Heart Shaped Scars ｡ﾟ･ׂׂૢ࿐
𝖈𝒉𝒂𝒑𝒕𝒆𝒓 𝒊𝒊𝒊 ─── ❝ an
ultimate charmspeak fail ❞

    𝕬LYA DISTINCTLY REMEMBERED telling Luke no when he asked if he could drive. The reason for that "no" would be because the boy had never even sat behind a steering wheel in his life, much less know how to operate one.

After they had finished their skeptical meal the night before, the two demigods had piled back into the camp van. Alya drove and drove for countless hours straight with only Luke's conversation to keep her company. Unfortunately for her, majority of those hours the boy spent asleep.

When he woke up, he had found Alya with lazy lids forcing her eyes to focus on the dark road ahead, being startled to concentration from time to time by the occasional blinding street light.

Because of this, Luke had insisted she pull over and rest for the night. It wasn't like they had a time limit or anything, there was no need in risking injury or sleep deprivation. That was how he had convinced her, anyways.

She remembered him insisting that she lay down in the backseat even though she had been perfectly content with reclining herself in the front seat ( it wasn't a proper way to sleep, he had insisted ). They each took a blanket that'd been stuffed into the floorboard in the back row, snuggling up underneath them and using their own arms as makeshift pillows.

Alya distinctly remembered both of them going to sleep for the night; Luke curled up in the passenger seat, her stretched out in the back.

Even though she had been halfway asleep already, she remembered that.

So now, why was she waking up to the van moving?

The girl woke with a start, fully rested and energized to continue their long journey to Florida, only to realize that the journey had apparently continued without her.

It took her a moment to realize that the van was, in fact, moving. When the thought dawned on her, immediate panic spread throughout her as she hesitantly looked to the driver's seat, already knowing and dreading who it was she would see.

Yep, just as she had feared.

Sitting there with his hands unusually steady on the wheel, was Luke in all his morning glory, the early sun rays illuminating his face with a golden glow. If it had been a different circumstance, Alya would've melted away and admired how she was pretty sure not even Apollo could make the sun look so beautiful, but there was definitely something more important to worry about.

Like what the actual hell was this boy doing driving, for example.

"Luke?" She asked him through gritted teeth, tossing the blanket across her lap off and discarding it onto one of the back seats. She was very tempted to climb over the center console into the passenger seat right then and there, but decided that would probably just distract her illegal driver even more.

"Oh, hey! Morning, heart eyes." The boy grinned, looking at her through the rear view mirror.

Alya flashed him a quick sarcastic smile while saying, "Yeah, mhm, morning. Now tell me, what the actual hades are you doing?"

"Um, I'm driving. Obviously." He told her in a very poor and very fake southern accent. Why? She did't know, and she didn't want to know.

"Well I can see that, I mean why are you driving?! You've never driven a car in your life and you don't even have a license!" She exclaimed.

"Relax, cupcake, I'm doing just fine." He assured her, glancing back at her as he was far too laid back about the whole situation. Just as he said that, he jerked the wheel to the left slightly, realizing that he was veering too far to the right when he took his eyes off the road to look at Alya.

"Oh dear gods, we're gonna die." The daughter of Aphrodite winced, squeezing onto the back of the passenger's seat.

"We're not gonna die!" He exclaimed. As the words left his mouth, the vehicle sped up in a quick jerk that was clearly accidental, but Alya was pretty sure her heart was about to shut down.

"LUCAS CASTELLAN!"

"THAT'S NOT EVEN MY NAME!"

Sirens.

The pair of demigods immediately shut up, though the sound of the tires whirring was enough noise in itself. Sirens wailed through the air and Alya whipped around in the backseat until she was completely backwards, gazing out the back window.

A flood of blue and red invaded her vision as a police car peeled out and onto the road, speeding down the road towards their van.

"Shit," Alya whispered under her breathe. She was prepared to walk Luke through this easily— just slow down and quickly swap places with her. She'd show her license, explain how she didn't mean to speed, and maybe use a little bit of charm-speak if necessary. Quick and simple. They'd be out of this fork in the road in no time.

But of course, Luke seemed to have a different idea.

As if the strawberry company van was a getaway car, the boy saw the flashing lights and only sped up more. The son of Hermes wasn't thinking. Panic had flooded in and he'd turned to the instincts of a thief: run, run, run.

"Slow down! Slow down!" Alya screamed at him from the backseat.

The black and white blur that was the cop car came closer and closer, the sirens almost deafening.

"What?" Luke called back, straining to be heard over the noise.

Alya looked at the boy via the rear view mirror, finding someone she would never want to see behind a steering wheel ever. His brown eyes were intense and full of fear, flickering between the road and side mirrors so that he could check on the police behind them.

She realized he'd never been in this situation before. Hell, he probably hadn't been in a car for this long since he was what . . . thirteen?

"Luke, you have to pull over! Slow down!"

Luke's slowing down was actually slamming on the breaks and almost sending the van airborne, but that was unimportant for the moment. Alya braced herself by holding onto the handle on the ceiling and thankfully didn't go flying through the windshield, which wasn't that far fetched of an occurrence.

When the van came to a final halt, Luke first let out a loud sigh of relief that they were alive, and then without any more hesitation, slammed his forehead against the steering wheel.

"Oh dear gods," he groaned, the sound of the police officer pulling open her car door behind them echoing into the street.

Alya glanced at the mirror and could already see the uniform clad woman approaching, a huge frown on her face. It was far too late to try and swap spots now.

The slow clomps of the officer's shoes against the asphalt road was condescendingly reminiscent of what Chiron sounded like whenever he would arrive to scold the two counselors for their infamous child-like behavior when they were around one another. Only difference was that a lecture from Chiron had never held the potential of landing one of them in jail before.

Time for plan b, Alya thought, charmspeak.

Once the patronizing footsteps came to a stop beside the van, the officer delivered three sharp knocks to the window, which in turn made Luke flinch slightly, though he'd never admit that.

When the boy did nothing but sit there with his forehead still against the wheel, ready to accept his fate, the officer tapped again, clearly growing impatient.

"Luke," Alya hissed. "You've got to roll down the window, you idiot."

"Do I have to?"

"Yes, it's the law."

"Oh because we've been following that so strictly, now haven't we?"

"Roll it down!"

"Fine." He grumbled, jamming his thumb onto the button to his left, the creaking sound of the window rolling down following.

"Good, um— good morning, officer." The boy said with a polite voice, putting on his best clueless "whatever did I do?" face.

"Do you have any idea how fast you were just driving, young man?" The woman responded, glaring daggers down at him from underneath the bill of her officer's cap.

"Uh, no— no ma'am I do not. But if I had to guess I'd say . . . like, y'know, thirty." The boy gulped, scratching a nonexistent itch on his chin and avoiding eye contact.

"You were going seventy, son. On a forty-five road." Said the woman angrily.

"Well that's— that's um quite fast, officer." Luke mumbled out amidst the woman's sentence, apparently unable to keep his remarks to himself.

"You think? And don't think I didn't see your little drifting trick. Whatchu think this is, nascar?" The cop inquired rhetorically.

Having no idea what in the world nascar was, Luke opted for being silent to the question, for once in his life.

"I'm gonna need your license and registration, please, young man."

Nodding, Luke hummed, "Mhm, yes ma'am." He then turned around in his seat and leaned over the center console, popping open the glove box like something might've magically appeared in there.

"Show time." He muttered to Alya, who had squirmed down in the backseat so that she wouldn't have to deal with the officer both questioning her and trying to guilt trip Luke with the fact that he was recklessly driving with a passenger on board.

After taking a fake gaze into the glove box and then shuffling his hand around the empty console for good measure, Luke then leaned back into his seat and faced the officer once again.

"Yep. Just like I thought— nothin'." He said with a fake sigh.

Clearly done with this teenage boy and his annoying antics, the woman placed a hand on her hip and frowned. "I do not have time for this, son. If you don't have a license or registration then I'm afraid I'm gonna have to take you down to the station."

There it was, Alya's cue.

Popping her head above the center console, the daughter of Aphrodite flashed the police officer a charming smile, wiggling her fingers in a wave, "Hi!"

"What the hell—" the woman muttered, taken aback by the sudden appearance of another juvenile. "You have a passenger in this car?"

"Well, in case that was not obvious, yes ma'am I do." Luke commented with a sarcastic smile. Great, he's slipping back into the disrespectful normalcy, Alya thought with an eye roll.

"That's okay, isn't it?" Alya asked with a heavy bat of her eyelashes, her mesmerizing smile still pasted on. "He's not going to be in any trouble, right?"

The officer scoffed right in her face. "Wishful thinkin', girlie."

Luke's eyes snapped over to look at Alya, full of alarm and silently screaming, what?!

"Please step out of the vehicle, sir." The officer said, taking a step away from the driver's side door so that the teen could open it properly.

Distressed, the boy stared at his friend in the car, slowly unbuckling his seatbelt. "Ly, what do we do?" He asked though gritted teeth.

"Do what she says, do what she says! It'll be okay. I've got this." Alya assured him, shuffling back into her own seat and reaching towards the back door handle.

If Luke didn't trust this girl so much, he'd pretty much be accepting right about now that his life was totally and undeniably over. Luckily, there was nobody else he'd rather be stuck in such a situation with. He knew Alya, and he trusted her with his life, so he tentatively stepped out of the van.

Not as slowly, Alya clambered out from the back seat and circled around the front of the car, stopping in front of the officer to find the woman reaching for her hand cuffs.

"Wait, is that really necessary, officer? He's doing what you say, he's not gonna— like, run off!" The girl exclaimed.

"I'm kinda thinkin' about it." The boy muttered loudly.

Alya almost turned around and climbed back into the van then and there. Mother give me strength, she thought.

"He's just kidding officer, don't uh— don't worry." The girl said quickly, widening her eyes at the boy in a way that if he didn't know any better, ( he didn't ) would've said "I'm gonna kill you."

"Mhm." The woman tutted, "Hands, young man. I'll even be nice and let you put them in front for the ride over there."

Alya took a deep breathe and scrounged up every last bit of power she had, which she figured was a pretty good load. Gathering it together and forcing it all into her words she declared,

"You're not going to arrest him, officer."

The woman furrowed her brows at the teenage girl as her eyes glazed over for a moment. But just a moment.

If they'd thought that Officer Buzzkill was mad before, she was now absolutely enraged. The woman went red in the face and quickly snapped the cuffs down on Luke's wrists so harshly that the boy audibly gasped.

"I don't know what games you're trying to play here, little girl, but I can tell you right now that I do not like to be played. Now, do yourself a favor and shut that little trap of yours, get back into the van, and sit tight while I take pretty boy here to the station." She snapped.

Taken aback, Alya did as told and snapped her mouth closed. Her mind went into overdrive as she scrambled around her brain to try and figure out what to do.

Of course, her mind drew a damn blank.

She watched hopelessly as Luke was heedlessly shoved into the back of a cop car, the officer hopping in her drivers seat and peeling away, sirens a blazing.

"No, no, no." Alya mumbled to herself. She pounded against her temples with the heels of her hands, urging some kind of idea to expose itself. "C'mon, you stupid Aphrodite kid. Think, think."

Given, negative self-talk was definitely not the way to find a solution to her problem, but she didn't really care. If the other demigods could call her that, then why shouldn't she?

The girl jerked open the drivers side door to the van and scrabbled inside, plopping down on the leather seat with a heavy sigh. She heaved the door closed behind her and grasped the keys in her hand, starting the engine that she subconsciously found herself noticing that she never even heard Luke stop.

Alya found herself relieved when the air condition cut on, filling the noiseless air in the van, making it seem less lonely than it actually was.

Taking a deep breath, she fastened her seat belt, adjusted the rear view mirror, and then flipped the visor down. She flipped up the mirror's plastic covering with much more ferocity than she had anticipated, surprising even herself.

She looked at the mirror and found her own eyes staring back at her; dark, brown, glassy eyes. The girls hadn't even noticed she was crying, but it was apparent on her face that she had been, evident by the watery streak that stained her skin, trailing all the way down from underneath her eye down to her chin.

With one hand, she swatted the tear away from its beeline down to her neck, her other hand reaching towards the center console and pulling it open. Inside, she rummaged around until she found what she was looking for: a bright pink tube of mascara, true Aphrodite child fashion.

Facing back to look in the mirror, Alya wiped the water from her lower lash line, replacing it with the dark makeup to cover up her tears.

There you go, dear, all fixed. Pretty girls don't cry, now do they? her mother would've said.

Alya replaced the mascara to where she'd found it, flipped the visor up, and gripped the steering wheel in her hands so tightly that her knuckles paled.

It was time for a rescue mission.

Pressing easily on the accelerator, the van rolled to life, in a far-away pursuit of the police car that housed Luke as its prisoner.

This escape was going to take a little more than a pretty face.

______