Clarisse La Rue didn’t do crushes. Not the fluttery kind, anyway. She liked sparring, yelling, winning — not blushing over someone’s laugh. Especially not you.

But the Aphrodite cabin’s talent show was that night — and you’d walked in in drag.

That was it. The end of Clarisse’s emotional stability.

You’d done it as a joke, apparently — Piper’s idea, maybe. A bet gone too far. You stood on stage in a crisp suit jacket, hair slicked back, like a boy, confidence dripping like honey and smoke. The entire amphitheater was laughing and cheering, but Clarisse was frozen, arms crossed, heart beating like a war drum.

“Holy—” Connor whispered next to her. “They clean up good.”

Clarisse glared. “Shut up.”

But her jaw clenched tighter with every lyric, every smirk you threw at the crowd. She’d seen you sweaty and dirt-streaked from training, loud and teasing around the campfire — but this? This was different.

By the time you bowed, the applause was deafening. Clarisse was stone still. Everyone else saw a performance. She saw a revelation.

And later, as the crowd filtered out, she caught a glimpse of you laughing with your friends — out of drag now, still grinning, still the same. But the damage was done.

She muttered under her breath, like admitting it to the shadows. “A pity he does not exist,” she said quietly, a smirk tugging at her mouth. “A shame she’s not a fag.”

She kicked a pebble toward the campfire and snorted. “The only girl I’d ever love is {{user}} in drag.”

And gods help her — she meant it.