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Leo would have loved California no matter what. The weather was nothing but sun every day of the year, a pleasant breeze was always blowing in from the beach to cool the air, and palm trees lined the streets. It was paradise — his to revel in without concern for his safety, in the aftermath of the war against the Titans.
What made it beyond amazing, however, was Calypso’s company. She made the sun shine brighter, made the colors more vibrant, and made food taste better.
At least, that was how he felt. He wasn’t so sure of her feelings about living with him. From what Leo could observe, she seemed to approach it in the same way she did everything else: with open distaste but a more subtle, begrudged enjoyment.
He showed her something new every day, whether it was a song, a snack he liked, a movie, or an article of clothing he thought she’d look good in. She liked some, but not all, of the things that he shared with her. If anything, she did not find much pleasure in the material things, but instead in things like watching the sunrise on the beach.
To do so she would wake up early, leaving Leo to his own devices aside from making him breakfast every morning. It was usually something healthy, something completely outside of the realm of possibilities he had become used to during his many years in foster homes and on the run. He always ate every last bite.
It was because of her absence that his mornings were quiet and therefore painful. Distraction was oxygen to him, and the two sources of it were Calypso and the odd jobs he happily picked up at work. He always opened up shop soon after he awoke, and it was around then that she would return, with light in her eyes to offset the muted expression she often wore. Leo would secretly breathe a sigh of relief when she came through the door, and he would return to work.
He found himself scared to touch her. He found himself scared to do anything that might remind her of the things that remained unaddressed between them. What if she had gotten over him in the time between his departure from and return to Ogygia? Since the day he flew her away from her island prison, Leo had made a point of never asking her if she still had the same feelings for him that she used to. In ambiguity, he found solace. Calypso could not confirm his hopes, but she also could not deny them.
There was a trade-off, though: Leo was in a constant funk for the first few weeks of their time working and living at the shop. He got the odd job, usually some idiot who didn’t know how to change his oil, which could distract him. When he wasn’t distracted he found himself constantly watching Calypso across the garage, where she worked at handicrafts, sang quietly to herself in ancient Greek, and made notes in a notebook.
He would cross the shop frequently to bother her, asking her questions such as “What’re you making?” (lots and lots of bracelets) or “What do you put in that notebook?” (none of your business, Leo Valdez). He speculated as to what the contents of the notebook could be. Maybe she wrote down the names of people she wanted to die. Or maybe she wrote down things that she heard about in the modern world and had yet to check out. He lobbied both of these ideas to her, and she frowned at the first but decidedly did not react to the second. He took that one to be the correct answer.
What he couldn’t get enough of were her eyes. They sparkled whether she was happy, angry, or upset. He could write a million songs, scrap all of them, and write a million more about those ridiculously enchanting eyes of hers. (He had written a few isolated rhymes in the privacy of his room, but he kept them stashed deep within Jarvis, his bedside table.)
He did these things instead of holding her hand, kissing her, or laying his head in her lap when they were on break and resting on the ratty couch in the corner of the garage that he had lovingly named Tennyson.
(“Why do you feel the need to name every piece of furniture we own?” Calypso asked him once.
His heart soared at her use of “we,” but he ignored it in favor of grinning and quipping, “I forge a tight bond with plenty of inanimate objects. For example, Buford the table. Oh, the times we had...”
She rolled her eyes and muttered something about “insufferable mortals” under her breath, but she was smiling.)
Every single day he was reminded of how beautiful she was, with her caramel hair which was seemingly growing blonder with the aid of the unrelenting California sun, and her slightly pouty, full lips that he oh-so-badly wanted to kiss again.
Leo did everything he could to avoid sharing his feelings with her. It was his style to keep them on the inside and express them in ways that didn't involve using his words. However, when Calypso looked at him for a second too long, or even raised an eyebrow in his direction, he found himself holding back with everything he had to not spill the contents of his heart out in front of her. He didn’t want to remind her of the promise on which he had returned to Ogygia to free her, because he knew that that conversation would undoubtedly lead to such mushy and gooey things as love.
Calypso noticed his brooding self eventually, though, and she called him out for it one day with a hand on her hip and that fire in her eyes that he admired so much.
“You are acting… weird. Why are you acting weird?” (“Weird” was obviously a new word in her vocabulary.) Her question made him look up frantically from the incomplete creation he had been toying with in the silence, fidgeting and pulling at random switches and coils of metal. She wore a white T-shirt, jeans with the cuffs rolled up, and sandals. Although she had supposedly worn chitons all her life, Calypso donned the more modern outfit like she’d popped out of the womb wearing it. The knowledge that he was the one who sparked her interest in such "practical" clothing did funny things to Leo's heart.
“Whaddya mean, Sunshine?” He asked, slamming the trinket down on the hood of the car he was supposed to be working on at the moment. “Aww, are you worried about me? I’m flattered, really, I am.”
She rolled her eyes the way she often did when she was frustrated with his antics. Quickly, though, her expression turned serious, and she began to march around the car and toward him. The clip-clop sound of her sandals hitting the ground should have been amusing, but instead, Leo had to fight to not shrink away from it. When she wanted to be, Calypso could be very intimidating.
All of a sudden her face was inches away from his. She jabbed a finger into his chest as she said her next words. “I have no patience for your jokes tonight, Leo Valdez. There is clearly something wrong, and I have wondered all day as to what it is, but you will not tell me!” Each poke of her carefully manicured nail into his core sent electricity pulsing through his nervous system. Coupled with the way her eyes angrily searched his for an answer to her question, Leo felt like he was going to melt.
He tried for a nervous laugh. It came out as more of a croak, which he tried to disguise as a cough. The unimpressed way in which she raised her brow at him was evidence enough that he failed at doing so. “So…” he mumbled.
“So,” he tried again, his voice gaining confidence as he spoke. “You were worried about me!”
She sighed as if she were his disgruntled mother and he was an insolent toddler. Then she grabbed his hand in an achingly tight grip. For someone with such dainty hands and a lithe body, she was strong. “You are coming with me,” she grumbled as she started to pull him toward the door of the shop.
“Hey! Don’t damage the goods! The ladies love all of Leo, not just this pretty face!” He tried to argue, but she did not even do so much as offer a look back in his direction as she continued to drag him outside.
They finally crossed the threshold between the controlled coolness of the auto shop and the heat of the Californian sunset. He immediately began to regret wearing long sleeves and pants as the beginnings of sweat formed on his brow. At least it was near closing time, Leo thought. Otherwise, he would have had to lock up, and at the pace at which Calypso was pulling him along, he didn’t get the opportunity to. At this point, he decided to try and match her stride, because being dragged down the block was going to be hell on his sneakers. He was already getting a few curious looks from bystanders, either laughing at him or moving out of Calypso’s warpath, watching in awe. Bulldozer of hotness, coming through, he wanted to joke.
“Where’re we going, Sunshine?” He asked. “I hope you’re not taking me somewhere quiet to murder me. What would you tell the others?”
“Shut up, Leo,” she said, with venom in her voice.
That made his throat constrict with the tiniest bit of shame. For one of the few times in his young life, he was rendered completely silent. The only sounds left now were the chatter of people headed for the boardwalk and the humming of car engines as they moved up and down the street.
For the following minutes, he simply walked behind Calypso as she took them… wherever she was taking them. With time, her grip on his hand loosened, becoming something more reminiscent of a lover’s gentle touch than of the grip of a vise. He didn’t dare let go. It was the closest they had come to a display of affection since Ogygia.
Eventually, they reached the boardwalk, which was bustling with activity: souvenir shops and carnival games lined the beach, crowded with plenty of dads wearing tacky Hawaiian shirts that Leo probably could have assembled into a gradient. A Ferris wheel and several rollercoasters that were surely lawsuits waiting to happen loomed in the distance. The angry rumble of the rollercoaster cars against the tracks served as a hum of white noise beneath the other sounds filling the air.
Instead of pulling him toward the action, Calypso steered them away from the crowd, moving down the beach toward a more quiet spot, where the kaleidoscopic sunset was visible and the sand unoccupied. When they were far enough from the din of the boardwalk, she abruptly stopped walking, causing Leo to nearly bowl her over. Before they toppled to the ground in a tangle of limbs, she caught him by his biceps, finally letting go of his hand.
“Whoa, Sunshine. Getting physical, I see.”
She glared at him like she wanted to kill him then and there, fuming slightly, her chest heaving and cheeks tinged red. But a moment later, she only sighed in disappointment as her gaze softened.
With her features finally relaxed, Leo took the image of her in: meticulously styled braid resting on her shoulder as if artfully placed there, strikingly beautiful ocean-green eyes, little button nose, and lips pulled into a thin, anxious line. She said nothing as he stared dumbly at her, and once he realized what he was doing, he averted his gaze, blushing fiercely.
It had been a while since he burst into flame but now would have been as apt a time as any. Heat made a home in his cheeks. He hoped Calypso wouldn’t notice the tinge of pink on them in the cotton candy glow of the sunset.
She finally spoke, her voice the softest it had been since she confronted him back at the shop. “Leo, please tell me what is going on with you. I am…” she paused, as if reluctant to continue.
“You’re…?” He prompted.
“I am worried. And do not let that get to your head, Valdez,” she said, jabbing a finger into his chest again. “I am serious.”
“I thought you were worr–-”
“LEO.”
“Right, right, sorry,” he said, raising his palms in surrender. Not the time for stupid jokes. He stuffed his shaking hands into his pockets to hide his nerves. Where to start? “I…”
Calypso watched him struggle, not offering an out by way of a verbal or physical prompt. She seemed content to watch him suffer through an explanation. Damn this stubborn, beautiful girl.
“Well, I've been thinking about this lately..." he began. "I don’t think I–- I know I don’t really compare to the other… heroes who washed up on your island,” he finally started, finding it hard to say “I” and “hero” in the same sentence. A frown line began to form on Calypso's brow, and Leo had to fight the urge to smooth it out with his thumb. “You had all these super cool, muscular white dudes like Odysseus, and Percy Jackson, you know?”
Calypso breathed a laugh, ducking her head in what looked like embarrassment. It was the most at ease she had looked all day. Leo wanted to keep it that way, so he continued speaking.
“And I know I helped you get off Ogygia.” He pronounced the name delicately as if handling glass. “But now I feel like maybe you feel like you owe me something just because of that, and I don’t want to hold you back from doing whatever you want to do.” He was on a roll now, that was for sure. “I don’t know if you still feel the same way about me as you did back then. I would totally get it if you didn’t. But I guess I’m being selfish because…” he breathed deeply. “I’m still in love with you, Calypso. And I don't wanna lose you.”
He’d done it. He’d bared his soul to her, laying out all of his fears for her to pick apart and possibly laugh at. And he’d even used her real name, something he never did. It had been a very weird evening so far.
Her face was blank as she processed, and that killed him. He’d gone and screwed it all up now. She had been waiting for the moment to tell him that she wanted to do her own thing, and no matter how much he cared about her, he would have understood. He was not like Percy. He was not worth coming home to. Calypso simply hadn’t had the opportunity to let him down easy yet, and he’d just handed it up to her on a silver platter.
Her lips finally moved, readying to speak. Leo focused his undivided attention on her next words (which was no small feat):
“Gods, I would hope you were still in love with me, Leo Valdez," she said, a smile forming. "Otherwise, my living with you would become rather awkward.”
He struggled to form words. “What?" He eventually croaked.
She giggled happily, the sound fluttery and heavenly to his ears, making his heart skip a beat. “Have I finally made Leo Valdez, Mister Motormouth, speechless? This shall go down in the history books!” Her eyes glowed with mirth. Leo was transfixed.
He had no idea where she’d heard of “motormouth,” or of the “history books.” She must have been getting up to some top-secret research behind his back.
“Listen to me, Leo,” she said, taking his hand, wrapping her fingers around his palm, and slowly rubbing circles into the back of it with her thumb. “I am going to tell you just how wrong you are.”
Leo could feel his free hand gathering heat. It would be a matter of moments before he went ablaze. Well, if that did happen, he could just take a quick dip in the ocean. It would be all ambient, with the sun setting beautifully over the water and the sound of the waves touching the shore and Calypso laughing as she watched him flail around–-
“First, I have had more than just ‘super cool, muscular white dudes’ show up on Ogygia. I will spare you the list, but know that,” she said, squeezing his hand. “Second, you did not ‘help me get off Ogygia,’ you died and came back to life so that you could rescue me.” Her eyes twinkled. “I owe you the world for what you have done for me.”
Leo began to protest, but she pressed a finger to his lips, effectively shutting him up. (The feeling of her touch simultaneously tickled and burned, like holding your hand over a flame.) She kept it there as she continued to speak. “You are not holding me back from anything. I am quite content with our current… arrangement. In fact, I feel the most free I have ever felt, now that I am here with you.”
She took a deep breath before continuing, dropping her finger from his mouth. Leo hung onto every last word she spoke.
“And, well.” She seemed to finally lose steam, her voice softening from its previously commanding tone. It reminded him of Piper’s charm-speak. “I would not call you spectacular, Leo Valdez…”
Leo blew air out of the side of his mouth. His eyes burned, but he blinked a few times to push away the tears. He knew what was coming.
“...Yeah, I know,” he murmured.
And then.
And then.
She leaned in quickly and kissed him forcefully, shutting down every single center of his brain with the touch of her lips to his. He felt his hand light up in flame, but he didn’t care because Calypso was kissing the absolute life out of him. He moved quickly to release his hand from hers and grip her waist tightly, leaning into her cinnamony taste and insistent pressure against his lips, all the while feeling as if he was on top of the world.
He kissed her for a moment longer until she pulled away from him, gripping the collar of his shirt for balance as she leaned backward, back arched.
“...But what I will call you, just this once, is the Supersized McShizzle, and that is exactly why I love you too.”
Leo was slack-jawed, already enough by the absolute doozy of a kiss she just plopped on him, and doubly so by the “Supersized McShizzle” comment. Maybe even triply so by the "I love you too" comment. He felt as if his brain was overheating like a computer would when trying to do too many things at once. He tried to move his lips to speak again but once more, nothing came of it. He simply opened and closed his mouth, not unlike a fish out of water.
“Uh-oh,” she said, grinning. Her eyes danced coyly. “I think I broke him.” She ducked her head, looking up at him through her eyelashes flirtatiously. “Do I need to kiss it better?”
Clearly, he was dead and this was the result of his neurons firing for the last time, creating a beautiful daydream that would send him off into the afterlife as a content ball of flame, with the knowledge that Calypso felt the same way about him as he did her. There was no chance that this was real life...
Finally, finally, his mind kicked back into action, and he spluttered, “Uh, yeah! That definitely… wouldn’t hurt. That would be very beneficial, actually.” He pointed up to his lips with the hand (which was thankfully no longer ablaze) that wasn’t still lightly gripping the back of her shirt in his fist, saying with a grin, “So put ‘em here, and your favorite bad boy will be working just fine.”
She laughed harder than he'd ever heard her, and gods did Leo love her laugh, catching the smallest little snort at the end of it. He thought that maybe if it weren’t for her hands tucked into his collar, he would collapse onto the sand and pass out.
She kissed him again, and by some unseen force, he stayed on his feet as their lips connected for a second time. He would never get used to kissing Calypso.
When she pulled away, she tilted her head slightly and smiled at him.
“I was waiting for you to make a move, you know,” she said.
Leo was surprised by her brazen allusion to affection. From what he knew about her (which was far less than he originally thought), she was the quiet brand of lover who had gotten her heart broken too many times to be so confident about a relationship, so it took a lot to get through to the surer side of her. He felt honored that she trusted him enough to show it.
“Me?” He asked dumbly.
She bit her lip to keep a laugh inside, and Leo was definitely in love with the sight. “Yes, you. No, actually, I was thinking of calling Odysseus.”
He blushed even as he came up with a retort. “Well, ain’t no way Odysseus could kiss like this,” he said, grinning.
“You definitely let it get to your head,” she said, tsking. “I guess I will have to take those kisses back, hmm?”
“Nuh-uh. No take-backs. And you definitely can’t take back ‘Supersized McShizzle.’ I expect to only be referred to as such until the end of time.”
“No way, Leo Valdez.” She leaned forward again. He expected another kiss, but instead, she simply pressed her forehead to his. The move was surprisingly intimate, especially for Calypso. As she stood impossibly close to him every smooth, youthful plane of her face was in high definition, but Leo was entranced by her eyes, the very eyes that caught his attention when he first met her. “I like that name better anyway. It rolls off the tongue nicely.”
Leo wanted to make a joke about tongues but realized that he’d only embarrass the hell out of himself and disgust Calypso. Instead, he opted to kiss her again. She smiled against his lips and sighed into his mouth.
The small knot that had been stuck in his stomach since the opening of the shop all those weeks ago was finally unwound. If he could just have this for the rest of his life, he wouldn’t need anything else.
Their lips parted with a quiet smack.
“I am not going anywhere,” Calypso then said, as if having read his mind. “‘Leo and Calypso’s Auto Repair and Mechanical Monsters’ would not be much without Calypso, would it?”
“No,” he said, his voice uncharacteristically hoarse, feeling weighted by this sudden realization. “It would be nothing without you.”
In the ensuing silence, Leo heard a few stray seagulls cawing some distance away, and the gentle caress of the waves against the beach. In silence, he tended to overthink every little thing that caused them, but at that moment, his mind was clear aside from the image in front of him: Calypso processing what he'd just said, teasing her bottom lip between her teeth as she did so. A twinge of sadness entered Calypso's expression, but it quickly transformed into a small smile that drove him wild.
“Let us go back to the shop, Leo,” she said as she took his hand in hers again, this time handling it with care instead of nearly breaking it. “It is dinnertime.”
~*~
While they ate dinner that night, Leo couldn’t stop smiling and studying Calypso as they sat down on Tennyson. She sat with her legs tucked beneath her, leaning on the back of the couch as she stabbed her fork into the bits of stew that she chewed as if savoring the taste of every single one. He wondered how she made such simple things as eating look so elegant.
“Your stew will get cold,” she said sternly when she noticed him staring, but she turned away to hide a blush.
After they ate, they put their dishes away and returned to the couch. Leo was feeling a bit drowsy, as he plopped down onto Tennyson and promptly took up nearly all the space, but Calypso forced him to move his legs so that she could sit down by his feet. They sat in silence like this for a few minutes. Leo watched Calypso as she looked out into the expanse of the shop. Her thick brows were furrowed in concentration as her eyes spanned the walls. He wondered if she saw the garage the way he saw it, as a true home, like somewhere she thought she could belong. It was the least that she deserved after being imprisoned on Ogygia for three thousand years.
Soon, though, Calypso got a funny look in her eye and told him, “Put your head here,” while pointing to her lap.
Leo gave her a confused look, at which she flushed.
“It is more comfortable,” she insisted, but he could see how shy she was about the whole thing. He shot her a tired, teasing grin, and obliged her, resting his head on the pillow of her thighs, which were far more comfortable than any bed he’d ever slept in. He looked up at her in wonder, and she looked back down at him with a loving smile, threading her fingers delicately through his curls, all the while making small playful comments like, “Your hair is a whole other creature, Leo Valdez.”
Leo could have slept until the next morning like this, but eventually, she said, “Up. My legs are falling asleep,” and forced him to stand.
He made a point of whining about it. “But I was comfortable!”
“Too bad,” she deadpanned, but she reluctantly grinned at the puppy-dog eyes he was shooting her. “It is past your bedtime.”
“Which is exactly why we should have stayed on the couch,” he argued. “I could have gotten a good night’s sleep with this view.” To specify exactly what view he was referring to, he brought a hand to her jaw, running his thumb along it and eventually resting his hand on the back of her neck.
Pink flared up in her cheeks and she gaped at him incredulously, unable to come up with a snappy response for that particular statement. “You… are…”
Something Leo loved about Calypso was that she rarely used contractions when she spoke, such as “you’re” or “he’s.” She almost always took care to enunciate each word with elegance and honey dripping from every syllable. It fascinated him, but what fascinated him more was that, at this moment, she seemed unable to speak, and she always had something witty on the tip of her tongue.
“Smooth as heck? Suave? Sexy?” He supplied, grinning. “All apply to Leo Valdez.”
“Try ‘an idiot,’” she challenged, finally finding her voice. She removed his hand from her neck and pulled him along by it through the door which led to their little apartment behind the garage.
It was messily furnished with a few ratty old lamps that supplied warm lighting, a TV in the corner, and another couch. There was a kitchen in the far-right corner, where Calypso made their meals. The sink was filled with dirty dishes (including the remains of tonight's dinner) and the counter, where two tall stools sat, was covered in boxes of cereal, a coffee maker, and other assorted items. The doors to their bedrooms were adjacent on the left wall, with the bathroom in the corner. The walls were concrete, but Calypso had told him she didn’t like the drab gray color, so she was working on covering all four walls with a vibrant mural with splashes of color and a few personal touches, such as a cornucopia spilling mountains of food, a campfire with the letter L painted on the end of one of the logs, and some palm trees. The paint cans that she was using were all shoved into the corner near the bathroom, but they were nearly empty. Leo would have to go out and buy some new ones soon.
They took turns getting ready for bed in the bathroom. Calypso went first, Leo second. He was a bit surprised to see her waiting for him next to the door after he finished, but he smiled at the sight of her pretending that she hadn’t been doing it, clearing her throat and crossing her arms over her chest.
“Smooth, Sunshine,” he joked, and she rolled her eyes, unabashedly smiling now. He’d wormed his way through to her heart, for sure.
“I am going to ignore that,” she said, as she looked him straight in the eye. The air around them felt full of something that Leo was slowly becoming more and more familiar with. Leaning forward, slowly as if through molasses, Calypso rested a hand on his chest for balance and kissed him chastely. He felt himself become what felt like a thousand degrees warmer as she pressed her lips to his, barely having the presence of mind to kiss back at the very last second.
When Calypso leaned back as if to pull away, Leo gripped her hips, effectively holding her in place, and kissed her again, this time with intention. She made a small noise of surprise but then hummed in satisfaction as she slotted her lips against his once more. He kissed her for as long as she let him, which turned out to be quite a long time.
At some point, however, she firmly planted her hands against his shoulders and pushed him away from her, smirking knowingly, but her particularly flushed cheeks shattered the illusion of calm that she was attempting to project.
“Good night, Leo," she said with force, taking a step away from him. "Sleep well.”
Calypso turned on her heel and walked to her bedroom door, giving him one last grin over her shoulder as she opened and closed it. Leo shook his head in amazement.
Suddenly, he smelled smoke and looked down at his hands, which were on fire once again.
“Crap!” He shouted, slapping them frantically against the wall to try and put them out. After a few attempts, he finally snuffed them, sighing in exhausted relief.
On the wall, Festus made a series of clicks and whirrs, which carried a tone of playfulness. Leo chuckled and said, “I know, right?” He turned around, walking to his bedroom. “Night, Festus,” Leo called across the room to the mechanical dragon’s head. (The rest of his body was stored safely in a hangar back at Camp Jupiter.) It responded in kind with another series of mechanical purrs.
Leo shut his door behind him, and nearly didn’t think to change into his pajamas thanks to how keyed up he was. When he was finally able to sleep, hours later, the only things on his mind were Calypso’s hexing smile and the feeling of her lush lips on his.