comfortable with his casual touches.

So when she would awkwardly put her hand forward to shake Ron's, he would push it away in order to wrap her up tightly in his arms. She'd tense at first before hugging back tentatively, then tightly, as if she never wanted him to let her go.

Harry tugs at his sleeves when he gets nervous.

He does it a lot, actually. When they ride up, he pulls the cuffs down to grip in his palms.

When adults speak to him, he squeezes himself inward to make himself smaller. When they raise their voices, his head drops down ever so slightly, as if it's an instinct he's trying to fight. When they get too close, his body twitches away as if it has a mind of its own.

Ron soon noticed that Harry couldn't handle yelling. Ron and Hermione began to fight about Merlin-knows-what one night by the lake. It wasn't until Ron's voice was slightly hoarse and he paused to take a breath that he remembered that Harry was still there. He was sitting on the damp grass, completely still with his hands muffling his ears and his head tucked between his knees.

Ron always warns Harry before reaching to him. Always asks if its okay. It's soon obvious to Ron that no one has truly hugged Harry, and does so whenever he has the chance. And Harry absolutely clings onto Ron, which is really nice. No one's really done that. His siblings weren't always the touchy-type and his parents were always too busy with this or that to dedicate so much time to the Least Favorite.

(Ron knew that they loved him. He never doubted that. But he was nothing if not a realist.)

But Ron's favorite thing was when Harry would jump on him. Harry never talked much unless one prompted him endlessly, and it was even rarer for him to initiate a conversation or reach out for anyone or anything. So when Harry would get so excited he tackle-hugged Ron into the grass or the floor of the common room, and Hermione would burst into giggles beside them, he'd feel his heart burst open for these two people that truly appreciated him.

Watching people fall was pretty fascinating.

Their bodies would turn and prepare for the inevitable, bracing in fear before the impact came.

They showed something real, in those moments. The shock, the resignation, pure, unadulterated fear that overtook their entire bodies dominated Ron's attention when it happened. And when the fear happened, he saw who they were. How one handles the fear, the harsh reality ready to break their nose it, shows who they truly are.

When Hermione fell into the Devil's Snare, and Ron and Harry were stuck in the stage of fear, he could see Hermione's brain turn over. He saw the way she went straight from the fear to the calm determination of someone who was not ready for the end. He could see the clear fuck you on her face before she sunk below the vines.

When Harry's broom began to shake and throw him off in a violent rage, Ron saw the fear. He saw the clear fear outline every bone of his body before his grip tightened and his body swung upwards. He could see the resignation, and he could see the acceptance of what would happen. But that wasn't standing out as much as the look that overtook his entire face. He could hear it from the stands, the way he was telling himself - not without a fight.

Ron quite liked the fear. He liked seeing them panic and squirm. He liked knowing who they were, if only for a moment.

When he punched Goyle in the face, he saw it. When he beat him over and over in the empty corridor, Ron knew. He didn't have that fight in him, the way his best friends do. He was pitiful, really. Ron felt no sympathy afterwards, merely watched as the larger boy scrambled away bloody and terrified.

And later, when Ron let Harry bandage his knuckles in a way that no eleven year old should be able to do with such ease, he watched the blood swirl down the drain with morbid fascination.

His knuckles were swollen and bruised, and Harry was endlessly careful with them.

Goyle had gotten a good punch in, and Hermione's hand flitted around his cheek worriedly for a good two minutes before calming down.

And the next day, when Goyle's bruises were yellow with some kind of accelerated healing potion, Ron was quite disappointed that the colors had left so quickly. He felt put-out, robbed even, of the satisfaction he'd wanted. That he'd earned.

But when their eyes met, and Goyle flinched to look down with shameful fear, Ron decided that he could settle for that.

********************

Hermione Granger had always been a smart girl. It was something she had always prided herself in. Top of her class, always on time, always perfect.

Her parents had made sure of that. The Grangers would not permit their only child to fail. They refused to have a fuck up for a daughter. It would disgrace them beyond belief, leaving the family humiliated and shame-faced for all of the world to see.

Hermione Granger was used to the low expectations. She had long since grown accustomed to people looking down on her. From her buck teeth, to dark skin, to her frizzy hair, not many expected much from her.

They were proper people, the Grangers. Practical and no-nonsense types that expected their child to achieve a level of success that they were never able to reach.

So it was quite a shock when one day a severe-looking woman appeared on their doorstep in a tall pointy hat and bright green bathrobe that smelled faintly of cat treats.

Hermione had had an inkling about the magic. Strange occurrences, things that logic simply could not explain.

"It snowed once," she had murmured under her breath.

The three adults stopped their snapping, which had been quickly escalating into a fully-blown argument, to look towards the girl.

"What was that?" the professor had sniped quickly.

Hermione looked towards her parents, their lips pressed together tensely as they stared down their daughter through narrowed eyes.

"It snowed," Hermione'd said a bit more clearly. "When... when I read Narnia." She barely kept from flinching when her mother's fist clenched at the mention of one of those horrid fairy tales, but Hermione looked down and twisted her lips from side to side.

"Why is that?" the woman had asked a touch less harshly.

"In the story the kids went through a wardrobe and found a place where it snowed all year round. I just wanted to visit somewhere... somewhere different. Like..."

When Hermione made no effort to finish the professor made the effort to kneel before her to match their heights.

And slowly, the professor's lips began to pull up ever so slightly into an encouraging (and slightly conspiratorial) smile. "Somewhere magical?"

"Yes," Hermione had breathed out emphatically, nodding her head so vigorously that the beads in her weighty braids clanked together loudly enough to echo around the silent room.

"Well, I think that I may be able to make that happen."

To be entirely truthful, Hermione didn't much like school.

She loved learning. She had always loved learning. It was her favorite thing in the whole world. But the pressure, both from the school and her family, made Hermione want to tear her hair out until there was nothing left. Her parents were terrible about it. They monitored her grades as closely as humanly possible. And it was't enough to just do good, or great, or perfect. She had to be better than everyone in anything and everything she did.

Hermione had done ballet when she was little. It wan't her favorite thing in the world, but it had been fun.

But she wasn't The Best.

So her parents made her quit.

Harry and Ron were different than most.

They were her friends. Her real friends. Most people sneered at her in class when her hand always shot up and she jumped at the chance to answer every question she could and fight to be the first one to demonstrate how much better she was than them. (There had been a period of time where Hermione had stopped doing so. Her parents found out. She began raising her hand again.)

Her boys sometimes did that. When Hermione got overexcited and cut off the teacher Harry would sometimes hide his face with his hand or Ron would groan and roll his eyes. But the second someone else said something to her, they would jump at the chance to defend her and take no prisoners.

The three of them were family. A real family. Not like at home where dinner was tense and silent while Hermione's father picked apart every single sentence of her school progress reports, or when Harry would talk about his relatives in quivering whispers before quickly changing the subject before they could ask about his over-sized clothing and the gruesome pattern of raised skin on his arms.

Hermione laughed more with them in her first year at Hogwarts than she ever had in her entire existence. While Harry had a strange kind of gasping laugh that she could hardly distinguish between joy or pain, Ron's was full-bodied and bright. But they were both amazing. They sounded happy. Safe. Kind of like home.

She had never been so happy in her life.

Hermione loved magic.

It had a strange set of rules to it. Strange. Different. But soon enough, Hermione understood it.

Her favorite was potions. There was a definitive way to it, logic that was always followed. Hermione could follow a method and it would be perfect. Action and reaction. That was all it was. Action and reaction. Action and reaction.

(Snape was obviously terrible. He made her face burn and tears spring to her eyes. But she couldn't stop raising her hand or jumping in to answer questions. She just couldn't. If it got back to her parents it would be a thousand times worse than anything Snape could ever do to her.)

But outside of the classroom, Hermione fell in love with the method of potion-making. It was soothing and gentle and welcoming and just so perfect for her. Outside of the dankness of the dungeons and the harsh bearing of Severus Snape's beady black eyes, Hermione Granger sat in the sunlight of the second floor girls' lavatory and created masterpieces. She used her tools to create art. From potions of brilliant greens to velvety purples to bright blues so clear that she could see the bottom of the cauldron through. It was stunningly beautiful. And it took her breath away.

But she wasn't The Best.

(not yet, at least)

It was early on a Saturday morning.

The sun streamed through the tall window of the second floor girls' lavatory and landed on Hermione and her cauldron at the perfect angle. It was a potion recipe that Harry had found in the restricted section and given to her. (Normally, Hermione would never condone breaking rules. At school, no less. But this was a Special Circumstance.) It caused the consumer's heart to beat so fast that the blood couldn't make it through the arteries quickly enough, causing them them to clog and trigger a heart attack.

Hermione hadn't planned on actually giving it to anyone. It would be disgustingly terrible. To cause someone's death...

But then, the colors were so pretty. Swirling pinks and purples moving like waves crashing upon the sand, splashing against the sides of the cauldron of their own accord. Her eyes traced their movements, transfixed into a deep state of pure calm.

She didn't even notice when some of it had splashed up over the lip of the cauldron. It landed on the tiles with a decisive plink that echoed in the silence.

Hermione hadn't seen the rat until it was too late. She watched in horror as the small rodent moved towards the spilled potion, sniffing at it before licking hesitantly.

Before she could yell for it to stop, the rat began to convulse on the dirty floor. Hermione could do nothing but watch as the poor thing's body shook violently, squealing pathetically and rolling around in excruciating pain.

And then the blood.

There was so much in its tiny body. It was actually quite shocking. Spilling from everywhere from its eyes to its mouth to its ears. It was a horror scene - party of one.

Hermione wanted it to stop. She wanted to save the little rat. It was cruel and unkind and unfair and...

Disgustingly beautiful.

The vividness of its blood threw her off. It was smooth and thick, running through the grooves of the tiles in gentle rivulets akin to that of the rivers that carved through the Forest of Dean.

It was very different to see this kind of pain tearing its course through something. It felt almost satisfying to watch. Like she was seeing her own pain manifest itself within a tiny conductor, forcing everything inside of her inside of it.

And it was Hermione that was doing it. Hermione's potion. Her own knowledge and power transferring into another living breathing thing, wreaking its havoc as it went.

Action and reaction.

Sometimes Hermione would watch others in school with the same lens that she had watched that rat. She would bore holes through the side of Pansy Parkinson's head or clench her hands to avoid tilting the entirety of her scalding potion down the back of Professor Snape's robes during class.

(She would fantasize about it. Sometimes Hermione felt like a monster for doing so, but then she would look at Ron when he dug his fingertips into the desk and glare at Draco Malfoy with a barely concealed type of rage that she Knew meant that they were the same.)

(Harry was a little different. He didn't always have that kind of rage inside of him. But he would watch when Ron would fight others, untamed and wild in every aspect. And it would glimmer behind the vibrant green of his irises that Hermione had yet to recreate with one of her potions.)

Hermione wanted to do it. She wanted to drip just the littlest bit of her art onto their wrists. Just a drop. She wanted to watch their skin shrivel and burn, eaten away by the nature of her poison. She wanted to hear them scream. She wanted them to feel what she feels, if only for a bit. She wanted to paint with their blood, tracing sigils of old into her skin and practicing the kind of magic that would have her mother fainting on the front lawn and her father puking into the ugly orange tulips tracing the stark white walls of her pretty little muggle home.

But for now, she'd have to settle for the rats haunting the bathroom floor.

#Harry Potter #Ron Weasley #Hermione Granger #black hermione granger #INDIAN HARRY POTTER #dark au #dark golden trio #golden trio #not v happy #and ive brought you mur #thank you #mur-dur!#JUDAS

157 notes · View notes

ariars-art · 4 years

Photo

First post of the new name/direction of this blog with my Linked Universe Percy Jackson AU! Meet the Demi-God boys!

After cleaning out my room a couple of weeks ago I found my old PJO & HoO books and my old obsession clashed with my new one along with my passion for mythology! I have a lot of stuff thought up about this AU and I’m going to keep riding the self indulgence juices for as long as I can!

Some info on the boys/the AU can be found below! Not everything is below, I would like to keep some secret/for the future ;) And feel free to ask/send questions about the AU, I would die of happiness if you did!

Wind -Son of Poseidon (God of the Sea, Storms, Earthquakes, Droughts, Floods and Horses) Counselor of Cabin 3. -14 years old. 3 years at camp. -He is a summer camper, and lives with his Grandma and younger sister Aryll when not at camp, they are unsure if his sister is a Demi-God as well. -Has gone on a few of quests so far, mainly ones that involved the sea including one to the sea of monster with his best friend/best rival Tetra. -Really excited about all his new cousins and family. -Hates being underestimated due to his age, he’s been on quests, he's a son of Poseidon, he’s just as capable as the rest of them! -Favourite part of his powers is his ability to talk to fish and horses. Horses don’t like him back though. Wild -Son of Hypnos? (God of Sleep and the Personification of Sleep) -Doesn’t even know his age, let alone his birthday. -A year round camper, well he’s got no where else to go. First year at CHB -All he remembers is being inside a nice plush cabin with lots of pillows a tree growing in the middle that leaked a milky colored sap that was dripping over his hands and lips. -Slept for a really long time and he guesses now he has no memory? At least that’s what Chiron told him. But why does he feel so guilty? -No quests just yet, he likes practicing archery trick-shots with the Apollo kids. -A daughter of Athena keeps trying to get him to eat frogs and bugs. Some of them make him feel funny. Twilight -Son of Lupercus (God of Shepherds and Wader against Wolves), Champion of Lupa (Wolf Goddess). Centurion of Cohort 3. -19 years old. 4 Years at Camp. -Summer Camper, goes home despite it being uncommon for Romans to do so. -Wasn’t found until he was 15, his father was too minor of a god to really draw any attention to Twilight. He liked it that way. He trained himself and it was enough to protect himself for a couple of years. -When he was 15, one of his mortal friends was killed the crossfire of one of the few monster attacks, afterwards he was taken to Camp Jupiter. -Whilst completing his training in the Wolf House under Lupa the wolf Goddess, the she-wolf took a liking to him and agreed to train him further than other Demi-gods and eventually took him on as her champion. -On a quest met someone and they teamed up and he fell in love with her despite knowing that she could never love him back. -Talk shit you get the stick Sky -Son of Zeus (God of the Sky, Lightning and Thunder. King of the Gods) Counselor of Cabin 1. -19 years old. 3 years at Camp. -Year round camper, but wishes he could be a summer camper like his girlfriend. -Very in love with his girlfriend who is a Daughter of Apollo, they knew each other as kids but never knew they were both Demi-Gods. -Has been on only two or three quests but they were very big/very important and needed the power of a son Zeus. Doesn’t like to think about his first quest. -Prefers to use his Wind powers over his Lightning Powers. -Feels quite bad due to the fact ever since he and his younger cousin (Wind) showed up at camp the number of monster attacks have only increased. -Jealous of Wind’s ability to talk to some animal, he wishes he could communicate with his bird.

Four -Son of Hephaestus (God of Fire, the Forge, Metalworking, Technology and Blacksmiths) Co-counselor of Cabin 9. -18 years old. 4 years at camp. -Summer Camper, goes home to his Grandfather during the year. -Quite small for an child of Hephaestus but that doesn’t put him down. -Known for stealing extra end of year beads from the Big House. -Sometimes seen talking to himself. -Is most skilled in weapons but has dabbled in creating automatons but all he ended up with was a cranky bird who likes to sit on his head, he named him E.Z.L.O. -”Yes I did flex and my sleeves fell off, shut up Legend!”

Hyrule -Son of Hecate (Goddess of Magic, Crossroads, Sorcery, Necromany and Light) -16 years old. 2 years at Camp. -Year round camper -Still quite new at all this Half-blood Demi-God stuff . -His Saytr guide got killed while escorting him to camp, managed to make the rest of the journey by himself. -His magic goes a bit haywire when he is stressed, last time he turned 3 members of the Hebe cabin in an acorn, plank of wood and a toaster for a few hours. -A little scared cause he feels unworthy next to all his siblings and all the other heroes in camp, but knows deep down he might be stronger than most of them. -Keeps taking the new Hypnos kid into the forest around the camp and sometimes they don’t show up again for a few days.

Time -Son of Janus (God of Beginnings, Transitions, Time, Duality, Doorways, Passages, and Endings) Former Praetor of Camp Jupiter, Former Centurion of the First Cohort. -Age unknown, but he’s quite old for a Demi-god. -Gave up the Demi-God life and his Praetor position years ago to go and live with his mortal wife. -Due to his powers he sometimes ends up walking through doorways through time and space. Thats how he ended up here. Not his first rodeo in this time though. -Was raised by a group of forest Dryads for the first years of his life before moving to Camp Jupiter. -Been on many quests, including one which ended up with him having to battle against the primordial moon goddess Luna. After winning the fight he took her sword. - “Look, I didn’t ask to be a half-blood.” Legend -Son of Hermes (God of Roads, Travel, Athletes, Diplomacy, Thieves, Commerce and Trade. Messenger of the Gods) Counselor of Cabin 10. -17 years old. 7 years at Camp. -Year round/Summer Camper, it kinda changes every year. -Currently holds onto the record for the most quests at Camp Half-Blood. Kinda proud but also kinda over it. -Hoarder of all sorts of items, unknown where he gets all these items from. -Bonded with Hyrule while he was holed up in Cabin 10 before his claiming by Hecate. -He sees a possible opportunity in the son of Poseidon to help him return to the mysterious island he wash up on years ago. An island where he fell in love with a goddess who could never leave. But he is going to find a way, he will. -Stole a pair of his dad’s flying shoes, but turns out they were kinda a dud. Can’t fly but can run really fast. Warriors -Son of Mars (God of War and Destruction) & Legacy of Venus (Goddess of Love, Beauty, Desire, Prosperity and Victory). Praetor of the 12th Legion. Former Centurion of Cohort 5. -18 years old. 4 years at Camp. -Year round camper. He’s in charge so he’s got to stay. -At first thought to be another child of Mars with a pretty face he was placed in Cohort 5. He was quickly made centurion of the ragtag group of Demi-Gods and quickly the cohort was competing with the best of them. -He caught the eye of the current female Preator and when her colleague failed to return from a quest, she promoted Warriors to Preator, despite him not having completed the minimum 5 years of service to be eligible for the position. -Most well known for helping defend Camp Jupiter during a war a year ago, which helped solidify his new position as Praetor. But he feels guilty for every life lost in each of the battles. -A bit of a heartthrob who can't help but flaunt his double legacy sometimes.

#linked universe #linkeduniverse #lu #legend of zelda #loz #link #percy jackson au #pjo au #twilight #wild #wind #my art #sky #time #warriors #legend #hyrule #four

626 notes · View notes

annabethy · 4 years

Note

Teach au like slightly needy percy where annabeth has been busy and percy is missing his annabeth tiime i see a lot of clingy annabeth but never percy and hes obsessed with his girl.

attention-seeking percabeth!

Percy quietly sulks from Annabeth’s chair, his arms crossed over his chest and his face morphed into a pout.

He’s a little bit insulted that Annabeth wasn’t paying any attention to him. He came all the way from his classroom, unannounced, only to have her steal his food and ignore him. Percy isn’t one to be self-absorbed but come on. He deserved attention more than her students, he likes to think.

“What’s up with you?” Annabeth calls from across the classroom. She’s leaning over a student’s desk, helping them with a problem from the homework.

Percy looks up for a moment to glare at her before sliding further down the seat and pointedly staring at the ground.

“What did I do this time?”

People are starting to look at the couple, amused and intrigued by their teachers’ bickering that was sure to come. He should probably be alarmed that the students are already butting in, but now the attention is on him, and this is his time to shine.

“You’re ignoring me,” he tells her.

“I’m doing my job.”

Percy feels a stab of pride through the thick haze of jealousy, because yes, she was doing her job, and she looked damn great doing it. He took a few seconds before responding just to trace over her body, appreciating the way her hair was thrown up in a messy ponytail and her hand was gently tapping a whiteboard marker against the desk. He always loved to see her in her working mode, the way her face morphs into one of concentration, the way she bites at her lip while grading papers or solving a problem.

Being ignored might not be so bad, now that he thinks of it. It just means he gets to watch her in her natural environment without judgement.

Without judgement from Annabeth, anyways. He’s pretty sure Piper is in there somewhere, but Percy can’t be bothered to tear his eyes away from Annabeth, who was now looking at him, clearly amused.

“You sure you want me to talk to you?” Annabeth asks, smirking. “You seem to be having fun all on your own there.”

Percy has half a mind to quickly dart his eyes down before he’s planning his revenge for her actually tricking him into thinking he—

He clears his throat and sits up straighter, raising an eyebrow at her. “Go back to teaching. I’ll be okay. It’s not like I need my girlfriend to love me or anything.”

Annabeth shrugs, a twinkle in her eyes, and then she goes back to helping a freshman he’s never seen before. Percy is only a little bit sad because he at least managed to get her to look at him. It’s more than she’s done in the past week.

Percy jumps when Piper slides into the desk next to him. She leans forwards, and Percy just stares blankly at her until she speaks.

“I’m here to help you,” Piper explains.

“I’m the one who needs help?” Percy says.

“That is not a conversation you want to get into, Mr. Jackson.” Piper smiles innocently. “As you probably know, I am very invested in your relationship with her. I’ve noticed that she’s a little bit preoccupied. I’ve also noticed that one of the reasons you love her is because she’s very focused, which we both know means she won’t be coming to talk to you as long as there’s a student that needs help.”

Percy’s mind is trying to play catch up, completely confused by where Piper was going with this.

“I’m going to ask her a lot of stupid questions to lure her over here. While she’s here, you start up a conversation.”

“I’m not in high school, Piper.”

“You’re teaching in one,” she challenges dully. “I need my daily dose of teacher love. It makes the tests easier when you’re both happy.”

“I feel like I’m a part of some devious plan.”

Piper pats his shoulder. “Oh, Mr. Jackson.”

A second later, Piper is flagging down Annabeth, leaving Percy to try and pull on his poker face. Annabeth would know something’s up in a second.

“Ms. Chase, how do I find the slope of a line?”

Percy can’t help the snort he gives because he didn’t think Piper was going for a question that stupid. Even he knew that one.

“Is that a serious question?” Annabeth asks. She glances at Percy out of the side of his eye, but otherwise doesn’t question why he looks ominous sitting in the corner.

“I can’t think of it.”

“Difference in y over the difference in x,” Annabeth tells her slowly.

Piper nods as though she knew this all along, and she motions for Annabeth to get closer so she can point to a specific question. When Annabeth kneels down in front of the desk to help her, Piper shoots Percy a look over Annabeth’s shoulder, mouthing something indistinguishable.

It’s kind of weird, conspiring with an eighteen-year-old. He doesn’t think he’s ever had a student as unashamed and gutsy as Piper. Maybe that’s why she was Annabeth’s favorite student. She used to be his favorite too until she started making fun of him.

Piper once asked him if he was getting grey hair. He’s only twenty-five.

“What did you eat this morning? Stupid loops?” Percy says, it being the only think he can come up with in the moment. Both Annabeth and Piper look at him in shock, and he can tell that Piper didn’t think he would start a conversation with Annabeth at the expense of her own dignity.

Piper just scowls, knowing her promise to him, and she continues on with the dumb questions. “When there’s a negative sign outside the parenthesis, what do I do with it?”

“Oh, come on,” Percy groans dramatically, internally grinning when Annabeth’s attention turns back to him. “You don’t want to deal with this sort of stupidity this early in the morning, do you?”

“You’re mean today,” Annabeth notes.

“I think it’s well deserved,” he says, gesturing towards Piper.

Annabeth doesn’t argue, and Piper looks even more insulted that her teacher didn’t defend her.

“But since I have you here,” Percy continues, “what do you say to going out to dinner tonight?”

“I say that it’s a school night and you’re being mean.”

“Nonsense. I’ll pay.”

Annabeth looks highly unamused as she stares at him, and her eyes quickly look to Piper before going back to him. Percy’s heart stops for a moment, fearful that she had discovered their conjoined plan, but then he calms when he realizes that it wouldn’t actually matter if she found out he lured her here because she would one-thousand percent not actually care.

“We’re going!” he announces, loud enough for the whole class.

This time, Annabeth does smile, taking a step towards him to nudge his foot with hers. “You’re such a romantic.”

Percy preens, even moreso when Piper gives him a big thumbs up. “I know I am.”

He’s much happier now than he was five minutes ago because Annabeth’s eyes are on him and that’s all he ever wants. She’s gazing at him softly, and he sees the marker still in her hand. Up close, he can see the small strands of hair falling from her ponytail. He can see the faint splay of freckles on her skin, the pink flush on her cheeks, and the shimmer of her grey eyes, like the calm before a storm.

“Are you planning on tricking me onto that date too?”

Percy comes reeling to reality. “Huh?” he says, and it’s not his most eloquent moment, his mouth gaping slightly.

“You think I didn’t realize you planned… whatever this is? I’m not stupid.”

“I didn’t do anything,” he denies, but there’s a hint of a smile on his lips.

“Piper’s stupid, but she’s not that stupid,” Annabeth says, ignoring Piper’s hey! “You two play dirty. I have to watch my back.”

“It was Piper’s idea.”

“Way to throw me under the bus,” Piper mutters.

“I only did it because I missed you,” Percy says. “I know I interrupted your work time, but you can’t be mad at me because you were ignoring me. Desperate times call for desperate measures.”

“Desperate times?” Annabeth asks, humored.

“I need attention, Annabeth!”

Annabeth shushed him, stepping closer again. When she spoke, only he could hear her.

“I promise to give you as much attention as you want later today but let me have my math fun.”

“You would want to have math fun,” he teases. He knew he wasn’t going to be getting her attention anymore, but the unsaid promise of her hugs and kisses was enough to battle the disappointment. “Fine. Later then.”

“Later,” she repeats. He wants to kiss her so badly, but there are too many people around, so he settles for taking her hand and squeezing three times, awaiting the three squeezes back.

“I love you so much,” he says, because he can’t help it.

Annabeth gives him a scolding look, but she still says, “I love you too.”

#percy jackson #percabeth #pjo #annabeth chase #percy jackson and the olympians #teacher au #anon #asks #my writing

97 notes · View notes

collegeburnoutsuperstar · 4 years

Text

Social Distancing Book Recs

I’ve been getting tons of book recommendations from friends and family to help get through social distancing/self-quarantine, so I thought I should share some of my favorite books with everybody!

Horror/Apocalyptic: *all books are ADULT*

- The Stand by Stephen King “This is the way the world ends: with a nanosecond of computer error in a Defense Department laboratory and a million casual contacts that form the links in a chain letter of death. And here is the bleak new world of the day after: a world stripped of its institutions and emptied of 99 percent of its people. A world in which a handful of panicky survivors choose sides -- or are chosen” (Goodreads Summary).

- Inferno by Dan Brown “Harvard professor of symbology Robert Langdon awakens in an Italian hospital, disorientated and with no recollection of the past thirty-six hours, including the origin of the macabre object hidden in his belongings. With a relentless female assassin tailing them through Florence, he and his resourceful doctor, Sienna Brooks, are forced to flee. Embarking on a harrowing journey, they must unravel a series of codes, which are the work of a brilliant scientist whose obsession with the end of the world is matched only by his passion for one of the most influential masterpieces ever written, Dante Alighieri’s The Inferno” (Goodreads Summary).

- World War Z by Max Brooks “The Zombie War came unthinkably close to eradicating humanity. Max Brooks, driven by the urgency of preserving the acid-etched first-hand experiences of the survivors from those apocalyptic years, traveled across the United States of America and throughout the world, form decimated cities that once teemed with upwards of thirty million souls to the most remote and inhospitable areas of the planet. He recorded the testimony of men, women, and sometimes children who came face-to-face with the living, or at least the undead, hell of that dreadful time. World War Z is the result. Never before have we had access to a document that so powerfully conveys the depth of fear and horror, and also the ineradicable spirit of resistance, that gripped human society through the plague years” (Goodreads summary).

- It by Stephen King “It’s a small city, a place as hauntingly familiar as your own hometown. Only in Derry the haunting is real... They were seven teenagers when they first stumbled upon the horror. Now they are grown-up men and women who have gone out into the big world to gain success and happiness. But none of them can withstand the force that has drawn them back to Derry to face the nightmare without an end, and the evil without a name” (Goodreads summary).

- The Shining by Stephen King “Jack Torrance’s new job at the Overlook Hotel is the perfect chance for a fresh start. As the off-season caretaker at the atmospheric old hotel, he’ll have plenty of time to spend reconnecting with his family and working on his writing. But as the harsh winter weather sets in, the idyllic locations feels ever more remote... and more sinister. And the only one to notice the strange and terrible forces gathering around the Overlook is Danny Torrance, a uniquely gifted five-year-old” (Goodreads summary).

- House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski “[House of Leaves] focuses on a young family that moves into a small home on Ash Tree Lane where they discover something is terribly wrong: their house is bigger on the inside than it is on the outside. Of course, neither Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist Will Navidson nor his companion Karen Green was prepared to face the consequences of the impossibility, until the day their two little children wandered off and their voices eerily began to return another story -- of creature darkness, of an ever-growing abyss behind a closet door, and of the unholy growl which soon enough would tear through their walls and consume all their dreams” (Goodreads summary).

Comedy:

- Good Omens by Neil Gaimen and Terry Pratchett “People have been predicting the end of the world almost from its very beginning, so it’s only natural to be skeptical when a new date is set for Judgement Day. But what if, for once, the predictions are right, and the apocalypse really is due to arrive next Saturday, just after tea? You could spend the time left drowning your sorrows, giving away all your possessions in preparation for the rapture, or laughing it off as (hopefully) just another hoax. Or you could just try to do something about it. It’s a predicament that Aziraphale, a somewhat fussy angel, and Crowley, a fast-living demon now finds themselves in. They’ve been living amongst Earth’s mortals since The Beginning and, truth be told, have grown rather fond of the lifestyle and, in all honesty, are not actually looking forward to the coming Apocalypse. And then there’s the small matter that someone appears to have misplaced the Antichrist... “ (Goodreads summary).

- Dad Is Fat by Jim Gaffigan *PG-13* Dad is Fat is a comedic memoir that details Jim Gaffigan’s life growing up in a large Catholic family to his experiences as a husband and father (specifically parenting his five young children while living in a tiny walk-up apartment in New York). I highly recommend the audiobook (which is narrated by Jim Gaffigan), my family and I always listen to it during road trips. It never stops being funny.

- Bored of the Rings: A Parody of J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings by The Harvard Lampoon *ADULT* “A quest, a war, a ring that would be grounds for calling any wedding off, a king without a kingdom, and a little, furry ‘hero’ named Frito, ready -- or maybe just forced by the wizard of Goodgulf-- to undertake the one mission which can save Lower Middle Earth from enslavement by the evil Sorhed… Luscious Elfmaidens, a roller-skating dragon, ugly plants that can soul-kiss the unwary to death-- these are just some of the ingredients in the wildest, wackiest, most irreverent excursion into fantasy realms that anyone has ever dared to undertake” (Goodreads summary).

Middle-Grade:

- Percy Jackson and the Olympians series by Rick Riordan (book 1: The Lightning Thief) “Percy Jackson is a good kid, but he can’t seem to focus on his schoolwork or control his temper. And lately, being away at boarding school is only getting worse - Percy could have sworn his pre-algebra teacher turned into a monster and tried to kill him. When Percy’s mom finds out, she knows it’s time that he knew the truth about where he came from, and that he go to the one place he’ll be safe. She sends Percy to Camp Half Blood, a summer camp for demigods. Soon a mystery unfolds and together with his friends-- one a satyr and the other the demigod daughter of Athena-- Percy sets out on a quest across the United States to reach the gates of the Underworld and prevent a catastrophic war between the gods” (Goodreads summary).

- The Heroes of Olympus series by Rick Riordan (book 1: The Lost Hero) “Jason has a problem. He doesn’t remember anything before waking up in a bus full of kids on a field trip. Apparently he has a girlfriend named Piper, and a best friend named Leo. They’re all students at a boarding school for ‘bad kids.’ What id Jason do to end up here? And where is here, exactly? Piper has a secret. Her father has been missing for three days, ever since she had that terrifying nightmare about his being in trouble. Piper doesn’t understand her dream, or why her boyfriend suddenly doesn’t recognize her. When a freak storm hits during the school trip, unleashing strange creatures and whisking her, Jason, and Leo away to someplace called Camp Half-Blood, she has a feeling she’s going to find out. Leo has a way with tools. When he sees his cabin at Camp Half-Blood, filled with power tools and machine parts, he feels right at home. But there’s weird stuff, too-- like the curse everyone keeps talking about, and some camper who’s gone missing. Weirdest of all, his bunkmates insist that each of them--including Leo-- is related to a god. Does this have anything to do with Jason’s amnesia, or the fact that Leo keeps seeing ghosts?” (Goodreads summary)

- The Children of the Red King series by Jenny Nimmo (book 1: Midnight for Charlie Bone) “Charlie Bone has a special gift-- he can hear people in photographs talking! The fabulous powers of the Red King were passed down through his descendants, after turning up quite unexpectedly, in someone who had no idea where they came from. This is what happened to Charlie Bone, and to some of the children he met behind the grim, gray walls of Bloor’s Academy. His scheming aunts decide to send him to Bloor’s Academy, a school for geniuses where he uses his grifts to discover the truth despite all the dangers that lie ahead” (Goodreads summary).

- Things Not Seen by Andrew Clements “Bobby Phillips is an average fifteen-year-old boy. Until the morning he wakes up and can’t see himself in the mirror. Not blind, not dreaming. Bobby is just plain invisible... There doesn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason to Bobby’s new conditions; even his dad the physicist can’t figure it out. For Bobby that means no school, no friends, no life. He’s a missing person” (Goodreads summary).

Science Fiction:

- Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick *Adult* “It was January 2021, and Rick Deckard had a license to kill. Somewhere among the hordes of humans out there, lurked several rogue androids. Deckard’s assignment-- find them and then... ‘retire’ them. Trouble was, the androids all looked exactly like humans, and they didn’t want to be found!” (Goodreads summary).

- Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton * Suitable for Young Adults* “An astonishing technique for recovering and cloning dinosaur DNA has been discovered. Now humankind’s most thrilling fantasies have come true. Creatures extinct for eons roam Jurassic Park with their awesome presence and profound mystery, and all the world can visit them-- for a price. Until something goes wrong...” (Goodreads summary).

Fantasy:

- The Magicians trilogy by Lev Grossman *ADULT* (book 1: The Magicians) “Quentin Coldwater is brilliant but miserable. A senior in high school, he’s still secretly preoccupied with a series of fantasy novels he read as a child, set in a magical land called Fillory. Imagine his surprise when he finds himself unexpectedly admitted to a very secret, very exclusive college of magic in upstate New York, where he receives a thorough and rigorous education in the craft of modern sorcery. He also discovers all the other things people learn in college: friendship, love, sex, booze, and boredom. Something is missing, though. Magic doesn’t bring Quentin the happiness and adventure he dreamed it would. After graduation he and his friends make a stunning discovery: Fillory is real. But the land of Quentin’s fantasies turns out to be much darker and more dangerous than he could have imagined. His childhood dream becomes a nightmare with a shocking truth at its heart” (Goodreads summary).

- The Raven Cycle by Maggie Stiefvater *YA* (book 1: The Raven Boys) “What do you know about Welsh kings?” This incredibly atmospheric story centers on a seemingly random group of teens as they uncover the mysterious and magical secrets of their small Virginia town.

- A Darker Shade of Magic by V.E. Schwab *Suitable for Young Adults* “Kell is one of the last Antari-- magicians with a rare, coveted ability to travel between parallel Londons; Red, Grey, White, and, once upon a time, Black. Kell was raised in Arnes-- Red London-- and officially serves the Maresh Empire as an ambassador, traveling between the frequent bloody regime changes in White London and the court of George III in the dullest of Londons, the one without any magic left to see. Unofficially, Kell is a smuggler, servicing people willing to pay for even the smallest glimpses of a world they’ll never see. After an exchange goes awry, Kell escapes to Grey London and runs into Delilah Bard, a cut-purse with lofty aspirations. She first robs him, then saves him from a deadly enemy, and finally forces Kell to spirit her to another world for a proper adventure. Now perilous magic is afoot, and treacher lurks at every turn. To save all of the worlds, they’ll first need to stay alive” (Goodreads summary).

- The Lord of the Rings trilogy by J.R.R. Tolkien *Suitable for middle-grade through adult* “In ancient times the Rings of Power were crafted by the Elven-smiths, and Sauron, the Dark Lord. forged the One Ring, filling it with his own power so that he could rule all others. But the One Ring was taken form him, and though he sought it throughout Middle-earth, it remained lost to him. After many ages it fell by chance into the hands of the hobbit Bilbo Baggins. When Bilbo reached his eleventy-first birthday he disappeared, bequeathing to his young cousin Frodo the Ruling Ring and a perilous quest: to journey across Middle-earth, deep into the shadow of the Dark Lord, and destroy the Ring by casting it into the Cracks of Doom” (Goodreads summary).

- The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss *Adult* “Told in Kvothe’s own voice, this is the tale of the magically gifted young man who grows to be the most notorious wizard his world has ever seen. The intimate narrative of his childhood in a troupe of traveling players, his years spent as a near-feral orphan in a crime-ridden city, his daringly brazen yet successful bit to enter a legendary school of magic, and his life as a fugitive, and his life as a fugitive after the murder of a king form a gripping coming-of-age story” (Goodreads summary).

- The Lies of Locke Lamora by Scott Lynch *Adult* “An orphan’s life is harsh-- and often short-- in the mysterious island city of Camorr. But youge Locke Lamora dodges death and slavery, becoming a thief under the tutelage of a gifted con artist. As leader of the band of light-fingered brothers known as the Gentleman Bastards, Loke is soon infamous, fooling even the underworld’s most feared ruler. But in the shadows lurks someone still more ambitious and deadly. Faced with a bloody coup that threatens to destroy everyone and everything that holds meaning in his mercenary life, Locke vows to beat the enemy at his own brutal game-- or die trying” (Goodreads summary).

Fiction:

- The Stephanie Plum series by Janet Evanovich *ADULT mystery-thrillers/romance* (book 1: One for the Money) “You’ve lost your job as a department store lingerie buyer, your car’s been repossessed, and most of your furniture and small appliances have been sold off to pay last month’s rent. Now the rent is due again. And you live in New Jersey. What do you do? If you’re Stephanie Plum, you become a bounty hunter. But not just a nickel-and-dime bounty hunter; you go after the big money. That means a cop gone bad. And not just any cop. She goes after Joe Morelli, a disgraced former vice cop who is also the man who took Stephanie’s virginity at age 16 and the wrote details on a bathroom wall. With pride and rent money on the line, Plum plunges headlong into her first case, one that pits her against ruthless adversaries - people who’d rather kill than lose” (Goodreads summary).

- The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown *Adult* “While in Paris, Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon is awakened by a phone call in the dead of the night. The elderly curator of the Louvre has been murdered inside the museum, his body covered in baffling symbols. As Langdon and gifted French cryptologist Sophie Neveu sort through the bizarre riddles, they are stunned to discover a trail of clues hidden in the works of Leonardo da Vinci-- clues visible for all to see and yet ingeniously disguised by the painter. Even more startling, the late curator was involved in the Priory of Sion-- a secret society whose members included Sir Isaac Newton, Victory Hugo, and Da Vici-- and he guarded a breathtaking historical secret. Unless Landon and Neveu can decipher the labyrinthine puzzle-- while avoiding the faceless adversary who shadows their every move-- the explosive, ancient truth will be lost forever” (Goodreads summary).

- Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle *Adult* Sherlock Holmes stories are always fun when stuck at home.

- 11/22/63 by Stephen King *Adult* “Life can turn on a dime-- or stumble into the extraordinary, as it does for Jake Epping, a high school English teacher in Lisbon Falls, Maine. While grading essays by his GED students, Jake reads a gruesome, enthralling piece penned by janitor Harry Dunning: fifty years ago, Harry somehow survived his father’s sledgehammer slaughter of his entire family, Jake is blown away... but an even more bizarre secret comes to light when Jake’s friend Al, owner of the local diner, enlists Jake to take over the mission that has become his obsession-- to prevent the Kennedy assassination. How? By stepping through a portal in the diner’s storeroom, and into the ear of Ike and Elvis, or big American cars, sock hops, and cigarette smoke... Finding himself in warmhearted Jodie, Texas, Jake begins a new life. But all turns in the road lead to a troubled loner named Lee Harvey Oswald. The course of history is about to be rewritten... and become heart-stoppingly suspenseful” (Goodreads summary).

Non-Fiction:

- The Men Who Stare at Goats by Jon Ronson *Adult* “In 1979 a secret unit was established by the most gifted minds within the U.S. Army. Defying all known accepted military practice-- and indeed, the laws of physics-- they believed that a soldier could adopt a cloak of invisibility, pass cleanly through walls, and, perhaps most chillingly, kill goats just by staring at them. Entrusted with defending America from all known adversaries, they were the First Earth Battalion. And they really weren’t joking. What’s more, they’re back and fighting the War on Terror. With firsthand access to the leading players in the story, Ronson traces the evolution of these bizarre activities over the past three decades and shows how they are alive today within the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and in postwar Iraq. Why are they blasting Iraqi prisoners of war with the theme tune to Barney the Purple Dinosaur? Why have 100 debleated goats been secretly placed inside the Special Forces Command Center at Fort Bragg, North Carolina? How was the U.S. military associated with the mysterious mass suicide of a strange cult form San Diego? The Men Who Stare at Goats answers these and many more questions” (Goodreads summary).

- Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert *Adult* (I recommend listening to the audiobook, which is narrated by Elizabeth Gilbert) “To recover from [an early midlife crisis, divorce, and depression], Gilbert took a radical step. In order to give herself the time and space to find out who she really was and what she really wanted, she got rid of her belongings, quit her job, and undertook a yearlong journey around the world-- all alone. Eat, Pray, Love is the absorbing chronicle of that year. Her aim was to visit three places where she could examine one aspect of her own nature set against the backdrop of a culture that has traditionally done that one thing very well. In Rome, she studied the art of pleasure, learning to speak Italian and gaining the twenty-three happiest pounds of her life. India was for the art of devotion, and with the help of a native guru and a surprisingly wise cowboy from Texas, she embarked on four uninterrupted months of spiritual exploration. In Bali, she studied the art of balance between worldly enjoyment and divine transcendence. She became the pupil of an elderly medicine man and also fell in love the best way-- unexpectedly” (Goodreads summary).

353 notes · View notes

artificialqueens · 3 years

Text

Tree House Kisses, Chapter 41 (Adorney) - Scorpio and Veronica

A/N: Hi everyone! Okay so, in this chapter, they begin working on a new musical, and I URGE you to check it out if you haven’t: The Scarlet Pimpernel. Also! I made a playlist with every song we’ve used as chapter titles, including the upcoming ones pretty much through the end of the story. Click here for previous chapters or here if you’d rather read on AO3. And thank you SO MUCH to wonderful betas: @saiphl, @sillylittlecandycane!!! XOXOXO

Chapter Summary: New semester, new school musical: and Courtney’s star is finally on the rise.

Chapter 41: You Are My Home

It was weird having Roy back home for the holidays, Adore thought, watching him tell a story to Bob, Jamin, and Thorgy, commanding all the attention as usual, sipping from a solo cup and gesturing wildly. It was even weirder to see him getting sloppy-drunk as the night wore on--Adore supposed that college was a bigger challenge than he’d planned for, and maybe he needed to blow off some steam. Still, seeing him grope Courtney as he bent her over Thorgy’s pool table was certainly...something different.

It was over a month since the night of her break-up with Tati, that near miss where she’d come so scarily close to a confession. Once in a while, late at night, she’d have a brief twinge of regret for not being honest. Most of the time though, she felt like she’d absolutely made the right call--their friendship was stronger than it had ever been. So Roy’s dumbass horndog behavior tonight was actually making her laugh.

Maybe it was Courtney’s eye rolls as he rubbed against her, but Adore didn’t find Roy nearly as annoying as she used to. He was no longer a looming, oppressive reminder of her hopeless crush. He was just a guy who came back from college to awkwardly hang out with his high school friends over winter break. A guy who was currently grinding pathetically against his girlfriend, trying (and failing) to get some affection.

“I thought you were gonna teach me Vanessa’s tricks,” Courtney said, pushing him away gently as she lined up her cue.

“I’m trying, but I need to get close,” Roy said, pulling her ass back against him. He leaned forward and murmured something into her hair, something which made her burst out laughing.

“Ummm...no offense, babe, but I don’t really feel like you’d be on your A game tonight,” Courtney said, still giggling.

“Rude,” he pouted.

Courtney looked up, catching Adore’s eye and sending her another exaggerated eye roll. Adore smiled back at her, shaking her head.

“Do you want to sleep over tonight?” Courtney asked.

“Yes,” Roy said, moving her hair aside to kiss her neck.

“Not you!” Courtney said, swatting him on the shoulder before giving Adore an exasperated look. “I meant Dory.”

Adore knew that it was petty, but she couldn’t help the slight thrill that Courtney was choosing her over Roy. It didn’t mean anything--they’d gotten back into their old habit of Adore staying with her every time Bonnie worked a night shift, and she knew that’s all it was. And anyway, it probably wasn’t going to happen, given the way Roy was now pouting and whining.

“Why her? She gets to see you all the time!” Roy argued, indignant. When Courtney didn’t immediately cave, he tried a softer tactic. “Please, baby, I miss you so much…”

“Fine. You can have the floor,” Courtney said, taking Adore by such surprise that she didn’t have time to cover her mouth before a loud cackle of laughter escaped.

“You are the meanest girlfriend in the entire world,” Roy said.

“I know.” Courtney leaned forward and kissed him gently on the cheek.

PEARL: How was your sleepover?

ADORE: So weird

PEARL: Did all three of you pile into Courtney’s bed?

ADORE: Ew, not that weird. No, Roy slept on the floor in a sleeping bag and Courtney and I slept in her bed. So like...just awkward as fuck.

PEARL: What’s wrong, you don’t like spooning her while her boyfriend is 2 feet away?

ADORE: Ugh

PEARL: Wanna come over today? Trin’s gonna be here in like an hour

ADORE: I can’t. I told Court I’d go ice skating with her and Roy.

PEARL: Well well well, how cosy

ADORE: Shut up

PEARL: The three musketeers

ADORE: SHUT UP

Adore sighed. She supposed it was probably strange that she’d been spending her whole break hanging out with Courtney and Roy, but it wasn’t her fault. Courtney invited her everywhere and Roy was just...always there. Besides, when it really came down to it, she liked Roy. And she liked how happy Courtney was when all three of them were together. And to her relief, they’d chilled out a lot on the PDA, now more like an old married couple who teased each other constantly and bickered playfully, using Adore to settle every disagreement.

So, if they had to be the Three Musketeers for another week, Adore was actually fine with that.

The musical for their senior year was The Scarlet Pimpernel, and Courtney was absolutely beside herself with glee when she landed the lead. All weekend, she listened to the soundtrack on repeat, falling in love with the music and story and her character, a French actress named Marguerite who was embroiled in a complicated love triangle with her British aristocrat husband and her French revolutionary ex-lover. She sang the songs over and over until she knew them by heart, and drove everyone in the household bonkers with her attempt at a French accent.

They had their first cast reading on a Monday evening in mid-January, and as usual, Mrs. Maguire had them sing through their songs as best they could. Courtney was especially excited when it came time to sing her duet with Adore, who was cast as her brother. It was a gorgeous, sappy ballad and one of her favorites in the show, always making her tear up.

Adore began a bit tentatively, since she hadn’t spent nearly as much time listening to the soundtrack as Courtney, but after a few bars, she got into it too, the drama of clinging to her “sister” as they waited in jail, facing the guillotine together.

“You are my home You make me strong And in this world of strangers, I belong to someone You are all I have You’re all I have; I need you so…”

Courtney, of course, had already memorized every word, and she sang directly into Adore’s eyes, arms wrapped around her neck.

Later, in her office, Mrs. Maguire was sitting pensively, brow furrowed in concern when Thorgy came in to let her know that the crew was finished cleaning up.

“Thor...let me ask you a question. I need a...second opinion.”

“Sure.”

“Do you think it was a mistake casting Courtney and Adore as siblings?”

“How so?” he asked carefully.

She cleared her throat. “Well...do you think they have too much of a...how should I put this...romantic vibe?”

Thorgy burst out laughing.

“Mrs. Maguire...girl…you don’t know the half of it.”

“So, I didn’t imagine that?”

“No. They’ve always been like that,” he told her.

“I mean, I knew they were close friends, but...isn’t Courtney still dating Roy?”

“Yeah...yeah. But…well, you saw it.” Thorgy chuckled again.

“Oy.” Mrs. Maguire picked up a cast list. “I may need to change some things around.”

The next day, a solution fell into her lap when Willam came to see her during the fourth period, looking more distraught than she’d ever seen him. Apparently, he was committed to the show choir for the Spring, and there were a bunch of scheduling conflicts with rehearsals, making it damn near impossible for him to play the title role he’d gotten. It was unsettling to see a kid who was normally as cool as a cucumber so upset.

“I don’t want to quit, I love doing the plays so much,” he said tearfully, and she jumped up to give him a hug.

“Of course you don’t want to quit. Listen, honey, it’s your senior year. We can definitely figure out a way for you to do both, okay? I might have to shuffle some casting, but it’ll all work out. I promise.” She hugged him again, patting him on the back.

“If you tell anyone I cried, I’ll key your car,” came his muffled voice, and she laughed, promising to keep his shameful secret.

Once he left, she sat back down, a relieved sigh leaving her. This could work out perfectly.

She spoke to all the kids individually about their new casting. Bob was over the moon when he found out he’d be taking over Willam’s title role: the wealthy aristocratic Percy, Courtney’s new husband, who uses his foppish clothing obsession as a cover in order to go into France and rescue his friends from the guillotine. And Willam was thrilled that not only did he still have a part, but a good one--taking over Adore’s role as Courtney’s brother, Armand. Adore was also delighted--she now had Bob’s role, a radical and sexy French revolutionary and compelling villain. After reading the script closely a few times, she asked Mrs. Maguire if it was necessary to play her new character, Chauvelin, as a man.

“Can’t I be a radical leftist woman instead?” she asked, during that first week of rehearsals.

“I don’t see why not,” Mrs. Maguire answered, tossing out a casual, “Courtney, Chauvelin is now your ex-girlfriend, not your ex-boyfriend.”

Courtney looked up with wide eyes before smiling and nodding, giving Adore a sassy wink. This show was certainly going to be interesting.

As a gentle knock sounded, Courtney rolled over slightly, whimpering. She was achy and feverish and felt absolutely awful. And to make matters worse, she’d missed two whole days of rehearsal with no telling when she’d feel better. At this rate, Mrs. Maguire would probably be giving her part away to her understudy, a freshman who’d never even been in a play before.

“Come in,” she said weakly, tears collecting in her eyes as she thought about how unfair it all was. She’d worked so hard, taken ensemble roles and been an understudy herself and helped with ticket sales and sold ads for every program and never complained, and now she was probably going to lose her one chance to be the lead in a musical.

Adore pushed the door open, offering a sympathetic, “Hey, babe, how ya doin’?”

Courtney tried to lift her head, even that small movement making her wince in pain, hot tears trickling down her cheeks.

“Don’t get up!” Adore rushed to her side, placing a few books on her nightstand. “I just came by to bring your homework.”

“Thanks,” Courtney said, sniffling.

“What’s the matter?” Adore pressed a cool hand to her cheek, lips turned down in a frown as a tear slipped down Courtney’s face.

“I’m just worried that Mrs. Maguire’s gonna give my part away,” Courtney admitted.

“Don’t worry about that. It took all of today’s rehearsal to get through half of ‘The Creation of Man.’ We have plenty of shit to work on without you. Besides, no one but you could do that part justice, anyway.”

Courtney blinked back her tears, gazing up at Adore with a grateful expression.

“Really?”

“Yeah, I promise!” Adore laughed, climbing into her bed to sit beside her. “Stop worrying, okay?”

“Aren’t you afraid you’ll get sick too?” Courtney said, pulling her blankets tighter around her shoulders.

“Nahh. You know Bonnie makes me do that dumb FluMist vaccine every year. I’m invincible.”

“I don’t think that’s actually true,” Courtney said, covering her mouth with her elbow to cough.

“Well, whatever. It’s worth it to hang out with my best friend.” Adore smiled down at her, and Courtney felt like she might cry all over again.

“Thanks, baby,” she murmured softly.

“Omigod, also...the craziest shit happened today at lunch, I have to tell you about it.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah, okay so first of all...did you know that Violet applied to Columbia early-decision and got in?”

“Wow.”

“Wow is right!” Adore exclaimed. “I mean, I know she’s smart, but she doesn’t give a shit about school. But apparently she got like, practically a perfect score on her SATs. And then everyone else started talking about what school they want to go to and they have all these plans and backup plans and I just...I had no idea our friends were like...so school motivated. It’s fucking weird.”

It surprised Courtney too...maybe not as much as Adore, because she’d figured that Trinity would have ambitious school plans, and Fame as well. And Pearl, well Pearl wasn’t very scholarly, but she assumed that she’d want to go to an art school or something.

“And I guess you’re probably planning to go to UCLA and move in with Roy or something,” Adore mumbled.

Courtney let out a rueful laugh, shaking her head. “I don’t have the grades for that.”

“What?” Adore looked confused. “Your grades are fine.”

“They’re okay. I could probably get into a Cal State. But Ms. Patterson told me in the fall that any UC is a pipe dream. So I’m probably gonna just do two years at a community college and then transfer.”

“Wait, seriously?”

“Yeah,” Courtney said, a deep sigh leaving her. “It’s for the best. We’ll save a bunch of money. My dad said he’d pay for my room and board, so I can still move out, thank god.”

“Move out where? Are you staying in the area?”

“No...but I dunno exactly. People say that Santa Barbara City College is good. Or Santa Monica college. It would be so great to be by the beach.”

“Ugh, I’d love to live near the beach. What I really want is to just move to LA, get some shitty retail job or whatever, and work on my music. I’m like, so close to convincing Bonnie what a good idea it is.”

“Adore! Omigod!” Suddenly, the aching in Courtney’s exhausted body didn’t matter, as she hoisted herself into a seated position to look directly into Adore’s hazel eyes. “We should be roommates!”

“Really?”

“Yeah! It would be perfect! Don’t you think?!” A smile lit up Courtney’s eyes, so big she thought it might split her face in two.

“Well...yeah, maybe...that could be cool.”

“I know, right?! Omigod, we’d have so much fun, and we could totally save money!” Courtney exclaimed, reaching forward to pull Adore in for a hug, her ecstatic joy pushing aside any thoughts of giving the flu to her friend.

Adore hugged her back, a light giggle slipping from her lips as she said, “I guess now we have a plan, too.”

Courtney was bone-tired. By the time she got over the flu, she’d missed a full week. Between catching up on her classes, the extra rehearsals, and struggling to memorize her lines, not to mention playing referee to Karen and Muriel’s latest argument over whether it was appropriate for Karen to have overnight guests, she felt like she could sleep for a week.

But she’d already agreed to this Saturday rehearsal, and she knew she needed it anyway, so she dragged herself out of bed and showed up at the theatre with an extra-large frappuccino that didn’t seem to help her exhaustion, but did make her jittery and off-balance.

That’s probably why she missed her cue, while working on her scene with Adore. At least, that’s what she would claim if anyone asked.

It was the scene in Act One where Adore’s character, Chauvelin, was trying to convince her to leave England and come back with her to Paris. She’d been zoning out a bit while Mrs. Maguire talked to Adore about the scene, explaining that her character needed to be angrier. Courtney really wasn’t paying attention like she should, but it was something about how Adore was supposed to be extra angry because not only did Marguerite abandon the French Revolution to marry a British aristocrat, but she’d also abandoned her.

Anyway, she wasn’t prepared when they started up the scene again, for the intensity with which Adore spoke her next line: “You do not belong in this cold land, with no one to understand you...to touch you.”

Adore let her fingers graze Courtney’s cheek before grabbing her waist and pulling her in roughly. A small gasp left Courtney’s lips, staring into Adore’s burning hazel eyes.

“The girl I knew could not bear this another moment,” Adore said, in a hoarse stage whisper.

As Adore inched closer, mouth softly parted, Courtney’s heart raced, fingers digging into Adore’s shoulders, eyes wide...

“Uh, Courtney?”

Courtney’s head snapped up, towards Mrs. Maguire’s voice. “Yes?”

“You’re supposed to push her away.”

“I know,” Courtney said, cheeks burning. “I was just trying to, um...act conflicted about it.”

“Wow, good work. We really believed you,” Mrs. Maguire said, and Courtney shoved Adore backwards, making her stumble slightly, nearly tripping over her feet.

“Oh god, are you okay?” Courtney reached for her hand to steady her.

“Yeah, sorry, I, uh…”

“Why don’t we take this section again, from Marguerite’s line ‘What do you know of it?’” Mrs. Maguire said, disguising her amused chuckle as a cough.

“Yeah, sure, okay.” Courtney brushed off her hands, hoping that the burning in her cheeks wasn’t obvious to everyone watching.

“So, Karen’s into Palm Reading now, huh?”

“Uh huh,” Courtney laughed. They were sitting around the tree in their usual lunch spot, Courtney sharing her mother’s latest passion by attempting to read Adore’s palm.

“So is that shitty broken one my lifeline?”

“No, this one is your lifeline…” Courtney said, finger trailing across Adore’s palm, making her giggle.

“And? What do you think?”

“You’re gonna live a long time.” Courtney grinned at her, eyes shining.

“Fuck,” Adore pouted. “You sure? Can I change that?”

Willam let out a braying laugh.

“Yeah, I know what you mean, lesbian. Personally I want to die young and beautiful.”

“One out of two isn’t bad,” Violet shrugged, earning a punch on the shoulder. “Ow!”

“Good one,” Trinity giggled.

“Watch it, cuz. I could punch you, too,” warned Willam.

“You just fucking try it. I dare you.”

“Guys, please calm down,” Fame interjected. As always, the voice of reason.

Still holding Adore’s hand, Courtney touched her palm again, shivers traveling up her arm.

“Stop it,” Adore said, biting her lip, but making no move to pull her hand away.

“A long, long life…” Courtney continued, flashing her winning smile.

Adore smiled back, but then off Violet’s intentionally loud scoff, she cleared her throat and finally snatched her hand back, just as Bob approached the group.

“Hey, uh...I need to speak to my wife,” Bob said, and Courtney laughed, getting up and following him a little ways away from the group.

“Is everything okay? Do you need-”

“What’s going on with you and Adore?” he asked quickly, head tilted down at her, brow slightly furrowed.

“What do you mean?” Courtney’s thoughts started racing, her heart beating quickly.

“Don’t play dumb with me, I’ve known you since we were 4.”

“I’m not playing!” Courtney said. “Maybe I’m just dumb?”

Bob put his hands on his hips, glaring at her. After a moment, he narrowed his eyes and said, “He really loves you--”

Courtney sighed. “I know, Bob. Okay? You don’t think I know that? And I love him-”

“--More than you deserve.”

Courtney looked at him for a long moment, a sarcastic comeback on the tip of her tongue, which she swallowed down, defeated, shifting her gaze to the ground.

“I know.” Her voice broke on the last word, a lump rising in her throat.

Bob’s voice seemed to soften a little, saying, “Look...I’m just trying to-”

“I know, you’re looking out for your friend,” Courtney said tiredly, still avoiding his knowing brown eyes. Tears stung in her own eyes. “I get it.”

“No. I’m looking out for my friends.”

At that, Courtney looked up at him, surprised.

“You’re my friend too,” he continued. “And Adore’s my friend. And I just don’t want anyone to get hurt.”

Courtney bit her lip, nodding. “Me neither,” she managed to whisper, before a single tear began to burn its way down her cheek. Bob pulled her in for a hug.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to-”

“I know.” Courtney sniffled against his shoulder. “You’re a good husband.”

“Oh yeah? Then why aren’t you in the kitchen making me some pie?”

Courtney laughed, parting from him with a good-natured shove.

“You okay?”

She nodded. “I really do love him, you know.”

“Yeah. Okay.” He smiled ruefully. “Things can’t ever be easy, huh?”

“No, I guess not.”

He pressed one last fatherly kiss to her forehead before leaving to join his own lunch group. Courtney took a moment more to collect herself, then walked back to the tree.

“What was that all about?” Pearl asked. “Everything okay?”

“Yeah, just some stuff about the play.”

“I’m so excited to see this play, it’s all you guys talk about,” Tati said.

“Yeah, better live up to the hype,” Trinity warned.

“Oh, it will,” Adore promised her with a charming grin. “We’re fucking amazing.”

“Damn right it will. Although, let’s be honest, I would have been a much better Percy than Bob,” said Willam.

“Ehhh…” Courtney grimaced.

“Fuck you, cheerleader!” Willam exclaimed, chucking an orange slice at her face.

“No I mean, you’d have been great in the campy parts, but the sincere romantic stuff? Not so much.”

“Yeah, remember last year? You two were the least believable teen romance ever,” Adore laughed, and Courtney joined in, nodding.

“Exactly.”

“Are you saying I can’t play it straight?” Willam looked deeply offended.

“Yeah, that’s exactly what we’re saying,” Adore told him.

“Oh yeah? Well, watch this…Come here, Virginia.” He grabbed Tati, who immediately squirmed away.

“Don’t touch me,” she said, pushing him onto the grass.

“Sorry.”

“See? A straight guy wouldn’t have listened,” Violet commented drily, making all of them crack up.

#rpdr fanfiction #tree house kisses #scorpio #veronica #adorney #adore delano #courtney act #bianca del rio #bitney #pearl liaison #willam belli #bob the drag queen #lesbian au #high school au #m/f au #angst #fluff

8 notes · View notes

twoidiotwriters1 · 3 years

Text

New Year’s Eve (PureBlood One-shot)

A/N: Temporality here, I didn’t care. Enjoy. Happy New Year 2021 to all our readers!!!!

Words: 1,448

Chapter’s Masterlist:

"I miss fireworks," Sirius says, pouting.

"Me too, mate,” James replies putting a hand on his best friend's shoulder.

"Who would say that you two would be crying because your girlfriends scolded you?" scoffs Remus.

"Shut up,” they both say at the same time.

"We don't care if they scold us, nobody tells us what to do," says Sirius, sticking out his chest.

"Yes, my wife does not control me,” continues James.

"You two, stop whining and help!” Persephone yells from the kitchen.

"We're coming!” Both yell.

Remus laughs when he sees the duo rush into the kitchen. He follows them and offers his help.

Everything is ready for the new year. Only two special guests are missing, but no one wants to interrupt their affairs just yet.

The Marauders along with Persephone and Lily sit at the table and chat for a while, telling stories and laughing, reminiscing about those days at Hogwarts.

“Persephone," Sirius calls his girlfriend and she turns. "Do you think that if I go upstairs, they’ll notice?" He asks with a playful smile.

"Don't you dare,” she warns him, "if you wake them up, you will suffer the consequences.”

"You say it like it's the worst that could happen…”

“If they wake up crying it will be. Let them sleep!”

"But it's almost midnight now!”

"I will not argue with you again."

Remus' laugh is heard again, drawing everyone's attention.

"What's so funny, Moony?"

"If they had told me that my two best friends, the Hogwarts womanizing boys, would be like cubs behind two girls, I would have laughed for months."

"Stop teasing," James complains.

"What's wrong with it?" Persephone asks.

Remus shrugs.

"It's not that is bad. It's just fun to see them like this.”

"I already want to see you with a girl to make fun of you!”

"Oh, that won't happen,” replies Remus sipping his wine.

"Don't start with your negativity, Woolfie."

"Who would be with a werewolf?”

"I can say several names,” answers Persephone.

He looks at her in surprise.

"What do you mean?"

"Some of my partners have seen us together and when I told them that I had a boyfriend that it's not you, they were very interested in the attractive man…”

Remus's face turns red and the others laugh.

"I've heard those same words!” says Lily laughing.

“Now Remus will be the heartthrob of the group. I’m proud!” says James.

“No, they must have mistaken me. They were probably talking about Sirius and James…”

“We are not in school anymore, Lupin. If I told a woman that you’re single, they would not think twice.”

"It's about time Moony gets a girlfriend so we can embarrass him…”

"Enough is enough!” He answers. “Is dinner ready?"

"Sure, divert the subject, casanova…”

Before anyone could say more, the roaring of some fireworks is heard not far from the house.

"Oh no!” without waiting any longer, a cry is heard on the second floor.

"Who will it be?"

"It's mine!" Sirius says jumping up and running towards the stairs.

Persephone rolls her eyes.

"I just hope he doesn't wake mine…” says Lily, but as if invoking him, another cry is heard.

"Easy, Lily flower. I will go…”

"Oh, what would we do without them?" says the sarcastic redhead.

Persephone laughs.

"Everything is fine, buddy,” says Sirius returning to the table with a small baby in his arms. "Look who you're with!” He sets the baby so he can see the guests. "There's Uncle Moony, Aunt Lily…” the baby follows his father's finger as he points to each one. "And there is mom!”

When he sees her, the little one smiles and gurgles with happiness making everyone laugh. Persephone takes her son, sitting him on her lap. Wipe lost tears from his plump cheeks.

"What did dad do to make you stop crying, my little star?"

Sirius sits next to him and smiles proudly.

"Nothing that a promise of a stuffed animal does not solve.”

"He's only a year old, Sirius,” teases Lily "I don't think he’s expecting it.”

"But it worked,” He shrugs.

The baby fidgets on his mother's lap and she hugs him, lifting him up to stand.

"He wants all the attention," she laughs as she strokes her baby's black hair.

“There's the proof that he’s the son of both,” says Remus.

"And here comes the other one!” announces James entering with Harry in his arms. Unlike little Black, Harry is still pouting. "Who is still scared by the noise, but will get better.”

James sits with his son on his lap and Lily smiles at him, causing any discomfort to go away.

"It's not fair that we can't use fireworks but other people can,” Sirius leans to take his baby's hand.

Harry watches him and shakes his hand in greeting. Remus laughs.

"I can't wait for both of them to grow up and be the best of friends," says James.

"Oh, that will be interesting," says Persephone.

“Can you imagine, Padfoot? A new generation of marauders…”

"I already have some ideas ready to give them,” Sirius answers with a mischievous smile.

"They're just babies, give them a break," says Lily.

"From now on I warn you Sirius that if my son gets in trouble for your ideas, you will take the blame," says Persephone.

“They will get away with it, just like us. Isn't that right, son?" He says looking at the baby, who laughs raising his arms for his father to carry him.

“I'm not sure, Padfoot. They won't have a Remus to help them,” says James nervously.

They all look back at Lupin.

"It is true. Lupin, what are you waiting for? Our children need balance!”complains Sirius.

“First the girlfriend, now a baby? I'll have a heart attack before I can have any of that."

"You already sound like an old man…”

“Since I’ve been your friend, years have been taken from me. It's not my fault,” He complains. "Besides, they don't need another person, surely they will be smarter than you two.”

"Are you still angry that we didn't choose you as their godfather, Moony?" James says distractedly.

"What's that got to do with this?"

"Don't worry about it, Moony. For the next one, you will be the godfather,”says Sirius playing with the baby.

“Next one?" Persephone asks raising an eyebrow. Sirius realizes his words and looks at his girlfriend.

"Uh, I mean. If we have another child,” he says quickly, “I don't know, it all depends on what my beautiful girlfriend says, whom I love very much, with all my heart,” He looks down at his son and raises him a little. “We love a lot.”

Persephone laughs.

"Nice try.”

"Hey, it's almost twelve o'clock," Lily announces.

Everyone gets up to meet in the living room of the house. They have their glasses with champagne. Sirius holds the baby and Lily takes little Harry.

They count down and when the new year arrives, they laugh and celebrate. The atmosphere is filled with hugs and kisses for everyone. Including a kiss on each cheek for Remus from Sirius and James.

Sirius approaches the fireplace along with his little family, while the others chat away. He hugs Persephone around the waist.

"I didn't think I'd ever be like this," He whispers to her and she lifts her head. "But I don’t regret anything.”

"Neither do I,” she answers smiling.

The baby sighs and rests his head on his mother's chest. Sirius strokes his hair admiring every detail of the baby’s face. His child's face.

"Thank you,” He says and his girlfriend looks at him confused. "For giving me another chance, for staying by my side and for giving me the best gift I could ever ask for…”

“There is nothing to be thankful for, Sirius. We achieved this together.”

He leans in and kisses her lips slowly, only until a small hand touches his cheek and a squeak is heard, they part laughing.

The baby laughs and points to his dad, who takes him in his arms.

“We've already had this conversation, little one. You have to share mom, I also need her love!”

They both laugh again when the baby completely ignores Sirius's words and concentrates on his long hair.

“It's just like you, Sirius. Doing everything to get my attention,” Sirius looks at her with a frown and she answers with an innocent smile. "Isn't that right, Perseus?" The baby laughs again.

"Two Percy's against me. We must have another baby so that I don't end up alone,” complains Sirius.

"Keep dreaming, darling,” She replies and kisses his cheek.

The three return with the others to continue the night of a new year.

taglist:

@treestarrrrrrrr @siriuslysirius1107 @thagreenmoon @madmaiden2890 @msella @avipshamitra @auroraawrites @findzelda @lizlil @siriusmuch @chloe-geoghegan1 @reverse-hxlland @may-rapp @the-specific-oceans @eveft @secret-obsessions @nikki-sixx-is-daddy

@xkonpinkx

@littledeadgirlwalking

@yunloyal

@bloodorangemoonlight

#New year with two idiots #Happy new year 2021 #Sirius black #sirius black x reader #pure blood #Harry Potter fanfic #twoidiots writing

18 notes · View notes

greatneedtotakeanap · 4 years

Text

i binge read

the finale, episode 15 - the tower of nero

!!!SPOILER ALERT FOR THE TOWER OF NERO!!! this post under the cut will be completely riddled with spoilers, as it is a personal account of my views on the book as a whole.

it will be spoiled!!

(obviously.)

I’m almost too heartsick to write this omg. It’s been such a long, heartwarming journey, and it came to such an electrifying ending.

I’m quite proud of Apollo. I knew I was going to be, but the way he realized it, the way he realized everything... how Nero’s abuse mirrored Zeus’ and affected him just the same, how much of an asshole he’d been because of it. He made the conscious choice to change, and he decided he could love. He was capable of true love, he was capable of moving forward and being better. And he was. I was just,,, I was so proud of him. Seeing him mature was a really eye-opening experience, especially in this book, when he talked so much about the small complexities of Nero’s abuse, how every move was calculated and how it affected Meg. We’d seen wisps of discussions of abuse before, mostly in the lightning thief (smelly gabe) but we’ve never before gone into the complexities of emotional abuse. The way it was described was fantastically clear, in a way that undoubtedly painted Nero as the true villain, but also gave us the chance to see him try and convince his children that he was good. Apollo breaking down his every move was good for the audience to distinguish the meaning behind his words. Fantastically portrayed. The way it helped him realize his own abuse, too, was good.

And Meg. My sweet darling Meg. What an absolute baddie, I swear. She made the same decision - she went back to Nero to fight him, to test her own strength and power of will. Her decision to drop her rings and refuse to dual wield anymore was strange to me at the very beginning, but I understood it later. It was her refusing to use the weapons he forced her to use, to even defend herself against him. It was her turning her back on the methods he’d armed her with and deciding to take her own path. “The Beast is dead” is the rawest f-ing line in this entire novel, the Beast representing Nero’s psychological abuse. “I killed him” - she liberated herself by believing she was better. I’m so insanely proud of that girl, too. She’s come a long way as well.

Okay. After that analysis, let me just say:

THE GAYS WON.

I spent this entire book terrified that Will Solace was doomed. There was a line in the prophecy about the terrible ending of ‘Apollo’s flesh and blood’, and I figured that meant his offspring - his son, rather than his human form. I kept muttering to myself ‘Will’s gonna die Will’s gonna die and it’s gonna BREAK Nico’. I was just so worried. I didn’t think anyone, even William Andrew Solace, could survive Rick Riordan’s patented Blond Boy Curse.

But he was fine in the end! As fine as you can be. Solangelo boyfriends lived to fight another day. And their development as a couple was also quite nice. I loved their dynamic. We only saw a little of it in the hidden oracle. Though it was great there too, we were able to go more in depth and explore how they truly function. Nico’s dry sense of humor combined with his whole lord-of-the-darkness aesthetic x Will’s genuine compassion and joking nature combined with his glow-in-the-dark-ness was fantastic to see.

Speaking of Solangelo - they not only got stronger as a couple, but as individual people as well. To be completely honest, we really haven’t seen much in the way of Will Solace. He healed, he was nice, yeah, sure, but what about him? What was his personality like outside from other people? In this book we find out. He’s kind, compassionate, easily flustered, overly protective. He craves parental approval, hence him repeatedly referring to Apollo as ‘dad’ and being so watchful over him. He gets embarrassed when asked to glow on command and upset when people mistake him for a lamp. He’s impulsive and a little hypocritical - he follows his instincts (being led off into the tunnels by a random voice) but gets very worried when Nico pulls the same thing. He’s a fantastic character, and his contrasts to Nico and the rest of the ton crew were great.

Nico - he seriously was the hero of this book. Or at least the secondary hero. He saved them all so many times over - he took everyone through shadow travel away from the bulls, he met the troglodytes, saw an opportunity, prepared an offering to said troglodytes because he saw an opportunity, became an underground ambassador, later saved Apollo’s life again by turning a germanus into a skeleton. He led this quest, and you can pry that from my cold dead hands. And that one paragraph about him enduring all this shit?? MASTERFUL. He’s had such a boatload of trauma and still he stands. One of my very favorite consistent Nico traits is this: no matter where he is or what he’s doing or how he feels, he ALWAYS takes the chance to talk with those who feel alone, because he knows what it’s like to be truly fighting one’s battles alone and he’d never wish that on anyone. It’s consistent, too: him being the only one to talk to Hestia at the hearth in Camp Half Blood, him talking to and befriending Bob the Titan, him talking to the troglodytes. And I have really gotten to see his progression firsthand, sped up - I read the Titan’s Curse in my binge read series maybe two weeks ago, back when he was this hyperactive ten-year-old with a Mythomagic obsession and now he’s this prince of darkness saving people with an adorable glowstick boyfriend and man. I love this kid. If he wasn’t my favorite character in this universe, he is now.

Also, even though with this book Rick has closed the gateway to this world (sad), the end alluded to a possible journey through Tartarus again to look for what’s been calling him, but this time he’ll have Will. Rachel Dare even whispered a prophecy at the end, probably pointing to it (but we’ll never know for sure). Will and Nico through the depths of Tartarus - now that’s a series I’d want to read for sure. It’s really too bad we’ll never get to see it in canon. Sigh.

SPEAKING OF CANON.

Another way the gays have won: Piper Mclean.

She has a canon girlfriend!! We really struck gold. I figured she was aro//ace when reading the Burning Maze - her whole monologue about being forced into love - but it turns out she’s just wlw!! I love this, I love this. We seriously won with this book.

Other noteworthy thoughts I had while reading below:

- The scene with Apollo defeating Python and hanging on the edge of Chaos was great. Especially when the goddess Styx came out. I was wondering how all of his broken oaths would serve him and come back to haunt him. It was quite well portrayed. A serious rip to the Arrow of Dodona though. I always loved it,,, a lot. It made me laugh and sometimes grind my teeth in frustration, but it was always a nice presence.

- Apollo’s return to Olympus was better than anything I ever could have hoped for. I was really hoping that returning would give him a new insight, not just of being mortal, but of Zeus as well. And it did. It did! I’ve said it before but I am quite proud of him. His new perspective on the Olympians was refreshing. You can really see the change in narrative if you go back to the Hidden Oracle.

- It is always always always nice to see Sally Jackson. Woman of many talents, including novel writing, blue chocolate chip cookies, and excellent seven-layer dip. She was my favorite character at the beginning of this binge-reading frenzy (as stated in the first post). Now she is still very up there. Definitely top 5.

- Why does Estelle have Percy’s green eyes?? I thought Percy had his father’s eyes????

- Grover knew about Jason dying. If Grover was on the cross-country field trip with Percy and Annabeth, and they didn’t realize Jason was dead until they got to New Rome, then was he just sitting on Jason’s death this whole time??? Rip to Grover, he must have been seriously traumatized for THAT to have happened.

- The last two chapters were basically just Apollo making his rounds and wrapping everything up, so Percabeth isn’t just in a perpetual cross-country ride and Piper doesn’t live out her life forever in a grief-stricken taxi. I’m glad those chapters were there, though. Nice to see everybody again in their element.

Okay but you don’t understand the fear in my heart. I seriously thought Will Solace was a goner. I cried out of relief because he DIDN’T die. It just makes me love the two of them all the more.

This post has been way too long already, but I gotta add an obligatory outro - I read these books once as a little kid, and the past two weeks has been amazing getting back into them. It’s been magical and wonderful, falling in love with these characters, and I’m so sad to leave it.

#tower of nero #the tower of nero #ton spoilers #toa spoilers #tower of nero spoilers #nap binge reads #(the final episode)#wow #what a ride the past two weeks have been

16 notes · View notes

forevfangirlwrites · 3 years

Note

Hi! I love your writing! Especially How We Could Have Met! I was wondering if you'd be interested in a medical/hospital/doctor AU?? I saw fanart of percabeth in scrubs and i'm a little obsessed lol thanks! :)

CONTINUATION OF: Part 1

After being better acquainted with the medical profession for the past couple years, you’d think that she’d be better with all this stuff.

Spoiler alert: she’s not.

And she still hates blood tests.

So needless to say, she’s already nervous when the door open to reveal a head of blonde hair, which only serves to make her more nervous. (And disappointed).

He’s new, or so she thinks. She hasn’t seen him around before, but it’s not like she knows everyone here. Either way, he’s not who she’d been hoping to see.

“Annabeth Chase?”

“Yep.”

Her leg is bouncing nervously again, but she doesn’t have the willpower to try and control it this time. (She also doesn’t have his soothing smile, so that’s probably also a factor).

“Ready for your blood test?” the nurse asks with a smile as he preps.

No.

“Yeah.”

He sits down close to her with another smile that she doesn’t return. “Good!”

And then, without any preamble, he grabs her arm and points the needle tip down. It’s all so quick that her brain struggles to keep up, but her body registers the pain. She sucks in a breath.

(So maybe she hates needles more than she’s willing to admit.)

Nurses probably aren’t required to talk you through a blood test, but she’s kinda starting to shake. The feel of the needle piecing into her skin is so vivid.

“Huh.” The nurse pulls the needle out. “I didn’t get your vein.”

“Um…” she tries to speak up but talking is starting to become a struggle all of a sudden. She wishes she had literally any other nurse but this guy.

“Don’t worry,” he seems to realize her concern. “We’ll get it this time.”

That’s not her concern.

The pain is much worse this time but his face as he pulls it out is the same. Overall, it’s probably not that bad. But her fear of needles is turning into panic and she can’t watch him try for a third time.

“I—” her words cut off as the harsh white lights turn to darkness.

-.-

“What happened?!” The words are loud enough to wake her. She still feels disoriented, but the voices are becoming clearer now.

“You can’t just go by yourself on these things yet! Where is your doctor?”

“It was just a blood test,” another voice replies, as she blinks at the florescent lighting.

“And yet you couldn’t handle it!”

“What is all this yelling?” A third voice has entered, and she finally manages to get her bearings in time to see the doctor who’s just walked in the room.

“He gave a blood test without supervision and the patient fainted!”

Oh…is that what had happened? She fainted? That was new. She turns her head to see the people in the room better.

The nurse who had so unsuccessfully tried to give her a blood test was there with his arms crossed, wearing a scowl, looking like a child.

“Is this true?” The doctor asks. “We need to talk. Out now.”

The doctor exits the room, but the nurse stays for a second and scoffs.

“Out!”

And, finally, the other person in the room comes into view, the only person she’s seen so far that makes her feel a hundred percent calmer.

“What’s your deal, man? I mean she’s cute and all, but like, chill out.”

She’s never seen him look so mad. Actually, she didn’t even know it was possible for him to look this mad.

“You disobeyed orders and hurt a patient.” His words come out slow but that just makes them all the more menacing. “And don’t talk about my girlfriend like that. Now get out of here.”

He watches the other nurse scamper, but she watches him. One day she’ll get used to just how unfairly attractive he looks in scrubs. But that combined with what he’d just pulled—

Concern replaces his anger as soon as he sees she’s up and watching him.

“Annabeth!” He’s by her side in and instant.

She wants to say it’s a side effect of the fainting (she knows it’s not), but her brain has not fully processed what had just happened.

“That was really hot,” she blurts. “Didn’t know you could be all…” She struggles with filtering her words around hot nurses more than she struggles with needles apparently.

Percy turns a shade pinker at her words as he helps her sit up. “I was just, doing my job, taking care of you, I didn’t—”

He’s flustered, which is rare since he’s usually the one keeping it together. But since he’s struggling with his words too, she makes it easy for him.

By pulling him into a kiss where no words are needed.

A/N: Thank you for sending in the prompt! Since I’d already written a How We Could Have Met featuring nurse Percy, I figured I’d extend it with some protective Percy this time! I hope you liked it! Thanks again for the prompt!

#percy and annabeth #percabeth #percabeth fic #percabeth au

35 notes · View notes

yukippe · 4 years

Text

one word: i want

for @pjofemslashweek day 4: rom com (teen idol - books count, right?) | read on ao3 | word count: 7.2k

ASK ATHENA

dear athena,

i really like this guy but he’s way out of my league and i don’t think he even knows my name. i don’t even care if we go out or anything, i just want to get to know him :( what should i do? thanks!

lonely in love

dear lonely,

if you’re worried he doesn’t know who you are, try doing something that’ll catch his attention. or, if you really wanna solve your problem go up to him and say hi. people are more willing to get to know you than you might think. just be careful not to say anything dumb.

athena

piper didn’t know why she said yes to this, but now she was kind of stuck with it. “this” being showing pop star actress thalia grace around school for two weeks.

piper said yes to most things people asked her to do. she said yes to being ask athena for the school paper, she said yes to joining the mathletes with annabeth and now she’s said yes to babysitting an actress. thalia grace has been a child star since she was little, following in her mom’s footsteps. but that means she’d never been to real school. piper had been called into a meeting last week about it, thalia grace (or thalia grace’s agent/mom beryl grace) had decided to attend high school to help prepare for her new role on some teen drama.

the reason she said yes is likely why they asked her. piper was good at keeping secrets (famous dad nobody knows about, much?) and she was even better at being forced to keep the peace. people loved to ask piper things and they hated to hear her advice. piper had gotten used to telling people what they wanted to hear. being thalia grace’s tour guide was just the newest on the list.

considering most teen drama writers had never been to high school, piper didn’t think it was very necessary. but to be fair, piper wasn’t an actress. when she’d mentioned it to her dad, he’d said it sounded pretty cool. piper was pretty sure her dad was considered an authority on “cool” to some girls her age. piper was also pretty sure none of those girls have seen her dad wipe out on a surfboard. (or maybe they had? some fans were creepy).

which meant monday morning piper was waiting in the office for thalia grace to show up, piper was early because lupa had told her too and piper was not about to mess with the principal. there was a rumour going around that gwen graduated early last year because she was scared principal lupa was going to eat her. piper checked her phone. 8:10. thalia was five minutes late, piper would’ve thought thalia would be on time because her dad was always obsessing over being early and piper had always assumed it was an actor thing. though, to be fair to thalia, thalia’s whole image was very black ripped jeans and self pierced ears. piper’s best friend annabeth was a little obsessed with her, but it wasn’t really piper’s thing.

“hey,” piper looked up. there was thalia grace. or, as she would be going as for the next two weeks, tessa green. someone had striped the blue streaks from her hair, the pixie cut was held back by a pink headband and instead of her signature leather jacket annabeth couldn’t shut up about, thalia was wearing a white sundress. piper blinked. she’d known that thalia was going to be undercover as a regular student so she wouldn’t be mobbed by fans or whatever....but piper hadn’t expected this.

“hi,” piper said. “nice outfit.”

thalia rolled her eyes, “my mom’s always wanted a chance to change my look, and she went a little overboard.”

“cool, well we should be getting to class. we have latin with mr. brunner,” piper told her. piper picked up her bag and pocketed her phone and started walking to class. she looked back to check that thalia was following her. thalia was following, but she was starting to droop. piper had a redbull in her bag for emergencies she’d offer her if thalia started to snore.

most of the class was already there when piper arrived with thalia. she showed thalia the empty seat behind her and turned back to the front. mr. brunner was already in class, but he wasn’t really….there there. last week octavian augur had decided to steal mr. brunner’s horse plushie that he likes to decorate in different historical armour for the senior prank. mr brunner’s been a little...weepy ever since. piper had told octavian and his cronies that it was dumb, but they’d told her it was chill and piper had let it go but...mr. brunner really wasn’t taking it well.

thalia nudged her with a pencil. “what?” piper asked, not bothering to turn around.

“one, are we actually supposed to start learning at eight thirty? that’s disgusting. and two, why is that guy so sad?”

piper sighed, “yes we start school at eight thirty, but we finish at three so it’s fine.”

“three?”

“yeah, and mr. brunner...well the guys in the back row stole his doll last week and he doesn’t know where it is.” piper bit at her lip as she watched mr. brunner stare at his papers. she was a little worried he was going to use them as tissues, and they looked like the last essays they’d handed in. she’d spent six hours on that.

“uh,” thalia said. “that’s fucked up.”

“it’s high school,” piper told her, starting to feel a little guilty. mr brunner bailed her out of any more of thalia’s comments as he finally called class to order, still sniffling.

thalia made it through first and second period, but when piper was leading her to third period she started wavering a bit so piper slide her her unlabelled thermos of energy drink. thalia drank it way too quickly, but piper didn’t judge.

as they walked through the hallways piper’s classmates whispered to each other. at one point, piper was pretty sure she saw one girl squeal something about how much thalia looked like thalia grace. yikes. piper pulled thalia quickly past that.

at lunch, thalia found the coffee machine and met piper at piper’s lunch table with a tray of coffees. piper stole on when thalia was turned around as payment for the day and turned back to her friends. she sat with annabeth and her friends from the paper. drew and grover were both columnists, jason was an editor, percy and rachel did the photography and the comics and reyna was the editor in chief. thalia seemed a little overwhelmed by all the kids, but piper let her be. if she could sing in front of giant crowds she could handle the caf.

annabeth was eyeing thalia, “who are you?” piper sighed. annabeth was kinda the worst at first impressions. besides, annabeth also had a massive crush on thalia grace and piper wouldn’t be surprised if annabeth saw past thalia’s pink-do.

thalia smirked from behind her second cup of coffee, “tessa green. transfer student.”

annabeth eyed her a little longer, but thalia had moved on. annabeth looked slightly miffed at that, but percy distracted her. percy’s crush on annabeth was even bigger than annabeth’s crush on thalia.

thalia elbowed piper. “hey,” thalia whispered to her. “who’s the kid in the corner with the matches?”

piper looked over to where thalia was pointing. oh. leo valdez. leo was...kind of a loser. he was also the exact kind of loser that piper wanted to be friends with, but he was in robotics and not mathletes and piper doubted he’d ever join the paper considering mr d had threatened him last year. he was typically making something that would set the school on fire. going straight to matches was new though. piper relayed this to thalia.

“okay, but why isn’t he sitting with anyone?” thalia asked.

“uh,” piper said. “because he has no friends?”

thalia blinked at her, “why aren’t you his friend then?”

“because this is high school and everyone thinks he’s a loser?” piper said.

“not everyone thinks he’s a loser,” jason piped up. thalia turned to look at jason, and her face started to look a little sick. piper could relate, jason sometimes looked a little too perfect with his whole american boy shtick. but piper could also remember the time he almost ate a battery when they were freshmen, so it wasn’t that bad.

drew detached herself from reyna’s mouth (piper was starting to get especially tired of this, they’d been dating for a year and piper saw way more tongue than she ever wanted too from her half sister) to stare at jason, “yes, jason. everyone thinks he’s a loser.”

“i don’t think he’s a loser!” jason repeated. jason always stuck up for the little guy, piper liked the sentiment but piper thought it was a little unrealistic to live like that all of the time.

thalia seemed to like the vibe though, “yeah. he can’t be the worst.”

drew turned to thalia with a raised eyebrow as she stuck the straw of her ice cap in her mouth. then drew stopped short. “oh,” drew said. “who are you?”

“tessa green,” thalia said, eyeing drew right back. piper wondered if thalia had somehow managed to miss that drew and reyna had just been making out. the two of them were making really weird eye contact so piper turned to face reyna. reyna was reading something on her phone. reyna was almost always reading something on her phone, and piper had made it her mission since reyna transferred to their school at the end of last year to figure out what it was.

annabeth thought piper liked reyna. piper had told annabeth multiple times to shove it. piper just. well, reyna already had a girlfriend so it didn’t matter. piper had known reyna since the fifth grade when they were on the track team together. they’d both done long jump. reyna had been much better and won metals and piper had shared the fancy snacks her dad’s shopper bought when they went to meets. then, at the end of fifth grade reyna had moved away to live with her sister. but she’d been at the paper’s retreat over the summer and had snatched the editor in chief position with her natural leadership and her essays on drive and growing up closeted. the position should’ve been drew’s since drew was the only senior on staff and reyna was a junior like piper, but drew had been at a much fancier journalism camp while reyna was impressing mr d.

then drew had come back for school and she and reyna had gotten together while piper had been stuck on the memory of reyna laughing as she helped piper get out the smores stuck in her hair at the retreat.

piper was still into reyna, but she wasn’t going to steal her half sister’s girlfriend. so instead, nd she very platonically hung out with reyna and tried to look over her shoulder when reyna was on her phone. she really wanted to know what reyna was reading. her current guess was the art of war, but she wasn’t sure.

there was only one almost case of a small fire during lunch, and leo got his matches confiscated by a lunch lady right after. piper watched him as he left. octavian augur might’ve been the best the seniors had to offer this year (mostly because percy and annabeth were to busy mooning at each other while the other wasn’t looking to bother) but piper knew leo was going to come up with something actually funny next year.

the rest of the day passed in a blur. thalia pestered her when she didn’t understand something - which was a lot - and thalia creepily watched jason during algebra.

thalia complained a bit about going to the paper meeting after school, but then she and drew got into a weirdly charged argument about a celebrities right for privacy. thalia argued paparazzis were like mosquitos and drew argued that celebrities chose to live in the public eye. piper wanted to back thalia up, but she’d managed to keep the fact that her dad was a movie star almost completely on the down low and she was a big fan of not hearing people ask her about how hot he was. drew knew and was mostly just playing up devils advocate to flirt, but that was about it.

reyna had asked piper after the meeting if she wanted a ride from her, but she told her that percy and annabeth had her covered. reyna used to drive piper and drew home all the time, but drew had been getting really bitchy recently and the drives home were growing more and more awkward. piper thought it was because she was graduating and going off to university in another state and would have to leave reyna behind, but she wasn’t going to get involved in her half sister’s love life.

percy shot finger guns at her as he raced out of the meeting to pull his car around. annabeth and him weren’t dating yet because neither of them had realized the other liked them back, but he still gave annabeth a ride home everyday and didn’t mind that piper had started to tag along. percy was nice like that. piper really hoped annabeth didn’t find out thalia was thalia and set her thing with percy back a few months.

thalia turned to piper as they exited the school, “thanks for today. i’ll see you tomorrow.” piper smiled awkwardly back and watched thalia go. thalia walked over to the parking lot and got on a motorcycle. piper blinked. well, it looked like thalia wasn’t going completely prep for her stint in high school.

ASK ATHENA

dear athena,

theres this guy and he’s super smart - way smarter than me. i want to talk to him but i’m worried he’s going to think i’m dumb. we share one of our classes and he’s the funniest guy i’ve ever met. funny AND smart. i’m average and boring :/ what can i do to get him to like me?

thanks,

average and boring

dear average,

average is better than below average! just kidding. listen to the kind of jokes he makes and see if you can make one back - google has like a gazillion pages on pages of jokes you can use. you can’t make him like you, but jokes and other common interests are a good way to start. if he’s really worth it, he’ll like that you’re making the effort.

athena

the next day thalia was full of questions. she’d also ditched the headband and the dress. she hadn’t gone full punk, but she was in jeans and flannel and had equipped herself with a very tall thermos. piper had caught a sniff and she was pretty sure it was just shots of espresso.

“so,” thalia said as they watched mr. brunner look over his collection of swords and miniature swords (those ones were for the horse). “do you like that leo kid?”

piper started to choke. when she recovered she shook her head. “no,” she said. “uh. i’m gay and i’m pretty sure he is too.”

“oh” thalia said. “Nice, same. Okay next question, when are you doing something about the horse?”

“i’m not.”

“you will,” thalia smiled at her. it wasn’t even a mean smile. it was just a very annoyingly assured smile. annabeth wore it all the time, so piper was well acquainted with it. “okay final question: what is it that you do on the paper?”

piper turned back around to face mr. brunner, thalia had dropped tissues off on his desk when she’d come in and he was putting them to good use. “i do ad placements,” piper lied. nobody was allowed to know who ask athena was because then nobody would feel comfortable asking anything. and - well piper liked being listened to, even if nobody knew it was her they were talking to. the only people who knew were principal lupa, coach hedge and reyna.

the rest of the week went mostly the same. thalia bothered her about the horse and why she wasn’t friends with leo and seemed oddly fixated on jason. thalia also wrote an article with drew about privacy that piper’s dad liked a lot. piper guess she should have known thalia was a good writer, she didn’t watch any of thalia’s shows or movies but she did have some of her songs downloaded and thalia was a really good songwriter. it was...actually pretty nice.

thalia also made fun of octavian whenever she passed him, which was pretty great. piper was starting to look forward to the day octavian tried to start a fight and thalia punched him in the face. piper had told her guidance counsellor coach hedge that, and he’d agreed. coach hedge was pretty sure that thalia could take him, and will piper wasn’t sure how much that really meant she was starting to notice something.

everyone, besides octavian probably, really liked thalia. mr. brunner had let her hold one of the unsharpened swords (piper had no idea how the sharpened ones were allowed in the classroom), principal lupa had smiled without her scary teeth near thalia, annabeth was starting to get a crush piper really wanted to end, and drew was halfway flirting with her most of the time - which piper was really grossed out by. who flirted with someone else when they were dating reyna.

reyna was reyna. how was drew not totally in love with her? piper was in love with her and she wasn’t even with her. reyna sang along to the thalia grace songs as she drove in a scratchy alto and made the worst brownies but could be coached into make half decent chocolate chip cookies and was the best writer piper had ever met and piper didn’t think she’d ever forget the way reyna had looked at her with complete and utter trust when she’d told her about moving out of her dads and into her sisters and how she much she loved her sister and loved living with her, even though her sister always beat her when they raced.

reyna was also like, the only person who didn’t love thalia. they still got along, but piper though it might be the whole your flirting with my girlfriend and she’s flirting back thing that was holding back their friendship.

everyone liked thalia and the paper was going well and mr. brunner wasn’t crying so much - even though octavian augur had left a ransom note threatening to make his doll bite it if mr brunner didn’t pass all of the seniors - and piper had even done half decent at the last mathletes meeting.

then on saturday the whole “tessa green is the coolest thing ever” train hit a snag.

ASK ATHENA

dear athena,

i got up the nerve to talk to mr. out of my league. i asked him to work on a group project with me and he said yes! but he’s so quiet i’m really struggling to get him to talk to me. the whole point was to get to know each other and he’s still the cutest guy ever but i don’t know how to get him to open up :(

thanks,

lonely in love

dear lonely,

congrats on the group project! you’ve taken the first step so the ball should really be in his court, but if you want to try and encourage him to open up try cracking a joke! if you can get him to laugh you can probably get him to talk to you

good luck,

athena

the mathletes were doing a car wash on saturday. piper didn’t know why, but annabeth had said something about raising money for the bus to regionals and percy coming up with it and then piper had clued in. well, if her best friend really wanted to see her crush without his shirt, piper could kind of get it. she’d been known to go quiet when she saw reyna flex her biceps.

most of the paper had been talked into helping out - which thank god. all of the mathletes gave piper dirty looks when she got a question wrong during practice. someone had decided to ask coach hedge to supervise mathlete meetings (piper thought he had gotten suckered in by the athlete part and then felt to guilty to quit), while coach hedge normally ditched them for the track team he’d been able to show up at the car wash and piper wasn’t sure what to expect. a bunch of mean nerds plus coach hedge plus thalia grace plus the paper.

annabeth had texted piper to show up in a swimsuit and shorts and piper had obeyed, while rolling her eyes at her phone. she was also stuck being the one to bring the speaker, because her dad had bought a top of the line waterproof bluetooth smartspeaker. sometimes, piper wondered what her friends thought her dad did to have all this weird stuff.

considering that piper was told to wear a swimsuit, she should've known that that meant reyna was also going to be wearing a swimsuit. piper had thought she’d had it bad when she’d seen reyna’s biceps, but she’d been frozen when she saw reyna’s abs as soon as she arrived. annabeth had ripped the speaker from her hands and almost spilt a bucket of soapy water on her before piper snapped out of it.

there were way more people at the car wash than piper had expected. it was for the mathletes with the assistance of the paper. it looked a bit like coach hedge had made his actual athletes show up and hold signs and pay for car washes, but there were a bunch of regular students piper never would have expected.

leo had shown up, for example. leo drove a pickup, which piper had found surprising because she’d heard a rumour that leo had gotten his license taken away for illegally tricking out his truck. leo told her that the cops didn’t know, which piper probably should’ve been more concerned about.

instead, she asked leo to show her what he’d done to his car. reyna and piper washed leo’s car as he showed them how he had a secondary horn for fun that spat out randomized animal sounds. reyna didn’t seem to find it funny, so piper was a little confused as to why she was washing leo’s car when drew seemed to be over at a much nicer car with thalia.

“so,” leo asked her after he finished showing her the lights he had in the wheels. “are you and thalia a thing?”

piper laughed, “what? me and thalia?”

“yeah, are you?” piper spun around to see reyna awkwardly holding up a sponge. reyna looked a little sad for some reason, maybe worried that thalia was dating piper and flirting with drew or something.

“uh no, thalia’s not really my type,” piper explained, still confused as to where these rumours where coming from.

“then who is your type?” reyna asked her, biting her lip. piper’s eyes caught on reyna’s mouth, but leo poked her and she blinked.

“uh,” piper said. “i like girls that um. girls that are strong, smart. good writers. bad bakers.”

leo started snickering, and piper kinda wanted to hit him. he’d caught on, but luckily reyna seemed not to realize piper was describing her.

piper looked back to where thalia and drew were washing the car, she was starting to think thalia was the reason there were so many people judging by how there were a crowd of ppl near her asking her to do something. “hey,” leo asked reyna. “how are things with you and drew?” piper winced.

“oh,” reyna said. “we broke up two days ago.”

piper spun around, “wait what?”

reyna looked over at drew and thalia, a strange look on her face. “yeah. drew and i. we ran our time out, i think. we got into a fight on the weekend and it didn’t end well.” reyna shook her head, and brushed her hair out of her face as she turned back to leo’s truck.

piper reached out and touched reyna’s arm. “hey,” she said softly. “i’m sure whatever drew said, she didn’t mean it.” reyna smiled, but her face was hard to read and piper let her hand fall.

leo leaned over and whispered to piper as she stepped back, “what are you doing - ask her out!” piper threw her sponge at him.

and then she heard the worst thing possible.

it was thalia’s music on the speaker. annabeth’s playlists all had something from thalia - piper felt her stomach drop as she turned back to thalia and drew. the crowd around thalia had started to chant something.

“sing! sing! sing! sing! sing!” piper’s classmates called. thalia laughed and hopped back onto the hood of the car and smiled at them all. and then she started to sing along to her own song on the radio like a complete fucking idiot.

annabeth was the first one to clue in. piper knew because she heard the music come to complete stop and when she turned around annabeth had dropped her bucket to the ground. piper looked around the entire parking lot and saw more and more people piece it together. and then they started moving towards thalia. thalia kept singing for a little longer - but then thalia seemed to realize what was going on and she hastily jumped onto the roof of the car she was sitting on as she fumbled for her phone.

piper had seen this happen before. her dad couldn’t go with her to a lot of places, and when they did hang out in public he always dressed very very carefully to try and put distance between himself and tristan mclean. “okay,” reyna said. piper looked back and saw reyna doing something on her phone. “i just called my sister so hylla’s gonna come by with some friends and try and talk some sense into all of those weirdos.” reyna’s sister did something with security, so piper nodded and turned back to the crowds.

there were teachers shoving screenplays at thalia and boys singing love songs and girls asking her to autograph their swimsuits. instead of trying to get her to sing, they were just saying thalia over and over again.

after a few minutes of it, reyna’s sister showed up in uniform with friends, and more importantly - a limo showed up for thalia. piper let out a breath of relief-

and then thalia called her name. “piper!” thalia said, halfway into her limo. “piper get over here!”

piper blinked at her, but leo and reyna shoved at her and she squeezed through the crowds as reyna’s sister helped her through the door. piper watched her friends faces as she drover away. there was no music playing in the limo.

ASK ATHENA

dear athena,

the really smart and funny guy asked me to work on a group project with him! except i keep freezing up when i talk to him!! i looked up jokes like you said, but i don’t know how to say them. he must think im such an airhead :’(

please help,

average and boring

dear average,

you said he’s funny right? next time he cracks a joke, say one back. also - maybe check out the letters from lonely in love? this is starting to sound weirdly familiar.

athena

piper sat on the carpet with her back to the couch in thalia’s apartment. thalia sat down next to her and handed her a glass of water. for a moment they just sat next to each other, staring at the black screen of the television.

“i’m sorry about back there,” piper said. “though, you probably shouldn’t have started singing.”

thalia let out a laugh, “yeah. yeah you’re right. but what are you sorry about?”

“for my friends being freaks?” piper offered.

“it’s fine,” thalia said. “happens all the time.”

piper knew that. it’s why everyone thought she and her dad were homebodies.

“hey,” thalia said, turning to face piper. “you’re different. you’re not as awful as all of those kids in your classes. i’ve never been to high school, but i’m kinda thankful for that now.”

piper frowned at thalia, “they’re not all bad.”

thalia blinked at her, “octavian augur is threatening to murder your latin teachers doll. and no ones saying anything. piper - you could say something.”

piper turned away from thalia and back to the black television screen. she wasn’t surprised by what thalia was saying, she’d been saying it all along. thalia wanted high school to have good fucking people. and she wanted piper to be one of them.

and. well, piper kind of wanted to be one of them too.

ASK ATHENA

dear athena,

i made a joke and he made a joke back! we’ve started actually talking and it’s so so so good, but i don’t know what to do now! i just wanted to get to know him at first, but now that i know him i want to ask him out. how do i let him know i’m interested - or how do i know he likes me back? he probably has lots of guys lining up to take him out

lonely in love

dear lonely,

go read average and boring’s letters. if you two aren’t writing ot me about each other i’m going to be very concerned about the state of unrequited crushes at this school. you both like each other. just ask him to go to the dance with you.

athena

piper went home with a mission in mind. she had her dad’s limo pick her up, just to mess with thalia. thalia had sent her off a little in awe and with an autograph request piper had promised ot fulfill with a laugh. piper wasn’t going to let anyone know who ask athena was anytime soon, but she figured she could let at least one secret go.

her dad took it all in stride, promising her he’d even deliver thalia her autograph in person. her dad was the easy part. annabeth had been blowing up her phone and when she finally answered it was like opening the flood gates.

“how do you think i should ask thalia grace to the dance?” annabeth asked. piper stared at her phone.

“why are you asking thalia grace to the dance?”

“piper! i’ve liked thalia grace forever, of course i’m going to ask her to the dance. wait - do you think drew beat me to it? i saw drew slip thalia her number before thalia got into the limo omigod piper i-”

piper cut her off, “annabeth you liked thalia grace’s music. you’ve been eating at the same lunch table as tessa green for a week and i didn’t think you liked her very much.”

“i. well. i just haven’t gotten the chance to get to know her. what, are you jealous that you don’t have a date to the dance or something?”

piper blinked at that. well, that was a take. she pinched herself so she would know she wasn’t hallucinating. “i’m not jealous. i already have a date. besides, you know who you actually know - and it’s not thalia. you know percy.”

“what does percy have to do with anything?”

“annabeth, percy’s going to ask you to the dance on monday. or at least he was going to. if you were ranting to him about thalia he probably doesn’t think you’re interested.”

annabeth was silent for a few moments. and then she said, hesitantly, “percy likes me?”

“yeah,” piper confirmed, way too tired for this conversation. then she hung up the phone because she wasn’t dealing with that for any longer.

after that, she called reyna.

reyna pulled up to the front of her house with her jaw hanging open. piper waved goodbye to her dad, who was laughing for some reason, and slipped into the passenger seat.

“your dad is tristan mclean,” reyna said, looking her right in the eye. “can you please interview him after his newest movie comes out. that would be the funniest issue we’ll ever print. i’ll get rachel and percy to put together a comic strip on it.”

piper blinked, and then she started to smile. “yeah sure,” piper said. “now can you drive me to octavian’s place?”

reyna dropped her off outside of octavian’s house and piper walked up to the door and rang the bell. after a few seconds the person piper was hoping for answered the door. will solace looked like he’d just rolled out of bed. he was in the year below piper and octavian’s younger step brother. he also hated octavian’s guts.

“hey,” piper said with a winning smile.

“hey,” will said. “uh, are you here for the doll? lou ellen’s in your math class and he said the new girls been bugging you about rescuing it all week.”

“uh,” piper said. will laughed and walked into the house. piper waited on the steps awkwardly, not quite sure what was going on. will came back a few seconds later with mr. brunner’s horse in one hand. in the other hand was a missing pet poster.

“hey i made this up with some friends, we thought it was funny,” will told her as he handed over the doll and the poster. “octavian thinks he lost the doll and has been freaking out for the past few days. can you like, record his reaction when he sees it?”

piper nodded slowly and thanked will. when she got back in the car she stared at the objects in her hand. reyna read over the poster. “huh,” reyna said. “maybe we can run an article about - wait his name is chiron? uh chiron’s return.”

“that was so much easier than i thought it would be,” piper said. reyna laughed at her and pulled away.

PIPER MCLEAN - DAUGHTER OF TRISTAIN MCLEAN - DATING THALIA GRACE?

EXES CHILDREN TURNED LOVEBIRDS

HIDING CELEBRITIES FIND LOVE!

unfortunately, the school paper didn’t get to be the one to break the news on who piper’s dad was. tabloids seemed to have caught on to thalia ushering her into her limo, there was even a picture of it swirling around the internet. some reporters had tried to call them, but her dad had shielded her from most of it. she’d given two quotes that he had approved. the first was, “you’re weirdly interested in a sixteen year olds love life” and the second had been, “yes i’m a lesbian. no i’m not dating thalia. not all teenage lesbians like thalia grace.”

pretty much all of her friends had sent her the clips and screenshots of it. leo had somehow gotten her number and texted her alternatives that involved a lot more swear words he wanted her to use next time. drew had texted saying that she was relieved because siblings shouldn’t share girlfriends. and reyna had called her laughing and they had stayed on the link for a few hours.

it was...pretty great. piper had even gotten out of the mathletes competition which she really hadn’t wanted to go and fail at because they didn’t want all of the extra attention she would bring. she’d been supposed to cover the event for the paper, but percy had happily taken her spot on the bus.

he’d asked annabeth to the dance while singing one of thalia’s songs. it was a song about second choices being just as good and annabeth had kissed him in front of the whole school and then told him very firmly that he wasn’t her second choice.

drew had been a little annoying - she’d texted piper something hearing thalia already had a date for the dance and how she was wondering if reyna would go with her. piper had told her she couldn’t go crawling back to reyna now. and then she told her that she should show up to the dance anyways, because that date wasn’t as sure a thing as drew might be thinking.

drew had left her on read. but the next day she’d been a lot more bearable. piper thought she might be getting the hang of the whole getting people to listen to her for once thing.

and leo was sitting with them at lunch. piper was pretty sure it had been jason who’d invited him - jason was getting a lot of confessions this week judging by the way he and leo were smiling at each other. leo let piper play with his robot and it didn’t catch on fire, but it did eat grover’s empty soda can.

the day before the dance piper made a returned version of the wanted poster, struggled to make clothes for the horse with reyna (apparently hylla and her had done some sewing classes at a community centre?) and placed chiron the horse on mr. brunner’s desk.

thalia wasn’t in the class with piper to see it all go down, but piper smiled and made direct eye contact with octavian the entire time as she was setting up chiron. he stared at her from his seat and didn’t dare to move a muscle. will’s friend lou ellen recorded it all the way including mr. brunner hugging the horse and challenging students to a duel with his swords. piper took him up on it, and laughed when he beat her.

“you know,” he said as he took back the sword she’d used. “i can do more in this wheelchair than you might think. like failing you!” mr. brunner had then pointed the sword at octavian and told him to march to the principal’s office. lou ellen’s video was on everyone's snapchat that night.

at lunch leo was smiling at everyone. “guess who’s hosting a dance protest party?”

“me,” jason said. leo turned and threw a hand on his chest and gasped dramatically. jason just smiled at him. “well it’s true! your mom said no so we’re hosting it at my place since i have a massive backyard.”

leo waved his hand at jason and turned back to the rest of the lunch table, “anyways you’re all coming.”

drew blinked at him, “i’m going to the dance. and so is annabeth and percy.”

leo sighed at her, “i know that drew. you are obviously gonna get it at the dance with thalia grace, but then thalia is going to drive you and annabeth and percy back to jason’s once you all get bored of the rest of our school. you know, all the people you hate?”

“uh,” percy said. “this is all news to me.”

“well,” said jason. “dances suck and i’m ordering cake pops and having a bonfire and thalia’s apparently my missing sister who happened to find me and she wanted to host a party with us so we’re having a party and you’re all coming.”

ASK ATHENA

dear athena,

um. wow. thanks? jason and i don’t really care about anonymity anymore - we’re too busy going out. thanks for letting us know we we were both being dumb. i was lonely in love and he thought he was average and boring but now we’re the cutest couple in school! ask athena verified dating service everyone!

leo and jason

dear leo and jason,

congrats! to the rest of the school, this is not a dating service and you don’t understand how happy i am that i don’t have these too pining in the mailbox anymore.

athena

thalia picked her up for the dance in her motorcycle. thalia wanted to get more use out of it and piper liked the idea of wearing a fancy dress on a bike. her dad was not having so much fun with it all, but the school wasn’t far away so he just watched them leave anxiously after getting pictures.

when piper had been over at thalia’s place on saturday thalia had asked her to the dance. thalia had never been to a school dance before, and she wanted to get as much of the high school experience in a week and a bit as she could. that’s why they were also having an anti dance right after. it was more punk, which thalia liked, and it was at her brothers, which meant thalia got to spend time with the brother she hadn’t seen in years do to really shitty custody agreements.

thalia had asked her as friends, and piper had said yes because thalia was her friend now - somehow - and she didn’t mind doing her a favour. especially if it meant she could see the look on drew’s face. besides, piper had never actually gone to one of these dances before because she’d always been busy at the anti dances with her friends who didn’t get dates until this year.

piper’s classmates were all taking pictures as they got off the bike in front of the school, but piper ignored them. she let thalia throw an arm around her shoulders and they laughed at stupid dresses as they walked into the school. it took thalia about three minutes to ditch her for drew - which was apparently becoming a very real thing and was also apparently completely fine with reyna. piper didn’t really know what was going on there and she wasn’t sure she wanted to.

instead, she danced with percy and annabeth and drank gross punch and defaced a couple decorations with grover - who insisted on recycling the broken decorations after - and then they got on the limo and went to jasons.

reyna was sitting by the fire pit on her phone when they got there. piper took a deep breathe, grabbed two cake pops, and sat next to reyna.

“hi,” piper said. “cake pop?”

reyna looked up from her phone and giggled, taking one, “thanks. how was the dance?”

piper shrugged, “it sucked. you weren’t there.”

reyna’s mouth dropped open. “oh.”

“yeah,” piper said, she was a little nervous but she couldn’t stop herself from smiling. “so uh. i’ve liked you for a while, haha. and um. do you want to go out?”

reyna’s face broke out into a grin. piper had always known that reyna looked beautiful in the firelight, but it was still stunning, “yeah i wanna go out. i’ve wanted to ask you out since we were kids, but i didn’t think you liked me.”

piper stared at her, “i’ve been trying to figure out what you’ve been reading on your phone all year because i wanted an excuse to be next to you when i looked over your shoulder. i’ve liked you too since we were kids.”

reyna started laughing and piper joined in.

“it’s romances, by the way.” “what?”

“i’m always reading trashy romances,” reyna told her. piper stared at her and then started laughing harder, bending over not being able to stop. reyna put her hand on piper’s back and piper did her best to take deep breaths as she calmed down.

as she sat back up they smiled at each other and reyna leaned in and kissed piper’s cheek and they watched the fire. grover and percy were daring each other dumb shit as annabeth watched and one upped them, and thalia and drew were making out and leo and jason were stealing bites from each others cake pops.

piper rested her head on reyna’s shoulders and felt the warmth of the fire on her face.

#pjofemslashweek2020 #pipeyna #piper mclean #teen idol!au #rey's writering #why do i keep writing so much!!!!!!

23 notes · View notes