Luke x reader where a girl, daughter of Aphrodite, flirts with him and insults the reader, causing her to avoid Luke, but later he manages to find her and confesses that he actually likes them... I don't know if they should already be together or not, but I believe in you!!! you write very well :ooo
Sorry if the idea is bad or you wouldn't want to write something like that, if that's the case please pretend you never read this 🤡🤡🫶
true colours; luke castellan
wc + pairing: 3.6k, luke castellan x child of iris! reader
synopsis: everyone wants luke castellan, including you. curse your mother for getting your hopes up.
warnings: friends to lovers, reader is very insecure, bullying, lee fletcher & will solace cameo!! some angst with a fluffy ending
notes: thank you for the request!! as always this is longer than i anticipated but hope you like it :) i also combined it with another request for a child of iris reader (i also identify as a child of iris sometimes so i lovee writing for them) also i’m pretty sure lee + a lot of parts of this are ooc sorry but i havent read the books in about a year so hopefully everything’s fairly accurate!🌈
You knew this summer would be different because your mother sent her wishes twice as much. On the first day of July, when children flood into Camp Half-Blood like a hive of wild bees, a rainbow always lights up the sky.
This year, there were two.
As a child of Iris you’re technically supposed to be in the Hermes cabin. But your love for art, for music, for fun, has made you a particular favourite of the Apollo cabin. Most of your friends are there. They tolerate you singing in your soft, often unsure voice. They love when you catch sunlight and filter it into prisms of colour on their cabin walls.
You’d probably move in there permanently if it weren’t for Hermes. Or rather, his son.
Over the last few months, in the sticky summer heat, your mother knew you would fall in love.
It's not any surprise you love Luke. Everyone loves Luke. A fact that's becoming more obvious every passing day.
It used to bother you less. You’ve always been his meagre, hopeless friend, never any real competition to these girls. You’d basically taken yourself out of the running and instead decided to pine after him in the very back of your mind. A safe, deluded fantasy that would never happen.
Until recently, where it seems less like a fantasy and more like a terrifying possibility.
Over the past few weeks Luke has gone out of his way to be sweet to you. Or at least you think so. He’s spent extra time talking to you at lunch, laughing at your half-formed jokes almost in earnest. At bonfires he saves you a seat, grabs you a marshmallow on occasion. You even made him a friendship bracelet of sorts—admittedly a little ugly—but he’s never taken it off. Not since the day you gave it to him.
Not to mention helping you last week before the archery competition. His hands lingering over yours as he steadied your bow, the curls of his breath on the back of your neck when he stood behind you.
“Don’t be nervous,” he says, a tinge of mirth in his voice. “You just steady your aim and first is as good as yours.”
(You came in fifteenth.)
You don’t want to say that it’s him weakening your aim, making your pulse beat out of your neck. His nose brushes against the back of your jaw as he leans forward and you smell the pine on his skin. Is this friendly? Is he this close on purpose? Are you delusional?
It’s all you’ve been thinking about these past few days. So when Luke Castellan’s endless admirers come to the forefront of your mind, you feel like all those moments of potential buildup have been ripped away.
“You alright there, sunshine?”
He takes you out of your spiral with a teasing lilt you love. When you look at him, his face is a shimmering warmth, complete with boyish smile.
“Yep,” you reply, trying to ignore the nickname making your insides flutter even though you know he’s saying it ironically.
You’ve always had a gift for identifying colour. It’s the thing you pay attention to most. Something inherited from your mother, you suppose. So you’ve memorized the way Luke’s eyes melt in the sunlight. How his scar blends with his pinking cheeks when it’s hot outside. You never told him, and you probably never will, but you’ve painted him from memory quite a few times in the Apollo cabin—always with the excuse that you were practicing. It's so blatantly obvious you're in love with him there's no point in your friends bringing it up.
The two of you are meandering around camp before dinner, a tradition Luke started early on in the summer. You talk about high points of your day (mostly you) or share nuggets of gossip you’ve heard around camp (mostly him). It's the thing you looked forward to every morning. A time when his words are just for you.
Idle chatter flows as you keep walking. Sometimes your arm brushes his and you have the embarrassing urge to tug yours away. You do your best not to stare at him too long or laugh too loud at his jokes.
“Hey, Castellan!” Someone calls.
Luke’s head turns. Your heart plummets. A beautiful girl, Aphrodite cabin, you think, is heading towards you. She’s all honey-spun hair and dazzling pink lips, and it’s obvious she knows it. You don’t know her name. But Luke does.
They fall into conversation the second she arrives. It’s just greetings, pleasantries, but there’s a coy smile on the girl’s face that betrays any sense of disinterest. “Heard you’re not too keen on pairing up with us for the Chariot Race next week. What gives?” Her tone is pouty and playful as she taps Luke’s shoulder. She side-eyes you, lips curling imperceptibly. “I’m sure you’ll have a better chance with us.”
He lets out a strained chuckle. “Dunno, just thought it was fine to switch it up.”
Just like that, you’re out of the loop again. More of her friends flock after her, and soon Luke is tangled in a whole other world. They’re all glowing with a kind of righteousness you only get when you’re popular. You know Luke has friends, tons of them. He's the leader of the cabin with the most campers. Not to mention assertive and gorgeous. His presence is so inviting it’s a challenge not to fall in love with him.
So you can’t blame this girl, the one that keeps touching his arm and giggling. It’s not like you’ve staked your claim on Luke—no one even knows you exist. As much as you want him to be yours, you know you’ll never stop someone from taking him first. It’s your fatal flaw, you think. Cowardice.
You end up sidelined completely. Watching him swathed in people more charismatic than you plants an ache deep inside you. All your wishful thinking feels sour now, a pipe dream, a bedtime story to help you sleep better. Somehow it hurts more knowing that it’s nobody’s fault but yours. These people can’t be doing this on purpose. It’s just who they are. It’s who you are—always a step behind, always daydreaming. You are your mother’s daughter, after all. Just a prism reflecting everyone around you.
Eventually, one of the boys in the group takes notice of you. He’s not nearly as captivating as Luke is—you don’t find the colours of his eyes hold as much depth. There’s also a haughtiness when he looks at you. He sneers, “What the hell do you have on your face?”
It draws the attention of others in the group. You feel like a naked sculpture in an art gallery. “Uh, what?” You stammer.
Some of them purse their lips. The girl with Luke lets a laugh slip. You’re pretty sure you look like an idiot, waiting there with your brows wrinkled in a daze. Their gazes keep flicking over to your cheek, so your hand flies up there before you can delay any more. When you press your fingers to the side of your face, they come away tacky and pink. Mortification constricts you.
Paint. It’s leftover, half-dried paint. The colour of Luke’s cheeks in the sun.
“Oh,” you say dumbly. It’s drowned by snickers. All you can do is find Luke, the only face you know, and ask, “Why didn’t you tell me?” without sounding too hurt.
You know you failed when your voice comes out wrong and his ebony brows push together. “I thought it looked—”
He never gets to finish because the golden girl laughs a little louder, the pink tones in her face a little darker. “Oh my Gods, you’re that Iris kid that’s always singing, right?” She giggles sharply, cornflower eyes darting between her friends. There’s something in there you can’t quite pick up on, until it flushes the pupils of all her friends, and they all grin with a secret knowledge they want you to see. “You’re, like, really good!” The girl simpers, but her bottom lip pulls between her teeth to soften another laugh.
“Oh, so good!” Another friend piles on.
Their passive-aggressive chuckles start to sound like hail on a window. You shift further away from them. Dirt slides beneath your shoe, and you long to kick up more of it, displace yourself, disappear.
You don’t look at Luke. The giggly, flaxen girl has already turned back to him, and you’re sure he’s enthralled once more. You try to stir up the image of Luke’s closeness during archery practice, the lilac bruise on his knuckles when he angled your bow, but it doesn’t take. Now, it feels like you’ve dreamed it.
Out of the corner of your eye, you see Luke leaning down to catch a whisper from the Aphrodite girl’s ear. The boy that first commented on your cheek leans closer to you again. He’s suffocatingly smug when he grins, “Why are you still here? Shouldn’t you go … wash that off? You don’t want to look like that at dinner.” He snorts. “For an Iris kid, you really aren’t good at taking a message.”
If you were a more confident person, maybe you’d point out how that didn’t really make sense, or how stupid it sounded coming out of his mouth. But the sentiment of it wounds you, and you’re weak enough as is.
"Guess you're right," you mumble. You wipe your face of paint as you leave. The memory of Luke’s skin stains you until you wash your hands off in the sink.
You haven’t talked to him since.
It’s been a few days of you avoiding him, and it’s hard to explain to anyone why you’ve been doing it. How do you tell the truth? Luke Castellan is a work of art and you are … a weird doodle, or something. Despite your adoration, you know there’s no reason he should feel the same for you. Everyone loves him for a reason. Everyone must ignore you for one, too.
“Why haven’t you been talking to Luke?”
The question breaks your concentrated silence in the Apollo cabin. You’ve been sitting here for a while now, humming to yourself over a mostly blank canvas. The cabin is dusted with a lilac haze, thanks to your manipulation of the light streaming through the windows. Helps you feel less like you’re at camp and more like you’re in a fairytale.
“Helloooo, lady, I asked you a question.”
You begrudgingly look up. Lee Fletcher, head of the Apollo cabin, is at the mouth of the cabin, gazing at all your supplies strewn about the floor like they’re a bunch of unsavoury substances. “It looks like a hurricane came in here. Now why aren’t you talking to Luke?”
“How do you know I’m not talking to him?” You mutter as Lee sits beside you.
“Uh, because you’ve been sleeping here multiple nights in a row and you never do that. And you don’t sit with him at dinner. And whenever we see him you drag me in the other direction—”
“Lee!”
“I’m just saying, you should probably talk about it. My beautiful voice can heal wounds, yes, but not of the heart.” He splays a hand across his chest in mock theatrics.
You don’t say anything. The familiar weight of the brush against your fingertips is far more comforting than trying to talk, so you busy yourself with your canvas again. “He waits for you, you know,” Lee continues, quieter. “In the morning. And before dinner. He always asks if you’re here.”
“Oh,” you say, and your wavering voice betrays your expression. But you think of everyone else at camp, their gleaming smiles and their celebrated parents, their own cabins and friends and dreams, how you don’t seem to have any of those. You think of the girl whispering in Luke’s ear. All her shades of beauty. You know it’s wrong to compare yourself, to be jealous. You’re just … sad.
The cabin darkens from a lilac to an imperceptibly gloomier shade. A blue sort of longing gets caught in your throat, blurring the colours on your canvas. But you keep your brush steady, focused on the scratch of its bristles so you don’t have to hear what you say next.
“I think I love him, Lee.” And then, “But I don’t think he loves me.”
There’s no sound except the scraping of your brush when it’s run out of paint, and a sniffle when a tear rolls down your cheek.
“Oh,” Lee fills the silence the way you did just moments before. Then he says your name, laced with pity, and hugs you on the floor of his lavender cabin.
“You want to help me lead the bonfire song tonight?” He asks after a minute. “Or at least … come to the bonfire song?”
“No to the first, yes to the second.”
You wish you said no to both.
The spot you choose after dinner is right next to the fire so you can distract yourself with the golden flecks of flame. Fire is so fluid, so complex, from a colour perspective. But no matter how close you get, the searing warmth can’t hide Luke’s gaze peering over the embers.
He will not. Stop. Looking at you.
The singing from the Apollo kids usually soothes you but tonight it’s just making you anxious. All this attention so close to you. Will Solace has been sitting next to you this whole time, your unofficial assigned companion for the night thanks to Lee. One of his siblings beckons him over, and he shoots you an apologetic look, hesitating. "Just go," you wave off kindly. "It's all good." He's not entirely convinced, and you aren't either, but he squeezes your shoulder with thanks and leaves you anyway.
Now you’re acutely aware the space next to you is wide open. And so is Luke, it seems. There’s an awkward moment where your gazes slide over each other and he weaves out of his current crowd towards you. So you do the most mature, sound thing you could possibly do in this situation:
You say you have to go to the bathroom to no one in particular and get out of there.
It’s dark, but you’ve got sharper eyes than most. Soon the noise of the campfire is behind you. You traipse through the camp towards the bathroom,but you don’t get far before you hear something that makes your stomach drop in the worst and best way.
Luke, calling your name.
At first you think you can get away with not hearing him. Then he calls a second, a third, a fourth time, punctuated with, “Come on, I know you can hear me, can you just turn around?”
He’s got longer legs than you so the next time he speaks it’s practically in your ear. “Hey, just look at me. Please. I want to talk to you.”
There’s something so tender in his voice that it makes you cave immediately. But you already feel so fragile, you can feel the tears behind your eyes. You know you won’t have the strength to talk to him.
His hand curls gently around your wrist and it sends warmth all the way up your arm. He says your name again, softer, and you love the way it sounds. You can’t meet his eyes, but you already know what he looks like. Even in the dark you picture him crystal clear.
“Look at me,” he repeats. “I just—I need to know what I did wrong.”
His dark eyes are full and apprehensive when you heed him. You notice how much you’ve missed studying his face—the slight bunch of his brows, the tensing in his jaw. And you almost delude yourself that he’s missed you just as much, the way he squeezes your wrist and rakes over your expression.
“Why are you ignoring me?” He asks.
“I’m not—”
“You are. I know you. Just tell me why.”
He looks so sweet, so earnest, and it kills you. You think of the way he looked when all his friends made fun of you. It all comes up before you can help it.
“Do you always let me walk around looking like an idiot?” You ask bitingly, staring at the floor. “The thing, with the paint on my cheek—why didn’t you tell me? I looked so stupid and all your friends just laughed at me!”
His face falls. “I tried to tell you, I thought—”
“It’s okay to say you don’t like me, or that you’re embarrassed, or whatever, but I …” You swallow, tears thick on your lower lashes. “Everyone makes fun of me. I don’t know why you don’t.”
“Because I do like you,” he states, hand moving up to your forearm.
“Don’t say that,” you whisper. “You’re so much … better, you know you are, and I don’t want your pity, or your spare time. I just—I made something up in my head that wasn’t there and I only noticed it the other day after you talked to that girl and that guy made fun of me and I’m really, really sorry—”
“It looked cute. I was trying to say I didn’t tell you about the paint because I thought it was cute.”
There’s a lull.
“What?” You blink stupidly.
“I know I should’ve told you about it, but I swear I was going to before dinner, I didn’t think we’d run into anyone before then.” His cheeks tinge red. “I had this whole dumb thing planned out where I’d wipe it off your cheek and tell you how cute it was once you got embarassed. I was waiting to tell you. I was thinking about it the whole time.”
His hand on your arm is a frighteningly grounding thing. You're dumbstruck by that alone. Your lips part, but all that comes out is, “Why?”
A gentle laugh tumbles out of his throat. “Why do you think?”
His other hand comes up to brush your cheekbone, where the paint had been, and you can imagine him doing it to you on that day. How you'd probably react just the way he said you would, the way you are now. A warm orange glow blooming in your chest. “But the girl—”
“She tried whispering to me how much she liked my bracelet,” he smiles fondly. “Told her you made it for me. It shut her up. I don’t know what that guy said to you but I chewed ‘em all out the second you left. They knew I wasn’t happy. I tried looking for you but you were gone. I don't like them, you know."
You don’t know what to say. It’s too difficult, too uncertain for you to jump the gun on this. So you just stare at all the shifting colours on his face as he moves closer to you. All this time going over his every detail, and there's still more to be enthralled by.
“I found the paintings,” he says, voice so close you can feel it brushing your skin. “The ones of me. I was looking for you in the Apollo cabin a week ago and you left one out. I knew it was yours because ... I mean, there’s no one in the world that can make me look that … beautiful.”
The last word is apprehensive but it’s spoken with an unimaginable tenderness. He looks a little teary himself. You think you’re dreaming. “I knew I had to tell you after that. I’ve been trying to tell you. But you started pulling away from me so I thought I was making it all up.”
“Tell me what?” It’s a ghost of a question between you, an impossible thing, but the hand on your arm slips around to your back and he presses it there with such certainty.
“You’re really gonna make me say it?” He cocks his head, but you nod. “I’m in love with you, I think.”
The words cascade over you in ribbons of warmth. Your brain feels fuzzy, seperate from the rest of your body. Your mouth opens multiple times but you can’t seem to control what comes out. “Luke, are you joking?”
“Not even a little.”
“But you’ve got so many other—”
“I want you.”
“I am literally the most incompetent person alive; I can’t sing, I can’t talk to people, I have a weird knee—”
"Your knee is fine!"
"I'm just saying, this makes no sense from an outsider perspective, it's—"
“Okay, clearly the telling thing isn’t working so I guess I’m just gonna have to kiss you.”
It happens so quickly you don’t have any time to think (probably for the better). You let out a surprised “oh” before his mouth silences you, stopping every other thought. He’s gentle, thumb still rubbing your cheekbone, other hand still firm at your waist. You want to panic—where should you put your hands? How do you know you’re doing this right? But he steadies you, the way he always does, and you give in.
He starts to smile against your lips. You’re almost positive the intensity of your heartbeat could summon a storm. When he pulls away, he kisses the corners of your mouth and you think you’re going to evaporate. “I don’t think I’m very good at this,” you whisper.
“You’re perfect.” He grins a little when your hands tentatively tug at a curl on the nape of his neck. “And none of that stuff you say is true. I mean, you’re definitely a better singer than me.”
Leaning close to your ear, he warbles out a song you know but gets the words horribly wrong anyways. You can’t help but laugh. “Okay, maybe you have a point.”
He hums and chuckles with you. You swear the moon gets brighter when he wraps his arms around your waist to kiss the side of your face. “Next time you paint me, I want to be there when you do it.”
You blush harder than you ever have in your life. “Only if you try painting me,” you say quietly.
“Of course. You’re very pretty, so I’m sure my horrible artistic skills won’t even make you look bad.”
Luke lets you press your face into the crook of his neck. You soak it up for all it’s worth.
In the morning, you wake up in the same position. Your nose tucked against his collarbone, the shade of pink you love freckled across his cheeks. You can't wait to paint him again.
When you look out the window, you say a silent, grateful prayer to your mother.
She's given you two more rainbows.