Chapter Text
Land on sight.
Land on sight.
Leo's hands shook as he slid down the mast, proclaiming like a preacher the sighting of their doom. The US was less than three hours away, the port of New York and New Jersey greeting them in the distance.
Everyone had been at a nerve's end for a while, sat in the mess hall in full gear, sharpening their swords and polishing their armour, shaky breaths and panic attacks filling the tense atmosphere of the Argo. Leo had weighed his possibilities, thought for weeks a way to fulfil the prophecy in a way that didn’t include his death.
To storm or fire the world must fall.
He had come back empty handed.
Did it mean he would have to die? That the earth would die at his hand? That mother earth would perish between the flames of his palms? He wasn't sure. He didn't know what to do.
He absentmindedly traced his fingers over the scarred burn on the nape of his neck, searching through the halls for the rest of the crew. He took a couple deep breaths, trying to not let his own panic overcome him, and went up the stairs back up to deck.
Nico sat on the edge, legs dangling off the ship as he… ate something. It seemed like the bag of totopos Leo had been saving for later (did he go through Leo's stuff?), compulsively running his thumb over a small coin-like thing, dressed head to toe in Leo's clothes (he definitely went through Leo's things. The fucker).
“Are those my pants?” Leo asked, and Nico turned to look at him with a shrug, eyes raking him over. Analyzing him.
“You're wearing my shoes.” Leo looked down to his feet, that were totally in Nico’s shoes. The shoes were battered, but after a thorough cleaning from Hazel (she had craaaazy strong arms from hand-washing, Leo was impressed to say the least) they had been wearable, comfortable even.
“Don't change the topic,” Leo said and sat down beside him, grabbing a handful of totopos and chewing obnoxiously. Nico just stared, not even a retort. “Are you ready for our beloved Greek Ragnarok? Sharpened your sword yet, dear child soldier?”
“No.” Nico replied, eating another chip. “How long until we reach the Americas?”
“The Americas?” Leo snorted, leaning on his hands and staring at the waves lapping beneath their feet. “When were you born, the forties?”
“1934, actually,” Nico said, taking out the coin again and rubbing his thumb over the depicted Jesus. The medallion. That was what Nico had been looking for.
Leo did have to give him a point for his ability to make such a stupid joke while holding the thing he had choked with. Leo was really starting to rub off on him, wasn't he?
A beat.
“Wait,” Leo's head snapped towards him at the lack of even a chuckle. “Like– actually?”
“...yes?” Nico looked at him like he was dumb– or maybe just incredulous at Leo's lack of information. As if him being like 500 years old was common knowledge! “Bianca and I fled Italy in 1945 to stay with father, just as the war ended.”
Leo blinked once. Twice.
“Did you seriously not know?” Nico asked, looking at him, now with a look clear as day that screamed are you dumb or are you dumb?
“I thought you were like– a sixties baby.” Leo said and stared down at the wooden boards. “Though now that I think about it coloured television was a thing in the sixties.”
“A sixties baby?”
“Yeah, you know– bowl cuts and mini paper dresses and the Beatles.” Leo sang a very off-tune couple verses of Here Comes The Sun. “You know?”
Leo turned to look at Nico again, and he was very badly trying to conceal the growing smile on his face by eating a handful of totopos all at once.
“I would look terrible with a bowl cut,” Nico ate another handful, settling the medallion on the space between them.
“I think you would look very handsome.” Leo faked a dramatic swoon, fanning himself with heavy sighs. “I'm getting the hots just thinking about it.“
Nico actually laughed at this, a snort leaving his throat and amusement coloring his features in a way Leo hadn’t seen in his face, even before the girl on deck was a thing or before Nico got in the jar.
Leo took it in; from the creases on his eyes to the chipped tooth, from the glint of playfulness down to the tenderness in his gaze. It took everything in him to not break down in that exact moment, he wanted nothing more than to crawl beneath Nico's skin and never face Gaea ever again, he wanted to his curl up in bed and be looked with those same eyes, with that same expression, until all the ages of the earth came to an end.
Nico might be a little crazy and a whole lot gloomy, he might snap back more often than Leo appreciated and he might be a riddle of a person, but these were all the things that made Nico Nico. Leo loved Nico despite all the bad things because, what wrong was there in seeing them? What wrong was there in getting to the kitchen and seeing all the cabinets open and thinking Nico was here with annoyance trapped in his throat? In being mad when he realized he had gone through his stuff? In waking up in the middle of the night to an empty bed and panicking only to see him brushing his teeth in the bathroom, all simply because he couldn’t wake him when he told him to? In receiving a grimace when lending clothes only because they were a weird texture? In seeing him wipe a kiss on the cheek off with a tiny smile? What wrong was there in being so deeply frustrated and annoyed at all these things and still choosing to love not because, but despite.
Jesus Christ.
Leo was going to die.
He was never going to experience the little pleasures of life; he would never see a flower in full bloom, a flame dancing for something other than violence, a tree guarding him from the Sun, the breeze of a cool winter evening. He was never going to get sand in his shoes again, or blow something when it fell and yell three second rule! To no one but himself, he would never yearn for comfort again, he would never smell perfume and cigarettes and turn his head thinking of his mother, he would never be afraid of the dark, he would never stain his hands with ink, he would never ask Jason to take him on a fly or beg Piper to charmspeak him into doing his chores or throw a chirp at Frank or wiggle his eyebrows at Hazel or make kissy faces at Percy and Annabeth or indulge Harley’s inventions or create anything ever again or–
Nothing.
Leo would become a shell of his life. A statue in a golden prison, a tale to be told around a campfire.
Leo was bound to become mythology, the same thing that killed him.
“I'm going to miss you.” Leo mumbled before he could think about it, forcing himself to let go of Nico. He wasn't going to cry. He wasn't.
Nico's face crumbled piece by piece. “What?” He asked. Leo couldn't look at him. He couldn't. “Valdez. What are you talking about?”
A beat.
“Valdez.”
Another.
“Valdez, what does that mean?”
“To storm or fire the world must fall,” Leo mumbled and bumped his shoulder against Nico's with a laugh. It felt incredibly forced. But he had made peace with it, so it was fine. “The world needs Superman more than they need me, ya know? We gotta make a choice and… stuff.”
He sighed, crossing his arms and kicking his legs against the hull of the ship. He ate another chip, looking to the sea with an odd sense of melancholy. He would miss a lot of things; the break of the waves against the boat, the clinking of forks against once full plates, laughs echoing from the other side of a door, Nico.
But he had made peace with it.
“I mean, there are like seven other Hephaestus kids back at camp, what's one less?” Leo ate another chip. It fell off his hand but he picked it up too quickly to seem casual. “I get to save the world and be the cool, handsome dude with statues around camp that gave up his life for the greater go–”
“Leo.”
“What?” Leo turned to look at Nico, and the look in his eyes nearly broke him. He stared with such confusion and betrayal it felt like a stab to the heart, his gaze searching for some sort of humor in Leo's, hoping to find even a glint of a joke.
But Leo wasn’t joking.
“How long?”
“What?”
“How long have you known you were going to kill yourself?” Nico's eyes now shone with rage, staring at him with a kind of firmness that betrayed nothing but hurt. Sadness. Understanding, even. “I– God, did you say all those things knowing you were just going to leave me?”
“Neeks–”
“No,” Nico shook his head, shoving the chips on Leo's chest and standing up. “You don't get to choose to leave. We were meant– we were meant to be with each other until all of this passed! You– Fuck, Leo, I need you.”
Nico's words grew more defeated by the second, like he was tired of asking for something he knew wasn't going to be returned.
But Leo did want to live.
Leo wanted to be needed. He had been born to be of service, to fix and create and gift in hope of being told he was needed. A son of Hephaestus without purpose was a compass without north, a thing that served no use other than waiting. Waiting. Waiting. Leo had allowed himself to be picked up and discarded, let people step over him and kick him and throw him around just so he would say glad I was of use! with a big smile.
Nico needed him.
He needed to be reminded more times than he enjoyed. To be told he was a good person. Or whatever. The praise was just a little spark to ignite a whole fire, and even if flames never lasted forever, the ashes left behind were proof it had happened. But ashes didn't give warmth. Leo needed to be ignited over and over and over and over and over again.
He wasn't going to cry.
“I have made peace with it,” Leo said and looked back at the sea, pushing a smile on his face. “I will look after you, don't worry, I will make sure you don't do anything stupid like– I don't know, be all gloom and doom all day.”
“Leo you don't fucking understand, I can't live without you!” Nico screamed, not loudly, but so suddenly Leo flinched back. His posture shrunk almost as if second nature, nostrils flaring with fear and face making a stupid attempt of portraying no emotion. He was mad, he was mad, fuck. He messed up. Fuck. Fuck. Shit. “I won't be able to just– be here when you aren't.”
Nico made a wounded sound from the back of his throat, tugging at his hair. He scratched his arms, growing more insistent the more he spoke. “If you die I will follow behind.” He grunted in frustration at the little soothing the scratching was bringing to the itch. Leo was helpless. He just stared as Nico nearly clawed through his skin in desperation. “Don't ask me not to because I will.”
Leo grabbed his hands. Nico shook him off.
It was an odd thing. How Leo found hubris beneath the creases of his skin and thought it was enough to justify his sacrifice, but when Nico spoke of the same thing it was foolish to even entertain the thought. They shared the same hunger for comfort, but they processed the world so differently. Nico needed Leo, he had told him so too many times; but in more than one way, Leo needed Nico too.
If Nico died Leo would bury himself alive besides him. He would lay on the casket and let the maggots eat away his eyes, his brain, and see constellations of Nico's eyes as they chewed away the neurons, a kind of drug made out of brain cells that remembered Nico's name even after the heart stopped beating.
He had spent so long thinking it was comfort. Telling himself they just had this weird relationship where they needed each other so desperately was in all ways but romantic, because yes Leo loved Nico, but he also loved Jason and Piper and his mother and Harley and Nyssa–
But it had always been different.
The meaning of love grew diffuse when he looked at Nico, a mix of feeling he couldn't quite discern and a whole lot of jabs thrown his way gave away to new significance, a new face to connote to a mere four letter word. A thing so complex yet so simple, nothing more than lines across paper, held a different meaning to every person to ever walk this earth.
Love was the caress of a tender hand for someone and the pull of hair for another. Love was pure adrenaline for one person and calm evenings for another. A look across a bar. Friendship that made its way into more. A rough kiss against a wall. A press of lips before bed. A fond roll of eyes at an unmade bed. A happy sigh at ironed laundry (better than you could've ever done it).
It was this big ever-growing thing that seemed to fill even the lives of those who rejected it.
But not Leo.
Leo had a different way of portraying love.
When he thought of love he had seen it simple, a series of things to say and do in order to be a good boyfriend; open the door for her, buy her flowers, take her out to eat, lend her your jacket when it's cold, tell her she's beautiful even when she doesn't want to hear it.
But what was Leo to do when this hypothetical her became a tangible presence?
He messed up. Over and over and over and over again. Too desperate, too intense, too reckless, too pushy; and Nico was everything but that.
Until he wasn't.
“I would do anything for you, Neeks,” Leo stood up too. He was perfectly fine. He was not one wrong step away from crying. Who lied to you? “But we can't defy the fates–”
“Then at least try!” Nico snapped, not even turning to look at him, anger and hurt and betrayal and so many other things Leo couldn't even begin to understand travelling through only the tone of his voice. “You haven't made peace with anything. You are lying to yourself.”
“I'm not lying! It has to happen! I can't delay it.” Leo's voice shook.
Why did it shake? It can't shake. I'm not scared. I’m not.
Nico grabbed him by the shoulders, hard enough to bruise. His eyes burning with fear and anger as he stared into Leo's. “Look at me in the eyes and tell me you have made peace with dying, alone, and feel rewarded by a miserable statue that will probably grow vines in ten years.”
Leo stared.
And stared.
And stared.
And stared.
He didn't want to die.
He wanted to live.
It overwhelmed every single brink of his brain, filling it with one single thought, one single need before it all went to absolute shit.
He let out a sob. “I want to live, Nico.”