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Thalia Grace never had the chance to be one of those kids who spent time in libraries raising themselves. She had a baby brother and a drunk mother and when Thalia left the house it was for the grocery store where she could get food and soap. Just because she wasn't one of those lucky kids - the ones with less responsibility, gods Thalia wanted less responsibility, she was only a child - didn't mean that Thalia didn't dream about being one of those kids. She knew that libraries were magical places and it was Thalia's dream to one day go to one.
The reality of libraries was slightly different from what Thalia pictured in her head. There were a lot more people there and sometimes librarians wanted to know where your parents were and why you'd been in the building from open to close for three days in a row. Sometimes people caught Thalia and Luke taking whore baths in the bathroom sinks and complained about it. There wasn't much in the way of food, either, except the vending machines full of sugary snacks. Thalia would have killed for a plant to eat. Any plant, she didn't even care which one as long as it was edible. Possibly the worst part of the library was that it closed.
When Thalia was on her own, this was a problem. Now that she'd found Luke, there were no doors that were closed to her. Luke hated his powers, hated anything that tied him to Hermes in any way, and yet Luke was willing to use his powers for Thalia. Every time Luke caved and did what Thalia wanted, it sent a wave of…of something through her. She liked having Luke at her beck and call. Sometimes Thalia worried she was growing too dependent on him but it felt so nice to let Luke take care of her. Luke wasn't like Thalia's mom, he didn't make her feel like a burden just by existing. He liked doing things for Thalia.
When they left the library at close, Luke and Thalia didn't go far. They hid out in a spot they could see the front doors from and waited until the last person left. Quietly they crossed the empty parking lot and Luke softly asked the door to open for them. It did and they were inside. They left the lights off. Being demigods, both Thalia and Luke had good night vision and managed to not run into anything.
The library at night was a completely different place.
The mural on the wall - that was so big it had to be divided into sections - shivered into life. Suddenly the sounds of water and birdsong and animals moving through the brush could be heard. Thalia liked to sleep under the big mural and watch the painted animals walk around.
It made Luke skittish. Luke was always skittish though, like the neighbor’s puppy after a few months of being kicked around. Thalia didn't know who kicked Luke around and he ran from everything. He kept saying he wasn't scared of fighting monsters but she had yet to see him actually do it. And his nose was so good at detecting monsters that Luke was hardly ever caught by surprise, giving him - them - plenty of time to get away.
Thalia had fought monsters from the West Coast to the East Coast of the United States. They hounded her constantly and it wasn't uncommon for Thalia to see more than one a day. If anyone deserved to be skittish, it was Thalia.
Luke slept next to her, though, pressed in as close as he could get with the flesh still on their bones. Sometimes Thalia thought that Luke would burrow into her skin if she let him. His loneliness was matched by hers, which was why Thalia never minded that Luke snuggled up against her every night. Or that Luke couldn't stand to let her out of his sight.
They didn't always sleep double with their sleeping bags but in magic libraries, Luke insisted. “We don't know where that goes,” Luke said, pointing to the mural. It fascinated Thalia that he thought it was a portal to another place. Maybe it was. Luke had a sense for these things. “If we sleep double, they'll drag us both through at the same time.”
Thalia sighed loudly like she was put out by the thought but Luke looked so anxious about it that she tossed her sleeping bag at him so that he could zip them together.
Luke's relief was like a barb to Thalia's chest and she looked away because it made her so…angry. Not at him, but for him. No one should have to look so profoundly relieved to be sharing sleeping bags.
Luke finished zipping their sleeping bags together, then grabbed his backpack and jerked his chin for Thalia to follow him.
They bathed in the sinks in the bathroom, using soap from the dispenser and their hands to lather then rinse.
Thalia used to be embarrassed about bathing in the same room as Luke, naked beside Luke, but she got over it pretty fast. For one, Thalia used to bathe her baby brother and occasionally clean up her mother when Beryl was too drunk to take care of herself. So she didn't really mind seeing other people naked and Luke was nice to look at anyway.
For two…for two, Thalia wanted Luke to see her. She kept her secrets from him but that didn't stop the desire she felt for Luke from growing. It seemed to grow every day, making Thalia blush and burn and have to stop herself from touching Luke. She wanted to pull him close and…and…well, Thalia always told herself she'd figure that out once she got him close.
Frustratingly, Thalia couldn't tell if Luke shared these feelings because even though he watched her from the corner of his eye or in the reflection of the mirror, Luke always watched her. There didn't seem to be anything particularly heated about it while they were bathing compared to when they weren't.
When they were dried - thanks to both paper towels and hand blowers - and dressed in less dirty clothes, Luke coaxed snacks from the vending machine..which he put in their backpacks.
Thalia raised an eyebrow.
“I thought we could raid the fridge in the break room tonight,” Luke explained. The snacks would keep but anything that needed to be refrigerated wouldn't last more than a day or two at most. Which meant that in the morning, he was ready to move on from this library. Luke tended to get antsy if they rested their heads in the same place more than a few nights.
There was salad in the fridge, thank the gods. There was even salad dressing. Thalia set upon it greedily. She couldn't even be bothered to look for a fork first, eating it by the handful. For a while, Thalia's world narrowed down to the salad and nothing else.
Luke ate but she didn't know what and he was done before Thalia was. He looked through the fridge for anything that he wanted to take with them, quietly packing this and that away for future meals. Luke took care of their meals, which was just as well because Thalia was never that good at finding food for herself while she was on her own. She'd been eating out of dumpsters before Zeus guided her to Luke. Now she only ate out of dumpsters sometimes instead of for every meal.
Luke and Thalia wandered around the library, poking through their closets and cupboards for anything useful. Everything that Luke stole was carefully divided up into both packs, just in case they were separated.
Thalia didn't see how they could be separated. In the beginning, when they'd met, she had tried to leave to strike out on her own again. Other demigods could be dangerous because for some reason, none of them particularly liked each other, especially the older ones. Luke had two years on Thalia and even though he was built like a starving dog - skin tight over lean muscles and protruding bones - Luke had gone into a dragon's den hunting for a new weapon. Alone and with the expectation of coming out again.
They'd met in the dragon's den and afterwards Luke followed Thalia around for two weeks before she finally gave in and let him travel with her. “You only want to be around me because of my father!” Thalia had snapped. “You're hoping Zeus will give you attention or Bless you.”
Luke had looked at Thalia evenly, blue eyes gone dark, and spat, “Only fools want attention from Zeus.” And he was right. And he had stayed and Thalia had slowly learned how wrong her assumptions about Luke were. He didn't care about the gods - not even his own father, Hermes - he just wanted to be around her.
Looking back, Thalia wondered if that was when her crush on Luke began. With the knowledge that Luke wanted her and absolutely nothing to do with Zeus.
Even when their backpacks were stuffed full, Luke managed to slip in a couple of books. He was one of those demigods who liked reading despite his dyslexia being as bad as Thalia's was.
With their bellies full and their loot secure, it was finally time for bed.
Luke crawled into the big sleeping bag first. He laid on his side, facing out.
When he was settled, Thalia wiggled in beside him. She laid on her side with her back to Luke.
Why they did this when they'd both end up snuggling each other by morning was beyond Thalia but she just…she couldn't make herself hold him while they were awake and Luke never even tried. Annoyingly, Thalia thought it was because he was trying to be a gentleman.
In any case, Luke's back was warm against Thalia's and his steady breathing was comforting. She wasn't alone.
Thalia watched the mural move for a long while. “Hey, Luke,” she whispered.
“Hmm?” Came Luke's reply.
“Why do you think the mural is a portal?” Thalia asked.
There was a hitch in Luke's steady breathing, a moment where he held his breath. “Remember that lizard I found the first day here?”
The aforementioned lizard was just a tiny wild house lizard, the kind you saw everywhere sunning themselves on walls. It was small and skinny and a brownish-gray color. The tail was missing and in the process of regrowing. Luke caught it because he could - although he'd told her once that he used to eat lizards sometimes when he couldn't find anything else; this had been said with the mischievous smile Luke wore when he wanted to keep her guessing so it might have been a lie or it might have been the truth, Thalia still wasn't sure - and then they'd gone inside. The librarians didn't notice that Luke was holding a lizard and Thalia kind of forgot about it while they were browsing the stacks. She assumed Luke either let it go somewhere (or ate it) and put it from her mind.
“I remember,” Thalia said slowly. A new idea was beginning to form about where exactly Luke might have let it go.
“I put it in the mural that first night,” Luke said.
Thalia's heart skipped a painful beat as adrenaline flooded her system. She squeezed her eyes shut and clamped her hands into fists and told herself not to start getting staticy. If she started getting upset, it made her get staticy and then it was an easy slide into electric, which meant with their close quarters that Luke would get electrocuted…again. “What happened to it?”
“It's still there,” Luke said. “Not in the exact place I put it, but it's still in the mural. I saw it running around last night.”
A demigod or a god must have painted that mural. This wasn't exactly a surprise but Thalia didn't like hearing that living things could go into it. “What about during the day?”
“Nothing moves during the day,” Luke said. “The lizard looks like just another part of the mural.”
No wonder Luke was worried about sleeping so close. No wonder he wanted to move on from this library.
“I don't know if it's a portal or if it's a trap,” Luke added. “Nothing seems to come back out of the mural…but it's all animals in it so I don't know if they'd know to try.”
Thalia wanted to scream. She did not scream. She bit her cheeks until the urge died down and then she said, “Oh. Lovely.” Static raced up her arms and rolled down Thalia's back.
Luke hissed through his teeth as he felt it shock him. They were just tiny shocks, though, and he no longer moved away from those. “You can see why I wanted to sleep double.”
“I can,” Thalia said through gritted teeth. She was never going to sleep at this rate, not waiting for that mural to reach down and grab them. “You should have told me.”
Luke was silent for a long time and Thalia could practically hear him say ‘I tried but you wanted to sleep here and I can't tell you no so I didn't stop you.’ When he finally spoke, Luke only said, “You’re right but I wouldn't mind getting trapped in a magical mural with you, Thalia. Beats the alternatives. Besides,” Luke's voice held a smile in it now, “I like sleeping double with you.”
Oh gods, thank you for this dumb boy, Thalia prayed. Aloud she said, “Shut up and go to sleep, Luke.”
Luke briefly tipped his head back to press against hers, then he settled again and did fall asleep.
Thalia thought she'd stay up all night but the next thing she knew, the library was lightening around her and it was time to go before they opened. As they packed up their sleeping bags, Thalia glanced at the mural and saw the little lizard with the stumpy tail. Still there.