[AU, ooc] It didn't take much common sense to know Drew was trouble and typically Leo steered away from that sort of stuff, but when his best friend gets hurt, he's out for blood. Watch out, because the camp's hottest heart-breaker was about to get her own heart broken, and Leo would stop at nothing until it splintered into pieces . leo&calypso . multichap.
.
a/n: meep. okay, since this is AU [alternate universe] and ooc [out of character], do not do not do. not. lecture me about the characters being a bit different. I'm trying to keep a couple of them mostly in character but still, some things -and people- will be changed.
ps. this is all human so no gods nor godly powers in this one. And also, CHB is going to be called Camp Hartwood bc I can't really explain why it's called half blood without complications lol
pps. the title is the song "biography of heartbreak" by This Century
beta'd by the amazing haley (borderlies)
.
Biography of Heartbreak
chapter one
a summer of mistakes never learned from
.
Leo was never all that into relationships. He was quite used to the comfort of his gadgets and gizmos. Emotions were...unstable. He never really could control those —not the way he could control his machinery. Feelings could deteriorate the immune system, make people weaker and ultimately more vulnerable. They could send the human mind spinning in a million directions, make you concentrate on the wrong things, and even get you hurt. 'Lovesick' was truly an illness, in Leo's eyes.
So, you thought wiring and rewiring the circuit board for a whole camp's electricity, along with assembling a dozen new inventions a week, and repairing-well, everything, was complicated? No, love-gone-wrong could bring about much more disaster.
In fact, the only thing—or rather, person—Leo hated more than love, was the queen of hearts herself: Drew. She was only the average, run-of-the-mill teenage girl who had a knack for making lives miserable. First she contaminated boys [give or take the occasional girl] with her lovesickness, and then continued to stomp on their little hearts, and thus make their lives miserable. Oh, what a pity.
He could still remember the summer she arrived at camp. They were, what, six? Seven? Whatever age it may have been, they were young. Little kids with innocent minds full of sugar and hype. Drew had walked up to the Big House and stood quietly as her parents exchanged words with Mr. Brunner, the camp Activities Director. [This was ironic, seeing as he couldn't really move around much in that squeaky old wheelchair.] Tiny Drew was shown to her cabin, given a tour, and from then on, she was a regular camper. If only he could go back in time and scare her far, far away from this place; maybe then his life would be much more peaceful.
But for now, Leo was hunched over his desk with failed blueprints sprawled about the room and his tools messily piled up next to him. It was the night before camp started up again, and he had to concentrate all of his energy on working until the moment he had to leave. With a final wire hooked up, his invention buzzed to life. It was a toy helicopter rigged to fly according to vocal commands, and it was also able to extend its metal ligaments for any assistance needed. It wasn't his cleverest contraption, that's for certain, but it was all he could do for the time being.
.
"Leo!" His foster mother, June, called from the bottom of the staircase. "The bus is here!" Leo shot up in his chair abruptly, dried drool crusty in the corners of his mouth and on the desk where his head had been. Yawning and rubbing his eyes tiredly, he pushed himself out of the chair. Shoot! He mentally cursed himself, having forgotten to finish packing. After running his hands through his hair and shaking it wildly [considering that "combed"], he rushed to shove clothes into his suitcase at random, and he made sure that his tools and belt were included.
Soon enough, he was tumbling out the door and onto the bus and claiming his regular seat in the back right by his friends: Calypso, Piper, and Jason. Calypso braided her hair, offering Leo a small smile and a "Hey." He nodded in response, shuffling in his seat to properly accompany both him and his backpack [as his suitcase had been tossed in the bus storage compartment]. "How did the school year treat you guys?" Calypso continued. She had already tied off the braid and started twirling a stray lock of hair.
Jason's shoulders shrugged, and he let out a bored sigh. "I almost got a B in one class, but I managed to raise it to an A minus before my mom blew her top." Mrs. Grace was never the best mother on the planet, but she had high expectations of her son. Thalia, Jason's sister, dropped out of high school at sixteen, making it especially important to their mother that he was the big success of the family. And how could he not be? With his golden hair, muscular build, and shimmery blue eyes… Everyone always figured that if this whole 'gotta go to med-school' thing didn't pan out, becoming an Abercrombie model was always an option.
"Poor you," Leo joked. "Only an A! Whereas some of us are struggling to even get a C minus." He crossed his arms and smirked. "Piper."
Piper glared at him furiously, thwacking him with her pillow pet. At this, Leo chuckled and shoved away the panda-pillow. Although he would never admit it to anyone, he really missed them whilst away at school; Jason and Piper were latched to his side from the beginning. And unfortunately, they were the most consistent thing in his life besides camp itself. He was always being sent from foster house to foster house, a new "mom and dad" every few months. But yet, every year he would come back to this camp, and there they are.
They were what kept him sane, in an insane kind of way.
The bus pulled into a narrow drive, under an archway that read 'Camp Hartwood'. Soon, they were brushing past the pine trees lining the front of the camp and through the strawberry fields, until, finally, they arrived at the Big House. Forming a line, everyone arose from their seats and poured out of the bus, desperate to get to camp already, desperate to start their summer. And all that was standing in their way was being confined in that yellow bus.
Mr. Brunner was sitting in his wheelchair on the deck to greet newcomers; but, Jason, Piper, Calypso, and Leo just slipped past him. They simply needed to sign in, and they could go to their cabins to unpack.
.
Cabins were a randomly decided thing, but it always seemed that people in a certain cabin had similar interests. For example, cabin three had all of the swimmers and lifeguards, with the occasional cliché dude that was really into surfing and using words like 'righteous' and 'gnarly'. Leo's cabin, cabin nine, was very...high tech. Everyone in the cabin loved metalworking and building things just like he did, so they got along quite nicely. Each bunk was constructed of certain metals, decorated to the campers' accord. Also, along the wall behind each bunk, was a control panel which could be hand-wired to their liking so it could do whatever they wanted. This place was Leo's home.
"Hey." Leo nodded to a few of his friends as he came in and settled down in his bunk. He always preferred the bottom bunk—it made it easier to sneak off to his work station in the middle of the night while everyone was supposed to be sleeping. After unpacking, [a.k.a. shoving his things under his bed in a messy manner and tossing blankets onto his mattress] Leo slipped outside.
And then, there she was.
Drew in all of her...Drew-ness, flirting with a few guys but paying close attention to one in particular. Jason.
Leo wasn't having none of that.
Screw double negatives.
The curly haired boy then marched up to his best friend, yanking him away and giving him a look like 'WTF are you thinking, man?!' But it was no use; Jason just rolled his eyes and turned back to her. What's the worst that could happen? Leo imagined Jason brushing it off like it was nothing.
"And I said, 'Shut up you idiot, you're drunk!'"
Jason chuckled at his own lame story; Drew giggled a bit as well. But Leo saw right through it. Leo knew that she was only faking it, and surely Jason had to notice too. He just had to. Didn't he? Suddenly, Jason looped his arm around Drew's waist. "So, Leo, I should probably tell you that Drew and I have been dating for a while." The blonde exchanged a nervous glance with his—ew—girlfriend. Leo wanted to jump off a cliff right then and there. "You cool with that?"
After giving Drew a disgusted once-over, Leo turned to glare at Jason.
"No." He turned away without another word.
