Work Text:
Dear diary,
he loves me
1 month, and 8 days.
Dear diary,
he loves me not
28 days
Dear diary,
he loves me
20 days, and 5 hours
Dear diary
he loves me not
17 days, and 6 hours.
Dear diary
he loves me
1 week and 2 hours
Percy is having a very uninteresting day. Which he supposes should make him happy since those are far and few between in his life. But something about the weather—windy and bone chilling, despite the shining sun— is putting him on edge. He's never wanted to go home and wrap himself in a blanket and call his boyfriend more. He can imagine it now, that soothing voice rumbling about something completely mundane. Jason won't even demand a reply of him. He'll just be content to talk softly about anything and listen to Percy's hum of agreement every so often.
He walks into his psych lecture, groaning internally when he remembers its a double, and for the first time since he was twelve years old he wishes anything would spurt from the depths of Tartarus, so he can fight it. The day has in fact been that unexciting.
Instead he finds a seat somewhere in the middle and puts his head down to the cool wood of the table. The wood is scratched in pen and engravings that mark students long since gone into the world. His finger traces fading words absent-mindedly, bumping across "She loves him she loves him not," scraped deep into the table, a dying daisy hanging over it.
The story he imagines comes to him in a flash.
He pulls out his diary, the black leather-bound book falling in front of him with a thud. Scrambling for a pen, he clicks once twice, three times.
Dear Diary,
They start at an arcade. Beating each other at whack-a-mole. Giving each other hard-won prizes. They share an ice-cream. Mint choc chip and vanilla. They have a story to tell at the wedding they keep dreaming up. They go to high school. They see each other in the halls and smile like sunshine. They go on summer break and pick daisies, pluck at them until there's nothing but stem. They start college. And the flowers they'd picked that one summer evening bleed into the wooden table where the memory of them would live forever. They pass each other across the fields. They don't say hello. They never said goodbye.
he loves me not
1 week, and 48 minutes.
Percy's hands are shaking slightly by the time he puts the pen down. The lecture hall is almost full by now, and the shuffling of last minute feet slide across his mind. He stuffs the diary back in his bag and twirls the pen around his finger. The class is antsy with the need to feel the weekend on their skin. Friday afternoon lectures always make people climb to the highest distractions. A group is chatting animatedly two rows above. A girl with wings etched into her skin sits one seat down and diagonal from him, frowning at the highlights on her page; her leg taps to the beat of "I want to go". On the other side there are people slurping coffee and gobbling down fries as they attempt to polish off the last of their lunch. Some in the front rows have their textbooks open, a hesitantly bored look on their faces. A guy in the very first row perks up every-time the door swings open; he is waiting for the lecturer; he doesn't want to get out of this he wants to get through it.
Percy drops his head back in his arms and takes deep stale breaths. He just has to survive 45 minutes. That's only three fifteen minutes, or four and a half ten minutes, or nine five minutes. He just has to get through five minutes nine times. He can do that. He got through Tartarus once and that's actually hell.
The lecture room door swings and when it clicks shut it feels more final. He doesn't bother to look up as the class slowly quiets to something resembling a humming beehive.
"Good afternoon," The professor begins. He hears the door open, and knows someone is trying to be careful as they slip in late. They sit down at the end of his row. He doesn't see them but he knows they're there. He can feel their presence like gentle heat and curiosity. He's too tired to look.
"Today were focusing on the executive functions and how their damage can affect our psychology."
Percy drifts in and out of focus as the professor drones on, mentioning memory and attention and dementia and recall. Words float around in his head. He can't catch any of them. He should probably try. He doesn't.
"Can anyone tell me why we can sometimes encode things but then not recall them?"
Hands go up all over the room. He knows the answer but since so many others do, it doesn't matter if he puts his hand up.
"Yes, in the green shirt, with the blonde hair." The professor calls.
"It may be because the retrieval methods we're trying to use may not work for that type of information or—"
Percy freezes in time. He goes back to the dinosaurs. He goes forward to the end. He becomes the entirety of the present itself.
Slowly, every so slowly he turns his head. And there, his row partner several seats away, in an emerald green shirt and golden hair swept into something resembling angelic, is Jason Grace.
He sputters, chokes on his disbelief, the shock tightens around his lungs.
The blonde finishes his answer and then turns to look directly at Percy. And everything in that lecture hall becomes mist.
There is no-one around them, there is nothing. There is only grey and flashes of lightning and the distant sound of an ocean.
"Hello baby," Jason whispers, floating towards him, setting himself down on his table.
"You're here." This can't be real. This is Hera playing tricks. This is his mind finally too exhausted to keep the disillusion at bay. This is not real.
And hand, warm and gentle, cups Percy's cheek. And he knows nothing has ever been more real in his life.
"You're here." He whispers, he can't say it enough. "Why are you here? You aren’t supposed to be here till next week."
Jason presses their foreheads together, somewhere around them lightning strikes. It mirrors in those blue eyes. "You were getting bad again."
He always knows. He always knows. Three thousand miles apart and he knows.
"I wasn't." Percy shakes his head, hands finding indents on strong thighs. "I was just missing you."
"Your eyes are dark, like undergrowth, like dying seaweed." Those slim fingers cup his jaw, tilting his head from side to side. "Where are the oceans that live there?“
"The nightmares," He sighs, "They're bad."
"How long?" The question is simple but it makes Percy's heart screech to a stop.
"Four weeks."
"Oh baby," Jason's eyes shatter, "Why didn't you tell me?"
"There's nothing we can do." His shoulders are shaking, he doesn't quite know if he's crying, he wouldn't be surprised. "But you're here and right now that's all that matters."
"Let's leave for a little while." Jason whispers into his skin.
"Where?"
"You and your mom still have that cabin in Montauk?"
He nods, breathing in the scent of fresh rain and jasmine soap. The scent of his boyfriend. The scent of safety.
"Lets go there." The blonde is saying. "We'll come back the day before your birthday so you can spend it with the family, but let's escape before that."
“Okay," He doesn't even hesitate.
"Really, you'll go?" Jason squeezes his shoulder, excitement shining in his eyes.
"Anywhere in the world as long as its with you." He kisses his boyfriend. Soft and sweet and thank you spread across their tongues.
"Want to finish this lecture?" The blonde mumbles against his mouth.
Percy snorts, already shoving stationery into his bag. "Let's have an adventure, Jason Grace."
"Let's."
They escape through the haze, horses already forming from storms itself, and become everything the world has to offer.
And when the mist in the lecture room clears there's a single row empty and a new engraving in the wooden table.
Our love is not daisies it is entire gardens.
Dear diary,
he loves me
Now.