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Piper couldn’t imagine a life without her boys.
She has trouble imagining life before them. When she was so lonely, every day. Day in and day out, aching for something she never really knew. Grandpa Tom had occupied that space in her chest for a while, and even her Dad had brushed the edges, but, the gulf between them grew every day. He tried, she knows he tried, by god, but Piper tried too. Reached out her hand, looking for his, but her hand always only met air and the same ache.
Piper had been born aching. Born with a throat that felt like it always filled with blood and liquid gold. A tongue made from quicksilver and her heart beating out someone else’s rhythm. Piper was always neat, no chaser. All spirit, she was.
Piper’s best years were with Grandpa Tom, with his eyes like the earth and deep laugh. With his old, wonderful, mythical stories of their people. She missed him so much. He was everything to her, he raised her, taught her how to love, wholly and completely.
He left her, aching and looking at the stars. School was bad, home was empty and Piper forgot how not to be guarded, how to love, what it was meant to feel like. Piper felt like she was always on edge, from sly glances and sharp words behind her back, but loud enough that she could hear what they said about her.
She said nothing back, swallowed around the snakes that had replaced her vocal cords, and the heat that burned in her voice box.
Then, she was doing anything to catch her father’s attention for more than five minutes. Dumb pranks and begging him for surfing lessons, helping him research for movies and getting him to tell her stories of when his mom was still alive and he still lived at home.
Then, when she was 15 and she was still aching, she thought one way to stop the ache was to run away. Escape her troubles by running from them. It seemed like a smart idea at the time.
She lasted a week in LA.
It wasn’t even the cops who got her. It was a fan of her dad’s, who recognized her and tweeted at her dad. Tweeted. Was that all she was to him? A fucking tweet? A footnote?
They were both reaching across the gap, but sometimes Piper felt like she would one day overreach and she’d fall into the pit-
Dad’s assistant sends her to Wilderness.
Piper McLean begins again.
Leo is her first friend. Ever.
Leo Valdez, her chemistry buddy, who acts like an idiot but gets paid to do other people’s homework. Who charms Piper into being his friend with his dumb, dumb jokes and fearless nature. He makes fun of the people who make fun of them, using their own insults like bullets and his mouth a gun.
Leo Valdez is 5’7. He is nahua and Piper is jealous because he seems more connected with his identity than Piper feels she ever will be. He’s got a mouth that could start wars and a brain to finish them. Bright brown eyes, black, oily curls that he never takes care of and faint freckles. He’s got a line of moles that follow the line of his slender neck up to his sharp jaw that Piper feels like she could connect into the Big Dipper.
He’s thousands of tiny mysteries that mesh together, leaving Piper feeling like he’s made from smoke, that if she tried to hold him, he’d simply collapse under her touch.
He slides so quickly into the space between her ribs that it surprises Piper. Is this what it always feels like? To find someone and realize that you could never, not ever, live without their cologne or raspy voice. He dulls the ache so quickly, his puns and inside jokes soothing Piper’s too-big heart like aloe vera.
She learns a lot about him. He’s a nerd, he’s got a deep-seated love of Star Trek and his taste in jokes and memes is atrocious. Leo’s also got weird ideas. Especially about sinning. Catholic, born and raised. He doesn’t believe, but that’s just what he tells Piper. It still clings to him though. The ideals and concepts. Piper was raised without religion, aside from Grandpa Tom’s stories, which Piper still believes wholly and completely. But the idea of Eve and Adam fascinates her.
To forsake heaven for knowledge. To forsake heaven for the love of a woman.
(If Piper’s the snake, who’s Eve? Who’s Adam? Who’s the apple and who’s the angels who guarded the garden? Or is Piper Eve, and this time she’s luring the snake instead?)
They have sleepovers in Wilderness and Piper wants to wipe the sadness away from Leo’s heart, but she can tell that kind of shit runs deep, deeper than Piper can see. Piper still aches, but Leo lost the ache. No one came in time, and the ache swallowed itself whole, an ouroboros of aching that swallowed itself whole and left Leo empty and shivering.
Sometimes, they can spend hours together, whispering as their heads laid close together on Leo’s pillow. He doesn’t have a roommate. This seems significant.
Sometimes, on evenings like this, Piper can spend hours listening to Leo talk as she counts his eyelashes, long and dark. She spends hours watching his long, scarred fingers tap out messages to no one on his knee, or Piper’s shoulder when they’re lying together.
Then he gets a roommate.
Jason is something unexpected. Sudden. 2 months into Wilderness he just turns up, electric blue eyes like a neon streetlight and skin as pale as a cloud. He’s soft-spoken, but sometimes, Piper can see something hard and unrelenting as steel underneath his skin. He and Leo get along immediately. Piper doesn’t know what the big deal is, but if Leo likes him so much, she’ll put up with Jason.
She doesn’t like the feeling that begins in her chest every time she sees them laughing together. Not the ache, but something- baser, hotter, and sharp.
Leo was hers first.
And, slowly, Jason curls up in her chest like a satisfied cat. Not as quickly as Leo, but- slow. So slow she doesn’t notice. Leo was like a fire catching on dry kindling, nothing, and then everything. Jason was like a storm. You could see it coming, but it didn’t seem like a big thing until it was thundering above your head, and the air smelt like ozone and lightning. His haunting lightning-blue eyes fill her and leave her wanting more. His white scar against pink lips. Broad shoulders. His laugh is quiet like he’s not used to it, but hearing it is addictive. Both her and Leo are swept up by him and he’s under their spell too-
He’s different from Leo, but they feel the same. Fire and Lightning are similar enough, she supposes. They burn and bluster around her, but they’re not dangerous, not her. She’s got a voice made to shake the heavens and they have the powers to raze it to the ground.
The ache in her, that’s been there since she came into the world screaming, finally, finally, subdues.
Softens.
Stops.
The air is warm. Heavy. It smells like sandalwood and Doritos. The sandalwood is Leo’s cologne, which he attempted to use to get rid of the overpowering stench of thousands of chili heatwave Doritos. Three bodies lie together, piled on top of one another, legs entangled, skin brushing skin, and eyes closed in sleep. The room is silent, save for their breathing. The air is still, warm, moving like a heavy blanket over all of them.
Piper doesn’t mind the smell.
She presses her face more firmly into the junction of Leo’s shoulder and neck. He just showered before Jason and Piper clambered into his private room and claimed his bed. His body wash is something tangy and minty. His body is warm against hers and her hand curls against Jason’s sharp hipbone. Leo’s between them because Leo’s so warm, radiating heat like he’s got starlight instead of marrow. Piper runs cold because Aphrodite is a creation of the sea and Jason doesn’t run hot or cold. Jason runs whatever temperature the room is, so easily affected by it.
Jason is on the other side of Leo, curled against his back like a cat, arm curled up against his chest and stomach, fisted in the fabric of his shirt above his heart. Piper and Leo are facing each other and she counts his dark, splattering freckles like sheep. Her own whiskey-dark eyes blink slowly as sleep makes its presence known to her, whispering at her eat and tugging at her hand, asking her to follow it into the hazy unknown of sleep. Her arm is slung over Leo’s hip and her hand soothingly brushes Jason’s hipbone every few beats of her heart. Leo’s arm is has curled around Piper like a vine, holding her like she was precious, delicate, something to be held and cherished and loved until the sun burned out.
She feels filled with aching, but it’s different from that old ache, this is an ache of love, of finally finding something good, something she could go home to. It hurt, to eat, after not eating for so long and that’s what this felt like.
She wants to cry. Her thick, dark hair slips like silk over her eyes and she’s too tired to move it. She shuts her dark eyes, black eyelashes fanning against earth-dark skin and sleep tugs at her like an impatient child.
Then, a shift.
Leo’s arm moves, reaching up to her face, and her hair rises, her eyes still shut. His rough fingertips skim her jaw, up to her cheek as he gathers the hair that’s fallen into her face, brushing it behind her ear.
“Idiot,” he whispers fondly, and her mouth curls into a smile against her wishes. “You got a hair-tie?”
She snorts and cracks open an eye, pulling away to look more firmly at him, her voice rough from disuse. “Do I ever? I just count on you guys”
He frowns at her, and Piper represses the urge to kiss it away. He mutters something that sounds rude in Spanish and motions for her to turn around. She rolls her eyes but obliges, curling so her back is against his firm chest, their legs entangled.
Jason mutters something, pulling Leo more firmly against him and Leo laughs, raspy and light. She feels his dexterous fingers scrape her thick hair back from her face, gathering it together, the smooth, repetitive motion lulling Piper into the space between sleep and not-sleep. He tugs as he braids the hair, making sure it’s tight and won’t loosen when Piper starts to flail in her sleep. He’s careful not to tug too hard and Piper’s slipping. Slowly. But surely.
Her breath evens out as he finishes and he doesn’t even say anything, just slips his arm around her and pulls her so close she feels like he could climb into her skin.
It’s days like this she loves. When it’s just them. Cause they don’t need anyone else. Just Them. PiperLeoJason. LeoPiperJason. JasonLeoPiper. JasonPiperLeo. There’s no beginning to them and there’s no end and Piper has to believe in soulmates when she’s with them. They fit together like the gears of Leo’s most intricate automatons.
Piper would speak in the gods into submission if Leo asked her to. She’d make world leaders bow to her if Jason wanted her to. But she knows they would do the same. Leo would tear stars from the sky if Piper wanted one. He’d build machine after machine if it brought a smile to Jason’s face. Jason would still the winds and stop the rain if Leo wanted a clear day. He would pull the breath from someone’s chest if Piper asked him nicely.
They loved one another. Plain and simple.
The waves of sleep are now up to her neck.
With them, Piper doesn’t feel like an imposter, a monster with a quicksilver tongue, and the ability to make gods bow. She just feels like Piper McLean, a 17-year-old High School Junior. Piper, who volunteers at the animal shelter in New York and likes so-bad-they’re-good movies. Who can’t do math for shit but has an affinity for remembering passages of information. Who has a deathly fear of cows and has tried (and failed) to start knitting.
They’re just them, together. No past. No expectations, no gods, no destinies. Just.
Them.
Piper breathes out one last time before exhaling and-
She drops underneath the current.