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livlocus · 2 months ago

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Love Buzz (Jason Grace x Fem!Reader)

Characters: Jason Grace, Piper McLean, Leo Valdez, Percy Jackson

Requested by @jgraceluvr: Hello may o have a Jason grace fic when the reader had a huge crush on him but don’t make a move because he is the ✨mighty son of Jupiter praetor✨ but in reality he is the biggest softie ever and he is like. Man I want I to ask her out but she is intimidated ? With a piper and Leo match maker ? Please

Summary: Jason Grace has a crush on you, but after a sparring incident, he is much too afraid to talk to you. Unknown to him, you also have a crush on Jason, so Piper embraces her parentage and forces Leo to play matchmaker with her for you and Jason.

Warnings: my grammar, cursing, kissing, crack fic vibes ??? genuinely lost track of where this was supposed to go about halfway through, and now we are here i fear

Word Count: 6.6k (it literally would not stop)

Liv Yaps: heeyyy... so i hope that this has the vibe that you wanted! i'm realizing that this accidentally turned into a crack fic... idk how it got so dramatic but i just could not stop so i fear it spiraled a bit haha i tried my best and it took me a while to fully conceptualize this but then it all like, word-vomited out of me haha. (yes i was in fact listening to love buzz by nirvana while i was making the post so that is the name now, the bassline has infiltrated my brain) i tried to make jason seem all praetor-y but also the true awkward jock-nerd hybrid that we have come to love, i feel like it's kinda ooc.... idk i was on a lot of caffeine when i finally pumped this out haha. i fully made up what the training area at chb looks like, i genuinely have no idea if they ever describe it in the books (im sure that they do and i just don't remember lmao) i also have to apologize for that entire sparring sequence because i have absolutely no clue how to write physcial fighting scenes lmao but i hope that you like it :)

Piper was annoyed. She had just spent the past three days convincing Jason to talk to you, and now here you all were. Jason at the Zeus table eating an embarrassingly plain waffle and stealing glances at you, so quick that they might as well not have been there. His blue eyes narrow and darting from his waffle to you and then back to his waffle.

Piper was ready to get up from the Aphrodite table and drag Jason from his waffle to you, over at your table, sitting with your siblings. She felt like she was living in one of those sitcoms that her dad just got cast in, watching you two exchange longing glances from across the dining pavilion without the other one noticing.

You had told Piper about your crush on Jason months ago after you practically tripped over your own two feet to get away from him at the campfire when he tried to sit next to you and Piper. When Piper hit you with a “just talk to him, he literally sat next to us on purpose,” you almost choked on your own tongue trying to explain all of the reasons why the son of Jupiter could never like you like that.

You knew of Jason Grace, but you didn’t know Jason Grace. He was one of the seven demigods who defeated Gaea, not to mention that he used to be a praetor when he was at Camp Jupiter before the war. He still had that air about him now, even when he was just a camper here at Camp Half-Blood. His shoulders constantly squared, his posture always perfect, that little scar on his lip so rugged, his sky blue eyes gleaming with an inherent authority, like just his gaze demanded your attention and your obedience. It was obvious that his father was Jupiter, the air seemed to practically buzz whenever he was around, and it made your cheeks flush.

Jason had killed titans with his bare hands, or so you had heard. He apparently almost caused absolute chaos in New Rome when he tried to change the name of the Twelfth Legion to the First Legion when he was elected as Praetor. The stories of his quests were practically on level with Percy Jackson, saving the world every summer on the other side of the country, and you didn’t even know about it until the whole Jason and Percy switching debacle a summer or two ago.

But for right now, you were doing exactly what Piper saw, avoiding Jason’s gaze so that you could steal a few glances as you picked at the remains of your breakfast. Each time your eyes met, you practically jumped and averted your line of sight to look at anything else. Suddenly, your now soggy toast seemed to hold the secrets of the universe as you tried to stop the creeping flush that tried to spread across your cheeks. You couldn’t stop thinking about how Jason probably looked at you because of your own staring, that he somehow felt your gaze on his perfect, perfect—stupidly perfect face.

Piper could scream. She could, and maybe she actually would scream if this kept going the way it was. She waved at Leo from across the dining pavilion, a signal to meet her after breakfast.

She had a plan.

-_-

The mid-afternoon sun was high in the sky, beating down on you as you sat on the ground, gulping water. Piper somehow managed to get your sparing block switched with Leo’s so that you could spar with her. She didn’t tell you that’s why, but that had to be the reason, surely there was no other reason. This did just so happen to be the block that Jason had, but you tried not to think too hard about that, or else you would have fallen flat on your ass the second that you and Piper started to spar with your wooden sword and dagger.

Piper had exhausted you with endless maneuvering and different kinds of tactics that left you winded and already sore as you held on to your water bottle. You were on the sidelines now, with Piper on your left, watching the other pairs practice different moves and weapons. Three pairs usually went at a time; there were three circles sprayed in the grass, all encompassed by a larger oval. Each pair stayed in their circle, and bystanders weren’t allowed to cross into the oval for “insurance reasons” or whatever Mr. D had said. Right now, there were only two pairs, leaving one of the rings open.

Percy was standing on the other side and ran over to quickly claim the empty ring. He stretched his hand up high in the air, looking off to the side for a specific someone to join him to spar. When you saw that Jason was the one he was waving over, your breath caught in your throat.

When the others saw that Jason was the one that Percy had waved over, they let out a series of sighs and grumbles, and maybe a few people let out excited murmurs. Whenever Percy and Jason sparred, it always turned into an… event, to say the least, which is why the pairs in the other two rings quickly finished as Jason made his way into the circle with Percy. Their sparring sessions had a reputation for getting out of hand; people always said it was a combination of Percy’s ability to function off of pure spite and Jason’s inability to let himself lose. To say that the two boys had a competitive streak was the understatement of the century.

Before Chiron had to give them limitations to their rounds of sparring, they would exchange blows for upwards of an hour, taking up the entire oval that encompassed the three sparring rings with water splashing, wind blowing, and an occasional clap of thunder somewhere off in the distance whenever Percy got in a good hit. Their matches tended to end in draws, with other campers complaining about how they were taking too long and that others needed a turn.

You watched them as they started to spar, both with wooden swords. Your eyes were glued to Jason, unable to look away from his perfect posture or his sharp eyes. Percy was lunging forward, making the first move with his wooden sword pointed at Jason. As always, Jason’s shoulders were squared, and his face was steady when he dodged Percy’s skillful attempt at him. The only indicator of any physical effort was how his glasses slid down his nose just a bit and how that scar on his lip stretched as his breathing got a bit heavier. That’s how it usually was; no matter how long Jason spent at Camp Half-Blood, his years of Roman training were always blatantly obvious. He was the poster child of restraint, barely even grimacing as Percy threw snarky remarks at him that you couldn’t quite hear.

They went on like that for around twenty minutes, mist started to gather around Percy’s feet, and wind seemed to start picking up around Jason, blowing around not only the hair of the two boys, but also your own. There was that faint buzz in the air that seemed to appear whenever Jason had that look in his eyes. They exchanged blow after blow, neither of them appearing to be slowing down anytime soon. That was, until Jason somehow made eye contact with you from across the field.

-_-

Jason was freaking out. He knew that he shouldn’t have been freaking out, but that wasn’t helping him at the moment as he jumped out of the way of Percy’s wooden sword.

He needed this sparring match to go well. No, scratch that, he needed it to go better than well, he needed this to go perfectly. This couldn’t be one of those days where he and Percy hit their forty-five-minute sparring limit and had to end in a draw. No, no, he needed to beat Percy, preferably while you were still watching him. Jason had a plan; in his mind, it was a brilliant plan. He was going to win this match and then walk up to you while he was still basking in the glorious win over Percy and ask if you wanted to sit next to him during the campfire tonight.

You would have to say yes, especially because he would have beaten Percy already. You would say yes, right? Jason knew that he was out of his depth here, he truly had no idea what to do, and that scared him. He was always supposed to know what to do, always supposed to have a next step or a plan B. But whenever he thought about you, his brain short-circuited, all of his functioning brain cells died violent deaths, and his heart just about stopped. You had to say yes. Jason didn’t know any other way to go about this, in all honesty.

When he had gone to Piper in a frenzy, pacing anxiously around the Aphrodite cabin, trying to explain these feelings that he had in his chest whenever he looked at you, Piper literally laughed at him. She had gone, “Jason, that’s either indigestion, or you have a crush on her, maybe it’s both?” Then, when Jason had run his hands over his face and groaned in frustration because why was Piper always so right? She suggested throwing a match with Percy, purposely losing, because she somehow had a vibe (whatever that meant) that you were a teensy bit intimidated by Jason. That it would make him seem less… “Praetor-y.”

Frankly, Jason had never heard anything so ridiculous in his life. He understood why some people would be intimidated by him; some of the legionaries back at Camp Jupiter still gave him that look when he would visit, remembering how he had killed Krios, how that had made him Praetor. But you had never seen that side of him before; you had no reason to be intimidated by Jason, or so he thought. Wouldn’t losing a match against Percy make him look bad? Sure, he had absolutely no idea about how he should ask you out, but that was the last thing he wanted to do right now: look bad, or even worse, weak in front of you.

And, it was going pretty well, Percy hadn’t managed to land a single hit on Jason. He was going to tire Percy out until he became just a little bit more sloppy, then that would guarantee his win, and that would mean that you would say yes—

You. Jason had managed to dodge another one of Percy’s swings, and the first thing his eyes latched onto was you. Of course, it was you. The gods had a cruel sense of humor sometimes.

Was there a god of making eye contact with the wrong person at the worst time imaginable?

If there was, Jason was sure that he had done something to piss them off because why did you have to look at him like that. Like he was holding up the sky, like he was holding up the sky for you. Gods know that he would, though he’s barely even had one full conversation with you, and he would switch places with Atlas in a heartbeat for you. The way that the wind was whipping your hair around your face, how it stuck to the thin, gleaming layer of sweat on your skin—Jason couldn’t help but stare. He really couldn’t help it, that and the way his breath caught in his throat, he couldn’t help it. You might as well have been glowing.

That was his first mistake—although Piper would later claim that it was his fourth—letting himself lock eyes with you for a millisecond too long. Percy undoubtedly saw that Jason was distracted, which was a rare sight in and of itself, and used it to his advantage. He swung his wooden sword at Jason while he was too busy looking at you like some sort of lovesick puppy.

Jason stumbled for the first time in the twenty minutes that they had been sparring, and he cursed under his breath, calling Percy a donkey in Latin. The grunted “asinus,” barely audible over the sound of the wind whipping around his head, filling his ears with the hollow sound of his own loss of self-control. He couldn’t help that either, he was going to look bad in front of you.

Jason needed to gain control of this match quickly, he knew that, he really did, but he couldn’t stop looking over Percy’s shoulder to try and steal another glance at you. The already loosened grasp that Jason had on his composure was rapidly slipping as he tried to do too many things at once—make sure that Percy didn’t manage to pin him down, think of a quick strategy to somehow win this match, steal a few more quick looks at you, all while trying to stay composed enough so he didn’t look like a complete idiot in front of the entire camp.

A distant crack of thunder made it unfortunately obvious that Jason was not doing a good job at multitasking at the moment. But then again, maybe he was, because now he had a strategy that he could focus on instead of how your eyes were watching his every move. It was simple, something that he’s done too many times to count in battles that were much more stressful than this. His feet slid in the grass, the dirt having turned into mud. Percy. The mist that was gathered around his feet had soaked the ground, turning the once solid sparring ring into mushy mud that made Jason’s feet unsteady.

Jason leaned to the left as Percy brought his wooden sword towards him, successfully dodging the swing. Jason continued to move, a fluid motion as his composure returned now that he had something besides you to focus on. He lunged at Percy, finally landing a blow to the top of his arm, right below his shoulder, knocking Percy off balance just enough for Jason to get back on level footing with him.

He did his absolute best to focus on the grin that Percy was giving him instead of the wide-eyed look that you were giving Jason over Percy’s shoulder. Jason was trying so hard to stay concentrated on the way that Percy’s feet were shifting in the mud, like he was about to lunge at Jason again. His eyes darted from Percy to you, back and forth so many times that it almost made him dizzy.

Stop that, she’s watching.

The more that Jason tried to concentrate on the sparring match—the dodging, the swinging, the not slipping in mud—the more he tried to look for you. He wanted to see your face, see what you thought about him. His body was on autopilot, dodging and swinging and blocking without a second thought. The familiarity of his movements allowed him to divert just a sliver of his focus to you, looking for your face among the other campers watching.

It was a splash of water on the back of Jason’s head as he swung his wooden sword at Percy’s leg that forced him to concentrate, really concentrate. Chiron had made a rule for Jason and Percy when they were sparring: no godly given abilities. No water, no lightning, no wind, no storms, nothing. Jason always tried to follow those rules, he really did, but when Percy decided to disregard Chiron’s rules, Jason was usually left with no choice but to follow suit if he wanted to win.

Maybe I could manage to focus enough to get a gust of wind to knock Percy off balance? Or maybe even enough to knock him over?

Another spin around the ring and a bout of eye contact with you derailed his train of thought.

Focus, focus, focus—

Another block.

One more swing.

Maybe a little too much static gathering on the tips of Jason’s fingers—

Two more seconds of his eyes looking for yours.

Focus, focus, breathe—

A quick lean to the left.

He didn’t even notice the buzz in the air, how the hair on his arm started to stand up just enough to mean something, but he was too worried about you watching him to realize what it meant.

Maybe sweep out Percy’s feet? No, too much mud for that—

A clap of thunder somewhere behind him.

Half a spin to duck out of the way of Percy.

Three more seconds of brief eye contact with you as he blocked with his sword.

A swing of Jason’s sword into Percy’s.

Tiny sparks snapped across his fingers, up his arm.

Negligible.

Jason’s heart was beating so hard he thought it would beat out of his chest. This match essentially had no stakes, no one here was going to die if he lost, no one was going to try to end the world if Jason missed the next swing of his wooden sword.

But she was watching.

Jason needed you to see him win so that you would say yes, and then he would get to sit next to you at the campfire and then—

Then, he made eye contact with you again.

And it looked like you were… blushing?

Why is she blushing? Did I do something weird? I’m holding my sword the right way, I always do, so it’s not that—

The electricity snapping along Jason’s arms was audible now, the sharp crackling breaking through the thought-spiral he was constructing in his head.

Shit, shit, shit, that has to stop, shit, shit—

Jason could feel himself spinning out, like a spinning top that was losing its speed and was about to fall over and roll away. Percy hit the inside of his knee, and Jason lost his balance.

One last glance at you before he fell into the mud. One barely audible curse in Latin before all of his dignity left his body, before he accepted his fate of being forever alone, never even able to sit next to you at the campfire.

One last glance at you before that buzzing in the air and that static dancing across his fingers became a problem. One last glance before that iron grip Jason had on his self-restraint crumbled to dust. One last glance before there was a crack, and there was a patch of burnt grass less than ten feet in front of you.

Jason’s entire face went hot, and he didn’t get up from the mud. He couldn’t get up from the mud, he was going to die here. He was going to pray to Hades that the earth swallow him whole right now. He was going to die of embarrassment before he even made it back to Cabin 1. Jason didn’t even flinch when Percy held the tip of his wooden sword at Jason’s neck to show that he had won. Jason didn’t even raise an eyebrow at Percy when he told the son of Jupiter that he just fried the training grounds like an overcooked fish stick. He was going to let himself grow old and die in this patch of mud. He could practically hear Piper stare at him from across the field.

That was not how this was supposed to go.

He waited a minute before he turned his head to the side, to see just how horribly he had messed up, but you weren’t even there anymore. Jason let himself sink further into the mud with a sigh that Reyna would have called “pitiful.”

-_-

You didn’t mean to run back to your cabin after almost being hit by lightning, but you needed a nap after that. Maybe a cold shower, too.

It didn’t really scare you, per se, you had been a summer camper at Camp Half-Blood since you were little, so you were used to having multiple near-death encounters every summer. But it was a little unnerving that your mega-crush had just accidentally sent a bolt of lightning right at you as he lost his sparring match.

It was obviously an accident, anyone with eyes could tell. Honestly, today was probably going to go down in history as the day that the Jason Grace, son of Jupiter, ex-Praetor of Camp Jupiter, champion of Juno, lost his composure during a sparring match. You didn’t really know why he started sparking like an electric candle lighter, but the fact that he looked right at you when it happened only fed into your delusional fantasy that he might like you back.

As a reward for not melting into a puddle from all of the eye contact that Jason made with you during his match with Percy, you flopped onto your bed. You nuzzled into your pillow, not even bothering to get under the covers in your training clothes. It was gross, but you wanted to fit in this nap before anyone noticed you were gone.

You drifted off without much trouble, the smell of ozone still fresh in your nose.

-_-

“Get up! I need you to help me with something,” was the first thing that you heard as Piper shook you awake from your nap.

“Wha—“ your voice was still a bit raspy from your nap, and you had to blink the sleep out of your eyes as Piper practically dragged you upright.

“Wipe your face off, you drooled all over,” Piper was already going through your desk. You didn’t really mind, that was just how being friends with Piper worked. She barged into your cabin and went through your things sometimes, and in exchange, you got one of the best friends you could have ever asked for at camp. You ran your hand over your cheek, effectively getting rid of the dried trail of drool Piper had so gracefully pointed out.

“Oh!” She tossed two tubes at you from your desk, “Put these on before you come and help me.”

Looking down at the two tubes in your hand, you quickly realized that one was mascara and the other was lip gloss.

“Do I really need this, Piper? What do you even need help with?”

“Just trust me! Put it on and then follow me, I need your help!”

You weren’t sure if she was using her charmspeak or not, but regardless, you reluctantly got up from your oh-so-cozy bed and swiped on your mascara and lip gloss. It felt silly to do this now, right before the campfire, where no one would even be able to see your face in the dark. But you let Piper win this one.

“Care to mention what I’m going to be helping you with?” You slipped on your shoes and followed Piper out of your cabin.

“No, not really,” she responded to you, head over her shoulder, tone a bit too matter-of-fact. You pressed your lips together into a tight line and huffed out a breath through your nose in defeat.

Piper led you all the way to her cabin, the Aphrodite Cabin, and right to where her bed was, stopping in front of her closet.

You looked around, not noticing anything out of the ordinary.

“Are you going to tell me now?”

“Yeah, yeah—just look in there for me, do you see that?” Piper reached across you, opening the closet door. The slotted French doors folded open, revealing the clothes and shoes that you had come to know as Piper’s. She pointed to something in the far corner of the closet, but it was too far, too dark to see anything there.

“What are you talking about?” You took a step closer to the closet, leaning in just a little bit to try to get a better look.

“Right there—you’ll see it better if you get a little closer,” Piper insisted, pointing her finger at the corner again, “trust me, you’ll know when you see it. Yeah, see, right there!”

You looked behind you at Piper, making a face as if to ask “literally what the fuck are you talking about?” There was nothing. Piper just shrugged at you and pointed again, telling you to look closer.

“Piper, I don’t see anything,” you complained, stepping closer to the closet. You might as well have been stepping into it now. You even leaned in, trying to get a better angle to see the corner of the closet, “What are you talking abou—“

That’s when Piper pushed you into her closet.

“I’m so sorry about this,” Piper mumbled as she shut the doors.

“Dude—Piper—what are you doing?” You tried your best to push the doors back open, but there was an audible click.

She locked me in her closet?!?

“Trust me, I promise you’ll be thanking me later!”

“Piper, you just locked me in your closet! There isn’t even a light in here!”

“Give it five minutes, and then you’ll be happy that I locked you in my closet!”

You threw up your hands in disbelief because literally what?

It was dark, and the slots from the French doors didn’t let in much light. The closet really wasn’t that big either. You were standing between Piper’s tank tops, and your feet were on top of a pair of boots.

“This better be good, Piper.”

-_-

Jason was face down in his bed. He was sulking. He was rarely allowed to sulk back at Camp Jupiter, there was too much to do. Because of that, he never got used to sulking. But now, at Camp Half-Blood, there was time to sulk, so that’s what he was doing. Jason Grace, son of Jupiter, ex-Praetor of Camp Jupiter, the champion of Juno, was sulking face down in his bed. With a pillow over his head to muffle the sounds of his own breathing and the sounds of the outside world that leaked in through the cracks in the marble of Cabin 1.

To say that Jason was embarrassed would do the blood pooling in his cheeks a disservice, it would be an insult to his teeth that he clenched just to say that Jason was embarrassed.

Jason was mortified.

He had finally figured out how to ask you out, finally—and then he almost fried you like a vendor at a county carnival would do to an Oreo! Jason was never going to leave Cabin 1.

I am never leaving, I’m going to rot here, never going to see the light of day ever again, never, ever, I am one with my mattress, never going to—

“Hey, Big J!”

Jason just grunted into his covers in response as Leo interrupted the downward trajectory of his inner monologue.

“Why do you look worse than that time Piper had to charmspeak you back to life?”

Jason rolled over on his bed, flopping his arms dramatically.

“Leo, I almost fried her. She definitely hates me now.”

“Dude, you’re not looking at the bigger picture.”

Jason lifted his head from his bed to look at Leo, raising an eyebrow at him, almost willing him to continue and explain this “bigger picture.”

“You didn’t almost fry just her, you almost fried like, ten other campers that were standing there! So don’t worry about singling her out.”

Jason groaned and put the pillow over his face, blocking out the light.

“You’re not helping me right now, Leo.” Jason’s voice was muffled by the pillow.

“What?” Leo asked in a voice that was probably two octaves higher than his usual voice, “J Man, it’ll be fine. And anyway, Piper needs your help with something.”

Jason lifted the pillow from his head and sat up. Anything to not think about how horribly that had just gone.

“She needs someone who can reach all the way up in her closet to change the light bulb or something,” Leo made a strange face, but the overwhelming need to be useful was overpowering Jason’s better judgment, and he stood up from his bed.

“Yeah, I can definitely do that,” Jason ran his hands over his face and through his hair. He didn’t really care that it stuck up, making it look like he was the one who almost got fried.

“Alright,” Leo smiled, it was small and impish. It made Jason do a double-take. “Come on, Sparky, to the Aphrodite Cabin!”

Leo walked out of Cabin 1 with a little too much pep in his step. Jason followed anyway.

-_-

Jason really didn’t think that Piper would have been able to shove him that hard into her closet, but here he was, face-planting into her graphic t-shirts. And he was stepping on shoes, probably Piper’s shoes, except—except they were your shoes.

Jason’s brain couldn’t keep up with what his eyes were seeing as he adjusted to the dim lighting in Piper’s closet. He heard the door lock, though. It was a clicking noise, followed by some mumbling from Leo about how he had “reinforced the locks” and then some metal clanking.

He could see you now, the light coming through the slats of the closet doors in thin lines on your face, outlining all of the high points of your face. Jason couldn’t help but stare. Again.

You didn’t know what to do. Piper’s grand idea was to lock you in her closet with Jason Grace? You simply stared at the now locked closet doors, then at Jason, and back to the doors.

“Have fun in there, you two!” Piper said from the other side of the French doors, “We won’t be back until after the campfire—“

“Yeah, so make yourselves busy!” Leo interrupted, and the two of you could hear Piper tell him to shut up from inside the closet. The two of you flushed at the implications.

“—So figure out whatever it is you two have going on before we get back,” Piper continued, “come on, Leo.”

“Hey—don’t grab me so hard!”

Their footsteps and bickering faded away, and you were left locked in Piper’s closet with Jason Grace.

Even in this lighting, while he was struggling to speak coherently, the poised and proper son of Jupiter, now stuttering, was looking almost too good. The flush on his cheeks gave him an adorable boyish look on his usually commanding, stony face.

“Uh—hey… uhm—“ Jason sputtered, his face getting warmer than he would have liked it to be, “I—I’m really sorry about earlier, it was a total accident! I wasn’t even aiming for you, I just couldn’t stop looking at you—er, I mean, I just—“

“Well—you know, I just—it’s okay…” You spoke quietly, afraid that if you spoke any louder, your voice would crack from the nerves.

He couldn’t stop looking at me.

You and Jason stood in Piper’s closet in an awkward silence. Every time you bumped your elbow into one of her sweaters, it shocked you. You didn’t say anything else, too scared to somehow embarrass yourself in front of Jason. He was just too perfect. The two of you stood there, cramped by hangers and boots, too nervous to speak further.

“Really?” Jason finally found his words, a bit surprised that you said it was okay that he almost electrocuted you, his voice was probably a little bit too high, “but I—I almost got you—“

“Yeah,” you interrupted him, half expecting Jason to just keep talking because he seemed like when he had an idea, he finished it, but he paused when he heard your voice. Your heart wasn’t threatening to beat out of your chest like it had that one time Jason had tried to sit next to you and Piper at the campfire. He seemed less… formal. Softer, even. It made your cheeks blush.

He wants to listen to me.

“I mean, you didn’t ‘get me’ and besides, I practically almost die every summer here anyway. Trust me when I say that I’ve come a lot closer to getting killed at camp than almost getting struck by lightning.”

Jason let out an awkward laugh. It was like someone was squeezing his lungs in a vice and squeezing out the pathetic sound the same way you squeeze out toothpaste from an almost empty tube.

That sounded like a duck, he thought to himself. Jason wanted to shrink down to be small enough to climb through the minuscule slats in the closet door. I bet she thinks that I sounded like a duck just now—

“So you don’t… You don’t despise me for almost—almost electrocuting you?” Jason’s voice was small, almost timid, as he asked you. He was scared, scared that you would say that you were afraid of him, that you didn’t want to be so close to him.

“Oh gods, no! I didn’t—I don’t despise you,” the idea of despising Jason for anything made you almost laugh, but you were too nervous to laugh right now. He sounded too vulnerable, almost… imperfect. “I’m not upset at you for that.”

Jason did his best to search your face in the dark, using the tiny lines of light that filtered in through the closet door, looking for any signs that you weren’t telling the truth. A wrinkle on your forehead, lines on the outside corners of your eyes, a slight tilt to the corner of your lips.

He couldn’t find any of those on your face, he couldn’t find any indicator that you were lying to him. You really didn’t hate him for what he did during the sparring match with Percy today. Jason had never been so shocked and so relieved at the same time before. He let his eyes travel back down to your lips.

A mistake.

Jason should not have looked at your lips. They were perfect, and they were glossy. Jason didn’t know how you made them look like that, and when he thought about it too hard, he blushed. This was a bad, bad, bad idea because now that’s all he could look at. All he could focus on now was your lips. All of those years of perfecting his willpower, of chiseling his impeccable composure to be exactly what it needed to be, a perfect mask of marble, wasted. Utterly wasted because you were right in front of him.

The face that Jason was making, brows furrowed, bright blue eyes wide, lips parted just enough to see the glint of his teeth, the scar above his lip catching a bit of the light that filtered in through the doors, and that blush that crept up his neck all the way up to his ears, it all made you weak in the knees. He was looking at you, his eyes boring into your face, drinking up every detail outlined by the thin rays of artificial light that streamed in through the slats of the doors.

This was real, the way that he was looking at you. Almost too real, you had to remind yourself that you were less than a foot away from each other in Piper’s closet, not some dreamland. That the two of you were stuffed uncomfortably between clothing hangers, shoes, and random sweaters that had fallen on the floor. But you two were so close. That strange, irrational fear you had of the Jason Grace seemed to fall away. He was just a boy, after all. Maybe Piper was right… You wouldn’t tell her that, though.

“I just—I never do that,” Jason admitted, sounding a bit dazed, still looking at your lips. There was a faint buzzing in the air. Not quite like the buzzing from earlier, not the buzz before a lightning strike. No, this was more mundane, more homely. This sounded like the buzz of a light bulb right before it’s about to blow out, more of a hum, really.

“That’s alright,” you whispered, feeling a matching flush creep up your neck and make its way to your ears. Your voice was quiet enough that Jason leaned in a bit more so that he could hear you. The humming noise was louder as he got closer to you. That buzz, the humming noise, was coming from Jason.

You looked up at his face, wide eyes meeting wide eyes. Your hands moved first. They didn’t even have to move that far; the closet was small. A few inches of movement,” and your hands were on his chest. You could hear his breath hitch in his throat, like he was about to jerk away. But he didn’t. Jason just leaned in a bit closer, his hands hesitantly finding their way around you, to your sides. You could feel his breath on your skin.

“Are you okay if—is it alright if I—“ Jason’s brain was melting out of his ears, and his tongue felt useless, “can I please kiss you?”

The tip of his broad Roman nose brushed against yours as you nodded your head. The Jason Grace was about to kiss you. Your heart was fluttering, and your stomach might as well have been doing parkour. He was so close to you. Jason still smelled like ozone, and you both ignored the humming.

Jason’s eyes flickered from your lips to your eyes and then back to your lips. He moved in to close the gap between the two of you. He could taste the lip gloss you were wearing, but he barely noticed. Jason didn’t even know what planet he was on anymore. You could have told him that he was on the moon for all he cared, as long as this moment never ended.

His hands traveled slowly up your body, grazing along your t-shirt as his hands found their very natural position on either side of your head, holding it closer to his. You never wanted this moment to end, but unfortunately, your lungs decided that the moment was over. You had to pull your head back just a little bit, enough to suck in a quick breath.

You could see Jason’s eyes, they were almost entirely black, that sky blue nearly engulfed by his pupils. Both of you were breathing heavily, but that pull was still there. The ever-present, almost magnetic pull that made you reach back up to Jason, connecting your lips for another kiss. It was addicting, filling your brain with fizz, like someone had carbonated your blood.

When your lips were about to meet for a second time, right before they touched, not even millimeters apart, there was a snap, and you pulled away. It felt like you had gotten one of the worst static shocks of your life, but it was from Jason.

“I’m so sorry—I have no idea what’s happening to me—“ he stuttered, his face going even redder. His glasses were crooked now, skewed a bit to the left.

You cut him off with a giggle, because how was this real?

“It’s alright,” you told him, moving your head to the side. You planted a kiss of reassurance on his cheek, leaving a sticky outline of your lips with lip gloss.

Never in a million years would you have thought that you would be the one to reassure Jason in any scenario. But here you were, hands on his shoulders, smiling at the boy you had thought was almost a god himself, telling him that it was okay that he accidentally gave you a static shock while trying to kiss him.

-_-

Piper and Leo eventually returned to the Aphrodite Cabin after the campfire to let the two of you out of her closet. They were very pleasantly surprised when Leo undid the overcomplicated lock he installed and found that the two of you had, in fact, “made yourselves busy.” The lip gloss stains on Jason’s lips and cheeks were more than enough to tell Piper that you ended up happy after she locked you in her closet.

Maybe Piper should play matchmaker more often?