soulmates ⋮ heroes of olympus au

four.

J a s o n

☼

In his mind, Jason was an idiot. It was absolutely ridiculous to him that he was in his junior year of high school and still just as crazy as he was about Piper McLean as he was the first time he saw her in his Math class in sixth grade.

You couldn't exactly blame Jason. In sixth grade, any pretty girl like Piper who was nice to him more than once is a good reason to fall in love in Jason's mind. But as the years went on, and as her spunk and beauty grew, those feelings never went away and in fact, had managed to grow stronger. He'd only talked to her a few times, but had never been the one to go up and initiate a conversation with her. As a result, for years Piper sat on the opposite side of the choir while Jason constantly snuck bashful glances at her, wishing he could at least pluck up the courage to talk to her.

Leo had been saying for years – not that Jason ever intended for him to find out but his best friends could almost figure out anything even if he were being subtle – that Jason just needed to grow a pair and talk to her. Frankly, to Jason that always seemed easy for Leo to say. He was the type of guy to go up to a girl and be able to strike a conversation with her instantly. Although, it didn't always work. But at least he tried.

The only time Piper and Jason ever seemed to talk was when the two ended up hanging out with the same group of friends in choir or she started the conversation. The latter was the case in Pre-Calc today, which Jason was pretty happy about. Granted, Jason was a stuttering mess. But at least Jason talked to her, which was a lot more than his usual staring and wishful thoughts.

That was a start.

Pushing open the door to the choir room, the chatter of excited choir kids filled his ears, and Jason felt at home in the brightly colored, cramped choir room. He'd been in the choir program since freshman year, and while it came with the usual performing arts drama, Jason loved every minute spent in that room. Jason grabbed a music folder labeled with his from the front of the room, and began to chat with Damien and Liam, two of the other tenors, at the bottom of the risers. Jason couldn't help but occasionally glance at Piper sitting at the edge of the risers in the soprano section, thumbing through her sheet music as one of the sopranos Dana spoke to her excitedly.

"Okay everyone!" Mr. Apollo yelled, clapping his hands in order to get the room's attention. "Get into your sections or I'm reciting a haiku."

The rest of the choir rushed over to their sections, desperate to not hear one of Apollo's awful haikus. It took Jason a little while longer to get to his spot, seeing that he was on the top row of risers due to his height.

"Nice job on getting to your spots quickly," Mr. Apollo chuckled as he sat down on the piano bench. "But I've already prepared a haiku for you all so too bad."

The choir groaned as Mr. Apollo began his poem, that only seemed to be worse than his ones in the past.

"New year has started
Les Mis is the musical
Please don't cry too much."

Mr. Apollo wasn't greeted with applause like he wanted. Instead, the fifty or so choir members stared blankly at him, some of them even trying to hide their cringing over how horrible the haiku was.

"Oh come on guys! Aren't you not just the littlest bit excited for the musical? You guys have been begging for years for me to do that production."

"Well we are glad," Gwen, one of the altos that Jason always liked talking to, told the frowning teacher. "It's just you already told us last year before we got out for the summer that the winter musical was going to be Les Mis."