Cruel Intentions.
I know I should be working on other things, but I couldn't resist another oneshot. Luke x Annabeth = 3. There are way too many random oneshots out there with Luke and an OC. Suspicious? Perhaps. I'm not a big fan of OCs anyway :D Existing people ftw.
It's not long, but I hope you enjoy it :)
Her heart aches.
Luke.
It's so tragic to have been betrayed this way, to have the years go past and her growth, her getting braver and stronger and humbler and more useful—and to have the person she wanted to see it the most completely absent. She's been proving herself all these years to the wrong boy—a sweet, brave, determined boy, who is as equally for all his talents not-
Luke.
When he takes her chin in his hands—big, strong adult hands—she doesn't resist, because she doesn't think she would ever be able to. This is Luke, her first crush, her obsession, her regret… It's Luke, one of the people who have inextricably made her who she is today. She could never fight him, and deep down she has known this all along. It would be too much destroying who she is. Along the way of forming her character, he became a part of her.
She would be breaking herself in two.
Oh, oh god, Luke.
His fingers, strong and scarred, explore her face, and the tear trails there. He kisses each trail, lightly, curiously, intently. His sandy hair brushes her face. It's not soft, it's almost coarse. This moment is not at all romantic. They're in a dark corner, stealing time. It's time that should belong to battles and death and protection, but instead Luke has stolen it and her and maybe he's cast a spell on her, because she can't move.
Perhaps it's just Luke's effect on her. All these years, the crush stayed there resolutely, refusing to be destroyed or fade away. Time after time, she believed he would come back and stay with her—even with Percy, Percy who nearly certainly loved her, but that argument wilted away despite common sense and her own intelligence, because this was utterly illogical, after all. It always had been.
He continues, ignoring the fact that she's stone underneath him. She's backed against the rock herself, pieces jutting cruelly into her back, one spar pressing into her left arm. She's relatively sure it's bleeding, but can't bring herself to look. His right arm is pressed against the wall by her head, his strong hand slightly curled, one strand of her hair trapped in the fingers. He's got her between the rock on her left and him on her right, and her legs are stretched out nearly flat on the floor. He's in between them, hunched over to reach down to her, crouching with perfect balance. If he wobbled and fell forwards, his knees would be in her stomach in seconds.
Luke.
His left hand brushes through her hair, not tenderly or romantically, but more curiously. It's as if he's checking she's still the same, examining her bit by bit to see how this Annabeth is different from the one he left so long ago. He's exploring her mechanically.
"I hate you," she whispers in a cracked voice, wishing it were true. This would be so much easier if she did. She'd scream and push him away for trying to assault her, and then she'd fight him with Percy. Everything would be black and white. He'd be despicable, rough with her, making her hate him more.
He smiles, the scar on his face distorting as he does. "You don't," he whispers right back, as if he were her lover, except for that his tone is darker and sends a forbidden thrill right through her. Luke, Luke, Luke.
Don't do this to me.
"Relax," he breathes into her ear, brushing down the shoulder of her shirt. It's loose, and not at all suited to battle. More for sleeping in. She hadn't been expecting this, or she would have worn something that would put up a fight. Coolly, smoothly, as if it's his own clothing for a bandage, he carefully rips down the front of her shirt, both of his hands occupied for a moment. She considers running, but he's already caught the wild look in her eyes. "Don't," he warns her softly. "You could have run a thousand times by now."
As if that makes this wanted.
"You still love me, Annabeth."
As if that makes this right.
"And I know Percy loves you." He chuckles for a moment, in that way that used to turn her to jelly. It doesn't have quite the same effect any more. Now, there's an undercurrent of fear for what it can do to her. It's not right for someone to have so much power over her. It's never mattered before, since Percy has always been there as a reminder of where her loyalties lie and where she wants them to lie. Without Percy, it all becomes that much more muddled.
His left hand brushes over her cheek, smoothing and rubbing any traces of tears. His other hand pulls off the wreckage of her shirt. Isn't it tragic, the circles they go in?
The piece of fabric lies on the floor, discarded. Luke moves forward again, shuffling right up to her. All she can smell, breathe, taste, touch is Luke. He fills her world. One of his hands brushes the underside of her breasts, and she closes her eyes, trying desperately to push away that thrill. He's teasing her on purpose, being cruel-kind.
"But Percy was never me, was he? Poor Percy."
Shut up. Don't talk about him like you know him.
"And that was what counted him out for you, wasn't it? How cruel, Annabeth."
He leans over, breath hot on her face, sending little thrills down her spine. "Percy would never back you against a wall, would he?" She wonders remotely what Percy would do if he could see this now. Would he realise how torn she was? Would he just see her limp against a wall, letting Luke do whatever he wanted?
Luke leaves kisses over her collarbone and bare shoulders, pushing down her bra straps slowly. Occasionally, he bites, as if he can't restrain himself. He doesn't kiss her on the lips, not once. That's too much commitment, too much like they're normal and care about each other properly.
She wonders when his descent into hell began, and if she could have stopped it. After all, she thinks distantly as his sandy hair brushes her chin, as he moves lower, she's brought a certain type of hell on herself and Percy by not stopping it if she could have back then. Now, as her body goes through the motions, and she can't make up her mind, her eyes tear up and her arms go around his head almost involuntarily. He looks up, surprised, to have one of her tears drip slowly onto his face.
"Annabeth. Stop crying."
His hands push her back up into a straight sitting stance from the odd hunched way she'd slid down into. "You can't save me, Annabeth. But you can give me this much. Don't you want to make me happy?"
No, yes, no, yes.
"For me, Annabeth. Go to hell for me, just for ten minutes."
She falls into him, his magnetic, charismatic personality and the way he looks tired and drained. She still doesn't say anything, but closes her eyes again, lets her arms fall slack. "I can't do this if you just sit there like a doll, Annabeth." Stop saying my name. "Fight me, work with me, move. This isn't you."
So she chooses to push him away, and he retaliates straight away, catching her hands with an easy smile. She bites him, and he bites her back, and she tries to kick him, and he pinions her below him, burning her skin with little nips and kisses the whole time. He rests his head on her chest, and she hits him. He nips her there as punishment, tracing the outline of his mark on her skin, blowing hot air against it and dragging his fingernails across afterwards.
She refuses to be submissive as he drags her to hell. Just for ten minutes, but those ten minutes are not going to be perfect or romantic or how he wants them to be. All the same, her resistance makes him laugh more, and be rougher, and it's a little easier to convince herself that he's cruel and nasty and inhuman.
He's an adult now, and she remains mainly a child. One of many reasons this is wrong. He doesn't seem to care that she's not eighteen. Perhaps age is of no importance when they're both so old in some respects. He's been bitter for so long. She never realised quite how much it had eaten away at him.
They're pressed together, chest to chest, so hard that she can feel his heart beat powerfully against her erratic, frightened one. She's not brave like Percy, and right now her brain is so muddled that she doesn't want what she wants enough to come up with a plan to save him, to get away. He'd said that she couldn't save him. But that's so unacceptable to her that her whole being rebels against it.
"Luke…"
"I like how you say my name. Say it again for me."
"Luke." She tries to convey all of her confused love and misery into one word. It really does sum it up, his name, for her.
He kisses her stomach, trailing down to her hipbones, and lower.
Annabeth closes her eyes and lets him steal time, and her, and in a horribly vague way consents to go to hell. Just for ten minutes.
Luke.