In these months I've been away from posting Jeyna fics, I've finished high school, taken my diploma, and started working. So, I guess I'm officially an adult now (even though - of course - I haven't finished studying, as I still have to go to university). And oh gosh, it's so weird! I hope I'll still have time to spread Jeyna because the world lacks of it. So yeah, this is the third chapter of Olympus. I hope you like it. It's a bit different from the others, and we have few Jason scenes, but I hope I will redeem myself thanks to the next chapter I've written for this fic. There's fluff (kinda). Enjoy!

Chapter III

Swann's Way

Reyna took another bite from her slice of tart, smelling the sweet scent of hot chocolate, which was, according to Malcolm, totally out of season. "We're in July," he always said, "don't you think all these hot drinks can hurt you?"

"So?" In front of her, sitting across the kitchen peninsula of her apartment on the outskirts of San Francisco, Nico di Angelo raised an eyebrow. They hadn't spoken in a while, and the girl missed their long chats about Edgar Allan Poe and Guy de Maupassant. And that's why, after he had finished to study for another exam of his sophomore year at San Francisco University, Reyna had invited him to have coffee together.

She shrugged her shoulders as she enjoyed the cherries jam Hazel had made for her a few weeks earlier. "So what?" she asked, grabbing a napkin to wipe out the crumbs that had got stuck on her lips.

"How's it going with that friend of yours?" The boy looked at her curiously from behind his cup of espresso, which he himself had taught Reyna to prepare with the typical coffee machine that she had often seen in films set in Italy. Nico shrugged his shoulders, disappearing for a moment in his black jersey.

Reyna immediately felt like her face was going to burn. A pair of blue eyes, neat blonde locks and a curious scar on the lips came to her mind like a flash, so fast it made her head spin. She shook her head, trying to take that thought out of her mind, and she cleared her voice, looking up at his friend. "Malcolm is fine. I think he just finished his three months as an intern in the bes–"

"I meant... your other friend. That blonde who occasionally comes to the bookstore to talk a little." Nico emphasized the last three words by mimicking quotation marks with his fingers. He drank some more of his coffee as, with the most careless gesture Reyna had ever seen, he shrugged his shoulders, smiling slyly. "I think his name is Jason, right? I saw you two together this morning."

The girl felt she was blushing again and, reluctantly, she was forced to hide her face behind her cup of hot chocolate, pretending to sip it with gusto and interest. "I... Yes, er..." She paused for a moment to catch her breath and control her thoughts. "We only talked a little bit. He had to go to work at eleven o'clock, so he couldn't stay much."

She nodded to herself, trying to convince herself that there was nothing strange or embarrassing. In the end, they had only talked.

"He just told me about his day yesterday. He told me about his work and asked me if I liked The Woman in White." The girl shrugged her shoulders, trying to remember in detail what had happened with the boy, to tell Nico.

"Marian Halcombe's character is one of my favorites in all English literature," he told her.

"Mine is Jane Eyre, actually," she replied, thinking back to how much she liked the novel she read many years ago. She still perfectly remembered the great feeling of unconditional esteem she had felt towards that woman who had been so strong at a time when strong women were poorly seen by society. "When I was a teenager, she was the role model I liked to follow."

"Actually," he whispered, looking down on the stack of books on Reyna's desk, "I never read Jane Eyre."

The girl wiggled her nose, glancing at him. "Is there a particular reason? You don't like Charlotte Bronte, maybe?" She asked. For a moment, she was even afraid that he might say that he didn't like the kind of stories in which the author's feminism is felt beyond the thicket of centuries gone by. That he wasn't... feminist, in fact.

Reyna paused from her description of her morning, rethinking about how, for a moment, she had felt let down by her high expectations. She wasn't a girl who let herself be fooled by expectations – indeed, it usually took months for her to get an idea of the people she spoke to or had to spend her time with daily – but she had high hopes for Jason Grace.

She had seen him cautiously wandering through the dusty shelves of Olympus, talked to him about books and hobbies, even heard each other at the phone once or twice, and never that boy had given her the impression of being a guy to get away from.

Nico raised an eyebrow as he stealthily grabbed one of the almond biscuits Reyna had purchased that morning for him. The boy had tried to disprove it several times, but she continued to believe that those cookies were her friend's favorites. "And what did he say instead?" he asked, genuinely interested.

The girl chuckled to herself, raising her eyes to the sky. "He told me that he was afraid that it might be like Wuthering Heights."

"I didn't like it very much," he confessed, as he shrugged his shoulders, "I think I didn't quite understand what the author meant to say, actually." Jason tilted his head, studying the girl in front of him with such attention that she felt, for a few seconds, under pressure.

"I know," she replied, relieved, as she shook her head to try to abandon that feeling.

Reyna shook her head, remembering that, at that moment, she was afraid that she had smiled a little too long, and that Jason had noticed. But she didn't tell Nico. Who knows what strange ideas he would have made if she had told him even a small part of that.

"I preferred other novels, too, but I appreciate Emily Bronte's commitment to the literary affirmation of the Byronic hero."

"Yes, well," he shrugged, looking at her straight in the eye. "I've read various essays on the hidden meaning of that book. One in particular had struck me. It explained how the reader should interpret the novel as a ghost story, and not something that really happened, like the de–"

"The description of what might happen if all the injustices that happened to the protagonists really happened in real life." Reyna couldn't help but interrupt him. "I love that interpretation," she explained then, noticing his surprised look, "I think it was that review that made me read the book." In fact, she was certain.

She remembered the little girl who, to escape her family's myriad problems, accompanied Hylla to study in the library. She remembered the wonder she had felt the first time she had seen that immense multitude of volumes, and the joy of taking one in her hands. And she remembered all the afternoons she spent reading essays and lectures on the classics of literature; falling in love with them without ever having read them.

Talking to Jason was refreshing. In the end, those were the best memories of her childhood, and bringing them back to mind in such a genuine way really pleased her.

"You talked of literature, then?" Nico raised an eyebrow again, making her realize that what she wanted to know was anything but that.

The girl instinctively turned her gaze towards her copy of The Woman in white resting on the kitchen table, opened on page three hundred and twenty-seven, in the middle of a decisive dialogue between Miss Halcombe and Count Fosco. "Not really," she muttered, looking at her friend in the face. "We also talked about work, and how this period is going in general."

"Uh-uh?" Nico commented, with a scornful hint in his voice, earning a bad look from his friend, "And you just talked about that?" he added soon after, unhurriedly. He smiled, biting into his third almond biscuit. The girl mentally promised to buy another pack, the next time Nico came to visit her.

Reyna didn't answer. She didn't want to reveal too many futily details, especially since Nico seemed to want to extract some information from her, as if it were a war mission. She knew he was doing it on good terms, but, at least in her opinion, there was nothing strange, embarrassing, nor even mischievous in what she and Jason had said to each other that morning. There was no reason to worry.

She appreciated the boy's concern, seriously. But there was no reason for him to fear that Jason might hurt her, for the moment. After all, they barely knew each other, they had spoken most of the time only about the bookstore, and, above all, Reyna was not an easy girl to approach. Those who knew her knew it very well. Even Malcolm, her best friend, had to work a long way before he could get a place in the life of that mysterious student at the school of journalism.

Yes, the girl said to herself, it was a very normal conversation I could have had with any costumer. She tried to remember what happened only a few hours before, sifting through facts and words, and looking for the nitpick, trying to understand what was so abnormal that Nico found in that conversation.

They just talked. Just talk. Well, maybe the fact that Jason had never taken his eyes off her and that, just before he left, he brought her an envelope from the tastiest pastry she knew, whispering, "Ah, I brought you breakfast. Brioche with pistachio and a black tea. I hope you don't mind," but Reyna decided to ignore it and simply continue with her story.

She cleared her voice as, looking as confident as she could, she sipped her hot chocolate. "He told me about his work as a political informant for one of the minor local newspapers. Apparently, the quality of such a job also depends very much on the quality of colleagues."

"Luckily, we're almost all friends: me, Leo, Piper, and even Frank, a little. We work very well together and, for now, I'm happy this way," he told her, shrugging his shoulders and curving his lips into a crooked smile.

Nico made no comment – thankfully, he seemed to have given up – but he asked, in a tone that, at least in appearance, seemed genuinely interested, "Why for now? Would he like to change jobs?" He looked at her with one eye, as if he were studying her.

The girl suddenly felt observed, as if her friend wanted to understand something that she had omitted from her narration. He knows, the back of her head suggested, an unwanted information that the girl hurried to drive away, telling the conversation with as much nonchalance as she could show.

Reyna nodded. "He told me that, after studying political science for five years, it would be pointless to give up a diplomatic career altogether, even if, to be honest, it is not what he has always aspired to."

"Really?" the boy asked, tilting his head to one side, while his too long locks of black hair rested all along the perimeter of his face.

"It was his father who recommended that faculty to him once he finished high school, even though Jason wanted to study other things."

"I wanted to change society, yes, but without necessarily being a politician. I'd like to do what you do: sell books and spread culture." And then he asked her about her, what she was doing and what she was going to do with her future.

Of course, the girl hadn't told Jason everything, as she always considered it risky to make certain confidences to people she barely knew. However, she had not lied to him once, and she had been sincere both in terms of her origins and studies, as well as regarding her hopes and future projects, what she intended to do with the bookstore and her aspirations – writing for San Francisco Chronicles and traveling to the places she had discovered in her favorite books.

Reyna sighed, bringing back to mind all the times that Jason Grace had kept her company in the days that, without his presence, would surely have been more boring, and smiled to herself. In the end, she admitted to herself, that boy wasn't that bad. Sure, she thought with a chuckle, he hadn't read Jane Eyre, but you can't always look for perfection in people, can you? And, omitting Nico's inappropriate comments (to which she had already decided not to give importance), the girl sincerely believed that, with some time, they could become good friends.

She placed his hand on the smooth, cold surface of her kitchen peninsula as she watched her friend's microscopic movements. "I think…" she murmured, looking for words suitable for what she was going to say. "I think I'm comfortable with him, you know..." In a second, she almost regretted saying it out loud: it sounded so secret and intimate. For a moment, she was afraid that Nico might joke about it, making some bad jokes. But that wasn't the case.

"I'm happy for you," the boy simply replied, shrugging his shoulders. Reyna thought she saw him hint at a smile, like a victory song, but that mink disappeared so quickly that she had to think again, thinking it was just her imagination. "Seriously, Reyna."

She smiled, feeling her own body fill with tenderness. Nico was, to her, like a little brother, and his approval – for whatever she did – was really important. Although that thing was as simple as, in fact, meeting a nice, interesting guy, that is, a guy who attended Olympus regularly. "Thank you, Nico," she muttered, picking up her cup of hot chocolate, which had cooled too much by now. "And I'm sure Jason would tell you this too," she joked, hiding behind a new piece of tart and yet another sip of chocolate.