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As a demigod, there will always be more important things than teenage romances. There are monsters to kill and prophecies to fulfill and probably more responsibilities Piper can't make herself remember. But right now, she's pacing around her cabin thinking about how much she wishes she could punch Leo Valdez in the face for making her freak out so much.
It's not like there's anything strictly wrong with what he did. Really, it should be sweet. But what Piper can't figure out is if he meant to do it and why he didn't and whether the words were targeted at her in the first place. Usually, she doesn't let herself get worked up by petty miscommunications.
But usually Leo Valdez doesn't tap I love you in Morse code at the dinner table.
So it's only natural that Piper's trying not to freak out.
She's a daughter of the love goddess, right? She can solve this. It wouldn't be fair to lead Leo on, not when there's a fledgling thing of a relationship between her and Jason, not when she doesn't know what had happened between them at the Wilderness School before Hera stepped in to ruin it, not when they're on a ship in the middle of the ocean and might die at any moment. It would be unfair to lead him on if she doesn't have feelings for him.
Piper stops pacing and thinks about it. She rubs her sweaty palms off on clean pajama pants and stares at the ceiling in her cabin. The boat rocks, gently but persistently. Does she have feelings for Leo? She's considered it before, of course. She'd be an idiot not to.
There's something about Leo, okay? He tells stupid jokes and laughs at them longer than anyone else does, sure, but Piper secretly thinks he's hilarious. And he's smart, seriously smart, not like Annabeth is with carefully laid plans but with quick thinking and gadgets she swears he makes out of nowhere. No matter what, she always feels safe around him, even when he's needling her.
She thinks about Leo dying for a moment—a brief terrifying thought that kicks her brain in the gut—and feels so uniquely terrible she could actually scream.
Holy fuck, thinks Piper. I'm in love with him.
It's suddenly, ridiculously, almost painfully obvious why Piper can't make things work with Jason. The Jason she thinks she's in love with—the one from the Wilderness School—that's not who he actually is. Praetor Grace would never sneak out of a dorm room to sit on the roof and watch the meteor shower with Piper. And she really has no way of confirming it, but she can tell from the way he talks about Reyna that he's not as oblivious as her Mist memories make it seem.
But it's more than that, isn't it?
When Piper became afraid of her powers, of how she'd literally talked a dead man back to life, all Jason did was tuck her hair behind her ear absentmindedly and tell her it made no difference to him. She couldn't tell him that it was precisely what she was scared of: influencing her friends into thinking she was perfect. Taking away their ability to see her do wrong, just because she says it. Jason's reaction was not exactly the most reassuring thing on the planet.
But Leo had frowned. And Leo had fixed it.
He'd spent three days at Camp Half-Blood teaching her Morse code. She was terrible at it to begin with, and Leo wasn't a natural teacher, but he stuck with it. They sent impractical messages during games of Capture the Flag, and quieter ones in late nights of Piper sticking around while he worked on building the ship. They haven't gotten to use it on the Argo II yet—the ship's usually too loud for them to hear each other—but Piper remembers.
There you go, he'd said when she finally nailed it. Now we can talk without you worrying about hurting me.
Piper's in love with Leo. And no amount of perfect Jason can change that for her.
It's almost too big of a realization for eagle pajamas in the middle of the night, but she supposes she can make do. She smiles and is halfway to the door before she realizes—she can't tell Leo. He'll never accept it outright. And she's not entirely sure he has feelings for her, she's definitely hoping he does, the Morse code thing is a sign, but it's not enough to go running to the engine in the middle of the night like a heroine from a bad nineties movie. Piper needs a plan.
Two days after she comes to this realization, Piper still hasn't done anything.
Leo gets caught up in a random invention from nuts and bolts and gears from his toolbelt and forgets to eat dinner, spacing out the world around him. Piper picks at her green beans and tells the rest of the crew that they can go to bed, she'll make sure he eats.
But when the room is empty of conversation, she suddenly gets a little bit more nervous. Images of camp light up the screens around them, but the only sound is the scratching of metal down the table from her. No, she didn't sit next to Leo at dinner. After she figured out how she felt about him, she knew she'd freak out if they were alone together.
Now they are, and she is freaking out. Gods, Piper loves it when she's right about things. She looks at the boy down the table from her and resists the urge to go running back into her cabin, when she can keep her feelings close to herself and private.
Relax, Piper tells herself sternly. You are a daughter of Aphrodite. You have faced down giants and gods. You can tap a sentence on a dining table.
Carefully, slowly, Piper taps. Her handle on Morse code is pretty good after hours of practice, but she made sure to rehearse in her cabin before dinner. Really, she's been practicing since she realized it was something she had to do. The execution is flawless. I L-O-V-E Y-O-U.
Leo doesn't look up, but he grimaces at a harsh squeal from the invention in his hands.
Piper sighs and taps the message out on the table again. I L-O-V-E Y-O-U.
This time, he does look up.
"That's really cute, Pipes," says Leo. "I can definitely help you practice Morse code if you want. I'm sure that's something Jason would be into, but you'd have to double check that he knows what you mean first. You could teach him, right? The student becoming the master and all that." He's talking fast, fidgeting so hard he's going to break something, acting weirdly nervous.
For a moment, all Piper can do is stare at him.
"Leo Valdez," she says slowly, enunciating his name so he doesn't get it twisted, "do you really think that I went out of my way to be alone with you and said I love you twice in a language only we know to practice for someone who isn't even my boyfriend?"
"It's a little weird, but you do you. Maybe try 'I love you Jason' to really get the point across?"
"I don't understand how someone as smart as you are can be so dense," says Piper. She rolls her eyes and hits more than taps the table, this time with a new addition to her plan. Leo follows along, muttering the letters that correspond to her actions.
"O…" he says, trailing off. "I love you, Leo."
Piper's tempted to make a joke, but he's looking at her with wide eyes and perfectly still hands and she can't bring herself to. He seems younger than she's ever seen him, confused and vulnerable and almost… almost hopeful. It's that that convinces her she hasn't made a huge mistake.
(Because if she loses Leo as a friend, then this was doomed from the start.)
"If this is a prank, I'm jumping off the ship," says Leo, but he's still staring at her like she's morphed into her mother in front of him.
"It's not a prank," whispers Piper, and her throat closes up. "I'm, um. I'm so sorry if this is a little much for you. I didn't, I wouldn't want to hurt our friendship in any way. Maybe it would be best if we pretended this whole thing never happened?" Her voice ticks up at the end, even though she didn't intend to make it a question. She feels tears burning in her eyes and stands up, pushing in her chair with a level of calm she doesn't remotely feel.
"No, wait, gods, Piper," says Leo. "Don't get it twisted. I love you. I mean, not in a platonic way. Wait, I do consider you a friend but I'm also hoping we can be more than that. Yes. I like you. I really don't know where I'm going with this. Please don't go."
Piper stops. He's so far away and her blood is rushing so hard she can feel it but all she can hear is don't get it twisted. I love you. "Why didn't you tell me?" she asks, stupidly, because it's the only thing she can think of to say when Leo is looking at her like that.
"Because I didn't think you could possibly like me back," he says, so quietly she has to strain to hear him. "Pipes, I'm no son of Zeus. The most important thing I've commanded is this ship, and I know enough to realize I'm royally fucking it up. I'm not Jason. You… well, you could do a lot better."
It might've hurt less if he'd punched her in the gut, but Piper is so used to rolling with the shock at this point that she immediately responds.
"I'm not looking for a laundry list of attributes to stand next to me at parties and look pretty," Piper says, suddenly frustrated. "I have spent so long pretending that what I felt for Jason was anywhere close to what I felt for you, and I like you too much to let you go because you don't think you're 'good enough' for me. Which is bullshit, by the way."
She takes a second to inhale, but plows ahead.
"Love isn't about deserving someone, and it's not about living up to some stupid expectation that couldn't possibly match who you are and what you mean to me. Don't… don't quit before we've even begun, Valdez."
"I wouldn't dream of it," says Leo, and Piper looks up to see him standing in front of her.
"Oh," she says, suddenly feeling small. "Hi."
"Hi," says Leo, and he's too close for her to remember what words are supposed to sound like. "That was quite a Winger speech."
"Great, now our first kiss is going to be forever marred by a Community reference," mumbles Piper, but she can't stop herself from smiling.
"I'll have you know that it's the best show on television… our first kiss?"
"Yeah," says Piper. "I mean, if you want to kiss me."
"McLean," says Leo, rolling his eyes at her, "if you think that I walked all the way down this weirdly huge dining room after I learned you loved me to not kiss you, you have got another thing coming."
"Shut up," she tells him, even as he's leaning ever closer to her.
"Make me," says Leo, and then he's kissing her. She thinks it might be his first kiss, but she's not sure, but either way she's just so happy that it doesn't matter. He tastes like toothpaste and soot, and her arms are so tight around him they might snap, but his hands are in her hair and he's kissing her. Leo Valdez is kissing her.
Piper has to break away from him because she's laughing.
"I'm not that bad of a kisser, am I?" Leo asks. "Or maybe I'm too good. Beginner's luck is a thing, right?"
She puts up a hand to stop him worrying and catches her breath. "No, I just… I've been worrying about doing this for two days, and I'm happy, Leo. I'm just so… overcome that this gets to happen, you know? It's practically surreal."
"Oh," says Leo, and she's finally rendered him speechless. His mouth quirks up and he smiles, barely preventing himself from breaking into laughter. "I'm pretty pumped this is happening too."
"Awesome," says Piper, and she means it, because she's kissed Jason before and it's nothing like this.
"Wait, Pipes, two days?" Leo asks. "Why two days?"
"You tapped I love you in Morse code at dinner two nights ago."
"I did?" Leo seems genuinely confused, and Piper can feel her cheeks start to burn.
"Yeah, um, and I thought it was weird that you were 'saying' that when you know perfectly well we're the only two people on this ship who know Morse code properly, but then I thought that maybe you liked me, and I realized I liked you, and… and I am now seeing that that was not why you did that at all."
"I mean, you had bad data, but you drew the correct conclusion," says Leo, and he's really grinning now.
"This would've been really awkward otherwise," says Piper, and Leo reaches out for her hand. She takes his and wants to start laughing all over again, even if it was just from her relief. Leo likes her. She won't lose him. Again, no data to support, but she can hear her mother popping a bottle on Mount Olympus.
"Not worse than the Jeff and Annie kiss in the Community season finale," says Leo, and Piper gasps in mock offense.
"They're in love! It's meant to be a tragedy."
"It's lazy writing, that's what it is. And real love doesn't need tragedy." He smiles at her, and she leans over to kiss him again.
It's really only appropriate that they hear a giant smash into the ship fifteen seconds later, because too much good luck in one day can make a demigod lose their touch.