Chapter Text
“This is a bad idea. Are we clear?”
“Crystal,” Leo replied, not paying attention in the slightest. The sun hadn’t even hit the horizon yet, but Jason’s eyes had already begun to change, the irises widening until almost no white was visible. How Jason didn’t notice him staring, Leo didn’t know. He wasn’t exactly being discreet.
Then again, Jason had a lot on his mind.
Anyone else in his position would probably be wringing their hands and pacing in circles, but he stood perfectly still with his arms by his sides, like a LEGO minifigure glued in place.
"I'm going to try and get as far away as possible, so hopefully you won't even see me."
Leo nodded, biting his tongue to keep from pointing out that that kind of defeated the point. Testing a containment spell wouldn't work if the thing you were trying to contain didn't try to get out.
In fact, if Jason succeeded and stayed out of sight, they'd have to repeat the whole stupid process again in a month, but he looked so tense already that Leo didn't have the heart to tell him.
"If you do see me, if I make it back here, don't do anything," Jason warned. "Stay out of my eyeline. Got it?"
"You don't need to worry about that," Leo replied, patting the harness that was already getting uncomfortable in places. "I'm gonna be hiding up in the branches."
"Like a squirrel?" Piper asked, finally emerging from digging around in the backseat of her car.
"Exactly like a squirrel." Leo grinned. "I'll be invisible."
"Mm-hmm." Jason did not look convinced. "Just— be safe okay?"
"Ah, you know me, I'm all about safety. OSHA golden boy, right here." Leo caught the look in Jason’s eye and dropped his joking tone. "I'll be careful. Promise."
"Alright." Jason stood a little straighter, like he was coming to attention. Military school left a lot of weird little habits behind, including an affinity for super-short haircuts that Leo wanted nothing more than to run his fingers through.
Piper tossed a sack tied with rope into Jason's arms. "Go forth and get naked, wolf boy."
The faintest blush dusted the tops of his cheekbones. Human clothes didn't exactly fit wolf bodies, so most werewolves kept their clothes tied up into trees until they changed back, and Jason was no exception, but being reminded of it tended to make him nervous.
"Alright. Well." Jason’s posture had become so stiff and uncomfortable, Leo half expected to turn around and see a mean-looking drill sergeant behind him. “As— as you were.”
Piper caught his eye, and it was clear she was also trying her best not to laugh. When it was clear nobody was going to say anything else, Jason turned sharply to his right and bolted off into the woods, moving like he wanted to be literally anywhere other than facing his two best friends.
As soon as he was out of earshot, Leo and Piper lost it, barely managing to stay upright.
“As you were,” Piper wheezed, lowering her voice and giving Leo a dramatic salute. “What a dork.”
“That was fast ,” Leo remarked. “It’s like he doesn’t like us.”
“To be fair, we are trying to set him on fire.”
“Only a little bit!”
"In case the fire doesn’t work— not that I think it won’t— do you remember the defensive ward?" Piper asked.
" Aleai ovuro fuck," Leo replied, replacing the last word of the incantation with a similar-sounding swear, both because it was fun to say and because he didn't feel like blasting his friend into the bushes. He wasn't much of a combat witch, so he'd only picked up the defensive ward a week before, but his harness would make sure he didn't have to use it.
As it turned out, sitting in a tree for hours at night was zero fun at all. Piper had long since left, walking to the closest bus stop so Leo and Jason would have her car to get home when Jason was back in human form. Why there was a bus stop this far out in the woods, Leo didn't know, but it made his life easier, so he wasn't going to question the city's decisions.
The night air would have been chilly for anyone who didn't run five degrees hotter than the average human being. Listening to the various animals shuffle around and make weird noises unnerved him— he wasn't used to listening to anything more alive than an engine.
His harness was proving to be way less comfortable than the salesperson had advertised, but it was designed for rock climbing, not sitting still. Leo already had three different drafts for a more comfortable treetop seat cycling through his head.
Eventually, the boredom made him restless, so he risked leaning backwards to grab some of the twigs near the end of the branch he was attached to, pulling some spare string and a few other knickknacks out of his pocket at the same time. While his hands got to work doing their own thing, his mind wandered, and he wondered why the hell he’d agreed to come out here in the first place. Nothing about this was in his comfort zone, especially not the being-outdoors thing.
Then again, he was the only fire witch for a good hundred miles, and testing a flame-based wolf deterrent was way easier when you were fireproof. The whole plan had actually been Annabeth’s idea, Leo was just there to execute it.
A vague blur that might have been a red fox darted towards him, and Leo held his breath. As the fox passed the tree he was in, a loud click-click sounded, halting the animal in its tracks. When nothing else came, it sped off once more, and Leo let out a sigh of relief. The click-click had been designed to go off whenever any animal passed the invisible line, but he and Annabeth had set a weight limit for the fire part, hoping not to torch too many innocent creatures.
The whole idea was to get Jason to stick to one specific area during the night, so that the chances of human encounter were reduced. Most werewolves, like Reyna, were socialized in wolf form from a very young age, and developed fairly neutral relationships with humans, sometimes even positive.
Jason, on the other hand…
It wasn’t his fault. Leo knew that. Everyone knew that, but Jason didn’t let himself believe it. Instead, he’d somehow convinced himself that not being socialized was his fault alone, not his mother’s for leaving him alone so young, or his father’s for teaching him that his wolf form was something he had to hide and control. Still, no matter how disciplined and straightlaced Jason was on every other day of the lunar cycle, he had no power over his other half.
With tension surrounding werewolves at an all-time high, Jason had turned to the two smartest people he knew for help. Leo had suggested a whole slew of contraption-based solutions, but Annabeth, fresh out of a hyperfixation on old psychological experiments, had proposed a Pavlovian setup: if they could get wolf-Jason to associate the click-click with a whole lot of fire, the click-click could be used by itself to create a kind of invisible fence that would keep him contained to a human-free space.
Tonight was supposed to be the fun part: the actual conditioning itself. Annabeth had warned that conditioning would take time, but Leo had a feeling it wouldn’t be too long before a giant wall of fire took its place in wolf-Jason’s head as a Very Bad Thing.
Leo heard Jason before he saw him, but it wasn’t really Jason he heard. Instead, what Leo heard was the terrified rabbit running for its dear life. Then he saw Jason.
Nobody, aside from maybe Reyna, had ever seen Jason in wolf form. He took great care in getting as far away from everyone as possible during full moons, and wouldn’t come back until long after the night was over. Even though Reyna, along with all the other werewolves Leo had met, referred to their more canine side as part of themselves, using “I” or “me,” with Jason it was always “it.”
The wolf tearing through the undergrowth couldn’t be anyone else— there weren’t any other wolves in this area, for one, and the sandy coat and ice-blue eyes matched Jason perfectly— but there was nothing behind the eyes to suggest Leo’s best friend was anywhere close to being in control. This was an animal, through and through.
The click-click went off without a hitch, and the weight threshold allowed the rabbit to scamper past unharmed, but Leo very quickly realized he may have been a bit overzealous with his fire spell.
Thirty-foot high flames shot out of the ground for as far as the eye could see, grazing the wolf below and fully engulfing Leo. As the fire roared against his skin, Leo grinned, glad he’d been the one chosen for this experiment, because nothing else besides a fire witch would have been able to withstand the heat.
“Nothing else,” unfortunately, included Leo’s harness. In all of their planning, with Leo, Piper, and Annabeth’s combined intellect, none of them had ever thought to maybe fireproof the thing keeping Leo safely up in the air. Leo scrambled for something to grab onto, but his seat fell out from underneath him and he plummeted downward.
What was it Jason said? Leo thought in the split second as he fell. Stay out of his eyeline?
While crashing on top of him was technically out of his eyeline, Leo had a sneaking suspicion it wouldn’t lead to better results.
Leo landed flat on his back, something you were probably not supposed to do, and heaved, very annoyed to find exactly zero air in his lungs. Before he could fix that problem, a new one presented itself in the form of a hundred-and-seventy-pound wolf landing on his chest. Teeth sunk into his forearm, and Leo thanked his lucky stars that he’d chosen to wear steel-toed boots as he kicked upward with all his might.
The pained yelp that followed made him think that maybe his lucky stars didn’t deserve the ego boost, but at least his arm was free and the weight was off his chest.
“What are the odds you’ll recognize me and not want to eat my face off?” he wheezed, pushing himself to a sitting position to see better. Now would be the perfect time for movie tropes to come to life.
A low growl echoed in his ears, hurt and angry.
“Okay, low. Got it.” From the looks of it, Leo had about five seconds. “ Aleai ovuro… aleai ovuro… fuck!” That stupid third word escaped him, making the defensive ward useless. With his options severely limited, he kicked out again, wincing at the crunch , and rolled as quickly as he could through the wall of fire, decently sure he wouldn’t be followed.
Safely on the outside of the containment spell, Leo hugged his arm to his chest, not wanting to look at whatever was going on below his elbow. All he needed to know was that it hurt , and it was making his shirt hot and sticky. He could see the faintest curls of steam coming from his own body illuminated in the morning light, and his brain used the last of its energy to inform him that this was probably bad before everything went dark.
Leo didn’t know how long he was out, but he was pulled back to consciousness at the sound of Jason calling his name. The fact that it was Jason, using his voice , didn’t quite click until the blond beat his way through the slowly-dwindling fire wall to Leo’s side, fully human and completely naked.
“Leo!” Jason dropped to his knees at his side, the smell of burnt hair surrounding him. “Oh, fuck , are you okay? Talk to me, please, tell me you’re alright.”
“Jase…” Leo muttered weakly. “I gotta know… how do I taste?”
A thousand different emotions played across Jason’s face. “ What ?”
“You know,” Leo wiggled his arm, a choice he immediately regretted. “How do I taste?” He tried for a teasing grin, but it showed up as more of a wince.
“ Bad !” Shock and horror mixed with revulsion as Jason turned and vomited into the grass, clutching his stomach.
With nothing better to do, mostly because he couldn’t move, Leo stared at the sky, thoroughly offended. Bad? Bad? He would have accepted himself as an acquired flavor, but bad?!? Jason was supposed to be his friend.
Jason turned back to face Leo, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. “We need to get you to a hospital.”
Leo’s head flopped to the side to look at his friend. Jason’s hair was singed, his left eyebrow almost completely burned off, and his nose looked… wrong , bruised and bloody and slightly off-center. His torso didn’t look much better, with dirt and mud almost covering a nasty boot-shaped mark.
Most importantly, though, Jason was naked. The mere idea of that would have been enough to send Leo’s blood pressure through the roof, but the fact that he was here , and this close? As hard as he tried, Leo couldn’t get the thoughts out of his mind.
“You need to put on pants.”
Jason looked down, as if his lack of clothes was news to him, and then looked over his shoulder. “I won’t be able to get back to my stuff in time. Let’s hope Piper’s got something in her car. Come on.”
He dragged Leo into a sitting position, pulling Leo’s good arm over his shoulders. With a pained hiss, Jason got the two of them to their feet, and Leo’s head spun. By all rights, Jason should have smelled awful— dirt and sweat and other gross wolf smells— but instead Leo found the scent surprisingly pleasant in a way he couldn’t describe. Feeling the muscles in Jason’s back and arms flex as he hauled both of them towards the parking lot didn’t hurt, either.
The two of them reached Piper’s car without being seen, which was good, because Leo didn’t think hikers would take too kindly to seeing two bruised and bloody men, one of them stark naked, first thing in the morning.
Jason dumped him in the passenger seat and began digging through the veritable mountain of clothes, bags, lacrosse gear, and whatever else Piper kept in her backseat. When he reemerged on the driver’s side, he was wearing a pair of lime-green sweatpants that barely reached his calves and left distractingly little to the imagination.
Jason took hold of Leo’s arm— ow— and wrapped it in a piece of cloth that might have been a T-shirt— double ow —, pulling it tightly to secure it.
“Ow, fuck ,” Leo finally vocalized, but his limbs felt too heavy to bother moving.
Jason sat back in his seat, throwing the car into gear and pulling out of the parking lot so fast the tires skidded on gravel. On any other day, he went exactly the speed limit, which normally drove Leo nuts, but the gas pedal never left the floor, and Leo figured if the bite on his arm didn’t kill him, his heart might give out.
Jason’s knuckles were white on the steering wheel, his mouth set in a firm line. Leo relaxed back against the headrest, letting his eyes fall shut, and was immediately startled awake when Jason snapped his fingers in front of his face. “Uh-uh. Stay with me.”
Leo wasn’t aware that he kept passing out, but there were parts of his memory that were just— missing. He didn’t remember turning onto the highway, and he certainly didn’t know how they’d made it into this apartment building. The door they were standing in front of didn’t look like either of theirs, and Leo was fairly sure he’d never seen this place before.
“Where the fuck are we?” he asked as Jason knocked.
His answer came when the door opened to reveal Will Solace, still in his pajamas. “Hell- oh, shit. Come in.”
Jason dragged Leo over the threshold into Will’s kitchen.
“Sit.” Will shoved a cup of water into Leo’s good hand, and another into Jason’s. His eyes scanned the two of them, lingering on Jason’s ribs and Leo’s arm.
“You look like you’ve been mauled,” he commented.
“I have been!” Leo replied, surprising even himself with his tone. At his side, Jason flinched in his seat. “Totally my fault, though.”
“Oh-kay,” Will replied, not looking totally convinced. “ You’ve got a broken nose, and your ribs are at the very least bruised,” he added, turning to Jason.
“Also my fault,” Leo cut in.
“And let me guess, the fact that half his hair has been burned off is your fault, too?”
“Bingo.” Leo grinned.
“What the fuck happened?”
“It’s a long story.”
“Give me your arm.” Will unwrapped the now-bloody shirt and winced. “We’ve got the time.”
Leo explained the spell, including Annabeth’s Pavlov theory, but he’d barely made it to the middle of the night when Will started cleaning the bite on his arm and he was rendered incapable of making any coherent noises, so Jason took over.
“My memory isn’t great when I’m… when I turn, so I don’t know exactly what happened, but there was a lot of fire and then something hit me.”
“Fell on you,” Leo hissed. “Harness not fireproof. Rookie mistake.”
“Ah.” Jason looked down at his hands. “It— I reacted about as well as you’d expect, but he had the brains to kick me and get to the other side of the fire. The sun came up only a few minutes later, and I found him almost as soon as I was back to normal.”
Leo couldn’t help but notice Jason’s use of “I” and “me.” Normally, he would have taken it as a good sign that Jason was finally accepting his more supernatural side, but this felt more like Jason assigning himself the blame.
Will sucked in a breath. “I’m honestly amazed this isn’t worse. This bite isn’t bad at all, all things considered.” Leo had half a mind to politely inform him that this was, in fact, the worst pain he’d ever felt, but with Jason present, it seemed like a bad move.
Instead, he brought up what had been on his mind all morning. “Hey Will, what do people taste like?”
“Huh?”
“People,” Leo repeated. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Jason put his head in his hands. “What does people meat taste like? Is it like chicken?”
“I wouldn’t know.”
Leo sighed. “You’re no help. I tried to ask him, but all he said was bad , which is just so insulting.”
Will stifled a laugh. “I can’t say I blame him. I think most things would taste bad in that kind of situation.”
“Both of you are useless!” Leo exclaimed. “You’re telling me you’ve never thought about the taste of whoever’s blood it is you’re drinking? You eat people, they’ve got to have a taste.”
Will’s face flushed. “I do not eat people . All the blood comes in bags.”
“Bo-ring.” Leo finally gave up and sat in silence. Behind Will, the coffee machine gurgled. Two cups of coffee sat on the counter, likely long-forgotten in all the chaos.
“Is…” Jason began hesitantly. “Lycanthropy, it’s not—” he faltered.
“Contagious?” Will finished, looking amused. “What, did you sleep through class when they taught this?”
“I never learned it. Military school didn’t bother.”
“Oh, yikes.” Will blinked. “No, it’s not. Lycanthropy and vampirism can be inherited, but they’re not transmissible by bite. You’ll both want to make sure you’re up to date on all your shots, though, just because the woods are kind of gross.”
Jason visibly relaxed in his seat. “Okay. Good.”
Will stopped whatever he was doing with the godforsaken alcohol and started bandaging up Leo’s arm. With the blood washed off for the most part, the bite looked a whole lot better, but it was still a bite.
"So where's your boyfriend at?" Leo asked, trying to look anywhere but his arm.
"Yeah, where is Nico? I haven't seen him in a while," Jason remarked.
Will’s fingers slipped, and he nearly dropped the gauze. "Nico's not my— we aren't—"
" Cazzo , Will, you're supposed to be more active at night! Why do you have guests this ea— Oh, hey, Jason. Hey, Leo." As if summoned by Will’s protests, Nico shuffled into the kitchen, wearing sweatpants far too large to be his own. "You two look like shit."
"Thanks, it's my fault." Leo grinned.
Nico yawned. "I figured." He picked up one of the cups of coffee and pressed a kiss to Will’s cheek. "I'll be up for real in an hour. Try to keep these idiots alive."
As he turned to leave, Will caught him by the waist, pulling him in for a kiss so passionate that it grossed Leo out and made him jealous all at once. Staring at them felt incredibly awkward, but anything was better than meeting Jason's gaze, which he could practically feel burning into the side of his head.
When Will pulled away, Nico looked like he'd been hit by a truck, if trucks made you goo-goo eyed and stupid. 'Stupid' had never been an adjective Leo wanted to describe himself with, but if the other blond in the room wanted to pull that same move, he'd happily lose a few brain cells.
"I'll be there soon," Will said quietly, and Nico left, looking dazed. Once he was gone, Will turned back to Jason and Leo. "Okay, we might be dating."
"Yeah, no kidding," Jason remarked, and Leo risked a glance in his direction. His expression was unreadable, but if Leo had to guess, he would have said it looked almost pained. That made sense, considering the bruise on his side had only spread and gotten darker since they'd arrived.
Will finished bandaging Leo's arm. "Alright then," he said, clapping his hands together. "Jason, your turn."
Jason shifted in his seat. "I don't think—"
"Look, unless you like your nose at a forty-five degree angle, I'm going to have to reset it." Will crossed his arms. "Or you can do it yourself."
Jason glanced out of the window and gingerly touched his nose. He'd barely grazed it, but the touch made him wince. "I don't think I can do it."
"So let me." Will stood. "Come here."
"It's not safe."
"I am well aware of that. The moon's not gonna go down for another few hours, and I want to get this done now." Will pointed at the kitchen floor. "Lie down. I know what I'm doing."
Jason got on the floor, looking like he wanted to protest further, but the movement put enough strain on his bruised ribs to make him gasp in pain, and he stayed quiet.
"Leo, do your legs still work?" Will asked.
"Yeah, last I checked."
"Great." Will beckoned him over. "What I'm gonna have you do is basically straddle him."
" What? " Leo and Jason exclaimed in unison. Leo's cheeks grew so hot he was sure they would catch on fire.
"We need to keep him down and keep his arms pinned," Will explained. "The moon is still technically full, even though the sun is up, so he's human, but strong emotions or a lot of pain will produce a bigger reaction than usual. I don't feel like getting punched, so I need you to help hold him still."
At Leo's feet, Jason sighed. "Unfortunately, you make a good point."
If it were anybody but Jason on the floor below him, Leo would have cracked one of about a million jokes. Instead, he found he could hardly breathe as he knelt down. With his knees on either side of Jason’s shoulders, he was able to keep the blond's arms pinned to his side without putting too much pressure on his already messed up ribcage.
"Don't be afraid to bear down on him," Will said, pulling on a pair of surgical gloves.
"Yeah don’t— don't let me move," Jason huffed as Leo let more of his weight rest on his chest.
For what felt like the first time in hours, their eyes met, and Leo lost all hope of acting even remotely normal about this. Jason's face was flushed, his hair was a mess, and Leo could feel his breathing quicken.
Will was saying something, but Leo couldn't have cared less. All he could think of was how much he wished he could see Jason from this angle in literally any other context.
"Three!" Will said, reaching out and twisting Jason’s nose back into place with a sickening crack . Jason howled in pain and sat up as if Leo wasn’t even there. Leo felt himself falling backwards for the second time that morning, and decided the feeling wasn’t much better this time around than it had been earlier. He braced himself for impact, but it never came. Jason’s hands, now free, were wrapped around Leo’s waist, his head pressed against Leo’s chest as he gasped for air through gritted teeth.
Doing his very best to avoid thinking about the fact that he was now sitting in Jason’s lap , Leo forced a laugh. “C’mon, man, you’re getting blood all over my shirt.”
Jason mumbled something inaudible.
“Come again?”
“That ship has sailed,” Jason repeated, finally pulling away with what almost looked like a smile. Leo looked down at his red-stained T-shirt and laughed for real. Maybe the insanity of what had happened had finally broken his brain.
Jason began laughing, too, his arms still loosely wrapped around Leo. “We really do look like shit, don’t we?”
“Eh, what else is new?” After a moment too long, Jason let go, and Leo climbed awkwardly off of his legs to let him stand.
"Well, I'm glad that worked, even if it didn't go exactly how I expected," Will noted, sounding almost impressed. He passed Jason a tissue. "We've got to test your strength next time you turn. I want to see what you can do."
"That... that won't be possible."
"What? Why?"
Jason crossed his arms, but it looked more like he was hugging himself than anything else. "After what happened in Wyoming, they've really upped the restrictions."
"Oh, shit."
The last full moon in Wyoming had been on everyone's mind, even if they wouldn't admit it. A werewolf, under-socialized and completely unprepared, had turned in his own neighborhood, severely injuring three people and killing one. Jason had been skittish ever since, going to Leo and Annabeth in a panic after the news broke.
"Anyone who— who's deemed a big enough threat gets locked up while the moon is full, day or night. Indefinitely."
"But it wasn't your fault!" Leo protested. He'd heard the horror stories of werewolves who'd been locked up for a single full moon, forced to sit chained up in what resembled a kennel more than anything, even while the sun was up and they were still fully human. The thought of Jason having to do that every month for what could be the rest of his life...
"They don't care." Jason was staring at a point over Leo's shoulder, too disciplined to drop his gaze but unwilling to look him in the eye. "Provoked or not, I'm a threat.”
“Who says they have to know what happened? How are they going to know?” Leo didn’t bother trying to hide the desperation in his voice. “I won’t tell them. I wouldn’t ever.”
Jason sighed and pointed at Will. “Doctors are required to report things like this. No matter what— who— does it.”
A slow smile spread across Will’s face. “Good thing I’m not a doctor, then.”