say im in love, so it's hard to admit (i think you're whats wrong with me)
pairing: luke castellan x fem!reader
synopsis: you, luke, and your dead best friend thalia. your arrival to camp half-blood and everything that follows.
included in this fic: luke being a sad and jealous teenage boy. grief. mentions of thalia's death. pre-lightning theif. canon divergent kinda?? . luke and reader being oblivious
word count: 2.1k
notes: so im starting a series!!! based off this req and this req (ik i missed some aspects but theyll be added in later parts) title from the olivia rodrigo song. this is kind of a filler to set the scene, future parts will be more entertaining i promise :)
When you and Luke first came to camp half-blood, you stuck out like a sore thumb.
It was like the entire camp was staring at you. Which, realistically, they most likely were. When two teenagers and a little child come to camp traumatized after their best friend—who happened to be a child of the big three—turned into a tree, who wouldn't stare?
You still hadn't fully wrapped your head around the fact Thalia was gone. She was your best friend. It was difficult for you to make female friendships, considering you practically grew up with a boy alone after you ran away from your crazy mothers. So when you accidentally ended up in police's custody and sent to school in Jersey city until "further notice"—which meant finding whatever foster home was willing to take a ten-year-old and shoving you in there—you immediately tried to make friends. However, you were quick to find most of the girls were not nice.
As a daughter of Ares, you were naturally more short-tempered and angry, despite your desperate attempts not to be. The fact that you had never known peace in your life, constantly fighting or running away from monsters, didn't help. So after getting into about five fights on the first day because your grungy clothes kept getting stared at, the girls at Greenville Junior High concluded they didn't like you.
Thalia had known you were special the moment you walked into her math class during fourth period.
She sat in the back next to an empty seat, since the girls had also decided they didn't like her at the beginning of the year, and she despised all the boys. She had gone through a similar situation with the police, since she had also been a ten-year-old walking around with no guardian.
Her smile at you when you walked into class late will forever be etched into your memory.
You sat next to her, and you two didn't even have to greet each other. You just immediately clicked and started talking to each other. Almost as if you had known each other your whole lives.
When you two found out you were both demigods, it just made you closer.
So of course, you invited her to run away with you and Luke.
At first, he was wary of her. So was she.
"So. You're the boyfriend?" she had said.
A pink color flushed his cheeks. "No! I am not her boyfriend!"
Later, Thalia made a plan to initiate Luke into the group.
"To the tree and back. If you beat me, you can hang out with us."
Luke looked dumbfounded. "What? I was literally friends with her before you! I should be the one challenging you!"
Thalia snorted, before bolting to the tree.
He immediately ran after her. "Hey! What? You got a head start! That's not fair!"
Somehow, Luke won the race. They decided to call a truce, deciding that three demigods on the run would be better than one or two. And eventually, with a little bit of your help, they became best friends as well.
At one point, you and Thalia even got the amazing idea to squeeze loads of sun-in that you found in a nearby dumpster on the ends of your hair and lay out in the sun until they lightened. Then, you bought kool-aid packets from a gas station and used them to "dye" your hair. Somehow, the color lasted, and she had blue ends while you had red.
On the first night, you slept with Luke and Annabeth in a random empty cabin until "further notice"—which no longer meant a foster family. It meant your real "family." Your demigod parent's cabin. You were numb the entire time. Annabeth cried herself to sleep, begging you to say a word. But you couldn't—because your best friend, the blue to your red, one of the only people who truly understood you—was gone.
Eventually, the dam broke, and you sobbed in Luke's arms until you fell asleep.
You partially blamed yourself. She knew you would do something stupidly brave, so she asked Luke to hold you back while she sacrificed herself.
What a pathetic waste for a daughter of Ares. You couldn't even fight your way out of a boy's arms to save your best friend.
So when everyone stared at you after her death, it just hurt more. Because you knew if she had made it, she would have fought them the same way you had fought those five girls at Greenville.
Eventually, the numbness and sadness morphed into anger. Which made you quickly get accepted into the Ares cabin. Your initiation was to fight the head counselor. Of course, you won.
When everyone chanted your name, you should have felt happy. Victory always made you happy. But it felt foreign to feel any ounce of happiness or belonging—it was overwhelmed by the ache in your heart.
Luke, however, had a different story. The moment he walked into the overcrowded Hermes cabin, it went silent. He got a stare from every camper in the cabin. Some dirty. Some pity. Some simply just curious.
Until the literal sunshine approached him.
And by sunshine he meant a blonde boy with the widest smile in the entire world.
"Hey, newbie. What's your name?"
Luke was skeptical. Nobody was usually nice to him. Not without a price. But he felt drawn to the boy, and something about him made Luke feel like the blonde boy with the widest smile could be trusted.
"Uh, I'm Luke," he forced out.
"Cool," said the boy. "I'm Aiden. Aiden Mankov."
Aiden Mankov seemed to be popular, because the moment Luke shook hands with him, the entire cabin went back to whatever they were doing.
Luke spent the rest of the day chatting with Aiden, eventually becoming good friends with him. He learned a lot about him. Like how Aiden had been at camp since he could remember, abandoned by whoever his mortal parent was. When he got claimed, a miracle happened. He got "claimed" by two gods—Apollo and Aphrodite.
Since it was impossible for both of them to be his parent, Aiden ended up being the reason for the silent rivalry between both the gods and their cabins. So Aiden had just stayed in the Hermes cabin. Though it was clear he favored Apollo.
He was both the camp's best archer and healer—as well as being great at singing and art, which he often used to calm down younger kids at camp.
Luke and Aiden were complete opposites, but maybe that's why they became such great friends. Aiden was always the first to cheer him up after he'd thought about Thalia or his mom. He was always the first to introduce him to new people. He was the one who got Luke out of his shell.
About a week after their first meeting, Luke decided to introduce Aiden to you.
Luke found you violently punching a dummy in the training arena. He wasn't surprised when he called your name out and you didn't respond.
On the fifth try, he finally got you to turn your head.
"This is Aiden," he said.
You looked him up and down, then turned to Luke. "You made a friend?"
"I'd say I was the one who started the friendship, but y'know. Who cares?" the boy replied with a grin.
You snorted. That was the closest thing to a laugh you had since Thalia's death.
Now, normally your laugh was Luke's favorite sound—but seeing another boy make you laugh twisted something in his chest.
He didn't understand the feeling at the time, but about a year after your arrival to camp was when you got your first boyfriend.
Fifteen-year-old Luke was devastated.
He had a super secret diary he carried with him everywhere. He spent the entire night writing in it.
It wasn't a serious relationship. You and the boy broke up after a week, but to Luke it felt like a lifetime. Then he realized it. It hit him smack in the face the night after the breakup—every time you talked to a boy that wasn't him, he felt jealous.
At first, he tried to convince himself it was just him being protective over you. I mean, he had known you since he was six. Of course he would care about you. Then he realized he kept comparing himself to all the boys you talked to. He would pick apart all his own flaws and use them as reasons to why you didn't like him back.
Why you didn't like him back.
In a way, he had always known—but now that he admitted it to himself, he realized he was in trouble. Big trouble.
He decided to bury the feeling deep in his chest, because he was convinced you would never like someone like him. He thought you saw him as a just a friend. Plus, seeing you smile over something some boy said to you was better than not seeing you smile at all.
The times he felt most insecure was when you were with Aiden. Despite Aiden being his best friend, he always envied the way he was so gentle and kind. Not that Luke wasn't kind, but he grew up fighting monsters for gods' sake. Of course he wasn't as gentle as someone who was at camp his whole life.
Eventually, Chris Rodriguez came to camp and became good friends with Luke and Aiden. You got closer to your sister Clarisse La Rue, and the five of you formed a friend group that eventually turned into your own little family. However, even then, Luke was unable to get over his feelings for you.
He tried his hardest to move on. To accept you would never see him as more than the boy you grew up with. A best friend. A brother, even.
You can't say you haven't once thought about dating Luke. You also can't say you don't find him attractive. But the thought of letting yourself have a crush on Luke terrifies you. He was smart, funny, caring, strong, handsome— and definitely not in love with you. You always pictured Luke with someone who was gentle, sweet even. They would have to cancel him out. You and Luke didn't cancel each other out—you worked together. You fought monsters back-to-back. You sparred each other to train. So you promised yourself to never, ever fall for him.
Luke, on the other hand, sometimes lets himself fantasize. Like when you lean your head on his shoulder during a bonfire, he puts his arm around you and plays with the ends of your hair. When you sneak out during lunch to have a picnic, he pretends he's spoiling you and treating you to a nice date. When you sneak into his cabin after he has a nightmare and sleep with him, he pretends it's forever.
He can't fathom how someone so pretty can confuse him so much. It's like one day you're holding his hand as you drag him to your cabin to hang out, and the other you're teasing him about him being "gross and un-likeable." There's times where he wished you'd just break his heart, that way he wouldn't have to guess so much. Why couldn't you just make up your mind?
Chris, Clarisse, and sometimes even Annabeth tease him non-stop about his obvious crush on you, but he always denies. He refuses to come clean to anyone. The only person who fully knew was Thalia, so every time he thinks of talking to someone about it, he gets a painful reminder she's gone.
So he simply sucks it up and accepts that the possibility of you ever being his is very low. Even if you were one day, he's convinced you'll call it off after a week once you realize he isn't good enough for you.
He's snapped out of his thoughts, nearly falling out of the porch chair he's sitting at. He looks up from the ground at you, aged by a year and a half of camp. The red ends of your hair are gone. You had cut them a month after you arrival because you couldn't handle the reminder of Thalia. You're slightly taller and healthier, but to him, you're still the same girl he's always loved.
"Yeah, red?" He replies, the nickname slipping out after years of him saying it.
You raise an eyebrow, scoffing slightly. "The conch bell rang, like, fifteen minutes ago. What are you doing here admiring the ground as if it's giving you the answers to life?"
He tries not to laugh. "My bad. Uh…you go ahead. I'll be there soon."
"M'kay," you turn around, beginning to walk to the dining pavilion. "But if Chris steals your bacon again, you can't blame me!"
"I won't!" He shouts after you, then goes back to his self-torturing thoughts.
tags: @kistuff @angxl-escent @goobfeels @amourxmp4 @imgonnashartmyself @whosurboyfriendnow