A/N: I finished the entire Heroes of Olympus series within a week and a half. Who's a bad bitch? Me. And Piper...and Annabeth...aND HAZEL GOT DAMN MY BABY GIRL MY FUCKING CINNAMON APPLE MY LIL GIRL THAT SACRIFICED HER LIFE FOR THE WORLD AND HER MOTHER'S PAIN FOR HEAVEN THERE IS NO CHARACTER THAT IS AS SELFLESS AND KIND AND BEAUTIFUL I LOVE HAZEL SO MUCH I CRIED READING HER PARTS.

I'm attached to every single one of the seven, as well as Reyna and Nico, in a very painful way. Like. All these hurt, lonely kids. I want to make them all soup.

I'm not too fond of the title but meh, I needed something. Leyna has to be my second favorite ship out of this entire series, behind Percico and Percabeth (which are tied for first). The parallels between Reyna and Leo are very strange within the series. I don't think they ever meet but they are so similar. The abject loneliness and guilt that they constantly harbor(ed), hiding their true feelings behind completely opposite masks, willing to make the biggest sacrifices for causes they aren't quite sure in out of loyalty. Amazing fucking characters.

The weird part is that I think they have very similar fundamentals with heavily contrasting personality and experiences. It's fun to play with.

Plus the fanart is cute as fuck.

WARNING: SEX. PRETTY DETAILED. LET ME GET ONE REVIEW COMPLAINING ABOUT THE CONTENT. I'LL SMACK YOU.

Lots of Spanish in this...so let me apologize to all the Spanish speakers who are gonna laugh at me for my mistakes...sorry y'all...and also I didn't proofread this well. Hehe.

(But really message me if you want to beta this. I'd write you a Leyna fic in exchange.)

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She's nineteen, so the legionnaires decide to throw her an extravagant party with good food and better alcohol that burned the back of her throat as it went down.

There is loud music and loud laughter and loud games being played made her feel deliriously happy. They move from couch to couch to talk and flirt. She attempts to catch up with it all the congratulations and well wishes. More than a few firecrackers explode, and she's almost certain that the Fifth Cohort is to blame.

The chaos makes her blood sing.

Reyna's dressed in a festive toga picta, doused a brilliant shade of blood red that glowed against her shiny Imperial gold armor. Her hair's been pulled up into a messy bun at the top of her head, ruby-jeweled pins, courtesy of Hylla, sunken into the glossy black locks. The catastrophe that is her face is not her doing. Piper slathered on strange different things onto her face - "If I find more than a coat of foundation on my face, I'm banning you and your boyfriend from my city." - "Oh, come on. You'd look great in red lipstick." - for the night.

Reyna lasts a good hour and a half before she washes most of it from her face in a nearby girl's restroom. Only the mascara and lipstick remained. She decided that she didn't mind red lipstick much at all.

Everyone managed to keep Dakota away from the alcohol and on his kool aid. Reyna greatly appreciated the joint effort.

Currently, she's wrapped herself around Nico's heavy leather aviator jacket as a blanket and leaning against the boy himself. Her eyes manage to close every few moments, but flutter back open when she hears a particularly loud noise. Left out in the cool night air and the antics of the party, it is hard to find rest with the meager amount of drinks she'd consumed. But still, she is tired, and her friend is a very patient boy.

Piper and Jason sat to their right, snuggling against the very end of the couch and murmuring quiet words to each other. Hazel to their left, much closer to them, entertaining her brother's complaints. Nico nursed a glass of something strong crinkled his nose into the crowd distastefully.

Somethings never change, Reyna thought smugly to herself.

"It gets worse every year," the son of Hades complained, his eyes roving around the dinning area.

"Better," Reyna corrected defensively. Her Romans new how to celebrate, and so did she.

"Way better," Hazel added, giving her brother a pointed look. "Everyone loves a good Roman party. You just need to learn to love it."

Nico snorted, probably rolling his eyes. "As if I'd want to. All these people crowded together is making me nauseous," he says. She isn't sure how sarcastic he's being with that statement. "And your boyfriend's coming this way."

Reyna's eyes snap open completely, completely shocked, then angry at herself. Why did she have to know exactly who he was talking about?

Leo Valdez was positively skipping his way over in the direction of their table with a bowl of candy in one hand and a bottle of vodka in the other. Her stomach dropped as her eyes followed the length of him, trying to find any change within him in the last three months. She found none. He wore a thin white t shirt that exposed the sharp chords of muscle along his collar bones and black jeans. Stubbornly, Reyna went back to leaning against Nico, curling up further in her makeshift blanket when she saw him caught up in a group of Vulcan kids and join in their conversation animatedly.

A girl from the third cohort with blonde hair and ocean blue eyes pulls him towards their low slung couch, her arm wrapped around his upper bicep. The praetor's lip curls in subtle distaste.

"By the gods, don't insult me like that," Reyna spat. The urge to press her face into Nico's shoulder and hide herself from the display was stronger than it should have been. "Why is he here? He's not supposed to be in New Rome until December."

"For you, obviously." A smirk pulled at Nico's lips.

"Hmm. Looks like your boyfriend needs you, Nico," Hazel said, pointing over her shoulder towards a gesturing Will Solace, bright-eyed and floppy-haired.

The Italian turned an interesting shade of red as Reyna sat up and he began to stand. She handed him his aviator jacket, and he took it, slipping it over his shoulders. "Not so damn loudly," he muttered, and something else that sounded like Solace wishes before leaving behind the seats. Jason and Piper left next, before sharing a telling look that she did not miss, saying subtle goodbyes. They passed Leo, greeting him for a moment before disappearing into the crowd of people.

The son of Hephaestus was approaching just as Hazel was standing, taking up the space beside her with all the energy and presence that his skinny frame allowed.

"Happy Birthday," she said. "See you tomorrow morning."

And then, she too was gone.

In that moment, watching the light dance in her gold eyes, she swore a painful revenge on them. Especially Hazel. That girl would be running errands for the next two weeks - hot chocolate and jelly bean runs from sun up to sun down. With ankle weights.

Were they all in cahoots with each other? Was this staged? As far as she knew, Leo Valdez was not supposed to be anywhere near this side of the United States until the beginning of winter to start New Rome's new project - they always submitted and approved requests for large architectural or militial endeavors in the Fall to begin construction in late November. He'd wrapped up his work here with the New Rome engineers at the end of May. He wasn't due back here for a while time.

Now, looking at his entire six feet stretched out before her, she decided that any other surprise wouldn't have been as pleasing.

Leo looked entirely too amused with himself as he appraised her. She settled a scowl onto her face, because no, she did not like surprises. Especially this insane, fire-throwing idiot.

"Well damn. I almost didn't recognize you," he teased. His brow quirked in question, a shit eating grin still pulling at his lips. She hated it. "Since when does my warrior queen wear makeup?"

"You really want to keep talking, or should I get straight to knocking the shit out of you?" Reyna groaned, sighing deeply and settling herself fully into the couch. She crossed her legs and tilted her head at him, a very dangerous look on her face that said tread carefully all over it.

"Oh, come on! I haven't seen you for months, and this is how you greet me? " Leo reproached, grinning wolfishly. Reina sighed deeply as he took the seat that Nico occupied before leaning forward to deposit the alcohol and jelly beans onto the table before them, right next to her emptied wine glass. "I've come bearing gifts, love."

"What the hell did I tell you about pet names, Leo?" she deadpanned, shifting away from him as quickly as she could. There's nothing cutesy and soft hearted about the names he calls her now, because she's quite sure she'd beaten the disrespect out of him long ago. Still, she's not letting him aggravate her to death on her own birthday. "Do I need to break your wrist again?"

Leo gave a high pitched chuckle, the sound so elfish and uniquely him, she went still for a moment. It had been too long since she'd heard him laugh. He placed a warm hand on top of her thigh to keep her from moving farther away. The urge to slap it away or stab it with the dagger strapped to her side never comes, agitating her slightly.

Reyna scowled, looking him in the eye as gave her his softest, most vulnerable smile.

"Feliz cumpleaños, mi reina (happy birthday, my queen)," he drawled in Spanish.

Her stomach dropped somewhere between her toes as the noise of the party drowned out. He looked good;his curly hair was wild and falling into his chocolate eyes. His dark, grease-free clothes made his skin look like warm coffee and milk. Long and lean and exuding warmth through every cell of his body, Reyna could have sat there until the sun rose and drowned in him.

Leo's hand suddenly felt hot against her clothes, the heat sinking into her skin. She threaded her fingers through his for a moment and squeezed reassuringly before letting go.

"Gracias, Leo," Reina said, feeling ridiculously vulnerable. Her eyes fell towards her sandal-clad feet, but still, they lingered on the bowl of candy before her. "¿Me has traído caramelos de goma (You brought me candy)?"

"Sí. Peace offering."

A grin fought its way onto her mouth - he makes fun of her candy obsession every chance he gets, and now he's enabling it with her favorite treat?

Hypocrite, she thought irately to herself.

"Lo que un niño inteligente (what a smart boy)," she muttered, giving him a particularly shrewd look. He merely gave her a shrug.

"Always am, mi reina."

They don't speak a word of English after that - the conversation flows from petty arguments to random commentary on the people in the surrounding area. He seems to notice her wish to flex her memory muscles with the language, so he obliges her, filling in words where she cannot - he's damn near fluent and it does more than just ruffle her feathers at how much better he is than her. They speak about what they've been up to, projects and quests and new demigods.

Several times, he comments on the happy smile that keeps slipping onto her face that looked foreign on her perpetually stoic features. She rapped her knuckles against his temple several times in reprimand.

"¿Dónde está mi regalado, idiota (Where is my present, idiot)?" Reyna demanded, bringing up her fist again in another strike.

Leo laughed and attempted to dodge away from it, grabbing onto her wrist as tightly as he could. It wasn't much - they both knew she was stronger than him. "Yo soy su regalado ( i am your present)! I wasn't supposed to even in Camp Jupiter for a while, y'know. So...here I am. De nada."

"Eh. No es suficiente (Not good enough)."

"¿No es suficiente (Not good enough)!? Soy un regalo de los dioses (I'm a gift from the gods)!"

It felt good, almost too good, flexing her tongue amidst the thick vowels and slick consonants of her native language. It feels like coming home from a long, boring journey.

Leo Valdez brought a little piece of her soul back to her, memories soft enough to be reminisce on without a barrier of pain, and laid them back into her life. Speaking this language is so much apart of her, as much as being New Rome's praetor, being Puerto Rican, and being her mother's daughter. She would think in English and form battle strategies in Latin, but she always feels in Spanish. Its how she recognizes emotions and sorts out her feelings.

The words for her melancholy, her fury, her loneliness, and her pride were all in Spanish. He's gives her back a piece of her home this way.

It's hard to explain to most people, so she doesn't try; how do you return the stars to someone's sky? All she knows is that she's more grateful than she ever wants him to know.

Leo's voice sounds reinvented in Spanish as he rolled his r's to call her Reina and slipped into English pronunciations accidentally when he got too excited. Sometimes, his Mexican Spanish and her Puerto Rican Spanish don't make sense to each other, with varying pronunciations and different words, so they have to repeat themselves several times. There are more than a few fights involving "No, you're saying it wrong."

This is a side of him that belongs to her.

He managed to scoot closer to her after whining a few times at the distance between them. It's hard to blame him on most days. The boy is a natural cuddler, constantly in someone's personal space. If his hugs weren't so ridiculously comfortable, she wouldn't put up with it.

Reyna pulled the bowl of jelly beans into her lap as she unwrapped her cape from around her shoulders. It pooled around hips, folding together with the rich red fabric of her toga. Their shoulders end up pressed together, the bowl of jelly balancing between their thighs. She begrudgingly allowed it. Leo nursed the bottle of alcohol, and surprisingly, he doesn't look intoxicated in the slightest. It intrigued her for a moment.

"How are you still sober?" Reyna demanded in English, interrupting his long-winded lecture on his latest inventive endeavor. She pulls the vodka from his hands, swishing the nearly-empty contents inside. "Did you drink all this by yourself?"

He grinned cheekily. "'Course. It's damn hard to get me plastered, beautiful," Leo said.

"That's relaxing to know. A drunk Leo Valdez is undoubtedly a difficult one." She drains the rest of the contents without wincing, then shoves a handful of jelly beans into her mouth. She's very, very sober now, and is eager to get her buzz back. "And don't call me that, either."

"Isn't there at least one name you like?"

"The one on my birth certificate, idiota."

"C'mon. You have to like one," Leo insisted, taking the empty bottle from her hands. He places it on the table carefully, not turning his head to look away from her once. He wiggled his brows suggestively. "Babe? Hot stuff? Sweetness? Babe? I have a thing for babe."

Reyna threw a handful of jelly beans in his face.

The son of Hephaestus sputtered, snorting out a jelly bean from his nose and choke-laughing. "Okay, okay! My bad!" he said, raising his hands in surrender. "I haven't tried any in Spanish, mi reina. Will you throw more candy up my nose if I try?"

"Pet names sound repulsive in all languages," Reyna spat, shoving jelly beans into her mouth in a stress-filled rage. She really would have to end up breaking his wrist again.

Leo rolled his eyes, instantly unamused. "Okay wow. What sounds repulsive in Spanish?" he challenged. He raised a brow. "Corazón? Cariño? Dulzura?"

Reyna swallowed thickly as she leaned away from him, as if the words physically offended her. Her skin felt too warm right now. The names seemed to have a completely opposite affect in Spanish...mostly because they didn't translate to babe. "Alright, you little Mexicano diablo," she snapped. "Cut it out."

"Mi dulce. Mi vida. Mi amor," he continued, looking more serious. The question left his words, and she knew he was addressing her. Leo leaned in as she leaned away, his hand returning to her thigh. Reyna did not stop him - did not want to stop him. Her body felt warm all over, as if he were a snake chamber, every roll of his tongue more hypnotic than the last. She looked on with trepidation, as if she is afraid of what she is going to hear next. A part of her knows she is. "Mi amor is a classic."

Reyna didn't realize she was moving back until their foreheads bumped together and she could feel his earthy breath against her face, his long lashes fluttering against her cheekbones with every rapid blink he took. Her heart began to beat slow and painful with every second that passed between them.

Leo shuddered against her, his eyes falling closed, taking a deep breath.

"Mi cielo," he murmured, as if speaking a quiet prayer.

When her father used to pray to her mother's return. Reyna was still young and he was still sane. He would go back and forth between a language she didn't understand (impeccable Latin, she recognizes now) and Spanish. He called to Bellona as mi cielo, my sky, my world, asking for her to return back to him.

She never did.

And the desperate way Leo called to her like that, the desperate way he leaned forward, the desperate way he squeezed down on her thigh as if to keep her in place, she could feel the want from him wafting over her entire body.

Reyna isn't stupid. Leo's had a thing for her since last year, just before leaving New Rome for the first time.

Yet it was always ridiculous pet names,and even worse flirting. So she feels justified in turning him down, turning him away, because it could barely be considered a crush. They are friends first. They work the best, the most efficiently as friends. He isn't supposed to care how he addresses her. The boy who winks at her with one eye and scavenges the area for pretty girls with the other is not supposed to call her his sky.

Her stomach twists painfully just as he presses his lips against the side of her nose, much too sweetly, as if asking permission, and she knows her heart is breaking.

"Don't call me that unless you mean it," she whispers, closing her eyes.

Reyna pulled away, from his breath and his hand and his warmth and his beautiful Spanish words. Pulling her cape into her arms, she stands and walks away, into the darkened shadows. She leaves behind Le Valdez and the crowd of people celebrating her.

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She's out of her armor and robes within moments of being inside the door of her villa. She flings the clothing and metal plates across the living room as hard as she dares, stumbling forward as she toes off her sandals, and then begins taking off her various rings and bracelets. When her thoughts turn mutinous, conjuring the feel of his breath against her cheek, her hands shake too hard for any of her jewelry to come off properly.

She wishes she was still half drunk.

Reyna groaned, her face crumpling from irritation to sadness, making her way into her bedroom to grab her pajamas. She slipped into an oversized hoodie and striped boxers, then a pair of fluffy socks.

The dark haired girl goes back inside her living room, then her kitchen, pulling out two Poptarts from her cabinet and pouring herself a glass of milk. She stood by the island, breaking her treat into little bite sized crusts, before popping them into her mouth.

I should not have done that, Reyna thinks, allowing herself to reflect. She shoves more Poptart into her mouth. I should not have done that whatsoever.

Reyna's relationship with Leo Valdez was an oddity among both their camps - they were friends, despite the odds. They were so ridiculously different that it made her head spin sometimes at how they meshed together easily in each others' lives. He flirts (poorly) with her, coerces her into watching new novellas he's found channel surfing, fixes her automaton dogs Aurum and Argentum on a regularly basis, interrupts her work to feed her various teeth-rotting candy, takes her sword fighting lessons as often as he dares, and goes on her morning runs with her when he's up early enough. They coexist too easily with each other.

They've both grown, she knows. She can solidly stand beside him in a game of capture the flag as she would any of her comrades. She can spot him out of a crowd She can look him in the eye and call him amigo.

They are not the lonely teenagers they were three years ago.

They're so much more than the insecurities they tried to cover up so poorly with bad humor and a cold mask. She's seeing all the world has to offer her these days, and it is California sunshine, a future with Camp Half Blood, new friends that are as loyal as her soldiers, and genuine happiness. It is all there. It is a real, palpable thing.

She knows that there is a happy ending in sight, somewhere. The journey has been so good to her. And sometimes she thinks her happy ending is with Leo, in some way or another. It's supposed to be impossible, but her heart doesn't listen to her head too well.

Venus be damned, she wants it. She wants him. No being on Olympus would deny that they've earned it.

The night on her mother's temple comes back into her thoughts full force, the pain blooming in her chest like a fresh wound.

Leo's eyes had been so warm and full and bright, putting the moon to shame, with a flutter of thick eyelashes batting against his cheek bones. Laying down against the temple's rocky rooftop, with starlight spilling down on his brown skin, she knew she would never seen anything more beautiful in her life. His lips were so close, her head angled upward toward him.

"I hate leaving this place," he murmured, a pout pulling at his face. "I'm attached. California is my thing now."

"You'll be missed," Reyna allowed, sighing deeply through her nose. As if he were the only one attached. "If you weren't such a wild card, I'd hold you hostage here myself. Frank and Hazel would help."

"Yeah they would," Leo mumbled. "Always something to fix."

"You are not the repair boy," Reyna pointed out. "You're our friend."

The word made his eyes narrow in question, and suddenly he shifted, leaning over on his side. His hand reached out between them in offering - so badly, she wanted to take it. "I don't want to be your friend, Reyna," Leo said . "You know I don't want to be your friend."

She closed her eyes and breathed in the electricity of the air between them, the warmth of the spring night and his body heat, melting through her clothes and armor. She gave herself a second to revel in their proximity, see her options and bask in the possibility of the impossible. She gave herself a second to believe.

And then she opened her eyes once more.

Reyna sat up, shoulders hunched over in defeat.

"But I am your friend, Leo," she murmured. It took her just a moment to get back onto her feet. The praetor looked down on him, tossing her long black braid over her shoulder. "Come. You're leaving early tomorrow."

Leo smiled sadly at her, unanswered questions and heartbreak locked up behind his eyes. It was a moment before the expression washed away from his face. He pushed back his unruly curls before sitting up and reaching out a hand towards her. Reyna grabbed it and pulled him onto his feet without effort. The moon shone on him still as he looked down on her, swathed in the monochromatic colors of the night.

"Yeah, yeah," Leo said. "Just get over here."

He pulled her into a hug and she obliged him, wrapping her arms around his middle and squeezing, melting into him as his arms laid languidly over her shoulders. There was everlasting warmth in his body, able to penetrate her clothes and armor until her skin felt like more than just her skin. She felt him press his lips against the crown of her head.

"I'm gonna miss you more than anyone here, queen. You should know that," Leo muttered against her head. The brush of his lips against her scalp made tears sting against her eyes in a harsh, painful reminder of what she cannot have. "Who's gonna kick my ass on a weekly basis with sword training? Who's gonna help me sneak out to get to the food trucks in Berkley?"

"There are food trucks in New York."

"There's no Reyna Ramirez-Arellano in New York."

The knock on the door startled her enough to make her spill some of her milk. Reyna sighed, staring down at the mess before walking over towards her front door.

She didn't bother looking through the peep hole before unlocking the door and opening it. Her Poptart was still held protectively inside of her hand, wishing it was her dagger.

Leo appeared in the door way, his face anxious and her shoulders tense. Reyna raised a brow, waiting for him to speak as his eyes scoured her frame.

"You got taller," he blurted out.

The observation startled her. They were near eye level again (as they usually are - it's like their growth spurts are coordinated in some way, so they never stay taller than each other for long) as he stood at the threshold of her door in front of her. Reyna guessed she standing at a solid five ten or eleven. The fact didn't seem to perturb him at all, which was strange. Most boys like girls to be much shorter than themselves.

"I did," she answered.

"Cool. Yeah...hot." He nodded to himself solemnly.

Of course.

"I will slam this door in your face."

Leo groaned loudly. She watched the strain stretch across his face, making his jaw tick and his eyes harden. "I'm sorry. That was- can you just let me in?" he insists.

Shrugging drolly, Reyna steps aside, letting in the door wider. He walks in tentatively, with quiet footsteps that still seem to echo against her marble floors. As she shuts the door behind him, the image of him inside of her quiet, pristine home looks almost comical. The nervousness she felt seconds ago dissipated as she watched him, awkward and unsure of himself in what was essentially enemy territory.

But he's not an enemy, she quietly reminded herself. He's never going to be an enemy.

Leo Valdez is nothing more than a slick tongue and wild curls and gangly limbs. It's always been damn near impossible for him to unnerve her - he can't start now.

Reyna doesn't register that he's looking at her until their eyes fully meet - black against brown. Suddenly bashful, she looks down towards her socks and curses to herself when she realizes that they are not from the same pair.

"I meant what I said you know," Leo said, breaking the silence. Reyna swallowed thickly, still not wanting to meet his eyes again. "I meant it when I called you mi cielo and always mean it when I call you beautiful. Because you are. Ridiculously beautiful. You're not allowed to tell me what I do and don't mean."

She stayed silent - partly because he had a point, and partly because she didn't want to start an argument so soon. She knew she would. You're not allowed were not words she boded well with in any context.

The curly haired boy walked forward shyly, close enough so that she could see the edges of his sneakers in the view of her toes with her eyes trained on the floor. He gave a slow, shaky breath, volts of nervousness rippling in the space between them. She worried her bottom lip with her teeth, trying to feel brave.

"You should just- just say you don't like me, and I can just go fuck off somewhere, Reyna," Leo said gruffly. He didn't meet her eyes, and his face began to bloom red underneath his coffee-and-milk skin. "Just say it."

Reyna's head whipped up so fast, she almost knocked her forehead against his chin. "What?"

"Just reject me and get it over with already. This isn't new for me. Stop pretending that you're into me because you feel sorry for me," he snapped. The skinny Latino boy threw his hands into the air, looking like he wanted to curse all the gods above. "Do it. Say that you don't like me so I can go."

She laughed weakly, slapping his hands down. "You're such an idiot."

"At least I'm being honest."

"Would you really like for me to be honest, mi amor?"

Reyna wasn't sure why she said that, but the reaction was worth it. All the anger drained from his face, replaced with apprehension, and maybe genuine fear. A bemused expression overtook his face, cloudy with worry and something else.

"Sí," He said meekly,

Reyna beckoned him forward, and he did, taking hesitant steps. She clasped her calloused, ring-clad fingers to his face, fingers dipping into the groove of his cheekbones and into the thick curls spilling over his ears. Her heart was beating so hard and so fast, ready to suffocate her.

"I'm not good for you. I don't think I will ever be good for you," the dark haired girl murmured, looking him squarely in the eye and hating the way her throat tightened in fear and shame. She forced the words out as best as she could without second guessing herself. "It would be in your best interests to like a girl much less complicated than I am. That is my honesty. I am no good for you."

She didn't want to say that he always made her question his motives - there would not be a day where she would be that forthcoming in her thoughts to him.

Leo frowned. "Why would you ever say that?"

The smile on her lips felt pathetic and sad. "Venus once said to me that I would not find love in a demigod," Reyna whispered. Her eyes stung with tears. "That's when I knew I would never be with Jason. But here you are, defying all odds and reason. I know this own't end well, and I can't just drag you into it thinking other wise."

"Being without you is painful," he said hoarsely. His own eyes were starting to turn red as his hands found her sides, long arms wrapping around her middle to bring him closer. "You are...the most amazing person I know. There's nothing else that I wanted as badly as I do you. You need to trust me on that."

Reyna pressed her lips into a thin line, swallowing thick as she willed the tears away.

She is tired. She wants to grab onto this scrawny boy and never let go. So badly, she wants to trust him.

"Gods, we're pathetic," she whispered.

"Pathetic squared," he countered. Leo leaned forward to press a soft, sweet kiss to the bridge of her nose, over her brow, and then each of her eyelids. Reyna drank in the heat of his presence, hypnotized once again by him. "But I'd rather be pathetic with you than without you."

She shifted his lips away cheek and brought him toward her own.

He sighed into the kiss - his breath left through his nose, fanning all over her face as their mouths moved together. Timid and unsure of what exactly she was supposed to do, she mimicked his movements. His arms pulled her closer against him as his tongue snaked out and pressed against her lower lip.

Reyna parted her lips for air, and to tell him to tell him to keep his tongue to his gods damn self, but Leo had other ideas. His tongue entered her mouth, slow and careful, as if in searching. She attempted to move with him, opening her mouth to him and threading her fingers into the hair at the sides of his head. He kissed with too much emotion, with the taste of candy and sharp alcohol into his mouth.

His hands slipped under her hoodie and rested at her waist, brushing against the bare skin underneath. Her skin tingled, bursts of nerves and heat flooding her system.

She broke away from him, breathing hard and feeling flushed. She rested her forehead against his shoulder, not wanting to meet his eyes yet.

"I've been waiting three months for that," Leo whispered.

Reyna felt herself overheating. "Your spit in my mouth seems like a very anticlimactic moment."

"Your spit is amazing."

Words left them after that, when he lift her chin by the crook of his fingers and planted open mouthed kisses along her jaw and down the column of her throat, pulling down the collar of her hoodie to get more access to her skin. He muttered words she could not hear through the blood rushing through her ears. Reyna's hands went into his hair and across his shoulders, pressing curious fingers against soft curls and wiry muscles.

Leo nipped hard and sucked at the skin just above her jugular, making her flinch, a painful arc of something shooting through her body and between her legs. He kissed his way back to her jaw before repeating the action.

"Do I look edible?" she said, sounding too breathless to be truly teasing.

"Yes," he breathed out.

Reyna laughed, pushing him away enough to stare into his sharp features and wide, darkened eyes. They stare at each other for a moment, half in assessment, half in the desire, as the air around them becomes electric. The laughter dies slowly inside of her chest when Leo gives another deliberate squeeze to her middle with his hands, the rough callouses scraping against soft skin.

"Pequeño diablo," she sighed. Reyna pulling her hands away from his hair to take off the jewelry on her fingers and wrists. "Be useful and get this shit out of my hair."

Leo pouts, but complies, nimble fingers working the pins out of her hair much faster and painlessly than she could do by herself. He collected them in a little ruby pile in his right hand, then stuffed them in the pocket of her hoodie. Then, he undid the bun at the top of her head, slipping the hair tie onto his wrist. Her hair fell around her in a dark, thick waves. Ten pounds of weight fell away from her neck and shoulders.

"That feels good," Reyna muttered.

Leo smirked, pulling the hair tie from his wrist and slinging shotting it across the living room. She glares on, unamused, as it slaps against a vase in the corner of the room and makes it wobble.

"Not as good as you," Leo responded, voice thick and gravelly. He raised up his arms, looking at her with his ridiculously cheeky grin. The nervousness in his eyes does not translate onto the rest of his face, and for that, she'll give him some credit. "So, what will mi reina have of me? I'll be here until tomorrow."

The words until tomorrow made her chest twinge painfully, reality crashing down on her quickly.

One night.

This time, when she pulls him down to kiss him, she's hurried and desperate. He follows her, the scrape of his teeth against her bottom lip and the rough fingers he presses against her. There is determination in this kiss, and a little sadness, because they know won't ever have what they really want. Reyna lets go of her age old inhibitions just for a moment - Just for tonight, she thinks quietly as his fingers make her shiver from her spine - to take what she wants without fear of retribution.

He leads her backwards with their stumbling limbs until she's pressed up against the wall of her kitchen. Reyna snickered like a prepubescent boy, shaking with laughter when her head smacks against the dry walls, because gods, they are clumsy together, but Leo tries to swallow her laughter whole.

His hands go from her waist to her hips to high up on her rib cage, just underneath her breasts. Reyna arcs into him, and illicits a shaky groan from his mouth. It makes her feel powerful in a way her sword and dagger never could.

Quickly, still shuddering from her movements, he steps away from her and slips off his socks before tossing them away somewhere. She looks on at him in confusion before he's all over her again.

Leo's hands skim downward, past her middle and down to her upper thighs. He takes on her weight as he jerks her upward, and scrambling, the Reyna wraps her legs around his hips for support. She gasps, not sure whether to be mad or not. In this position, there are a hundred different sensations all at once: her legs spread wide and the rough material of his jeans holding her still, the two of them separated by only a few scant layers; his entire body is made of some sort of inner fire that sinks into her skin and ignites her chest painfully; her heart beats fast enough to rattle her rib cage, disturb her breathing, make her ears swim; the smell of him that is nothing more than masculinity and metal, swims inside of her head.

He's the one chuckling this time, hiding his laughter poorly behind his lips as he kisses down her throat. It almost annoys her. Did he forget who was in control here?

"Lose the shirt, Valdez," Reyna breathes, tugging at the collar of his dress shirt.

Leo pulled away from her neck, his hands left her thighs. He pressed in closer to her body to pin her more securely to the wall as her own legs wrap more securely around him. She wants to tell him that she can hold up her own weight by herself, but she's not bothered enough to care. He grabbed the back of his t-shirt and pulled up, snaking out of his clothing with muscles flexing in all the right ways. He dropped the piece of clothing somewhere behind him.

Reyna hummed in pleasure, her hands skimming over his bare skin to feel him. His shoulders are much more enticing than they should be - they are strong and broad and well built from the hours he spends hunched over machinery.

Leo leans back to kiss her, with deliberate weight. Her nails skim along his skin, a hand shoved between them, sinking lower and lower, to map out the muscles of his lower stomach. His arms reaches for the backs of her thighs again, his fingers kneading slowly against her flesh.

"Lose the hoodie," Leo said, staring her down. His eyes were darkened with lust, closer to burnt tree bark than chocolate now.

Reyna barks out a quick laugh. "Doesn't work that way."

She wrapped her arms around his neck and pulls him in for another heated kiss. She isn't sure how long they are there, pressed and tangled together, just barely managing breathe around each others' lips. Reyna rocked her hips into his on pure without much conscious thought, and Leo responded over enthusiastically.

If possible, he pressed her even further against the wall, their bodies flush against each other as he rocked back into her. He gave a little gasp, breaking the rhythm of the kiss, but caught on again.

"Glad I don't have t'hold you up," he grunted brokenly against her lips, making a slow, grinding rhythm against her hips. She responded in kind, moving with him. His eyes rolled back in pleasure. "Probably drop you by now."

The idea makes Reyna scowl a bit - as if she needs him of all people to lift her up when she probably has more muscle mass in one arm than he does in his entire torso - but he's still grinding against her, hard and ready and so close to where she wants him the most, that she goes slack jawed within moments.

She sheds her hoodie immediately, not once breaking their rhythm. He is concentrated, shifting away from her upper body as she whips off the heavy outerwear and flings it behind him, still going at it. Reyna wants to tell him that she thinks he's imitating some kind of slowed-down rumba step, but words don't come easily to her right now.

Leo immediately hikes her up higher on his chest and latches his teeth onto her collarbones, trailing sharp bites and sloppy kisses down her chest until he reaches the edge of her bra. Reyna moaned, loud and clear, as he pulled down the cups and grazed his teeth against her nipple.

She arcs her back into him, shoving her chest into his face as he latches onto one hard nipple and sucks. Reyna's breathing goes haywire, but she has enough conscious forethought to reach behind her with one hand to unhook her bra. It falls away to the floor underneath her.

"Bed," she growled, running her fingers through his hair and pulling him away from her breasts.

Leo nods dumbly, setting her back down on the floor. Her thighs are a bit sore from the strain, but she takes his hand and pulls him further into her villa. She can hear the sound of his belt undoing itself and being tossed somewhere inside of the living room.

She opens the door to her bedroom, leading him inside. It dark, but the windows are large and inviting. They spill out starlight from the sparse clouds in the sky. She can see how many steps it takes to pull him towards her bed, and she can see his hands turning her around to face him, bathed in the pale wash of light that turned makes him look celestial.

Leo kissed her deeply, slow and sweet as he led her down on top of the bed. She touches and caresses any bare skin that she can get too all over his torso.

She wants to call it romantic, the way he threads his fingers through her hair, the way he cradles her face with his forger hands. There is deliberate care and hesitation in his movements now. They are no longer blinded by heat and lust. There is excitement, pure nervous energy that eats away at her psyche, but she's so hyper aware of every act and sensation that she knows she's not making a mistake. Her heart is beating double time, compensating for the blood rushing to her head, and she lets it.

Reyna shifted back on top of the pillows and reached up on her elbow for leverage as he pressed kisses down her shoulders. A hand clasped around the nape of his neck and brought him in for another kiss. He his hands pressed against her thighs to steady himself and spreads them so he could rest between them. His weight against her is comforting, and she welcomes him as if in home coming.

Reyna pulled away and reached for the zipper of his jeans. Together, they struggle to get them off. She makes a comment in Spanish about how his pants were as tight as a woman's.

Couldn't have he taken these off in the hall with his belt? Reyna thought irately.

"Yeah, yeah," he grunts. His legs finally slip free of the denim and he grabs her thighs to yank her fully onto her back. He reaches for her own sleepwear With purpose. The boxers slide down her legs much easier. "I've caught you staring at my ass at least twice before."

Reyna feels a blush that has nothing to do with her nakedness bloom on her face. She is immediately thankful for her brown skin and the darkness concealing them. Those two times before - when she is left without anything to do in her visits to Camp Half Blood, she sulks around the bunker with some kind of book to read where he works so they can argue in between his work breaks - weren't even her fault. His shirt had caught fire, and he'd taken it off without much care for her in the room.

His shoulders looked amazing, flexing and shifting underneath the tan skin, and so did the rest of his back. The slope of his spine was lithe and led to...

When he'd whirled his head at her as he was connecting wires, she had her nose buried back into her book.

"Liar," Reyna lied. "You're too scrawny to have an ass."

"Oh, come on! You were blushing!" Leo shouted. "I bet you're blushing right now."

One of his hands was snaking up her right thigh as the other settled contentedly beside her head on her pillow. He watched her, eyes trailing from her face to her chest, pupils dancing as if he didn't know where to focus on first. Reyna was in no way ashamed of her body - she had Latina curves and a warrior's musculature, juxtaposed into a tall figure and dark skin.

Her vanity urged him to like what he saw, and enjoy it thoroughly. She doubted that he wasn't already; he was straining against the material of his boxers.

"I feel like I have to apologize," Leo murmured. There was no smile on his face this time. "My fantasies didn't do you justice."

Reyna's face grew even hotter, if possible. A grin fought it's way onto her face.

He fantasized about her?

She fought back a full bodied tremor at the feel of his rough hands against the soft, sensitive skin, so unlike the rest of her scar-littered body. Leo sat up in front of her, on his knees looking over her. Reyna reached forward and let her finger tips skim against the lining of his boxer briefs; he trembled underneath her touch, the muscles in his stomach clenching sporadically.

Leo's hand was suddenly right between her between her legs, one rough thumb brushing up against the ridges of stretch marks on her upper thighs. Reyna arced off the bed desperately when his fingers trailed right over her slit, back and forth, with movements too slow to be anything but teasing.

"If you're gonna be a tease, I can do this much better myself," Reyna challenged, gasping for breath and rolling her hips into his slow movements.

Leo chuckled, sounding evil. "You've had practice," he noted.

Reyna rolls her eyes. "I'm eighteen and single. What do you think?"

The remark is enough to broaden his smile to satanic proportions. And then, his fingers are suddenly inside of her, knuckle-deep and taking long strokes in and out. Reyna lost the ability to speak and form coherent thoughts inside of her head almost immediately as the wanton heat turned into an inferno, the stabbing pressure of his fingers stretching and shifting inside of her. It's a new sensation, part pleasure, part pain.

A long, loud moan rips its way out of her mouth, and she is too worked up to care how it sounds.

"I'm gonna have to show you up then," Leo says, hoarse and thick. There is so much promise in his words. It sent a shiver down her spine.

Leo Valdez has amazing, absolutely perfect hands. They are large, much larger than her own, with long fingers, lined with thick calluses from working long hours on his different machines and inventions. They are the hands of a forging god's son.

She's had some highly inappropriate thoughts about these hands - especially when she wishes they would replace her own.

So with Leo overlooking her, his lithe frame blocking out the pale night light pouring in her room, his fingers pumping and scissoring roughly inside of her, she decides that reality was so much better than anything she could imagine or attempt to replicate. Her moans and soft, mewling noises got louder and higher as the pain begins to leave her as her muscles relax against his hand. When he leans down to trail kisses over her neck, her collarbones, her breasts, she drags her fingers through the thick curls at the top of her head.

"Mi cielo," Leo whispered, again and again and again, breathing the words onto her skin. "You feel too good."

Reyna dragged him upward for a kiss, making up for her sloppiness with passion and need. He reciprocated fully and let her explore his mouth with her tongue, running along his bottom lip.

A burning, twisting heat coiled inside of her stomach, and she knew she was close. She rocked against his hand as hard as she could, shaking when he fingers slipped out of her to play with her clit. Leo pressed down and pinched against the swollen nerve and she cried out sharply.

"Gods," she gasped, trembling all over. "Leo, more."

The son of Hephaestus pulled away from her, looking down on her once again as she came close to her release. He slipped a third finger inside of her and she went into overdrive, her breathing sporadic and her skin on fire. He watched her with heavy, serious eyes drowning in darkness and lust.

"Déjame verte (let me see you)," he muttered thickly, staring down at her face as she came undone. "Gods, I fucking dreamed about you almost every night. I wanted to eat you out in your office and fuck you on top of my work table."

His words were doing something - dirty talk had never, ever been her thing, not when she was so used to commanding the utmost respectful and dignified words from her male legionnaires. It wasn't supposed to be her thing. Not with a skinny, Latino version of a Christmas elf.

Leo groaned aloud, working his fingers harder and faster. Reyna began to see spots in her eyes as she held them shut tightly, focusing on the heated sensations. "And the first time I see you in months, looking like you owned the whole damn city. I almost died," he rasped, too worked up to even try and sound normal. "I wanted to fuck you on that couch in front of everyone."

"Who are you kidding," Reyna gasped aloud, a smile breaking it's way on her face. "Of course I own this fucking city."

She was so, so close, working her hips against the quick movements of his hand. Her own fell listlessly to the sides, twisting up the bed sheets. Leo pulled his hands away from inside of her, making her growl in an incoherent protest. Her head was too hazy and lust-driven to focus on anything other than release.

Leo dipped his head down as he pulled her legs over his shoulders, and oh gods, no, he was not going to just-

The first lick curious lick made her heart climb into her throat and bang against her esophagus, choking her up with blinding pleasure. She wasn't even sure about what sound she was making anymore; all she knew was his tongue trailing up and down her slit in slow, deliberate strokes. He ate her out with deliberate flicks of his tongue and kisses trailing along the inside of her thighs. She can feel his tongue inside of her, making her eye shut tightly, dipping in and out.

Reyna came when he grazed his teeth against her clit.

Her vision went spotty for a minute as the coil released and her hips bucked sharply, pushing down against his lips that suckled off the moisture that dribbled down her thighs. She gasped brokenly, attempting to find her lungs and failing miserably.

"You taste good," Leo drawled, his grin devilish. Reyna saw the glisten of her on his upper lip and chin, saw him lick his fingers in deliberate motions. "Sweet."

Still hazy post-orgasm, Reyna watched with jelly bones and indistinct warmth. Leo hovered over her and gave her a long, drawn-out kiss that made her toes curl in a completely different way from all the kisses they'd shared this far.

Reyna could taste herself in his mouth, which made her shiver in desire that lurked low in her belly. But she could feel him smiling against her lips. He kissed her too sweetly as his hands traveled up her sides, over her ribs and down her waist. She tossed her arms over his shoulders and pulled him closer to her, trying to keep herself from smiling herself.

"Remind me why you still have clothes on again?" she prompted, a hand tugging at the waist band of his boxers. She could see him straining against the black fabric, which made her swallow thickly.

Leo laughed breathlessly, but complied nonetheless. Together they got his underwear off without too much hassle. Reyna kicked it off the bed, and reached for the straining, long cock that hung at his waist. She wrapped her hand around the base of him and shifted her hand experimentally. His shoulders hunched forward and his eyes shut closed and he let out a hiss.

"Try not to catch fire," Reyna murmured, beginning to stroke him with slow, heavy movements. Leo buckled overhead of her, groaning heavily.

"'ll try," he grunted. "Kind of asking for a lot, y'know."

"You'll survive."

"Not when you're moving your hand like that."

As Reyna moved her hand over the base of her cock, she watched him, and she watched the movement of his body. The severe muscles just below his waist that let to a sharp V shape clenched sporadically, looking ridiculously enticing. His cock was long and stained a pinkish color at his head. She mused on the idea of getting used to the strange way it looked as she flicked the head and brushed against the tip of him with the calloused pads of her fingers.

"Reina," Leo gasped, his voice three octaves higher than normal. "Gods, please."

She was smirking as she let go of him and braced her hands against his shoulders. It took her a second to flip him onto his back, settling herself just over his hips. Leo blinked in confusion, blinking owlishly at her. Her black hair fell in a curtain around them, closing off the light from her windows to enclose just the two of them.

"Well if you wanted to top, y'could've just said so," Leo rasped, smirking hugely. The strain in his voice pleases her as she settles her core just overhead of his cock. The effort to keep herself still makes her body tremble just slightly.

"Dominating you is much more fun than asking permission," Reyna replied, leaning down to press feather-light kisses to his jaw. He sighed, as if tasting oxygen for the first time in a long time. "Try and comply."

"Who are you kidding? Comply? Me?" As if to make a point, he bucked his hips against her, rocking his hot flesh against her clit. Reyna rocked back just as insistently, her trembling becoming more persistent.

"I could go all night, Leo."

"I'm counting on that. I want to test out my refractory period."

She huffed in exasperation, but ended up tossing her hair over her shoulder and pulled him into her hand once again. "I haven't done this before," Reyna muttered, locking her jaw up at the vulnerable words. She knows that they're necessary, but she doesn't want to say them anyway.

"I've got you," Leo said, squeezing her waist in reassurance. "Set your pace and I'll follow."

Reyna lowered herself down on him, taking him inside of her. They both hissed in unison. The dark haired girl grit her teeth at the stinging as he stretched her inside, but felt herself heartbeat pulse all over her body in how full she felt - an awkward and strange sensation. She braced her hands against her chest and held still. Leo's rough hands clamped down on her hips to steady her.

"I need a...minute," she muttered, breathing around the stinging and the pleasure warring inside of her body.

"Take two. I wanna inspect the view," Leo gasped aloud, drawing circles over her hips with his thumbs. He looked up at her with reverence, minus the amusement that usually shone in his eyes. "Gods, you look like a queen on her throne."

Reyna smiled at him begrudgingly, holding back her laughter as best as she could. "You're cock is not a throne, Leo," she said.

"But you're definitely a queen."

She had no rebuttal to that, and decided to focus on trying to actually move. The stinging dulled, and taking a deep breath, she rocked her hips back and forth onto him in an awkward motion. Leo groaned again, his hands tightening on her. She tried again, slower this time, attempting to create a rhythm.

He brought his hips up to meet her, thrust for thrust, with wandering hands that made their way towards her breasts to flick her nipples, and down towards her entrance. Several times worked against his hips to slow down when he tried rocking against in a speedier tempo. The pain was fading fast, but she desire to have him under control overtook her train of thought.

"I'd tie you up, but you'd probably enjoy it too much," Reyna gasped out, coming down on him hard. He groaned, the sound ripping from his mouth and rolling over her skin.

"Damn right I would," Leo said gruffly. "Kinky. I'm down."

"Cállate, estúpido (shut up, stupid)."

Reyna got into the rhythm and found herself speeding up. Her nails dug into Leo's chest as her breathing got harder and his thrusts brought her closer and closer to release. Her skin became slick with sweat, overheated from his hands and his proximity and the exertion. Her head swam with how good it felt - every single sensation was amplified and singled out. The sounds she made were unrecognizable from her own throat, some high pitched keens, and other low moans.

"Mierda," he swore, rocking against her fervently. "Shit shit shit shit shit shit fuck shit."

So, so close, she knew. He twitched and throbbed inside of her, and she clenched around him, trailed her palms against his chest, did everything she could to make him feel good.

Leo's hand found her clit again and the sharp stab of pleasure that flooded through made her see spots again, bucking feverishly when he drubbed down on the nub. Breathing became an impossible task for her to manage. Her hands went still against his chest as her orgasm ripped through her body and a needy keen ripped its way through her voice, making her heartbeat stutter and her stomach twist and release the painfully building pressure.

Leo groaned beneath her, and thrust out of tempo several times until he came, spilling inside of her. Reyna shivered and gasped and along with him, drinking each other in.

He rolled them over to their sides, and waited several moments until he slipped out of her. Reyna winced, the stinging returning with a vengeance. She knows instantly that she'll be sore in the morning.

"Refractory periods my ass," Leo mumbled, reaching for the bed's comforter. He brought her flush against him with one hand and pulled the blankets over them with the other. "Sleep. Sleep now."

"That's sounds good," Reyna said in a thick voice. She gave a full bellied yawn and tossed one arm over Leo's shoulder. Unabashedly, she snuggled against him, face pressed into his throat and legs tangled with his own. Her thighs still felt wet and sticky from the both of them, but "I wore you out. My job is done here.

"Just you wait 'til the morning, mi cielo," Leo muttered.

The promise and the endearment make her smile more than she should - he will deliver, whether challenged or not. Her arm tightens around his, and she quietly to hopes that she won't be too sore when she wakes up.

Truthfully, a part of her does not want to see morning. Reyna hates the unknown most of all; what will he think of her without the concealment of darkness to hide him away, what will become of them when they leave her bed, and on what terms they will part on when he returns to New York.

Reyna still has so much left to say, and she's tempted to shake him fully awake just to get it off her chest. She wants to apologize for pushing away so many times. She wants to explain her past, her father, the madness that crept on him and ruined her life. She wants to tell him that she wants them to try.

And she wants him to stay.

So when Leo mumbles mi cielo against her forehead, tapping his fingers in a soothing, staccato rhythm against her lower back, over and over again, tears spring up in her eyes.

Gods, she doesn't want him to go. If she could, she'd chain him to this damn bed and never let him leave.

But she's her mother's daughter. There is no battle, big or small, that she shies away from. So tonight, she'll sleep with him. When morning comes, they'll figure it out. And whether he wants to let her go or not, she'll accept it.

She has to.

.

.

.

"Reyna. Psssst, Reyna."

"Hnnng."

"Reina."

"Go away."

"I have food."

Reyna groaned, but managed to sit up. She was curled up on her side, the bed's blankets hanging over half of her face. She pushed them away and squinted into the still-dark room. Her hair was a wild, wavy mess down her back. She was sore between the legs and the skin on her hips stung.

"You look beautiful," he said quietly.

She felt the stickiness between her thighs, the bruised spots of skin all along her throat and breasts, the fragile skin at her hips which she suspects are tender from his overheated hands, as well as he tangles in her hair. She stared at him, and he stared back, eyes locked onto her's.

She isn't sure whether to believe him or not.

The sun had yet to peak out of the windows beside her bed, but Leo was already fully dressed.

"What's going on?" Reyna questioned instead, her voice thick with sleep. "It can't be five in the morning yet."

"Just past four twenty, actually," Leo corrected. He sat on the bed beside her on top of the sheets with back against the headboard. He was fully dressed, tool belt and all, sans shoes. The bags under his eyes looked more prominent than usual - violet half moons imprinted under his eyes and the creamy color of his skin. There was a large bag of McDonald's sitting on the bed sheets in front of her, and he held two large cups of orange juice. "Dig in, sport."

Reyna did not bother with covering herself with the blankets - she reached for the cup of juice. His eyes did not follow her, and she thinks that they have reached a new level of comfortableness between them.

"I appreciate the food, but I'd rather have an explanation," she said.

"Sorry for the wake up call," he said sheepishly. He took a sip of his juice from the straw. "I didn't want to leave without saying goodbye. That would have been sort of shitty."

"And I probably would have murdered you for it."

"Very true. My self preservation instincts in working condition."

Reyna snorted - self preservation instincts, coming from the boy who planned out his own death? Not very likely. "What kind of food do you have, repair boy?" she said.

Leo put down his juice between his legs and brought out several different things from the McDonald's bag - four chicken biscuits, several hash browns, containers of pancakes with eggs and sausages, as well as a parfait. It seemed like much for a moment, but then she was reminded of her eating habits were on par with his own.

The food wouldn't last long.

"I wasn't supposed to say anything about this, but it makes no sense hiding it," Leo said, reaching for the one of the pancake containers. He popped it open proceeded to pour butter and syrup all over it. "I'm on a quest right now and technically made a little bit of a detour."

Reyna blinked at him, astounded. "You're on a quest? As in, right now?"

He gave her a sheepish grin. "Uh, yeah."

"Then why are you- did you take valuable time from a quest just to see me?" Reyna snapped. "Are you an idiot?"

"An idiot in love, maybe," he said. Leo shrugged, then brought out a fork for his pancakes.

Reyna blinked, still staring in confusion as she took note of several other things. She hadn't see him with his tool belt all throughout last night, yet it sat around his waist like he'd never had it anywhere else. A pair of boots and a large black backpack sat by the door to her bedroom. A pair of sunglasses sat on top of his forehead. He wore an old plaid shirt hiked up at the elbows, and worn jeans with old rips and grease stains.

He was on a quest.

And he wasted valuable time just to be with her on her birthday.

An idiot in love, maybe.

With a headache that began to pulse in the left side of her temple, Reyna reached for one of the chicken biscuits. She unwrapped it, and began eating.

"Explain," Reyna said, chewing around her food. "What are you doing for this quest?"

And he explained.

Four demigods had going missing for the past six months - snatched away from satyr protectors that were escorting them to Camp Half Blood. There were no explanations or traces of their disappearance after a few hundred miles. Leo was sent with a team to investigate the trail of a daughter of Aphrodite who went missing somewhere in Virgina. Through a series of very unfortunate events, they found themselves trapped in an enchanted warehouse full of lamiai - ancient, man-eating, Tartarus-resurrected succibi - in the middle of downtown Pheonix. They found the girl there, ready to be sacrificed.

"Her name is Kaya," Leo said, looking very old and very sad. They both stopped eating for a moment as he spoke. "She's eleven. I'd never seen a kid that cute - you could just tell her mom was a love goddess. Some of the lamiai wanted to try and turn her into one of them so she could help catch guys to eat for lunch. She'd used her charmspeak to keep the from sacrificing her for a few days, but she...she couldn't help the other three."

Reyna swallowed hard. "They were killed?"

Leo's jaw locked. "One of them was using their body as a foot stool."

They were silent for several moments as they ate, and Reyna thought of those three children, dead before they could even truly get to live. Dead before they could see a life that didn't involve endless monsters trying to destroy them. Their lives and stories that are lost now with them. Were their godly parents mourning? Did they try to help?

Reyna dismissed that train of thought immediately - the gods could only do so much for their demigod children, no matter how badly it irritated her.

"The lamiai used their blood to resurrect a super old demon lady queen named Libys, so now we're trying to figure out where we can find her. All we know is that she was an old lover of Zeus and that Hera kidnapped her kids," he said after a while. "Percy was out of commission and our ride was fucked up after fighting them, so we had to stop somewhere close to do maintenance and get supplies. We'll be leaving by sunrise."

"Who else is on this quest with you?" Reyna asked. He pouted at the note of concern on his face.

"Just Percy and Annabeth," Leo said. "Not that I really needed them..."

"You may not have needed Percy, but you definitely needed Annabeth." Reyna was pleased. Annabeth would be enough to counteract Leo and Percy's stupidity. "So the three of you are going off to find this succubi Libys and destroy her?" Reyna said, giving him a sharp look. "I wish you would have told me that you were on a quest instead of just deciding it was alright to...to take the night off. I would have helped give you whatever resources you needed so you could confront this woman as quickly as possible."

"We needed to take the night off regardless. We just ended up at the perfect pit stop," Leo replied. "Especially since we can't take Kaya with us to find Libys. She said she wanted to stay here. Get stronger. You'll probably like her. She's really good with a hunting knife."

"Interesting," Reyna allowed. A small smile pulled at the corners of her mouth as she thought of Piper McLean, and how many enemies she's put out of commission with a magically persuasive voice and her bare hands. "Daughters of Venus are not to be toyed with."

"Damn right," Leo said.

They continued to eat, and just as the sun was peaking over the horizon, they'd finished all the food. Reyna went to take a shower while Leo cleaned away all the trash. When she'd come out with a wet braid slung over one shoulder, her purple camp shirt, and cut off shorts, the smell of coffee was thick in the air. It made her entire body feel warm and welcoming.

She walked into the kitchen just as Leo was putting their drinks on her kitchen island. His cup was filled, left black. Her's was filled up half way. She watched him fill up the rest of the mug with milk, and then stir in four spoons of sugar.

Her chest felt tight and warm.

Three months later, and he still remembered how she took her coffee.

For all the times she'd questioned this idiot's motives, for all the times he would say stupid, disrespectful things, making her out to be an pretty toy in the same breath as he commemorated her strength over him, she had not trusted him once. Her suspicions led back to teenage hormones and honest pettiness -she wouldn't put it past him to try and get with a girl who'd been head over heels for Jason Grace, his best friend, just to prove something to his fragile ego. She'd never trusted him. She couldn't. Because trusting boys with your heart was dangerous business.

Not when he was kind the most quiet ways, not with her past, and not with his intentions. She was too hesitant to believe him. And now...

This boy was making a believer out of her.

Reyna walked towards him, bare feet pattering against the kitchen tiles. He grabbed the milk and moved to put it back into the fridge, but she pulled it out of his hand. She put it away for him, close the door, and ignored the confused expression on his face to shove him up against it.

She kissed him, passionate and confused and just a little bit needy. His hands went to her waist and brought her flush against him. They stayed that way for a long time, longer than she really knew. Their lips moved in sync together, more focus, more skill, and much less spit.

Reyna pulled away perfectly calm. Leo breathed harshly, staring at her with bright eyes.

"I don't like public displays of affection when on duty. At all. Not even hand holding," she started, giving him a pointed look in the eye. Before she knew it, words were leaving her mouth without much forethought behind them. "I have my own agenda and responsibilities; I will not allow you to become a distraction. I like rap from the nineties. I like Japanese food more than Chinese. If you ever do something stupid, don't give me flowers. Dark chocolate."

His expression became amused, a smile that belonged to a devil's son. Reyna swallowed down the harsh, heavy beating of her heart, and prayed for strength. "Think you can handle me, Valdez? I'm not easy to please," Reyna said, raising a brow. She stepped back from him, crossing her arms. "But I'm worth it."

He chuckled. "Well, duh. Besides, I love challenges," Leo said. He stepped forward, completely in her personal space with his hands shoved into his pockets. The gleam still shone in his eyes. "And salsa. I only listen to alternative rock. I kind of have a thing for Beyoncé too. I will get caught up in projects and forget to talk to you. Or brush my teeth. Or both. I can get needy. I'm going to be a loud mouth about how hot and amazing you are on a constant basis. I'm probably going to piss you off a lot."

"I'm very aware of your dancing skills. I...recognized the rumba step," Reyna said as seriously as possible, nodding over towards the wall with her chin. He grinned evilly. "Dancing is acceptable. Beyoncé is as well. Not brushing your teeth isn't."

"Oh come on. I'm still a fantastic kisser."

"Kissing skill is automatically nullified with bad breath."

Leo chuckled, pecking her on the temple. Reyna pushed him away and pointed at the very large, very purple hickey on her jaw. "And this can't happen again," she said, sounding genuinely angry. "I have to find some way to cover this up today. Anything above the collar is unacceptable. Because I will return the favor unpleasantly."

He pouted. "Fine. Nothing above the collar," he said.

"Good. Anything else?"

"Um. I'm going to compliment you liberally in front of everyone."

"Also acceptable."

He chuckled, reaching forward to wrap his arms around her shoulders. Reyna's arms went around his middle, and she squeezed tight enough to constrict his breathing. She pressed her nose into his shirt and drowned herself in his scent; metal, masculinity, smoke, salt, and wood.

"C'mon, mi cielo," Leo said - his voice was suddenly gruff, and he cleared it twice to speak again. "Coffee's getting cold."

They grabbed their cups and he led her over to the couch. Hesitantly, she settled beside him. Shoulder to shoulder, hip to hip, they leaned into each other and watched through the large windows of her villa as the sun slowly covered Camp Jupiter in morning light. The sky bled into pinks and oranges and soft, soft yellows. It was a calming image,

"You wanna know when I knew I liked you?" Leo said suddenly.

Reyna gave him a look, a raised brow, then leaned forward to rest her elbows on her knees. Her cup of over sweetened, milk-laden coffee was still cradled in her hands. She watched the concentration on his face as he stared out of the glass in front of them.

"Spill," she replied.

"I came back to Camp Half Blood in August after the battle against Gaia," he began, his eyes narrowing and a smile pulling at his lips. "I was bringing a girl named Calypso with me."

"The daughter of Atlas trapped by the gods?" Reyna said, automatically suspicious.

"Yeup."

"And you just..."

"Freed her from eternal imprisonment? Hell yes."

"The island that one only returns to once in a lifetime," Reyna mused, realization dawning on her with a very scary thought. She felt her skin grow cold instantly. "You died for her."

He looked sheepish suddenly, taking a sip of his drink. It was hard for her to catch his eyes. "Not exactly. I'll admit that I didn't have...the best intentions. And I didn't really do it all for her. One of the Seven were supposed to die in the first place," Leo clarified. He shrugged. "I've never had a girl actually like me back before. I got hung up on it. So I thought that going back for her and freeing her from Ogygia would just...seal the deal. So I went through with the whole dying thing and hoped it would all work out."

The praetor didn't have much to say to that - there was something very, very wrong with that line of thought. Before she'd strangled him with her cape and Athena's golden fleece, Reyna had told Orion the Hunter in Puerto Rico that she was not defined by the boys who did not like her.

Nor am I defined by the ones that do, Reyna thought quietly. She eyed Leo with a solemn expression. I know that now.

His intentions hadn't been miraculously selfless - it was not in Leo's nature to be morally right and ethical at all times. Rebellion and lawlessness ran through his veins. So she knew she wouldn't fault him for doing what he did.

Not when he freed a girl that had been unjustly trapped on an island for thousands of years and sacrificed his life so his friends didn't have to.

"Your face looks kind of judgey," Leo said honestly. His brows furrowed.

"I'm not judging," Reyna returned, scrunching up her nose a bit. "It's just...I can understand, wanting someone enough to be a little selfish about it."

Leo reached over with his free hand to poke her nose. She scrunched it up even more and leaned away from him. He smiled.

"She stayed at Camp Half Blood with me for a while. It was...I can't explain it. At the time, I thought it was the best four months of my fucking life," Leo muttered, a bitter grin overtaking the short-lived contentment on his face. The lines of his face and jaw stood out starkly. He looked like a man who held onto too much heartbreak. "I knew she wasn't happy. She felt trapped. Always wanted me to take her out on Festus to just...see places. Do things. Take a step back from the modern world, I guess. I knew she wasn't going to just tag along with me until I decided to do something else."

"It's a hard lesson for the male gender to learn," Reyna told him. She placed a hand on his knee and squeezed. "Some women are too ambitious and wide eyed about the world to be content with following someone else's dreams."

"I was a bigger idiot about girls back then," Leo admitted reluctantly. It made her smirk. " I could never understand that. I didn't understand that she wanted more out of her freedom. The Hunters showed me that."

Reyna nodded, remembering the Hunters of Artemis and how they'd helped her, Nico, and Coach Hedge in Puerto Rico. Many had sacrificed their for their successful escape before she could finally kill him with the statue (mostly) safe inside Camp Half Blood.

She'd went to their funerals after all the blood had been shed and their bodies had been recovered , Artemis oversaw their departures from this world and their organic bodies. They blessed on their journey into the Underworld.

"They were recruiting," Leo whispered, the bitter grin growing and growing until it was a full blown, painful grimace. His eyes went glassy. "I remember walking in on Calypso and Thalia Grace just...talking by the camp fire. She looked so happy. There was a sparkle in her eyes that I hadn't seen since she left Ogygia. I knew what was going to happen before she told me. It was perfect. Surrounded by a bunch of friends, hunting monsters and travelling the world? Serving a super feminist, badass goddess? There was nothing she would want more. Not even me."

Reyna watched him, watched the hurt on his face, and the tightness in his jaw. She was surprised at how even her voice came out when the thoughts left her mind. "Do you still have feelings for her?"

"Hell fucking no," Leo said, smirking just a little bit. Reyna had the very sudden urge to bring forth her automaton dogs to check if he was lying, but something told her instinctively that he wasn't lying. "I was just- I'm still bitter about- about her leaving. We were supposed to have our stupid happily ever after. I wasn't supposed to be alone again after...after everything. That's all. It put me in a bad head space."

"You weren't enough, Leo," Reyna said plainly. He flinched at her words, staring down at his lap. He cradled the mug of coffee in his hands with tense fingers. "I won't blame you for being bitter over that."

"I was still a little asshole to her," Leo muttered. His bitterness turned to anger, cold and simmering. "Such a little asshole. I guilt tripped her so much, said shitty things...I wish I could see her again to just apologize."

"I am a firm believer in the fact that some fights are inevitable, Leo Valdez. They're conversations that took too long to happen."

He chuckled too sadly for her to find any genuine amusement inside of him. "Are you gonna say that whenever we piss each other off and argue?"

"Most likely."

"Even if I say terrible things?"

"I'll probably say worse, if we're being honest."

"Can't argue there."

It was Reyna's turn to laugh, and she did, shaking quietly feeling happier than she should. She looked down at her coffee and her toes, the clean cuticles and neat nails trimmed to precision. Leo laid his hand on her back and she breathed, feeling the warmth of his palm flood into her spine and through her whole body.

"Neat trick," Reyna murmured.

"Thanks," Leo said. "Anyways, that's why I came here. Frank and Hazel visited that week too, and they said the Vulcan kids were working on building training centers for each of the cohorts. They asked me to get in on it, so I came back with them. Then we met."

Reyna nodded, remembering her fellow praetor and centurion returning with the short, skinny Mexican boy that bombed her camp. They were introduced on relatively easy terms - she remembered the haggard look on his face as he held out his hand to shake. Reyna immediately knocked him square in eye with a nasty left hook. He was on the floor in a second. She placed a shiny gold boot right over his chest, pressed down, and threatened his life and testicles if he ever put this camp and it's people in harm ever again.

The dark haired girl gave him a disgruntled look. "You got a crush on me because I punched you in the face? Seriously?"

Leo burst into laughter, trying not to spill any of his coffee and trying not to choke on his own tongue. It went on for a solid minute as he leaned against the arm rest, gasping for air. Reyna pat his knee again, looking more bemused than anything.

"Gods, no!" Leo guffawed. He breathed raggedly. "I swore off girls for, like, a freaking month because of that! You scared the fuck out of me!"

Reyna shrugged, not offended in the least. "Can't say I blame you. One girl breaks your heart, and the other breaks your face," she replied. "Not the best week."

"Not at all. Even if you were insanely pretty, I just had shittier luck than normal," Leo said. The melancholy was back inside of his voice again, and she did not like it one bit. "I knew I liked you on New Years."

"When I broke your wrist?"

"Not really. Kind of. Remember the New Years party?"

It clicked immediately for her: their conversation on New Years when he was half drunk, with his hand still in a splint. They found themselves in a low slung couch alone as the rest of the legionnaires were off, waiting for the last six minutes of the year to come to a close. She'd watched him sulking in a corner with a slice of pepperoni pizza in his good hand. She didn't understand what possessed her to come next to him, or even bother apologizing.

All she knew was that she didn't like that look on his face. Not one bit.

"You apologized," Leo said. His look had never been more serious in the last ten hours, and she held it. "Even when I told you it had nothing to do with you. I earned that broken wrist."

"You did," Reyna murmured. She shrugged. "But I still...I wanted to make sure you were okay."

Earlier that day, Leo had been following her around, pestering about making changes to the blueprints Annabeth had sent her for the training centers. He'd commented on her appearance - "Damn, have I told you that you looked hot today?" - and she'd immediately lost it. She challenged him to an arm wrestling match in a falsely sweet voice, and he'd agreed.

Reyna remembered the fury, the almost-hate flooding through her body as he rolled up the sleeve of his right arm. They sat at one of the many picnic tables littered across New Rome. Several legionnaires watched the ordeal.

Reyna had at first let him believe he had a chance - they struggled in a standstill for a moment, watching the concentration on his face, the exertion in his arm as he tried moving her.

Then she started moving him a few inches at a time, with sharp, steep intervals, bursts of her true strength. His face turned red with stress as he struggled to keep his arm upright, knuckles close to knocking against the picnic table. And then she'd pulled a dirty trick, bending his hand back by the wrist sharply. The crack resounded sickeningly, sending waves of satisfaction through her.

"I'm not a piece of eye candy for you to ogle whenever you get the chance. Neither are the other female legionnaires," Reyna hissed, watching him cradle his broken wrist, looking victimized and hurt. The sight made her blood boil. He'd earned it. "I am one of this camp's most skilled and powerful praetors' in history. My mother is the goddess of war. I killed Orion with my bare hands. You will not disrespect me like that again or I will snap you like the gods damned twig you are. This is your warning."

Not one of her most compassionate moments, but Reyna didn't regret it for a second - some fights are inevitable after all.

A part of her thought that that particular conversation had been a long time coming from at least someone. Leo was insufferable when it came to treating girls with respect. Someone had to do it.

Hours and hours later, with the new year upon them, watching the young Greek boy sitting on his own, she felt guilty over being apart of his sadness. If they hadn't had that fight in the first place, then she wouldn't have bothered. So she'd sat herself down beside him without much of a game plan.

"I was feeling like shit. Even after destroying the actual personification of Earth, I couldn't end out the year with any positives. I'd been in New Rome for a month and still didn't feel like I could just...I wasn't feeling it. I don't know," Leo said, seemingly unable to explain. "Then you come along with the pep talk of a life time."

"It wasn't a pep talk."

"It was totally a pep talk."

Totally? she thought to herself. The west coast slang was getting to him in the stranges ways. "It was a conversation between two very similar people, Valdez."

He rolled his eyes. "Don't make it sound boring. You could be a motivational speaker," Leo said.

"It's not you, Reyna. I'm not upset about my wrist," Leo said, two and a half years ago. His voice was still high, but he looked much younger than her. They sat at eye level next to each other, and his expression reminded her so much of Nico that her chest hurt. "I'm just coming to terms with the fact that I'm always going to have a tragic fucking life. So I'm not up for celebrating, okay?"

"You aren't coming to terms with anything. You're accepting an unsure fate promised by very fickle immortals," Reyna replied. She did not feel fear speaking her mind. It was a choice she'd made months ago. Happiness wasn't the destination. It was the day-to-day. It was choice. "At the end of the day, only you get what you put into this life."

"That's bullshit and you know it," he grumbled. "Prophecies are made about us all the time. Dying terrible deaths and whatever. Living shitty, painful lives. I'm done trying to fight it. Nothing I put in is working."

"Happiness will always be your choice, Leo Valdez," Reyna told him. The crowd had began the final last minute countdown, and in the distance, echoed shouts of sixty!, fifty nine!, fifty eight! filled the cool night air. "It doesn't matter what happens, who is hurt, or what you're denied. Circumstance can never take your choice to be happy and try. That's all you. And it's possible, even for tragic half bloods like us."

She leaned in to kiss his cheek and ruffle his hair. He turned red, staring at her in complete shock. Reyna smirked. The praetor stole a slice of mushroom pizza from the plate in front of him, raising it in the air like a toast.

"To better choices," she toasted, raising the slice in the air as if holding a wine glass before taking a huge bite out of it. "Happy New Years, Valdez."

"I listened, you know," Leo said, breaking out of her short reverie. She watched the angles of his face, the lean muscle of his arm and torso, the curls falling into his eyes, and saw growth. "I figured it out. I look at things in...a healthier way, I think. I'm happier."

"That's all I want for you," Reyna said. She sat up fully and grasped his chin between his hands. "I want you to be happy, Leo. Even then I wanted that for you. If being takes away your happiness, then I will give this uspI don't care."

"Gods, I am. You don't understand. You make me the happiest. You make everything...you simplify everything," Leo said, leaning in closer to her so that their noses were an inch apart. "I'm not fucking around when I say that I love you. You're mi reina y mi ceilo. Fuck what Aphrodite says. Things change. Fate isn't ever clear, even to the immortals. All I know is that I want you and you want me. Not for sex, and not because I'm lonely. No matter what happens. I'm going to fight for this. For you. Whatever it takes."

"Whatever it takes," she repeated. Reyna bit back a smile in vain. She reached for his knee and flooded her strength, her bravery, her hope into him - she felt her SPQR tattoo flash and burn. She drank in his own fearlessness. "Careful there. Keep talking like that and I might just follow you into battle."

"Who says love isn't a war in the first place?"

"I can give you that."

He set down their lukewarm cups of coffee on the table next to her couch and he tackled her. Reyna shrieked deliriously, wrapping her arms around his shoulders as he stood them up and spun them around her living room. He was laughing triumphantly, as if he'd just found an antidote to an incurable disease he suffered from.

The sound of it made her heart race and her skin glow.

Leo set her down and kissed her until she was dizzy. Reyna kissed back, forgetting her lungs somewhere along the way.

The sunrise through the living room windows shone down on them, turning his skin gold and her hair chocolate. With the clean lines of his body pressed against her, and his lips dragging down her neck, she knew they would be okay. Not even the goddess of love herself could stand between them.

Reyna would make sure of that.

.

.

.

Reyna pat her fingers against the sticky concealer covering the side of her face. It was late in the morning, nearing noon. Her papers were spread out in front of her, from resource allocation forms for the different cohorts, to quest requests for supplies. She'd made it through nearly all of them, her work ethic double timed in her haste to keep Leo Valdez far from her thoughts.

But it turned out to be, as usual, a useless endeavor.

Reyna sighed, shoving a handful of jelly beans into her mouth, and leaning back into her office chair. Frank was nowhere to be seen, so the desk beside her's was empty.

She reached into one of her desk drawers to pull out a new highlighter to start working again, but found a small wooden box sitting inside of it instead. A moment of confusion passed, wondering when she'd placed it inside of there. Had she ever seen the thing at all?

The praetor took it out from the drawer and inspected it for a moment before opening it. Her jaw dropped at the item inside.

The watch was made of pure Imperial gold, reflective and shiny like her armor. It was finely crafted and feminine looking enough to pass as an average watch, though she could feel the complicated mechanics behind it with just one look. It had a thin strap and rounded face that held two miniature clocks inside of it - both telling the same time, just past eleven.

The rounded face of the watch blacked out and suddenly shifted, stretching out before her eyes. She flinched, her arm held a good foot away from her face as the watch grew and grew until it was at least half a foot in diameter. On top of the green, two glowing buttons faded into view.

With a slightly horrified expression and several curses just on her tongue, she tapped the green button.

Leo's ridiculous face popped into view, grinning hugely and wiggling his eyebrows. He looked to be in the back of a car with black leather interior. The windows beside him were tinted darkly, so she shouldn't make out his location.

"Right on time," he said happily. "How d'you like the gift?"

"I'm going to strangle you when I see you," she hissed. "Gods, I thought it was going to explode for a second."

He was still grinning, but he shrugged as well. "I can't help my amazing skills," he said. "Besides, I couldn't just say that me showing up was a gift. That's kind of lame, and I am aspiring to be not a lame boyfriend."

"Yeah, you're a lame everything else," Percy's voice called out to him.

"Who's boyfriend?" Annabeth's said. "Is that Reyna?"

"You guys just keep focused on the road," Leo said, glaring just over the screen at the two unshown passengers in the car. He turned his attention back to her with a grin. "So, a few things. Do I get to say I'm your boyfriend? We never really labelled it. Also, we stole one of the SUV's. So sorry."

Reyna rolled her eyes. "Frank let you steal it. He saw you in one of the workshops messing around with one of our cars yesterday and let it be," she said. "Yes, you get to say that you're my boyfriend, boyfriend. What else would I refer to you as?"

"Um, your Hot Ass Man. I'm cool with that."

"Keep dreaming."

"I am. Of you."

"Gods, that was bad," Percy called out again. Leo immediately gave him a rude gesture, then realized the driver could not see it from his view of the road.

"If I wanted to hang around a sassy white boy, I would have taken Nico with me," Leo snapped. Reyna pressed her lips together and shook silently with laughter. "There's no magic water to save you from this ass kicking, Jackson."

"There's two half filled water bottles in the backseat's cup holders. I can get creative, Valdez."

"Shut up, Seaweed Brain," Annabeth said. "Tell Reyna I said hey and hurry up your little love fest. I can see a Pontiac full of empousae trailing us."

Leo sighed, rolling his eyes and looking out the tinted windows. He frowned, then stared back at the watch. "We're always on a time limit, aren't we?" he said, looking more than a bit miffed. "I'll call you later. The second clock on the watch shows my time zone, wherever the hell I might be. And the connection won't attract any monsters, so you can keep it with you wherever you go. Solid imperial gold. That shit will last through a second battle with Gaea."

"Hopefully I won't have to test that out," Reyna drawled, leaning forward to cup her chin with her hand. "Go fight the monsters, Valdez. I'll be here all day."

"Good," Leo said. The melancholy in his tone rattled inside of her chest. "Te amo, mi cielo."

Reyna smirked, biting down on her lower lip for just a second. Maybe faith was like happiness. She always did have a choice to believe, didn't she?

"...te amo, stupid."

.

.

.

Reyna hung up the call on him the second after she'd said it - like she hadn't just literally turned his entire world on its axis. He stared into mid air as his all black, Stygian iron watch folded back into its normal size. He leaned back onto the head seat and felt his stomach drop somewhere around his big toe. He hadn't even told how to hang up. How'd she figure it out?

"My brain just broke," Leo said aloud, staring around in a quiet panic. "Holy Hephaestus."

"Wait, what does te amo mean?" Percy said, sounding way too curious. Annabeth scoffed aloud.

"Google Translate it later, idiot. Just keep driving. Leo, get your head in the game and melt their tires. If we're quick enough, we could probably jump them before hey do something."

Leo nodded, reaching for the control panel just beside the door for the button that opened the sun roof. He pushed it, and the roof of the SUV began sliding open to reveal the warm California sky. "I'm on it," he replied. "But just to let you know, my gorgeous, amazing, super powerful girlfriend just said that she loved me and I need, like, ten minutes to freak out."

"We'll give you your ten minutes soon. I promise," Annabeth said. "Percy needed twenty minutes when I told him."

"Very true," he said. "Still don't know what I did right if we're gonna be honest."

"Neither do I."

As he stood in the backseat, his upper body sticking out in the sun roof, the rapid wind whipped against his ears and drowned out their conversation. All he knew was the heat of the sun on his shoulders and the sharp flap of the wind against his hair and clothes.

Leo definitely needed a freak out session after hearing his very new girlfriend say I love you - maybe he'd call back and get her to say it in English too for extra proof - but now he had monsters to destroy. The fast the better. The fast they got done with this quest, the faster he could be back in new room with his queen.

.

.

.


A/N: Oh my god this is so long but I love it. So much. Damn close to ten thousand words. Maybe I suddenly wrote smut because of the desperate lack of Leyna smut fics, because let me tell you, I found literally none. It was astounding. Well...really, there's a desperate lack of Leyna fics in general, so I can't be too sad.

So yeah. Notes time.

1) I love Leo Valdez, alright? He's a little Mexican Santa helper that I want to cuddle for the rest of my life. He made me cry during The Lost Hero. I empathize with his character in a deeply personal way. That being said, I really dislike how he sees girls throughout the series. I really dislike some of his motives towards freeing Calypso (even tho the relationship and their build up was sort of cute). I like how he finds strength attractive, like all the boys in the Percy Jackson series, but I really dislike the way he equates powerful ass girls to just hotness. It happens many times. He gets hormonal tunnel vision and blatantly focuses on how a girl looks. It's annoying. He's a teenage boy, but he's so much more than that. It just downgrades his character immensely.

So hell yes I addressed that in this fic, because while I do love him with all my heart, I couldn't have him be with Reyna of all people with his shitty objectifying/disrespectful tendencies.

Many people label it misogynistic, but I don't use that word. Nu uh. He doesn't hold a hatred/dislike of women at all, even subconsciously. And personally, I don't equate his objectification to misogyny. They're related, but correlation doesn't equate to causation, and blah blah blah.

2) Don't come at me trying to excuse this boy on his bullshit whatsoever.

3) I have never written PJO anything before, so I am a newbie. If anything seems too out of character, I'm sorry!

4) If you were bothered by the amount of Spanish in the fic, then...lol, deal with it. No apology for is my headcanon yo. Leo and Reyna are constantly around non-Latinos in canon, so I definitely think that if they became friends, they would speak in Spanish all the damn time. Having secret conversations, talking shit with that person close by, and just trying to practice. Language isn't just simple communication: it's connecting with people in a real way. It's apart of one's culture and identity. They are very proud of being who they are, especially Leo in my opinion. They'd whip out Spanish whenever. I honestly couldn't write them and not have them speak Spanish. My fingers would not let me.

5) To address Reyna's lil pep talk about happiness being a choice: in no way do I feel that people should be happy all the time. That's impossible. I've suffered severe depression myself. I know what it's like to be unable to be happy and not understand why or how. Sadness and grief will never give you a choice in life. Sometimes feelings just happen. I have a headcanon that Leo is genuinely bipolar, and goes through manic and depressive periods (not that I wrote it in here, but it fits with his character in my opinion). But I think that the way you chose to live your life as well as how you see the world impacts how you live greatly. You are always going to certain choices in life. Actively attempting to be positive and strive for improvement is one.

6) If you understood the pineapple jokes, points for you. I was laughing for three minutes straight over it.

I almost ended this off after they had sex and just called it a day. Bad idea! Such a bad idea! I'm glad I stewed on this for several days and added more and more. I'm glad that they got to talk the morning after and just digest the notion of them together. I'm glad I got to quasi-develop bonds between them. It makes this fic so much better in my opinion.

If you want me to write the New Years scene where Reyna breaks his wrist they have their little heart to heart, make sure you review and tell me! Thank you so much for reading~