reflection ● jason grace

one shot: love languages

They don't say it.

Sometimes, Daria twiddles her fingers on their picnic bench until Jason wraps his hand over them until she comes back to earth. Other times, it's even less noticeable than that, a glance across the Senate floor as someone says something incredibly stupid about the war that they didn't even fight in. So they don't say it, but it's there around them, buried below the grass and floating through the wind; it smells a little bit too sweet, Daria thinks, but that's what they need these days.

She doesn't tell Jason she loves him in so many words yet. It's hard to trust it — both she and Jason are used to people they love leaving. It's stupid to think that this can't hurt him, if they keep each other at a distance, but they're 16. They're not meant to be that smart anyway.

Daria thinks people know, though. Or at very least suspect. They've gotten a hoard of newcomers since the end of the war. Reyna, Jason, and for some reason, Daria, are infamous here. It's strange, after so many years, that she doesn't have to pretend that she wouldn't die for Jason.

It's even weirder, these days, that she probably will never have to.

Acts of Service: Knowing each other better than you know yourself

They were playing charades, of all things.

It was two weeks after the war; things were almost normal. They were in Jason's brand new praetor house, except it still looked like Daniel's, with Mitch's touch of things, and so Daria's chest ached a little bit. She'd try to help Jason organize a bit — small photos here and bits of decor from the stores in New Rome — but he'd been too busy with his praetor duties to notice, or care.

Daria didn't blame him. She figured house decoration was pretty low on his list of priorities.

But the seven of them were alive, and that eased the tension. As Reyna and Jason got back from their daily debriefs, Daria sat next to Clara on the couch, clutching a mug of hot chocolate like it could protect her from the freakishly cold October weather. The gods might be upset with them for something, but Camp hadn't made contact with a single one in weeks, so it's impossible to know.

"Dakota," Nathan announced from the center of the living room. Their time was up. Dakota and Nathan had scored all of one point in three minutes. "You are the worst at this game."

"All you, Nathan," Dakota shot back, fire in their eyes from a sugar high. "What the hell was that?"

"I think it was supposed to be Call Me Maybe," Clara suggested as Dakota took their place on her other side. "Like, I threw a wish in the well. You know?"

"We were in a band!" Nathan pointed at Michael, the other member of their three-person team, dramatically. "We were like family!"

Michael paused, popcorn halfway to his mouth. Even with the living room light on, in the moonlight, his eyes looked dark as obsidian. "I wasn't in the band. Please do not associate me with the band."

"Well I don't like it either, Reyna!" Jason's voice tore down to the rest of them. "But that standard is ridiculous. You're-"

Reyna's voice echoed something a little quieter, though not by much, and it was still coated in the same venomous tone as her opponent. Which is weird, since they didn't used to be opponents just two weeks ago.

Heads and raised eyebrows swiveled in Daria's direction. Long ago, they'd decided that Daria was the bridge between two kingdoms (since she was primus pilus again, she had to be), but it was hard, with Jason and Reyna. Like she didn't belong. Which, she kept having to remind herself, she didn't.