[looking at people younger than me] you have your whole life ahead of you [looking at people older than me] you have your whole life ahead of you [looking at myself] its over
THE GRUDGE (or: the 7 things luke castellan hated about you)
read part two GET HIM BACK! (or: the 7 reasons you want revenge on luke castellan)
pairing: luke castellan x child of nemesis!reader (gender not specified)
word count: 8.5k
summary: luke hated your guts. he really did. he just hoped that no one could tell how, even after all this, you're still everything to him.
warnings/disclaimer: luke's POV. spoilers for the lightning thief and season 1 of pjo. some heated make-out sessions but no actual smut - MDNI / 18+. mentions of blood + death + alcohol. luke is 19 during tlt but i wrote this with him + reader being 21 by the end of this (this is important for the next part lol). anyways, luke + reader share clothes and lots of intense emotions they maybe possibly don't process in the best way. lots of ANGST - it's a greek tragedy fr!
author's note: welcome to my new hyperfixation! this fic is LONG but i hope she's worth it ♡
♪: the grudge by olivia rodrigo
(i. you have a sharp tongue)
fourteen year old luke was overwhelmed when he first stepped into the hermes cabin. it was loud and overcrowded and no one really seemed to care that they had a new cabinmate. the head counselor showed luke to an empty bed at the back, told him to get settled in, and left without another word. luke dropped his backpack before collapsing on the mattress. it was so thin that he could feel the springs dig into his back.
"you'll get used to it."
luke sat up to see you climbing through the window.
you had a band-aid stuck on your chin, chipped nail polish the color of blackberries, and leather combat boots that looked way too heavy to be wearing in the heat of summer.
“the shitty mattress?”
“i meant the whole chaos of cabin 11, and the way things work around here in general. if you can get used to the shitty mattress, all power to you.”
your tone was friendly enough, playful even. you smiled at him so comfortably it made luke nauseous.
“good to know.” he tried to smile back at you, but his heart wasn’t in it. “i’m luke, by the way.”
“yeah, i know. i’m —”
“y/n!”
you seemed entirely unfazed as the blond who called your name stormed over to you. you rolled your eyes, something only luke could notice, before turning to her.
“someone stole my candy.”
“i’m very sorry to hear that, maddy. gotta be careful around here.” your voice dripped like poisoned honey, deceptively innocent and sweet.
maddy was not having it. she huffed at you. “it was you, wasn’t it?”
“that depends. did you cheat at poker last night? again?”
some of the chatter throughout the cabin paused, heads turning to listen in.
“what? n-no!”
“then you have your answer, maddy.” you exaggerated a sigh, as though you had already won the fight and were annoyed that she came back for more. “now, if you’ll excuse me, i have a new camper to show around.”
chiron had already given them a tour, but luke didn’t protest when you grabbed his hand and pulled him out of the window with you. your hand was warm in his as you dragged him along to the corner of the cabin where a poorly made ladder waited for you.
“come on.” you started climbing, and only stopped to look down when you realized luke wasn’t following you. “best view of camp. trust me.”
a shiver passed through luke. trust didn’t come easy to him. he also didn’t particularly want to return to a stuffy cabin where all he would do was count reasons he did not want to be there.
so, luke followed you. he sat down next to you on the roof and looked out at the sun shining on his new home, but he couldn't help but be slightly bitter. the gods had gotten all of you into this life of endless danger and battles and monsters, and this was all they had to offer in return: a summer camp.
it just didn't seem fair.
there was something else he noticed then. what was it that chiron had said? camp half-blood was supposed to be a safe haven for all demigods.
“i don’t get it. there are only twelve cabins, but aren’t there, like, a million other gods?”
you straightened your posture then, and turned to luke with a newfound interest.
“camp half-blood only has cabins representing the twelve olympians. apparently, they’re the only ones important enough to have children worth recognizing, and they can’t even do that half the time,” you explained, impertinence laced throughout your words. it seemed like something you could never quite get off your chest.
every demigod knew that the gods didn’t appreciate sarcasm. they didn’t particularly like being called out on their bullshit, either.
you didn’t seem to care; you even rolled your eyes up at the sky, as if challenging zeus himself.
“anyways, that’s why the hermes cabin is so crowded. it takes in campers who are unclaimed or whose parent doesn’t have a cabin at camp. like me.”
“so, who’s your godly parent?”
you fiddled with the leather cord on your neck. it held a few clay beads like the other campers, but there was one silver charm he noticed only you wore — scales, by the looks of it. you clutched onto it.
luke realized that, despite your own advice, maybe you resented having to get used to the way things worked around here, and having to hide your resentment. maybe that was worse than having to sleep on an uncomfortable bed for the rest of your life.
"nemesis. goddess of revenge."
"that's....hardcore."
you scoffed and moved on to twisting the silver ring on your index finger. "a lot of people take it that way, and i think it scares them a bit.”
“so that’s why you’re extra nice to new campers, huh?”
“no, i was just in a good mood today.” you smirked.
“guess i was just lucky, then.”
luke couldn’t help but smile at your laugh — sharp, biting. you nudged your boot against his sneaker, which shifted you closer to him, shoulders practically touching.
“what people don’t understand is that it's more about balance, you know? you do good things, and good things happen to you. at least, they should. you do bad things and….” you pulled out an outrageously big bag of candy, dropped it between you and luke, and winked at him. “you face the consequences.”
“that makes sense.” luke leaned over to grab a handful of gummy bears. “like karma.”
“yeah. exactly.”
you bit the head off a red bear, both of you chewing in silence before you added:
“by the way, i’m sorry about your friend.” you swallowed and caught luke’s gaze.
chiron warned him that word would travel fast around camp about what happened to thalia, and luke had prepared himself for anything — anything but your reaction. there was no pity in your eyes; instead, there was a hint of rage, as though thalia had been your friend, too.
“she deserved more.”
luke’s eyes caught the glint of a knife strapped to your belt. he took another handful of the candy you stole, and he thought about the fire and fearlessness behind your words, and, despite everything, it felt right to be with you then and there.
“yeah,” he finally whispered back. “she did.”
we all do.
neither of you said those words, but the suggestion was there, and it felt like a promise.
(ii. you hold on to every stupid, little detail)
“slow down, tiger.”
your voice echoed throughout the arena, and if luke had been fighting a real opponent, it might have gotten him killed. instead, he just stopped mid-swing, sparing another straw dummy from losing its arm.
“left hand,” you noted as you walked past him towards a bench. “you, my friend, are in need of a break.”
luke loosened the grip on his sword. the only time luke fought with his non-dominant hand was when he had overworked the other. he must have switched an hour ago, but judging by how heavy his arm felt, it could have very well been two.
his curls were stuck to his forehead with sweat, his shirt soaked through. he could feel a dull pain behind his eyes, and luke was worried that if he stopped to catch his breath, he would pass out. or, even worse, have to face the reality of the shitty news he’d gotten early that day.
“come sit with me,” you urged. “you’re exhausted, tiger.”
luke bristled at your nickname for him.
sure, luke loved that there was something only you called him, a secret kept between you in plain sight, but it was also a reminder that it was harder to hide behind the hero act when you were around.
everyone else at camp figured the nickname was a playful attempt at calling him strong and charismatic. the truth was that luke once told you that his favorite cereal as a kid was frosted flakes and that he would dream of playing sports as well as tony the tiger. for better or for worse, like most things, you wouldn’t let it go.
case in point: if it was anybody other than you trying to get him to take a break, luke could have just brushed them off with a charming smile and continued swordfighting until his arms fell off, but in the two years since meeting you, luke had never met anyone as stubborn and convincing. like him, it seemed you were willing to fight and shed blood to get your way. luke was never really in the mood to make you bleed, even when feeling like he could burn the entire world down, so he usually gave in to your demands.
as soon as he sat down next to you, you handed him an orange flavored energy drink — his favorite. anything other than water was hard to come by at camp without the enchanted goblets in the dining pavilion, or the right connection in the hermes cabin. he ran out of his stash the other day, but you must have noticed and gotten one of the stoll brothers to smuggle more in.
“thanks,” luke said, ignoring the jolt of electricity that passed through him when your fingers brushed together briefly.
the two of you looked out at the sword arena, and all the straw dummies that luke had destroyed. you wait for him to take three big gulps of his drink before speaking again.
“i guess chiron and your dad decided you weren’t ready for a quest.”
luke exhaled sharply. “how did you —”
“the only time you’d skip out on capture the flag is if something really shitty happened.” you looked down at luke’s clenched fists, and that seemed to be all the confirmation you needed. “you promised annabeth you'd be there, and it's not like you to let her down."
fuck. he had completely forgotten that tonight was annabeth's first time as team captain. this entire week, she had been prepping a winning strategy. it wasn’t like annabeth needed him to win, but luke was her big brother, and he should have been there. you were right — he had let her down.
the realization made luke’s day go from bad to worse.
"i told her you were helping a new camper with an emergency. she didn't believe it, but she adjusted her strategy and we still won.”
“well, thank the gods everything worked in the end,” luke grumbled.
“don’t thank the gods,” you quipped. “thank annabeth chase for her brilliant mind, and me for covering for your sorry ass.”
when luke didn’t indulge in your usual playful banter, you moved closer to him and brushed some curls away from his eyes. your skin warmed his forehead, and the small gesture made him feel better than he had all day.
“look, i’m not going to give you some bullshit inspirational speech about how the gods don’t get to define what a hero is, or how you don’t need a quest to prove that you’re worthy of being one. we’ve each been through that before, and i have a feeling this won’t be our last time, either.”
“then why are you here?” the question came out harsher than luke had intended it to.
“because she’s trying her best to hide it, but annabeth is really hurt that you didn’t show up for the game. i figured the least you could do is suck it up, come to the campfire, and make her those signature luke castellan s’mores. you could probably use one, too, since you haven’t eaten anything since breakfast.”
you were right, again. luke was exhausted, he was furious, but most of all, he was starving.
later that night, luke sat next to annabeth and vowed to make her as many s’mores as she wanted. you’d gone to sit with the hephaestus kids, trying to convince beckendorf and nyssa to join your cabin’s post-campfire party at the beach, even though they had to work in the forges early the next morning.
when chiron made his weekly speech, congratulating the winners of capture the flag and thanking the gods for keeping everyone safe, you and luke caught each other’s gaze from across the fire. you rolled your eyes and luke bit back a smile as you turned back to beckendorf. he noticed your knees were practically touching. did you sit that close to everyone?
luke was looking at you for so long that the marshmallow he was roasting fell into the fire, despite annabeth’s warnings. she handed him another one.
"you should tell her how you feel," annabeth said. "stop being a coward."
whether it was the smell of burnt sugar, the heat of the fire, or annabeth’s comment, luke started to feel dizzy. he did his best to shake it off, asking annabeth for a play-by-play of her strategy earlier that night, but he couldn’t quite get rid of the thought of you.
(iii. you don't care if your clothes are stained with blood)
“i just….i can’t fucking believe you, luke.”
“i don’t get why you’re so upset — you’ve never cared about quests before.”
luke was hoping to break the news to you after capture the flag. unfortunately for him, word travels fast around camp.
annabeth had the two of you scouting the east side for the flag, while she and some other athena kids took the west. you hadn’t found anything so far, which meant that you’d spent the better part of an hour bickering over luke’s choice of companions for his quest. a choice that included charles beckendorf and chris rodriguez, and purposefully did not include you, much to your fury.
before you could continue arguing, luke heard the sound of footsteps approaching. he looked over to you, and you already had your shield and sword at the ready.
a few red defenders emerged from the trees. one charged at luke, but you stepped in so he could deal with the other two. one of his opponents went down fairly easily, but the other put up much more of a fight. metal clashed behind him as you kept fighting as well. you might not have been as skilled a swordfighter as luke, but he knew that you could hold your own, at least until he was finished with the person in front of him.
luke parried his opponent’s strike, causing them to take a step closer. he was preparing to disarm them, just as he heard you yelp and stumble to the ground. it only took a millisecond of his attention, but it gave his opponent the opportunity to elbow him in the face. luke felt a crack upon impact, and pain radiated from his nose; he powered through.
he had to finish this fight, and he had to do it fast. you needed him.
his ears were ringing as he finally knocked over his opponent, kicking away their sword and keeping his foot on their chest. luke turned around to see you having turned the tides, the blade of your sword dangerously close to your opponent’s neck.
you locked eyes with luke, and you both understood — it was time to go. the two of you ran through the forest, as far away as you could before having to stop and catch your breath.
luke removed his helmet to get some air, and dropped his weapons. you did the same. you looked at him, brows furrowed.
“your nose.”
luke licked his lips, tasting blood. the triumph of winning that last fight overshadowed the ache of his potentially broken nose. in fact, he liked the image of a ruthless warrior emerging from the glory and gore of battle, that even though he did not bleed ichor like a god, he still had power.
you, on the other hand, didn’t look impressed. instead, you stepped forward and offered the sleeve of your shirt to wipe away the blood.
“you don’t have to —”
“i know you think you’re a badass walking around all broken and bloody, but you shouldn’t deny your admirers your pretty face,” you teased.
it was no secret that luke had numerous admirers around camp, a fact you loved to tease him about. he was sure that you relished in how flustered that made him. all you had to call him was pretty boy, and luke could be reduced to a blushing mess.
it was pathetic how much power you had over him.
“besides, i wouldn’t have gotten out of that last fight if you hadn’t taught me that disarming technique earlier. i owe you. it’s what we do. we take care of each other, right?”
he couldn’t argue with that.
a few moments of silence passed as you cleaned his face. something shifted as you worked, the flirtatious grin fading away. when you pulled away, your sleeve was stained a dark crimson.
“just tell me honestly,” you finally murmured. “why don't you want me to join your quest?”
luke was genuinely taken aback by the softness of your voice, now devoid of its usual fire. you wouldn’t meet luke’s eyes, but being that close to you, he noticed they were slightly glazed over.
he had expected you to be angry at his decision. he expected you to yell and argue and try to change his mind. luke hadn’t expected you to be so hurt. so broken.
he hadn’t planned on it, but luke decided to tell you the truth then.
“look, karma, if you come with me, my heart wouldn’t fully be in the quest. i’d be so caught up in….well, you.”
a pause.
“is that a bad thing?”
“not usually, no.”
you smirked a little at that, and luke’s heart skipped a beat. it also made his decision even clearer.
“but i need to be focused for this. i need….” he let out a deep sigh. “i need to prove myself. this is my first real chance, and i can’t fuck it up.”
you met his gaze and smiled brightly at him, your signature spark of confidence returning.
“you won’t.”
you reached a hand up to play with his necklace. luke hadn’t noticed how close you’d gotten until your fingers started tracing over those four clay beads. it made his entire body burst into flames.
“i’ve been wanting to do something for a while. and, aphrodite save me, it might be really stupid, but —”
luke took a lucky guess as to where you were going, and crashed his lips against yours. aphrodite knows that he'd been wanting to do that for a while, too.
he often got drunk on the adrenaline of battle, the glory of winning, but nothing was quite like the rush of kissing you for the first time.
it was messy and urgent, both of you aware that, at any moment, you could be interrupted. your noses were bumping together, teeth clacking against each other. the metallic tang of blood lingered on luke’s tongue, but neither of you seemed to care. you even bit his lip slightly, as if you wanted more. armor sat heavy and cold between your chests, preventing you from getting closer. luke had never loathed the protective gear more.
he made up for it by lodging one hand underneath your jaw, and snaking the other beneath the celestial bronze, beneath the cotton of your shirt, admiring how your pulse quickened under his thumb when he grazed the soft skin of your stomach. you tangled your hands into his hair, nails scraping against his scalp. he groaned and felt you smirk against his lips.
luke had kissed a few people before, sure, but never like this: like a knife to the gut, and if you pulled away, luke would surely bleed out and die.
it wouldn’t be a hero’s death, in the traditional sense, but at least he’d die happy.
how many heroes could claim that?
when luke ran out of air, feeling like his lungs were burning, he had to pull away.
you glanced down at luke’s kiss-bitten lips, then back to his eyes. luke flushed under the intensity of your gaze.
“just promise me something, tiger,” you whispered, voice hoarse.
“anything.”
“come back alive.”
luke leaned forward and placed another kiss on your lips, this one much gentler than before.
“i promise.”
(iv. you love like a scar that won't fade)
the nightmares were getting worse.
luke woke up in a cold sweat, taking gulps of air in an attempt to steady his breathing.
“luke.”
your whisper did little to quell the pit of dread growing in his stomach, but it did enough to bring him back down to reality.
he was at camp half-blood (fuck the gods of olympus), in the hermes cabin (fuck you, dad), in a bed next to yours (fuck, if he could tell you what — who — was going through his head, he would).
“i’m…i’m fine,” he murmured back, voice catching slightly on the lie.
like clockwork, you shifted from your bed to his, slipping under the covers. it didn’t matter that it was a hot summer night, and the minute your legs touched his, he could feel himself starting to overheat.
your thumb brushed over the thick edge of his scar, up his cheekbone to the corner of his eye. it had been a year, living with this reminder. a reminder that he had failed, just as much as his father and the olympians had failed him.
luke tried to pretend that he didn’t come back from his quest as a shell of who he once was. after all, it was meant to be his shining moment as a demigod, meant to gain him all the glory and father’s praise he once wished for.
what a fucking joke.
every morning, luke would crawl into a different skin. he welcomed new campers and taught sword-fighting. he laughed with chris and his other siblings and strategized with annabeth for capture the flag. he would be the easy-going, charming, skillful senior counselor who respected the gods and honored them in everything he did.
again: a fucking joke.
nights were different, though, with you so close to him, you who could always see right through him.
every night, luke was a fourteen-year old boy again, with so much rage and resentment he didn't know what to do with it.
of course, you were always you - a bleeding heart underneath layers of armor. you didn't care about fate, or the gods, or the titans. you cared about justice, you cared about what was right and fair.
most of all, you cared about luke.
“you were screaming,” you told him, voice barely cutting through the soft snores and sleeptalkings of your other cabinmates.
“sorry,” he managed. looking at you in the dull moonlight, luke noticed the deep shadows under your eyes.
“it’s fine. you just….you scared me, tiger.”
your hand still rested on his cheek, and for a second, luke hoped you would kiss him, but you didn’t. instead, you told him to try and get some sleep, and sank further into his bed before closing your eyes.
for the hundredth night in a row, luke hoped you couldn’t hear his heart hammering in his chest as you fell asleep next to him.
since coming back from his quest, luke didn’t have it in him to suggest being anything other than friends, and you didn’t push it. there had been a few....moments between you, sure, but nothing more.
luke thought you might have changed your mind, because who would want to be with a bitter, worthless, wannabe hero? then again, that voice haunting his dreams…. luke could change that.
but, at what cost?
(v. you protect people as ruthlessly as a starving dog)
luke could hear you talking to percy jackson outside. though he couldn’t quite determine what was being said, as much as he tried.
you entered the bathroom and instantly caught luke’s eyes in the mirror. you were wearing your faded pyjama shorts with cartoon crows, and a flannel shirt that luke had a sneaking suspicion might have been his. you smiled at him before setting up at the counter, one sink between you.
“what was that about?” luke asked after spitting out a mouthful of minty toothpaste.
“oh, nothing.” you were searching through your toiletry bag for something, and seemed to come up short. “hey, do you have any extra dental floss?”
luke threw some over to you. as you effortlessly caught it, he noticed your knuckles, bruised and bloodied.
“what happened?”
you finished flossing and briefly examined your hands before pulling out your toothbrush.
“it’s not a big deal,” you assured. “some ares kids were picking on percy, and then they started pushing him around, like, really pushing him around, so….”
“....you decided to send them to the infirmary.”
you squeezed some toothpaste on your brush before continuing. “i don’t need you to lecture me about how i shouldn’t be fighting with other campers because i’ve been here longer and i should be a good role model. you know what a good role model does? not let kids beat up other kids and think the worst punishment they’ll get is no dessert for a week.”
luke watched carefully as you jammed the toothbrush in your mouth and brushed with such force, he was worried your teeth might dislodge. he knew that you would shed blood for someone you loved, and that you didn’t particularly care if you had to break rules in doing so, because you believed that what was written was not necessarily what was right.
in fact, luke loved that about you.
no, it wasn’t the fighting that luke cared about — it was who you were fighting for.
percy was a good kid, he really was. luke just didn’t want you getting attached.
you nodded and spat out what looked like a combination of toothpaste and blood. you rinsed your mouth until the water lost its pinkish hue. once you were done, luke continued his train of thought.
“i just didn’t realize you cared so much about him.”
“about percy?”
luke could tell that he didn’t have your full attention. you were packing your stuff back up, accidentally tossing luke’s dental floss into your bag, but he had more pressing matters to deal with.
“yeah. the kid’s only been at camp for three days, and you’re already acting like his guard dog.”
you finally turned to luke and glared at him.
“maybe. but percy’s sweet and he doesn’t seem like the type to put up with bullshit. he’s been through a lot, and annabeth seems to like him, too. as far as i’m concerned, percy’s one of us, and i’m not going to let anyone push him around.”
luke raised an eyebrow at you. “he’s sweet?”
“yeah. like, just now, he gave me some blue raspberry jelly beans as a thank you. said his mom used to work at a candy store. he also wanted me to apologize to you for him. he feels bad about beating you in sword-fighting earlier.”
you scoffed, like you resented luke for having to apologize to him on percy’s behalf. you definitely did not appreciate that guard dog comment. luke clenched his jaw, seething over what you had just said.
satisfied with his reaction, you gave luke that nauseating smile of yours, tilted your head towards the exit. a truce, because you never liked to fight with luke for too long, and a order, because you knew luke would always follow.
the two of you began walking back to your cabin in the warm mid-june air.
“i wouldn’t say he beat me,” luke huffed. “it was beginner’s luck.”
“sure, tiger. it was beginner’s luck that disarmed the best swordsman we’ve had in the last 300 years.”
you nudged luke’s shoulder with yours, but he recoiled from your touch.
“are you trying to make me feel worse?” luke tried his best to avoid snapping at you, keeping his tone measured.
“i’m just saying that maybe the kid has natural talent and that doesn’t make you any less talented. there’s no need to get jealous.”
luke resisted the urge to growl at your suggestion.
to be clear, he was not jealous. it’s just that luke had spent years of blood, sweat, and tears getting to where he was then, and percy jackson had just gotten to camp.
and, to be even more clear, luke was not jealous of how you were already defending percy with your whole body and your whole heart, the way you did for him.
by then, you reached the front of the hermes cabin. luke could already hear the commotion of what he would need to deal with as soon as he walked in. the burden of being head counselor, one he approached with an elastic smile that could snap at any moment.
you tugged on luke’s sleeve before he could open the door.
“hey. are we okay?”
luke looked down at your fingers grasping the fabric of a sweatshirt he was just realizing was yours. your nails were painted a dark red, now chipped after a week of wear. you had begged luke to paint his nails then, and once again, he gave in. he even started to like the purple you had chosen just for him, so deep it was almost black. the same color you were wearing the first time you and luke met.
he smiled at the memory — a real smile, no plastic — and then smiled back up at you.
“we’re fine, karma.” and he moved to enter the cabin. luke could hear the threat of an argument bubbling up, what sounded like a petty one over a prank gone wrong.
“wait.” you tugged at his (your) sweatshirt once more. “there’s something i wanted to talk to you about, about tomorrow night—”
“annabeth called a meeting during free time.”
“yeah, i know, it’s just —”
“she’ll run through strategy for capture the flag then.”
“one of the aphrodite senior campers asked me to the campfire,” you blurted it out, and luke decided to ignore the sound of a fight breaking out from behind the wooden door.
what in the name of hades were you talking about?
“they asked you out? like…like a….” luke didn’t even want to speak the word, scared it would make it real.
“a date,” you said casually, as if that one word didn’t rip luke’s heart in a million pieces. “i said yes.” an admission that took all those pieces and set them on fire.
sure, in the seven years since you and luke met, you’d each talked about boys, about girls, about dating and kissing them and going further. but there was something about this one that felt different. something about the way you told him.
“but, listen, i wanted to let you know it’s not —”
“good for you,” was all luke said through gritted teeth before someone started calling his name again, louder and more urgently, and he had to duck inside.
(vi. you taste like burning cherries and righteous anger)
your team had won capture the flag, of course. the biggest news of the evening, though: percy jackson was the son of the sea god.
he was a forbidden child, the hero of the great prophecy.
everything was falling into place.
all luke should be thinking about is kronos’ plan, and his role in it, and how a world without the gods of olympus was that much more in reach.
unfortunately, for the time being, he was so consumed by you.
you, from across the campfire, sporting cutoff denim shorts and fresh wounds from the game earlier. you, who had wrapped your knuckles in gauze, concealing their bruising, fixed the chips in your nail polish and stacked rings on your fingers. (for the record: luke had gifted you the one on your left thumb.) you, with dark lips that whispered too closely and laughed too loudly with a child of aphrodite— jordan li.
you hadn’t so much as looked at luke since congratulating each other on another win. when chiron announced his weekly gratitude to the gods at the start of that night’s campfire, you didn’t punctuate your resentment with your usual eye-roll or biting remark. you were too busy giggling at something jordan said.
luke wanted to be the one to whisper jokes in your ear. he wanted to be the one you left lipstick stains on later, along his jaw and down his neck. he wanted to be the one who kissed the blade mark on your shoulder and the bruises on your knuckles.
and yet, hours passed and it seemed that the thought of luke had never so much as crossed your mind. he found himself at an after hours party with a few senior campers on the beach. a lethal recipe: a poorly crafted bonfire, some contraband drinks and you in jordan li’s lap, playing with their hair and pretending luke castellan did not exist.
meanwhile, luke had katie gardner’s full attention. she was talking to him about the strawberry season, potentially leaning a bit too close into luke’s personal space, definitely flirting with him.
luke could have done a lot worse than the head counselor of the demeter cabin, who always smelled like fresh lavender, whose eyes were the bright green of spring grass and whose lips tasted like golden honey.
the problem was that luke only wanted you, and his eyes kept sliding over to where you were kissing jordan’s cheek, and he accidentally called the girl he was kissing by your name, which did not make her happy.
katie threw her drink in his face, told him to wake the fuck up, and walked away.
a chorus of gasps and chuckles erupted as luke stood there, diet coke and vodka seeping into his shirt. the commotion seemed to capture your attention, because you suddenly appeared next to luke, an empty bottle of cherry soda in your hand.
“rough night, tiger?” your voice, that nickname, made luke sick, his face twisting into a frown. you don’t seem to notice or care. instead, you switched your bottle with luke’s and took a sip.
“looks like you were having a pretty good time,” luke practically sneered. “where’s your date?”
“they went to bed.” you swallowed a mouthful of beer, grimacing at its bitterness. “gods, this is terrible. you and i should go on the drink run next time — we have better taste.”
“so, are you and jordan like a thing now?”
you gave luke a smile he didn’t quite understand, but made his stomach churn in ways only you could. “would that be a problem?”
“of course not.” he answered way too quickly for that to be true.
“let’s get out of here,” you suggested. “i think katie is about this close to strangling you with a tree branch.”
luke glanced over your shoulder to where green eyes glared back at him.
nowhere could luke find it in him to care. he wasn’t even sorry. he just shrugged, took the bottle back from you, took his first sip all night. luke almost gagged (because of course you were right, and the stoll brothers had better fake ids than they had taste) but he suppressed it.
“no. i’m good.”
biggest lie he ever said. like there wasn’t anger caught in his throat and jealousy swelling between his ribs.
“go find jordan,” he taunted. “kiss them, show them a good time! isn’t that the reason why you got all pretty?”
you narrowed your eyes at him carefully. your nostrils were slightly flared, and luke took a bit of pride in being able to rile you up.
“look, we haven’t really talked lately, and i think we should.”
“go find jordan,” he mocked once more. “almost all the aphrodite kids are here, and i’m sure you can be quiet enough to sneak into their cabin and if you want a quick fu—”
“luke.” you clipped his name, obviously getting to the limit of your patience with him. “if you want to stay here all night and be an asshole, you’re welcome to. you should know, though, that your happy-go-lucky hero mask is starting to crack and i don’t know if you could deal with the fallout from it shattering completely.”
you leaned in close and whispered that last part, very aware of the chattering that stopped and the eyes that watched the pair of you anxiously. luke was usually good at hiding that part of himself who wanted to burn the world down.
in ways you didn’t realize, you were right: he couldn’t risk revealing it, not now.
not yet.
“do whatever you want, castellan,” you spat out his last name, the combination of letters foreign in your mouth.“i’m leaving.”
luke should be proud of himself. he waited a whole two seconds before following you like a stray dog.
luke didn’t know if he’d ever felt you that enraged by him, and it horrified him. it also made him hungry for more.
“i’m not sure that jordan would want the two of us alone together at night,” he shouted after you, words echoing into the starless sky.
“gods, enough about jordan!” luke practically ran into you with how fast you turned around to confront him. “i was helping them with that stupid aphrodite tradition!”
“you….” luke faltered, all the snark leaving his body. “what?”
luke remembered silena beauregard once explaining the rite of passage to him: to prove themselves, a child of aphrodite had to make someone fall in love with them, and then break their heart.
“why…why would you agree to do that?”
you had reached the dining area by then, and you sat on one of the steps leading to the pavilion. luke stayed a few feet away, looking at you cautiously.
“jordan and i are already friends, and they figured a fake relationship would be the way to avoid anyone from actually getting hurt in the process.”
“you seemed so…so into it, though,” luke stammered, the memory of you in jordan’s lap, laughter bubbling from your lips, still fresh.
“it’s called acting, dumbass.” the camp didn’t rely on electricity, but there were enough torches around that luke could see you roll your eyes. “anyways, i was trying to give you a heads-up last night, but you wouldn’t listen.” you took a deep breath. “and, honestly, i didn’t push it because….i figured i should test a hypothesis.”
a hypothesis? you’d known annabeth for too long.
“what hypothesis?”
you hesitated.
“it doesn’t matter. fuck, this was stupid,” you muttered, and without another word, stormed through the dining pavilion, a short cut to the hermes cabin. your footsteps fell heavy against the marble, and luke’s not far behind.
“what hypothesis?” he asked again.
nothing but rushed footsteps.
“what hypothesis?” luke finally yelled.
third time was the charm, because you stopped in your tracks and faced luke once again. a fire burned in the bronze brazier, where campers were forced to offer up portions of your food to the gods at every meal. its roaring seemed to captivate you, and the flames danced across your face, illuminating all your curves and edges.
“i’m angry at the gods,” you stated.
this caught luke off guard. from the day the two of you met, luke knew you shared that feeling. you’d gotten quieter with your rage as you’d gotten older. luke supposed he got better at hiding it himself, as well.
“i’m angry at the gods for letting bad shit happen even if they can stop it, and for building this world in the fucked up way they did. i’m angry at your dad for the way he’s treated you, but — you, luke castellan.” you finally met luke’s eyes with a gaze so sharp, luke almost felt himself bleed. “i’m also angry at you, and not just for your bullshit tonight.”
your admission felt like a punch to the stomach, and luke was left with no air to breathe.
did you know?
“you haven’t been the same since your quest,” you continued, words slow and deliberate, the way you spoke when you were worried your voice would shake. “and i’ve come to terms with that in the past few years, but you….you’ve never tried to ice me out before. you’ve been acting distant since december, and it’s been driving me insane. do you realize how much i miss my best …..” you swallowed the word friend. “how much i miss you?”
luke hesitated, because what could he say? i know i’ve been distant, but i’ve been busy trying to start a war between the gods. sorry babe!
would you hate him, if you knew?
you had to have known that, despite the distance, luke missed you. for tartarus sake, in the last two days, he’d driven himself mad at you calling a fourteen year old boy sweet, and he was about to combust at the image of you dating someone else, with little care as to the collateral damage.
"you can't just avoid me, makeout with katie fucking gardner, and then….” you trailed off, hiding your face in your hands. whether it was to hide embarrassment or tears, luke wasn’t sure.
a smirk spread across luke’s face at the revelation that he hadn’t been the only one jealous at the bonfire that night. it lit luke up with the confidence he needed to not completely fall to his knees in front of you, beg for your forgiveness for everything he’s done.
“why do you care if i make out with katie fucking gardner?”
as he waited for a response, luke walked towards you until your back hit one of the marble columns.
“why do you care if i’m with jordan fucking li?” you clenched your jaw and looked right through luke. a clear indication that you wanted him to break down first; it wouldn’t be you who yielded this fight.
“because i want to be the one you’re with.” at that point, luke was so close to you that he swore he could hear your heartbeat. he reached out and played with the hem of your shorts. “why do you care if i make out with katie gardner?”
“because.” you drew in a sharp breath when luke’s fingers brushed underneath the denim, across the warm skin of your thigh. you closed your eyes. “don’t make me say it, tiger.”
the desperation in your voice made luke want to do unholy things with you, to you. luke knew you didn’t think of him as a saint, and you never expected him to be one. the reality was that you weren’t much better, either. what was essentially an altar to the gods burned bright next to you, but it seemed neither of you had ever cared less about it than in that moment.
luke would watch olympus fall. he would dethrone the gods and watch their glass castle shatter and find glory in a new world. in the grand scheme of things, he was willing to lose this battle.
in fact, he would have rather betrayed the titan lord himself than waste another second not kissing your lips.
so, he kissed you, and you kissed him back with such force, such hunger, it was ungodly.
no, you certainly weren’t a saint — but you were divine, in the most brutal, intoxicating way. in the way you shuddered when luke lodged a leg between your thighs; in the way you threaded your fingers through the belt loops of his jeans to bring him closer; in the way the metal of your rings burned through the skin of his hip, right to the bone, which made him shudder, and you smile triumphantly against his jaw.
the more he tasted your smirk flavored by cherry soda and the ashes of nearby flames, the more he felt your feral teeth against his neck and your wicked nails digging into his shoulders, the more you tugged on his curls, the more luke thought: maybe.
maybe you would give into your seething resentment, live up to those eye-rolls and snarky comments that got you in trouble with chiron, on the edge of hot water with the gods. maybe you would join the titan army. maybe, just maybe, this time, you would follow luke.
and yet — maybe wasn’t enough if it meant he could lose this. luke wouldn’t risk it, not until he kissed every battle scar and bruise on your body, and you did the same to his.
“wait.”
it was the last thing luke wanted to do, but he complied. he took the opportunity to appreciate the chaos he created: your shirt in disarray, your lipstick a mess, your chest heaving and desperate to catch a breath.
“i promised jordan that we’d keep up our charade for a week, two at the most. do you think we could keep this…” you tightened your fist around the fabric of his shirt. “a secret until then?”
luke responded by pressing his lips to yours once more, because there were definitely worse secrets to keep.
(vii. you wouldn’t hesitate to make him bleed)
luke had just left percy jackson to die.
he should be leaving camp, now, but he needed to see you one last time.
the universe works in mysterious ways, because you were out on a run through the forest, and you crossed paths before he even had time to wonder where you were.
“hey, tiger.” you smiled as if this was a regular afternoon. the two of you would teach your afternoon activities, sneak away during dinner so luke could kiss you in that spot that made you gasp. “wanna join me? i was just wrapping up, but i could be convinced to go longer.”
for a second, he was tempted to. very tempted.
“i don’t have much time.”
you seemed to notice luke’s sullen mood and you dropped your playful demeanor.
luke explained: the messages from kronos in his dreams, him stealing the lightning bolt and helm of darkness to start a war between the gods and framing percy. the plan to destroy olympus that luke had pledged his life to.
percy was surprised at what luke had done, and luke could imagine that the rest of camp would be, too. luke was the golden boy of camp half-blood, everyone’s big brother.
you, on the other hand, didn’t express any sense of shock.
“luke.” you said his name like you weren’t quite sure it was poison. “i’m going to give you five seconds to tell me that you’re joking.”
five seconds of silence passed. you took a few steps back from luke.
“i….i should have told you sooner.”
“yeah,” you scoffed. “you should have. but, you didn’t. did it feel good, having the titan king whispering sweet nothings in your ear? all the lies about how this war is the only way to get the glory you so desperately want? it’s fucking delusional.”
“it’s not delusional—”
“yes, it is!” you glared at him. “you’re on the wrong side of a war you made the mistake of starting.”
luke straightened his posture, thinking about how hypocritical you were being.
“isn’t this what you’re all about? revenge, karma. your mom will probably join us, too. don’t you want to see the gods finally get what they deserve?”
“not like this. i can’t believe how desperate you are, to believe that kronos is going to make everything right. it’s pathetic,” you spat. “i’m not saying the gods don’t deserve to be taken down a notch. their fucking obsession with power and glory….it’s sick and twisted, but i don’t think your titan king is any better. i don’t think you are any better.”
“it’s time that the gods fall. this is the only way, even if it isn’t perfect,” luke countered. his voice was firmer now as he absorbed your anger. your mother was the goddess of revenge, but you clearly didn't understand the sacrifices, pain, and blood that was required to make the world a better place.
luke just needed to convince you.
“we’ve talked about this for years,” he continued. “nothing is balanced! there’s no justice here, for anyone. we can build a better world where we don’t have to burn our scraps and throw ourselves at monsters to get attention. we can fight together like we always have. y/n, i love—”
“don’t,” you snapped. “don’t you fucking dare. you should have died on your quest.” your voice laced with venom. one hand gripping the knife you always kept on your belt. “that dragon should have fucking sliced through you and saved us all the trouble.”
something pricked in the back of his throat, down to his stomach.
“you don’t mean that.”
“i do,” you promised. “at least you would have died with all of us thinking you’re a hero instead of the traitor you really are.”
you grabbed your knife, took a fighting stance.
“i’m not going to fight you,” was all luke could say. he noticed your hand tremble, and you tightened the grip on your knife to prevent emotion from slipping through your invisible armor.
in that moment, you have could slice through luke, and it would hurt less than everything you just said, less than the murderous look you were giving him, like he was just another monster you wouldn’t think twice about sending to tartarus.
luke didn’t even have a chance to unsheathe his sword before you charged at him, but he quickly had you pinned to the ground, the tip of your own knife pointed at you. he hesitated. the blade pressed harder against your cheek than he intended, enough to break the skin and let a few droplets of dark crimson escape.
“please come with me,” he pleaded. you didn’t answer, but you did seem surprised by the softness of his voice.
a few moments passed, the celestial bronze still between you. luke waited for you to see his way, to yield to his proposal.
you didn’t. instead, you took advantage of the situation. you wrapped your leg around his and flipped your position. in the process, you regained possession of your knife. without the hesitation that held luke back, you sliced through his cheek, deep. luke bit his lip to suppress a groan, tasting blood. your gaze set his whole body on fire as he waited for your next move. that was when you glanced down at his camp necklace, and the new clay bead added to commemorate this summer.
a turquoise trident.
“percy told me he was on his way to see you,” you realized. “what did you do?”
luke didn’t answer. he knew then that a choice ran through your head.
and it stung, just a little, watching you sprint away through the trees in a last ditch effort to save percy’s life.
there was a small, pathetic part of luke that wanted you to choose him, even if it meant you would have plunged the knife into his chest.
I think Mac should mes up bad or something and Luke should like save the day cause lowkey
texts with frat!luke castellan
especially yours
a/n: i have been thinking of lara jean's lost scrunchie the past few days so i made this out of that idea. this one's for my sentimental girls if u get it i get it <33
synopsis: your boyfriend is just way too hot, sometimes you can’t control yourself.
warnings: reader has a slight choking and praise kink, everybody is horny and needy, dry humping, making out, fingering?
note: wanted to let you know that all of my knowledge is based off the things i’ve read, i’m not 100% if everything is correct so correct me </3
It was Luke’s fault for being so hot. Come on, the way his biceps flexed every time he swung his sword.
How he taught all of the younger campers the basics of sword fighting, and he’s good with kids!
And especially the way he touched you late at night in the forest sometime past curfew. He pulled you out of bed, hand gripping tightly on yours as he led you to the forest.
When he pinned you against the tree, a hand resting on your thigh directing up and inwards while the other held your neck, thumb and index finger on either side as he pressed down.
Luke’s lips collided on you like a starved man, hungry and passionate. Dancing with yours. His grip on your thigh tightening and sending shivers of pleasure to your below.
“You looked so pretty t’night.” Luke mumbled breathlessly in your ear, his lips parting from yours and down to your jawline.
Planting sloppy kisses along your neck and trailing down to your collarbones, often sucking on a piece of flesh.
Amusement flickering in Luke’s eyes as he pulled his head away for a second, his hand around your neck now holding onto your shoulder with his thumb caressing the deep purple mark on your collarbone.
You felt a twitch, a pulse against your thigh, grinning to yourself. “Lips on mine, Lukey…” you grabbed his face, cupping his jaw with both of your hands and pulling his soft lips to yours again.
Luke slipped his tongue in your mouth, a moan leaving your mouth. His lips pulling into a smirk against yours while he grinded his hips forward to meet yours, often nipping at your bottom lip.
You reached a hand to the nape of his neck, trailing up until your fingers tangled in his hair. With a tug, he moaned into your mouth.
It was your turn to smirk.
You tugged again just to make sure you weren’t dreaming, but he moaned again as he devoured you.
Your name leaving his mouth disappearing into your sloppy kisses. “You’re so beautiful, you know that?” Luke panted, tugging down the collar of your camp half-blood shirt to have more access to your skin, just above your breasts.
You hummed in content and delight, your fingers trailing down while leaving goosebumps on his tan skin until they were holding onto his strong biceps.
Again, the way Luke’s biceps flexed made you even more turned on then before.
And, oh gods, his hands. His long, calloused, massive fingers. You just wanted to grab his hands away from your body and bring them to your wetness.
Luke noticed the way you were lost staring at his arms then smirked. “You like my arms?” you nodded, a betraying whimper leaving your lips as his hips grinded against yours.
Bulge prominent and rubbing against your lower stomach. “What about my hands?” he grabbed his hand away from your waistline and up in front of your face.
You nodded quickly, not caring about if you were too needy, only wanting his fingers inside of you.
Luke paused for a moment before bringing two of his fingers and shoving them into your mouth.
You sighed in pleasure and his eyes darkened. His calloused fingers dipped around your mouth, your tongue sucking on them instinctively, your salvia covering them as you pretended they were his cock.
Luke adjusted himself so that his bulge was more in line with your cunt, his hips grinding yours more forcefully and needily than before.
His hand gripped onto your thigh tightly before rolling his hips, so very desperate. You multitasked, sucking on his warm fingers in mouth and your hands on his lower back pushing him into your arousal.
Your head fell back against the tree, tilting upwards so that you could see the night sky and how the stars scattered.
The friction between your hips was overwhelming, you could feel a coil pooling up in your lower stomach enjoying the way he rubbed against you, teasing your entrance.
“My needy girl.” Luke praised.
His fingers finally left your mouth, your salvia on them and a string of it connecting your mouth and his digits. Luke trailed his hand down his jeans, the belt already discarded a while ago.
He touched his length, his fingers with your salvia on it rubbing it as Luke continued grinding against you.
He moaned, eyes fluttering shut before he took his hand out of his jeans. Luke placed his new free hand on your hips, thrusting into you.
With every thrust it elicited a small whimper from you and Luke, him mostly quieter all while you arched your back. It was enough of the teasing and humping, you wanted to feel his length in you.
As you attempted to pull his jeans down, Luke pushed them away with a tut. “Not yet, baby.” He grinned, his raspy voice not helping your state.
You whined, instead putting your hands around his neck and pulling Luke closer if that was even possible.
The coil in your lower stomach grew and you moaned, feeling closer by the second. Then he parted from you.
Your eyebrows furrowed at the removal of his hips against yours, your eyes flickered down to his pants where his bulge was still very prominent.
Instead, Luke tugged at your shirt. You could just let out a small nod, still confused and horny when he ripped the shirt off you.
The red lacy bra you wore just for him was finally shown. His eyes widened and sparkled in love and lust, head falling down to the outline of your tits.
Sure you were scared that somebody was going to catch the two of you, especially you with your shirt off. But in the moment, Luke was all you could think about.
Your hands kept going from his biceps to his shoulders then hair, unsure where to put them.
Luke nipped at your skin with a groan, leaving a couple of hickeys on your tits, even pushing away the fabric so he could get closer to your nipple.
Then, his right hand fell down to the front of your clothed cunt, thumb pressing against your clit through your jeans and rubbing in circles.
Your breath hitched then you untensed, feeling looser.
“You’re so beautiful.” Luke muttered mindlessly like he was infected by your beauty, mumbling words into your chest and often gazing into your hands which only seemed to enhance your beauty.
His two hands going in the same circular motion, one on your lower stomach and on your pussy. It ached as he finally touched it, sending jolts of excitement to your brain and delight through your veins.
“So wet, so sweet. Just f’me?” Luke continued, feeling your wetness in your underwear.
You nodded.
“Words.” He ordered.
“All for you, just for you.” You gripped onto your biceps like your life depended on it.
A low chuckle left his mouth as Luke looked up through his eyelashes, his curls slightly damp against his forehead.
“Yes, my sweet girl. All for me.” He mumbled, fingers leaving your clit and inside zipping down your jeans and buttoning them.
“Let me reward you.”
Gods above—
not proofread! (oh hell no) ,, masterlist
happy valentines day my lovelies!!! i would think if you’ve read, your alone as well but its okay cuz we are alone all together <3
summary: you try your best to move on. it’s made only somewhat easier by the fact that you see luke only three more times before the end of the summer.
content: childhood friends to lovers to whatever they have going on. yearning, heartbreak, and angst of course! they are at the “its so over” point of that one chart unfortunately
notes: i feel like that tik tok audio thats like u cant get rid of me…. im not going nowhere!!! thats literally how i feel abt this series they are a part of me forever. title from the phoebe bridgers song
ONE
You and Luke fall into a steady routine after your breakup—if you can even call it that.
You still can’t tell what parts of this summer were true or made up in your mind. After all, it hadn’t been real, right?
It’s not difficult to avoid each other completely. When his habits are ingrained into every part of your being, knowing what time to steer clear of the armory on Mondays and only lingering around the places he hates the most becomes as easy as breathing. The two of you also manage to synchronize your eating schedules, so his usual spot at the Hermes table is starkly empty every time you find your way to the pavilion. It’s a twisted dance of avoidance.
The feeling of him remains though, his memory lingering around every single corner of Camp Half-Blood. The lack of him ends up becoming just as much of a reminder as the actual sight of him. You can’t count the amount of times you’ve turned to your side, expecting him to be there the same way he always has.
Luke Castellan has always been the only steady presence in your life. Your friends had jokingly called him your human shadow. There was never you without him, and never him without you.
The emptiness at your side is almost as stark as the empty ache in your heart.
It feels like a part of you has disappeared. It’s hard, because you see Luke in just about everything. You hear his laugh in the creaking patio of Cabin Eleven and feel the ghost of his touch over your spine whenever someone brushes too close to you. The twin sized mattress always feels two sizes too big when you find your way back to your own cabin to sleep.
You had gone to Luke’s after leaving the lake that night, your hand shaking on the door knob and a sick feeling in your chest. The empty bag slung over your back felt as heavy as the sky itself.
A cabin that you knew just as well as your own began to distort in front of your eyes. The squeaking of the sticky door hinges felt like they were mocking you. The familiar chatter of Luke’s siblings that flowed into the night air filled your stomach with dread.
Usually, the shame of cowardice was enough to get you to push forward when it was hard. But as you stood in front of the door, you hadn’t felt any of that familiar humiliation. You would have turned around and fled if a heavy hand hadn’t landed on your shoulder.
You’d tensed, the edges of your vision darkening. But whatever apology or insult that was waiting to fall from your lips slipped your mind when you’d been spun around.
It was only Chris.
“Hey,” he had said, entirely unaware of the way you were about to be sick on the front step. Chris had been giving you an easy smile. “What’ve you been—”
“Is Luke here?”
Your interruption had been as rude as it sounded, but it was difficult for you to think over the sound of your heart racing in your chest. You were afraid of the answer Chris had to offer.
How would you be able to look at Luke when just the thought of seeing him made your hands shake with fear?
Chris’ brows had furrowed, confused. “No. I just saw him over by the Big House. He should be heading this way soon, though, if you need to talk to him—”
The door creaked loudly as you pulled on it, though the sound went unnoticed by the kids talking inside. Sheer muscle memory was what let you step over askew sleeping bags and stray soccer balls without much thought. The ease of it all had been too much to think about at the moment.
Your vision narrowed as you crossed the room, nausea rearing its ugly head once again as you hurried over the floorboards.
For what would be the last time, you found yourself face to face with Luke’s things.
Luke’s stuff laid cluttered all over his dresser. There was a stick of deodorant tossed haphazardly between his sunglasses and an empty cardboard box, and one of Annabeth’s drawings sitting on top of a few loose pieces of paper. He had also kept a makeshift flag football trophy a Hephaestus kid made for him. You let your eyes rake over every inch of it greedily, your hand unsteady where it curled into the fabric of one of his jackets.
“—t’s the matter? Did something happen?”
Somewhere in the back of your mind, you realized that Chris was standing a few steps behind you. He had no doubt followed you from the front door, concern dripping heavy from his words.
It almost stung to hear. You had met Chris as Luke’s brother first, but he had become your friend over the years too. You knew him well enough to know that he would want nothing to do with you when he found out what had happened.
As selfish as it was, you let yourself enjoy the last moment of kindness you probably would ever receive from Chris Rodriguez.
The details of Luke’s things grated on your heart. The closer you had looked, the more you saw yourself, too. One of your shirts was draped over his headboard. The water bottle you’d left this morning was sitting in front of the mirror, right next to—
Your heart had felt like it stopped in your chest. The memories flashed back through your head against your will.
You and Luke’s trip to the city for your sixteenth birthday. The diner. The sightseeing boat. The photobooth.
It’d only been a few years ago, but it felt like you didn’t recognize the people in the pictures. Your faces were pressed together in one of them, and you were laying a kiss on his cheek in another. The last one showed you laughing, your arm over his shoulder. You couldn’t see it, but you could still feel Luke’s embarrassed smile pressed into your neck, the redness of his cheeks lost to the black and white photo.
A sick sense of jealousy surged through you. This version of you was ignorant. Ignorant but happy. She had no idea that the person who held her heart in his hands would be the same person to shatter it.
Distantly, you realized you didn’t feel upset anymore.
You felt nothing but angry.
How could Luke do this to the two of you? Where had it all gone wrong?
Chris’ sharp intake of air was what snapped you out of your stupor.
You blinked, looking down in confusion, and you froze. The photo was in your hands, the strip ripped quickly in half.
Your immortalized laughter taunted you from where the lower half of the photo remained taped on Luke’s mirror. You looked away before any tears could form, your fist closing hard over the broken piece in your palm.
It all unraveled after that.
It didn’t take you long to clear out the bottom drawer of Luke’s dresser, the one he’d dedicated to your things. There were a few things under his bed that you went back and forth on, like that paint splattered hoodie that was yours just as much as it was his and a shirt he’d given to you a few years ago. You weren’t sure if you would be able to take the sight of any of it after this.
You’d lost your camp necklace somewhere here too, and had been meaning to find it. You wondered if you would have time before Luke came back.
It felt like your breath grew shorter and shorter the longer you stayed in the cabin. Images flashed through your head no matter where you looked. He’d kissed you for the first time against this bed. He’d helped you sneak in through the back window of the cabin years before that, and you didn’t realize that you were hyperventilating until something warm settled at your side.
It was Chris, his eyes wide where he was kneeling next to you.
His hand slipped into yours, unclenching your fist the same way Luke would. You were still holding onto half of the photo. His face fell with sympathy and something that looked like understanding.
You wiped your face, beyond glad when you realized it was completely dry. It had been an hour or so, but you still hadn’t cried about losing your best friend.
In that moment, you promised yourself that you never would.
“Are you okay?” Chris had asked, voice low to not draw too much attention. He tossed a furtive glance over his shoulder in the direction of where a group of younger campers were giggling over a magazine.
“Yeah,” you said, a complete and utter lie. “Sorry about all of this. I’m all done now.”
The familiar weight of eyes on you made you rush to your feet.
It seemed now that Luke would be able to keep your camp necklace. He was standing in the doorway of his cabin, his eyes trained on where you were sitting in front of his things.
You had no intention of staying in Cabin Eleven for another second. You never wanted to step foot in this room ever again.
The two of you tracked each other as you moved.
Even though you were—or, had been—his best friend, anyone would’ve been able to tell Luke had been crying. His eyes were bloodshot and puffy, though they were not still wet with tears. You did not take as much comfort in the thought as you thought you would have.
His mouth had been parted in surprise, clearly not expecting to see you so soon. The heel of his palm was frozen against his sternum, like he had stopped moving the second he had realized it was really you inside of his cabin.
When Luke was younger and had nightmares every other night, he would rub circles into his chest to get his heart to stop aching. You wondered if that was what he had been doing just now. You also wondered who would hold him through the rest of his nightmares now.
He didn’t let his gaze stray as you stepped closer and closer and closer until you were near enough to touch.
If it had been any other day, you would’ve brushed your thumbs over the tear tracks on his cheeks. He would’ve kissed your palm. He would’ve kissed you.
As you stepped close enough to touch him, your eyes traced over the tightness of his shoulders. It was like he was scared you would brush against him. The skin of his neck was tinged red with tension.
You couldn’t tell if you would ever stand this close to him again.
The smell of his cologne followed you as you stepped past him, and you were slammed with the realization that one day, you would forget the little details of Luke Castellan. Eventually, you wouldn’t remember that he liked to press his forehead to your shoulder, or that he only needed two alarms to wake up in the morning.
He was leaving you, and the memories of him would eventually fade too.
You hadn’t been able to hold his gaze for another second, fixing your eyes on some far off point ahead of you. Emotion clouded your vision. Chris had mumbled some sort of greeting to his friend, probably pulling him inside before he shut the door behind them.
You made it fifteen feet before a resounding slam echoed from somewhere inside the building.
You didn’t recognize it as the sound of your now empty drawer until sometime later.
TWO
The next time you see Luke, you almost don’t recognize him.
Some of the kids had decided to put together an informal fighting tournament, with the winner getting a whopping prize of thirty-three drachmas. Half of camp came to the arena to watch, the summer campers eager to spend some of their last days here doing something seriously fun.
The Ares cabin was taking the bracket a little more seriously than you’d expected them to. Your siblings had passed around eye black before the big event, and a few of the boys painted letters on their chest spelling out your sister Lana’s name.
(Most of the time though, they rearranged themselves to spell out something that was clearly not Lana.)
You were excited for your siblings who were participating, of course, smiling whenever someone looked your way and even letting Clarisse smear a line of red face paint under your eyes. But to say your heart wasn’t in it would be an understatement.
It had officially been a week since you’d last spoken to Luke.
It meant that you’d officially broken your record of not speaking to each other. Seven whole days had passed, though it felt a lot closer to a year.
Embarrassment burns hot in your chest when you acknowledge it, but it feels like you’re missing a part of yourself. He was a part of you. The biggest part.
It’s shameful how you’re only halfway functioning without him. You finally understand what it means when people say they are ‘going through the motions’. Every day, you wake up to a nightmare where your best friend hates you and you hate him. You eat, walk the grounds of camp more as a ghost than as a person, let sleep evade you, then get up to the same nightmare.
You haven’t been able to sleep through the night since your fight. When the sun sets on camp, you stare up at the ceiling and try to pretend like you aren’t thinking about the empty spot next to you. You’ve started burning food as an offering to Hypnos, but find not even that’s enough to let you sleep for more than an hour at a time.
In the days after your fight, you almost found yourself flinching at every reminder of Luke. You’ve gone out of your way to avoid anything that would even make you think of him, which meant you lost interest in most things you used to love doing. You haven’t sparred since. You sat out of yesterday’s Capture the Flag game to sit by the beach instead. It felt like he had taken every aspect of your life from you.
His memory taints everything you even think about doing. But after a week of silence, you find that you’re almost hungry for any glimpse of him you can manage. In every crowd, around every corner, and in every shadow, you look for the outline of his back, or the cut of his jaw. You still search for him despite the fact the thought of seeing him fills you with dread.
Annabeth had explained something to you a couple of years ago — the concept of negativity bias. Even when positive or neutral things of equal intensity occur, a person’s psychological state is more likely to be affected by something negative.
You think that’s what’s happening to you now. You’re trying your best, but every time you think of every hug you shared, every hour you spent together, every moment Luke had been the only thing that felt safe, you only seem able to think of that night.
Is it really that hard to believe someone doesn’t love you?
You can’t get the way he looked at you out of your head. It felt like he hadn’t known you at all. The person you were convinced you were going to spend the rest of your life with looked you in the eyes and swore his love had been a lie.
And you can’t even think about him long enough to remember if any of it had even been real.
It ends up being here, at the camp’s makeshift fighting tournament, that you see Luke Castellan for the first time in a week.
Even when faced with only the sight of his back, you know immediately that he looks almost nothing like your Luke.
He’s sitting next to Chris on the edge of the mat the campers are fighting on, his shoulders slumped, like he’s curling in on himself. He seems completely unresponsive to the shouts and heckles of the rest of the kids from his cabin, who are currently cheering on Travis in the ring.
You’re torn between two opposite gut reactions.
The new unease that rises at the thought of him sits uncomfortably in your chest. You move to duck behind a taller Aphrodite camper to your left when you feel your hands reach to pick at a loose thread on your jeans.
But somewhere else, deep down, your lifelong instinct takes over, and you’re taking a step in his direction before you can stop yourself.
After all, something was wrong with Luke. You were supposed to comfort him, weren’t you?
Their entire section stands up abruptly when Travis manages to knock his opponent’s weapon onto the floor, and you watch with morbid curiosity as Luke remains seated, his jaw resting in the palm of his hand.
You get hit in the back so hard you almost stumble forward.
From right next to you, you catch a glimpse of a sharp glare aimed at your direction, and you realize belatedly that your entire cabin is now standing too, cheering loudly as your brother Cole gets ready to step into the ring. You get to your feet abruptly, clapping mindlessly.
Even if she wasn’t glaring, Clarisse’s disappointment would still feel almost palpable. “Stop giving ass-face your time of day.”
It didn’t take long for your siblings to put together what happened between you and Luke, though none of them knew the full story. They saw that he stopped coming by to ask for you and that your sleepovers came to an abrupt stop, and the pieces settled into place for them. You realized the Hermes cabin came to a similar understanding when whispers of Luke’s apparent mood swings made their way to you.
The general consensus among them at first was that you two were having a little fight. To everyone else, it had seemed like the silent treatment you had given him earlier in the summer. Your brother insisted that Luke had been wandering around camp like a kicked puppy dog, though you sincerely doubt that.
You could feel the looks people gave you whenever the Hermes cabin was nearby, waiting to see if you were going to go running over like you used to. People were shocked to see your twenty-four hours of silence creep into forty-eight and then roll over into seventy-two.
It was clear that everyone expected for it to blow over eventually. After all, no one has ever known who you are without Luke. You arrived at camp together and haven’t spent a day apart since.
Your stomach twists when you realize you aren’t sure who you are without Luke either.
Five days after your argument, you snapped at someone who asked when your boyfriend was coming over, and their suspicions were confirmed. Whatever was happening between the two of you was serious.
You and Luke are the only two people alive who knew whatever this was was permanent.
Permanent.
You’re having a tough time coming to terms with the fact that the feelings of resentment you held toward him were going to remain a permanent thing. Luke had been more than just your best friend. He’d been your… boyfriend? Partner? Soulmate? You aren’t even sure there was a single word that could perfectly describe what he had been to you. None of the words in the English language seemed to encompass it.
You still half believed that Luke was going to come back to you and apologize. After all, he’d drawn first blood. But as the days passed, and the end of your time at camp drew nearer, you felt yourself losing hope.
He’d asked you to stay away from him. It was over. He swore it.
“I’m not giving him my time of day,” you insist to your sister, though it’s clearly a lie. Your eyes are still trained on the outline of his back. “I was just looking.”
A group of people next to you knock you closer to Clarisse when one of your brothers in the ring lands a good hit on his opponent.
“Then stop looking,” she grits out, not bothering to keep her voice low with how loud the arena is. “He doesn’t deserve you thinking about him.”
“I’m thinking about how much he looks like shit,” you say flatly, your voice lacking any of the vitriol you planned to say it with. Even after everything that happened, you still can’t bring yourself to hate him completely. You aren’t sure you’re even capable of it. Not even playing your last conversation in your head seems to work. You’re hurt by what he said, but hatred isn’t something you think you can feel for him.
Your sister snorts from next to you. “You can’t even see his stupid face.”
You don’t respond. She leans closer to you to try and catch a glimpse of him too, craning her neck around to get a good look.
You’re just about to hiss at her to stop being nosy when she grabs your bicep, an amused sound coming from her throat in surprise. Your heart jumps to your throat.
Somewhere in the commotion, Annabeth wandered over to the Hermes cabin. She’s just tapped on Luke’s shoulder, and he’s spun around to face her, giving you your first good look of him in a week.
Clarisse laughs. “Holy shit.”
Dark circles mar Luke’s under eyes like twin bruises. He’s listening to Annabeth, nodding along as he does so, but his eyes look vacant and unfocused. He looks just as exhausted as you feel.
Even when you’re apart, you can’t help but be connected in the worst ways.
“He’s sure taking your little breakup hard,” she muses. “Couldn’t handle being dumped, I guess.”
You whip your head in her direction. “Clarisse—”
“What?” She rolls her eyes. “It’s not like Castellan would’ve dumped you. He’d probably cut off his own arm if you said it would make you happy.”
Her words make your insides twist. There was a time when you believed that too. “I didn’t dump him. We weren’t even… it wasn’t—”
“Yeah, yeah, you ‘weren’t dating.’” You don’t appreciate the quotes she makes around her last few words. “I know, you’ve only said it fifty times.”
“And I’ll say it fifty more times if that’s what it takes for you to get it,” you snap, finally tearing your eyes away from him. “Drop it, okay?”
Clarisse puts her hands up in surrender, though the amusement hasn’t faded from her eyes. “Heard.”
You try to put your focus back on the tournament, where your sister Lana is finally taking her turn after your brother’s win. Your brothers in the front row have their arms around each other’s shoulders, and they’re cheering in sync.
“Sheesh,” Clarisse says again, though her attention is clearly not on the fight in front of you. She’s still looking over at Luke.
“Clarisse,” you warn, voice firm, but as stubborn as ever, she ignores you.
“He looks like he got trampled. And then hit by a bus that pushed him off a cliff.”
You can’t tell if the lump in your chest is concern or intrigue. Whatever it is, though, is strong enough to get you to look back up at him again.
He and Annabeth are… arguing.
It’s subtle enough that Clarisse can’t tell, too busy making a snide comment about how it looks like he’s climbed his way out from the Underworld.
And while the slight sheen to his eyes is enough to give you pause, you’re much more stunned by the way his fists clench at his sides, jaw twitching with irritation. Luke’s never gotten upset with Annabeth before. You almost don’t believe your own eyes.
Luke has been soft on Annabeth your entire lives. While the three of you were always close, you knew their similar home lives meant that the two of them understood each other in a way you would never be fully able to. He doted on her a lot, and had probably stolen hundreds of dollars worth of trinkets for her over the course of your time on the road. He was more likely to jump into a pit of vipers than say no to her.
It’s why you can’t quite make sense of the scene in front of you. Even Clarisse has started to realize the conversation is shifting more into a fight, because she gives you an amused smile before putting her attention back onto Lana’s match in front of you.
Annabeth’s shaking her head vigorously, and you watch as Luke cuts her off abruptly, which she doesn’t take lightly. His brows knit as he crosses his arms in front of his chest. They go back and forth some more before he scoffs, his dark eyes rolling briefly. She pokes a finger into his chest with so much force his eyes widen, and then she’s whirling around so quickly you almost don’t realize she’s making a beeline in your direction.
You don’t bother pretending you weren’t watching. Annabeth’s face is scrunched with frustration, and she looks about a second away from pulling her own hair out. She weaves between people swiftly until she finds herself in front of you, her features pulled into a scowl.
“There is seriously something wrong with him,” she grumbles, not bothering to use his name. Her eyes are steely, but you can see they’re hurt, too. “What happened to you two? He’s been weird this whole week. What are you even fighting about?”
“Annabeth,” you say, your voice catching on the last syllable. You don’t know what to tell her.
“Did he do something?” she pushes on, brow furrowing. “It’s his fault, isn’t it? He wouldn’t be so mad if—”
You cut her off before she can continue. “It’s nothing, okay?”
As sharp as ever, Annabeth hears the break in your voice and drops it. She can probably tell she clearly isn’t going to get anything else out of you despite how much she wants to press it. She sighs and doesn’t say anything even when some of your siblings jostle the two of you around.
Before she disappears into the crowd again, she gives you a look you can’t quite understand. “Just talk to him.”
You direct your gaze somewhere in the direction of the tournament in front of you, but your vision is swimming. You and Luke Castellan have already spoken for what you know is the last time.
Your cabin surges forward again when Lana finally bests her opponent, and you feel your heart plummet to the ground.
THREE
It’s been another week since you last saw Luke.
You leave Camp Half-Blood tomorrow morning.
You’ve already gorged yourself on strawberries from the field and run your hands over the Ares cabin’s flag for the last time. You said goodbye to the naiad who saved your life a few years ago and had one last climbing wall race against Clarisse, which you won, obviously. A little after, your little sister pushed you on the tire swing outside the Big House until you got dizzy. Your hands are stained from painting your very last camp bead, which sits safely in your packed bag next to your bed.
You’ve revisited almost every hidden corner and every inch of camp that exists, and there’s only one place left on your goodbye tour.
The lake.
You haven’t gone back since your fight. The spot had belonged to both of you, and it didn’t feel right going back without him.
Truthfully, you haven’t wanted to go back there, either. Your last conversation had tainted your memory of the place, but you know that you won’t be able to leave without seeing it one last time.
After promising your siblings that you’ll be back before the fireworks start, you start the short walk through the woods.
Nothing has changed, of course. The grass to your right rustles as a rabbit darts across your path. When you reach for the thick branch to pull yourself over a fallen log, your hands fit perfectly in the grooves you’ve worn into the wood over the years. The air is sticky with humidity, and the laughter that rings out from behind you grows quieter as you move further away from camp.
The only thing missing is the steady presence at your side. Luke probably would’ve made ten bad jokes by this point of the walk, and would’ve bounced a few times between trying to trip you and trying to hold your hand.
You shift your focus intently to where you’re stepping instead. You estimate how many yards away the lake is. You think about what being on a plane will be like. You wonder how you’re going to say goodbye to Annabeth. You wonder if you’re going to say goodbye to Luke.
No matter how hard you try, it all comes back to him anyway.
Before you can even stop and realize it, you’re stepping past the treeline, gravel crunching quietly under your shoes.
The lake is eerily silent.
A canoe that someone was too lazy to put away rests overturned by the water. In the distance, you can see a duck dipping into the lake looking for something to eat. Its small movements send ripples throughout the rest of the water.
It’s so quiet that you can only hear the sound of your own breathing.
Being here by yourself is unsettling. You almost get the urge to turn around and leave, but something tells you to plant your feet. You know you’re going to regret not saying goodbye to a place that has watched you grow up. It witnessed the entirety of your love for Luke — the oblivious years, your first real kiss, and the crash and burn of all of it.
There’s movement in your peripheral vision. You swear for a moment that you can hear the familiar crackling of fire by the trees, but when you turn there’s nothing there.
You start to regret coming here. For the first time, being at this lake isn’t making you feel better. It’s nothing but a painful reminder of what you’ve lost.
The last few weeks have been the hardest of your entire life. It’s even worse than the weeks after you nearly died in Pennsylvania, and even harder than your first weeks on the run.
You had Luke through all of it. Nothing had been too hard to bear because he had been there to shoulder it with you. He’d held you through nights where your stomach would cramp from hunger, and he would always let you sleep an extra hour or two even when it was your turn to be on watch.
Nothing about those years were easy. It’d been hard, but you were always together. When you couldn’t rely on yourself, you knew you could rely on Luke.
Your eyes sting as you take in the emptiness of your surroundings. The slow breeze that whips at your face bites a little harder. It’s so quiet that your ears start to ring. You try to pop your ears to stop the incessant noise, but find that the silence gets worse. There’s nothing out here but you.
The weight of it hits you a second later.
For the first time in your life, you are completely and utterly alone.
You’d promised yourself that you wouldn’t cry over Luke. You blink quickly to try and stop the onslaught of tears and find that your eyes begin to burn despite it. Pain stirs in your chest as you finally feel yourself fall apart.
You’ve been alone for a long time.
Did you ever truly have Luke? You wonder how long he’d been harboring that anger against you. When did he start pulling away? Had you been too love-blind to see it? Was any of it real?
Everything about your relationship had been a secret. Was it because he was ashamed of you? Has this been his plan all along?
The outline of the dock comes into focus despite how unsteady your gaze is.
You can still see the version of yourself that sat here and believed in a future you were never going to have. It had only been a month since that morning.
A breeze kisses the apples of your cheeks, and more memories come back to you.
Phantom laughter rings in your ear, taunting you. If you focus hard enough, you can almost feel the soreness of your arms from a day full of playful fighting and racing Luke through the water. A few summers ago, he had held you by the fire here and told you he wanted to stay with you forever. He saw a future with you in it.
You had so many plans, and none of them would come true.
Tomorrow morning, you are going to get on a plane that will take you miles away from this place and the person you’ve called home for almost as long as you can remember.
You stumble away from the water.
It’s too late, but you finally realize that you’re heaving.
It feels like your chest is trying to collapse in on itself. You can barely breathe around the physical weight that’s compressing your ribcage, pressing hard against the rampant beating of your heart. You can’t take a breath in without your entire body shaking, the tightness in your chest stopping you from getting any air in.
You clutch at your shirt like it might help, trying to pull it off the space above your lungs, but the fabric is as loose as it's always been. You can barely feel your fingertips.
The sobs that wrack your body ache.
You’re so sick of feeling sad. Only one person has ever made you feel better when you get like this, and you have no idea what to do when he’s the reason you feel this way.
You want him to come back to you. You want to never see him again. You want him to apologize. You want to beg him to forgive you. You want to leave camp and never look back. You want to shackle yourself to him so you’re never separated again.
There’s shuffling behind you. Deja vu creeps around your shoulders and curls around your insides like a familiar friend. It feels like the sand at Compo Beach and tastes like your mom’s lemonade. It feels like coming home.
Warmth envelops you from every side. You find yourself sinking into it despite the way it feels like you’ve been turned inside out.
How could you stop yourself, anyway?
It’s Luke.
His cologne fills your senses as you shove your face into the crook of his neck, slotting yourself so close to him he stumbles back a step.
The familiar feeling of his skin against yours causes a sob to wrack your chest. You start grabbing for any part of him your hands can reach, one of your hands fisting in his hair while the other grabs blindly for one of his arms that he has around you. You never thought you would feel this whole again.
“I’m sorry,” you plead. You aren’t sure what you’re apologizing for. For your fight? For reaching for him like he’s the only thing that’s holding you together? You can’t tell. “Luke. I love you.”
His grip loosens and you panic. You grab onto him harder, your nails digging into the skin of his bicep painfully, your vision swimming. He’s a blur of orange fabric and curly hair as you shake your head, refusing to let him leave. He can’t.
You don’t recognize that he’s saying something to you until the familiar feel of his palms settles on both sides of your face. Your eyes trace the shape of his lips as he speaks, though none of it processes. Your ears are ringing again.
He pulls you against his chest again, letting you feel the rise and fall of it. His breathing is barely more even than yours. The setting sun paints the two of you in pink and gold.
“How could you do this?” You feel bile rise to your throat. You think you’re going to be physically sick. “Why are you doing this to us? I’m sorry. I’m sorry, you know I’m so sorry, please—”
“I know. I know.”
“You’re my best friend. I’m sorry. I love you. I love you, Luke. Please don’t do this to me.”
“You need to breathe, okay?” His hand passes over your back. It’s shaking so badly that he has to clutch at your shirt. His words are fraught with tension, like he’s forcing them out through gritted teeth.
“I’m sorry. I need you to forgive me. You have to forgive me.” Half of your words are choked out between gasps for air, but you know he understands.
“Breathe. I know. I promise you, I know.”
You vaguely feel his grip on you loosen again, and you protest with every ounce of energy you have left. Your tears are soaking his shirt.
“Hey,” he says, rubbing a line down your arm. Warmth creeps into his voice and another sob wracks your body. “You’re hiccuping. You’re gonna be sick.”
He rubs your back through the entirety of it. You must make quite the sight, the both of you on your knees in the dirt as you empty your stomach.
You fall back against Luke when it’s over, pressing against him as much is physically possible. Your neck is craned at an impossible angle so you can see his face. You want to memorize every inch of it. You never thought he would be this close to you ever again.
“I don’t know how to do this without you, Luke,” you admit without an ounce of shame. Your voice comes out rough from the tears and coarse from your retching. “I’m so scared.”
He stays silent while he cradles you against him, his eyes unmoving from the sand. The dark circles under his eyes have somehow gotten worse, which makes you frown. His lips are red and bitten too. He looks just as sick as you.
After another bout of quiet, he finally looks at you. He wipes at the corner of your mouth, his stare blank.
“I was so mean,” you try again, nodding, like it’ll help him understand. “I’m so sorry. How could I have said those things to you?”
One of the last times you sat like this was the morning after you first kissed. You wonder if he realizes that too.
“You’re nothing like him,” you promise. “You’re good. So good, Luke.”
Luke’s face crumples with an emotion you can’t quite read. “I have to do this.”
You shake your head, desperate. “No. No. I’ll do better. I’ll be better. I’ll make it up to you for the rest of my life, I promise, Luke, I promise.”
He presses his forehead against yours, the two of you so close together that it feels like you’re sharing oxygen. His eyes are glassy and almost unfocused, and you brush your thumb over his cheek, greedy and desperate. You should feel guiltier than you are.
“He… he is the only one who can fix this. All of this. I don’t have a choice,” he says, almost whispering it.
Your head spins. It feels like he’s talking through you and not to you. “I don’t understand. You’re… you always have a choice, Luke. You’re nothing like your father. You don’t need him to do anything. And you know I didn’t—there’s not a world that exists where I actually thought those things. I didn’t mean it.”
You can’t believe you used his father against him. You can’t even blame Luke for wanting to leave you. What kind of person says those things to someone they love?
Luke’s features pull down into a grimace as he shakes his head. He says nothing else as his eyes trace the path of your tears down your cheeks.
The July humidity makes it feel almost unbearable to be this close to him, but you soak up every second he’s willing to offer you. Sweat beads at your hairline and in the small of your back.
A month wasn’t long enough to erase the nuances of Luke from your memory. You trace the cut of his jaw with your thumb. His tan has come in full force this summer, and you mourn the time you could have spent together.
“Leave with me.” You nod quickly, reaching for his hand that rests limply against your side. “It’s not too late, Luke. It’ll never be too late.”
You can’t remember why you’d even been angry with him at all. Your flight is tomorrow morning. How did you think you could ever leave without him?
He doesn’t respond, his eyes tracing down the length of your face. You wonder what he sees there.
You glance down at his lips, and wish instantly that you hadn’t.
Luke tenses, and it feels like you’ve been struck.
He shakes his head, his throat bobbing as he swallows stiffly. His words are even and practiced when he says, “Kissing me won’t change anything.”
“Then what will?” you beg. Your face heats, not with embarrassment, but with grief. The words sound just as desperate as you feel.
You feel his entire body go very still behind you.
You’re almost grateful that he doesn’t grace you with a response. You’re all out of words to say.
Your eyes slide shut when you feel the warmth at your back disappear.
Surprisingly, there is no tell-tale feeling of your eyes burning with tears. In place of grief is the all-consuming ache of numbness.
Sometime later, you get the strength to face the empty space behind you. Luke is gone.
For the next hour, you sit alone by the lake as the fireworks explode over your last night at Camp Half-Blood. Red and blue lights make shapes in front of your unseeing eyes. You wonder if Luke had even been here or if you’d just imagined him when you’d needed him most.
An hour later, by the time you find your way back to your siblings, it’s over.
You’re standing on the front steps of your cabin when you find out that Luke has betrayed camp.
—
notes: im always holding space for when phoebe bridgers said “but you know the killer doesn’t understand”
summary: you try your best to move on. it’s made only somewhat easier by the fact that you see luke only three more times before the end of the summer.
content: childhood friends to lovers to whatever they have going on. yearning, heartbreak, and angst of course! they are at the “its so over” point of that one chart unfortunately
notes: i feel like that tik tok audio thats like u cant get rid of me…. im not going nowhere!!! thats literally how i feel abt this series they are a part of me forever. title from the phoebe bridgers song
ONE
You and Luke fall into a steady routine after your breakup—if you can even call it that.
You still can’t tell what parts of this summer were true or made up in your mind. After all, it hadn’t been real, right?
It’s not difficult to avoid each other completely. When his habits are ingrained into every part of your being, knowing what time to steer clear of the armory on Mondays and only lingering around the places he hates the most becomes as easy as breathing. The two of you also manage to synchronize your eating schedules, so his usual spot at the Hermes table is starkly empty every time you find your way to the pavilion. It’s a twisted dance of avoidance.
The feeling of him remains though, his memory lingering around every single corner of Camp Half-Blood. The lack of him ends up becoming just as much of a reminder as the actual sight of him. You can’t count the amount of times you’ve turned to your side, expecting him to be there the same way he always has.
Luke Castellan has always been the only steady presence in your life. Your friends had jokingly called him your human shadow. There was never you without him, and never him without you.
The emptiness at your side is almost as stark as the empty ache in your heart.
It feels like a part of you has disappeared. It’s hard, because you see Luke in just about everything. You hear his laugh in the creaking patio of Cabin Eleven and feel the ghost of his touch over your spine whenever someone brushes too close to you. The twin sized mattress always feels two sizes too big when you find your way back to your own cabin to sleep.
You had gone to Luke’s after leaving the lake that night, your hand shaking on the door knob and a sick feeling in your chest. The empty bag slung over your back felt as heavy as the sky itself.
A cabin that you knew just as well as your own began to distort in front of your eyes. The squeaking of the sticky door hinges felt like they were mocking you. The familiar chatter of Luke’s siblings that flowed into the night air filled your stomach with dread.
Usually, the shame of cowardice was enough to get you to push forward when it was hard. But as you stood in front of the door, you hadn’t felt any of that familiar humiliation. You would have turned around and fled if a heavy hand hadn’t landed on your shoulder.
You’d tensed, the edges of your vision darkening. But whatever apology or insult that was waiting to fall from your lips slipped your mind when you’d been spun around.
It was only Chris.
“Hey,” he had said, entirely unaware of the way you were about to be sick on the front step. Chris had been giving you an easy smile. “What’ve you been—”
“Is Luke here?”
Your interruption had been as rude as it sounded, but it was difficult for you to think over the sound of your heart racing in your chest. You were afraid of the answer Chris had to offer.
How would you be able to look at Luke when just the thought of seeing him made your hands shake with fear?
Chris’ brows had furrowed, confused. “No. I just saw him over by the Big House. He should be heading this way soon, though, if you need to talk to him—”
The door creaked loudly as you pulled on it, though the sound went unnoticed by the kids talking inside. Sheer muscle memory was what let you step over askew sleeping bags and stray soccer balls without much thought. The ease of it all had been too much to think about at the moment.
Your vision narrowed as you crossed the room, nausea rearing its ugly head once again as you hurried over the floorboards.
For what would be the last time, you found yourself face to face with Luke’s things.
Luke’s stuff laid cluttered all over his dresser. There was a stick of deodorant tossed haphazardly between his sunglasses and an empty cardboard box, and one of Annabeth’s drawings sitting on top of a few loose pieces of paper. He had also kept a makeshift flag football trophy a Hephaestus kid made for him. You let your eyes rake over every inch of it greedily, your hand unsteady where it curled into the fabric of one of his jackets.
“—t’s the matter? Did something happen?”
Somewhere in the back of your mind, you realized that Chris was standing a few steps behind you. He had no doubt followed you from the front door, concern dripping heavy from his words.
It almost stung to hear. You had met Chris as Luke’s brother first, but he had become your friend over the years too. You knew him well enough to know that he would want nothing to do with you when he found out what had happened.
As selfish as it was, you let yourself enjoy the last moment of kindness you probably would ever receive from Chris Rodriguez.
The details of Luke’s things grated on your heart. The closer you had looked, the more you saw yourself, too. One of your shirts was draped over his headboard. The water bottle you’d left this morning was sitting in front of the mirror, right next to—
Your heart had felt like it stopped in your chest. The memories flashed back through your head against your will.
You and Luke’s trip to the city for your sixteenth birthday. The diner. The sightseeing boat. The photobooth.
It’d only been a few years ago, but it felt like you didn’t recognize the people in the pictures. Your faces were pressed together in one of them, and you were laying a kiss on his cheek in another. The last one showed you laughing, your arm over his shoulder. You couldn’t see it, but you could still feel Luke’s embarrassed smile pressed into your neck, the redness of his cheeks lost to the black and white photo.
A sick sense of jealousy surged through you. This version of you was ignorant. Ignorant but happy. She had no idea that the person who held her heart in his hands would be the same person to shatter it.
Distantly, you realized you didn’t feel upset anymore.
You felt nothing but angry.
How could Luke do this to the two of you? Where had it all gone wrong?
Chris’ sharp intake of air was what snapped you out of your stupor.
You blinked, looking down in confusion, and you froze. The photo was in your hands, the strip ripped quickly in half.
Your immortalized laughter taunted you from where the lower half of the photo remained taped on Luke’s mirror. You looked away before any tears could form, your fist closing hard over the broken piece in your palm.
It all unraveled after that.
It didn’t take you long to clear out the bottom drawer of Luke’s dresser, the one he’d dedicated to your things. There were a few things under his bed that you went back and forth on, like that paint splattered hoodie that was yours just as much as it was his and a shirt he’d given to you a few years ago. You weren’t sure if you would be able to take the sight of any of it after this.
You’d lost your camp necklace somewhere here too, and had been meaning to find it. You wondered if you would have time before Luke came back.
It felt like your breath grew shorter and shorter the longer you stayed in the cabin. Images flashed through your head no matter where you looked. He’d kissed you for the first time against this bed. He’d helped you sneak in through the back window of the cabin years before that, and you didn’t realize that you were hyperventilating until something warm settled at your side.
It was Chris, his eyes wide where he was kneeling next to you.
His hand slipped into yours, unclenching your fist the same way Luke would. You were still holding onto half of the photo. His face fell with sympathy and something that looked like understanding.
You wiped your face, beyond glad when you realized it was completely dry. It had been an hour or so, but you still hadn’t cried about losing your best friend.
In that moment, you promised yourself that you never would.
“Are you okay?” Chris had asked, voice low to not draw too much attention. He tossed a furtive glance over his shoulder in the direction of where a group of younger campers were giggling over a magazine.
“Yeah,” you said, a complete and utter lie. “Sorry about all of this. I’m all done now.”
The familiar weight of eyes on you made you rush to your feet.
It seemed now that Luke would be able to keep your camp necklace. He was standing in the doorway of his cabin, his eyes trained on where you were sitting in front of his things.
You had no intention of staying in Cabin Eleven for another second. You never wanted to step foot in this room ever again.
The two of you tracked each other as you moved.
Even though you were—or, had been—his best friend, anyone would’ve been able to tell Luke had been crying. His eyes were bloodshot and puffy, though they were not still wet with tears. You did not take as much comfort in the thought as you thought you would have.
His mouth had been parted in surprise, clearly not expecting to see you so soon. The heel of his palm was frozen against his sternum, like he had stopped moving the second he had realized it was really you inside of his cabin.
When Luke was younger and had nightmares every other night, he would rub circles into his chest to get his heart to stop aching. You wondered if that was what he had been doing just now. You also wondered who would hold him through the rest of his nightmares now.
He didn’t let his gaze stray as you stepped closer and closer and closer until you were near enough to touch.
If it had been any other day, you would’ve brushed your thumbs over the tear tracks on his cheeks. He would’ve kissed your palm. He would’ve kissed you.
As you stepped close enough to touch him, your eyes traced over the tightness of his shoulders. It was like he was scared you would brush against him. The skin of his neck was tinged red with tension.
You couldn’t tell if you would ever stand this close to him again.
The smell of his cologne followed you as you stepped past him, and you were slammed with the realization that one day, you would forget the little details of Luke Castellan. Eventually, you wouldn’t remember that he liked to press his forehead to your shoulder, or that he only needed two alarms to wake up in the morning.
He was leaving you, and the memories of him would eventually fade too.
You hadn’t been able to hold his gaze for another second, fixing your eyes on some far off point ahead of you. Emotion clouded your vision. Chris had mumbled some sort of greeting to his friend, probably pulling him inside before he shut the door behind them.
You made it fifteen feet before a resounding slam echoed from somewhere inside the building.
You didn’t recognize it as the sound of your now empty drawer until sometime later.
TWO
The next time you see Luke, you almost don’t recognize him.
Some of the kids had decided to put together an informal fighting tournament, with the winner getting a whopping prize of thirty-three drachmas. Half of camp came to the arena to watch, the summer campers eager to spend some of their last days here doing something seriously fun.
The Ares cabin was taking the bracket a little more seriously than you’d expected them to. Your siblings had passed around eye black before the big event, and a few of the boys painted letters on their chest spelling out your sister Lana’s name.
(Most of the time though, they rearranged themselves to spell out something that was clearly not Lana.)
You were excited for your siblings who were participating, of course, smiling whenever someone looked your way and even letting Clarisse smear a line of red face paint under your eyes. But to say your heart wasn’t in it would be an understatement.
It had officially been a week since you’d last spoken to Luke.
It meant that you’d officially broken your record of not speaking to each other. Seven whole days had passed, though it felt a lot closer to a year.
Embarrassment burns hot in your chest when you acknowledge it, but it feels like you’re missing a part of yourself. He was a part of you. The biggest part.
It’s shameful how you’re only halfway functioning without him. You finally understand what it means when people say they are ‘going through the motions’. Every day, you wake up to a nightmare where your best friend hates you and you hate him. You eat, walk the grounds of camp more as a ghost than as a person, let sleep evade you, then get up to the same nightmare.
You haven’t been able to sleep through the night since your fight. When the sun sets on camp, you stare up at the ceiling and try to pretend like you aren’t thinking about the empty spot next to you. You’ve started burning food as an offering to Hypnos, but find not even that’s enough to let you sleep for more than an hour at a time.
In the days after your fight, you almost found yourself flinching at every reminder of Luke. You’ve gone out of your way to avoid anything that would even make you think of him, which meant you lost interest in most things you used to love doing. You haven’t sparred since. You sat out of yesterday’s Capture the Flag game to sit by the beach instead. It felt like he had taken every aspect of your life from you.
His memory taints everything you even think about doing. But after a week of silence, you find that you’re almost hungry for any glimpse of him you can manage. In every crowd, around every corner, and in every shadow, you look for the outline of his back, or the cut of his jaw. You still search for him despite the fact the thought of seeing him fills you with dread.
Annabeth had explained something to you a couple of years ago — the concept of negativity bias. Even when positive or neutral things of equal intensity occur, a person’s psychological state is more likely to be affected by something negative.
You think that’s what’s happening to you now. You’re trying your best, but every time you think of every hug you shared, every hour you spent together, every moment Luke had been the only thing that felt safe, you only seem able to think of that night.
Is it really that hard to believe someone doesn’t love you?
You can’t get the way he looked at you out of your head. It felt like he hadn’t known you at all. The person you were convinced you were going to spend the rest of your life with looked you in the eyes and swore his love had been a lie.
And you can’t even think about him long enough to remember if any of it had even been real.
It ends up being here, at the camp’s makeshift fighting tournament, that you see Luke Castellan for the first time in a week.
Even when faced with only the sight of his back, you know immediately that he looks almost nothing like your Luke.
He’s sitting next to Chris on the edge of the mat the campers are fighting on, his shoulders slumped, like he’s curling in on himself. He seems completely unresponsive to the shouts and heckles of the rest of the kids from his cabin, who are currently cheering on Travis in the ring.
You’re torn between two opposite gut reactions.
The new unease that rises at the thought of him sits uncomfortably in your chest. You move to duck behind a taller Aphrodite camper to your left when you feel your hands reach to pick at a loose thread on your jeans.
But somewhere else, deep down, your lifelong instinct takes over, and you’re taking a step in his direction before you can stop yourself.
After all, something was wrong with Luke. You were supposed to comfort him, weren’t you?
Their entire section stands up abruptly when Travis manages to knock his opponent’s weapon onto the floor, and you watch with morbid curiosity as Luke remains seated, his jaw resting in the palm of his hand.
You get hit in the back so hard you almost stumble forward.
From right next to you, you catch a glimpse of a sharp glare aimed at your direction, and you realize belatedly that your entire cabin is now standing too, cheering loudly as your brother Cole gets ready to step into the ring. You get to your feet abruptly, clapping mindlessly.
Even if she wasn’t glaring, Clarisse’s disappointment would still feel almost palpable. “Stop giving ass-face your time of day.”
It didn’t take long for your siblings to put together what happened between you and Luke, though none of them knew the full story. They saw that he stopped coming by to ask for you and that your sleepovers came to an abrupt stop, and the pieces settled into place for them. You realized the Hermes cabin came to a similar understanding when whispers of Luke’s apparent mood swings made their way to you.
The general consensus among them at first was that you two were having a little fight. To everyone else, it had seemed like the silent treatment you had given him earlier in the summer. Your brother insisted that Luke had been wandering around camp like a kicked puppy dog, though you sincerely doubt that.
You could feel the looks people gave you whenever the Hermes cabin was nearby, waiting to see if you were going to go running over like you used to. People were shocked to see your twenty-four hours of silence creep into forty-eight and then roll over into seventy-two.
It was clear that everyone expected for it to blow over eventually. After all, no one has ever known who you are without Luke. You arrived at camp together and haven’t spent a day apart since.
Your stomach twists when you realize you aren’t sure who you are without Luke either.
Five days after your argument, you snapped at someone who asked when your boyfriend was coming over, and their suspicions were confirmed. Whatever was happening between the two of you was serious.
You and Luke are the only two people alive who knew whatever this was was permanent.
Permanent.
You’re having a tough time coming to terms with the fact that the feelings of resentment you held toward him were going to remain a permanent thing. Luke had been more than just your best friend. He’d been your… boyfriend? Partner? Soulmate? You aren’t even sure there was a single word that could perfectly describe what he had been to you. None of the words in the English language seemed to encompass it.
You still half believed that Luke was going to come back to you and apologize. After all, he’d drawn first blood. But as the days passed, and the end of your time at camp drew nearer, you felt yourself losing hope.
He’d asked you to stay away from him. It was over. He swore it.
“I’m not giving him my time of day,” you insist to your sister, though it’s clearly a lie. Your eyes are still trained on the outline of his back. “I was just looking.”
A group of people next to you knock you closer to Clarisse when one of your brothers in the ring lands a good hit on his opponent.
“Then stop looking,” she grits out, not bothering to keep her voice low with how loud the arena is. “He doesn’t deserve you thinking about him.”
“I’m thinking about how much he looks like shit,” you say flatly, your voice lacking any of the vitriol you planned to say it with. Even after everything that happened, you still can’t bring yourself to hate him completely. You aren’t sure you’re even capable of it. Not even playing your last conversation in your head seems to work. You’re hurt by what he said, but hatred isn’t something you think you can feel for him.
Your sister snorts from next to you. “You can’t even see his stupid face.”
You don’t respond. She leans closer to you to try and catch a glimpse of him too, craning her neck around to get a good look.
You’re just about to hiss at her to stop being nosy when she grabs your bicep, an amused sound coming from her throat in surprise. Your heart jumps to your throat.
Somewhere in the commotion, Annabeth wandered over to the Hermes cabin. She’s just tapped on Luke’s shoulder, and he’s spun around to face her, giving you your first good look of him in a week.
Clarisse laughs. “Holy shit.”
Dark circles mar Luke’s under eyes like twin bruises. He’s listening to Annabeth, nodding along as he does so, but his eyes look vacant and unfocused. He looks just as exhausted as you feel.
Even when you’re apart, you can’t help but be connected in the worst ways.
“He’s sure taking your little breakup hard,” she muses. “Couldn’t handle being dumped, I guess.”
You whip your head in her direction. “Clarisse—”
“What?” She rolls her eyes. “It’s not like Castellan would’ve dumped you. He’d probably cut off his own arm if you said it would make you happy.”
Her words make your insides twist. There was a time when you believed that too. “I didn’t dump him. We weren’t even… it wasn’t—”
“Yeah, yeah, you ‘weren’t dating.’” You don’t appreciate the quotes she makes around her last few words. “I know, you’ve only said it fifty times.”
“And I’ll say it fifty more times if that’s what it takes for you to get it,” you snap, finally tearing your eyes away from him. “Drop it, okay?”
Clarisse puts her hands up in surrender, though the amusement hasn’t faded from her eyes. “Heard.”
You try to put your focus back on the tournament, where your sister Lana is finally taking her turn after your brother’s win. Your brothers in the front row have their arms around each other’s shoulders, and they’re cheering in sync.
“Sheesh,” Clarisse says again, though her attention is clearly not on the fight in front of you. She’s still looking over at Luke.
“Clarisse,” you warn, voice firm, but as stubborn as ever, she ignores you.
“He looks like he got trampled. And then hit by a bus that pushed him off a cliff.”
You can’t tell if the lump in your chest is concern or intrigue. Whatever it is, though, is strong enough to get you to look back up at him again.
He and Annabeth are… arguing.
It’s subtle enough that Clarisse can’t tell, too busy making a snide comment about how it looks like he’s climbed his way out from the Underworld.
And while the slight sheen to his eyes is enough to give you pause, you’re much more stunned by the way his fists clench at his sides, jaw twitching with irritation. Luke’s never gotten upset with Annabeth before. You almost don’t believe your own eyes.
Luke has been soft on Annabeth your entire lives. While the three of you were always close, you knew their similar home lives meant that the two of them understood each other in a way you would never be fully able to. He doted on her a lot, and had probably stolen hundreds of dollars worth of trinkets for her over the course of your time on the road. He was more likely to jump into a pit of vipers than say no to her.
It’s why you can’t quite make sense of the scene in front of you. Even Clarisse has started to realize the conversation is shifting more into a fight, because she gives you an amused smile before putting her attention back onto Lana’s match in front of you.
Annabeth’s shaking her head vigorously, and you watch as Luke cuts her off abruptly, which she doesn’t take lightly. His brows knit as he crosses his arms in front of his chest. They go back and forth some more before he scoffs, his dark eyes rolling briefly. She pokes a finger into his chest with so much force his eyes widen, and then she’s whirling around so quickly you almost don’t realize she’s making a beeline in your direction.
You don’t bother pretending you weren’t watching. Annabeth’s face is scrunched with frustration, and she looks about a second away from pulling her own hair out. She weaves between people swiftly until she finds herself in front of you, her features pulled into a scowl.
“There is seriously something wrong with him,” she grumbles, not bothering to use his name. Her eyes are steely, but you can see they’re hurt, too. “What happened to you two? He’s been weird this whole week. What are you even fighting about?”
“Annabeth,” you say, your voice catching on the last syllable. You don’t know what to tell her.
“Did he do something?” she pushes on, brow furrowing. “It’s his fault, isn’t it? He wouldn’t be so mad if—”
You cut her off before she can continue. “It’s nothing, okay?”
As sharp as ever, Annabeth hears the break in your voice and drops it. She can probably tell she clearly isn’t going to get anything else out of you despite how much she wants to press it. She sighs and doesn’t say anything even when some of your siblings jostle the two of you around.
Before she disappears into the crowd again, she gives you a look you can’t quite understand. “Just talk to him.”
You direct your gaze somewhere in the direction of the tournament in front of you, but your vision is swimming. You and Luke Castellan have already spoken for what you know is the last time.
Your cabin surges forward again when Lana finally bests her opponent, and you feel your heart plummet to the ground.
THREE
It’s been another week since you last saw Luke.
You leave Camp Half-Blood tomorrow morning.
You’ve already gorged yourself on strawberries from the field and run your hands over the Ares cabin’s flag for the last time. You said goodbye to the naiad who saved your life a few years ago and had one last climbing wall race against Clarisse, which you won, obviously. A little after, your little sister pushed you on the tire swing outside the Big House until you got dizzy. Your hands are stained from painting your very last camp bead, which sits safely in your packed bag next to your bed.
You’ve revisited almost every hidden corner and every inch of camp that exists, and there’s only one place left on your goodbye tour.
The lake.
You haven’t gone back since your fight. The spot had belonged to both of you, and it didn’t feel right going back without him.
Truthfully, you haven’t wanted to go back there, either. Your last conversation had tainted your memory of the place, but you know that you won’t be able to leave without seeing it one last time.
After promising your siblings that you’ll be back before the fireworks start, you start the short walk through the woods.
Nothing has changed, of course. The grass to your right rustles as a rabbit darts across your path. When you reach for the thick branch to pull yourself over a fallen log, your hands fit perfectly in the grooves you’ve worn into the wood over the years. The air is sticky with humidity, and the laughter that rings out from behind you grows quieter as you move further away from camp.
The only thing missing is the steady presence at your side. Luke probably would’ve made ten bad jokes by this point of the walk, and would’ve bounced a few times between trying to trip you and trying to hold your hand.
You shift your focus intently to where you’re stepping instead. You estimate how many yards away the lake is. You think about what being on a plane will be like. You wonder how you’re going to say goodbye to Annabeth. You wonder if you’re going to say goodbye to Luke.
No matter how hard you try, it all comes back to him anyway.
Before you can even stop and realize it, you’re stepping past the treeline, gravel crunching quietly under your shoes.
The lake is eerily silent.
A canoe that someone was too lazy to put away rests overturned by the water. In the distance, you can see a duck dipping into the lake looking for something to eat. Its small movements send ripples throughout the rest of the water.
It’s so quiet that you can only hear the sound of your own breathing.
Being here by yourself is unsettling. You almost get the urge to turn around and leave, but something tells you to plant your feet. You know you’re going to regret not saying goodbye to a place that has watched you grow up. It witnessed the entirety of your love for Luke — the oblivious years, your first real kiss, and the crash and burn of all of it.
There’s movement in your peripheral vision. You swear for a moment that you can hear the familiar crackling of fire by the trees, but when you turn there’s nothing there.
You start to regret coming here. For the first time, being at this lake isn’t making you feel better. It’s nothing but a painful reminder of what you’ve lost.
The last few weeks have been the hardest of your entire life. It’s even worse than the weeks after you nearly died in Pennsylvania, and even harder than your first weeks on the run.
You had Luke through all of it. Nothing had been too hard to bear because he had been there to shoulder it with you. He’d held you through nights where your stomach would cramp from hunger, and he would always let you sleep an extra hour or two even when it was your turn to be on watch.
Nothing about those years were easy. It’d been hard, but you were always together. When you couldn’t rely on yourself, you knew you could rely on Luke.
Your eyes sting as you take in the emptiness of your surroundings. The slow breeze that whips at your face bites a little harder. It’s so quiet that your ears start to ring. You try to pop your ears to stop the incessant noise, but find that the silence gets worse. There’s nothing out here but you.
The weight of it hits you a second later.
For the first time in your life, you are completely and utterly alone.
You’d promised yourself that you wouldn’t cry over Luke. You blink quickly to try and stop the onslaught of tears and find that your eyes begin to burn despite it. Pain stirs in your chest as you finally feel yourself fall apart.
You’ve been alone for a long time.
Did you ever truly have Luke? You wonder how long he’d been harboring that anger against you. When did he start pulling away? Had you been too love-blind to see it? Was any of it real?
Everything about your relationship had been a secret. Was it because he was ashamed of you? Has this been his plan all along?
The outline of the dock comes into focus despite how unsteady your gaze is.
You can still see the version of yourself that sat here and believed in a future you were never going to have. It had only been a month since that morning.
A breeze kisses the apples of your cheeks, and more memories come back to you.
Phantom laughter rings in your ear, taunting you. If you focus hard enough, you can almost feel the soreness of your arms from a day full of playful fighting and racing Luke through the water. A few summers ago, he had held you by the fire here and told you he wanted to stay with you forever. He saw a future with you in it.
You had so many plans, and none of them would come true.
Tomorrow morning, you are going to get on a plane that will take you miles away from this place and the person you’ve called home for almost as long as you can remember.
You stumble away from the water.
It’s too late, but you finally realize that you’re heaving.
It feels like your chest is trying to collapse in on itself. You can barely breathe around the physical weight that’s compressing your ribcage, pressing hard against the rampant beating of your heart. You can’t take a breath in without your entire body shaking, the tightness in your chest stopping you from getting any air in.
You clutch at your shirt like it might help, trying to pull it off the space above your lungs, but the fabric is as loose as it's always been. You can barely feel your fingertips.
The sobs that wrack your body ache.
You’re so sick of feeling sad. Only one person has ever made you feel better when you get like this, and you have no idea what to do when he’s the reason you feel this way.
You want him to come back to you. You want to never see him again. You want him to apologize. You want to beg him to forgive you. You want to leave camp and never look back. You want to shackle yourself to him so you’re never separated again.
There’s shuffling behind you. Deja vu creeps around your shoulders and curls around your insides like a familiar friend. It feels like the sand at Compo Beach and tastes like your mom’s lemonade. It feels like coming home.
Warmth envelops you from every side. You find yourself sinking into it despite the way it feels like you’ve been turned inside out.
How could you stop yourself, anyway?
It’s Luke.
His cologne fills your senses as you shove your face into the crook of his neck, slotting yourself so close to him he stumbles back a step.
The familiar feeling of his skin against yours causes a sob to wrack your chest. You start grabbing for any part of him your hands can reach, one of your hands fisting in his hair while the other grabs blindly for one of his arms that he has around you. You never thought you would feel this whole again.
“I’m sorry,” you plead. You aren’t sure what you’re apologizing for. For your fight? For reaching for him like he’s the only thing that’s holding you together? You can’t tell. “Luke. I love you.”
His grip loosens and you panic. You grab onto him harder, your nails digging into the skin of his bicep painfully, your vision swimming. He’s a blur of orange fabric and curly hair as you shake your head, refusing to let him leave. He can’t.
You don’t recognize that he’s saying something to you until the familiar feel of his palms settles on both sides of your face. Your eyes trace the shape of his lips as he speaks, though none of it processes. Your ears are ringing again.
He pulls you against his chest again, letting you feel the rise and fall of it. His breathing is barely more even than yours. The setting sun paints the two of you in pink and gold.
“How could you do this?” You feel bile rise to your throat. You think you’re going to be physically sick. “Why are you doing this to us? I’m sorry. I’m sorry, you know I’m so sorry, please—”
“I know. I know.”
“You’re my best friend. I’m sorry. I love you. I love you, Luke. Please don’t do this to me.”
“You need to breathe, okay?” His hand passes over your back. It’s shaking so badly that he has to clutch at your shirt. His words are fraught with tension, like he’s forcing them out through gritted teeth.
“I’m sorry. I need you to forgive me. You have to forgive me.” Half of your words are choked out between gasps for air, but you know he understands.
“Breathe. I know. I promise you, I know.”
You vaguely feel his grip on you loosen again, and you protest with every ounce of energy you have left. Your tears are soaking his shirt.
“Hey,” he says, rubbing a line down your arm. Warmth creeps into his voice and another sob wracks your body. “You’re hiccuping. You’re gonna be sick.”
He rubs your back through the entirety of it. You must make quite the sight, the both of you on your knees in the dirt as you empty your stomach.
You fall back against Luke when it’s over, pressing against him as much is physically possible. Your neck is craned at an impossible angle so you can see his face. You want to memorize every inch of it. You never thought he would be this close to you ever again.
“I don’t know how to do this without you, Luke,” you admit without an ounce of shame. Your voice comes out rough from the tears and coarse from your retching. “I’m so scared.”
He stays silent while he cradles you against him, his eyes unmoving from the sand. The dark circles under his eyes have somehow gotten worse, which makes you frown. His lips are red and bitten too. He looks just as sick as you.
After another bout of quiet, he finally looks at you. He wipes at the corner of your mouth, his stare blank.
“I was so mean,” you try again, nodding, like it’ll help him understand. “I’m so sorry. How could I have said those things to you?”
One of the last times you sat like this was the morning after you first kissed. You wonder if he realizes that too.
“You’re nothing like him,” you promise. “You’re good. So good, Luke.”
Luke’s face crumples with an emotion you can’t quite read. “I have to do this.”
You shake your head, desperate. “No. No. I’ll do better. I’ll be better. I’ll make it up to you for the rest of my life, I promise, Luke, I promise.”
He presses his forehead against yours, the two of you so close together that it feels like you’re sharing oxygen. His eyes are glassy and almost unfocused, and you brush your thumb over his cheek, greedy and desperate. You should feel guiltier than you are.
“He… he is the only one who can fix this. All of this. I don’t have a choice,” he says, almost whispering it.
Your head spins. It feels like he’s talking through you and not to you. “I don’t understand. You’re… you always have a choice, Luke. You’re nothing like your father. You don’t need him to do anything. And you know I didn’t—there’s not a world that exists where I actually thought those things. I didn’t mean it.”
You can’t believe you used his father against him. You can’t even blame Luke for wanting to leave you. What kind of person says those things to someone they love?
Luke’s features pull down into a grimace as he shakes his head. He says nothing else as his eyes trace the path of your tears down your cheeks.
The July humidity makes it feel almost unbearable to be this close to him, but you soak up every second he’s willing to offer you. Sweat beads at your hairline and in the small of your back.
A month wasn’t long enough to erase the nuances of Luke from your memory. You trace the cut of his jaw with your thumb. His tan has come in full force this summer, and you mourn the time you could have spent together.
“Leave with me.” You nod quickly, reaching for his hand that rests limply against your side. “It’s not too late, Luke. It’ll never be too late.”
You can’t remember why you’d even been angry with him at all. Your flight is tomorrow morning. How did you think you could ever leave without him?
He doesn’t respond, his eyes tracing down the length of your face. You wonder what he sees there.
You glance down at his lips, and wish instantly that you hadn’t.
Luke tenses, and it feels like you’ve been struck.
He shakes his head, his throat bobbing as he swallows stiffly. His words are even and practiced when he says, “Kissing me won’t change anything.”
“Then what will?” you beg. Your face heats, not with embarrassment, but with grief. The words sound just as desperate as you feel.
You feel his entire body go very still behind you.
You’re almost grateful that he doesn’t grace you with a response. You’re all out of words to say.
Your eyes slide shut when you feel the warmth at your back disappear.
Surprisingly, there is no tell-tale feeling of your eyes burning with tears. In place of grief is the all-consuming ache of numbness.
Sometime later, you get the strength to face the empty space behind you. Luke is gone.
For the next hour, you sit alone by the lake as the fireworks explode over your last night at Camp Half-Blood. Red and blue lights make shapes in front of your unseeing eyes. You wonder if Luke had even been here or if you’d just imagined him when you’d needed him most.
An hour later, by the time you find your way back to your siblings, it’s over.
You’re standing on the front steps of your cabin when you find out that Luke has betrayed camp.
—
notes: im always holding space for when phoebe bridgers said “but you know the killer doesn’t understand”
warnings: luke is obsessed, mention of bl00d and cuts, sexual fantasies, I guess it'd be food play but it's not, mention of 0ral s3x
₊˚⊹♡
Just imagine Luke having a sick and twisted fixation with your mouth. It's not like he ever had any preferences or felt a certain way about lips or mouth, but the moment he paid close enough attention to yours, he knew he wanted them on him.
He fantasized about it way more than he would've thought was possible. He wanted to feel the plush of your bottom lip with his finger, the plumpness. He craved for the feeling of your tongue against his, to see you drool and whine from all of it. He thought of cupping your jaw as he gently bites down on your bottom lip, pulling so softly it's torture. He wants you to bite him; to feel your teeth scraping against the sensitive skin of his lip. He wants to press your tongue down with his thumb, wants to test the sharpness of your canines against his rough skin.
Shit, that gets him hard.
Sometimes, he doesn't even hear you speak. When you do, his eyes can't help but go down; memorize every moment, every lick of your tongue, every last remain of lip plump that would make them swell. "Sorry, I didn't catch that", he'd say when you're done, and you'd whine and groan. You hated to repeat yourself.
But what really got him bad, was the one time you busted your lip open during capture the flag. Some idiot camper had gotten way too close to you, and the tiny river of crimson that seeped out made Luke's stomach feel heavy. On the right side of your bottom lip, some droplets staining your chin. He masked his expression pretty well, but his throat ran dry when he realized how much the image of your lips dripping with something turned him on. By the time he walked you to the Apollo cabin, your lip swell, and he can't look away. He stayed there with you until you assured him that it was a superficial cut that ambrosia could cure; not a busted eyeball.
He didn't want to see you bleed; he wanted more of a show.
And as cunning and as smartass as he is, he knew which cards to play.
"No way," you said when you saw him, palming your hands against your shorts, "You went strawberry picking?" you ask in surprise as he walks towards you with a full basket.
The strawberry fields were as beautiful as ever, but Luke rarely went there, especially during the day. "Yeah," he shook his head, "Some Demeter kids needed help. Want some?" he asked, picking one up himself, popping it in his mouth, "They're juicy" he said, picking the biggest, reddest, ripe one, bringing it towards your mouth.
You lean in, reaching for the berry. Luke pretends to act uninterested as you bite into the tip and wrap your lips around it. You popped the fruit in your mouth. The sweet taste exploded in your mouth, juice staining your lips and tongue. Watery red droplets rested on your lips; the way you licked the excess was almost pornographic in his eyes. Luke remained silent; you were completely oblivious to the effect you had on him.
"Oh, wow" you simply said, taking the fruit from his fingers, "These are amazing"
Luke nodded, "You bet".
He watched as you took another bite of the strawberry, the red juice tainting your lips a thin red, getting caught in your fingertips. You asked him something about camp duties as you sucked on them, one by one. Luke couldn't form a coherent thought. He watched your lips glistening with sweet strawberry nectar. He shifted, a subtle adjustment of his position, his shorts were constricting, a direct, undeniable response to the captivating display in front of him. Your cheeks barely hollowing at the action. "Let me grab some more" you ask.
Shit, that gets him super hard.
Suddenly, you and Luke ate strawberries under the shadow of a tree once or twice a week.
He liked to watch during lunch, too. He'd walk past and pop a ripe peach next to your plate. You'd whine about chocolate; he'd say fruit is healthier and helps with satiety. Not necessarily bullshit, but... He'd watch from his own seat at his table how you'd struggle to take a bite without the tropical juice dripping down your chin. He'd watch the muscles in your jaw flex as you bit down carefully, the little frown between your brows as you concentrated, the tiny drip of juice that would escape and trace a path past your lip. He'd imagine leaning over and licking it away himself. The thought was so vivid, so potent, it got him being delusional all day.
He'd make you sweat on purpose during his sparring session so you'd crave the water from your bottle so hard, you wouldn't care if it led a trail of liquid down your neck, hiding under your sports bra and your camp t-shirt. From the bob of your throat to your panted breath. After that, he'd spend twenty minutes in the showers, the cold water doing little to dampen the heat erupting from his pores.
Once, during one of camp's worst heated days, he saw you eat a strawberry popsicle. You tried to be careful with it, but failed every time. Just the image of your tongue running along the length of it-, that's a whole other thing. The image of you and that flash of pink was seared into the back of his eyelids. He excused himself claiming a sudden migraine and abandonment of duties for the day.
His cabin was empty during dinner. That night, he thought about pressing your head between his thighs, about that plushy bottom lip sucking him off until he can't see straight. He wants your lips wrapped around something else. He wants to be the cause of that sweet, red mess. He imagined your lips stretched around his cock, drool pooling on your mouth. He wanted to be the one to ruin you, to have you so utterly intoxicated by him.
It was getting pathetic, he knew it. This obsession. But he couldn't stop. Every casual encounter became a new opportunity to watch you, to study the way you spoke, the way you ate, the way you licked your lips when you were nervous or concentrating. Every time you spoke there was a high chance that Luke had touched himself to the thought of you the night before.
"Luke" you called out a little higher.
He blinked, "Yeah, sorry- what?" he'd ask.
"You're staring" you stated, your own cheeks going warm. He shook his head with a sheepish grin.
"Sorry, can you tell me the last part again?"
You groaned to the sky. "So, I was saying-"
He watched you, your words, his signature smirk playing on his lips. He knew there was a chance to have you, sooner or later. And he was going to enjoy every second of it.
you’re so vain (teaser) ft. luke castellan (fem!reader)
RELEASE DATE. TBA
⋮ ⌗ ┆synopsis ⸝⸝⸝ the man you despise is the only one offering more than empty platitudes. while the rest of the court whispers behind their masks and fans, luke castellan might just be your only hope to ensure you survive this season's marriage mart.
⋮ ⌗ ┆taglist ⸝⸝⸝ OPEN .
─── written lit. since i don't have much to show until the full fic is out, you can anticipate heavy slowburn, lowk enemies to lovers, subplot from other ships (ruegard & percabeth), fake dating, profanity, eventual smut and other rake activities from luke lol ♡ send an ask or comment if you'd like to be added to the tag list !!
𝐈𝐓 𝐈𝐒 𝐀𝐍 𝐀𝐅𝐅𝐑𝐎𝐍𝐓 𝐓𝐎 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐍𝐀𝐓𝐔𝐑𝐀𝐋 𝐎𝐑𝐃𝐄𝐑—the way luke castellan occupies space within the palace drawing room as if he has been carved into the very architecture. he does not just sit; he reclines with a threatening sort of grace, his boots buffed to a mirror shine that seems to mock the sunlight streaming through the floor-to-ceiling windows of mayfair.
“a saint!” percy gushes, his youthful exuberance rattling the fine bone china on the tea tray. your stepbrother, the youngest prince of the ton and a boy whose heart is far too large for his own legal safety, looks at luke with nothing short of amazement. “truly, sister, luke has won three bouts at the boxing saloon this week alone. he is the champion of the square!”
you do not look up from your embroidery, though the needle punctuates the silk with a violence that suggests you are stitching a shroud rather than a rosebud. “a champion of ruffians and pugilists, perhaps,” you remark, your voice as cool as a january frost in the highlands. “i fail to see how bruised knuckles qualify as a personality trait, percy. though i suppose for mr. castellan, it is a significant upgrade from his usual brooding silence.”
the princes and the dukes of the other countries are distant memories compared to the persistent, irritating reality of luke castellan. for five years, you have been away, building some sort of a reputation overseas as a woman of rather strong opinions, a lady who views the marriage market with the same nonchalance one might afford at a livestock auction. you have returned to london not to seek a husband, but to watch over your stepbrother while your mother and the king enjoy the honeyed air of florence. you have been tasked as the temporary mistress of the palace, yet luke treats the royal residence like his personal clubhouse.
“your sister has a sharp tongue, percy,” luke says, and you can hear the smirk in his voice without ever lifting your gaze. it is a haunting sound that seems to linger in the air between you. “it’s a wonder she hasn’t accidentally cut herself with it yet. tell me, my lady, did they run out of charms in monaco, or did you simply decide that being thorny was much more efficient than being courtly?”
you let out a polite huff and finally look up, your eyes narrowing. luke is leaning against the mantelpiece now, the pink and orange hues of the sunset light catching the unruly waves of his dark curls. he is devastatingly handsome in the way a storm is beautiful—all trouble and impending chaos. you've labelled him a sponger, a man who has made himself a fixture in your life ever since your arrival, simply by refusing to be ignored.
“i find that charm is often wasted on those who lack the intellect to perceive it,” you reply, setting your embroidery aside with deliberate slowness. you stand, your skirts rustling with a hurried hiss that doesn't go unnoticed. “and since you seem to have mistaken this drawing room for a tavern, i shall leave you to your delusions. percy dear, do ensure that when mr. castellan departs, he takes his circus with him. the palace is already quite full.”
“oh, i’m not leaving yet,” luke counters, smoothly gliding into your path as you make for the door. he is tall—impossibly so—and he smells of blueberry jam from tea earlier and whatever perfume his housekeep have selected for him, a scent that feels dangerously invasive in the stagnant heat of the afternoon. “i promised your brother i would review his form for his fencing lessons. besides, i find your company far too educational to abandon so soon.”
“educational ?” you scoff, refusing to take a step back even as he invades your personal space. you are the daughter of an honourable and respectable woman in all, and you would not be cowed by a man whose greatest achievement is being the most persistent headache in the ton.
“indeed,” he murmurs, leaning down so that his words are meant only for your ears, his breath ghosting over the shell of your ear. “i am learning exactly how many layers of difficulties i have to get through before i find the mischievous charm everyone says you’re hiding. it’s a fascinating study in persistence.”
“you will find only more hurdles, mr. castellan,” you retort back, it alerts you quietly—the way your heart betrays you with a sudden, traitorous thud against your ribs. “i suggest you find a different subject for your ‘studies’ before i give you my own hand in the way you least expect it.”
he lets out a low whistle that sends a shiver down your spine—one that has nothing to do with cold. “and will that hand be in marriage?” he teases, his brown eyes dancing with a challenge that makes your blood simmer with loathing. “all jokes, my lady.”
he steps aside then, bowing with a flourish that is far too graceful to be sincere. you sweep past him, your head held high, though the heat in your cheeks feels like a brand. you hate him. you truly, deeply despise the way he turns your quiet life into a series of breathless encounters.
he is a rake (as per the columns of lady whistledown), a palace parasite, and a vexation you do not wish to acknowledge. ever .
and so, as you reach the safety of the hallway, you realise with a twisted dread that you have never felt more alive than when he is trying to ruin your day.
— please do not copy , translate or repost any of my works anywhere.
Can you write about Luke who has a tendency to leave marks on you whether it’s a hickey or a handprint just anything to show people your his
Luke acts cool about it at first. Once in the beginning he leaves a hickey that peeks out from the neck of your camp shirt, but it’s little!! A little dark blotch in the shape of his mouth. Tiny, even. When you see it and murmur “aw, man,” Luke looks up casually and feigns surprise. “Oh, my bad. Didn’t realize.” He’s apologetic enough, and you accept and move on easily.
He drops the facade slowly. Leaves marks pretty much every time, and stops pretending to be surprised and apologetic when he sees them. You catch the way his lips quirk up, the smug glint in his eyes when he looks at the proof he left behind. Luke rubs it in when you’re in public, eyes flicking down to the blotches blooming across your skin to wordlessly remind you how obvious they are. To remind you that everyone can see them.
Luke’s not a chill guy. He’s not chill about most things. He’s definitely not chill about you—or about the way the other campers look at you. He looks around and sees a sea of demigods thinking about you the same way he did for so long—turned on by your exertion during war games, when you’re breathless and sweaty, imagining all the ways he could make you look like that for him. Watching your ass in those little shorts. Jerking off to the thought of you in the showers, staying silent so no one else hears except for the mutter of your name through gritted teeth as he cums. Luke thinks everyone wants you the way he does, and he has to show them that he’s the only one that gets you.
You refuse to satisfy him with tales of how your siblings gasped and ooh-ed and aah-ed over every hickey and handprint-shaped bruise, how they prodded you relentlessly for answers on who they were from (which you wouldn’t admit even though you knew damn well they already knew.)
And it’s your fault, too. You feel his mouth latch onto your neck, sucking, teeth nipping against your skin. Luke’s extra aggressive when he’s marking you up, his fingers dig harder into whatever he’s holding onto, your hip or your ass or your throat, like he’s physically grounding himself as he works on you. You’ve never tried to stop him. You don’t think about who’s gonna look tomorrow, or what they’re gonna say. You just think about how fucking good it feels, the way your eyes roll back and your lips fall open uselessly, your body unraveling under his attention without him even needing to be inside you.
There are days when you have to stroll back into your cabin and open with, “he’s not beating me or anything, I swear,” desperately, embarrassed as fuck, because your siblings look horrified. They see the markings from his rough, unyielding mouth on your neck and the insides of your thighs (and on your back, too. He had your face shoved into the pillow. The feeling of him biting down on the back of your neck like a misbehaving kitten he had to discipline mid-stroke made you cum immediately. But the shirt covered that one. Thankfully.) The bruises on your hips from him holding you in place while he took what he wanted. Bruises on your ass in the shape of his hands.
After weeks of whining at him, shoving him when you see fresh marks, telling him to wipe that smirk off his face, he asks you earnestly. Sweetly. “You really don’t like ‘em? They hurt too much?” brushing his fingers across the freshest of the bruises. And you’re victim to the worst fate of all—admitting through Luke-having-to-pull-a-pillow-away-from-your-face levels of humiliation that the proof that he was there long after he’s gone makes you wet. Which he already knew. (Duh.)
Can you write about Luke who has a tendency to leave marks on you whether it’s a hickey or a handprint just anything to show people your his
Luke acts cool about it at first. Once in the beginning he leaves a hickey that peeks out from the neck of your camp shirt, but it’s little!! A little dark blotch in the shape of his mouth. Tiny, even. When you see it and murmur “aw, man,” Luke looks up casually and feigns surprise. “Oh, my bad. Didn’t realize.” He’s apologetic enough, and you accept and move on easily.
He drops the facade slowly. Leaves marks pretty much every time, and stops pretending to be surprised and apologetic when he sees them. You catch the way his lips quirk up, the smug glint in his eyes when he looks at the proof he left behind. Luke rubs it in when you’re in public, eyes flicking down to the blotches blooming across your skin to wordlessly remind you how obvious they are. To remind you that everyone can see them.
Luke’s not a chill guy. He’s not chill about most things. He’s definitely not chill about you—or about the way the other campers look at you. He looks around and sees a sea of demigods thinking about you the same way he did for so long—turned on by your exertion during war games, when you’re breathless and sweaty, imagining all the ways he could make you look like that for him. Watching your ass in those little shorts. Jerking off to the thought of you in the showers, staying silent so no one else hears except for the mutter of your name through gritted teeth as he cums. Luke thinks everyone wants you the way he does, and he has to show them that he’s the only one that gets you.
You refuse to satisfy him with tales of how your siblings gasped and ooh-ed and aah-ed over every hickey and handprint-shaped bruise, how they prodded you relentlessly for answers on who they were from (which you wouldn’t admit even though you knew damn well they already knew.)
And it’s your fault, too. You feel his mouth latch onto your neck, sucking, teeth nipping against your skin. Luke’s extra aggressive when he’s marking you up, his fingers dig harder into whatever he’s holding onto, your hip or your ass or your throat, like he’s physically grounding himself as he works on you. You’ve never tried to stop him. You don’t think about who’s gonna look tomorrow, or what they’re gonna say. You just think about how fucking good it feels, the way your eyes roll back and your lips fall open uselessly, your body unraveling under his attention without him even needing to be inside you.
There are days when you have to stroll back into your cabin and open with, “he’s not beating me or anything, I swear,” desperately, embarrassed as fuck, because your siblings look horrified. They see the markings from his rough, unyielding mouth on your neck and the insides of your thighs (and on your back, too. He had your face shoved into the pillow. The feeling of him biting down on the back of your neck like a misbehaving kitten he had to discipline mid-stroke made you cum immediately. But the shirt covered that one. Thankfully.) The bruises on your hips from him holding you in place while he took what he wanted. Bruises on your ass in the shape of his hands.
After weeks of whining at him, shoving him when you see fresh marks, telling him to wipe that smirk off his face, he asks you earnestly. Sweetly. “You really don’t like ‘em? They hurt too much?” brushing his fingers across the freshest of the bruises. And you’re victim to the worst fate of all—admitting through Luke-having-to-pull-a-pillow-away-from-your-face levels of humiliation that the proof that he was there long after he’s gone makes you wet. Which he already knew. (Duh.)
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