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Leo Valdez was a lot of things. A mechanical genius. A borderline menace with a blowtorch. The funniest guy in any room, depending on who you asked. And right now, he was pacing in front of her cabin at Camp Half-Blood, muttering something about "casual friend outings" and "not blowing it."
She opened the door just as he tried to knock. He nearly punched her in the face.
“Oh gods—!” he yelped, yanking his hand back like it had been zapped. “I wasn’t—uh—I was gonna knock, I swear.”
She raised an eyebrow. “Leo, are you nervous?”
“What? No. I’m just… thinking. Strategizing. Calculating the optimal route for maximum fun and minimum food poisoning.”
She crossed her arms, amused. “Right. So... the carnival?”
He perked up. “Yes! Exactly! A carnival. Just two friends, out on the town. Laughing. Maybe throwing up together on a spinning ride. Totally platonic stuff.”
Her stomach did a little flip, and not because of the funnel cake she hadn’t eaten yet.
Leo grinned that signature grin of his—the one that could light a match if it had teeth—and held out his hand. “Shall we?”
The carnival had set up shop a few miles outside camp, just past the tree line. Campers weren’t usually allowed out without a quest or a prophecy, but Chiron had made an exception for this one night. Something about morale, and gods knew Camp Half-Blood could use some.
Bright lights buzzed overhead as the two of them passed under the entrance banner. There were booths with oversized stuffed animals, fried food on sticks, suspiciously unstable-looking rides, and music loud enough to drown out any rational thought.
Leo looked like a kid in a toy store—if the toy store also had the potential to kill you via rusty metal.
“All right,” she said, nudging him with her shoulder. “Where to, O Captain?”
He rubbed his hands together. “Let’s start easy. Ring toss? Then maybe win you a deformed stuffed platypus?”
“Aw, you do know my love language.”
Twenty minutes later, Leo was dramatically mourning his third straight ring toss failure.
“This game is rigged,” he said, squinting suspiciously at the bottles. “There’s definitely some godly interference happening here. Maybe Nemesis. She hates me.”
“You hate losing,” she countered, smug as she held up her newly-won prize—a floppy blue frog she’d earned without pyrokinesis.
Leo pouted. “You’re enjoying this too much.”
“Definitely.”
He rolled his eyes but laughed, brushing a curl from his forehead. “Fine. Time to redeem my honor. Let’s try the Cyclone.”
She followed his gaze to a towering, spinning monstrosity of a ride. It whipped around in nauseating spirals, lights flashing, the screams of its victims echoing into the night.
She blinked. “You sure?”
He straightened. “Absolutely. I fear no ride.”
He feared that ride.
They were barely thirty seconds in before Leo was white-knuckling the safety bar, eyes wide, hair blown straight up by sheer velocity.
“THIS WAS A MISTAKE!” he yelled over the wind.
She laughed so hard she nearly choked on air. “YOU PICKED THIS!”
“I WAS SHOWING OFF!”
When the ride finally ground to a halt, Leo stumbled off like a baby deer. She caught him before he face-planted into a popcorn cart.
He groaned. “If I die, tell Festus he was my favorite.”
She smirked. “I think Festus already knows. But I’ll let him know his title is secure.”
He gave her a weak glare. “You’re never gonna let this go, are you?”
“Not a chance.”
After that, they kept to gentler activities. Leo won her a caramel apple at a darts game (which he definitely cheated at—she saw the tiny spark leave his fingertips and hit the balloon). They tried their luck at a haunted house, where Leo insisted he wasn’t scared but managed to scream louder than she did when a guy with a fake axe jumped out.
The night blurred in laughter, sugar highs, and the kind of warm moments that sneak up on you when you're trying too hard not to stare too long.
He’d reach for her hand to guide her through a crowd, then hold on longer than necessary.
She’d catch him watching her with a smile he quickly hid behind another dumb joke.
And yet, nothing was said.
Not yet.
As the night waned, they found themselves at the base of the Ferris wheel.
Leo paused, looking up. The lights bathed his face in gold and blue.
“Last ride of the night?” he asked casually, but his voice cracked a little on night.
She shrugged, heart hammering. “Sure. Unless you’re too scared.”
He gasped dramatically. “Excuse you. I only fear emotionally vulnerable conversations and taxes.”
She snorted. “So brave.”
The Ferris wheel groaned as it lifted their cart into the sky. Below, the carnival glittered like a constellation of chaos. Above, stars blinked in a navy-blue sky, half-hidden behind wispy clouds.
The cart swayed slightly in the breeze. She was hyper-aware of Leo’s leg pressed against hers, his hands fidgeting in his lap, his eyes fixed on anything but her.
He spoke first.
“I didn’t bring you here just for fun.”
She turned to him. “No?”
“I mean, yeah, fun too. But also…” He trailed off, tapping his fingers against the side of the cart.
She waited.
“I’ve liked you. For a while. Like, more than a ‘you’re-cool-let’s-hang’ way. In a ‘I think about you all the time and try not to be a total disaster around you’ way.”
She stared, her breath catching.
Leo kept going, rushing now like he was afraid the ride might crash before he got it all out.
“And I didn’t wanna mess anything up, so I made it a joke, because that’s what I do. But I had to say something. Even if it’s just… up here. Just this once.”
The wheel stopped. They were at the top.
The wind tugged at her jacket.
Leo finally looked at her. His eyes—usually mischievous—were wide and open, vulnerable in a way that made her chest ache.
“I like you too,” she whispered.
Silence.
Then he laughed—soft and disbelieving. “You do?”
She leaned closer. “I have for a long time, Leo.”
For once, Leo Valdez was speechless.
So she kissed him.
It was sweet and a little hesitant, but warm—like every late-night campfire and all the things they hadn’t dared to say until now. His hands found hers, and when they pulled back, he was beaming like he’d built the world’s most ridiculous machine and somehow, it worked.
The Ferris wheel creaked back to life, lowering them slowly into a carnival that suddenly looked even brighter than before.
Leo exhaled. “So... wanna go on that spinning ride again?”
She grinned. “Not if you plan to scream louder than me again.”
“I let you win that one,” he said, trying to sound indignant.
“Sure you did, Valdez.”
And she held his hand all the way down.