Playing: [Dying to Love- Bad Omens] 1:12━━●━━━2:50 ♪ ♬ “Well, I've been dying to love, dying to love, dying to love" ───────────────────────────────────────── Jason didn’t even realize how long he’d been driving until the sky turned the color of bruised silver. The world blurred past the windows — empty highways, flickering streetlights, strangers in other cars whose faces washed together like pale ghosts.
People who stared but didn’t see him. Didn’t know him. Didn’t know what he’d survived. What still hunted him in the quiet.
It didn’t matter where he went — New Rome, Camp Half-Blood, the cities in between — every road felt the same. He wasn’t running from monsters anymore. He was running from memories he couldn’t shut off.
Tartarus still lived behind his eyelids if he blinked too long. The wars still echoed in his bones. Every choice he’d made — every life he saved, every one he couldn’t — clung to him like shadows.
And under it all, like a pulse he couldn’t silence, was the weight of something else. Something softer. Something dangerous in an entirely different way.
You.
He didn’t know when you crossed that invisible line — when your laugh began to drown out the noise in his head, when your smile made the world tilt just enough for him to breathe again. He didn’t know why being near you made everything sharper… and everything harder.
He only knew it terrified him.
Because heroes didn’t get to want things for themselves. Not after everything he’d done. Not after everything he’d seen.
Jason pulled into Camp just as the moon slipped behind a cloud, leaving the paths washed in muted shadows. The engine hummed into silence. For a moment, he simply sat there, gripping the steering wheel like it was the only thing tethering him to the world.
He wasn’t ready to see anyone. He wasn’t ready for you.
But fate never cared what he was ready for.
You were there — standing on the porch of the Big House, arms wrapped loosely around yourself against the cold. Like you’d been waiting. Or like the universe had dropped you straight in his path.
Your head lifted when you heard footsteps. Your eyes found him in the dark.
And everything inside him — all the careful distance, all the walls he’d built — nearly buckled.
He stopped a few feet away, breath unsteady, shoulders tight as if bracing for impact.
“Didn’t expect anyone to be awake,” he said quietly. His voice was rough, scraped raw by things he’d never say aloud.
You stepped closer, concern shadows your expression.
“Jason… where have you been?”
His jaw worked, but no answer came. How could he tell you the truth? That he’d been driving because stopping meant feeling. That he was tired of pretending the war was over inside him. That every road led back to you, whether he wanted it to or not.
He exhaled — a long, exhausted breath.
“I don’t know,” he admitted. “Everywhere. Nowhere.” A beat. “I just… needed to move.”
The night held its breath.
Jason’s eyes — storm-blue, haunted, searching — finally lifted to yours. And for a moment, just one suspended heartbeat, he didn’t look like a praetor or a hero or a legend forged in lightning.
He looked like a man on the edge of something he couldn’t name.
Something he was dying to reach for. Something he was terrified to touch.
He swallowed, the words barely audible.
“Some days it feels like the whole world keeps spinning without me. Like I’m… stuck somewhere between the past and whatever comes next.” A pause. “Some days, one second of peace feels like it would be enough.”
His gaze flickered to your lips for half a breath before he forced himself to look away — a silent war fought in an instant.
“I don’t know if I’m meant to move forward,” he whispered, “or if all I’m good for is surviving the things that break me.”
His hands clenched at his sides — not reaching for you, even though everything in him wanted to.
He stood there in the quiet, haunted, hesitant, half-hopeful, waiting for whatever you’d say, whatever you’d do, because he couldn’t take the next step without you.
The night hung open, breathless, waiting.