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August 3rd
Jason was pretty sure he hadn’t moved in the past twelve hours. Part of him knew he was supposed to feel at least a little bad about that. Camp had just survived an apocalyptic battle, and they were still recovering, still cleaning up the mess. Jason had been stripped of his Praetorship, but he was still a leader. He was Pontifex Maximus, whatever that meant, and he was supposed to be helping, managing, guiding, making decisions. But he couldn’t. He couldn’t make any of his numb, useless limbs work. The battle had been won, but Jason’s world had fallen, and he didn’t know what to do about it.
Jason’s life had ground to a sudden, unexpected halt in the medic tent after the battle. He’d woken up, largely unharmed, and Nico and Hazel both had been standing at his bed with grim expressions. He hadn’t understood at first, and asked them where Leo was.
“I’m sorry, Jason,” Hazel had said, tears rolling steadily down her cheeks. “He’s gone.”
And so it came to be that Jason learned of Leo’s sacrifice. He’d taken Gaea into the sky, vaporized her with his own fiery magic. He’d defeated their greatest foe single-handedly and lost his life in the process. Leo Valdez had saved the world. He’d saved everyone, only he didn’t. He didn’t save himself, and he certainly didn’t save Jason.
Jason was beginning to wonder if he needed to force himself to eat again soon when Piper suddenly burst through the front door of the Zeus cabin, clutching something to her chest and breathless with joy. “Jason!”
Jason managed to sit up and squint at her. “Piper? What are you–”
“It’s Leo!” she shouted, shoving what looked like a scroll into Jason’s arms. “He’s alive somewhere, he just sent the Camp a video message. He made a special one for you, though.”
Jason’s breath clicked in his throat and he barely managed to croak, “He’s alive?”
Piper’s face melted into gentleness. “He is. And he’s gonna come home.” She leaned forward and brushed a kiss over Jason’s cheek. “Watch it. It will be good for you to see him again.” Then she left, quieter than she arrived, and Jason was left alone with the scroll.
His hands shook as he slowly unfurled it. After an agonizing second where Jason was convinced Piper had played an unfathomably cruel prank, it flickered to life and Jason laid eyes on his boyfriend for the first time in nearly thirty-six hours. This version of Leo was clearly filming himself somewhere in the belly of the Argo II, and he tapped the screen a few times.
“Is this thing on?” he muttered to himself, scrunching his nose as he squinted. “Like, I know I made this stupid thing so I should know if it’s on but–” He shook his head. “Whatever. I’m just gonna start talking and assume I know what I’m doing. Not like that’s ever led me astray.”
He took a deep breath, then he put on that one sweet smile that he only ever let Jason see when he was allowing himself to be extra sentimental. “Hi, Superman. First off, I need to apologize. I haven’t quite decided if I’m going to tell you about my plan yet or not. I hope I do because maybe it not being a surprise will make it suck less, but I know me and I highly doubt that’s going to happen. Either way, watching me blow myself up is going to suck. God, actually blowing myself up is going to suck. I don’t want to blow up, Jason.”
He shook his head again. “Sorry, focusing. Anyway, I have a plan and it does not involve staying exploded forever. In fact, if you’re watching this, it means my plan worked and I’m alive! Hooray! I have… no idea where I’m going to wind up when I’m done. There’s not really a precedent for using the Physician’s Cure like this. I’m guessing that if you’re watching this, though, I did not just reform over Camp. I’d really been hoping for it to be that simple, but you know how well simple and I get along.
“Regardless, I’m out here somewhere, and I’m going to get home to you as soon as possible. I’d make a Styx promise, but I’m a little worried about how that would actually go down for the both of us. I will send you another message when I figure out what the hell I’m doing.” Leo concluded. “Anyway, I miss you. Well, I don’t miss you because I’m literally about to go have dinner with you, but the future me that’s trying to cross the globe to find you already misses you. You know what I mean. I love you, and I can’t wait to see you. Bye, Jace!”
The screen went black, and Jason was left laying there, breathing hard. He suddenly realized he was smiling and the beating of his heart didn’t make him want to weep. He let his smile widen, and he pressed play on the message again.
August 17th
When Leo came into focus on the screen, he looked exhausted. Not necessarily physically tired, though he’d always been perpetually in need of a 48-hour nap, more the exhaustion of someone who had done the same thing over and over again and was beginning to be worn thin from it. There were deep bags under his eyes, and his mouth was tight and turned down at the corners.
“Hey, Jace,” he sighed, rubbing roughly at his cheek. “I hate to be the bearer of bad news but, uh, this ship has gone south. Not literally I mean – I’m on Festus and we’re not headed south – but things aren’t exactly going how I planned them.
“Okay, so to start, I wound up reforming in the Sea of Monsters, which is literally just the Bermuda Triangle, by the way,” he explained. “That’s actually really close to Florida, so I figured that this would be over and done, and I’d be home in, like, two weeks, tops. No idea why or how I got here, but it was fine. Unfortunately, Festus also kinda got blown up during my fireworks show, so he’s been requiring a lot of stops and repairs. I even had to make a barge out of tarps and PVC pipes because he needed an emergency tune-up on the open water. Annoying, because it feels like every time I make a repair, something that definitely wasn’t even close to breaking breaks, but it’s manageable. ETA jumped from two weeks to a month. No big deal.
“The problem is the Sea of Monsters itself. Just like everything else in this stupid bullshit mythological world of our, it’s not a physical place, exactly, it’s just the concept of Odysseus’s journey in the Odyssey manifested into something real. I don’t know. Annabeth explained it to me once, but it was stupid and hurt my brain so I quit listening. You can ask her for details. Long story short, you can’t just navigate it.
“But! Leo Valdez always has a plan!” He shifted around to show off a complicated-looking navigational device. “You remember when we hunted down those ugly little monkey Dwarves in Bologna? Well, I took this from them, apparently Odysseus himself made it, but it needed a crystal to work properly. Fortunately for me I actually had a crystal that resonates with Camp. I was using them to power those big viewer screens. So, thousands of years after his death, the one and only Odysseus is going to help me navigate the embodiment of the mess he made for himself and get home. Seems fitting, no?”
Leo sighed. He still looked tired, but there was a strange sense of peace in the way he held his shoulders now. “I’m gonna get home to you, Jason, I promise. Just so you know, I still love you, and I’m super looking forward to seeing your stupid, handsome face. I’ll send you another message when I can. Bye, Jace.”
October 5th
Leo was angry. Visibly fuming, in fact, and his hands shook so hard that it made the footage tremble with his fury. “Hiya, Superman,” he said with entirely false chipperness. “I have good news and bad news. Good news: I’ve figured out what’s been causing the delays. Bad news: It’s your darling daddy-o, who has a stick up his ass and is making my life difficult. Or maybe he’s making your life difficult? Hard to tell, but he’s enough of an ass that I assume he probably kicked his stupid little heels at the thought of a two for one deal.”
Above him, thunder rolled, loud and dangerous, but Leo just glared up at the sky. “I didn’t say your name! I could be talking about Jason’s sugar daddy, for all you know! Mind your business!”
Leo rolled his eyes and viciously muttered under her breath, “Bolt-happy nutcase.” Thunder rolled again, but Leo just ignored it. Instead, he turned his attention back to the screen. “Okay, so, mildly comprehensible explanation incoming:
“Turns out that the Physician's Cure is not an Olympus-approved form of health care. Apparently skipping out on death ‘makes a mockery of the balance between the mortal and divine’ or whatever. I didn’t think it was that big of a deal because apparently Ascephelus, or whatever his name is, was raising every dead Tom, Dick, and Harry he could find and I literally just did it on one dude, but Olympus did not agree. You’d think that Hades would have been the one most upset, but Zeus is all about balance and order and law and junk, so he’s the one who made a big stink over it. There was, apparently, this tribunal I wasn’t invited to, which is illegal I think, and they made a decision about my Fate. That was a capital F, in case you couldn’t hear it.”
Leo heaved a heavy sigh and looked down at the hands he now had folded in his lap. “Apparently, the normal punishment for what I did would be just a regular, good, old fashioned smiting. Thunder and lightning would rain down from the heavens and I would be reduced to atoms where I stood. That’s what happened to Ascephelus, at least. Fortunately for me, I very recently reduced myself to atoms all on my own in an effort to save the world. That got me a good chunk of brownie points, and Tía Callida is a great lawyer, so Zeus had to get creative. Which leads me to the really bad news.”
Leo looked up at the sky and blinked hard a few times as he took in a couple deep, soothing breaths. When he spoke his voice was thick. “So, you remember how I told you that Festus kept breaking down, no matter what I did to prevent it? And how it seemed super weird and random that I wound up in the Sea of Monsters? Well, turns out that neither of those things were an accident. They happened because I’ve been cursed to live out Odysseus’s story. Not beat for beat, according to Tía Callida, I just… have to fill his role? I don’t really get it.”
Leo stayed quiet for a few valiant seconds before his jaw wobbled dangerously and he doubled over to hide his face and his shoulders shook. “Fuck, Jace, this isn’t fair. I’m just some stupid kid who didn’t want to literally die to save the world and now I have to deal with this? What kind of sick game are they playing upstairs, and how do I opt out of being a gamepiece?”
Leo silently wept for a bit, form trembling under the weight of his grief and terror. Finally he looked up again, and his eyes were red and his cheeks were wet. “I don’t know what happens next, Superman. I just– Odysseus made it home, right? Then I will too. I’m gonna come home to you, and I’ll try not to make you wait ten whole years.” He sniffled hard, then scrubbed the tears off of his cheeks so he could force a brave smile. “I love you. Talk to you as soon as I can. Bye, Jace.”
December 29th
Leo was soaking wet. He looked a bit like a drowned rat, and he kept shaking water off his hands as he frantically tried to set up the video scroll. This was not an image that instilled confidence.
“Hi, Jace. Okay, lemme start by saying that I am so sorry,” he started. He shook his head to unstick some of his drenched curls from his forehead, but he didn’t focus on that. “It has been, like way too long since my last message and that one ended on a really bummer note, so I’m sorry if you spent the last however long thinking I had just, I dunno, given up. I didn’t. I’ll never give up, not on this, not on you. Even if it takes me forever, I’ll just be another living myth for the next hundred generations of demigods: Leo Valdez, that one crazy mechanic who will stop at nothing to get back to his boyfriend, even though said boyfriend has probably died of old age by now. Sorry, that got weirdly morbid out of nowhere. I just kinda start babbling when I get nervous and I’m weirdly, like, super nervous that you’re mad at me. Sorry. Focusing.”
Leo took in a deep breath through his nose and let it out in a sharp huff through his mouth. “Okay, so. Sorry again about the delay, this is literally the first time that I’ve been physically capable of sending you a message. Turns out that being aware of the Curse of Odysseus makes it work faster somehow. Maybe. Or it’s just that weird mental trick where if you learn a new word you suddenly hear it everywhere. Baader-Meinhof phenomena, I think? I don’t really know, I’m making this up. Point of the matter, for the past forty days and forty nights, it has been pouring down rain on me. I haven’t been able to find shelter anywhere, Festus and I can’t outrun it, it’s just been never-ending rain and I don’t know if you know this but these scrolls, which are a combination of paper and magic and electronics, do not like getting wet. So, like, I hope you’re not thinking about watching these in the shower or something, you pervert.”
Leo suddenly flushed, like he hadn’t been fully aware of the words coming out of his mouth until they echoed in his own ears, and he awkwardly cleared his throat. “Right, uh, moving on. So! Forty days and forty nights. I don’t know how much you know about Abrahamic tradition – ask Nico if you need a crash course on Catholic doctrine – but a flood that lasts exactly forty days and forty nights is, like, one of the most important myths. Noah is a foundational guy for Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, and everyone agrees that he was a pretty cool dude. I thought that it was super weird for me to suddenly be reenacting a Bible story so I looked it up on Festus and – wait, have I shown you the update I did on Festus? I did it right before the storm rolled in.”
The view suddenly spun until it was facing Festus’s neck. Leo dug his fingers around under the scales until there was a quiet click and a screen popped up. “Ta-da! It's a touchscreen!” To prove his point, he poked around and pulled up a few different windows in a demo before returning the view to his own grinning face. “It’s not, like, connected to the internet or anything because I’m not trying to get any more monsters trying to eat me. Instead, it runs on myth, which sounds super cool and is, in fact, demigod-friendly, but it means that it can only access mythical information. It’s helpful for searching up what kind of ugly monster you’re looking at, but I can’t watch YouTube.”
He shook his head again and flapped his hands through the air. “Anyway! Like I was saying, Abrahamic tradition isn’t the only one with a flood narrative, it’s one of the most common narratives across the globe. There’s even one from Greek mythology. Apparently, your dad was so mad about the whole Lycaon thing that in addition to turning him into the ugliest werewolf in ancient or modern media, he brought down a massive flood that wiped everything out. Prometheus – another very clever fire guy – helped his son Deucalion survive by riding it out in a chest, Noah-style. There’s a whole bunch of Native American ones, too, but nothing from the Cherokee tribe that I could find. Still, very neat in my book.
“Anyway, that’s kinda all I’ve got for today. The flood wasn’t actually that dangerous, it was just mind-numbingly wet,” Leo said with a shrug. He seemed much calmer now that he’d gotten his message out. “I still love you, even more than I did yesterday, somehow or another, and I promise I’m on my way home, rain or shine, quite literally. Bye, Jace.”
January 8th
Leo was stretched out on the back of Festus looking entirely calm for the first time in a very long time. He had the video scroll held up over his face so that it cast a heavy shadow in the otherwise blindingly brilliant sun. He gave the scroll a grin. “Hiya, Supes! Nothing major to report this time around. I just suddenly got super nervous that something would happen to keep me from sending you a message for a long time, so I wanted to go ahead and send you a really chill one to keep you company if that happens.”
He yawned and stretched like a cat and gave the scroll a devastatingly fond look. “So, I’ve been giving a lot of thought about what’s gonna happen when I come home. Like, I’m bound to get a hero’s welcome, right? You’ll make sure that happens? I kinda really want one. It’s not gonna make blowing myself up and getting lost in the Atlantic suck any less, but it would make me feel better. A bit. Maybe. I don’t know. What I do know is that even if the President of the United States and the Queen of England were there, I’d ignore them both. I’d ignore everyone and the crowd would part like the Red Sea – another Abrahamic reference, ask Nico – until I found myself standing there staring at you. You’d be speechless, of course, because you’re not exactly chatty even on the best of days, but I’d be talking a mile a minute. It’ll probably be super annoying for everyone who isn’t you, but you won’t mind because you’re a weirdo who likes when I talk like I’m about to lose permanent use of my mouth if I don’t hit some kind of quota. But this time it’ll be different, you’ll actually want me to quit talking for once, but instead of just telling me to shut up, you’ll kiss me. I’ve always kinda wanted someone to kiss me to shut me up. I am, like, built for that kinda thing. It’s kinda cringe, but also kinda romantic, you know?
“Speaking of cringe, I’m gonna show you something super embarrassing and you have to promise not to laugh. Now or when you see me again. I’ll know if you do.” He stopped talking and stuck his hand down his shirt, only to emerge with a sturdy metal pendant about the size of a deck of playing cards. He flipped a little hidden lever, and it popped open, revealing a candid shot of Jason. He was at the campfire, and Leo was tucked against his side, mostly out of frame, and offering him a blazing marshmallow in his bare hand. The Jason in the picture was laughing so hard he had a hand to his chest and his eyes were closed. At some point someone, presumably Leo, had gone in with a thin gold pen and carefully drawn a pair of glasses on Jason’s face.
“I didn’t have a photo from after you got your shiny new specs, but I didn’t want to forget how they looked, so I improvised,” Leo explained. “In the beginning, I just had this tucked into a little spot in Festus’s scales, but after the big storm, I was super worried about it getting wet, so I made this. I’m no silversmith or anything, but it works. Plus, when I wear it, it keeps you close to my heart, and that was so sappy I think you might actually have a heart attack and die when you hear me say it. I almost did.”
Leo sighed happily and closed his eyes. “Another sappy thing I want to do is buy you flowers. I bet no one’s ever gotten you flowers before. I for sure haven’t gotten any, other than when Piper picks weeds in the strawberry fields and sprinkles them on my head. That definitely doesn’t count. Nobody ever buys teenage guys flowers. But I can change that. I can buy flowers for one particular teenage guy, at least, but every small step counts. Would you like getting flowers? I bet you for sure would. Add that to my dramatic entrance. As soon as I hit New York, I’ll make a pit stop and I’ll get you the prettiest bouquet of daisies the grocery store has to offer. You strike me as the kind of guy who would like daisies.
“The real question is what are we gonna do after the dramatic reunion?” He let out a soft hum and let himself drift in thought. “I mean, obviously we’re gonna stay at Camp for a little while. I don’t want to just up and ditch them the moment I get back, you know? But I don’t think I want to stay at Camp forever. It’s always gonna be a home base, but I’d like to do something… normal. Find somewhere to be where we’re not expected to save the world. I know we talked about you actually getting to go to high school before, and I kinda told you not to bother, but what if we did that? It’s crazy, like beyond crazy, actually, but I think I wouldn’t hate it. I don’t think I’d hate anything, so long as I did it with you.”
Leo went totally silent for a while after that, letting the sound of his breathing be the only thing recorded, and then he smiled again. “Whatever we do, I look forward to doing it with you, even if it sucks. I love you forever, and I can’t wait to see you. Bye, Jace.”
February 15th
Leo was frantic. His curls were sticking up at odd angles from where he’d been yanking his fingers through it, and there was a wild gleam in his eye that didn’t have any right being there. He looked like a piece of fabric that had been stretched too thin and was beginning to fray at the edges.
“Hiya, Jace!” he started with a brightness so forced it sounded brittle. “So, it turns out that I’m not allowed to fucking talk anymore!
“Do you remember when there was that weird flood a couple months ago? And how I figured out that it was just a recreation of a Greek flood tale, not the Noah thing?” he asked before letting out a manic laugh. “Turns out, I was wrong! On both accounts! It wasn’t from the Greek or Abrahamic traditions! I was both! It was from all of them. Every last god damn flood myth in the existence of everything happened to me all at once.”
Leo let out an exhausted wheeze and doubled over on himself. “I’ve been so many god forsaken places, places my Greek ass does not belong. Like, first of all, surprise! The other pantheons exist! That’s neat, right? But it’s also kind of a secret. Like they kept the Greeks and Romans separated for centuries, and we’re basically the same group in slightly different fonts. We’re supposed to only be exposed to stuff that’s only Greek or Roman. You know what’s not Greek or Roman?”
Leo looked up, eyes bright and blazing. “Fucking Avalon! I had to go on a mission to save King Arthur! And then I went to the Garden of Eden to protect the Fruit of the Knowledge of Good and Evil – massive mouthful, by the way – from the literal devil, and then I went to the Land of Manu where I was hosted by and had to entertain Ra for three nights. Fun fact: he’s surprisingly amused by sleight of hand magic. Don’t know when you’re going to use that information, but there you go.”
Then he heaved a deep, exhausted sigh. “And then I wound up in Te Pō. It’s this realm of darkness and ancestors, but not quite like the Underworld. It’s not about death, not really. Te Pō is where life originated, and it’s all part of this cycle of light and darkness, death and life. Te Pō is the darkest part of the night, right before it tips towards the light of dawn. It’s beautiful, honestly. It’s still a little creepy because of all the dead people and realms of the dead are not for the living, but it was also amazing.
“But, it is very much not Greek,” he concluded. “Which is very unfortunate because Festus and I are both incredibly Greek. Going to all those different places was already making things screwy, but we may have kinda died again in Te Pō, so now that fancy little navigation system – also super-duper Greek, thank you Odysseus – is completely busted.
“I am…” Leo’s teeth clicked shut and he swallowed thickly a few times. “I’m so lost, Jason. I have no idea where I am or even what religion I’m in. I have no idea how I’m supposed to get home because the world is literally spinning under us. I’ve tried just flying straight north, but all the sudden we’re flying directly into the rising sun without ever changing course. I don’t know if I should be classified as MIA or AWOL or what, but I know that I am completely in over my head.”
Leo looked past the screen out at the horizon, a tight frown on his face. “I’m afraid this message is going to be a little short. I’ve been dealing with a lot the past month or so, and I think whatever is coming next is about to be here. I don’t know what it is, but it’s coming.”
Then Leo smiled properly for the first time. It was a small, tired smile, but it was genuine and not forced at all. “But no matter where I go, I know that two things are true: I love you, and I’m coming home, no matter what. See you in New York, wherever the hell that is. Bye, Jace.”
May 26th
The next time Leo came on screen, he was calmer than he’d been, probably ever in his life. He was clean, his curls bounced softly around his face, the bags under his eyes had lightened, and the hard slant of his mouth had softened slightly. He was wearing a set of dark, muted orange robes, held closed with his toolbelt, of course, and he sat in a modest room, with Festus nowhere in sight.
“Hi, Superman,” he started with a smile. “It’s been a while, and I’m sorry about that. I’d say it’s not my fault, but it actually is. Kinda. Here, lemme show you.” He stood with more grace than most would have thought possible and took the scroll over to a window. Outside was a small town full of people from all walks of life, smiling and nodding at each other as they passed, and each one of them was wearing a set of robes similar to Leo’s in various shades of brown and orange. The city didn’t look like anything all that special, but there was something to it, something magical that hummed just beneath the surface.
“Welcome, Jason, to the mythical city of Shambhala.”
Leo turned the screen back towards him and he grinned. “Yeah, I was a little surprised when I found out myself. I was kind of under the assumption that Shambhala is paradise, and when I think of paradise, I think of Elysium and its never-ending block parties or cities of gold and opulence where milk and honey flows. And that is paradise, but so is this. It’s nothing flashy or loud, but it’s perfect. It’s peace.
“Shambhala is populated by people from all over the world, of every age, who have found true enlightenment, and they come to live here for eternity. As you can imagine, it’s not a super populated place, but the real actual Budduh is here, so that’s super cool. I've met him, and he ’s not one of those little fat guy statues, he’s actually really fit and can swim a mile in twenty-two minutes. Like, I’m pretty sure he could give Percy a run for his money in a pool. Anyway. Shambhala’s not all glitter and gold because that’s not what enlightened people care about. Instead, it’s a place of safety, free of suffering. You go to sleep every night, knowing that you’ll wake up the next morning in your own bed, alive and cared for. There’s no pain, no hunger, no strife. Everything you need, you have, and it turns out that you don’t actually need all that much.”
Leo got quiet for a long time after that, and when he spoke again, his voice was soft and hesitant. “I… almost wasn’t able to leave. I mean, part of that is just how Shambhala works. To pass through the gates, you must reach Nirvanna. I never actually passed through those gates, meaning I’m the first ever person to reach Shambhala without putting in the work. Everyone tried to help me leave, but the only way out on purpose is through the gates, and that enlightened thing works in both directions. Some of the elders had a meeting and decided that while I probably won’t reach true Nirvanna literally ever, I might be able to reach enlightenment about my quest, and that might be enough to get me through. So, I’ve spent the past–” he paused and reached over to a cot to grab a notebook and flipped to the last page– “ninty-four days sitting in one spot and just meditating for hours on end, every day. I’m sure you can imagine how well that worked for my ADHD ass.
“But honestly, that wasn’t the real challenge,” Leo confessed. “The real challenge was myself. I didn’t want to leave for the longest time. Like I said, this place is perfect. It is really, really hard to want to go back to your war-raveged life when you have the option to just live in bliss and never fight again. Fortunately, either Shambhala has my back, or my indecision was causing strife because the place itself started reminding me why I wanted to go home. Take a look at this,” he said, opening up the front flap of his robe. On the edge was a very faded design, but it was unmistakably the silhouette of a pegasus surrounded by Ancient Greek. “Look familiar? The clothes here come from all over the world, just like the people. When fabric is discarded somewhere out in the world, it ends up here, right when someone needs it for something. I didn’t ask for this, in fact it took me three weeks to find it, but Shambhala knew I needed it, so it gave it to me. I’ve been carrying a piece of home over my heart since the day I got here without even realizing it.”
Then he chuckled softly. “The funnier, less subtle example was my guide. They saw me and paired me up with this tall blond guy with blue eyes, and, just in case I didn’t get the memo, his name was Jason. Like, I know the name Jason is super common, but come on. It was a little on the nose. Also, don’t worry, he’s not nearly as hot as you.”
Leo closed his eyes and took in a deep breath, and as he released it all the tension in his body drained away. “I hope this message gets to you. I’ve been sending them every week or so, but they keep bouncing back when they hit the gates. If you’re seeing this, I hope it means that I’m almost done. Something tells me that once I finally leave this place, I’ll be on the last leg of my journey home. And I will come home. My time here has taught me that nowhere, not even paradise, will ever truly match the place where you know you belong. I know now, beyond anything, that the only place I truly belong is by your side. Wherever that is, be it one of the Camps, some mortal high school, or just wandering the side of the highway on foot. Wherever you are, that’s my Shambhala. That’s my paradise.”
Leo’s eyes opened and they were practically molten with affection. “I love you now, and I’ll love you forever. See you soon, Jace.”
June 1st
One thing Jason had always hated about the Zeus cabin was that it was cold. Even in the middle of summer in a climate-controlled training camp, all the marble and gold just sapped the warmth straight out of the air and into unfeeling stone. So, naturally, Jason spent as little time as he could in there, which worked most of the day, but he was tragically unable to avoid it at night. He could try sleeping in other cabins, but that would likely either result in him being smited either by whatever god’s territory he was encroaching on, or by his own father who was insulted by the snub. He’d turned Jason’s sister into a tree as an act of kindness, he wasn’t sure what… gifts irritation would earn. Still though. Sometimes when he woke up to cold toes he wondered if it might be worth risking it.
One thing that always made Cabin One slightly more tolerable was coffee, so when Jason woke to the smell of his favorite vanilla latte, he heaved a heavy sigh of relief. It wasn’t quite enough to get him out of bed, though.
“Morning, Piper,” he mumbled, shoving his face back into his pillow. He knew she was supposed to be getting in early that day, but “early” for her usually meant about 9:45, not daybreak.
“Sorry to disappoint, Superman, but Pipes isn’t here. You’ll have to settle for me.”
Jason’s eyes flew wide open, and he shot straight up like an overwound jack in the box. “Leo?”
Leo – real, actual, physical Leo, not the one on a magical scroll – was kneeling at Jason’s bedside, coffee cup in hand. The early light of dawn was streaming through the windows, catching in his curls and giving him an ethereal halo, and he was wearing a set of orange robes. He was smiling wide enough to show off every last one of his crooked teeth, and his eyes were shimmering with unshed tears.
“Hi,” he said, sounding a bit sheepish. “Sorry I don’t actually have any flowers. I was genuinely planning on buying some, but I made landfall stupid early and all the grocery stores and florists were closed and I was too impatient to wait for one to open. I mean, like, there was a Wal-Mart that might have had flowers, but you deserve for your first bouquet to be something a little nicer than 4 AM Wal-Mart flowers. So, I decided to get you one of those dumb coffees you like because coffee shops are, like, designed to be open super early and there was this one you kept going to last summer, even though Chiron told you that coffee runs weren’t a valid use of the Camp vans and–”
Jason interrupted him by lunging out of bed and practically body slamming his boyfriend, knocking the coffee to the side. Then, for the first time in nearly a year, Jason kissed him, and it was perfect. The Zeus cabin was cold and he couldn’t see Leo clearly close up without his glasses and there was spilled vanilla latte soaking his pajama pants, but Leo was warm and alive and here in his arms, so nothing else mattered.
Eventually, Leo broke away with a besotted giggle. “You remembered.”
Jason let out his own breathy laugh as he pressed their foreheads together. “Yeah, I remember my boyfriend breaking pretty much every rule of myth to send me a video chat where he asked me to kiss him to shut him up.”
“I was right, it was super cringe,” Leo said before kissing Jason again. “But also kinda romantic, so it balances out.”
Jason let out a deep, heaving sigh and squeezed Leo that much closer to his chest. “You’re here,” he said, voice thick with the beginning of tears. “You’re really, really here. I’m not just dreaming this time.”
“I dreamed of this, too,” Leo confessed. “Almost every night. I was pretty sure I’d dreamt up everything, but I didn’t foresee how sticky the real deal would wind up being.” Jason laughed, and Leo’s shoulders slackened. “It’s been so long since I heard that. I missed it so much.”
“Well, lucky for you, the funniest guy in the world just made it back to Camp, so you’ll hear it plenty.” Leo’s cheeks got a bit warm and he pressed his face into Jason’s neck. Jason let him stay there for a moment before he stood, pulling Leo up with him. “Come on. You deserve a bed after all that.”
Leo stumbled after him, and soon they were a pile of tangled limbs on the bed. Jason held Leo close, and Leo clung like he was trying to find a place to live under Jason’s skin. It was damp and, as Leo pointed out, a bit sticky, but neither cared. It was perfect.
“Sometimes I was worried you wouldn’t want me when I came back,” Leo confessed into Jason’s shirt. He was trembling slightly. “Like, I know ten months isn’t as bad as ten years, but it’s pretty much forever at sixteen, you know? I would have understood if you didn’t want me.”
“Leo Valdez, you are the single most deranged creature on the planet,” Jason chided. “You went through an Odyssey, a literal Odyssey, just to get back to me. You sent me letters and signed off each and every one by telling me you love me. How stupid would I have to be to just give that up because I got impatient?”
“Well, you have had more head injuries than anyone I know. I’m not sure if you still have a brain or if it’s just tapioca pudding at this point.” Jason pinched his side, and Leo snickered. Then he sighed, playfulness melting away and pressed closer. “Thank you. Thank you for waiting. I know it was hard, but you did it anyway. Thank you.”
“Always,” Jason swore. “I’ll always be waiting if you’ll always come home.”
“What if I never leave home?” Leo proposed, laying his cheek on Jason’s chest. “Wherever you are is home now, so I’m thinking that I kinda just want to stay home forever.”
Jason felt his heart glow, and he tilted Leo’s face up to kiss him again. “Then we’ll just be a pair of homebodies for the rest of our lives.”
Leo looked like he was going to cry, but he was smiling wider than any sky that would ever try to hold him down. “Now that’s an adventure I can get behind.”