Chapter Text
leo’s going to kill himself.
“i’m going to kill myself.”
calypso laughs. “i’m sure it’s not that bad.”
“if anything,” leo says, jabbing a finger in calypso’s face, “you’re the one person in the world who should get just how bad it really is.”
they’re laying side-by-side in the sand, soaking up the sun shining over the lake. calypso’s hair brushes leo’s arm, and he thinks back to a time when he was convinced that minimal point of contact would make him burst into flames. now, calypso grabs that arm and repositions it under her head and all leo feels is deep, slow fondness, honey-like in his chest.
“to be fair,” she reasons, “everything i felt was fake, and now i don’t feel that way at all. so really-” she pulls a voice, jabbing her own finger in leo’s face, “-i’m the last person to get it. c’mon leo, you’re supposed to be the logician between us.”
“whatever. i’m going to kill you. ”
“sure, little hero. i’d like to see you try.”
“haven’t you heard?” leo turns to her and cocks a brow. “i’ve gone rogue now. i’m dangerous. even hades is scared of me.”
calypso snorts. “hades is a child.”
“ew, old lady. what were you doing with me, then?”
calypso turns red. “don’t bring that up, it’s strange to think about. let’s go back to how you’re busy falling in true love, little hero.”
“i don’t know where you picked it up from but can you not call me that? tia callida called me that. it’s super weird to hear from your ex-girlfriend.” it’s a stupid distraction and it doesn’t work. leo shouldn’t be surprised.
“alright, so - jason grace.”
leo groans, yanks his arm out from under calypso (she yelps in protest, but leo thinks she deserves it) and sits up, pulling his knees to his chest and burying his head between them. “i don’t want to talk about jason grace.”
“oh, leo,” calypso’s voice is soft, and it makes leo feel gooey. he doesn’t like feeling gooey. gooey is gross.
“cal,” he stretches her name out, only to annoy her. “can we not? i have nothing to say. it’s super embarrassing and i want to kill myself. like - wow. its so stupid. that’s it.”
“you know,” she huffs, sitting up to be level with leo. she pulls at his knees to expose his face, and promptly cringes at leo blowing her a raspberry. “you should talk about it. love isn’t stupid.”
“boo, calypso, daughter of altas, primordial titan. boo to you for being nosy about my sorry little teeange love life.”
“leo, seriously.” and leo is almost impressed at how persistent she is, how fast she’s learned to poke and poke at every one of leo’s walls of annoying-ness until he crumbles into something real.
he sighs. “i really don’t know what to say, cal. i really don’t. i mean - it’s just great. i fall in love with my best friend when he pulls out a sword and battles a fart spirit at 15, and then i don’t realise it because i’m too busy trying to aggressively convince everyone i like women while we’re on a flying boat that i named after him and trying not to die, and then i do die for him, and then he dies because of me-” he barrels through calypso beginning to protest that one, “-and for his ex-girlfriend who’s my other best friend, by the way, and then i mourn him so horribly that it shocks me into figuring out i’m in love with him. great romance. everybody squealed. soy shakespeare, encantado de conocerte.”
calypso’s silent for a moment, before she starts, “i’m not even going to try with the part where you seriously believe you were the cause of his death. i’m not sure when you’ll change your mind about that, but knowing you, nobody can talk you into letting go of the precious little guilt blanket you love to bury yourself in-”
“okay, most senior of all citizens, i accept the gift of your infinite wisdom, thanks-”
“-but what i am going to do is remind you that not only do you and jason make one great love story, you make several.”
leo stares at her. “what the fuck does that mean.”
“i’ve picked up reading,” calypso supplies.
“that’s great! super impressive for your age. hope you make it to second grade soon. what does the love story thing mean?”
“you’re the stupidest genius i’ve ever met,” calypso says, rolling her eyes. “you realise you’re orpheus and he’s eurydice but it’s a happy ending? and speaking of shakespeare - he’s romeo and you’re juliet, and somehow the both of you managed to turn that into a happy ending, too. what’s left to do but kiss? it doesn’t get more romantic than the both of you.”
leo’s stumped for a full minute. eventually, he drops his mouth open and says, “well, that’s stupid.”
calypso rolls her eyes for the umpteenth time and leo thinks he’s probably seen her eyes flash solid whites more than he’s seen her have irises.
“no, i’m serious,” leo says. “that’s stupid logic. what would make jason and i a romance would be mutual love, which - sorry to break your bubble, cal - is literally not happening. in fact, it’s a bigger sign of how doomed i am that even after us being rips offs of all these great love stories, he’s still not in love with me.”
“have you asked him if he is?”
“calypso,” leo stresses, and he can feel himself suddenly slipping into a space so vulnerable he could never be in it in front of anyone but her. there’s no joke left to crack, no quirk or annoyance left to tease. just the truth. “you know what’s it like - more than anyone - what it’s like to have someone not feel the same for you as you feel for them. how humiliating that feels, no matter how fake or real you realise your feelings are later.”
calypso purses her lips and frowns, and if leo didn’t know he was right, he would think her expression was pity, not the empathy it really is. regardless, he’s glad at the silence, because she doesn’t seem to have a response and that means he shut her up. he won the argument. he’s right , and it should feel like shit that’s he’s right, but it’s a comfortable feeling, more like home than anything else he’s ever felt. the reality that someone doesn’t adore him with the sheer intensity he adores them, in whatever way that might be.
she hums eventually. “i’m sorry you feel that way, leo.” and that sentence stings, even as she loops her arm through his and rests her head on his shoulder. “because something i do know, more than anyone else, is what it’s like to want to be known. and he does - he knows you, really knows you.”
that about knocks the wind out of leo. he barely manages to say, “if he did, he’d know what i feel.”
calypso tsks and squeezes his arm. “tell me about that night. tell me what happened.”
“you already know what happened.”
“still.”
leo figures, at this moment that maybe that night will be difficult to talk about for the rest of his life, because he finds himself struggling to say it. it feels like an admission of some sort, or a maybe a confession - he feels like a little boy again, sitting in that dingy little church booth in houston, the one tia rosa shoved him in. ‘go, diablo,’ she had told him in spanish, ‘beg to be cleansed from your sin. beg for forgiveness. only god can wash your own mother’s blood from your hands.’
“he turned with me,” he whispers, eyes boring into the sand. it sounds so simple when he says it like that, and maybe it is. it really is, and it’s the sinner in leo that makes his heart squeeze and pound at saying those words.
calypso hums in encouragement.
leo feels his throat getting scratchy. it feels wrong to talk about the cave, feels wrong to dissect and ruminate and ponder over that one moment, much less talk to calypso about it, of all people. yet he knows - she’s the only person he can really talk to, about anything. sure, he said it was jason and piper, but really - she’s his best friend.
“i- i mean,” he stumbles, “he knew i would turn. i don’t know how. i don’t know what gave it away. maybe i stumbled, maybe- i don’t know. it was just dark, and damp, and i was dizzy, and crying. i kept calling for him and he didn’t - probably couldn’t - respond, so. i remember trying not to turn, doing everything in my power not to turn, but it’s like something was forcing me - i could hear a thousand voices telling me he left me again, i didn’t get a goodbye again, or that he was never there at all. that he wouldn’t follow me out. that he- fuck.” leo inhales. “he knew that it was my fault he was down there, and he didn’t want my help because- he blamed me. regardless, i didn’t turn completely, but if he had stayed where he was, i would’ve seen him out of the corner of my eye and i would’ve fucked everything up. but- i didn’t. thank the fucking gods, thanks to him, i didn’t.”
leo’s head hangs low and calypso runs her free hand through his hair. he quickly wipes at his eyes, and wipes some more when she finally says, “see. he knows you. right down to here,” before knocking at the centre of his chest with her knuckle.
“ugh, stop it,” leo croaks, pushing her hand away. “like i said - super embarrassing.”
“just because you’re embarrassed doesn’t mean it’s embarrassing, leo, get over yourself.”
“you’re so damn mean to me.”
calypso grins. “and yet - where the hell would you be without me?”
there’s rustling behind them, and then -
“oh gods, sorry.”
“no, no!” calypso stands up quickly, extricating her arm from leo’s. leo looks over his shoulder just in time to see brilliant blue eyes flicker between calypso’s arm and leo’s face.
“i can come back later. sorry.”
“don’t be stupid, superman,” leo grins, and it’s easy when jason smiles back hesitantly. his eyes still burn, his chest is still squeezing painfully, but it’s easy. “we were going to head back anyway, right, cal?”
“right,” she says, and the way she’s looking between him and jason, amused, is making him want to strangle her with her own hair. “i’m going to get a headstart, though.”
jason’s eyes widen. “no, seriously-”
“no, seriously-” calypso repeats. “you guys take your time.”
and then she’s gone, and jason and leo are left staring at each other.
“what did chiron say?” leo offers eventually, shifting to look at jason without craning his neck.
“um,” jason says, and then moves to sit on the ground, where calypso’s inprint has still left curved lines into the soft sand. leo tries to stare at the sun. he hopes apollo is staring back, and sticks his tongue out for good measure. it makes jason snort, before he continues, “nothing much. the same thing he said the first time i showed up here.”
“what was that?”
“uh, ‘you’re supposed to be dead’?”
“yikes.” leo pulls a face. “that’s not fun to hear. speaking from experience, this time.”
things are awkward between them, and leo hates it but he’s not surprised. it’s always awkward when someone finds out how much he loves them, what he’s willing to do for them. they don’t usually know how to respond in the face of that. even calypso, once free from the magic of her resort island prison, shuffled from foot to foot trying to let him down easy.
“sorry i interrupted you guys.” jason is pushing his hands through the sand, and when leo blinks out the sunspots and glances at him, his cheeks are red.
“dude, stop apologising. it’s not that big a deal. you really didn’t walk into anything crazy.” for some reason, that sentence makes jason flush further. leo debates sticking hand down his toolbelt and pulling out an spf-100000+ sunscreen, and then wonders what it would take to drag apollo back down to earth by the ear and demand that he spare jason from sunburn at the very least.
“i mean, you guys were holding hands. that’s pretty much third base for you.” the joke strikes just slightly too hard, but leo laughs out loud anyway. that jason’s joking with him means he’s not weirded out by leo enough to be leading up to a friendship-break-up, which is good news. at least, leo hopes that’s the case.
“i don’t want to get to third base with my several thousand year-old ex, man, i’m good.”
“wait, what?”
leo cocked an eyebrow. “is brain damage complimentary with the elysium death package or something? calypso’s older than-”
“no- that’s not- you guys broke up?” jason’s looking so sincerely confused, like a puppy, and it makes leo want to smack his head in the sand. he doesn’t want to see that face on that body on that friend.
“oh, right. i guess i never got around to telling you,” leo says, “because, you know.”
there’s a beat. “right. we’ve missed a lot of each other’s lives.” his voice is soft. leo wants to crawl to the rim of the lake and throw up into the blue-green, but the nereids would hate him for that, and it’s not worth the trouble of having to answer to percy jackson about the whole thing.
“tell me about it, man. by the way, edgarton? sounds like a gross old british town. what the fuck was that about?”
jason laughs, his eyes crinkling up and once close-cropped hair brushing against his forehead. “don’t even get me started.” he says, and he sounds so carefree, it makes leo’s heart soar.
“no, please do. please tell me what mortal school was like. i did, like, one semester, and it sucked. i bet you were the golden boy.”
“stop it, leo,” jason huffs, but he’s grinning, and when he launches into stories about his breif time at prisy mcprisserton school of prissies, leo settles into the sand, finally, remotely, just kind-of content.