Author's Note: i don't own pjo, rights to the fabulous rick riordan. this fic took over 6 months to write and is a self-indulgent accumulation of every headcanon about chris and clarisse that i have. it's my baby. it would be hella nice if you left a review if you like this! also, i'm sorry about any spanish in this fic because i just ran that through google translate.
Chris and Clarisse are very young when they meet. Their moms are friends. Gabrielle La Rue and Elena Maria Rodriguez met a long time ago at a club in South Carolina, and have carried their friendship through godly affairs, children, and distance.
"Chris, this is Clarisse," Elena Maria says, gently nudging him in the direction of a scowling little girl. "Say hi, darling."
"Hi," Chris says dutifully. He barely resists the urge to poke at her to see how she'd react. She looks like she could go off at anything, like the chihuahua his neighbour has.
Gabrielle makes a soft noise when her daughter doesn't reply. "Clarisse."
"Hi," Clarisse says back dully, glaring at him. She doesn't like him, she decides, because he looks stupid and childish and his whole smiling thing has to be fake.
Chris holds out his hand. Clarisse smacks it away.
It's only the beginning.
"What the hell are you doing here?" is the first thing a camper says to Chris at Camp Half-Blood. He looks up from where he's curled up on the couch in the Big House, sees Clarisse standing there. He doesn't know why he's surprised, really, she's always turning up - in vacations, school, his mom's Skype sessions with Aunt Gabbie.
"Hi to you too. You're my guide?"
"If it were my choice, I'd have let you keep lying here dramatically," Clarisse sneers. "Get up, we're touring this hellhole."
Chris hums, climbing off the couch, and following her out the door. He squints against the bright sunlight, adjusts his t-shirt. "You like it here," he observes, watching the way her eyes flick around, the ease in her steps. It's unlike how she looked at the military school: all tense shoulders, a stride like she was expecting attack.
Clarisse says, "I like it well enough," and that's confirmation enough. She asks, "How did Chiron find out we knew each other? What'd you tell him?"
He shrugs. He didn't even think Chiron knows. He'd only told him a bit about his mom, getting to camp, the monsters following him. "I didn't mention anything, no, actually, stop looking at me like that, Reese."
"I don't believe you."
"You believe in Greek gods and goddesses."
"Now, so do you." Which, fair. Chris is kind of impressed, honestly, her arguments used to be shit.
He smiles at her. "I believe in y'all," he says, drawing out the last word. Clarisse is Southern, it's funny to him. She has this way of drawing out her vowels that she's doing a good job hiding, but he can hear a ghost of it.
"Shut up," she says. "You're fuckin' Southern too." She proceeds to give him the grand tour. It's mostly just walking by stuff, tonelessly pointing them out, and avoiding questions, but she offers her own tidbits of information. The arena, which has most of the wrestling and boxing and fighting stuff, is her favourite. The dining hall, where she tells him that, no, he can't sit with her. The Hermes cabin, where all the newbies go.
"I'm not sure how you'll fit in there with those legs," she jibes.
He grins at her, says, "You jealous of these legs?"
She shoves him in the ribs, and he laughs.
Chris goes to the Hermes cabin after being walked around. Gets introduced to Luke, who's a little bit older than him and seems like a cool guy; then befriends some people. The Stoll brothers, a girl named Miranda Gardner, a young kid named Felix who looks like he needs a friend.
He hangs out with them until dinner, where Luke tells him to sacrifice a part of his meal to Hermes.
Chris wonders where his dad has been, where all their parents are, why they've left all these unclaimed kids with so little answers. As he sacrifices his dinner, he wonders if he should ask the questions he has, then thinks better of it.
He sits with Clarisse during the campfire. Everybody looks, he can feel it. They judge them - including her older brothers, who Clarisse briefly gestured to before and are all now glowering at him. Clarisse gives him this soft, rare, little smile, though. She looks tired.
Chris stays beside her just for that.
Clarisse goes to Chris for help, one day, mottled with bruises on her jaw, stomach, and arms. She says, "Teach me how to run well," and he looks at her for a long moment. There is quiet fury building in his eyes. She holds her ground, wills herself not to look away or flinch back.
He's not mad at her. She knows this. She knows because his eyes linger on the bruises, because he looks for people behind them.
She knows because he reaches out, touching her shoulder gently. Clarisse is far from delicate, but she is human. It's nice that someone acknowledges that.
"Okay," he says. "You gonna tell me why?"
Clarisse shakes her head no. Chris doesn't press, because he respects her boundaries, and she's so grateful for him, she aches.
They train together, and Clarisse grows stronger. Day by day, she's running longer, fighting harder, hiding better. She follows her brothers with no complaint, and pays close attention to their fighting styles. They're powerful, but tactless, and slow. Most of them don't have an edge of precision. Some do have that edge. They are the ones who win almost every time. However, they're not the ones that are leading the cabin.
13 years old, and Clarisse topples the unintentional patriarchy. In the Ares cabin, to become cabin leader, an Ares child has to beat the current head counsellor in a battle. It's common practice to let the challenger choose the weapon to battle with. Joshua's main weapon was the same as Clarisse's: a spear. He assumed she would choose that weapon, underestimated the work she put into her training and strategy.
Clarisse had chosen a knife fight, and drawn a long, wicked hunting knife. Where he was a stumbling Minotaur, she was a skilled huntress. More Hermes than Ares, she was light on her feet, quick in her wounding.
This is what follows: Clarisse leads her cabin out of the arena, where only they were allowed. Joshua is behind her, no longer the leader, no longer first in line.
A hush falls across the Dining Pavilion when Clarisse steps forward, so small compared to her siblings. So young to have beat a boy 4 years her senior.
This is what follows: Chris stands up, and begins to clap.
It's a new era for the Ares Cabin, and Chris is with Clarisse every step of the way.
He's there to congratulate her when she gains more respect from her siblings. He's there when Clarisse disloactes her shoulder badly during training; he pretends her grip isn't crushing his hand in the infirmary as they fix her up and feed her ambrosia. He's there when Percy breaks her spear, training with her for hour after hour, and listening to her rant.
"I just," Clarisse growls, and cuts herself off. Thrusts her temporary spear into the middle of a training dummy. "He walks into camp, and everyone is automatically so impressed with him. Why? What did he do to impress them? Fucking breathe?"
"What a talent," Chris hums, and throws a javelin across the training area. It hits a target dead centre.
Clarisse snarls, "Exactly. I had to earn my respect, I had to earn a reputation. He shouldn't have to just not work for it!" She stabs again, vicious, and Chris makes a noise in his throats that says yes, exactly. "And breaking my spear? Fucking asshole."
"That," Chris agrees, "was not necessary. I'm sorry about it, by the way, I know how much it meant to you." He doesn't make fun of her, like half the camp has been doing. Instead, he's softer, apologetic. He moves closer, until Clarisse has to stop training or else she'd end up stabbing him.
She barks, "What." Defensive. Gruff.
He reaches out, curls his fingers around the bones of her wrist, gentle. Says, "You wanna get out of here?"
If they weren't Chris and Clarisse, it would sound like such a bad pick up line. However, since they are Chris and Clarisse, she rolls her eyes and grumbles about training, but puts her spear away. They pack up their weapons and bags.
Chris leads Clarisse out into the forest, where they curl up beside a stream. They play Tic-Tac-Toe in the dirt, eat pretzels and dried fruit and random snacks Chris had stashed in his bag, and talk quietly for hours. Clarisse walks on her hands for 60 metres, and Chris almost trips over himself, but manages to do 7 roundoffs in a row.
It's dark when they get back to camp. The fire's already going, the campers gathered around it watching as Chris walks Clarisse to her cabin.
"Thank you," she mouths, and he smiles, wide and easy, and winks cheekily.
When Chris leaves, Clarisse is not the first to hear. The entire Hermes cabin knows, the gossip finding its way into the other cabins.
We should've figured, people say, he was always closest to Luke after all.
Clarisse finds a box, wedged between the side of his bed and the wall. Chris had the top bunk at the back of the cabin, stashed stuff in the little space there so nobody would find it. Inside the box is Chris' camp necklace, an old pocket knife, a couple of folded photos, and a scrap of paper that said I had to. I'm so sorry, Reese. Love you.
It isn't, it isn't romantic. Clarisse is 14, Chris is only a year older, they're just friends, but. He wasn't closest to Luke, Clarisse thinks, he was closest to me. Apparently, though, Chris isn't. Closest to her.
He left with Luke. Left her at Camp, didn't even talk to her about it, and she thought he'd been acting off but she hadn't thought he would leave.
Just last night Chris had pulled her over, made her sit beside him, Lou Ellen, the Stolls. He had sprawled out over Clarisse's lap, nudging his head under her hand to be pet, and cracked bad jokes.
You're like a dog, Clarisse had scowled, running a hand through his hair. Watched as he'd sprawled out, taking up as much space as possible. Chris kicked Travis in the ankle, smiling; had said, You're the bitch here, and taken a pull to his hair.
He had walked her back to her cabin at the end of the night, and hugged her tightly.
Clarisse had known it was goodbye. She just hadn't realized it was such a significant goodbye, that she would wake up and not see him the next day.
She throws herself into training, into leading her cabin, into studying. Grows into somewhat of a maternal figure to her siblings and into someone who demands respect and fear from other campers. Beckendorf tries to talk to her, once. Clarisse snarls at him and says, "Yes, I'm sure you understand how I feel, fuck off."
Aunt Elena Maria calls her weekly, now, ever since Clarisse had called her and Aunt Elena had asked Where's my baby? They have long chats, and it's comfortable, it helps both of them unwind. Aunt Elena talks about the West Coast, New Mexico, how she misses Massachusetts. Clarisse talks about training, New York, and avoids discussing the war at all costs.
More unclaimed campers follow in Chris' footsteps. Some come back, saying they've defected, saying they can't, they won't, join Kronos' Army. Apollo himself runs them through a truth test, lets the ones who pass stay.
Silena Beauregard, miraculously, becomes Clarisse's friend. She followed Clarisse around, pestering her, annoying the fuck out of Clarisse. She's persistent, though, and stays by her side, is always steadfastly there.
"Why the hell are you doing this?" asks Clarisse, one day, during a break from training. Silena looks up from a glossy magazine. Uncrosses, and then re-crosses, her legs.
"You look like you could use a friend," Silena says, then shrugs, a dainty little motion. "And, you're more interesting and less vapid than half my siblings. And I like to think I'm more considerate and less aggressive than half your siblings."
In the end, Silena turns out to be a bit annoying, a bit airheaded, but sweet and well-rounded. She makes Clarisse smile.
However, all in all, it's not quite enough to keep her from training most hours of the day and stressing. Eventually, Chiron makes her go back to Arizona. He calls it "relaxing so you don't overwork yourself" but Clarisse calls it "bullshit." There's a big fight about it.
Clarisse stands her ground, refusing to go. Mr. D gets involved. Says I don't care but gifts her with a new knife, and tells her you're looking a little tired, Clementine, huh.
When will my sleep return from war, she says, all southern drawl and western twang because you take the girl out of the Southwest but can't take the Southwest out of the girl. Mr. D twitches at the twang, and Clarisse grins, very sharp.
Clarisse ends up returning home anyway. The day she leaves, she hugs each and every one of her brothers, gets kissed on the cheek and forehead. She leaves Sherman in charge, and tells them all to be good, that she loves them.
Her mom picks her up at the airport, feeds her pastries, and escargot, sends her to bed feeling worn and softened up. Her room is mostly as it was before she left: soothing shades of pastel blue and purple to calm her inherited anger, white bedding, a few new plants added, thick blackout curtains.
It's not that she's not happy to be back. But there's a war waiting for her at her other home.
In the end, she's glad Chiron and Mr. D made her go when she's a mile into her morning run and stumbles upon Chris.
If Chris leaving camp was bad, Chris' return is devastating. He's insane, delirious, dehydrated, and malnourished. Clarisse remembers him from before he left: wiry muscles, a laughing grin, bright eyes, healthy. The contrast makes her chest hurt.
It's a lot of work to keep him alive. She spends hours in the dark cellar, talking to him. She coaxes him to eat, to drink, to sleep. She's on call 24/7, wondering if this is what a nurse feels like.
"You don't have to do this," Beauregard says, walking her to the Big House to check on Chris. Her voice is gentle, probing. "No one is making you. Chiron can handle this. An Apollo kid can handle this."
Clarisse shakes her head. She knows, she knows that she should let someone else take over. She's juggling her cabin, her siblings, her duties, her spear-fighting teaching, and nursing Chris. It's exhausting, but there's something inside of her that refuses to let Chris go.
"Okay," Beauregard nods, and she and Nyssa are waiting for her after she leaves the Big House at midnight, melting ice cream in their hands.
Chris calls Clarisse Mary a lot. Clarisse found Chris alone. Sometimes, she wonders who Mary is, was. Is she still alive? Who was or is her godly parent? What happened to her? It makes her head hurt, sometimes more than Chris' screams do.
Sometimes, Chris calls Clarisse a monster. She tells him she isn't, and tries to coax him to drink some water.
It's a lot of work to keep him on the brink of living. It's even more work to get Mr. D to make him sane again. Clarisse does things she never thought she'd do - begs, pleads, grovels, bargains. Chris has been insane for months now, and she sucks up her pride. Fuck it. Fuck all of it. Fuck Mr. D especially.
Clarisse talks. She talks about Chris, about knowing him since she so fucking young, and finding him again and again. In military school, where her mom sent her per recommendation of public schools. During vacation, where their moms pushed them together. At Camp Half-Blood, where he became one of her best friends.
"I've lost him once," she says, quiet, steely. Chris is getting thinner, losing his energy, losing this fight. It's terrifying: the hollows of his cheekbones, the pain in his eyes. "I won't lose him again. You don't want to know what will happen if I do."
Mr. D leaves for a week, and, when he comes back, turns Chris sane again.
Clarisse doesn't know until she walks into the Big House in the morning. "He's not here," Chiron says, and her first thought is did he die. Her chest feels tight, her stomach knotted. "He's in the infirmary. Mr. D helped him recover. He's okay."
She goes, finds Chris waking up, groggy and weak. He's out of bed in less than 24 hours and Clarisse keeps pace with him through his first panic attack when he goes outside, to walking around the camp grounds, to watching him slowly regain his appetite.
He's different. Traumatized, obviously. Maeve, one of the few Apollo kids Clarisse is genuinely friends with, murmurs PTSD in her ear. But Chris is also quieter, has a nihilistic edge added to his humour, and considers his words more. Says them tastefully, artfully, in a sort of random way that slides from topic to topic.
"I'm sorry," Chris says. They're sitting in silence on the pier, looking out into the clear blue water. "I don't think I've told you that, but I'm sorry. For leaving. For hurting you."
Clarisse remembers the scrap of paper, I had to. I'm sorry. It's worn and crumpled, letters feathering into the paper now, from all the times she's folded and creased it.
"Why did you leave," she quietly demands. It's not the only demand or question she has, but she pulls back, stringing control taut over her spine and heart.
Chris is silent for a long time. Long enough that Clarisse looks over sharply, finds him tapping his fingers on his knee and looking thoughtful.
A year ago, he would've laughed at her. Put his hands up, saying, Give me a sec, Reese. God, you're so impatient.
Now, he ignores her for another beat. "I," he begins, then halts. Thinking this deeply, that's something he didn't do before. Without thinking, she curls up a bit more, hunching down. When Chris looks over, a shadow of surprise passing over his features, she lets herself slowly straighten.
Maybe he's forgotten how she likes to let go sometimes. Being at attention all the time - shoulders back, chest out, chin up, spine straight - gets tiring. She likes to relax her posture, slumping down like she's a marionette with cut strings.
"I wasn't claimed for a long time," Chris blurts out. He's looking out at the water, avoiding eye contact, and, before, he would have looked her dead in the eye. "It felt bad. Like, he didn't care about me. And, yeah, like, I got claimed. After over a year of being here. Hermes had already claimed some kids, newer than I was. It felt like he didn't care. And here were other unclaimed kids, waiting, and I just. I wanted it to stop. I wanted to make them realize the effect the gods were having on their children."
"And you thought going against us was the best idea?" Clarisse snaps, angry, all of a sudden. "Why didn't you say anything? Why didn't -"
"I do what?" Chris is angry too, she can see it in the line of his shoulders, the way he draws himself up and squares his jaw. "My opinion didn't seem to matter to the gods. Honestly? It still doesn't, okay, they don't give two fucks about what I do as long as I'm still doing what they want me to do."
Clarisse bares her teeth. "Right, like Kronos gives a shit about anybody."
"I'm not saying he did!" Chris finally looks at her, gets up in her face for the first time since he came back. "It was a shit idea to go to him, okay, I fucking know that. All I wanted was to help, and to have a goddamn voice. It was either stay here and never have a voice, or at least try. Luke made it sound okay there, made it sound like I'd be heard for once. Kronos is worse than the gods, yeah, but it's not like they're saints either."
Silence hangs in the air between them. This is the first time Clarisse has seen Chris simultaneously coherent and animated in a year. She doesn't know what to say.
"What would you have done," she starts, and looks him dead in the eye, "if you had been up against me in battle?"
He flinches, hard, doesn't even try to hide it. He's so vulnerable, it makes her chest ache.
Chris exhales heavily. "I," he begins, then falters. "I don't know. I would've not fought you."
"It's a war, Chris."
"So? Would you have fought me?"
Clarisse scowls, "If you had attacked first, then I would have." She knows, in her heart, that it's true. She's also aware she probably would have knocked him unconscious, dragged him into a safe place, and left him to wake up on his own time. He doesn't need to know that.
Chris says, "I don't think I could ever really intentionally hurt you," and she doesn't know what to say to that either.
"I know," is what she goes with, because she does. Chris, Chris still looks tired.
A month later and he gets tired of being, tired all the time. Weak.
He's takes up running every morning again, only two miles to begin with. Then he goes for five, then seven, and just keeps going. Chris runs in the early hours of the morning, when only Clarisse, training, and Katie Gardner, tending the garden, are awake.
Chris levels up to slowly beating more of his cabin mates during practice. He trains just by himself for two months, and December is when Sherman asks him, "Hey, man, you training with us?"
"Clarisse approve of this?"
Sherman looks back at his brothers. Evan, Brock, Derrick. They stand a couple yards away, waiting and watching with more patience than they should have. They'd been close to Chris pre-insanity. "No," he tells him, finally. "But she's busy doing ballet with Mark, Miles, and Jake. Come on."
Chris goes. He trains heavily with the Ares kids, is sore everyday. It's not long before Clarisse finds out, and he's pretty surprised this secret lasted so long to begin with. Clarisse usually knows everything regarding her siblings and cabin.
"You're not fit to train like this," she insists, cornering him during his run. He has no idea how she found him. He mixes up his path weekly, and is four and a half miles into his run.
"Don't you only run two miles in the morning?" Chris asks. She glares at him, shoving him back into a tree. "Jesus, okay, chill," he yelps, holding up his hands in surrender. "And thanks, but I'm doing fine."
"They could seriously injure you." Up close, he can see her light freckles, the darkness of her eyes.
"I could seriously injure myself. But I haven't. Come on, Reese, I'm getting stronger."
She growls, "You can't handle this kind of training. Stop, or else I'll make you."
Who's injuring me now? he thinks, sarcastic and wry. Chris bites his tongue, though. That kind of comment, as funny as it would be, would get him nowhere. "Don't you want me to be able to defend myself," he tries, laying out his trump card. "I've been training daily for months now. Your brothers are even going easy on me, but Kronos' army won't."
Clarisse visibly hesitates, her palm still pressed flat against his sternum. He keeps breathing, easy, normal.
"Fine," she says, at last. Chris blinks, surprised she's letting him go that easily and that she came to a conclusion quickly. "But," she adds, "you train with me instead."
Fuck, he doesn't say. "Deal," he tells her, and Clarisse grins like she knows what he's thinking.
"Good, I'll see you right after your run tomorrow. Meet me by the arena."
As she goes to leave, Chris smirks, "You know you have to run back, right?"
Clarisse turns her head and glares at him. "I hate you," she says, and flips him off as she jogs back.
Chris takes the long way back, totalling his run to ten miles instead of eight, and is back a little after Clarisse.
"I hate you so much," she gasps. Her entire face is red. He tries unsuccessfully to not laugh and takes a punch to the arm.
As promised, they begin training the next day. Clarisse runs him through hell and back. All of his body is aching. He's eating cleaner than literally all of his cabin mates, and going to the bathroom twice as much from all the water he's drinking. He still hasn't actually fought against Clarisse yet, but his new go-to sparring partner is Brock instead of Travis Stoll.
Additionally, Clarisse decides to put him on the same vitamin and protein tablets the Ares cabin uses to ensure that muscle builds.
"You don't use steroids, right?" Chris jokes.
Clarisse looks at him flatly. "I'd rather wear a dress." She's in track pants and a Nike t-shirt. He doesn't think he's seen her in a dress since she was 7.
Beside her, Sherman, shirtless, snorts and doesn't even look up from the latest copy of Vogue. "I'd rather train in heels."
"You'd wear a dress?" Chris asks.
Sherman tilts the magazine at him pointedly. "Think about your range of motion," and yeah, Chris has to admit that's a good point. A loose dress would allow a full range of motion.
Clarisse, however, shakes her head in vehement disagreement. "I can get that range of motion fine in my pants and shorts."
"I don't know," Chris says, "I think you'd look nice in a dress." He looks her dead in the eye, but Clarisse avoids eye contact after a split second, her whole face red. He's pretty sure Sherman is having a seizure across from them.
"Shaddup," she mutters, sounding grouchy, and slugs him on the arm. Chris laughs.
The first time Silena sees Chris truly fight against Clarisse, it's coincidentally the one and only time she sees him knock her to the ground and pin her.
Silena gapes (probably unattractively, she thinks) at them. Clarisse is struggling underneath Chris, trying to throw him off, but he's holding strong.
"Get the fuck off me," she snarls, so loud that Silena can hear all the way on the bleachers. Chris just seems to press down harder, leaning down to say something. "Fuck you," she snaps.
They're like that for a long time, Chris pinning Clarisse down, and Silena watching. Clarisse doesn't calm down for at least twenty minutes. Silena is genuinely concerned she's going to end up stabbing Chris.
Chris, however, is calm and sturdy. He has Clarisse well-pinned for the better part of half an hour, when he finally lets her up.
He says something to her, a hand on her shoulder, and Clarisse nods, avoiding eye contact. Only when Chris leaves does Silena deign to come down.
"You okay?"
"I'm fine," Clarisse says, gruff, staring at the door. "I just." She inhales deeply, then exhales deeply. "I'm fine."
Silena purses her lips, and lets out a deep breath. "What were you even angry about?" she asks, steeling herself a sharp retort.
Clarisse surprises her by saying, "Deimos and Phobos."
She takes an inch, moves with a mile. She can't help it. She's curious. "Aren't they supposed to be helping you train your siblings?"
"Yeah," she says, all bite and sarcasm, something vicious and cutting in her tone. "They're supposed to be helping. Instead, they sit around degrading me. Because I'm a girl. Because I can still kick their asses."
"You want me to kick their butts?" Silena asks. She knows she can't, obviously, but she forces Clarisse to make eye contact with her, watches her smile a bit.
"No," she tells her. "I can do that fine by myself. Thanks, though."
"Delivery," Linda Du, a daughter of Demeter, calls, a big bouquet of red roses in hand. Her voice is high, nervous. She pauses in the middle of the dining area, and takes a hesitant step to the right. She visibly wavers, before taking a deep breath and marching over to the Ares table.
Evan drawls, "That for me?" and the entire table cracks up.
"Who'd get you flowers?" Sherman snorts.
"People who actually appreciate me, dickwad."
Linda's gone already, tucked between her siblings at the Demeter table. Across the dining pavilion, someone shouts, "Who's it for?"
"Not you, so fuck off," Evan yells back.
Clarisse sighs, rolls her eyes. "Oh my God," she says, with no real heat, "shut up." She leans over, pulling out a plain white card from the flowers.
"Who's it for?" asks Sherman, leaning into her space, and Clarisse ducks away, shouldering him gently. Sherman immediately grins. "Fuck, actually?"
"What," Lacy hisses, from the Aphrodite table, bewildred, and turns to Silena, who only holds up a finger. Wait a moment. She's leaning forward, excitedly watching the scene like it's something out of Gossip Girl.
Sherman begins laughing, and all the rest of the Ares brothers crowd in, clamouring to see the card. Silena wishes briefly that Clarisse's two sisters, who are summer-campers, were also here. During the summer, she always sees the Ares girls exchanging sympathetic looks.
"Clarisse, come on!"
"Reese, show us."
"What the fuck, Clarisse, where'd the card even go..."
Clarisse says, "Jesus. Sherman, handle this." It's such a blatant power-transfer that everyone in the dining pavilion just stares. The majority of them have never actually seen Clarisse hand off control to her brothers.
Sherman, still laughing, finally gets his act together enough to choke out, "It's for her," and the entire Ares table blows up.
Clarisse flips them all off, and there's a solid thumping sound over the clamour that leaves Derrick wincing in pain. "Why don't you ever kick Mark, huh, or Miles," he demands, leaning back and rubbing his shin.
"Because they chose to take ballet with me," Clarisse tells him, blank-faced, and Derrick sticks his tongue at her.
At the Hermes table, Travis Stoll wolf-whistles and yells, "Who's it from?"
"None of your business," Derrick shoots back. Now, Clarisse is the one making a face at him, but she doesn't say anything.
Nobody notices Chris walking in to the dining pavilion until he sits down right beside Clarisse, an arm tossed comfortably over her shoulders. The Ares siblings don't even pause, talking to each other through mouthfuls of their vitamin-packed, protein-heavy meals. Everybody else in the pavilion are still staring. Silena bites her lip, hard, to keep from squealing.
"What the fuck," Drew Tanaka whispers, eyebrows nearly touching her hairline.
Silena grins at her. "I told you," she says, smug. "They're meant to be."
Meanwhile, Chris leans close to Clarisse. "Nice flowers," he murmurs to her.
Clarisse elbows him in the gut without even looking. "I can't believe you," she says. "I hate you."
He laughs, "I'm glad you like them," and, "Love you too." He leans into her a little more, feels her sigh and relax and let him draw her in closer.
"You're such an asshole."
"Me? Nah," Chris grins, and winks cheekily at her before getting up to go to his own table. Travis and Connor are watching him with identical smirks on their faces as he squeezes in across from them. "What?" he asks.
Connor snorts. "You're so whipped, man." He spills his drink all down the front of his shirt when Chris throws a bread roll at him. "Hey! What the fuck, Chris?"
"I don't know what you're talking about," he says, avoiding eye contact. As he summons tacos on to his plate, he says, conversationally, "I just figured, you know, white bread for white people."
"We get it, you like your food and your girls spicy," Travis grins, wiggling his brows.
Chris looks him dead in the eye. "Travis, are you trying to say you're a bland dude with no personality and no taste? Because I gotta say, I agree."
Travis rolls his eyes. "Five minutes at the Ares table and you suddenly got funny, huh?" he shoots back, but he's smiling, warm and easy. It's good to have his half-brother back.
Later, Clarisse slips away during the campfire and sets up the roses in a vase by her bedside. If she leans in to smell them, smiling a little, nobody's around to witness it.
From then on, Clarisse and Chris are caught in various risque positions. They've been caught spooning on Clarisse's bunk, pressed thigh to thigh at one of their respective cabin's dining tables. Other time, they've been seen with one of them sitting on some sort of elevated surface, the other standing in the open V of their legs. They touch all the damn time. Nobody knows if they're dating. None of the Hermes cabinmates, anyway. The Ares cabinmates don't make any noise of protest, and just fold Chris further into their exclusive circle. However, they also refuse to say anything on the subject matter.
"Look," Damien Chen had said, loudly, two weeks ago, "if I get another question about who the hell my sister is fucking, I'm going to gut the person that asks. I don't want to think about it. She's my sister, and her own person. Y'all need Jesus."
The next person who asked, which happened to be poor Connor Stoll on a dare, had, in fact, been punched in the stomach. Damien got put on kitchen duty for a week, and got a cookie from Clarisse. Like, an actual, massive, freshly-baked cookie. It kind of stopped anyone else from asking about Chris and Clarisse.
"I didn't know you could bake," Silena says to Clarisse, right before their history class.
Clarisse shrugs. She says, "We're all supposed to be on a diet. We're not supposed to be eating a lot of calories," so dryly, Silena's laughing a little without even realizing. Clarisse is smiling, small and pleased.
The Ares boys eat like pigs, albeit healthy pigs. Silena's seen Clarisse's diet plans for optimal muscle mass and health, which are detailed and involve a lot of pictures, but each son of Ares intakes an incredible amount of food. The Ares girls also eat an a large amount of calories, but Silena's never seen Clarisse eat unhealthy.
That is, until Chris appears in the Pavilion with flan he made himself. Clarisse has a slice on her plate in less than a minute, and is clearly savouring each bite.
"Rodriguez, man, you're the fucking man," garbles Brock between a mouthful. Chris is grinning, clearly smug. Clarisse catches Silena's eye, and rolls her eyes. Silena barely stifles a smile, and waggles her eyebrows in response.
"Thanks," he says, "man," and, at the Hermes table, Marissa Gbeho makes an ugly snorting sound.
"Sorry," she says, when she notices people looking at her. She's laughing, and doesn't look the least bit sorry.
Silena's eyes cut to Chris and Clarisse. Their shoulders are pressed together, and Silena watches as, under the radar of all the commotion, a bored-looking Clarisse feeds a smirking Chris a spoonful of flan.
"Lena?" A hand touches her arm. It's Emily, one of her younger sisters. "You okay? Your mouth is kind of - " She waves her hand, looking equal parts concerned and uncomfortable.
Silena shuts her mouth, and straightens up. "I'm fantastic," she beams.
"When are you and Chris going to come clean about dating?" Silena asks Clarisse, during a work period in English. They still have classes for the year-round campers. English is taught by a nymph who has a collection of classic novels on her desk, and who likes pushing them to think creatively. Right now, they're in the middle of a choice Much Ado About Nothing project.
Outline a rewrite of the play while keeping the same theme, characterization, and meaning or write an essay on how the play could have been improved with reference to the change in culture from Shakespeare's time to today's. Silena's, like, halfway done already. She can afford a break.
Clarisse looks hard at work, but also like she wants to murder something. Silena's doing her a favour, really.
"Shut up, Beauregard," she says. Silena grins a little wider as Clarisse ducks her head further over her paper.
"Come on," she says. "I know you're just dying to spill the deets."
She flatly echoes, "The deets," and finally deigns to look up, an eyebrow raised. "What the fuck, Silena."
"Details. Dating. Going public." Silena waves her hands around. "Anything big or romantic for the reveal?"
"I don't know what you're talking about."
"We all know about you and Chris," Silena says, soft and gentle. She doesn't want to startle Clarisse or anything, but it's true. Half the camp is aware that Chris and Clarisse are doing something by now. It's kind of obvious, even though the furtive looks and abstract pining from before were enough to tip Silena off.
Clarisse gives her a baleful look. "You don't know anything," she scowls, and Silena gentles further at the caged look in her eyes.
"Look," she says, "I just. I want you to be happy."
"I'm fine," she replies, gruff, but she seems a tiny bit less tense. Silena'll take it. "Don't worry about it, Beauregard. We're fine." She bends back over her homework, as if this conversation is over.
Silena smiles at her slyly. "Are you in love?"
Clarisse's head snaps up, and she glares. She looks a solid fifty-percent murderous, but she's definitely blushing.
"It's okay if you are," Silena says, placatingly, a little giddy. "Love is good!"
"I hate you," Clarisse says, not actually denying it. "I genuinely, really fuckin' hate y'all."
Silena's grin only widens. "You're breaking out the southern accent for him, oh my gods." She's practically bouncing in her seat, watching as Clarisse's blush darkens. "That's so cute."
"Nothing is cute," groans Clarisse, scowling even harder. She presses a hand to her forehead. "Fuckin' Christ, Beauregard. Knock it off."
In the end, the grand relationship reveal is pretty anticlimatic. It's the Friday campfire, after a Capture the Flag where the Ares cabin came away victors. Nobody really belongs to their cabin during campfires, so everyone is clumped together seemingly randomly.
Silena watches Derrick, the oldest of the Ares kids, talk to Logan, her own second-oldest sister. Derrick is taking a gap year to help fight in the war and take care of his siblings, and Logan, Silena knows, has her heart set on the same university as Derrick. They'd be cute if Silena didn't know Logan was aromantic.
"Creeping on your sister?" Chris sighs, dropping down beside her. "Really, Lena?"
She smiles at him, taking a sip from her cup. Unbeknownst to Chiron, it's spiked hot chocolate, and makes warmth bloom in her chest. "Shush," she says. "You don't get to judge. You spent, like, years tragically pining after Clarisse and looking out for her."
Chris raises his eyebrows. "I was not tragically pining," he protests. He tosses a lanyard in the air, and the keys jangle noisily. "She's my best friend."
"And that means you can't pine?"
"That means you're delusional and fantastical," he corrects, smirking, and tosses the keys in front of her. They're her keys, she realizes, recognizing the bright pink lanyard and Eiffel Tower keychain. He must have just swiped them. Hermes kids - so petty.
Silena huffs. "Don't be rude," she reprimands, sliding the keys into her bag. Then, she slaps him on the arm, and Chris begins laughing.
"Sorry, princess," he says, open-mouthed and smiling. He's gotten a lot better over the past months, Silena thinks, taking in his brightened grin, his easy posture. He's laughing like he used to. He doesn't look as haunted and depressed anymore. "Hey, where's your boyfriend?"
"He got called over to talk to Lee," Silena says, waving her hand in the direction opposite of them. "It's hard, you know, dating such a popular, sweet, kind man who's always willing to help." She can't help the smile that stretches across her face, even as Chris snorts.
He says, "You've got it so fucking bad."
Silena gives him her best Bitch, Please look. "People in glass houses shouldn't throw stones," she says primly. Chris just rolls his eyes. She makes a face at him, trying to look especially bitchy.
"Hola, perdedores," a voice drawls, roughened and low, before Clarisse drops down beside Chris. She's wearing an Ares flag around her shoulders, and Silena can only imagine the detailed stitching of the boar that spreads out across the broad width of her shoulderblades.
Silena asks, "Why are you wearing your flag?" at the same time Chris snorts and says, "Is that still the only Spanish you know? Besides swear words?"
Clarisse scowls. "Estoy usando mi bandera porque me gané el derecho de usar esta bandera. Además, vete a la mierda, Rodríguez." Silena blinks, a little stunned. She didn't understand anything, except maybe mierda and that's only because Angelica, her hispanic half-sister, swears in Spanish regularly.
Chris, on the other hand, is unattractively open-mouthed. He's sitting stock still while Clarisse, looking a little smug and a little annoyed, shifts uncomfortably at his staring.
"Para," she growls, clearly full-out irritated now. "Deja de mirarme de esa manera."
Silena's eyebrows climb even higher up her forehead. Gods, she's going to have so many wrinkles, but, "When did you become fluent in Spanish?"
"Recently," she replies shortly, nonplussed.
Undeterred, Silena presses on. "Who taught you, though?"
Clarisse moves around again, shooting a glance at a still-stunned Chris. "...A family friend," she says, finally, after a lengthy silence. Silena lowers and raises her eyebrows in silent question. Clarisse glares at her briefly before turning to Chris.
"Rodriguez?" she says, her voice more careful than Silena has ever heard it. There's a strange look on her face. Something volunerable, apprehensive.
Chris blinks at her, and then leans in and kisses her on the mouth. Clarisse doesn't make a single sound. She just sits there, stiff and still, back ramrod straight, before relaxing into it, her eyes fluttering close. Chris has a hand cupping her jaw, and another wrapped around the back of her neck. She curls a hand around his shoulder, the other pinning the ends of the flag together at her chest. The kiss is long and slow; practiced, as if they'd done it a dozen times before.
Someone wolf-whistles. Silena is ninety-percent sure it's a Stoll brother. There's a solid thud sound, immediately followed by a pained, high-pitched noise that causes Chris and Clarisse to break away from each other.
Immediately, Clarisse looks around and scowls. "What the fuck are you looking at?" Her face is bright red, but she still has a hand on Chris's shoulder. Silena hides a smile behind her hand.
"I think they're looking at us," Chris says, wry. His grin is the brightest Silena's ever seen. His hands have migrated to Clarisse's waist, his fingers flexing like he's squeezing her gently. Clarisse turns her scowl on him, and his grin only seems to grow.
Silena catches one of her half-sister's eyes. What the fuck, Helena mouths.
She tries not to smile too smugly. I told you so, she mouths back.
The drama ends when Chris and Clarisse stand up and walk away together, towards the direction of the beach, hand-in-hand. There are many wolf-whistles and catcalls made, mostly by the Hermes cabin, but at least two of Clarisse's brothers have their weapons out, which makes the leering sounds stop almost as soon as they started.
"Happy?" Charlie asks, sliding in beside Silena. He slings an arm comfortably over her shoulders, drawing her in close to his side.
She grins up at him. "Fabulous."
Later, Silena will catch them really making out. At Zeus's Fist, in the empty dining pavilion, in a deserted Ares Cabin. Chris looks her dead in the eye and says, "Nobody will ever believe you."
The Hermes kids laugh and half-believe her, the Ares kids ignore her entirely. The camp is divided otherwise because Chris and Clarisse, aside from their first public kiss, have been careful with each other. Not too handsy, nothing below the waist. Only quick pecks on the cheek or forehead, and very rarely on the lips. Leaving enough room for Zeus to slip between them if he wanted to.
"I can hardly imagine them getting all," Drew waves her hands, pursing her lips, "hot and heavy? Sexy?"
"They do," Silena insists, and Michael laughs kindly at her. She groans, resigned. All her matchmaking for this, she takes it all back. Chris and Clarisse are terrible together.
Then she thinks of Clarisse, red-faced, turned away in Chris's arms, and a laughing Chris with messy hair as he tells her now isn't a good time, Lena, we've got a, uh, private situation.
"I better be your maid of honour," Silena says to Clarisse.
"What?"
"Your maid of honour. At your wedding. To Chris. I take full matchmaking responsibility and this is my fee for getting you two together."
Clarisse snorts, incredulous. "Yeah, you're the one who got us together," she sneers, rolling her eyes.
Silena grins, sly. There's a scary glint to her eye. "I noticed you didn't deny marrying Chris though," she says.
"Shut up." Predictably, Clarisse flushes a bright pink. Silena's smile only widens. She pulls out a binder, glossy white, full of colourful tabs.
She says, "Come on," and then, to Clarisse's mounting horror, pulls out a stack of thick magazines. They spend the afternoon planning Clarisse's and Silena's hypothetical weddings.
Silena wants lots of blush pink, and bright poppy colours. I want it to stand out against the white, althought these gold accents are going to look darling. Maybe silver? If I'm adding blue. She wants a strapless silk Vera Wang dress, Louboutin or Dior heels. Something classic for jewelry. A statement necklace, maybe. She wants a vacation wedding: Paris or Florence or Honolulu. Somewhere warm, suitably romantic, and full of life.
It takes a lot of cajoling, but Clarisse eventually admits, grudgingly, that she would like to eventually get married. Maybe. Silena is thrilled - what dress colour would you like, do you want a wedding dress, or would a jumpsuit be too avant-garde for you. Clarisse suggests a black dress, straight-faced, and Silena frowns at her, saying, no, that's a funeral - and Clarisse drawls, what's the difference again. She does point at a rustic wedding scene a magazine, saying that she likes the colours. Silena beams at her.
She's the one that cuts out pictures from the magazines to stick in the binder. The daughter of Ares doesn't help, but she encourages her to keep going, and doesn't leave, even when she looks annoyed.
It's a good afternoon.
Silena never makes it to her own wedding. Neither does Beckendorf.
Chris and Clarisse do get married, in Providence, Rhode Island - the first and last place Clarisse and Silena roadtripped together. At the reception, Clarisse and Chris raise their glasses of celebratory vodka.
"We'd like to thank Silena," Clarisse says, voice even. Grief is an old wound that always tries to knock her off her feet. Chris presses a hand to her lower back. It grounds her. "For her matchmaking abilities."