#pjjg percy jackson bday

[perseusjackson-jasongrace]

look i didn’t want to be a sour kid

god, it's brutal out here: and percy jackson knows what that means. scars on his body like pulled threads. calluses on his palms from pens that turn into swords, coins that turn into weapons, hands that curl into fists. walking home after an annoying day at school and having to fight the troll on the bridge. you must give me something in order to pass my territory. he gives it death. it gives him another shirt to wash blood stains out of. gods with too much arrogance giving him quests with too little return policy. body that doesn't want to cooperate after he blows up a mountain. body that wants to move too fast when he needs to follow a plan. heart that gets broken and rebuilt with different materials every day. god it’s brutal out here: and percy jackson knows it’s brutal in here too.

traitor: and percy jackson has never felt a word more like a branding in his entire life. he thinks back to the summer he turned thirteen and he sees scorpion tails flashing behind his eyelids. and he sees blonde hair and sometimes he can't differentiate between her and him and them and him. and he sees a scar and he wonders if the cut was deep enough to lose goodness. and he thinks maybe he wouldn’t have minded so much if someone had just told him what was going on. and that makes him a traitor too. and he sees it now, how easily he would succumb to the scorpion tail. how he would welcome the bliss of losing his goodness. who’s to say it’s true goodness anyway? and he remembers the red curls and the summer of beach walks and glass houses and the look of betrayal when plastic hairbrush meets yankees cap. is he a traitor then? to his own feelings? surely not. must be. neither of them liked it. he liked them. traitor, but to who? and remembers the day he left a girl on an island and promised to help her and couldn’t in the end. he remembers eyes of fire at his incompetence. and he is a betrayer. but only to others. traitor: and percy jackson thinks he’s never really betrayed anyone but himself.

got my driver’s license: and percy jackson is growing up so fast his limbs can't keep up. one leg is slightly longer than the other and it makes him clumsy. his left hand is bigger than his right and he uses it to punch. he flies a pegasus for the first time and he understands why mortals are always so angry. they will never know this unbridled freedom. and he gets kissed by a girl and he thinks his skin understands the heat of the sun. and his hair becomes curls instead of waves and he has to clip it> push it> tie it back because it keeps getting in his eyes. and his mom asks him if he wants “blue cake this year?” and he has to tell her he’ll never be too old for it because she’s scared he’s going to grow out of her love. he is not. and paul teaches him how to read a book without feeling like his eyes are drowning and he can’t believe he’s learning to read in high school. and he is moving through the days like water, finding a way around everything. got my driver’s license: and percy jackson knows it’s only a matter of time before he gets a death sentence too.

it’s always one step forward and three steps back: and percy jackson is waking up with no sense of who he is. he is carrying a goddess on his back and he doesn’t even know who his mother is. he is stepping across a river and erasing the curse of indestructible. he is again a demigod with too much vulnerability and not enough care. and he is being flung to an island where time doesn’t move and he doesn’t want to either. and he is healing like he never has before. and he is leaving and not even the girl who loves him can keep him there because he loves another girl and she doesn’t know she loves him back. and he is taking the sky from a friend and he is giving the sky to a goddess and he is leaving a hunter to see the stars and he is watching a new hunter evade the fate they are cursed with. and he was relieved from this burden for one brief second in time. burden of what? burden of sky? burden of prophecy? burden of death? and they are all handed back to him, presented with no other option. they are not the weights in the balancing scale. they are the scale and he is the weights. one step forward and three steps back: and percy jackson wonders if he can go far back enough to erase his own existence. 

i know you get déjà vu: and percy jackson is hurtled to summers spent in a camp, next to a girl, next to a satyr, next to a friend. and he is living his life in montauk with his mom and he is watching red hair fly in the wind, paint smudges on their  skin. and he is remembering how everything is different every year but he can still see the fire wall from his cabin and the smell of wild strawberries is the only thing his scent receptors know how to identify. and he knows solstice could bring death or happiness and he’s starting to think one doesn’t exist and one exists too much. and he sees people who love him and show it in ways he knows. blue candy has never been a complicated feeling. and doesn’t see people who love him in ways he doesn’t know. seaweed brain, let me come with you into the labyrinth, become praetor with me. and he thinks his childhood disappeared the day his mother was kidnapped and is it possible to have déjà vu if you’ve never lived enough to experience something once. and he thinks maybe the god of the sun gets déjà vu every time he pulls the star across the sky because it’s all about warmth isn’t it? your body’s way of saying we’ve been here before and we survived. i know you get déjà vu: and percy jackson is sure he has lived a thousand lives in this one alone.

good for you: and percy jackson is craving a life that doesn’t involve this madness. he is jealous of the kid in his science class that accidentally knocks over the bunsen burner and only gets a disapproving look from the teacher. his nose bleed starts a war. he is jealous of the neireids that simply become the water and wait for the world to stop burning itself to the ground. you look happy and healthy and he looks like he’s missing five years of his life and no way of moving forward. he is tired and he wants to sleep but the last time he did that it was six months later and he couldn’t remember anything. and he wants to sink to the bottom of the ocean but he is still exhaling mud because he drowned in sludge once. and he is too young to be this exhausted but. good for you: and percy jackson wants to become the villain.

all i ever wanted was to be enough for you: and percy jackson is struggling with the expectations people who don't know him want him to have. he is twelve and the teacher hands back a test face down and he knows he’s going to shove it into the pit of his bag before he can be scathed by a red pen. he is thirteen and his mother has finally given herself the hero ending she deserves but he is still this little kid who doesn’t know how to handle the world and if she doesn’t need him to protect her what is his purpose? he is a teenager watching people have silent conversations about his fate and getting no replies when he asks too. as if it is ridiculous to involve himself in these discussions. he can't be the one, it’s not possible. and wait she is here, from her tree grave. no, she is gone, to her hunter fate. wait they are here from their timeless casino. no she is gone and he is young. far too young. and he can’t do this and he can’t do that and he isn’t there yet, not powerful, too reckless, too loyal. the monsters realise his potential and use it to hurt him. the people don't realise his potential and wish he would use it. all i ever wanted was to be enough for you: and percy jackson is too far gone to be of use.

i hope you're happy, but don't be happier: and percy jackson cannot fall in love unless it’s with her. and he has seen the beauty of people and he wants to keep them all close and he doesn’t know how to do it because she keeps him in her grasp. deathly afraid of spiders she says but she has built a web so big he can't move without getting caught. and he goes to a scorned girl on a secluded beach and he likes the way her eyes sparkle in the sun, how she plants the same way his mother does and he leaves her there because she doesn’t have a storm in her gaze. and he loses his memory and remembers only her and he knows it’s inescapable. and maybe he kind of loves it. nobody has ever really given him a choice anyway. at least this one he can love. i hope you're happy, but don't be happier: and percy jackson has never known happier anyway.

jealousy, jealousy: and percy jackson is surrounded by the best. he is in a camp dedicated to people like him and he is still at the bottom. and he is on a quest that makes him the main perpetrator but he is still being puppeted along. and he cant help but wonder if he will turn out like the boy with the scarred face. and he cant help but wonder if he’ll turn out like the girl who grabbed a figurine. and he can't help but wonder if he’ll become a monster or a hero and what’s the difference really. everyone is fighting for a cause. it’s just the matter of whose side you're on. and he wants to know what will happen if he just lets go. he wants to be like the people who follow their cause. instead he is doing biddings. he is following orders. he is making things right. jealousy, jealousy: and percy jackson wants to know if he can be jealous of his own dreams.

i hope i was your favorite crime: and percy jackson is a little kid with a long record. he is on the news plastered as a criminal endangering others, blowing up a bus. it is not the last destruction he causes. he learns to get clever about it. and he is on the news sobbing about his generous stepdad. generous about the bruises he administers, and the words he spits. generous about his appliances. and he is on the news for jumping off a bridge too high to survive. and he doesn’t really know if he will survive but when is he ever really sure he’s going to survive anyway? at least this was a choice. and he is always a criminal unable to plead his innocence. i hope i was your favorite crime: and percy jackson wonders if anyone cares about the injustices against him. 

you're okay: and percy jackson is staring at his reflection in the rippling water and he knows it’s time to forgive himself. he was just a child. with far too much responsibility and far too much guilt. he had seen death before he’d had his first kiss. he had felt pain before he felt comfort. he had never known safety. and now he is old enough to go wherever he wants and do whatever he wants and he has to forgive himself first. because he was just a kid with a hundred targets on his back and only a fierce need to survive protecting him. you’re okay: and percy jackson knows he will be. 

[perseusjackson-jasongrace]

spies between the stone-cold shadows

of course i had to save my favourite drabble for my boi’s bday! happy birthday to the love of my life, Jason Grace. your little blonde, secretly wild ass is my favourite comfort station and i love you v much.

please enjoy the jercabeth because they’re the hottest trio alive, no jokes

[all images have alt text]

“You know, for a spy, you’re pretty terrible at lying.”

“It’s you,” He whispers, soft enough even the wind strains to pick up the words.

“What?”

“It’s you. I can’t lie to you. I—” Jason finally peers up, a torn look in his darkened eyes. “I don’t know what it is but I can't lie to you.” He feels uncomfortable under such an intense gaze. He feels microscopic, as if he had been swabbed from the inside of a cheek and put into a petri dish for seventh grade science kids to ‘ooh’ and ‘ahh’ over. He feels Examined. “You and—” He nods his head to the person on the other side of the room, bathed in shadows but startlingly clear all the same.

“My partner?” Her voice is so cut-throat, as if each word is picked apart before she offers them.

He nods again, too afraid to say anything in case all those shadows engulf him. A small part of his mind— one he usually has the strength to keep locked away, when he’s not facing imminent death— says maybe he’d enjoy it, all that… intensity.

“Why are you here?” She moves the conversation, if he can call it that.

They had been over this, countless times. He was sent by his superiors to recover a missing artefact that her little organisation was illegally storing, because they illegally took it, because they’re illegally operating. He repeats this to her now, and watches as her grey eyes flash and change, become storms and concrete and smoke and slices of moon. No single emotion stays long enough for him to gauge her reaction, and sliding his gaze to her wreath of a partner doesn’t prove much more useful. He simply stares at them, green eyes even more piercing than her grey. Full of too many beautiful deadly things. Full of promises. 

“Why are you lying?”

“I’m not.” They’ve been over this too. He’s not lying about why he’s here, he’s just lying about who sent him.

Their particular organisation had become a personal interest of his and while his supervisors had told him the company had more pressing matters than smuggling groups he had continued to keep tabs on the one of a kind “Medusa”. When he found out about the little shindig they were having tonight to showcase something no government has been able to retrieve in the ten years it's been missing Jason had bought the first tux that fit him well enough and found his way inside the event.

He didn’t plan to get caught but he wasn’t surprised that he did. What he is surprised about is that he’s meeting the heads of this whole operation. He figured he’d be delegated to some lowly fresh-into-trouble member who would simply raise a gun and gain a raise. But here he is hands cuffed behind him, metal chair cold under his thighs, staring at Annabeth Chase and trying very hard not to stare at Percy Jackson. 

“What do you plan to do with me?” His tone is casual, maybe even curious. He really should be more worried than he currently is.

They stare at each other, the power couple of the Underworld. The ones you want in their good graces, and won’t survive if you aren't. He can see a silent conversation passing between their gazes. He can read it well enough but he wonders if they do this often. If many people are privy to it or if it’s just the ones that aren’t going to see much more of… well anything.

“How would you like to help us?” It’s the shadow’s turn to talk. And by gods, if Jason wasn’t cuffed to his chair he would have surely kissed the floor in pure bliss. Percy’s voice is heaven in an hourglass, all melting and slow and caressing glass. He can feel every syllable like a soft kiss against the back of his neck. He knows his skin is red because it feels scorching under his suit.

“Do I have a choice?” He manages to keep his voice steady. “And before you say it’s either this or death, I'd like to inform you that that’s not really a valid choice.”

He sees a hint of a smirk; a grin tugging at Annabeth’s lips too. 

“Then no, you don’t have a choice.”

“How do you know I won't turn on you the first chance I get?” He cocks his head to the side; mischief dances in his blue eyes. He has no real reason to ask the question, he just wants to see what they’d say. How dispensable he would be in his new role.

“If you do, we'll kill you.” Annabeth shrugs.

“Will you?” Percy asks.

Jason grins. Oh how wonderful it is to be needed. “No,” He decides. 

Their eyes flash simultaneously. He wants to frame the picture right here. He wants to stare at the rain-soaked forest.

“I like being ruined.”