Chapter Text
Piper is going to be late.
Typically, it isn’t this difficult to get all of her siblings into bed at the end of the day. She knows children of Aphrodite may seem like the type to stay up late gossiping or watching chick-flicks, and yes, while most of her siblings were huge fans of camp hearsay and Rachel McAdams, they were also huge fans a full night’s rest. And with a well thought out routine and Mitchell’s help, things went accordingly every night.
Tonight, however, for whatever reason, is a complete disaster.
It starts off smoothly, like any other night. All of the Aphrodite children return from the campfire around 10 pm, voices hoarse and smelling like smoke. Piper takes headcount of all her siblings and sends the boys off to the washroom first, while the girls wait for their turn (along with Esme, who is non-binary but prefers to be grouped with the girls).
Shortly after this, the train derails from its tracks.
“Piper!”
Piper glances up, having been distracted with fishtailing the hair of their ten year old sister, Linda. She meets eyes with Jessica, who’s wearing the typical irritated expression.
“Oh, are the boys out of the bathroom? Girls can go.”
“We can’t actually. Dilan's been doing his skincare routine in the washroom for fifteen minutes,” Jess complains, impatiently tapping her right foot. “He won’t get out. I have to pee.”
“Uh.“ Piper’s eyebrows furrow in concentration as she tries not to lose grip on a section of hair. Linda practically begged Piper to braid her hair, claiming she was the best of all her siblings at braiding. Piper feels like she has to live up to Linda’s expectation. “Did you tell him his ten minutes are up?”
Jessica rolls her eyes, bored with the conservation. “Duh. He’s still in there.”
Everyone was allowed only ten minutes for their skincare routine on weeknights. When you have 16 teenagers, a majority of whom were very high maintenance, fighting over a washroom that only had two sinks, two toilets, and two showers, time limits were an absolute must.
Most cabins didn’t even have their own washrooms, other campers having to use the communal toilets and showers Camp Half-Blood provided, so the Aphrodite cabin having their own private restroom was definitely a luxury. It was also a pain in Piper’s ass.
Piper sighs. “Mitchell,” she calls out to her brother/co-counselor, “can you get Dilan out of the bathroom, please?”
Mitchell nods, tossing his bottle of moisturizer aside and heading for the bathroom in the back of the cabin.
“My doctor said I’m not supposed to hold in a full bladder,” Jess rants to her siblings. “I could get another UTI.”
Drew laughs at Jess, sending a suggestive look through the reflection of her vanity mirror. “Yeah, that’s definitely why you got the first UTI.”
The entire cabin bursts into giggles. Jess, now slightly red, raises a perfectly manicured middle finger in Drew’s direction.
Linda frowns, not understanding the joke. “What’s a UTI?”
“Uh,” says Piper awkwardly. “Don’t worry about it Linda. There, your braid’s all done.”
She secures the end of the fishtail braid with a hair tie, resting it delicately against the small girls back.
“Yay!” Linda cheers, turning around and hugging Piper, the ten year old especially grateful. “Now my hair will be curly tomorrow.”
Mitchell soon comes back from the bathroom with Dilan, who insists he needed to add extra steps into his routine tonight because the state his pores were in was truly devastating.
“Whatever, Dilan,” says Friya, climbing down from her bunk and grabbing her bathroom caddy. She shoots him an irritated glare, her sharp cat-eye liner adding to the menace. “I’m going to end up in bed ten minutes later than usual now, which is going to completely throw off my circadian rhythm. If I don’t get enough REM tonight, I will kill you in the morning.”
Dilan rolls his eyes, scoffing. “Ten minutes isn’t going to throw off your circadian rhythm.”
Maybe not, but it definitely throws off the Aphrodite-Cabin-nighttime-routine-rhythm. Ten minutes behind schedule somehow becomes twenty minutes behind schedule, which means Piper was going to be twenty minutes late.
She tries to mask how agitated she is, because besides Mitchell, her siblings don’t know she leaves the cabin on Wednesday nights after they’ve gone to bed. But Piper’s never really been great at hiding her emotions.
“Eli, put the Switch away!” Piper chastises her younger brother, the boy fully immersed in whatever video game he was playing. “We talked about cutting down screen time before bed.”
“Can I finish this last match? I’m like, this close to unlocking Cloud.”
“I don’t even know what that means,” says Piper. “And no, we’re behind schedule as it is.”
She also has to deal with another bathroom straggler—her sister Peyton, whose hair has fallen victim to unexpected rain today and was now struggling to detangle it.
“Shrinkage is a blessing and a curse,” says Peyton, wincing as she combs through a section of hair.
Piper offers to help the girl, impatient to get everyone in bed, but Peyton absolutely refuses.
“No offense, but I don’t let anyone besides my auntie and my stylist touch my hair.”
And when she finally, finally has everyone in bed for the night—pajamas, bonnets, and eye masks on, the lights turned off, and a still silence settling in the cabin—Piper slowly slips out of bed, tugs on her shoes, and ever-so-quietly creeps out of the cabin.
-
“It’s cute that she thinks we don’t know.”
A few giggles and titters from those that were awake.
“Did you see how antsy she was to leave? We did good.”
“What if Valdez thinks she bailed and left?”
“Oh please. Leo would stay out there all night for her, we all know that.”
-
Piper hates climbing the back wall of Cabin One. It’s the tallest of all the cabins—climbing it caused a lot of exertion, and she isn’t exactly as in shape as she used to be. It’s definitely helped improve her upper body strength this summer; she recently achieved a new best on the lava wall. So there’s that.
After what happened, Piper didn’t think she’d ever have a reason to go back to Cabin One. For the first couple of weeks, just the sight of the Zeus Cabin was. . . painful. And being the biggest and most imposing of all the cabins, it was hard to miss.
Now she spends every Wednesday night trying to not to break her neck scaling the side of it.
It became a recurring thing for Piper once summer began; leaving her cabin after lights out and sneaking up onto this roof. Just to be alone. Being head counselor of the Aphrodite Cabin meant being around her siblings a majority of most days. She just needed time to herself. To think about things besides relationships and the gods and the new Fenty Beauty drop.
It felt peaceful, being up there. It wasn’t necessarily allowed (neither was sneaking out after curfew), but Piper didn’t care. She ditched her “troublemaker” reputation long ago, but she never forgot how to break the rules. And she managed to do it for two whole weeks, every night, without getting caught.
She couldn’t say she was surprised when Leo Valdez—the only person she ever knew to be better at breaking the rules than she is—noticed her one night walking back from Bunker 9. She definitely wasn’t surprised when he climbed up to join her without a second thought.
“Up here again?”
It wasn’t their first time together up on the roof of Cabin One. Six months before they sat up there, grieving and miserable. Earlier that day they had told the camp about Jason’s death. Apollo had taken his coffin back to New Rome but Camp Half-Blood still burned him a shroud. The rites were performed in front of Cabin One. Piper climbed to the top of Cabin One after the ceremony, Leo followed after her. They sat up there for hours. Piper cried so much. It rained on them. Leo brought up the one time they danced in the rain at the Wilderness School. They stayed up there the rest of the night.
“I’m not crying again. I just. . .wanted to be alone.”
“You hate being alone.”
Leo’s also the only person she ever knew to see right through her. She’s not sure how he does it.
So Leo joined her, like he did before, and they just talked. Which hadn’t been something they’d been able to do since camp started, with both of them stepping up in their position as Head Counselor. They spoke about everything; from camp gossip to sharing old folktales their parents used to tell them. And it was nothing like the spontaneous, impromptu adventures she and Leo used to share, yet all the same, it was like nothing had ever changed.
It became recurring for the both of them, sneaking up onto the roof of Cabin One past curfew to hangout. It dwindled from every night to every Wednesday night, else they’d never have time to sleep, but they always made the best of their one night a week.
Piper finds her way to the top of the Zeus Cabin, her breathing heavy. She immediately meets eyes with Leo, who’s wears a smug grin. He definitely heard her struggling to climb up here, the asshole.
“You know I hate you, right?”
He ignores her. “Was starting to think the harpies had you for dinner, McLean.”
Piper’s jaw drops in mock offense. “You think little of my stealth.”
“I’ve been waiting, for like, half an hour.” Nevertheless, he scooches over and makes room for her on the ceramic tiling, which gleams in the moonlight.
“I know, I know. Sorry. I had a hard time getting my cabin into bed.” She scoots in next to him, making herself as comfy as sitting on a rooftop could get. Which wasn’t very comfortable. Piper’s tailbone passionately hated her on Thursday mornings.
“Ah,” says Leo as he nods in understanding, “The trials and tribulations of being a head counselor.”
“You’re a head counselor too.”
“Yeah, but Nyssa’s way better at all that authority stuff. She handles all the rules and routines, while I—“
“What? Help your siblings blow stuff up?” jokes Piper.
Leo frowns. “I was going to say help with projects and give advice,” he says, raising an eyebrow at Piper. She watches as his frown slowly transforms into a smirk. He knocks her knee with his. “But yeah, that too.”
“I knew it,” Piper laughs. “There’s always smoke coming from your cabin. You guys are worse than the Hermes kids.”
He scoffs. “Constructing the perfect smoke-bomb is a valuable skill that all demigods should have.”
“Oh my gods, do you remember when you smoke bombed Mr. Kirchoff’s class?”
Leo immediately cackles with laughter, a little too loudly. “To get us out of that unprecedented chemistry quiz? Hell yeah, I do! One of my finest moments.”
Piper shoves him in the shoulder as a way to get him to shut the hell up, but she’s barely containing her laughter herself. “It set off all the smoke alarms. The fire department showed up.”
“Indeed they did. You did an amazing job at convincing everyone it was an accidental chemical reaction, by the way.”
Oh, back when Piper thought she was just extremely well at lying and being persuasive. Charmspeak had definitely been her and Leo’s best friend whenever they got into trouble.
She snorts. “We were so bad, we really fit right in.”
Piper feels so at ease in this moment. Hanging out with Leo, reminiscing about Wilderness School and laughing at their endless inside jokes.
It’s nice. Having someone talk to and laugh with at the end of stressful days like this. When the responsibility of being head counselor began to weigh heavily on Piper’s shoulders. She could be the irresponsible teenager she was, who made stupid decisions with her best friend like sitting on top of a roof the entire night.
Wednesday nights were the only thing she looks forward too lately.
Hours later and they’re still up there. Piper is almost completely leaned into Leo’s side. It was chilly being so high up, and he radiates endless warmth. Hell if she wasn’t going to siphon off his heat.
They’ve stopped talking, a tranquil silence blanketing over them. They could probably do this for hours too. Just sit here without exchanging a word. It wouldn’t feel awkward or anything; they were comfortable with each other to just enjoy the company.
But Piper likes talking to Leo. She likes listening to Leo. Whether it was a tangent about a project he’s working on or offhand mumble in Spanish or literally the worst pick-up line she’s ever heard—he always had something worth hearing.
She turns slightly to look at him. He’s staring out into the night, seemingly deep in thought. The dark curls from his hair look glossy in the moonlight. She reaches up to tug on one of them.
“Drachma for your thoughts?”
He’s brought out of his reverie, the brooding look on his face instantly replaced with a grin. “Just one Drachma? For my thoughts? Piper, in no way is that a fair sale.” He points at his temple. “This intellectual property is priceless.”
She shrugs, looking expectantly at him.
His grin falters. Piper could see through him sometimes, too.
He sighs. “I was thinking about Calypso.”
Piper feels like she should have expected that, but she didn’t. And for a moment she’s unsure how to respond. She knows Leo and Calypso broke up before summer started, but she never truly asked him about it, which, in retrospect, she should have. Leo was there for her... after everything. She should’ve been there for him too.
She places a comforting hand on his shoulder. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah. I just. . . hope she’s happy, you know?”
She did know. She wanted nothing but happiness for Jason after they’d broken up. It’s something she’s been trying to teach the younger of her siblings—breakups didn’t have to be angsty and bitter like they were in cheesy romcoms. It’s okay to wish the best for someone you once loved.
“Drachma for your thoughts?
Telling Leo what she’s actually thinking about wouldn’t help him feel better. It wasn’t something she really wanted to talk about right now either. Not when she’s supposed to be having fun.
“Uh. The stars are really pretty tonight.”
Leo snorts. “That’s what you’re thinking about? How pretty the stars are?”
“Yeah.”
“Piper, please stop hanging out with your siblings.”
She packs a lot into the punch she gives his right bicep.
“Ow! Mierda, Pipes—“
“Sorry.”
“The smirk on your face says otherwise.”
“My sibling Esme loves astronomy and astrology. It’s what they would have wanted.”
“Is that the one who asked me what my star sign was at the campfire, then politely requested I stay far away from them for the rest of the month after telling them I was a Cancer?”
“That’s the one.”
“Ah.”
“Look,” Piper says, leaning into Leo even closer. She points up at the celestial body above them. “Esme showed me this. If you connect that dipper right there, to those stars—“ she traces invisible lines into the sky “—it’s Chiron.”
Technically Sagittarius, but same thing.
He looks at her, unimpressed. “That looks nothing like Chiron.”
“Dude, use your imagination.”
He squints hard at the constellation, his nose scrunching up with effort. Piper tries her best not to laugh at him.
“I’m not seeing it.”
Piper rolls her eyes. “Of course not—“
“Holy shit, Piper, look!”
Leo abruptly grabs her chin, forcing her gaze upwards. He points out a trail of light that streaks across the sky. Piper gasps.
“I may not be able to see the constellation, but I know a shooting star when I see one, baby!”
In less than a second the trail of light has vanished, the starry sky still and unmoving once more.
“Woah,” Piper says in disbelief, her eyes lingering on the night. She meets Leo’s gaze, and they both break out into giddy, childlike grins.
She’s not entirely sure why, but this moment has her heart stirring in her chest.
“That was so dope!” exclaims Leo. “Did you make a wish?”
Piper shakes her head no. She didn’t. It happened so fast, she can’t believe she even saw it. She hasn’t seen a shooting star since—
Her face falls, because suddenly something about this is hauntingly familiar.
“Ah, it’s whatever. I didn’t either, I don’t really believe in all that crap.”
All of this is hauntingly familiar. Being on the rooftop, talking and laughing with a close friend. The shooting star. The weird feeling inside of her chest.
“Maybe it wasn’t a shooting star. Maybe it was an alien ship. Wishing on that would be fucking weird, Pipes—Piper?”
The happiness Piper was feeling a moment ago quickly festered into something nauseating. She’s plagued with memories of shooting stars and first kisses and other things she’s tried so hard to forget. She feels physically sick.
Leo places a tentative hand on her shoulder. Piper’s aware that she’s begun to shake slightly. “Piper, are you okay?”
Leo’s saying something but with the blood rushing in her ears it just sounds like warbled nonsense. Everything is spinning too, and it’s worse being so high up and suddenly Piper hates being on this roof.
“Spinning,” she gasps, squeezing her eyes shut. It hardly stops the swimming in her head.
“Shit, do you have vertigo?”
In an act of desperation, Piper smothers her face into Leo’s chest. He’s thrown off guard and falters slightly, but manages to regain his balance. That was dangerous, Piper thinks. She could’ve thrown them both off of the roof. She can’t think straight—she just wants the spinning to stop.
“Pipes, if you barf on me I’m going to disown you as my friend.” Despite the threat, he rubs comfortingly at her back. Piper wants to laugh, she truly does.
She knows it’ll pass. They always do eventually. Deep breaths. Slow breaths. Use her diaphragm.
“Maybe we should get down?” Leo suggests.
Piper shakes her head where it’s pressed against the fabric of his shirt, the slight motion triggering another wave a nausea. She swallows. “I need a few.”
Leo doesn’t argue, just continues rubbing comfortably at her back. Piper uses the warm sensation as a distraction from her upsetting thoughts. She’s grateful that he’s here right now, even though he doesn’t exactly understand what’s wrong.
Piper knows she’ll be fine. It’s already starting to subside. Her anxiety recedes into the dark and dismal part of her mind that it likes to hide in, until the next time Piper will let her guard down and it pounces on her like a predator to it’s prey.
Piper is pissed all of a sudden. Nauseous and pissed off. She was having fun. She was being carefree and irresponsible and having the time of her life like kids her age were supposed to do. Yet she can’t do it without darkness lingering in her shadow, breathing down her neck every second of it.
She sniffs, trying to hold back frustrated tears. Leo’s shirt smells like sweat and grease. She pulls away from him, wiping at her eyes. “I can’t believe I just smothered my face in your dirty ass shirt.”
Leo blinks, the shift in her demeanor giving him whiplash. “I spent ten minutes comforting you and the first thing you do is insult me? Next time you have vertigo I’m letting your dizzy ass stumble off this roof.”
Piper bursts out into laughter, leaning over and pressing a quick peck to Leo’s cheek as a thank you. She doesn’t correct him on the vertigo comment. Not tonight. “My face is totally gonna breakout now. I need one of Peyton’s emergency facemasks.”
“Piper, again, please stop hanging out with your siblings.”
It gets late. Time doesn't stop, not even for them. They come down eventually, they always do. The camp would have a field day if they woke up one morning and spotted the two of them on Cabin One’s roof.
Leo offers to walk Piper back to Cabin 10, and she doesn’t refuse. She pretends not to notice him eyeing her warily as they walk back to their cabins. He’s only concerned about her, and rightfully so. But Piper doesn’t want to talk about it.
They arrive at the foot her cabin’s porch steps. “This is my stop,” she whispers. Her siblings were heavy sleepers for the most part, but she didn’t want to take any chances.
“Until next Wednesday?”
Piper nods. They’ll see each other tomorrow most likely, but it’s not the same. They’ll be busy with their cabins, doing camp activities and taking care of their counselor responsibilities.
Piper watches as Leo walks the short distance across the green. Once he retreats inside his own cabin, Piper does the same. She tip-toes quietly inside and curls up in her bottom bunk, wanting to get the few hours of sleep she had left until the next day began.
(She doesn’t. Her ass hurts as expected. Behind her eyes distressing memories make a reappearance. Failed love she thought would last and boys she couldn’t save. Sleep does not fare her well at all.
But it’s alright. Nights like these were worth it.)