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Hide and Seek

Fandom: Trials of Apollo Rating: Teen Genre: Family Characters: Michael, Apollo, Piper, Meg, Jason Michael wasn't expecting to stumble across his mortal father in his latest escape attempt. Now if only his dad would do the sensible thing and get off the floating villa Michael's been trying to escape for the past two years. TOApril day 24 - Unexpected Allies. This is a spin-off AU from mine and @stereden's fic A Single Drachma, where instead of his escape from Caligula meaning he missed the TBM drama of canon... well. This happened. I may or may not tackle this AU properly later on, but for now here's a pilot of what could be. There are characters I've not written much if at all before in here, so please bear with any oocness that may have occurred as I start to get to grips with them.

Michael didn’t know what he’d expected, but it wasn’t this.

More fucking big eared furry menaces hounding him with the bows that he just wished he could get his hands on? He’d rather not because they meant trouble, but they were a possibility.

Brainwashed humans and stupid cyclopes working together to pin him down and drag him back to his dressed-up fucking prison? Second most likely, and preferred out of the two – even without a weapon he had a chance of wriggling past them.

The horse? Fuck off, but also a known quantity. Same for the deluded creepy freak that called himself an emperor-god and kept telling Michael he was going to replace Apollo. If he never saw either of them again it would be too fucking soon, but so far his luck hadn’t been that good.

It hadn’t been good at all. If it was, he wouldn’t have been stuck on these fucking boats for the past two years. Michael was very, very sick of water everywhere he looked. There was land around them at the moment, some bay or other, although he had no idea which one. He didn’t care, either, as long as he could finally get away, and there had been enough noise going on that something was happening, and he had another chance to slip away – if he could get onto one of those landing boats unnoticed.

Then the lightning had struck the boat he was on, blowing apart enough of it that the freaky sound-proofing that Michael hated so much cracked open and the noise of fighting was right there.

Lightning. Striking a boat.

Michael had been a demigod long enough to know that lightning didn’t just strike for no reason.

He shrunk back into the shadows as more of the freak’s goons – one of them a cyclops – ran towards the broken cabin and yanked open the door with enough force that it almost came off its hinges. The freak was not going to be happy about the destruction of one of his precious boats, and Michael almost wished he could see his reaction.

Almost.

He still wanted to get the fuck away more.

Then the freak’s goons dropped dead, and Michael saw opportunity. He hated to admit it, but with two years’ worth of failed escape attempts, it was pretty damning evidence that he wasn’t going to get away without some help. It was either going to save or damn him, but he needed to know if there were more anti-freaks on the ship – if there were, he was joining their fucking party no matter what they said.

Michael stayed low as he nudged the door open, pushing it without actually standing in the doorway, because he’d seen how fast those idiots had dropped and wasn’t going to get himself killed by being like them.

Gold weapons flashed out at the empty space, lower than he’d anticipated – a shorter warrior than he’d accounted for – and proved his paranoia right.

“I’m not with those bastards,” he said, keeping his voice low – because sound travelled on the water and the freak might be several boats over but that didn’t make him necessarily out of earshot – but clear. He was well aware his outfit didn’t help matters, with the stupid white-and-blue sailor crap the freak loved so much, but that wasn’t his fucking choice, either. Still, he poked his head cautiously around the doorframe, keeping a hand raised where whoever was in there could see it.

It was a bad fucking idea, he knew it was, but two years was enough to make him more than a little bit fucking desperate, okay?

There were four of them in there – closest to the door, with those dangerous-looking twin golden blades, was a black haired girl about his height, and probably a similar age to Kayla (if Kayla hadn’t fallen, and no, Michael wasn’t going to think about seeing his youngest sister fall from the fucking bridge right now). The other teenagers were all a couple of years younger than him, maybe Will’s age or a bit older, but they had the clear air of demigods, and Michael hadn’t seen any of those in two years.

Demigods on a quest, even if there was too many of them, technically. If the kid was part of it.

She certainly gripped her weapons like she knew how to use them.

“Michael?”

It was his name, soft and broken and unexpected, and it came from the curly haired brown boy clutching an arrow in his hands.

“You know this guy?” the older girl asked, and the other boy – this one blond – peered at him from behind his glasses in a way that looked distinctly Athena-kid-like, except for the bright blue eyes.

“I- yes,” Curly said, sounding like he’d seen a fucking ghost, and Michael scowled at him. He didn’t recognise him at all – he hadn’t been a camper two years ago, none of them had been, Michael didn’t recognise any of them. Not the unruly brown curls, not the nasty case of acne, not his voice or even the bow that he used.

Then he made eye contact.

He’d heard the saying ‘eyes are the window to the soul’ many times, but he’d always dismissed it at romanticised bullshit. Eyes were eyes and they came in many colours and shapes and emotions, but the idea of them being more had never settled well with him.

Curly’s eyes were an unfamiliar blue, but there was something in them that was familiar, that made Michael unwillingly think of camp, of his siblings, of dreams and sun-warmth. Of all the things he’d missed for the past two years, wrapped up into one condensed thing.

“Dad?” he asked, and it was stupid, Apollo wouldn’t be fucking here, except-

Except it was, wasn’t it?

Fuck.

“Michael!” The arrow dropped to the ground, and Curly – Apollo, really, what the actual fuck, what had taken him so fucking long and Michael wasn’t stupid, Apollo hadn’t expected to see him – grabbed him in a desperate embrace.

“How many do you have?” the younger girl asked, but she wasn’t threatening Michael with her swords so he was going to take that. She went unanswered as Apollo started crying into Michael’s shoulder, blubbing things about you’re alive that Michael immediately decided to shut up in a box and not acknowledge until after he was off the fucking floating villa once and for all.

With his dad there, it seemed a lot more possible, even if there was something really weird about him.

“What the fuck is going on?” Michael demanded, intentionally cutting off Apollo’s words.

“That’s what I want to know,” the older girl said, and Michael could see the way her eyes were inspecting his clothes with suspicion. “So tell me why you’re here.”

Her voice gained a sort of double-layer, subtle enough that Michael knew most people couldn’t hear it, let alone ignore it, but he wasn’t most people. Drew had bitched about it often enough.

“You’re an Aphrodite kid,” he deducted, pointedly not answering the Charmspeak-layered question. That would tell her what she needed to know, would stop her wasting her power-

Except she was looking at him with even more open suspicion now, and so was the so far silent blond boy behind her. Seriously?

“Answer my question,” she said, and the Charmspeak was less subtle and more like a hammer against his ears.

Idiot. How had Drew or Silena let her out on a quest like that?

He shut down the unwelcome thought that maybe they hadn’t been there to teach her.

“When you stop trying to fucking Charmspeak me,” he growled. “Apollo, why the fuck are you like this?” He gestured as best he could whilst trapped by his dad’s arms at the whole not-pretty teenager thing. He’d never seen Apollo look so not-perfect in his life.

“He’s mortal,” the younger girl – and really, Michael could do with some fucking names, he was going to call her Sword Girl until he got a better one – shrugged, although there was nothing carefree about the action.

That… that was another can of fucking worms that Michael did not want to deal with right then. His immortal god of a father suddenly mortal. Great.

Wait. Fuck. Was this what the freak meant when he said he was going to replace Apollo? Fuck, no, Michael was not letting that happen.

“You need to get the fuck off this boat,” he snapped. “Now. Why the fuck are you even here, anyway?”

“To steal Caligula’s shoes,” Sword Girl said bluntly. She was rapidly becoming Michael’s favourite for actually answering his questions with recognisable answers. Even if they were stupid ones.

“Why?” he despaired. “What is worth risking your whole damn fucking existence for a pair of fucking shoes? Or a boat of them?”

“How do you know about that?” Charmspeak Girl demanded (he would have called her Charmspeak Bitch, except Drew was a difficult one to topple from her bitch queen throne), her voice still laced with the fucking useless power.

He fixed her with a glare. “Stop with the fucking Charmspeak. It doesn’t fucking work on me, and even if it did it’s not a fucking interrogation power.”

“What do you mean?” formerly Silent-Blond asked, finally inserting himself into the conversation. Charmspeak Girl looked just as confused, if also frustrated, and Michael realised she really didn’t have a fucking clue.

She was working with his dad, and Michael wasn’t one for dead demigods, either. Fuck, he was not qualified to teach Aphrodite kids about their own powers, dammit. Still, he had to say something.

“Charmspeak is based on attraction,” he told her, elbowing his dad in the process because forget Drew and Silena, why hadn’t Apollo thought to explain this shit to her? “You persuade people that are fucking attracted to you that they want to do whatever the fuck you want. Works for direct orders. Doesn’t work for getting the truth out of people when they’re busy saying whatever the fuck they think you want to hear. Stop relying on the fucking thing, it’s unreliable at best.”

Charmspeak Girl looked like he’d just told her the sky was fucking green. Duty done, Michael ignored her and turned back to his dad.

“You need to get the fuck off this villa,” he repeated. “Which of these idiots is your master?” because Michael had been a camper for seven fucking years, he knew the stories. Every damn time his dad got turned mortal, he got given a demigod master. Silent-Blond and Charmspeak Girl stared at him like he’d said something unreasonable, while Sword Girl puffed her chest out.

“Me, duh.”

Huh. Well, at least it wasn’t Charmspeak Girl.

“Get him the fuck away from this villa,” he told her. “This isn’t fucking worth-”

“There’s a prophecy,” Apollo said, finally talking again. “We need those shoes, to beat him.”

Well, fuck.

Michael would love to see the freak defeated. Right now, more than most other fucking things, but he wasn’t letting Apollo get destroyed in the process, which was what was going to happen if his idiot of a currently-mortal dad kept trying to scout across the boats until he stumbled across the right one, and then the right pair of shoes.

No fucking way.

Fuck.

“What fucking shoes?” he demanded, finally pushing Apollo off of him. Mortal or not, Apollo was still the god of prophecy. If he was saying shit like that, then Michael couldn’t just tell him to fuck off and ignore it.

“Caligula’s namesake,” Silent Blond finally spoke, still assessing him with those too-sharp, too-bright blue eyes. Michael still couldn’t shake the feeling that he wasn’t quite an Athena kid, but didn’t have a clue what other options were on the table. “His childhood shoes.”

Michael sighed and nodded. “Get the fuck off of this thing,” he told them. “You don’t stand a fucking chance.”

They bristled, all four of them, and Michael got it, at least from the three demigods. Of fucking course they didn’t trust him. Apollo’s reaction hurt a little more, but Michael forced himself to ignore it. The arrow at his foot caught his attention and he bent down, picking it up and shoving the shaft against his dad’s chest, not entirely certain why except it was an arrow and Michael had always been an archer.

Apollo’s eyes got so wide it would have been funny if Michael wasn’t currently trying to save his dad’s fucking existence.

“Go,” he snarled. “If you want to be fucking helpful, get one of those fucking landing boats over to ship forty three.”

“And what are you going to do?” She’d finally dropped the Charmspeak, but her voice was still sharp without it.

Michael scoffed. “I’m going to go get your fucking shoes. Now fuck off.”

He didn’t wait for them to respond, ducking back out of the ruined cabin and slipping back into the shadows.

Time to put the last two years of playing hide and seek with the freak’s fucking goons to good use.

----

Okay I don't usually put A/Ns at the end of fics on tumblr, but at this point I want to clarify the Charmspeak thing, because Charmspeak is a power that can very easily go squick so I've spent some time trying to make it not so awful - specifically the implication that every middle-aged adult that Piper charmspeaks is Attracted to a sixteen year old girl. So, the premise I've worked on is that Charmspeak works on by drawing on either attraction (as in somebody already actively attracted either romantically or physically to the Charmspeaker), or for more powerful Charmspeakers like Piper, the potential for attraction (e.g. if a man is straight or bi/attracted to women, then even though he's an upstanding individual who would never dream of being attracted to a teenage girl, because the only thing that skews her out of his demographic is her age, the Charmspeak is still enough to bring them under control despite the lack of active attraction). This also extends to the additional worldbuilding whereby people with no potential for attraction - don't swing that way, or in the case of Michael in all my fics, are both very much aroace and also have no inclination to seek that sort of company anyway - can't be Charmspoken, even by someone as powerful as Piper.

#shouting from the rooftoops: michael & meg interactionnnn #fic recs #toa #rrverse

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