A/N: So I got this idea to do a bad-girl Piper and a good-boy Jason one-shot thing. A bit out-of-character, but also kind of... not OOC? I don't know. Read and tell me what you think. Hope you enjoy!
Disclaimer: I lay no claims to the Percy Jackson franchise or any of its consequent subsidiaries, or the image I used, so please refrain from booting my fic off the site. Thanks!
Beautiful Lies
She was the kind of girl you couldn't help but notice. Red-rouge lips, so bright it looked like they were smeared with crayon wax, rough and swollen. Dark, choppy hair, as if it had been cut at home with a pair of plastic scissors. And her eyes, my God. To this day, I still can't do them justice. They were like a kaleidoscope, one of those toys you bought for a buck-fifty in the checkout line of a department store. When you peered inside, a thousand shimmering beads tilted, folding in on themselves like a baker kneading floury dough. That's what looking into her eyes was like; losing yourself in the kaleidoscope, drowning in the sea of blues and golds and amethysts and ambers. No rhyme or reason to her eyes. They were wild, just like her.
I was sitting on a barstool, tucked in the corner of a bar, tracing sticky cup rims imprinted on the scarred wooden table. I was meeting someone that night; a girl from my business class. We had met over hastily scrawled, smudged sheets of notes and flimsy textbook pages. The girl was an hour and a half late, and a glass and a half of strong alcohol later, the sort you can feel clawing its way down your throat, I was beginning to suspect the girl from business class would never arrive.
And then I saw her. Not the girl from business class. The other one.
I swear, I got tunnel vision. For a moment it was just her standing there, slouched against the wall. She wasn't the sort of girl I went for. She was risky and dangerous and new and intoxicating, wearing a pair of shredded jeans, her slender feet bare, toes painted with bright red polish. A pair of desecrated flip-flops were tossed onto the ground carelessly by her feet. She was wearing a tight olive tank top, one of those shirts that didn't leave much to the imagination.
I swallowed.
She met my stare, and her crayon-wax lips curved. Her finger crooked, her nail polish – vermilion to match her toes – glimmered in the faint lamplight. Come here, she mouthed.
I wasn't the sort of guy to respond to something like that. I was the sort of guy to blush, mortified, and stare very hard at the ceiling, shifting uncomfortably in his seat. I was the sort of guy that went for the girls from business class, the bespectacled, safe, no-risks-involved girls. I was the sort of guy that went for the predictable, the obvious. The Next Step always visible from a hundred and fifty miles away.
But then I looked down at my half-empty glass, thought about the girl that had stood me up. My eyes went to the girl leaning against the wall. She had a tattoo that snaked up one arm, black ink imprisoned in her caramel skin.
The tattoo was what decided it. I pushed aside my chair and made my way over to the girl. She split into a wide, low, lazy smile, the kind I could only describe as cat-like. She reached her hands over her head and stretched, and her shirt rode high, exposing her navel. I gulped, throat suddenly arid and dry. "Caught you," she said, slowly, dragging the words out as if they were drops of molasses dripping from her lips.
"Guess so," I said, forcing a laugh. I felt the tips of my ears burning crimson.
She grinned then, detaching herself from the wall. She was long and lithe. "What's your name?" she asked, that same lethargic voice, smooth and husky.
"My name?" I repeated, as if it were a foreign question.
"Your name," she said again, mouth pulled up in a curvy smile.
"Oh," I said, clearing my throat. "Uh… Jason."
"Jason," she said, letting the words fall off her tongue. "Jason, Jason, Jason." She let out a soft sigh, stretching on for what seemed like eternity. I got the feeling this girl didn't do anything fast. She liked to take her time, manipulating time like it was silly putty, dragging the bit of stretchy material out between her fingertips until it broke into two pieces.
"So," I forced out, "what's your name?"
She tilted her head, that unnerving smile still twisting her lips. "Hmm."
"Your name is 'hmm'?"
"No," she said, with five extra 'o's on the end. "I'm just not sure I should tell you. Not yet." She grinned, stepping closer to me. She smelled of patchouli oil and incense, like one of those hippie shops lining the streets of the hip neighborhoods of San Francisco, the kind that sold marijuana leaf bumper stickers and decks of tarot cards.
"Oh?" I said, giving her a small smile of my own. "And what do I have to do to earn your name?" Better, I thought.
"You have to pass my test," she whispered, her words barely audible over the din of the chaos and chatter of the bar.
"And what's your te-"
But I never got to ask my question, because before I could finish, she grabbed hold of my shirt and yanked me down for a kiss, crayon-wax lips smashed against mine, heavy and full and rough and swollen, just like they looked. Out of instinct, my arms slid around her waist, one of them reaching up to brush against the choppy strands of her hair.
Before I was even remotely finished with her crayon-wax lips, she pulled back, eyes hazy. "Hmm," she said, brushing her fingers along my mouth, tracing the minute scar hovering just above my upper lip. "You taste of whiskey, Jason."
"Unh," I said intelligently.
She giggled, a soft, sweet sound. "My name is Piper," she said. She dropped her fingers from my mouth.
"Wait," I said. "Does that mean-"
"You passed my test, Jason," she said, and then her hand closed around my wrist. Piper smirked, deliberate and languorous. "Now, come on."
"Come where?" I asked, but she was already tugging, pulling me through the bar.
"On an adventure," she said, glancing back at me with her kaleidoscope eyes. "For the adventure of a lifetime."
For a moment, I was about to protest, an argument hovering on my tongue, about to burst free, but then I remembered the girl from business class that had stood me up, how the visible, no-risks Next Step had been working out for me so far. My world was blurred at the edges by the alcohol, my morals tugging loose, floating away. Already gone.
Here was this girl, Piper with the kaleidoscope eyes, her lipstick already smudged.
"The adventure of a lifetime," I said, tone still laced with skepticism.
Her smile glimmered. "That's right."
I hesitated, still looking back. Then I dug into my jeans pocket, tossed a few wadded, crumple bills at the bartender, and grabbed her hand. "Alright, Piper," I said, imitating her slow, lazy tone. Piiiii-peeeer. "Show me, then. Take me on this adventure of a lifetime."
That was the first time I ever met Piper McLean.
She was intoxicating, utterly and completely bewitching. Unlike any other girl I'd ever known. She had a way of talking, a lilt to her voice, sinking into her husky timbre and sending my heart ricocheting in my chest. Her words were utterly and completely charming, simple as they were, those molasses, sugar-sweet falsities. That was the thing about Piper. That night was not an adventure of a lifetime, but it might as well have been. Piper had a way of telling the most beautiful lies, so sugar-spun and perfect you could almost believe them.
A/N: Review and let me know what you think! Hope you enjoyed ;)