Aubade
Fandom: Percy Jackson Rating: Teen Characters: Lee Fletcher; Caz (Castor) Summary: Lee must be gone by morning light.
AN: This takes place about February, they're both 19
It had rained overnight. Lee could still hear the echo of it when he woke, the emergence out of silence, birdsong soft and sleepy, the pitter of drops from wet leaves, the trill of water in the metal drainpipes. And the smell, fresh in his lungs, of green and woody things: soil and grass and bark. It was early enough to still be dark, there in the countryside, only a thin sickle moon to look in on them through the open curtains.
The curtains and windows were always open in Caz's room, anything for them to feel less inside. And Lee didn't mind, not when it meant he could lie like this, warm and cozy against them, safe against the wide world outside.
Lee could get used to this, he wanted to get used to this, more than almost anything. His spine pressed to Caz's front, their nose nuzzled into the back of his neck, one of their arms wrapped around Lee's middle and the other stretched out under his pillow so that their fingers could hold his even in sleep.
They wouldn't be up for hours yet, child of the dark and raving midnight, so Lee wasn't afraid of waking them as he snuggled backwards and pressed himself even closer to them. Even still, they pulled him tighter with a mumble and a sleepful kiss to the short hairs of his nape. It was a delirious pleasure to get them like this, Caz -- so full of life and energy, always moving, or singing or dancing or laughing -- soft and floppy in Lee's arms.
They were pushing their luck already, Lee knew it well, but still he wished it could always be like this. The two of them, Caz's room, their double bed. Instead, they had to steal occasional nights, once a week perhaps, sometimes two, and Lee always up before dawn, sneaking back to his cabin before his siblings woke. But one day. One Day. They'd go to bed every night together, would brush their teeth in the same sink, and he'd get to watch them take their makeup off, and they'd pull each other under the covers and not have to worry about the time or the hours or the rules. Weekends would be their own, slow waking, Caz reading in the morning light while Lee made coffee and fed the rabbits Caz had always wanted.
He can almost taste it. He wasn't sure he'd wanted anything more strongly in his life.
It was wings in the end, the herd of pegasi stretching and waking in the fields beyond, that broke him out of his thoughts. It was early, yes, but his father would soon be rising and he needed to get up.
Caz whined sleepily as he moved and wrapped their arm tighter around him. Lee laughed gently and tried again, even as they folded a leg over his and twined them together.
'Darling,' Lee whispered fondly, with only a small snigger, and kissed the crook of their arms: he's had practice at this by now. Their traps won't keep him. No, he wiggled his way out of their arms and legs, offering kisses as reparation at every protest and obstruction, until he finally slipped free. Caz's brow furrowed in confusion and complaint, a sleepy pout as they burrowed into Lee's pillow and they were cute enough to nearly tempt him back into bed.
But no. He had practice with this too. So he willed himself away with only a featherlight kiss dropped to their hair, out the bedroom with a soft click of the door, tiptoed across the main room of the cabin, the little trickle of their river, under the sleeping ivy, brushed away the curious grapevines with well-versed ease. Out, out he went, onto the front porch of Cabin 12, stretched deep until his ankles clicked, and breathed in the stars above, the still-young birdsong, the sun just starting to bleed like a yolk across the sky.
[Epilogue]
Caz woke alone. They always woke like this, eyes still closed, breathing in the greenwood, already missing Lee. Caz thought they were born missing him.
They were wrapped around his pillow and the smell of his hair, the bright spring smell of his aftershave. If they concentrated hard enough, surely, they could still feel his warmth in their sheets, and their heart clenched painfully because what they would give for him to be there still, just once, curled up with them. And even as a cool, cold rainbreeze blew the at the curtains, snagged at the fabric, still Caz lay there, snuggled up, soaking the ghost of Lee.
In through the windows, Caz could hear camp waking, or already woken. The champing of the horses, the morning song of the nymphs, the murmur of voices at breakfast. They turned over finally, to paw at the clock and see if they could skive a few more minutes before they have to get ready. But there. On their little cobbled bedside table, the smell of soil and wet leaves still on them, a bowl of strawberries. A note.
'love you xxx'.
(Part of a larger story universe) | ao3 link
