After saving the world together, the son of Aphrodite takes it upon himself to get your attention by visiting your archery classes unannounced - much to your annoyance and much to everyone else's amusement.
➳ Characters: son of Aphrodite!Ten x daughter of Ares!reader/you
➳ Genre: Camp Half-Blood au, greek mythology au, comedy, enemies to lovers
➳ Words: 2.6k
➳ Warning: mentions of blood, innocent lives taken, Ten is called stupid a few times (but reader is in denial, that's why)
➳ A/N: This story is part of my '5 words, 5 stories' series for which I wrote 5 totally different stories with 5 different band members featuring the same 5 words "I'm sorry, I love you". If you're interested in the other stories, check out this link! Otherwise, they can totally be read on their own. Dedicated to @dat-town❤️
➳ Check out: my NCT masterlist
➳ NCT taglist: @dat-town, @sweetjaemss, @winterbeartaehyungbestboy, @effulgentfireflies, @stories-inbetween-the-stars, @squiishymeow, @heyditseeey
“No, widen your stance!”
“I’ve told you, you should stand at a 90 degree angle to the target!”
“What are you doing? You are not Hephaestus at work! Straighten your spine, you fool.”
It was never easy to be at Camp Half-Blood, but when you were the instructor instead of the pupil, it was even more difficult. You knew that not everyone can be a skilled archer like yourself - for instance, the kids of Aphrodite had never been one for archery -, but at least they should seem like they were trying. They should listen to you instead of going after their own heads or daydreaming about their crush in a different cabin. You were their instructor, for gods and goddesses’ sake!
Yangyang, one of the Hermes kids, let out a frustrated huff after another completely missed attempt, and instead of aiming at the target, he put one hand on his hip while holding the bow in the other, ready to throw it to the ground.
“Yangyang, you better not-”
As soon as he heard your authoritative voice and noticed your deadly glare, he pulled his lips into a (faked) innocent, boyish smile. That boy was one for tricks and smooth talking, but you never gave in to such behaviour. You were the daughter of Ares, the god of war after all. You didn’t come here to be messed with - you were determined to teach everyone how to do archery even if they were a seemingly hopeless case. Like Mark Lee who - despite being the son of Apollo, so supposedly excelling at archery - could not aim further from the target each and every time. At least, he was trying though. Even after yet again falling for Yuta’s trick (thinking that he got apple juice from the son of Dionysus, not actual alcohol), being hungover yet again, he was here, making the effort to aim at the target (even though his arrows flew everywhere like a firework).
“I was just imagining myself in a fight. I didn’t actually want to act on my intrusive thoughts,” Yangyang reasoned with a grin, and you just shook your head.
“I must warn you that we will have field archery soon, so if you can’t bring yourself to do target archery now, that will be even harder. As in, the target won’t be in a straight line like now.”
“Yes, I might stand a chance then,” Mark chirped gleefully. “I can’t bring myself to shoot in a straight line, but with field archery, I might have some luck,” he added beamingly, and you respected his optimism even though archery scarcely had anything to do with luck.
Either way, you walked up and down the archery field, correcting postures and suggesting to change bows, taking your job very seriously. After basically saving the world with a few other demigods, you decided to stay at the camp instead of leaving and trying to head for college because you knew that this camp needed some heavy training if there was ever another mission to accomplish.
Even though you were certain you could take on the world yet again, the more trained campers there were, the merrier. Besides, you couldn’t be everywhere all at once - last time you might not have been able to go and come back from the Underworld if Johnny, Kun and the others hadn’t protected the camp from a flock of monsters unleashed from the Underworld. Hades and Zeus had a beef yet again, and of course you had to be the ones to suffer the consequences.
Though it was not only you who decided to stay instead of going to college after finishing school…
“Oh, look who we have here!” The mellifluous voice of Aphrodite’s son reached your ears as you turned around even before he could signal his presence. Your hearing was good, and he didn’t exactly have the lightest steps - unlike yours, you were like a shadow, trained to be invisible and go around silently.
“Ten…” You gritted through your teeth even before you came face-to-face with his grinning face. This boy had too much confidence for someone who walked around half-naked (most of the time) and missed being shot (sadly all the time) when he decided to visit your archery classes. It seemed to be his favourite pastime activity these days.
“Don’t I look dashing today?” He inquired proudly as he swirled around in his robe. Because the damn boy wore a bathrobe, except that he didn’t bother to tie it in the front, so his whole chest was out on full display - much to the entertainment of some girls in your class.
“I would appreciate it if you didn’t decide to march into my class aka march straight into the archery field all the time,” you mentioned, completely ignoring his question, as you pointed around. Ten literally walked to the centre of the field where you were supposed to say your instructions about the next exercise. If he had walked out just a few minutes earlier, someone might have shot him. Mark Lee probably would have.
“I’m sooooorry,” he pouted, but anyone could tell that it was fake acting on his part. No one did fake acting better than the Aphrodite kids. “I love you, Miss Instructor, and I just can’t bear not seeing you even for a day,” he winked at you, and you acted as if you gagged at him.
Just because you had saved the world together once, it didn’t mean that you were anything more than comrades at best. Even though you couldn’t deny that he had been there when you almost had a nervous breakdown because you had doubted your skills… Damn it, why did he have to see you at your worst?
“If you don’t want me to shoot you straight through your heart, I advise you to leave,” you warned him through gritted teeth, but as expected, he turned the tables.
“But you’ve already done that. Eros has nothing on you.”
There were a few murmurs hearing that, and a group of girls blinked at the two of you in confusion. Even though there had been rumours about you two having developed romantic feelings towards each other during the mission, they had died down a few days after your return. However, ever since peace settled into the camp again, the rumours had grown stronger again, and Ten was definitely not helping the situation with his ever so frequent (and very much unannounced) visits during your classes.
“Besides, I don’t think everyone despises my presence as much as you do,” he added smugly as he winked in a few, shushing girls’ direction. They shrieked excitedly at the gesture, acting like stupid teenagers in those stupid teen movies you had seen on TV before you realised that they were a load of trash. Well, they were teenagers after all.
“Shut up, Ten!” You rolled your eyes, and you were ready to push him off the field when he looked back at you, his lips slowly curling upwards, curling seductively, and you knew it, you could feel what was about to come. “If you dare to say ‘make me’, I’ll shove you off right now,” you added before he could open his mouth, but that just fuelled his fire even more.
“Looks like someone knows me too well.”
“Looks like someone chatted way too much on our way to literal Hell.”
“Well, I can’t deny that I had a good time.”
“Well, I didn’t,” you bantered with him because you could not let him win this one. You were the daughter of Ares, you didn’t just lose to a guy with the IQ of a fish.
Ten was about to open his mouth, but Johnny showed up in his usual training clothes, and you knew that it signalled the end of your class because the campers were supposed to have his lesson after yours. Yangyang was overjoyed at the arrival of the son of Artemis while Mark Lee whimpered that he wanted to try some more to see if he could have any luck today.
“Bye bye, Miss Instructor!” Ten waved at you as he was scurrying away, and you couldn’t help but exchange a glance with Johnny.
“He leaves only when the class is over, that dumbass.”
“Not gonna lie, he’s trying hard to get your attention,” Johnny pointed out, bemused, and you couldn’t help but realise that there had not been any rumours about Ten being with girls since you had returned to the camp together. Flirting with girls? Yes, he was still doing that, but he was the son of Aphrodite, it came with his blood, but being with girls and seen kissing girls like he had been before your mission… you had not yet heard such rumours. Maybe that’s why everyone believed that you were actually together.
You shrugged though, trying not to think of the way he looked at you, the way he held your hand and squeezed it and the way he had promised you that everything would be alright when your plan had almost fallen through during your mission.
Back then, you had just escaped the Underworld together with Ten only to get to know from Persephone that Hades was currently outside, doing god knows what. Meanwhile, storms were raging, tsunamis flooded cities, drought dried out lands of crops, and ultimately, people were suffering and dying as a consequence. That’s what you had always hated about the gods and goddesses: no matter what, they could never find peace, and whenever they stirred up trouble, it affected humans in the human world. Innocent humans, women, men, children, parents, sisters, brothers… All because these so-called mighty immortals could not control their feelings.
Your best chance afterwards had been to visit Hermes because he always knew where to find someone. At least, he knew where to start finding him. However, instead of a direct answer, Hermes had told you that his roadways had been distributed due to the turbulence in weather, so he couldn’t have helped you. Instead, he had directed you to Anemoi, the wind gods, because they might be able to lend you their compass to tell you the direction of Hades. For that, you had to travel to the Tower of the Winds in Athens, and on your way, you had not only lost precious time but also hope.
With Hades’ rage, many monsters from the Underworld had emerged, and you had to constantly battle through them as they had started popping up out of nowhere. You had been hurt, sleep-deprived and very, very tired of this whole thing by this point, no wonder you had not been in the best mood while you had been walking towards the Tower of the Winds (and to do that, you had to go there after closing hours and turn off the security cameras around, so ultimately breaking the law here and there), and Ten had picked up on it.
“Are you going to stay silent for the rest of the mission?” The boy had asked, breaking the silence that had been stretched between you two ever since the son of Aphrodite had realised that you would not react to his words, let alone snap at him for his stupidest ideas.
You had continued walking forward sulkily, not in the mood for small talk, but he had grabbed your wrist, making you turn towards him. Your immediate reaction had been to fight back, but he had seemed to expect that, hence he had yanked your other hand away before you could peel his fingers off.
“Hey, I know you’re mad, but it’s going to be alright. We’ll put an end to this soon, I can feel it.”
“You and your optimism…” You had tsked snarkily, your mood not at all lifted by his supposedly motivational words.
“I know you feel like the weight of the world is on you, and I know you think that I can’t compare to you which is, in a way, actually true because you can kick ass better than anyone at Camp Half-Blood,” he had started again, and hearing that, your lips had curled upwards just a bit. Only a bit. Ten wasn’t one to flatter anyone but himself, so his compliment had meant a lot to you.”But let me share that burden with you, just for the duration of this mission. You can go back to hating me afterwards, but let me help whenever I can.”
“I don’t hate you,” you had blurted out, your voice coming out raspy after not speaking up for so long. Hearing that, the boy’s eyebrows had elevated, and his lips had started to curl into a smile, but before he could have continued, you had added: “I just find you annoying.”
“I prefer annoyingly handsome, but I’ll let it slide this time,” he had joked, and you couldn’t have found the will in you to go against him, not this time.
When he had let his features become solemn again, he had just stared at you for a few seconds, and you had this jarring feeling stirring up something inside your heart. You weren’t one to let anyone close to you, but spending so much time together while hopefully saving the world had undeniably brought you two closer and he had seen you in so many ugly and vulnerable situations (such as meeting your father on the way to Hermes, and having to hear from him that you had been nothing but a nuisance in his eyes because someone who was focused on battle all the time shouldn’t have made the mistake of having a child like you, a girl on top of that even though he had had many love affairs during his lifetime), seen you sleeping with your hands balled into fists, your knife by your side, seen you cry when some monsters from the Underworld had attacked a child, and you couldn’t have saved her… So yeah, the list was long by that time.
“If anyone can do it, it’s you. It will be alright, I promise,” he had told you, and this time, it had seemed convincing. You had felt yourself soften a bit, and may it have been because of your less alarmed body language or the solemnity of the situation, but the boy had squeezed your hand and you had let it, you had let him do so.
For once, you had wanted someone to hold you like that, so you wouldn’t need to be the one to always keep yourself together, and no matter how much you would have wanted to deny it, it had been him. The one you had supposedly found annoying and bratty and self-centered before this very mission.
“Hey! Are you okay? You had been zoning out a bit,” Johnny’s familiar voice brought you back to reality, and you shook your head in an attempt to shake off the remaining parts of the flashback. You swore you could have felt the ghost of Ten’s touch on your fingers though.
“Yeah, sure, whatever. I still find him annoying,” you clarified as a belated point to your previous conversation, and let Johnny smirk to himself all he wanted, you headed to your own cabin.
A voice in your head gawked at you though, repeating the same word over and over again: liar, liar, liar…
Maybe one day, you will be brave enough to confront your feelings instead of denying them, but that day was not today.
A/N: I hope you enjoyed reading the fic! Personally, I really enjoyed writing it as I love the setting and also sassy Ten is just iconic haha
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