#whooop!

CHAPTER ELEVEN:

“A thousand beetles,” suggested Emma, sitting on the end of Dan’s bed. He shook his head, pulling his comforter higher up over his shoulder.

“Hear me out,” Emma continued. “A thousand beetles... in his bed.”

Dan deigned this with a loud sniff.

“I think the beetles are a great idea,” chimed Jasmine, coming to stand by Dan’s bed. She looked down at him, her red lips pursed.

Jasmine was his half sister. Everyone in here, other than Emma, were his half siblings. And they were all looking at Dan with a modicum of pity in their eyes. Him having his heart broken wasn’t really the Aphrodite way. Her kids usually did the heart breaking, languishing in the drama and romance that came with broken hearts.

Before, his siblings had spent a lot of time trying to get him to date people, telling him it’d be way more fun than he thought. Now, they just wanted him to chipper up. At least when he wasn’t dating anyone he’d been an active part of the cabin, remembering to do his chores and clean his area and score them a billion points whenever they played capture the flag. Now he was just a depressed lump, hiding away in his cabin where the embarrassment and sorrow affected him least.

Going outside meant, at best, having to deal with everyone looking at him. He didn’t care whether it was with pity or delight (in the Ares’ cabins case), he just didn’t like the eyes on him period.

“Come on, Dan!” Matthew suddenly said, sitting up on his bed across the cabin. It took entirely too much effort to pull his eyes from the ground up to the boy. “Think of how great getting revenge would be!”

“Yeah,” agreed Jasmine. “What’s the point of getting your heart broken if you’re not going to go out of your way to ruin their life for doing it?”

“I guess,” Dan huffed. He did kind of like the idea of seeing Phil in pain or suffering or something, after all he’d done to Dan. It’d been a few days since their horrible return to camp, and Dan hadn’t left his cabin since. His siblings had been kind enough to bring him food (and not complain about him needing a shower).

“And it doesn’t have to be beetles,” Added Matthew. “You could always lure him out into the woods and have like, a monster waiting or something.”

“You guys are right,” Dan decided. He sat up for the first time in several hours, and the Aphrodite cabin members let out a cheer. Already, people were pulling out face masks and eyeliner, ready to clean him up.

“I was thinking,” said Emma, obediently tilting her head up when one of Dan’s siblings descended on her with mascara, “that maybe you could make him jealous. Have a fling with someone, or something.”

“That wouldn’t work,” Dan said immediately. “He wouldn’t be jealous because he’d just been playing me the whole... the whole...”

Tears welled up in his eyes. He eyed his pillow, considering becoming horizontal again. It was only made worse by the fact that Dan didn’t even want to kiss anyone else anyway.

It hadn’t taken him long to realize his mom’s bow had done shit. It probably didn’t work unless it was fired by Aphrodite herself, obviously. Phil very clearly didn’t love Dan, and Dan realized, with relief, that at least he’d been panicking for no reason. He really wasn’t in love with Phil, even though he’d found it in himself to accept it.

Now he could just not accept it again. He could push the idea of love far, far away from him and never touch it ever again, not even with a billion foot long stick.

“Don’t cry,” instructed Jasmine, pointing a finger at Dan and frowning severely. “Every tear you shed for that Ares bastard is a win for him.”

Dan sniffed loudly. He let Matthew attack his under-eye bags with concealer.

The whole cabin was suddenly animated again, and when Dan stood to let Matthew pick him out some clothes, a couple sisters started cleaning his bed with vigor, stripping sheets and fluffing pillows and throwing away tissues littered all over the place. Still, each and every one of them went deathly still when there was a knock on the cabin door.

They all eyed each other cautiously. No Aphrodite kid would ever knock on their own cabin door. And the only person who really ever visited them was already in there, so...

The knock came again. “...Hello?”

So many people gasped at once, outraged, that it sounded like a breeze had whooshed through the cabin. Dan’s eleven-year-old half-sister, Nandine, pulled out a knife.

“The audacity,” Jasmine hissed, eyeing the door with anger.

“We can’t let him in,” someone else said, which garnered a flurry of agreement.

“Or...”

Everyone turned to look at Matthew, who was staring at Emma. “Well, we could try the making him jealous plan,” he whispered.

“It wouldn’t work,” Dan said again, but Matthew just shook his head.

“He obviously feels something, seeing as he’s here right now. And the look on his face when Amy broke the news that night...”

Matthew shut up at the look on Dan’s face.

“It’s too late, anyway,” Dan finally responded. “He’s at the door.”

“Well...” Matthew said, and his eyes drifted to Emma again. Dan followed his gaze, and then he gagged.

“Ew! Matthew—gross! She’s my best friend! And I’m... I’m...”

“Gay, we get it,” Jasmine said hastily. “But he has a point, I mean, well, it might work.”

Dan glanced at Emma. She shrugged. “I’m down if you are.”

With that, Dan and Emma were scrambling onto his bed.

“Wait—take your shirt off,” Emma suggest. And so, shirtless and with his best friend on his lap, Dan pulled her down to kiss him. It was nothing like kissing Phil, but that didn’t really matter. It didn’t feel horrible, it just lacked the passion that was supposed to come with it.

That didn’t matter. What did matter was Emma was a great actor, and she had her hands buried in his hair and her tongue in his mouth. Even still, Dan strained his ears for the interaction about to happen.

The door creaked open.

“Can I help you?” Jasmine sneered. She’d put on her I’m Aphrodite’s daughter and I’ll walk on your face if I want to voice.

“Um—yeah, I’m... Well, I wanted to check on Dan. He hasn’t been out of the cabin in a few days...”

“Oh!” Jasmine said, her voice dripping venom. “Yeah, he’s been... busy,” she giggled.

Dan heard the door creak open wider, and he pulled Emma closer to him, knowing their dark corner of the cabin was now clearly visible through the open door. Emma moaned against his mouth.

“Wh—I- what?” Phil managed.

“I don’t know, turns out he’s not as gay as he thought, you know? And we’ve always been, like, the sex cabin,” she giggled. This was an outright lie. Sure, Aphrodite kids sometimes slept around, but it was an explicit rule of theirs to never do it in the cabin.

“I’m—okay, I’m just gonna—I’ll—“

“Sounds good!” Jasmine said cheerily, cutting him off. She slammed the door in his face. Emma immediately slid off of Dan, wiping her mouth.

“You really let me do all the work right then,” she commented.

“I was distracted!”

“You should’ve seen his face!” someone cheered, and then the whole cabin was active again, everyone talking over each other and laughing and cheering. Dan was pulled to his feet and pampered by his siblings. Soon enough he smelled and looked great, his curls styled perfectly and his eyeliner sharp enough to kill.

He felt hungry for more revenge.

—

“This’ll be great,” Emma decided, peering around the wooden shack with Dan. They’d gotten help from a few of Hephaestus’ kids and had managed to rig up a big and elaborate trap for Phil. It helped that mostly everyone sympathized with Dan for Phil being such a dick.

Now, all they had to do was wait for Phil to walk right into the trap, where Dan would then press a button and Phil would be flung out into the lake. It wasn’t particularly evil or painful, but Dan thought it’d be nice to see Phil flying through the air, screaming, only to crash into the lake.

“All right, we’re ready,” Dan finally declared. Emma nodded and spun on the spot, making her way up towards the cabins. The plan was that she would tell Phil Dan wanted to talk to him here on the beach. And then, once Phil was in the right spot… Fling!

Dan stayed crouched behind the shack, the remote in hand, as he waited for Phil. He came quickly, looking around left and right as he made his way to the beach. He looked kind of worried, a little anxious, and this only made Dan more angry. Mainly because he could recognize these expressions, knew them from the sheer amount of time he’d spent with Phil—all of it fake.

Phil stepped into range, and Dan watched him carefully, raising the button towards his finger.

“Cowardice.”

Dan gasped, falling backward and landing on his ass. He looked up, gaping at the figure above him.

“Ares?” he said incredulously. The man was tall and bulky, wearing a leather jacket and a pair of sunglasses. Behind him—though Dan had no clue how he hadn’t heard him arrive on it—idled a motorcycle.

“The one and only.”

Dan felt his face twist up in anger. “Oh, this is such BULLSHIT.”

“Excuse me?”

Dan knew it was really impolite to curse in front of a god. Ares could take offense and decide to zap him into a puddle of sludge, or something. Luckily, Ares just looked kind of amused instead.

“This totally isn’t fair!” Dan exclaimed. “‘One’s last wish takes its hold’,” he quoted. “Phil gets his wish after all the shit he did to me?!”

Ares surprised Dan with his booming laugh. He went so far as to even wipe an imaginary tear away, leaving Dan glaring at him angrily.

“‘One’s last wish’ means the last thing someone would want,” Ares said. And he held out a giant hand, barely waiting for Dan to reach out and grab it to pull him to his feet. “Your prophecy’s already over—this is just a family visit.”

“But then…”

Ares, seeing Dan still struggling, huffed. “The last wish was yours,” he said. “You fell in love even though you didn’t want to, yada yada.”

Dan felt his face go red—with indignation, not embarrassment! “I—I didn’t—I’m not—”

“Ohoho, trust me—you are,” Ares said, cutting him off. “Your mom’s told me all about it.”

And that's how he left Dan—his mind blown, his brain located in little bits in the sand all around him—as he walked down to talk to Phil. Dan found he couldn’t really concentrate all that easily. He was just aware that he was, apparently, in love, and he felt those stupid treacherous tears rising to his eyes once again. He watched as Ares spoke to Phil, and once the god left, hopping onto his motorcycle and driving it right over the lake and out of sight, Dan hit his hand on the button. It didn’t feel quite as good as it should have, watching Phil get flung out into the lake.

—

Dripping wet and exhausted, Phil finally stumbled back onto the sand, putting his hands on his knees and panting. He knew he probably deserved it, so he wasn’t going to complain.

He’d been trying to talk to Dan every day since they’d gotten back. He’d already chewed out Amy and the rest of the cabin, practically dragged them to hell and back with how much he’d yelled at them, but taking his anger out on them did nothing to relieve the pain of losing Dan. He just wanted a chance to explain himself, but Dan refused to see him. Not to mention the fact that his entire cabin acted like his personal body guard as well. Phil didn't doubt that if Dan dared to venture out of his cabin, his siblings would follow him, forming a legion around him.

Well—maybe not, Phil realized. He doubted anyone else had enough of a vendetta against him right now to organize some kind of elaborate trap to fling him out into the middle of the lake. So Dan was obviously out of his cabin by now, or at least, he had been. And he’d been near—near enough to watch Phil, near enough to know when he was standing on the giant platform hidden beneath the sand, the one that had sent him flying.

Phil knew he’d really hurt Dan. What made it worse was that he’d been planning to tell him all about Amy’s dumb plan, too. He’d decided to on their bus ride home, decided to throw everything out in the open and lay himself bare, to apologize. He’d been swept up in the excitement of returning home, though. And Amy had beaten him to the punch.

He hadn’t even needed Amy’s stupid plan to meet his dad anyway. Ares had come to see him on his own. Mostly, Phil had been too overwhelmed to really form complete sentences, but Ares had told him that he was proud of him, and that the only reason he hadn’t visited sooner was because he thought Phil didn’t want to see him, what with the way he’d avoided the Ares cabin’s trips to Mount Olympus. (“My siblings wouldn’t let me come!” “The next time one of them tries to control you, punch them in the face.”)

It was after about a minute of talking to him that Phil realized he recognized him from that gas station in West, Texas. When he mentioned this, Ares just smirked, and suddenly that “father figure” that had paid for their hotel room and given them supplies made a whole lot more sense.

“I’m really proud of you, kid,” Ares had said, stepping in for the briefest, gruffest hug Phil had ever experienced. “Except for that shit that you pulled on Aphrodite’s kid—that sucked.”

“Yeah, I know… I’m gonna talk to him, though. He’s meeting me down here soon.”

Ares mouth had twisted a bit uncomfortably. “You know how to swim?”

“Yeah, why?”

“No reason.” And with that, Ares had hopped onto his motorcycle, done a cool head nod at Phil, and driven away.

With a sigh, Phil finally straightened up, having regained enough of his breath to feel ready to climb the slight slope before him. He was debating whether to try knocking on the Aphrodite cabin a second time. Gods, he really didn’t want to see Dan kissing Emma again, though. He didn’t believe for a second that Dan was straight. The only problem was he wasn’t sure if Dan believed it, if Phil’s betrayal had had him reverting back to the perfectly straight person he’d been pretending to be.

In the end, he came across Dan on accident. He’d decided to make his way to the dining hall to snag some food despite the early hour, his impromptu swim having left him starving. And there, when he walked into the hall, he spotted Dan—standing at the end of one table and grabbing food, collecting it into the pocket he’d made by holding out the hem of his t-shirt.

“Dan,” he said, more out of surprise than actual preparedness to speak to him. Dan jumped with a gasp, managing to drop the grip he’d had on his shirt, resulting in his food tumbling to the floor. Immediately, he spun around, a glare set on his face.

“As if you haven’t done enough!” he snarled. This drew the attention of his siblings—all of whom Phil hadn’t noticed until now—previously seated at the table but now all jumping to their feet, looking terrifying as they glared at Phil. The sight of them made his hands feel sweaty, made the words “to love is to destroy” echo uncomfortably around his head. Besides the Aphrodite kids, there was barely anyone in the dining hall—just a few campers dotted around, accompanied by nymphs and satyrs—but now all their attention was on Dan and Phil, standing at the end of Aphrodite’s table.

“I'm sorry,” Phil said quickly. About a hundred high-pitched and mocking “I’m sorry”s echoed from Dan’s siblings, one of whom had already drawn a knife.

“Oh, well then I suppose it’s okay,” Dan said with an exaggerated shrug, but anger still blazed in his eyes. “I can always get more food,” he added, and with that, he turned back to face the table.

“No, Dan—please, I want to talk to you.” To this, the Aphrodite entourage scoffed and imitated him again.

“And if I don’t want to talk to you?”

“Please, Dan,” Phil said, having managed to step closer to him without realizing he’d done so. “Please just… just let me explain.”

Dan crossed his arms over his chest and turned to face Phil. “Fine,” he spat. “You have one minute.”

“One minute?” Phil spluttered.

A short girl behind Dan was staring hard at her watch. “Fifty-six,” she said loudly. “Fifty-five. Fifty-four.”

“For gods’ sake!” Phil muttered, before facing Dan and trying to organize his thoughts as coherently as he could.

“I love you,” he said immediately. Dan scoffed, rolling his eyes so hard Phil was worried they would roll right out of his head. “I’m serious!” Phil added. He could barely concentrate, what with the, “Forty-nine, forty-eight,” echoing around him.

“It’s true, I went on the quest with you for all the wrong reasons,” Phil said hastily. “I was desperate and, and greedy, and I’d been planning to use you in order to meet my dad.”

“Which you did,” Dan interjected. Phil ignored him.

“But I quickly realized that that wasn’t going to work. I mean, I was so forward in the beginning that I scared you off, and immediately after I realized I wished I hadn’t scared you off, because I liked you.”

Dan looked completely, entirely unimpressed. Phil tried to forge on. “I realized that you were more important to me than meeting my dad—you and your happiness and wellbeing and… and everything. And because of that I suffered. I liked you and you hated me, it seemed like—”

“Yeah,” Dan said flatly.

“And it was wrong to like you because I’d only even come on the quest for like, the worst, most selfish reasons, but I couldn’t help it. Dan, I suffered for the cost of the bet—” Dan’s eyes went kind of wide here, the prophecy line slotting into place. “I suffered because I really, really liked you—loved you—and I knew I was the biggest, worst asshole on the planet and I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, Dan, I just—I really—”

“ZERO!” shouted a million Aphrodite kids, and, all glaring at Phil, they swept Dan out of the dining hall. Phil only just caught Dan’s eyes—wide and thoughtful, almost considering—before he was gone.

With a sigh, Phil walked alone down the steps of the dining hall, his appetite gone.

~~