Chapter Text
Jason is almost bouncing like a kid when he sees Piper and Leo, he bounds forward and scoops the two of them up in a giant hug, accidentally lifting all three of them into the air.
“Easy there, tiger!” Leo squeaks as he feels his feet dangling a foot above the ground.
“Haha, sorry!” Jason lets them down gently. His sweater vest and his light blue cardigan caught itself in Piper's hair. “I’m just so excited to see you guys again, I haven’t seen you two since my graduation a few months ago. You guys are going to love my new place, and I can’t wait to show you guys around D.C. Nico and I went to Costco to get everything we need for Leo’s tacos, and we got a Julia Child cookbook. Guys,” he says seriously as he leads the two of them to his car. “I can’t wait to blow your socks off with the casseroles.”
Piper gags to Leo behind his back as they exchange an “ what kind of white bullshit is casserole? ” look between the two of them. But they’re good friends, so both of them decide to stomach whatever food that Jason will throw at them.
There was a dark spot in the sky and Leo doesn’t even blink as he snaps a finger and a bolt of fire strikes the attacking harpy and incinerates it into monster dust.
“I hope that’s not a cleaning harpy,” Jason says, “They’re gonna charge you if you accidentally killed a cleaning harpy.”
Piper shrugs, “Nah, that one was definitely trying to kill us.”
Jason happily takes their suitcases for them and tucks them into his minivan. “Sorry we only have one guest room, I went and bought dividers and an air mattress, no expenses were spared.”
He swerves as a car that ignored traffic lights almost hit them, and continues like nothing just happened. Then Jason resolutely continues to drive at the exact speed limit as the surrounding cars around them become increasingly frustrated at his textbook speed.
They arrive downtown in a nice neighborhood, and Jason neatly pulls into a parking space. Nico was already waiting for them outside, also looking vaguely excited at the prospect of giving Piper and Leo a house tour.
Leo gulps, he remembers Nico’s cabin, he really hopes that the two of them didn’t decorate their apartment with skeletons and coffins. Jason’s room was always neat and nice looking wherever he stayed, so their place should be normal, right?
Piper and Nico exchange their own bro handshake, and then Nico takes her suitcase for her and leads the rest of them inside the apartment building.
“Bats aren’t going to be flying out of the apartment, are they?” Leo asks, half jokingly.
“Come on,” Nico rolls his eyes. “I’m an adult, I’m not going to decorate my place like I did when I was 12. You two are going to be completely surprised at how it looks.”
Jason nods like a golden retriever. He taps the fingerprint activated lock their door had and flings it open, “Welcome!”
Piper and Leo gasp.
“What the fuck,” Leo can’t help but say.
“This looks amazing!” Piper pinches him, “Jason, Nico, you’ve done such a great job.”
They both beam brightly and guide their guests inside.
The Grace-Di Angelo household looks....bare. That’s the only way that Piper can describe it. The front door open into a living room with an open concept kitchen beyond it. To the side of the kitchen there’s a door that leads to a balcony. Between the countertop of the kitchen and the living room is a small rectangular table with four chairs around it and a decorative vase of flowers in the middle. There are four plates that have been set there, along with four red solo cups.
The living room was sparse, there’s a huge flatscreen TV with a neat stack of video games next to it. Next to it was a bright pink beanbag chair. There was a small couch that was obviously a pullout futon, and in between the couch and the TV was a wooden chest that Piper knows contained a variety of weapons, charms, and other mythical paraphernalia.
There’s no end table, the huge TV was lying on the ground, and there’s another two red solo cups full of suspicious looking liquid on the wooden chest.
“Here,” Nico picks up the cups and shoves them at Piper and Leo, “Have some ice tea.”
“Thank you...” Piper almost chokes on the lukewarm “ice” tea when her eyes were drawn to the Wall. It was right behind the couch, and it led to a corridor that she assumes had the bedrooms and bathroom. And it was. A Wall.
Leo looks at it as well and tries to articulate. “So. That’s. Um. Jason. Tell us about this.”
It’s horrific and creepy, that’s the only way that Piper can describe it. She remembers the picture of Thalia that Jason took around with him throughout his stint in boarding school and during his stay in his Roman frat in college. But here? An entire wall was filled entirely with huge blown up photos of Thalia and Hazel. It looks like a stalking serial killer’s moodboard.
“This is my idea,” Jason says proudly, “A lot of people have family portraits on their walls, right? So I was talking to Nico about decorating the place, and he saw that I only have one photo of Thalia printed out. Well, Nico didn’t have any pictures of Hazel and Bianca printed out. So I said, I know a guy in New Rome, let’s get more photos of our sisters, and the guy can print and frame everything for us at a good price.” He points at a black and white photo of a young girl looking straight at the camera. “We even found the passport photo of Bianca.”
“Jason has so many interior decorating ideas,” Nico says. “He came up with the idea of making the quest chest the living room table.” He waves his hands around, “Who even thinks like that? That’s genius.”
Leo takes a sip of his tea as he sees that Nico was one hundred percent serious.
He raises an eyebrow at Piper to say, Don’t you wish we got hotel rooms instead?
She nervously grins back, Be nice.
“Oh!” Nico jogs to the kitchen and opens the refrigerator. “You guys must be hungry.”
He brings out a neon green jello with hot dog sausages, lettuce, bell pepper, and what looks to be tomatoes suspended inside it.
“The casserole is still being baked in the oven, but Jason made an appetizer and it just finished setting.”
“Oh that’s okay, there’s hot dogs there so I can’t eat it,” Piper says, “Leo would love it though, he’s so hungry.”
“Piper!” Jason looks hurt, “Of course I used vegan hot dogs. I always look out for you.”
“Oh but, uh, the gelatin in jello is-”
“Pipes,” Jason is a kind, understanding, generous friend who protects his pack against all dangers and is ready to lay down his life for any of them. “Of course I used vegan jello. Don’t you worry.”
Nico had brought the jello out onto the small dining room table and is already plating four slices of the green abomination. Leo notices with a sickening twist in his stomach that there was a can of whip cream next to him.
“Whip cream anyone?” he asks, about to add another layer of nightmare onto the monstrosity that Piper and Leo were about to force themselves to ingest.
They shake their heads and try not to throw up as Nico shrugs and gives his and Jason’s plates a generous dose.
Piper notices that the kitchen is spotless, but that there’s no dishrags- oh- is that- she sees an abandoned shirt that hangs over the oven handle that Nico just used to wipe his freshly washed hands on. It looks clean, but that was a shirt!
She glances at the sink and sighs with relief when she finds that the guys did have a sponge and dish soap. Piper tries to fill her mind with thoughts as she mechanically chomps down on the disgusting jello dish and swallows.
“This is really good, Jason,” she lies. “Um, you know, I just want to thank you two for letting us crash here while we have business. So why don’t you guys let me and Leo take over cooking for this week.”
“Yes!” Leo cuts in, “I’ll cook! I’ll cook every single day, breakfast, lunch, and dinner!”
Both Nico and Jason look extremely touched.
“That’s nice, Leo,” Nico says, “I know you want to make your signature tacos, but I can’t let a guest cook that much while I’m hosting.”
“The book says that that’s a faux pas,” Jason adds in. “We’re trying to establish a routine, so we have to follow basic etiquette. I’m looking forward to taco night tomorrow, but I can’t put the burden of cooking on you guys when you’re visiting.”
And that’s when Piper decided that she had to cheat. She’d been so good at not letting charmspeak creep into her everyday conversations with friends, but if she had to choose between living with the idea of manipulating the trust of people she loved versus having to sit through more of Jason’s cooking, sorry but she chooses to be the villain.
“Jason,” she purrs, letting her magic flow into her words like sweet honey, “We’re all best friends here. We’ve saved each other’s lives countless times. Let us take the burden off of you and Nico. If you tell Nico that I’m sure he’ll agree that a little bending of etiquette means nothing between friends like us.”
Piper had gotten so good at charmspeak that Nico’s not able to notice anything, and Jason listens to her before turning to Nico to shrug and tell him that they can take Piper and Leo out to dinner most nights so that they don’t need to cook as much.
Nico hesitates, but eventually nods at Jason’s suggestion.
Piper and Leo gulp down their “snack” before Jason leads them to their guestroom.
Leo wonders if he’s gotten soft since the days when he was able to sleep just about anywhere after running from foster home to foster home. It’s a sign of progress, that Jason and Nico’s apartment of nightmarish frat bro aesthetic (they have a dartboard! They’re using old tshirts as handtowels in the fucking bathroom as well and they have a dartboard!) horrified him as much as it did. But then he remembers that Jason has only ever lived in school dorms, military barracks, and his miserable Cabin One room, and that Nico practically lived on the streets for a number of years before settling down into his emo inspired Cabin Thirteen.
Leo gives Jason a tight grin as he sees the guest room. There’s a clinical white divider between the bed and an air mattress. And that was it. There’s nothing else in the room. There’s a walkin closet that Jason told them they can hang their clothes in, and a guest bathroom.
The bed is made with a fitted sheet cover, one sad blanket, and one pillow, and the air mattress is the same. Piper explores the bathroom and she finds two toothbrushes, a toothpaste, toilet paper, and two bottles of soap in the shower. One was a bodywash, and the other was a two in one shampoo-conditioner.
The bathroom drawers are filled with a mountain of menstrual pads, tampons, and an entire row of menstrual discs and cups.
“Oh that!” Jason looks proud, “I don’t know how much you use during your period, so we just got everything. Just in case.”
“Aw,” Piper feels genuinely touched, even though she’s so glad that she brought her own toiletries. “This is so sweet, Jason. Tell Nico thanks as well.”
“Anything for you, Pipes! Plus, when we get more defensive charms in this place, we want to make this into a safehouse for the younger demigods as well,” Jason says. “I want this place to be as homey and comfortable as possible. That’s why we’ve been trying our best with decorations and plates, and everything. We bought a matching set of plates, bowls and cups from Ikea.” He then points to the bottles in the shower. “And Nico’s the one who suggested separate soaps for bodywash and hair, rather than the all in one that we use.”
“Well, when I was in the position of running from place to place, all I wanted was warm food, a bed, and understanding hosts, and you guys fit that to a T,” Leo says diplomatically.
Jason beams, “Thanks, I love you guys, man. Go get some rest, I have to prepare the rest of dinner.”
He leaves Piper and Leo to their bare room, and closes the door behind him.
“I-” Leo sits on the bed. “I honestly don’t know what to say.”
“It makes sense if you think about it,” Piper responds and plops down next to him. “All of Jason’s rooms came furnished for him, and Nico probably had help when he designed his cabin as well. And the two of them have only had communal living and dining. So now that the two of them are living together, there’s no one to tell them that they need things like hand towels, and cabinets, and just. Everything.”
“So, are we going to do anything about this?”
Piper thinks back to how excited both Jason and Nico were about their current living situation, and even back to that horrifying wall of Sister Photos.
“I think they can figure it out on their own. It’ll be a nice journey for them. But when we leave I’m going to list out of things they need to have for the guestroom, because this-” she gestures around the room, “-is not going to be comforting for your average nervous demigod on the run.”
There’s a ding from the kitchen.
“Dinners ready!” Nico’s voice calls out.
Piper and Leo look at each other as they brace themselves.
“This is making me more nervous fighting against monsters,” Leo says, “and that’s before my powers suddenly leveled up.”
“They’re our friends, and we love them. Remember that,” Piper breathes. “We love them.”
The two repeat the mantra, slap on a polite smile, and open the door to meet their destiny.
........
Hazel looks at the wall, her face frozen in time as Nico and Jason wait for her response.
“Well?” Nico prompts her.
“I-” She’s trying to find the right words. Her own eyes stare out at her, multiple of them, multiples of her face and her portraits stare out into the distance from that horrifying, horrifying wall. “I don’t know what to say.”
Nico grimaces, “Is it because there’s one more picture of Thalia than you? I’ll put up one more picture of you.”
“You have two sisters, I only have one, if we put up one more picture of Hazel then Thalia’s outnumbered.”
“Are we having this conversation again? In front of Hazel? You’re going to embarrass me like this?”
Hazel tuned out their argument as she tries to digest the sight of the Sister Wall in front of her. Although, by the time she tuned back in, the two of them seemed to have made up already.
Nico leans into Jason as they discuss more picture placements.
“We’ll find more pictures of Bianca, alright?” Jason had taken to slowly rubbing circles into Nico’s shoulders.
“Okay, but if Hazel feels offended that she doesn’t have enough photos on here...”
“I’m fine!” She says loudly. “Completely fine with this! You don’t need to put more photos of me on here!”
She gingerly takes off a photo that was just her sleeping face- she remembers this, this was from a group photo taken during a sing along at Camp Halfblood. Someone had taken a candid and she’d already fallen asleep at the time. Nico must have asked for the group photo, isolated her part, and then blown up the picture to be large enough to fit into a normal frame.
“I love this one so much, can I keep it?”
“Of course!” Jason gestures for her to take it. “We have plenty. Oh!” He rushes into his room and runs out with something rectangular in his hands. Hazel prays to her father that it wasn’t one more photo of her.
Jason flips it over, and they see that it’s a crude, homemade sign made of what looked like driftwood.
He proudly hangs it on the spot where Hazel’s sleeping picture used to be.
“Wow,” Nico says, leaning against Hazel. “Look at that.”
She smiles softly. “It’s perfect.”
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