A/N: Hi everyone again! How are you doing? I'm actually pretty busy because of school, but I'm having a lot of inspiration lately, so I finally got to translate this piece lol. It's a longfic based on Panic! At The Disco's album Vices & Virtues because I love their music, and each chapter will be named after one of the songs in the album. I really hope you like it as I think this is my favourite fic of mine at the moment, and I really hope the plot won't be too difficult to follow haha. Please let me know and please, leave a review if you want to. Enjoy!
I - Stall me
Why would you bring me in if you knew what you'd become?
So curse everyone and everything, even the sun.
Stall me, stall me, I'm all in; stall me, call me up or break me in.
A dark room in the wallflower garden at the party.
Jason had the feeling he'd already seen her somewhere. His gaze wandered for a few seconds up and down the girl's face, in a desperate search for answers. Perhaps, he said to himself, he had noticed her a few hours before, when the party had begun and there were not many people yet; that girl did not seem easy to ignore: the high cheekbones and the red lips made up her regal appearance, making her look like a real queen. "Are you Jason Grace?" she asked, surprising him while, his back turned to her, the boy was giving another bite to his cupcake.
He smiled truthfully, swallowing the last bite and resting the dessert on the table where he had found it. "Yes, I am," he answered, handing her his hand. She clasped it in hers, making Jason perceive the silky cold of her body that looked dangerously like an ice statue. She smiled too, as her black eyes lightened up and the corners of her mouth lifted a little, not too much to make her look ridiculous; she kept her shoulders wide and her head straight, as if, from her childhood, she had been accustomed to behaving in a certain way. He wondered if she wasn't really a royal - maybe British. "How do you know me?" he retorted instead.
The girl smiled again, tilting her head. "That guy over there told me," she pointed a distant point of the garden where they were, beyond the pool in which some college boys were trying to compete in some acrobatic diving competitions. "He says he's your friend; his name is Leo, I think," she went on, assuming an undecipherable expression.
"Oh, Leo, yes," he laughed. As always, his best friend never gave up a chat with the pretty girl on duty: there had been Khione, there had been Calypso and even Thalia, Jason's older sister who, of course, had rejected him in a rather abrupt way. "How did you manage to get rid of him?"
The girl shook her head, suggesting that it was better not to talk about it. For a moment, Jason felt almost guilty for his friend, who had never understood - and never would, his conscience told him - when it was time to stop it. Even Piper, his roommate, the person Leo had more to do with during all his life and the only one who knew how to make him reason when the situation was difficult, often complained about the boy's constant jokes, which also continued in those moments that, at least in theory, were serious or touching.
Jason sighed, lowering his gaze at the tip of his shoes, always ready to keep him company in the most critical moments of his life. "Excuse him," he murmured, shrugging his shoulders not to appear too serious, "he does that with all the girls." He looked at the girl in the eye, as if to explain that, despite everything, Leo was still a nice and funny guy and that never ever he could hurt her, because yes, he was annoying, but not bad at all.
"Anyway," she continued, fondling her left arm with the fingertips of her right hand as if to protect herself from some unforeseen trouble, "I am Reyna." She said her name with a hint of contempt, as if she did not like to repeat it or say it out loud, and she was trapped in an image of a woman who, in fact, was not the one she wanted to show to others. Her black hair, loose on her shoulders, just swawed, tried to dance just for a few seconds with the wind that had just woken up.
At first, the boy wondered if it was not rude not to ask her anything (how was she?, was she feeling good?, did she have some problems?), even just to make her notice that she was not alone and that as far as it could be worthy, she could count on his moral support; then, however, he decided not to think about it, since, to be honest, it was not his business, and he wanted to fully enjoy the evening. "Well, nice to meet you, Reyna," he smiled. He run a hand through his blond hair, just to make sure that it was still combed after the ride in the car that, he had promised to himself, he would no longer do if Leo or Percy were driving. He looked around the crowded garden, the coloured lanterns that warmed the more or less fresh air of one night at the end of July: the more tight-knit 20-years-olds were still piled up on the dance floor and, in pairs, swayed everything but awkward, slow dancing to the beat of a vintage song, some girls in bikinis were browsing a newspaper by the pool, perhaps in the hope that even the moon could improve their tanning, while, with the smile printed on their face, those who were already drunk were still drinking out of proportion. "What brought you here? I've never seen you in college."
The girl shrugged her shoulders, a shadow running through her eyes. "In fact, I don't study in college," she explained, looking around as if, in the crowd of students, she wanted to identify only one of them, a needle in the haystack, "a friend of mine invited me, but now... I can't see him anywhere. I must have been looking for him for more than an hour now." Her voice became deeper and darker, as if, even though she didn't want to talk about it, she wanted to make it clear in the most explicit way that the boy who had stood her up would not be so good, once he would meet her again. She hastily arranged the purple red tulle straps of the dress, which had descended along her arms, revealing more skin than she had foreseen. The bodice covered with red and golden beads wrapped her bust with refined precision, highlighting the right points without exaggeration, as if that dress had been specially designed for her; the skirt, a very light tulle all the same color of the shoulder straps, only let glimpse the golden sandals that embellished her whole silhouette.
"I'm sorry." Jason didn't know what else he could say: he was sorry for that girl who probably knew no one there. He imagined he was in her shoes, alone at a party where those who had invited him had stood him up, not knowing who he could talk to or who he could trust. Jason was not a scary boy, but it was always better to be provident and not to get too close to the wrong people: his sister had taught him when, still very young, they had begun to go to the park near the house to play with the other children of their neighborhood.
The girl's face writhed in an expression that, in different contexts, the boy would have found funny. She bit her lips, while, for the sudden movement of her head, a dark strand freed from the hairstyle - a simple half-ponytail which had been arranged like a bun -, landing on her face; she wrinkled her eyebrows, approaching each other dangerously, while her nose was crinkled in an explicit No. "Don't be sorry," she said, her voice firmer than ever, "it doesn't matter. I guess he forgot about our date." She brought a hand to her face and, with a fluid movement, removed her hair, brushing it behind her left ear. "Or he's fallen asleep on his schoolbooks."
Jason almost choked on his own saliva. "On his schoolbooks?!" he exclaimed, fearing, a moment later, of having called upon himself the attention of all the guests. He turned to look around him, but, as it seemed, none of them had noticed, engaged as they were to have as much fun as possible. Then, returning to face the girl, he went on, in a more earnest tone: "Isn't it a little too early to study?" A reflector light went around the garden, illuminating, even if only for a short time, the young man and woman, making them, for that little, the protagonists of the party. Jason smiled at Reyna, as he carefully examined her eyes lighten and brighten. Then, twilight came to reign over them again, hiding their vices and secrets.
"He's got an exam as soon as the classes start again." She told him in a whisper, almost ashamed or as if she was admitting it for the first time for her mysterious friend. "You know, he cares so much," she explained, sighing bitterly. How long had Reyna had to deal with the stubbornness of that boy who, in order to take good grades at school, had forgotten about her? Months? Years? Jason hoped that she didn't like this one friend of hers, because, otherwise, she would suffer a lot, both in the past and in the future.
The boy tried to imagine such a situation, but the only person who cared so much about school (and yes, even Jason wanted to have good results, but he wasn't obsessed with the thought of having to get the highest marks in all the exams) he was able to think about was Annabeth, who, surprisingly, could find time for friends and for her fiancé too. "A friend of mine's girlfriend is like that too: she thinks about her marks more than anything else," he said, not knowing the precise reason why he was doing it.
Reyna sneered. "Leo?" she asked, in the most natural tone that he had heard her pull out that evening.
The boy burst out laughing, he couldn't help it. "Pft, no!" he exclaimed, amused by the thought of Leo and Annabeth together. Who knows, he said, if his friend had told something to Reyna, maybe braging about having even more than one girlfriend, and asking her if she wanted to be the next one. He shook his head vigorously, trying to drive that creepy image out of his brain. Once again, Jason felt ashamed for Leo, who, as usual, had earned the title of Killjoy. "His name is Percy Jackson," he explained, "He's pretty famous in college; maybe your friend told you about him" he tried.
The girl stared at him intensely, and he was afraid she could take his soul at any moment, as if she had the power to take it away with just one look. "May be," she said, "Is he the captain of the swimming-team?"
He could not avoid smiling while he nodded smugly. Percy was one of his best friends and he considered him almost like a brother: knowing that even people who had never seen Percy in their life were aware of his fame and position in college could only fill him with pride. He was almost laughing while, with the contentment that only a very tired person could feel for something so silly, he talked again. He said, a smile that grew wider and wider dangerously pulling the skin of his face, "They call him Aquaman at school, for this reason. Well, if he was named captain, there must be a reason," he explained, as an excuse.
"Is he really as good as they say?"
Jason nodded again, mindful of when, the first time he had visited Jacksons' house, he was amazed at how many medals and trophies Percy had won during his swimming career, that had started at the tender age of five, when his mother, tired of running after him all the time, had enrolled him in the children's course to make him calm a little, at least. "Actually, swimming is not the only sport he's good at," he confessed, knowing that, if his friend discovered him, he would insult him in all the languages he knew - that is, only one. "He secretly attends a fencing course, to prevent him from having a nickname like Swordman, which would sound both ridiculous and creepy." The boy chuckled at the memory of the day when, begging him on his knees, Percy had asked him to ask his sister's boyfriend, Luke, to give him lessons, and making him promise that he would keep that secret away from the college students.
Reyna was almost surprised by that information, still bursting into a loud laugh. "Ah, really?" They chuckled, completely indifferent to the hustle and bustle that surrounded them, as if they were completely alone in the middle of nowhere. They stayed in silence for a while, listening carefully to every single movement and sound and noise, like two children who, playing hide and seek, look for the best time to get out of their hideout without being discovered. The students laughed and shouted at every new victim of their alcoholic Truth or Dare; the crickets sang, not knowing that, in any case, no one that night would hear them, while the radio inside the villa was softly releasing John Lennon's voice and his Imagine. The girl winced, grasping her wrist with one hand. "I love this song!" she exclaimed, her face suddenly brightening.
"To tell the truth," the young man joked, grinning, "I didn't think you were so cliché." For a second, he felt like he was in a movie, or in one of his favorite books, those who had been his best friends since he was little. He held out his hand, hoping she would willingly accept his good intentions and, his voice as similar to Mr. Darcy's as he managed to pull out, asked: "Do you want to have a drink, or to dance a little?"
She nodded silently, half-closing her eyelids in a mute request of discretion. Her black lashes seemed to want him to approach, while the opaque brown of her eyeshadow made her gaze even more elegant than it must be without the makeup. She walked quickly but elegantly toward the dance floor, and Jason forced himself not to look at her flanks waving, following her shortly thereafter. He put his hands on her waist, approaching her, while she slid her arms around his neck, surrounding him with an exorbitant slowness and starting to play with his hair immediately after, tickling him and sending to his body discharges of pure adrenaline in the form of electricity. They flew around the room without modesty or shame on each other, because, at that moment, they both had the feeling of getting to know each other, of being in complete harmony and of feeling at ease, as if they were alone in the dark, the reality as the only interlocutor.
The boy almost immediately realized that Reyna was not an easy girl to approach: even though she had consented to dance with him, she kept her distance and kept her body rigid, as if she was going to meet something she could not avoid but of which she was inevitably frightened. She hadn't broken down even for a second since she had spoken to him for the first time, not opening up like no other had ever done. Jason wondered for the second time that evening if there was anything wrong with her, whether it was extremely sad or just lost in her thoughts and why she was. He bit his lower lip, trying to think of something to say while the notes of Love of my life invaded his thoughts, forcing him to hum in such a sneaky way that he didn't notice until he opened his mouth to talk to the girl he was dancing with.
"Is there something wrong?" He looked at her, studying her face with tanned skin, looking for any sign that could confirm his theory and automatically authorize him to drive her home. The dance floor had gradually emptied, leaving them space to move more freely, flipping in the midsummer starry sky. In the back of the room, the young man intercepted Percy and Annabeth waving in time with the melody that they knew by heart, while exchanging a tender kiss on their lips. Behind them, Gwen was trying to drag Bobby, his best friend who, as always, preferred to stand up for his own business, on the dancefloor. He smiled at the memory of the evening when, at the end of their Senior year in high school, that guy had decided, for the first time in his life, to attend a social event like that – how much fun they had!
"No," Reyna murmured, her voice soft and calm, while, with a colder and more decisive expression than before, she looked at him in the eyes, challenging him to prove otherwise. She had moved her hair behind her shoulders, revealing her pendants which, the same purple red as the dress, glistened in contact with the soft light, emanating flashes that could only be noticed. "There's no problem," she went on, opening her lips in a half smile that, as far as he could know, to Jason seemed everything but sincere, and then she immediately returned serious and thoughtful. "You don't have to worry, Jason."
He shook his head. "Sorry," he whispered in her ear, holding her closer, "I don't like leaving people in trouble." He leaned his chin on her shoulder and moved his arms from her waist to her shoulders, stroked them slowly, trying to take away a little of the cold that enchained every single cell of hers. It was a long time since Jason had hugged someone: Leo liked to be tough, the typical guy who didn't need anything other than sex and some extreme experiences to take away his boredom from time to time (everyone knew that, anyway, the boy was all the opposite of what he wanted to make others believe), and he had seen Thalia about a month earlier. In fact, it had been a while since Jason had talked to someone for over an hour a day out of college, since he was always busy studying and at his part-time work.
Reyna's muscles were flexed, ready to react to any threat, while she held her hands behind his neck, giving him a glimpse of how sharp her nails must be. "Sorry," she whispered, as she approached her lips to the lobe of his ear, cheek against cheek, skin against skin, making him have goose bumps and shivers which disappeared a second after arriving, at the same speed, "I'm not accustomed to such a situation." She slowly moved away from him, hair ended up on her face, sticking without restraint to her lipstick and lashes impregnated with mascara. "In fact, I haven't danced in months," she confessed, moving her gaze behind Jason's shoulders, staring at an indefinite point beyond the stained-glass windows that divided the room and the courtyard.
"I don't since I was in San Francisco for the last time" he laughed, clenching his eyelids to evoke the memory of him and Leila who, not even knowing what they were doing, jumped here and there with their eyes closed while shouting songs that pleased her, the Bullet for my Valentine ones, failing to take the right notes and getting all the neighbors' reproaches. "And it was about four years ago."
"Four years ago?" She repeated in a smile, incredulous. Her eyes spread, revealing all her astonishment, while her eyebrows rose, forming small lines of expression on her immaculate forehead. Then, Reyna reposed, clenching her jaw and lowering her eyelids, showing a seriousness that Jason thought to be almost inhuman. She cleared her voice. "San Francisco, did you say? Is it your hometown?"
"To tell the truth, it's Los Angeles," he calmly explained. Behind Reyna, Percy and Annabeth had disappeared. He wondered if they had gone home already, or if they had come out to put their feet to soak in the water of the pool, or if, again, they had found a secluded place where to continue their session of kisses flavoured classical architecture. Gwen had lost to Bobby, who, victorious, was seated on the track to observe her peers having fun even without him. "I moved to San Francisco when I was five years old and here in Seattle about three years ago." Jason remembered perfectly the moment when, with a low head and a vacuum in his stomach, he had left the city in which he had grown up, had made friends and had fallen in love for the first time, obliged by his mother who, desperate, wanted to move away as much as possible from the man who had made her suffer the most in the world, her husband. "I've been around a bit, actually."
Reyna shrugged her shoulders, moving aside a little more and making a turn on herself, straining their intertwined fingers. "It's a good thing, isn't it?" she inquired, returning in his arms and letting him hug her again.
Jason didn't know what she meant with a good thing. I mean, did she want to say he had the chance to travel, to see places and meet new people, or that he hadn't been enough in a city to get too attached and be disappointed by the next? "I had to move because of my family," he replied, while the stereo was starting to play a song the boy did not know, but that seemed to come out directly from the 40s - a classic jazz with a fast and full of brass. "I don't remember a time when my parents got along, actually. When they got divorced, my sister stayed with our father and I stayed with our mother. The tension grew to such an extent that they could no longer stay in the same State, and here I am in Washington, the State with the largest apple production in the whole USA." The boy chuckled at that information, remembering when, as soon as he'd arrived, his new class-mate Dakota had welcomed him with those words.
She remained silent, the fingers of her right hand intertwined with his and her chest crushed against his white shirt, not a stain to tarnish her immaculate criminal record. Her body - her shoulders, her arms, her fingers - was still cold, but she was slowly warming up in contact with him. Jason felt relieved at the thought, as if losing some of his body heat to help someone else was not the worst thing in the world. He held her tight for another little while, caressing her smooth skin, observing the tension of the nerves and muscles under it and relishing at a distance the smell of her hair, an irresistible mixture of lavender and lemon that, strange as it may seem, approached each other perfectly. Then, in a silent sigh that determined the inevitable end of their moment, she dismissed him and made him sign to follow her out, where, by now, only the most daring had remained to party, letting the others go home or in their dormitories to do things forbidden by law.
They sat on the wall of the courtyard, which divided the flowerbeds (Jason was able to recognize a score of different types of flowers, some of which he did not know the existence until now) from the apple orchard of the cottage in which they were. Being still summer, the trees were devoid of both fruit and flowers, and as the only decoration they had a series of small gems that hid among the green leaves and that did everything but embellish their appearance. The night was stared, only a couple of clouds covered the black mantle the sky was covered by, excluding the view of what must be the constellation of Orion and part of the Milky Way; a slight breeze refreshed the air, pinching Jason's face tenderly, which, in response, began to be tinged with red. Reyna quickly arranged the skirt of her dress, smoothing the fabric that seemed intertwined with golden threads to prevent the formation of folds.
The boy cleared his throat, feeling his face blush. "So," he began, in the worst possible way (Percy's advice to approach girls began to hammer him again in his head, before he shut them down a few seconds later), "Did you have fun at least a little?" He placed the palms of his hands behind him on the wall, succeeding in laying his back and legs to stretch a little.
She chuckled, lowering her gaze and bending her head. "Just a little bit," he admitted, smiling at her own joke full of that timid irony that Jason had never perceived so clear. "Leave it alone," the girl continued, hugging her torso with her bare arms, "I'm not a party girl." She laughed again, softly, as if only she, in the whole world, was allowed to tease people in that way, and as if she did not want others to imitate her. She had goose bumps, and once in a while, a thrill crossed her back, causing her to tremble almost imperceptibly. The stone gaze fixed in the void, Reyna contemplated the whole and the nothing, the vices and the virtues of the people, the thought of the thought, and the motionless engine of which ancient philosophers so much had spoken. The light of the moon illumined her face, highlighting the contrast between the recesses of the eyes and the fullness of the cheeks, and coloring her skin a ghostly white, luminous and disturbing, which made it extremely fascinating and frightening at the same time.
Once again, Jason raised his gaze to the sky, facing the immensity that overcame them. Who was that girl he had danced with all night? What was he doing there? Why did he have that strange feeling that he had already seen her, but that he could not understand where?, he wondered, as he sighed with theatricality as his mother had taught him. "I'd like to see you again" he told her, and, immediately, he was amazed by his own words, the same ones that had so naturally slipped away from his tongue, diving into the air in which they had fluctuated, remaining suspended for a few thousandths of a second. He turned his head towards Reyna, who, on the other hand, stared at him with a mixture of amazement and confusion, her eyebrows raised and her forehead knitted.
"To tell the truth," the girl cleared her throat. "I'd love to, too," she whispered, fiddling with a lock of dark hair, twisting it around her index finger, creating a small bud that had a life expectancy of five seconds. "It's been nice, Jason," she went on, looking at him in the eyes and leaning a little towards him. It was an almost imperceptible movement, as if the girl wanted to approach while maintaining, however, a safe distance. Many might not have noticed it, but Jason had been accustomed to observing every detail of the world surrounding him and having quick reflexes.
The boy beckoned her to wait for him (It will only take two minutes, all right?, he told her through his gaze), as he walked away and, taken a rag of paper and a working pen, scribbled his cell phone number with the most readable handwriting he could. When he went back to the wall, she was still there, sitting and observing the scene around her with attentive eye. Seeing him arrive, the girl stood up, taking a few steps towards him. "Here's to you," Jason said, handing her the folded leaflet – she unfolded it, looked at it carefully and, only a few seconds later, folded it back to look at the guy in the eye. "Call me once in a while."
Reyna smiled. "I will." She pointed a distant point, over the hedge the enclosure of the house was, where the road laid. "Now," she said, "I should really go: my carriage has arrived," she joked, chuckling still softly and bending her head forward. The atmosphere was quiet now, the music lower and most of the lights off, revealing the calm and silence that reigned in that little mansion outside the city. "Good night, Jason. Thank you." And, with those words, she left him alone, without the shadow of a kiss, nor a smile, studying the emptiness and silence that, devious, approached him as she, faster and quicker, disappeared from his sight.
