Work Text:
“Leo, I have a crush on you. Will you go out with me?”
It had taken Jason so long to get to this point. Months of pining and coming to terms with his own feelings, hours spent staring at the ceiling of the Aphrodite Cabin as he lamented said feelings to Piper while she sympathetically patted him on the head with one hand and fiddled with whatever puzzle box Leo had given her most recently with the other, sleepless nights spent on the roof of his own cabin watching stars and trading jokes and hushed giggles with Leo and knowing there was nowhere else he’d rather be. All of it had led to this one very moment, and Jason’s chest felt warm and full with so much hydrogen-like joy that he was concerned that he was going to start floating off the ground. Or, well, he would have been concerned if he weren’t so focused on the giddiness that came from finally telling Leo how he felt.
He beamed at Leo, and much like the Hindenburg, Jason’s heart crashed to the ground in a fiery heap.
“Real fucking funny, Grace,” Leo snapped. He looked angry, angrier than Jason had ever seen him outside of fighting primordial goddesses, but worse than that he looked hurt. “Really clever and not a dick move at all. Wow. How’d you even come up with that?”
“I–” Jason choked on his tongue, and he sounded more than a little pathetic when he squeaked out, “Piper said it would be a good idea.”
If anything, Leo just looked more devastated and betrayed at his words. “Piper said to do this?”
Jason desperately reached out for him. “Leo, please, I don’t–”
Leo cut him off by bodily flinching away from his outstretched hand, and Jason felt almost sick when he saw unshed tears glinting in the corners of hard brown eyes. “Just leave me alone. Go find Piper and the two of you have fun laughing about what a grand fucking idea this was. And, again, super fucking funny, masterfully executed. With any luck, it’ll work even better on the next sorry sucker you go for. Make sure you leave me out of it, though.”
Then he turned, gave Jason one last dirty look, and stomped off towards the woods where Bunker Nine was waiting, leaving Jason standing exactly where he was, one hand grasping at air and desperately wondering what he did wrong.
Jason didn't go find Piper. He couldn't really, not after that conversation. Instead he slumped back to his cabin where he collapsed into the first bunk he came across and hid under the covers. He couldn't even really bring himself to care that the Zeus statue was scowling directly at the pathetic little heap of teenage angst that was meant to be Pontifex Maximus of New Rome. So what if his father was disappointed in him? Just another thing to add to his list of failures for the day.
He fully planned to just lay in that bed and waste away until he was nothing but a pile of dirt and bugs and bone, but Piper apparently had other plans, because an hour later she kicked in the door with a scowl on her face. Oh, good. Someone else he managed to upset.
“Jason Grace, would you care to explain to me why Leo bailed on canoeing and locked me out of Bunker Nine when I went to go get him?”
“Am I allowed to say no, or are you just going to get mad at me, too?” Jason asked petulantly.
Piper hesitated at that, looking over Jason's moping with a frown that was more concerned than angry. “What's wrong with you?”
Jason sighed and rolled over onto his back. “Well, you know how I've been crushing on Leo?”
“It is an integral part of your personality at this point, yes.”
“And you know how you told me that I should confess? And that the worst he could do was say no?”
“Yes? What does that have to do with–” Piper cut herself off and gave Jason a horrified look. “Oh, please tell me you didn't. Today?”
“Yeah, I did,” Jason sighed. “And let me tell you, what I got was way worse than a no.”
Piper groaned and hid her face in her hands. “Jason! I specifically told you to wait until this weekend!”
“I didn't want to wait!” Jason protested. “What if I chickened out between now and then?”
“But why did you do it today?” Piper demanded. “Of course he's going to get mad at you for confessing today!”
Jason paused and squinted at her. “What's that supposed to mean? Why would it matter if I told him today or tomorrow or this weekend or whatever? He obviously doesn't like me and thinks the whole idea is a joke.”
Jason didn't really mean for it to happen, but his voice kind of cracked on the last word. He had been hoping to keep his reactions in front of other people confined to sulking and being a little defensive, but in truth, his feelings were hurt. Piper had managed to convince him that he had a shot with Leo, but he was still fully prepared to be rejected. He'd imagined the sympathetic wince Leo was bound to give him so many times that he'd grown almost desensitized to it. He'd been okay with the thought that Leo didn't return his feelings, but that was leagues apart from Leo being angry and hurt and horrified by said feelings.
Piper let out a soft sigh and poked and prodded Jason until he was sitting up enough for her to give him a hug. “I promise it's not as bad as you think,” she whispered in his ear. “You can still fix this.”
Jason grimaced and pulled away. “Thanks for the vote of confidence, but you weren’t there. There’s no fixing that.”
“Yes, there is,” Piper insisted. “Look, I promise Leo’s reaction wasn’t about you. Well, not entirely. Jason, do you know what day it is?”
“Um. Thursday? I think?”
“No, the date.”
Jason paused and considered that. He’d never been all that good with remembering numbers of any kind, and dates fell solidly within that category. He knew anniversaries and holidays, obviously, and he could rattle off every last one of his friends’ birthdays, but he struggled with the current date. Even in New Rome he’d had issues with it, but with Camp Half-Blood’s apparent aversion to having seasons or any kind of weather at all, he was worse than hopeless. “Um, I’m pretty sure it’s after Valentine’s Day but before your birthday.”
Piper dragged a hand down her face. “Jason. It’s April first.”
He stared blankly at her. “Okay? And?”
“It’s April Fools Day, dummy!”
“What is– Wait. That’s the made up holiday people use as an excuse to play pranks, right?” He’d learned about the holiday the previous spring he’d spent at Camp. The Stolls were master pranksters, and had wreaked absolute havoc after teaming up with some of the Hecate kids. Jason was pretty sure he’d never look at Lou Ellen without fear again. “What does that have to do with me confessing to Leo?”
Piper winced at the question. “Well, sometimes people will play this prank. It’s usually done by, like, the popular kids or whatever, and they’ll ask someone out or say so and so has a crush on them. Then, when that person gets excited or embarrassed, they pull the rug out from under them to humiliate them.”
Jason was horrified at the news and gaped at Piper. “Seriously? But it’s Leo. That doesn’t make any sense.”
“It was before I met him at Wilderness,” Piper shrugged. “He told me about it once, but I didn’t ask for a lot of details because it’s kind of a shitty situation. I didn’t wanna make him relive it.”
Jason shook his head, still confused. “I just… Can’t imagine why he would do something like that.” Piper just stared at him, her face getting that mildly pitying look it always got when he was missing something very obvious, and he felt his heart plummet down to the Underworld. “Oh.”
“Yeah. Oh.”
“So, he wasn’t the one who…”
“No, he wasn’t.”
“And he thinks that I…”
“Yeah, seems like it.”
“But I’d never do something like that!” Jason protested.
“I know,” Piper soothed. “And trust me, Leo’s gonna feel awful for thinking you would when he figures it out.”
Jason blew a loud raspberry and flopped back on his bed with a scowl. “Great. So, my confession is going to make him feel shitty twice. It’s not exactly poetry.” He huffed at her. “Tell your mom to stop cursing me.”
“Take responsibility for your actions!” Piper snickered, thumping him between the eyes. “Number one, I specifically told you to wait until this weekend. No one’s fault but your own that you refused to listen. Number two, buy yourself a calendar.”
Jason sighed and stared up at his ceiling. “I’m gonna have to figure out how to fix this myself, huh?”
“Sorry, but you know this romance junk is way out of my wheelhouse,” Piper said sympathetically. “I mean, I can ask Drew to help you. She owes me a favor.”
“I think I’d rather ask Lady Juno for help than Drew.”
“Probably for the best.”
They were quiet for a moment before Piper nudged him with a gentle smile. “You’ll figure it out, I know you will. If there’s anyone who can woo Leo Valdez, it’s you.”
Jason grinned back at her. “Thanks. I think I might have a plan, but I may need your help.”
To be fair, calling what Jason was about to do a “plan” was probably being more than a little generous. It was more Jason crossing his fingers and chanting pleasepleaseplease to himself as he waited to see if all the coincidences he needed managed to line up. The first one was a success. Jason had watched with bated breath as the Hephaestus kids marched up to the Pavilion for dinner. Leo wasn't among them and when Jason asked, Nyssa just shrugged and said he had been in the Bunker all day, so he was probably still there. The second coincidence was that the Camp Store just so happened to have a battery-powered analog clock for sale. He'd been hoping for a calendar, too, but seeing as it was April, he was unsurprised to come up short. Besides, Piper had called in her favor with Drew and supplied him with a very nice planner that he was going to start paying very close attention to.
All that was left now was sneaking out to Bunker Nine in the middle of the night, and praying to Venus and Vulcan both that Leo wasn't doing something that required him to use the forge.
Unsurprisingly, the heat vent attached to the forge was not a great way to get into the Bunker. It was cramped and twisted awkwardly and let out into, well, the forge, which wasn't exactly a great place to land, even when it was unlit. But, Jason thought to himself as he heaved the vent cover open, it was a way in, and when you're determined (or desperate) you don't have the luxury of being picky.
Apparently, Venus and Vulcan had decided to work together because Jason didn't crawl face-first into a thousand degree inferno, but they also apparently thought it would be funny to make life as difficult as possible because he did crawl face-first into a pile of soot and still smoldering embers.
Leo shouted and let out a rather impressive string of swear words when Jason let out his own rather impressive yelp of pain, and proceeded to use his entire body weight to drag Jason out of the forge.
“Dude! What the actual hell is wrong with you?” he demanded. “Are you trying to die? Do you want to burn to death right in front of my eyes? Because crawling into a fucking furnace is a really good way to achieve your goals.”
Jason ignored him and instead started digging through his bag. He let out a sigh of relief when he saw that the planner and clock were both completely unharmed, and saw that the little bronze clock hands were proudly displaying a time of 11:57.
“Seriously, what’s the big idea?” Leo snapped. “This is, like, way not cool, man.”
“Just give me a minute,” Jason said, not taking his eyes off the clock face. Leo muttered something that Jason couldn't really hear (though, he could tell it was wildly unflattering) but he quieted down to wait. The clock read 11:59 and when the second hand passed the 6 he let out a deep sigh and turned to Leo.
“Willing to talk to me now?” Leo asked sourly.
Jason ignored his comment and showed him the clock. “It's midnight.”
“Good clock reading skills, Jason. Glad those wolves taught you something after all.”
Jason continued to ignore him and pulled out the leatherback planner, opened to the month of April. “That means it's April second right now.”
Leo just looked more confused. “Okay? And?”
Jason looked him dead in the eye and slowly leaned forward to clasp Leo’s hands in his. Leo stiffened and he looked almost scared, but Jason refused to drop his gaze. “It's past midnight, which means it's April second, which means it's not April Fools Day, and I still like you, Leo.”
Leo blinked at him in shock for a moment before his face completely crumpled. “Oh, my god,” he whispered, burying his face in his hands. “You weren’t joking and I was literally the biggest dick imaginable to you.” Jason cautiously stepped forward to wrap Leo in a hug, and let out a quiet huff of relief when Leo tipped forward into his arms. He felt Leo’s bone-deep trembling and silently squeezed him a little tighter. “I’m so fucking sorry, Jason.”
“It's okay,” Jason assured him, stroking his back in a soothing manner. Surprisingly, he wasn't lying. His feelings had definitely been more than a little bruised at the harsh rejection, but he understood Leo’s position. “Piper kind of had to explain things to me. I didn't know what the date was, much less what that actually meant.”
Leo snorted, and Jason could hear the fondness in his voice when he said, “Of course you didn't. You believed me when I said your birthday was coming up back in January.”
Jason’s cheeks flushed, and he tugged on one of Leo’s curls in retribution. “I only believed you for, like, two seconds.”
Leo looked up at him, and there were tears in the corners of his eyes, but they still managed to sparkle with the force of his smile. “It was definitely more like two minutes.”
Jason rolled his eyes, but just put his chin on top of Leo’s head to keep from having to answer. Leo looped his arms around Jason’s waist as he snickered into his chest, but didn’t have any further smart comments. When he pulled Jason in a little closer, Jason had to tuck his nose into Leo’s curls to hide his goofy grin.
“I'm sorry people were so mean to you,” Jason said softly after a moment. “I promise I'd never do anything like that.”
Leo obviously grimaced before saying, “I know that now. I'm sorry I thought you would. It's just… It not being a joke made less sense than it being one.”
Jason considered asking him to explain what that meant, but he doubted he’d like the explanation much. “It's okay,” he repeated instead. “I get it, I really do.”
Leo grumbled something quietly to himself before he pulled out of the hug just enough to look up at Jason with vermillion cheeks. “I, um, like you, too. By the way. In case that wasn't obvious.”
In all honesty, it was pretty obvious, but Jason had been terrified to assume, so he was grateful for the confirmation. He beamed at Leo, feeling very much like the over-eager puppy he was often accused of being. “Really?”
Leo’s cheeks got somehow darker and he scowled up at Jason. “Yes, really. What kind of question is that?”
“Will you go on a date with me, then?”
“Uh, sure. Where do you want to go?”
Jason paused and thought about that for a second, coming up blank. “Uh, I don't know. I didn’t think I'd get this far.”
Leo tipped his head back and laughed, the sound loud and bright and echoing off the walls of the Bunker and directly into Jason's chest, which once again felt lighter than air. He brought his hands up to cup around Jason's jaw and gave him a blindingly bright smile. “Don't worry about it. We'll figure it out.”
“Together?” Jason asked, pushing his cheek into Leo's palm.
“Together,” Leo confirmed. Then he stood up on his toes and kissed Jason, smile against smile.
Together, Jason thought giddily as they continued to kiss. I think I like together.