@ladystark428 is legendary bc every fic is SO unsubtly horny that every single one has a moment where it's like "hey btw it's not happening onscreen but they're fucking so much. like. all the time. they don't stop. im actually not sure if they know how to stop" all without writing a single word of smut. and it gets me every time
@oeleruathechronicallyillasshole @gay-mormon-wizard @ava-sweeney if any of you stop posting out the blue i’m assuming something bad has happened and will be acting accordingly
I do not think he'd die by drowning, but I think he'd long to. Going underwater can be so peaceful until you run out of air and sometimes he just wishes he didn't have to come back up. He wishes he could just let the air in his lung run out. It'd be a more peaceful death than the one that will inevitably come for him
@itsyaboi-eli has a devastating fic called "Gilded Lily" where Will attempts suicide by drowning so yeah i b thinkin about it 😭😭😭 (angst with a happy ending)
I do not think he'd die by drowning, but I think he'd long to. Going underwater can be so peaceful until you run out of air and sometimes he just wishes he didn't have to come back up. He wishes he could just let the air in his lung run out. It'd be a more peaceful death than the one that will inevitably come for him
Hihihi everyone! Who wants the first chapter of my newest Valgrace Long Fic? This was originally going to just be a oneshot for @valgraceweek but it sort of got legs and walked to the store for milk and cigarettes. I should probably stop using metaphors. Fic time!
May I be the first (and only) to present Fire in the Hearth Chapter One: A Knock at the Door
Leo Valdez left the demigod world behind. He chose a life for himself, a life that was calm and patient and boring. Every day he woke up in his little farmhouse, he cared for his animals, tended to his plants, and every evening he called his best friend. It took him eight years of pain and sweat and tears, but he'd made a life for himself, and he wasn't willing to give it up. Unfortunately, when the past comes knocking, it rarely sends a warning. When it did, he finds himself wondering if the past is something you can ever truly outrun.
Jason Grace has had everything taken from him by the gods he serves. He lost his childhood, his family, his best friend, and even the love of his young life. All he had left to cling to was a sense of duty that rang more and more hollow with every passing day. Every time he was given another mission, another way to serve, he wondered if he made the right choice to stay. He wondered if he could ever fix his biggest mistake.
When both men find themselves stuck together for a week one summer in Iowa, they get answers to questions they'd been too scared to even ask.
Or: Leo's Ex-Boyfriend Shows Up And Ruins His Cottagecore Life
Leo woke to the once-familiar scent of burning cotton sheets.
He recognized it immediately, despite not having smelled it in years. It wasn’t a scent you forgot easily. He sort of expected himself to jerk upright in a panic, that’s what he would have done the last time this happened, but instead he forced himself to breathe deeply and slowly sit up. His sheets were still clenched in his fists, blackened and irreparably charred beneath his palms. He took another deep breath and tried to figure out what, exactly, this meant.
The first thing it meant was obvious. He’d used his powers. Three and a half years clean, all that time where the only trace of the fire in his blood being the fact that he ran about a degree and a half hotter than the average person, had just been flushed down the toilet. Not deliberately, of course. He’d had a dream, that much was obvious to anyone who had lived a life like his, but it wasn’t a nightmare, not exactly, which was worse. He couldn’t remember most of it, just flashes of lightning and gold and piercing electric blue eyes he’d told himself to forget eight years ago.
Then, he heard an undignified yowl from down the hall and he told himself that he had better things to do.
“I’m coming!” he called, kicking his way out of the sheets. He considered them for a moment, before quickly stripping the bed and balling the whole set up to be thrown in the first dumpster he saw when he got into town. He knew he should turn them into rags or something useful, but the thought of seeing that particular striped floral pattern and being reminded of this moment made his stomach churn.
He made his way to the kitchen where Piper 2.0 was sitting next to her food bowl and giving him a baleful look with her one green eye. He reached down to scratch behind her ears, and glanced at the clock. 5:07 am. “Oh, I’m sorry, princess. Was your breakfast a whole two minutes later than normal? Is that a crime?” Piper 2.0 purred loudly and headbutted his hand, unconcerned that she was being mocked, so long as she was also getting kibble.
Once his tiny furry dictator was fed, he turned his attention to his own breakfast, or, rather, what would be his breakfast at some point later in the week. “Good morning, Rosco,” he mumbled to his sourdough starter as he carefully measured out the water and flour needed to feed him and wake him from his fridge hibernation. He hadn’t baked bread in probably close to a month, so Rosco wasn’t going to be ready to go until the next day, but that was fine with Leo. Sourdough was a test of patience more than anything, and life had certainly taught Leo how to slow down over the past eight years.
If you had asked Leo at any point in his childhood what he thought he’d be when he grew up, he’d tell you that he was destined to be a mechanic, just like his mamá. And, to be fair, he was a mechanic, but he was only a mechanic two days a week. Even then he didn’t have a shop, he traveled to people’s houses and worked on their cars and their plumbing and electrical and just about anything they needed. The other five days a week, he was a farmer, and that was the bit that would have made a younger version of himself laugh until his stomach cramped because Leo Valdez was not a farmer. He lived in big, crowded cities where he could slip away unseen and he surrounded himself with machines because the squishy organics of the world could only be tolerated for so long. Sometimes, part of him still wondered if that old self-assessment was true, but then he’d step outside onto a porch he owned and built himself, take a deep breath, and that part would quiet back down into peace.
Regardless of what was and wasn’t true of his new self-actualization, Leo had chores to do. The chickens needed to be let out and have their eggs collected, the dog needed to be fed, and Daisy Bell needed to be milked. It wasn’t a glamorous or flashy life – certainly not a heroic one – but it was the life he’d carved out for himself. His animals (including the highly demanding Piper 2.0) depended on him, and his garden provided. He was happy here.
Unbidden, the flashes of his dream resurfaced, bringing with them an unwelcome sense of dread. He grit his teeth and focused on the eggs he was collecting. Merriweather and The General clucked around his ankles while the others scratched at the dirt, Einstein heaved a big doggy huff as he watched over his flock, and in the distance Daisy Bell mooed about something or another. They were real. Far more real than whatever flashes of memory his subconscious had decided to drag up in the middle of the night. This was his life, the life he’d chosen, and he wasn’t going to let it go.
His chores took longer than usual that morning – despite his best efforts, he’d been horribly distracted the whole time – and when it was finally time to head back up to the house, he was starving. Piper 2.0 was lounging on the porch, clearly too busy enjoying her post-breakfast nap to bother with her own chores. Leo didn’t mind. He reached down and stroked her back. “You’re a horrifically lazy little beast. Did you know that?” Piper 2.0 flopped onto her side and arched into a perfect backwards croissant, and Leo chuckled. “Yeah, yeah. You’re cute. Big deal.”
He had work to do in town today, so before he let himself have breakfast, he took a shower, making sure to scrub all of the dirt and crud out from under his nails and taking the time to finger twist his hair to keep his curls protected. He dressed and checked his schedule on his phone – two oil changes, a brake check, and Ms. Nelson needed her dryer looked at again, plus he needed to stop by the farmer’s market to drop off his excess eggs and the salsa he’d already started jarring that weekend. A busy day. A productive day. A good day.
By the time he was cracking eggs into the frying pan, Leo had forgotten all about his dream.
*-*-*-*-*
Much to Leo’s dismay, life wasn’t actually all that interested in letting him forget his dream. Not completely at least. He’d driven into town, dropped off his household garbage (including the sheets) at the communal dumpster, and headed straight to Naomi’s Fruit Stand. It wasn’t just a fruit stand, hadn’t been for almost ten years, and it was being run by Naomi’s grandson, Marshall, but Naomi’s Fruit Stand had been in the exact same place with the exact same name for as long as anyone could remember, and Millrose dug its heels in when it came to arbitrary change.
Marshall was chatting at the register with another customer when Leo walked in, and he offered a wave and a smile when he heard the bell above the door jingle. This got Amee’s attention, and she turned towards the door with a blinding smile of her own. “Good morning, Leo! Dropping off some more strawberry preserves?”
“Fraid I dropped the last of those off a couple weeks ago,” he confessed. “It’s salsa season now.”
Amee’s eyes got wide and eager. “Ooh, even better. I’ll have to tell Lawrence to go easy on the strawberries we have left though. I swear the man eats more jam than toast in the morning.”
“Well, if it makes a difference, the blueberries should be coming in soon,” Leo chuckled and set his crates on the counter for Marshall. “I’ve got four and a half dozen eggs and four quart jars of salsa–”
“Three jars!” Amee cut in. “I would like to buy one right now.”
“Three jars of salsa,” Leo corrected with a snort. “This was just the first harvest, so I should be bringing double that next week.”
“You should think about getting more chickens,” Marshall advised, writing out a check for Leo. “Those sell out almost immediately. You should have seen the fit Mr. Pickens threw when he missed out on the last batch.”
“That’s what Jim gets for showing up on Tuesday,” Amee sniffed.
“I’ll think about getting more chickens when Einstein grows thumbs and can help me take care of them,” Leo drawled. Then he looked between the two of them with his eyebrows raised. “Anyway, what’s going on with the two of you?”
Amee’s eyes immediately went wide and sparkly. “Oooh, Marshall! Tell him! You’ve got to!”
Leo’s eyebrows climbed higher. “Got something to share with the class?”
Marshall ducked his head, cheeks growing pink. “Tommy’s supposed to be moving back to town next month.”
“Tommy?”
“Tommy Wells; you wouldn’t know him,” Amee explained eagerly. “But everyone knows that he and Marshall here were inseparable in high school. Best of friends.”
“We haven’t properly talked in years, though.”
“What happened?” Leo frowned.
“We wanted different things in life,” Marshall shrugged. “He decided to go to the city and try to do something with his life there. Wanted me to come with him, but I said no.”
Leo felt his throat get a little tight. He knew the exact shape of that conversation. “Why not? If he was so important, why didn’t you go with him?”
“Well, he couldn’t exactly leave Millrose,” Amee said, almost defensively. “The Wells family moved here when Tommy was in high school, but Marshall’s been here since he was a baby! This is the only life he’s ever known.”
“Besides, I had responsibilities here,” Marshall added. “I’ve been planning to take over the shop since before I even met Tommy. I couldn’t just abandon that.”
“Right, makes sense,” Leo agreed, though the words were bitter on his tongue.
“Besides, it all worked out!” Amee piped up. “Millrose draws everyone back eventually! Mark my words!”
Leo wasn’t sure if he was going to cry or be sick. “Right. Uh, yeah. Um, anyway, I’ve, uh–”
“Are you alright man?” Marshall asked. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
“No, no I’m–” Leo swallowed thickly, then forced a smile. “I’m fine. I just suddenly remembered everything I’m supposed to be doing today.”
“Oh, are you going to help Ms. Nelson?” Amee asked. “Poor dear’s been putting her laundry out on the line for almost a week now. I send Lawrence over to help her when I notice her out there.”
“Well, you don’t have to do that any more; she’s my next stop,” Leo said. “See you guys later.”
“Bye, Leo.”
“Tell Ms. Nelson I said hello!”
Leo gave them both a silent wave over his shoulder and walked out of the grocery store.
Maybe, if things had stayed there, Leo would have been fine. Maybe he would have just chalked it up to a weird coincidence. Marshall’s best friend from when he was a teenager was being dragged back into town after trying desperately to leave its confines and make a life for himself. That didn’t necessarily mean anything. It was just a strange happenstance. Just a classic case of self-important projection But then one of his oil changes announced that she was going to try pottery again after not touching the wheel for nearly four years. And his brake pad customer was talking about going back to college to finish a degree everyone told him to give up on. In fact, it seemed like the only person not hellbent on returning or welcoming back a part of their past was Ms. Nelson, and that was likely because she was too busy trying to get her hearing aids to work so that she could hear the words coming out of Leo’s mouth to supply many of her own.
Eventually, the growing pit of anxiety and dread got to the point where Leo couldn’t reasonably ignore it, and he begrudgingly pulled out his phone.
“Dr. Kimbrough’s office, how can I help you?”
“Hey, Dr. K. It’s Leo,” he said, trying to sound as cheerful as possible. “You, um. You think you have a sec?”
Dr. Kimbrough went quiet for a moment, assessing everything before she spoke. “It’s good to hear from you. What’s going on?”
“Do you think you maybe might have some availability in the next few days?” he asked casually. “I know we have an appointment next month, but I’ve, uh, got some stuff I want to hash out. Sooner rather than later.”
She hummed. “I have an availability for Friday at 10:30.”
“Perfect. I’ll take it.”
She hummed again and started typing on her computer. For one shining moment, Leo thought that maybe she’d just schedule him and he could go back to ignoring things until Fridayday, but that had never been how they worked. “And what is the cause for this visit?”
Leo chewed on his tongue, actively biting back a deflection or stupid joke. Dr. Kimbrough wouldn’t laugh anyway, even if it was funny. Besides, she would understand. “I, uh, had a dream. I don’t remember much of it, but, uh, yeah. A dream.”
“A dream?”
“Yeah, but not a normal dream. One of those dreams that gives your a bad feeling in you gut all day. More of a, well…”
“A demigod dream?”
Leo closed his eyes and breathed through his nose deeply. He didn’t say the D word. Not anymore. Dr. Kimbrough was the only one who did. “Yeah, one of those.”
She was typing again. “I see. Thank you for reaching out to me, Leo.”
He picked at his nails and felt shame burning behind his eyes as he said, “I used my fire powers.”
That gave Dr. Kimbrough pause. Then she cleared her throat. “I’m going to cancel my lunch meeting with a colleague. How does Wednesday at 12 sound?”
Leo barked out a sharp, wobbly little laugh. “You don’t have to do that, doc.”
“It may not be required, but something like this deserves as immediate attention as possible,” she said. Most people might have said it gently, or with pity, but she didn’t. She never treated Leo with pity. She treated him like someone who had a chronic medical condition that she was paid to address. That was much better than pity. “Have you called Piper?”
“My cat? Doc, I don’t think she’s exactly qualified for this,” Leo snorted. Dr. Kimbrough went dead silent on the other end of the line, just as predicted, and Leo winced. “No, I haven’t called.”
“Why not?”
“Why should I?”
“Leo, we’ve talked about this,” Dr. Kimbrough said sternly. “This isn’t a load you have to manage on your own.”
“I’m not managing on my own,” Leo shot back. “I called my shrink and set up an emergency appointment so I can talk about my big feelings like a grownup.”
“I am not, should not, and will never be your primary support system,” she told him flatly. “Calling me was a good decision, but I’m not your friend. You need your best friend.”
Leo sighed and scrubbed a hand over his face. “I don’t want to talk to her about this.”
“Why not?”
“Do I have to say?”
“No, but you have to tell me you don’t want to talk about it.”
Leo puckered his face. He hated that rule. “I don’t want to call her about this because it’s not something we talk about anymore. This isn’t– Piper left that life. She left it before I did. I don’t want to drag her back into it over something that might be nothing.”
Dr. Kimbrough hummed. “And if it turns out that it isn’t nothing?”
“Then I definitely don’t want her involved.”
“So, you’re keeping secrets from her because you’ve decided that she can’t handle it?”
“I–” Leo cut himself off with a scowl. “You’re putting words in my mouth.”
“Communication is a tricky thing,” she said pleasantly. “Very easy to get the wrong interpretation when no words are exchanged.”
“You’re the worst shrink ever.”
“And yet, you keep scheduling appointments.”
Leo barked out another laugh. “Alright, fine. You win. I was planning on calling her tonight anyway. But I’m giving her a heads up before I dump any of this on her so she can choose what she does and doesn’t want to hear.”
“That’s a very good idea,” she told him. “Oh, and Leo?”
“Yeah?”
“I’m proud of you.” Leo went completely still and she gave the words a chance to settle in silence before she continued. “This right here? This is growth. Four years ago, you would have just kept this to yourself until it festered into something unmanageable. You wouldn’t have talked to me, you wouldn’t have talked to Piper. Your willingness to reach out is a good thing and you should be proud.”
Leo’s eyes stung and he forced a weak chuckle. “I’ll be sure to buy myself an ice cream cone and a blue ribbon to celebrate.”
Dr. Kimbrough actually laughed at that. “See that you do. If anything happens between now and Wednesday, be sure to call.”
“You got it, doc. Talk to you then.”
“Goodbye, Leo. I’ll see you Wednesday at 12.”
Leo hung up the phone and heaved a deep, heavy sigh as he stared up at the summer sun beating down on him. Maybe he really did deserve that ice cream.
*-*-*-*-*
Leo did wind up calling Piper that night, partially because he knew Dr. Kimbrough was right, but mostly because he liked talking to Piper and he called her pretty much every night. It was a system they’d developed, not on purpose, but present none the less. It had started a couple years after high school when Piper had wanted to move to a big city and Leo knew he needed the opposite. The thought of separation had been terrifying at first; they’d spent the past four years as a singular codependent organism that shared a bedroom at 19 just to try to handle their own PTSD. They weren’t sure they’d be able to survive the idea of not speaking to each other every day, so they resigned themselves to spending the rest of their lives in that tiny little cabin in Oklahoma. Then Piper’s dad had looked at them like they were insane (maybe they were) and gently reminded them that phones existed for this exact reason.
The first year was hard on them both. The phones helped, but they could only do so much in the middle of the night when you started desperately searching for your person, especially when those calls were only about a minute and a half long and sporadic at best. They’d been terrified to stay on any longer than that back then, they’d heard the horror stories about what extended phone calls meant for people like them. Then Piper had called him at one in the morning in hysterics because of a nightmare and they fell asleep to the sound of the other breathing a hundred and fifty miles away. That phone call was eight hours long and the world didn’t end, but it did unlock something in their chests.
These days they talked most every day, anywhere from fifteen minutes to an hour and a half. Piper usually let Leo do the calling so that she could be sure he was done with all of his farm chores, and Leo took his job very seriously.
That night’s conversation started out normally. Boring, even, in that one particular way they had both come to cherish over the years. It started with the expected updates. Piper wanted to know how Einstein and Daisy Bell and her namesake and all nine of the chickens were doing, and Leo wanted to know if the tomato plant he’d given her for her birthday was still alive and producing for her. Then, of course, came all of the little nothing conversations. Leo talked about the town gossip (Piper was very interested to hear that a local artist was considering selling pottery again) and she told him about the couple she’d taken on house tours that afternoon.
“And, Leo, I’m not fucking with you even one percent when I tell you this woman looked me dead in the eye and told me that she was a cat therapist, who dabbled in exorcisms,” she all but yelped, and Leo could already see her waving her free hand through the air for emphasis. “Her husband is a professional stamp collector!”
Leo was curled up in his favorite chair wheezing as he stroked Piper 2.0. “You should give me her contact information. “Better Piper could probably use her services.”
“The insane thing was their budget,” she groaned, totally ignoring him like she always did when she was mid-story. “Like, I work forty hours a week, every week. Sometimes more, even! But I’m still renting an apartment while these caricatures of the upper middle class are casually telling me five hundred thousand dollars on a house. I’m not convinced these two have jobs.”
“Depending on what kind of stamp collector the guy is, you can sell those little pieces of paper for literally millions of dollars.”
“That is obscene,” Piper seethed, sending Leo into another peal of cackling. “I’m gonna be sick.”
“Big talk coming from the lady who spent almost seven hundred dollars on a Pokémon card.”
“That is completely different,” Piper insisted, sounding betrayed. “That was an Umbreon VMax alternate art that was PSA rated nine. They were practically giving it away at that price. Plus, I needed it for my Eeveelutions binder. I couldn’t not buy it”
“Uh-huh,” Leo drawled. “But stamp collecting? That’s for the real freaks and weirdos.”
“I hate you.”
“Mhm. Keep telling yourself that, Pipes. Be sure to send me a post card from Egypt while you’re floating down that river.”
“Fuck off,” she laughed brightly. “You’re literally the worst. I don’t know why I even waste my time talking to you.”
“Yeah, because your social calendar is so full, other than me. You’ve got your pick of the litter.”
“I’ll have you know that I actually went on a date this afternoon. We got ice cream.”
“Oh? How’d that go?” Leo asked eagerly. Piper stayed silent for a moment too long and Leo winced in sympathy. “That bad, huh?”
“I mean, like, she was fine, I guess?” Piper whined. “But she had so many opinions about The Bee Movie–”
“Which is, of course, a work of art.”
“And you can do that if you’re bringing something else great to the table but she wasn’t,” Piper finished with a huff. “She brought Jello salad and a loaf of white bread to the personality potluck. That’s great if you love Jello salad, but I don’t.”
“You continue to have the most peculiar, scathing reviews of people,” Leo mused. “I think you might be insane. Have you considered that you might be insane?”
She blew a loud raspberry at him over the phone, and they settled into a comfortable silence, and Leo just let him focus on the sound of her breathing, the proof that somewhere out there his best friend was alive and safe. Then, Piper let out a soft sigh and he braced himself for impact. “Leo?”
“Yeah?”
“Are you gonna tell me about it?”
Leo sucked his teeth loudly in that way he knew she hated. She didn’t comment on it, which told Leo more than any words could. Still, he wanted to put it off for just a second longer. “Tell you what?”
“I don’t know.” There was another beat of silence, and Leo knew that 150 miles away, she was picking at her cuticles, just like he was. “You just… have this vibe. It’s weird.”
“I was planning on telling you,” he said. “I just wanted to save it for the end so we could have a nice conversation first.”
“Well, the nice part has been had. Show me the ugly part now.”
Leo chuckled softly. It wasn’t funny, but it was an incredibly Piper thing to say. “Alright, but fair warning, talking about it is going to break the rules.”
Piper’s breath hitched on the other end of the line. “You don’t mean–”
“That’s exactly what I mean,” he said grimly. “You sure you still want to hear it?”
Piper swallowed and Leo could almost hear her squaring her jaw. “Of course. If it’s you, there’s no rule we won’t break.”
He took a deep breath and closed his eyes. If he was going to make this real, he wasn’t going to watch. “I had a dream last night. A… a demigod dream.”
“Okay,” Piper said softly, trying to manage the anxiety he knew was crawling up her throat. “Okay. Um. Do you… remember it?”
“Not really,” he confessed. “Just flashes, mostly.”
“Then how do you know it had anything to do with… that?”
“Because it made me use my fire powers.”
“Oh, Leo,” she breathed. Her voice was filled with all the gentle sympathy he couldn’t accept from Dr. Kimbrough, even if she offered it, and his eyes swam with tears. “That was– That broke your streak, didn’t it?”
“I was supposed to hit thirteen hundred days in November,” he said in a tiny voice. “I didn’t– It’s been so long, and I didn’t even choose it. It just happened to me, just like everything else just happened to us.”
“I’m sorry,” she said simply. “It’s not fair. This– We shouldn’t have ever had to deal with any of that in the first place, much less now that we’ve made the effort to do something else.”
“That’s not the only thing,” he continued miserably. “The dream? It was– He was in it.”
Piper went very still, the dangerous, angry kind of still that refused to let the world ever really forget that she was a trained killer. “You mean Jason?”
“Yeah.” He pressed a fist to his lips and caught his breath. “I haven’t thought about him in months, Piper. Why the hell am I suddenly dreaming about my ex-boyfriend like some kind of high schooler again?”
“Fuck that guy,” she said venomously. “He wasn’t even a good boyfriend to begin with.”
That wasn’t true, and they both knew it. Jason had been a great boyfriend when Leo had been dating him. The ending didn’t necessarily negate the good that came before it; he’d learned that with Dr. Kimbrough’s help. “I just wish I knew why it was happening now.”
Piper hummed thoughtfully. “Leo, what’s today?”
“Uh, Monday? Why?”
“No, I mean the date, dummy.” Leo was silent and she heaved a sigh. “It’s July first.”
The world went very still around him. “Today’s his…”
“Birthday, yeah,” she finished. “Maybe that’s why you had that dream. Brains are a lot better at dates subconsciously than they are consciously. Maybe you just recognized the anniversary in the back of your head before you let it actually manifest in your proper brain, so it came out in a dream.”
“I– Yeah, I guess that makes sense,” Leo agreed, though he knew it wasn’t the truth. The theory did make sense, but there was something else. His dream had been a message, not just a calendar reminder, but he didn’t want to admit that to himself, much less her.
Piper made a noise that made Leo think she didn’t believe her words either, but she pressed on, finding a new topic that suited her better. “Anyway, your birthday is Sunday. I’ve already taken Monday through Wednesday off, so I’ll be driving down Saturday. I was planning to take the Friday off so we could do the Fourth together, but that plan fell through. Apparently the cat therapist needs to see a specific house that day. I hate rich people.”
“Friendly reminder that your dad owned a plane.”
“Irrelevant. He sold it years ago.”
Leo snorted softly. “Whatever you say, Pipes.” Then he let himself smile. “So, you’re gonna be here Saturday?”
“Mhm!” she hummed. “I haven’t decided if I’m gonna drive through Friday night and get there super early or just wait until Saturday to leave.”
“You hate driving at night.”
“Yeah, but I love you. That’s more important to me.”
Leo’s chest warmed, just like it did every time she said that. “Love you, too.”
Piper was about to start in on her schedule planning again when a loud, sudden boom of thunder shook the little farm house to the foundations. Leo whipped his head up to see that it was pouring buckets outside like a storm had simply been summoned on top of him, and he frowned. “It’s raining.”
“Is that a bad thing?”
Leo shook his head, though he knew she couldn’t see him. “No, it’s just a surprise. Millrose is usually pretty good about sticking to the forecast.” Before she could reply, a frantic knock came from the front door, and Leo went perfectly still and she did, too. “Piper,” he whispered under his breath. “Someone’s here.”
“Are you sure?” she whispered back, though there was no one to hear her. To make its point clear, the knock sounded again, even louder and more desperate than before and Piper sucked in a breath. “What are you gonna do?”
“I gotta answer it,” Leo said. “It could be someone who needs help.”
“But what about your–”
“My dream doesn’t mean shit in the face of someone dying on my front porch!” he hissed.
Without waiting for Piper’s response, Leo shifted Piper 2.0 off his lap and crept to the front door. Another round of frantic knocking, this time accompanied with a weak voice. “Please. I don’t know where else to go.”
Leo felt like a bucket of ice water had been dumped over his head. He knew that voice. He hadn't heard it in eight years, but he’d never ever forget it. Before he could question himself, he flung the door open wide to see a once-familiar face, aged nearly a decade and pale with pain and fear alike. He was soaked from the storm and his shirt was stained bright red with blood. He blinked slowly at Leo a few times before recognition finally dawned in those electric blue eyes. “Leo,” he breathed, the syllables sounding almost reverent from his lips.
Then, without any sort of warning, Jason Grace tipped forward and collapsed into Leo’s arms.
And speaking of father's day, a reminder that "Peeta wanted them so badly" does not equal "he pressured Katniss" or that "he was constantly asking Katniss for a baby" or that Katniss didn't want them. He just wanted them and there's nothing wrong with that.
(Also, Katniss has a habit of reflecting her own secret wishes on other characters, see the moment after the beach kiss when she sees the dream about Peeta's children and decides there and then Peeta must have them, even though Peeta had never expressed such wishes)
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Percy Jackson and the Olympians - Rick Riordan, The Heroes of Olympus - Rick Riordan
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Major Character Death
Relationships: Jason Grace/Leo Valdez
Characters: Leo Valdez, Jason Grace
Additional Tags: Engagement, Multiple Orgasms, Anal Sex, Aftercare, Service Top Jason Grace, Jason Grace was Raised by Wolves, Forced Orgasm, them being stupid in love, Bathing/Washing, Wedding Rings, Kissing
Series: Part 23 of Valgrace Good Future
Jason is doing that thing in bed again where he's trying to break Leo
It usually builds. His man has always had a thing for getting him off, and Leo is not complaining, but every once in a while he will get obsessed. There are a few things that can trigger it; travel stress or nightmares are always a sure bet, but also getting really excited and love struck will do it too. So it's not a surprise that their fresh engagement has triggered this particular game tonight, but it is, as always, a treat
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They doing it the night they get engaged
the next few chapters of my soldez fic are more delicate bc we are leading up to the first kiss now, so they will all require more time to write than previous chapters have required. thank you for your patience soldez nation
i've compiled some of the funny phrases i like to use into a list of robot friendly additions to your vocabulary for the mechanically inclined
the circuits are saying - i have a gut feeling
the circuits are singing - i have a good feeling
the sensors are pinging - i just noticed something
that RAM is reserved - i have too much on my plate right now / i have some responsibilities to work on
the servos are stalling - i'm feeling very tired
i'm short a circuit - i don't quite understand
my batteries are dry - hungry
let's grab some fuel rods - let's get something to eat
