title: Dancing Shadows

summary: Clarisse doesn't recognize the feeling that tingles through her body whenever Chris is near—and she hates it. / A brief ChrisClarisse moment, takes place between BoTL and TLO.

word count without a/n's: 1163

She can't sleep.

She stares at the red ceiling in the dark, she tosses and turns in her top bunk (it's a good thing that her siblings sleep like rocks), and she tries counting boars or whatever, but none of it works. It's just one of those nights when she can't sleep, and she needs to get out of this bed now, or she may accidentally destroy something out of her frustration. She's not very good at controlling her temper.

So she gets out of bed and jumps from her top bunk, landing nimbly on her feet with hardly a sound. And she opens the door to her cabin and leaves.

Technically, this is against the rules, but when has a demigod child of Ares ever really respected rules? She just has to make sure she doesn't get caught.

She wanders around, hoping the night air will clear up her insomnia, noticing how peaceful and different the camp looks in the middle of the night. She looks up and sees a clear half-moon and countless stars. She doesn't know or care for constellations, but to some people the sky might look nice. She passes the cabins one by one, marveling in how quiet they are for once. The only sounds are the chirpings of crickets and the distant giggling that comes from the forest and fields. Nymphs, she supposes.

She puts her hands in her pockets and ambles past the cabins—each and every one of them dark and quiet, something she's still getting used to. Suddenly, she sees a light in the distance. It's coming from the practice center—which is possibly her favorite building in all the camp, because that's where the weapons are. And a light is coming from it. She furrows her eyebrows in confusion and heads towards it, wondering why its lights are on.

She hears grunts and yells coming from the center as she gets closer. This makes her even more curious. She bangs the door open.

It's mostly dark, like the rest of the camp—racks of weapons and practice dummies in the shadows—but in the center, there flickers a slightly dim but definitely on florescent light. And underneath the light, attacking a dummy with a spear, is Chris Rodriguez.

Immediately her stomach squirms uncomfortably.

Chris seems to have heard the opening of the door, and he whips around and drops the spear. "Oh, it's only you, Clarisse. I thought you were Mr. D or something. Uh, hi?"

She grunts. "What are you doing here?"

"I may ask you the same thing," he says teasingly. When she doesn't back down but rather stares at him with one eyebrow raised, he surrenders and says, "Okay, I'll tell you. I haven't been able to sleep so well lately, so I've been coming here for the past week."

Rather begrudgingly, she's impressed. "You've been here slicing dummies and making racket, and no one's caught you?"

"I am a child of Hermes," he says smugly. "Okay, to be honest, Chiron caught me on my second night. But he let me off easy. Because, you know, my nightmares." He runs a hand through his brown hair rather nervously.

She softens immediately. (Why is it that Chris can always do this to her?) "Chris! You told me that you were getting better—"

"I am, most of the time. But at night, well, it's too much like—" He breaks off. "Anyway, it's calming to come here and stick stuff into dummies. Cool, right?"

"That's one way of putting it," she mutters.

"Your turn," Chris says cheerfully. "Why are you here?"

"I couldn't sleep. Went for a walk and noticed that this was the only place with its lights on. You really have to be more subtle, Rodriguez." She leaves out why she couldn't sleep—that she had been thinking of him.

He shrugs. "I have Chiron's approval. Although if Mr. D runs into me, he may not care and punish me anyway. He's been extra nasty to me ever since he cured my, erm, madness. It's like he has to prove to himself that he's not getting too nice or whatever." He laughs.

Clarisse pretends that she didn't hear the slight stumble over the word madness, and that her stomach didn't flip again at the sight of his laughter. She wishes that she wasn't just wearing an old Camp Half Blood t-shirt and oversized sweats. And her hair must be awful; she didn't pick up a bandana to cover it up with. But why is she fussing over her appearance? That's such an Aphrodite child thing to do. She's never cared about her appearance, and she's never cared about what anyone thinks either.

The truth is, she muses, she does care, when it comes to Chris at least, and she hates it. She hates that he can make her stomach flip. A child of Ares isn't supposed to give a rat's nest for such feelings.

But she's known Chris since she was ten, and she cares about him. Back then, they'd both been tiny little things that had just barely made it to camp. She'd been feeling upset and lost because Ares had taken his sweet time in claiming her even after she'd arrived at camp—a good two weeks. A good two weeks of sleeping in random cabins and wondering if she belonged. And even when she'd finally been sent over to the Ares cabins, her siblings hadn't exactly been the most… welcoming.

Chris had been there for her. He was another child whose parent had neglected him—Hermes had taken three weeks to claim Chris. His cabin had welcomed him in with a prank that was supposed to be in "good humor" but had ended up hurting him. So they'd bonded over not belonging and other angsty preteen feelings. Yay.

So even after she'd hit her growth spurt and won the begrudging respect of not only her cabin, but everyone at camp, she'd stuck with Chris. And Chris had stuck with her. Then he'd left and joined Kronos's side, and to be honest, she couldn't bring herself to be upset over him. No, she decided to continue caring, even during those times—

"Hello? Earth to Clarisse!" Chris was waving his hand in front of her face. "Maybe you should go to sleep, huh? You seemed pretty out of it there."

She reddens a bit and smacks his hand away, ignoring the tingles that come from the brief contact. "I'm fine, Chris." She can't let him think that she's weak.

"Well, in that case, I'm sure you'll agree to duel me?"

"Duel?" she snorts. "You meet defeat?"

"Oh, it's on, La Rue."

"Get on it, Rodriguez!"

They duel. She wonders if she'll ever be able to tell him how she feels.

Then she grins. It's okay. There will be time for talking about goopy teen feelings later. As for now, she duels him in the middle of the night.

This is brief and pointless. I may do a followup because what kind of ending is this, right? Blech. I pretty much forced this one out of me. I'm sorry you had to read this, and thanks.