Work Text:
Once the Hephaestus cabin delivered the last load of fireworks to the beach, it wasn’t that hard for Leo to slip away.
He’s exhausted. He’s been awake for thirty-six hours putting together the fireworks for tonight, and his last 5 Hour Energy is slowly wearing off. There’s no way he can stay up another half an hour for the festivities. So, while everyone else is distracted, he simply walks off, bidding everyone his best Irish goodbye. Nyssa and Annabeth are supervising the barge where they’re setting up for the firework show, Annabeth with a fire extinguisher on standby. He thinks it’s okay to sit this one out.
(Leo feels like he should be a little offended that his pyrotechnics are raising questions, especially ones that he stayed up all night perfecting in Bunker Nine, but he guesses the Hephaestus cabin is still under that stupid curse. Better safe than sorry).
He trudges his way back up the beach, where the entire camp is hanging out on the shore for the countdown to the new year. By the light of a bonfire, kids from the Apollo and Hecate cabins battle head to head in a game of charades. A few of Piper’s siblings from the Aphrodite cabin can be seen handing out multi-colored beaded necklaces and funky 2010 party glasses to their fellow campers.
Wait—where is Piper?
Now that Leo thinks about it, he hasn’t seen Jason around either.
Well, that solves that question. They’re probably together, somewhere around here that Leo can’t spot out. Maybe they’ve picked a secluded area farther down along the beach to be alone together. Piper, the romantic that she is, will have laid out a cozy blanket and set up a picnic for them, having snuck some food from the dining pavilion earlier that night.
They’ll have strawberries for dessert, courtesy of the Demeter kids. Red juice will drip down Jason’s chin as he takes a bite, and Piper will laugh at him, reaching over to thumb it off. The countdown will start right at that moment, and Jason will reach up to caress her cheek and pull her closer. The fireworks Leo pulled an all nighter to finish last night will go off down the beach as the clock hits midnight, and the gap between Jason and Piper’s lips will shrink as they—
A shudder rolls through Leo. Gross. He really doesn’t want to picture his best friends macking on each other’s faces.
Everybody seems to be coupled up tonight actually. Which is typical for the time of year, he supposes, but what are the odds that he steps into a whole new fantasy life, with quests and superpowers galore, and is still forever alone? He has pyrokinesis! He's a demigod for crying out loud. If this were a comic book, chicks would be all over him!
He veers off the trail to the cabins and cuts into a thin part of the woods, guided by a flashlight he keeps in his toolbelt. He’d love to use his own fire for extra visibility, but Annabeth told him the wood nymphs get nervous when he does that, especially since the only camper who’d be able to put out a rapidly spreading wildfire is currently M.I.A.
“Only you can prevent forest fires,” he says to himself.
“Leo?”
“ Holy Hephaestus !” Leo gasps, nearly dropping his flashlight in fright. He directs the light over to his right, where a pile of boulders rests in the middle of a small clearing in the forest. Near the base of it, on the flattest rock, sits Piper, her own flashlight in hand.
She raises an amused eyebrow at him. “Holy Hephaestus?”
Leo places a hand over his chest, a feeble attempt to calm his sprinting heart. “I picked it up from my cabin mates. Nyssa says we’re not allowed to swear in front of the younger kids. What the fuck, Piper, what are you doing out here?”
Piper laughs at his explanation, then shrugs. “I dunno. I figured this would be a good spot for the firework show.”
“. . . And not the beach?”
She shrugs again. She scoots over and pats the empty spot next to her on her rock, inviting Leo to come sit.
Leo throws an unsure look around the clearing, mostly met with the dark silhouettes of trees and brush. Is she out here alone? Slowly, he moves toward her. “Where’s Jason?”
Even in the low lighting, Leo can see the slight twitch of her face falling. “Oh, uh, he wasn’t really up for fireworks. After dinner he said he was going to swing by the Hypnos cabin; see if they can retrieve any more memories now that we’ve completed Hera’s quest.”
“Oh,” Leo replies.
That makes sense. Together, they were able to free Hera from the clutches of Polyphyrion on the day of the solstice, a little over a week ago. When they arrived back to camp, it was revealed that Jason belongs to another demigod camp—one on the west coast, near San Francisco—and that they need to unite the camps to gear up for some big godly war. They’re likely to find Annabeth’s boyfriend over at the other camp too, that Percy dude.
Since then, Leo’s been holed up in Bunker Nine, trying to perfect the final blueprints of the Argo II . Nyssa only approached him a couple of days ago asking if he could help their cabin out with the firework show because he’d run out of granola bars and had to leave the Bunker for dinner. Apparently, Charlie used to handle most of the heavy lifting when he was head counselor. Leo would’ve felt bad saying no.
So, Leo’s been planning, Jason is trying to recover intel, and Piper. . .
Leo’s not sure what Piper’s been doing.
He noticed she was missing from the beach, but that was mostly because he saw the rest of the Aphrodite kids out there. When was the last time he’s seen her before now? Christmas, maybe?
The weight of her absence hadn’t hit Leo until now. At Wilderness, they never went a day without seeing each other. Even when Piper was sick with laryngitis, Leo still weaseled his way into her dorm and forced her to read his Ironman comics with him until she recovered.
“What have you been up to?”
“Oh, not much,” she laughs weakly, waving a dismissive hand. “Just head counselor stuff. Learning names. Settling arguments. Trying to convince my siblings our mother won’t smite them for wearing white after Labor Day. Normal stuff people deal with after overthrowing a cabin dictatorship, I guess.”
Leo had been promoted to head counselor, too, but he hadn’t been putting nearly that much effort into getting to know his cabin mates. A fond smile stretches across his face as he finally takes a seat next to her. “You’ve always been so much better than the rest of us, Pipes.”
She instantly frowns, which Leo saw coming from a mile away. “What? No. It’s you guys who are better than me. Didn’t you design the firework show for tonight? Annabeth told me. You and Jason are already so dedicated to camp and I’ve just. . .” she trails off, shrugging, “been trying to keep myself busy, I guess.”
Leo hums. “You’ve always sucked at taking a compliment, too.”
She socks him in the arm, which he also knew was coming and yet he still winces in pain anyway.
“Why aren’t you on the beach?” she asks, despite never giving Leo the answer to the same question. Fortunately for her, Leo has always been too much of a blabbermouth to keep petty conversations.
“Eh, I’ve got a lot of work to do, and I’ve never been big on New Years. Same old shit, different revolution around the sun.”
He definitely shouldn’t mention that he’s been awake for a day and a half and was heading back to Bunker Nine to sleep the entire holiday away tomorrow. Piper would kick his ass, she hates when he neglects sleep to work on a project.
Piper’s laugh is small and a little sarcastic. “Shit’s pretty different this time around, actually.”
Not so much for Leo. Sure, he’s a demigod now or whatever, but he’s always been engineering his way out of things. And Hera has been terrorizing him as Tía Callida ever since he was a baby. Having to save her was just another one of her weird babysitter activities, though he really wanted to get his lick back on the old hag.
Piper, on the other hand, probably has whiplash from the amount of change she’s had to go through. Between getting shipped off to Wilderness School by her dad and learning her mother’s a goddess, and that her memories with Jason were fake, Leo knows that she’s probably bottling up a lot right now. Being able to save her dad and keep Leo and Jason in her life most likely just put a lid on something that’s eventually going to simmer over.
Piper doesn’t have to tell Leo any of this. He’s highly analytical and great at making observations. Plus, Piper is his best friend. He just knows . This whole demigod thing is bothering her, that much is obvious.
But there’s something else, beyond even Leo’s own observational skills, that’s got Piper down. And when Leo can’t get a read on his own best friend, he’s forced to resort to desperate measures—being as annoying as possible.
“Something’s bothering you.” It’s a statement and not a question. It’s also an opportunity: she can choose to speak now, instead of forcing his hand.
She wrinkles her brow. “What? No, nothing’s bothering me.”
“Liar,” Leo says with a straight face, because Piper hates being called one, even if it’s true, sometimes.
Her face morphs into a stubborn scowl. “I’m not lying. I’m telling you that—”
“Another lie,” Leo cuts her off before she can finish, because she hates that too.
It if weren’t so dark, he’d be able to see the apples of her cheeks turning crimson, and storm clouds gathering in her glare. He feels a little bad, but he’ll make it up to her somehow.
“Valdez,” she warns.
“ Mentira, mentira, mentir— ouch! Damn, Pipes!”
She punched him again, even harder somehow to Leo’s dismay, because although he’s pretty much ambidextrous he still has a preferred tinkering hand, damn .
She ignores his cry of pain, grabbing him by the ear and pinching hard. “Quit provoking me!”
“Ow! Tell me what’s wrong, then!”
“I can’t!”
“Why not? Ow! ”
“It’s stupid!” she exclaims. To Leo’s relief, she finally releases his ear. “That’s why!”
Leo rubs his ear, muttering obscenities to himself, at which Piper rolls his eyes and declares he’s being dramatic. After a moment of soothing, he responds. “Whatever it is, Piper, I’m sure it’s not stupid.”
“It is stupid,” she insists, her voice quiet. “Compared to everything else, it is .”
Leo scoots further into her space, encroaching on the bubble she’s trying to curl herself into. “Well, will you let me be the judge of that, at least? Because if it’s important to you, it’s important to me.”
If it has Piper McLean avoiding the beach, her favorite place in the world, then it’s not stupid. If it has the one person Leo knows to have the biggest emotions feeling small, then it’s not stupid.
He’s close enough now that he can see it, actually—the pink glow of Piper’s cheeks under scattered moonlight. He watches as she reaches for one of her braids and begins to unravel it, a nervous habit.
“I. . .” she starts unsurely. Leo gently takes the braid from her fingertips and tucks it behind her ear. She turns toward him then, so he can see her. “I still want Jason to be my boyfriend.”
Leo is . . . not sure how he should respond to that.
Piper immediately takes his three seconds of silence the wrong way. “I told you it was stupid!”
She stands up and clicks her flashlight on, beginning to march back into the darkness of the woods. Leo quickly reaches for her, interlocking their hands before she can get too far. “Hey, no, it’s not stupid!”
“Then why’d you stare at me like that?”
“That’s just my face, I stare at everybody like that!”
Okay, maybe he’s a little bit of a liar, too.
In truth, he just really wasn’t expecting that. Were Piper and Jason not dating anymore? When did that happen? He knows the whole fake memories thing made their relationship a bit complicated, but he sees the way they look at each other. Leo doesn’t have a whole lot of experience with mutual feelings but their’s seem very mutual.
Leo stands up, the grip he has on Piper’s hand tightening. “Did Jason say he wanted to break-up?”
Under no circumstance would Leo ever be able to take Jason in a fight, Madea’s charmspeak or not, but that doesn’t stop him from contemplating ways that he could for a tiny, miniscule second. A second is all he needs, anyway. He’ll have to build a suit that rival’s Tony Stark’s in Ironman , but he could make it happen.
“No! He hasn’t said anything at all. That’s the problem,” Piper huffs, tugging her hand away from Leo and switching her flashlight off again.
“Is he avoiding you?” Leo asks. If he’s still looking for an excuse to be angry with Jason and build the Ironman suit, only he has to know that.
“I don’t think it’s intentional. He just has a lot going on,” Piper admits. “But I don’t want to bring it up, since, you know, it’s kind of unimportant considering everything else.”
Leo furrows his eyebrows. “Everything else?”
Piper stares at him like his hair’s on fire; it could be. He doesn’t have full control over his pyrokinesis yet and he’s a little ticked off right now. “Um, hello? The whole impending war we just learned about? Having his life switched with Percy Jackson’s? I can’t blame him for not putting me at the top of his list of priorities! All I care about right now is how I’m not getting a New Years kiss under the fireworks.” Piper turns her gaze down, mournfully. “Which is why I don’t want to be at the beach, by the way. My siblings said firework shows are like, the biggest dating events of the year at camp.”
It is. Leo saw it with his own eyes, and he definitely left the beach feeling a little jealous and bitter. But in his mind, Piper was undoubtedly there with Jason.
Piper looks back at him, smiling ruefully. “I’m not gonna bother the new camp hero with my romantic insecurities.”
Leo stares at her for a second before his eyes narrow. “That’s dumb.”
Piper purses her lips, folding her arms in over herself. “I told you it was.”
“No, that’s not what I meant.” Leo corrects her, his voice uncharacteristically stern. “I meant that it’s dumb you think your feelings about your relationship are unimportant in the grand scheme of things. How you feel is important, Pipes. It matters to you.”
The ‘ and it matters to me’ at the tip of his tongue goes unsaid.
Piper’s pout becomes petulant, because she hates it when Leo’s right, even though he is, like, ninety percent of the time.
“You should talk to him tomorrow,” he offers, feeling calmer than he did a minute ago. “He’s got a lot going on, but I doubt he’ll think your relationship is unimportant.”
A noise of complaint comes from her throat. “But—”
“No buts.”
“But—!”
Leo reaches into the right pocket of his toolbelt, finds what he’s looking for and throws the small papery item at Piper’s feet. A loud crack! echoes throughout the clearing. “No buts!”
Piper shrieks, jumping back. She looks up at him in disbelief. “What the hell? Was that a popper, you psychopath?”
Leo throws another one at her feet just to fuck with her a little more, reveling in the resulting scream that leaves her mouth. “ That was for pinching my ear earlier.”
“Quit it!”
Crack! “And that was for thinking your feelings are dumb.”
“Leo, stop!”
Crack! Crack! “And those were because I love you.”
“I hate you!”
Crack! “What was that?”
“I love you, too! Stop, please . I’m gonna pee my pants.”
He holds the last popper above his head as leverage. Piper’s little flinch and frightful squeak make him laugh. “Now, give me a hug.”
“Alright, alright! Just cease your fire, jeez!”
He shoves the tiny firework back into his pocket and offers his arms out to Piper. She rolls her eyes, but moves forward into his waiting embrace anyway. Once she realizes Leo’s not going to surprise attack her with the last popper, the tension completely eases out of her body, which only makes Leo hug her tighter.
She huffs beside his ear, leaning her head against his shoulder. “How do you do that?”
He leans back to meet her gaze, her hazel eyes shimmering. “What, make the poppers? It’s kinda cool, actually—!”
“No, not that.” She reaches down to pinch his hip. “How do you see right through me?”
Leo doesn’t see through her—he never has. He just sees her. But he doesn’t know how to express that.
“Maybe you shouldn’t wear your heart on your sleeve, McLean,” he says, poking her in the sides. “You’re sooo middle school. You have your hoodie up and you’re all ‘I don’t wanna talk to anyone today,’ and then halfway through lunch I shoot a spitball in someone’s ear to make you laugh and then you tell me everything that pissed you off.”
Piper giggles into his neck. The sound makes Leo feel warm, like he can ignite his insides too.
She groans, nuzzling herself into his shoulder. “This has been the worst year of my life .”
The admission makes Leo grimace, but he doesn’t stop hugging her. “I know. I’m sorry.”
She sighs. “It gave me you, though.”
That one makes Leo smile, though. “I know. I’m sorry.”
They both burst into a fit of giggles.
She pulls her head back. “Is it New Years yet?”
Before Leo gets the chance to squint at his watch, the sky suddenly begins to explode with color. The sound of the firework show beginning rattles the whole forest, causing Piper to shriek again.
Leo laughs at her expense. “There’s your answer!”
Piper turns in their embrace, craning her neck up at the sky.
“You designed this?” She shouts over the explosions. They watch as Hercules slays the Hydra in an animation of gold and green. “It’s gorgeous, Leo. This must’ve taken you forever!”
He shrugs like it was no big deal, because he has a reputation to uphold. But he thinks the fireworks are going to be burned into his retinas when he closes his eyes tonight, and will continue to play in his comatose like sleep.
Piper gleefully watches the display all the way through, in awe of the bright colors and animations. Her face is lit up, both with joy and under the firework’s colorful dance.
Leo didn’t think much of it the night Piper was claimed and given Aphrodite’s blessing, but she really is pretty.
He finds himself frowning, not at Piper, but just in general. Despite how tired he is, his thoughts begin to race. He thinks Piper’s. . . pretty ?
Has she. . . has she been this pretty the whole time?
Leo has to physically resist the urge to smack the hell out of himself. Is he so sleep deprived that he’s suddenly attracted to Piper ? He can’t think Piper’s pretty, he’s her best friend! And his other best friend’s sort of girlfriend?
That’s weird .
“Are you okay?” Piper asks, once the show is over and Leo hasn’t said a single arrogant remark.
“Yeah,” he reassures her, hoping she can’t feel the way his heart is pounding in his chest. “Yeah, no, I was just, you know. Critiquing myself in my head. Not my best work. Six out of ten.”
Thankfully, he’s always been just a smidge of a better liar than Piper.
“Are you kidding?” she exclaims. She jumps out of his arms and motions up toward the sky in disbelief. “Don’t talk about my best friend like that! I didn’t even know you could do that, that was so cool!”
Leo smiles in spite of himself. He’d be happy that he made Piper smile any day, sleep deprived attraction to her or not.
“Wanna see more? I’ve got some sparklers somewhere in my toolbelt.”
Piper gasps, making grabby hands toward him. “Gimme!”
He’s been awake thirty-six hours already. What’s thirty-seven?