A/N: Ready for some Jasper?
Disclaimer: I do not own the Percy Jackson characters, or any of the ideas from the novel The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton.
I remember almost two weeks after that incident with me bumping into them while the two Socs were slipping necessities into the lockers, a lot of things had happened that very same week. Percy had decided to spend more time with Annabeth, claiming that he needed to comfort her (though she really didn't need it that much) and to look for more information from Annabeth's mother if he hung out around the house. That wasn't really an option, though. Annabeth's mother knew better than to stay at home now, especially now that everyone knows her secret. But he still had insisted on going.
I respected his decision, knowing that all he really wanted was a break from reality. And if there was anything that was a perfect distraction from reality, it was Annabeth. Same thing goes for her as well, which is probably one of the reasons that makes them good for each other.
Another thing, was Rachel. This had to be the most depressing week for her out of all that she's been through in the past. Like I had said before, there were only two of her friends that knew about her father being sick at all: Percy and I. So trying to keep her secret was hard, especially through all the questions that the rest of the gang had been asking her throughout the week, that I hadn't even noticed that I had been asking during the previous months/weeks that I didn't know about her father being sick.
I felt awful for her, I really did. I tried to think of the images of Rachel's father stuck in some hospital that you've never heard of in a foreign country that you weren't familiar with, and replaced them with my own dad. Just thinking about it... I swallowed hard, roughly against the choking up lump that was increasing up my throat. It was only a matter of time when Rachel got a letter sent from Africa, telling about the progress report of her father. Rachel hadn't ever gotten a letter before, since they took so long to send due to the long distance and inconvenient circumstances, and this was the first one she would get.
She's expecting it to come today.
The night before today, however, I sat with her by the back steps of her small porch, the large overgrown trees representing as a cover-up from her worried rants, and tried my best to keep silent for her, thinking that she would need it. It didn't make it any better that I didn't help a shit. At least, that's what I was thinking while I was sitting with her. Thinking back on it, I really wish I had comforted her more. Or maybe that is what she had needed. Silence.
I remember walking back to my house, converged into my own thought process around 2 AM. I hated myself. I hated feeling useless. Like I had done nothing. And I wasn't even thinking about Rachel anymore (though she was still a pretty big factor in it), I was also thinking about how things were going with the crop field. The Greasers are trying their best to move on (well, at least the adults were), and even the Socs, Jason and Reyna, were putting an effort into making things right.
I didn't have that same ability.
So, forcing myself to fall into some dreadful sleep, I yanked the covers over my head and squeezed my eyes shut, letting down a few pity, useless, pathetic drops of tears of my own, and furiously wiping them away afterwards.
The day after that, had definitely had to be the most weirdest day of all the weirdest days I had. Also the most least expected, if there's even a difference between the two. That morning, almost scared the living crap out of me.
I was awoken that day, not by some random spurt of water splashing against my face, but by two arms roughly shaking me awake. And I wanted to complain badly because it wasn't even a fucking weekday. I thought Percy or Leo or whoever the hell it was could shove it, and freaking leave me the hell alone and bother someone else, just for one day, especially that I had gotten home so late that night.
I was pissed.
And the person who was trying to wake me up obviously could tell because I heard an annoyed groan vibrate above me, letting me know that it was definitely a boy. The person kept shaking, not even opening his damned mouth to speak so I could know just who I was dealing with. If it was Leo, it was somewhat easy to kick out the window. Percy, it was a little harder, but eventually he would leave as well.
I patiently (or as much as I could) waited for some sound of distinct shuffling to let me know that the person decided to leave. No such respond. Instead, the person had climbed right on top of my body, muscles tensed as if he wasn't completely sure with his decision to do so, and gripped my shoulders a bit harder, hard enough that I was officially woken up, but I still refused to open my eyes. I figured, now that there was a weight difference from above me, I knew definitely that it was too heavy for it to be Leo.
"Percy..." I murmured, mentally cursing at him. Then I raised my voice a little sharper, so that he knew that I was being dead serious about it. "If you don't get the hell off my bed, I will jack-slap you off of it myself."
There was a deafening silence that followed, even he stopped shaking my shoulder to process that sentence. "...Why would you think Percy would be the one to wake you up from your bed?" I heard from above me.
I froze instantly, feeling a deep frown spread across my lips. He's tripping...right? I lift my right eye slowly, cautiously to make sure that he was joking.
What I saw instead made me lose my thought of speech completely. I blinked for a second, two. Then I sprung up from the bed, vaguely aware that his body was still on mine. "What do you think you are doing here? In my room? How did...?" I snap my neck to my right, looking at the window and how it was perched up. He couldn't have gone through there unless he had a key... My eyes opened wide, looking around desperately for any sign of my key.
How the hell could I have missed it? Not that I had ever needed it, I recently have been going through the actual door now more frequently now that my dad was staying home for a little while longer than before, but still...how had I not noticed it was missing for almost two weeks now?
As if reading my head, Jason Grace reached into his back pocket and pulled out sheepishly the small key with the random chains here and there around the key-chain. "You...uh, you sorta dropped it by accident in my car the other day. I just found it, like, last night. I was going to give it to you last night, but you weren't there..."
"...So you came through my window while I was sleeping instead?" I asked blankly, calming down a little after my initial shock.
"Yeah..." he then frowned, as if just thinking about what he had done. "Is that improper?"
"Considering that we just started being official nonpublic friends?" I said, referring back to the day that he mentioned us being like this in the first place, "only slightly."
He grinned, something that I rarely ever see of him, and silently wondered what sensation in my body that was making me smile back at him as well. "So why the heck are you here at...holy shit, you woke me up at 9? What type of sick person does that?"
"The kind that doesn't always act like she's sleep deprived all the time and is less lethargic than the average Piper McLean," he chuckled.
I rolled my eyes at him, but not in the usual way I used to do whenever he tried to get on my nerves, it was more of a...a playful way. And that was wrong. I knew it was wrong. Everything in my brain was screaming at me that it was wrong.
But I would be lying to myself and to you if I had told you that.
In order to distract myself from the thought, I intrigued, "so...I have my key back now...is that all you came here for?"
He furrowed his eyebrows, as if he was seriously thinking over that question, before shooting them up in realization and said, "um, no. It's...it's actually because of this." He reached over to his side and gestured to me a magazine that I hadn't even noticed that he brought with him.
The cover of it had just shown a couple of houses and gardens that was obviously going for sale or something, and I didn't get what the big deal was at first. I looked at Jason with confusion, before he pointed more clearly at the small print that was written near the bottom of the page.
I had to literally squint to be able to see it: All money that is spent on the above products will be given to the companies of Jupiter Grace and Athena Chase. I frowned for a second, wondering why they would put that bit of information in such a belittled font size. Then it hit me that not a lot of people were on the side of the crop field going to waste. But that only made me smile wider, if anything.
The downside of it, however, was that since people could barely even see the print, it would be easier for them to buy it, unknowing about just how much they would be giving away. Looking at the magazine title's name made me flinch, knowing that with its proper advertising franchise, reputation, and the actual general look of the product was hard not to be tempted to buy it.
I looked back up at him to see that he was staring at me, trying to see what my reaction was to looking at the printing. When he saw my uncertain face, he explained, "I figured that if I showed this to you, you would understand that there is a way to stop it."
"...How?"
"...I don't really know."
"...What do you mean you don't know?"
He sighed. "I mean, if my dad was the one who was ruining the crops in the first place, and now he was trying to sell other things to earn profit for the town-or, whatever the crap he's building, then maybe...I don't know, maybe he's getting desperate."
I nodded slightly, trying to see things in his point of view. "So...maybe we start selling stuff to raise our side of the campaign?"
He shook his head immediately. "No, that would only complicate things and make things worse. If we did that, then we would definitely get caught doing it, and it wouldn't end pretty."
"Okay, okay, it was just a suggestion. Jeez," I raised my hands in fake surrender.
Jason ignored that and continued, "we need something that actually sets people up. Something that makes people rile up and gets people...I don't know, excited? Is that the word? Whatever, all I know is that we need to cause something that will spark people so they'll pay attention to just exactly what my dad and Chase's mom is doing."
I then smiled. "Like, sabotage?" But it had quickly faded once I realized that I was supposed to be helping Jason and his dad's relationship, not bringing them apart. I felt immediately guilty after saying it, but it was like Jason hadn't even considered that option before. It was like...he was acting like his dad wasn't even related to him. That thought brought a nostalgic feeling into my mind, wondering what it would be like if I hadn't gotten along with my father for so long, that I didn't even consider him my actual dad anymore, and I shoved it away. I couldn't deal with that right now.
"Yeah, okay. Sabotage. It's just right," he concluded.
Shock filled me up as my eyebrows jumped in surprise. "Wait, you actually agree to that? I understand if you don't. I'm sorry for bringing that up in the first place. That was stupid of me. I-"
"It's fine, Pipes," he cut me off, leaving my mouth hanging slightly ajar. Pipes? I thought, did he just call me Pipes? I had no idea where the hell he heard that nickname from, but I found myself not commenting at all after that. And that just pissed me off even more. This was not supposed to be happening. He really shouldn't be in my room right now...why am I letting him do this again? "I'll fix whatever that needs to be fixed after we get this taken care of. The only thing I care about right now, is the Socs' needs. I can handle him afterward. Trust me."
He even gripped my hand after that to reassure me, sending something unusual straight up my nerve and shaking through my head, before he snapped it back to his side, frowning a little as he did so with a crimson fuzz sprinkling across his nose. I was confused as to why he looked slightly red, before figuring that it was because of the non-present heat that was occurring in the room at the moment. It was cold. Like legitimately freezing cold. To say the least, I was thankful for the blankets that cascaded around my body.
But thinking back to what he had said, I had to admire him. I actually think that that was the first time I truly saw Jason Grace in a new light. He would honestly choose to help his family over his own blood, and that was something I had to look up to, considering I don't even think I would be able to do that.
And that was when I started to notice a bunch of meaningless things about him. Like how I had never really noticed that tiny little scar on his lip. Or how hard he intently looked at the blankets around us, like he was too scared to look up from them. Or how the hell he managed to smell so darn good at 9 in the freaking morning. Not cool, man. Not cool at all.
I think I made some weird sound from the back of my throat, something that oddly sounded like an uncomfortable squeak, because he all of a sudden glanced up to my face and studied it just like I had been doing to him.
God, we really needed to stop playing the same damn scenario. I was truly sick of it. But it really did happen, whether I would have liked to admit it or not.
I snapped my head back down to the magazine that I was clutching in my hands with an undefined grip, and scooted over quickly to his side of the bed, letting my hair fall down to the side of my face so he wouldn't see it burning with embarrassment.
That didn't help at all.
Because he scooted over as well, and I was aware of my senses shooting high at his casual-not-so-casual slightly grazing legs against mine. Not to mention that his scent was even more overwhelming than before. And we just sat there, blankly staring at the cover of the magazine for what felt like hours, but in reality was only a few minutes before I finally took the daring step to open it and escape our bubble of whatever that was, and we planned our sabotaging quietly, secretly, but at the same time not quiet or secret at all.
There were times when I could tell he purposefully brushed his hand against mine while flipping over the pages every so often, but whether it was to get a rise out of me or because it was purely by accident, I didn't know. Either way, I wanted to slap him for it (though I wasn't the one to talk; I was sort of doing some of the work myself).
He didn't leave until 11, but that was only because my dad was calling me to get my ass down the stairs and if I didn't "wake up" right now, he would personally drag me out of my bedroom door himself. Jason chuckled when he heard that, before whispering slightly, "it was a pleasure waking you up, you know," obviously hinting that he had to leave now.
"It was a pleasure being woken up," I replied before winking, and I smirked after seeing that his cocky smile wavered a little before turning away quickly. I frowned after that, wondering what his deal was with me, and he mumbled another quick good-bye to me before exiting out through the window.
I grinned into space when my dad teasingly threatened me one last time to get down, but I then felt the corner of my lips tugging downwards and my eyebrows immediately beginning to crinkle at the sight of my phone light up with a text message I had gotten from a certain flaming-haired Greaser.
I have the letter with me now.
A/N: So, how did I do with the Jasper? Hope you enjoyed it! There will be more about the sabotaging and all that good stuff in the coming chapters. That ending, though. I don't even know how this is going to end up yet. We'll see how it goes.
Review?
Till next time,
Penguin
