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Since getting back from France (which had been fun to explain to literally everyone around them), Nico had been spending a lot more time with Leo than he necessarily needed to. He couldn’t really even explain why. He just knew that he felt even more drawn to him now than he had before.
And, on top of spending more time with him, he…
He was letting him touch him more often, and he was sure that Leo had noticed.
It was simple stuff, really, so it wasn’t like anyone who didn’t know he hated physical contact would bat an eyelash at it. But Leo knew him better than that. Leo knew he didn’t like being touched.
He knew and Nico could see when he gave him little surprised glances any time they bumped each other’s shoulders and Nico didn’t jerk away instantly. Any time Nico went out of his way to pat Leo on the shoulder, or poke him on the nose. Any time he didn’t think before he acted and threw an arm around Nico’s shoulders or nudged him with his elbow and wasn’t reprimanded for it.
But, thankfully, Leo never said anything about it. He just let it slide and slide and Nico was never more glad that his feelings were being ignored… Except maybe when he was still in love with Percy and had fully realized that.
It was with a start, while watching Leo tinker, that he realized something else.
He knew what this was.
He knew this feeling.
It was too familiar for him not to know what it was―this warmth in his chest, the tightness when Leo smiled, the tingling over his whole body when that smiling was directed at him. He knew these feelings. He knew what they meant.
He’d fallen in love again.
As it happens, however, at about the moment he realized this, Leo realized he’d made an error in his tinkering and, yelping, vaulted sideways over the table separating he and Nico (not the table the strange invention was on). He slammed right into Nico with an obvious sort of intent and both of them crashed to the floor of the workshop at the same moment that the small creation burst into a billion tiny little pieces and scorched everything around it.
“Sorry,” Leo said, once their ears had stopped ringing and he’d sat up, offering Nico a hand, “I just realized I messed up the self-destruct code and accidentally rigged it to blow on a set interval rather than when ordered to.”
Nico accepted his hand, shaking his head as he got up as well.
He noticed Leo’s eyes lingering on their hands when Nico didn’t immediately pull away. He flushed and pulled his hand back a little more forcefully than he intended.
“And how did you manage that?”
“Oh, well, I―” Leo stopped before he could actually get into the details, turning a little pink, himself, “Let’s call it a miscalculation? I know a lot of the technical mumbo-jumbo goes right over your head and I don’t wanna leave you standing here staring at me like I started speaking German or something.”
Nico couldn’t help snorting a little at that. “Fair point. But that must have been a hell of a miscalculation.”
“It was,” Leo grinned sheepishly, “In the simplest terms I attached some wires where I shouldn’t have and activated some things before I should have… Thus having to yeet myself over the table to get you out of the blast zone since I didn’t have time to warn you.”
“Guess you’ll just have to try it again, huh?”
“Guess so.” Leo’s grin turned genuine as he stood and made his way back to where he’d started, “Here we go―attempt numero dos!”
It took a long time for him to get it back to the state he’d had the first one, and Nico didn’t mind sitting and waiting. Watching. He hated knowing why he was so okay with watching, hated knowing he hadn’t been able to hold onto friendly feelings for the guy and had to go and get romantic instead. But he guessed it was okay. He didn’t have to tell Leo. Nothing had to change.
It was just Leo had touching privileges now and Nico really wouldn’t mind if they, like… Cuddled.
This time, when Leo was done with the funny little contraption, he went straight into testing it. It carried out each command perfectly and he all but bounced with each success. Finally, he didn’t seem to be able to hold in his excitement and lurched away from the table, hopping around and flapping his hands in front of him. And then, stopping in his tracks, he seemed to decide on a better way to express this excitement, and…
… Began to dance.
Badly.
Nico couldn’t hold in his laugh, so it escaped him before he could slap his hand over his mouth.
“That’s so stupid,” He blurted from behind his hand as Leo did some strange combination of the mashed-potato and the running man. Leo stopped, looking a little disgruntled, “Please, do it again.”
“But you think it’s stupid.” Leo said, regardless of the fact that he immediately started dancing again.
“That dance is an insult to all traditional dances and I wouldn’t be caught dead doing it,” Nico agreed, feeling himself grinning like the love-struck idiot he was, “But I like it… I like it a lot.”
And Leo grinned right back at him.
And then he started dancing even more enthusiastically, and Nico had no idea what all the dance moves he incorporated into the new version were, but hey. It was high-energy, funny, and inventive.
He liked that.