Work Text:
The camp of the Hunt followed its own rhythm as dawn spread across the land.
Not the sharp, immediate rhythm of a camp roused by alarm, not the clipped efficiency of hunters preparing for a known quarry with a tight window. Slower than that, softer, the organic pulse of a camp that had learned over the millennia to let the morning arrive at its own pace before demanding anything of it. Watch rotation changed in near silence, the hunters that finished their watch walked with the quiet discipline of long practice, their boots finding the soft patches between roots by memory rather than sight.
The fire pit breathed low, its embers patient and generous, throwing modest warmth outward into the pale dark before dawn, the pines held their stillness, releasing it only in slow, measured sighs when the first wind moved through them, carrying the cold mineral scent of dew on bark and the faint sweetness of distant wildflowers that had opened in the night.
The hunters knew, by now, not to expect Artemis at first light.
This understanding had arrived gradually over the time since Percy had began to live with the Hunt, settling into the fabric of the morning routine the way most truths settled here, without announcement, without discussion, simply by becoming undeniably and repeatedly consistent. The hunters had made their quiet observations, drawn their quiet conclusions, and adjusted accordingly, dawn assessments began slightly later now, even the hounds had developed the habit of lying still an hour longer, massive heads resting on enormous paws, ears at ease, as though understanding of the camp had reached itself even to them.
It was not mentioned, it did not need to be.
Inside the tent, the light came in slowly, it filtered through the silver threaded canvas in gradual increments, the deep dark of night yielding first to a grey that was the absence of darkness rather than the presence of anything, then warming by degrees into the pale, tentative gold of a morning not yet certain of itself. Long quiet panels of light moved across the interior, shifting as the canopy above shifted, as the wind moved the branches and altered the shapes of the shadows they cast.
Percy was still asleep.
He slept the way he always slept after a long day, deeply and without apparent concern for anything the world might be doing in his absence. His dark locks were scattered across the pillow in their particular cheerful disorder, one arm was tucked beneath the pillow, his bare chest raised and fell with each slow breath, as if his body had decided it was owed this rest and was collecting accordingly and thoroughly.
Artemis had been awake for some time.
She had opened her silver eyes, as she always did, at the precise moment the light shifted from dark to that first grey threshold, an instinct so old and so deeply written into her that it did not require a decision, simply occurred, she had registered the light, registered the sounds of the camp moving into its morning rotation, and then she had registered him.
She had looked at her precious lover for a moment, then, as it had become entirely inevitable, she had moved closer.
Now she lay with her cheek pressed to his bare shoulder, her arm draped across his chest, her fingers resting lightly over his heartbeat. She had told herself, in the first months, that she was simply cold, even though it was blandly false, after some time she had stopped bothering with it.
The warmth of him was unique, not merely heat, something more specific than that, the particular quality of warmth that belonged only to him, that she would have known in any darkness, in any forest, in any crowd of gods and mortals and every manner of being between them. She had not anticipated, when this had first begun, that familiarity would work like this, she had understood it as something that dulled experience, wore edges smooth, left things manageable and unremarkable. She had been wrong. Familiarity with him had done the opposite entirely, had made the warmth of him not less but more, had taken something comfortable and turned it into something she yearned each morning with an instinct, something that caught at her breath on quiet mornings when he did not even know she was watching, she had long since stopped questioning it.
She breathed him in, slow and quiet, and felt her chest soften, it was, she had concluded after considerable evidence, profoundly and absolutely unfair. She pressed her lips, very gently, to his bare shoulder, not quite a kiss, almost one, the kind of thing she did when the feeling became too overwhelming for simple stillness.
Percy made a small sound in his sleep, just a soft shift, his arm moved in a slow arc and came to rest around her, his hand settling at her back and drawing her fractionally closer before his breathing evened out again, deep and content, completely unaware of what he had done.
She tucked herself closer, her nose against the curve of his neck, and felt the steady beat of his pulse beneath her lips when she pressed them there, barely a touch, deliberate and soft. He stirred faintly at that, another small sound escaping him, something between a murmur and a sigh, and the corners of his mouth curved the smallest amount without his eyes opening, without anything like wakefulness entering his face.
"You are absurd," she whispered, careful not to disturb his sleep, with complete tenderness, she meant him, and she also meant herself.
She smoothed her palm slowly across his bare chest, feeling the steady rise and fall of him beneath her hand, and pressed her mouth to his jaw, a small, quiet thing, because she could, and because the mornings had become the time where she allowed herself to be consumed by her love for him without any resistance.
She felt her chest ache with something she did not have any adequate word for.
She traced an absent pattern on his chest with one fingertip, the kind of motion that required nothing, meant nothing, and somehow meant everything. Outside, the camp was breathing into its fuller morning, quiet voices threading through the canvas, the soft sounds of movement, the shift of boots on pine needles. One of the hounds made a low sound, not alarm, only the acknowledgment of a day beginning, a bird somewhere above the canopy declared its opinion of the morning loudly.
Percy slept through all of it.
"Honestly," she murmured against his skin, barely above a breath, "I do not know what to do with you," she stopped for a moment, the firelight from outside flickered, and the tent walls glowed faintly, "I suspect I never will."
He did not answer, he would not, he was still deep in sleep, only the very edges of him reaching toward the morning, and she was not asking for an answer. She was simply saying it, because the weight of it had accumulated to a point where it required occasional release, and the mornings were the only time she trusted herself to say anything at all.
"I did not anticipate you," she told him, almost soundless, outside, the camp went about its business, inside, it was only this, only him breathing, only her voice too quiet for anyone but him, and even then only the sleeping part that received without knowing, "I want you to know that, I planned for many things across the millennia," her thumb moved in a slow arc across his knuckles, "You were not among them."
His face was very close to her, she studied it, the dark lashes against his cheek, the slight parting of his lips, a faint trace of drool gathering at the corner of his mouth, the lock that had fallen further across his forehead since she had last looked, she reached slowly, and moved it aside with one finger, he did not stir.
"Beautiful," she whispered to herself, with devastating affection, and he was, and he belonged to her.
She breathed his scent and closed her eyes, her lips found the curve where his neck met his shoulder, and she bit him, gently and tenderly, her teeth barely grazing his skin, because sometimes the feeling became too overwhelming for her to bear, and this small absurd expression of too much affection condensed into something she could press against him without having to name it.
He whimpered, small and soft and entirely unconscious, a sound that lasted only a breath before his face smoothed, and she pressed her smile against his shoulder and felt enormously, irrationally pleased with herself and with him and with the whole specific ridiculous fact of him.
"You," she murmured under her breath, and kissed the spot that she had bitten, "Will be the doom of me."
She had thought, at the beginning, that these mornings would feel like something borrowed, that the warmth of them would carry the quality of pleasant things that were temporary, that she was simply in the habit of something she would eventually step back from. She had been wrong, had discovered the wrongness of it incrementally, each morning layering itself onto the ones before, building something with a permanence that had snuck on her like the seasons did, inevitable and undeniable by the time she recognized it, and by then she was already addicted to him to the point she could not survive without him.
She pressed her lips to his cheek, soft and calm, then his temple, where a dark lock had fallen, moving it aside gently with her nose before settling her mouth against his skin there too, a small pilgrimage, quiet and passionate, each point of contact its own small declaration. She let her fingers find his, their hands arranging themselves with familiarity as they have done for countless times before, his grip was loose but present, and she held it carefully, as though it were something she had been trusted with.
Outside, the light deepened toward gold, filling the tent with warmth that turned the silver threading of the canvas walls into something that glowed, and cast the furs beneath them in colours like late autumn, the bird above the canopy appeared to have reached the central, most emphatic section of its morning argument.
She bit him again, the softest edge of her teeth against the curve of his jaw, tender and fond and completely helpless despite all the divine authority she possessed, and he made that sound again, that small half conscious whimper, and turned his face toward her. His nose found her auburn curls, he breathed, long and slow, and the genuine smile that touched his lips in sleep was enough to devastate her heart, and she had witnessed the birth of stars.
She pressed her forehead to his, their faces close in the bright morning light, and stayed there, "I would offer you every morning and every night, for eternity," she told him, barely a breath of sound, a secret kept between her and the tent walls and the pale gold light, "Every forest and every mountain, I would bring you the moon if it were mine to place in your hands in any sense other than the one it already holds."
Percy smiled faintly, his arm tightened around her, briefly, a slow and dreaming pull, and he made a soft satisfied sound, nestling closer with the complete trust of a lover who knew, even in sleep, that he was exactly where he was supposed to be.
She kissed the corner of his mouth, then his cheek again, because she could not help it, and he turned toward her lips in sleep, just slightly, and returned the faintest pressure, and she stayed very still and felt the warmth of it move through her like the first proper dawn after a very long night, she whispered, "I love you."
The morning deepened around them, the gold of the light became richer, committing itself more fully to the day, the camp beyond the tent walls hummed its gentle, familiar frequency. She had a camp to operate, she had hunters to command and a day that would make its demands the moment she stepped into it.
She knew this with perfect clarity.
She pressed one last kiss to the corner of his sleeping mouth, soft as breath, and felt him smile again beneath it without waking, felt his arm instinctively tighten, felt the small helpless sound he made settle somewhere inside her chest like something it intended to stay.
She tucked her head beneath his chin.
She closed her eyes.
She stayed.