#this really was just an excuse to write about jason chewing on reyna's arm as a stim thing hahaha

[happyk44]

Reyna's entire arm is covered in weird scars. No one really knows how to ask her about it - probably some odd quest she and Jason went on as kids. Then one day she walks into their biannual argo 2 group meeting while Jason is pacing back and forth while Leo is chattering up a storm about some project, using words only Annabeth understands.

Jason isn't really the type to pace, that's more Leo's and Percy's thing. He's more like Annabeth, sat down with tapping feet and fidgety hands, hyperfocusing on one specific thing to keep from going insane. But there he is far in the back of Percy's cabin. It's back and forth, from wall to wall. He chimes in with a clipped tone at times. It's odd, but no one calls him out about it. He seems stressed. Drawing attention to his stress tends to only heighten it.

Then Reyna barges in. Her question, "Where's Nico?", goes answered by Hazel, but she doesn't turn around and walk out. Instead she catches Jason's speedwalking form. A scowl immediately cuts her face. She stomps through the group's impromptu circle on her way towards him.

"Jason!" she barks, hiking up the sleeve of her left arm. The scars are much lighter than the rest of her skin. "Arm!"

Jason draws short. His eyes are wide when he looks at her. Then an annoyed draw of his eyebrows. But before he can say anything, she grabs him by the back of his head, dragging him down and shoving her arm into his mouth.

Suddenly the scars make much more sense.

There's a moment where nothing happens. Jason just looks pissed off, Reyna is unbothered, still holding on the back of his head, and everyone thinks he's going to detach and snap at her with whatever annoyance is glowing in his eyes.

Then a guttural snarl rips out his chest. It's more animal than human. It takes a minute to realize Jason was the source and not some emergence of a creature from the shadows. He bites down and Reyna barely flinches. She draws up to the balls of her feet as Jason rises with her arm in his mouth. Her other arm falls to her side. With a roll of her eyes, she sighs and turns to the confused group before her.

"When we were younger and he'd get overstimulated and agitated, I'd let him chew on my arm," she says, like it's the most normal thing to say about a childhood. Then again only two of the demigods in the room had vaguely normal childhoods, so it's not necessarily out of place.

"Why not just get a chew toy?" Piper asks. "Or a bone?"

Jason drags his teeth down to Reyna's wrist. She squints at him and he pulls back up a bit. "Because Jason likes fleshy things and it's less creepy to chew on your friend's arm instead of the dead rabbit you caught and ripped the head off.

"Jesus Christ," Hazel mutters.

The neutral look on Reyna's face remains. "Exactly."

Frank grimaces when Jason draws up to her shoulder and a weird noise clicks in the air. Leo has already moved on and is rambling about his latest project again, Annabeth turning away from Jason and Reyna to listen in. Percy eyes the two for a bit before going back to placing star stickers all over Piper's face.

"Doesn't that hurt?" Frank asks, slightly drowned out by Leo's loud chatter.

"I still a feel it, but it stopped hurting after the third time," Reyna says. A bit of blood drips down her skin, Jason's eyes wide and feral. "Apparently I have a degree of nerve damage in this arm, which is why-" She cuts her gaze back to Jason who is uninterested in anything else but chewing her skin like he wants to rip it open and eat it. "-he's not supposed to go near my hand."

He chuffs around her arm and bites harder into her bicep. She flicks his forehead. It lasts another minute. By the end, the others have drawn their focuses back to one another. Jason drops Reyna's arm out of his mouth like a cat giving a rat to its owner. They knock their foreheads together. Jason rubs his cheek against hers, then draws back. There's still a simmer of something in him, but he's not pacing like he's trying to catch up on his steps for the day.

Reyna marches back to the door and repeats her initial question. Annabeth answers with a wave goodbye. In the back of the cabin, Jason has relaxed in a slump on the floor. No one questions him, but eyes are drawn and Leo fades off for the first time since they all sat down and asked, "What have you guys been up to?"

However Leo is never silent for long, and shouts, "Are you gonna start biting my arm? Because I've kind of been thinking about mangling it up on purpose to make myself into a bitching cyborg."

All three girls reach across to swat him across the head at the thought, but he just ducks it with a laugh. James draws up out of his slump. He stretches long like a dog waking up from a good nap, and crawls over just enough to drop his head into Frank's lap. He reaches around to grab his hand and drops it into his hair. Frank rolls his eyes but starts petting.

"No," Jason says, tone clipped. "I stopped doing that when I was like thirteen."

Frank tugs once at Jason's hair. "When did you start?"

Jason's eyes slide close. "When was I given to the wolves?"

Hazel's nose wrinkles. "Those poor fucking rabbits. Did you at least eat them?"

A wide grin splits Jason's face. Then he shakes his head and twists over a bit so Frank can cover some more ground in his pets. "Of course," he says, half into Frank's belly. "But I've got other things I can do now." He doesn't elaborate on the other things. "Camp's just loud. I forgot."

Before Leo had launched into his latest project spiel, Jason dropped that he was meeting with minor gods across the country. Touring cities and states alone certainly approached more silence than the screeching and yells of kids calling out to one another from several feet away. Or the constant clang of swords, the breakout of musical renditions from the Apollo cabin, or the braying of pegasi and unicorns.

"Jason, you grew up around wolves and Hannibal," Frank laughs, "And you don't like noise?"

Jason gestures to his ear. "Sound carries on air. I hear a lot more than everyone else."

Oh, they all think, then grimace at memories of embarrassing noises they've made when they thought they were far enough away no one else would notice it.

"It's more... in-depth," Jason adds quiet. "Like the flap of a butterfly's wings. And the last few gods have lived closer to the nature. Quieter, solitude." He laughs a quiet wisp of a laugh. "And then I come back here and it's more than just leaves rustling." He's quiet for a breath, then, "It's noise. And it's like it's inside me."

"I get it," Percy says. "I have whales trying to talk to me and that goes right through my bones." He shakes his head, voice quieting down. "It is hell."

Jason's knees draw up closer to him, his face twisting further into Frank's lap. "Yeah. It is."

#my writing #pjo fanfic #my fanfic #jason grace #reyna avila ramirez arellano #happy talks pjo #this really was just an excuse to write about jason chewing on reyna's arm as a stim thing hahaha #im so sleepy. and i was writing another jason thing but i stopped enjoying it so we have this instead. hugs and hugs everyone