This seemed longer in Microsoft Word, but yeah. Merry incredibly belated Christmas, Priya! (Like super belated it's almost April I can't apologize enough)
The first time Thalia steals her mother's perfume, she's five and showing off to her best friend. She sneaks into the master bedroom and climbs onto the spotless poufy pink-and-white chair, retrieving the key to the cosmetics drawer that she knows has been pushed into a tiny cavity between the mirror and the gild.
Beryl Grace returns home to her two-year-old son's face slathered in foundation, his blond tufts spiked up with her $80 moisturiser, grinning at her with red lipstick on his teeth. She finds his sister and her best friend clad in her Louboutins, fast asleep inside her walk-in closet.
.
Eight years later, Thalia doesn't know if Reyna remembers that night, but she definitely remembers blinking at the alarm clock that proclaimed in neon, "03:17," and clambering down from the top bunk to tiptoe out into the corridor, only to see the lightning in her father's eyes as he shouted, "Goddamn it, Beryl!" right before he slammed his fist into the wall that separated the dining room.
Jason woke up crying a while after that.
x
The next time she wears it, the bottle is cracked at the top and almost empty and the chair is wine-stained and gritty and Thalia is a stupid, stupid fifteen year-old with a straight girl crush (or so she thinks) who's somehow convinced Reyna to sneak into the city pool at midnight with her.
Thalia cannot forget scaling the fence in their pyjamas, cannot forget Reyna's bronze skin breaking out in goosebumps when she pulls her top over the head, cannot forget jumping in the pool to splash the other girl and screaming, "It's cold as fuck!" immediately, cannot forget the impromptu racing and shivering every time her skin accidentally brushed Reyna's, cannot forget being backed against the pool wall with her heart almost beating out her chest, and absolutely cannot forget the haze and the clouds of their breaths and the almost-kiss under the December night sky.
.
They don't speak of it the next day, or the day after that.
x
Her sneakers tap rhythmically against the carpeted floor of Reyna's car, unlaced and worn-out. She's seventeen and her life is a fucking mess and her mother is a bigger fucking mess and she has to take care of Jason and ward off their dumbass asshole father but her hair is a shade of blue that matches her eyes and she has her best friend and its okay.
x
Reyna's dark eyes gleam silver in the saturated sunset as she runs her thumb across Thalia's lower lip. The former looks up at the blown-wide blue eyes, before flickering back to the Chapstick smeared on Thalia's lips – Reyna's Chapstick. She feels like she's been sedated as she lets her lids fall shut again, and slides one hand into Thalia's short, choppy hair, splaying the other across her back in one quick, fluid motion before capturing her plump, bruised bottom lip between her own.
Thalia lets out a sound that can mean anything from approval to indignance but Reyna can't care less as Thalia falls back against the seat, gripping Reyna's hips and pulling her down with her.
The blue-eyed girl wonders what her mother would think, what the people in their hometown would think – two girls, intertwined, wide-eyed, lit up in the pinks and violets and reds the champagne light was letting through.
.
They reach Queens forty seven minutes later, and Thalia kicks off the same sneakers she had three years ago, and Reyna pulls off her favourite sweater, and then they lose themselves in outer space.
x
Reyna doesn't know how they got here, their feet chasing moonlight, they could be running or they could be chasing, but they're on the brink of the world, they're on the brink of their world, they're completely ready to fall into a new one, and maybe the flight tickets to Europe they bought with money saved carefully in a mason jar will get them there.
.
Thalia wonders if she'll love anything more than this – the feeling in her stomach as she accelerates the Vespa, the biting air stinging her skin, and her best friend, girlfriend, at her back and she knows for a fact that Reyna's hair – which is, for once, loose – is billowing in the wind, stark black against the royal purple of the scarf she always wears and she knows for a fact that the perfume that her girlfriend is wearing is called Cristalle, because one day, years ago, she stole a bit of it from her mother's vanity.
I know the whole make-up thing might seem out-of-character or whatever but I couldn't be more done with Rick Riordan's half-in-half-out feminism. Please don't hesitate to message me if there are any grammar/spelling errors because I'm an idiotic half-dead walnut. Thanks for reading xx