Chapter Text
Technically speaking, this whole scheme started back in Nevada when Leo and Piper were still at Wilderness School. Granted his memories get sorta iffy once fake Jason entered the picture, but he can more or less parse out the details now. Or at the very least just ignore the parts where Jason was there. This is one of the clearer memories though, it being rehashed so many times that it makes sense beyond mangled godly filters.
Let him set the scene: It was Thanksgiving, almost all of the students had gotten 48 hour passes to spend time with their families. Not Leo though, he didn't have the family nor the points to leave. Despite the fact he's always moving around schools, this was the first time he's ever actually been failing. That’s always a shocker to people— Leo’s really good at school despite the fact it seems like he’s never paying attention. So failing was a stark difference, even if it was just blatant ableism.
He was pretty sure that Piper just stayed out of pity, even though she said some excuse about her dad being busy. But he was in no place to complain, company is company and it was better than being left alone with the straight up evil principal. A part of him is still horrified at the idea of what she would try to pull if there were no other students here. Maybe Piper didn't stay out of pity, maybe she stayed out of fear. He didn’t have it in him to think too much about it.
It's not that Leo is even a particular lover of Thanksgiving or anything— his family never celebrated and he usually tried to stay hidden away when he was in foster homes. It’s just that he wasn’t ever really part of their families, so there was no point in pretending to be for a few hours. There's also the whole he's Indigenous and fundamentally opposed to a colonizer holiday thing. Even his body opposes it since most of the food makes him nauseous as fuck when he's doing well, which translated to totally bedbound considering how his health was annihilated since starting at the school.
Speaking of food that makes him nauseous as fuck, the cafeteria had some sad excuse for a Thanksgiving dinner that day. He was pretty sure the turkey was just previously frozen lunch meat and the potatoes were somehow the consistency of a non-Newtonian fluid. Leo was doing what he could to stomach it, knowing he'd be lucky if even half of it stays down. He thought it was just him, but he looked over to see Piper was picking at the food on her tray too.
“Bruh, they somehow made Thanksgiving even worse,” Piper complained, “Tastes worse than fuckin’ commodities.”
“Not like there's any way to make this shit not suck,” Leo scoffed, “Eating this shit alone is enough of a case for reparations.”
“My whole family always does a big meal on the rez. We cook a bunch of traditional foods, do a Native twist on the white people stuff, call it taking back the dinner,” Piper fondly recalled, “Better than whatever this shit is. You're invited when we both get out of here, it's fun, my aunties will love you.”
Leo shrugged in response. He'd never been good with families and had spent almost no time around other Natives since his mom died. Plus with larger nations, sometimes it gets into this weird territory of him not “actually” being Indigenous in the US, especially around some of the more conservative elders. However, he did manage to recall that it's rude to refuse food and that's something he does an awful lot of these days. There's no way it'd work out.
The conversation abruptly ended when Leo’s nausea got too overwhelming and he had to leave to get sick. In all honesty, most of his conversations during his Wilderness School era ended in that way. At least to his memory, between being so foggy and Hera’s interferences it’s all veiled behind permanent confusion. Nonetheless, he shoved the conversation away figuring it would never come to fruition. Surely Piper would forget about it. Surely she would change her mind.
Then it came up again. On the Argo II this time, right after he had made some tofu tacos for the crew. It was one of the extremely rare times he was well enough to cook and his joints decided they'd cooperate for long enough to do something not demigod related. He had figured out why he could always do intricate builds but couldn’t chop veggies without dislocating the shit out of his wrist or fingers— Hephaestus kid advantages.
The effects of Wilderness School had undoubtedly lingered, his baseline seemingly permanently changed for the worse. It’s something he was still trying to adjust to, the idea that he just wouldn’t bounce back the way he used to be able to. He’s been pretty sick his whole life, but this was still so new. Sometimes, he would dream of this alternate universe where the last year hadn't happened and he could still do what he used to be able to. An alternate universe where his mother was still alive and all that Gaea shit never happened.
Leo had been feeling like nothing but dead fucking weight on the Seven, so he figured that cooking just one time was the least he could do. Yeah yeah, everybody has their own strengths or whatever, but it's hard to not feel like a drain on everybody else when it was abundantly clear he was the weakest link. So he set up some fluids for his feeding tube and carefully constructed a couple of tacos that hopefully wouldn't upset his stomach too much before joining the rest of the crew. Everything had been upsetting his stomach lately, but he was choosing to blame it on anxiety and not the looming threat of his gastrointestinal dysmotility worsening.
“These are so fuckin’ good Leo, you've gotta teach me how to make ‘em. Maybe we could make them when you come for dinner in November,” Piper praised his cooking.
To be clear, Leo had already made peace with the very real likelihood that he would probably not be the one to survive the quest. Or at least as much peace as he could while actively trying to find a loophole for death itself. Still, Piper's optimism really took him aback, like she sees a future. Then again, Leo's never really been one to see any future beyond a week or two— he never had the luxury.
“For you? Anything, Beauty Queen,” Leo quipped back, trying not to get too caught up in the mention of the family dinner, “Anyways, I'm getting full. I'll clean up for y'all.”
At that, he stood up and moved to clear away the dishes. He had barely been able to finish just one of the tacos and was hoping to detract attention from that fact. And also the fact he was nauseous as shit. The flying boat, having been so mechanical in nature, served as a major loophole for his motion sickness. Nonetheless, eating while traveling is always a risk for him.
Leo had never been one to hide his disabilities until this quest. It just felt too burdensome to let the others worry over the fact he can’t fucking eat or keep his joints in place. Like they have to save the world, his shit objectively should take the backburner. He only got away with it because his feeds fit nicely into his toolbelt, he could hide the tubing behind the pouch, and his braces looked ornamental enough to look like jewelry or were hidden under clothes.
Only Piper and Jason knew how disabled he really was, with Percy and Hedge getting a heavily filtered truth. As far as the rest of the crew was aware, Leo was a little bit quirky but otherwise perfectly normal and abled. It definitely helped his cause that his ADHD made him come off as really energetic, even when he was dead tired.
Piper stopped him, “I've got it, don't worry.”
She had this knowing look, or more so a judgemental one. They both fully knew that Leo basically never has the stamina for cleaning dishes after cooking and had barely touched his food. Deciding it's not worth it to argue, he changed course and started retreating towards the engine room. Admittedly, he was getting pretty nauseous and knew he had to get to a bathroom sooner rather than later. Piper and Jason could probably tell considering how quiet he was, he only gets that quiet when he feels too sick to talk.
Before he left earshot, he swore he heard somebody talking about how Piper shouldn't clean up his messes for him. That the least he could do is a few dishes considering he never helps with them. Sometimes it made him want to scream, I fucking can't! Grow a pair of eyes and look! It's so fucking obvious! Standing still for dishes makes it feel like his ankles are slipping out of his skin and his hands are collapsing. He doesn't enjoy not being able to help.
But at the same time, he was the one actively keeping the truth from them. So it really was his fault he was in that situation in the first place being a burden on everyone else. Gods, did he wish he could be less fucking useless to everyone there. Perhaps that's why he made his grand plan in the first place. Anyways, he didn't try to stick around to hear how the rest went. He didn't have it in him to take it.
When Leo finally got back to Camp after pseudo-dying, it all felt like a whirlwind. The trip back had been hard on him physically, he knew to expect things to get worse than they were before. Still, it was a lot harder than he anticipated it being. Gee, it's almost like you exploded, died, then came back to life, genius.
Not to mention he totally freaked out Calypso so badly with his disabled shit that she joined the fuckin’ Hunters. Granted he’d never be interested in somebody so unwilling to learn about cEDS, it still hurt knowing he was the literal reason somebody gave up love. Talk about a whole new level of cockblocking. Nonetheless, it was nice to see Piper and Jason again. He really missed them.
Speaking of freaking people out, he totally freaked out Jason on their first quest. At the time he was still trying to recover from the shitshow of Nevada, so he was far from peak health. Come to find out, the dude had literally never met anybody chronically ill before and just straight up didn't have a point of reference for it. But he definitely got used to Leo's shit, even going as far as helping Piper with some of the caregiving stuff. It almost felt like how some of his fake memories of Wilderness School felt. It felt nice.
He would spend most of his days in Bunker 9 working on odd projects or following people around while they did whatever they wanted to do that day. Nobody seemed too bothered and he liked getting to actually see Camp. In all honesty, he didn't have the energy for much else. His energy levels had been absolutely destroyed, with the changing seasons he anticipated that it'd only get worse.
Then one day Leo was hanging out with Piper and Jason in his room. He was feeling pretty shitty, but not too shitty that he couldn't enjoy being with his friends. Just that leaving his room wasn’t the most feasible thing ever. A lot of his days had been like that in the recent, but he usually tried to avoid going to the infirmary if he could manage it himself. It wasn't too bad yet.
They were talking about plans for the rapidly approaching start of the school year. Leo was just going to finish up the last few classes he had online, while Jason was busy focusing on Pontifex Maximus stuff. Only Piper was choosing to leave to go home, having enrolled in her local public school. When discussing seeing each other again, Piper mentioned how she'd see him soon enough in November. Another mention of the dinner. Another plan for the future.
After a literal year of lead-up and almost/actually dying a few times, that’s how Leo ends up where he is right now: on his weekly video call with Piper while he disabled-ly lounges around Bunker 9. The two had made a promise to stay in touch and set a regular time to call, even though they usually talk more than that. Piper hasn't really brought up the dinner since she and Jason broke up. Leo's been dodging the topic of Jason with her since then— especially since the son of Jupiter has become more and more prominent in his life to say the least.
He's like… 75.6% sure he's dating Jason right now and 53.8% sure he's not just a rebound for Jason. As Piper would put it if she knew about it, Leo's absolutely whipped. It's been so nice to have somebody who cares about him so much, is so open to learning to navigate his disabilities, is so sweet. It almost feels too good to be true, hence where Leo's doubts come in. Is it the trauma speaking? Definitely. But that's beside the point.
“Since you're coming in a couple weeks, I figured I'd go over what we're planning to cook so far,” Piper cheerily mentions.
See, that's another slight barrier. Leo may have been downplaying how bad his health has gotten since she left. As in he can barely keep any food down and one of his conditions that he thought was dormant has come back with full on allergy-filled vengeance. And he has had literally no clue how to tell her that the future seems like it’ll never happen and he’ll just be like this forever. He supposes it's now or never for the truth.
“I dunno, I've been pretty sick. The travel would be really hard on me, I won't be able to do it alone,” Leo admits.
“Oh, I thought Jason said he was coming too? Or is he coming from New Rome?” Piper asks back.
Leo’s eyes go wide, “What?”
“Bruh I talk to the dude like every week, it'd be evil if I said you can come but not your partner,” Piper says like it’s old news.
“What!?” exclaims Leo, shocked at every single word in that sentence, “You've been talking?? My partner??”
“...Yeah? He's been asking me about ways he can learn more about caregiving and cEDS since you've been going through it. Were you not aware you two are dating? Boys really do need to improve communication, that's why I'm gay now,” Piper replies as if it's all obvious.
“Ugh, my point still stands that I'm really fuckin’ disabled right now and anything you give me will prolly make me feel like shit. As much as I wanna see you, I don't wanna come off as rude to your family,” Leo groans at the realization he's been keeping secrets for no good reason.
“Headass, that's why I've been talking with Jason about what dishes would be good for you,” Piper lightly chides, “Look it's chill if the trip’s too much for you, but don't say no ‘cause you think you being sick is a dealbreaker. I’ve said it a million times before, you being disabled isn’t gonna suddenly turn me away. You’re stuck with me.”
“Has he told you anything about what's been going on?” Leo asks.
“Nothing specific, just pointing out foods that might not agree with you, ways to change the menu so it’s better for you, stuff like that,” replies Piper.
He takes a deep breath, never a better time than now to admit the truth, “I've got this thing called MCAS, it hasn't been a huge issue in years but recently it’s been flaring. It makes me have all these random allergic reactions, be super sensitive to anything and everything, and fucks with my GI shit. I literally don't know if I could tolerate any of the food or scents.”
Piper waves him off, “We'll figure something out, I don't mind having to change plans. But is MCAS why you're always so itchy when we're outside and like… around living plants?”
“I'm pretty allergic to most flowers and grasses that grow here, yeah. Didn't think it was that obvious, though,” Leo admits, “I'll try to come, are you sure you're chill with Jason coming?”
“Positive. I promise we ended things pretty mutually. I want you two to be happy and to come see my home,” Piper warmly smiles, “Anyways, I've gotta head to class soon, talk to you later!”
At that, the video call ends.
Alright, so it's really completely real that he's going to visit Piper all the way in Oklahoma. Definitely not only the 2nd time he's ever traveled for fun and not court/quest obligations. Definitely not anxious as hell about the prospect of it. Rather than dealing with that whole mess, Leo decides that he's too exhausted to be anxious and takes a nap on the old couch he had Festus haul into the Bunker a while ago.
A few hours later he wakes up to knocking, he's pretty sure it's Jason, “Come in!” he shouts in response.
The door swings open to confirm his suspicions, “Dinner starts soon, I haven't seen you since breakfast. What's up?”
Leo shrugs, it's a loaded question. Because yeah, he wants to know what Leo’s been up to all day; but more so, he wants to know how crappy Leo feels. That’s the real question, and the answer is he still feels like shit, but not shit enough to really do anything about it. Abled people hate that kind of limbo that he constantly lives in— even though Jason’s not the world’s most abled man with his whole migraine and post-traumatic brain injury thing he's got going on.
The two have talked about it before, Jason doesn’t consider himself disabled on account of it really not getting in his way too often and not changing almost anything in his daily life. Leo, as a fellow migraine-haver, personally feels like it’s disabling. Jason doesn't get them as often now, but he's 100% out of commission for at least a day and gets symptoms far worse than Leo's ever had with them. But that whole disabled identity thing is between Jason and the gods at this point.
He thinks over the day, landing back on his conversation with Piper. The dinner. The fact he and Jason are dating. Did Jason think they’re dating? Does Leo think they’re dating?? He’s pretty sure he thinks they’re dating. Suddenly, it’s the only thing on his mind.
“Are we like… a thing? Like dating. Boyfriends. That,” Leo blurts out.
“I thought we were dating, are we not dating?” Jason asks back.
“You never asked,” Leo replies, “I wasn’t totally sure.”
“Well do you want to? Actually date and officially say it?”
Leo grins in response, enthusiastically nodding, “Come and sit by me… boyfriend.”
Jason moves to sit on the couch, helping Leo sit up just enough that he can then rest his head on Jason’s lap. He twirls Leo’s curls through his fingers, going through his daily complaints about gods and goddesses bothering him. Luckily, Jason recently got some other people in New Rome to help the cause so it’s been less annoying than it was before. Will was more than happy to sign onto an official-looking letter to make it so Jason could redistribute some of the labor. Granted, that means that Jason has to actually delegate the responsibilities then.
“You never answered,” Jason softly reminds, “You feeling up to dinner?”
“I should try it, it’s bad if I don’t at least try,” Leo replies, fully knowing he’s just going to feel worse from it.
The dinner horn blares through camp, “Alright, we can start heading over. Just let me know if you wanna leave,” Jason warmly smiles, helping Leo up and to his wheelchair.
Before they leave, Leo sets up some fluids to run through his feeding tube and makes sure he has all of his meds he might need. He preemptively pushes some anti-nausea meds and antihistamines, triple checking that he has everything else he might possibly need for his increasingly rare ventures out of his room or Bunker 9. The Mess Hall, being in the middle of a grassy field, has a solid 50/50 shot of setting off an allergic reaction from that fact alone.
When they arrive, he sees that the Demeter cabin has decorated the Mess Hall tables with arrangements of autumn flowers. It looks really beautiful with all the different reds and oranges; the pollen also just immediately hits him like a truck and he gets thrown into an allergy attack, getting super obnoxiously congested. He summons a pack of tissues from his toolbelt and just covers his face to try to save himself from some embarrassment.
Jason moves the flowers on the Big Three table to an empty table, it doesn’t do much but it’s better than nothing. Then, he just waits and rubs Leo's back until the attack calms down enough to continue on. They go through the food line together, Leo takes a pretty small plate of only a few of the choices— most of it being too hard for him to digest or a guaranteed even worse allergic reaction.
“They’ve really gotta do better about having choices for you, bread rolls, plastic fruit cups, and sad soup shouldn’t be your only options when everybody else has a whole spread,” Jason frustratedly expresses, seeing the stark difference between Leo’s plate and his own.
“I’m already starting to get hives from all these fuckass flowers, can we please just eat?” Leo replies, appreciating the solidarity but feeling like his skin is crawling and just wanting to get this over with, “I won’t even be able to taste it probably.”
Nico, Will, Percy, and Annabeth are all already at the table— the usual bunch. They’re all super aware of Leo’s gastroparesis at this point, so none of them ever question how small his portions are. He has not, however, told any of them about his MCAS yet. It’s mostly denial that it’s back, if he starts telling people beyond Jason and Piper it’s actually real again. However, today is giving him a run for his money for how long he can hide it, because holy fuck is his everything itchy right now.
To add insult to injury, dinner isn’t settling well at all. He thinks that there must be something in the soup that wasn’t visibly obvious. Having GI dysmotility his whole life, he’s gotten pretty good at parsing out ingredients by intensely looking at it. Evidently, it still fails him on occasion. Or maybe it’s his MCAS making him sick to his stomach instead this time. Talk about being a godsdamn mess, Valdez .
Leo eats a little more of his bread before sacrificing the rest of his meal to his dad in the bronze brazier. To be polite, he sits back down at the table next to Jason. He rests his head in his hands, still feeling allergic as fuck from just everything hitting him at the same time. But he doesn’t want to take Jason away from his friends, so he’s putting up with it as long as he can.
“Are you okay? You’ve been… snotty. No offense,” Percy nervously asks
Observant as always. It's really bad news if Percy gets sick though, so Leo's not annoyed about the question despite the fact he usually hates it when people ask. He fully acknowledges that his brand of chronic illnesses very much look like regular contagious illness. That's part of why he hates it when his symptoms show in public, it makes people afraid of being anywhere near him.
“Yeah, I’m good. I’m just allergic to some of the flowers,” Leo carefully chooses his words, it’s normal for people to be allergic to flowers so he figures it’s safe to disclose.
“The smell is awfully strong in here, it’s messing with me and I’m not even allergic,” Percy empathizes, Leo learned a while back his lungs are sensitive to strong scents.
Leo hums in agreement and directs the conversation away from him. He stays for as long as he can tolerate before he starts feeling way too awful, gently squeezing Jason’s hand before heading towards his cabin alone. Since his cEDS is rather… demanding, he got to have an attached bathroom and his own kitchenette added to his room as opposed to having to share with the rest of his siblings. Which is perfect because when he gets back he beelines to the bathroom and promptly loses most of his dinner. Fan-fucking-tastic. And of course, he's still congested as shit, just as a cherry on top.
He looks at his hands that are totally covered in hives and pulls up the bottom of his shirt to see them covering his torso too, it feels like it’s cascading up to his neck and the rest of his arms too. Digging through the rolling cart next to his sink, he finds a bottle of aloe vera and takes off his shirt to put it on. It’s at that point that he sees his boyfriend appear in the doorway, knocking gently on the doorframe to let Leo know he’s there.
Jason peers into the toilet before kneeling down next to Leo, “Here, I can open that,” he points at the bottle of aloe vera and easily gets the lid off, “Take it you’re pretty queasy right now?”
Leo nods, “Maxed on Zofran,” he feels bad for taking Jason away from his friends.
“What’s this stuff?” asks Jason, looking at the unlabeled bottle.
“Aloe, for itching,” Leo patiently replies, then realizes he really can't risk continuing to talk, “Really nauseous, sorry.”
Jason nods empathetically and silently offers to help Leo with the aloe, which he agrees to. The idea of moving sort of feels horrible right now so the help is much appreciated. Leo really wishes he didn’t feel like Jason was always taking care of him, like all he does is take from him without anything to give in return. He really likes Jason, don’t get him wrong, it just doesn’t compute in his mind what he could possibly see in Leo to like him too. Yeah, he knows it’s the internalized ableism speaking; that doesn’t make it feel less true.
That line of self-deprecation is abruptly cut off when almost everything else he ate today makes a reappearance— completely undigested of course, his signature move. Leo knows he shouldn’t have tried to push it when it was already not a great day, but he wanted to see his friends and didn’t want to make Jason spend another meal inside because he can’t get his shit together for an hour. Yet here he is, paying the price, puking his guts out and having one hell of an allergic reaction.
Speaking of one hell of an allergic reaction, his throat is definitely starting to close up a little. Hopefully, being in his mega air-purified room and Benadryl will be enough to negate it before he has to use his Epi-Pen though. Leo hates having to use it because then he's supposed to go to the ER, or emergency page the infirmary in this case, and it becomes a whole thing where everybody freaks out. Meanwhile, he just wants to be home since there’s nothing they can do for him anyways. Luckily, his stomach calms down enough and he moves to lay down on the cool tile floor, reaching for the Benadryl on the med cart and pushing it through his feeding tube.
“I feel fucking awful,” Leo admits to Jason. He doesn’t usually put it that bluntly, but today was proving to be far worse than he thought it was.
“I know, my dear, I’m sorry,” Jason runs his fingers through Leo’s hair, “Do you wanna go lay in bed? Might be more comfortable and no offense, I don’t think you got much more to barf about.”
Leo chuckles, “Yeah, you’re right. Can you help me up?”
“Of course,” Jason helps him to bed, then disappears to the bathroom. He emerges wearing a different set of clothes, “I still had the pollen on my clothes, these are clean. Scooch over, I’ll stay.”
“Fuck, can you hand me a different pair of shorts?” Leo realizes he'd been too preoccupied to change his clothes or even wash off the pollen, “I have some baby wipes in the bathroom, could you bring them here too? Sorry, I should’ve remembered.”
“It’s okay, I don’t mind,” Jason says as he grabs a clean set of pajamas, returning with everything and turning around to give Leo privacy.
Leo changes as quickly as he can without tugging a shoulder out of its socket “I’m done, you can turn around,” he updates, wiping down his arms.
Jason climbs into the bed and grabs a few wipes for himself too, “I talked to Piper today, she mentioned you seemed iffy about visiting.”
Leo shrugs, “I’m worried I’m too sick for it. I know Piper’s fine with it, but I’m worried about her family.”
“From what she's told me, she's good about it because her family taught her to be,” Jason reassures him, “I can help you pack and fly Festus so you can just relax on the way there?”
“Festus is stubborn, plus I usually feel fine when I’m flying him. But packing would be nice. I’ve only really travelled for fun once before, no idea how to do it,” Leo smiles, feeling a flutter of excitement, “I’m getting tired, you can stay though. I like you here.”
He falls asleep with Jason’s arms wrapped around him, sleeping the most peacefully he has in a long, long while. No nightmares or anything, just uninterrupted sleep in the company of his boyfriend.
Over the next couple of weeks, they slowly start packing for the trip— it’s just 4 days long, but still. Leo has to pack a lot and he considers getting another IV line from Coach Hedge like he did for the Grand Canyon, but settles on deciding his GJ will suffice for the purpose. He’s also been super careful about everything, being the perfect cEDS patient to try to negate any flares. It’s been working for the most part, by the time the week of the trip swings around he’s feeling miles better than he has in a long while. Not perfect, but better than before. The trip is actually happening, he’s gonna get to see Piper.