Work Text:
There are some things that the universe has set in stone from the second it was born. Things that are unavoidable, crash coursing through time and space with the force of a star going supernova.
Like the repeated humiliation of being stuck in a laughably mortal body when you’re really a cosmic being of pure light.
Or, the cherry on top of this monumentally fucked up cake: Being stuck with a secondary gender like any other human on this dusty planet, and the subsequent ticks that buzz through his brain.
Just yesterday he’d found himself brushing up against Will almost involuntarily, nearly purring when he’d caught his scent transferred onto the omega.
Everything in Appllo — Lester now, he reminds himself bitterly, Lester — had preened at marking his son as part of his pack. At least until reality set in quite rudely to alert him to Will‘s wide eyes.
The ensuing talk of “scenting consent” and “it’s fine with me but you absolutely cannot go around and do that to everyone” was less purr-inducing, and Lester had prayed to more than one deity to just please-kill-him-now.
At least Will had had — ever merciful, so very unlike his father and forever beloved — tugged him into a long lasting embrace afterwards, allowing their scents to mingle.
Afterwards he’d gone straight back to the cabin, thrown himself on the bed listlessly and suppressed the stupid urge to gather pillows and blankets around him like a hoarding dragon.
Everything feels wrong.
His body, a hollowed out shell. Every ounce of light scraped from his too-brittle bones, like his father had closed his fist around that raging lodestar in his chest and squeezed until only sorrowful stardust remained, cooling between the barely warmth of his mortal blood.
His eyes flit to the windows where sunlight seeps in veins of gold through the translucent curtains and Apollo watches, homesick, until his eyes start to burn and that bright, bright star leaves a lasting mark on his retina.
Oh, and then there’s Percy.
At first, Apollo — no, Lester — doesn’t mean to avoid the son of Poseidon. Not really, anyway. It just so happens that, when Lester sees Percy walking into Camp Half Blood with Annabeth hot on his heels, he suddenly remembers that there’s this really important thing he needs to do. Like, right now. And when Percy marches through camp later that day, increasingly agitated, obviously searching for something — someone — he stumbles over a root and twists his ankle, for which he needs to see Will. Right now.
“He’s worried,” Will chastises, tapping his fingers against the red skin of Lester’s ankle. More show than anything else, “You’ve been missing for six months before you tumbled into camp. I think he actually went to Olympus with Poseidon and Triton the other day, searching for you.”
The stardust in his chest stirs, embers coming to life briefly before Lester exhales shakily, snuffing them out, “Now that’s just stupid.”
Will’s answering glower is almost enough to pull an apologetic whimper from his throat, but before the sound can escape Lester bites down hard on his tongue until he can taste the metallic tang of blood.
“I’m going to pretend you did not just say that,” Will declares, daring Lester to argue, “Because I know it was you who stole Percy’s shirt from Jason’s cabin.“
Lester grimaces, thinking rather guiltily of the bunched up blue shirt sitting at the very bottom of his drawer.
Will sighs, “Dad, I’m serious. At least talk to him, please. He’s making us crazy with his snappy behavior. And if this keeps up I will have to sedate him.”
Lester bristles, sitting up straighter on the small cot as a white hot wave of indignity rushes through him, “You will do no such thing!”
It’s a testament to Apollo’s demeaned state of existence that his son merely rolls his eyes, clicking his tongue impatiently before sitting down beside him on the cot, side to side.
“No, I probably won’t, but having an anxious alpha waltz through camp is starting to become a problem. The younger omegas are frightened, and there’s only so much damage control the betas can do. Annabeth had to send Jason to New Rome for a “little vacation” because Percy nearly ripped his throat out.”
Lester hums, mildly confused.
His half brother and Percy are usually a tight knit duo, frequently sparring together and getting into all sorts of reckless situations that Apollo tends to watch at least partly. Just in case.
And perhaps due to a tiny sliver of jealousy that Percy absolutely delights in. Those make his ensuing visits all the more worth it.
“Why?”
“Because, you idiot, Percy could smell you and Jason have been hanging out.”
“Obviously,” Lester says, pressing a little closer to Will with a short sigh of relief. His son is warm, and his scent, though mildly irritated, is above all sweet and full of affection. It soothes Lester’s skittish nerves, makes muscles he hadn’t realized being tense relax, “We’re sleeping in the same cabin.”
“Dad, you smell like Jason, an alpha. And you refuse to see Percy.”
Lester blinks.
Once.
Twice.
“Oh.”
Will groans, knocking their shoulders together, “Yeah, oh.”
“Apollo,” Percy breathes, such stark relief in his voice that it makes Lester feel strangely guilty for avoiding him.
“Percy,” he replies, wary and awfully aware of his current physical form. The last time they’d seen each other Apollo had been towering over the demigod, coaxing the sweetest sounds from his lips. Now the top of his head barely reaches past Percy’s collarbone and his skin looks like the surface of the moon his sister so adores.
“You absolute asshole,” Percy says, and then his body is crashing into Lester’s and his senses are being flooded with a dizzying rush of alpha pheromones screaming safe?-protect-found-want and something else, something that smells sweet and warm and for which Lester has no name.
Lester doesn’t apologize, the remainder of his pride forbids it, but when Percy pulls back wildly to slot their mouths together in a messy, semi aggressive kiss, Lester lets him.
Being with Percy looking like… well… like Lester feels like a particular kind of torture. Something only the fates can possibly cook up between their sinister game of snipping strings.
But what hurts-but-doesn’t-quite-hurt is that Percy still holds him so tenderly, still sighs into the space between them like they’re back on Delos, still looks at him like Apollo could eclipse the sun just for him.
Lester has no name for the embers that smolder in his chest, attempting to ignite back into that raging lodestar, but still feel content to bask in the demigod’s presence and just burn quietly. Frankly, he’s afraid to put a name to it.
Percy’s body is heavy against him and Lester keens into the hot mouth against his.
It feels foreign to be the one pressed into the soft fabric of the mattress, to have more divinity above than inside him.
But maybe….
Lester bites into the soft flesh of Percy’s throat, not hard enough to break skin but definitely enough to leave a visible mark.
Percy growls, half feral as his pupils dilate into wide circles of black, and all coherent thought vanishes from Lester’s head as the demigod dives back down to return the favor.
The dredges of a bond — another thing Lester is hesitant to name properly — form in his mind. A wispy thing, muted and shy, and when Lester brushes against it for the first time experimentally it lights up with so much awe and adoration that he has to pull himself away lest he gets burned.
There had to be a catch to this entire situation, obviously.
Lester wakes up in the middle of the night, disoriented and confused as to what had woken him before he shifts and— oh, the bed feels all wrong.
He sits up, bleary eyed and utterly exhausted, and stares down at the crumbled white sheets tangled around his legs, at the pillows arranged on either side of him, and a wave of absolute and irrational discomfort washes over him.
The bed is wrong.
He doesn’t know why, just that it is and that he needs to fix it. Right now.
He’s halfway through the process of disemboweling Jason‘s bed and arranging the left over shreds of fabric and pillows in a neat little circle on his own bed before he freezes, stupid mortal brain catching up to the situation and pushing him into a full blown panic.
He’s nesting.
He does not leave the cabin the next day. He doesn’t think he physically can, to be honest. Every time he leaves his nest, if only to relieve himself, every fiber of his being vibrates with terror.
Nest is safe.
Outside is not.
So he stays tucked away in the furthermost corner of the cabin, surrounded by a mountain of pillows that smell of Percy, his children, ironically enough, Jason. It’s not enough, he’d rather have them all here, close enough at least that the prospect of sleep doesn’t evoke a sense of terror so strong he nearly howls from the sheer feeling of desolation.
But Lester is alone, so he will settle for this next best thing.
This is ridiculous enough without the added humiliation of crying for protection from his pack mates. He may be an omega right now, but he’s still a god. A shackled one perhaps, but still a god.
He can endure one measly heat alone. Omegas have done it for thousands of years in far less amicable environments.
Sadly, his stupid hindbrain is intend on arguing.
A pillow at the very top of the nest tilts dangerously, threatening to fall and destroy the integrity of the entire construct, and Lester yelps as he scrambles to right it, patting anxiously at the weak spot in the wall, fortifying it by bunching the blanket a little tighter into the narrow space underneath.
It’s one of Jason’s pillows, smelling faintly of ozone, and Lester takes a guilty whiff before plopping back down in the middle, hugging the blue, stuffed stingray to his chest while inhaling Percy’s scent.
The cramps in his lower abdomen die down momentarily, a blessed reprieve since they started this morning, and Lester huffs tiredly.
He’s exhausted, his body is begging him to sleep, but he knows that nothing short of a coma will convince his buzzing brain to surrender to unconsciousness, so he tracks the progression of the rays of sunlight over by the window, considering his newfound respect for any and all omegas he’d encountered over the centuries.
The statue of his father across the room seems to mock him.
He drift in and out of awareness after a while. Never truly asleep, instincts pulling him back from the brink like a persistent alarm clock, screaming at him that it’s not safe to sleep here, dumbass!
Only once does he consider praying to his twin sister, begging her for help, to stay with him, too keep watch while his body burns those stupid hormones and returns him to a semblance of normal.
He knows that she would come. Artemis, for all the she is not allowed to interfere, would do nothing short of shooting Zeus in the face if he dared to try and keep her from watching his back in such a vulnerable state.
But Lester locks his jaw and bites down on the pathetic keen that would bring the goddess here. He will not be a burden. His pride won’t allow it.
Lester twists himself tighter around the little plush toy in his arms, burying his nose inside the artificial fur to find more of that sea-sand-salt scent, but the smell has gone old and stale after a few days of Lester cuddling with the thing, and the feeling of helpless-alone-danger multiplies tenfold.
Another burst of pain shoots through his abdomen just when there’s a knock on the door to the cabin, “Dad? Are you ok?”
Lester whines.
There’s a pause, and Lester bites his tongue until he tastes copper, but then the door handle clicks softly and Will’s blond hair appears in the crack, along with the worried lines of his face.
“Dad, what’s-,” Will pauses, tilts his head and audibly sniffs the air once, twice, before his eyes go wide as saucers and he nearly slams the door shut, barely squeezing through himself before he turns the lock and the doors bolt with a click.
A tiny part of Lester’s insides uncoil.
“Dad,” he murmurs, half a purr, and squats by the door, both hands held forward, palms up, and the part of Lester that still hasn’t gotten over the fact that he’s mortal at the moment bristles at being treated like a frightened animal.
The larger part makes a resounding whine echo through the cabin, and Lester blinks in confusion. He doesn’t know what they means, those sounds. Percy doesn’t make them when he’s in rut, so it’s probably an omega thing.
Will coos at him, soft and gentle, and Lester’s brain short circuits with the resounding impulse of pup. Which, yeah, that’s wild alright.
Still, the feverish shivers have subsided for now so Lester tries not to feel ashamed when he reaches a hand out towards Will, a quiet keen slipping past his lips.
Will walks closer, slowly and deliberately, until he’s standing at the edge of Lester’s pathetic little nest, his gaze flitting from one corner to the next until Lester almost whines with anxiety. But then Will smiles again, another soft coo.
“Can I come in?”
Please, Lester doesn’t say, because his body acts on his own accord to grab at Will and pull him into the nest, his body curling around the other omega immediately.
Puppy, his hindbrain purrs, brushing carefully along the edge of Will’s consciousness.
The weak mental link between them lights up and Will’s mind nudges him back, afterthoughts of safe-sleep-keep-watch translating in a jumble of emotions.
But it’s enough, because the bow tight tension in Lester’s body dissipates like a breeze, and his stupid, primitive brain finally stops screaming at him to find suitable shelter and is reduced to a steady hum in the back of his head.
“Sleep, dad,” Will says kindly, rubbing his exposed wrist along Lester’s neck.
Lester sighs.
Everything smells like sunshine now, like stars burning ever brighter, familiar and soothing.
If he pretends hard enough, he’s back inside the burning of the sun, overseeing the progress of the world within the cradle of the universe.
He misses the ocean.
He’s woken up by Will’s fierce growls and the sound of the cabin’s lock being picked.
A rather rude wake up call, as Lester will remember later. When, you know, he’s not busy whining and panicking and trying to disappear behind the battle ready form of Will.
“Thanks, Connor.”
“Yeah, just make sure that Jason’s dad doesn’t, like, strike me down.”
“Yeah, sure thing-“
The door slides open, admitting a cool rush of air and the permeating scent of alpha, the silhouette of someone haloed by daylight, and Lester’s vision goes blotchy with momentary panic.
“Oh fuck-“
“What-?”
“Ok, I’m out, fuck no, fuck, I’m so dead, gods, fuck-“
Will’s growl crests into a furious snarl, and Lester is stuck between the horrifying instinct to push his pup behind him and protect him from the stranger still standing there, stock still and immovable, or to hide behind Will because Lester is sure his current prowess rivals that of a wet paper towel.
But that would require thinking and his hindbrain is too busy howling and screaming into the void of his frayed pack bonds that he’s fucking terrified and wants-needs help.
“Leave,” Will hisses, much more coherent than Lester’s indecipherable keens and whimpers, “right. Now.”
A heartbeat where nothing happens and then, slowly, the figure raises its hands in surrender, stepping away from the threshold.
“I’m sorry,” the figure says softly, an underlying, calming rumble in his voice that makes Lester perk up with recognition, “I won’t get in. I was scared something had happened to Lester.”
“He’s fine,” Will says coldly, pressing his back to Lester’s front reassuringly, their pack bond humming with projected calm, “now leave.”
Percy hesitates, clearly not convinced, and Lester feels his eyes flitting between Will and him uncertainly.
Lester sniffs the air surreptitiously, blinking away the haze that settles over him when Percy’s smell hits his senses.
It smells like alpha, of course, but there’s none of the aggression or unhinged madness Lester had expected. Only softness and affection and a hint of bitter concern.
“I… can’t,” Percy says sheepishly, grimacing at Will’s answering growl, “I don’t know, my instincts are not going to let me walk away from here. My skin’s been crawling all morning and now that I’ve smelled him…”
“Jackson,you better watch what comes out of your mouth next because I’m not above ripping you-“
“What? No! Not like that! Will, what the fuck! No, I—“
Lester leans more to the side, trying to catch a better glimpse of Percy from within his pathetically built pillow fort.
“I’ll just, I’ll stay here and keep watch, ok? I’ll even turn around! But, please,” Lester’s hindbrain perks up when he feels the impossible blue of Percy’s eyes settle on him, piercing through him, into him, pleading, “Don’t send me away or I might actually try to drown the next person who wanders by the cabin.”
Will’s growling tapers off into tense silence as the blond turns his eyes on Lester, question clear in his eyes. This is something his son will not decide for him, and Lester finds himself strangely grateful.
“Stay,” he says quietly, the low undertones of another whine slipping through his vocal chords.
Percy exhales and it’s like his strings have been cut, the tension Lester hadn’t noticed before draining from the demigod, vanishing into the winds.
Will also relaxes against him, back to rearranging the askew pillows.
The heat comes back, clawing through his skin,
and Lester groans when another wave of pain shoots through his abdomen.
Will isn’t back yet, probably still collecting water and food and informing Chiron or, gods forbid, Dionysus. Him and the god of wine had never been too… close. But Lester thinks it would be a safe bet to think that even he would do his damndest to protect Lester.
If for no other reason than Artemis, who would be sure to skin him alive if he didn’t.
But all that doesn’t ease the nerves Lester feels returning upon realizing that he is, once more, essentially alone in a too big nest that feels unsafe and too out in the open.
But maybe…
Lester keens.
Quiet at first, little more than a whimper, that quickly crescendos into a high pitched sound that makes Percy tense before his head snaps around, alert.
A part of Lester wants to kick his own teeth in for being so vulnerable, for allowing himself to be so gods damned weak, but he’s not Apollo right now. He’s a husk of a star, burned out coals, and Percy is good. So inherently good that even the fates hesitate to put more tragedy in his path. Too good to take advantage.
And Lester likes to think that Percy knows he will be rewarded once Apollo returns to divinity. So really, it’s more of an equivalent exchange than anything…
Lester keens again and Percy almost stumbles over the threshold, his grip white knuckled and painful on the door frame.
“Are you ok?” Percy asks, out of breath and eyes wide open. Lester can smell the anxious protectiveness wafting off him from way across the room, and it makes him yearn for… for something. For Percy to be closer, namely.
“Please,” he says quietly, and Percy looks like he’s about to be bowled over by a herd of rampant pegasi.
“Ap- Lester, I’m sure Will is gonna be back any second, and—“
“Please,” Lester reiterates, letting another mournful keen slip into his voice.
Percy’s resolve crumbles.
“I’m so getting smited,” Percy mumbles as he steps into the cabin, eyes flitting over the unmoving statue of Zeus before all his attention zeroes back in on Lester.
Lester yips happily and refuses to feel guilty over the abhorrent sound, opting instead to grasp blindly for the hem of Percy’s shirt when the alpha stops just outside his nest, ever respectful, and pulls him inside with a tug.
Percy falls directly onto Lester with a soft “oof” and Lester wastes no time in wrapping himself around the alpha, cooing blissfully as the scent of alpha-protect-safe permeates the nest and washes away the cold stench of anxiety.
Percy rumbles back at him soothingly, nibbling at the soft, exposed skin along Lester’s throat tenderly, mingling their scents.
A chirrup tears from Lester’s throat then and he relaxes fully against the pillows, the raging heat in his body suddenly made bearable by the alpha’s presence.
“Better?” Percy asks quietly, maneuvering them carefully until he’s not crushing Lester beneath his… actually very comfortable weight.
“Yes,” he breathes, pathetically grateful, and feels cautiously along the pack bond that tentatively connects him to Percy.
The connection lights up at once and Percy makes a curious, pleased little sound in the back of his throat.
Lester doesn’t reply verbally and simply clings a bit tighter to Percy, sending as much of that raw gratitude and affection he feels along the bond as he can.
His clumsy attempt at silent communication is met with another gentle wave of affection and a tender kiss.
“Don’t,” Percy mumbles, rubbing his cheek Lester’s, “there’s nothing to be thankful for, Apollo.”
“You will be rewarded,” Lester promises, blinking sluggishly as a wave of exhaustion hits him like a freight train.
Right, he can sleep now. With an alpha oozing protect-safe-stay-away he is as safe as can be.
“Yeah, no fucking way. But we’ll talk about that later, okay? You should get some sleep. You smell exhausted. I will keep you safe.”
Lester hums.
Of course, Percy will keep him safe. Percy is good. Percy is his alpha.
Surprise and awe and affection so strong it’s overwhelming flood through the bond, and Lester blinks back into wakefulness momentarily to register Percy’s wide, glistening eyes right in front of his face.
“Apollo,” Percy whispers, and the sound alone is enough to lull him back into a half sleep.
Safe, his hindbrain croons. Alpha, safe.
He burrows deeper into Percy’s warmth, inhaling that familiar scent of salt and sea, and considers that warm feeling in his chest that feels like a miniature star about to burst as he slips away into Morpheus’ realm.
“I love you,” is the last thing he hears, whispered like a secret directly into the shell of his ear and—
Oh—-
Right.
That’s the name of that star in his chest.