Unadultared Jeyna, coming your way! Except this stuff still has the potential of being cannon (and also I'm punching the idea that Jason Grace is a bullying womanizer in the throat). So really, this is the best of both worlds.

Disclaimer: I don't own the characters portrayed below.

Flirting with Disaster

She looked up from the straw dummy she'd just ripped apart and looked at him. The light in her eyes didn't change, like Jason wasn't any other different from the straw and sack mess lying at her feet.

"Hi," he said. "My name is Jason." He told her.

"I know. They talk about you. I'm Reyna."

"Pleased to meet you," Jason said. "Welcome to Camp. Did you…"

"I already for the tour," she said. "Why are you here?"

Jason got caught off guard. He'd been told that she wasn't the warm and fuzzy type. Well, he'd known that from the second he'd seen her dark eyes, and the way she held her head up even if her braid was faltering and she was so dirty it looked as if she'd been on the run long before she got to the Wolf House.

Jason felt himself smile, though.

"Want to spare with me? I'm better at it than these guys," he said, his hand showing the straw dummies on the ground.

"I highly doubt it."

She left just like she said it; head high, with the quick and long steps of someone who knows where they want to be and want to be there now.

"No luck, man." Bobby said walking up to him.

"Shut up, Bobby."

"No luck what?" Dakota mumbled.

"No luck flirting with the new girl." Bobby said.

"Flirting with..? I was not!" Jason said.

"Sure," Bobby said.

"It'd be flirting with disaster," Dakota said. "Have you seen her?"

"Oh, he's seen her plenty." Bobby said.

"Flirting with disaster," Dakota sing-songed. Jason had a bad feeling this wasn't going to end there.

"Did you try talking to her about the Trojan sea monster?" Bobby asked.

Jason nodded. The monster had been haunting Jason's nightmares and recently the senate had assigned him to figure out how to kill it. It had been a disaster.

"She didn't want to talk," Jason said. "But I'm sure she knows something. I mean, if those rumours about pirates are true and she's been on open water recently she has got to have seen this thing…"

"Sure. Make up another story to go see her," Dakota said. "I get it you slick guy."

"I'm not making up another story to flirt with her," Jason said. "Besides, aren't you guys the ones who said that it's be flirting with disaster?"

"You like disasters, though."

"Storms count as natural disasters," Bobby said.

"Your Cupid genes are showing," Jason told him as they both laughed at his annoyed looks.

"One day disaster boy, one day." Bobby said.

"That's rich coming from you two," Jason said.

"You're right, forget about it. Let's just go catch dinner." Dakota said.

"And a movie."

"Cupid genes," Jason coughed.

But yeah, okay, he admitted it (just not out loud). If talking to the new girl meant flirting with disaster, then so be it.

He figured that for every hi, or smile, or step towards here, he was a step closer to losing an eye. He figured he had two eyes, and there was only one girl like Reyna ('thank Olympus', according to Bobby and Dakota).

Yeah, she was… Harsh. And extremely reserved until it was time to tell someone off. But Jason hadn't given up on her, as long as Reyna hadn't given up on telling him to shut up. As long as she talked to him, right? He might be losing his mind, but he was starting to think that she had a certain satirical and sarcastic sense of humour. She was making up stupider excuses to tell him to go away after drawing out the conversation peacefully, and eye contact had now become a reality.

Dakota and Bobby were being awfully moronic about this. Yeah, Jason was talking to a girl. But it wasn't like that'd never happened before. They were probably just teasing him for the fun of watching his face turn red and to see how long it'd take before he punched one of their teeth out (Jason wasn't giving himself much more time).

Anyways, they were talking strategy for the upcoming war games and brainstorming ideas for getting her centurion to pair up with the fifth cohort.

"Your reputation doesn't make that easy," Reyna said.

"Yeah," Jason said. "I know. It's a miracle you're even talking to me. I mean, someone from the second…"

"It's a miracle you're talking to me," she said. "Or a nuisance. Most people stay away. At any rate, I don't believe much in reputations," Reyna said.

"Neither do I," Jason said thinking over and over again of what Bobby and Dakota repeated like prayers. You're flirting with disaster.

Okay, so you weren't supposed to flirt with disaster. Especially if you were a demigod, because disaster had a tendency of finding you all by itself. Jason knew that.

But what did you do if disaster flirted right back?

Jason didn't know, so he decided to return the favour.

And so began one of the weirdest and coolest and most nerve-wrecking yet exciting nights of his life.

Reyna still had her transfer papers sticking out of her back pocket- signed by the two praetors and officialising the fact that she was no longer a member of the second cohort, but a centurion of the fifth. It was a hierarchical move-up and bump down all at once.

Jason picked them out and dangled them in front of her from behind.

"You mustn't touch what is not yours," she said giving him a stern look. But the thing about body language was that Jason rocked at it, and Reyna's eyebrows hadn't moved at all so he knew that she wasn't mad. "Except for some notable exceptions."

"Such as?" Jason asked.

"Shall I give you a list?" she asked. She snatched the papers right back and walked right past him. "Come along, we'll be late for muster."

"And my list?"

"Later, Grace."

"I'm going to be on your heels until I get it."

"Like I said, later," she said. She grinned coyly over her shoulder before running off again, leaving him to put her words together like a puzzle as always. (It was okay, he caught up every time).

They were forced onto the shields by the eager, blood-covered hands of their fellow Romans. Jason's mind was blown- he wasn't expecting to survive the day seeing as a battle with Krios was on his agenda, much less to finish it with honours.

He looked over his shoulder. Reyna didn't look shocked, but he could tell by her body language that she was surprised. Hands pushed on Jason's shoulders and he sat. He still nearly fell when the shields were raised over the legionnaires' shoulders, and Reyna nearly did too ten seconds later. Jason grabbed her arm to support her. Her fingers clasped his wrist. She looked at him and smiled- not coyly, just a plain old happy grin that barely anyone on earth had ever seen.

Neither of them let go.

"Don't touch," she said as soon as his hand went towards the bowl of jelly beans.

"Oh come on," Jason whined.

"You've exceeded your daily quota," she said sternly without even looking up from her reading.

"My daily quota?" Jason asked.

"Yes," Reyna said. "I've got to ration this stuff out until the next time someone can pick some up in Berkeley."

"That's bull," Jason said.

"That's life," Reyna said.

"You just don't want me to have any because I'm already so sweet," Jason said.

"By that logic I'd never let you clean bathrooms because you're already so full of crap," Reyna said.

Jason laughed and Reyna smiled. Then she elbowed him gently.

"I'm kidding, have a handful," she said. "Even if you are sweet."

They'd been flirting for ages. Jason had stopped thinking about it now, it was like his brain had compartamentalised witty banter, subtle compliments and jokes to his mouth. So on the third of the three days of mercatus, the three days of markets and fairs set after the Ludi Romani, when they were looking at a display of spirally, golden jewellery because why not, most of the legionnaires were at the fair and the families were in bed anyways, he didn't think about it twice.

"Beautiful," Reyna said looking at the hand-crafted jewellery.

"Sounds familiar," Jason said.

Reyna turned to look at him.

"What did you just say?"

"What?" Jason said.

"What did you just say?" Reyna said. She didn't sound pissed off but Jason was nearly more scared to admit to anything.

"I just said, umm, 'sounds familiar'," Jason said.

"In reference to what?" she asked.

Nobody was around, which nearly made Jason more nervous.

"Come on Reyna…"

"Come on what?"

"You've got to know what," Jason said. "Come on, it's been weeks, Reyna- unless we're going to say years…"

"Of what?" Reyna said. "Say it Jason. Just say it."

"It's not a big deal," Jason said. But it had been, he was just nervous. "It's beautiful like you."

Reyna looked at him with shock in her eyes.

"What?" Jason said. "I'm sorry if this was really direct, but we've been flirting forever."

Reyna didn't say no, she just walked away.

"Reyna!" he called. "Rey…"

"Don't you 'Rey' me."

"Don't you walk away from me!" Jason said. "I'm sorry if I offended you. I'm sorry if you didn't see everything else as flirting and I'm freaking you out because I'm an idiot. I didn't mean to, Rey. Oh gods…" he thought that she was out of hearing range and he ran a hand through his hair. "I should have known… they told me I was flirting with disaster…"

"Yes, Jason, you are!" Reyna said turning around. "Except I think you've got the wrong kind of disaster, because I'm not going to blow up on you and mutilate you in your sleep or something. I am a disaster. I am a messed up, unemotional person who has been broken so many times and I'm not sure if I fixed myself back every time. It wasn't so bad when it was discreet and subtle and small. I could handle all of that, but now… I am busy and snappy and rude and stoic and callous and mean and vindictive and the opposite of you. The world rubbed off on me, I don't want to rub off on you. So back off."

Jason was paralysed in place for a second. She hadn't stated a single new piece of information to him. Yes, he knew that Reyna was snappy. Of course she was stoic. He'd seen her be vindictive. He knew they weren't much alike outside of business hours with the legion. But none of those things had he ever seen in a bad light- or at least not recently.

"Okay," Jason said. "Alright, I'll back off. But because you told me to. Not because I believe a word that you said."

"Doesn't matter who you believe," Reyna said. Her eyes weren't mad though her voice was. They were fleeting and… and sad.

"Sure it does," Jason said. "And I think that you shouldn't believe in all that you said too. But fine. I'll back off..."

He felt fleeting and pretty damn sad too.