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On the morning of July first, Jason woke up with a grin, already breathless with excitement. Jason didn’t normally consider himself a “morning person” – he did frequently wake up bright and early, but it was always a struggle and against his will – but today was a special occasion. Today was worth waking up for because today was the day he turned sixteen.
Birthdays hadn’t exactly been a highlight for Jason before. His first fourteen birthdays were only ever marked by splitting a gas station cupcake with Thalia and maybe getting to pick what they had for dinner, if their mom was in a charitable mood. His fifteenth birthday had been spent at his father’s house after his mom had lost custody of him. He’d been alone, no sister, no mom, no father, no cupcakes. Just him and the knowledge that he’d been uprooted from the only home he’d ever known and that no one could be bothered to remember he existed.
But this year was going to be different. For the first time in Jason’s life he felt stable. He had friends who cared about him, and a boyfriend who made him feel like he could fly. And he knew that his friends cared about birthdays. Each and every one of them was celebrated like the world was going to end if they didn’t. Even Nico, who more often than not pretended like he was allergic to any emotion other than ambivalence, had been roped into a party at McDonalds where he and Leo had claimed dominion over the PlayPlace, seeing as they were the only ones still short enough to be allowed inside. That hadn’t stopped Percy from trying, of course, but he admitted defeat after Annabeth and Piper had been forced to unjam him from the tunnel slide he’d tried to crawl up.
Jason wasn’t sure what to expect for his birthday (maybe they’d all go to the movies? Or maybe something as simple as a picnic in the park to take advantage of the beautiful summer weather?) but he figured it didn’t matter. He’d love it no matter what they chose to do because he’d be doing it with them. With his heart hammering in his chest, he shoved on his glasses and reached for his phone, ready for the flood of messages that were sure to await him.
He found nothing.
Jason blinked at the screen, brain still foggy from sleep, as he tried to process what he was seeing. He pulled up his texts, convinced that he’d actually woken up earlier, read the messages, fallen back asleep, and forgot it all. Nothing. He refreshed it just in case, and the little notification of No new messages blinked at him mockingly. He shut his phone off and restarted it. Still nothing.
Jason flopped back and stared at the ceiling in hurt confusion. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d woken up to an empty inbox. His friends were up at all hours of the night, sending group messages, not caring in the slightest that half of said group chat was asleep at any given moment. Ever since he’d started dating Leo two and a half months ago, Leo liked to stay up past when he knew Jason was asleep, then send an incredibly cheesy good morning text, along with an obscure (and only debatably true) fun fact. But not today. Leo had broken that seventy-three day streak on Jason’s birthday.
Jason swallowed thickly and forced himself to his feet. There was an explanation, there had to be, but he wasn’t going to figure it out if he just laid in bed and wallowed in self-pity. So he got up, did his morning stretches, washed his face, and dressed with mechanical precision. Any time his thoughts drifted to his friends or his hauntingly empty phone, he grit his teeth and focused on the next step.
The house was uncomfortably, but unsurprisingly silent as Jason made his way down the stairs. It had been a bitter pill to swallow at first, but Jason eventually realized that his father preferred to spend far more time “away on business” than he did at home. Sometimes, Jason wondered why his father had even bothered with getting custody of Jason, but the thought made him queasy, so he avoided it when he remembered to.
As expected, his father had a note placed on the center of the refrigerator door using the one singular magnet he allowed in his kitchen. It was the same as always: a rough itinerary on when he planned to be home, a list of chores he wanted Jason to complete before he returned, and a stern reminder of the house rules Jason had never even come close to breaking, typed out in black 12 point EB Garamond Semi Bold. Only this note was ever so slightly different. There was a worn, wrinkled fifty dollar bill paper clipped to it and a hastily scrawled post script at the bottom.
Happy birthday.
That was it, and Jason knew not to expect anything more from his father. Not a call, not a text, certainly not a gift wrapped in colorful paper. Just a bill pulled from his wallet at the last moment and two words at the bottom of a list of demands. Jason kinda wished his father hadn’t bothered at all. At least then he could assume he had just been forgotten instead of having proof that his father didn’t care.
Jason just ripped the note off the fridge and wadded it up for the trash without even reading it. He’d deal with whatever punishment his father invented for failing his little quest, assuming he even remembered. It wasn’t like he ever noticed when Jason actually met all of his demands. He considered throwing the money away too before he stuffed it in his pocket, figuring he could take Leo out to get pizza that afternoon, or do something else he knew his father wouldn’t approve of.
Assuming Leo would want to, that is.
The thought snuck up on Jason, biting with teeth sharp enough to make him flinch, but he kicked it into submission as he readied himself a bowl of instant oatmeal. He had no real reason to think Leo wouldn’t want to go have pizza with him. Leo loved… pizza. The fact that he’d forgotten to send a stupid text wasn’t going to change that fact.
There were plenty of reasons why his friends had functionally abandoned him on his birthday, Jason decided as he shoved a spoonful of bland lukewarm mush into his mouth. Maybe nobody even knew that it was Jason’s birthday. He was almost certain that he’d told them, but “almost” left room for doubt. He could have very easily just assumed he’d brought it up at some point and never actually done it. Or maybe he had said it and he’d just mumbled it and everyone thought he said July thirty first. There were so, so many perfectly reasonable scenarios that perfectly explained his friends’ absence without coming to the conclusion that they’d unanimously decided overnight to drop him like hot garbage. He was fine. His friends didn’t hate him. He was fine.
Right?
Jason let out a frustrated growl from the depths of his chest, scrubbing his fingers through his hair. He needed to get out of this stupid, stifling tomb of a house he’d hated since he’d first laid eyes on it. He needed to get away from his phone that echoed empty promises like a long-abandoned cave. He needed to get out to find somewhere he could breathe. Without stopping to think twice, to maybe find a more grounded, less reactionary response, Jason shoved on his tennis shoes and tore off through the back door, not even bothering to lock it.
The one and only good thing about his father’s house was that it backed right up onto the woods, and Jason had taken advantage of this on many occasions. He liked the woods, he felt more at home there than he ever did in his father’s house. In fact, he’d spent every night of his father’s first business trip sleeping beneath the trees. He liked being outside where he didn’t have to be anyone or anything. Nature didn’t care if he’d been yanked out of his sister’s arms to live, essentially, alone. It didn’t care about grades or chores or school drama. It didn’t care that he turned sixteen today and he was all alone.
And right now, Jason needed, more than anything, to not care.
So he ran. He kept to his usual paths, not exactly eager to wind up on the back of a milk carton, even in his current mood. He still kept running, though, even when his thighs ached, even when his breath stitched in his chest. He ran and ran until all of his thoughts were filled with white noise and he was nothing more than an extension of the woods, just another animal running on nothing but instinct.
He ran for nearly two hours straight when he finally had to slow down for a break, heart hammering in his ears and exhaustion seeping into his bones. He was slowly pacing back and forth, fingers laced behind his head as he sucked in deep, panting lungfuls of air when he heard it. A twig snapped nearby and Jason froze. There wasn’t anything in the woods big enough to make that noise. Not this close to the house, at any rate. He slowly turned and scanned his surroundings. Everything was still. Everything was quiet.
Except that.
A bush, dense enough to hide in, rustled, and Jason narrowed his eyes. He slowly approached, but before he could get close enough to investigate, his target bolted.
Jason didn’t hesitate. Couldn’t really. His epinephrine and cortisol levels were too high for anything involving the front half of his brain. He saw something move and his hindbrain reared up and howled CHASE before he could think better of it.
Whatever Jason was chasing was fast and it knew it, but more importantly, it was agile. It raced ahead, weaving between trees and taking sharp turns that left Jason skidding in the dirt for a moment. It ran out far enough ahead that Jason lost sight of it more than once. It probably could have gotten away, but it was noisy, crashing through branches and the like and practically screaming its location. Jason would have thought it was sloppy, but it was too deliberate. Coordinated.
Then, suddenly, the chase ended. Jason’s target came to a complete standstill at the edge of a clearing, open and vulnerable, like it was just waiting to be caught. The more structured part of Jason’s conscience started screaming about traps, but it was too late, Jason had already launched himself forward, tackling his prey to the ground.
They tumbled over one another until they came to a grassy stop with Jason pinning the other firmly to the ground, and there was a loud wheeze followed by a breathless, “I did not account for the two hundred and ninety pounds when I came up with this plan.”
Jason blinked the haze out of his eyes and furrowed his brow. “Leo?”
“Hey, babe,” Leo grinned up at him, his voice still winded but just as steady and bright as it ever was. His curly hair was splayed out around his face like a messy halo. His eyes sparkled and he looked like he was exactly where he wanted to be, but he still wiggled and tugged at where Jason had his wrists pinned. “You’re really fucking heavy, you know that?”
“I’ve been told once or twice. Mostly by you,” Jason confirmed, sitting back and pulling Leo up with him, patting him down to make sure there were no injuries from the tumble. “What were you thinking? I could have hurt you.”
“Nah, I’d have been fine, I knew you wouldn’t do anything,” Leo dismissed with a wave of his hand. “Besides, I had to get you out here some way or another.”
Jason frowned. “Why would you–”
“SURPRISE!”
The shout came from all around them and Jason instinctively yanked Leo closer, ignoring the fact that Leo was just laughing directly into his chest. He looked around the clearing to find that somehow during his hunt he’d managed to miss a whole table of freezer-aisle snacks and carefully stacked pyramids of the weird off-brand fruit punch soda Jason liked so much and there were balloons and picket signs scattered everywhere that all read HAPPY BIRTHDAY JASON! in handwriting that was very obviously done as carefully as possible, but still managed to be a bit sloppy. More importantly, everyone was there. Piper and Reyna. Nico and Will. Frank, Hazel, Percy, Annabeth, and–
“Thalia?” Jason choked, eyes feeling like they were about to bug out of his skull. “What are you doing here?”
Thalia looked different than she had the last time Jason saw her. Her hair was shorter and choppier now, with an underlayer of electric blue. She had a silver bar running through her eyebrow, and when she grinned, she revealed that she’d finally gotten her braces taken off. “You kidding?” she scoffed, walking over to ruffle Jason’s hair. “Like hell am I gonna miss my baby brother’s sweet sixteen.”
Jason blinked stars out of his eyes as he looked around the clearing at everyone, all of whom seemed thrilled to be standing in the middle of the woods with handmade party supplies while Jason gawked at them. “You– You guys didn’t forget,” he stammered, feeling a little dumb. “You remembered my birthday.”
“Of course we remembered,” Piper said, like it was the most obvious thing in the world. “We’re your friends, Jason.”
Jason let the words wash over him, let them sink deep into his bones. Of course they remembered; why wouldn’t they? They were his friends. His heart hammered against his ribs in a way that had nothing to do with the chase from moments before. He blinked hard a couple times to keep his tears at bay and he noticed that for the first time in Jason’s memory, Leo was completely still and silent. He was just hugging Jason with his face pressed into Jason’s chest. “Thanks, you guys.”
Nobody said anything about how Jason’s voice was thick with emotion, Percy just grinned at him with the kind of trouble that led to getting stuck in McDonald’s slides. “Let’s get this party started, birthday boy.”
Everything was perfect. Or rather, it was perfectly imperfect. All of the originally hot food was getting dangerously close to room temperature and the strawberry ice cream cake was closer to a biohazard than a pastry, but that was fine. Better than fine. He got to spend the morning hanging out with his friends and playing all the stupid party games he’d missed growing up. There was a dollar store pinata, a high-octane game of Duck Duck Goose, and even a modified game of Pin the Tail on the Coach, which was designed to look like Hedge. Leo had even promised there would be presents later, after they finished the day at Piper’s house for movie night.
Then suddenly, Percy and Will leapt out of the tree line (Jason was so distracted he hadn’t even noticed them leave) with a massive cooler between them. Annabeth was only able to shriek, “Percy Jackson, don’t you dare!” before a massive water balloon hit her in the chest, soaking her completely.
There was a cacophony of yelps and laughter and shouted curse words as everyone scrambled for cover from Percy and Will’s ambush. Jason was trying to flee when Leo popped out from behind an overturned table, and yanked him under cover. They were so close that their noses brushed, and Jason could feel Leo’s breathless giggles fan over his mouth. Jason thunked their foreheads together and let out his own soft chuckle. “Who’s idea, exactly, was it to give Percy water balloons?”
“Technically, he came up with the idea, but I cleared it.” There was the sound of a splash, followed by what Jason was pretty sure was Thalia’s indignant shout, and Leo’s grin sharpened. “No regrets.”
“So you were the one who planned this?” Jason asked softly. When Leo nodded, Jason’s heart sang. “Thank you. I wasn’t expecting all this. This was the best birthday I could have imagined.”
“Well, you’d better start expecting it,” Leo warned, his tone equal parts playful and serious. “Because I’m gonna keep doing it. For your birthday next year, and the one after that, and the one after that until you tell me to stop.”
For a moment, Jason wanted to respond. To meet Leo right where he was. But he couldn’t.There were no words for the feeling in his chest. So instead, he just grabbed this wonderful, beautiful boy and kissed him. Leo grabbed onto his wrists in response, more than happy to allow himself to be kissed. They stayed right there, trading kisses until Will unearthed their hiding spot with a crow of victory and a barrage of water. Leo shrieked with laughter and grabbed Jason’s hand, once again leading him on a run, and Jason followed him, cheeks aching with the force of his smile.
This was definitely the best birthday ever.