#also STOP making percy naturally smooth STOP IT his charm comes from how he works his ass off to be as kind and funny as he is

[privpro]

Beard Love

Written for & inspired by @joleanart​‘s art post here

If there was one thing that Jason could say about college, it was that it was a fucking ride. Growing up the son of the world’s most prominent (and arguably most arrogant) businessmen and getting sent off to a prestigious boarding school practically the minute he could talk, Jason thought he had it all down. He was self-reliant, studious, charming, a natural leader and so, so unprepared for public school.

Lupa Capitolina Military Institution and Jupiter Preparatory Academy were both excellent for breeding youths of character discipline and strength. Most of Jason’s former classmates were now off attending law, business and medical school or prepping to take over their parent’s companies. Jason, meanwhile, had opted to attend NYU and was studying the Classics – partially out of rebellion to his father and stepmother and partially because it actually interested him. His friend Frank recommended the school after applying there himself for International Studies. Aside from occasional run-ins with Frank in the history building, however, Jason found himself almost completely alone.

Enter, Greek life.

Greek life had simultaneously become the most wonderful and most terrifying thing Jason had ever experienced. Practically the moment his last midterm was over, Jason’s roommate, one randomly assigned Perseus Jackson, literally dragged him across campus to one of the frat houses. Jason doesn’t remember half of what happened that night, but he’s pretty sure it changed his life. He woke up the next morning with a standing invitation to pledge to Chi Eta Beta and possibly a girlfriend. As it turned out CHB and Piper made the rest of his freshman year a lot more enjoyable than, well, pretty much his entire school experience up to that point.

Fast forward two years and Jason found himself with a room in CHB’s row house, a fantastic group of both wild and studious friends and, somehow, a beard.

And okay, a week prior all of the brothers were sporting facial hair in honor of no-shave-november (and because it was hilarious to watch some of the younger pledges try to grow facial hair), but by now the only other person who’d kept their beard was Beckendorf, who’d had a beard almost the entire time Jason had known him. No one had brought it up until now, when Percy – still Jason’s roommate finally broached the subject.

“So is the beard gonna be a permanent thing now?”

He asked, his own face baby smooth since Annabeth Chase informed him it was no longer November, during their 9am lecture on December 1st. Said face was currently pulled into Percy’s signature lop-sided smirk as he plopped down on the couch beside Jason and stole some of Leo’s popcorn, despite the fact that he’d only gotten up in the first place to get more snacks.

“Hey!”

The Hispanic protested, leaning over to try and snatch the snacks back and nearly rolling off the loveseat in the process.

“Here,” Piper said, nimbly snatching the unopened Doritos Percy had fetched from his other side and tossing them at Leo’s head. All of this gave Jason time to pretend to finish reading his page and internally freak out.

The thing was, Jason might be keeping the beard because it was easier to take care of than shaving his face daily – like Charlies claimed. Or, he might be keeping it because two weeks ago at their “fratsgiving” Percy got wasted and spent an hour rambling about how hot beards were. While the other male was distracted, Jason sent a silent plea for help in Piper’s direction. When she caught the glance, his girlfriend (ex-girlfriend? “On a break for Jason’s emotional and sexual discovery” friend?), she just smiled encouragingly and shrugged. Thanks Pipes.

With nothing particularly elegant or solid enough to really satisfy Percy’s curiosity, Jason followed his ex’s example and simply shrugged when the native New Yorker turned his attention back to him. He carefully kept his eyes glued to the book in front of him rather than looking at Percy’s reaction when he deflected.

“Why?”

Percy returned the shrug but then leaned back into the couch and wrapped an arm around Jason’s shoulder. His smirk then went from mischievously friendly to deviously enticing.

“Well, you see,” he started, his voice pitched lower like when he fake flirts with Piper. “If you get anymore handsome, then I’m gonna have to fuck you.”

Once again, Jason was saved from immediately answering by an outburst from Leo and he used the time to decide how he wanted to reply. On the one hand, it was completely possible that Percy was just messing around and had only platonic (or, as Leo liked to call it “bromance”) feelings towards him. On the other hand…well, they might have told everyone they were taking a break because Piper needed to spend more time studying this semester, but the actual reason was because Jason had confessed his confusing feelings for his roommate and she’d encouraged him to try and figure things out for himself without any pressure – and shared that her own preferences had nothing to do with gender and were also open to multiple partners.

Currently, Piper was texting and therefore no help at all, but Jason found that maybe he didn’t need it. There was really only one way to figure out if Percy meant it or not. So, before either Percy or Leo could get too worked up defending his “handsomeness” v. “masculine dignity” (yeah, he wasn’t going to touch that with a ten-foot pole), he gave his own reply as nonchalantly as possible.

“I guess I’ll have to swear off shaving forever, then.”

The living room quieted significantly after that, with only the sound of the Hallmark channel filling the air. Next to Jason, Percy seemed to have stopped breathing, let alone moving, but the blonde very deliberately forced himself to actually finish reading his page before he looked up.

When he did, Piper was still texting, Leo was frozen half off the loveseat with his mouth open, and Percy was sporting one of the deepest blushes Jason had ever seen. It was Leo who spoke first.

“Wha – what is happening?”

His tone was level, but his voice cracked slightly out of either shock or disbelief. Thankfully, Piper chose that moment to finally look up from her phone.

“What’s happening,” She said plainly, standing up from the couch and then pulling Leo up as well, “Is that I’m going to study with Annabeth and you’re going to tell the Stolls that they owe me fifty bucks.”

“Fifty bucks? Oh! Right, the bet!”

Leo puzzled and then practically shot up with excitement. This, it seemed was also enough to finally pull Percy out of his stupor, though Piper and Leo were halfway to the door before he could fully form his sentence of outrage.

“Hey, wait! You’ve been betting on if we’d get together? What kind of friends are you??”

“Not if,” Piper corrected with a grin, shoving Leo out of the door. “How.”

And with that, she too exited the house, leaving Jason and Percy alone inside.

Percy fish-mouthed at the closed door and then all but collapsed back onto the couch next to Jason.

“I can’t decide if I’m more upset that they set up a betting pool, that apparently everyone else saw our feelings before we did, or that the winning bet was only worth $50.”

He groused, rubbing a hand over his face before thumping his head back against the couch and closing his eyes. Jason, no longer feeling insecure, just smiled and turned so that he could lean over and kiss the boy. At the first press of their lips, Percy jolted like he’d completely forgotten the reason their friends were making bets in the first place. He very quickly got over the shock of it however, and started reciprocating.

Jason found that while it wasn’t better or worse than kissing Piper, making out with Percy was certainly different. For one, Percy treated the kiss like he was some kind of underwater explorer, trying to discover and coax out as much as possible and only coming up for air when absolutely necessary. For another thing, Piper never tasted like an unholy mix of leftover pie and Doritos, nor did she ever spend quite as much of her time appreciating his beard. The biggest difference, of course, came in the way that Percy levered him onto his back across the couch so the brunette lay atop him and then started grinding their hips together with practically liquid rolls of his hips.

It was so much sensation that neither of them noticed when the front door opened again until Hazel’s voice filled the air.

“Oh wait, Frank! Nico just texted. He said that Percy and Jason are –.”

There was a pause, one that both boys were now very well aware of given that they’d pretty much frozen themselves.

“Uh yeah, doing that.”

Jason cracked an eye open and felt rather embarrassed as Frank let out a sigh and then pointed behind him back at the door. Percy, for his part, had taken to burying his face into Jason’s chest as if that could hide him.

“Yeah…we’re just gonna go be…literally anywhere else. Uh, have fun?”

He sounded about as awkward as Jason felt, even though he was clearly well-meaning. Percy turned his head towards them just in time to see Hazel wink and shoot them a double thumbs-up before following her boyfriend out. Jason stifled a laugh as Percy weakly returned the gesture, his face going tomato red once more. In the silence that followed, the pair heard her ask “How much money do you think Nico won from the betting pool?” Percy groaned and buried his face in Jason’s neck.

“What did we do to deserve such terrible friends? Using our emotional turmoil to yield a profit. I feel so betrayed.”

Jason laughed and stroked his hand through Percy’s hair because, well, because he could.

“Yield a profit?”

He asked, amusement in his voice. Percy nodded against his skin.

“I may have just finished my econ essay at 4:00 this morning.” The blonde smiled at that and thought suddenly how glad he was that despite the big change between them, all of the little things had stayed the same. They were still Percy and Jason, and out of the things that had changed well…

“Hey,” he waited for Percy to look at him. “You wanna keep complaining about our friends, or do you wanna make good on that promise you made earlier?”

At that, Percy shot up so quickly that he nearly smacked his head on Jason’s jaw and he did elbow him in the stomach. Momentary pain aside, Jason found himself grinning the whole way up the stairs.

[gymleadercheren]

As for going in depth with Orland’s family........ his family is totally enormous so it’ll be long lol

Orland is an orphan, first off, although he doesn’t know it. He highly suspects it, but doesn’t know for sure and honestly never found himself caring very much about figuring out the identities of his parents (which is odd, considering his self-obsession).

He likes to think that he was misplaced royalty of some sort despite the fact that there is no halfling royalty or nobility of any kind. He assumes his parents were very high-up, rich, and as endlessly charming and beloved and talented as he is. What he doesn’t know, or rather what he’s repressed, is that he is the illegitimate son of a particularly despicable dirty halfling theif and a penniless prostitute who died in childbirth with him. Far from the grand pedigree he’s imagined for himself. His mother, Rosalina, had beautiful golden hair he inherited from her, very rare among halflings, which made her popular. When she died shortly after having him, he somehow wound up with his father, Ryell O’Dell, who lived most of his life underground, performing shady deals in the Underdark with incredibly dangerous associates.

Orland lived the first nine years of his life never seeing sunlight, his father only dragging him along to the surface under cover of night. Orland was not popular at all in the underground, a very unwelcome drop of sunshine amidst the dark and gloom. He wasn’t cheerful, but he was endlessly talkative and curious, and he asked all sorts of questions that unfortunately either went unanswered or punished somehow. Ryell wasn’t a gentle father, or a kind one, or particularly caring at all. But he was all Orland had, so he followed him everywhere and was often used as an accessory to his crimes (often as a distraction because adorable little halfling kids are very good distractions).

When Orland was 9, Ryell double-crossed his dark elf associates for the last time and he got what was coming to him, killed by their giant pet spiders right in front of his son. Terrified, Orland ran off, somehow managing to hide from his pursuers due to his tiny size. He eventually climbed his way to the surface, where he saw the sun for the first time, and flowers and trees and blooming roses and a super cute little girl named Cornflower who demanded to know why he was so dirty and weird and crying in a fetal position in the middle of a field. Upon finding these sources of real happiness for the first time in his life, he ends up repressing and completely forgetting his past in the underground, and he begins anew (although he later feels compelled to name his lute ‘Rosalina’ for some reason. It just feels right.)

YEARS LATER when he finally marries cornflower and they settle down and have their own enormous family that he is beyond enthusiastic over because he’s never had a family before and now he made one all on his own, he has an... interesting relationship with everyone.

He and Cornflower are super duper in love of course, but where Orland is incredibly blatant about it, Cornflower is much much much subtler. Even so, everyone KNOWS she’s just as crazy about him as he is about her by the simple virtue of her having not strangled him yet. And the twelve kids, pfffffffft.

Their first son, Orland Percival O’Dell the Second (who vastly prefers going by Percy), is much more like his mother in nature. Very stoic, very solid, and keenly intelligent. He’s about 17 years old and desperately wants to be a famous mage. He is annoyed that magic seems to come so naturally to his father, while he has had to study it all his life to summon any. He works incredibly hard and always has his nose in a tome or history book of some sort. He is the most responsible child, but all his younger siblings see him as incredibly stuffy. Percy adores his mother and does all he can to help her (which she appreciates) but he is somewhat estranged from his father. He thinks Orland is irresponsible and silly and is often at odds with him (which frustrates him because Orland often doesn’t even realize when he’s arguin with him). Through our campaign, he got separated from his family and ended up being offered some very dark magic, his ambition leading him to seek it. It was very powerful, but it took its toll on him and eventually when Orland found him, the deadly magic had already crawled its way up his arm and was threatening to take over his entire body. Orland stopped his party members from chopping his son’s arm off with an axe to save him, and instead made a deal with a fairy queen to stop the magic from spreading, giving up a lot of his own magic to do so. Because of this sacrifice, Percy is on much better terms with Orland but things are still awkward between them. His arm is entirely black and he’s got a few black marks spreading up his shoulder and neck. It’s very goth. He loves rabbits, and he has 6 of them that he adores and takes care of all the time. They’re named after a bunch of famous mages.

Their oldest daughter is named Pepper, and where Percy favors his mother looks-wise, she looks very much like Orland, only female and with very long hair. She is about 16 years old and wants nothing more than to be an adventurer like her Dad, but both her parents insist on her being too young to travel, which she hates. She feels like she’s trapped in their house, where she’s unable to get any privacy or do anything for herself. She trains in secret, trying to become a rogue like her mother (who doesn’t know that Pepper knows about her abilities, haha). She sneaks off a lot at night, but she hasn’t been caught yet. She loves her parents and siblings, but she feels smothered. Nonetheless, she will beat up anybody who says a single word against any of them. Even stuffy Percy, who she makes fun of the most. She is sarcastic like her mother, has her father’s endless passion, but has not inherited her mother’s good sense or her father’s blithe nature.

Penny is their next daughter and she is sweetness and light and sunshine personified. She is about 14 years old. She is full of boundless energy and is always bouncing around in perpetual excitement. Nothing ever gets her down, and she is always cheerful. She has a huge amount of bushy brown hair that is filled with tons of flowers she inexpertly weaves in herself. She often leaves a trail of flowers in her wake as they fall out of her hair as she zooms around. She can be innocently insensitive, but she never realizes it. She sings often, but while she is louder than her father, her voice is not nearly as good. Which is a bad combination.

Potter is their next son and he wears a poncho pulled up over his mouth at all times. He is about 13 years old. He is the child that looks the most like Orland, but you can hardly tell since he hides his face. He can speak, but he almost never ever does, and when he does, it’s typically only a few words, very to-the-point, and very soft. He is an inventor, and he’s always fiddling around with things in his room, creating odd contraptions. His siblings joke that he is part-gnome somehow, which both Orland and cornflower resent, haha. It is very hard to tell what he is thinking a lot of the time because he rarely changes expression.

Pippa is their next daughter, and she is an enormous daddy’s girl. She is about 12 years old. She truly adores her father, but she is also admittedly manipulative of him. She knows that the more love she piles on him and the more she compliments him and praises him, he more gifts Orland will bring her from his travels. She is a little prissy, and always wears nice dresses and likes her hair curled and tied up a very specific way and hates getting dirty. But she is very cute and knows how to work it, haha. She is also a little bossy, and can be a little bit of a brat, but she loves her family fiercely and would do anything for them.

Peter is the next son, 10 years old. He is the only one that needs glasses (and they are enormous on him, as halflings typically don’t need glasses and they were the smallest they could find, haha). He is a big crybaby and a huge coward, and often trails along free his older siblings, often needing one of them to hold his hand. Orland has to reassure him that monsters aren’t real almost every night, but he often gets carried away with descriptions and ends up scaring Peter anyway, whoops. He is very gentle and has an appreciation for beautiful things, much like his father, but he gets teased because of his sensitivity.

Preston is the next son, 8 years old. He doesn’t look like Orland, since his long, bushy dark hair covers his eyes at all times, but of all the kids, he has almost the exact same personality as his father (Cornflower supposed with this many kids it was inevitable at some point). Preston is very charming and has a way with words. Unfortunately, he uses this gift to steal food from people or talk his way into getting other things he wants. He can’t trick Cornflower anymore, but he works his magic on the other halflings in town, certainly. He’s goofy and loud and enthusiastic, but he can be smooth when he needs to be, haha.

Pansy is the next daughter, 6 years old. She is sweet and kind, but very very spacey. She often says odd things hat nobody quite understands, and she is often found daydreaming and drifting off in the middle of a conversation. She loves nature, and often wanders off on her own, getting lost more often than not and panicking her family. She likes bugs, and tries to collect them, but Cornflower always makes her put them back outside.

Perry is the next son, 5 years old. He is the wild child, energetic and ready to fight. He’s like a little whirlwind and runs around everywhere outside, getting dirty and hitting things with sticks. He often climbs Orland and pulls at his hair, much to his father’s dismay. He always manages to find a way out into the yard, even when Cornflower tries to put him on lockdown. He wants to be a big strong fighter someday, but Cornflower has been trying to persuade him to channel his energy in a different way. It hasn’t worked yet.

Poppy is the next daughter, 3 years old. Like Potter, she rarely talks and is very quiet. She likes to observe. She has large eyes that rarely blink, and she takes everything in, staring and observing and thinking. She’s very smart, but she almost never shares her thoughts. People find her creepy sometimes, including her siblings, but they all love her and take her with them anyway because even though she’s odd, she’s very interesting. She can’t sleep unless Orland sings her a lullaby he wrote especially for her. This makes it hard for Cornflower when he’s off of one of his adventures.

Patrick and Piper are a pair of newborn twins. They are very cute, but as they are babies, they haven’t shown distinct personalities yet. If you touch them, Cornflower will bite your fingers off.