WHO: Jace Atwater and Cerys Ravensworth WHEN: Evening of July 1 WHERE: A hidden spot on the river in Dunhaven SUMMARY: Jace shows Cerys the abilities that he's inherited from Percy, which leads to some confessions. WARNINGS: None BINGO PROMPT: 🏖
The night breeze coming off their seemingly abandoned stretch of river was refreshing in a way that Jace had always appreciated, though his appreciation seemed to have only grown in the months that had passed since that night he'd discovered his affinity for water and connection to Percy Jackson. He'd always been drawn to the water, long before he moved with his mother and sister to Dunhaven. Late nights were always spent on the beach, their family vacations more often than not revolving around renting a beach house. Some of his fondest childhood memories were spent on a surfboard or fishing with his dad. It seemed almost uncanny now as he grappled with the abilities he'd acquired.
This little stretch of abandoned beach was somewhere he'd found not long after moving from Australia. When his life had felt in constant turmoil as he grappled with the sheer amount of change that had been thrown his way, he had come here to be alone. It required parking on the side of a road and walking through a small patch of pine trees, but it was always worth it.
He had only shared the place with one other person -- his sister. At least, he had only shared it with Ruby until he had brought Cerys. For as relaxing as sitting there on the nights where his mind wouldn't stop and he felt particular restless could be, it was nothing like when he was sitting in the sand with Cerys. Sometimes it still baffled him that they had reached this place where he would find spending any time with her to be relaxing, but those moments had become more few and far between as time had gone on. They had been replaced with happiness, which he wasn't about to question.
As Riptide trotted forward, dropping the tennis ball he had fetched in the sand next to Jace, his owner didn't hesitate in picking it up and tossing it across the sand once more. The dog took off at a run and Jace watched fondly for a few seconds before turning to look at Cerys. There was one thing that he hadn't talked to Cerys about and Jace was starting to think that it was beyond time. Though he'd told her about Percy and his dreams, he hadn't told her about the side effect that came with them. As more time went on and he enjoyed their relationship together, he started to feel more and more guilt about that fact.
Jace turned where he sat, facing Cerys a bit better. "Can I show you something?"
Cerys had come to think of Jace in a similar way as she thought of Gansey--a permanent fixture that she couldn’t imagine having ever existed outside of her tiny sphere of existence. It had been too long a time coming, but it was almost like he possessed some part of the same thing that she had found in the likes of Ronan, Noah, Mo, Hannah, and the others that she tried not to think about lest it reopen the ever-present wound their absence had created. He was just as much a part of her as Henrietta or Glendower was, but he also gave her something that even Gansey had found difficult to attain.
He gave her…quiet.
With Jace, Cerys felt her thoughts focus and calm. She felt safe in a way that she’d always tried to be for her friends but had never demanded in return. And sitting here on the beach with him, her bare toes burrowing into the sand as Riptide ran to and fro chasing the ball, she felt more at peace than she could ever remember having felt in this life or the last.
“Hm?” she asked, pulling her gaze away from the water and fixing it on her boyfriend, a smile that crinkled the corners of her eyes erupting across her features the moment she did so. “Yeah, absolutely. Bonus points if it’s pizza.”
"Mm. I wish it was pizza. Maybe later it can be pizza." Jace returned her smile for one of his own, nerves suddenly filtering into his system. He didn't think that Cerys would take this badly; he knew that she had been dealing with the secondary lives that so many of the citizens of Dunhaven dealt with for longer than most. She was as familiar with it all as he was, if not more.
Still, the nerves were there.
Swallowing, Jace took Riptide's ball as it rolled across the sand to him and tossed it once more for the dog to chase after. "It's to do with those other lives we all have." He peered at Cerys, raising an eyebrow. "Some of the parts of those lives that manifest here." A brief pause. "Abilities."
“I’ll probably hold you to that,” Cerys insisted, but she knew he was as unlikely to play around with the topic of food as she was.
He was correct, though, in thinking that Cerys was even more familiar with the dreams than most. She’d spent years talking about parallel universes and the way they seemed to collide with one another. Everyone had thought she was just a bit crazy, an unfortunate side effect to experience so much trauma at such a young age. Now they all knew she was much more well-adjusted than they’d given her credit for, but she never asked for an apology because she knew it sounded crazy to anyone who didn’t get it.
But that was why Jace’s comments didn’t surprise her like they maybe should have.
Tilting her head to the side, she reached a hand out and brushed her fingertips over his. “Are you telling me you have them? Abilities?”
On instinct, Jace turned his hand over in the sand, letting his fingers slip through Cerys's. It was comforting in a way he didn't think he would have ever been able to put into words. Riptide trotted over to his side once more, dropping the ball and looking at his owner expectantly. For the moment, though, Jace's concentration was on Cerys. "You could say that."
His head turned, gaze falling on the river in front of him. He could feel it in his bones; every bend, every wave, every current. And even though he didn't need to, he lifted his hand that wasn't holding onto Cerys's toward the water in front of them. With hardly a thought, a stream of water made a line up the shore, then lifted into the air, defying all gravity as it formed a sphere. A second later and he let it fall to the sand with a splash.
Turning to look at Cerys, his nerves showed in his eyes once again without his permission. "Just, you know... stuff like that."
As much as Cerys had grown used to things like this, both thanks to Dunhaven’s quirks and the magic of Gansey’s world. She’d seen things both living and not living taken from dreams. She’d seen ghosts, and futures, and magical forests deconstructed and turned into a boy’s life taken too soon. And now she was seeing a man controlling water as though it was as easy as tugging a string.
Sitting up on her knees as if to see the show better, Cerys watched the water rise and fall. After a moment, she turned back to Jace, fingers still clutching his. “You,” she said, quietly, with barely a breath, “are extraordinary. But you always have been.”
All of the nerves and apprehension that Jace had been battling fell away in an instant. Though he really had known that Cerys would be accepting of this deep down, it felt good to know just how correct that thought had been. He smiled, lifting their joined hands to press a kiss to her knuckles.
"There's more," he said, finding himself getting a bit excited. Having been given permission to talk about all of this seemed to be opening a door. "I can go into water and not even get wet, if I want to. And I can breathe underwater, like some kind of Aquaman kind of thing. Oh and I found out it was happening in the first place because I cut myself, but when I went to clean the wound it healed up as soon as it touched the water flowing from the sink. I can feel the water, like it's as much a part of me as my arm." He paused, shaking his head once as he let out a short laugh at the realization that he'd just babbled on. "I haven't gone to the ocean yet to see how different it might be there, but I might have to soon. I just want to know."
Cerys listened as Jace went on, sharing in his excitement because it was so infectious. It was amazing, frankly, what the magic in this town could make possible. She’d been studying the ley lines for what felt like forever and it was suddenly so beyond her comprehension, beyond her reach. But as she watched Jace animatedly describe all the things he’d been figuring out on his own, she couldn’t even find it within herself to be frustrated that there was something she couldn’t understand, or put into words in her ever-growing journal of fantastical thing.
Jace could control water just as easily as she could flex her own fingers and he...he was magnificent.
“Let’s go,” Cerys said, moving closer to him, framing her hands around his beautifully bearded face. “To the ocean.”
Jace's eyebrows rose, even as his hands did the same, fingers curling around Cerys's wrists. The smile was still there, though it turned a bit bewildered as he considered what she was saying. "Right now?"
She’d meant sometime in the near future but now that the question had presented itself, she couldn’t help but feel a thrill of excitement at the prospect of just going for it. She could feel how much he wanted to see how different it would be near an ocean and, if she was completely honest, she wanted to know, too. “We could, you know. Any ocean, anywhere. Wherever you want to go, let’s do it.”
"Any ocean," Jace repeated, "anywhere."
Immediately, he had thoughts of swells off the coast of Perth. Ocean spray and foam and salt water from his ocean, his currents and his waves. He hadn't seen that ocean since he was a teenager, from the view of an aisle airplane seat before he became a Virginian. But, there was an ocean that was much closer than the one in Australia only a car ride away.
"The Atlantic ocean is just, you know..." Jace turned his head, looking around before nodding in one direction. "That way."
Cerys laughed and, without needing to consider it, she believed him. She believed that he knew not only exactly which way the ocean was, but exactly how far away. “That’s boring,” she countered, running her thumbs over his cheeks. “This should be a big deal.”
"Yeah?" Jace tipped his head to the side, pausing only long enough to press a kiss to her palm. "What do you suggest? Florida? California?" He lifted an eyebrow. "Australia?"
Quite frankly, Cerys would happily take Jace anywhere. She was quiet for a moment, though, despite the fact that she wanted to tell him exactly that. Leaning forward, she stole a quick kiss from him and rested her forehead against his. “Is that where you want to go?” she finally asked, voice quiet. “Australia? You’d go there with me?” Cerys knew how much Jace still loved where he’d been born and mostly raised, but also knew the pain that came with going home when you’d lost so much, no matter how long it had been since you’d been there. “Because all you have to do is say the word, Jace, and tomorrow we’ll be on a beach in Australia.”
Jace knew as the words settled in his mind that Cerys wasn't joking. Tomorrow, as she said, they could be on a beach in Australia. The thought made his stomach twist in ways he hadn't had to examine in a very long time. He had longed for Perth in those early days. He had sat in his bedroom, angry at his mother for taking him away from the only home he'd ever known and missing his dad with every fiber of his being. He had acted out in an attempt at payback or to try and prove to his mother than coming to Virginia had been a mistake. He'd talked to his friends from Australia online, refusing to even try to make friends at his new school.
Eventually, though, he'd come around. He'd settled into Dunhaven. He'd made friends. He'd found a new type of happy. Though he missed Australia and assumed he'd visit one day, Dunhaven had become his home. But to go and visit Australia with a part of Dunhaven that had become so important to him? That idea had merit.
Still, though he liked the idea and that fact shown clearly on his face as he smiled, Jace had to say, "I can't ask you to do that."
Cerys watched as her words settled over him, while he mulled it over, and warred between wanting it and not being sure he could have it. The hopeful look on his face reached something inside of her and warmed her heart. She smiled, the grin broadening as she looked at him.
Shaking her head, she said, “You didn’t ask me to. I offered, Jace. What’s the point of having anything that I have if I can’t share all of it with the people that I love?”
Slowly, the words that Cerys had just said sunk in. It wasn't even just that she was willing to drop way more money than he thought he was entirely worth just to fly across the world so he could visit an ocean. It was that last word, that love word. It made his heart race, his breath catch -- all those things that he might have at one time mocked from romantic books or movies.
He didn't know if it would ruin the moment or what, but Jace couldn't stop from asking, "People that you love?"
She hadn’t realized what she was saying, even if she was fully cognizant of the fact that she meant it. Cerys wasn’t unused to telling people she loved them. She said it every day to Jeb, and it wasn’t unusual for her to say it to Mo and Hannah. They were all different types of love, but all equally powerful, and she had learned the hard way that she could never assume she have another chance to say it.
Still, she didn’t have the best track record when it came to relationships. She said and did things too fast, too soon, and it scared people off. She’d been better with Jace, not wanting to ruin what they were building with her typical pitfalls, but now she worried that she’d crossed the line.
Her hands fell to her knees, her smile dimming ever-so-slightly. “Is that okay? Because I’m not sure I can take it back, even if I wanted to, not when I feel it with such certainty. I’m not ashamed of it, but I know my feelings can be...a lot, and I wouldn’t harbor any hard feelings toward you if it was too much. If I was too much.”
She’d just seen Jace wield water as easily as she wielded a pencil and still her concern was that she was too much.
"Cerys," Jace started, reaching out to tuck a strand of hair behind her ear, then gently cup her jaw. He didn't know how he'd gotten so lucky as to catch her attention in this way, especially after the years of sass and general button pushing that they had engaged in together beforehand. But, somehow he had and he knew, with as much certainty as she seemed to feel, that he loved her, too. It might not have been an emotion that he'd put to words before this moment, but now that he had, he wondered how he'd missed it in the first place.
"You aren't too much," he continued, thumb making a gentle motion across her cheek. "You're exactly the right amount for me. And the feelings are mutual. I love you, too."
Instinctively, Cerys leaned into Jace’s touch, relief and pure, unadulterated joy flooding her at his response. Without a moment’s hesitation, she leaned forward again, wrapping her arms behind his neck before pressing her lips to his. She had never expected him, and would never have predicted that he would come to mean so much to her. Her dating history had been spotty at best, and she hadn’t thought to give Jace a second glance until she stumbled into it. But a part of her knew that it had been him all along. Since she had met him, he’d been exactly what she had needed, even when they’d been at odds. And now she needed the way it felt to be in his arms, and the sound of his voice when he said her name, and the overwhelming sense of safety she felt when he was near. He understood her and her past in a way that so few did and, while she wished their losses had never happened, she couldn’t help but to see the way they filled spaces within each other that had been cracked and broken. She loved him and it was something so new and welcomed to be able to love him openly, and freely, and without complication. To be able to kiss him like this without fear or reservation.
“So, Australia?” she murmured against his mouth. She would stay here and watch anything he wanted to show her for however long it took, but she loved him and that meant wanting to know as much as he did what waited for him at the ocean.
A smile formed at Jace's mouth at her words, or maybe simply thanks to the kiss they'd shared, as he let his forehead come to press against Cerys's. It wasn't hard for him to start imagining what taking her to Australia would be like. Looking to see what shops and restaurants he'd frequented in his youth were still open, but also exploring new ones. Taking her to his favorite beaches, going out in the water with her. They might not have seemed like big deal situations to some, but to Jace they were everything. It was time, he thought, to introduce his past to his present -- and, hopefully, his future.
And so, with a gentle press to her lips, Jace replied, "Australia."