Work Text:
“So what do we do with it?” Lit looked at the flour bag suspiciously. “Do we… kill it? Bake it?”
“No!” Leo scooped it up in his hands and held it close to his chest. “ I cherish it, and keep it safe and healthy. It’s my baby.”
Lit looked at the bag. He looked at Leo. He looked at the bag. “Either that’s some kind of trapped karpos, which I can tell you that it isn’t from standing here, or you’ve lost your senses.”
“No , I’m fine. Thank you. It’s my school’s version of sex ed. They’re all in on abstinence only.”
“Not a problem for you.”
“If I wasn’t trying to set a good impression for my daughter, Leo Junior, I would say some very choice words right now.”
Lit raised his eyebrows into his hairline. “I recommend that you get a vasectomy as soon as possible if you think that that is an appropriate name for a child.”
“You’re literally from Ancient Greece, dude, who taught you what a vasectomy is?”
He shrugged, “Guess I got a better sex education than you.”
“Well, that’s nice because it’s the only sex you’re getti- Hi Emmie.”
She stood like an exhausted avenging angel. “Boys. How’s it going?”
“Fine.”
“Very well, Emmie. Great.”
She looked at them sceptically, “I don’t want to make you censor yourselves, but if Georgie comes to me with any questions, I’m going to make you explain what it is. And until she’s twelve you have to pay any swear jar fines on her behalf.”
“Hey!”
“That’s not fair,” Lit whined.
“I was just coming to tell you that dinner’s in twenty, and you’re both on dishes.”
“Sure,” Leo sighed. “What is it tonight?”
“I think Jo has an old stew recipe she’s experimenting with,” she said with a look that said if you say anything awful about my wife’s cooking, I will end you .
“Sounds great,” Lit said. “Come on Leo, I want to hear more about Leo Junior.”
“That’s what you named that thing?” Emmie laughed. “I’d make fun, but my name is Hemithea, so I don’t think I can talk.”
“Can I hold it?”
“Her,” Leo passed the flour bag over. “Say hello to your uncle Lit, Leo Junior.”
Lit cradled it with more tenderness than any other inanimate failed cooking ingredient probably deserved. “Calypso’s coming back from her friends’ next week.”
“Yeah,” Leo clicked his teeth.
“You guys are still so awkward around each other,” he stroked the top of the flour bag’s ‘head’.
“Are you trying to get at something or just be a dick?”
“Well, I was hoping you were both over that by now so I can stop having to abort getting coffee because you’re avoiding her in the kitchen or she’s passive aggressively vegetable chopping. I like coffee, and it’s been months.”
“So?”
So I’m gonna make you talk about it while holding your only child hostage.”
He gasped, “Not your own niece? You wouldn’t.”
“You don’t know what I’d do, Valdez. Now, talk.”
Leo rolled his eyes, “Fine, but only to get my daughter back.” He sighed, “What do I even say about that? We were never going to be like… forever. We’re not Percy and Annabeth- that’s these guys who were-”
“-I know who Percy Jackson and Annabeth Chase are,” he cut him off. “Obviously.”
He nodded frantically, “Obviously. Well, one hand you know, I think I always knew it was never going to be that. No one ends up with their first girlfriend.”
“If it helps,” Lit said. “According to the gossip rags Midas got before, you know, Annabeth wasn’t Percy Jackson’s first girlfriend.”
“Wait, who?” He blinked a couple of times. “Wait, sorry. Midas got gossip rags. Which had stuff about a random teenager’s love life?”
“Not a random teenager,” he patted Leo Junior’s head, looking at Leo Senior as if he were a complete idiot. “The Hero of Olympus. Who wouldn’t know about which girls he’d been seeing? Outside of Calypso, of course. And, you know.” He shrugged. “He’s hot.”
“Olympus has gossip rags?” He put his head in his hands, “Of course it fucking does.”
“You’re avoiding talking about your feelings.”
“Because it's terrible. Fine. Fine. I died and came back to life, in order to kill Gaea, yeah, but a major part of the prophecy was keeping that promise, to come back for her.”
“I thought Percy made the gods promise to free her. Pheme had a whole thing about if he’d get with her, instead of Annabeth.
“I don’t know about like… any of that. But-” he put up his finger, “I do desperately need to get some of those tabloids.”
He made a face, “There’s more bestiality than you’re probably expecting.”
“Right… Well, okay. I get why we broke up. But I don’t know. Something about having it in a thousands of years old prophecy. Just,” he swallowed tightly. “I don’t know, it sucks. We were fated but… not that much.”
Lit passed back Leo Junior, supporting the back of the flour bag. “Well done.”
“So what, no advice?”
He clicked his tongue against the back of his teeth, “Leonidas-”
“How did you find out that that’s my legal name?”
“-I saw your birth certificate- anyway-
“You what?”
“-I don’t think I can give you any advice you can’t figure out yourself.”
“Right yeah, Reaper of Men probably doesn’t lend itself to dating advice.”
“Exactly. You want to commit murder over farming competitions? I’m your guy. Do not come to me about girls.”
“Got it.”
Lit clapped him on the shoulder, “Good talk. Never get between me and the coffee again. It’s my favourite thing about being alive now.”
“I thought you guys had it back then?”
“Not that far back, and not where I was,” He looked wistful, “Imagine what we could have done. All the reaping competitions.”
“Are you daydreaming about farming murder competitions again? Because Emmie said I had to tell someone if you were.”
“No!” He exhaled, “But it would have been fun.”
“Well Calypso’s not home yet, so I’m sure you can drink all the coffee you want before then.”
He looked delighted, as if he hadn’t quite considered this before. “See you later.”
He was gone before Leo could think to ask why he hadn’t asked the Waystation to put a machine in his room. But maybe the Reaper of Men on all the caffeine he could access all hours of the day and night, wasn’t something anyone should be forced to endure.