When Percy first saw the hyperactive Latino, there was a niggling in his chest. Like eating something that you knew was expired, but not recalling it until later.
He couldn't place it at first. He didn't think much of it. How could he? Not when he was reuniting with Annabeth, not when he was remembering everything gradually, not when months and months of obscurity could be cleared away by someone of his past.
Not when the beginning of a long-awaited battle was brushing at the brink of his mind, an annoying itch that just wouldn't go away.
Percy wanted to enjoy the few moments he was going to have because, as much experience that was under his belt, he was still not ready for another full-out war. Not mentally, anyways.
He tried to forestall it by ambling around leisurely, making small talk with his Roman friends, and then the strangers that he was going to travel with for who knows how long.
However, the Fates hated him, and life tripped him, and the gods probably snickered at his every thought, because next thing Percy knew, he was dancing around fireballs and trying to defend his new quest mates, and sprinting up the dragon-headed ship like he was running from monsters rather than acquaintances.
And yeah, he was angry. Sue him. Couldn't Leo have waited? No, couldn't the whole entire universe just wait one freaking moment and allow Percy to breathe?
When he was finally alone, sitting cross-legged on his assigned bed in his assigned room, head leaned on the wall, and trying to soothe the angry whispers in his head, he suddenly felt odd. Like deja vu. Like expired food.
A voice in his head that whispered, You are on a boat on a very dangerous quest with a son of Hephaestus and it suddenly seemed so . . . hilariously cruel, that Percy just . . . cannot look at Leo.
Because they look nothing alike, but Percy could almost see him in the way Leo snarks at Jason and Piper, in the nimble fingers skimming over screws and bolts and sometimes even twist-ties, in the look submerged inside the fire-wielder's eyes when he runs his soot-covered hand over the dragon-and oh, the dragon.
Like another bitter reminder of what Percy had lost and what he had found, only to realize that it was just a mirage, made to slip from his grasp and mock at his mind.
So Percy talked to the rest of the crew. He talked, and he laughed, and he shared inside jokes with the others. But never approached Leo.
With Leo, he'd shuffle pass (conversations about girls and swords, casual meet-ups and dark-skinned high-fives, a memory of a distant past swallowed up on another ship) andkeep his eyes fixated on the planks of the ship, so carefully melded together that it almost didn't look like wood. Or maybe it wasn't.
In a way, they were both dissembling like that. Mischievous. So skilled and deft with their hands and a couple of miscellaneous trinkets that it made Percy want to bang his head on the door.
It helped that the scrawny boy didn't seem to want much to do with Percy, either, though Percy supposed that could be blamed on the fact that he had basically stabbed Leo with his glare the first day, saturated with all the pent-up frustration and anger he had felt for so long.
(And even though Percy also turned away, he always felt guilty when Leo would flinch and scuttle out the room like his life depended on it whenever Percy loitered near.)
The rebirth didn't match up with Leo's age, but it still crosses Percy's mind, anyways. That and the fact that the burly mechanic was probably happily ghosting around with the slender, black-haired, blue-eyed daughter of Aphrodite a thousand feet under the swiftly-gliding ship in the sky.
The sea was his domain, but Percy became nauseous on it. They sky was a difference he welcomed despite the stricter dangers to him.
Annabeth caught on to his actions sooner than he wanted her to. She'd glance at him from across the table with that look and Percy would peek down and promise himself that he would speak with Leo.
One day.
Someday.
And he does.
Just that it took both of them almost dying, and for Leo to be lying on the makeshift infirmary, unconscious, curly hair plastered onto his face. He spoke, yes, but it was more like a monologue. During his speech, Percy opened the thing he wasn't able to. Bowed down to the thoughts he'd been desperately blocking, authorized it to seep in.
To not deny it.
It almost felt like life was shoving it in his face, cackling, Look, look what you've done. Letting him be injured. Again? Again?
It almost felt like a atonement, but an atonement washed in repentance and dressed like a curse. Staring down at the son of Hephaestus, pale, fingers still for once, Percy's chest shook in the way he first met the boy.
One part wanted to step up. To protect him as if somehow by doing that, it would close the wound in his mind. Another wanted to back up. To circumscribe interaction to the point that he wouldn't feel remorse if anything were to happen, to be able to convince himself that I wasn't involved so I wasn't responsible-
and it's harsh, Percy knew. It was harsh to base one person by another person just because they acted alike. Kind of walked alike. And the words shaded into different parts that, if juxtaposed, would almost sound like the same person save for a few tweaks.
Or perhaps he was paranoid. Because in the situation he was in, it seemed that Leo's death was inevitable.
Just like last time.
Just like last time, except with a dark-skinned, burly mechanic who towered over even some of the Ares kids but was almost graceful with a hammer and a chunk of metal in his hands. Just like last time, except with another son of Hephaestus, one that Percy had allowed himself to laugh with, to hang out with outside the demigod life, to be . . . close with.
And Percy didn't want to go through it again. Not when the gnawing guilt fresh from the previous war was still throbbing, not when another possible casualty could be so much like the former.
Because they were so similar in so many ways.
Because Leo resembled Beckendorf more than Percy could handle.
So I apologize for all da grammar mistakes and stuff. And I always felt as if Leo and Percy weren't that close, even before the Calypso incident so this is me trying to explain it? Or my memory's shoddy and this is just another crapped up story.