Chapter Text
Jason held a hand out against the wall to steady himself. Spinning. The room was spinning.
'Of all the things to remember,' he thought, disbelieving, 'Why now?'
Gingerly avoiding the puddle of puke he'd made when the memory had come rushing back, Jason made his way back to his bed. He collapsed onto the mattress and pulled the blanket over his face, wishing he could block out memories as easily as light, or perhaps that the floor of the cabin would open up and devour him.
Either one would have worked for Jason at that moment.
He'd been laying there for what felt like hours, staring at the light filtered through his blanket (because when he closed his eyes, he saw it), when his solitude was interrupted by a knock on the door...
"Hey Jason! You ok in there? Your swordfighting lesson's been waiting almost half an hour!"
...and the absolute last voice he wanted to hear right then.
Before he could do much more than uncover his face, the door to Cabin One swung open and in stepped one Perseus Jackson.
"Jason are you-whoa!" The son of Poseidon noticed the vomit on the floor, and then Jason's face (which must have looked terrible). "Dude, are you ok?"
"I, uh..."
"Sorry, dumb question. You need some help getting to the infirmary?"
Jason shook his head. "No. I'm just...gonna stay in today."
Percy nodded. "Yeah, ok. I'll take your class for the day, and tell everyone you're not feeling well. Get some rest, man."
He left the cabin, shutting the door gently behind him, and leaving Jason alone with one mortified thought.
'It was you. It was your name. He was calling your name.
He ended up staying inside for the rest of the day. Come morning, he knew it was time to face the world. More than that, he knew that he couldn't deal with something like this on his own. He needed help.
Piper was out. One night stands were not something you discussed with ex-girlfriends. Also, she'd want more details than he really felt like giving. Same with Leo. No, for a horrifying romantic secret, there was only one person Jason could go to.
"Nico, I need your help."
They'd been on their way to the dining pavilion after morning workout when he'd seen the son of Hades. He'd kept Nico's secret and tried to offer help, and he hoped the other boy would be willing to do the same.
Nico shrugged. "Sure. Can it wait until after lunch, or...?"
Jason grimaced. "Actually, is there any way we could go somewhere else?" He did not want anyone overhearing this. "My treat?"
The dark-haired boy fixed with a suspicious look. "Sure..." He led Jason to a darkened closet in the Big House. Judging it to be sufficiently dark to shadow travel, he shut them inside and grabbed Jason's arm.
"All aboard," he quipped, as they melted into the darkness.
They emerged an uncertain distance away, in a narrow crevice between a brick wall and what looked like a prefab shed.
"Where did you bring us?" Jason asked, noticing the cloudy sky. It had been sunny back in Long Island.
"Outside Boise," Nico replied, "I found it when I was on the run after I left camp the first time. They have great fries." It still amazed Jason how far his friend had come, that he could refer to that time without so much as a frown. Also that he could bring them across the continent without fainting.
There didn't seemed to be many customers, so they were able to seat themselves well away from anyone else, with a window looking out on a parking lot and a closed video rental place across the street. A tired but polite waitress took their orders, and soon the two were looking silently at each other across the empty table.
"Sooo...?" Nico prompted after a long moment.
"So what?"
"You asked me here? Said you needed my help? Wanted to do it outside camp? Is this ringing any bells at all?"
"Oh. Right." Moment of truth. "What can you tell me about Luke Castellan?"
Nico's eyebrows shot up. "Luke? I don't...he was our enemy? Betrayed camp, joined Kronos, took it back and then died. Everyone else was very sad, but I didn't really know him. Percy or Annabeth could tell you more, or, you know, your sister. She knew him a million years ago or something."
"No!" Jason gasped. "I-I mean, no, I don't wan't to, er, dredge up bad memories for them." Thalia and Annabeth should never find out about this in any way. Not while Jason was still alive, anyway.
"Ok, what is up with you?" Nico asked, clearly irritated, "You didn't drag me away from camp just to buy me lunch and and be evasive. Spill."
Their food bought Jason a momentary respite. The waitress set their plates before them, along with two milkshakes. They both thanked her and she retreated to the counter as they dug in.
Respite over.
Jason sighed and poked at his burger. "I guess...you know how Juno took my memories before I came to camp?" Nico nodded. "Well, I never really got them all back. Sometimes, I'll just be siting there and then I'll remember something, something I had no idea had ever happened. Like at my fifteenth birthday, when Gwen...ah that doesn't matter, you get the point."
Nico nodded, swallowing a french fry.
"Well, yesterday...I got another one back."
"Yesterday?" Nico bit down on another fry (they really were good) "Is this why you were sick?"
"Yeah. I just...couldn't deal."
"So, you got a memory, and now you wanna know about Luke? Is this about the Titan war?"
"No, I mean sort of. Maybe?" Jason took off his glasses and rubbed at his eyes. "See, a few years ago I did something...stupid."
"What kind of stupid?" Nico asked, eyebrow raised, "Like, 'Leo at karaoke night' stupid, or 'turning out the light by shooting the switch' stupid?"
"In hindsight?" Jason looked down at his hands, "Lightswitch."
Nico whistled. "Ok. Well, we all make mistakes. What'd you do?"
"I snuck away from Camp Jupiter and had a drunken one night stand."
That obviously hadn't been what Nico had ben expecting to hear. He'd dropped his burger, his arm hung frozen in the air in front of him and his jaw had practically hit the table.
The son of Hades snapped his mouth closed and narrowed his eyes. He leaned in to examine Jason, looking for even the slightest hint of humor.
He found none.
"You...aren't joking."
Jason buried his face in his hands.
"How...why...how...when?
"It was about a year before Mt. Othrys," Jason answered.
"When you killed Krios?"
"Yeah."
"But..." A troubled look crossed Nico's face, "You wouldn't have been more than thirteen!"
"Fourteen," Jason corrected him sharply.
"Fourteen. Because that's clearly so much better!" Jason hadn't seen his friend look this upset since they'd parted ways in Greece. "How'd you even manage that at fourteen?"
"A fake ID and and a really shitty bouncer."
"Merda!" Jason wasn't sure what that meant, but he felt like it was bad. "So you're saying...tell me you aren't saying what I think you're saying!
"Yesterday I was looking at some of the pictures Thalia left in our cabin. I'd seen them a hundred times but yesterday...I recognized one." He inhaled. "It was Luke."
"Uuuugggghhh!" Nico grabbed the side of his head as though he was in pain. He closed his eyes for a moment, before suddenly wrenching them open and fixing Jason with a concerened look. "He didn't...did he make you-"
"No!" Jason interjected before Nico could finish the question. "No, he was..." He blushed a little at the memory, "He was really nice, actually."
"Yes, I'm sure he was," Nico said, voice full of venom, "Very nice to the fourteen-year-old boy he got drunk and took advantage of."
"Actually...more like I was the one taking advantage," Jason said hesitantly.
"I doubt that, but go on."
"Look, back then, I was...not the happiest. I felt like I wasn't allowed to be anything but the perfect son of Jupiter. I felt like if I didn't let myself do something really stupid I'd go insane. So I took a weekend off, and went into the city. Found a sleazy nightclub, and a really handsome stranger and..." His blush deepened. "I made my mistake."
"Yes," Nico's tone was icy, "That's romantic and all, but it doesn't change the fact that Luke was into his twenties. He was an idiot about a lot of things but I would've thought he'd have a little more sense that to take a drunk teenager home. I'm surprised he--wait, did he know? About, y'know, you?"
Jason shook his head, "No. I thought he was mortal. He must've thought the same about me."
"Yeah," Nico agreed, "If he'd known, you probably wouldn't have left that hotel room."
"Hey! I could've taken him!" Jason rebutted.
Nico just shook his head. "Don't be so sure about that," he said as he put his hamburger back together, "Even with the mark of Achilles, Percy had trouble."
And there it was. "Y'know..." Jason dragged a fry through his ketchup, "It's actually funny you should mention Percy..."
*CLUNK*
Jason looked up to see Nico's milkshake lying on its side where he'd dropped it. The boy cursed again and righted the glass, wiping up the spill with a napkin.
"He didn't." Nico did not look up at him.
"He did. I don't think he even realized. But yeah, he did.
"Of course." The son of Hades looked nothing so much as annoyed. "I mean, that's what you do, isn't it? You get someone's trust, then you spend years trying to kill him, and then you pick up teenage boys and scream his name while you fuck 'em." Now it was Nico's turn to bury his face in his hands. "Jesus, Luke, you had problems."
Another silence filled the air between them.
"It's actually kind of funny," Jason offered after a few minutes had passed.
"I fail to see how."
"Well, turns out Juno wasn't the first one to use me as a replacement Percy." Jason cracked a grin.
"Huh. That is a little funny," Nico smiled back, "In a monumentally messed up way."
"No argument there."
They sat there for a while, business in the diner picking up around them. Nico trying to process everything he'd heard, and Jason trying to figure out how to ask the next question.
Nico beat him to it.
"Don't tell him."
"Wouldn't you want to know?" This was the hard part. Jason didn't have anyone like Luke in his past, not in that way. He wasn't sure what do with what he now knew about the man.
"I might," Nico conceded, "But then I might not. I don't know. Luke was a big part of Percy's life. He'd never say it, but he feels bad about how things ended. He feels guilty about surviving. Knowing this...it might not be good for him. Unless telling him will help you deal with this, I'd leave it be."
It wouldn't help him, Jason knew that. It had been forever ago, and he'd talked about it. He knew how he felt: Not so great in hindsight, but there was no way to change it, and no point regretting it; He'd still gotten what he'd wanted, after all. There was really no pressing need to open anyone else's old wounds. But if the positions were different...
"I'd want to know." He declared. " And I think he would too. I'm alright with what happened back then. But this. This feels too much like a lie."
Nico gave a helpless shrug.
"Then it sounds like you have a choice to make."