Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“Jesus Christ, this is...it's just not right. I can't believe it, Hazel, none of it. He's not—we can't —god, I can't even say it. Wh—what do we even do now—?”

“Frank. Look at me—look. We got here in time. We can figure this out, we've got no other choice and we've pushed through that just fine before. Don't psych yourself out, not now."

"I know, but, I have no clue what to do and he's going to make himself throw up at this rate. I don’t think that’s gonna help us much."

"Take a deep breath. Both of us cannot be freaking out. Turn him on his side so he doesn't choke, just in case it happens, alright? Good. Now, we need to get towels, as many as we can find. He's shivering way too mu--"

“Wait. Wait, hold on, he’s saying something. Leo?”

DESPITE THE COSMIC LUCKINESS associated with living in a town called Pleasantville (and yes, it was a real place), Leo had been crying on his bathroom floor for four hours.

Not hysterically, obviously. Nobody had the energy to heave for minutes, much less hours, and Leo was included in that demographic (sorry, Polyphemus), for all that he usually had a surplus of it. Nope, definitely not today, he didn't. Man, and he wasn't even doing any cool crying, either: this bathroom had seen no dramatic wailing tears to mark some epic coming of age moment or anything. No, insult to injury—all Leo seemed to be able to muster up tear-wise at this point were these super mortifying little ones that dropped from the corners of his eyes while his body literally quivered. He couldn’t help but imagine himself as a bug-eyed chihuahua having a nervous breakdown. ‘Yo quiero Taco Bell…’ (<—Leo feels compelled to mention that this is a niche reference. He has self respect, he swears)

Even though he was feeling a considerable amount of physical pain, this thought was powerful (read: stupid) enough to make him feel embarrassed with himself on some level, which was somehow worse than the physical agony he was dealing with right now, lol. Lol? Did he just think the word LOL?? God, this was what he was talking about. He couldn't help but feel as if someone else must be invisible in his bathroom, secretly watching and judging him for being such a freak about this situation he'd found himself in.

It sure felt like he wasn't alone. 

He felt...strange. He just couldn't put his finger on it.

...That aside, the four hours he'd spent trying and failing to change either of his most immediate problems had thoroughly impressed to him that this wouldn't knock it off and stop, already. Having been reminded of this, Leo heaved a whistling sigh, his brow scrunching in contempt for his circumstances. Unfortunately, this just made the dampness up there suddenly more pronounced (and therefore annoying), and as if to prove this, his eyebrows started to itch faintly. He could've tried to scratch it, but if he was being perfectly honest, he was so tired that he legitimately didn't think that the energy to scrub the sweat off was worth the expense. See, he'd unfortunately wasted most of all of it, and his time, lying down on the floor and waiting for the discomfort of consciousness to fade enough for him to want to move somewhere better to waste away. Which, naturally, had not happened, and now left him several hours deep into being very productively paralyzed by how overwhelmed he was by the discomfort he was in. At this point, he had to commit to the bit. So, uh. Here he was. Rooted in place on his bathroom floor.

In laymans terms, he felt weak, achy, and overall pathetic, and instead of migrating somewhere else in his house to ride this out somewhere more sensible, his tomb was apparently destined to be the bathroom. Which wasn't exactly an activity outside his norm these days, but something about this was...a bit more soul draining than usual. Which was saying a lot. Which, in turn, probably explained why his eyes wouldn't stop leaking no matter how hard he tried to suck it up and tighten the faucet.

...In short, this meant he was crying in pain on the bathroom floor and had been for hours. Duh. Geez, twist his arm much?

He somehow mustered the energy for another sigh, this one heaving. It made the pain dissipate a little for one glorious stretch of three seconds, and it was worryingly sanity stabilizing. Thinking was coming in layers, now, filtering through several talking heads within his head until it distilled into truth. A mental alchemy he'd been slow-cooking himself through all this time. Anyone else would've been driven insane by this years ago, which--well. You know Leo.

Age of fifteen, he'd almost fallen into the Grand Canyon, impulsively flown a helicopter with zero experience and nailed it, and in that same stretch, threw a port-a-potty lid straight in the face of Gaia, the, uh, personification of the earth itself and scary all-power goddess who was hellbent on making all of society do the cha-cha-slide into devastation, then built a fucking warship, then committed an involuntary terrorist attack on demigod peers they were specifically trying NOT to piss off, then flew an epic metal dragon and self-immolated in order to destroy aforementioned terrifying goddess, then got swept into a doomed whirlwind situationship with his first psycho girlfriend who proved to him keenly that MAYBE he should keep up on ancient literature like the Odys—

Um. Ahem. In that order. 

Did it suddenly make more sense why this was a predicament that Leo was in? Fifteen was one of those ugly gauntlets of life that determines who you are inside forevermore, anyone knows that, and Leo was living proof of this at age 20. Of course he was on this level of bullshitticus thinking to cope with being in pain and being very lackadaisacal about it. Or, well, completely ignoring it as best as possible and trucking it, which was basically the same thing. It was just such a shame that this round of disabling agony had hit him like a flyswatter instead of the usual hydraulic urrrhghhghg press of the chronic pain associated with a days worth of wear and tear. He hadn't had time to bring a blanket or phone charger for floor time, much less water or a snack.

How hard he'd hit the wall had felt unnatural... which was something Leo was sure he should've been concerned about, come to think of it.

—Unfortunately, though, this was (plausibly) an unfortunately common reality for him. A lifetime of random Denny's parking lot style throwdowns with various creatures of Greek and Roman mythos, and probably all that scrunching himself into abstract shapes beneath machinery of all kind (and under bridges, mouths of sewers, under beds, anywhere safe where no one can see or reach) oh, and self immolating that one time (had he mentioned that?) had caught up to him, and he'd been nerfed by chronic pain for his transgressions against the natural order and nature or whatever.

Bottom line, Leo was used to experiencing some kind of pain at all times, generally speaking. In his joints (he often wished WD-40 would work on him), sometimes just nerve pain, sometimes both, sometimes mental, sometimes all. And it was always worse when he was exhausted, which was exactly what Leo felt right now, most of all, when he really thought about it.

Exhausted.

Too tired to think, especially about something he knew(?) was normal, for him. This was normal. Really, nothing much to worry about. And maybe, maybe it was better to just relax (yes, relax) and ride this out quietly.

...Is what he'd say if he was a loser chump that tapped out of mental gymnastics before the audience was suitably entertained. Surely he had more cartwheels in him! Leo Valdez, relaxed, quiet? Never!

(Keep thinking, keep thinking...think your way out of this.)

Man, doing cartwheels sounded like hell, now that he thought of it. The very idea of doing one sounded impossible to him, unsurprising given his current state of "depressed lump of agony on the bathroom floor". He had a whole sentence-summary ready for it, a testament to how much he'd been indulging in that more lately. It couldn't be helped; floor time was sometimes the only cure for how blue he got these days, no thanks to the creeping autumn. Fuck seasonal depression and its stupid ass S.A.D acronym (what a joke!)...  And fuck this time of year, too, and the completely unfair amount of random traumatic shit that had happened to him near these dates. He'd learned a hard lesson on the body remembering what the mind forgets.... now, more than any other time.

God, he was in agony. 

And since running away from pain wasn’t an option anymore (or yet, he sometimes worried), he just had to deal with it—a process of which often came hand-in-hand with activites such as moping like this in his new...house.

His new house.

His brain threatened to trail off there in the face of such a monumental topic, but he stubbornly nudged his neurons into motion, almost like he was shaking dust out of his own cobwebs. It was a flagging effort; he was near hour fifty-seven of consciousness, which was pretty intense, even for him. It couldn't be helped.

See, Leo had made, something, here in Pleasantville. Accidentally, of course. It had started as a promise to Annabeth, and ended up as a workshop. Dedicated to...crafting. Not bound by a single discipline—instead, a chaotic, tumbling interdisciplinary jumble of all sorts of bullshit workshops with amenities as far as the imagination could go. And it was doors-open to anyone. He had talented artisans of every kind imaginable there and people constantly working on all sorts of things, which was amazing.

…But, truthfully, this place held something even softer to him—something, something he fell into caring about a lot.

The novelty of the workshop had had a strange way of wearing off, and had made Leo grow restless. Access to all sorts of artisans who were down to clown was unbelievably engaging and something that always sparked some sort of cool project (many of which never got finished, but always repurposed!), but something about it had begun to feel hollow, after a while. He challenged himself into making more and more intricate...anythings, but every 'ladder rung' of one-upping himself went from being satisfying, to being relieving, to being...a slight mood lift, to being nothing, to being...empty, in a way. Nothing fixed it, no matter how many projects he got involved in. Something inside of him just wasn't lighting up anymore.

But then, some clever people representing a Title I school district had gone around the community in Pleasantville, and ended up reaching out to him to see if they could possibly coordinate some sort of field trip, school assembly speaker, or even a lesson of some kind for their elementary school.  He'd literally slapped himself on the forehead and laughed out loud when he'd read the email—it seemed so obvious, very suddenly, that of course he should be working to do something useful for his community, especially for kids who came from circumstances like his own....a series of phone calls on a good day of chattiness (read: manic energy) and the conversations had gone in great detail about community engagement and uses for grants and federal funding. Jo and Emmie pulled some veteran Hunters of Artemis strings in full support of getting funding and sponsoring all set up as he leapt straight on it, and set himself off brainstorming something cool and useful he could show a bunch of kids...and then consulting Annabeth to ground his ideas in reasonable and achievable sanity.

After a lot of careful planning and conversations with all sorts of people, they were able to hold an open workshop day for a whole series of K-8 schools, an occasion of which had sent him down the path of making something out of one of the most precious gifts he'd been given:

An ongoing purpose to create and teach...to kids in need. Low-income kids, foster kids, first generation immigrants, SNAP kids, any kids who just wanted to learn. After a truly ungodly* amount of planning and preparing, his workshop doors were open. 

(*actually, it had been very godly. He had mustered to cajones to approach a few gods such as Hestia and his father, Hephaestus, to 'cash in' his godly reward points for, y'know, saving their entire world, and networked via Jason to beseech the relevant deities and spirits to bless his workspace against threats of any sort.  Since this wasn't in direct defiance of someone like Zeus's wishes (sorry Percy), many of them had been surprisingly receptive to it, and thus the entire workshop was basically magically protected to fuck and back. Turned out blowing yourself up actually can be good for something after all, beyond getting punched a lot.)

...All that said, this personal sense of ownership and importance for this shit meant that he was a little hardcore about his commitment to helping those kids sometimes. What could he say? Old habits died hard from the Argo Building Trenches. What was important this time was that he'd been really invested in helping out one small group of the kids he'd sourced from one of the original title I schools he'd worked with before the workshop had gotten so big.

Their school was holding a competition for ‘parade floats’ which were really mostly just wagons with some sort of themed constructions in them. They had to make them themselves, and whoever had the coolest one would win, they’d said. Well, more like lamented, because they thought it’d be boring since "everyone broke as hell here!" (<- direct quote) and they didn’t have supplies for it anyway. Leo, Captain Tryhard McShizzle, had taken it upon himself to help them out, put the 'cool' back in school. Had thusly stayed up prepping and executing a last-minute weekend open-workshop for the kids' schools via setting rabid children loose with a bunch of fliers to hand out to their peers. They'd had a huge turnout and he'd been running around like a headless chicken the whole time, trying to balance coordinating the whole thing with equally last minute volunteers...and actually helping out the original group of kids he'd enlisted himself to help. 

To their credit, the kids accomplished most of the broad work on their own and made a genuinely well-made and pretty float, but of course, there was a lot of fine-tuning and testing to do to make sure it wouldn't spontaneously explode or burst into flames. That, or just not work. There was a lot of complex machinery that had somehow ended up going into it—confetti, cupcake cannon, glitter, and many other questionable components. Leo had inadvertently gotten a little carried away when the kids gave him ideas. They were so creative, and it had been fun to figure out how to do it with them, walk them through the construction bit-by-bit, even though they hadn’t been as actively involved...

He worried, a little bit, about what a bunch of young children would do with information about how to rig confetti blasts, but he figured that if they wanted to use the knowledge for evil, that was their (parents') problem.

Parents. Something about the word seemed significant. He paused, then, when his mind suddenly went blank out of nowhere. He shook out his brains, but for some reason, he just couldn't remember where this had been...? Oh. OH, right. Yes, why he was awake for so long. He was on hour fifty...something, now, because as children were wont to do, they'd conveniently waited til the last minute to bring up this generally high-energy project, so Leo'd effectively been working overtime since Saturday afternoon running that craziness up there and helping design, build, and fine-tune the one he was involved with in time for Tuesday. To say it had been a pretty draining project was the understatement of the century, and through that, he had to focus enough to check the living crap out of the safety features he'd been including just in case (as Leo was so not down with being liable for child-death), which did not exactly work with how much time he had to do it. 

Had he mentioned the fact that he got distracted by a very impromptu dinner party and monster battle midway through this? Because that interlude had not helped the process at all, and frankly was where Leo suspected his problem here bega—-

—

--Wh...

His thoughts came slowly, as if trying to push through molasses, but determination might as well have been Leo's middle name, because he stubbornly laid out the sequence of events in his head line by line. He had been on his way to his workshop for one last worried lookover on Monday evening, and scrolling the neighborhood Facebook group while Festus flew (don’t judge him, he had to get connected to the community somehow). He’d seen a post asking for recommendations for a reputable, honest mechanic. Based on their crossroads, they were on the way, so on a whim, he'd offered to go assess it to make sure they didn't get screwed over by somebody. It was a newly wed parents, with a baby. Classic white picket fence hetero dream. And when he’d seen how easy of a fix it was (piece of cake; all it had been was a fluid leak, and the fixing process only involved flushing the fluid, sealing, and recalibration), he'd just whipped it out without thinking, and been blindsided by their gratitude.

He should’ve known attempting to be a kind human would be immediately punished— because they'd then invited him over for dinner (AKA socializing when he really didn't want to do it + was not overall on his game for it) and he hadn't been able to politely decline. All of his training in Texas's weird communication culture of “I’m not ever going to tell you directly that there is a problem and try to direct you with 'subliminal vibes'/passive aggressive tendencies” had failed him. Why this had been such an anxiety inducing experience this time was beyond him.

He reminded himself to be grateful: A family had their car fixed, he got to see a cute little baby, and he’d been given a good meal for free. That didn’t mask the drain it had been, though. Even though their company had been nice, and witnessing their baby daughter navigate mashed potatoes for the first time in her short six months of life had been hilarious and awesome at the time, there had been a mortal feeling of wrongness that he hadn't been able to shake the whole time. Like Leo had no business playing house in his own life, or something.

Whatever it was, the feeling had been all-encompassing. Or, in laymans terms, a total buzzkill. And a...familiar one, too.

That feeling had been a seed growing inside of him for weeks, now. He had something really stable here, now, that made him feel truly happy and fulfilled. He was surrounded by all the wealth and human connection he could ever ask for, and people seemed to genuinely like him, now, most of the time...generally speaking. There'd been a lot of initial fumbling, but he was always a comeback kid. 

(Haha, gross. Gross!)

It was...stable.

And as much as he tried to ignore it, push it aside, try to work around it...it just didn't feel right. It didn't feel like it belonged to him. That he’d earned it. And it didn't feel like he could feel it. Sometimes. Sometimes when he sat with himself and thought, he just thought and felt a whole lot of nothing. Not a normal nothing, either. An unsettling, uneasy emptiness inside, one that only ached more with each passing day. Like a festering wound. Seeing this picture perfect couple of people his age, with a kid and a picket fence, hosting a neighbor like him for dinner with the grace of thankful people...it was one of those moments where that ache became a stab.                                                                (its still bleeding, always, and it hurts-)

When he got tired of stewing in that, he’d dismissed himself to the backyard to ‘have a smoke’ over this feeling (something Leo had never done in his life unless you meant literal smoking), and he’d stood out there to shake out his nerves and jitters. Shockingly, social politeness and being emotionally regulated like a passably normal human was hard when he was over two days deep into not sleeping (who could've possibly guessed?).

This dreadful thought had hit his mind at the same moment that he spotted something stalking near the baby daughter's window, shrouded in shadow so dark it seemed to swallow the light around it, a void of nothing his eyes could make sense of.

(They'd just put her down for the night. Both her parents were in the kitchen. He could hear them laughing.

She was entirely alone. Defenseless.

The potential tragedy is so on the nose its almost comedic. And isn't that the story of his life.

This was what his life was for. A casual helper on the outskirts, earning enough scraps of gratitude to get by. An armslength from the world, a stoic fixer, the labor they don't see. This is all he is good for.)

'And of course it's a night like this that that shit becomes my problem. Dammit. Time to be a single mother who works two jobs and loves her kids and never stops, Leo' Though his mind had been on a lighter tone for once, something about the feeling he got inside when he laid eyes on the...darkness, basically, that had taken form outside of her window, had made him freeze in place, staring. For a long stretch, it stood just as still as him, unmoving, looking in the window as if looking at a bakery display...and then, it leaned in, slow and deliberate.

(A horrible lurch inside , an almost primal feeling of dread that told him clearly what it is before him is a monster.) 

He was sure their daughter was mortal. He had no reason to think she wasn't.

But...that lean. That uncanny stillness. It hadn’t sat right with him. He’d observed it linger by the window, and when it didn't even look at him as it started to tilt forward, as if to climb through the window, his arm hairs raised, and before he’d even known what he was doing, he’d gone racing over to confront it. 'There will be no baby paninis for you!'. Most of the time, monster fights began in earnest from this point. Leo, however, had had this monster stop him, look him straight in the eyes, and say exactly what it was, and nothing else that was helpful. To be completely honest, it had been hard to understand it, and he had been too tired to care about this much and just threw himself into getting the fight over with. Sue him for saving energy. 

It seemed aware of this after a certain point, and had just started repeating what he was sure it probably was; nosoi. He wasn’t sure why it felt like declaring what it was like it was a goddamned Pokémon would make a difference, but it had looked pretty disappointed when he hadn’t run away screaming. They'd fought only briefly before it fled(?), blah blah, and between that, having to explain the amount of smoke, and the fact that he’d been waterboarded into socializing after days without sleep had all worked magnificently together to send him scampering to the workshop to work out the frustration and occupy his mind until he felt less amped up. 

Which was soundly disrupted by how sick he had begun to feel while working.

Not normal sick. Super sick. Stupid-level-sick. "I'm about to write my will" level shit. Not a man-cold, Leo was dead sure of that. It had slowly but steadily creeped into an aura-migraine-enjoying, sinus-exploding, pins-and-needles vertigo extravaganza with shitloads of nerve and muscle pain popping up out of nowhere for dessert. It sucked, is what that meant. And he didn’t even really know why this had been happening so fast. It wasn’t like he’d been tap-dancing in a TB quarantine zone, honestly, and he'd survived way longer periods of sleeplessness when he’d been building the Argo II (...nearly six years ago).

Whatever the case was, it had made him wave the white flag, and after much knocking into walls and ploughing over workshop materials (he was due for a lot of bruises), he’d finally found his way outside and crawled onto Festus. After a truly egregious amount of convincing and cajoling of Festus, who had been very anxious about his state, they had finally flown back to the new house. He'd been so tired he lost time on the fifteen or so minute journey, blinking at the workshop and opening his eyes to find himself touching down in the backyard at home seemingly instantaneously. He’d felt…woozy, getting off of Festus, and he’d brushed off the dragon’s concerned creaks with a simple, “I think I’m just really tired. Let’s go to sleep, buddy.”

He came in through the backdoor, and he’d just felt so hot coming inside, enough so that he began halfway stripping the second he was indoors. No one there to impress but his mirrors, and he never looked at those much. He'd only gotten as far as his shoes and pants before he’d gone stumbling into the main bathroom to cool his face off. But then he got that fuzzy, cotton-stuffy feeling he usually got when he was going to pass out, and he'd had about two seconds to think, 'Yeah, that tracks, let's sit down real quick--' before his legs had buckled, like they'd been kicked out, and he went pinging spectacularly down, hitting the front and back of his head. 

Resting was supposed to make that sort of ouch feel better, but now he was sure he was just feeling worse and worse. Maybe he just should go to sleep. He'd could take the debilitating back pain in the morning from sleeping on the tile, right? To this appalling thought, he blinked spots out of his vision, fighting the nausea creeping up. The haze in his head swelled and he thought harder for a minute, and wondered, with growing clarity, just why he was so carefree about this. Because... it really made the most sense that this would be concerning, and that he should get off this floor and should've done this hours ago, but for some reason, over and over again, he got stuck thinking, and thinking, and thinking, and he couldn’t quite summon the motivation to do any action. He just laid there. Thinking. Wasn't this pathetic? 

It was hard to take this thought seriously.

  Too hard.

His head reminded him, suddenly and seemingly out of nowhere (angrily), that this happened sometimes too, when he got too in his head and depressed. On those occasions and right now, it was like someone whacked him over the head with a vacuum that sucked all the energy out of him. Even his fire was coming out as smoke.

Still, he wondered if maybe the nosoi had anything to do about it―

                                         ―He swore he heard something snarl, but he couldn’t quite place where it had come from. He listened for awhile.

                                                                                                             He didn’t hear it again. 

…Unnerved, Leo thought that, if it was the nosoi, at least he could remember what he had evidently been cursed by. Most demigods weren't that lucky, and had to rely on frantic, scattered recollections of appearance before they could cross-reference other peoples' encounters and various written things to know what the hell had (or nearly had) taken a chunk out of them.

(...Come to think of it, it had been a very sensational ordeal that landed him here. It was kind of weird, honestly. Passing out randomly happened sometimes when he was tired, or sometimes when he stood up too fast, but this time, it really had felt a little different. Less of his heart pounding, and more of the shortness of breath than usual. A feeling of exhaustion so profound that his body didn't have the strength to support the weight of it anymore. What did Nosoi even do? He wondered if he should look it u--)

.. - / ..-. . . .-.. ... / .-.. .. -.- .
... --- -- . - .... .. -. --. / .. ... / ..-. ..- -.-. -.-
.. -. --. / .-- .. - .... / -- -.-- / .... . .- -.. 

He really thought that maybe he should pull out his phone and look up what a Nosoi was, but for some reason, he just couldn't bother himself enough to get off the floor. He was just so tired. It felt like a force other than himself had laid a thick, weighted blanket over him, and he couldn't muster the willpower to pull it off. Or do much of anything, really.

Whatever the case was, it didn't change that by now, Leo thought he might've finally crossed the territory of 'pain', and fighting to keep from crying about it was seeming like more and more of a useless, nigh-counterproductive idea at this point.

.

(He hadn't been doing too well with discomfort these days, honestly, not ever since he'd been (trying to) settle into this bizarrely calm and slow ( 'dangerous?' his head whispered) life he'd recently been building for himself in this dumb town with a silly name. Compared to the hellish circumstances he and his friends had faced down while living on the Argo II for a bit over a month, this life situation he was working with now was so much nicer, to the degree that it was actually laughable...and yet, he just couldn't seem to adjust to it for the life of him.

If anything, he'd been... forgetting(?) how to deal with himself lately, and losing his composure way more than usual. Which was really stupid, because this was literally the safest he'd ever been in his life. Was he so broken that no matter where he was, he'd always be this...pathetic? So thoroughly incompetent at being a normal human that he could somehow figure out how to build a warship in 6 months when he was fifteen , then live through a month of nonstop working hell right afterwards, but not how to sit and live with himself? Because this was a new low—that his ultimate response to the pain he'd only been dealing with for four damn hours was just to cry like a girl about it.

He found himself thinking, 'One of my foster 'fathers' put my head through drywall once, and I walked that shit off like a champ. What the hell is up with this? ')

.

He tried out moving a little, but the heaviness in his limbs hadn't budged one bit, and neither had the shooting pains that rocketed down his legs and middle-back with every attempt, so intense that he had already wondered if Zeus was using psychic powers to shoot invisible lightning bolts down his legs for some reason. One particularly bad period of 'zap' made him sob aloud with a curling heave of his stomach, one so intense that it felt as though his body was caving in. Thankfully, he was so used to this totally normal outcome by now that he got over the worst of it quickly, hiccupping and transitioning to crying softly over the miniscule, searing hot aches that each small jerk forced his body into. As he held his breath, waiting for the pressure in his chest to break them away, he blinked away the black in his eyes. The delulu kept going strong as he waited in suspense for everything to get better on its own. 

- .... .. ... / .. ... / . -..- .... .- ..- ... - .. -. --. .-.-.- / ... --- -- . - .... .. -. --. / .. ... / .-- .-. --- -. --. .-.-.- / .-- . / -.- -. --- .-- / - .... .- - .-.-.- / -... ..- - / .-- .... .- - / .. ... / .. - ..--.. / .. - / -.. --- . ... -. .----. - / .-.. .. -.- . / -... . .. -. --. / ..-. --- ..- -. -.. .-.-.-

Which, naturally, was something that was taking its sweet time! Still, he kept his levels of copium topped off, even when he got to the point of nearly salivating and panting from the force of the pain, like a laboring dog on the floor. Somewhere in this, he mustered the humor to think, 'Talk about the definition of insanity.'

He would've wiped his tears away, but his arms still felt so heavy and so sore, sore enough that he didn't even want to bother. He might've if pinching his nose to ward off the inevitable post-sob stuff nose stuffing actually did anything, but as he'd learned, doing that did next to nothing. It wasn't worth the effort, none of it.

A lot of the time, it felt like nothing was.

So, as the stuffed nose settled over him, he sucked in air slowly through his dry mouth, and as the cool, damp bathroom air parted his stale breath, he reflected on how spectacularly frustrating it was to even be crying in the first place. It was exhausting. And he was at home, dammit. This was no place for tears like these. Home was 'safe happy time' zone, not 'pain and all encompassing dread' zone. Experiencing this here was so fundamentally wrong to him to the degree that it almost felt insulting, like each of the three sisters of Fate themselves had extended a middle finger a-piece to him. Considering the that this situation wasn’t something controllable or fixable (<— or seemed like it would take longer than 3-4 business days to unfuck), Leo was wondering if it was Christmas.

.

(It wasn't even about the crying itself, was the worst part. That was a-okay to do when he was home, because he wasn't a total masochist, hand over heart. And...well, he'd do it no matter what. Just like the sadness, the tears always caught up to him too, and always seemed to save themselves for when he was at home. 

His traitorous body didn't often give him a choice about it in the first place. Leo had been reduced to seemingly random and uncontrollable tears way too many times simply from crossing the threshold of his front door. It was a truly awful feeling, like a car tumbling into a bajillion individual pieces with a comical tap of a wrench on the hood like bones falling straight out from their body the second it stopped as if inertia had been the only force holding them together all along.

Sometimes it happened on days that he was really stressed out from doing something complex, like conducting the workshop—something that could be considerably frustrating at times. Sometimes it was after what felt like some of the best days of his life; always soured by the sadness no matter what he did. And sometimes...sometimes it just happened, even on his numb days. Especially on his numb days.

He wasn't totally sure what it was all about, but he had some ideas.)

.

All the tears Leo had shed in this house for reasons out of his control (and randomly + against his will if he didn't sleep enough) had seen to it that Leo developed a vague system for it, and he was frustrated specifically with it in this moment, because this situation was not compatible with this at-home system at all. And not for any functional reasons, necessarily; it was the spirit of this weeping that was completely unprecedented.

He reserved crying in his home for catharsis. Not this! Anger/Screaming tears belonged in the workshop/garage (which was soundproof for related reasons), whereas ones for relief (or a hit of soothing endorphins so he could get back to a frustratingly delicate project quicker) were good for being in the actual house, and Leo was more than happy to sob his pathetic little heart out over uncomfortably complex feelings in bed (*Only there). Or, well, in his weird garage cave.

(Honestly, what mattered most to him was the most important edict: that he had to keep a lid on the crying when he wasn't home. No one could ever see this, not his friends, not even Piper, not anyone. That moment in front of Midas's doorstep could never happen twice. If something so humiliating ever occurred to him again, he was all set to jump on Festus and finally make good on a very age-old threat to run away to Mexico and never come back. He had family in Rocky Point, didn't he?)

All this crying was doing was tiring him out more, so he tried to stop, tried to stop thinking self-deprecating thoughts, but as if in response, he felt as though a strangled knot inside of his chest panged, did some sort of lunging throb that crashed into a hard surface inside of him, something that would make the mental gymnastics judges give a row of 0's. The comedy didn't absorb the impact, which radiated like a cymbal crash across a taut metal sheet he felt inside of himself, his chest. The force fostered a gnawing, sinking emotional ache inside of himself.

(It screamed need. I need, I need, I need.)

He breathed away the feeling, but the tears wouldn't budge. He allowed a couple more to leak out, letting his breath shake out with them.

'Calm down, Leo,' The lie came easy, like every other one did. 'You're fine.'

Right, what had he'd been...yeah. Emotions. Tears. God, those were hard. Especially now. It felt like they stole the air in his lungs. Leo shook himself, feeling a bit dazed, as if the pain really had done exactly that. It felt harder to breathe satisfyingly, like each inhale was just slightly incomplete.

Well, that was new and very unwelcome. Leo tried to brush it off, more worried about feeling yet another small jolt of lightning-pain, and he ignored it when another tear threatened to slip out of his eye. He inhaled slowly through his blocked nose as he tried to make it feel like he'd taken a whole breath, and it didn't work. Worrisome. The tear that had welled up finally dripped and dramatically splashed on the tile beneath his cheek, speckles of the moisture refracting back at his jawline. 

He almost laughed. Hard to breathe, sad little tear? Such drama. He was fine. He was just being dramatic. This was like a telenovela, he thought. His chest shook as another tear dripped down, and it was easy to pretend that it was just because of the pain.

He inhaled shakily again. He wasn't light-headed yet. He was OK.

...Well, Rocky Point dramatics aside, Leo was damn good at following his usual protocol for tears, and he was very upset that he was breaking his amazing streak—all because the system hadn't even accounted for this tear-scenario in the first place. Massive oversight in retrospect given his demographic (both human and godly), but that didn't change that this hysterical combination of sad, angry, and painful tears was an abomination to the system. He should've anticipated this, but he hadn't, and now he was riding his bullshit out in the bathroom. Not even the master bathroom, the normal bathroom. This was the exact antithesis of literally every part of his system. How uselessly ineffective it had turned out to be for crises.

To this thought, Leo huffed another quivering, aggravated sigh into the damp bathroom air, and rode out the sudden and extra-painful shockwave that shot down his back in response. He breathed gently through it as it wracked through him, and when it didn't leave quickly, he laser-level focused on not screaming until the urge left. As it eventually tapered away, insultingly slow, he felt his body trembling, and tried to knock it off. Naturally, his most earnest effort did exactly nothing, and all he could think was 'goddamn that hurt'. Because that one had... really hurt, hadn't it?

Honestly, Leo had spent most of these hours feeling like he was gaslighting himself.

He genuinely wasn't sure if he was in agony at this point, or if it was mild pain, or if it was nothing and he was being a baby for no reason. Whatever the case was, it was quickly becoming so pronounced that his bandwidth for coping with it was just about falling through his fingers, and he probably could've ripped out his own hair and screamed if his arms weren't still so sore. This was, like, literal cosmic-level torture, and it was happening in! his! house! Ugh, this house.

He blinked through the fog, trying to ground his head...which was becoming hard for some reason.

He blinked again, but the strange feeling that had descended over him didn't dissipate. Man, crying so much had drained him way more than he thought it even could. It definitely wasn't as though crying hadn't wiped him out before (it had, many times), but it was weird, because it never really felt like this. It was hard to stay awake, and he felt...heavy. Like it was hard to breathe. Was he getting light-headed? He wasn't sure. It felt light, being so empty of thoughts.

His head was quiet. So much so that it was eerie.

He wasn't sure that he liked it. He scrunched his eyebrows, forcing neurons back into motion as he thought, very intently and purposefully (mostly just to check if he still could), about something important to him, something he knew he could probably focus on— 'C'mon Valdez, put that noodle to work...' — and so sprung forth that he loved his house. Because it was true; he loved his house. He really did. Almost as much as he loved Festus, which was saying a lot.... And yet, he still had to admit that, for all the safety it provided for Leo (especially with his many, many epic boobytraps), he hadn't considered that while it was externally defended to high heaven and back, internally, it wasn't really the greatest location for moments of dubiously pretty-high need, particularly the one happening here and now.

('Sound familiar?' And that.)

He thought about it for a second, considering the odd note that had been mixed into his feelings about his house, and it was as easy to think— 'Nah, not worth the energy to unfuck or ask for help with, don't do that' as it was for Leo to remember his own name. 

(Because Leo was an idiot, and knowing it didn't mean he could change it. He didn't know how to.) 

He trued to settle down and controlled his breathing on purpose, thinking intently to keep back the weird feeling of fog inside of him. He thought about this dumb little house, in the town that had the least threatening name Leo could possibly find on a map, one that was absolutely nowhere near Texas or Arizona, and close enough to Camp Half-Blood that from here, he could take a long train ride to Riverhead if he needed to get there for help if it came down to it....

‘You already filled your quota of dramatic deaths. Don't be an idiot, you're not going to die in your own house at 20 over some bad body pains and a stuffy nose.’ He scolded himself and for added effect, Leo even thocked his head on the floor as if it might make him forget such a stupid idea faster...which hurt, a lot. And also did nothing to dislodge the thought, which instead lingered; 'Theoretically, I could totally be dying right now.'  And that was terrible. This was terrible, that it was even possible that this stupid little town, where he might've otherwise raised a stupid little family―something Leo still held vague pipedreams of―might be his tomb in the worst case scenario. He was trying to focus less on the fact he might actually die on the bathroom floor at this rate, and more on how he might unfuck this ASAP.

.

(And yet, his emotional little heart persisted where his scared one stopped, and that traitor death-bed confessed that he really did love this house, this neighborhood, this town, and even the stupid farmers market. That it scared him terribly how much he loved it sometimes. It was...unfamiliar, and uncomfortable to love something, to (want to) feel connected to it. So much of the time, it felt like it hurt. It sort of did.)

.

"If I actually die, Hazel's dad, do me a solid and let me go screw around with people in the farmer's market. I never explored it enough." He mumbled into the open air, words slow and kind of...slurring? "I know it's my fault, I've been here for years, but I thought I'd have more. Have mercy." He paused. "More mercy. You did let my paperwork slide that one time with Pottyface." And he laughed with a lot of breath (almost wheezing), fondly remembering chucking that toilet seat at Gaea's face in the port-a-potty carnage during his first quest. Had he really been 15, then? It felt bizarre, that that had been a quarter of his life ago. 

...Man, it was hard to take the prospect of his own imminent(??) doom seriously since his Greek God parent hit his brain with the fast-forward button on a cosmic TV remote, and left it stuck on the comedy channel. Well.

-- It got a bit foggy from here, suddenly. It was hard to think, and after a while of trying, he wondered why he was bothering. He didn't need to think for a while, did he? So he didn't.

He zombied through playing a lot of Bubblepop and Woodblock games on his phone for...what felt like a long time. He lost, a lot.

Sometime later, somewhere between random rounds of tears and alarmingly probable lapses in consciousness, Leo eventually got to thinking that, for all that he’d never been one to look a gift horse in the mouth, he'd somehow forgotten to even give Nosoi a perfunctory google search post-fight. 

Leo scrunched his eyebrows (which made his head pang in protest) as he tried to remember what the hell Nosoi were supposed to represent on his own, sure that he must've heard it at some point, but for all his efforts, he couldn’t remember for the life of him exactly or even vaguely what they were supposed to do. It was a big, cavernous blank in his head. He knew they came from Pandora’s box and that they were eViL sPiRiTs (as if nearly every Greek mythological creature wasn’t evil) but that was about it.

- .... .- - / ..-. . . .-.. .. -. --. / -.- . . .--. ...
-.-. --- -- .. -. --. / -... -.--
.- -. -.. / .. / -.. --- -. .----. - / -.- -. --- .--
.-- .... -.--

Well, it hardly mattered now, he found himself thinking, mostly because he was too tired to care about googling it now. Either way he sliced it, Leo had long gotten the most important part of the memo―nosoi smelled really bad when he lit them on fire, and their shitty smell made him feel like shit. If they didn’t represent the word “ow”, Leo swore he was going to file an official inquiry to Olympus to change that at some point because... ow. So. Yeah. 

This was all to say that there was a reason Leo had been laid out on the bathroom floor for hours(??) now, and that it was perfectly understandable that in all that time, all he’d managed to accomplish was crying in sporadic fits of agony, making stupid jokes to himself, playing games on his phone, and maintaining his focus on not dying. What a glowing day of productivity for Leo, right? 

Dimly, he had the impression that he really should probably call someone (probably 911) at this point because like, Jesus, y’know? But Leo seldom made things easy for himself, often too busy screwing around or scrutinizing things with the expectation that it was too good to be true, and that wasn't going to change overnight. Some part of Leo, miraculously, still felt like he could handle this himself, and that even if he couldn't, well, that it would still only be his problem. Nobody else's. 

It didn't occur to him that he was listening to a version of himself that should've laid down his weapons for good years before. A part of himself that had his survival in mind, but not his thriving. Perhaps this was why he didn't care that he really wasn’t sure how long he’d been sprawled on the tile anymore—that hours had been more of a bold estimate than strictly factual to begin with—or that the idea of trudging back into his room wasn't just exhausting now―that he physically couldn't do it, now. Nothing mattered more than maintaining this fragile stillness. This illusion of purgatory.

He should've cared a lot more that he had to be resigned to his fate of sleeping fitfully on the bathroom tile, and the weird but somewhat probable possibility of straight up dying from whatever the hell this was, but at this time, all he could manage to think was something stupid, right in the zone of his inner angsty baseline (which he was well aware of, thanks): 'Who even gives a shit about me biting it anyway? So upset about me living that they had to punch me for it. Committing to death might just be good riddance.'

(In short, as a victim of an underdeveloped frontal lobe and overdeveloped amygdala, Leo was twenty, and therefore not immune to being an overly self-reliant and irrational idiot.)

... --- -- . - .... .. -. --. / .. ... / - . .-.. .-.. .. -. --. / -- . / - .... .- - / .. - / .. ... -. .----. - / - .... . .-. . / .- -. -.. / .. / -.. --- -. .----. - / - .-. ..- ... - / .. - .-.-.- / ... --- -- . - .... .. -. --. / .. ... / .-- .-. --- -. --. .-.-.-

What must’ve been hours continued to slog on with Leo sinking, slowly but steadily, into a strange, fugue state of mind, one that didn't feel like his anymore. Further into the snip-happy palms of fate. The pain dulled―was that a good sign, or a bad one? It didn't matter, really, because he cried in relief anyway, his cheek growing wet from the puddle forming beneath his head. He didn't even want to vomit anymore. Nothing to vomit left, and no need to. 

Time crept along, silent and tense, breaking only much later down the line when he was feeling adventurous enough to fumble for his fallen phone, intent on playing another half-hearted round of Tetris or something. The bottom of it was literally soaked with his own tears (embarrassing) and when he acknowledged that, that was where came his latest problem, and the latest breath that fate itself held for a hero of Olympus.

Leo had the strongest urge to call someone, and he felt it so badly that it ached.

And at the same exact time, a wave of dread at the very thought of actually doing this made him think, not exactly unseriously, and wholly reflexively, 

"Oh my god, I would literally rather die than ask for help."

Good.

.

.

.

Leo wasn't sure how long he'd been paralyzed with indecision. It definitely felt like a while. 

Yet another epic demigod perk, and a very painful part of ADHD--decision paralysis. Knowing you need to do something, something important, but some sort of spiritual dread kept your stupid ass chained to your couch, or garage floor. Or, in his current case, the bathroom floor. On loop in his head, he ruminated a painfully pronounced thought. That maybe he really should call someone. A loved one. He was sick, miserable, (much closer to death than he even knew), and like anyone else would, Leo wanted the comfort of his loved ones, few that he had. It was stuck, slowly filling his head more and more, clinging to the insides of his foggy brain like insulation foam, expanding rapidly from very little. Relentless. 

'Just to have a chat,' he psyched himself up, the most favorable compromise he'd been able to cook up. Nothing more. Something inside of him tried to stamp down the idea quickly, but the fire was lit, and Leo was all about that. It was almost funny how predictably his brain cycled all the standard excuses, ones he knew were mostly not true or not important in the grand scheme―that everyone was busy with their own things, that it would be annoying, that they didn’t particularly care for him anyway. That...if he wasn’t dead by now, he’d probably be alright. Probably. That heavy chest was congestion, that was all. It was normal to pass out if you had low iron--it was all a natural consequence of his shitastic eating habits that he was already working on. He had to stay calm. He had to believe it'd be okay. There was no need to be dramatic. He was just being dramatic. He was sure he was being dramatic, he had to be.

.. / -.- -. --- .-- / -.-- --- ..- .----. .-. . / .. -. / .... . .-. . .-.-.- / .. / ..-. . . .-.. / -.-- --- ..- .-.-.- / -.-- --- ..- .----. .-. . / -. --- - / .-- .. -. -. .. -. --. .-.-.-

Yet, the deeper truth always came through in the end. He needed to reach out to someone. He was loved. He had to trust that he was loved. And man, it was hard to believe it.

('But I have to if I want to survive.')

He was almost ready, he could feel it. The potential of action burned bright and painfully in his hands and his eyes, so close and yet so awfully far from reach, and the frustration filled him so hotly and heart felt that before he could even think to suck it back down, a miserable sob bullied its way out of his mouth, quiet and sort of pathetic sounding at first. But it had echoed. A natural consequence of being in a tiled room.  Yet, stuck in the silence, there was a moment of genuine horror when he imagined, for a moment, that the sound had echoed through the entire emptiness of his house. That in the worst case scenario, of which he often got waterboarded through by the universe, that sound could possibly be the last one this quiet house ever heard from him. The feeling built, until the prospect actually, properly scared the shit out of him. Which ended up working out in its own way, because now he definitely wanted to call someone, at least ten times more, and that was a powerful boon in a time like this.

Unfortunately, forces beyond his wishes kept him plunged in that awful, fermenting process of mental marination to go through before this translated into action. For a seeming eternity, he lied there in horror and slowly got worked up enough that he felt his chest start to hammer and his breath get shorter, started feeling as though his lungs were physically pulsing (and that it was reverberating down into his aching back). He suffered through his stomach flooding with something caustic and squirming, and as the panic began to thrash inside of him in earnest, just as desperate to come out as he was to avoid it, tears leaked down his face. This sucked. This sucked so bad. He hadn't been scared like this in forever and it felt more intense than ever. 

He couldn't stall forever, and he was ready to get over it already. This felt like it was taking a million years. Almost exasperated, he shoved down the chaos inside of him as much as he could, literally shaking with the effort. For a wild moment, he thought he couldn't handle it, that there was no way he do this shit. Last minute bullshit came to mind rapid fire. He was already feeling awful enough―anymore felt like it'd snap him in two.

With genuine force, he thought, yes, duh, that's why we call someone! Thought that was why he wanted to talk to someone else to begin with; with how much he was failing to brush the panic off now, he really wasn't sure anything else other than another human being who was not Leo would be able to ground him at this point.

Never before had turning on his phone and looking at it been more painful. Partially because his screen brightness, despite being all the way down, was somehow still completely fucking blinding in the dim bathroom. His waterworks poured in earnest out of genuine pain. Despite this, he centered his thinking. The phone screen was on, unlocked, and he was staring like a dumbass at his contacts right now. The time was nigh for action. He'd been too lazy to get around to coding in a 'confirm call' stopgate, so all he had to do was scroll and poke someone's name once. One tap was all it was going to take. That was easy. Easy, he told himself fervently.

But...okay, wait, he'd gotten further than he thought now, and now came a subsequent and somehow unexpected dilemma: 'Even if I call someone, WHO am I calling?'.

('NO MAMES—ANOTHER FUCKING ENDLESS FUCKING MONÓLOGO, neta?! PINCHE PENDEJO PIECE OF SHIT BOOGER MEISTER! ¿CUÁNTOS MÁS ME VAS A HACER SOPORTAR, HUH?! ¡CÁLLATE UN RATITO, GÜEY! DON’T YOU GOT A LIFE OR SOMETHING?! CHINGAO.”)

Somehow, Leo had the distinct impression that something was laughing evilly at him, and to this, he literally yelled in frustration. Take that, existential dread. Now that would be the last sound his house maybe possibly ever heard. Mm. That had sounded more reassuring in his subconscious. He blinked. Right. Fuck. Who was he going to call? The process of elimination should have been easier, but for some reason, it was pretty involved. Regardless, he tried to run through the decision making as fast as possible.

People who were nearby were out, because they'd come check on him and he wasn't on board with people finding him pantless on his bathroom floor. He couldn’t do Chiron, Leo still felt weird about him and the centaur was busy keeping the camp from burning down (an ongoing effort long after the days of Camp Half-Blood being his stomping grounds). Dionysus was out, he wasn't sure he even knew that Leo existed...his siblings were all busy people, and he didn’t know how he felt about them seeing him like this if they came by. They weren't exactly cozy with one another. Calypso (something pounded his chest at the thought of her, stealing his breath, like the final one that finished out his oath to her. Did he regret it? He didn't know. He didn't. She) was immediately so out that it felt like he physically breathed it out, hard. He shut down the thought forcibly. She was still out frolicking with the Hunters, and that was all there was going to be to it. Jo and Emmie were surely occupied with their real kid, their daughter, and they didn't need his shit right now...so many names flitted across the screen, and all he could do was cook up more and more increasingly bullshit excuses as to why they couldn’t (wouldn’t bother themselves enough to) talk to him, much less come help him if he needed it.

Quickly, he narrowed in on the Seven.

At least they were a little obligated to pick up the phone, right? Several months being stuck together on a ship had to count for something, didn’t it? He’d been helpful―he’d―he’d kept everyone’s weapons sharp, and their rooms secure, and made sure they all ate. Usually. Some horrible, tight feeling in Leo’s chest made itself known as it suddenly worsened, leaping from the back of his mind to the forefront. 

‘You don’t deserve help.’ screamed his brain, an organ that regularly tried to convince him to die and was currently succeeding through the most dastardly, under-handed method ever. He wasn't clear-headed enough to tell it to fuck off. Instead, he thought―incorrectly―that, duh, he'd already known that. That it was bad enough that he had needs, one of which was hearing a voice other than his own, and knowing that he didn't even deserve it just made it double-bad.

Because that was exactly how his irrational and negative thoughts sounded, all the time, and this was a perfect example as to why he usually fought tooth and nail to not ever let them hold the steering wheel in his head.

--. --- - -.-. .... .- .-.-.- / -.-- --- ..- / .- .-. . / -- -.-- / .--. .-.. .- --. ..- . / .- -. -.. / .. / .-- --- -. .----. - / .-.. . - / -.-- --- ..- / .-- .. -.

A beat passed as that exact sentiment crossed his mind with dazzling clarity, and after another, rationality suddenly resumed control of the vehicle. Fate let out a sigh of relief when he decided, suddenly and firmly, that if his thoughts had been reduced to this point, by now he had to bite the bullet and just pick somebody before this got worse. Jason came to mind first since that was the first one of them who he saw on the screen before Jo & Emmie, but then another thought said, Piper? Then, Hazel's name, right at the top, screamed at him. 'Fuck,' he thought, 'I'd take Frank’s voice, too.' .

He just had to hear someone. Anyone. Any comfort at all would do. He stared at his phone screen, bleary-eyed, heart pounding, vision blurred, and his fingers trembling fiercely as he scrolled back up through his contacts. He stared for a long minute, feeling frozen in limbo between decision and action. He tried to make his eyes look at Jason despite the draw of Hazel's name, but deep down, he knew immediately that his decision had already been made. She...and Frank. They.

They had been the first people he'd ever legitimately chosen to rely on.

Although Fate had twisted his arm into it, he still had been the one to throw all of his faith onto them with the Physician's Cure. He'd been very unserious about it in appearance at the time, but deep down, he hadn't made the decision to tell them lightly at all. They had been allies for the quest and had some meaningful interactions, sure, but he hadn't had the sort of long relationship and built, earned trust with them like Piper and Jason had.

Not to mention what his hands had done to their home the day they met...

His decision to go through with putting his faith on them had ultimately been a total shot in the dark, and had involved him throwing a lot of trust at them and hoping to have it rewarded. A big ask for the two fully Roman demigods whose first impression of him was him accidentally commiting a terrorist attack on their home and inciting a major conflict between them and the Greek demigods, which had gone on to fuck them over numerous times during the hellish quest. Something he had never, and still couldn't take lightly at all.

One of the scariest things he had ever done was literally placing the sacrifice and restoration of his life in the hands of those people., people belonging to a republic that valued righteous sacrifice and the greater good..and yet, without even seeming to hesitate, they had done nothing but choose him and his half-baked idea of cheating fate, start to finish. Emotional enough about it to be human, but ultimately stoic and resolved, and in so, reassuring. He realized, suddenly, that if there was anyone he trusted in a time like this down to his deepest core reactor, it wasn't Jason and Piper.

It was them.

Hazel's face, Frank's face, flashed in his mind, and even through the haze curling through his brain, the most powerful longing he'd ever felt in his entire life reached down into him, and just about seized his entire fucking soul. If it had pulled up, his guts would've come ripping out. He never wanted anything more, ever, not even his own mother, than he wanted to hear them in that moment. It was overwhelming to the point of tears, heavy like the hunger he'd felt living on the streets, and he gasped a sob, breathing out hard and harsh. With it, he keened, low and anguished. It was the worst sound he thought he'd ever made in his entire life. A surge of overpowering hatred struck him, hot like a whiplash. His entire body locked at once from the onslaught of vivid, hot anger, and the cold, pounding shame. Both directionless and all-consuming. 

It was a visceral, sudden roar of dread within him that made him try to tap at “Jason”, figuring peripherally that at least Jason would probably be the least annoyed with him―but as if fate itself knew his heart wasn't in it, it made it so that the errant organ was instead sent skyrocketing into his fucking throat when his finger spasmed, and he accidentally tapped Hazel's name. Which had been, naturally, right above Jason’s contact. That caustic squirm in his belly abruptly transformed into dry ice from the amount of fear that flooded him head to toe, circuit to socket. Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck. So many emotions raced through him in moments, all over the place, everything screaming―it felt like his head was screaming. It sounded almost like rage, but why would he...

--God, he knew he should've stop procrastinating on coding in a 'confirm call' stop-gate. He scrambled to hang up suddenly, acting before his brain approved it, but naturally, it was mid-second ring that she picked up. He was screwed from the start. He choked down a sob, and he barely managed to swipe on speakerphone before he let his phone thump downside-up on his chest. Nothing else to do but surrender. He wracked his brains for something to say―literally anything― but apparently this was the one (1) time that the well was dry. Wonderful. 

“Leo?” Her voice asked softly, sounding worried. He swallowed thickly, and he closed his eyes as she spoke, letting her voice wash over him. “You normally text ahead. What's going on, are you okay?”

Though his eyes were closed, the feeling of relief he got from hearing her voice settle in his ears was powerful enough to make them brim with tears almost instantly. He squashed them down fast, fighting back the tight ache in his chest. Man, he'd been a little too onto something. It was unbelievably nice to hear her voice for―for the first time in weeks, actually. Shit. It really had been that long, hadn’t it? 

He'd missed her, he realized, emphasis on the word very necessary. It was like hearing her was a balm for a wound he hadn't even known was there. And he was so... glad that it was her on the phone with him, now, even if he was scared out of his mind for it. Hazel's voice had always been soothing to him, almost as much as Piper's or his mother's. 

The soft, gentle tinks and twangs of her usual cadence came through every syllable as she asked, haltingly, “...Is this about my spatha? Nico brought it over just this morning, and it feels perfect again, thanks to you.”

‘I do keep their weapons in working order,’ He shook off the thought, and told himself a stronger, more insistent one, one that said very sternly, ‘Alright, Valdez. Everything sucks.’ And wasn’t that the understatement of the year? ‘But you’ve gotta put on your big boy panties, keep it cool, and just.’ And just what? What now? ‘Ask a question. Let her get bored of you and hang up. Keep suffering.’ He coached himself through the motions, sucking in a painful breath. He didn’t want to worry her and...she was busy. She had to be. ‘Act like everything’s fine. She’ll fall for it.’  

Swimming in theory and swimming in practice were very different things. Leo, one of the least buoyant people alive, had a tendency to sink when it came down to actually doing it. Water had a weird way of trying to swallow him. Naturally, the same was true of communicating with his friends.

Its very easy for plague to consume you, isn’t it?

Thankfully, another exasperated divine intervention came through, of which was―   

"Leo? Are you there?"

“What does Sir Yankee Candle want?”

Frank’s sudden baritone made his phone vibrate pleasantly, subtly on his chest, and Leo unattractively peered down at it with no small degree of trepidation. Fuck his life, seriously? Frank always saw right through his jackassery. This was going to be a lot more problematic, he thought, mind scrambling for a new action plan that might get past Frank’s immaculate bullshit radar. But then, he paused. Upon second thought… Leo still had yet to work out how the hell Frank always knew. So…Maybe it was a body cue? No, it had to be a body cue, because no one had ever seen through the happy-voice or dumb fuckery before. So if that were the case, he’d be fine, right?

“Leo? Seriously, talk to me, you're freaking me out.”

Shit, she sounded nervous. He hadn’t even said anything yet. Wow, this was going terribly.

“That's the lamest thing you've ever called me, Frank. Yankee Doodle? Step up your game, man.” Leo huffed out quickly, cringing when he couldn’t remove the quiver from his voice in full. It was silent over the line for too many beats and Leo laughed nervously, wincing when it made his chest twang again. Yeesh, that one hadn't landed, clearly. What the hell did he want to say? Was there something he wanted to say? Fuck, he really should've rehearsed this more. “I, uh, sorry, I―"

'Didn't plan this, just missed you guys, am drawing a blank' all the truths in all their forms flitted across Leo's painfully dry lips, but what cracked out through them was, as usual, bullshit.

"...I totally forgot that I had myself muted. I had to piss off a spam caller a bit―a bit ago. Can you believe these stupid phones I made still can’t get some dudes to stop asking me about my car insurance? Festus might be street legal but he doesn't need that. Would’ve been nice with Midas―not that you guys were. Uh. There for that―he exploded―but―but still.” 

The silence persisted, and there was a terrible moment where Leo was wholly convinced that perhaps they had just hung up, but then there was a brief cough. He hated how relieved it made him feel. “I―I was just calling to ask about your spatha, actually, but you answered th―that already. The blade isn’t wobbling in the―” Shit. Leo had just blue-screened on what the handle of a sword was called. “Isn’t wobbling in the p-part you hold on to?” Shit, shitshitshit, he was slipping. ‘C’mon, you’re better than this. You have to be. Try harder.’

“...The hilt?” Hazel asked after a moment, sounding slightly confused and even more concerned.

Yikes. The feds were on his trail. Goddammit.

“Yeah, that thing. Sorry, ‘m a lot better with hammers and wrenches than swords, you know?” He joked, laughing painfully again. “Though I'm not a bad shot with a screwdriver. Yeah, it’s not wobbling in the hilt, is it?”

“N…No, not at all. Still nice and firm.” Hazel said, and there was a scraping against the receiver. “Why?”

Leo grit his teeth, and bullshitted quickly, “I don’t know, someone at camp was bitching about their sword wiggling a bit in the hilt and made me tighten it, and I got to thinking that maybe I fucked yours up too. Good to know it’s all good. Last thing I need is for your stuff to break mid-fight, because me and my shoulder checked, and we're all funeral-ed out.” He barely suppressed a cough by the time he got to the last words, and took a long, forcibly smooth breath. He really didn’t want to hang up, but he knew himself; he couldn’t keep this up for much longer without doing something embarrassing like crying over the phone. This was enough. He wasn't quite panicking anymore even though his belly still squirmed with cold, and he couldn't be greedy (His chest twanged again, like a tangible ache of rejection and denied comfort. He ignored it. He had to. He always had to, or). And so. And so.

“That’s all I needed from you s-so―”

.. / -. . . -.. / .... . .-.. .--. / -... ..- - / .. / -.. --- -. .----. - / -.- -. --- .-- / .... --- .-- / - --- / .- ... -.-

“Okay.” Frank said, dragging out the y. He sounded closer to the receiver this time. 'Fuck my life, he's investing,' Leo squeezed his eyes shut. 'Goddammit'. “So. Why did you actually call, Leo? Did the Bolt-For-Brain Prophecy come to fruition after all? You need us to bring some screwdrivers?”

Leo glared in the general direction of his phone, “Really?" He said, flying by the seat of his pants. "Fruition. That's the word choice you want to rock with, here?"

"And roll, too."

"Shut the fuck up, Shakespeare," Leo said flatly, somehow managing to muster up that familiar feeling of (mildly amused) annoyance that he always felt when he hung out with Frank for more than thirty business seconds. For a moment, Leo almost felt normal. Then he was forced to huff out his chest's attempt at a whine when a scatter shock of pain shot down from his collarbone and arced around his lung, and he was right back to remembering his current position. Ouch. God, that ached. Tightly, he carried on: "And I'll have you know that you don’t even use screwdrivers on bolts you stupid assho―ugh."  It pinged way too late that, "And that’s not even a prophecy.”

"And yet it comes to pass way too often, so I'm going to ask, directly, that you let us cut out the middleman here this time and stop fucking around before it gets bad, because we both know that that's what you're doing. What's going on?"

Leo had never been so gagged in his life.

"Woooooow," He drew it out, and it was uncomfortably genuine, which felt weird. He wracked his brains on what to say; nothing came to mind, well and truly. Which meant there was nothing left to say other than, "I mean, you're right?" After all, it'd be stupid not to admit it by now, "But Jesus, man. Right for the jugular. You can't give me three business minutes of fuckery to work out what I want to say?"

"I'd rather give you less time to put any pizazz in how you decide to churn out that shit you're full of."

Despite himself, Leo laughed, a soft and surprised sound. "Shakespeare," He repeated the insult(?), and squirmed inside: he'd felt it too fondly when he'd said it. 'Distance,' Some archaic monster screamed in his head, a sudden shriek. 'Hold them at a distance.' It felt impossible not to oblige the demand. 

"None of those are made-up words, Leo, it's not my fault you've never looked in a thesaurus in your life,"

'Shakespeare was known for much more than creating words,' Leo thought, but what he decided to say was what Frank wanted. The truth. Just...in the form that would (probably) freak them out the least. Make them more likely to leave him alone. Frank had made it clear that he did want the truth, and clearly the problem was in Leo’s voice, so he couldn’t bullshit something. It was unavoidable that Frank would have to get it, ugly as it was. 

…He just had to nail making the words sound not-scary. Then he could make them go away, and he could go lick his latest wound from being recognized in his stupidity so viscerally. His tired brain just about wailed in protest at the thought of doing such a task; at such a waste of energy in such a dire time in his life, 'But it's an expense you're not brave enough to avoid and you know that.'

-.. .- -- -- .. - / - .... .. ... / --. ..- -.-- / .. ... / --. --- --- -..

“I just...um. I wanted to hear someone’s voice.”

The words finally creaked out after a long pause, humiliatingly feeble. But that wasn’t a lie, was it?

“...Why?”

‘Oh, fuck you and your hard questions, Zhang.’ Leo cursed in his head, not even slightly meaning it as he tried desperately hard to push back tears. 'I have to think of a better justification than I've been on the floor all day and everything hurts? That I’m tired of comforting myself? That I think...I think I couldn't (can't?) comfort myself anymore... ?'

He stared up at the ceiling as the thoughts started to creep in, the ones he had been trying to forget every second he'd been on this floor.

They were all truths, but none of them felt like they wouldn't scare the shit out of Frank.

He began to play ceiling tetris. 

'Because I miss you. All of you. But I just figured out that I think I miss you and Hazel the most, that I want you the most, and you're the furthest from me. Because I just realized a minute ago that I could die in my house right now, and that I might stay here forever, til the bank takes it and some poor inspector finds me. Because I feel alone and I’m so, so fucking tired of feeling that way. Because I'm scared. I am very scared. I am terrified that I'm not OK, Frank, but I never feel like I am, so I have no idea if this is even bad at all. Because I want someone here. I wish you guys were here.'

'I wish I was brave enough to ask you to come.'

“I’m just…really sick," 'I kinda feel like I'm dying, and that made me think of you guys. I'm still not sure. Maybe I am.'  Leo wet his lips―when had his mouth gone so dry? "and I got around to missing everyone. S-Sad sick person stuff, y'know? I meant to―to hit up Jason since I figured he’d be the least bothered by me calling out the blue―” Leo kicked himself on the inside; that had come out sounding a lot more honest about his feelings than he liked. He winced at the quiver in his voice when he finished with, “―But my finger shook and I hit Hazel’s name on accident, and I keep putting off coding in the stopgate confirmation thingy so it just rang. Sorry about that.”

Fuck. He'd just lost ceiling tetris. He sat in the silence, waiting for the guillotine (was it going to come at all?). At least Hazel was far from the worst person he could've accidentally called. Maybe, given the weird comfort he now awkwardly associated with her and Frank since they had literally both been a ride-or-die friend to him, she was even the best choice of people to call. Perhaps this had been a rare judgement W for Leo.

“...What do you mean, ‘sick’? What's happening? Demigod stuff, or human?”

'Motherfucker,' Leo thought, blindingly angry for several seconds out of nowhere. It felt almost like offense, that was how furious he was that somehow, Frank had picked at the weakest part of his statement. God, what even were their lives? Apparently so chaotically fucked that they knew to specify human or demigod problems; that one presented significantly more lethality and thus involved much swifter and equally drastic action. This was the exact opposite of what Leo wanted.

(Come to think of it, maybe it wasn't so illustrious that they'd been in a couple life-or-death situations with him after all, and he was being weirdly clingy. Ugh. Fuck. Psychic damage.)

“I-I don’t know? Both? I started feeling like shit a couple hours ago, and I think I wanna blame the nosoi that I lit part of my neighbor's backyard on-fire for the other night." Leo explained pointlessly, and when he realized he'd let the name of the monster slip, his guts flooded cold. He prayed to fuck and back that a nosoi wasn't anything crazy, and he shook his head past another sudden fog inside of it, like he'd been plunged into Florida humidity, because the impending potential that 'oh fuck they might run here in the next three seconds if this is something bad' was pretty overpowering. Carefully, he said in his lightest, most convincing and cajoling tone. "But this could just be me getting sick like normal, too. It's September, and colds usually take me out pretty good...?” 

'Colds don't make me weak enough to lay on the bathroom floor for hours , though.' Leo (un)wisely did not mention this. 'Just minutes,'

“Nosoi?” Hazel mumbled, sounding puzzled,' Fuck, here we go,' and sure enough, there was silence over the line for a beat, a sound of tapping, before she spoke again, with a damning note of alarm in her voice, “You don’t mean Morbus, do you?”

“Is that the roman-equivalent of a nosoi?”

“Yeah,” Frank said. "That's what the notes say."

He braced himself, “Then that’s exactly what I mean, duh."

“Leo, this says those are physical manifestations of plague.” Hazel cried, clearly alarmed in full this time, judging by the authoritative action-voice she donned, and he heard scrambling over the line. “Where are you? Tell me now.” 

Oh, he thought. Something lurched horribly inside of him, thrashing as though it were alive. He fought it back with all his might, trying not to vomit. Of course nosoi were symbolic of the literal plague, and he just had to name-drop it. Of course. Stupid Pokémon. Leo took stock of himself, noting the snot and tears all over him and his acute lack of pants. His brain nearly short-circuited itself by how strongly and urgently he felt that he couldn’t―he couldn’t make them come over for him, much less when he looked like this. No one was supposed to see this. Least of all them. Holy shit. Oh man.

“Wait, so what I’m hearing is that I’m going to die of, like, ebola or something?” He redirected hastily.

“No―yes― maybe?” Hazel said quickly, the shuffling intensifying. 

“Sounds festive.” He said, at the same time that Hazel repeated, sounding agitated,

“―Where are you, Leonidas? I'm not joking.”

Ah hell, she'd even full-named him. “I'm at home chilling on my bathroom floor,” He said evasively. “Same place I’ve been for...actually, it doesn’t matter. Look, it’s been a couple hours of feeling like this, and I haven’t died yet, so I'm pretty sure that if I’ve lived this long, it’s probably fine―” The rasping coughs he had to cut himself off for did not seem to alleviate any of Hazel’s worries in the slightest.

In fact, it seemed to intensify it tenfold as, with the most anxiety he'd ever heard in her voice, she demanded, “Leo, have you been on the floor for hours? If you say 'yes', I swear―Leo, talk to me."

Dammit. Why did she have to be so good at reading between the lines with him? He'd deliberately moved his words around so that wouldn't be obvious, but clearly that had been a wasted effort. It was nice that someone knew him so well, except for when it made this happen.

“It just didn't really seem like a good idea to get up once I actually got down here." Leo admitted softly but in a vague, bargaining tone, omitting that he'd uh. Wound up down on the floor involuntarily in the first place. "So I’ve uh. Been on the bathroom floor―and it turned out to be helpful anyway, since I didn't have to go on any expeditions to throw up―since, y'know, I was already at the dumping grounds."

"Leo." That was Frank, this time―gruff, in that 'stop fucking around'  tone that he seemed to reserve use for Leo exclusively. "Be serious for five fucking seconds, please. What is going on now."

Leo’s throat tried it's hardest to whine and Leo barely suppressed it, but it still felt like there was something awfully hard clogging it. He frustratedly scrubbed away the tears that came down, and grimaced when the side of his hand came away drenched in sweat, too. God, he was disgusting right now. He was totally dying in a hot shower after he got off this phone call. Speaking of which, he took a deep breath (tried not to cough)...and he put everything he had into keeping his voice smooth and steady through―

"Nothing, man. I’m in here by choice, I'm just being lazy, it’s fine. I’m fine. So don’t worry about it.”

He blinked, somewhat surprised. He felt, for a moment, that he'd nailed it. His voice had been strong, clear. Not one word had trembled. 

.

(His guts sank cold. He'd only ever lied like that to Teresa. It wasn't nice to know that he hadn't forgotten the skill, yet.)

.

At least it was done, now, he thought, ice still stubbornly lodged in his chest. They wouldn't bother with him anymore and he could figure this out alone. Just like he always did, and always wanted to do.

But the silence that followed his words went on for a long time. Longer than it should've.

And then, there was a lot of shuffling/scraping noises. Frank said, amid this, in a strange tone― “No, no, I’m― we’re going to worry about it, are you actually crazy? If you've been on the floor for hours, your decisions suck and that's fucked up. Alright, I'm really not―ugh. Leo. Look. We’re already throwing crap in our backpacks, we're coming to get you―sit tight.”

Something in Leo's chest came crashing down like a piano hitting the pavement, and he squeezed his eyes shut in dread-soaked defeat. He genuinely wanted to sob from just thinking about how much stress this development was going to foster. There was no hope from here; Frank had sounded genuinely concerned. If Frank gave enough of a shit to come here himself, he was already fucked; Frank would literally part the sea like Moses to get to his goals when he was motivated, and anxiety seemed to run the guy like gasoline ran a truck. Dammit, he cursed in his head, fighting back the tears with all of his might. Now he was going to have to figure out how to clean the house up before these idiots got here on a plane―which already would've been A Task had he not been super-sick. Fuuuck.

“Is anyone with you at all? How about a chiropractor to look over how much you've just wrecked your back?”

Leo let himself comprehend that sentence for an extra second, and then laughed. “...That's not even funny, and fuck you, I’m by myself.” 'I have been all day.'

He sniffled half through a laugh, and half through a miserable and barely hidden sob. He rolled over onto his side, letting his phone clatter to the tile, and puffed out a sigh. He could admit to having wanted them here so badly it hurt, but in practice? He was still delusional enough to be halfway sure that he was just being dramatic. He felt like he should’ve hung up the phone, even after Hazel answered. Claimed it was a buttdial, and/or that he was busy.

“It’s seriously fine, like I said," Came one last feeble attempt at deflection. "I'm pretty sure this'll pass just fine, and there's always the Camp. You’re literally across the country anyway―”   

“Oh, shut up." Leo surprised himself by shutting up (mostly because Frank had sounded...angry), and he was halfway through working himself up to flipping off his phone when Frank interrupted that with an eerily omniscient, "and stop flipping me off, because you have to know that is all complete bullshit. Did you know that friends actually care about each other? Wow. Amazing, I know." Hazel spoke in the background, words indistinct, but the tone was telling enough. "By the way, we're actually going to come over right now. Remember how Hazel's been honing her shadow-travel? The darkness teleporting thing we did with Nico near when we first met."

Panic lanced through him, because oh, jiminy fucking Christmas. Leo did not remember that. When in the living hell had that become a thing, what?

"We’re just going to grab a few more things and we’ll be there in either an instant, or like, we'll land in Riverhead and have to take a million years on the train over. We'll call your Camp either way for backup. For now, you've basically got heads or tails that you get enough time to throw your dirty dishes in the closet or something, but we are merciful people, so this is your five minute warning of panic-cleaning. ” 

"You are actually evil." Leo said, aghast but somehow unsurprised. Then the reality hit and―Oh god. Leo shook his head before realizing Frank couldn’t see him, and his voice veered way too close to desperate as he begged, “Guys, please don’t. I’m fine―I’ll...I’ll call if it gets worse? Look, Camp Half-Blood is literally right here, you could just―”  

“No dice. Hold on.”

Shit. He had not banked on his friends being insane. Shit, shit, shit. “I’m not wearing pants.” Leo said weakly, and Frank huffed a short laugh. 

“I’ve seen Percy skinny dipping, you won’t be much scarier with your briefs on.”

There was a story behind that and Leo wanted to know it, but he sighed shakily. “I wear boxers.” He mumbled pointlessly, mentally preparing himself for what was most likely about to come. He wasn’t winning this either way.

“Even better.” Before Leo could work out what the hell that was supposed to mean, there was quick, high-pitched muttering over the line and Frank sighed. “Okay, we’re ready. I’m going to hang up. Sorry if we fall on top of you.”

Leo squeezed his eyes shut, and grit out, “I got it, I got it. I’ll uh. Be on the floor.” 

“No. Try to get in bed like, now. Hazel can’t manage to shadow-travel more than once every few hours―and the train takes almost four if we end up in Riverhead again. We'll send Camp over if that happens but I seriously don’t want you staying in the bathroom for any longer than you've been there―that's the last place that's helping you.” 

“Alright, but consider." Leo cut himself off to cough, then finished. "I don’t want to get up.” ' I can’t get up'. 

“Leo, for the love of―” 

Leo sighed and, in a burst of energy, reached and slapped the end call button, cutting off whatever Frank was going to say next. And just like that, the line went dead and Leo had to lay there, feeling like a complete idiot and even more pathetic than usual while he waited in suspense for them to arrive.  

Except. 

They didn't. 

No one came at all. 

With every long minute that passed with the silence continuing in the house, Leo got more and more anxious. He hadn’t wanted them, much less anyone from Camp, to come at all, but at the same time, that was entirely untrue; he’d really wanted someone to come get him, in the same sort of way anyone would like to be reasonably babied. 

At first, he cycled through early excuses; maybe shadow travel was just taking longer than usual. Maybe they stopped to get him something to eat. Maybe they got into a monster fight. Maybe they really had overshot, just like Frank had warned, and those poor, unacclimated San Francisco clowns were bumbling through east-coast transit. And, y'know, their phones had been lost to the shadows. Hazel had gotten to be really good at shadow travel, and she was so capable, but everyone made mistakes sometimes, didn’t they?

Didn’t they?

But as minutes ticked by, and those minutes turned into hours...nothing as little as a text came through to let him know the situation, no knocks on his front door. He just got to watching the sun set, nearly nine more hours into his stint on the floor, when hope started to falter, and did it quick and hard. Maybe an emergency had popped up and they (rightfully) decided it was more important than him, and were just...on some epic quest, now.

.

.

.

(Or maybe they had lied, he thought. Maybe they had just told him they were coming, but never actually did. Maybe they were laughing about it right now, “Leo’s hilarious―I bet he really thought we’d care enough to go get him. We’re halfway across the country. What kind of chumps does he think we are?”  Maybe no one knew about him being here at all except for them. Or maybe no one cared at all. It seemed likely to him, alone in the silence, and it made him feel like a skyscraper was resting on his chest and burying him deep into the ground. Some kind of sour, caustic poison was suffusing the cracks gouged in the metal chassis he'd made of his chest―every nerve and circuit he had ached inside of him with a feeling of worthlessness so intense that it consumed him.

He didn't bother with calling them. Calling anyone. He'd already had his nerve punished once. It'd be masochistic to try again. He wouldn't. Couldn't. His body hurt too much. Everything inside of him hurt.

It felt like all of his strength was gone.

..-. ..- -.-. -.-)

.

More hours turned into more hours, and those hours blurred into a massive haze of pain, tears, pain, playing ceiling tetris when his phone died, misery, tears, pain, self-deprecation, and more tears. At some point he must’ve dozed off, because Leo closed his eyes in a moment of exhaustion, and when he opened them again, it was much darker in the bathroom. He acknowledged, slowly, that he had spent nearly (or more than?) a whole day on the floor. He hadn't meant to do that. He was starting to wonder about his prospects. Lying on the floor had, uh. Definitely been not-voluntary for a long time, actually, and this wasn't helpful. Perhaps Frank had had a point.

The belatedness of this realization was not lost on him. He really wasn't uncomfortable on the floor, though, despite how long he'd been here. Looking at all the dust he'd need to use an old toothbrush to scrub away from his lower bathroom later (provided that he lived long enough, hahaha...) had been entertaining enough, and the tile beneath him had long since gotten pleasantly warm from his body temperature seeping into it. He closed his eyes, blissfully unconcerned by much of anything, and he felt himself breathe out a long, weary sigh. 'Should move,' groused a voice in his head, and, well, he couldn't deny the need for that, if only to see if he could. It took a truly embarrassing amount of effort, but before long, Leo somehow willed himself into motion, and―for lack of anything better to do, since the black spots blooming in his vision said "hey, idiot, no standing" very clearly―he craned his neck to look outside of the tiny window above the bathtub.

The moon shone through the wavering black leaves that cocooned his little house, a pale obelisk that existed as his only evidence that the whole day had passed. It faintly illuminated his crumpled body, which only became heavier and heavier with each slow second. He couldn't hold himself up much longer, actually. That wasn't ideal. Yet. He couldn't seem to care all the way―it was like his fingertips groped at the space just before the feeling, brushing against it but never quite latching. It was as though some voice inside of him was saying, 'That's that, then. They don't care. No one is coming for you. It's time to give up.'

And for a moment, he fully and truly believed it. The last iota of hope he had fizzled away. Something changed, then. Everything got heavier. Darker. Harder to breathe. It felt like―

.-.. . - / -- . / --. ---

Every cell and neuron inside of him seemed to scream it in unison, loud and overpowering: why bother? This was a useless fight. It was better to just lie down and stay there. Let the pain take him. And yet, chewing on the inside of his cheek, Leo somehow found the tiniest bit of strength, and he used it to shift his leg experimentally. A scatter shock of pain shot through it, just like every other time before it, but Leo was numb, now. He'd long crossed some sort of threshold and the pain meant nothing to him anymore. Maybe that was what made it more bearable than it had been earlier, what coaxed him to try more.  

On some level he was surprised with himself, but a different inalienable intent existed inside of him, now. Some other random burst of strength came from nowhere and he went sliding forward, reaching over to grasp the bottom of the sink counter he'd clocked himself on a day ago(?). He took one moment, and not another, to wince at the needle-like pain that erupted in his palm. 

A lot more slowly than he was even aware of, he managed to raise his trembling upper body without falling back over. It was a grueling effort, one that made tears burn in his eyes anew, but somehow he still managed to steady himself onto his knees and, without thinking too hard about it, he followed the intent and edged his way under the shower nozzle, pressing his back against the bathtub. 

His shower was next to the bathtub, a modification Nyssa had installed so he wouldn't need to scrub oil out of his tub all the time, and for all the teasing he'd gotten for it, moments like this made it worth it. He tried to smile at the thought of his sister, of how grateful he was for this stupid shower, but it fell awkwardly short. 

Instead, he felt like he might...cry?

He felt...unpleasantly tender, now. Like a single poke would make him shatter somehow. Physically, and somewhere inside of him. He was sad, and terrified, he recognized, but the reasons why, without him even noticing, eluded him, slipping through his fingers like fish in water. He just wanted to shower. He needed to shower.

.--. .-.. . .- ... . / .-- --- .-. -.- .-.-.- / .--- ..- -- .--. . .-. / -.-. .- -... .-.. . / -- . / .-- .. - .... / - .... . / -.-. --- .-.. -.. / .-. . ... .--. --- -. ... . .-.-.- / .--- ..- ... - / .- / .-.. .. - - .-.. . / .-.. --- -. --. . .-. .-.-.- / .--. .-.. . .- ... . / .-.. . - / -- . / .-.. .. ...- . / .- / .-.. .. - - .-.. . / .-.. --- -. --. . .-. .-.-.-

.. .----. -- / -. --- - / -.. --- -. . / -.-- . -

 ...to feel the comfort and peace of warm water was all he wanted(?), but in his focus on what he wanted, which was the water, he forewent taking off his clothes altogether and simply reached up and turned on the nozzle. The whimper that left him when icy water, somehow unexpected, assaulted him, creaked through the bathroom like a dying animal. The water trickled painfully into his clothes, soaking them heavy and freezing, and it took entirely too long for the water to creep towards feeling warm. 

He sobbed for every second he had to wait, in pain, in discomfort, in relief. Slowly but soon enough, the water warmed, and he hiccupped as he tried to relax under the spray, the heat making him feel marginally better by the moment. After what must’ve been ten or so minutes, he started to feel drowsy again, relaxed and drained from the latest round of tears.

Before he could think too hard about it or even bother with attempting to strip himself―having recognized at some point that hey, wait a minute, he had not followed the procedure correctly―he curled up on his side on the tile, and some integral cognitive processes went offline.

Leo lay prone for a long while, staring at a fixed point of the bathroom door. Kept company only by errant, miserable thoughts that he could barely understand before they faded into something completely new. Dread rose up inside of him, heavy, and at some point, he began to cry again. He didn't really notice it much. Was it because the tears mixed with the water, or because he simply couldn't? It was anyone's guess. 

His chest got heavier, and the rise and fall slowed. He blamed the steam from the shower. His vision darkened. He blamed his shut eyes, though they hadn't necessarily closed with his say-so to begin with. He felt...cold. He wasn't sure why that was, and for all he wracked his staggering brain, he couldn't think of any reasons why. It didn't seem like it mattered, though.

Did anything?

Somewhere in a primordial, gnarled hand, a scorched thread glimmered in a blade. 

It felt like a cosmic second had passed before he was driven back to consciousness by someone’s muffled voice ringing through the house, sounding slightly out of breath, “Leo?! Where are you? You didn't answer the door. Hazel overshot and took us to Riverhead again. Then there was a bunch of--oh, nevermind, are you awake?! Are you okay?!” They said, voice looming closer to the bathroom. “Leo?! Seriously, man, we--we tried to call you to tell you, but the shadows drained her phone, and mine broke, then you weren't answering at all when we finally got hers charged--” The voice sounded slightly sheepish mid-call, and Leo tensed when it came right outside the door...and then passed right by. The voice mumbled, in an undertone near the door, "And seriously, man, I really hope you’re not in here and you're in bed because if you’re not―”

“―I’m going to have a goddamn coronary.” Came another voice right outside the bathroom door, sounding anxious. “I hear the shower, Frank.” They said. 

Oh, these mystery people were going to come in. A sense of urgency seemed to grip him, but then fell short. They called his name once, twice. Then a third time. Pounding on the wood. He didn't bother with replying. He was too tired to even try. They'd get it open eventually if they wanted to, and he was powerless to stop it. Well. At least Leo hadn’t bothered with taking off his clothes for the shower. He heard the door knob jam, a lot, then a quiet curse, silence, and then a sigh as the lock clicked. The door swung open, then, and he cringed slightly when a blast of cold air washed over him on the floor. 

It was dead silent for all of three seconds before there came― 

“Leonidas Valdez, ‘I’m fine’ are going to be your last words someday! This does not look like ‘fine’ to me!” 

Yikes. He tried to make a joke, maybe make himself look slightly less pathetic, know that he surely looked like a sodden rag right now, but his mouth―his body―wouldn’t cooperate. Two blurry masses stood over him, one brown, white, and cinnamon, the other mostly white and black. Their faces twisted, and something cool ran across his own, and he realized very belatedly that it was Frank and Hazel crouching down before him. Not mystery people. Oh. So they’d come after all. 

“Oh fuck, Hazel, I know he always runs hot, but that’s bad. He doesn’t look too good.”

“He’s fully clothed―” Hazel paused. There was a faint squeak, and the water hitting him stopped. “Was partially clothed under the shower. I got the memo.” 

The words sounded fuzzy as they rested in his ears, heard but not comprehended. Something wet trickled down his temples. He shut his eyes.

It was cold. It was so cold that it hurt.

“Help―Help me get him up. Leo? Can you hear me? Talk to me, honey, come―oh. Oh, Leo.” 

Hazel’s voice seemed to float just above him, words gentle and swimming in his head, never sticking. Something tickled his cheeks. Brown and loose. A feather? No...maybe. 

“What’s the matter?”

“He’s crying.”

A pause.

“Oh, shit.”

A pair of warm arms slid beneath him and really slowly propped him upright, like a guy trying to pick up a glass pane that he didn't have a good grip on. A short jolt of pain shot through his back halfway up, and he gasped involuntarily. A short puff of air coasted across Leo’s cheeks, vaguely cooling the dampness there. 

Leo cracked his eyes open slightly, unsure of when he’d closed them and unable to do much more than that, and found himself staring into familiar black ones. Frank. He looked worried. His eyes softened as he noticed he was looking at him, though. That face looked a lot better than concern.

“Hey. Long time no see. And it'll be longer, because I think it’s time for bed.” He said. His voice was weirdly gentle. 

To this, embarrassingly, a muffled and unexpected sob came hurtling out of Leo’s mouth. With it came an overwhelming sense of the most powerful influx of misery he'd felt thus far, and something else he couldn’t place. He felt his cheeks burn, overwhelmed with shame as he couldn't help but cry his goddamn eyes out, his entire body trembling like a leaf in a hurricane. Quickly, Frank's hands fumbled with him and tugged him towards him until his head was tucked beneath his strong, blunt chin. Leo seized his forearm, tapping frantically.

... --- ... / ... --- ... / .. .----. -- / ... --- .-. .-. -.-- / .. .----. -- / ... --- .-. .-. -.-- / .. .----. -- / ... --- .-. .-. -.-- / .--. .-.. . .- ... . / -.. --- -. .----. - / -... . / -- .- -.. / .. .----. -- / ... --- .-. .-. -.--

... --- -- . - .... .. -. --. / .. ... / .-- .-. --- -. --.
... --- -- . - .... .. -. --. / .. ... / .. -. / -- .
... --- ... / ... --- ... / ... --- ... /

He lost track of things, pressing into the warmth of Frank's body like a starving plant and trying desperately hard to stop crying. He couldn't stop tapping, slow and slipping. He had to know, he had to know.

“Shit. Come on, buddy." Frank mumbled in a vague, somewhat stressed and equally soothing tone. He felt fingers catch lightly through damp curls of his hair. "It’s alright. I got you. We’ve got you. We’ll get you dried off and in bed, okay? You're gonna be okay.”

With unexpected gentleness, in an unexpected gesture in general, he felt Frank twist him around slowly but dizzyingly anyway, and curl him sideways against his steady wall of a chest. He wrapped his arms around him, almost cradling him, and started to rock his body lightly, running a wide, flat hand up and down his sodden back. 

It was so nice and warm that it was distinctly unbearable. Perhaps that was why Leo registered, at some point, that he was letting out quieter, but no less miserable sobs and little noises, even mumbling words breathlessly before even really thinking about them...he was just getting around to worrying about this when he heard the sweetest sigh of, "Oh, Leo." and one of Frank's warm, steady hands curled comfortably around the back of his neck.

That was about when things really went a little foggy, his mind too overwhelmed by the alarmingly pronounced, resounding ache that made itself known in his arms and legs by the careful, grounding contact. His body moved before his head even pinged that it wanted to, driving him closer to the warmth pressed against him. It was like his entire body was suddenly washed with a need for contact, like he would die without it. 

Every cell he had was screaming in unison that it needed this, a base howl for survival that spurred him to tuck his face into the thrumming, warm neck nearby, breathe in a familiar, comforting scent, and fuss until Frank took the reins. He pinned him by holding tighter, forcing Leo's cold, drenched hand to press against his chest. His heart pounded hard and fast beneath Leo's fingers.

He heard a nervous little laugh above him and Leo squirmed, sluggishly struggling to get somewhere resembling comfortable. As he was finally held, for the first time in well over a day, he felt as though it was okay. That he was finally safe. That he didn’t need to do much here.

He felt Frank sigh lowly, neck fluttering against the top of his cheek. Or maybe Leo was just trembling. His voice vibrated like the concrete floor he slept on as it said,

“Come on, now. Up you go.” 

Like magic, Leo felt his stomach drop out as he rose into the air, wide arms load-bearing constructions beneath his knees and neck. Hazel and Frank spoke in low undertones as they began to walk. Frank’s chin held itself strangely taught and tight close to his hidden face and he muttered, “He told us it wasn’t that bad. Why did I think it was a good idea to listen, I should've―God, Hazel. My God.” as Leo sunk into the sensation of weightlessness, feeling himself settle closer to Frank and his warmth as they moved. 

He mumbled, low and mourning, the moment the thought occurred to him, “‘M getting you soaked.” 

Frank didn't say anything for a while, and his words came out a bit tight as he murmured, softer than he'd ever heard Frank's voice before, “It’s fine, Leo. I’ve got more clothes in my bag. Don’t you worry about it,” and he squeezed the side of his knee. It felt comforting.

'Jesus, what am I, dying? Look at this big guy worried about me.' Leo thought, feeling connected to the east coast culture for the first time. And then he thought about it. Frank wasn't usually worried like this. Maybe he was dying. It was alarmingly easy to think and accept that, 'Even if I am, these guys'll bust their asses to pull me out. I trust that. I'd do the same for them.'  

Things moved as he thought. Fabric shifted around him, different feelings and temperatures. His head went wonderfully blank. Whooshes of warm air. A feeling of weightlessness. Something soft scrubbed over him, and Frank and Hazel circled around him, holding him. They talked about things he didn’t listen to. Blankets were tucked around him. He felt warm again. At some point, Hazel coaxed him into swallowing little mouthfuls of water, and something that tasted like home. Frank’s broad, warm palms trailed lazily up and down his chest for a long time, scaled and soothing, and it made him feel like he could finally breathe. He could remember mumbling things in fits of misery, sobbing in small bursts, but it never seemed important enough to remember. He finally fell asleep to Hazel’s fingers threading through his damp curls. Frank's warmth never left his side, a protective wall against him.

He felt safe.

Even though he’d last fallen asleep so nicely, waking up was not nearly as pleasant. 

In fact, there was no ceremony nor was there any form of warning to be found in the way Leo jerked awake. Something like white-hot terror―but not quite that brave―was roiling in his chest alongside a heaviness that he elected to ignore, and it was only once Leo managed to wrench himself out of those second hand feelings that he noticed he was drenched in a cold sweat and trembling. His breath huffed out in a sharp, tense sigh, and he struggled in his bed sheets, trying to sit upright. 

He wound up opting for a half-slouch when he found himself too tangled in his blanket to nail it on first try, and he shook his head vigorously, as if that might make him slightly more cognizant. Surprisingly, it worked, and once he felt he’d done that enough and stopped being so aimlessly scared, he scrubbed a sweaty palm over his equally sweaty face, and peered at his alarm clock. It read 5:37am. 

“Goddammit, really?” He whispered―it was so damn early― and wriggled out of his blankets just enough to breathe before listlessly flopping onto his back again. “Fuck.” 

He squinted at his ceiling for awhile. At some point he got to thinking ―'hold the phone, what even happened?'. He could vaguely remember Hazel and Frank coming to his house, but how that correlated to him somehow teleporting into his bed from the bathroom floor, Leo did not know. And that was not ideal. Shit, now he had to go get up and investigate. He made a low noise in the back of his throat as he heaved himself upright, and looked around his room with complete and utter disorientation.

Was this what it was like to be a baby that woke up from a nap in their crib and found themselves in their car seat at Target while their parent(s) did their shopping? Leo imagined that it had to be close to that as his head swam nauseatingly and he coughed pitifully, head throbbing in tandem with every one of them. Ugh. He shimmied over to the side of his bed, sort of rolling out of his sheets mid-trail in a half-hearted attempt to stop feeling so damn hot. Somehow, the soft material rubbing against his skin felt so awful right now.

Actually, everything felt awful.

Every single inch of his body felt tender like the time Aunt Rosa had snapped and beat the shit out of him with her chanclas when he was seven, and he sighed at the thought, feeling his lungs ache and rattle with mucus as he did so. Ugh. Gross, gross, every bit of him felt gross and he wanted to die. What had he even been dreaming about that made it so important to be awake ? He could recall a few things, but he forgot them just as fast as he remembered them. He got the faintest impression of a bright golden light and...an impact. 

Oh. Leo shuddered. Fuck that. Where was his ginormous emotional support dragon when he needed him? ‘Where the hell did I even shove Festus…’ Making a series of muffled grunts as he heaved himself upright, Leo leaned forward a bit too far and, misjudging his proximity to the floor, almost ate shit off the bed. 

Throwing out an arm to brace himself, Leo stopped his fall, only to whack his forehead on his lamp anyway when a sudden, violent cough decided that that exact instance was the most superb time ever to make its debut. His forehead throbbed against the lampshade and, groaning again, Leo promptly gave up on life entirely and slumped over, barely hanging onto the mattress as he mumbled exasperated curses under his breath. 

There was a brief lull before someone’s muffled voice said, “Hazel, he’s trying to kill himself. Again.”

Startled, Leo jerked and unthinkingly flailed a palmful of fire towards the disturber of peace and he blinked, horrified, as he watched a blast of smoke whap Frank right across the face. His stomach sank as Frank yelped and nearly fell backwards.

“Leo!”

Holy fuck. What if that had been an open flame?  Leo fisted his blanket and watched, waiting anxiously for Frank to get up and start yelling at him for it―but the notion was quickly interrupted by the arrival of Hazel. 

“That’s what you get for scaring a demigod.” Hazel said shortly, nudging Frank’s side as she slid into Leo’s room, as if she were a fixture that had belonged there all along.

“Well, it's not like I meant to do it, what is this, the--" Frank flung a hand at him, and seemed very uncertain as he said, "--the Spanish Inquisition? Are you my girlfriend?” He didn't sound angry or accusatory at all, strangely. Moreover...dubious and uncertain, like he wasn't sure what he was doing. Leo wasn't sure, either.

Hazel looked between them for a minute and actually held out both of her palms like she was fending off two cat-sized velociraptors as she said, brightly, “...No, I'm Leo’s, now. Sorry Frank, he’s just better for me. He’s smarter and travel-sized, you know?”

“Oi―man, maybe it is the Spanish Inquisition," Frank said in a dubious tone. 

"I don't think inquisition means what you think it does, fruition man. Did your dictionary fail you on imposition?" He blurted before he even realized he'd opened his mouth to speak. Internally, he patted himself on the back a little for the quick thinking. 

He prepared for a much longer altercation, but all Frank did was look at him for a long moment before he said, "Probably," while laughing(?!) and just like that, the strange atmosphere seemed to evaporate. 

Leo relaxed almost instantly, which was perturbing and thus not-relaxing, and that made it much harder to let the relief trickle in. But it was there. No one seemed really mad, just kind of vaguely awkward and stressed. But not upset. And for some reason, no one being upset seemed really important right now. 

After a beat, something spurred Hazel into action and she approached Leo’s bed, then gently wedged herself past the end table to sit down on the upper corner of his mattress ( ←which he barely used), holding something that she set on the end table with the lampshade Leo had just whacked his head on. Frank followed, sitting on the bed and bringing his legs up criss-crossed near Leo.

"Hey." He croaked.

"Hi." She said back, and then flicked him on the forehead―which actually hurt a surprising amount.

At the reproachful look he apparently gave her, Frank ganged up on him to hit him with― "Yeah, no, that's the least you deserve for nearly dying on your bathroom floor, dude. You scared the shit out of both of us."

Leo blinked owlishly at this, alarmed, but Hazel completely nerfed this by laughing, which made Leo dubiously think that he might not have been serious. She reached around to drape a soft, cool hand over Leo’s forehead, nudging him back into laying down. Frank's leg went stiff near his, like he was being electrocuted. Leo was pretty sure Hazel was glaring at him, then--Hazel had a very foreboding glare. He was pretty sure it was something genetic from Pluto, though Hazel had never liked this conclusion. 

The girl in question silenced his thoughts with, "We were coming in to try to make you eat something. I'm glad you were already awake, because we really were about to worry." 

Her cool fingertips skirted around his forehead and hair, immediately drawing Leo’s anxious attention away from Frank. He peered up at her hand, befuddled, and then she swept a small film of magical frost over Leo’s forehead. He only halfway succeeded in hiding a whimper of relief, and the small sound that strangled its way out of him was utterly unwanted. The ice, it just felt―it felt nice. His head stopped hurting as bad as it had before, and he sighed, tilting his head down towards her knee. Hazel made a little shushing noise and stroked back his hair, her slender fingers carefully dancing around the sheen of frost she’d made. There was a strange edge about her in that moment that he couldn’t figure out, but he brushed it off as the silence carried, peaceful and still. Frank's hand came to rest heavy and comforting on his hip as Hazel scratched his scalp lightly, saying nothing.

“I didn’t know you could make ice,” He mumbled eventually, breaking the silence and trying to untense his shoulders. 

“I’ve been learning more stuff from my brother and the Hecate kids,” She murmured, rubbing just around his throbbing temple. “Ice was the easiest for me to figure out, and Nico does it well too. I guess it might have something to do with Pluto. Coldness of the grave, or something like that.”

Leo scrunched his eyebrows. “I think the planet Pluto is covered in ice?”

“Pluto isn’t a planet,” Frank sighed as his voice finally came closer. 

Hazel said, “And dad will forever be pissed about it,” at the same time that Leo said, “Yes, it is, you dick.”

“No, it’s not. It’s too small―if we had to call it a planet, we’d need to call, like, I think four other celestial bodies ‘planets’ too.”

“I’m pretty sure it’s way more than four, but that's just more planets to love and torture elementary school kids with.”

They squabbled back-and-forth about the logistics of adding more planets to the official solar system out of “arbitrary feelings” (Leo’s stance was that minor gods like Hestia or Hecate could be named after the new additions) for several minutes before Leo actually looked at Frank long enough to notice that something was weird about Frank’s face.

He cut Frank off mid-sentence to say, “Why’s your forehead all red?”

“No reason,” Hazel said quickly, just as Frank said, “Hazel had to practice that ice trick on someone , didn’t she?”

They exchanged a look, and Hazel leaned over to softly punch Frank’s thigh. Her hair was longer than usual―it tickled Leo’s nose. “I wasn’t going to tell him that,” She said, sounding embarrassed. 

“Well, I was because I’m surprised my screaming didn’t wake him up earlier,” Frank laughed, and then he patted Leo’s shoulder. Something about him looked a little strained in that moment, as if he were remembering something unpleasant. His hand stayed on his shoulder. The weight felt...nice.  “She got the ice in my nostrils. Like. Wedged in there. I had to figure out where you squirreled away your hair dryer so I could stop mouth-breathing.”

Leo thought deeply about how that must’ve looked for a second and burst into laughter, only slightly regretting it when it shifted into a heavy coughing fit. It lasted for a very annoyingly long time, and left him breathless. 

“Ooh, sit up. Don’t choke.” Hazel mumbled and Leo nodded, struggling to sit up and leaning back a bit when his head swam. She steadied him with a soft hand on his back, and he miraculously remembered to have the wherewithal to shoot her a grateful look. And he was really grateful, that wasn't sarcasm. He'd already whacked the front of his head on the lampshade―there wasn't any use in getting the back too. Believe it or not, that didn't level out bumps--it just made two. Not that he knew that from experience or anything. 

“Thanks,” He muttered, and immediately regretted it.

He reached up to rub at his throat, which had suddenly decided to manifest the feeling of what Leo could only imagine was what a garbage disposal grinding a tank full of glass felt. To this profound feeling, he said, "Ugh.” As Hazel said to him, having noticed the move, "I did make some soup,” and directed his attention to the bowlful that had apparently manifested on the end-table. He blinked at it owlishly. 

She seemed a bit confused with him (or maybe just the sudden tenseness of his body, shit) as she haltingly elaborated, “...It might soothe your throat a little. Do you think you can hold the spoon?” She asked the question carefully and softly, and perhaps only because it was her, Leo didn't feel all too mortified. "Your hands were trembling really bad earlier, you get shaky when you're sick."

Leo did a test-wiggle of his arm and found that, while shaky as Hazel predicted, it wasn't unbearably so, and so he inclined his head. "I think I can do it." He said, reaching out a clammy palm to grab for the bowl.

Hazel grabbed it before he could and handed it over without any fuss. He blinked, bemused and a mused at the same time. He took the bowl without comment, and let her and Frank run some commentary about what was going on with them at home and at work, casual and easy topics...until he realized he was wearing different clothes than he last remembered being in, and what, exactly, that meant.

He turned to look at Hazel, then at Frank. He processed.

--Then the rest of it pinged, everything, crashing in his brain suddenly, like a raging bull busting down a door.

Over a day on the bathroom floor, then another dubious length of time before now. He flicked his eyes to his alarm clock--it was Thursday. His brain stuttered. He'd fallen in the wee hours of Tuesday. They hadn't gotten there til early Wednesday morning. He couldn't remember the day at all, except for--

Oh my god, he thought, panic hurtling up his throat. Oh my god.

He realized a second too late that he'd unwittingly dropped his soup bowl, and that was only from the dismayed little "oh" Hazel let out. He stared down at his lap, full of soup, and found he wasn't thinking of it at all, too busy thinking about exactly what had happened. How little he remembered. What he did remember. His mind whirled and after a moment, the psychic damage got so overwhelming that all he could do was hold his palms to his face. He never wanted to run so badly in his entire life, and had never been less equipped to do it ever.

He wasn't even sure he could stand right now. And wasn't that just the kind of miraculous, laughably awful thing that always seemed to happen to him?

He nearly vomited from the stress as his head whirled with what he could remember, God, there was so much of it―he'd sobbed his guts out the moment they'd found him. And been so pathetic that Frank had had to carry him like a princess, and then they had had to strip him out of his sopping wet clothes and slip new ones over him after they finally got here, they’d―they’d seen him naked. And he had―Oh. Horrible. Horrible, horrible, horrible. So much blackness from there, but he could remember a lot of crying. The one thing he never did in front of other people, especially not like that.

Revulsion for himself seared his throat as memories since their arrival came crashing back down on Leo’s head, one by one and as he reviewed more and more of it, he began to heavily consider the ramifications of making a break for the window and following through on starting a new life in Mexico now instead of later, current inability to stand be damned. He was sure he could stay conscious just long enough to get on Festus, and the dragon would definitely be careful with his unconscious body. He'd nailed it for the many, many days his corpse had lied on him as he delivered him to Caly pso DON'T THINK ABOUT CALYPSO

His breath came quick. He tried not to think of anything else panic-inducing. This was a difficult thing to accomplish.

Leo's brain whirled with chaos as he fought back tears, heart pounding. He knew he had family in Mexico, he could do it, he’d be fine. He was sure he'd left Festus in the shed, come to think of it. He could definitely make a break for that in thirty seconds, couldn't he? ...His numb and aching legs said, "Fuck no, idiot." and it got way, way too close to making him cry out loud. There was no way he could survive this, how was he supposed to survive this? 

“Honestly, if you were about to drop it, you could’ve just said something.” Hazel fussed, blissfully unaware of the horror suffusing Leo's entire body as she lifted the blanket off of him. “At least you won’t need to shower to get all this soup off of you―this is a solid blanket. What is this, flame retardant? No wonder it’s so crinkly,” She mumbled, and he was sure he wasn't imagining the stiffness in her voice when she mentioned the shower. Leo decided right then and there that she was angry with him, and that he deserved it. “You know, there are soft flame-resistant blankets. It wouldn't have blocked liquid like this one, but…well. Me and Frank thought about getting you some for your birthday, but we'd figured you’d already have some, so we didn't. Were we wrong?”

“I’m so sorry for. For earlier.” He blurted without thinking, words coming out shaking, and he viciously kicked himself on the inside as a tense silence descended over them. 

Shit. Shit. Shit, shit, shit. What was wrong with him? 'Well, fuck. You opened this can of worms, Valdez, now lie in it.’ 

“For the uh. The waterworks.” He elaborated weakly, and tensed at the look in Frank’s eyes, forcing himself not to look. To submit. Soft and small was all he had left in his defense for now. “Holy shit there was so much of that.” He said quickly, and gestured at his eyes when he noticed the confusion on Hazel’s face. He waited til he watched it light up in understanding.  

“...We weren’t going to say anything.” Hazel said softly. She sucked in a sudden, seemingly fortifying breath before she went right for the kill. “Not about any of it, not that, not even the things you said. You didn't know where you were for awhile, it'd be unfair." She stroked his hair back as she said, a bit brightly, "No matter what you end up remembering out of all that, it's seriously all okay on our ends. We handled it fine, and it wasn't your fault.”

'But it was. It was. I let it get bad and let you see it. Made you responsible. I'm sorry.' Something incredibly cold and heavy settled uncomfortably in Leo’s guts. It did not mix well with the trembling he was barely suppressing. It was very hard not to launch into full hyperventilation―the sheer humiliation of doing it was all that held it at bay when it came down to it. He clung to that feeling with the passion of a man fighting for his life on the edge of a cliff. The desperation sure felt like the Grand Canyon again. 

(He'd been fifteen. He felt fifteen again.)

“...What did I say?” He asked suddenly, voice quick and breathy, because he couldn’t remember, but he knew what he usually said when he was absolutely, unfuckably incoherent―he’d heard all about it from Calypso― ’don’t think about Calypso’ ― and if it was anything like that, he wouldn't even survive long enough to make it to Rocky Point; he'd just die from shame on the spot.

No matter what, there was absolutely no question in his mind, though―the urge overtook him. He fully loaded and locked it, ready at a trigger's pulse. Once they were gone, the moment he had the chance to get the jump on everyone ('won't be long,' he thought, like an idiot) he was going to do it. Hell, even now he was so profoundly assured that half of him wanted to just get it over with now and make a running leap towards and out of the window and make a break for Festus in the shed, so that here and now, he would never show his stupid face to anyone ever again, and they could never hurt him with what they'd seen ―-

And maybe Frank saw this in some way, or maybe he saw whatever else, but before Hazel could say a word, Frank lurched forward―- Leo flinched, heart leaping and legs tensing in preparation to run like his life depended on it―-

And he went onto his knees on the floor--? and

scooped Leo into a hug
?

He went completely rigid, having somewhat hysterically expected Frank to do something out of character like throw a sucker punch at him for his horrible behavior before Leo ran for it. He had even humiliated himself by flinching in anticipation. The shame washed through his body, a sick twin to the warmth of Frank's chest, and every neuron in his animal brain screamed it from the rooftops: that this didn’t make sense.

That this wasn’t what Leo deserved.

His chest pounded, heaving upwards with raw panic. He didn’t deserve this, not this, not after everything or anything he'd put them through. He couldn’t help but look up to Hazel, confused and almost desperate to see the hostility he expected. But her eyes were teary. Not hardened in disgust like he thought they might be. Should be. Even now, he half-wished they would’ve been, no matter how badly it hurt. He wouldn't have to feel so lost.  

He tried not to show how much it startled him, the physical sensation of Frank mumbling into his hair, voice thick. “I. I don’t know what to say, man. I don't yet. But just.” Frank sucked in a long breath, and he pulled back, only to take Leo by the shoulders, look him in the eyes, and say very seriously, “You ever feel like that, or like this, call us, you hear me? You made these stupid phones for a reason, so use them. We’ll be here in seconds. We care about you. We do. I know we’re far away, and we don’t―we don’t text you or call you as much as we should, but if we had even the slightest idea that you felt like that, we would’ve.”

The sense of utter wrongness about the situation batted every single well-adjusted sounding word straight out of his head, all of his brain consumed in a storm of rejection, crazed and paralyzed with panic in the face of this kindness. Seemingly instinctually, his entire body was repulsed by it outright, as though it was the wrong blood type. His guts flooded with what somehow managed to feel like more ice, enough to weigh down his lungs and freeze his chest tight. So heavy that he could barely breathe. 

What the fuck had he said. What the actual, living and breathing fuck had they heard, or seen, or both, to have ended them here? At once, he was flooded with a desire so intense it literally made his eyes burn. He had to know. Somehow, someway, he needed to know what they'd seen.

Frank didn't seem keen on telling him any time soon, and he knew if he asked outright, they'd volley and jockey his questions out of some stupid, missense of being gentle with him, as if that ever mattered. He only had one option, which was to fucking cope, somehow, and get through the next however long it took them to wise up and leave. In the meantime, he needed to...

...He needed to hide. He had the sickening idea that he'd already shown them both a side of himself not even he had seen, and the absolute goddamn last thing he wanted to do was throw more shit on that pile. They needed a calm landing. The sooner it felt like a normal day with him, the sooner they'd leave. This seemed obvious to him, and he strategized immediately. Priority one. He needed to calm the hell down. The only way that was happening was when they stopped paying attention to him (naturally), so to streamline this goal, he told Frank what he was pretty sure he wanted to hear.

He whispered, inserting just enough tremor and guilt (it wasn't hard to change and unbold the font) into his most convincingly sheepish, cowed sounding―-

“Okay.”

He immediately knew he'd failed when Frank's lips tightened upwards and his eyebrows creased. He looked even more seriously when he pushed, “Promise it. We're not psychic, Leo. We can’t show up and help you if we don’t know what's going on.” 

The way Frank's voice went ragged as he said the words, with unmistakable desperation coloring the rasp, struck Leo deeply. For a moment, he just stared, at a loss.

None of this made sense, his useless brain said, beyond unable to process something so far out of his expectations. His throat clogged in earnest, and he looked down at the bed, away from Frank’s very, very insistent eyes. There was a lot to unpackHe couldn’t promise if he didn’t know what he was promising. What it meant, or what Frank wanted it to mean. Hazel made a low sigh above him, and placed her cool hand on his shoulder. She rubbed slow, easy circles into it; it was so soothing that he felt outright pathetic. He didn't deserve it. He shouldn't need it. 

“Easy on him, Frank.” She said after a moment. Her voice was quiet, calming, and somehow directive. His ribs crackled with the relief he felt when he could hear that she sounded slightly angry. It hurt so badly to know she was angry at him (it must be at him), every nerve seeming to fire off with agony at once in sight of it, but it was finally what he was used to; the punishment he needed to get his shit back together. 'Thank God,' He thought, trying so hard not to cry that his throat felt like a vice. 'Thank God.' “We can talk more about it later. Please go toss that blanket in the laundry room, and come back with another. Leo, do you want more soup?”

He did. He didn't want to ask―-couldn't ask. Leo shook his head, mute. It was okay if he didn't lie out loud.

“It’s alright. I got you. We’ve got you. We’ll get you dry and in bed, okay? You're gonna be okay."

He stared down at his mattress, fists tight. He pushed the words out of his mind determinedly. He just stared at the stiff mattress below the three of them, failing to remember the last time he'd even slept on this thing. He slept in the garage. In that dumb cave. Where he belonged. The hard floor, the buzz of the breaker box, and the warmth was just close enough to the Argo II’s engine, the only part of his life where he'd ever been important enough to force people not to ignore him. He still wished that the stupid ship wouldn’t have gotten blown up by Jason's dad. He’d poured his heart and soul in every grommet and nail he'd pounded into that goliath of a ship, just for it to be wasted by a lightning spanking. Insulted by two Gods (he sometimes still rankled over Terminus calling it a 'monstrosity' or however he'd called it).

As Hazel's hand remained on one of his shoulders for some godforsaken reason, all he could think was, 'What I wouldn't give to be on that ship again, this time with no quest, no threats, just living in a self-made paradise far, far above the horrible things on this stupid jerk of an earth. Far from whatever this is.'

All of the territory in the sky was charted. This wasn’t. And Leo hated flailing in the face of the unknown more than anything. He was so busy thinking about this uncommon flavor of failure that he didn't notice when Frank came back, nor that he was holding the dusty blankets an arms length away and peering at them with some vague look of concern, until he was sitting right next to him. Hazel made some weird, complex motions several times, and it was only the fourth round that saw whatever she was trying to do work, as the dust suddenly zapped off of them and they smelled fresher. He looked around what was supposed to be his room. At the abject lack of dust. He guessed she’d had a lot of practice with that one.

“...I’m probably just going to go back to sleep,” Leo said quietly as Frank carefully draped the blankets over him, voice so much quieter than he thought it would be. Too late to fix it. "I'm really tired."

His chest seized in shame as Frank's hands took ahold of him and tugged him down gently on his side, like he were putting a toddler to bed. His hands paused as to take an extra second to linger on him, and he looked Leo in the eyes as he said, in that stoic, accepting way he also seemed to reserve for Leo, "We know, buddy."

His breath hitched. That was the crux of everything, wasn't it? That he knew. That they knew.

They’d seen it.

The worst of himself, that disgusting sickness he had inside of him. The vulnerable little thing inside of him that needed, and needed, and needed no matter how far he went to protect it from sight or harm, shielding it with the intent and the ferocity of a starving lion. And there was no taking that back, no taking this back. It had been seen, he'd been seen and being seen was Leo's ultimate killcode.

It felt like a perpetual, gaping exposure that was completely and utterly insurmountable, and that was why he knew that, just like every other time he'd ever cracked and let anyone see how pathetic and horrible and vulnerable he really was, it would never stop feeling like this until he was away . Gone for good. Gone to people who had never seen his weakness, known how to make it come. It felt like the guts of his machine were tumbling out uncontrollably, and his body steadily pulsed with the desire to run so far and so fast that he would be nowhere near anyone or anything that had spotted him or knew him ever again.

Every single time, every foster home, every friendship. It was this that made him run. He never ran away to flee danger, or from someone hurting him, or from someone he hated. It was this terror, this terror, that had always been the last push that left him with no other option than to run ― when someone saw him , not his facades. No one was allowed to know, could never see his gears, see him as flayed open and helpless as he was now and the day before. Not even Piper or Jason.

And now...now he was trapped lying helpless right next to two people that knew it, had seen it , and it felt like a hook inside of him was using the weight of one thousand anchors to yank him down. As if his own soul could sink into the floorboards in shame. And though he knew that this was his imagination, that all this really was in the long run was a very, very bad day for his friends, the terror was all consuming. The fear that had always peripherally powered Leo usually only pulsed in the back of his head, but now, it was shrieking, pounding his skull with the prompt for the only outcome that ever came from this: RUN. FLEE. HIDE.

His legs ached as if in preparation, and he pushed back tears desperately because he wasn't too stupid to ping that at this level of exhaustion and weakness, he couldn't stand anymore. He'd waited too long, and now there was no chance in hell that he could get out of this. The lightning strike realization zapped him―that there was no way out― and it hit him hard enough that, to his somehow worse horror, traitorous tears came tumbling down.

And he deserved it, he realized suddenly. More than. He'd put them all through something absolutely horrific for no other reason than his own stubborn pride, and they'd been the ones to tank the consequences of that, not him. He couldn't ask them for anything more, he'd already asked for far too much and he hadn't deserved anything he'd been given. They should see how useless, pathetic, and worthless he really was. They deserved the privilege of knowing and laughing at the wretch he truly was. 

Just like thinking about his mother every day, this shame and agony was penance, and it was for the best ―that he was going to have to sit with this until they left. That he didn't ask them to do something else for him and leave. Suffering through and stewing in this awful array of feelings all until he had the chance to quietly disappear and stop bothering everyone for good was more than a fair punishment to take on the chin for what he'd put them through, all because of his own stupidity. This drowning feeling of shame and fear would be a phenomenal thing to remind himself of just in case he ever wanted to consider forgetting to never fucking do this again. Because he couldn't. This could never, ever happen twice.

He sat through his punishment as stoically as he could manage, fighting back the terror that was thrumming throughout his body like a live wire, and he held tense through it, unable to relax his muscles. He couldn't risk it. If he let go, even a little bit, he was going to fall into more pieces than he already had. They didn't need to deal with that, and he didn't deserve their help. He didn't want to force them to give it.

Excruciating minutes ticked by through passes of Hazel's hand through his hair as he breathed shallowly, somehow hoping it might make them forget he existed faster. He tried not to flinch or shake when Frank, who had long since crawled back onto the bed, suddenly tugged him downwards and draped his legs over the side of Leo's knees, and curled somewhat behind him. He accomplished this with reasonable success. Problem was, Frank's body heat pushed towards Leo like a distant blanket, and eventually, Hazel started to flip through the book he'd left on his nightstand weeks ago, hand still idling in his curls...and it was soothing. Leo didn't deserve soothing.

In spite of this, but still after a long time, something unexpected happened.

The terror started to fade.

A little bit. It was the most insultingly small decrease known to mankind, but one that was undeniable. And to his surprise, the terror didn't...get worse again, even when he'd realized it was draining. Even more surprising, it began to dull more and more over time. As the minutes ticked by, the stress magically fucked off, little by little, into near-nothingness as the pair of them sat quietly by his side. Hazel stroked his hair, and Frank remained a pillar of warmth to lean on. The flipping pages quieted his head.

They didn't yell at him. They didn't seem mad at him at all. He felt like―no, was sure that they should've been furious with him, screamed at him the moment he was awake and aware enough to appreciate it, but no matter how long he laid there and waited for the other shoe to drop, it never did. They were just... there, and they didn't seem to be in any hurry to leave him to lick his wounds alone. At one point of him pondering this,  it all...

Something inside of him seemed to give, so fast that it actually startled him exactly how easy it was to slip into thinking, still cautiously, that maybe if it was them...that he wasn't sure that he even wanted them to forget all about this after all.

And that was something that was more terrifying than anything else on earth, even more than being seen. Realizing that not one, but two people had suddenly manifested VIP tickets into the metal lockbox he'd made of his insides, and that he was even vaguely alright with it, was horrifying . The fear screamed inside of him again, howling with frightening vigor through the haze of peace that was trying so hard to creep over him.

But... it was like the fear didn't fit anymore. Like the peace was winning, making some kind of space that, for once, was blocking the needles of terror that would otherwise stick. He let a stressed huff slip as he tried so, so hard to bat it all back: what, exactly, he was fighting was something he wasn't sure about anymore.

At this point, all he wanted was for it all to drain into the nothingness he liked to retreat into when he got too tired of himself―and naturally, this was thoroughly shot by Hazel’s hand finding a home on his shoulder again, unaware that it was just about tethering his unwilling soul to earth. Insult to injury, Frank reached forward and began to rub his back, as if both of them somehow knew how overwhelmed he felt. Every pass of warmth from the two of them sent every feeling skittering, but the rush of his insides started to make way for some sort of other feeling, something that felt like a whole new one. It felt warm, and sticky, and like... something that couldn't possibly be returned. It came crushing through his chest like a rocket firing out of a pipe. It was all so directionlessly frustrating and overwhelming that it took an embarrassing amount of effort to not cry again. 'Put this all away,' He scolded himself. 'Lock it away with the rest of your wantings, you horrible little goblin.'

(His body was shaking, lightly.) 

Frank's breath ghosted warmly across the back of his neck and he sighed, “This sucked, Leo. Please don't forget that we’ll always be around if you need something again.”

Leo's eyes flew open as the realization struck his body just like the lightning had in the bathroom―-that that was the problem.

That they were!  He wracked his brains as best as he could manage through the admittedly heavy exhaustion, and every single time he reviewed a moment where he'd asked something of them, across the board they had followed through with his request. Save for one from a particularly miserable period of sleeplessness that had ended with him asking Hazel to use his hammer to knock him out because "I feel like Frank would swing too hard, but I'd let him if you won't." Neither of them had hit him with the hammer, shockingly. 

No. But every other request. Every single one. Not one failure on a promise, either. Not even when he'd asked them to place the secret and prevention of his own death in their hands. He'd placed his life in their hands and they were just kind enough to spare it. He'd half been expecting Hazel not to use the Mist after all with some sort of brutalist motivation in mind, something intensely Roman like "Commit to your sacrifice, serf!" . Some part of him had even twinged with guilty disappointment when they had spared him. Done what he'd asked.

And the fact that they had done more for him after that too, as if he hadn't far exceeded his budget for asking favors of them, completely confounded him. For some reason, this thought was what tipped him just far enough for his eyes to well over in earnest, and for his chest to feel as though it caved inwards awfully, ribs ricocheting with some sort of terrible, rattling pain. He didn't panic, though he wondered if his recent brush with whatever the hell the nosoi had cursed him with had anything to do it. It was pointless to worry at this point. Either it would kill him, or it wouldn't. Feeling the same sort of pain he'd felt literally every time he'd ever reached this point of emotionally overwhelmed wasn't high on the list of alarming things. 'Still on the list, though,' He noted dismally, and determinedly pushed back his tears as the feeling faded way too tentatively. He breathed out the exhaustion deep and soft, quiet enough that they wouldn't notice.

Sometimes Leo wondered if they somehow knew how much he fucking hated lying to them. He had zero qualms about lying through his teeth for the most part, given that he'd spent a whole adolescent period doing it left and right. Leo had spent almost all of his lifetime absolutely lying through his teeth every single day. It had been the best way to protect himself from the start, and once he'd managed to fuck up enough for people to see him as a lost cause (normal Leo "L" honestly), some combination of pubescent angst and sheer hatred for being alive had resulted in him veering into becoming a class clown delinquent that forced the world to put up with him. His rebellious and shameful actions were things he regretted more than anything sometimes.

His only motivation to live back then was the same reason he made himself thinking of his mother every single day as if it were his religion, tapping her morse code "I-LOVE-YOU'  without relent: it was penance. Every day he'd been alive and in foster care had been a special kind of hell, and it was only right that he suffered after he'd killed her. It was only right that he felt pain every day. And he'd lie his ass off every day until he was an expert, until he knew how to talk his way into and out of every bruise, to stay just flayed open enough that he could still fly under the radar, but still bleed enough for it to feel like he'd done enough suffering to justify being alive, completely unable to avenge mom's death. After all, it was hard to avenge her from from something he'd been convinced he'd hallucinated outright out of some pathetic desire to dodge the guilt of burning her alive...up until he'd been fifteen and learned (and settled the score with) the truth.

Yet, even though he'd never been back in foster care or under someone's thumb again, he had never stopped lying. It was more comfortable, honestly. He had never felt particularly guilty about it; until he was close with Frank and Hazel. With them, more than anyone, he fucking hated lying to them. 

And now he knew why he did. Because they were always there for him, and they always had been, every single time that it had mattered to him, and even when it didn't really. Like a perfect code, they did the action every time he'd ever needed it, no matter what. Sometimes even when he hadn't asked for help to begin with. It was so frustrating and so hard to lie to them because it was ...they were safe.

Leo didn't do safe; it was a feeling he'd abandoned in the burning warehouse he'd left his mother in and kept it at bay ever since. He didn't know how to lie to safety; he'd been terrible at lying to his mom. But Frank and Hazel kept making that feeling come back to him, and he hated that he couldn't hate them at all. He hated how weak they made him want to be. His chest swelled, fighting back the feeling he'd made foreign to himself. And yet he still, against his will, tasted it on the back of his tongue, and it was the most distinctly off thing he'd ever experienced. He'd made himself forget what this had felt like, and having to feel it again squirmed. A lot. Tentatively, he tried to talk himself out of it―'don't be greedy, you know better than that. Be brave, deal with it yourself.' But the feeling stuck like glue. It was very inconvenient. 

Perhaps it was the exasperation he was suddenly experiencing from this―imagine that, being tired and cranky with feeling― that left him staring forward helplessly, finally surrendering to their touch.

He lied there in defeat, lost.

After a second of pondering this new and unique flavor of horror, he shook his head lightly. His feeling of helplessness did not budge at all. He glared at nothing; these fucking people...if anyone ever wanted to deal unimaginable amounts of mental torture to Leo, all they had to do was sit these two next to him and force him to remember all they had ever and probably would ever do for him. Because it was just like that, honestly. 

The very virtue of who they were and currently being made him want to lose his mind because it was improbably good, and something a wretch like him had no business being anywhere near. He cursed the Fates for allowing him to foolishly make friends with some of the most wonderful, awe-inspiring people that he knew, and leave him arrogant enough not to recognize just how inevitable it was that he'd someday want to push closer to souls as beautiful as theirs, and on so, burn them. It was all he was good for; burning everything good and bright.

They were bright, impossibly bright, like the sun he'd stared towards until the very end. The same he'd seen on the dawn of his rebirth. They kept attacking him by shining down on him, over and over again. Like they wanted to. Maybe they did. And maybe he wanted that to be true. Maybe he'd always wanted this. But Leo had learned by now how worthless it was to reach out to people. It was a task he had long-since willfully classified as 'impossible' and sworn off, content with holding anyone and everyone at a long distance.

And he could've spent a lifetime committed to this self-imposed exile of who he was beneath the mask, and of the pathetic, crying baby inside of him that needed . He could've believed wholeheartedly, until the day he finally died, that it wasn't worth it to let someone see him, that it never had been or would be. If nothing else, how bad it hurt when his heart was thrown back at him was enough to deter him for good. 

Leo had already accomplished the ultimate Icarus homage once, and so he knew exactly how terribly painful it was to fly too close to the sun and burn. Undergoing that nearly impossible leap of faith to place his trust and heart in someone's hands? Only to have it rejected? That was exactly like what dying had felt like―the feeling of impossible burning inside of him. Every single time it had ever happened, the feeling had been one and the same. 

He'd convinced himself on some level that it was perfectly understandable that he wasn't eager to try it out again, but as he lied there beneath the tent of two of his best friends, and they kept protecting him in this period of extended weakness, he recognized, somehow sadly, that it had been so easy to sit with the pain. To change like this. He felt changed. He felt...

...That the flames that licked his insides and flew out of him could do more than burn with reckless abandon, like he always expected it to do. He treated his own fire like it was evil, but in truth, it was just what it was. It was just fire. And flames weren't malicious. The only thing flames could consistently be accused of was the act of change. They were forever malleable, and completely unrelenting. Ferocious in hunger and desire to consume, to shape. Eager to transform. They could be used a million different ways in million different temperatures for a million different things. 

And something flames could do... they could solder new circuits.

New paths to create something new, or something that optimized the machine. It was an intricate thing to do, and in so, very goddamn stressful. But this was what was happening, he realized. These assholes were soldering new circuits in him, cursing him with the new and agonizing feeling of being loved. He hadn't felt like this since his mother had left him. And that was why this was so hard. Because it was ―it was amazingly hard to sit here and quiver―but he had no choice, and quickly, he was coming to have no desire to have one.

Because they loved him, he realized. The words finally sunk in for the first time. These fucking idiots loved him.

He wanted to beat them upside the head for being so dumb, but the cracks and creaks he felt and listened to inside of himself for the first time in... forever, honestly, held him down. As he sunk into what felt like the only true complete and utter surrender he'd felt in over a decade, his body finally told him very quickly, through the reflections, that if there was any hope of saving this machine, that he needed to figure out where the codes and circuits of the machine needed maintenance the most and do it fast . And that, just like the Argo, he had to...prioritize. Find where it ached most at the end of the day, and attack from there, one by one, until everything was put to rights.

It was something he had always known but didn't want to know―that he had to do it. 

And now, he absolutely did. It would be completely stupid and irreparably selfish to hold off on it anymore. Not after this. Not after he'd done this to them. Put them through this. 

His eyes burned anew with the shame and horrible guilt of it; that it took nearly dying for him to figure out how to lean on people, on Hazel and Frank. They'd undergone incredible horror just because of his own stupid ass stubbornness, and this was the final blue-screening firewall that was going to push him to make that leap and stop avoiding dealing with this.

If these two morons were going to love him, he had to make damn sure that he was or that he became what they deserved, because it was definitely more than this, and he couldn't ever risk putting them through this again. There was no other way he could possibly repay them if he was going to man up and stay here. With them. With their friends. If he wasn't going to run away. 

He'd run away in fear so many times that he'd forgotten how to face it when it mattered. He was sure he had failed to do it just a night ago. And now Hazel and Frank had... 

In that moment, he regretted hesitating on doing maintenance on himself more than he regretted anything else in his life, and the words rushed to and hovered in the back of his mouth, unable to be spoken but unable to be swallowed. Instead, he lied mute as the two of them unknowingly held him together, and the wave of binary buzzed behind his locked teeth―-

'I'm sorry that I couldn't figure out my bug fixes faster.'

“I’m sorry, ’m so sorry, ‘m not s’pposed to bother you guys…Shoulda just died on th’  floor b’fore I called you…Shoulda hung up.”

”Wh—buddy, you’re not bothering us, what? It’s okay...w-what do you mean you should’ve died on the floor? I don't—“

”I’m sorry. I hate this so mu-uch, I hate me so much. You're not even supposed to be in here. You can't see this. You wouldn't come, why did you... god, I don't want you to see me. I hope 'm dying, 'm so tired of this. ‘M so tired.”

.

He sobs, slow and quiet, between the words. He sounds exhausted and afraid.

(Original WC: 7.201) : (Current WC: I dont even know man this chapter is insane : Leo V3.7.65

Chapter Text

YOU WILL NOTICE THIS IS UPDATED BUT THERE IS NOT CHAPTER 3, YET. THIS IS MARKED AS AN UPDATE BECAUSE OF THE HEAVY EDITS THE STORY UNDERWENT. I APOLOGIZE FOR THE CONFUSION.

*Generally, this story will undergo heavy edits as time goes on and the construction/writing flow is optimized. Check on this periodically! It's going to change a LOT over time...just like people who heal from trauma do.

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"He was so light when I was carrying him. So...small. I never noticed how small he is. It's like my hand could cave in his chest."

"He's not made of paper mache, just 'idiot'. How are you doing? I can take over if--"

"― No. This is my job."

"...Frank, I already told you. It's not your fault."

"Isn't it?"

FRANK TOLD HIMSELF THAT he meant it in the least dramatic way possible when he thought that Leo(nidas, if the guy was to be believed) Valdez was a force of nature. 

―In that he was the dazzling, yet inconvenient kind of nature that only some people liked. Think dust devils, or sudden showers of tiny pieces of hail (emphasis on ‘tiny’). Much like these phenomena, Leo’s general existence in Frank’s life also seemed to be short, distilled (and truly mesmerizing) bursts of baffling “what-the-fuck”-ery that came as fast as they went. 

At least, this was what Frank had thought yesterday.

Because yesterday, Frank’s internal picture of Leo Valdez was somebody who was (dubiously) normal and (reasonably) sane…except for when he did weird or crazy shit, which was fairly often. (He paused). Honestly, Frank wasn’t sure what his initial understanding of Leo had been, but that had been the point, hadn’t it? 

That had been the point. Leo had been manufacturing that image on purpose.

Frank set his jaw, determinedly (failing at) folding towels, considering not for the first time just how intricate this facade Leo had built for himself truly was. And Frank only knew about it because yesterday happened, and he was beyond lucky it had even gone down as it had, horrible as it might have been. 

They were lucky they’d even found Leo alive.  

That Leo had survived that night at all, well enough to be able to stand and talk, now, was a miracle. Frank was amazed that he wasn’t sitting at a funeral pyre. As it had turned out, the spirit of plague had been much more than an easy fight in a neighbor’s backyard, and it had been more than a simple illness, too. Plague was more than a sickness. It was an intricate horror. The damage it wrought on an immune system would always be reflected in the victim’s body and soul, leave them stained with the scars left behind. To the degree that it was very likely that from here on out, Leo could become immunocompromised, or at least be thoroughly weakened in some way. 

Maybe he already was. Frank thought he might be, based on what he'd said.

'What he said...' Frank stared down at his hand, trying not to think about it. It was a failing effort. Every time he'd tried to control his thoughts after this horrific experience had been a failing effort, really. Even now, Frank was enjoying the beautiful experience of thinking nonstop about how… terrible it had been to listen to Leo sobbing and gasping for breath.

It had gone on for hours after Hazel had banished the plague spirit from him. The sound of it wasn’t unlike an invisible fly that kept buzzing past his ears.

And the things Leo had been forced to say seemed to speak into them directly. 

He couldn't rip his eyes from his own hand, almost frozen in place. He breathed shallowly, reminding himself for the millionth time that it was over. Leo was safe now, at least, as much as he could possibly be. 

Yet still, the images flashed in his mind. The memories of how, right in front of Frank’s eyes, the nosoi had mutilated Leo from the inside out, ripped Leo’s spirit into shreds.

How it had used his own plague.

It was frightful, the way it wound its way deeper inside of Leo than the plague that was living inside of his lungs―the one that had frightened Chiron enough to forcibly quarantine Leo’s house, the final move that had nearly spelled Leo’s doom. By the time they'd reached him, Leo’s own plague was killing him, the things he kept buried inside of him wrenched up to the surface, laid bare for them to see. All the awful things he’d been through, the experiences that had weighed Leo down every day of his life, thoughts and feelings and other things he’d desperately kept invisible from those who loved him, would’ve probably kept invisible until the very end of his life had the nosoi never come to him.

All of his fear. All of his trauma. All of it. He’d relived it all, felt it all, right in front of them, and screamed his way through too much of it for comfort. Far too much.

The scope of what Frank and Hazel had heard was beyond words.

So he focused on the words that he could. The obvious ones. And what was obvious was this: Leo had been bearing an incredible burden for a long time without anyone knowing it. Not to the degree Frank and Hazel did, now.

And it’d been forced out of him. He’d had no control.

Neither had they, but they had to live with the consequences either way.

It was unspeakable. Frank wasn’t sure what to do about it.  

All he could do was think about how it had felt inside of him as Leo laid dying in his arms just yesterday. Had it really only been yesterday that he'd felt that yawning, inescapable dread as they fought to get the demon out of him and keep him alive? The terrifying experience had been backlit by all those things they never deserved to be privy too, that Leo never should’ve been forced to divulge.

Yet in some strange way, it almost seemed a fitting punishment for Hazel and himself. Punishment for every second they’d made him wait for them.

He’d sworn to protect Leo after he’d come home from his sacrifice, even though he’d never said so out loud (mostly because Leo would probably be an asshole about it). It'd been a simple conclusion for Frank to assimilate into his life after Leo gave his to save it: until the day Frank died, Leo would always have his sword at his side. He'd always look out for him.

But instead of succeeding in protecting him, Frank had failed to recognize the gravity of Leo calling Hazel for help.

Back then, part of him had even known that Leo reaching out in a moment of weakness was incredibly unlike him, though he'd only known it in his gut at the time. But he hadn't listened to it. Even though he'd known, somehow, that Leo was hesitant to ask for help, he had chosen to believe Leo knew when to call it instead. He pushed away the thought that had said maybe he would wait until he was literally on death's fucking doorstep to ask anyone for anything.

He regretted choosing not to believe in his own gut more than anything in his life, now. And this was only one of Frank’s mistakes. One that he only knew about because of the nosoi.

The truth was terrible. Leo had been dying on the phone, and even though he’d managed to tell them exactly what he’d encountered, Frank overlooked something important.

Like a fucking idiot, Frank had underestimated the gravity of what a nosoi was, the particular Greek manifestation Leo’d encountered, because for Romans, a morbus was just a disease. Still devastating but only over time. Slowly. But for Greeks, nosoi were gods of plague. Physical manifestations of the concept itself. And even though it was so painfully obvious now, even though he’d had all the clues on the phone, he’d had no idea how close Leo was to death until it was almost too late. He’d underestimated an enemy.  

He had underestimated another, too. With anger, he remembered Chiron’s face going ashen as he spoke of Leo’s battle with the nosoi, the way his voice sounded as he uttered, “Then he is already lost.”. The order he gave for quarantine until they could find a way to contain the spirit. The horror suffusing his body, leaving him cold and numb. The rage in Hazel’s screams, “He’s still ALIVE! GODS DAMN YOU!” The fight to get in, finding him on the floor―-

He pinched his leg so hard he swore he felt his nail puncture the skin. He focused on the pain. Cleared his head. ‘Breathe, Frank.’

God, they had almost lost him. It had been so close. They'd come way too fucking close.

Frantic tapping on his arms, unintelligible syllables and gasps as he thrashes in Frank's arms. He's crying. Frank has seen him close to it before, but never seen him do it for real. Not like this. Never seen anything like this in his life. It's unbelievably horrible, like something out of his nightmares. But it's real. Leo's gasping and sobbing in his arms, and he won't stop tapping Frank. He knows it means something, but Leo looks like he's--

'Stop thinking about it, dammit.' Frank told himself. 'Fold the towels'. The dry skin on his fingertips dragged lightly across the scratchy surface of Leo's battered dish towels. Frank shut his eyes, dragging his thumb through it over and over again until he felt like he could think. He found himself peering at Leo in the other room for the millionth time; more specifically, his pitiful figure collapsed on the couch. 

Frank ground his jaw, and heard the fabric of the dish towel he was holding creak ominously. Relaxing his hand, he pondered for what seemed like the millionth time just how furious he was that—beyond the pain he felt about making a bad judgment to begin with, it stung so much more that Frank had known it was a bad call, but hadn’t trusted himself. 

He'd made every excuse in the book just to assume he was alright, even rationalize to himself that plagues didn't pop up overnight, that there were incubation periods. That Leo would...that he would be honest about how much pain he was in. That Leo would have an understanding of pain that was anywhere near reasonable. But even after the phone call, even after they'd shadow traveled, Frank’s guts hadn't stopped writhing, even once.

When Leo didn't call with any updates, Percy and Hazel soothed his anxieties. Again, he’d chosen not to trust his own gut and naively hoped? trusted? assumed, stupidly and unfairly, Leo would have the sense to realize he was fucking dying when he was actively doing it. That he'd have the sense to call for help through that. When he sent Percy to tell Camp Half-blood about the run-in with the nosoi, he chose not to double-check what had been said ( ‘And honestly,’ Frank thought with a touch of aggravation. ‘“Leo got sick from a monster attack and needs help from Apollo kids, and it’s easier to do a house call than make him trudge here.” was all well and good but he left out the name of which monster! How careless!’ and suppressed the urge to summon Percy somehow and throttle him.) If Frank was even more honest, he was pretty fucking furious with Percy for the lapse, accidental as it might’ve been. And he was mad at whoever had answered the call for not asking him what the monster had been. It was unbelievably stupid, but he supposed it was his fault in the end: he hadn’t confirmed a serious matter. It made him want to hit his head into the countertop.

He’d believed against his own gut he’d been fine. But then Chiron had made that face. Made that call. And then Leo hadn’t answered calls when he’d tried it. He had felt true, refined fear, then, and suppressed it even more, the risk so unconscionable to him, not with Hazel demanding to be let through because, as Pluto’s daughter, she knew he was still alive. He felt as though he had just about begged fate to make it so that Leo was okay. That they’d find him frumping on the couch, sniffly and small. 

Then Hazel felt him begin to die in earnest. They broke through the quarantine, and he didn’t answer the door. They broke through the front door. They found the locked bathroom door, the sound of the shower. The bathroom he’d been in a whole day ago when he’d called them.

And then Hazel had opened the bathroom door, and he was there, and he said—-

“N—No…you can’t, yo—ou, why are — please, no, no you can’t see this, you—ca— I’m sorry, I’m so sorry…oh my god I made you come, you came, it’s my fault it’s mine, o-oh my god, no, don’t look at me.”

He had never left the bathroom.

‘Stop thinking about it.’

And now, for all of his failures, Frank had another memory to complete the top five most traumatizing moments of his life, because as he cradled him in the bathroom, it had hit him well and truly that if they couldn’t figure out something fast, Leo was going to die because of how long they'd taken. He’d been absolutely certain of this. And as they fought like hell to soothe him as he screamed and cried, to desperately keep him tethered to life just long enough to figure out how to get the nosoi out, it tormented him that all of it could’ve been avoided had he not told all of those lies to himself. 

Ignoring his gut hadn’t just nearly killed one of Frank’s closest friends; it had nearly killed the one he’d sworn to protect. He wanted to thrust his own sword into his gut in shame. This wasn't acceptable, none of it was acceptable. His own terrible judgment had been what plunged them all into the absolute worst case scenario. He curled his fist shut, feeling his fingernails catch on the rough surface of the dish towel he’d been holding. He rolled a tether of the fabric between his pointer and thumb, looking back up at Leo. He hadn’t moved an inch. 

Unease curled in his chest. He tried to tamp it down, knowing Leo was…stable, now. He knew Leo was stable now. But his heart didn’t. It thumped with unease relentlessly. It was distracting him from folding the towels badly.

As he set about trying to finish that, he pondered how much of a plague trauma was by its own right. It was amazing that Leo's went so deep. It had certainly gone on for a long time, and all they could do was sit solemnly by his side and work at keeping him alive as everything inside of him did everything it could to try and drag him down into…into nothingness. Against all odds, even though he'd relived the worst of his life and it took hours to get through it, Leo had fought the whole time, and he'd won. He’d won. 

The pride that bloomed deep in Frank’s gut and chest in honor of his friend, this amazing warrior, was his only beacon of sanity against the images of Leo’s body writhing in agony, the ones that wouldn’t leave him. It was still the words he said that had struck him worse, honestly. 

Leo had said such awful things. Been put through worse.

Frank wasn’t sure he’d ever be able to forget (some of) it.

Now that the worst had come and passed, Frank found himself doing a really poor job of folding hand towels as he finally processed enough of the previous day to fully and truly appreciate that his friend was not, in fact, reasonably sane nor dubiously normal.

No. His plague had shown it to Hazel and himself with blistering clarity: Leo was completely and utterly batshit out of his goddamn mind.

And―worst of all―it wasn’t even his own fault. ‘No’ , he thought, feeling his chest tighten as his eyes flickered to Leo, who was sprawled across his couch like someone had hit him with a mega-flyswatter, ‘it’s not’. 

He’d heard more than enough to figure that out for himself. 

As he reflected on this, he could summon just the smallest iota of gratitude, if only because this experience had been a much-needed learning experience, one hell of one. 

1. Frank was way more of an idiot than he’d ever given himself credit for, which was already a pretty high bar. Good knowledge to have. ‘Your beliefs aren’t gospel, idiot. Why are we prone to forgetting that?’ was a valuable peripheral concern to work at.
2. Leo had almost died for good because of his idiocy. Terrible new knowledge, but knowledge he did deserve. It was a consequence. A tangible consequence that he’d learn from. 
3. The knowledge he didn’t deserve, that Leo had been forced to give up, had taught him so much about Leo that it was actually mind-boggling, enough so to have changed his entire perspective of Leo and all of their interactions overnight. 
4. Leo himself was fire. 

One of Frank's most secret, closely held ideas had thus been confirmed. That Leo was a force of nature, alright…but not a hail storm, not a dust devil (though he might as well have been…)

Leo was the force of fire itself. 

There was a reason he wielded it. It had always felt like fate, in some way. It already was in the prophecy that had brought their lives together― Leo’s role in the prophecy. But now it was for certain: Hephaestus had chosen to bless Leo with fire for more than power.

Leo’s fire was what kept him alive .

He’d seen it for himself during what had been one of the most harrowing tasks of his life, which was helping Leo breathe for those hours it’d taken the nectar to work on healing Leo from the aftermath of the nosoi's exit from his body. He’d spent all those hours holding Leo upright and working at his diaphragm, trying anything to keep Leo breathing, or at least make it easier for him. 

It had never been enough by itself. Leo had always deteriorated no matter what he did. 

But every time Leo began to fade more than Frank’s knuckles could prompt his lungs, something strange and mesmerizing happened. 

Like a phoenix, Leo’s body would ripple with fire, just for moments at a time. Color would flush back to his face and skin, his lips would blush back to their normal hue, and he’d resume breathing at a slow, but steadier pace. Over, and over, and over again, no matter how much and how often he started to slip more towards death. It was like his fire was energy itself, fading back into his body. 

A protective mechanism. 

(Privately, Frank pondered how that kind of power couldn’t be innate. And whether Hephaestus knew Leo would be the fire that brought down Gaia. How he couldn’t have known; no one but Hera had ever known the prophecy of the seven, and her own understanding had been incomplete. He’d seemingly given Leo the blessing of fire from youth, of his own accord. A gift he’d given no child of his for centuries.

He wondered if Hephaestus loved his son. He hoped it was so, because it’d mean that someone, in some way, had been looking out for Leo through all of the horror he’d been made a victim to. Deep inside, Frank begged for this to be true.)

‘Of course,’ Frank’s mind had spun back then, even amid the grief and terror of watching Leo fade and reignite over and over again, scared shitless that there’d come a time that the fire wouldn’t re-emerge and save Leo’s life. Unable to do anything but stew in fear, thinking uncontrollably about all he’d heard. ‘Of course. Fire was how Leo survived all of this. It makes sense, now. He is fire.’

And then, he thought, almost hysterically: ‘Oh, I was so right.’

(**This is Frank’s warning that an extremely, deeply homoerotic monologue about Leo is about to happen.)
(Yes, Frank was aware of this. Hazel’s merciless teasing after the first time he’d taken (half) an edible and proceeded to walk her through all of this had taught him that.)
(Knowing that this was the case did not deter him at all and in fact, it just made it funny to him. Which, as Leo had taught him in a rare(?) moment of wisdom, made life 10x more enjoyable.)

As Leo’s close and deep association with fire rolled into the sight of his mind's eye, his physical ones flickered to Leo once more despite himself. As he checked him over, Frank felt the weight of his own shame press into him like a brand. Leo was listless. Completely and utterly. It was awful to look at, and Frank, in all his stupidity, had managed to cause it. Yet, he was undoubtedly still alive. The power of the Gods’ ambrosia and nectar was incomparable, but it paled in strength to Leo’s resolve to live. Frank had seen it for himself.

And wasn’t that just like fire? A determination to live?

Fire was a force like none other. It had the power to spring back from or up from nothingness, make ashes out of towns and forests from sources as small as candle flames and campfires. Maybe it was more than that, too. Maybe, in being the essence of energy itself made manifest, maybe fire was just a manifestation of life. That ephemeral zing that animated all, thrummed through cells and powered their motion.

(**“OH!” Hazel had proclaimed at this point. “And fire is Leo. Leo is love, Leo is life. Hahaha.” and then Frank had to walk himself through the several stages of grief associated with remembering that wildly NSFW Shrek video. And then explain to his girlfriend that “Yes a little, but mostly actually no, shut up.” while she laughed at him.)

Nothing on earth existed without some sort of energy keeping it animated; it seemed painfully obvious to him that fire was just the energy someone could see with their own eyes. Frank's own eyes were--

--he caught the fleeting look of Leo's face scrunching, as if in pain, with such razor-sharp precision that he was almost embarrassed by it. 

His hands froze on the towels automatically, as if the near-silent noises of the flailing he was doing with them was somehow waking Leo up. He eyed his friend nervously, and didn't dare to move again until Leo stayed still for another couple minutes, expression still somewhat tight. It was only once those stress lines faded into nothingness that Frank cautiously continued his campaign to fold the towels.

As he worked through them (with mounting frustration), he pondered that, whatever it was that fire represented, that it didn't change what it did. It did exactly what life did, relentlessly and without remorse. 

It changed.

More specifically, it changed by the power of its own force. It was amazing, how broad and great fire was for change. It was primed for completely ruthless destruction if abused...just as much as it could act as the most marvelous catalyst of life in other circumstances. So much so that whole forests could spring up from behind it, nourished fully by the wake of the flames. The power that fire held was extreme in either direction...which made it all the more strange and miraculous that, more often than not, flames were completely indiscriminate about the transformations they presented when left alone. There was no deep motivation behind any of the wonders of fire. Instead, it was animated only to take and transform as much as it could, in whatever way that it could. 

It was so much like life that it was painful. 

Fire was so full of pain.

No other force on earth was so boundless in potential, nor fighting as hard to show it, like an undrainable well―an ironic comparison. Frank wondered, now, what it felt like. If it was more like a gaping void inside, instead. If that was why Leo--

'Plea--piedad por favor no mas, no quiero, Teresa por favor no ma--no  more, please, pa- I'll be buen--g-good, be good, I promise I'll be quiet!'

'Focus, Frank,' He thought, watching his knuckles shake. 'Don't think about what he was saying. It's not important. Not now,' 

Leo didn't need this from him; what he needed was rest, relaxation, and―Frank looked up again, eyebrows scrunching―a chiropractor at this rate, if he didn't adjust his body sometime soon. His chest tightened the longer he looked over Leo, who was still completely motionless on the distant living room couch. 

He continued thinking.

The world; his own and the one at large, could not live without energy, without fire, without someone like Leo, who’d do something so defiant of chance itself that he would destroy the world itself before he let it destroy him. Losing a force like that, losing fire, suffocating it all would be irresponsible to the point of devastation. People like Leo were a marvel of the tenacity of the human spirit. 

What Frank was supposed to do with fire, as a person born to bear the burden of flame forever, was be watchful, and work in advance to course-correct when things began to slide into undesirable territory. Direct it to the power of good. Guide it, protect it. Never take it for granted, lest it burn him up for good. Frank's long and turbulent relationship with fire had done a lot to thoroughly impress Frank with respect for flame, and understand exactly how stupid it was to seize open flame and try to force it to his will. (It often wound up being more destructive than any other outcome.)

All of the above was something he’d practiced on Leo. 

Learned from Leo. Though he now knew it for certain, every observation he made of fire that had ever worked to establish the belief in Frank's mind that Leo and flames were one and the same was because of how Leo had, over time, come to show him the truths of fire in all of its forms. Of life and the burn of the change associated with it. The boundless potential of it, too. None of it had been lessons of any kind. All of it was simply the natural product of spending time with Leo, and seeing him conduct himself through a wide array of moods. When he was small. Weak. Rising. Burning. Large … 

The circumstances wherein those descriptors might be true of fire, the nature of Leo, as it had turned out again and again, was one and the same. He wrought destruction and marvelous creation in every form. His will was indomitable, and it seemed he could constantly do the impossible. He sprang up from nothing even when all seemed lost. And, funnily, he moved just about as much as flames did. Fiddling with his fingers, babbling about something stupid, bouncing his leg, juggling, tinkering, creating, doing anything. The seemingly endless levels of energy the guy had never ceased boggling Frank's mind.

It was for all of these reasons that he believed Hephaestus had blessed Leo with the gift of fire. All because Leo himself was fire, his mind and soul. 

Which made it all the more difficult to watch him lie still in the other room. 

―A feeling of which made him drag himself right back to the backbone of his most present worries. He sighed through his nose as he helplessly looked up to check on Leo again. He still hadn’t moved. The dread spiral geared to begin again, and he found himself wishing Hazel were there to just snatch the towel out of his hand and whip him out of the impending anxiety with it. She always grounded him, hauling him out of his anxiousness physically, whether it be by doing something as small as placing her hand in his, or as far as her curling his head into her body. But she wasn't here to do that, now. All Frank had at his disposal was hand towels for Leo's kitchen; ones that were insultingly hard to fold, too. Aside from his shaking hands, Frank couldn't understand why this was the case. 

'You know how to survive anxiety without Hazel, don't be a baby.' He told himself, critically glaring at the uneven fold of the towel before him. He wasn't pleased that he was finding it relatable. 'Hey, wait, don't call yourself a baby. Validate yourself, dangit. You're scared and need a distraction. Your brain is providing what it can with the fire. Try to make this less stressful to deal with. You know how to do this, Frank.'   He stood uneasily, wondering if maybe leaning into this dread spiral and letting it finish naturally instead of holding it back was his ticket out, as if another minute of reviewing the horror of the previous day would help him process it more than he already had.

It wasn't like he’d spent the entire day ruminating on yesterday at length…except, that had been exactly what Frank had been doing, unable to get his mind off of it now that the dust had settled. Familiarity was supposed to breed comfort, so was time to process, but there was none to be found regarding the experience, not this early and never truly. It was unavoidably and unconscionably awful from start to finish, and Frank was sure he’d never forget it. That it would always haunt him somehow, dogging his every step. 

Yet, it still felt to him that maybe, this consequence of his action would only make sense to undergo, a sign of penance for managing to let Leo down so terribly. For his fundamental failure of his duty to Leo. 

He could never fail so terribly again.

He peered over at Leo for as long as he could bear it instead (which wasn't long), knowing him to be familiar. Sadly, scrutinizing him even more heavily than he'd been routinely doing for, oh, the last hour or so just made him feel even more anxious. Processing this reality, Frank resumed folding to the best of his capabilities (they were still currently poor), feeling pensive. It was unbelievably hard to contain himself, and it was only when he was sure he wouldn't do something crazy (like crying, which he had felt a tremendous urge to do since he'd gotten here) that he tentatively began working himself through the dread. 

He kept trying to but found himself utterly unable to get around how totally creepy and unpleasant it was for him to observe that Leo was currently doing nothing . And Frank meant that―he peered at his friend lying barely a few steps away from him to confirm it for the umpteenth time, and nervously eyed how he had settled his spine. More vague worries about Leo's back came to mind next, because Leo hadn’t so much as twitched since he’d wordlessly sprawled across the couch hours ago. 

Eyeing the uncanny sight before him, Frank recognized that whatever hellish engine that ran his friend had sputtered to some unceremonious sort of stop, probably for the first time since Frank had met him. The silence left behind in the absence of its roar hung heavy in the room, for Frank at least. Leo's own silence was terrible, and though the lack of this had aggravated Frank more than once, he was sure now that he'd give anything, even some of his fingers, for Leo to just start laughing . Play a thumb war with himself. Anything. 

He hated how still he was, to the point that it felt as though he could choke. Leo wasn't meant to be silent, his mind said, and definitely not still. Fire never was, and he never should be. Frank was not at all grateful for this awful change he was witnessing, not even one little bit. No. It was as though a steady river within him had unexpectedly pounded through settled earth and bore a new pathway, ripping apart careful constructions and leaving a streak within him that felt raw and powerful.

He was...fearful. And disturbed. But above all else, Frank was worried. Very and deeply worried.

He grimaced, returning to folding. Of all the things that had tried and gotten perilously close to taking his friend over there out for good, it was genuinely not surprising to Frank that it was something so rare and extravagantly awful that almost managed it, and he meant that in the most derogatory* way possible. 

Just as Leo was fire in many ways, Leo was way too much like it in that he did absolutely nothing by halves when left to his own devices, and it was precisely because this was the case that Frank, frankly**, felt that he should have guessed that if there ever came a time that Leo needed assistance the moment Frank was out of reach, that jackass there was going to accomplish this not by getting a bad cold or having a standard run-in with some common monster, but by getting cursed by a literal conduit of the fucking plague. 

When Frank said Leo demonstrated the epitome of 'all, or nothing' just as good as the same flames he commanded, he meant it.

• *Not actually though.
• **He’d just like to note that he heard you laugh(?) and that for the record, he knew this combination sounded stupid, but it was the only word he could think of that described that feeling.

For the millionth time that day, he observed Leo for a little while longer, unwilling to look away. He catalogued anything around and about Leo that he might need to worry about fortifying later (since god knew Leo wouldn’t in time, based off “I’m fine and totally not actually literally fucking dying on my bathroom floor instead of moping on my couch with a bad cough, thus unwittingly forcing my friends to do a really impromptu ritual to banish the plague spirit in you me. Where the fuck did you even find that? Leo, why is it always you? I wish I-- ”). It was appallingly unhelpful that, by this point, all his brain could come up with just looking at Leo was “not good”. 

He felt...as though he had grown careless. He knew, or should’ve known that flames left alone didn’t always grow―that they could fade, too. He had taken Leo’s general zest for life and living for granted just as much as he’d taken for granted that when flames began to fade, that they often did it quickly. No matter how brightly something burned, the flames needed fuel to sustain itself, especially when something had doused a good amount of them. Fuel for a human―for Leo― was care.

...Something Leo had clearly experienced a deplorable amount of, based on all those awful things he’d been mumbling at the worst of his sickness. It had been...one of the hardest things Frank had ever had to sit through in his life, honestly. As he had carefully kept Leo raised and massaged breath back into his chest through that dreadfully long night, Leo, whether he knew it yet or not, had revealed through his scattered cries just how dangerously close to that ‘certain point’ of no return he had actually been. 

All of those terrible things he spoke of as it flashed behind his streaming, sightless eyes... they swirled in his head without relent. Ever since it had finally ceased and Leo calmed, Frank had also been working through the arduous process of comprehending just how badly he'd had no clue about... anything about Leo.

He had no idea who Leo was until Wednesday. 

Nothing about his family. Not his upbringing. Not his way of thinking. Nothing formative, nothing...solid. He'd taken the anchorless feeling of Leo completely for granted, having thoughtlessly cited within his own head the massless existence of flame, and assumed Leo to be exactly as shallow and flippant as he'd presented himself to be so perfectly...and so he had neglected to remember that, fire or no fire, what Leo was had undergone no fundamental change.

He was just as human as him.

And Frank had been unceremoniously slapped across the face with this newfound understanding over and over again—that Leo was so, so, so painfully human —feeling another lash across his shameful face with each individual moment of Leo's delirious and uncontrollable onslaught of some of his most core feelings and experiences. He sincerely doubted that Leo even knew it, yet, just how much he'd said. He had no idea how much vulnerability Frank had been privy too. 

Maybe that was what scared Frank the most: the notion that he'd have to see that fear spread through Leo the moment he did know. He'd already seen a stark glimmer of that fear just hours before, in the barren master's bedroom. It was something he never wanted to see in Leo again, something that just the sight of alone had made something ache deep within Frank's chest, filled him with the urge to protect.

Leo's fear, as he'd come to learn, was as deep-set as the boy was tall, and it wasn't hard to ping that it had been the biggest force to blame for what could've been the sudden and horrifying loss of him (for the second time!), for what almost was. Never in Frank's wildest dreams would he have imagined Leo would be too scared to even ask for help properly.... until he'd seen the consequences of this reality in action the moment Hazel opened the bathroom door, and it dawned on them both that he hadn’t ever left the floor. He looked over the kitchen island, grimly pondering how small Leo looked on the couch. 

He stared. Squinted. The image persisted. It made him feel cold in a way he’d never felt in Leo’s presence before. On some level, Frank was certain that the chill was real; that Leo’s presence literally filled a room (whether anyone liked it or not) with warmth—as he felt that there could be no other explanation for how frigid the absence of it now made him feel. It was as though something fundamental to reality by Leo's side had fucked itself entirely. Leo wasn't supposed to be... He looked down at the tiny towel he was struggling with, frowning as his eyes traveled back up to Leo again, as if by magnets. 

He’d always known in his objective mind that Leo wasn't very tall. In this skeletal house they rested in now, Leo cocooned on the couch and swathed in a fleece blanket, it was only now that it was dawning on Frank just...how much Leo was just...small. The veil of the enormity of Leo's warmth and cheer had unceremoniously plunged from Frank's eyes, and the truths he could now see all unnerved him terribly.

(Leo had felt like he was literally a hundred pounds soaking wet, or at least close to it when they’d found him in the bathroom. He'd felt that heavy in Frank's arms, Frank was sure of it. He couldn't stop remembering the phantom stroke of the top of Leo's curls, the ones that barely skimmed the underside of Frank's chin. The ones that harassed him when they were both standing too close together. They'd dragged wetly across his shoulder last night, as frightfully limp as the boy? friend? companion cradled against him. He couldn't stop vividly recalling the...the frail feeling of Leo's soaked, overwarm body pressed to his own. It was as though a small brand was seared into him, now, imperceptible to anyone but himself. He swore he could still feel the sensation of carrying him, too. It was all driving him insane, he was sure of it.)

So far away from Frank, it didn’t even look like Leo was breathing. 

Something revoltingly close to panic rushed up Frank’s throat, and he sucked it down forcefully, not willing to face Leo’s judgmental look if Frank actually lost his nerve and went to shake him into giving him a sign that he wasn’t dead. He stared a bit harder than usual at Leo’s slight frame instead, and just faintly caught the gentle rise and fall of his back. 

He watched for just a bit longer to soothe himself, and then quickly looked back down to finish folding Leo’s stupid towels as quickly as he could manage with a marked amount of newfound urgency. Enough was enough. He’d been dithering his way through folding these stupid towels while Hazel was out being much more helpful at a local farmer’s market to restock Leo’s frightfully bare cupboards. Leo definitely needed something more nutritious at this time than stale ramen noodles, and since he was definitely not disposed for the act of acquiring that (and Frank would duct tape him to his bed if he tried) it had fallen to Hazel, and left Frank making himself useful by cleaning up the house as best as he could while babysitting.

...Which, in practice for about the last hour, meant that he’d been stuck ham-handedly folding Leo’s obnoxiously dainty hand towels, and accomplished little else because he’d been too busy worrying. As he hurried through the rest of it, he was distraught to note that Leo still hadn't moved a single inch the whole time, all the way through to when he finally finished. By then, he was so keyed up that the moment it was all done and over with, he nearly threw the last folded pile into the drawer by the sink that Leo favored for them, and wasted no more time. He made quick strides towards the couch―and then dithered once he actually neared, because Frank realized immediately that, for all that he'd just spent the last (several) hour(s) stewing in concern, he was unsure of what he wanted to do about that, exactly. All that had been driving him was an insistent sense of urgency, but now that he could address it, he was a bit at a loss regarding where to direct it.

He studied Leo’s form for a minute, considering. ...He didn’t look any better nor bigger up close than he had when Frank had been across the room. Most of his body was either buried by his leather couch or swathed in a humongous blanket; Frank could barely make him out even though the blanket he was draped in was of a garden variety, size-wise. It was genuinely kind of…sad, in a way? It just didn’t seem right for Leo to look like this. He just seemed so pathetic and frail, and it was quickly making itself apparent that this made Frank feel a truly insane urge to hold him, but in a “you-look-really-miserable-and-i-care-about-you” kind of way. Which was a problem, because he was 92% sure that if he tried that, Leo would either bite him or spontaneously combust. Possibly both. 

A sign of life came suddenly in the form of a round of coughs, though they were all unnervingly weak and quiet. And then―

“The couch isn’t gonna bite you.” 

It took an embarrassingly long moment for Frank to realize that the raspy, hushed voice that had randomly manifested in the room belonged to Leo. He blinked, and realized suddenly that he’d been standing and staring at him like an idiot for at least a couple minutes. He felt his cheeks heat. Man, that was awkward. 

“Sorry,” he said gruffly, and surprised himself by saying in complete honesty, “I’m just caught up in how terrible you look.”

It looked like it took Leo a monumental amount of effort to lift his eyes to look at Frank, which just made Frank feel, somehow, even more worried. But for how ashen and truly exhausted he looked , Leo also seemed…vaguely offended? Oh. Wait a second.

“I mean―uh.” Frank paused, trying to think of how to word his next sentence without looking like an ass. “I’ve never seen you like this, and it’s freaking me out. I feel like you might disappear and die if I stop keeping an eye on you.”

Leo’s face softened at this, just slightly, and he looked askance in a somewhat awkward manner, huffing before he mumbled, “Well, do that on the couch instead of Blair Witching. It’s creepy.”

“I’m pretty sure Blair Witch stood in the corner,” Frank said, if only for pity’s sake, and wavered in place. “Facing the wall.”

“You might as well be doing the same thing, looking at me. I’m not very interesting right now.” Leo groused as his eyes fell downwards again, and he resumed trying to oracle something out of his living room carpet. 

He had sounded a bit glum as he’d spoken, as if it were some mortal crime that he wasn’t juggling for him or something. Maybe that was why, “You’re always interesting,” tumbled out of Frank’s mouth, shockingly more earnest than the ‘You’re stupid’ he’d initially wanted to say. At least he’d managed to sound exasperated as he’d spoken, though it didn’t seem to do much given how Leo’s eyes flickered up once more to look at him, faintly surprised(?) 

Frank’s stomach squirmed, and before Leo could poke fun at him, he scrambled for a distraction, which wound up coming in the form of him shifting into the most comically large, fluffy cat he could think of…and sauntering over to his friend as obviously as he could manage. 

Leo’s mouth curved into a tired-looking, but genuinely amused smile, and there was a laugh in his voice as he croaked, “What are you doing, man?”

Somehow, just hearing Leo finally laugh for the first time in a while made Frank feel almost ten times better. Man, he must’ve been softening up to this guy more than he’d thought. He didn’t answer Leo’s question, not that he could in the first place (cat vocal cords = not really simpatico with human speech) and instead stopped right next to Leo’s limp hand on the couch, bumping it with his head as he lowered himself into a comfortable sit, scenting it. 

It smelled like death. 

Not acutely—Leo was no corpse. But Frank couldn’t fool himself, for all that he wanted to: the undertone was very real, and it was wound into the overwarmth of Leo’s skin. It set his fur on edge in a way he’d never felt before, and it was distinctly unpleasant. So was the smell itself. He wasn’t sure how to describe what death smelled like, but it definitely wasn’t nice. 

It rankled literally every single animal instinct he had. He hated it. As he sat still, discomfited and thinking, he didn’t notice Leo’s fingers lifting before he carefully stroked the top of Frank’s cat-head, which felt…pleasant, actually. Pleasant enough for him to want to purr, which Frank surprised himself by doing almost immediately. 'Dammit, don't cats purr when they're stressed, too?'  What a perfectly obvious biological sign. (He wished humans had a power like this that wasn't screaming.)

He looked up at Leo, who seemed similarly surprised, and he must’ve had some sort of look about him, because Leo suddenly started to laugh again, longer, which lasted about as long as it took for that to turn into a series of really awful, rasping coughs. Frank watched, alarmed, as Leo turned over and buried his face in the couch to muffle them. His entire body almost convulsed with the force of every cough, and by the end of it, he seemed a lot more tired, a lot more limp, and…like he was in pain. His back was minutely quivering, and when he turned his face just enough for one of his brown eyes to land on Frank again, the lines around it were tight and vaguely wet. 

Death felt pungent in his nose.

“Bleh,” Leo groaned, and heaved a sigh that was way too shaky for comfort before saying, “Let’s save the laughing part of cheering up for when I’m not dying, yeah?”

He knew Leo had meant the phrasing casually―that Leo had always been alarmingly blithe about death since their time on the Argo II ship. But Frank knew more about it, now. More about why. And he now could only think back to the terrifying sight of Leo lying under his shower just the night before. With the smell lying just beneath his skin being what it was, with what was left in the aftermath lying beside him, he sincerely worried that Leo might. 

Without thinking much about it, perhaps on purpose, Frank leapt onto the leather cushion next to Leo, and followed some ephemeral instinct to hop and lay on Leo’s back. It was still shaking, just a little, and something about that…the sluggish beat of his heart that Frank could now feel beneath his paw…the slow, gasping breaths Leo took…it all made the fur along his spine fluff. The smell of death was strongest here, right where Leo’s lungs were. 

“What’re you doing back there?” Leo asked softly, voice lilting in tune with the little jumps of his back. 

He thought about Leo’s question, asking it to himself for the first time as he pressed his paws into Leo’s shoulders. Frank wasn’t sure what he was trying to accomplish, really. He’d been following some sort of instinct to get up here, and he concentrated for a moment, trying to summon it back. The name of the game materialized in his mind eventually. Animals were sometimes more of a comfort than humans were…and cats in particular were not only a symbol of luckiness, but their purr was supposed to be physically healing for humans in some way (fun fact).

If anyone needed some luck and health right now, it was Leo, and if he couldn’t have it by virtue of Frank turning himself into a cat, the least he should receive was some relief. This was what made Frank settle himself a bit more firmly on Leo’s back…and pointedly not think as he let animal instinct lead him. He began kneading the blanket on Leo’s back as gently as he could, and purring as loud as he could manage. He poured his whole kitty soul into every prrrrr. 

Leo went stiff beneath him at the beginning, and he lifted himself up a bit to crane his neck at an awkward angle just to stare at Frank incredulously, struck mute. When Frank pointedly did not look back at him, embarrassed but determined, Leo eventually laid back down, carefully and hesitantly, as though he were afraid of something...but soon enough, it seemed he could hold out no longer, and finally submitted himself to Frank’s haphazard, cat-driven attempt at comfort. Frank was grateful for it, deeply. And amazingly, his efforts did appear to be working on some level, too―it didn’t take terribly long for Leo’s breath to come back stable and even, and for his body to go somewhat boneless. Frank kept purring and kneading anyway. 

At some random point, Leo’s voice sounded out again, slurred and softer than he’d ever heard it before as he murmured, “Thanks, Frank.” 

And then he went limp.

Scary- limp. 

For one completely horrifying moment, Frank was utterly convinced he’d just felt his friend die. White-hot terror filled his entire being for as long as it took for him to realize he could still feel Leo’s heartbeat going slow but steady beneath his paw, and that he was still breathing. Just slowly, and deep ones. Frank nearly went boneless with relief―holy shit, Leo had only dozed off. 

'Augh,' He thought. This whole ordeal was terrible for his blood pressure (*it was already usually sky high; his doctor was borderline begging him to reduce his stress levels at this point). Did he still have to worry about that when he was a cat? Frank thought about that for a moment, and then decided to not think about it. There were more important things to do―namely, uh. Keeping himself glued to Leo’s back. 

For some reason, it wasn’t easy to shake the intense urge to continue being a cat and stay where he was, and Frank wasn’t really inclined to do so to begin with. So he continued his campaign to soothe Leo, not that he really needed to do it so pointedly anymore, and tried to chill out. Cat brain and human brain were in total agreement―Frank wasn’t going anywhere unless something literally forced him to. And that was all well and good, because that just meant Frank could supervise Leo to his heart’s content. Make sure he didn’t have any nightmares.

Leo had been having a lot of nightmares. 

That’s what Frank reminded himself of as he hunkered back down on Leo’s slowly rising back. After some false starts, he resumed purring and more idle kneading, slipping into a sort of vague, instinct-driven headspace as time went on. He broke out of it only once he realized he was absentmindedly grooming Leo’s hair. Aghast with himself, he let the curls fall out of his mouth and quickly shuffled further down Leo’s back. Boy, was he glad Leo wasn’t awake for that one. He never would’ve lived it down. 

Hazel found him sometime later in the midst of him still pondering the psychic damage of his own making, and did not seem even slightly bothered by anything as she bustled through the kitchen with several large, bulky bags clutched to her chest. She absentmindedly shook some raindrops off the surface of her hair as she just about dumped all the bags across the counter, all of which made satisfying thunks against the granite. Frank was vaguely surprised, both by the amount and the raindrops she’d brought back. He hadn’t even noticed it was raining. He peered at the window, and saw that it was only drizzling, which explained it.

He startled a bit when fingers buried themselves in the fur on his head, but it wasn’t Leo dislocating his joints to reach back at him―Hazel had mysteriously materialized next to the both of them, and regarded Frank gently as he bopped the side of her hand. 

“Thanks for keeping an eye on him,” She said quietly, and she leaned down a bit to tug Leo’s blanket more firmly around him. “How is he? You seem worried.”

Gingerly, Frank stepped off Leo’s back and rubbed against Hazel’s soft belly before he hopped over to an adjacent cushion, and he carefully shifted back to his usual self. He checked, and saw that Leo hadn’t even twitched, seemingly still knocked out. 

“...He’s still coughing really bad. It knocked the breath out of him earlier.” He reported quietly, gazing over Leo’s resting face. He was sleeping, and yet he still looked exhausted. “He seems pretty miserable. I turned into a cat to try to cheer him up a little, but I just ended up kneading and purring on him. Cat me was convinced he’s dying.”

Hazel tensed next to him, and she echoed, “Dying?” 

Frank carefully fisted a hand on the end of her shirt, tugging slightly. She put her fingers over his. “I don’t know for sure. I just couldn’t stop worrying about him when I was being a cat, and I swear I could smell it. Those guys are pretty sensitive to illness and stuff…” Frank explained quietly, looking at the floor. “I’m sure he’ll be alright, I mean, he’s been breathing well enough. I don’t think he’s about to randomly keel over and die… but I don’t think he’s doing too hot, either.” Then he frowned. “Actually, I think him being too hot is half the problem. Fever and all that.”

“That's why we’re here, though.” Hazel said firmly, sounding completely assured. Which was great, because that was what Frank was looking for. “He’s not going to get anywhere near death, not if I have any say in it.”

Frank opened his mouth to reply, but another voice beat him to it, making him just about jump out of his skin:

“That’s great, Hazel. Thanks. But if you could please declare that away from your sleeping friend, that’d be awesome,” Leo cracked a cranky eye open as he rasped out the words, and in the ensuing, somewhat embarrassed silence, he let out a rattling sigh. “Sorry. It’s fine, I’m just tired. Welcome back. Was there anything interesting at the market?”

Frank blinked―it really was that easy with Leo, sometimes, and it still often confounded him―but that wasn't the priority. To Frank, and seemingly Leo’s relief, Hazel shook her head as she replied,

“Just some rain. You were right, though—that farmer’s market was wonderful. I’ll have to drag you and Frank around it whenever you’re next up for it. I know it’s local for you, but I doubt you’ve ever explored it.”

“Agh, the slander. In my own home!” Leo joked dryly. Frank avoided looking at two of his extra smiles―the ones beneath each eye. “Heartless of you, to make accusations of a ‘dying’ man. And you're wrong, for once! I have been there, multiple times! Fool! Scoundrel!"

Hazel ignored the weak bait, and Frank watched her sink down in the small space next to Leo’s side on the couch, and followed the motion of her hand as she smoothed it across Leo’s shoulders. She’d been doing that a lot, lately—touching Leo with her hand. She had described it as a nervous, soothing gesture when he’d asked, but Frank wasn’t stupid. He’d been making fun of her for treating Leo like her princely boyfriend, but at the end of the day, he hadn’t forgotten that she was Pluto’s daughter. 

It was for those reasons that when Hazel didn’t look worried after checking on Leo—instead, seemed to outright relax—that Frank sighed in relief, too. For Leo, all Hazel had done was stroke his shoulders―for Frank, though, Hazel had instantaneously assuaged so much of his anxiousness. Apparently, Leo’s life force had felt strong enough to her to feel at ease, which was certainly a good sign.

“Feeling any better?”  She asked Leo.

“Better than yesterday, so yeah.”

“Wonderful, then could you do me a favor and stop traumatizing Frank, please?” Her eyes were lit with humor as she spoke, a laugh in her voice. 

Leo looked at her with a look of adoration, and Frank was not bothered at all by it. If anything, it just made his chest bloom with warmth somehow, to know that someone else saw her for the sunlight she was. 

He seemed amused too as he hit back with, “Is coughing illegal, now?”

Hazel nodded resolutely. “Oh, most certainly, didn’t you hear about that new proposition?”

“I don’t follow politics.”

“That’s irresponsible,” She swung back with, and as she stood and strode away only to grab something off the kitchen island she said, “And it’s actually quite simple; it’s called “take this gross medicine without complaint before your awesome friend Hazel beats you with the bottle, young man.” Why do you have no medicine in this house? This is a criminal level of preparation.”

“I’m just a silly goofy boy.” Leo said, faux-heartfelt (he even fake-brushed away a tear), “But yes, old lady. I’ll chug some.”

“I’m putting it in a medicine cup,”

“Frank, she won’t let me rawdog medicine, help.”

Yeah, no. Frank said bald-faced and without missing a beat, “I will always be a proprietor of safe sex with medicine.”

For whatever reason, this made Leo burst into loud laughter, the kind that made him cough like he had earlier again. Frank watched in horror as a speckle of blood very dramatically flashed on the couch, and seeing it too, Hazel and he prepared to launch into course-correcting fussing right away. He wished he was surprised when Leo tried to brush them off like they were descending harpies. 

As he weakly fended them off, Leo―amazingly―hurked out through his coughing, “Shakespea-eare, di―id you eat a fffu―ucking thesau―” His breath came out in a wheezing huff, “--au, au,” He stumbled on the syllables, each an exhaling gust of breath that he couldn’t seem to stop, for all he was visibly trying to. “Y―You know wha―at book I―I me-ean.”

“Leo, please stop talking when there’s blood, please,” Frank borderline begged, words flying out of his mouth without his say-so. It came out sounding unnervingly frightened.

Leo stopped, immediately. He saw him look down. He saw his eyes land on the blood, and the wooden look that crossed his face. Quietly, Leo said,

“Oh.”

Hazel quickly dumped a generous heap of nectar into the liquid medicine she’d bought, shaking it vigorously before dumping it into the medicine cup, as promised. “Frank, you know the drill. Prop him up for me and I’ll handle the rest.” 

Frank felt himself relax suddenly and, feeling tougher by the second, he set about carefully edging Leo up into an upright position, sliding behind him and allowing Leo to lean heavily back into his large, steady chest. Leo felt alarmingly limp and horrifyingly unheavy, and was honestly almost frightfully cooperative. ‘Wow, Frank, it's almost like emotions are useful sometimes.’ said Brain-Frank, the voice inside sounding vicious. ‘You know, the lesson we just fucking learned the other day when Leo nearly died because you wanted to respect his feelings above your own and more informed ones? Stop being a dipshit, you know how to learn.’

‘Be nicer-sounding, you’re not my Grandma,’ He said right back to it internally, shoving down the fear in favor of focus when Leo’s body began to tremble minutely as Hazel carefully tipped the medicine cup into his mouth, his own hands unable to grasp it. He just squeezed his arms around Leo tighter in a display of comfort, doing his best to provide some kind of stability. That had been the only thing helping Leo effectively so far. Once Leo managed to swallow, he watched Hazel lift Leo’s legs, and she shoved a pillow beneath them just to trap herself beneath both, bending his knees over her lap. 

He complimented it internally―great for blood flow back to the heart, bringing the oxygen to the brain faster. He felt Leo’s heart begin to pound faster, and his breath come back shorter. It was temporary, he knew it, but that didn’t mean it didn’t scare him. He breathed purposefully deep behind Leo’s back, rocking his body just slightly with each successful one. Slowly but surely, Leo’s breath began to match. 

He took much longer to stop shaking. 

They sat in a long silence after that. It was as if the three of them were frozen, and none of them seemed inclined to figure out why that was. Strangely, Frank felt that none of them were rankled by it, either. It felt safe to take a moment and digest. 

“That fucking sucked.” Leo eventually said suddenly, always so quick to adapt. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know it was that bad.” 

And wasn't that the understatement of the year? Leo had nearly died in his arms just yesterday, and he wasn't bouncing back very fast, even with nectar and ambrosia. It was hard to handle, and harder to watch. The sense of powerlessness and fear was astronomical, and the overall uselessness Frank felt in the face of such a helplessly horrendous circumstance was overwhelming. It felt like his first days at Camp Jupiter again, how poorly prepared and poorly performing he felt that he was. 

The silence persisted. He felt Leo tense more and more the longer it held―accordingly, Frank leaned down and squeezed a bit tighter and, on a whim, pressed his cheek into the back of Leo’s head (he felt a brief stab of fluster when he felt the tackiness of a certain section of the hair) before withdrawing shortly after, feeling it had lasted long enough to get across the message. He leaned back on the couch cushion, gusting out a sigh as he closed his eyes for a little while, thinking. 

Frustration motivated the words that came out eventually, utterly plain, “You really don’t know, don’t you?” as if it were a simple observation for him. He hadn’t quite managed to mask the despairing note to it, either. 

There was a certain, tense undertone to Leo’s voice in his returning sentence, the kind that Frank had long since trained himself to recognize, “What do you mean?”

Bingo, his brain said as he said, or observed, really, “How bad it is. You have no idea how bad things have been for you. Right?”

After a moment, Hazel put her hands on Leo’s leg, just holding. Frank nodded to her as she looked to him for approval, as she kept doing repeatedly. ‘Go-time. We’re about to have a hard conversation. Lethal damage not authorized. Liability risk is high. We got this.’ It was like they both psychically knew this assessment, and what each of them could do to help. A phenomenon between them which they had confirmed as accurate several times over. 

It never stopped being immeasurably gratifying to share a relationship with someone who knew his skills as good as he knew hers. Who thought (somewhat) like he did, who worked so seamlessly and carefully with him, and was able to divide and conquer with incredible grace. He was so proud of her every day, and he trusted whole-heartedly that she felt the same way about him. (She had told him so, many times). 

“...What would you rate it as, on a scale of one to ten?” Leo blurted it out, sudden and spouting before an eerie halt. “...I―I. I know I definitely said some crazy shit to you guys. When I was sicker. I just don’t know what. I don’t know what you know. And I don’t know what the past couple…hours? Days? I don’t even know what day it is, man, is it still Thursday―? I don't know! I don’t know what anything has looked like since the―okay, to be completely real with you, I’m not even sure I remember that phone call aside from the broad strokes. It’s kind of all been fucked after I whacked my head on the bathroom counter on the way down.”

Frank’s insides flooded with ice. He’d seen the faint discoloration on the side of Leo’s head, but brushed it off as something old. “You hit your head?” He uttered, keeping his voice as steady as he could. 

“Okay, I’m feeling the panic back there, and I―” Leo’s breath hitched, and he paused for a second before he said, with distinct determination, “Look, I’ve passed out a couple times after standing up a handful of times in my life, not really excessively, and I’m not sure why that is exactly but I’m pretty sure it’s just low iron or some shit like that since I’m not dead yet and it’s been awhile, and I usually feel okay after just a couple minutes, just tired, so―so it was normal for me. I wasn't thinking. I didn't mean to lie to you.” 

Frank digested the complete horror within that…entire everything as quickly as he could, and couldn’t help exhaling a wheezing breath of anxiety behind Leo which made Hazel look at him imploringly. “I know, Hazel,” He muttered, making sure she knew, and patted Leo’s shoulder. 

It took him a while to speak again―he didn’t stop idly rubbing Leo’s shoulder. It seemed helpful for both of them. “So what I’m getting out of that is that when you passed out, you figured it was that, uh….you’d probably phrase it like, ‘random inconvenience that occasionally fucks up my groove for like five-ten minutes before I feel better after taking it easy-ish for the rest of that day?’ and don’t investigate further at all because it doesn’t seem like a priority?”

“...Frank, I’m going to need you to remove yourself from my brain like right now.” Leo sounded almost aghast as he craned his head to look back at Frank, and he did look genuinely mystified. “You and Hazel both…” He sputtered briefly, and shook his head suddenly, “Okay, never mind, that’s making it feel bad again. Raincheck on that conversation. Jesus.” 

He breathed somewhat harder for a while longer before he seemed to flicker back on, “Okay. Yes, and it’s dawning on me how dumb that was now, but we can unpack that later. What I’m trying to get across is that when I bonked my head on the way down, I had just been like, “Well, this is way far from baby’s first concussion―” ( ‘Jesus fucking christ,’ Frank thought.) “And like, you know that so long as you don’t sleep and keep an eye on your cognition, you’ll be fine, so like, just chill out here. It’s not like the floor is really that bad, you’re―” 

He stopped suddenly. Frank immediately thought of Leo’s extremely dusty bedroom and blankets, and a small, warm, almost cave-like contraption he’d found in the garage on his quest for said dusty blankets. The connection completed itself easily, and he quickly filed it away into ‘confirm via investigation later’ folder, insides feeling heavy and cold with empathetic pity. 

“...One night of the floor shouldn’t be too bad, you’re like 20, not 30. Enjoy the easy recovery while it lasts, right? So I just. Stayed there.”

“And by the time it got bad, you didn’t notice. You were too busy just trying to relax and ride it out? Thinking it wasn’t anything outside of what had happened before?”

“...Yeah. Frank, you are really eerily on the mark with me sometimes, man. It freaks me out.” He paused, and he laughed somewhat as he said, “I remember you told me to stop flipping you off when we were on the phone, right? I was so mad that you knew I was doing that.”

Frank laughed, gratified to know that at least, after all of this, that he could be assured that he knew Leo well enough to predict something he’d do. It was warming, to know someone so well…His brain kind of stuttered for some reason.

His eyes flickered to Hazel. She was already looking, and smiling softly at him. She didn’t seem bothered by anything at all, and the look she gave him was reassuring. He wasn’t sure what it meant, not yet, but it felt relieving and that was what mattered for the time being. He had time.

“You’re a gremlin, I… usually know how to account for that.” He said, then paused, and took a bracing breath before he continued, bluntly, “And, look. I need to tell you that I didn’t, this last time. I made a bad call, and Leo, I am 99% sure you nearly died because of it. Outright. I should’ve known a nosoi curse would work fast because for you it was a fucking nosoi, which is not equivalent to the morbus, not with power. I…I was trying to give you the time to pull things together because I thought it was just a normal oncoming disease, not something lethal, and doing that when you were all alone was absolutely stupid. I wish I would’ve called your Camp before Hazel and I went. It could’ve…God, Leo, it was the perfect storm and I’m so sorry you almost….”

“―Frank, wait.” Leo said, craning backwards very slowly, and looking at him as though he were absolutely insane. And it made Frank want to double down even more, because this wasn’t insane. This was accountability. Airing out all of his failure showed that he knew where he could’ve done better, and taking responsibility for this was what the right thing to do was. Of this. Frank was certain,

“Please let me finish. I’ll stop if you need it but if you don’t, please let me finish.”

Still looking very discomfited (the vengeful rage he felt on Leo’s behalf for this roared in the back of his head; Frank shoved it in a cage for later), Leo settled a bit, and nodded.

Dreadfully, his eyes were filled with fear. 

This was what really made Frank’s breath come so shaky as he staunchly worked to finish, “You have no fucking idea how scared I felt when you weren’t answering your phone. When you didn’t answer the door. When I― saw you. On the ground like that. Horror will never describe it good enough, and I will never be able to express how sorry I am for dropping the ball on this. There’s no way in hell you could’ve been expected to help yourself then, and I missed it. You just―” 

He swallowed thickly. He held his core tight, willed his backbone to feel stronger. Leo needed to hear this, he was certain of it.

“You sounded so normal. It baffles me, how you sounded so normal, and you…you were dying.”

The words hung heavy in the space between them. Frank wonder if Leo knew, now. The depths of what he might’ve disclosed.

It felt as though there were a clump of other words stuck in his throat as he pressed, 

“I hate that it might’ve been for you. Being in pain. That shouldn’t be normal. Not for you. It’s not okay if you’re having problems like that.”

It didn’t feel like Leo was breathing. 

Finishing softer, he murmured, “We almost lost you again And I―I cannot handle that. Not twice. I can’t do it twice, Hazel can’t do it twice, none of us can do it twice, not so soon. And that’s why we’re here now, trying to help you out. It’s only right, and it’s the literal least you deserve. We care about you.” 

Leo didn’t respond. Not for a long time. He saw Hazel scrape her nails, light and gentle, down Leo’s leg for a while. It was okay to wait. 

"I didn't tell you. On purpose. I remember it was on purpose." Leo's voice cracked out, devastatingly small and shaking. "When I told you it wasn't that bad―"

But― "I already knew that, and I'm telling you, Leo, it's not on you. Take the reality check. Would you expect me to be able to communicate through the―I cannot stress this enough―the plague. The actual, literal spirit of plague?"

Leo was silent for a long time, seemingly chewing on what should've been a simple thing for him to integrate. "You'd probably be pretty good at it." He rasped suddenly.

Never before had Frank wanted to shake someone in his life, and he only held off because he was worried about sending Leo into another round of those awful coughs. "First of all, you’re wrong, and second of all, even if you weren’t wrong, you. Are. Not. Me." He enunciated, and he looked Leo dead in the eyes as he said, with completely stoic certainty, that― "And it wouldn’t be fair for me to assume you were. That's why I was a moron and didn't fight tooth and nail to get to you faster. Choosing not to detail how bad it was definitely was a fucking dumb thing to do, but it was the work of some random plague demon, man. You're not the one responsible for what happened." 

At the blank and somewhat disbelieving face he got in return, he impressed further, "I'm not kidding, Leo, you literally were possessed. Just like the eidolons―” Leo physically flinched. Frank grit his teeth, “―The whole time. You nearly died in my fucking arms because of it, and if you blame yourself for not being able to get through communication when you're getting your ass kicked by a demon of that kind of high stakes, I'm going to have to beat some sense into you."

Suddenly, Leo sucked in a breath. He seemed to have a very troublesome time parsing what, exactly, all of this new information meant. Their pause held for only a few seconds before, “...The scale, Frank.”

He blinked, thrown. “The scale?”

“One to ten. How bad.” Frank blinked. “All of this. This whole situation.”

Oh. Right. Frank thought about it for a while. “The sickness?” He studied Leo’s face carefully, doing his best to parse through the mask he now knew he wore like a second skin. The fear hadn’t left it. He was pretty sure he and Hazel both knew why it was there, now. Keeping his voice low and careful, he finished, “Or…everything I heard? That it made you say?”

Leo went so stiff in front of Frank that he felt, for a moment, his friend had become a block of wood. He looked as though Frank had confirmed his worst fear. His breath came harder, and somewhat surprisingly, he managed to speak through a gusting, accepting sigh, barely a moment later, “Everything.”

“Are you sure?” He asked, just to confirm. He needed to know that it wouldn’t hurt him more to hear it. “It can wait.”

“Please.”

He pulled himself forward from the couch cushion just a bit, raising Leo’s body up with his own as he moved to wrap himself more firmly. It was the only thing that he'd seen help Leo stop trembling, which he was starting to do now, seemingly uncontrollably. It was only when his hammering heart stopped reverberating against Frank’s rib that he sighed, and said, 

“Solid ten, buddy. Jesus fucking Lord.” 

Leo went still. Very still. His voice came out low and strangled as he said one word. A heartfelt and emphatic, “Fuck.” It hurt somewhere deep inside to hear the way he said it. But then, Leo heaved a sigh. A very long one. And then his shoulders slumped completely, and he said, “...Okay. Wow. And I thought yesterday was the worst day of my life. I’m sorry, Frank.”

Frank completely fucking short-circuited. The urge to shake Leo had never been stronger as he said, quite forcefully― “No, Leo, I don’t want an apology. Remember. None of that was your fault.”

“ Don’t.”  Frank’s jaw snapped shut before he even consciously willed it, because that had been the hardest note he’d ever heard in Leo's voice before. ‘Another first with him,’ he thought, staring down at him wide-eyed. It was even more jarring that his voice came out soft…and shaky once more as he said, “Don’t. You don’t want my apology? Too bad, because I don’t want you to make excuses for me, or―or blame yourself. I chose not to tell you. I misled you on purpose , Frank, I―I…and it wasn’t fair. And you had to tank those consequences, not me.” His voice took on a strangled note as he said, voice tight and… watery? Oh no. “It wasn’t fair. I’m sorry.”

And this was all just about the stupidest thing Frank had ever heard in his life, and his next words came out almost outraged, because― “Okay, listen here, you do know you were posses―”

Hazel’s hand came to rest on Frank’s forearm suddenly. He got the memo immediately. ‘Step off,’ It said. ‘Hit it later.’ He relaxed slowly, gusting out a long and exhausted sigh. “Alright, Leo. I’ll accept that you feel like I need an apology.”

“That’s all I’m asking for, big guy.” 

Leo chuckled as he spoke, the sound a little nervous. He was starting to jitter again, the same thing Frank had been wishing he’d do all day. But now it only seemed like nerves. That wasn’t what Frank wanted. He made a deeply heartfelt, momentary grunt (like a bear) and said,

“I don’t really think you did anything wrong, and I think it’s fucking crazy that you do.”

“Sucks,” Leo said, and that put a pretty pin on the whole situation. 

The three of them sat in a chapped, contemplative silence for a long while. It persisted until―

“Fuck this, I'm taking a nap to emotionally process this, alright? You assholes have overloaded the crap out of me.” Once again, Leo chuckled as he spoke, rubbing his eyes. His body shuddered against Frank’s as it happened. 

Slowly, something stupid enough that it might work came to form in Frank’s head. “You know…if you really want to take responsibility for what you think you messed up, if it would really make you feel better, I can give you penance.”

Hazel gave him a sharp look, but he beamed ‘Let me cook,’ at her mentally and prayed she’d understand. 

“Oh?” Leo said, voice sounding slightly thick.

Exchanging a meaningful look with Hazel, who he knew must’ve been compartmentalizing her own fear, he said slowly, “Lay here with us.” Leo’s breath caught. “Let’s just watch a movie and have a little fear huddle.” ‘Let us hold onto you just a little longer. We nearly lost you.’ Frank draped Leo’s fleece blanket from earlier over them both, a shield. He looked down in satisfaction―Leo’s shins were stuck out from beneath it, leaving his body not-quite swamped by the small blankets. 

“You want to have a cuddle puddle?” Leo sounded a little incredulous. “ Seriously?” 

“Seriously. You scared the shit out of us, man”

“I’m with him,” Hazel piped up suddenly. “I―I can feel it. Your grip on this plane.” Frank’s eyebrows shot up, impressed that she was admitting to it outright. “It’s nice to hold onto you, because that’s when I feel it most.” Her voice quavered as she finished, “Yours, ah, it’s been slipping around a lot, recently. It’s good to feel it steady.”

He locked eyes with Hazel again. Understanding and gratitude flashed in her eyes. 'Clever,' Her gaze seemed to say. He winked accordingly.

Leo seemed to contemplate this for a while. Then. He nodded, swallowing hard. “Alright,” He said, leaning over to the coffee table (Frank held him steady) and he fumbled for the remote. “Alright,” He said again, and looked nervously between them. “That’s fine. Let’s do that.”

He seemed, strangely, like he might want to cry. Frank kept himself ready for it. 

Leo didn’t cry, though. He just sat stiffly, and only slowly came to relax in their arms. 

The three of them sat in a solemn, uneasy silence until Leo slipped off into an uneasy sleep. 

All the while, Leo felt terribly small in Frank’s arms.

"I did-n't... tell you... I ne-ever tell, when it...I--I can't...I'm sorry" 

“...No sorries needed. Just sleep. Please just sleep.”

The words are as small and fragile as he is. Leo had never looked so fragile. 

(Original WC: 9.182) : (Current WC: 13,724) : Frank V2.0