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malrie · 1 day

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for: @jasipereo, @partiallypearl what: liper as emotional cheaters but in a totally normal, not bad way! wc: 1600

“So, Leo, how’s Calypso?”

Hazel knew she should’ve done something before Annabeth opened her mouth, but doing so would’ve required the miraculous ability to assuage a seething daughter of Athena. Because she did not possess that, Hazel only sighed into her salad.

Getting the Seven together for their annual reunion dinner was becoming hard enough each passing year as they grew into adulthood. The Fates were now intent on making it even harder.

Leo paused in his laughter with Piper, where they sat shoulder to shoulder, his hand resting on her bare thigh. He was still smiling when he turned to Annabeth, but it slipped away slowly as soon as he saw her face.

The hand did not move.

“Huh?” Leo asked dumbly, and Hazel could have groaned aloud if it weren’t for the fact that everyone in the room had quieted to a hush. Even Percy, Grover, and Frank had silenced their rowdy food-shoveling, breaking their unspoken competition. Will, Hazel noticed, was nudging Nico for smiling too widely at the stirring drama. It was practically by divine mercy that Reyna hadn’t been able to make it this year.

“Calypso,” Annabeth went on. “You must know her. Your girlfriend of two years? How is she, Leo?”

He wasn’t getting it. “Uh, she’s fine? She had practice tonight so she couldn’t—”

“Yeah, she couldn’t make it.” The effect of Annabeth at the head of a table was a sight, especially with a dinner knife in her throwing hand. “But you did. And you seem really happy to have made it. I wonder why that is.”

“Annabeth,” said Piper. She furrowed her brows.

“Annabeth,” said Percy, though it was done around a mouthful of chicken parmesan, so it wasn’t much help.

“You know,” continued Annabeth, unrelenting, “you’d never think you were in a loving, committed relationship by the way you’re—”

Piper stood up. Leo’s hand slid off. “Excuse us. Annabeth and I were just heading to the bathroom.”

Frank looked concerned. “Together? Wait, was it the mac n’ cheese? Will, man, you said it was lactose-free!”

“Just eat your mac, dude,” muttered Percy. He was still chewing, but doing so solemnly. He wouldn’t intervene; his survival instincts were honed to a fine point by now.

The girls had made their advance. Grover bleated into an ineffectual burp, cueing Nico into an unashamed cackle. Leo was staring at his palm. Hazel shared a concerned frown with Will, but before she could start on about how she refused to be in charge of organizing dinners for the near future, Annabeth scooped her up by the arm, forcing her to follow them down the hall.

“Why me?” Hazel whined. Her pleading went unanswered.

As soon as the three of them shuffled into the bathroom, Piper shut the door behind them. The movement caused a couple of Estelle’s bath toys on the rim of the empty tub to fall inside it. What Hazel would do to be that three year old right about now, deep asleep in another room, blissfully ignorant of her beloved brother’s friends’ convoluted relationship dynamics.

Resigned to being an unwilling witness, Hazel sat over the fluffy blue toilet cover and dodged Piper’s elbow when the other girl crossed her arms. It was a small space.

“You can’t possibly be doing this here,” Piper said, a slight flush having come up her neck and onto her cheeks. It only made her look rather sunkissed and pretty. “I know you always found Leo annoying or something, but by now I would’ve hoped you’d gotten past that—after all we’ve been through!”

“Oh, gods,” said Annabeth, throwing her hands up. Hazel also dodged being smacked by the gesture. “This is not about me finding Leo Valdez annoying. You know I find plenty of people annoying!”

“Then why are you being like this?”

For the first time tonight, Annabeth was caught off guard. She mirrored Piper, arms coming to shield her chest. “Piper, you really don’t get it? Don’t you see what you’ve been like with him all night?”

“What I’ve been like with Leo?” Piper repeated. “What do you mean? We’ve been normal.”

Hazel had to say it: “You guys have been crazy flirting.”

“What?”

Crazy as an adverb was stolen from one of the younger campers. It didn’t feel too right on Hazel’s tongue, but she figured it was the only way to properly describe how much Leo and Piper had been all over each other tonight. A touch on the forcep. Sweeping stray hairs out of the way. Whispering jokes a breadth away from each other. It was a lot. Hazel knew they were close, attached to the waist. But after Jason’s death, year after year, they became more inseparable than ever before.

On her part, Hazel thought it was sweet that Leo and Piper had each other. Except she wasn’t stupid. She knew why Annabeth was so perturbed: Leo was already knee-deep in a solid romance with an equally zealous goddess, and Piper was basically two steps away from a proposal by her superhero-perfect, cohabitating girlfriend. That was, by many cultures’ standards, a bad sign.

“Not just tonight, Piper,” Annabeth explained. “Things have been different. I know you two have—a bond. I’m just worried. Moments like this just spring up sometimes, and it gets everybody messed up. You have to watch yourself, and not just for your sake. What would you do if some random girl just cuddled up to Shel one day and never left her side?”

The image seemed to agitate Piper, who was notoriously a possessive kind of girl. “One stab for every second she spent near her.”

Annabeth looked charmed, almost endeared. Hazel needed new friends.

“See,” said Annabeth, “it just isn’t a good feeling, right? And you and Leo… Well, if you were going to, you know, go for it—as your best friend, I really have to recommend rethinking everything first. Everything. Seriously. You’re way better than—I mean, you both are better than something this impulsive.”

“Yeah,” said Piper, sounding fragile. “I would never… It isn’t like that with us. I mean, it’s different, that’s all. What we have is special. I can’t just let it go. Leo’s just been there through everything. But it’s never been… At least, I don’t think… I don’t know, Annabeth!”

“Oh, come here,” Annabeth said, opening her arms to Piper once she saw the other girl had begun to shed frustrated tears.

Annabeth was constantly overprotective of Piper, for answers Hazel figured neither of them really thought of addressing. Piper did seem to bring that out in people; Hazel herself once almost made the earth swallow up every mosquito in the vicinity after one bit the daughter of Aphrodite in front of her.

“Am I being that selfish?” asked Piper through a sniffle.

Somewhat mollified, Annabeth answered, “A little. Though maybe we all are, in a way. It’s not always bad to want more. We just have to know when enough’s enough. Moderation’s important, right?”

“That’s hard for me, I think,” Piper admitted.

Hazel, feeling dazed a bit at the whirlwind turn of conversation, said something if only to remind them of her presence. “So what are you going to do?”

Piper came away from Annabeth’s hug. “I’m not sure. I want to talk to him before—”

Someone banged on the bathroom door. Before the girls could react, the door gave way, having been unlocked the entire time. Nico poked his head inside. “You done being gay in here?”

“Nico!” Hazel cried. “You can’t say that!”

Her brother rolled his eyes. “I’m actually uniquely qualified to say it. Anyway, Frank and Percy are doing some stupid shit with the beer and Will doesn’t wanna go home yet. Please do not make me go back there alone.”

“What’s Leo doing?” Piper asked him.

In response, Nico shook his head. “He left. Said something about having to pick up Calypso.”

Piper half-laughed, incredulous. “Wow.”

“I’m sorry, Piper,” said Annabeth, an arm looping around Piper’s. Hazel knew Annabeth well enough to know that she wasn’t as remorseful as she sounded. Maybe it was a good thing to postpone another day—when Hazel wouldn’t have to be there to spectate.

They ended up in better spirits with Leo gone, which would have been a terrible thing to say to Leo to his face, and Hazel never would. Annabeth, gleaming, rounded on Percy to swig the rest of his drink. Grover had passed out from a food coma, and Frank and Will had dug out Annabeth’s chess set and had begun to play. Hazel wanted to talk to Leo, too, one way or the other, but she figured it was something he and Piper needed to work out themselves. They were adults now. They could do at least that.

The rest of the night, Piper tried hard to keep spirited, even though it was clear she was out of it and would be for some time. Tomorrow she was bound to catch her flight back to Tahlequah, where she could possibly push this behind her. But Hazel wasn’t the Oracle of Delphi. Things changed constantly, even when you expected them to stay exactly the same—especially then, she learned.

“I refuse to be the one to set this up again, you actual monsters,” Hazel told her dearest friends. “You all make me feel like my actual age! The second I see a premature grey hair on me, you’ll all get cursed gems in your Christmas stockings. Santa will die before getting to his milk and cookies!”

“Oh, shit,” said Will, face paling. “Sorry, Frank. There was dairy in it.”

#liper #leo valdez #piper mclean #HINT of pipabeth for the real ones #hoo #heroes of olympus #rrverse #annabeth chase #hazel levesque #fic #this is a girls talk............#just girls being girls.#this is wholly unserious im so sorry KASFJASD

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