Disclaimer: I don't own the Percy Jackson or Heroes of Olympus series, RR does.
Suggested listening: Anberlin - Feel Good Drag (Although my original song fanstory is more smutty and involves only Jason, hehe. I have it described here :3: post / 73439697898 / zjem-and-the-storyline-by-my-crazy-brain-is-leo [delete the spaces].)
Like always, my Spanish exists thanks to a translator.
Feel Good Drag
He had a bad day. A really sucking one, to be honest.
First Festus' CPU suddenly breaking down, enabling his machine friend from doing anything reasonable. Leo still didn't know if he'd be able to fix that. Putting the dragon in vigil mode for the time being, however, he'd had nothing but bad scenarios in his head.
After that, like it hadn't been enough already, Buford running away because of some error or a short circuit, he had no idea what. He'd sent other automatons to search for him but he doubted if even Hephaestus could predict if they'd succeed.
Because of that and a quarrel with Nyssa via an Iris message on top of it all, he'd decided to visit his favorite praetor to calm himself down. She was always so collected, so professional. Yeah, he was sure that visit would help him.
She'd been there when he'd come back from Ogygia, completely broken after Calypso had dumped him for yet another lover. He hadn't known how to move on, how to forget. He hadn't known what his reason to live had been anymore. Until meeting her, he'd lived through day after day, without any specific purpose. Then it had been the mission to save her and, if she let him, always staying by her side. But without her? He had nothing and couldn't get used to that situation once again. Not when he'd finally found stability, only to lose it in nasty circumstances that he'd gladly not remember about.
And Reyna... She'd never been his friend, they could have barely been called acquaintances. When he'd stayed in Camp Jupiter, she would have been his supervisor. Precious Roman forges just couldn't have been given away to a fire-ruling Graecus without any control, right?
Being around her had been easy, he'd found out. She hadn't pitied him, like his friends had. She'd treated him like nothing had happened, as if nothing had changed. Because, really, their relationship had been so distant that it had actually been true. He'd still been the same Leo to her because she hadn't really known him before. He could have hidden the wounds inside so that she wouldn't have noticed. He'd quickly grown fond of that indifference. She'd been his source of oblivion.
When he'd found out she actually could have seen his tears, it had surprised him that it'd still felt good to be around her. She hadn't pressed him, hadn't tried to comfort him. She'd just been there if he'd have ever wanted to talk to her.
And he had. He'd told her, because it'd only felt right. She'd listened. She hadn't judged, hadn't changed her approach to him. It'd seemed that the only thing that mattered to her in her contacts with him had been her own experience, her own personal opinion. It hadn't mattered what he'd done to others or what the others had done to him.
He'd liked that. He'd slowly grown to enjoy their meetings even more than he'd already had.
I'd seemed she'd liked that meets too. She'd finally dropped the hostility she'd treated him with in the beginning. She'd been coming more often as the time had gone by. Eventually, she'd opened up too, just like he had. Step by step, fact after fact, she'd told him about everything that had scarred her.
He'd been shocked, at first. He hadn't even thought that her, the almighty, spotless praetor, could have hidden so much hurt inside of her.
But he hadn't judged, hadn't pitied. True, he'd wanted to comfort her, but he'd decided that he'd had to repay her with the same that had brought relief to his heart. It'd only been fair to do that.
That was what their relationship had been - a mutual support. No forced help or emotional BFF chatting full of drama. She'd been there for him, he'd been there for her. That had been enough.
However, it had only been natural that he'd started falling for her. A beautiful, tough girl completely out of his league - just Leo's type, right? But he felt it was different that time. Maybe it was because he'd noticed just how wondrous she'd been only after getting to know her first? He had no idea. He knew only one thing - he wanted that relationship to last and... Well, the rest was his diffident wishes.
Because maybe the way that she smiled, sometimes even laughed, at his most stupid jokes actually meant something? Maybe the fact that she preferred to drag him to the forges to just observe him working, instead of staying with everybody at the official reunion, was something to put hopes in? Maybe that time when she'd wanted for him just to hug her, because Aurum had been unwell and she hadn't known if she'd have lost yet another member of her small family, meant that she'd started considering him his family..?
Woah, Valdez, that was a bold thought. He shook his head, blushing. That was when he noticed he'd reached her villa.
He knocked on the door mindlessly, feeling his ears getting hot when he realized he'd said "I lo" in Morse code. He quickly lowered his hand and waited. He heard a loud thud inside, followed by a bunch of Latin and Spanish swear-words. Finally, the door opened, revealing an irritated (yet still beautiful) Reyna.
When she noticed that it was him who she was looking at, her eyes widened and she let out a tired sigh. A bad day too? "Come in" she said, turning around and climbing up the stairs. He closed the door and followed her to her office.
"What was that noise?" he tried to ask in a playful manner. She didn't even have time to answer as he let out a loud gasp at the sight of the room. Right, like her being in sweat-pants and a baggy T-shirt meant she hadn't been working. The desk was covered in official papers and a USA map.
"I missed a stair" she muttered. Reyna missing a stair? Something had to had happened. "Sit" she added louder, motioning for the couch on the right. He raised his eyebrow. She must had noticed her diplomatic mistake (not that he cared about them at all, it just wasn't her style), because she added "Please" after a moment of afterthought.
He made himself comfortable on the couch, petting Aurum and Argentum that had come to him and had put their heads on his lap. He could feel the anxiousness of the automatons. So Reyna had been annoyed for a while, huh?
They sat in silence as she resumed her work, scribbling something ferociously on a piece of paper and mumbling a bunch of words from which he could only understand stupid, Octavian and a few kills.
"What has that sweetie come up with now?" he asked carefully. She raised her head, her lips forming a tight line.
"Do you even care?" she growled out. "Just same old bullshit that has never got your attention for more than two hours" she muttered angrily, lowering her head. Hey, so now she was cross with him?! Like he'd done anything wrong-! Hey! Don't lose your temper, Valdez! You'd come to calm yourself down, not start an argument!
He swallowed. "Is there anything I could help you with..?" he asked, hoping to sound polite and not show that little part of him that felt offended. She looked at him with a killing intend.
"You could be quiet and stop being annoying, just this once" she answered viciously. His eyes narrowed. Easy, Valdez...
"I've had a shitty day too, you don't need to prove your bad mood to me" he whispered, slowly losing any hope for staying calm. Actually, he'd been starting to feel even more edgy than he'd felt earlier.
She cocked her head to the side a little. After a moment of their stares' fight, she snorted. "You really think your day was bad?" she said quietly in a dangerous voice. "Try being a Roman camp's praetor for a while. None of your problems match the shittiness of mine" she turned back to her work, not favoring him with any more gazes.
That was when he snapped.
True, he knew praetor's life wasn't the easiest. But that didn't mean them and their problems were on a higher level of importance than other people and their issues! His mood had been seriously fucked up and he hadn't come there to be made feel even worse. Not talking about being made feel inferior, the thing he hated most (maybe it was because when it came to that he couldn't defend himself too well).
He stood up. "I'm sorry, mi princesa, for destroying your chances for some drama, but I won't be it's victim" He approached the door and put his hand on it's knob.
"I'm not anybody's princess" her angry answer stopped him in his tracks. "Not yours, for sure" a note of sadness in her voice made him frown. So now they were up to some YOU'RE NO JASON issue, huh? Yeah, yeah, she still hadn't mentioned him but Leo felt it was that thing again. She called him her friend and had never tried to deny any suspicious actions that made Piper ask Is it still just friendship? (which annoyed him, of course they were just friends! For then, at least...). So sometimes he had that little hope in the corner of his mind, that maybe their relationship could bloom into something more in the future..? But every longing look she'd given Jason, every time she'd been upset after them running into one of his best friend and Piper's lovey-dovey sessions, had been making his hopes die slowly...
Jason, Jason, Jason.
"That's the only guy that will ever have her affection, huh?" he thought bitterly, feeling a painful pressure on his heart. He snorted, making her furrow her eyebrows in uncertainty.
"Say it" he whispered, smiling sadly and looking deep into her eyes. "Say I don't matter" The smile disappeared from his face.
"What..?" she only managed to croak out. He started shaking with a force of a noiseless laughter. "What's so funny?!" she snapped.
"Just say it!" he suddenly yelled. "I don't even matter 'cause I'm not him! I'm not Jason! Never was, never will be!" he was suddenly shouting his lungs out. "That's why you treat me like shit! That's why I'm not important!" he was panting heavily, his palms smoking. He clenched his fists tight to prevent the fire from raging. Yeah, she'd stabbed the remains of his heart with her damn noble Roman wonder, but that wasn't enough of a reason to lose control and hurt her. Never in a million years he wanted to hurt her.
He smirked bitterly at the sight of her confused frown. Go on, girl. Pretend you didn't know how much you were wounding his already barely patched soul.
"What are you talking about..?" she whispered hollowly, her eyes wide. Leo smirked gloomily and made a few steps towards her.
"I don't matter" he started calmly. "My problems don't matter" his voice was beginning to shake. "My fucking pains are shit to you" he didn't even notice that he was speaking louder and faster with every word. "All because I'm not Jason!" now he was shouting one more time. "I'm not the only guy you'll ever care about, I-" he stuttered a bit but finished, anger and sorrow erasing all that was left of his timidity in contacts with her "I'll never be the only one you'll ever be in love with!" he growled, feeling like crying and screaming and destroying everything, like embracing her and kissing her and whispering her name all over again. Reyna lowered her head, not answering with a single word. He smiled grievously. "See?" he whispered. "I'm ri-"
What cut off his speech was her quiet snort. A snort that sounded suspiciously like laughter. He frowned, falling completely silent. Even the sound of him breathing seemed to be too loud in that moment.
"So you're saying it's my fault..?" she lifted her head and he froze at the sight of tears threatening to escape her eye corners. She took a deep breath and lifted her chin proudly, looking at him with one of her famous intimidating glares. "You really think my so-called crush on Jason is the reason we... We're still just friends?" He hadn't said that but she knew. From the beginning of their friendship, she'd always been the one to guess his feelings correctly without fail. (The only exception seemed to be his unnoticed infatuation.) She smiled but there was no joy in that expression. "You're stupid..." she whispered, coming so close to him that he could faintly feel her breath on his face.
His frown deepened. "What..?" he asked coldly. Was she trying to bully him again? Had he found a great example of a domination freak to fall for?
"You're stupid" she repeated harshly, not even blinking when she was staring into his dark-chocolate orbs. "There could have been nothing because you still love her" she whispered and he made a confused face.
"What?" he mumbled. Reyna's eyes narrowed even more.
"Calypso" she growled. "All you could think of has been Calypso, you haven't even looked in my direction in that way!" he'd never thought he'd have heard her screaming, but it seemed she'd had enough too. "I sent countless fucking signals to you but NO!" she shouted. "All you'd do then would have been smiling and saying Thank you for staying with me, you're a great friend!" she chuckled humorlessly. "A friend, Valdez! So yeah, it's all your fault-!" her voice broke as she stared at him with fury in her beautiful onyx eyes.
Leo felt a warm flame explode in his chest at her avowal. Unlucky, it was quickly put off by the gall that had still been inside of him. He was angry, fucking furious. At Festus, Buford, Nyssa, Calypso, her new lover, his father, Hera, Jason, Reyna and himself. The entire universe seemed to be against him on that day. He grinned, not really smiling, it was more of just baring his teeth. "How would I know?! All I could hear from you was Jason, Jason, Jason! If there really ever were any signals, you had them hidden deep!" he shouted. She blinked a few times quickly, as if sending off tears.
"You really ARE fucking dumb!" she yelled in return. "I've just technically confessed to you and you do what?! You try to prove me I don't feel what I said I do!" she turned around, crossing her arms on her chest. "Calypso, there still isn't anything else in your head then that fucking slut!" she casted a glance over her shoulder at him and smirked bitterly. "Pathetic" she mumbled.
Next thing she knew, her back was painfully pressed to the bookcase on the side of the room that opposed the couch and his fingers were clutched unpleasantly on her shoulders. He was panting heavily, madness in his eyes and a single flame playing in his hair. "There is no Calypso anymore" he growled in a low voice which she'd never heard before. "All that's left is you and that pisses me off" he snorted and laughed quietly. "Because your rejection had hurt more than anyone else's, you know..?" he asked in a soft voice, a frown on his face, his fingers tracing the line of her jaw. He finally looked her in the eyes. He let go of her shoulder and leaned over her even closer, one of his hands on the bookcase at the side of her head. She moistened her lips, both of their hearts beginning to race. They both felt they were on verge of doing something that would change everything, and that that thing couldn't be undone. Reyna was the one to walk into the unknown first, her head high.
"Does this taste like rejection to you..?" she whispered before wrapping her hands on his neck and pulling him into a kiss. He felt as if he was going to explode into a human torch. Her lips, so soft, so gentle, kept touching his in such a way that he could almost pretend they never did. It felt so good, so right, as if he finally found the harbor he'd been looking for since Calypso had broken his heart... But then she halted suddenly, opening her half-lidded eyes and piercing his orbs with her hungry stare. "You're the one who can't move on" she said quietly with a note of pain in her voice so vivid that it caused him physical suffering to think he could be it's cause.
And then she attacked his mouth with hers and he forgot everything. He forgot about their argument, about his accusation (oh, how stupid he'd been to stick to his childish stubbornness), he even forgot that he was still alive. All he could feel, all there was in his head and heart, was her. Her sweet smell filling his nostrils and lungs. Her fingers in his locks, sending shivers down his spine which accumulated in his groin. Her heated lips and her cocoa-tasting tongue caressing his mouth in a way nobody had ever tried to, a way he hadn't even known was possible to achieve.
He half-consciously felt his body respond to the kiss, wrapping his arm around her waist and letting his lean fingers invade her neatly braided hair. He felt her body's pressure against him as he pushed her harder to the bookcase. She hissed, biting his lower lip and breaking the kiss.
"You've already hurt my feelings, now you want me to have real bruises?" she asked with a sad smile, pushing him off herself and walking to the window where she stood silent.
He tried to swallow but his mouth had suddenly gone too dry. "Reyna..." he started awkwardly. She shook her head.
"Just go, Leo" he could hear she'd started crying, even if she was trying to conceal it. He looked away and sighed heavily.
"Look" he croaked out. "I... I'm sorry..." he fell silent, coming close to her tense silhouette. He could see her frown reflecting in the window.
"For what..?" she asked in such a sad voice that his heart ached. She shuddered when he hesitantly put his arms around her. He knew she probably wouldn't like it, but couldn't help that his body was being bound to her, like a tiny piece of metal to a giant magnet. His nose found it's way to the crook of her neck. Her body was stiff, she still wasn't relaxed. He inhaled her scent and felt her breath hitch when he brushed her skin with the warm exhalation.
"For being a childish idiot who couldn't get your signals right and then argued with you about your feelings, not wanting to believe in your words" He furrowed his eyebrows. "Wow, that sounds even more stupid than it actually was..." he mumbled. His heart flipped when he heard a quiet snort escape her. Maybe there was a chance..? He turned her around slowly. Her sight was plastered on the ground but he could see tracks of the recent tears on her cheeks. He lifted her chin gently. She was still trying to avoid his gaze.
"Please, look at me, please..." he whispered, his voice shaky. "Reyna..." She did, slowly and hesitantly. In her eyes, he could see heart-break, sadness and sorrow that made him want to throw himself off Olympus, but he noticed a faint light of hope too. In that laid his chance. "Calypso..." She winced at the mention of the other's name. "She doesn't matter to me anymore" he whispered, unconsciously taking her smooth, soft hands in his, callused and rough (by then his palms had started to match those of his siblings). Reyna was looking at him as if all she wanted in that moment was to believe him. He sighed quietly. "I know you're proud and upstanding... That's a part of why you're so unbelievably gorgeous..." he smiled at her, feeling a small blush creeping onto his face. Reyna's expression was unreadable. "But..." He lowered his head, feeling his tongue twist and not let him finish. "Please, please give me a chance... Let me prove you..." He swallowed and glanced at her.
He froze when he heard her whisper "They all left... I was always alone, in a way... Why would you stay..?" Her eyes didn't leave his. He did something he probably shouldn't have done when a girl was checking whether to trust him or not in such a matter - he chuckled. She frowned.
"I'm sorry!" he breathed, terrified. "I just... I just thought your question was funny..." The wrinkle on her forehead deepened even more. His eyes widened. "I mean..! Uh..! What I wanted to say is that..!" He sighed, plastering his sight on their linked hands. "They've always left me too... Aren't we like... A perfect match..?" He snickered nervously.
He'd never felt such a panic as when they were standing there, noiseless, himself waiting for her judgment. He didn't think his heart could have taken yet another defeat but his hope had been slowly dying too. That girl was going to be the end of the Bad Boy Supreme, he felt.
If he had somehow lived through that heart-break, maybe he would have joined a monastery..?
And then something had changed. At first, he didn't know what that was but when the realization finally hit him, it did hard.
"R-reyna..?" he croaked out, feeling her forehead leaning on his. He froze when he saw another tear fall down her cheek. "Hey, reina... Why are you-?"
"I'll try" she interrupted his speech, her voice thick with tears. "I'll try to trust you. But I'm-" her breath hitched with a sob. "I'm just... So fucked up..! I'm sorry..." He embraced her gently and let her cry on his shoulder. He smiled, boundless happiness mixing with seriousness on his face.
"Remember, nothing is unfixable..." He stroked her hair tenderly. "And I'm supposed to be one of the best mechanics ever, 'kay..?" His smile widened at her quiet snort.
"Muy modesto, como siempre... [Very modest, as always...]" she whispered, lifting her head to look at him. He grinned.
"Lo sé, belleza [I know, beauty]" he answered, placing a soft kiss on her nose.
ZJeM, 12-16.02.14
From author:
This is what I do when I have two multichapters and a oneshot started and should start writing yet another oneshot - I write something entirely different. XD
The Thaluke references weren't put there on purpose. Probably... TEE HEE! XD (I mean that "all she wanted in that moment" part. ;))
What is it with me always making Rey so fucking soft? Damn.
THANKS FOR READING!