“Luke, incidentally, shows up to work like he doesn’t have a bruise smeared across his cheek and a bandage across the bridge of his nose. Some distant part of Percy wonders if he’d refused to take ambrosia, or if Chiron hadn’t offered him any, and suspects it’s the former. Chiron’s not that kind of petty.” -on hold
oh, Luke is a b s o lu te l y doing this to get under both Percy and Annabeth’s skin. Like. is there an undercurrent of self loathing that believes he doesn’t really deserve ambrosia/easy healing? sure, this kid is messy as hell.
but largely like. he knows that he’s gotten under both percy and annabeth’s skin. he knows annabeth will be mad that percy hit hinm, and that percy’s mad at himself for doing it too, and he’s not going to let either of them forget it.
ultimately what luke craves more than anything in the tire fire verse is to be important to both of them. he needs to be noticed, he needs for them to be some kind of equal triangle even if it’s messy and fucked up in the process.
luke has basically been frozen in place since the end of the kronos situation, unable to progess or move on or really live at all, and he’s been stuck seeing percy and annabeth get closer, and go through new trauma that’s totally unrelated to him, which (and yeah that’s super terrible!) means in some way that he’s Less Important.
basically he’s just being a bit of a shit and of course chiron is not going to withhold healing from him if he needs it. i think chiron probably considers luke’s fall his failure just as much as luke’s.
