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kazoosandfannypacks · 2 months

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summary: when an apollo camper falls for an aphrodite camper, heart-shaped cough drops and haikus written with glitter gel pens aren't too far behind. word count: 6815 words a/n: it started as a simple headcanon. apollo's kid falling for aphrodite's. i told a few friends on discord about it, and they ate the idea up so much, i knew i had to write something about them. this story is about two ocs, but you'll see a few familiar faces in here too, and if you're paying close enough attention to context clues, you can figure out where eva and kodi's story fits in within the pjo timeline. taglist: @poptart-cat-78 @fynn-arcana @babsbabbles @laughingphoenixleader {if you’d like to be added to my halfblood 5&1 taglist/pjo taglist, let me know!}

also on ao3!

five times it paid to know an apollo boy (and one time being an aphrodite girl paid off too)

~eva's first summer~

Eva wasn't surprised that, in a camp with archery, flying pegasi, and lava in the dish pit as well as on the climbing wall, she'd gotten herself hurt within her first week at Camp Half-Blood.

But, although she hadn't sat down and considered all the possible injuries available to her at Camp, if she had, getting a papercut while opening a chocolate bar for s'mores wouldn't've exactly made the list.

And yet, even in the dim lighting of the camp's bonfire, she could see very clearly the scratch on her thumb.

"That kind of injury takes some serious skill," someone said.

She couldn't see his face in the low lighting by the bonfire, but she saw him hold something out to her.

"Need a band-aid?"

"Thanks," Eva said. She took it from him and unwrapped it.

By the time the bandage was around her thumb, the stranger had disappeared into the crowd, and she shoved the wrapping into her pocket.

She'd almost forgotten that moment had happened by the time she got back to her cabin. But now that she looked at it in the light, she saw that the band-aid was a shade of hot pink— her favorite color, and the same color as the accessories she'd worn with her Camp Half-Blood t-shirt that day.

~eva's first summer~

When Eva was a little girl, she always looked forward to Valentine's Day. It made more sense now, looking back on it after her demigod diagnosis, why her decorated shoebox mailbox was always filled to the brim with heart-shaped lollipops, tiny treasures, and cards with cartoon character puns on them. Of course Aphrodite's daughter would attract a lot of attention from her classmates.

Not long after she settled into camp, she realized Cabin 10 was one giant Valentine's shoebox. Eva was used to coming back to the cabin each evening and seeing her sisters' bunks surrounded by flowers and chocolates and her brothers' bunks cluttered with assorted candies and letters that smelled like perfume. As long as there were Aphrodite kids who treasured cheap attempts to buy their affection, there would be kids from the other cabins more than willing to oblige them.

But Eva didn't get gifts like that, at least, not as much as her siblings. She spent a lot of that first summer reminding herself that she was still the youngest in the cabin, and that her time to shine would come soon enough.

In the meantime, though, she'd just have to get used to all the flowers. She had just the luck of having a bunk next to Silena— kind-hearted, beautiful Silena, who could scarcely glance in a boy's direction without him falling for her. Eva soon found out that where there were boys falling for you, there were flowers, and where there were flowers, there were allergies, and she figured the best way to dispel the issue quietly was to stop by Cabin 7.

A normal camp would have a camp nurse, maybe a nurse's assistant on staff, and wouldn't be much more than a phone call away from the nearest hospital. Camp Half-Blood's medical treatments pretty much amounted to "tell someone at Cabin 7 what's wrong, and if they can't patch you up, well, there's not much a mortal doctor could do for you anyways."

~💘~

As Eva approached the cabin, she noticed there were several chains by the door, each one with a different label underneath.

"PULL FOR URGENT EMERGENCY"

"PULL FOR IMPALEMENT"

"PULL FOR PRANK-RELATED INJURY"

"PULL FOR WALK-IN CONSULTATION"

That last one sounded the most like what she needed, so she pulled that chain and heard a chime go off in the cabin.

"I'll be out in a second," a voice said, and a moment later the door opened to a blonde boy, not much older than Eva, whose eyes widened when he saw her.

"Oh my gosh, are you alright?" he asked, with so much concern on his face she might as well have been actively on fire.

"Yeah," Eva wrinkled her nose, "just a slight problem I was hoping someone could help me with."

"Oh, good," he said, "I, uh, what can I do for you?"

She hesitated a moment, not sure what would happen if word got out that Aphrodite's new daughter was allergic to flowers.

"Can you keep a secret?"

"Anything for you," he said, then coughed so hard Eva thought that he might need a doctor, "I mean, uh, of course."

"I found out I'm allergic to flowers," Eva whispered, "and Drew said that if I wake her up with my coughing one more time, I'm gonna be the one who needs beauty sleep."

"That's perfect!" the boy said.

"My allergy is perfect?" Eva asked.

"No, no," he said, "I have just the thing. Don't go away!"

He scurried back into the cabin, and about a minute later he came back with a bottle and a cloth pouch.

"These will help the allergy," he handed her the bottle, "take one each night before bed, and you should be cough free. But, just in case!'

He handed her the pouch as well and she opened it to see several heart shaped lollipops.

"What are these?"

"Newest breakthrough in Cabin 7 medicine," he said, "making your own blend of cough drops is almost a rite of passage, but I've turned the science into an art form."

Eva held one up and sniffed it. "You made cough drops into lollipops?"

"Yeah," he said.

"Why?"

"Why not?"

They stood in silence for an awkward moment.

"I gotta go," Eva said, "but thanks for everything."

"You're welcome," he said.

She walked away, slightly confused and highly appreciative, though the whole of the moment was soon lost in the hubbub of demigod adventures.

~eva's second summer~

The biggest problem with being a child of Aphrodite is that your skill set usually boils down to "distraction." Another unfortunate truth is that sometimes "distraction" boils down to "do the hard part and run through the woods so that someone else can get the glory for your actions."

Unfortunately for Eva, this was one of those times.

All of Red Team had been hopeful for their own chance to shine when Clarisse announced that she wouldn't be going directly for the flag this time. She claimed it was a solid strategy for her and a couple of her siblings to divert the enemy's attention, so she volunteered to take patrol up along the lake instead of in the woods as usual.

However, this shuffling of the troops meant that Eva and a couple of the other Aphrodite campers were on a new mission: distract the enemy while the remaining Ares campers rush the Blue Team's flag.

Things had gone pretty much according to plan there. A few of the Apollo kids had been guarding the flag, and more than half of them had abandoned their post to chase down the Red Team's distraction.

But although the chase was part of the plan, Eva hoped the boy running after her would just give up already. She wasn't sure how much more of it she could take right now.

As the forest passed by around her, she glanced over her shoulder— just long enough to see her pursuer's determined smile— then looked back ahead of her, in just enough time to notice the tree root in front of her, but without enough time to avoid tripping on it.

She landed with her hands in front of her, the wind knocked out of her for a moment.

"Oh my gosh, I am so sorry," his voice behind her said, "are you okay?"

Eva pushed herself up a little and turned her head to see the boy who'd been chasing her, now with a concerned look on his face.

She wanted to make a clever remark and then run past her enemy and make her escape, but as she tried to push herself up further, she realized the pain in her knees and chin, and especially her hands.

"I'm alright," she huffed, sitting up and looking at her hands, both of them brushburned and dirt stained, and one having a decent sized cut.

"No you're not," he said, and knelt down in front of her, "you're bleeding in five different places."

"I'll be fine," Eva said.

"At least let me take a look at it. Apollo's my father, I…."

"I know," Eva said, "and you'll take me back to Blue Team's jail as a wounded prisoner."

A drop of blood fell onto Eva's shirt, and it took her a few seconds to realize where it had come from. She touched a sticky spot on her chin, then looked at her fingers to see a streak of red and brown.

"Capture the Flag isn't my concern right now," he said, taking off his helmet to reveal a familiar face, with a mop of fair blonde hair that would've looked even lighter if it wasn't so sweaty, paired the warmest brown eyes Eva'd ever seen— the boy who'd given her the cough drops and allergy pills last summer, "let me patch you up, and I'll give you a fifteen second head start."

"I guess that sounds like a deal," Eva said. She was supposed to be the distraction anyways, and this camper wouldn't be after her teammates if he was occupied with her instead.

"Good," he said. He'd already taken off his chestplate as well, and he pulled a knife out of a holster at his side.

"What are you doing?" Eva asked.

"Emergency bandages," he said, cutting a strip off the bottom of his shirt, "maybe this'll convince Annabeth to let us bring more first aid supplies next time. She says they only slow us down," he cut another chunk of the fabric off his shirt, "but this would go a lot faster if I didn't have to tear apart my wardrobe to do it."

"You don't have to."

"Nonsense," he said, pouring some water from his canteen onto one of the cloths, "you wouldn't've tripped if I hadn't been chasing you. May I?"

She nodded as he took her right hand and dabbed her open palm with the wet cloth. She tried not to wince too much.

"Sorry," he said, "I wish I had something better to clean this out with."

"No need to apologize."

Once her hand was clean, he wrapped a strip of the fabric around it, and tied it tightly.

"Here," he said, handing her the wet cloth, "wipe up that cut on your chin, then apply pressure to stop the bleeding."

She followed his instructions as best she could as he cut off another chunk of his shirt and wet it.

"You know a lot about first aid," Eva said.

He smiled a little as he took her other hand and dappled off the dirt.

"I'm not the best of my siblings," he said, "but I do what I can."

Eva knew all about struggling to be the best, having consigned herself at this point to the fact that she wouldn't even be third best among her siblings for a very long time.

"I'm Eva," she said.

"Evangeline Blythe," he nodded, "I know. This is your second summer, right?"

"That's what it says on my necklace," Eva said, glancing at the single clay bead on the string around her neck.

He held up his own necklace with two beads on it. "Then I guess this is my third. I'm Kodi Archer."

"I remember you from last summer," Eva said.

"You do?" Kodi asked.

"You gave me something for my allergies," she said.

"Glad to make an impression," he said, cleaning the spots of dirt off her scratched-but-not-actively-bleeding knees, "that's also not the first time we met."

"It's not?"

"I'm just sorry I didn't have any hot pink bandages on me this time."

"That was you?" Eva asked, recalling the bonfire and the perfectly accessorized band-aid.

"Yeah," he said.

Kodi looked back up at her, a smile on his face as their eyes met for half a moment. His eyes then shifted, however, to the cloth she had pressed against her chin.

"Let's see what I can do for that chin," he said, his hand brushing against hers as he took the cloth from her.

She hardly noticed the sting of the wet cloth on her cut as he tilted her chin up with his other hand, giving her a better view of his face in the golden lighting of the sun, warming his eyes to an even richer hue. He hadn't been this nice to look at last summer, but he'd apparently grown into his nose, and his height, and some confidence had no-doubt come with it, all of which paid off nicely together.

Her gaze was drawn away when she heard a sound in the distance: the blaring of a horn, signifying the end of the game. Kodi stopped a moment as well, looking up as though trying to see where it came from.

"That's a relief," he smiled.

"Who do you think won?"

"Doesn't matter," Kodi said, "I'm just glad I didn't have to explain to Luke and Annabeth why I was stopping to help you and would've given you a head start instead of taking you prisoner."

"At least you don't have to report to Clarisse," Eva offered.

"I don't envy you on that one," Kodi said, dabbing away the last of the blood on her chin, "now, keep applying pressure, and stop by Cabin 7 to get it looked at once you get back by the main camp, okay?"

Eva rolled her eyes.

"At least grab yourself a couple real bandages?"

"Do they have hot pink ones?" Eva smiled

"If you tell them I sent you," Kodi smiled back, resheathing his knife. "Now, do you think you can walk with your knees all scraped up?"

"I think so," she said, trying to stand up off the ground.

"Here," Kodi jumped to his feet, then held a hand out to Eva, who gladly took it and let him help stand her up.

"Thanks for everything." Eva said, taking a couple steps with minimum difficulty.

"All in a day's work," he said.

In the distance, they heard quite a ruckus.

"What's that?" Eva asked.

"Sounds like some commotion over at canoe lake," Kodi said, "probably nothing important."

~eva's third summer~

Eva had no idea where the haikus were coming from.

It started one day at dinner, when she got up to make her offering to Aphrodite, and came back to find a three-by-five index card on her napkin. One one side was her name— Evangeline, not Eva— written with a smudged pink glitter gel pen. The other side had three lines written on it.

She stayed at the table after most of the other campers had left, when it was a little quieter and easier to focus on the words scribbled on the notecard:

"if the sun should rise

and see the way your face shines

it would be ashamed"

That was it. The only other thing on the card was a heart, near her name, a classic Valentine's heart with an arrow through it, and a scribbled line near the top corner that looked like something you'd do to get the ink in a pen flowing.

By now, Eva was used to this kind of stuff. Toward the end of last summer, a couple of the Demeter boys started competing to win her affection, and she found her bunk surrounded each day with fresh flowers (which, of course, led to frequent trips to Cabin 7 for allergy medication and a weekly supply of heart-shaped "cough-pops," as Kodi had branded them.) It wasn't uncommon for the Hermes kids to slip candy bars into her pockets and backpacks for her to find later. One of the Ares kids had dedicated an arm-wrestling victory to her, and one of Mr. D's boys had just about run out of elaborate pickup lines to use on her.

Being well-acquainted with this kind of stuff by now, Eva slipped the poem into her backpack and went on with her evening.

~💘~

That night before bed, she pulled the notecard out of her backpack, only to discover a second notecard with it. Her name was written on this one as well, with the same arrow-struck heart next to it, but there were two marks in the corner, and the glittering ink on the other side read:

"your smile is like the

dripping of nectar, like a

lump of ambrosia"

It was a pity that whoever wrote the poem wasn't there to see her read it, because they would've seen another one of her smiles as she read it.

She stacked both notes together neatly, and was about to set them on her nightstand, when she realized there was a third notecard already there. The unlined side, once again, bore her name and and the same kind of heart, this time with three marks in the corner, and a haiku that read:

"your laugh is a song

that i've always known without

knowing all the words"

Eva couldn't help but laugh just a little as she read it, then stacked all three notes on her nightstand and went to bed.

~💘~

As they tidied up the cabin the next morning, Eva smiled with a newfound confidence. There's always something special about having an admirer, but even more deliciously romantic about a secret admirer, one who writes you poems and tells you the sun doesn't hold a candle to you.

"Is there an Evangeline in this cabin?"Aurora, one of the first-year campers, asked.

"Yeah, that would be me." Eva sighed. Her dad had always said he gave her the name because it was a beautiful name, and she was his beautiful daughter, but she'd never been a fan of the impromptu Disney karaoke sessions she'd see whenever she introduced herself by it. "Eva" suited her much better.

"Someone left you a note," Aurora said, holding up a three-by-five card.

"Where?" Eva asked, walking over to her.

"Tacked onto the door," the girl said, "I found it while I was sweeping."

Before Eva could get to her, one of their older brothers, Mitchell, grabbed the note and read it out loud.

"'You are a poem, and I am just the reader,'' he read, slowly, his tone slightly mocking, "'I've mem'rized your words.' What a piece of…."

"None of your business," Eva snapped, taking the note from him and looking it over carefully, noting the lines in the corner and familiar handwriting. A favorite pastime of the Aphrodite kids was making fun of the horrible attempts at poetry the other kids would write for them, but for some reason the mockery of this one seemed out of place.

"Relax, Eva," Drew said, "tell me, who's this new beau, Evangeline?"

"I don't know," Eva said, calming down a little in spite of her anger.

"Someone from Apollo's cabin," another guy said, looking over Eva's shoulder.

"You don't know that," Eva shrugged. Several Apollo campers came to mind.

"Well, it is a poorly written haiku," Mitchell said.

"And there's that arrow through the heart," he said.

"Who do you think it is?" Aurora asked.

"I don't know," Eva shrugged, "but it's not the first one, either."

Now that the whole cabin was invested in this story, she showed her siblings the other three notecards and told them where she found them, as they laughed at the words comparing her to ambrosia and singalongs.

"Those are some hard-to-get-to places to sneak a poem into undetected," Mitchell said.

"Could be a Hermes kid, then," Lacy suggested.

That didn't seem right, but Eva couldn't say why.

"Could be anyone," Silena said, "but for now, let's finish getting the cleaned up and head to breakfast. Just because those Posiedon boys are gonna lose at cabin clean up again doesn't mean we shouldn't try to win."

And with that, the campers got back to work.

~💘~

Within a week, Eva had found five more notes in various pockets of her backpack, one at her seat at almost every meal, one on her nightstand each night and her cabin door in the morning, and three in her shorts' pockets (and how they got there without her noticing, she didn't want to know.) Each of them came with her name and a heart pierced with an arrow, a series of strikes up in the corner (which she soon realized were tally marks, the highest one up to twenty-nine so far, though a few in between were missing,) and a haiku, likening her to arrows, celestial bodies, anything beautiful you could think of (except, strangely enough, flowers,) and an assortment of diseases and ailments. Any time she found one, her nearby brothers and sisters would gather around and giggle and gawk over the attempts at romance.

Eva, however, treasured every one of these notes in her heart. With each note she found, her secret admirer became even more of a point of interest. At the end of that week, her curiosity got the better of her, and she hatched a plan involving a stakeout out front of her cabin. Whoever was hiding these notes came every night to leave them on the door, and tonight she'd catch the cupid culprit in the act.

~💘~

It was nearly midnight, and her tiredness had almost caught up with her as she crouched behind a flowering shrub outside the cabin.

Suddenly, she heard the sound of someone coming, and perked up to watch. This part required the most secrecy. If they heard her, no doubt they'd come up with some alibi that didn't involve haikus and thumb tacks. She'd have to catch them in the act. Quietly as she could, she watched as a figure approached the door, stuck something to it, and started to walk away.

Quickly, Eva shone her flashlight at the note, just to check that it was indeed another three-by-five with her glittering name on it, then turned the light on the intruder.

"Going somewhere?" she asked.

He looked like he was gonna jump out of his skin, but instead turned back around to face her. She recognized him as one of the Stoll brothers from Hermes' cabin, but even in better lighting she wouldn't be able to tell you which one.

"You've been writing me haikus?" Eva asked.

"Oh no," he said, his hands over his head in a way that made Eva feel like she was some kind of cop. "I'm just the delivery boy."

"You're running errands?" Eva asked.

"Half-Blood's gotta make a living," he said, "and I'm just using the skills dad gave me."

Hermes was a master of sneakery and delivery, and there was a reason the Stoll brothers were the heads of his children. Every demigod knew that if you want something done sneaky and you want it done right, you turn to the Stoll brothers.

Every camper also knew that they could both be easily bought.

"Who put you up to this?" Eva asked.

"My 'client' paid a high price for my silence," he said.

"Oh?" Eva asked, "and how high a price would I have to pay for the opposite?"

"I'm not a sellout," Stoll said, "even among thieves and pickpockets, there is honor."

"Such a shame," Eva smiled, smugly, knowing she had a bargaining chip worth much more than money, "because that means I won't have to tell my lovely sisters that you were part of this 'secret admirer' plot."

"Why should that matter?" he asked.

"They haven't been able to stop talking about it," Eva said, "someone being so clever and sneaky in the name of love. They always go crazy for guys in touch with their romantic side."

"Really?"

"Oh, sure," Eva said, "If they found out you were involved with this, oh, they'd be all over you."

"They would?" he asked, his voice weak.

"And of course," Eva said, knowing exactly how to seal the deal, "the best thing about attracting my sisters' attention? Being a child of Aphrodite pretty much guarantees more candy than you'll ever be able to eat, more than enough to share with such a daring romantic soul as your own.."

"Any peanut m&ms?" he asked.

Though they were a favorite slip-into-your-pocket candy from the Hermes kids, the Aphrodite kids seldom appreciated them. However, there was no one at camp who loved them more than Connor Stoll, who'd burn a pack of them for his father on the regular, and that gave Eva a pretty good hunch who she was talking to.

"Too many to eat," she said, "it's a shame, really."

"What's a shame?"

"Oh, you know," Eva said, "the fact that you'd rather keep your silence than attract the interests of a dozen beautiful girls with a lifetime supply of chocolate."

Eva turned, with a smile on her face, knowing she'd made an offer he couldn't refuse.

"Do you promise you won't tell him I told you?" Stoll asked.

She turned back to him.

"The only person who'll know about this conversation is my siblings, who will get to hear about how wonderfully romantic the great Connor Stoll is."

He smiled, so Eva assumed she had guessed properly as to which brother it was.

"I don't know," he said, with a wink, "Kodi paid a good price to tell me not to tell you."

"Kodi?" Eva asked, "Kodi Archer?"

Aside from her trips to Cabin 7 for allergy pills, cough-pops, and brightly colored band-aids, she hadn't spoken much to Kodi since the Capture the Flag game at the start of last summer. She'd attracted the attention of a lot of guys last year, and even more this year, so a lot of her attention-seekers fell through the cracks. She couldn't keep up with every boy who went out of his way to do something for her.

"I don't want any trouble between myself and the guy who makes my medicine," Connor winked again, and nodded in confirmation, "but don't tell anyone besides your sisters."

"You got it," Eva smiled, "now, you should get outta here before the harpies catch you."

"That's not a concern when you know what you're doing," he laughed. He pulled something out of his pocket and threw it into the distance, and Eva watched something in the sky chase it into a far-off tree.

"How did you…" Eva asked, but when she looked back at him, he was already gone.

Since she didn't have any magical harpy-escape-plan, she decided it best to head back to the cabin.

But she stopped a moment at the cabin door, running her fingers along the index card. Had she been paying attention, she could've figured it out without Connor's help. No one at camp called her "Evangeline," except Kodi. He'd written it in what he clearly knew was her favorite shade of pink. The arrow piercing the hearts doodled on the notes represented Cabin 7, and also the boy whose last name just-so-happened to be Archer. There were metaphors to sunshine and medicine and archery all throughout the poorly written poems, and while any other poet would've likened her to beautiful, fragrant flowers, only Kodi knew of her allergy. Not everyone on campus would trust the word of one of the Stoll brothers, but the facts lined up in this one.

She sighed, and decided not to bring the notecard back to the cabin with her. It would be better to leave it there for her siblings to gawk over in the morning.

~💘~

The next morning, Eva regaled the tale of her stakeout to her cabin mates, a captive audience, especially for her version of the story, in which Connor had taken the task of leaving the haikus solely "for the sake of romance" and "keeping the delicate flower of young love alive" and a few other poetic turns of phrase that made him into the kind of guy that at least a few of her siblings would fall for by the end of the story.

The other big change in this version of the story was that when she recounted it, Connor was not so easily bought, and claimed to "honor the romanticism of mystery," meaning he disappeared into the night before telling Eva who her secret admirer was.

In Cabin 10, names were thrown around often. Eva could list off the top of her head at least a dozen demigods who'd tried gestures like this to win her siblings' affections. Gossip was more juicy when you had names and faces to go with the story.

But for some reason, Eva didn't want this to be juicy gossip, though, quite frankly, she couldn't quite put her finger on why. So, she kept Kodi's name out of the discussion, suggesting to her clamoring sisters that maybe the best way to get that information was from Connor, either through sweet-talk, or just sweets in general

~eva's third summer~

It was Eva's turn to help Silena in the stables. It always fascinated Eva, how comfortably Silena got on with the pegasi, and vice versa, especially because Eva was terrified of them. It wasn't just pegasi; she was afraid of horses too, and though she'd never seen a unicorn, she was sure she wouldn't want to. No matter how much Silena would tell her it was safe, that the pegasi wouldn't hurt her— and even having a satyr and that Percy kid translate the pegasi's whinnies for her multiple times— this was something Eva couldn't shake.

And yet, that afternoon she found herself in the stables with Silena.

"I wish I could talk with them," Silena said, brushing a winged palomino.

"Why?" Eva asked, polishing a saddle as far from the pegasi as she could be.

"I think they know more than they let on," she smiled, "kind of like you."

"What?" Eva's nose wrinkled.

"I heard you talking to Connor outside the cabin last night," Silena said.

"You what?"

"I knew you were gonna stay up and get to the bottom of the secret poet mystery," Silena said, "so, I waited up to listen in. Kodi likes you?"

"Not so loud!" Eva said.

"The only ones around to hear us are the pegasi," Silena said.

"And they know a lot more than they let on." Eva rolled her eyes, then looked back down at the saddle in front of her and buffed up a stain.

If Silena had anything further to say, she didn't say it. Instead, she rubbed her wrist, anxiously, then bit her lip, with a far-off look in her eyes.

"I'll be right back," she said, before Eva had time to question her or protest at being left alone with the flying death horses.

"May as well get this over with," Eva muttered. She picked up the horse-brush Silena had been using and decided to try to face her fears head-on.

Everyone had always told her these kinds of creatures were more afraid of her than she was of them, which seemed stupid because they weighed at least ten times more than her and had a mouth bigger than her entire face.

But whoever had said it was apparently right, because the pegasus she approached seemed startled by her mere presence, and the last thing Eva remembered before hitting the floor was the pegasi standing in front of her, reared up to a terrifying height on his hind legs.

~💘~

Eva knew stable floors to be notoriously hard and dirty, and yet when she came to, she felt like she was lying on fresh bedsheets on a mattress. Instead of being surrounded by hay and the smell of a stable, she saw tulle around her, and smelled something delightfully clean.

"I know this room," she thought, "I'm in the Big House."

Usually, campers only stayed in the Big House for medical emergencies. As her consciousness regained itself, a pain in her head did too, and she realized why she qualified.

Trying not to move her head too much, she looked around the room. Out the window was total darkness, like the middle of the night. Flowers were gathered, not near her bed, but on the other side of the room. The only light in the room was a lamp, which sat next to a chair that was next to the bed, and in that chair sat someone Eva knew well: a dimly lit Kodi.

He didn't look like he'd intended to fall asleep. Instead of a blanket, his lap was covered in notecards, and he hadn't returned the cap on the pink gel pen in his hand.

She turned over, just a little, and felt something out of place on her pillow: a notecard, her name written in familiar handwriting, with an arrow-pierced heart, and more tally marks than she wanted to count. The other side contained three simple lines.

"evangeline, please,

you've got to wake up because

i kind of love you."

The rest of the kids in Cabin 10 would've laughed their heads off at the words "kind of," but she was focused on the word after them: love. It was one thing to say you like someone, or have a crush on someone, or you think someone's cute. But to say you love someone, even just "kind of?" In the last three summers at Camp Half-Blood, and all those years of grade-school Valentine's and getting hounded for her phone number, not one of those guys had ever said they love her. And now, Kodi had.

But Kodi hadn't just said that he loved her, he'd shown it. Maybe the hot pink bandages weren't a coincidence. Maybe the heart-shaped cough pops were made with her in mind. Maybe there was a reason he'd helped his Capture the Flag enemy. Maybe he hadn't left her side since he heard about her pegasus incident, and wanted her to see a friendly face when she came to.

Even if none of that was true, there was no denying he'd gone out of his way to pour his heart out for her. Given the lengths he went to to get his poems to her and the price he paid for Connor's silence, it was clear that he wasn't doing this to get something in return. He just wanted her to know that she was special, and she was loved. That was all he'd been telling her from the beginning, wasn't it?

~kodi's fourth summer~

From the first time he met Evangeline Blythe, Kodi had known one thing: she was special, and she deserved to be loved like it.

Of course, his friends and siblings tried to dissuade him. Demigods and mortals alike throughout history had grown a sudden belief in "love at first sight" after meeting Aphrodite kids, and it never worked out as planned.

Kodi, however, was great at working out plans. He saw the way she accessorized each day, and sent for some colored bandages to meet that need. Every time he saw her felt like Valentine's Day, so when her coughing fits started, it'd only made sense to make heart shaped "cough-pops" to capture that essence. And when he realized that helping her with her injuries in capture the flag wasn't enough to compete with all the other boys who sought her attention, he started his most ambitious project yet, which took a long while (and several pink gel pens) to execute, but the payoff was well worth it.

He was a worried mess when Silena called him to the stables, and even more of a wreck when he saw Evangaline's lifeless form, and the blood dripping from her forehead. He was thankful he always kept a bit of ambrosia on hand. Had his shirt been able to voice an opinion it would've been ungrateful, though, that Kodi had thought ahead to keep hot pink bandages and a knife on hand, but didn't keep any cloths on hand. A chunk of his shirt was cut off without a second thought as he wiped the blood off her forehead and prayed a million prayers to his father.

He'd gotten her to a more stable condition— no pun intended— though still unconscious, and brought her back to the Big House as safely as he could on the back of a pegasus.

Kodi had insisted on staying by her bedside until she woke up, and Chiron said that would be fine, as long as they weren't alone together. Silena volunteered to stay with them, feeling excessive guilt over not being in the stable to stop the problem before it happened.

Around midnight, after an unexpected heart-to-heart with Silena about his feelings for Evangeline, he'd told her to get some sleep, and that he'd wake her up when Evangeline did.

In the meantime, Kodi had plenty of time to write some more haikus, and had just slipped the best of them on her pillow when his exhaustion from the day's events finally kicked in.

~💘~

Kodi woke with a start when he felt something touching him, and looked down to see a hand on top of his. The hand was slender, nails well-manicured in a shade of pink that perfectly complemented the bracelets around the wrist.

His eyes followed the arm to Evangeline's face, her eyes open and her lips smiling at him as she lay on the bed next to his seat.

"Good morning, sleepyhead," she whispered, despite the fact that the sun hadn't even risen yet.

"You're awake," he whispered back in surprise, "and you're… holding my hand?"

He wasn't sure how this had happened, but he tried to move his hand away from hers, just in case, but instead her hand chased after his, and caught it.

"I am," she smiled.

"Why?" he asked, and when she looked disappointed, he followed up, "not that I'm upset, just a little confused. Did I miss something? Maybe you're delirious? I should wake Silena, or maybe get Will…."

"Not yet," Evangeline said, "I'm thinking clearly. I'm actually thinking a lot more clearly about a lot of things than I have been in a long time."

"What kind of things?"

"I never asked to be Aphrodite's kid," she said, "we don't get to come up with strategies or fight epic battles or tend to the wounded with great expertise," and she smiled and squeezed his hand, "but we do have it lucky."

"How?" Kodi asked.

"When your mom is the goddess of love," she smiled, that pure smile that somehow had a way of healing his soul every time he saw it, "the most confusing thing anyone can ever go through suddenly makes a lot more sense."

"What's that?"

"This," Evangeline said, holding up the note he'd left on her pillow, "'I kind of love you' too," she said.

"You do?" He asked, and he hoped she liked his smiles as much as he liked hers, because there was no stopping the one that now spread across his face. All that planning and working at getting her attention had actually worked.

Instead of responding, she squeezed his hand three times, and he'd listened to the modern poets enough to know it meant "I love you."

He responded the same way, but after the third squeeze, he brought her hand to his lips and kissed it, the world stopping a moment as he looked up and saw the blush creeping along her cheeks, that perfect shade of pink she'd taught him to see everywhere.

"You said you needed to wake Silena?" Evangeline asked.

"Yeah," he said.

"Can it wait ten seconds?"

"Why ten seconds?" Kodi asked.

"Because," Evangeline said, leaning closer toward him off the edge of the bed, "that gives me just enough time to do this."

Then, she kissed him, and if it had lasted ten seconds or ten hours, he wouldn't've known the difference, and he wouldn't've cared. It still would've been overwhelming. He still would've thought it ended too soon. It still would've taken him a few hazy minutes to recover. Even after passing out in a stable and spending a day in a hospital room, her lips still tasted like chocolate and strawberries, and they pressed against his as gently as a feather, pulling away just as softly.

"Wow," he whispered, between deep breaths, "I think I kind of love you more than I thought I did."

She giggled a little, and said "me too," and it was the capstone of the greatest moment of his entire life.

The sun was just beginning to rise out the infirmary window, and as perfect as it would be to say they held hands and watched the sunrise together while Apollo painted the skies in glorious hues, no one could honestly say that's what happened that morning— because Kodi was much more interested in watching Evangeline than in anything the sunrise had to offer.

#percy jackon and the olympians #kazzy's ocs #evangeline blythe #kodi archer #5 and 1 #kazzy writes #fanfiction #silena beauregard #drew tanaka #percy jackson book spoilers #kazzy borrows uncle rick's sweater #kazzy writes fanfic #camp half blood #tw blood #connor stoll

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kazoosandfannypacks · 1 month

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summary: when a demeter camper falls for an ares camper, carnations and crocuses aren’t too far behind, whether they like it or not. word count: 4173 words a/n: hey guys! i know y'all liked my last story so much, and i had so much fun with it, that i wanted to do another one! and yeah, i've never seen anything anywhere about the power i gave the demeter kid, but it i just kinda made it up and it works well for this story. enjoy! taglist: @poptart-cat-78 @fynn-arcana @babsbabbles @laughingphoenixleader {if you’d like to be added to my halfblood 5&1 taglist/pjo taglist, let me know!}

also on ao3!

five flowers ares girls don't appreciate (and one that they really, really do)

~oliver's third summer~

Oliver McAdam had a rare blessing from his godly parent, and it was the bane of his existence.

For some people, sometimes being a demigod meant you could do really cool things. A few of Hermes' kids were able to run fast enough, they may as well be teleporting. Apollo's kids sometimes had prophecy, or the ability to bend light. Some of Aphrodite's kids could control you with their voice like a Jedi mind trick.

Oliver, however, a child of Demeter, possessed an ability none of his siblings— or anyone else he'd ever met— did. He'd first noticed it on his father's farm, when orchis started growing in the pumpkin patch, and he found osmunda in his window box of violets, but it wasn't until the tulip tree sprouted in the bathtub that he realized these flowers weren't random— he was creating them.

Different flowers came from different moods. Daffodils and daisies bloomed when he was happy. Black dahlias surrounded him when he was anxious. Hyacinth grew when he was sorrowful. Sometimes fruit would graft itself from a nearby tree when he was hungry. That one wasn't so bad, of course, but he could do without the rest of them. The trail of flowers that followed his emotions made him feel like a freak, even by demigod standards.

One of his little demigod half-sisters, Calla, had done extensive research on Victorian flower language, and thought it was the coolest thing ever how the blossoms that surrounded him followed him and responded to his mood exactly, speaking a language that florists had spoken for more than a century. She'd always been able to read his flowers like a functional mood ring, and sometimes she'd explain them to him when he didn't understand them.

But he didn't need her to tell him what the sweet-brier blossoms growing at his feet were about, because even though they sounded pleasant enough by name, well, a sweet-brier by any other name could still spell terror. As it was, he was quaking in his boots. It was his day to check the cabins, which wasn't ever so bad in and of itself, until he got to Cabin 5. The Ares cabin was bad enough to look at from the outside, but to go inside the house of horrors? That was terrifying.

He approached the cabin nervously, glancing down at his clipboard and praying no more sweet-brier planted itself on the cabin doorstep.

Someone in front of him opened the door, and he froze with fear. The only thing scarier than Ares' cabin was Ares' kids, and though he didn't know which of them would be at the door, he could guarantee he didn't want to find out.

The camper in question, apparently, hadn't seen Oliver standing there, but she became very aware of his presence when she ran into him.

"Watch it, punk." she said.

"I'm sorry," Oliver said, his voice squeaking as several flowers cropped up around him, "I didn't mean to…."

If there had been more to that sentence, Oliver forgot it when he looked up at her. He'd never dared get this close to an Ares kid before, but if anyone had told him they were this pretty, he would've much sooner. Her eyes were the color of freshly upturned soil, her skin like a field of ripened wheat touched by a sunrise, her hair the same shade of black as the leather jacket with the ripped off sleeves she wore over her Camp Half-Blood t-shirt.

"You'd better not've," she said, pushing past him.

Oliver barely had time to notice the crocus that sprouted between them before she pushed past him and stepped on it on her way out of the cabin.

~oliver's third summer~

By the end of that summer, Oliver had gathered that the beautiful child of the war god was named Emilia, and he recalled her claiming a couple summers ago after a divisive and merciless Capture the Flag victory. Oliver hadn't been outgoing even then, and Emilia hadn't exactly ever played nice, so he'd had no problem avoiding her.

But now, that was the last thing he wanted to do.

As he packed up at the end of the summer, he kept an eye out the open door of his cabin, watching Cabin #5 more closely than ever before.

Most of his siblings had already left by the time he decided it was time to go, a couple ox-eye daisies budding around his suitcase. He saw in the distance as Ares' cabin door opened and Emilia left. Oliver had planned and timed this, quickly grabbing his suitcase and hoping he could make it look like an accident that he happened to leave at the same time as her.

"See you next summer," he called across the distance, waving at her, "have a great school year!"

"Get lost already!" she grumbled back.

The last two times he'd tried to talk to her, she'd ignored him entirely, so he took her upset response as a good sign, hoping she wouldn't see the snowdrops that blossomed around him.

~oliver's fourth summer~

When you feel refreshed by time out in the garden, winter lasts an eternity. Just when you think there's hope for the browns and grays around you to awaken into green again, they're buried in another layer of heartless white.

But, just as hope comes to fruition from the darkest souls, so springtime blooms out of winter's chill, and soon it was spring at McAdam farms, and Oliver was soon busy helping his father on the farm. The past few years, he'd done as much as he could in the spring and fall, wondering how his father even got on through the summer while he was away at camp.

And once again, his father would have to manage, as Oliver found himself in the familiar fields of Camp Half Blood.

In the past four years, Oliver had gotten better and better at controlling his emotions and their telltale flora. He still couldn't stop himself from growing monkshood in moments of panic or control what plants he created, but for the most part, he had a handle on his feelings in the minutiae of day-to-day life.

That is, until he sat down for his first dinner of the summer at Camp Half-Blood, and saw Emilia at her sibling's table across the pavilion, laughing with a violent excitement at being together again. Oliver's life wasn't very exciting in the offseason, so one of the biggest points of interest that year had been the thought of Emilia.

Despite his best attempts at restraint, his plate was soon covered in yellow blossoms, blooming out of his chicken nuggets in a feat of nature that would've been incredible if it wasn't so incredibly annoying.

"Tarragon?" Calla asked, taking a seat next to him, "funny, I prefer ketchup on my chicken nuggets, myself."

"Are you sure you don't want to try it?" Oliver joked, as he started to pick the flowers off his plate, hovering a few over her dinner plate as a taunt.

"Oh, I'm good," she giggled.

He looked up across the pavilion again, and saw that Emilia was looking at him. Granted, most of the camp was looking at him, almost as though they'd been awaiting the first of his accidental flowerings this summer. He only really noticed Emilia though, and how she smiled a little and rolled her eyes.

Oliver didn't care that her smile was meant to taunt him, that she was laughing at him and not with him— he still saw something warm in it, and her smile made him smile.

Unfortunately, her smile also made him sprout, a yellow tulip blossoming— not in front of him, but at the longest distance away he'd ever gotten a flower to bloom: right out of Emilia's blood red glass of cola.

He looked back down at his food quickly as her siblings began laughing and her face flushed as red as her cola. When an Ares kid gets into a rage, you don't want to find yourself in their warpath, and Emilia was no exception. Oliver looked up, only a little, to see the crumpled tulip land on his dinner plate, though he knew that if flowers were a better projectile, she definitely could've taken his head off with it.

"I guess I'm eating salad," he muttered, deadpan, shrugging as he stabbed at the head of the tulip and pretended to eat it.

His siblings laughed, and he looked up to see Emilia, still upset, and he tried to convince himself that she didn't look cute when she was angry like that. He wasn't sure how she'd respond if his feelings accidentally covered her table in red roses, but he didn't want to find out, especially once she'd remember that roses have thorns.

Instead, he kept his mind occupied by his quest to remove the plants from his dinner.

"Don't think I don't know what that means," Calla whispered to him.

"I know you do," Oliver said, without looking up.

"Tarragon is for lasting interest," Calla said, "and even though everyone thinks yellow flowers just mean friendship, the yellow tulip goes deeper. It actually means 'there is sunshine in your smile." Isn't that so dreamy?"

"I guess," Oliver chuckled.

"You've had a crush on her since last summer?" she whispered. He looked up at her with a glare, "what makes you say that?"

"It's so obvious," she said, "does she know?"

He looked down at the crumpled tulip on the table.

"I sure hope not."

~oliver's fourth summer~

It wasn't uncommon for Ares kids to challenge each other to combat. Sometimes it was to air grievances, and sometimes it was to let off some steam, but usually it was just for fun.

Oliver had never found it fun to fight or to watch fighting, but he was excited to watch the fight that broke out between Emilia and the new girl, Clarisse. Clarisse was young, but still a terrifying force, and Olilver wouldn't've wanted to face her, even before she'd gotten a month and a half of half-blood combat training.

But Oliver was still rooting for Emilia. She was still older than Clarisse by a few years, and was one of the most formidable fighters at camp.

"You think she's gonna win?" Calla asked, coming up behind Oliver and standing next to him as they watched this fight.

"Who?" Oliver asked, without looking back at Calla, taking advantage of this chance to stare at Emilia.

"The Easter Bunny," Calla said, sarcastically, then clarified, "Emilia."

"Yeah," Oliver sighed, "isn't she so cool? She's such a talented fighter, and she knows exactly what she's doing, and her moves are so graceful and calculated, and…."

"You need to get out of here," Calla's voice was suddenly serious.

"What do you mean?" Oliver asked, but before the words were out of his mouth, he saw Emilia fall to the ground, having tripped on something. Clarisse was quickly at the ready, with a sword pointed at her neck before she had a chance to get up. He then noticed what she'd tripped on— dozens of trailing alyssum plants had grown at her feet.

"Was that me?" Oliver asked.

"No, it was the Easter Bunny again," Calla said, "you'd better run. If you're here when she gets up…" "Yeah, I know," Oliver said, taking off for his cabin, hoping Emilia wouldn't join the trail of peony that followed him away.

~oliver's fourth summer~

Oliver tried to ignore the flowers at his feet as he sat on his cabin's steps. Over the last few days, Emilia had made it clear that she didn't want him, or his pity apologies and peony powers, within two hundred yards of her.

But even two yards from her would've been too far for him, and no matter how physically distant he was, his crumbled heart was still with her.

"Red carnations?" Calla interrupted Oliver's brooding silence.

Oliver didn't respond.

"Do you need me to tell you what that one means?"

Calla sat down next to him. "'Alas, for my poor heart!' I always thought that was a strong sentiment for one plant to carry, but I get it now, mopey."

"She won't even talk to me," Oliver shook his head, "I mean, she never talked to me, but she won't even let me apologize."

"It probably wouldn't've worked out anyways," Calla said.

"What's that supposed to mean?" If anyone would've understood his feelings, it was her. He sometimes wondered if his little sister had been misclaimed by Demeter, and if Aphrodite was her mom instead. She saw the potential for a relationship in anyone.

"I mean, her dad's the god of war," Calla said, "our mom is the god of wildflowers."

"The opposite of that," Oliver shook his head, "the harvest. Things we plant."

"So, gardening."

"Have you ever started a garden?" Oliver asked. When she shook her head, he continued, "you look at a piece of land, and you say, 'this is mine.' You mark off a territory, and you fight for it. You rip it apart by the roots, you make it yours, and you don't show mercy to any weeds or wildflowers that stand in the way. If you let your guard down for even a day, the enemy will choke you out. You have to keep fighting. Gardening is war, and if anyone could understand that…."

He shook his head as his voice trailed away.

"I didn't know you were such a fighter," Calla smiled, then nudged him, "and I bet Emilia doesn't know that either."

Another red carnation sprouted at the mere mention of Emilia.

"And she never will," he half laughed to shrug off the pain.

"Not with that attitude," Calla said, "but maybe if you show her?"

"How?"

"Maybe start with flowers," Calla suggested, motioning to the DIY bouquet at their feet.

"Give her these?" Oliver asked.

"It's a start," Calla said.

"I can't do it."

"You have to try."

"No I don't."

Calla shook her head and got up.

"And here I thought you were a fighter."

"So?" Oliver asked.

Calla smiled and shrugged, "so fight for her."

Oliver looked down at the flowers at his feet and knew exactly what to do.

🥀

He watched her cabin from a safe distance. He'd seen his brothers leave flowers for the Aphrodite girls all the time, but he had a feeling Emilia wouldn't respond the same way. It was just a simple bouquet with a note that said "I'm sorry," but he hoped the rich hue of the red flowers would appease her, like a sacrifice painted in the blood of her enemies.

He watched as she opened the cabin door and picked up the bouquet, then re-entered her cabin.

Did it work? Would she hear him out? Would she at least treat him civilly?

He watched again as she left her cabin, holding the flowers upside-down, a lighter in her other hand (and where she got a lighter at camp, he didn't want to know.) The flame quickly licked up the plants, and she left the charred husk that remained on her cabin steps as a reminder.

Oliver didn't need to hear that message twice. If his poor heart ached when he saw that happen, he wouldn't give her the flowers to prove it.

~emilia's third summer~

Emilia had had just about enough of this flower boy, and it took her every last ounce of restraint to keep from burning down his cabin instead of just the red flowers he'd left at the doorstep yesterday. She couldn't imagine what would've happened if any of her siblings saw them before she got rid of them. They'd already given her a hard enough time about the tulip soda at the start of the summer and losing in battle to the new girl last week, she didn't need this ruining her image either. When would this pansy stop trying to embarrass her already?

She smiled as he cowered away when she saw him at breakfast that morning. She'd put him in his place. Nobody, nobody makes Emilia Alvarez look stupid and gets away with it.

🥀

Emilia had been cornered by a lot of people in her life. Even mortals like her siblings back home and the bullies at school had seen her as easy prey for years— though the older she got, the less she let them give her problems. And demigods? Most of them would steer clear of her with just a glare, and the ones that didn't quickly learned their lessons.

That's why she was so thrown off today, when a girl grabbed her by the arm and growled her name like it was some kind of curse.

Emilia turned to see a girl ten inches shorter than her, with flowers braided in her hair and a necklace made of plastic daisies.

"What's your problem?" Emilia asked.

"No, what's yours?" the flower girl sneered.

"Hey, I'm not usually in the mood to bust someone's nose right after eating," Emilia threatened, "but you wouldn't be the first, and you won't be the last."

"Take your best shot," she said, "you could stand to lose dessert privileges the next few days."

Emilia frowned, then smiled and pulled back to punch, but stopped when she saw the fear in her eyes.

"I recognize you," Emilia said, "you're the one always hanging out with that punk."

"Calla," she said, "and 'that punk' has a name— it's Oliver— and if he didn't care so much about you, I would've flattened you myself by now."

"Back that train up," Emilia crossed her arms, "'Oliver' doesn't care about me. He's been using his flower powers to make me look stupid all summer."

"I didn't know he goes for stupid," she sighed, "but he's absolutely crazy about you, so…."

"'Crazy's' a good word for it, runt."

"You don't understand," Calla said, "he hasn't been trying to make you look bad at all."

"Well, he's got a funny way of showing it," she rolled her eyes.

"He can't control it."

"Can't control what?"

"The flowers," Calla said, "they just kind of happen. He doesn't cause them— deliberately."

"I don't buy that," Emilia asked, "you've got ten seconds to scram before I bash your brains in."

"It's true!" she said, apparently undeterred, "they respond to his emotions. Like the tulips when someone's smile reminds him of the sunshine."

"What?" Emilia asked, recalling the soda blossom at the start of the summer.

"And the alyssum you tripped on?" Calla said, "when he likes someone for who they are, more than just their beauty." "Beauty?" Emilia asked, "He thinks I'm pretty?" "More than that," Calla said, listing a few things off on her fingers, "a skilled fighter, a queen on earth, the pride of Camp Half Blood. He won't shut up about you."

Emilia tried to pretend that the red she could feel creeping across her cheeks was from anger, not because she was blushing. She tried to change the subject.

"So you expect me to believe the bouquet of flowers with an apology note was an accident too?"

"That one was my idea," Calla admitted, "a foolish attempt to get you to talk to him— but it was only flowers he'd already grown, borne of heartbreak. He's devastated, Emilia, and it's because of you."

"Good," Emilia said.

"I know you don't really think that," Calla said.

"You don't know me."

"I know you would've pulverized me by now if you were glad you hurt him."

Emilia could've pulverized her. She could've punched the smug grin off the flower child's face. She could've flattened her before she got a chance to turn heel and leave. She could've yelled a few insults, or chased after her and beat her down. Instead, Emilia stood in silence as she walked away.

🥀

Everything felt different as Emilia walked across the camp. Her heart raced like she was preparing for war. She smiled like she'd completed some conquest. Somehow she felt a little bit invincible— was this what love feels like?

She started to notice things more too— most prominently, she noticed a trail of red flowers, just like the ones she'd burned yesterday. Now that she realized that was a declaration of love and not of war, she almost felt guilty crushing his heart in response. In fact, she did feel guilty— and she needed to make it up.

She followed the trail of flowers to the shade behind cabin #4, where she saw Oliver sitting against the wall, lost in thought. She approached him with military stealth, and he didn't even notice as she stood right over him.

"I thought I'd find you here," Emilia said.

He looked up at her, startled, though she couldn't tell if it was a general startle or if it was because her presence had that effect on people.

"Then again, the carnations gave you away."

"Emilia!" he said, nervously jumping to his feet as though he were about to make a hasty escape, "don't worry, I'll, I'll get out of your way."

"Not so fast, punk," Emilia said. She grabbed him by the back of his shirt and pulled him back, turning him around and pushing him against the wall in front of her, her arm pressing against his collarbone, "I had a talk with your little friend."

"What about?" he asked, fear swirling in his eyes.

"Something about you having a little crush on me," she narrowed her eyes, "is that true?"

He looked down at the ground for a moment, then back up at her, meeting her eyes with his.

"Yeah," he said, followed by a quick, "please don't kill me."

For a moment, before his face washed with fear, she saw a confident determination, like a soldier prepared for war. She liked that more than she normally would've admitted. She also liked the fear in his eyes too— actually, maybe it was just that she liked his eyes, and the rest of his face as well.

"Oh, don't worry," she said, pushing him harder against the wall, "I wouldn't do that. I can think of something a lot better to do with your face than pulverizing it."

"Like what?" his voice squeaked.

"Like this," she smiled.

She leaned toward him and planted a kiss on his trembling lips, which stilled themselves as the world did, stopping itself and starting itself all over again.

She pulled away, and he blinked a few times, stupefied. She ran a range of emotions she couldn't begin to place names to. He must've as well, because as she looked down at their feet, there must've been a dozen different flowers growing around them, entangling their roots, planting them both to the spot.

But one flower stood out most to her, a couple bright orange blossoms she couldn't stop herself from picking.

"Nasturtium," she said.

"What?" Oliver asked, breathless, still clearly trying to regain his senses.

"These grew back home," Emilia said, lost for a wistful moment as she twirled the buds between her fingers, "when I was a little girl, back in Chile."

She met Oliver's eyes.

"Know what this one means?"

He shook his head.

"Conquest," Emilia said, "victory in battle."

She didn't explain how she knew, but he seemed too shocked still to even bother to ask.

"I think I'll keep this one," she said, tucking the flower behind her ear, "if that's okay with you."

"Yeah," he whispered.

She could tell he was still processing, trying to figure out what was going on, and if there'd been a flower for confusion, it would've been in the garden growing between them. It might be best to give him time to weed out his thoughts— pun literally intended.

"I'll talk to you later, okay?" she said.

He started to say "yeah," but she planted a kiss on his cheek first, which apparently flipped a reset switch in his brain all over again.

As Emilia walked away, she brushed her fingers along the flower behind her ear. She knew her siblings were gonna give her a hard time for it, but she'd give it right back to them. As much as she hated them picking on her, she'd tolerated it— but somehow she knew that if any of the others started poking fun at Oliver, she'd personally arrange a meeting between their head and a toilet, complete with a black eye as a parting gift.

She'd heard someone on TV say that love was strength, and maybe they were right. As much as she'd always fought for herself, she was twice as prepared to fight for Oliver.

Especially that day at lunch, when he gave her a whole bouquet of those bright orange nasturtium flowers, and though he was still apparently too tongue-tied to get out anything more than a "these are for you," the note he'd written on the card said it all in just how he addressed her: "to the champion who conquered my very heart"

#percy jackon and the olympians #kazzy's ocs #oliver mcadam #emilia alvarez #calla fields #5 and 1 #kazzy writes fanfiction #clariss la rue #percy jackson book spoilers #kazzy borrows uncle rick's sweater #kazzy writes fanfic #camp half blood

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