kelpheaded | get up and shake the glitter off your clothes now

Entry tags:

get up and shake the glitter off your clothes now

When she wakes up, she doesn't realize anything's wrong at first. She's in a bed, soft but supportive, tucked under a thick blanket. She's cuddled up against a warm body, her head pillowed against a firm chest that moves up and down steadily with even breaths. It's comfortable, and when she cracks her eyes open and sees she's in a (hotel?) room that's empty aside from her sleeping companion, no monsters (why would she be looking for monsters?) or anything else dangerous in sight, she almost shuts her eyes again to fall back asleep.

It's the thought that she doesn't quite remember how she got here that really wakes her up. Because: how did she get here? Where is here? It might be safe... ish... in that she might not be in immediate danger, but there's a lot of unknowns right now, including the question of who the frick is in bed with her.

It would probably make more sense to stay quiet and take in more of the situation, but the realization that she's in bed with a stranger causes her to flail backwards in a way that would absolutely have had her falling off the side of the bed if the mattress itself wasn't surprisingly large. Instead, she ends up tangled gracelessly in the sheets and slightly frozen in place, like the guy waking up won't see her if she's completely still.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

“How fucked up this all is, mostly.”

She’s pretty sure she has every right to have some very weird and complicated emotions right now. It does kind of feel out of place to be having them while walking in a beautiful beach with a cute boy, but. There it is.

“Also, that I feel like maybe this isn’t the first time our parents have fucked us over? I don’t know, the confusion and the anger feels familiar.”

Jason makes a sound that's maybe a snort, but it's clearly not dismissal.

"I don't know... I don't feel like I knew my parents at all." He shrugs one shoulder. "But yeah. The confusion's a little familiar. The not knowing."

Anger, too, yes. But it feels more deeply buried for him, he thinks. Simmering. But contained.

"This is fucked up," he agrees. "Especially if it's not the first time. Which is why I think it's a good idea that we're not doing exactly what they want."

It’s not exactly that they’re doing something they wouldn’t want. If they really wanted to do that, they’d check out, maybe even part ways. But that’s not exactly smart, and it’s not necessarily what Percy wants, at this point.

“ - Hey, um. Do you see that?” is somehow what Percy ends up saying, because there’s some kind of - animal? In the distance? Moving towards them?

Jason figures it's a compromise: They're not doing exactly what the gods seem to want, and they are doing what he and Percy want. So, it works.

He glances at her, though, then back where she's looking, squinting into the distance. "See - ?"

It takes him a minute to make it out, but - "Oh. Yeah. What... is that?"

He can't tell, the outline is fuzzy, but it does not appear to be a human. His fingers tighten around hers, as every nerve starts to stand on end. He isn't sure that it's a good thing, whatever it is.

“I think - maybe we should move into the water,” she says, already tugging him in that direction. Working by instinct has gone pretty well so far, and her instincts say to meet whatever it is in a source of power.

Also, weirdly, instinct is pushing her to check that her pen is in her pocket with the hand that isn’t holding his.

Admittedly, Jason's instinct isn't to go for the water, but he can understand why she does, and he's not about to argue. The wind picks up a little - it may or may not be responding to his tension and anticipation - ruffling the waves and their hair as he lets her tug him toward the ocean without complaint. Wet shoes are not appealing but they're better than the alternative, he thinks.

Even if he's not sure what the alternative is.

He realizes he's pulled the coin out of his pocket, the worn metal pressing into the palm of his free hand. When did he do that?

"It's headed right for us." That much he can tell, and he doesn't like it at all.

The water stills around them, but this time there’s a sense of tension to it, anticipation. Like it’s readying itself for a fight.

“I want to say maybe it’s friendly, but I really don’t think it is.”

She finds herself pulling her pen out as well, totally unsure what that’s supposed to do to help, but. Again. Working on instinct.

"Neither do I."

He's watching it so intently that when his fingers curl to flip the coin, it's all happening in the back of his brain. He doesn't even realize he's doing it until it flashes in the air and -

When it comes back down and he catches it, still on autopilot, there's a -

That is a sword in his hand. A perfectly balanced, golden sword that should probably feel a lot more foreign in his grip, but instead just feels... right. He's held this sword before. He knows what to do with it.

Which means it comes up into guard position without his needing to think about it.

“What the - “

The thing is, with Jason’s coin sword thing distracting her, her hands are free to follow what they think is right, which is uncapping the stupid pen, which is suddenly no longer a stupid pen.

It’s a sword.

“What the-?!”

Jason doesn't really have an explanation; he glances at Percy out of the corner of his eye, mostly because he doesn't want to take his full gaze off whatever the thing is that's approaching them, but then her other hand moves and she's got a sword, and -

And that feels right, too? Or, at least, better than her not having a sword.

"I don't know," is all he's got to say to it, really. "But we must have - faced things like this before."

It's the only thing that makes sense to him, at least.

“I’m just going to hope we know how to use them.”

She does, though. The way he’s holding his speaks of practice and comfort, and the sword in her hands feels as natural as anything. Which is good, because the creature’s getting close enough to identify, and it looks like… Actually, she’s not sure what she’d call it, aside from giant terrifying hog thing. She’s pretty sure it could run right over them and barrel them over like they were nothing, which doesn’t sound great.

Jason's grip tightens on the sword and he has to admit, "I think I do."

Honestly, it doesn't sound unsure. He sounds very sure that he does.

He finds himself wishing in the back of his mind that he had a javelin, for some reason, as the beast comes tearing up the beach, putting on speed. Jason's stance widens and the wind starts to whip up again; there are dark clouds rolling in but he doesn't seem to notice them.

He squeezes her hand again, before moving to drop it. "I'll go left if you go right?" That puts Percy farther into the ocean, and that seems like the best idea.

She really doesn't like the idea of letting Jason go and separating, even as part of a battle stance, but she guesses she's going to have to trust that they both know what they're doing, and that the urge to protectively shove him behind her is probably counterproductive. "Okay."

The boar's not actually close enough to the edge of the water that it should be going in right now, but the ocean is abruptly changing its boundaries, gathering in front of the boar's path and creating resistance to slow it down.

Don't worry, Percy - Jason has the exact same urge, to get between her and the charging boar, but he knows he can't. Honestly, she's probably stronger than he is, given that they're standing in the ocean.

He watches a little wide-eyed as the water seems to make an effort to keep the thing back; the wind is starting to do the same, blowing directly in the animal's face. But still it keeps coming, slower, but not stopped. Jason starts to work his way around to its flank while it's struggling forward, not entirely sure what he's going to do but feeling like he'll know what to do when it's time to do it.

He hopes.

It's definitely getting darker overhead. There's a low roll of thunder, but nothing more, for the moment.

For some reason, she feels something like relief that it’s at least a wild animal. It’s acting on instinct, not with malicious intent. Hopefully. She’s not sure why she knows this or what malicious intent would entail, but…

The closer it comes, the harder the water works to push it back. In the meantime, the water around Percy’s feet works to brace her, hold her in place and keep her steady as she swings at the boar coming within range.

Jason doesn't have the same steadying force, but it's okay - Percy's standing her ground, but Jason's moving, so that by the time Percy takes a swing, he's ready to do the same.

He wonders if he should have hesitated more, when the sword tip slices at the creature's skin, making it scream and swing its head around in Jason's direction. Then he feels the wind snatch him away right as the tusks slice through the place where he would have otherwise been. Which is good - he probably would've been a lot worse off than the boar, if those tusks had connected.

"Watch out for the tusks!" Maybe Percy doesn't need the warning, but it comes out anyway.

And then, "Do you think we can just drive it away?" he calls, even as he suspects that's probably not what's going to happen. Even if they could... it might go after someone else. Someone who doesn't know how to use a sword.

"Thanks! My plan was to try to get impaled!"

Okay, she might be a little overly sassy when stressed. Don't judge her, it is not her fault. She doesn't even remember how she got like this.

A powerful wave knocks into the boar, pushing it off balance and giving her an opportunity to slice at it with her sword. "Maybe, but where?"

Jason's eyes dart around, but, "I don't know," is the frustrated answer, as he tries to keep himself between the boar and what lies beyond the shore, since Percy's clearly got the ocean covered. He's loath to just kill it, but he isn't sure there are a lot of alternative options.

At the same time, he feels... kinship isn't the right word, exactly, but he wonders how much of this was the boar's choice, and how much of this is outside forces sending it against them.

"I don't want it to hurt someone else," he grits out, practically growling with frustration. "Do you think we can calm it down?"

It seems, admittedly, unlikely, as the thing squeals madly and stomps at the water too close to Percy, setting Jason's teeth on edge as the air starts to tingle, almost like there's an electric charge building. He doesn't think anything of it.

“Not really? We’re not exactly calming people to it right now.”

Seeing as how they’re whacking at it with swords and bullying it with water and everything. They can kind of keep it running along a line, but not forever.

Apparently she can’t keep avoiding the tusks forever, either, because it turns abruptly and basically barrels into her in a way that should gore her on one of them - even with the water working to push it back - except it just. Doesn’t. Well, it knocks her back, definitely, but there’s no tusk sticking out of her stomach.

No, they really aren't.

And then the boar turns and, for all Jason can tell, swings its head to gore Percy cleanly in the stomach -

And something snaps in him at the sight of it. Jason screams her name and lunges for her, right as a crack of thunder goes off directly overhead and a bolt of lightning sizzles too close, setting every hair on his body standing straight up as it hits the boar square in the back.

And the boar just explodes in a shower of golden dust scattering on the wind, but Jason is too busy slogging his way toward Percy, panicked, to care.

Holy shit.

The combination of getting stabbed-but-not by the boar and then watching Jason call down lightning from the sky might have her a little bit in shock. She should reassure him that she’s fine (she thinks, she’s not in pain at least), but instead she’s just kind of left staring at where the boar was and now isn’t, because Jason literally killed it so dead that it turned into dust. Is that normal? A part of her feels like that makes sense but it also very, very much does not.

“What the fuck?” is all she manages to choke out.

What the fuck is right, Jason thinks frantically, as he falls to his knees in the water, dropping the sword so his hands can tug at Percy's shirt to get to her stomach -

Which is not injured. There's no hole gored in her, no blood, no... nothing?

Jason blinks at the lack of a wound, then at her face. "What?" is only as far as he gets.

She legitimately has to look down to confirm that she is uninjured, because maybe the lack of pain was shock. That would make sense. But no, she’s still not bleeding or anything.

“I don’t know. But I’m okay? It didn’t… go through. It’s like I was wearing armor it couldn’t penetrate, except… I’m not.”

She's definitely not - there's the T-shirt and there's her skin, and nothing in between.

"Maybe... because you're in the water?" he says, almost numbly, because it's the only explanation he can think of. Not that he really cares why, so much as he cares about the fact that she's not dead or dying, but still. Knowing why would be helpful for making sure she's not vulnerable next time.

If there is a next time.

He feels like there's going to be a next time, and finally he starts looking around, actually taking in their surroundings again - which generally consist of no boar, some dust floating on the water and in the wind, and dark thunderclouds quickly vanishing into the sunny sky.

“Maybe? It’s a neat trick if it is.”

She finally stands and starts making her way towards land, because some part of her doesn’t like the idea of sticking around in a place where an animal just attacked them. Not that there’s much evidence left behind by it, thanks to the neat trick of it turning to dust, but still.

Once she gets out of the water, her legs start to crumple under her, because without the ocean supporting her, she’s way more shaky after nearly being stabbed through than she realized.

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject