I realise that the pure existence of this story has probably given heart attacks on the grounds that this is not a Jeyna story: so here's a quick back story.

For about five thousand years, a friend has been trying to make me read The Host. Having previously been burned by Stephenie Meyer's work, I was hesitant. But I was stalling so hard, it was getting ridiculous. So the deal was struck. Once I got back from camp last Friday; I had three days to read The Host. If by Monday the book wasn't complete, I owed this friend one oneshot for every spare day.

I love writing, so the catch was that these could be anything at all. I had to follow the request to the letter. This friend once tried to make me write a Dora the Explorer/Percy Jackson fanfic...

This is the first of three oneshots I owe so far. I'm very proud of it.

Disclaimer: I don't owe the characters shown below.

Dedication: for Wierdo.

Touches

Jason's pencil was tapping against the table as he worked.

The clock on the wall ticked.

The dogs were whizzing as they slept.

Papers shuffled every now and then.

Muffled swearing when a tongue was burned on coffee.

Reyna looked at the clock on the wall and then back at Jason.

"You should call her before it's too late."

"It's already 1:00 AM anyways," Jason said not raising his eyes.

"Are you trying to tell me that anyone in her cabin would be sleeping at this time?" Reyna asked.

Jason smiled faintly, got up and excused himself from the principia.

It was subtle, the way things had changed since Jason and Piper had started dating. Just little touches here and there on the normal life they'd been able to re-establish after the war. But she'd known Jason long enough to be able to tell that things had changed.

The downside or perk, depending on how you looked at it, of being in Cabin 9 was that you had to sit next to Cabin 10 at the campfires. To put it mildly; it wasn't the marshmallows that Leo liked about campfires.

Piper was wearing a hoody that dropped just above her knees.

"Honey, I know you like it baggy but this is a bit too big," Drew said nodding her head towards Piper's sweater. She twisted the sleeves in her hands and pulled them over her fists.

"It's perfect," she said.

"It's Jason's," Mitchell informed Drew.

"That too." Piper said.

Jason had gone a bit nuts when he'd moved into his villa and had been told that he could decorate his walls. After living in a barrack for his entire life, that was understandable. He barely had any stuff, but he had lots of pictures. So he'd put them up to keep the excitement from killing him.

Pictures with Gwen, Dakota, Hazel, Bobby, Reyna and him goofing off in various places in New Rome, accepting medals, making speeches… He had a picture of him and Julia playing in the sandbox at the park near her house, that day that he'd had to babysit her. Bobby, Dakota and he with straws up their nostrils at the mall's food court in Berkeley when they were about twelve. Pictures of New Rome, the sky, postcards that his old babysitters had sent him from wherever in the world they were at, San Francisco…

They were peppered with new pictures, naturally. Camp Half-Blood, the Argo's crew, the boat, Bunker Nine, he and Leo and Piper screwing around camp…

The picture on his bedside table, however, was new.

He and Piper were sitting on the steps of her cabin (though it was hard to tell because of the zoom) and as Leo had approached them with the camera they'd snuggled up. Her cheek was pressed to his and her arms were looped around his neck. Leo, however busy he was with the Argo II, always had a few minutes of his day dedicated to being annoying and intrusive.

"How many times did you see Pacific Rim?" Lacy asked, sprawled on Piper's bed as Drew did her toenails.

"I don't know. Like, five."

"I'm counting five stubs," Lacy said pointing to the top of Piper's bunk.

"Both of us were really into it," Piper said.

She and Jason found times close together during which they could see them, and then called each other from the movie theater's payphones to talk about the movies. Luckily there wasn't much arguing going on. Piper would have to get dragged by the hair to go see a chick flick.

While waiting for Reyna to finish up her paperwork (she was always slower), Jason didn't just twiddle his thumbs and act annoying. He was always reading under the table.

Nobody was stupid enough to think that they were anything other than letters.

Piper kept pressed flowers between the pages of the few books she kept at camp, so whenever someone asked to borrow her copy of The Fellowship of the Rings she had to go through it page by page beforehand.

(Jason sent her flowers whenever he could work out the logistics. Leo was often caught as the awkward in between guy who got to voyage the flowers, ditto for Percy- especially during the school year. She kept a flower from each bouquet.)

When they went to Berkeley for their day off, they always stopped at the post office before driving home. Jason picked up a package or mailed it.

(He and Piper had found a moleskin notebook in the principia. Jason had started it, writing an entry a day or a doodle at least, and then mailing it over. Piper had been the one to start adding other stuff in the box, thus making them care packages.)

It was a miracle.

Piper wore jewellery.

Mitchell yelled that now he truly was alone in the scheme of things. Drew was ecstatic. Lacy opened and closed her mouth like a goldfish, wondering what had happened. Annabeth didn't mention it, hoping that maybe it would go away.

(Jason had, one lazy day while they were cloud gazing, materialised a leather bracelet with a bronze piece on it that read Love travels. He'd even blushed as she read the message. How could she not wear that?)

Jason listened to the radio a whole lot more. It annoyed Reyna, especially since he'd gotten into the habit of singing along. Highly distracting.

(He was sick of losing every round of Name that Tune that they played over the phone. For similar Hangman related reasons, the thesauruses and dictionaries in the principia were dusted off now.)

Piper started watching all the action movies that her Dad had recommended but that she'd thought were too brainless to be worth her attention. She spent more time with the Athena Cabin, particularly Gregory who had a particular knack with cyphers.

(She had to decode the dit and dots, the number or the alphabet codes that Jason sent in the care packages every now and then, knowing that it'd frustrate her and force her to call for the answer. She stopped her efforts soon enough. She really did like calling him.)

Jason slept with a small blanket folded over his pillow.

(He hadn't had a stuffed animal since he was two, and this blanket was beside the point. It'd originally been a scarf that Aphrodite had dumped in Piper's care. It'd started smelling like cinnamon because of long time incarceration in her clothes trunk. By reasons that weren't about to be disclosed, it's ended up in Jason's backpack and had come with him to Camp Jupiter. Jason just couldn't rip himself away from it now. He felt like she was right next to him, that his face was buried in her hair. It was too good of a feeling to bypass. Dakota could tease all that he wanted.)

Piper prayed before bed that she wouldn't get strangled in her sleep, and slept with ear buds in her ears even though her Dad had told her not to do that a thousand times.

(Jason had recorded himself reading her favourite part of her favourite Harry Potter book. She was so fond of running her MP3's battery dry that she'd taped herself singing too. As a perk of living alone, Jason got to blast that particular cassette through his villa.)

More post-its were disappearing from the principia than ever before.

(Jason made countdowns until the next time there was a visit between camps due, since they always managed to get to each other. He sent the discarded post-its in the care packages that traveled with the journal).

Piper aced her Mythology classes even more than before. She had mastered the constellations and had even corrected the stand-in mythology teacher about the name of Orion's mother once.

(She and Jason made lists of the constellations they saw and swapped them. It was comforting to know that they may not be in the same climate or timezone, but at least one thing was the same- stretching above them in the most beautiful spectacle earth had to her name.)

Jason had perfected the art of paper airplanes.

(To make her laugh when her journal entries got sad or tear-stained or angsty or mad, he folded up old complaint forms or report drafts that he'd fish out of the recycling bin at home. He's write notes in them and tell Piper to throw the airplanes at the person bothering her so that he could give them a piece of his mind about bothering his girlfriend. He'd put them in the packages and tell Piper that they'd been flown to New York via Grace Airlines).

Piper didn't walk anymore. It was like she danced.

Jason didn't get frustrated with accumulating paperwork, the stubborn and occasionally unproductive senate, or his dyslexia.

She showed her teeth when she smiled.

He joked with more people, more openly.

She sang in the shower.

He let his hair grow a bit.

Piper wasn't as scared to try new obstacle courses, ring the highest bells on the climbing wall, take on taller competitors in the arena during training…

Jason was a little more careful with himself. When (it wasn't a question of 'if' with him) he got hurt, he didn't undermine his injury.

It was nothing grand. It was nothing obvious. It was nothing frequent or eloquent or sickening. It was small and precious. It was rare and quiet.

There were just little marks of lip gloss, fingerprints on doorknobs, smiles at the corner of mouths and twinkles in their eyes to show that they were in love at all.