I would've posted this sooner but the site was busted.

As I'm typing this chapter, I still have to read ToN but I got this idea while reading THO. The moment I read that Lester had acne, which was literally page one, I related to him.

This could pass as a deleted scene in THO. Also, the haiku at the start wasn't planned but now all my Lester chapters will start with one.

Story #6: Lester's New Skincare Routine

Goddess of Love, she
is. Aphrodite? More like
Goddess of Skincare

Lester's been at Camp for a day. A. Day. Or at least it felt like a day. When he blacked out on arrival, it's been more than a day but he's only calling it a day to dramatize the trauma he's been through. He's been attacked, injured, and insulted on more fingers than he can count on. He wonders how he's still alive but knows that good ol' Zeus is probably sitting on his throne waving a finger, thinking as if you'll die this early. You, my stupid boy, just got started! How considerate of his dear father for prolonging his life for more suffering? Wasn't his lesson learned when he awoke as Lester Papadopoulos?

Nope.

And his own children were more concerned about their own well-being more than his godly status. Where could they have gotten that from? A lot of the other cabins looked at him strangely, as if a god being turned mortal was the weirdest thing to show up on campgrounds. And a conventionally unattractive mortal at that. He could tell which half-bloods were Aphrodite's bunch because they looked offended to see the once gorgeous multi-talented god be turned to this unappealing mortal. (Lester knows the pain too well.)

The pain got worse when Aphrodite's Cabin offered to help him. He thought they were being nice but he ended up being a charity case. First banishment from Olympus, then deity status stripped, and now supposed help from Aphrodite's perfect-looking children. Their cabin was like a Barbie dollhouse: everything pink and laced with heavy scents of floral perfumes.

They almost kicked Meg out but allowed her to stay when she enriched the bloom of their already-perfect carnations. Besides, as if Meg would've left him alone with them. She'd want to watch the Barbie dolls put him through another set of trials.

"First, we're fixing that," Drew says, circling a perfectly manicured finger around his face. He just walked through the door and they were already insulting him. It didn't help that Meg snorted a laugh.

"Please help him," Meg begs as if she's asking for money on the side of the road. "He can't become a god again looking like that. His face looks like the wrong side of a pizza."

Lester glares at her as the Aphrodite girls snicker amongst themselves. "That expression makes no sense."

"So does your face."

Lester was about to fire back another playground insult (he knew a whole bunch of them from growing up with Artemis) but is cut off by Valentina and Drew muttering back and forth to each other in French. Their eyes are pierced on his face as they make small gestures towards his violated face with their beautiful nails.

"I think that means you're hopeless," Meg guesses.

"It did not," Lester argues.

They turn to see Valentina and Drew staring at him like wild monsters as they roll up their sleeves.

"Give us the cabin!" Drew orders her siblings.

"Oh gods, it did…" Lester mutters.

-o-

All Aphrodite kids except for Drew, Valentina, and Lacy cleared out of the cabin. Before they left, they helped set up a spa for facial treatments in the centre of the cabin. Some vanities were pushed together to hold their supplies and they pulled up a spa sink from the floor. They must have spa days often. Lester sat in a chair in front of the vanities with a towel wrapped around him over his clothes. Meg sat nearby, playing with the flowers, commenting on how dumb he looked.

"You must've really messed up to get punished with cystic acne," Valentina comments in a piteous tone as she started steaming his face. (It was to open the pores, they said.)

The fact that she and Drew wore gloves before handling his face offended him but at the same time, he couldn't blame them. It gave Meg a good laugh and she offered to get some gardening gloves from her cabin. Lester wasn't sure if she was kidding which scared him.

"Don't remind me," Lester grumbles.

Lester can't remember if he and Aphrodite had bad blood. He knows Aphrodite despises his twin Artemis. She was always out finding handsome suitors or fooling around with Ares (which Lester never understood because, out of literally anything in the world, she chose Ares). But Lester had a feeling that another one of his mortal castaways, especially since he was blamed for Gaea's uprising (For the record, he doesn't think it's his fault but he was no longer in a position to argue). If anything, he'll blame Artemis.

"That excuse isn't bad," Valentina says, "but it's still an excuse."

What was he talking about again? Oh, right. Aphrodite definitely added the acne as a curse for no reason. She loved good tragic love stories for the emotional angst, but what did the acne prove?

"Why don't you just leave it?" Lacy asks.

Lester sits straight to stare at her as Valentina and Drew drop their supplies to look at their sister in shock.

"Have you seen that face?" Drew asks her rhetorically, pointing directly at Lester's cheek as if he wasn't there. "Everyone's seen it and they can't stop staring for the wrong reasons."

Lester narrows his eyes at her. "Thanks."

Lacy shrugs as she slides off her bunk. "I'm saying all this spa stuff isn't worth the effort. The thing about love, especially loving yourself for who you are, is stronger than hating yourself for who you're not. Self-love is the best kind of love."

Lester knew Aphrodite wasn't aiming for that love story. Although it would be a tragic one, especially for his Lester Papadopoulos identity.

"Says you and your perfect Aphrodite-blessed skin," Lester retorts.

"I tried…" Lacy mumbles as she heads out.

Drew and Valentina glance at each other, shrug in sync, before sashaying back to work on Lester's face. They scrubbed it with exfoliants and soften their harsh gestures with cleansers.

"This is from the drugstore," Meg says as she starts showing interest in the spa session.

"Drugstore?" Lester exclaims. "I demand better quality than the drugstore!"

"This works!" Valentina exclaims as she smothers his face with it. "It's better than the designer stuff. Ask the Hermes cabin."

"And you have no money," Drew adds. She continues talking before Lester could argue. "You can't tell us to treat you like a god when you're not a god. You have to be the same deity to tell us you're said deity."

Lester awkwardly clears his throat. "Well -"

Meg snorts a laugh. "Ha, burn."

-o-

Nothing worked.

They know better than to expect instant clear skin but he expected some sort of Aphrodite magic. Instead, his skin looks the same. At least it's soft and smells nice. Meg had nothing to say since she was busy laughing because they've been at the Aphrodite Spa for two hours with no results. Lester's convinced the treatments gave him more acne.

"Oh, here!" Valentina exclaims. "You can try this!"

Valentina rummages through a box and pulls out a machine with a scanner attached to a face mask-helmet device. When he pushes a button on the hand-held scanner, the helmet lights up on the inside.

"Use this light therapy acne set," Valentina suggests.

"I am or was the sun god," Lester argues. "I am light."

"Your acne is more blinding than you," Drew says, shoving the set in his arms.

Lester looks at it disgusted. "I am not wearing that."

"Please do," Meg begs.

"You don't care about my face."

"I want you to look stupider. I'll just order you to put it on later."

In the little time he's known Meg, he picked up that her philosophy is that she'll say something embarrassing if she has nothing nice to say … which was often.

"Where did you even get this?" Lester asks the Aphrodite girls.

"We get PR." Drew points to a box in the corner and Meg starts scavenging through it. Lester isn't surprised by the PR or Meg looking for free things to take for herself.

"Can I throw this light mask away?" Lester asks.

"No."

"Then can I keep it in my trash can?" He's surprised Meg didn't make the comment that Zeus launched him into a dumpster.

"If you want to remain ugly. At least try to be a decent-looking. You're lucky Valentine's Day isn't close."

"Valentine's Day?" Valentina asks. "How is that helpful?"

Meg scoffs as she swatches some eyeshadows on her arms. (Lester makes a note to trash that palette after Meg's done with it because her fingers have been everywhere, including Connor Stoll's eyes.) She has colourful eye shadow stripes all over her arms and neck now.

"It's not like anyone loves him on any other day," Meg comments.

Lester glares at her as Valentina and Drew laugh. Not even Lacy and her self-love advocacy would save him from that one.

"That machine thing won't help," Meg adds about the light gizmo.

Valentina shrugs. "We're not miracle workers."

"Maybe you could ask the Hephaestus cabin to burn off your face," Drew adds with a snarky laugh.

"You three are just like your mothers," Lester says before storming off.

In TLH, when Piper was claimed by Aphrodite and she felt her zit clear up, that was the moment I wanted Aphrodite to take me as her own.