SO EASY (TO FALL IN LOVE) / Luke Castellan.
Summary. There's no need to hide if you're into me ‘cause I'm into you quite intimately, and maybe one night could turn into three. Well, I’m down to see!
Notes. smau/irl + no kronos!au. best friends to lovers. Luke x Aphrodite!fem!reader. rating: t. unedited
yn_ln | ♫ - Bless the Telephone by Labi Siffre
Liked by percyjcksn and 104 others
yn_ln 🌞🌞🌞 @/clarisselarueee
grvrunderwood when are you getting back?
yn_ln @/grvrunderwood boarding the train soooon :)
yn_ln @/grvrunderwood answer my text!!
clarisselarueee 🌚🌚🌚 • ♥︎ by author
annabeth_chase eeeee I can’t wait to see you!! • ♥︎ by author
percyjcksn stay in greece‼️
yn_ln @/percyjcksn man😔💔wtf
grvrunderwood @/yn_ln he’s just mad bcuz he knows annabeth won’t want to hang out with him as much
yn_ln @/grvrunderwood OH??
percyjcksn @/grvrunderwood DUDE.
grverunderwood @/percyjcksn ijbol
castelluke cool flowers • ♥︎ by author
yn_ln @/castelluke thanks 😛
GC: “🤓🫵” (between Grover, Percy, & you)
“I almost feel like you’ve been avoiding me.” Luke shrugs as his fingers twirl with one of his misplaced curls. “You know, since you’ve been back.”
Cabin 10 is bathed in golden light from a lamp, soft and forgiving in a way you find moonlight to not often be. It’s one of your favorite ways to see Luke—next to freshly woken up, or straight from the lake, or endlessly happy. You love him soft and unguarded, and (quite selfishly, or hopelessly, a difference you’ve never quite been able to tell) you find he often looks like it when he’s in your space.
Next to the posters of your favorite films and musicians, your knitted blanket pooled on his lap, his eyes fixed to you—it’s the most unguarded you’ve seen him in a while. Even if his words leave your stomach twisting and the bump of his knee (twice: once accidental, the next a firm insistence) brings heat to your face.
You struggle for a moment, but he waits you out. Finally: “I…I don’t know what you mean. I’ve only been back a week.”
“Yeah, but you’ve spent every night with Annabeth, Grover, and Percy.” He moves the weight of his knee from yours. The loss makes you feel cold, a shiver wracking down your frame. “You’ve hung out with Clarisse more than me, and she went to Greece with you!”
The silence after that is not one easily unbroken. What can you say? That you’re sorry; that he’s right? Worse, that there’s a reason for your obvious distance?
It’s your turn to shrug and at the fall of his face, you turn your own away. Your eyes land on your vanity. Tucked into the bottom corner, you know, is a picture of you and Luke. Your favorite picture—taken four summers ago, when the skip of your heart was less obvious and most songs didn’t remind you of him. His eyes on the camera; yours on him. A glare from the sun covers the top corner.
Memories of the past are easier to face than the present. You didn’t feel so dumb back then.
No—that’s wrong. You felt dumb: for crushing on the sweet guy who first introduced you to the camp that became home, who let you make unbecoming jokes about being the daughter of the Goddess of Love, who was your best friend. It hadn’t been like that at first, you would defend yourself if anyone had asked (they didn’t). For the first few years, you knew you did not like Luke Castellan like that.
He crept up on you, slow and careful, like low tide. One moment you were 13 and had a new best friend, the next you were 15 and felt a bubbly sort of stupid when he came in the room. Then you were 19–and nothing was that exciting anymore.
If these feelings came slow and careful, you can tell that the tide was changing. Every moment since he and Thalia got together (six awful months) you felt salt water clog your throat and sting your eyes.
“Clarisse is my best friend,” you say. Your hands spasm slightly on your lap in a motion like, what can I say? “I wouldn’t have wanted anyone else on that trip.”
He laughs, a rough scrape against his throat and past his lips. Your own grimace at the sound.
“What?” You can hear the panic in your voice—the wrong tilt of the vowels as the word forces itself out.
“Why’d you leave?” His eyes are locked on yours now. There’s a seriousness to the clench of his jaw, the slight furrow between his eyebrows. It’s the type of expression he makes before a calculated move when he spars, one that says: oh, I got you. “You never really told me.”
Because I couldn’t stand your hands on her. The words almost come out, embarrassment curdling in your stomach. Your hands pluck at the hem of your top, feet tapping against the frame of your bed. There’s a restlessness in the humming of the air. Your mouth opens and then closes when you realize you can’t find any new ones.
Luke shifts closer after another beat. His touch, from the top of your shoulder to the juncture of your knee, is a brand.
He’s hot, is the thing. You remember the times in winter (seldom and crystallized) when one of you would visit the other. How his arms would keep you warm when the frigid air became too much. The days melting into a balmy haze only make it worse.
Your stomach twists. This—the heat of him, the unforgiving yield of his body to yours—is not reasonable. You feel unreasonable as your face heats and fingers twist in the hem of your shirt.
Luke has always been hot, but this is different. This is leaving you with a buzzing in your ears. The world around you static as his eyes move between your own, and then dip lower. You can feel the press and release of your chest as it quickens with each passing minute. Your breath leaving your mouth parted, your shoulder sweeping his.
“You and Thalia,” you trail off. This is not-
“But you,” you force an exhale out when the words get stuck in your throat. It leaves shaky and too loud in the resounding silence. “You always wanted her.”
This, too, is true. Luke had wanted Thalia before you had even come into the picture. Years of surviving together; of becoming a family with Annabeth together. It was a type of wanting that was bone deep. It carved Luke—made him choose different personalities, his favorite songs, his most relived moments. Without Thalia, there would not be the Luke that sat at your bed today.
It had left you angry many times before. Now it just left you bereft.
You wanted to make that mark on Luke. To take his body between your hands and twist, or squeeze, or shake. To make him permanently different. For everyone to see it and think of you, and then think of how much you mattered to him for him to allow it to happen.
“She’ll always matter to me, Y/N.” When Luke shrugs, your body moves with him. It makes you both pause. “But I-we realized that our relationship was meant to be different. We weren’t it for each other.”
You sound half-committal, half-there. It’s not that you think Luke is a liar, you just don’t believe him. That type of love is not something one can just dismiss as ‘not it.’ You can tell it leaves him unbalanced—the blatant dismissal. He flounders for a moment, his expression melting away into something more neutral.
The hum of cicadas break through the static of your head and you turn to face the open window without thinking. Luke is almost as fast as he reaches out to your face, thumb tucking itself firmly to the dip of your chin as he drags your gaze back.
“Thalia and I are over,” he repeats.
It’s unreasonable. Your stomach twists and dips and pulls at the space beyond your navel. Luke is a brand at your side, but now also a weight on your chin. His index finger a spark on the soft underside of your chin; his thumb a bruise as it pushes against your lower lip.
The buzzing comes back full-force and the space behind your eyes feels hot. You think if Silena came back into the cabin, joking that she really didn’t usher all of your siblings away so you could have a moment alone, you wouldn’t even notice.
“I’m still her oldest friend. She was upset.”
“I want you more than I’ve ever wanted anyone else.” This is said a breath away from your lips, from his thumb which pulls lightly at the skin. This is said a breath between the titling of his head and his next words. “I don’t know what the hell you’re doing to me.”
All of the air leaves your lungs. Your heart beats and skips along, bumping into the cage of your ribs with every painful thud. You feel like the tide has finally turned; like you’re drowning.
I want you. I want you. I want you. I want you.
“Luke,” you get out. It takes with it the rest of the air you had measly gotten back.
For a moment, you think of praying to your mother. Of offering your silver necklace (an identical one placed delicately around Annabeth’s neck) to the soft flame of your candle, and asking for guidance. You think of your mother suddenly stepping into the cabin—eyes exactly like your father’s, hair pulled back and braided like Clarisse’s, smile carved like Luke’s. How she would look to the pair of you and hum knowingly, eyes caught on how hopelessly in love a daughter of hers is.
It is a thought gone by the next moment. As is every thought that you’ve held in your mind as Luke drags the side of his nose against your own.
Perhaps it is this that pulls the words out of your mouth: the remembrance of how soft and unguarded he always is around you. The way this touch is an echo of every other touch given to you by him.
“Because I’ve never wanted anyone…except for you. For me, it’s always you.”
An unbearable second and then: a soft press of lips, the quiet tick as they pull apart in a moment of shock. Before you can even think you are pushing back in.
It sort of falls into place after that.
Luke’s hands—his beautiful hands, of which you have memorized every line and scar and crevice of—card into your hair, take place at the root of it. His fingers tighten as you find a rhythm. The hold on the strands, the subsequent pull when he tilts his face, grounds you enough for your own to find the line of his jaw.
There, the years of stress and worry melt away as your thumb rubs against the clenched muscle. His mouth opens with your care, bottom lip slotting between yours.
It is unreasonable and then suddenly it is not. Suddenly it is his body finally yielding to yours, curving back until it rests against the wall, scooping you up as he does and pulling you onto his lap. Suddenly it is his hands everywhere—wrapped around the nape of your neck, pressing into the meat of your thighs, sneaking under your t-shirt and finding the delicate skin of your ribs.
The warm slide of his tongue spurns you on, gets your hands pushed into his curls and slipping beneath the collar of his shirt. You two stay like that for a long moment, rhythm falling and building and twisting.
Eventually, Luke leans back, placing a few open mouth kisses down your cheek and to the base of your throat.
Against the beat of your hummingbird pulse, he says, “I want to try…this. I want to see if we can do it.”
You run a hand through his curls once more and hear the way his tone has gone slightly begging. His hands clench around your waist at the silence, urging you to talk.
He leans away from the crook of your neck at the words, eyes connecting with your own. The happiness painted across his face, you know, is a twin to your own. It is suddenly easy to meet his lips with another kiss—to fall into this.
Luke knows it, too. It’s easy to fall in love with you.
⋆˙⟡ THANK YOU FOR READING <333 any likes, comments, and reblogs are appreciated!!!
⋆˙⟡ Divider Credit: @uzmacchiato !!
⋆˙⟡ Have a good day! LOVE, AMALIA <3
discoholicmusic
stormborns
areudirty
dailybridgerton
blakekathryn
kianamaiart
jbbartram-illu
