Work Text:
leo was a fucking trainwreck.
just about everyone knew it. the adhd, the cockiness, the inability to sit still. he was a car moving at full speed at every single moment. faster and faster, just constantly building momentum but never crashing.
but leo had crashed, ages ago. he’s on sertraline for his ptsd. he has been, since he was thirteen. he’s medicated. and yeah maybe that was normal but for him that was a big red flag on how fucked up he was. his friends weren’t medicated, and they’d fought monsters. like real, furry, eiffel tower sized monsters. they’d faced all that and came out unscathed. and maybe it was a demigod thing, like it’s in their blood to be able to see all that fucked up shit with no consequences, but leo had been through very human-sized traumatic events.
and he’s medicated.
he hadn’t told anyone. will knows, probably most of the apollo kids in charge of the prescriptions do. but he hasn’t told them. he’s told chiron, when he asked if leo had any prescriptions he needed transferred to chb, and he said yeah, sertraline, and chiron said okay, and that was it. he hasn’t told anyone he was medicated because he has ptsd. that he has panic attacks and nightmares. he’s normal to them. he’s happy. to the seven, he was okay. and that’s how leo liked it.
it got painful, when his cheeks were tearstained and he was sitting on the bathroom floor, because he didn’t have anyone there to comfort him. it got bad when he had to hurt himself, when red splattered onto the sink and floor like the warning raindrops before a storm. when crimson stained his sheets like red wine, and he said he’d gotten a nosebleed, it ached. it ached like when your feet cramp up or you sleep the wrong way and wake up sore, but it wasn’t his feet or his neck or his shoulders, it was his heart.
he dragged the past behind him. it was heavy. but he wouldn’t let himself unload on the people who he loved, the people who keep his slashes diagonal instead of vertical. sharing meant shame. shame and tears and pain and honestly, he couldn’t bring himself to spend too long thinking about what had happened.
his mind makes him. he lies in bed and feels the rough hands between his legs, hands he knows aren’t there, but he can feel them, hands that aren’t his. hands that aren’t his but his body isn’t his either, his body belongs to the man that took his innocence, that stripped him naked.
he loved his younger siblings. he loved the sparkle of youth in their eyes, and he would endure what he had a thousand times over if it meant keeping them from losing it. he lost it far too young.
he hates how he remembers it. his childhood is foggy, sorting through his memories is like walking through a cloud, but he remembers the worst moments clearly. apparently he remembers them so well that they force themselves upon him, wracking his brain and hitting him. hitting him in the face and stomach and everywhere.
he bled himself out slowly as if that could rid him of the demons inside him, the demons underneath his skin.
“leo, you okay?” the lack of blood in his body was dizzying. everything spun.
“yeah i’m fine.” annabeth was curious. the daughter of athena, she wanted to know why leo was acting so fucked up. it was because he felt like his stupid car that was driving at 953786576 miles per hour just crashed into a fucking tree.
“you look really pale, what’s going on?” he looked up at her. she was older than him, so she automatically assumed a motherly role with him. and hazel and piper and like everyone else. he wasn’t special.
“i’m okay.”
(crimson droplets)
“no you’re not.” she was touching him now,
touching him, (too many crimson drops)
but he couldn’t identify where, maybe his arm. his shoulder. his face?
something was in his mouth.
fingers, he remembered when there were fingers in his mouth
(too many crimson drops too much red wine)
ambrosia.
he could see her again.
they were in the middle of the woods.
( the leaves were turning crimson)
they had been playing capture the flag.
(crimson like the drops on your bedsheets when you were small)
they were alone. “where did everybody go?”
(everybody left nobody was there to protect you)
“they left the game is over, what just happened? were you dizzy?”
(dizzy red wine makes you dizzy)
it goes straight to your head.
“yeah.” he blinked. “i got lightheaded.”
she was worried.
(nobody was worried back then)
“has this ever happened to you before?”
“yeah i have this iron deficiency, it happens sometimes. sorry.”
“
gods,
leo you worried me.
are you okay now?” he nodded. yeah. yeah he was.