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They bring Luke back.
It takes what feels like hours to cut the last of Kronos out of him, Luke’s fingers slipping on the hilt of Annabeth’s knife.
All three sets of their hands come away bloody by the time it’s done. Annabeth’s cheeks wet with tears and sweat, Percy’s heart pounding in his throat, Luke—alive in the vaguest definition of the word—flat on his back, chest heaving and breath seesawing out of him.
But they bring him back.
He comes with them to camp after Annabeth pours ambrosia down his throat and clamps his mouth shut to make sure he stays alive, his head cradled in her lap. Percy can’t look at him directly, the aching wet splay of his broken body. The afterimage of his golden eyes.
Luke isn’t welcomed home, no matter what Annabeth and Grover, and Percy by proxy, preach about him being the true hero. He stays at the Big House, the Hermes cabin doors—known for being open to anyone and everyone, all those no-longer unclaimed campers—closed to him by unspoken and unanimous decision.
He lies in bed for a week.
Annabeth and Grover check on him in shifts, Percy hovering in the hallway outside of his room but never once stepping inside. Chiron paces, waits and hopes and tries not to let his anxieties show but fails so miserably that Percy has to duck out the front door and stare blankly at the Atlantic until his own heart rate slows down.
When Luke can finally stand on his own two feet, he takes to shadowing Chiron and Mr. D like a well behaved dog. He plays almost-silent games of pinochle with them on the porch, a third point to their odd little duo. He sits next to them at breakfast and dinner, staring down at his plate and not breathing a word to anyone.
The other campers ignore him, avoid him, take great pains to be as far away from him as possible. Percy hears the murmuring, knows that people aren’t happy he was brought back here. Brought back at all.
He’s not sure where else Luke would go.
The weeks pass and Percy is unfortunate witness to Luke falling into a weeping, miserable heap at Annabeth’s feet, begging for forgiveness and crying like a child. She drops to her knees in front of him in turn, holding him like a little sister too young to bear any of the weight but shouldering it anyway, and accepts his apologies without hesitation.
The sight of it makes Percy’s stomach turn.
Annabeth forgives him, of course she does. She’s always forgiven him, from the start—before he even asked for it.
Thalia can’t look him in the eye. Refuses to be within fifty feet of him. He understands that, too.
Luke doesn’t apologize to Percy.
Luke doesn’t say anything to Percy at all.
*
The weeks pass. Luke and Annabeth stay at camp, polar opposite stars orbiting the same tiny planet. Percy goes back to school and subsequently loses actual months of his life. And almost all of his memories.
Annabeth finds him after half a year, drags him back to his rightful place next to her by the tips of her fingers because she refuses to lose another person that she cares about, and they save the world. Again.
He doesn’t see Luke for almost a year and a half.
When Percy does come back to camp—older and bitter and scarred more so mentally than physically, but alive—Luke’s there. Still that same too tall, too bright shadow, quietly lurking behind Chiron.
He assumes Luke has some sort of camp responsibilities, like an actual camp counselor or something, but he’s got no damn idea what they are. It might be tough to revamp the image of a traitor hellbent on familicide, but Percy doesn’t think Mr. D just lets him sit around all day playing cards either.
There are new campers now, kids Percy has never seen before. Kids who seem less afraid of Luke, other kids who dare each other to speak to him, to pass him in the Big House hallways.
The Luke Percy knew from the war would have snapped his teeth at them, a gleam in his eye, sending them running. The Luke Percy knew from before even that would have smiled, thrown an arm around their shoulders, showed them something new.
This Luke says and does nothing.
The thought of it—Luke quiet and beaten down after everything they’ve been through, as if he’s suffered the most out of all of them at the hands of a choice he made—makes Percy so angry that blood pounds in his ears.
It seems like everyone is treating him like he’s simultaneously made of glass and also the dirt on the bottom of their shoes. A walking time bomb and their greatest enemy, reduced to a husk of his former glory.
Percy lasts three days before he ignores the watchful eyes of almost everyone he’s ever known, Annabeth’s included, and stomps up the steps of the Big House to drag Luke by the arm to the camp arena.
He puts a sword in his hand, one that looks nothing like Backbiter, and lunges at him before Luke seems to really understand what’s going on.
He gets with the program soon enough.
That first time, they fight so hard that they’re both out of breath only a few minutes in.
There’s a cut on Percy’s cheek that’s slowly dripping down his jaw and neck, a terrible echo of that tiny spill of blood that had the entire world halving before them.
Luke has a split lip from Percy losing his grip on his sword at one point and hauling off and punching him square in the face instead. They’re covered in dirt and grime from the neck down, their clothes rumpled and dusty.
It’s the best Percy’s felt in months.
They still don’t say anything to each other—no apologies, no explanations.
But they do start sparring regularly.
By regularly, Percy means he shows up at the Big House every few days and stares at Luke—sprawled in his seat at the card table while Mr. D calls Percy variations of Peter Johnson—until they walk to the arena together.
Fighting Luke feels like coming full circle.
It forces Percy to think about every foundational piece of sword fighting technique he was taught by this man years ago, shot through with every new thing he’s ever learned.
It’s nice, is all.
Percy’s been fighting for his life for so long that it’s taken all the fun out of it, the initial sheer joy at being able to protect himself so rote that it’s second nature.
Having to think about his next moves, to carefully track where Luke is in space, to run through all of his options, it’s a challenge. Finally.
He’s fought his fair share of sword fights at this point, but Luke is the only person who can keep up with Percy that isn’t an actual monster.
Although—maybe. Maybe he still sort of is.
Percy’s not sure what total body possession does to your brain, but probably nothing good.
Monster or not, Luke still looks good while fighting.
Looks like how he has for years, tall and strong and bright from the inside out. Sword form impeccable, his body loose but still strung with enough tension to make the hair on the back of Percy’s neck rise.
He’s not much taller than Percy is now, not like when they first met. A few inches of difference at most, although Luke’s reach is longer.
Sometimes he does something so smoothly, so effortlessly, that it makes Percy wonder just how many new tricks he learned from Kronos piloting him like a mech for a year.
He has enough tact not to ask.
Barely.
*
“You’re good,” Luke says one afternoon, ducking to avoid an overhead swing that Percy was hoping would catch him off guard. His voice is low, quiet.
The praise makes tiny flames lap low in Percy’s belly, which immediately pisses him off in a fun feedback loop of embarrassed pleasure.
He can’t help but scoff, taking his eyes off Luke for the second it takes to roll them back into his head. “You’re still better.”
This, this five word exchange, is the most they’ve spoken the entire time they’ve been sparring. Weeks of hot summer days that bleed together, the two of them fighting in the dirt for hours, ignoring all the things they still have left to say.
“Yeah,” Luke huffs, a sound almost like a laugh if you don’t listen to it too closely, “cause I taught you everything you know.”
It isn’t condescending, not really. The words are fact, if you look at them objectively.
They still make Percy grind his teeth.
“Not everything.”
He falls back on what he’s good at—being an absolute fuckin’ punk. “Got anything new to teach me? You absorb any of Kronos’s titan level fighting abilities while you were piggybacking him around?”
Luke pauses, his arm held out like he forgot he was in the process of moving. Percy sucks in a breath, sweat dripping from his hairline, and waits.
Then, as if he’s finally processed what Percy said, he jerkily starts back to life, baring his teeth and snarling. The sound throws him back to every time they met before that last battle on Olympus.
Luke’s eyes flicker. Percy can’t tell if they’re blue or gold, the sunlight cutting across them strangely. The split second panic, the memories pressing in on them from all sides, makes his breath come short.
He doesn’t have enough time to get out of the way, especially when Luke tosses his sword to the side and lunges, tackling Percy to the ground.
Flailing, Percy scrabbles against him, throwing all of his limbs around like that’ll do anything. Luke pins him to the hard packed dirt—arm pressed tight against Percy’s neck. He pulls back with heaving breaths to look directly into Percy’s eyes.
They make eye contact for one second, his eyes still blue, before Luke is slamming his mouth against Percy’s hard enough that it should count as a punch to the face. The motion knocks his head back, the curve of his skull rocking against the dirt.
It’s terrifyingly easy to let happen, to fall limp against the warm ground, to let Luke pry his mouth open with his tongue, attempting to lick the back of his teeth.
There’s no mistaking it for anything but a kiss, purposeful and intentional. And a damn good one at that.
Gasping against each other’s open mouths, Percy wiggles his arms out from underneath Luke to throw them around his shoulders, to slide his palms up the back of his neck, slick with sweat.
Wrapping his legs around Luke’s waist, he rocks into the motion of him grinding down. His willing participation must be enough to scare Luke off, to pull him from whatever blurred state he retreated to when he tackled Percy to the ground.
He jolts away from Percy, mouth wet and slick, breath too fast. Makes like he’s going to get up, peel his body away from him, pick up his sword and leave, but Percy doesn’t let him.
He’s so damn sick of them pretending. Pretending that everything is fine, pretending that now that they’re on the other side of a familial civil war that they have nothing left to say. Pretending that they haven’t torn awful, bone deep wounds into each other.
He isn’t going to pretend about this, either.
Grabbing a handful of blond hair, he tugs Luke back down toward him, kissing him open mouthed and wet.
Luke groans, a short sharp sound, and presses Percy back down into the dirt.
He pulls away momentarily—leaving Percy to pant up into the slowly darkening sky—to press open mouthed kisses to the side of his neck, sucking what are undoubtedly fuck off huge hickies into the skin there.
It’s so good, pressed together like this. Close, close, close. A continuation of their fight, an understandable progression.
Luke is a line of hard heat between his thighs, consistent pressure and a grind so good it makes Percy’s eyes roll back.
He ducks his own face into the curve of Luke’s neck, licking a line up his throat. The sweat tangy and sharp on his tongue.
Opening his mouth too wide, Luke bites down hard on the junction between Percy’s neck and his shoulder. The pain sparks, bright white, up and down his spine. He yelps like an idiot, torn between darting away and scrambling closer, goading Luke into doing it again.
When Luke shuffles down his body, using an arm to hold him flat to the ground, the bite mark undoubtedly left behind throbs in time with Percy’s heartbeat.
With a terrible huff of laughter, his shirt is rucked up with one hand, Luke’s other one tugging at the waistband of Percy’s cargo shorts. He gets the picture pretty quick, rushing to unbutton them and shuck them down his thighs.
Luke fists a hand around his dick and squeezes, almost too hard, and Percy keens into the open air of the arena. It’s an embarrassing noise, one he’s pretty sure he’s never made in his entire stupid life.
Cicadas have started singing, but he can’t hear them over the rush of blood in his ears.
Bending down, Luke licks a flat-tongued stripe up the head of his dick and Percy can’t help but arch up to meet him. The embarrassment continues, he guesses. Virgin antics. Can’t be helped.
“Fuck, Percy,” Luke growls, his exhale tickling sensitive skin. “Stay still.”
Blinking up into the dark sky, Percy goes against every single bit of his nature and tries to obey.
Luke sucks him off right there in the goddamn dirt, the warm, wet pull of his mouth absolutely ridiculous. The heat is too much, the gentle curls of Luke’s tongue, the smooth slide when Luke deepthroats him, the slow exhales from his nose against Percy’s navel making him shiver.
He doesn’t let Percy rock into it. Refuses to. Big, warm hand wrapped around Percy’s hip bones. There’s gonna be bruises there later and he can’t stand the thrill he gets from wanting to see them.
The grip on his hips tightens, almost too hard, the juxtaposition of pleasure and pain tangling up in Percy’s brain like they always have. He comes with a gasp and a vicious tug to Luke’s hair. It makes Luke groan deep in his chest, vibrates up around where he’s still got Percy’s dick in his mouth.
When Luke pulls off of him, the sudden lack of heat and exposure to the almost-warm air makes his toes curl in his sneakers.
Luke slides back up his body, his mouth swollen. When he bends down to kiss Percy again, he rises up to meet him.
The warmth of Luke’s cock against his and the tiny, seemingly unconscious little grinding motions he starts doing against Percy’s splayed legs jolt him into action.
Frantically, he undoes Luke’s jeans, the pure need to get his hands on him making him move sharp and jerky. He commits the sound Luke makes when Percy gets a hand around him to memory, playing it back over and over again in the echoey space in his head where his brain used to be.
It takes him a beat, Luke breathing heavily into the sensitive space behind his ear, before his thoughts snap back into order and he sits up.
Wet and slick between his thighs from the spit, Percy scrambles onto his belly and shifts to his knees. Tucking himself into the curve of Luke’s body, the familiar-yet-not bright arc of warmth, feels easy. Especially when he can push back and grind, making Luke tighten a hand around his hips, the other fisted in his hair.
“Not gonna fuck you without lube, Perce,” Luke grits out, breath warm against his neck where he’s tucked his face.
“S’fine,” Percy half mumbles, still orgasm-stupid. He presses his thighs together tight, reaching behind him to grab Luke’s dick in his own too-intense hold. That should be enough for him to get the idea, he hopes, ‘cause Percy’s mouth isn’t connected to his brain anymore in any way that matters.
“Fuck, yeah, okay,” Luke breathes, resting his damp forehead against the back of Percy’s neck.
They’re sweaty from sparring, sweatier from grinding on each other. The insides of his thighs are spit-wet, the rocking motion made easier when he licks a wet line up his own palm, reaching behind him to jerk Luke off for a few strokes.
The first full slide of Luke against his half-hard dick, the heat of Luke’s cock between his thighs—it’s otherworldly. He’s so over-sensitive it makes him wheeze, face pillowed on his own folded arms. Luke doesn’t let him shift away, holds him close the entire time.
He presses Percy into the dirt face first, rocks against him in long, measured strokes that make him crave the real thing. In a daze, he unfortunately realizes he has no idea how to get lube at camp.
Percy can tell when Luke gets close, his rhythm faltering, the arm he’s got barred around Percy’s chest tightening. The hand on his hip grabs so hard it makes Percy’s dick twitch valiantly, the shock of pain mixed too thoroughly with his pleasure that he can’t tease them apart.
When he does come with a quiet groaning noise, Luke rocks so hard against him that Percy slides in the dirt. The uneven exhale after makes Percy’s hair flutter, tickly. He thunks his head hard against the back of Percy’s head, the entirety of his weight pressing them both into the ground.
He’s absolutely going to have to shower the second he gets out of here, dirt all over him and come everywhere else.
Luke presses soft, tiny kisses along the curve of Percy’s neck in the aftermath. Ending his trail with a tiny nip to the hinge of Percy’s jaw. He flips them over, settles in even closer against Percy, a buffer between him and the ground. The come and spit is tacky where their hips and bellies press together, but he doesn’t really mind.
Percy throws his arm over the breadth of Luke’s shoulders, closes his eyes, and breathes.
*
Afterward—Luke still a heavy, bizarrely comforting weight on top of him, come and spit sticky and getting cold between them—Luke begins to cry.
It starts quiet, subdued. The tiny plink of his tears against the side of Percy’s face.
It ends with him sobbing, gasping, “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.” against Percy’s mouth.
“For what,” he asks back, the dumbass on the tip of his tongue. He better not be talking about thigh fucking Percy into the dirt.
With slightly hesitant hands, he cards his fingers through Luke’s sweat-damp hair, aiming for comforting, pleased when Luke’s heaving breath evens out a bit.
“For everything, for the pit scorpion and leaving you in the woods, for everything else. For all of it.” The words sound like they’re wrenched out of Luke, nothing like the easy flow of apologies that came with his Annabeth-breakdown.
There’s no mention of the actual heart of the issue, the ideological divide that’s only divisive in how they handled it. Just apologies for everything that came after.
Percy knees Luke in the side until he rises up on his elbows, looking down at him, blue eyes wet. His scar stands out against the otherwise smoothness of his face, brightened by the setting sun.
After he wriggles his shorts back up, Percy pins Luke’s hips between his thighs and throws their bodies to the side, straddling him. He pushes down, his hands fisted into Luke’s t-shirt.
Plain blue, not orange. Not yet, probably never again.
Their faces are too close but he doesn’t back away.
“You could’ve talked to me, before that fucking ambush,” Percy hisses, suddenly furious and empty and aching. The betrayal from the first person at camp that took the time to show him anything, to explain anything to him in depth, still so white-hot and scalding even years later. “From the beginning, I understood where you were coming from, I get it even more now, I understand.”
He sounds stupid, feels even stupider, but he needs to make sure that Luke gets it. That he won’t run away to misguidedly change the world and get caught up in something bigger than him again.
“I would’ve listened, we could’ve—” He peters off here, looking down at the too-open expression on Luke’s face. He isn’t sure what else to say, where he was going with this angle.
“We could’ve what?” Luke asks, voice mean. His hands are tight against Percy’s hips again, his grip pointed. “Destroyed the gods together?”
Percy knees him in the ribs again, hard. Luke winces, but doesn’t move his palms from where they’ve loosened on his hipbones, cupping gently instead.
“No, jackass. But we could’ve figured something out. Something better than you letting Kronos use your body like some fucked up puppet.”
Under him, Luke laughs, a disbelieving scoff at first, turning into something real and achingly genuine.
Percy leans down and tips their foreheads together. He’s still furious, still hurt. Still so devastated by how things turned out, even if Luke came back alive.
But it’s enough, for now. The familiar sound of Luke’s laughter.
They can figure the rest out.