Hi! I'm Juno! This is where I post about my writing stuff! Right now I'm into *(spins wheel)* Percy Jackson! Specifically I care SO MUCH about the Lost Trio | she/they | Adult | header by @skogensro
Hello everyone! Happy Valgrace Week! Are we all having fun? I certainly am! This year, to celebrate, I would like to invite you all to what could very well be the inaugural Valgrace Big Bang! Today I am very excited to finally present the Big Bang Interest Check~! (ﾉ◕ヮ◕)ﾉ*:･･ﾟ✧ Not entirely sure what a Big Bang is? Fear not! I have a brief overview of how it works here! If this sounds like something you'd be interested in, be sure to let me know!
This is and interest check to see who might be interested in a Big Bang featuring Jason Grace and Leo Valdez from Rick Riordan's Heroes of O
Hihihi everyone! Who wants the first chapter of my newest Valgrace Long Fic? This was originally going to just be a oneshot for @valgraceweek but it sort of got legs and walked to the store for milk and cigarettes. I should probably stop using metaphors. Fic time!
May I be the first (and only) to present Fire in the Hearth Chapter One: A Knock at the Door
Leo Valdez left the demigod world behind. He chose a life for himself, a life that was calm and patient and boring. Every day he woke up in his little farmhouse, he cared for his animals, tended to his plants, and every evening he called his best friend. It took him eight years of pain and sweat and tears, but he'd made a life for himself, and he wasn't willing to give it up. Unfortunately, when the past comes knocking, it rarely sends a warning. When it did, he finds himself wondering if the past is something you can ever truly outrun.
Jason Grace has had everything taken from him by the gods he serves. He lost his childhood, his family, his best friend, and even the love of his young life. All he had left to cling to was a sense of duty that rang more and more hollow with every passing day. Every time he was given another mission, another way to serve, he wondered if he made the right choice to stay. He wondered if he could ever fix his biggest mistake.
When both men find themselves stuck together for a week one summer in Iowa, they get answers to questions they'd been too scared to even ask.
Or: Leo's Ex-Boyfriend Shows Up And Ruins His Cottagecore Life
Leo woke to the once-familiar scent of burning cotton sheets.
He recognized it immediately, despite not having smelled it in years. It wasn’t a scent you forgot easily. He sort of expected himself to jerk upright in a panic, that’s what he would have done the last time this happened, but instead he forced himself to breathe deeply and slowly sit up. His sheets were still clenched in his fists, blackened and irreparably charred beneath his palms. He took another deep breath and tried to figure out what, exactly, this meant.
The first thing it meant was obvious. He’d used his powers. Three and a half years clean, all that time where the only trace of the fire in his blood being the fact that he ran about a degree and a half hotter than the average person, had just been flushed down the toilet. Not deliberately, of course. He’d had a dream, that much was obvious to anyone who had lived a life like his, but it wasn’t a nightmare, not exactly, which was worse. He couldn’t remember most of it, just flashes of lightning and gold and piercing electric blue eyes he’d told himself to forget eight years ago.
Then, he heard an undignified yowl from down the hall and he told himself that he had better things to do.
“I’m coming!” he called, kicking his way out of the sheets. He considered them for a moment, before quickly stripping the bed and balling the whole set up to be thrown in the first dumpster he saw when he got into town. He knew he should turn them into rags or something useful, but the thought of seeing that particular striped floral pattern and being reminded of this moment made his stomach churn.
He made his way to the kitchen where Piper 2.0 was sitting next to her food bowl and giving him a baleful look with her one green eye. He reached down to scratch behind her ears, and glanced at the clock. 5:07 am. “Oh, I’m sorry, princess. Was your breakfast a whole two minutes later than normal? Is that a crime?” Piper 2.0 purred loudly and headbutted his hand, unconcerned that she was being mocked, so long as she was also getting kibble.
Once his tiny furry dictator was fed, he turned his attention to his own breakfast, or, rather, what would be his breakfast at some point later in the week. “Good morning, Rosco,” he mumbled to his sourdough starter as he carefully measured out the water and flour needed to feed him and wake him from his fridge hibernation. He hadn’t baked bread in probably close to a month, so Rosco wasn’t going to be ready to go until the next day, but that was fine with Leo. Sourdough was a test of patience more than anything, and life had certainly taught Leo how to slow down over the past eight years.
If you had asked Leo at any point in his childhood what he thought he’d be when he grew up, he’d tell you that he was destined to be a mechanic, just like his mamá. And, to be fair, he was a mechanic, but he was only a mechanic two days a week. Even then he didn’t have a shop, he traveled to people’s houses and worked on their cars and their plumbing and electrical and just about anything they needed. The other five days a week, he was a farmer, and that was the bit that would have made a younger version of himself laugh until his stomach cramped because Leo Valdez was not a farmer. He lived in big, crowded cities where he could slip away unseen and he surrounded himself with machines because the squishy organics of the world could only be tolerated for so long. Sometimes, part of him still wondered if that old self-assessment was true, but then he’d step outside onto a porch he owned and built himself, take a deep breath, and that part would quiet back down into peace.
Regardless of what was and wasn’t true of his new self-actualization, Leo had chores to do. The chickens needed to be let out and have their eggs collected, the dog needed to be fed, and Daisy Bell needed to be milked. It wasn’t a glamorous or flashy life – certainly not a heroic one – but it was the life he’d carved out for himself. His animals (including the highly demanding Piper 2.0) depended on him, and his garden provided. He was happy here.
Unbidden, the flashes of his dream resurfaced, bringing with them an unwelcome sense of dread. He grit his teeth and focused on the eggs he was collecting. Merriweather and The General clucked around his ankles while the others scratched at the dirt, Einstein heaved a big doggy huff as he watched over his flock, and in the distance Daisy Bell mooed about something or another. They were real. Far more real than whatever flashes of memory his subconscious had decided to drag up in the middle of the night. This was his life, the life he’d chosen, and he wasn’t going to let it go.
His chores took longer than usual that morning – despite his best efforts, he’d been horribly distracted the whole time – and when it was finally time to head back up to the house, he was starving. Piper 2.0 was lounging on the porch, clearly too busy enjoying her post-breakfast nap to bother with her own chores. Leo didn’t mind. He reached down and stroked her back. “You’re a horrifically lazy little beast. Did you know that?” Piper 2.0 flopped onto her side and arched into a perfect backwards croissant, and Leo chuckled. “Yeah, yeah. You’re cute. Big deal.”
He had work to do in town today, so before he let himself have breakfast, he took a shower, making sure to scrub all of the dirt and crud out from under his nails and taking the time to finger twist his hair to keep his curls protected. He dressed and checked his schedule on his phone – two oil changes, a brake check, and Ms. Nelson needed her dryer looked at again, plus he needed to stop by the farmer’s market to drop off his excess eggs and the salsa he’d already started jarring that weekend. A busy day. A productive day. A good day.
By the time he was cracking eggs into the frying pan, Leo had forgotten all about his dream.
*-*-*-*-*
Much to Leo’s dismay, life wasn’t actually all that interested in letting him forget his dream. Not completely at least. He’d driven into town, dropped off his household garbage (including the sheets) at the communal dumpster, and headed straight to Naomi’s Fruit Stand. It wasn’t just a fruit stand, hadn’t been for almost ten years, and it was being run by Naomi’s grandson, Marshall, but Naomi’s Fruit Stand had been in the exact same place with the exact same name for as long as anyone could remember, and Millrose dug its heels in when it came to arbitrary change.
Marshall was chatting at the register with another customer when Leo walked in, and he offered a wave and a smile when he heard the bell above the door jingle. This got Amee’s attention, and she turned towards the door with a blinding smile of her own. “Good morning, Leo! Dropping off some more strawberry preserves?”
“Fraid I dropped the last of those off a couple weeks ago,” he confessed. “It’s salsa season now.”
Amee’s eyes got wide and eager. “Ooh, even better. I’ll have to tell Lawrence to go easy on the strawberries we have left though. I swear the man eats more jam than toast in the morning.”
“Well, if it makes a difference, the blueberries should be coming in soon,” Leo chuckled and set his crates on the counter for Marshall. “I’ve got four and a half dozen eggs and four quart jars of salsa–”
“Three jars!” Amee cut in. “I would like to buy one right now.”
“Three jars of salsa,” Leo corrected with a snort. “This was just the first harvest, so I should be bringing double that next week.”
“You should think about getting more chickens,” Marshall advised, writing out a check for Leo. “Those sell out almost immediately. You should have seen the fit Mr. Pickens threw when he missed out on the last batch.”
“That’s what Jim gets for showing up on Tuesday,” Amee sniffed.
“I’ll think about getting more chickens when Einstein grows thumbs and can help me take care of them,” Leo drawled. Then he looked between the two of them with his eyebrows raised. “Anyway, what’s going on with the two of you?”
Amee’s eyes immediately went wide and sparkly. “Oooh, Marshall! Tell him! You’ve got to!”
Leo’s eyebrows climbed higher. “Got something to share with the class?”
Marshall ducked his head, cheeks growing pink. “Tommy’s supposed to be moving back to town next month.”
“Tommy?”
“Tommy Wells; you wouldn’t know him,” Amee explained eagerly. “But everyone knows that he and Marshall here were inseparable in high school. Best of friends.”
“We haven’t properly talked in years, though.”
“What happened?” Leo frowned.
“We wanted different things in life,” Marshall shrugged. “He decided to go to the city and try to do something with his life there. Wanted me to come with him, but I said no.”
Leo felt his throat get a little tight. He knew the exact shape of that conversation. “Why not? If he was so important, why didn’t you go with him?”
“Well, he couldn’t exactly leave Millrose,” Amee said, almost defensively. “The Wells family moved here when Tommy was in high school, but Marshall’s been here since he was a baby! This is the only life he’s ever known.”
“Besides, I had responsibilities here,” Marshall added. “I’ve been planning to take over the shop since before I even met Tommy. I couldn’t just abandon that.”
“Right, makes sense,” Leo agreed, though the words were bitter on his tongue.
“Besides, it all worked out!” Amee piped up. “Millrose draws everyone back eventually! Mark my words!”
Leo wasn’t sure if he was going to cry or be sick. “Right. Uh, yeah. Um, anyway, I’ve, uh–”
“Are you alright man?” Marshall asked. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
“No, no I’m–” Leo swallowed thickly, then forced a smile. “I’m fine. I just suddenly remembered everything I’m supposed to be doing today.”
“Oh, are you going to help Ms. Nelson?” Amee asked. “Poor dear’s been putting her laundry out on the line for almost a week now. I send Lawrence over to help her when I notice her out there.”
“Well, you don’t have to do that any more; she’s my next stop,” Leo said. “See you guys later.”
“Bye, Leo.”
“Tell Ms. Nelson I said hello!”
Leo gave them both a silent wave over his shoulder and walked out of the grocery store.
Maybe, if things had stayed there, Leo would have been fine. Maybe he would have just chalked it up to a weird coincidence. Marshall’s best friend from when he was a teenager was being dragged back into town after trying desperately to leave its confines and make a life for himself. That didn’t necessarily mean anything. It was just a strange happenstance. Just a classic case of self-important projection But then one of his oil changes announced that she was going to try pottery again after not touching the wheel for nearly four years. And his brake pad customer was talking about going back to college to finish a degree everyone told him to give up on. In fact, it seemed like the only person not hellbent on returning or welcoming back a part of their past was Ms. Nelson, and that was likely because she was too busy trying to get her hearing aids to work so that she could hear the words coming out of Leo’s mouth to supply many of her own.
Eventually, the growing pit of anxiety and dread got to the point where Leo couldn’t reasonably ignore it, and he begrudgingly pulled out his phone.
“Dr. Kimbrough’s office, how can I help you?”
“Hey, Dr. K. It’s Leo,” he said, trying to sound as cheerful as possible. “You, um. You think you have a sec?”
Dr. Kimbrough went quiet for a moment, assessing everything before she spoke. “It’s good to hear from you. What’s going on?”
“Do you think you maybe might have some availability in the next few days?” he asked casually. “I know we have an appointment next month, but I’ve, uh, got some stuff I want to hash out. Sooner rather than later.”
She hummed. “I have an availability for Friday at 10:30.”
“Perfect. I’ll take it.”
She hummed again and started typing on her computer. For one shining moment, Leo thought that maybe she’d just schedule him and he could go back to ignoring things until Fridayday, but that had never been how they worked. “And what is the cause for this visit?”
Leo chewed on his tongue, actively biting back a deflection or stupid joke. Dr. Kimbrough wouldn’t laugh anyway, even if it was funny. Besides, she would understand. “I, uh, had a dream. I don’t remember much of it, but, uh, yeah. A dream.”
“A dream?”
“Yeah, but not a normal dream. One of those dreams that gives your a bad feeling in you gut all day. More of a, well…”
“A demigod dream?”
Leo closed his eyes and breathed through his nose deeply. He didn’t say the D word. Not anymore. Dr. Kimbrough was the only one who did. “Yeah, one of those.”
She was typing again. “I see. Thank you for reaching out to me, Leo.”
He picked at his nails and felt shame burning behind his eyes as he said, “I used my fire powers.”
That gave Dr. Kimbrough pause. Then she cleared her throat. “I’m going to cancel my lunch meeting with a colleague. How does Wednesday at 12 sound?”
Leo barked out a sharp, wobbly little laugh. “You don’t have to do that, doc.”
“It may not be required, but something like this deserves as immediate attention as possible,” she said. Most people might have said it gently, or with pity, but she didn’t. She never treated Leo with pity. She treated him like someone who had a chronic medical condition that she was paid to address. That was much better than pity. “Have you called Piper?”
“My cat? Doc, I don’t think she’s exactly qualified for this,” Leo snorted. Dr. Kimbrough went dead silent on the other end of the line, just as predicted, and Leo winced. “No, I haven’t called.”
“Why not?”
“Why should I?”
“Leo, we’ve talked about this,” Dr. Kimbrough said sternly. “This isn’t a load you have to manage on your own.”
“I’m not managing on my own,” Leo shot back. “I called my shrink and set up an emergency appointment so I can talk about my big feelings like a grownup.”
“I am not, should not, and will never be your primary support system,” she told him flatly. “Calling me was a good decision, but I’m not your friend. You need your best friend.”
Leo sighed and scrubbed a hand over his face. “I don’t want to talk to her about this.”
“Why not?”
“Do I have to say?”
“No, but you have to tell me you don’t want to talk about it.”
Leo puckered his face. He hated that rule. “I don’t want to call her about this because it’s not something we talk about anymore. This isn’t– Piper left that life. She left it before I did. I don’t want to drag her back into it over something that might be nothing.”
Dr. Kimbrough hummed. “And if it turns out that it isn’t nothing?”
“Then I definitely don’t want her involved.”
“So, you’re keeping secrets from her because you’ve decided that she can’t handle it?”
“I–” Leo cut himself off with a scowl. “You’re putting words in my mouth.”
“Communication is a tricky thing,” she said pleasantly. “Very easy to get the wrong interpretation when no words are exchanged.”
“You’re the worst shrink ever.”
“And yet, you keep scheduling appointments.”
Leo barked out another laugh. “Alright, fine. You win. I was planning on calling her tonight anyway. But I’m giving her a heads up before I dump any of this on her so she can choose what she does and doesn’t want to hear.”
“That’s a very good idea,” she told him. “Oh, and Leo?”
“Yeah?”
“I’m proud of you.” Leo went completely still and she gave the words a chance to settle in silence before she continued. “This right here? This is growth. Four years ago, you would have just kept this to yourself until it festered into something unmanageable. You wouldn’t have talked to me, you wouldn’t have talked to Piper. Your willingness to reach out is a good thing and you should be proud.”
Leo’s eyes stung and he forced a weak chuckle. “I’ll be sure to buy myself an ice cream cone and a blue ribbon to celebrate.”
Dr. Kimbrough actually laughed at that. “See that you do. If anything happens between now and Wednesday, be sure to call.”
“You got it, doc. Talk to you then.”
“Goodbye, Leo. I’ll see you Wednesday at 12.”
Leo hung up the phone and heaved a deep, heavy sigh as he stared up at the summer sun beating down on him. Maybe he really did deserve that ice cream.
*-*-*-*-*
Leo did wind up calling Piper that night, partially because he knew Dr. Kimbrough was right, but mostly because he liked talking to Piper and he called her pretty much every night. It was a system they’d developed, not on purpose, but present none the less. It had started a couple years after high school when Piper had wanted to move to a big city and Leo knew he needed the opposite. The thought of separation had been terrifying at first; they’d spent the past four years as a singular codependent organism that shared a bedroom at 19 just to try to handle their own PTSD. They weren’t sure they’d be able to survive the idea of not speaking to each other every day, so they resigned themselves to spending the rest of their lives in that tiny little cabin in Oklahoma. Then Piper’s dad had looked at them like they were insane (maybe they were) and gently reminded them that phones existed for this exact reason.
The first year was hard on them both. The phones helped, but they could only do so much in the middle of the night when you started desperately searching for your person, especially when those calls were only about a minute and a half long and sporadic at best. They’d been terrified to stay on any longer than that back then, they’d heard the horror stories about what extended phone calls meant for people like them. Then Piper had called him at one in the morning in hysterics because of a nightmare and they fell asleep to the sound of the other breathing a hundred and fifty miles away. That phone call was eight hours long and the world didn’t end, but it did unlock something in their chests.
These days they talked most every day, anywhere from fifteen minutes to an hour and a half. Piper usually let Leo do the calling so that she could be sure he was done with all of his farm chores, and Leo took his job very seriously.
That night’s conversation started out normally. Boring, even, in that one particular way they had both come to cherish over the years. It started with the expected updates. Piper wanted to know how Einstein and Daisy Bell and her namesake and all nine of the chickens were doing, and Leo wanted to know if the tomato plant he’d given her for her birthday was still alive and producing for her. Then, of course, came all of the little nothing conversations. Leo talked about the town gossip (Piper was very interested to hear that a local artist was considering selling pottery again) and she told him about the couple she’d taken on house tours that afternoon.
“And, Leo, I’m not fucking with you even one percent when I tell you this woman looked me dead in the eye and told me that she was a cat therapist, who dabbled in exorcisms,” she all but yelped, and Leo could already see her waving her free hand through the air for emphasis. “Her husband is a professional stamp collector!”
Leo was curled up in his favorite chair wheezing as he stroked Piper 2.0. “You should give me her contact information. “Better Piper could probably use her services.”
“The insane thing was their budget,” she groaned, totally ignoring him like she always did when she was mid-story. “Like, I work forty hours a week, every week. Sometimes more, even! But I’m still renting an apartment while these caricatures of the upper middle class are casually telling me five hundred thousand dollars on a house. I’m not convinced these two have jobs.”
“Depending on what kind of stamp collector the guy is, you can sell those little pieces of paper for literally millions of dollars.”
“That is obscene,” Piper seethed, sending Leo into another peal of cackling. “I’m gonna be sick.”
“Big talk coming from the lady who spent almost seven hundred dollars on a Pokémon card.”
“That is completely different,” Piper insisted, sounding betrayed. “That was an Umbreon VMax alternate art that was PSA rated nine. They were practically giving it away at that price. Plus, I needed it for my Eeveelutions binder. I couldn’t not buy it”
“Uh-huh,” Leo drawled. “But stamp collecting? That’s for the real freaks and weirdos.”
“I hate you.”
“Mhm. Keep telling yourself that, Pipes. Be sure to send me a post card from Egypt while you’re floating down that river.”
“Fuck off,” she laughed brightly. “You’re literally the worst. I don’t know why I even waste my time talking to you.”
“Yeah, because your social calendar is so full, other than me. You’ve got your pick of the litter.”
“I’ll have you know that I actually went on a date this afternoon. We got ice cream.”
“Oh? How’d that go?” Leo asked eagerly. Piper stayed silent for a moment too long and Leo winced in sympathy. “That bad, huh?”
“I mean, like, she was fine, I guess?” Piper whined. “But she had so many opinions about The Bee Movie–”
“Which is, of course, a work of art.”
“And you can do that if you’re bringing something else great to the table but she wasn’t,” Piper finished with a huff. “She brought Jello salad and a loaf of white bread to the personality potluck. That’s great if you love Jello salad, but I don’t.”
“You continue to have the most peculiar, scathing reviews of people,” Leo mused. “I think you might be insane. Have you considered that you might be insane?”
She blew a loud raspberry at him over the phone, and they settled into a comfortable silence, and Leo just let him focus on the sound of her breathing, the proof that somewhere out there his best friend was alive and safe. Then, Piper let out a soft sigh and he braced himself for impact. “Leo?”
“Yeah?”
“Are you gonna tell me about it?”
Leo sucked his teeth loudly in that way he knew she hated. She didn’t comment on it, which told Leo more than any words could. Still, he wanted to put it off for just a second longer. “Tell you what?”
“I don’t know.” There was another beat of silence, and Leo knew that 150 miles away, she was picking at her cuticles, just like he was. “You just… have this vibe. It’s weird.”
“I was planning on telling you,” he said. “I just wanted to save it for the end so we could have a nice conversation first.”
“Well, the nice part has been had. Show me the ugly part now.”
Leo chuckled softly. It wasn’t funny, but it was an incredibly Piper thing to say. “Alright, but fair warning, talking about it is going to break the rules.”
Piper’s breath hitched on the other end of the line. “You don’t mean–”
“That’s exactly what I mean,” he said grimly. “You sure you still want to hear it?”
Piper swallowed and Leo could almost hear her squaring her jaw. “Of course. If it’s you, there’s no rule we won’t break.”
He took a deep breath and closed his eyes. If he was going to make this real, he wasn’t going to watch. “I had a dream last night. A… a demigod dream.”
“Okay,” Piper said softly, trying to manage the anxiety he knew was crawling up her throat. “Okay. Um. Do you… remember it?”
“Not really,” he confessed. “Just flashes, mostly.”
“Then how do you know it had anything to do with… that?”
“Because it made me use my fire powers.”
“Oh, Leo,” she breathed. Her voice was filled with all the gentle sympathy he couldn’t accept from Dr. Kimbrough, even if she offered it, and his eyes swam with tears. “That was– That broke your streak, didn’t it?”
“I was supposed to hit thirteen hundred days in November,” he said in a tiny voice. “I didn’t– It’s been so long, and I didn’t even choose it. It just happened to me, just like everything else just happened to us.”
“I’m sorry,” she said simply. “It’s not fair. This– We shouldn’t have ever had to deal with any of that in the first place, much less now that we’ve made the effort to do something else.”
“That’s not the only thing,” he continued miserably. “The dream? It was– He was in it.”
Piper went very still, the dangerous, angry kind of still that refused to let the world ever really forget that she was a trained killer. “You mean Jason?”
“Yeah.” He pressed a fist to his lips and caught his breath. “I haven’t thought about him in months, Piper. Why the hell am I suddenly dreaming about my ex-boyfriend like some kind of high schooler again?”
“Fuck that guy,” she said venomously. “He wasn’t even a good boyfriend to begin with.”
That wasn’t true, and they both knew it. Jason had been a great boyfriend when Leo had been dating him. The ending didn’t necessarily negate the good that came before it; he’d learned that with Dr. Kimbrough’s help. “I just wish I knew why it was happening now.”
Piper hummed thoughtfully. “Leo, what’s today?”
“Uh, Monday? Why?”
“No, I mean the date, dummy.” Leo was silent and she heaved a sigh. “It’s July first.”
The world went very still around him. “Today’s his…”
“Birthday, yeah,” she finished. “Maybe that’s why you had that dream. Brains are a lot better at dates subconsciously than they are consciously. Maybe you just recognized the anniversary in the back of your head before you let it actually manifest in your proper brain, so it came out in a dream.”
“I– Yeah, I guess that makes sense,” Leo agreed, though he knew it wasn’t the truth. The theory did make sense, but there was something else. His dream had been a message, not just a calendar reminder, but he didn’t want to admit that to himself, much less her.
Piper made a noise that made Leo think she didn’t believe her words either, but she pressed on, finding a new topic that suited her better. “Anyway, your birthday is Sunday. I’ve already taken Monday through Wednesday off, so I’ll be driving down Saturday. I was planning to take the Friday off so we could do the Fourth together, but that plan fell through. Apparently the cat therapist needs to see a specific house that day. I hate rich people.”
“Friendly reminder that your dad owned a plane.”
“Irrelevant. He sold it years ago.”
Leo snorted softly. “Whatever you say, Pipes.” Then he let himself smile. “So, you’re gonna be here Saturday?”
“Mhm!” she hummed. “I haven’t decided if I’m gonna drive through Friday night and get there super early or just wait until Saturday to leave.”
“You hate driving at night.”
“Yeah, but I love you. That’s more important to me.”
Leo’s chest warmed, just like it did every time she said that. “Love you, too.”
Piper was about to start in on her schedule planning again when a loud, sudden boom of thunder shook the little farm house to the foundations. Leo whipped his head up to see that it was pouring buckets outside like a storm had simply been summoned on top of him, and he frowned. “It’s raining.”
“Is that a bad thing?”
Leo shook his head, though he knew she couldn’t see him. “No, it’s just a surprise. Millrose is usually pretty good about sticking to the forecast.” Before she could reply, a frantic knock came from the front door, and Leo went perfectly still and she did, too. “Piper,” he whispered under his breath. “Someone’s here.”
“Are you sure?” she whispered back, though there was no one to hear her. To make its point clear, the knock sounded again, even louder and more desperate than before and Piper sucked in a breath. “What are you gonna do?”
“I gotta answer it,” Leo said. “It could be someone who needs help.”
“But what about your–”
“My dream doesn’t mean shit in the face of someone dying on my front porch!” he hissed.
Without waiting for Piper’s response, Leo shifted Piper 2.0 off his lap and crept to the front door. Another round of frantic knocking, this time accompanied with a weak voice. “Please. I don’t know where else to go.”
Leo felt like a bucket of ice water had been dumped over his head. He knew that voice. He hadn't heard it in eight years, but he’d never ever forget it. Before he could question himself, he flung the door open wide to see a once-familiar face, aged nearly a decade and pale with pain and fear alike. He was soaked from the storm and his shirt was stained bright red with blood. He blinked slowly at Leo a few times before recognition finally dawned in those electric blue eyes. “Leo,” he breathed, the syllables sounding almost reverent from his lips.
Then, without any sort of warning, Jason Grace tipped forward and collapsed into Leo’s arms.
Since I have so thoroughly adopted the concept of archeologist Jason, how do we feel about the concept of Indiana Jones Valgrace? Or, possibly, reverse Indiana Jones where instead of taking artifacts from their original location, it's a heist movie in the beginning where he steals from museums to return them to where they belong
Hello hello hello! Back for round two today! I have for you another entry for @rrverseflashfics and this time it goes out to the one and only @gay-mormon-wizard who is in the labs trying to cook up some Jason/Will! I hope this helps your scientific endeavors <3
So, may I present my very first Wilson fic: Doctor's Orders
“We tattled on you,” Kayla said, jutting her chin out defiantly. “And we’re not sorry.”
Will looked between them both before scoffing incredulously. “Is that supposed to scare me? I’m head camper, and Mr. D and Chiron have given me full jurisdiction of the Infirmary. What, did you tell dad? Hate to break it to you, but he’s got some really bad time-management skills. He’ll be down here in six minutes to six years. So, just who did you tattle to, exactly?”
“Uh, that would be me.”
Will whirled around to see his boyfriend filling the entire doorway, looking every inch the Roman superhuman he was. Will’s eyebrows knit. “What are you doing here?”
“Kayla said you needed a day off and refused to take one,” Jason explained. “I’m here to make you take it.”
“Yeah, all right, Hercules, let’s see you try it,” Will snorted, turning his back on Jason to focus on his work.
Turning his back was a very foolish decision.
***
Riordanverse Flash Fic Fridays 2026 "Sickfic"
Will knew how getting sick worked. He was a– well, he wasn’t a doctor, exactly, but he was the closest damn thing Camp Half-Blood had to one. He’d been in the Infirmary healing people since he was a whopping twelve years old, and in order to be a healer, you had to know what made people hurt in the first place. He knew that the best cure for the common crud was not getting it in the first place, and the best way to do that was with a good diet, plenty of water, and at least seven hours of sleep a night.
Unfortunately, Will’s days usually consisted of four pots of coffee, cat naps whenever he found fifteen minutes to sit still, and a peanut butter sandwich, if he was lucky. He was rarely lucky.
So, it was no surprise when Will woke up in his bunk after about four hours of fitful sleep with his head throbbing, his muscles stiff, his throat scratchy, and a spectre of death looming over him. Still, the Infirmary wouldn’t run itself, demigods would keep trying to kill themselves, and Will would keep patching them up so they could haplessly wander in front of another round of archery practice or fall off a pegasus or trip face-first down a ravine or pick a fight with an acid-spitting monster or half-drown themselves trying to kiss an Nereid or– Well, there were a lot of things that could go wrong at a training camp for child soldiers souped up on divinity and new ones were being discovered each and every day, much to Will’s chagrin. So, with a groan that sounded more like stone being rubbed against stone than he cared to admit, Will swung his legs over the edge of the bed and forced himself to face the day.
Kayla and Austin both tried to argue him out of working that day. Kayla said that he’d get other people sick, and Austin claimed that he looked like he was one heavy breath from just falling out right in front of them, but Will just flipped them off, ignoring the way his vision was getting fuzzy at the edges, and got back to work. He did his best to ignore them, but in his current state, he could only tolerate their concerned glances and shared whispers for so long before he snapped.
“Do the two of you have something you’d like to share with the class?” he asked sharply after Kayla did an interpretive dance with just her eyebrows and Austin nodded solemnly back at her.
Kayla glanced between him and Austin a couple times before she cleared her throat. “Well, we’ve tried telling you to take the day off nicely, but you wouldn’t listen to us, so we, uh…”
“You, uh… what?”
“You can’t be mad at her,” Austin said sternly. “It was my idea.”
“What was your idea?”
“We tattled on you,” Kayla said, jutting her chin out defiantly. “And we’re not sorry.”
Will looked between them both before scoffing incredulously. “Is that supposed to scare me? I’m head camper, and Mr. D and Chiron have given me full jurisdiction of the Infirmary. What, did you tell dad? Hate to break it to you, but he’s got some really bad time-management skills. He’ll be down here in six minutes to six years. So, just who did you tattle to, exactly?”
“Uh, that would be me.”
Will whirled around to see his boyfriend filling the entire doorway, looking every inch the Roman superhuman he was. Will’s eyebrows knit. “What are you doing here?”
“Kayla said you needed a day off and refused to take one,” Jason explained. “I’m here to make you take it.”
“Yeah, all right, Hercules, let’s see you try it,” Will snorted, turning his back on Jason to focus on his work.
Turning his back was a very foolish decision.
The thing that Will had forgotten in his nearly delirious state was that Jason was a very physical guy. If he saw a problem that he felt needed to be fixed, he’d use his whole body to fix it without a second’s hesitation. At that moment, Will was a problem Jason felt needed fixing, boyfriend status be damned, so Will was hoisted up, and flung over Jason’s shoulder without a shred of remorse.
“Jason Grace! Put me down this instant!”
“Are you going to come with me voluntarily?”
“No!”
“Then no.” Jason shrugged, which Will felt because he was being handled like a god damn sack of flour, then turned to face Kayla and Austin, who were grinning like the traitors they were. “Bye, guys. I’ll see if I can get him to nap.”
“I’m putting you two on KP for a month,” Will growled, but it did little to curb their amusement.
The trek through Camp was, quite frankly, the most humiliating thing Will had experienced up to that point in his life. Jason had no problem tossing Leo and Piper around – the freaks even seemed to enjoy it – but that was because they were short. Will, standing at a proud six foot, was at least seven inches taller than them both. Unfortunately, Will was also lanky everywhere but his shoulders and biceps, which made him a prime slinging victim. Apparently.
“I hate you,” Will seethed as Jason casually tossed him on one of the Zeus cabin beds. Much to his dismay, his body immediately betrayed him and all but melted into the cloud-soft mattress. “You’re literally the worst person ever.”
Jason ignored him and just climbed in the bed, flopping his entire body on Will like a dog napping on the rug. There was a concerned crease between his eyebrows and a frown on his lips as he brushed his thumb over Will’s cheek. “You’re almost as hot as Leo.”
“Jason, I’m your boyfriend,” Will drawled, trying not to press into Jason hand like a cat. “I don’t know how things are done on the Roman side of the river, but Greeks typically don’t tell their boyfriends they’re only almost as hot as another guy.”
“That’s not what I meant,” Jason said softly. “You really are sick, aren’t you?”
Will wanted to insist that he wasn’t sick, just stressed out and tired, but Jason’s big blue eyes held him in place and stripped his defenses down to nothing. “It’s not that bad.”
“But it is some bad.” Will didn’t correct him, so Jason just nodded his own confirmation. He leaned in for a kiss, and without thinking Will’s hand came up and shoved him away. Jason looked like a kicked puppy. “What was that for?”
“I’m sick,” Will snapped, and that was the first and only time he’d actually admit it. “I’m not going to let you get yourself sick, too.”
“I have a really good immune system.”
Will narrowed his eyes. “Sorry, but the only person whose immune system I trust is Leo’s, and he’s hotter than you.”
“I said that’s not what I meant!”
“I know exactly what you meant, and I know what I mean,” Will said, arching his eyebrows. “Leo’s resting body temperature is high enough to kill pathogens, so his is the only immune system I trust. He’s constantly running a fever.”
“Oh.” Jason looked very sulky and watched Will with those big eyes of his. “So no kissing.”
“Absolutely no lip-on-lip action.”
Jason’s brows knit for a moment before he suddenly brightened. “Okay then.”
Before Will could even think to question it, Jason once again used his body to solve a problem. He placed his massive hand over the bottom half of Will’s face, then pressed a long, happy kiss to the back of his own hand. When he was done, Will was left laying there shock still, blinking. “What the hell was that?”
“Kissing with absolutely no lip-on-lip action,” Jason said cheerfully. “Will that work?”
There was no universe where that would actually work, but Will was too busy being a dumb, stupid teenager in dumb, stupid teenager love, so he just breathlessly nodded. “Uh-huh.” Jason smiled like he’d solved world peace and kissed him again.
Jason got sick the very next day, and Will didn’t look Kayla in the eye for a week.
Summary: “You’re going to be okay,” Jason said gently. “You lost a lot of blood, but once we got you to the infirmary, it was nothing a little nectar and a blood transfusion couldn’t fix.”
But Thalia wasn’t okay. None of this was okay.
The wrongness of it all settled deep in her bones as her brother spoke. She could tell his smile was strained, but he spoke with this strange calm, as if to soothe her. Her little brother was trying to comfort her.
Or: Thalia gets hurt on a mission, and wakes up to Jason sitting at her bedside. She has some… complicated feelings about it, to say the least.
Written for @rrverseflashfics: Care
This takes place in the same universe as the choiceless hope in grief, but you do not need to have read that fic to understand this one! The main things you need to know are just that Leo went and did the Orpheus and Eurydice thing with Jason, and Jason and Leo are currently staying at the Waystation!
———
Thalia woke up thoroughly disoriented. This was, at least in parts, due to the fact that she had no memory of falling asleep. She tried to make sense of her hazy surroundings and hazier recollection of past events.
The last thing she vividly remembered was their final standoff with the Teumessian Fox, assisting Laelaps in catching his ancient foe. She remembered Piper moving towards the beasts—fearless despite the fact that she did not even have Artemis’ blessing to protect her, wielding nothing but the power of her words.
It hadn’t been enough. They’d needed a distraction.
Thalia could do distractions.
She had arrows and lightning bolts and her shield Aegis, and she’d wielded them all without hesitation. The monster hadn’t been thrilled, immediately retaliating with claws and teeth.
She remembered the pain, dulled as it had been by the layers of her armor and the rush of adrenaline. She remembered thinking that it didn’t matter if she was hurt, so long as the distraction had been enough.
And it had been. It had been enough for Piper’s voice to do the rest. To remind the beast how it had missed its ancient foe and their endless chase across the stars. This world was too small to contain them. But the universe was vast, and it was theirs to return to.
And so they had. The fox never meant to be caught had turned to glittering dust, a streak of gold moving through the night sky to take back its rightful place among the constellations. Laelaps had followed soon after, welcoming a final affectionate petting from Reyna before it had chased after the Teumessian Fox.
Thalia had still barely felt the pain at the time. She’d been too preoccupied making sure the other hunters were unharmed, especially since she’d lost track of Iphigenia during the fight.
Despite the immediate danger being over, the adrenaline had kept her on her feet a while longer after that. The chase had gone on for months, and after so much time spent barely able to mitigate the destruction the Teumessian Fox had caused, her body took a while to process the fact that the danger was well and truly dealt with.
But then the memories grew hazy around the edges. They were snippets, like a film reel that had been exposed to too much light, half the sections faded beyond recognition.
Thalia remembered traveling, but couldn’t remember where they’d traveled. She remembered the warm, slick feel of blood against her fingers. She remembered sitting against a wall, breathing growing increasingly harder. There was only inky blackness afterwards.
There was no more darkness now. She blinked hard, struggling to get her eyes to adjust to the harsh light of the room she was in.
“You’re awake.” Thalia spent several seconds trying and failing to place the voice. “Thank the gods, Lia. For a second, I thought…”
A hand slipped into hers, cold fingers squeezing hers.
Thalia didn’t need to recognize the voice, then. There was only one person in the world who called her Lia.
It was the first word her little brother had ever spoken. Despite his best efforts, that had been the only part of her name he’d been able to pronounce at the time. Even through all of their devastating losses of each other, it had stuck.
“Jay?” Her voice came out brittle.
“You’re going to be okay,” Jason said gently. “You lost a lot of blood, but once we got you to the infirmary, it was nothing a little nectar and a blood transfusion couldn’t fix.”
But Thalia wasn’t okay. None of this was okay.
The wrongness of it all settled deep in her bones as her brother spoke. She could tell his smile was strained, but he spoke with this strange calm, as if to soothe her. Her little brother was trying to comfort her.
She hated this. Hated that he felt the need to comfort her when, as the older sibling, the comforting should have been her job. Hated that she had not recognized him by his voice. Hated that she should have known it immediately, but did not. Hated knowing that, had it been Annabeth, she would have known her, no matter how dizzy and disoriented she felt.
The thought of letting herself love Annabeth like a sister had felt like a betrayal of Jason’s memory in the early days. She had failed one little sibling, and there she’d been, opening her heart to another. Teaching her to fight and survive when she hadn’t been able to save the first person whose life had ever depended on her. Dark hair intricately braided between her fingers when Jason’s had never had the chance to grow past his shoulders. Listening to her stories and seeing her be foolish and brave and fierce in ways Jason had never gotten to be. It had been a kindness and a cruelty, to know Annabeth—this little sister she had not looked for but had found regardless—in a way she’d never known her brother.
But then Thalia had died, and miraculously, both of her siblings had lived. And sometime in her absence, both Jason and Annabeth had outgrown her. Her little sister had grown accustomed to no longer needing her, and Thalia wasn’t even sure her little brother remembered ever needing her at all.
Jason’s hand squeezed hers a little tighter. Thalia remembered what his tiny hand had felt like in hers, back when she’d been nine and Jason had been two. She had clung to the memory in its stead once she no longer had that hand to take in hers. But this hand was no longer the same she’d held as a child. His hand was larger than hers now, and it didn’t have the same fragile softness she remembered. It was strong from years of wielding weapons, and scarred from fights Thalia had not been privy to.
It wasn’t just that she hadn’t recognized his voice in an instant the way any halfway decent older sister should. There was so much about Jason that she didn’t know. Thalia had grieved her brother twice, but she hadn’t truly known him even once.
She didn’t know where to even start with that. Didn’t know how to be an older sister outside of trying her best to protect her younger siblings—a job that she couldn’t help but feel like she had failed at miserably.
She didn’t know how to say any of that. She tried to will the water out of her eyes, to will her voice to steady. “How long was I out?”
“It’s Monday, almost three pm. You were out for a full day,” Jason said softly, his big hand trembling in hers.
“You have lacrosse training on Monday afternoons,” Thalia realized, alarmed.
Jason blinked owlishly at her. “I- what?”
“You love lacrosse,” she said softly. “You should be at training.”
“Lia, forget about lacrosse for a second, you could have died!” Jason snapped, staring at her with a distraught expression. “Lacrosse will still be there for me next week, but I… I had to be sure you would be, too, okay?”
“Jay…”
She was startled when she realized he was crying.
She’d barely known her little brother—that tiny, vulnerable bundle full of warm, fussy baby that had been pressed into her arms at seven years old and that she’d sworn to herself to never let go—any other way. He’d had a strong pair of lungs and voiced his upset loudly, even when Thalia desperately tried to shush him so he wouldn’t wake their easily upset mother. His cries had grown softer as a toddler, once he’d started to understand and fear what would happen if their mom got mad, but he’d still spent so much time clinging to her, tears muffled against her nightgown.
She hadn’t ever seen this Jason cry. He’d had to be a strong leader at Camp Jupiter for so long that a part of her had feared he’d utterly unlearned how. But here he was, crying over her, of all things.
“I can’t lose you,” Jason said with a quiet, trembling voice. “Not again.”
Thalia say up slowly, ignoring the way her injured side protested. It felt more like a giant bruise than anything now—not life-threatening, just a serious pain in the ass—but even if it had been worse than that, she didn’t think she would have cared. Her little brother was crying, and the only thing she wanted was to pull him close and hold him and tell him everything would be okay until at least one of them believed it.
Jason looked hesitantly at her bandages, but she held up her arms, and he collapsed into her. He was much too big to cry into her chest now, but he sobbed fiercely into her shoulder, and he still fit into her arms all the same.
“I’m right here,” she told him, and she was fifteen and twenty and nine years old, all at the same time. Her voice wasn’t steady now. She could feel the way her eyes were watering, a few stray tears dripping down into Jason’s hair and she gently pressed a kiss to the top of his head, the way she hadn’t since he’d been a toddler. “I’m not going anywhere. I promise.”
They both knew she couldn’t actually promise that, but Jason didn’t protest. He accepted her gentle reassurances with the same ease he had as a child—and even then, he’d known some of them were untrue. The fact of the matter was that things weren’t magically going to be okay just because your big sister told you they would be—but his willingness to believe her had always made the impossible things she promised seem slightly more possible.
They’d both gone places before where the other couldn’t follow. They had no illusions about what the reality of their lives looked like—couldn’t have, after everything that had happened to them.
But they had each other back, at least for a little while.
The best they could do was make it count.
“I think I should stay here a few days to properly recover before rejoining the Hunters,” Thalia decided, almost surprised at the ease with which the words left her mouth. The fox was dealt with. She could leave the world for other people to save—at least for a little while.
Jason immediately perked up. “I have a game on Friday, if you want to come watch,” he said softly, slightly muffled by her shoulder. “Only if you’re feeling well enough, though.”
“Stop trying to parent me. You may look older than me now, but I’m still the older sibling here,” she said, a smile spreading across her face. She squeezed his shoulders as tightly as her bruised body would allow. “I wouldn’t miss it for the world.”
———
Notes:
-This is my first ever Thalia POV, which is a little scary! I do also realize that it’s kind of evil of me to write this instead of the Thalia and Jason hug I promise you of them reuniting post Leo’s little Orpheus maneuver, but this one fits well into my usual formula of getting a tough character into a situation where she’s forced to be a little vulnerable, so it felt like a less intimidating approach for my first proper Thalia focused fic!
-It also very nicely fit one of this week’s Riordanverse Flash Fic prompts, which I love!
-You will still be getting the other fic, I promise, but we’ll have to see when I get around to it!
-Also, the bit about loving Annabeth like a sister feeling like a betrayal of Jason’s memory and worrying about failing her the way she failed him goes specifically out to pjoTV Thalia, because I came up with the thought of her being tough on Annabeth specifically because of the way losing shaped her and she couldn't bear to lose another sibling, and I’ve wanted to do something about that ever since! I might actually also take a stab at the bit where tiny Annabeth gets captured sometime to go into the Jason of all that :)
He crept over to his husband’s side, careful to make as little noise as possible. Sure enough, Jason’s eyes were closed, his face completely slack, and his cheek was all smooshed up on one side. In his gentlest voice Leo called, “Hey, Superman?”
Immediately, Jason puckered his lips, but he remained firmly asleep, evident by the slight pout that formed when he didn’t receive his expected kiss. Leo bit his tongue hard to keep from giggling like a besotted school girl. “You fall asleep on me?”
Jason scrunch his nose a couple times like a confused rabbit, then mumbled, “Goin’ places.”
“Yeah? Where you goin’?”
“Home.”
“Home? Aren’t you at home?”
Jason’s eyebrow twitched like it always did when he was confused before he sighed happily. “Yeah. ‘m at home.”
****
Jason talks in his sleep
—
Podfic of A Light Sleeper But A Heavy Dreamer by @queenjunothegreat
It's Friday, which, of course, means that it's @flashfictionfridayofficial time! Today we went back to the Rare Pair Wheel and @demigod-shenanigans suggestion of Jason & Reyna came up! They are probably regretting adding the suggestion now, because I am here to make their girl suffer. Oops lol. Anywho, have fun with the angst and my beloved purple prose!
Words: 1000
Ao3: The Red and Gold Between Our Palms
The first thing I noticed about you was that you didn’t flinch at the sight of blood. We met at the border of Camp Jupiter . I was injured after months of training with Lupa and walking from Seattle to San Francisco and a run in with the Namean Lion, its pelt heavy on my shoulders, but I finally made it, stumbling and slicked red with blood. You were on guard that afternoon, and you rushed forward and caught me before my knees could fully buckle.
Your grip smeared blood onto your palms and my arms, but your stare never faltered. “You’re safe now.”
“Who are you?” I croaked, blood bubbling past my lips.
“Jason Grace,” you said, and even then I knew your name carried more than your identity.
The rest of my memories from that day are a blur. I remember you half-dragging me to the shores of the Little Tiber, and offering a prayer to Juno before submerging me. I wasn’t healed, but the waters stabilized me, enough for you to get me to the Infirmary, at the very least. You stayed at my side the entire time, like a soldier assigned to a post, unerring, undaunted, unsmiling. As the world faded to black, there was one detail I couldn’t help but fixate on.
Your hands were still red.
When I woke up, yours was the first face I saw. You smiled at me for the first time, though your eyes stayed guarded and your teeth unbared. “Hey. You feeling any better?”
“Marginally,” I groaned. I blinked at you for a moment, trying to get my vision to focus. “You’re Jason Grace?” You nodded, and I gave you a cautious smile of my own. “My name’s Reyna.”
After that, life moved quickly, and I learned what it meant to be part of something for the very first time. Before, I had only ever had Hylla and my own blade, but now I had the Legion, I had all of Rome at my back, but most importantly, I had you. You still didn’t smile at me often, but that was fine, I didn’t smile at you, either. We both had the weight of legacies bigger than ourselves on our shoulders, and joy is a luxury rarely afforded in the line of duty. We couldn’t share our load, but we could bear our burdens together, and that was more than I had ever dared to hope for. We stood by each other, shoulder to shoulder, even when others shied away and averted their gaze.
They averted their gaze far more than they ever dared to look at you.
You’d always unsettled people. You stood too still, watched too carefully, and when you struck it was with animal violence that no one could replicate. People talk, and more than one person wondered if Lupa was the source of your divinity rather than Jupiter.
I saw it when we were on a quest together, and we were cornered by monsters, completely unarmed Everyone thought we were going to die, but you launched yourself forward, teeth bared and fingers curled into claws. You killed the monsters with your bare hands, and when you turned back to us, your mouth and hands dripped with golden blood, but your eyes were hard in the way I had learned meant hurt.
Everyone was terrified, wondering if the threat was truly gone or merely changed shape, but I remembered the boy who saw me covered in blood and held out a hand so I stepped forward and offered my own. You didn’t flinch that first day, and I didn’t flinch any of the following. You took my hand, smearing ichor between our fingers, and I never let go.
Because of that, I saw you, Jason Grace. I saw you more clearly than anyone who had ever dipped their head in respect of your name. They looked at you and saw a savior, the prince of Olympus and Champion of Rome. You were all but a god to them, and everyone knows that gods don’t bleed. They certainly don’t cry.
But teenage boys do.
I found you after the Battle of Othrys, after they lifted you on their shields and named you their leader. I had sought you out with the intention of celebration. We were both Praetors now, we could lead Rome together the way I’d wanted us to since I had learned what a Praetor was. I wasn’t expecting to find you kneeling at the banks of the Little Tiber, desperately scrubbing your already raw hands in the waters as tears rolled down your cheeks.
“His blood,” you said hollowly when you finally noticed me standing there. “It’s– I can’t get it out from under my nails.”
“Whose blood?” I asked, though I already knew the answer.
“Christopher,” you said. “I held him, and he died, and now I’m wearing his title like a crown.”
You broke down after that, grief radiating off of you thick enough to choke. I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t comfort you, not really, so I stood there silently as you wept. We didn’t speak again after that night, not like we used to. We were Praetors together, and that was it. I will forever wonder if that was my fault.
And then, without warning, you were gone. Juno, the goddess you prayed to save me, took you from me. I searched as long as I was able, but you were gone, and I wondered if that was my fault too.
When you came back, you were different. You smiled with your whole face, teeth bared, and you laughed. You held hands with Greeks, and there wasn’t a drop of red or gold on your fingers. You smiled at me with teeth and without recognition and offered me a hand that anyone else would call clean, but I have always seen you, Jason Grace. There was blood on the hand you offered me.
Summary: It was very obvious which space was Piper’s and which space was Reyna’s, but the shared walls they’d decorated alongside each other tied the room together enough to almost make it seem cohesive. The star-shaped string lights Piper had put over the window during their first week at NRU glittered gently in the dark, illuminating the cork board beneath that was filled almost entirely with pictures of their families and friends. On the window sill sat two orchids—one yellow, one purple—that Reyna lovingly kept alive in a way that was entirely mystical to Piper, who had once managed to kill a cactus by forgetting to water it.
Piper’s chaos and Reyna’s tidiness had learned to coexist, fitting together in a way that felt like home.
Or: Piper spends a mostly quiet evening with her girlfriend.
Word Count: 2.4k
Rating: Teen and Up
Written for @sapphic-summer-riordanverse Free Space!
———
Text:
“Reyna, you won’t believe the day I’ve had,” Piper greeted her girlfriend before she even had the chance to step through the door. “I haven’t been this productive in weeks. I finally went over my Spanish vocab with Leo and then I did a bunch of laundry and I spent the whole evening finally writing that essay I was putting off. It’s a miracle!” she announced, feeling thoroughly accomplished and proud of herself.
“Well done. But also: did you have dinner?” Reyna asked gently, and Piper froze.
“What time is it?” she tried innocently, hoping that maybe she could get away with pretending she’d been about to head down to the cafeteria. Which, in her defense, had genuinely been her plan at some point. It was just that, somewhere along the way, she’d sort of gone into hyperfocus tunnel vision and forgotten that food was a thing that existed.
“Almost 10 pm.”
Right. So the cafeteria was definitely closed. Whoops.
This was… less surprising than she would have liked to admit. Really, she was lucky Leo had left when he did and flipped the light switch on the way out. If he hadn’t, there would have been a real chance of her girlfriend finding her hunched over her laptop in near-complete darkness while she’d barely begun to wonder why she was having to squint so much all of a sudden.
Piper deflated. “Damn it. I swear it was still 5, like, fifteen minutes ago.”
“I understand the feeling, but I’m pretty sure it doesn’t work like that mathematically,” her girlfriend said lightly.
“Dyscalculia, remember? Don’t ask me to do maths. Especially not at 10 pm,” Piper shot back, reassuring herself twice that the essay she’d neglected her basic needs over was saved properly before finally closing her laptop. She’d been ripped out of her little focus bubble now, and her body decided to immediately file a bunch of complaints about all the things it had paid absolutely zero attention to. Like the fact that her posture was shit because she focused best leaning forward and with one knee pulled up to her chest. Or the fact that she was not only hungry but also mildly dizzy. Had she had anything to drink since she’d gotten back from lunch? “I guess I should go find something to eat,” she sighed, feeling less than enthusiastic about the idea of leaving their nice, cozy room to spend a minimum of one hour failing miserably at cooking in the communal kitchen, only to inevitably give up and just eat instant noodles for the fourth day in a row.
“That pizzeria you like should still be open. I could IM them and we can go pick it up together, if you want,” Reyna offered, reaching out to squeeze Piper’s shoulder. “I know hearing this won’t thrill you, but your back will thank you for the exercise in the morning.”
“Ugh. You’re the worst,” Piper groaned, giving her girlfriend a dirty look even though pizza theoretically sounded great. Her stomach grumbled at the thought of neither burnt vegetables nor instant noodles. “I don’t wanna go outside. It’s nice and warm in here,” she complained nonetheless.
“The sky is really clear tonight. It would make for a perfectly romantic stroll under the night sky.”
Piper caved. Damn her girlfriend for knowing her so well.
“Fine.” She reluctantly extricated herself from her chair. “The things I do for pizza.”
She took the hand up her girlfriend was offering her and blushed furiously when Reyna pulled it up to her lips and pressed them gently to her knuckles. “For what it’s worth: I’m proud of you for tackling so many of the things you were dreading today. I wish you hadn’t forgotten dinner over it, but it happens, and it’s not an insurmountable issue. Besides, I’m not really one to talk here.”
The problem with Reyna was that it was so perfectly easy to be hopelessly in love with her that Piper couldn’t help but do completely ridiculous things for her—like go on midnight pizza errands or actually sit down and do her coursework so she was free to hang out with her in the evenings.
While Reyna called the pizza place, Piper found the water bottle she’d put on her desk next to her laptop several hours ago and hadn’t taken a single sip from all day. Now that her body deigned to remember that drinking water was a thing that existed, she emptied it greedily. Once her mouth felt a little less like she’d been walking through the desert for three days, she put the bottle down and slipped into her girlfriend’s purple NRU sweater—the one she herself had refused to buy because the concept of university merchandise was stupid and selling sweaters to freshmen when summer was still in full swing had seemed even sillier. The logo was slightly faded now, but the fabric was still pleasantly fluffy and the sweater was slightly too long, cutting off halfway down Piper’s thigh rather than at her waist like it was intended to be.
Reyna raised an eyebrow at her, then apparently decided to retaliate, slipping into the denim jacket Piper had abandoned on her desk chair. Reyna was taller than her, but a combination of their height being at least vaguely comparable and Piper’s penchant for oversized clothes meant that their clothes theft was a lot more mutual than Jason and Leo ever could have dreamed of. Piper was actually more than a little proud of the fact that Reyna did this. It wasn’t something Reyna would have ever dreamed of doing back when they’d met. She also looked so unfairly good in that jacket that Piper briefly considered ditching their pizza plans in favor of a makeout session, but between her own growling stomach and Reyna’s single-minded determination not to let her starve to death, she figured that would tragically have to wait.
She was slightly placated by the fact that her girlfriend's fingers remained intertwined with hers and the night sky being exactly as clear and beautiful as promised.
She wondered if her dad was looking at it, too, all the way in Oklahoma. There was something comforting about that thought—about the fact that, despite the distance, they still shared the same night sky. That they still looked at the same constellations he’d taught her so many years ago.
Despite Piper’s initial protests, she was glad she’d agreed to this little trip. The air was so much fresher here than it ever could have been in a human city filled with cars. Reyna had been right, it did feel nice to get to stretch her legs a little bit after how long she’d been hunched over in her chair.
She and Reyna walked hand in hand for several minutes, enjoying the fresh, cold air in amicable silence.
It was one of the things Piper liked about their relationship—the way neither of them felt the need to fill every silence between them. They didn’t always need words to fit together just right. Sometimes, just existing in each other’s general vicinity was enough.
“You look like you have something on your mind,” Reyna finally said. It was an offer to share her thoughts, but without pressure behind it. If Piper had wanted, they could have lapsed right back into silence, with nothing changed between them.
But it was late and Piper was feeling both brave and slightly reckless, so she said, “just thinking about my dad again. You know how I’m planning to visit him next weekend?” Reyna nodded. “I was wondering if you’d like to come along.”
“I wouldn’t want to intrude,” Reyna said quietly.
“You wouldn’t be intruding. I think he’d like to get to know you a little better, actually. I talk about you an embarrassing amount.” Piper laughed nervously and tried to ignore how sweaty her hands suddenly felt. “But also, no pressure. I know that’s kind of a huge deal and maybe I shouldn’t have dumped that on you out of nowhere, I just-”
“Piper,” Reyna broke in, voice infinitely gentle. She looked at Piper, then. Really looked at her, the way so few people ever did. She knew the real Piper, with all of her questionable cooking skills and bad habits and worse sense of humor, and she loved her with a steadfastness that still made Piper’s head spin. “It’s not that I don’t want to. I just know that you don’t get to spend nearly as much time with your father as you wish you did. I wouldn’t want to cut into that time.”
Piper gently bumped her shoulder into Reyna’s. “Maybe consider that you’re both important to me and that’s why I’d like you to get to know each other,” she pointed out, shaking her head in amusement. Of course it hadn’t been a rejection on Reyna’s part. Of course she was just being thoughtful as well as a tiny bit dense. “And dad may still refuse to go surfing with me, but he suggested we could go camping for a week once I’m on break, the way we used to when I was little. I’ll have plenty of one-on-one time with him, then. In the meantime, I’d like to properlyintroduce him to my girlfriend, without quests or doomsday prophecies or monsters interfering.”
“You should know better than to tempt the Fates like that,” Reyna said, shaking her head, but she was smiling. “Now we’re definitely getting at least one monster.”
“You’re coming, then?”
“Of course I am,” Reyna told her, like it was the most obvious thing in the world. Her whole being radiated love. “You asked.”
And, well, at that point, if Piper ignored her grumbling stomach and left their food to cool on the pizzeria counter a bit longer so she could kiss her girlfriend silly in the middle of the street, who could blame her, really?
~~~~
Half an hour later, the two of them were curled up on Reyna’s bed, sharing pizza with the TV running in the background. While Piper had refused to give up the stolen hoodie, Reyna had placed Piper’s denim jacket back on the hanger where it belonged and that Piper also conveniently ignored most of the time. Piper was both fond as well as slightly exasperated at the way that apparently, borrowing her clothes also served to give her girlfriend an excuse to tidy up a little bit.
Not that Piper could entirely blame her. Reyna’s bed was their default cuddle spot specifically because, between the two of them, she was the tidier person by a mile. Piper’s bed, on the other hand, currently hosted several open books, a half-emptied bag of Fonzies that was definitelyLeo’s fault, as well as the laundry Piper had folded and then apparently forgotten to put away because she’d gotten distracted.
It wasn’t that she didn’t try to keep her spaces tidy—she actually tried very hard. It was just that sometimes it felt like she invested four hours into cleaning up, then blinked once and found that everything had suddenly returned to being a mess in new and interesting ways.
Thankfully, Reyna didn’t mind sharing her bed, so long as Piper made sure the mess didn’t expand to her half of the room, too.
It was very obvious which space was Piper’s and which space was Reyna’s, but the shared walls they’d decorated alongside each other tied the room together enough to almost make it seem cohesive. The star-shaped string lights Piper had put over the window during their first week at NRU glittered gently in the dark, illuminating the cork board beneath that was filled almost entirely with pictures of their families and friends. On the window sill sat two orchids—one yellow, one purple—that Reyna lovingly kept alive in a way that was entirely mystical to Piper, who had once managed to kill a cactus by forgetting to water it.
Piper’s chaos and Reyna’s tidiness had learned to coexist, fitting together in a way that felt like home.
Piper wasn’t even pretending to watch the show they’d put on. It was one of the ones Reyna had picked out—it was a competition show about forging historically accurate weaponry and then getting judged in a bunch of different categories, including one where they slashed at different dummies, which was a fun enough concept. But the way Reyna’s eyes gleamed as she watched it and the way she sometimes couldn’t help but talk over the competitors, cutting in with more historical facts than any of the people on their screen knew, explaining which of these weapons she had experience fighting with and what monsters they were most effective against, was infinitely more mesmerizing than any of the things happening onscreen.
She loved this version of Reyna, too—the one that had learned that there was no such thing as being too much of herself with Piper and just let herself go on her rambles about swordsmanship in medieval Europe without even a hint of restraint. When a contestant got something wrong, she shot Piper a look, like, can you believe this guy, then went on a three minute rant about why what he’d said was both factually incorrect and a sign of poor research practices.
Reyna was an excellent listener, and Piper loved her for that, but gods, she adored getting to listen to her in turn. Adored it when the restrained diplomat Reyna had schooled herself into fell away and revealed the passionate, prideful, pedantic girl underneath that had once dragged her, Jason and Leo all the way back through an exhibit about knights to exasperatedly correct every single fact that Leo had spent the whole afternoon getting wrong on purpose. She was an absolute force to be reckoned with, and getting to be a person she let herself fully unmask around was a joy very few things could match.
Reyna made all the space for Piper that she could ever ask for, but she’d also learned to make space for herself, and gods, Piper was so, so impossibly in love with this girl. More than that: as she let herself sink against her girlfriend, Reyna still rambling about the benefits of different types of ranged weapons, Piper knew that this was what coming home felt like.
———
Notes:
I still struggle quite a bit with mostly plotless fluff, so I did have one kind of important moment in there, but it’s mostly plotless fluff, which I’m counting as a win! Also, Piper’s experience here with “I got so much done today!” *pauses* “…I completely forgot I have human needs, didn’t I” may or may not be based on the author’s personal experience, lmao.
I love writing domestic Pipeyna. I need to do that way more, honestly.
Reyna dragging them all through a museum is based on this lovely fic by my @queenjunothegreat!
I hope you enjoyed this fic! I’d you did, I’d love to hear about it, but either way, thank you for reading! :D
i totally get it that writing takes time, and life happens, but i just want to say i'm SO excited for when your valgrace week finale is posted!! usually longer waits mean longer fics and i'm super hyped regardless of how long it may take :3
Thank you very much for your patience! I had some scheduling conflicts the last half of last week (don't ask) that kept me from uploading that first chapter, but it will definitely be up this Saturday! At the moment I'm expecting it to be anywhere between 15-30K, depending on how future chapters go lol
sooooo would you ever consider making a sequel to any of the valgrace week fics? particularly blooming in ink? IM ADDICTED IT'S SO GOOD
First of all, thank you for asking! I'm delighted that you've liked these stories enough to want sequels! Most of them are kinda stuck where they are, but Blooming in Ink is actually an exception! I fully intend to expand on that universe some more, and I even have some future fics planned. But if there's anything SPECIFIC you'd like to see from that, feel free to send an ask with a fic request :3 I LOVE getting fic requests
Okay! Valgrace week is officially over, but I’d like to continue being a nuisance, so I’m a) advocating for anyone who’s okay with doing so to put a blanket permission to podfic on their Ao3 profile (go read this post for some good explanations on what that is and what it does!) and b) if you are open to podfics being made of your work, please go ahead and put your username on this google sheet I made!
I thought it’d be handy to have list of valgrace/lost trio fic authors open to podfics for me and anyone else who might want to use it! If you’re generally open to the idea, but have works you don’t want people to podfic, there’s a field in the google sheet made exactly for that purpose! If you at any point want to change your permissions or take yourself off the list again, go into the doc and do just that!
A general database for podficcers exists, but as far as I’m aware it’s only sortable by overarching fandom, it’s for blanket permissions exclusively and there were also barely any valgrace authors in it (I spent half an afternoon going through every single listed HoO fandom profile), so I figured I’d make things a little easier for myself and potentially others!
Keep in mind that people have different boundaries and comfort zones and that podficcing takes time, so a blanket permission statement or interacting with this post/the google sheet isn’t a guarantee you’ll get a podfic! However, the more easily available the information that you’re open to podfics is, the more likely it is that someone will make one!
Aaaaaaaaaaaaand it's @flashfictionfridayofficial time again! Man, I don't think I talk enough about how much I LOVE doing these. Thank you sosososo much to all the mods that make this possible <3 Also! Thank you to @manygeese who suggested Calypso and Echo many moons ago when I first opened up my Rare Pair Wheel. These girls didn't WIN the wheel today, they just suited the prompt, and I get to break my own rules whenever I want xoxox
Words: 920
Ao3: An Echoed Song
Echo wasn’t entirely sure how she wound up here. In fact, for a little while there, she didn’t even know where “here” was, considering she hadn’t chosen her destination or even the journey itself. It happened after she met the demigods, Leo and Hazel, and helped them steal her beloved Narcissus’s mirror. She’d hoped taking it would free him from his self-imprisonment, let him look up and finally see her, but that wasn’t really how things worked. Much to her dismay, taking the source of a story took away the subject’s focus in the mortal world. If Narcissus couldn’t spend his day consumed with love for his own reflection, he had no narrative purpose and began to fade. He’d come back eventually, all mythic figures did, but until then Narcissus’s Island had no need to exist, and began to fade with its master. The nymphs, fortunately, were spared and scattered to the winds.
And that was how Echo wound up on this island. It was beautiful, far more so than any place she’d been before, and she silently wandered the paths, humming pretty songs to birds just to have something repeated to her for once, and that’s when she finally came across the master of the island: Calypso.
Everyone Echo had ever met knew who Calypso was, she was the most famous of all Nymphs, a Titaness, even. She was known to be a powerful sorceress, and beautiful and kind on top of it. Despite all this, Echo was left woefully unprepared for the reality that was Calypso.
The one thing that nobody ever mentioned was that Calypso sang. She sang all the time – hen she was collecting fruit in the orchards, and when she was weaving, and when she was just wandering the shoreline in her bare feet – and every note that passed her lips was beautiful. Echo was utterly enchanted, and after weeks of simply following the Titaness around, she finally plucked up the courage to repeat Calypso’s song back to her, timid and thin, but full of hope.
Calypso froze, and narrowed her eyes at the foliage. “Is someone there?”
“Someone there!” Echo called back breathlessly.
“Well, then. Show yourself.”
Echo gulped, and stepped forward, unsure if Calypso would be able to see her at all, much less if she would approve. “Show yourself.”
Calypso blinked and cocked her head to the side. “And who are you? I’ve never seen you before, but you’re not a hero.”
“Not a hero.”
“Okay. Who are you?”
“Who are you?”
“Must you keep doing that?” Calypso asked, eyebrow twitching.
“Must… keep doing that,” Echo said with a morose nod.
Calypso immediately went still, and her face softened. “Oh, you poor little echo.”
“Echo.”
“That’s your name?” Calypso asked, her voice sharp. “Your name is Echo?”
“Name is Echo.”
Calypso looked incensed. “Another cruel game played by the gods, I’m sure.” She turned and scowled up at the sky. “And what was her crime? For what reason have you deemed it fit to torment her so?” Thunder rolled, but she ignored it, instead turning to face Echo. “We don’t need those petty Olympians. If you’d like, you and I can stick together.”
“Stick together,” Echo said, breathless again for an entirely different reason than before.
Calypso gave her a brilliant smile and offered her hand. “Come with me.”
After that, Echo stuck to Calypso’s side like glue and the Titaness never seemed to grow weary of her company, which was more than Echo could have dared to hope for. Calypso still did most of the talking, of course, though she always paused to let Echo repeat any phrases she wanted to. But mostly, they just sang together. Calypso would begin the melody, and Echo would pick it up in a perfect round, and they would make the most beautiful sounds. Echo had forgotten how much she liked to sing.
And then, one day, Calypso sat down before her, a gentle but hesitant smile on her face. “I… have a proposal, if you’re willing to hear it out.”
Echo blinked at her. “Hear it out.”
“You’re welcome to say no if you want, of course you are, but I have an idea that might, at least soothe some of the daily pain of your curse,” Calypso said. “Echo is your name, it was your name first, but since then it has become something else, something that isn’t you. If you’re willing, I’d like to offer you a new name.”
“A new name?” Echo asked, breath hitching.
Calypso nodded. “Before the Olympians, there were Muses. They’re long gone and forgotten by most at this point, but I knew them, and I loved them, just as I have come to love you.”
“Love you.”
Calypso smiled, her cheeks warming, but she stayed on topic. “One of them, Aoede, was a Muse of song. If you think it fits, I believe it would be a beautiful name for you.”
Echo’s head was spinning. Calypso wanted to give her a name. And not just any name. The name of someone whose voice was worth listening to. The name of someone who deserved to speak. Her eyes welled, and her voice hitched, tiny and fragile. “A beautiful name.”
Calypso’s face lit up. “Do you like it?”
She nodded furiously, tears rolling down her cheeks. “Like it, like it, like it, like it.”
Calypso laughed. “Then it’s yours. From now on, your name is Aoede.”
Aoede smiled with her whole face. “From now on, my name is Aoede.”
FSH Future Valgrace thing: Jason and Leo have a son while they're sailing the world on the Argo XIV and his name is Nolan because he was born on da water and there was No Land
