InsaneJournal

Tweak says, "What is taters?"

Thalia Grace (wasatree) wrote in thedoorway,
@ 2012-12-08 19:06:00

Entry tags:

!log, luke castellan, thalia grace

log; thalia and luke
WHO: Luke Castellan and Thalia Grace
WHERE: Potts Tower, then Minetta Tavern
WHEN: Saturday, Dec 8
WHAT: Luke and Thalia go on the hunt for the best burger in NYC. It’s all very civilised.
RATING:
STATUS: log; complete.

What had she been thinking when she’d invited Luke to join her on the quest to find the best burger in New York? Thalia still couldn’t find a good answer for it. It’d just seemed like bad form to take the information he’d given her and cut him out of her burger-tasting adventure. Then again, there was probably no etiquette guide on how to treat a guy who used to be the most important person in your life and had then gone on to try to destroy the world but then turned around and saved your life so you had no idea what to think about him anymore. It definitely wasn’t something she could write to Miss Manners about, if she were the type to write to Miss Manners.

Anyway, it was too late to change her mind now. The invitation had been extended and accepted, and unless she wanted to be a jerk and rescind it, Luke was joining her for lunch. It was going to be their first planned outing, and she was nervous about it. So far, they hadn’t managed to be in the same space without a punch in the face, a bullet to the arm, or some really painful breakdowns - all on his part, admittedly. At least Harry Potter night had resulted in nothing worse than Percy choking on a piece of popcorn that Luke had thrown clear down his throat. That had to be a good sign, right? Gods, she hoped so.

She tucked her hands into the sleeves of her hoodie while she waited for him to arrive. It wasn’t as warm as her parka, but she hadn’t been able to wear it since he’d gotten shot. It wasn’t because it had been ruined by his blood - it’d been enchanted so that stains from blood and mud came right off - it was just that she couldn’t put it on without remembering how thready his breath had been, and how much blood had poured through her fingers when she’d tried to staunch his wound. Just thinking about it and the possibility that he could’ve died because of her made her feel ill. So it was just the hoodie, then, until she could find a proper winter coat. She just hoped it didn’t get any colder than it already was today.

Luke showed up better prepared for the weather, with a wool peacoat of dark blue and a Black Watch plaid scarf around his neck. He had gone out to find winter gear with Annabeth and Percy when the weather had first started turning cold, and generally erred on the side of being too warm rather than too cold. Despite his childhood in Connecticut, or perhaps because of it, Luke had never really cared for cold weather. Its only positive, as far as he could see, was that it presented an excuse to build up a fire and drink hot chocolate. It was really too bad that these apartments didn’t have fireplaces. This kind of chilled, overcast day would have been a good time for one.

Instead, he was going for lunch with Thalia, and he didn’t know if that was going to be a good or a bad thing. On the surface, it all looked good. He had loved her almost his whole life, and despite all the wrong he had done, it seemed that she was willing to offer some friendship. It was just that Luke knew that things were undoubtedly going to be weird. So far, their meetings in person (outside of the previous day’s movie night) had been violently emotional conversations that left him in shreds. Perhaps it was selfish of him, but he was really hoping this one could just be about burgers.

So when he saw her he smiled, and he hoped his worry didn’t show. “Ready to go seek The Greatest Burger Of Them All?” he asked.

Thalia gave him a smile that didn’t quite reach her eyes. The expression in them was wary, cautious. She was nervous too: this lunch had the possibility of turning out okay with no fights to the death, or of turning out so horrible and painful that they weren’t going to be able to hang out unsupervised again. She really hoped it would be the former.

“Yep, and we’re counting down from Number Ten,” she informed him. She stuck her hands in the front pouch of her hoodie and braced herself from the cold as she headed for the door. “So I started looking up directions, then remembered I’m going with you, so I figured I’ll just let you lead the way. Do you know where it is? It’s up by Washington Square Park.”

“Further than I wanna walk today, then,” Luke said. “And since I’m being whiny, I’ll pay for the cab.”

Mostly he was thinking that he owed her for french fries and that she didn’t have a job here and hadn’t been here long anyway. He was almost definitely in better financial shape than she was, and just getting to the other side of SoHo wouldn’t be too pricey anyway.

As they stepped outside, Luke went to the curb and waved. Mere seconds later, a cab appeared. Sons of Hermes never had a hard time finding a cab. They just seemed to attract them. And here, it was extremely unlikely that the cab would be driven by anything that wanted to eat him or Thalia.

Thalia blinked. She’d been thinking about a walk or the subway, but the possibility of taking a cab had never occurred to her. Then she remembered: they actually had money now. They could take cabs and eat in restaurants and pay their bills like normal people, instead of doing an eat-and-run or waiting at the back door to see what got thrown out for the day.

This obviously was going to take some getting used to, although Luke seemed to have settled in just fine. He’d even gotten weather-appropriate clothes - weather-appropriate clothes that fit. No more giant jackets that looked like they were in the middle of devouring him, or coats that were too tight across his shoulders. His clothes fit, and they looked really good on him.

She climbed into the back of the cab, doing a quick check of the driver first to make sure that there wasn’t anything overtly monster-y about him. Like Luke, she’d been burned too many times by monsters masquerading as normal service people to not do a reflexive check.

“Look at us,” she said as the cab merged into the busy street, “Taking a cab to a restaurant. It’s like we’re normal people.”

“Crazy, isn’t it?” Luke gave her a sideways smile, but took care not to look too long. Things were already awkward enough without him noticing how her hair was almost blue-black in sunlight, different from how it looked indoors, or that he liked how it looked longer, or that she was even more beautiful now than he had always thought she was when they were kids.

“I have to keep reminding myself of all the stuff that’s different,” he said, his gaze drifting out the window. “Being in the outside world, in a city...the other day I accidentally bumped into a guy and almost took his wallet just by reflex.”

That made Thalia laugh a little. She could well imagine it; back then, stealing and conning had been almost second nature to them. It had to have been in order for them to survive, and it was no surprise that

“I still hoard food,” she admitted. “I’m pretty good at letting the perishables go now, but my apartment’s full of bread and toast I keep bringing back, just in case I get hungry.”

“For me, it’s constantly keeping a bag packed,” Luke replied. “You know, just in case. And now that I have the opportunity to be clean, I’m kind of nuts about it.”

Camp Halfblood had eventually broken him of the food-hoarding habit, but he’d never stopped being constantly ready to go on the run again. That meant there was always a bag with emergency supplies easy to grab and bolt out the door. There were other old habits and fears from his days on the street that clung, too - locking everything, having a hard time sleeping a solid eight hours straight, always sitting or sleeping on easily defensible ground, and other things he barely noticed were unusual - but those were the most obvious.

“It kind of works for you,” Thalia said, offering him a small smile. She was trying not to let her gaze linger too long on him either, although she hadn’t figured out why yet. “The soap smell is much better than eau de alley.”

Not that she’d minded it back then. When staying alive was a daily struggle, staying clean wasn’t ever really on their list of priorities. She wouldn’t even mind it now, if it meant they could turn back time and go back to the days when they were taking on the world together and everything felt right. But those days were long gone, replaced by the luxury of being able to take cabs to restaurants.

It was a short ride, despite the regular New York traffic. Thalia was out of the car before she remembered that the cabbie still had to be paid. Learning to be a normal person was obviously going to take time.

She waited outside, hopping slightly for warmth, while Luke paid for the ride, and peered through the window. It looked busy and crowded, which was always a good sign for a restaurant. Even if this lunch was going to be awkward, at least it’ll be delicious.

With the driver paid, Luke was right behind Thalia, checking out the restaurant along with her. It was a much classier joint than the kind of place he usually went, even now that he had a job. A lot of these Greenwich Village places were. Still...there was nothing wrong with splurging a little, not when he so seldom spent money at all most of the time.

He opened the door for Thalia, but immediately felt awkward-and-a-half in the midst of all the well-dressed professionals. When he spoke to the host to get a table, Luke could see that the guy was just a split second from looking at his I-bought-this-at-Old-Navy coat and telling him that reservations were necessary. But then the host took a look at his face, and then at Thalia’s, and suddenly his attitude shifted entirely.

“I’m sure we can have a table for you in a just a moment, sir,” he said with a smile. “Can I get either of you a beverage while you wait?”

Which meant that, as sometimes happened, Luke had just been mistaken for someone he looked like. This time, he was just going to roll with it. “No, I’m good, thanks,” he said, and grinned at Thalia. “You?”

This whole concept of being mistaken for someone famous was new for Thalia, who hadn’t been around long enough to see this phenomenon in action. She cast a glance at Luke, as if to ask what this was all about, then turned back to the host with a shrug. “Uh...nope. I’m fine. Thanks.” She smiled at the host, but as soon as he left to find that table, she turned to Luke. “Is this where Rule Number One should be setting off alarm bells all over the place?” she muttered to him under her breath.

“No, it happens sometimes,” Luke said, keeping his voice low. “Along with apparently being fictional, most of us also look like someone else, and a lot of those someone elses are famous in this world. Normally it’s somewhere between really irritating and completely overwhelming...but today, we’re gonna take advantage of it to get our glorious Top Ten Burger.”

Next time they were definitely going to have to check the dress code before venturing out into burger adventures. It hadn’t occurred to him that he’d need to, because...you know, burgers. But if Minetta Tavern was any indication, some of these burgers were seriously fancy, and it felt really weird sitting there looking normal.

“I have no problem with taking advantage of my uncanny resemblance to somebody famous to get some food, but it’s kind of weird,” Thalia murmured back.

By that time, the host was returning, all smiles, and led them to a dark booth at the back of the restaurant. Thalia walked by all the people with their expensive suits and more expensive jewellery and tried to look like she belonged there.

She hadn’t been expecting this either: burgers, in her experience, were from places that had drive-throughs, not valet service. “Okay, this had better be a really good burger,” she said as she took her seat.

“No kidding,” Luke said, his eyes widening a little at the menu. “The cheap burger is seventeen dollars.”

Luke had never spent seventeen dollars on a meal for one person in his life. Seventeen dollars for a meal for two people was more his speed, and that was only since he’d landed in this world. There had been too many times in his life when seventeen dollars had been a veritable fortune. The idea that the seventeen dollar burger wasn’t even the fanciest burger available at this restaurant was a little bit mind-blowing. (The expensive one was $24.)

“Do you know what pommes frites are?” he asked quietly. “‘cause I have no idea, but it sounds French.”

Thalia shook her head, a little intimidated by the menu. The people she wasn’t scared of, but all these choices and strange words that accompanied the burger options made her feel like a total yokel. “Whatever it is, they’re coming with the burger.”

She peered at him over the top of her menu. “D’you wanna...just slip out the back? I was seriously not expecting this.” She didn’t know how much he made at the Youth Centre, but Thalia knew that she didn’t have a whole lot, and the idea of a seventeen - or twenty-four - dollar burger seemed like an extravagance that was best left unindulged, no matter how much she loved burgers.

“Nah, we got this,” Luke said. “I hardly even remember that I can spend money, so most of the time I don’t. I can afford the splurge. This is a perfect opportunity for the old Fake It ‘Til You Make It.”

He looked up over the menu at grinned at her, and for a moment he was vintage Luke, thirteen years old and coming up with some outrageous plan to come by burgers and fries for the night. In a moment he would get run over with everything that had passed between then and now, but for a few seconds it felt good to be plotting and scheming with Thalia again. He had missed it more than he could say.

It was a grin that never failed to make Thalia feel as if all was well in the world, no matter how cold and hungry they were, because Luke had a plan and he wasn’t ever going to let anything really bad happen to them.

Its effect hadn’t lessened in the years and bad choices that had happened since. Thalia found herself smiling back, and she almost reached out to bump his fist before she remembered that she wasn’t eleven with a giant crush anymore, and Luke’s plans didn’t always make everything turn out for the better.

She managed to hold onto her smile, but she tightened her grip on her menu and stared more intently at it. “Okay,” she said. “Okay, if we’re going to do this, we might as well go the whole hog and take their expensive burger. Because I’m not coming in here like I know what I’m doing just to get the cheap one.”

“Oh, hell no,” Luke agreed, determinedly ignoring the flood of emotion that followed that brief almost-normal moment. They were doing well. They were having fun. If he just focused on that, they would be fine and maybe even manage to have a too-expensive lunch without anybody (read: him) getting punched in the face or falling to pieces. “We’re ordering that Black Label Burger, and we’re finding out what pommes frites are. We came here with a mission, dammit, and we are going to achieve it.”

Pommes frites, much to Thalia’s eternal disappointment, were nothing but french fries. Really delicious, hand-cut french fries, the kind that was crisp outside and soft and gooey on the inside, but french fries nonetheless. It was something that Luke would like, at least.

The disappointment of the fries was offset by the thing of beauty that was the Black Label burger, however. The closest thing Thalia had ever gotten to a gourmet burger was one at Red Robin’s, when she and Luke and Annabeth had made a particularly good haul one day and had gone off to celebrate. Thalia had dreamed of that burger for years afterwards and getting something close to that again.

But this looked like it was going to surpass even that, with a patty that was thick and perfectly charred and fairly dripping with juices. “Gods,” she breathed. “I’m not sure if I can even bring myself to eat this.”

Luke was eying his own plate with similar lust, taking in the caramelized onions and the perfectly melted cheddar and thinking that if some god of burgers had deliberately designed the ultimate burger, it might have appeared something like this.

“And this is number ten!” he marveled. “I’m not sure I’m gonna be able to handle number one. This one already looks like it might make me pass out with pure joy.”

When he took a bite of it, he seriously considered the possibility. This was no mere burger. This was ambrosia disguised as a burger, it had to be. The meat was perfectly cooked, perfectly seasoned; the bread was fresh; the cheese was flavorful, but not so much as to overwhelm the burger, and the slightly-sweet onions balanced it like the third note in a chord, bringing everything together in pure burger bliss.

“Uhmigohffs,” he said, failing to chew it completely before his love for the burger demanded to be spoken aloud. “Thifsamazin.”

“Ahdorite?” Thalia closed her eyes in bliss, turning out the world to better focus on the explosion of tastes and textures in her mouth. She finally swallowed, and managed to refrain from stuffing her face again with it. It would be a shame to inhale this burger just because she had impulse control issues. It really ought to be savoured.

“This is totally worth it,” she announced, pointing one finger at the burger in her hand. “Everything. I’m so glad we decided to stay.”

Luke nodded, because his mouth was currently occupied with several pommes frites at once. They were every bit as glorious as the burger was. This place was culinary bliss, and he was beyond glad that they managed to not-exactly-lie their way in on short notice.

“This is ten, Thalia,” he finally said, marveling once more at that fact. “Ten. Is the number one burger going to be delivered to us by a herd of unicorns escorted by angels?”

“I don’t care, as long as it makes me feel like my mouth’s just taken a field trip to Elysium,” Thalia declared. She took another bite, trying to make it a little more manageable this time, but this was a burger that was impossible to just nibble on. She finally gave up and took a giant bite, and only after she’d swallowed that did she speak again. “Seriously. I don’t even care if it’s like one of those cases where you can’t tell the difference between a thousand-dollar bottle of wine and a ten thousand-dollar bottle of wine. I just want it to be at least this good.”

“Dude, no kidding,” Luke agreed. Just having nine more burgers along the lines of this one, even if they weren’t constantly improving burgers, would be pretty amazing. And if they were all this expensive, well, that was fine too. There were only nine more of them, after all. The hard part would be avoiding developing a very expensive addiction.

He’d already plowed through more than half of his burger, and a good chunk of the fries as well. “I’m totally failing at taking my time and savoring,” he said. “It’s just too good.”

“I’m only succeeding because I can’t eat as fast as you,” Thalia admitted, although she was making good headway as well. They were eating as fast as they had when they’d scrounged up enough money to have their first meal in over a day. “I think I’m going to have to quit this idea of school and sell my soul to some great big corporation so I can eat this every day.”

“Maybe you can find someplace with a straight souls-to-gourmet burgers conversion program,” Luke suggested. “There’s got to be a great big corporation who’d just trade you endless burgers for your soul. You should ask Mr. Stark.”

Tony Stark did have a great big corporation, after all. And a real appreciation for food. If anybody would be likely to potentially trade in souls or burgers, it was probably him.

“Mm, true,” she acknowledged. She managed to set her burger aside for a moment to work on the fries because they were delicious too. “I’m just not sure what I’d be cut out for. Most job descriptions don’t require a monster-hunting archer.”

“Yeah, nobody ever teaches demigods to be regular grown-ups,” Luke said. They generally weren’t expected to live long enough to use the skills, at least not on the Greek side. Judging by the Legacy thing, it must have been more common for the Romans. “I guess you’re probably stuck doing the school thing a little while. Who’d you get for an advisor?”

“Storm,” Thalia said, obviously pleased with the assignment. “We haven’t actually gotten around to figuring out a curriculum yet because I really don’t know what I want to do when I grow up - not that I’m going to grow up. I just haven’t been in a position where I’ve had a chance to think about what I’d want to do if I didn’t have to fight monsters. I don’t think I’d make a very good knitter, for example. But she’s going to try to teach me to control air currents. Jason can do it, and I want to see if I can too.” Why she wasn’t asking Jason to help her, though, was left unspoken.

“Awesome,” Luke replied, immediately reaching the conclusion that talking about her brother wasn’t going to help in his quest to make this a nice, normal, friendly conversation. “If I remember right from the comics and cartoons, Storm’s so good with the air currents she can pick herself up with them and fly. I know you wouldn’t want to go really high up, but it’d probably be handy for getting things down from the top shelf.”

“I was just thinking that being able to make little hurricanes might be good for distracting monsters,” Thalia said, and she laughed a little. “See? I literally cannot think outside a life that doesn’t have monsters in it. I don’t know. Maybe when I’ve been here for a little while longer I’ll be ready for it, but right now I’m still thinking I need to get back to the war.”

“What’s weird is how it seemed like everything keeps going without us,” Luke said. “I mean, my mom showed up yesterday. She’s twenty-four years old, not crazy, and last time she checked I was a sleeping baby. But we know it doesn’t stay like that, and I’m pretty sure she would have mentioned ‘and this one time I met you and you were taller than me’ despite being out of her head. So are we just...copies of ourselves?”

“I have no idea how it works,” Thalia said. “I’m still wrapping my head around this fictional thing. It’s weird to think that in this world, I’m just somebody’s creation, and...and everything that happened was just because they needed a good plot. It feels like it cheapens everything.”

“And we thought it was bad when it was just the Fates moving us around like chess pieces,” Luke dryly replied. “Now we’ve got an author.”

If anything was worse than the gods, it had to be authors. So many people at Potts Tower had been through so much, and for what? The entertainment of other worlds? It sort of put a new perspective on their fascination with the tales of Harry Potter and his wizard friends.

“I think it’s just best to think about this as bizarro world where somebody somehow managed to see what was going on in ours and decided to write about it thinking it was his idea,” Thalia said determinedly. She’d been working steadily on her burger as they’d talked, but she was finding that she was having trouble finishing it. The thing was huge, and she wasn’t half-starved like she used to be.

Luke was a 22 year old guy who skipped too many meals. When he actually sat down to one, he tended to eat a lot. The burger was no trouble at all for him, and his was nearly gone - fries, too.

“Seems legit,” Luke replied. It was as good an explanation as any. It was certainly better than ‘and then this dude Rick dictated our lives and made mine suck.’ That hardly seemed fair. And he wasn’t looking to blame anyone for his situation anymore; Luke was in fact pretty determined to take responsibility for his own actions nowadays.

“Any thoughts on these people who just up and disappeared?” he asked. “If their books and shows are any indication, they just slip right back in without ever knowing they were gone.”

“I don’t know what books or shows they’re from, but that would be too bad if that’s true,” Thalia said, poking at her fries. “That would mean Reyna would go back thinking that the Greeks had attacked her camp, and I’d never know that the burgers I’ve been eating are pale imitations of the good stuff.”

She’d never know that Luke was here, too, living through the pain every day to try to make amends for what he had done. The thought saddened her.

“Wash and Zoe were from a show called Firefly, and a movie called Serenity,” Luke said. He had Googled them, so he knew that Zoe would make it out of the series alive, and that Wash wouldn’t. Wash and Zoe had been cool people. Zoe was a badass, and Wash was funny. Luke had liked them. He hated thinking of them going back just for Wash to be dead and Zoe to be alone.

“And apparently Major Sharpe was from a series of books. He keeps on fighting all across Europe, has a crappy marriage, and finally ends up common-law married to a French woman,” Luke went on. “So I guess it goes more or less okay for him in the end.”

He didn’t want to talk about his own end. Part of Luke wanted to go back, so he could sit quietly in Elysium and let the old memories of his past fade into eternity. Part of him, however, thought that staying here, whether it was privilege or punishment, was what he ought to do. He had grown to appreciate the idea of atoning for his sins. His mother would need him here, too. Even if they could send him back to right where he’d been taken from, Luke didn’t think he would go - not even for the bliss of Elysium.

“Yeah, but it still sucks that they wouldn’t be able to remember what went on here,” Thalia said. “Maybe they go back to some kind of alternate universe where there’s a book or a show that talks about what they do remember, and all the adventures they have after that.”

She took one last poke at her fries, then finally decided to give up for now. “You want any of this?” she asked. “If not I’ll just take it home for dinner.”

“Take it,” Luke said. A waiter came with the check, and Luke picked it up before Thalia even had time to reach for it. “Don’t argue. I owe you for yesterday,” he said before she could protest. “You can get the number nine burgers or something.”

Thalia had indeed been ready to protest, but by that time the waiter had already taken off with Luke’s credit card. “Okay, fine, as long as I get the next one.”

The very idea that there was going to be a next one wasn’t something she would have entertained even a week and a half ago, when she’d punched him in the face, but a lot of things had happened since then. Now, she didn’t actually mind the idea. She even looked forward to it. They’d managed a whole lunch and more or less enjoyed themselves. It was a start. She wasn’t sure what it was a start of, but it was better than where they’d been before.

“You heading back to work after this?” she asked.

“Yeah, Saturday afternoons are usually busy,” Luke replied, starting to smile as he launched into his list of activities. “The Mario Kart gang will be out in full force, and we’ll probably have at least one troop of movie watchers, and I’ll probably have to run Bonnie and Ria off the slide before they set up permanent camp there. Then I’m due for a discussion with Octavian about why paying the fundraising coordinator is not actually counterproductive--” He paused to roll his eyes at that one. “-- and helping Leo out with his office construction project as much as I can with one arm. And somewhere in there I need to catch up on how many new kids have shown up and what we can do to help them be more comfortable here. It’s probably going to be time for another Welcome Party soon.”

“That sounds fun,” Thalia said, smiling back. She’d been avoiding the Youth Centre because of him, but maybe she didn’t have to anymore. “Just make sure you find some time in there to rest. Your arm’s not going to heal any faster if you drive yourself harder, you know. But for what it’s worth...” Her smile turned a little more cautious. “I think it’s cool that you’re doing all this.”

Luke shrugged, the gesture lopsided due to the arm that was still in a sling. Compliments about his work made him uncomfortable, even from people other than Thalia. From Thalia, that went double.

“People don’t get second chances at life often,” he said. “I want to make sure I do something positive with mine.”

“I’m glad,” Thalia said. She didn’t want to ruin this fun outing they’d been having, so she tried to keep her tone light despite the seriousness of her words. “I know it can’t be easy, so...really. I’m glad you’re doing it.”

Luke smiled faintly back at her. “Me too.”

He didn’t know what else to say, but he was glad he was doing something that made her happy. That wasn’t going to do anything for his tendency to be a workaholic, of course, but Annabeth would keep him from driving himself into the ground, and Snow would always make sure he ate at some point during the day.

The waiter came back, and Luke finished and signed the card receipt. “Subway back?” he said. “Now that I’ve eaten, I don’t mind taking the slow route and walking a couple blocks at the end.”

“Sounds good.” Thalia slid out of the booth and pulled her hoodie back over her head, then picked up her takeout box. She wasn’t looking forward to going back into the brisk chill after the warm coziness of the restaurant, but after such a large and satisfying lunch she was okay with a bit of a walk. She’d lasted longer wearing less, so it wasn’t as if this was going to kill her. Maybe she was just getting spoiled.

“Anyway, thanks for coming with me,” she said as they made their way back to the door. “It wouldn’t have been the same eating by myself.”

“Thanks for inviting me,” Luke said. “It was good to hang out with you without getting shot.” He smiled, and left out the ‘...or punched, or emotionally traumatized’ part. It seemed better to just go for the light jab.

“And of course, it was good to eat what was easily the best burger that ever went in my mouth,” he added. “And the french fries that were clearly stolen from Olympus itself.”

Thalia grimaced. “Oh gods, I really am sorry about that. And if I nag you about resting or keeping your arm elevated or whatever, it’s the guilt talking, okay? I just...” She stopped once they were outside, turning to face him with eyes that were dark with worry. “I wish I’d listened to you.”

“Seriously, Thalia, don’t worry about it,” he assured her. “I was just teasing. In another couple months, you’ll never know anything happened to my arm.”

There was something really terribly wrong about Thalia apologizing to him for anything. Luke felt about as big as a cockroach just hearing it. She hadn’t even done anything, really. He could have killed her several times over, and would never be able to apologize enough for it.

“Well, I still feel bad.” She resumed walking again, flipping her hood over her head to protect it from the chill.

Some people might say it was karma that he’d get shot because of her when he’d killed so many people himself, and nearly succeeded at killing her. Thalia didn’t think of it that way. She still hated everything that he’d done, but she didn’t really hate him anymore.

They made their way down to the subway, which - while still cold - was at least out of the wind, but when they came back up, Thalia was hit by a wintry blast. “Augh. First thing after I warm up: get a proper winter jacket.”

“Here, take my scarf,” Luke said, unwinding it from his neck. “I’ve got a coat, and you’re gonna freeze your face off.”

He knew she was probably going to argue with him, so he draped it over her head anyway. It wasn’t a proper jacket, but it would at least keep her warmer than she was in that hoodie. He probably should’ve just gotten them another cab. It would really suck to get Thalia back only to lose again to frostbite of the nose.

It still held his warmth and his scent, and for a moment it felt as if he’d wrapped himself around her. Thalia tugged the scarf tighter around her, feeling a pang of sorrow for what had been lost. If he’d never turned on the gods, if he hadn’t done everything he had, he’d probably be opening up his coat for her to scurry into, so he could wrap it around them both. Then she’d be enveloped by warmth from all sides, and feel like the most protected person on the planet.

But that wasn’t going to happen any more. Thalia shouldn’t be wasting any time thinking about what could’ve been. She should just be happy that her face wasn’t going to turn into an icicle.

The walk back to the Tower seemed to go by a little quick, though it wasn’t surprising given how eager she was to get out of the cold. Once there, she took a moment to bask in the heated lobby. “Oh, blessed warmth.”

Unfortunately, back in the lobby meant letting Thalia go. Luke didn’t really want to. Things had been going so well today. They had talked like old friends, and most of it hadn’t been weird. They had gotten along, just like they always had. He didn’t know what would happen when this afternoon was over.

But he smiled, and took a single step toward the youth center so he didn’t do anything crazy like try to hug her. It would be weird, and she might very well decide to put a knife through his throat for coming too close uninvited.

“This was fun,” he said. “Let me know when you’re ready to go out for Burger Number Nine.”

“Yeah, okay.” She smiled back, starting to feel a little awkward. She didn’t really want this to end either - it had been going so well - but since it looked like he was ready to leave, she wasn’t going to keep him. “Remember: take rests and don’t work yourself too hard.”

Luke smiled and saluted with his good arm. “Yes ma’am,” he said, and turned to walk away.

He was only two steps in when he remembered she still had his scarf. He still didn’t turn back.