ᴡʀɪᴛᴇ ᴍᴇ ᴜᴘ | ʙɪʟʟ
Leo Valdez hasn’t never really known what burns felt like, but if he’d have to describe the feeling, that would probably be it.
A painful, burning agony that made him want to dig his fingers into his chest and rip out the source.
The isolation had been the start, but the letter was the catalyst. He had gotten a bad feeling from the start, receiving that piece of paper instead of a housecall, an uncharacteristic Jason Grace move. He should have never opened it up, read the words staining the paper that dug a knife into and ripped right through the mask he had spent so much time building. To think he had shut himself away in the middle of this, to think he had been so blind as to not figure it out earlier...
To think he had left behind the one person who never lost hope in him.
He had searched for hours. Legs aching, throat sore, hands balled into fists for the entire time. He had felt his fingers go slightly numb, nail marks dug into freshly calloused palms with no intention of leaving. He just wanted to find him, to see for himself that he was alright, that he was still around and he’d still be able to see him again.
He doesn’t even realize how dry his throat is until he sits himself down, a little spot in an alley surrounded by thrown away scrap metal. A little dumpsite, but a spot of comfort for a son of Hephaestus, who runs his fingers over sharp edges and has to take deep breaths to avoid letting out anything unnecessary.
He’s so good at hiding how he feels, at playing the clown, the goofball, ever-present smile, but there’s only so much he can take. This is too much, even for him.
Too much for him to notice anything else joining him, one arm currently wrapped tightly around his knees.