Work Text:
”Do you, uh, need anything?”
Leo looks around, elbows-deep in grease, and sees Nico standing awkwardly in the engine room doorway. The kid makes Leo a little uneasy, but he hasn’t done anything except genuinely help them try to get to Greece. Leo isn’t entirely sure what to make of him.
Before he can tell Nico that he’s good, thanks, the whole ship quakes with what can only be another mountain god attack. Leo mutters some of his Aunt Rosa’s favourite curses and says, louder, “Yeah, can you tell Jason to stop being a tool? I’m still working on the damages from yesterday.”
“Okay,” Nico says and disappears. Leo allows himself an amused moment, imagining Hazel’s brother somberly calling Jason a tool, before giving the engine his full attention.
--
Leo isn’t sure how long he’s been living here -- he’d stopped keeping track after a few months -- but he’s settled into a loose routine since then. That routine is not going to hold today, clearly. He’s just getting out of bed, thinking so intensely about strawberry Pop-Tarts that it takes him a moment to realise his kitchen isn’t empty. Nico di Angelo is rifling through his fridge, and that should probably surprise him more than it does. Instead of asking what he’s doing, Leo says, “Hey, man. Took you a while to visit.”
“I’ve been busy,” says Nico, head still in Leo’s refrigerator. “Why don’t you have any milk?”
“Milk goes bad way too quickly if it’s just me drinking it.”
Now Nico does look at Leo, closing the fridge and turning to face him. He crosses his arms, and Leo is surprised at the definition in them. He’s taller, too. Leo must have been here longer than he thought.
“Nothing goes bad here, si coglione,” Nico says.
“I know, but every time I go to buy milk, I think about the time I kept some in Bunker Nine and accidentally drank chunks.” Leo shudders at the memory. Nico makes a face, like, too much information, but Leo thinks he got his point across. “I mostly stick to non-perishables, man. Way safer.”
He maneuvers around Nico to get to his pantry, because surprise visits from children of Hades shouldn’t stop him from getting his Pop-Tart on.
Nico lets him pass without comment, but Leo can feel the weight of his eyes. He's probably scrutinising Leo, looking for changes. He must already know he won't find any.
“How long’s it been, anyway?” Leo asks, setting his hand ablaze to toast his Pop-Tarts. He used to have a sentient toaster, but it had gotten too smart. There was a whole thing, where it had wanted to escape the clutches of electricity and run off with the kettle, and Leo had panicked before smashing it with a hammer. Now he keeps all his household appliances in regular condition.
“A while,” says Nico. He doesn’t sound very certain. “I’m not really good at keeping track of time. Almost a year, I think.”
“Wow, time flies.” Leo half-heartedly offers one of his Pop-Tarts to Nico, who breaks off a small piece of the edge and lets Leo devour the rest. “Have you talked to anyone else recently?”
“I check in on Hazel whenever I can,” Nico assures him. Crumbs are stuck to his mouth. “Frank’s doing the praetor thing really well. She’s proud of him.”
“We’re all proud of him,” says Leo.
He means it, but it still comes out sounding sarcastic. Nico just nods like he gets what Leo’s trying to say.
“Jason and Piper are in the middle of a dramatic break-up,” Nico continues, counting off their demigod friends on his fingers as he does. Leo’s expression must be pretty bewildered, because Nico hastens to explain, “Jupiter was being all ‘you should be dating a more powerful demigod’, which pissed Piper off, so she went to Barcelona with her dad for the summer. Jason’s upset.”
Leo doesn’t blame Piper. His Pop-Tarts taste like cardboard, thinking about anyone, even the king of the gods, making her feel useless. “She helped save the world, what more does Jupiter want?”
“I think he wants Jason and Hazel to get together,” Nico says, wrinkling his nose at the thought. “He wants ultra-powerful grandchildren.”
That’s creepy. Jupiter’s a weird guy, though, and Leo’s pretty sure Jason and Piper will work this out.
He hops up onto his counter, swinging his feet against the steel cabinets. Nico gives him the stink eye for the loud noise, but Leo can do what he likes in his own home, thanks. Leo doesn’t ask about Percy or Annabeth, because he knows Nico avoids them like the plague.
“How’s Reyna?” Nico asks him, voice softening.
“I think she’s okay. She still hates me, so I couldn’t say for sure.”
“She can really hold a grudge,” Nico agrees. He doesn’t sound like he thinks that’s a bad thing. Of course, Leo knows that holding grudges is Nico’s fatal flaw; Percy told him. (Percy had also told him that Annabeth’s was hummus, though, so maybe Leo shouldn’t rely on him for pertinent information.) What Leo’s fatal flaw is, he never really got the chance to find out. Being too awesome, probably. “I should go check on her later.”
“How long are you staying?” asks Leo. He’s hoping for some kind of set period of time, but he shouldn’t have expected that from Nico.
The guy just shrugs, shoving his hands deep into his jean pockets as he does. Like that’s an answer.
Whatever. He may not have spoken to Nico in months, but Leo remembers the way he would always switch from annoyingly cryptic to blunt and insulting. At first, it drove Leo up the wall. Then he got used to it. Now, he kind of misses it.
“You’re welcome to stay as long as you want,” Leo says, because his mother did teach him some manners before she burned, no matter what Jason might say. He gestures around his kitchen with both hands. “Mi casa and you know the rest. I don’t have a couch, though.”
“It’s fine,” says Nico dismissively. “I’ll share with you.”
Leo might have been uncomfortable with that idea, once upon a weirder time, but he’s at that point where he just doesn’t give a damn about things that might be embarrassing.
He nods and hops off the counter. “I’m going to do some experiments in the attic. You should come check it out.”
“No thanks, I like having all my limbs.”
“Hey, man, I haven’t injured myself in,” Leo says, and then has to think about it. The prolonged pause does nothing to make Nico seem less wary about the workshop Leo’s built for himself upstairs. Leo ends up shrugging. “A while, I don’t know. Fine, whatevs, you don’t need to come watch me be a genius. Bed’s free if you want a nap. Reyna’s down the street. There’s no wifi, though not from lack of me trying, I assure you. I’m sure you can entertain yourself.”
“Glad to have your permission,” says Nico. Then, like it’s a compulsion -- and it might be, the way Jason used to show up at his shoulder every time he tried to leave camp -- he adds, “I’m going to see Reyna for a bit.”
“Have fun,” Leo calls out in his best falsetto. Nico flips him off on his way out the door.
--
Leo leaves the campfire to get some peace and quiet. He loves his friends and his siblings, he does, but sometimes it’s just a lot to deal with at once. His intent is to be alone for a little while, but he sees di Angelo hanging out on the dock by himself and worries for a second that he’s going to jump in.
“Hey, man,” he calls out. Nico doesn’t turn, but his shoulders tense like he isn’t happy about Leo’s presence. Weird how Leo has never let a little issue like that deter him.
He drops down next to Nico, grinning absently, and is taken aback by the unlit cigarette Nico is clearly trying to hide.
Jason and Percy would freak out if they were the ones who caught him out, but Leo doesn’t particularly care what a fourteen-year-old gets the older Hermes kids to buy for him. He makes a finger gun with his hand and allows his index finger to catch flame. When Nico looks at him in confusion, he rolls his eyes and says, “Do you need a light, kid?”
--
Immersed as he always gets in his tinkering, Leo doesn’t really register that the kitchen exchange with Nico actually happened until the guy comes back. It could have been a dream, or a hallucination. It wouldn’t have been the first time.
“What are you working on?” Nico asks, sitting on the edge of the trapdoor opening and dangling his legs into the hallway.
Leo tells him, but he’s got several nails between his teeth, so Nico probably just heard a lot of garbled syllables. He spits them onto the floor, deciding to call it a day. “Trying to make my coffee maker start the pot automatically every morning. Without making it too intelligent, because hijo de puta have I learned my lesson about that.”
“There’s a story there,” Nico observes. After a beat, he adds, “But I don’t care. Are you hungry?”
“Starving,” says Leo. He’s surprised by how much he means it. He wonders vaguely how long he’s been up here, but he long ago gave up on telling time, since the sky is always dark. “I could make some gumbo. Hazel’s favourite.”
“Yeah, alright.”
Abandoning his project on the floor, Leo commando-rolls over to the trapdoor. Nico’s lips twitch like he’s amused.
“Come on, Inspector Gadget,” he says, and Leo is so happily surprised that Nico is making pop culture references that he almost falls through the trapdoor opening. It’s a close call, but his windmilling arms make Nico laugh for real, so Leo isn’t too torn up about it. He follows Nico down the ladder and into his kitchen, asking questions about how Reyna’s doing. If there’s one thing Leo knows about Nico di Angelo, it’s that he can talk about his sisters for hours -- and he has considered Reyna a de facto sister ever since their journey across the Atlantic with the Athena Parthenos.
He lets Nico’s chatter fill the kitchen along with the steam from his old-fashioned gumbo pot, which he’d forged for himself after learning that Hazel loved it. Hazel hasn’t come to visit yet, but when she does, Leo’s prepared. It’s comfortable with Nico there, which surprises Leo. He’s so used to being alone every day that just having another person with him while he cooks is a little outstanding.
They eat leaning against the kitchen counter, bowls in hand. It seems to be hot, because Nico keeps shifting his hold on the bronze bowl and blowing on the surface, but the heat doesn’t bother Leo.
Nico has finally run out of things to say about Reyna -- he’s just finished telling Leo that her garden is awful, no matter how hard she tries to keep it up without anyone’s help, but there is a single tomato plant that’s inexplicably healthy -- and the two of them eat in silence, which Leo’s weirdly okay with.
When was the last time he’d had someone to talk to? He can’t even remember.
“How long are you staying?” he asks again, and Nico still refuses to give him a straight answer. He acts super interested in his gumbo, which Leo takes as a compliment even though he knows it’s a Nico avoidance method.
“You’re a good cook,” says Nico. “Did you learn that here?”
“Nah, I’ve always known how to cook. When you run away as many times as I did, you gotta know how to feed yourself.”
“I just went to McDonald’s a lot,” Nico mutters.
“That’s disgusting,” Leo says fondly.
Nico sticks his tongue out, then immediately pretends he didn’t.
It’s pretty cool that Nico is the one visiting, because he doesn’t try asking Leo things that someone like Percy would -- so what do you do for fun around here? -- he just helps wash up and follows Leo down the hall. The truth is, Leo doesn’t do anything for fun other than sit in his attic and think of cool projects that nobody will ever see, and Nico knows that. He understands.
“Do you sleep on a certain side of the bed?” Nico asks, pulling his skull-patterned t-shirt over his head. Leo wonders if Nico is trying to be ironic, or if he really enjoys looking like he stepped out of a punk-pop band in 2007.
“I haven’t shared a bed since I was in foster care, so I mostly sleep on all the sides,” says Leo.
“I’m pretty sure I’ve never shared a bed,” Nico says. “So don’t be surprised if you end up on the floor at some point.”
“Why kick me out of bed when we could cuddle?” Leo brings a hand up to his chest, milking the offended act for all it’s worth. Nico snorts. Then he starts to unbutton his jeans, and Leo decides it’s a great time to turn away and get into his pajamas.
As long as Leo can remember, he’s been averting his eyes somewhere safe in the locker rooms and foster homes, because staring at another dude’s chest for a split second too long can get you beat up real fast.
He doesn’t think Nico would punch him, but he might leave. Leo really doesn’t want him to leave. He’d forgotten, somehow, how nice it is to have someone just to hang out with, because Reyna isn’t exactly the warmest neighbour. Something about how it’s all Leo’s fault she’s here in the first place, blah-blah-blah, nothing he doesn’t already know.
Reyna probably won’t hang around here much longer, anyway, and then Leo will be alone again. He’s not very good at being alone.
When he’s dressed for sleep, he turns to see Nico already under the covers with his back to Leo. Even though he’s fairly certain the gods haven’t been listening to him lately, he sends up a quick prayer that Nico left his shorts on. Leo’s -- well, it’s been a long time.
He gets into bed and snuggles into the warmth of his blankets. He’s very careful not to knock any of his limbs against Nico, or steal the covers, or breathe too loudly. What’s the etiquette for sharing a bed?
There’s no light to turn off, because he’s never bothered installing a light in here. His eyes have adjusted well to the dark after so many months, so there’s not much of a point. He doesn’t even have a set time for sleeping. The sky is always dark; there are no clocks. Leo doesn’t even get tired the way he used to. Really, he only sleeps out of boredom, because what else is there for him to do? He can only fool around with household appliances for so long.
Leo can’t fall asleep for a prolonged amount of time, even when he matches his breathing to Nico’s.
He’s afraid that if he does, he’s going to wake up to an empty bed. Nico has better things to do than hang around Leo’s tiny home, after all.
Human contact. That’s such a foreign concept for Leo, now. If Nico’s timekeeping is accurate, it’s been a year or more since Leo’s had the chance to hug Piper, to fall asleep on Jason, to kiss Hazel’s curls and, when Frank looked uncomfortable with that, Frank’s jaw as well.
Percy and Annabeth, Leo was never as close to. Still he misses them -- Annabeth leaning over his designs and pointing out things that were straight-up impossible, Percy’s grin whenever Leo surprised him with a joke.
“Don’t leave right away,” Leo whispers across the space between his pillows.
In his sleep, Nico sighs.
Leo can’t help it. Ever since he found Nico in his kitchen, he’s been meaning to make completely sure that Nico isn’t a figment of his lonely imagination. He reaches out and touches the tips of his fingers to Nico’s shoulderblade. Nico’s skin is ice-cold, but he’s real, and Leo hesitates a moment too long before retracting his hand.
With another, more exasperated sigh, Nico rolls over and glares at Leo through half-closed eyes. His voice is rough when he says, “Go to sleep. I’m not going anywhere.”
He has no idea what his expression is like, but it makes Nico groan. Looking really annoyed about the situation, Nico rolls farther into Leo’s space, so that his arm is like a freezing seatbelt across Leo’s chest. He repeats himself a couple of times, saying variations of "go to sleep, Leo, I’m here, just sleep".
Leo does.
--
Ever since the war ended and Nico got heralded as a hero again, he's been expected to spend a lot more time at camp. Leo knows this because Nico has decided that 'at camp' means 'lurking around Bunker Nine and not interacting with anyone there except sometimes Leo and Nyssa', and it's been hard to ignore the tiny punk perching on shelves that are high enough to ignore people talking to him.
"I'm having flashbacks to your nest," Leo calls up to him.
Without looking up from the volume of Young Avengers that Piper had let him borrow in a fit of pity, Nico says, "I don't know what you mean."
Leo makes cawing noises at him until a skeleton appears out of the ground to his left and punches him in the arm. His siblings hear him yell and look over, some raising tools like they're weapons, but Leo waves them off and pulls an elastic band from his toolbelt to shoot up at Nico.
It hits Nico's comic, and Nico gives him an exasperated look over it. "Grow up," he tells Leo, then settles back in to ignore everyone's existence and read about superheroes.
--
Nico is annoyingly insistent on staying inside, unless he's ducking down to Reyna's or having a smoke in Leo's pathetic garden. At first Leo amuses himself by wondering what sort of acquaintances Nico could possibly run into here, but after a while he realises that the cheerful atmosphere outside is just as stifling to Nico as it has been to him.
"You hate it here," he observes over dishes from lunch one day. He could make a dishwasher from scratch in less than an hour, for sure, but he likes having something to do. Nico's shoulder twitches like it wants to shrug.
"So do you," Nico points out, and Leo can't argue.
The thing is, his problem with being away from his friends is the complete lack of physical contact. Leo used to hate people touching him, growing up, because all he could remember was the way his hands used to burst into flames and he couldn't hurt someone else, he just couldn't. Months of Piper latching onto him like an octopus and Jason wrapping an arm around his shoulders and Hazel kissing his cheeks had gotten him used to the concept and actually enjoying it.
Granted, he doesn't know Nico super well, but he remembers how skillfully the kid used to avoid anyone but Hazel touching him, so it's a little embarrassing to admit, "It kind of sucks that nobody's hugging me, you know?"
Nico doesn't deign to respond.
They finish the small amount of dishes in no time at all, and Leo uses a towel to dry his hands instead of setting them alight in case he freaks Nico out more. Nico catches his eye and immediately stares at Leo's feet instead.
"I'm not," Nico starts, then sighs like he's got the world on his shoulders. "I'm not very good at this."
Leo is going to ask what Nico is talking about, but it's pretty obvious once he grabs Leo's forearms and pulls him into a rough embrace. He's so cold and his grip is uncomfortably tight, he really isn't good at this -- and yet, Leo can't stop his hands from shaking or twisting into the back of Nico's shirt to keep him there. He buries his face in Nico's neck and tries his hardest not to start crying. Nobody's hugged him in like, a year, and Nico's going to leave soon and then it'll be longer until Leo gets another visit, and he knows he earned his place here, he does, but it's a lot more like punishment than he expected.
"Sorry," he says into Nico's neck, glad to muffle his voice so the hoarseness isn't noticeable.
"You're an idiot," is what Nico responds with, but there's no heat behind it. He sighs into Leo's ear and kind of strokes his back awkwardly. "I know you miss them. It's okay, man, they'll be here before you know it."
Leo laughs a bit. "That's not very comforting."
It's better than he expected from Nico di Angelo, though, and after a few minutes (or maybe an hour, time is weird) he feels secure enough to pull away. Nico drops his arms a split second later than would be natural, but Leo pretends not to notice. One of them falling apart is enough for an afternoon.
Without warning, he sinks to the kitchen floor. Nico joins him after an unimpressed moment and leans against the fridge.
"Tell me a Piper story," he says, closing his eyes and resting his head back against the steel counter.
Nico jumps right into one like he'd prepared it days ago, wry voice painting a picture of Piper getting into a situation with some celebrities and then insisting to her friends that aliens were real. Leo isn't listening, really, he's just letting the words wash over him in reminder that Piper is still out there acting like her old self. The person she was before the canyon, before the war, before... well, before. It cheers him up an indescribable amount.
--
"Are you feeling any better?" Nico asks, pulling his hood further over his head so Percy, two tables away, doesn't notice him sliding onto the Hephaestus bench. Leo offers him a spring roll, and Nico eyes it warily before taking a large bite.
"Didn't realise you cared," Leo teases, brow damp with sweat. He wishes he could blame the weather, but it's November, and he brushes it away with his sleeve impatiently.
Nico's eyes track the movement. "I don't," he says, unconvincing. "We're not friends."
A laugh bubbles from Leo's lips, but it quickly turns into a coughing fit. Harley, on his other side, thumps him on the back. The whole scene has Percy looking over, but Nico has already melted from Leo's side into the shadows.
--
Neither of them are very good at keeping track of time. Leo’s always lost days to his projects, and Nico spends so much time in the Underworld, where time runs differently, that he’s not bothered to.
So when Reyna shows up at Leo’s door -- which has never happened and makes Leo’s brain short-circuit for a moment -- and frowns at him, he’s really confused. She marches in like she owns the place, and if it were anyone but Reyna, Leo might protest.
“Is he still here?” she asks.
Leo’s not proud of his answer, which is “Who?”
She levels him with a very unimpressed look, and Leo shrugs. Yeah, Nico’s still here, what’s it to her? Hearing Reyna’s voice, Nico pokes his head into the hallway.
“Hi, Reyna,” he says, sounding brighter than Leo’s ever heard. “What brings you here?”
He’s just getting out of the shower, jeans unbuttoned and a towel around his bare shoulders, but he doesn’t seem to notice. Leo’s pretty sure that if he were suddenly half-naked in front of Reyna, he would scream. He’ll never admit it out loud, but Reyna has always frightened him more than anyone. It’s something about that look in her eye. The one that says she’d like to tear Leo’s head off with her bare hands.
“You’ve been here for weeks,” is all she says in response, voice sharper than Leo thinks is strictly necessary. “I don’t know how many, but you’re going to have to leave soon. You know you’re not supposed to be here.”
Nico gives Leo a quick, worried glance.
“Leave it alone, Reyna,” says Nico.
“You can’t stay here! Nico, you know you’re not allowed to stay here.”
Leo feels like he shouldn’t be here for this argument. Obviously, he doesn’t want Nico to go anywhere, but he sees Reyna’s point. Nico broke a ton of rules just coming to visit, and if he’s really been here that long… well, he can understand why Reyna came all the way here to yell at him.
“He needs me,” Nico hisses, and, oh, that’s embarrassing. Leo feels his face heat up, and he makes an executive decision to leave the hallway.
While he goes to hide in his bedroom, he tunes out the squabbling behind him by burying his face in a pillow. Reyna’s right. Nico shouldn’t still be here. Honestly, Leo should have told him to leave ages ago, but he’s selfish. Yes, he has to bring home more Pop-Tarts than he usually would, and Nico’s a freak who only eats the crust part, and Leo has woken up on the floor more times than he can count, but at least he’s not alone. Being alone is so hard in this place. All it does is make you think about how you got here, what you could have done to prevent it, and Leo doesn’t need those kinds of thoughts.
With Nico around to distract him, he hasn’t been as sad. Leo isn’t very good at being sad. It’s just not his strong suit. Some people handle sadness and solitude well; Leo has never been one of them.
The pillow he’s basically using to suffocate himself smells like Nico, and that’s upsetting. Nico has to go soon. Leo doesn’t want anything in here reminding him of that. He doesn’t move away from the pillow, though, because, whatever. He’s going to miss the guy.
A hand on his shoulder is what wakes him later. He turns over and hitches a smile onto his face, like he didn’t accidentally fall asleep feeling sorry for himself.
“You’re still here,” he says, relieved.
“What, you thought Reyna was going to scare me off?” Nico says, snorting in amusement.
“Reyna’s a pretty scary girl,” says Leo. He moves his legs so Nico can sit on the edge of the bed. When Nico does, Leo automatically curls around him. “Scary or not, though, she’s right. You probably shouldn’t still be here.” He feels his face turn red, remembering what Nico had said to her. “And I don’t need you to stay, pfft. I’m perfectly happy working on my projects alone, gracias.”
“No you’re not.” Nico smiles down at him, small and fond, and Leo feels it like a punch to the throat. No matter what he says, Nico must realise that he can’t stay. The thought seems to occur to Nico, too, because he lies down half on top of Leo and tucks his face into Leo’s neck. As goodbyes go, Leo’s had worse.
Reluctantly, Leo says, “You know Reyna’s right. Kid of the death god or not, you’re not even supposed to come past the Elysian gates. You’ll lose mortal decades here if you’re not careful.”
“Might not be so bad,” Nico murmurs against his skin.
“Come on, don’t say that,” says Leo. “You want to see Hazel grow up, don’t you?”
“She’s already pretty grown, you missed that,” Nico says, sounding sad. He tenses suddenly and leans away from Leo. The look he’s fixing Leo with is so -- serious, and mournful, and it makes Leo feel like he just died all over again. Leo wants to pretend he never said anything and go back to cuddling until Nico has to leave, but Nico is still talking about Hazel. “She’s as tall as you are now, and she’s happy at Camp Jupiter. She’s going to go to college in a couple of years, keep dating the praetor -- maybe marry him, or someone else, or nobody. Whatever her choices are, I hope she stays happy.” The way he’s talking… Leo finally gets it. He probably should have realised the first time he’d asked how long Nico was staying.
“You aren’t going to get to see it, are you?” he asks softly. Nico hesitates, then shakes his head. “What happened?”
Nico’s quiet for a long time. He just keeps looking at Leo, tapping his fingers against Leo’s collarbone erratically. He doesn’t seem upset that Leo asked, but he’s contemplative. Leo gets that. He spent his first month or so in Elysium thinking about everything he could have done to save himself.
Eventually, Nico answers him. “Percy, che pezzo di idiota that he is, pissed off an annoyingly powerful drakon in San Francisco.”
“You protected him,” Leo guesses.
“Stopped him from getting charbroiled, yeah,” says Nico. “First time I see him in months, and he’s all, ‘hey, how are you, there’s a giant drakon chasing me, what’s new with you’. He’s probably really mad at me now, though. He never wanted anyone to die for him.”
“I think there’s a street a few blocks away that’s full of people who have died for Percy Jackson,” Leo says, rolling his eyes. “He inspires that kind of sacrifice.”
Nico’s lips quirk in an amused smile, and Leo can’t help but return it.
“Why’d you come to my place instead of Reyna’s?” Leo asks, curious. Nico shrugs.
“Reyna won’t be here much longer, you know that,” he says, and Leo does know that. He’s been waiting for the day he walks by Reyna’s cottage and finds the windows dark. She’s more of a hero than Leo will ever be. Nico gives him a look like he gets it and adds, “Piper was always convinced you wouldn’t choose to be reborn.”
“She’s right, dude, it was pure luck that I did so much good this life,” says Leo, shaking his head. “I couldn’t swing it two more times, chingue su madre.”
“It sucks when everyone you love is a hero,” Nico says on a sigh.
That’s all Leo ever thinks about. When his friends come here, as he knows they will eventually, they won’t stay long. He knows they’ll aim for the Isles, because that’s the place where real heroes go.
Leo isn’t a real hero. He’s not Jason, or Annabeth, or Percy freakin’ Jackson. Even Reyna, who got hurt in the battle against her own camp, is braver than him. The idea of going to the River Lethe and putting yet another life in the Fates’ hands is so not appealing. He thinks he deserves an eternity of good food and rest after being a part of the Prophecy of Seven. He knows that he wouldn’t remember being important if he gets reborn, so it wouldn’t really matter, but still.
At some point in the future, Leo will be completely alone. After his friends return to Elysium a second time, they’ll be so excited that they’re nearly to the Isles that they might not even hang around for the standard few months. And then they’ll be gone for good. They’ll all be together, probably in one big house, while Leo stays exactly where he is.
“So, when are you leaving?” he asks Nico, his own thoughts making him feel preemptively dejected.
“I’m not,” Nico says, sounding surprised that Leo would ask such a thing. At Leo’s wide eyes, he explains, “Like you said. I got lucky this life.”
“But -- Hazel.”
Nico looks uncertain now, chewing on his bottom lip.
“I’m not sure if Hazel will choose to be reborn,” he admits. “She’s already come back from the dead once, and even though it’s not the same thing, she might not jump at the chance to prove herself again, you know? And I know Bianca’s going to live on the Isles eventually” --the name rings a bell to Leo; Percy used it while explaining why Nico hated him so much, Jason pulling skeptical faces over his shoulder like he knew something Percy didn’t-- “but I don’t trust myself not to screw things up in a new life.”
“You’re staying? Here?” Leo asks. His heart is expanding like a balloon, and he doesn’t bother holding back the dorky smile he knows is on his face.
He isn’t happy, exactly, that Nico’s in Elysium, because the guy hasn’t even turned seventeen yet, and now he never will. Even so, it means Nico isn’t going anywhere, and that’s -- it makes Leo’s stomach flutter.
Suddenly he’s very aware of how close Nico is. It’s a real problem, because Nico is mostly lying on top of him, their legs all tangled together, and he isn’t wearing a shirt. Leo’s not quite sure what to do, here. He’s managed to keep his attraction to himself thanks to the protocol set in his old foster homes, but he’s definitely never been in this position before.
“Um,” says Leo.
With the tiniest grin, Nico turns back into the safety of Leo’s neck and presses a soft kiss against his pulse point. Hearts beat out of habit here, not necessity, so Leo isn’t too surprised that his stops for a moment. He skims his fingers along Nico’s bare shoulder in question.
“Yeah, I’m staying,” Nico says, and then he arches up to kiss Leo on the mouth.
The contact is a little awkward, because Leo has only ever kissed one person, and Nico doesn’t seem to know exactly what he’s doing, but that’s okay. It’s okay because they have endless nights to get it right.
Nico pulls back just enough to start laughing. Leo wants to be offended, but he’s never heard Nico laugh like this before, and he can’t quite muster up negativity about it.
“What?” he asks, a grin stretching his lips without his permission.
“Nothing, it’s just,” Nico manages to get out through huffs of laughter, “this is exactly where you always used to joke I’d end up.”
That doesn’t make sense at first, because Leo doesn’t remember ever joking about making out with Nico, but then he gets it. He snorts a laugh. “This isn’t exactly what I had in mind when I said you’d end up sleeping with the dead, but I’m not complaining.”
--
Leo knows what his friends’ individual touches feel like, and the palm on his forehead isn’t anyone he’s used to. Opening his eyes is too much work, though, so he just trusts the owner of it isn’t here to kill him and focuses on keeping his breathing even like Annabeth told him to.
“Can’t you fix him?” That’s Hazel’s voice, farther away and barely more than a whisper.
The hand on Leo’s face brushes through his sweat-soaked curls, quick as winking, and he realises that the chilly skin is Nico’s. Nico almost never touches him, so Leo thinks that’s a pretty good indicator of how worried everybody is about him. He doesn’t reply to Hazel’s question, but she must have known that there was nothing he could do. This had to be a last-resort type of thing.
Hazel starts to cry, these great, wheezing sobs that Leo can’t bear to listen to. He wants to sit up and smile at her, wrap his arms around her, tell her she’ll be fine, but he doesn’t have the strength for speech, let alone movement.
“The cause isn’t mystical,” Nico finally says, voice cracking like he’s about to burst into tears, too. “He’s just -- burning up.”
Literally, Leo thinks, but he’s so, so tired, he can’t even muster up a good laugh at a bad joke. He lets the cold from Nico’s hand seep into his skin as he drifts off, and he thinks that, considering all the times he’s nearly gotten himself killed doing thrilling heroics, this is a pretty pitiful way to go.