Valgrace week day 4! Prompt: Inspired by other works
I absolutely ADORE @neo-kid-funk's Leo and Valgrace art, and their drawing of Leo in a skirt definitely stuck with me, lol, so I decided to draw the outfit and Jason getting flustered over it
And They Were Soulmates! (oh my god they were soulmates)
Leo and Jason have always loved each other. It just hasn’t always been obvious.
tl;dr: soulmates exist and you experience the same pain they do. jason and leo are gay for each other (whoda thunk?)
@valgraceweek 2026, day 4: trope list, soulmates
fic under the cut!
Hera’s little hero was just two years of age when he started crying in the middle of a perfectly ordinary afternoon.
Revolutionary! A toddler? Crying? Someone call the police!
(She rather enjoyed human humor. Esperanza had introduced her to a thing called sarcasm, and it had, uh, how should she say this…rocked her world? Is that right?)
She emerged from her comfortable armchair to go check on him (that was one thing humans did right: armchairs. Wonderful to take this little thing called naps in). After all, what right did she have to call herself goddess of motherhood if she couldn’t take care of a human baby?
“Leo, my dear, what’s the matter?” She asked, half-expecting him to answer as she joined him in his playpen. “Stop crying. That isn’t becoming of a demigod such as yourself.”
The boy quieted down somewhat at that, as he should’ve, but his big brown eyes still glistened as he pointed to his mouth, which was trembling with the effort of holding back his sobs.
His mouth, which was covered in blood spouting from a thin cut on his upper lip.
Well, that was peculiar. She hadn’t left him in the playpen with anything that could do that, now, had she?
Hera lifted her little hero into the air, holding him against her shoulder as she scanned the floor for what could’ve done this.
That jigsaw puzzle in the corner was made of cardboard, too flimsy and dull to cut him like that. Those rings he liked to stack on that pole were too round and soft to have done it, either. The blocks were possible culprits, she supposed. If someone were to rub a sharp edge against their lip, it could make a cut like the one Leo had…
…but Leo hadn’t been holding anything when she found him. And it didn’t look like any of his blocks had blood on them.
But if none of the toys had done it, and there was nothing else he could’ve reached to cut his lip on, how on Earth—
—oh, shit. (That was another thing humans had gotten right: cussing! So liberating. She had to try it out on Zeus sometime.)
The part of herself that was keeping an eye on her champion halfway across the country was setting off alarm bells in her head. The poor boy had attempted to eat a stapler, of all things. The boy’s sister was taking care of it at the moment, but the encounter had ended with a cut on his upper lip.
Just like the one Leo seemed to have developed.
“What are the odds?” She asked aloud to herself. “My little hero and my champion, soulmates. The Fates must think themselves funny.”
Leo mumbled a response in his charming toddler language. He was crying again.
“Yes, yes, of course, dear,” Hera appeased, stepping out of the playpen and towards the apartment’s kitchenette. “Do you want a band-aid with the cool mutant turtles on it, the funny puppets, or the dinosaurs?”
Leo Valdez was six years old when he began bleeding smack dab in the middle of Sunday dinner.
It had been a normal meal with the extended Valdez family up until that point. Tía Rosa was gossipping about the other women in her church group, Raphael was laughing with Leo’s other cousins on the other side of the table, Abuelo and Abuela were quietly eating their chicken as they watched over the rest of the table.
Leo had learned to dread these dinners. The good food couldn’t make up for the cold ignorance he faced there. When he spoke, he was shut down or talked over, and the upset looks his mamá sent the offenders were not enough to make it stop. And he certainly didn’t wanna make his mamá fight with the others when they were already lucky to be invited! So, he enjoyed the food, and tried his best to stay absolutely silent.
The nosebleed was the exact opposite of what he wanted. First of all, it freaking hurt, like someone had reared back and hit him between the eyes. He almost fell back in his chair with the force of his flinch. Secondly, everybody was looking at him now, frowning. Having their attention was unfamiliar territory for him. He didn’t think he liked it.
He just wanted to go home.
His mamá sprung into action as soon as she saw the blood dripping from his nose. She grabbed his chin, turning him this way and that, poking and prodding at his face.
“I don’t think it’s broken,” she concluded, “but it’ll leave a nasty bruise.”
Tía Rosa rolled her eyes from her place across the table. “Ay, Leo, someone needs to tell your soulmate to stop getting into fights! She’s making you bleed all over the tablecloth.”
The family laughed with her (at him, he realized) and he found the tears beading in his eyes were no longer just from the force of the punch.
His mamá got up from her seat, tugging at his arm until he got the message to follow her. They made their way to the nearest bathroom in his abuelos’ ranch house, the one with the seashell wallpaper. Mamá set him on the counter beside the sink as she rifled through the closet looking for a spare washcloth.
Leo kicked his legs aimlessly, staring down at his feet, trying to ignore the tears running down his face.
“I hate my soulmate,” he sobbed, barely audible, as if he were testing out the idea. “I hate them.”
His mamá frowned at him just like the others had frowned at him earlier. He turned his head away. “You don’t mean that, mijo,” she soothed.
“Yes, I do.”
“No, you don’t.”
“Yes, I do. They’re always getting into trouble and embarrassing me,” he hiccupped.
“That isn’t your fault,” Mamá argued, dampening the towel she found with warm water, “and who knows? Maybe it isn’t theirs, either.”
Leo sniffed. “They still make me look stupid.”
“Maybe the problem isn’t your soulmate doing these things. Maybe the problem is the people who think you’re stupid because of it.”
Leo scrunched up his nose at her. Ouch, that hurt. He stopped scrunching up his nose. “What do you mean?”
Mamá smiled down at him as she ran the washcloth over his face, wiping away the tear tracks. “You remember that time you stepped on one of your legos?”
Leo let out a wet laugh. “Yeah.”
“Somewhere out there, your soulmate felt that same pain, and they probably did the same thing you did: jump up and down on one leg and howl like a stray dog.”
“Yeah,” Leo snickered as his mamá smoothed the washcloth down the bridge of his nose.
“Do you think it’d be fair for anyone who saw your soulmate do that to think they were stupid because of it?”
Leo shook his head after a moment of thought. “Wasn’t their fault.”
“Exactly,” his mamá agreed, “so if it wasn’t fair in that case, why would it be fair for people to make judgements about you because of something your soulmate did?”
“It wouldn’t be,” Leo realized.
“There you go.” Mamá finished cleaning him up and handed him a tissue to stop the bleeding. “Do you still hate your soulmate?” She asked.
“I guess not,” Leo said. “I’m sorry, soulmate,” he continued, aiming the words at the ceiling.
Mamá chuckled and ruffled his hair. “You’ll find them someday, mi hijo, and they will love you almost as much as I do.”
Jason Grace, son of Jupiter, was eight (almost nine, he’d have you know) when he started feeling faint in the middle of training.
It was a cool spring morning, just after a few days of rain, though, so he had no clue as to why. He had been drinking plenty of water like the nurses told him he should after the last three times he found himself in the infirmary. He was wearing shorts and his SPQR t-shirt, so it was unlikely he was overheating. None of his opponents had managed to hit him in the head thus far, so he couldn’t point a finger at the root of this sudden dizziness.
That was, until the taste and burn of smoke began clawing at his lungs.
When he tried to call for a time-out, he couldn’t get the words out of his mouth. All he managed were thick coughs as he tried to dodge the attacks the other soldier was throwing at him. He looked desperately towards his centurions watching him from the sidelines before he collapsed in the field without any hit knocking him down.
The other soldier, a girl only a little older than him, sheathed her gladius in victory before she realized there was something wrong. The centurions were already rushing towards the pair, though, pushing aside other trainees to get to them.
“I-I don’t know what happened,” his opponent stammered. One of the centurions hissed an order at her, and she ran off, yelling about something.
The other centurion helped him up into a sitting position as coughs racked his body, smacking him continuously on the back. He was hacking up blood, now, and it dribbled down his chin, onto the yellow letters on his shirt, into the hand he was holding to his mouth.
That was when he decided that seeing wasn’t for him at the moment.
He squeezed his eyes shut tight, ignoring the tight pain in his throat and the warm blood spilling out of it.
Instead, he strained to focus on the hurried steps of people arriving to help. There were two, from what he can hear, and one of them was the girl he was duelling. He could hear her filling in the newcomer and the sword on her hip clanking against her armor.
He focused on the soothing voice of the field medic, or at least, who he assumed was the field medic. She sounded like the one who helped him last time he got injured during training. He liked her voice—it was like a thunderstorm, all low and rumbly.
He focused on the centurions talking amongst themselves as they stepped back to let the medic handle him. It was a quiet conversation, barely audible from this distance, but he picked out a few words: “Do you think it could be his soulmate?” The question was whispered, half-concernedly, half-dissapprovingly to their brother in arms.
It was the last thing he heard before the static overtook the darkness of his shut eyes. The last thing he tasted was ash.
Jason Grace, son of Jupiter, centurion of the Fifth Cohort was thirteen and trying to get some sleep when something collided with the back of his head.
He let out an involuntary grunt of pain, followed quickly by another as what felt like a hand came into contact with his cheek. His eyes began to water without his input.
Jason gritted his teeth, trying to stay quiet so he wouldn’t wake anyone else, even as the blows kept coming. There was one on his upper back, then another, a squeezing pain on his bicep, and another slap to the face. He tried and failed (yet again) to not think about how he would bruise in the morning. Would there be a black and blue handprint on his shoulder tomorrow? Would his uniform shirt be enough to cover it?
Many of his nights had been spent like this as of late. It wasn’t even the first time this week, and it was only Tuesday.
With a sigh, Jason swung his legs out of his bunk, making his peace with the fact he wasn’t going to get any more sleep that night. He pulled on a jacket over his tank before heading out into the balmy winter night.
His feet took him towards the square just outside of the main plaza, where he found his friend Reyna picking flowers. She was dressed in the same standard issue tank top and sweatpants he had. The dark circles under her eyes matched his, too.
“Hi,” he greeted, plopping down next to her on the grass. “Nightmares?”
“Yes,” she confirmed. She tossed him a commiserating look. “Is it—”
“—the soulmate thing?” They said at the same time.
“Yeah,” Jason finished. “Yeah. It’s bad. Actually, could you check if my head is bleeding?”
Reyna nodded wordlessly while he bent down. He felt her fingers in his short hair. The area where his soulmate had been hit was sore, but it didn’t feel like the skin was broken.
She patted his shoulder, drawing back when he winced a bit. “You’re good.”
It was Jason’s turn to nod, now. They sat together for another moment or so. Reyna braided her flowers into a crown and Jason was content to share the same air as someone he cared about.
“You’re lucky,” Reyna said finally. “You might not feel like it, but you’re lucky.”
Jason picked at the grass by his knee. “What do you mean?”
“You have a soulmate.”
He laughed weakly. “Doesn’t everybody?”
Reyna lifted her head. Her dark eyebrows were knitted together in an expression that would be unreadable for anyone else.
“Oh.” Jason rubbed the back of his head, and immediately regretted it as the pain spiked. “Sorry. I didn’t know.”
“I’ve never felt them,” Reyna whispered. “I don’t think they exist. Either that, or they’ve been much more careful than I have.”
“Maybe that’s it,” Jason reassured.
Reyna’s mouth drew back in a snarl. “How many people do you know who have never felt pain?”
Jason opened his mouth. He closed it when he realized he didn’t have anything to say.
“That’s what I thought. In any case, why would they ever want me? I’ve put them through so much. They must hate me at this point.”
Jason placed a hand over hers. “Reyna, don’t say that. They’d be a fool if they didn’t love you. You’re so…well, you’re you. You’re Reyna.”
The other centurion rolled her eyes. “What an astute observation.”
“Shush. You know I’m not good with this stuff.”
“You’re telling me.”
“My point is, you’re a great person, and a good friend, and an amazing leader, and so many other admirable things, and you’re all of that because you’re you. If your soulmate—Gods, if any person in general is worth their salt, they’ll recognize that immediately and want to be part of your life and for you to be part of theirs.”
Reyna’s nose twitched. “Thanks,” she said, voice cracking.
Jason was beginning to think she didn’t want to talk about her soulmate anymore, so he decided to change the subject. “Besides, if anybody’s soulmate hates them, it’s mine,” he joked.
She punched him in the arm lightly. “Why would any sane person hate you?”
Jason shrugged. “Octavian hates me.”
“I said any sane person.”
He unleashed a giggle he didn’t let many people other than Reyna hear. “I dunno,” he admitted eventually, taking a deep breath, “it’s just, I’m so angry for them. There are evil people or, Gods forbid, monsters doing this stuff to them, and I can’t…help them.”
“Your soulmate’s survived this long. They can take care of themselves,” Reyna pointed out.
“They shouldn’t have to,” Jason huffed. “I want them to be safe and happy. And none of this stops me from having all this hatred for whoever’s doing this to them but having no place to put it. I can’t do anything to protect them. I can’t let them know I’m on their side. I can’t do anything but wait for us to meet, so then, maybe, I’ll be able to help. I feel…trapped.”
One of Reyna’s hands came up to pat his back. “There, there,” she comforted.
“You’re not any good at this, either,” Jason laughed.
Reyna’s mouth clicked shut. “I’m trying.”
“I know, I know…thanks. It means a lot.”
“Anytime,” she said, and it sounded like she meant it, “and, for what it’s worth, you might be the only thing they have to look forward to at the moment.”
She mumbled something along the lines of “Lords know I’ve been there,” but Jason didn’t want to assume. He furrowed his brow at her, but she had already looked away.
“…Thanks, Reyna.”
She gave him one last pat on the back before she pushed herself up, leaving a half-finished daisy chain in her wake. “I’m going back to the bunks. You coming with?”
Jason smiled at her. “I’ll catch up. Don’t wait for me, though.”
Grass crunched underneath her boots as she stalked off towards the centurions’ quarters, and finally, Jason was alone.
“I love you,” he whispered to his soulmate and the stars. “I’m in your corner. We’ll find each other someday, I promise.”
Leo Valdez was fifteen and pretty damn sure he closed his eyes when Tía Callida told him to, but at the same time, he was pretty damn sure his corneas were melting out of his skull.
Which was crazy because—
A) as previously mentioned, he totally fucking closed his eyes,
B) he didn’t know corneas could melt. That seemed like an evolutionary flaw if they could, and
C) even if they could melt, Leo should have been exempt from that cruel twist of fate because he was fireproof, and that should have applied to his corneas, too.
Yet there he was, flashbanged to oblivion in the middle of the newly monster-free Wolf House.
“Piper?” He called out, stumbling to his feet with his arms out in front of him. “Jason? Tía?”
The sound of Piper’s groan as she got up was a welcome one, even if she didn’t seem particularly happy about him yelling. Her footsteps sounded closer and closer by the second. “Leo? You good?”
“Yeah, probably not,” he hissed, pressing the palms of his hand into his eye sockets. Oh, that was a relief, it seemed like his eyeballs were still eyeball-shaped. But when he opened them, he still couldn’t see anything. “I might be kinda sorta blind.”
“What? Dude, you should be dead,” Piper balked. “Really happy you aren’t, but, like, if you didn’t close your eyes when Hera went beast-mode, you should be super mega ultra dead. How the hell did you survive?”
“I dunno, man. I’ve got a killer headache right now.”
“Same. After this, I am gonna steal all of the nearest CVS’ tylenol. You wanna go halfsies?”
Leo laughed despite the pain. The relief and euphoria of winning, for once in his life, hit him all at once.
After everything, they had done it. They had freed Tía Callida, defeated Khione, driven Lycaon and his sons away, and made it out alive—
“Wait, where the fuck is Jason?”
Piper paused for a moment before she gasped. And it wasn’t an oh, you remembered our anniversary and got me my favorite flowers! gasp. It was even a holy shit! gasp. It was a holy shit. gasp. In Leo’s experience, nothing good ever came from holy shit. gasps.
“Pipes? Pipes, what’s wrong?” He asked, his voice suddenly hoarse. When she didn’t respond, only led him carefully forward, he tried again. “Tell me what’s wrong. Please, Piper.”
She sat him down in the charred grass, the scent of ash surrounding them. A heavy thump accompanied her own collapse next to his spot. She leaned against him and threw an arm over his shoulder as she began to sob. “It’s Jason. Oh, god, Jason… he’s—”
The mournful voice of Tía Callida made itself known surprisingly close to where Leo and Piper were sitting. “Poor boy. I did tell him to close his eyes.”
As Tía Callida and Thalia began to argue, Leo reached out for Jason’s hand. His own jaw had gone slack with shock, and his fingers were growing numb from the adrenaline crash, and his headache was only getting worse (frankly, it was a migraine, at this point), but was filled with the overwhelming urge to have his hand in his.
Jason’s hand was limp when he found it, but he held it in his grasp like it’d disappear if he didn’t. Leo’s other hand came to rest on Jason’s chest, which was stonily unmoving. It flitted up to his neck, where two fingers pressed down hard, but found no pulse. It smoothed up the side and front of his face, which burned with a deathly chill.
His thumb caught on something as it ran over the skin of Jason’s upper lip. There was a faint line there, barely even noticeable, tucked between the textures of his face. It was almost like the feeling of that one scar Leo had. It was on his upper lip, too, and he’d had it since he was two. Rubbing his fingers over it had become a bit of a nervous habit of his since his mamá died. See, it was from his soulmate, and whatever minute comfort that had provided for him was often all he could get—
—oh shit.
What were the odds that Jason was his soulmate the entire time they were on that quest, and he only noticed after Jason got himself killed? He was so dumb, God, he was so dumb, how could not have noticed by now? That every time Jason took a blow, he felt it, too? That every time Leo chewed on his nails, Jason would mess with his?
Oh, he was so, so, so dumb.
Jason was fifteen or sixteen-ish when life got breathed back into him for a reason he didn’t know, and the first thing he thought was that he was so, so, so dumb.
Stupid, really. He was stupid, stupid, stupid, because he didn’t close his godsdamn eyes when Lady Juno told him to, and it had gotten him killed. It hadn’t even done him the favor of being painless—it had felt like being baked to medium well and then some on the surface of the sun. Turns out, the gods’ true forms weren’t to be messed with. If only he had had someone to tell him this!
He didn’t have much time to dwell on that, though, because just as soon as he had realized he was dead, he was coming back to the land of the living.
The feeling came back in his arms and legs, first, a tingling sensation that spread towards his core. It was just like falling asleep and waking up as the sun hit your face: slow as molasses and just as sweet, too.
When that feeling reached his chest, his heart jumped back into motion. He gulped down air and spat it back out in deep breaths, like he had just emerged from the ocean. His throat was dry from disuse and his skin still felt like it was boiling, but at least when he opened his eyes, he could actually see.
Before his death, all he had seen was a supernova, bright golden light pouring from Lady Juno as she revealed herself in all her glory. He was still blinking away the afterimages of the formless glow, but behind it was the bright blue sky of a California afternoon. He caught glimpses of his friends bent over him. Piper was clearly distraught, crushing Leo in a hug as she wailed. Leo himself was looking just as bewildered as Jason felt, hunched over Jason’s body with one hand in Jason’s and the other on Jason’s… face?
That felt nice, actually. Jason leaned into the touch. He moved to say something, but he couldn’t hear himself over the ringing in his ears and even if he could, he most likely just let out a pained groan. He did his best to keep his unfocused gaze trained on Leo and Piper.
Piper seemed to hear whatever sound he made, though, and she sprung to her feet. “He’s alive!” She declared, not unlike an evil scientist. “Jason’s alive, you can stop fucking arguing now!”
Lady Juno and Thalia’s jaws shut in sync. Jason would’ve laughed if he had the energy.
“Sheesh, Pipes, did you forget about the headache?” Leo griped after letting out a relieved sigh. His eyes were staying stubbornly closed.
A nagging voice in the back of Jason’s head told him something must be wrong. He pushed himself up on his elbows with considerable effort, sore muscles complaining all the way until he was in a position that passed for sitting up. “Leo?” He croaked. “Are you alright?”
He had barely finished his sentence before Leo’s arms threw themselves around his shoulders, hugging him within an inch of his life. It would have been a shame to lose his second lease on life so quickly, but all things considered, this wasn’t a bad way to go. “Jesus Christ, man, don’t scare us like that ever again. And shut your eyes faster next time, yeah? I don’t wanna wind up blind and soulmate-less.”
Jason’s hands had been rubbing circles in Leo’s shoulders, but were stopped in their tracks when the last sentence met his ears.
What?
He pulled away ever so slightly, not wanting to stray too far. He scanned Leo’s face for any hint he was joking (it was a nice look on him whenever there was. His eyes got this calculating look in them, and he would crack a bright smile when someone laughed. That someone was usually Jason).
He found none.
Mostly because his gaze had gotten stuck on Leo’s upper lip.
There was a razor thin scar there, a carbon copy of the one Jason had seen in the mirror in the Jupiter—no, Zeus—cabin just a few days earlier, the one Thalia had said was from the time he tried to eat a stapler.
By the Gods. Was Leo his soulmate?
He should start thanking them; thank them for finally letting him see who it was, for tying him to such a brilliant person, and also probably for bringing him back to life…
…but before he did that, he sank into his soulmate’s embrace.
"Maybe." Leo gives him that crooked grin that he knows Jason can't resist, all impish with his dimples and gap-tooth on full display. "Gonna do something about it?"
Jason strides across the kitchen and pulls him into a kiss.
Leo laughs against his lips, hands tangling in Jason's t-shirt. "Effective."
-
Jason and Leo have a quiet morning at home.
Podfic of he said honey take me dancing by @skogensro
Last one of my @valgraceweek podfics! I saved the longest one for last! Posting a little earlier in the day today because I’ve got a university exam tomorrow that I need to go back to studying for! Hope you’ll enjoy :D
Heeeeeeello my lovely little night owlets! I have another fic for you and I PROMISE it's not as sad the summary makes it sound. Probably. What do I know? One way to find out!
Might I offer you another @valgraceweek fic: Love Goes Where My Rosemary Grows
Leo stood there, tears steadily rolling down his cheeks. “I hate you,” he whispered before the petals of marigolds started floating past his own lips.
Jason just gave him a sad smile. “Me, too.”
But that was three years ago, back in the fifth year of Jason’s sickness when it was starting to get really bad. He’d gone another two years coughing up florist shops before being hospitalized, at which point Leo finally had his breakdown. He’d begged Jason not to leave him, promised he’d do anything to keep him, and even confessed the desperate love he’d been whispering to Venters for years. Then, with IVs stuck in his arms and a breathing tube shoved up his nose, Jason finally relented. He held Leo close, kissed away his fat, ugly tears and said the three most beautiful words imaginable. They’d kissed and promised to live the rest of their lives together, the end.
Right?
***
VGW: Hanahaki
Flower lung.
Love sickness.
Petal death.
Choking vines.
Fatal blooms.
Flores exscreare.
Hanahaki.
Everyone on the planet knew what Hanahaki was. No one had quite figured out how it was, but it was common knowledge that about twenty years ago, people started coughing up flower petals, choking on them for months, years if they were unlucky, before they suffocated on their own lungs. Then, miraculously, there was a breakthrough. Someone had found a cause, and therefore a cure. The flowers were the result of suppressed feelings, each and every petal that passed the lips was something felt, but unvoiced, struggling to make it out into the world, and the only cure was to speak those feelings into existence and give them room to grow.
Really and truly, the flowers could come from any form of repression from something as daunting as refusing self-actualization to something as simple as hating your boss and keeping it a secret. But the most common was love, romantic love, especially. It started young, middle schoolers would find themselves hiccupping up honeysuckle because their seat partner in math got a new haircut. It was very rarely fatal at that age, partially because adolescent crushes weren’t usually as dedicated and long-lasting as they’d need to be for death, but also because the culture had simply changed around it. If the result of not talking about your feelings was literally fatal, talking about them became incredibly commonplace. Generally, the subject of the feelings didn’t have to be the one hearing the feelings said aloud. So long as you spoke them, gave them room to breathe, and there was somebody there to accept and acknowledge the feelings, you were fine. In fact, an entirely new profession, Venters, sprang up just because people wanted an easily accessible place to dump their feelings before they became fatal.
Only, sometimes it didn’t work like that. Sometimes, a stranger in a room who was paid to listen didn’t cut it. Sometimes there were particularly virulent strains (usually involving love) that did actually require a full-on confession, and wasn’t that just so romantic? An illness that forced people to reveal their deepest secrets to the one person they’d never want to tell. Something like that wouldn’t be upsetting or traumatizing for either party at all. It made so much sense to make a hundred different romance dramas about it. Movies, TV shows, books, plays, music, hell even videogames weren't safe from the eternal presence of Hanahaki. And, largely, everyone was fine with this. It was romantic, remember? Who wouldn’t be okay with it?
Leo Valdez wouldn’t be okay with it. He’d lived that story, every agonizing minute of it. He’d stood there and teased Jason when he coughed up a couple of morning glory petals for the first time, felt the weight of preemptive grief on his shoulders when gardenia petals were stained red with blood, and wept hysterically at a hospital bedside surrounded by whole red carnations. Jason had Hanahaki for seven years, one of the longest cases in recorded history, and he had the kind that required a proper confession, but he never did it. Leo begged him, sobbing on his knees and clinging to his best friend, for him to just say what he needed to say to whoever he needed to say it to, but Jason couldn’t. Or maybe he just wouldn’t.
“I’m a coward,” Jason panted, rubbing the back of his hand over his mouth. He’d just vomited up a bouquet of chrysanthemums and daisies and sunflowers and he was left weak and trembling in its wake. “And selfish. I’d rather die than risk living in a world without them in my life.”
Leo stood there, tears steadily rolling down his cheeks. “I hate you,” he whispered before the petals of marigolds started floating past his own lips.
Jason just gave him a sad smile. “Me, too.”
But that was three years ago, back in the fifth year of Jason’s sickness when it was starting to get really bad. He’d gone another two years coughing up florist shops before being hospitalized, at which point Leo finally had his breakdown. He’d begged Jason not to leave him, promised he’d do anything to keep him, and even confessed the desperate love he’d been whispering to Venters for years. Then, with IVs stuck in his arms and a breathing tube shoved up his nose, Jason finally relented. He held Leo close, kissed away his fat, ugly tears and said the three most beautiful words imaginable. They’d kissed and promised to live the rest of their lives together, the end.
Right?
That was certainly when the credits would have rolled in the chick flick of their life, but the benefit of movies is that there are no consequences. The movie ends, and everyone goes back to scene one to wait for someone to hit play again. Real life didn’t work like that. Real life had all those big, cinematic moments, but instead of a director shouting cut, you had to wake up the next morning and go to the grocery store because you forgot to buy toilet paper on your last shopping trip. Real life kept moving.
And that meant Jason and Leo kept moving, too. The doctor said that Jason was cured. Kind of. See, because Jason had stubbornly lived with Hanahaki for such an unprecedented length of time without being cured or dying, he was a little medical mystery and the first ever case of what was being referred to as “Chronic Benign Hanahaki,” which that he was going to keep coughing up petals, probably forever. His body had gone so long turning its feelings into flowers that it didn’t know how to do anything else. It wasn’t dangerous, so long as he didn’t do any more little suppression stunts, and the only physical change he had to deal with was a few petals whenever he was hit with a surge of affection for the subject of his original feelings and floral-scented breath. It should have been super easy to deal with.
What they’d failed to consider was that Jason was obsessed with Leo. What was probably imagined to be a couple petals a day was buckets. Jason’s base state was, apparently, thinking about Leo, and when he really got that big heart of his a-thumpin’, the flower output multiplied. It still wasn’t dangerous, especially if Jason took a huff from his inhaler of people-friendly herbicide, but it was annoying as hell.
For instance, when Leo came home from his toilet paper run to a veritable carpet of bright red rose petals leading to the bedroom, he felt his temple throb. “Jason!”
Jason stuck his head out of the bedroom, clearly having expected a warmer reception, based on the fact that he wasn’t wearing a shirt like a hussy. “Yes?”
“Do you see anything wrong with this picture?” Leo asked, gesturing around. He glanced over and saw that there were a bunch of sorrel blossoms on the coffee table like an army of defeated lady bugs. He felt his eye twitch.
“I don’t see a problem; I don’t have my glasses on.”
Leo reached down and grabbed a folded pair of socks from a nearby basket of laundry and attempted to hit Jason between the eyes. He missed. Horribly. “There’s flowers everywhere, Jason! I literally cleaned the whole apartment yesterday!”
“They’re gestures of love,” Jason insisted. He picked up a cluster of myrtle from a different table. “This one means ‘love in a marriage.’”
“There’s not going to be a marriage if you don’t knock it off.”
“I can’t help it. It’s a medical condition.”
“You could, I don’t know, sweep them up, like I have to every day.”
“But I want you to see them,” Jason protested. “It’s romantic.”
“News flash, Jason, it’s actually kinda gross,” Leo shot right back. “You cough these things up out of your lungs, remember? They’re basically loogies with good PR.”
Jason actually looked a little hurt. “You don’t have to be mean about it.”
“Well, you don’t have to–” Leo cut himself off with a grimace, feeling a strange tickle in the back of his throat. He coughed a couple times and then a single petal, a red columbine passed his lips.
Silence fell between them, tense and uncomfortable before Jason cleared his throat. “You, uh, wanna talk about it?” Leo shook his head. “Are you willing to do it anyway?”
Leo sucked on his teeth before begrudgingly nodding. “Yeah, I, um…”
“I’m gonna go put on a shirt,” Jason suggested. “Do you think you could maybe make some hot chocolate?”
“I’m mad at you, so I’m not spending fifteen minutes making you the real stuff,” Leo warned. “It’s Swiss Miss or nothing right now.”
Jason smiled gently at him. “I like Swiss Miss.”
With that, they split up to do their separate tasks. Jason retreated to the bedroom to de-hussy himself while Leo took up his familiar position in the kitchen. He used the extra -marshmallow packets, dumping Jason’s marshmallows into his own mug out of instinctual kindness because Jason didn’t like marshmallows and even mad, Leo couldn’t force them on him. After that, he started heating up the milk to water ratio that he’d perfected long ago because he wasn’t an animal who offered water-only hot chocolate during an argument. He did heat it up in the microwave, though, because he wasn’t in any state to care about being a monster.
When he finally brought the mugs out, Jason was sitting on the couch wearing one of his favorite purple hoodies, and all of the sorrel blossoms had been hidden away. Leo couldn’t be bothered to care where they wound up. He curled up in his spot next to Jason and started slowly sipping on his hot chocolate. Jason didn’t push for him to start talking, he just sat there taking up space and waiting for Leo to take the stage when he was ready.
It took Leo a whole mug of hot chocolate and half of a second one before he was ready.
“Sometimes I think you forget you almost died,” Leo said quietly into the mug he’d stolen from Jason. “You just… You decided how I’d react if you told me how you felt and then chose to just give up without even giving me a chance. Would you have ever said anything if I didn’t confess first?”
Jason was completely and totally silent for a moment, which made his single word answer drop like an anvil. “No.”
Leo squeezed his eyes shut and just focused on his breathing. He’d already known the answer before asking the question, but it was still awful to hear out loud. Jason had almost died. He was ready to punch his own ticket, just because he thought Leo was a shitty enough person to totally abandon him over feelings. It wasn’t fair. “I still get mad at you sometimes,” he confessed. “I go see a Venter about it when it gets really bad because I’m worried that if I talk to you, I’ll prove you right.”
Jason went very, very still. “Prove me right about what?”
“That I’m a bad person and dying would be better than talking to me.”
Jason made a strangled noise, then got down on his knees in front of Leo, cradling his face. Leo pressed into his palms and squeezed his eyes shut so that he didn’t have to see Jason’s face twisted in pain. “Sweetheart, no. No no no. That’s not it at all.”
“Then why?” Leo asked, ignoring the way his voice broke on the last word. “Why did you just… You just assumed I’d be so awful that dying was literally the better alternative.”
“I don’t know,” Jason admitted. “I was… scared. I was dying and it was all my fault, and I just couldn’t bring myself to do the one thing that would have fixed it. I knew you would have been nice about it, even then. You stood with me through every second of my Hanahaki and you never complained. But there was one tiny fraction of a chance that you wouldn’t, and I was so terrified of that one possibility that I refused all the others.”
Leo swallowed thickly. He didn’t want to admit it, but he understood where Jason was coming from. “I probably wouldn’t have said anything, either.”
Jason sighed and pressed his forehead to Leo’s knee. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry I put you through that.”
Leo could have said the expected it’s okay or I forgive you, but it wouldn’t have been right. It wasn’t okay, and he'd forgiven Jason a year ago, really he had. Instead, he just said, “I love you.”
Jason pressed a kiss to Leo’s knee, right where his forehead had been. “I love you, too.”
“Enough to clean up your flower mess?” Leo asked hesitantly. “Like, I get what you’re saying about them being a sign of love, I really do, but they don’t feel like that. You see the flowers and know what they mean and what feelings they represent, but all I see is a reminder of the worst seven years of my life. They remind me that you almost died before I got the chance to love you properly.”
“That’s fair,” Jason said a bit begrudgingly. He chewed his lip in thought for a moment, then looked up at him. “Can I buy you flowers?”
“Uh, sure?” Leo said, somewhat hesitantly. “That’s gonna get kinda pricey after a while, though.”
The furrow between Jason’s eyebrows deepened, then his eyes lit up. “Alright, then. I’ll grow them.”
Leo blinked. “You’ll… grow them?”
“Yeah,” Jason said, nodding like a very enthusiastic bobblehead. He stood and cupped Leo’s jaw in both his hands like he was cradling the whole world between his palms. “No more death flowers. From now on, the only flowers you’re going to see are ones that I grew for you. Is that okay?”
“You’re ridiculous,” Leo giggled breathlessly. “All I asked is for you to pick up a broom and you’ve decided to become a horticulturist instead.”
“I’ll get the broom, too,” Jason promised. “But I want you to have absolute proof that I’m living and that I love you. Does that make sense?”
“Yeah,” Leo said, feeling almost helpless. “Yeah, that makes sense.”
Then he grabbed Jason by the ears and kissed him.
From then on, things were better. Not perfect, but better. Jason still coughed up flowers, plenty of them, and try as he might, he couldn’t get rid of all of them. Leo woke up in a bed of baby’s breath and red and blue salvia on more than one occasion, and sometimes Jason just missed a spot or simply forgot. But that was okay. The petals were still a monument to their past terror, but now there was a monument to their future commitment. Now Leo could go out on their little balcony and be enveloped by the scent of daffodil and yarrow and jasmine and ivy and aster and, Leo’s favorite, rosemary. He could breathe deep and be reminded by every sense that Jason was alive, that Jason was alive and loved him enough to learn how to garden and to wake up every morning to cut two blooms to live next to the bathroom sink for the day.
Even after seventeen years of knowing him, five years of dating, and three years of marriage, Jason still wasn’t over the way Leo looked when he worked on something he cared about.
Podfic of Just Some Saturday in September by Speedy_the_Random
Day 5 of me using the @valgraceweek Inspired by Other Works prompts! Do not be alarmed by the fact that this one is archive locked, I’m not gonna start archive locking all my fics! I just chose to archive lock this one specific podfic because the fic this is based on is archive locked!
Aaaaaaaand it is once again fic time! I didn't forget you all, I promise! Not much to say today, but I hope you all have fun with this fic!
May I present another @valgraceweek fic: Wrong Place Wrong Time
“No! Don’t you move an inch!” the lady hissed, and Leo felt every last one of his joints lock in place. The lady didn’t look nearly as friendly now. Her eyes were molten gold, her hair an inferno, and her fingers curled into claws as she stalked forward. “I’ve been tracking you for days, if you think you’re getting away that–”
The lady, monster, thing cut herself off with a choked, gurgling noise and both she and Leo looked down to see the end of a golden javelin poking out of the center of her chest. The world stood still for a moment before she exploded into gold glitter, revealing the man who had attacked her.
He was a grownup, older than his teacher, but not older than Matt. He had fluffy blond hair that fell down around his ears, and he had the bluest eyes Leo had ever seen. He was also big, like, football-player-big. His shoulders were probably three times as wide as Leo’s and he was so, so tall. His face was twisted up in a deadly serious expression, until his gaze landed on the other person still in the alley, and his eyes went wide. “Leo?”
***
VGW 2026: Time Travel
Leo had never really liked summer all that much. Summers in Houston were worse. The sun beamed down, heating up the pavement and buildings like an oven, and the humidity suffocated everything like a microwaved wet blanket. It was like having a massive, slobbering beast breathing down the back of his shirt, and he could never, ever manage to cool down.
School was supposed to be a sanctuary from, well, everything. It had AC to protect him from the late-August heat, it had readily available food to make up for the past two months, and there were no foster parents to scold him for being underfoot and kick him out until sundown. Plus, Leo was in fifth grade now, which meant he was doing actually fun math instead of just boring fractions, and Leo loved math. School was supposed to be safe.
Unfortunately, no one told Leo’s classmates that.
Jayden and Daniel had been in Leo’s class since kindergarten. They’d never been friends, but they played hide-and-go-seek during recess and Jayden had one time saved the red cupcake from a class party for Leo because he knew it was his favorite color. But then Leo’s mamá died and Leo went from being the fastest kid in class who carried around car parts to the unwanted foster kid who cried when you pushed him to the ground one too many times, and one of those was far less forgivable.
“Come on, crybaby,” Daniel ordered, towering over him. “Do it.”
Leo grit his teeth and glared as much as he could with the taste of dirt between his teeth and a scrape on his palm. “No. I’m not doing it.”
Jayden rolled his eyes and gave him a swift kick to the ribs. It wasn’t enough to bruise him to the extent that anyone would care, but it did hurt enough to make Leo suck in a harsh breath through his teeth. “Just cry already and we’ll leave you alone.”
“Leave me alone!”
“Or what?” he taunted. “You gonna tell your mom? Oh wait, you don’t even have one of those anymore.”
That actually made water sting at the corner of Leo’s eyes, and Daniel leaned forward eagerly. “Look! He’s gonna cry! Do it again!”
Jayden’s expression lit up, and he reared back to kick Leo again, but while he was off balance, Leo made his move. With more force than he’d thought possible, he surged up to his knees and shoved Jayden as hard as he could, knocking the other boy flat on his butt. Leo scrambled to his feet, panting, and glared down at the other boy. “I told you to leave me alone!”
“You can’t do that!” Daniel said. “I’ll tell my dad and he’ll call the cops!”
The hypocrisy and unfairness wasn’t completely lost on Leo, but he didn’t have an opportunity to dwell on it. Not with the threat of getting the cops involved. Ms. Stanton hated when her cases got the cops involved. So, without thinking, he ran as fast as he could. There was a gap in the fence, one Leo had used to sneak into the schoolyard during summer break, that led directly onto one of the less-busy streets of Houston.
Still though, it was lunch time and Houston was never quiet, so Leo had to find a place to hide, and he had to do it quick. Grownups were bound to ask questions if they saw a ten-year-old wandering around during school hours and nothing was ever improved by grownups asking questions. So, without thinking too much about it, he ducked into a nearby alleyway, trying to figure out what he needed to do. He couldn’t go home, obviously. Matt worked nights, so if Leo came through the front door, not only would he be caught skipping, he’d also wake the man up, which was breaking the biggest, most important rule. Quite frankly, he’d be lucky if Matt just took him back to school. Going back to school wasn’t an option, either. There was a strict no violence policy, and he had pushed Jayden to the ground. Sure, the other boy had been kicking him first, but he had no proof, so it would be his word against Jayden and Daniel’s, and he’d learned the hard way just how little his word was worth.
So, that just left wandering the streets for another four hours until he was expected back home. His first stop was the convenience store down the street from his old house. Mr. Alvarez, the old man who’d owned it since the dinosaur times, worked weekday afternoons and didn’t ask too many questions. Leo had been going there since he was little and Mr. Alvarez was friends with his mamá, so he always gave Leo some kind of little treat when he managed to make it in, assuming it wasn’t too busy.
Today was one of those days when it wasn’t too busy. Today it was just Leo, the almost shockingly cold AC and some teenagers huddled together near the drinks cooler to combat the heat. Leo ignored them and just walked straight up to the register. “Hola, Mr. Alvarez.”
“Hola, Leo.” Mr. Alvarez peered down at Leo over the top of his thick spectacles, then looked at the clock with a frown. “Shouldn’t you be in school?”
“No, sir. We had an early dismissal today,” Leo chirped. He didn’t like lying to the nice old man, but he’d learned over the years that all adults, even well-meaning ones, were traps.
Mr. Alvarez didn’t look like he entirely believed him, but he didn’t push the matter. “Well then, what are you doing here? Shouldn’t you be at home?”
“My foster dad works nights, and I don’t wanna wake him up,” Leo said truthfully. “I’m gonna go hang out at the playground until later.”
“In this heat? Are you sure that’s what you want to do?” Mr. Alvarez asked, his frown deepening. “Why don’t you stay here? My granddaughter left one of her coloring books behind recently. I could pull up a chair for you back here.”
“I can’t, I’m meeting my friend at the park!” Leo told him, which he also hated doing. He would have loved to sit with Mr. Alvarez in the AC and do word searches all afternoon, but he couldn’t because someone who didn’t respect privacy was bound to notice him. “I just came in because I wanted to say hi.”
Mr. Alvarez seemed a little less worried with the introduction of another kid, probably because he assumed it meant there would be a grownup involved. “Well, in that case, thank you for taking the time to visit an old man. Would you like to go get a couple slushies for you and your friend to share?”
“Yes, please!” Leo beamed. “Thank you!”
Leo bounded over toward the slushy machine while Mr. Alvarez muttered about what a polite boy he was. He only got the small size cups because his mamá didn’t like him taking advantage of kindness, and he got one in blue and another in red. They were so cold they almost hurt to carry, but Leo held them with the utmost care as he slowly made his way out of the store. “Thanks, Mr. Alvarez!”
“Have a nice time, Leo!”
After the relief of the AC, the August afternoon was somehow even more oppressive. Leo could feel sweat already beading at his temples as he ducked back out of sight, slushies in hand. He hadn’t actually planned to go to the park before, but now that he had a way to keep cool, it wasn’t a bad option. A kid at the playground wouldn’t immediately read as weird, plus there was a little alcove under the slide that Leo liked to hide in. It wasn’t exactly comfortable, but it was shaded and out of sight, and, most importantly, the entrance was so small that nobody except Leo could squeeze their way into it. It was the closest thing to solitude that he had access to.
Leo was almost to the park and a third of the way through the blue slushy (he was saving the red for under the slide) when he heard a melodic voice call out to him, “Oh, goodness, darlin’, where do you think you’re going?”
That should have sent Leo running for the hills. Any adult who approached him out of the blue, much less one that asked a question like that, was an automatic five-alarm fire in Leo’s head. But this lady was different. He wasn’t sure if it was the heat turning his brain to pudding or something else, but her voice was just nice. It washed over his brain in cool, soothing waves, then made it tingle like Pop Rocks. Leo shivered, suddenly chilled to the bone, as he turned to face the sweet voice. He blinked very slowly at her. “Uh, hi, miss.”
The lady standing before him was very, very pretty. She had the brightest orange hair Leo had ever seen in real life, and her face was warm and round and inviting like a diner waitress in one of the kissing movies Matt’s girlfriend insisted on watching almost every day. She smiled at him with teeth that were too sharp and she blinked sideways. For some reason, Leo didn’t think that was a problem, he just smiled and blinked back at her. “So, where are you headed off to, darlin?”
“Uh, the park,” Leo said slowly. His brain felt fuzzy, but he wasn’t quite sure why. “I ran away from school, and now I’m hiding.”
“Oh, really now?” the lady asked eagerly. “And won’t somebody be lookin’ for you?”
Leo shook his head. “Uh-uh. My teacher doesn’t take attendance after recess and Matt’s asleep.”
“Well, then,” the lady purred at him. “Why don’t you come with me? I know a shortcut to the playground that I think you’re gonna just love.”
Leo’s mind was screaming every danger alert it had available to it. Even a kid in the best of circumstances should have been wary of an adult leading them off with a promise of a “shortcut” to a destination less than half a block away. But Leo wouldn’t help it. His brain still felt fuzzy, so he just stumbled after her like he was in a trance, murmuring, “Okie dokie.”
She led him around a corner – in the exact opposite direction of the park, and Leo couldn’t help but notice that she walked funny, like her legs were made of two different things, causing her to limp heavily. Her steps sounded weird, too. One was a soft little clop sound, and the other a heavy, hollow, metallic sound. Leo frowned and came to a stop. “Uh, miss? Are your legs okay? Do you need to sit down?”
The lady came to a stop, and her fingers twitched at her side. “Demigods. Always make things more difficult than they need to be,” she muttered under her breath. She suddenly didn’t sound like a sweet Southern lady any more. Her accent was sharp and much, much older than Texas, and Leo suddenly got the feeling that her words hadn’t even been English. She turned and faced him properly, once again wearing that too-sharp smile. “Oh, aren’t you just the sweetest little thing for asking? I could just eat you up, but you don’t need to worry your little head about me.”
Her tone had gone soft and round again, and it was somehow even more syrup-sweet than before. But Leo had heard the truth. His body finally agreed with his brain and he took a couple steps back. “Um, I’m– I know how to find the park by myself. Thank you.”
“No! Don’t you move an inch!” the lady hissed, and Leo felt every last one of his joints lock in place. The lady didn’t look nearly as friendly now. Her eyes were molten gold, her hair an inferno, and her fingers curled into claws as she stalked forward. “I’ve been tracking you for days, if you think you’re getting away that–”
The lady, monster, thing cut herself off with a choked, gurgling noise and both she and Leo looked down to see the end of a golden javelin poking out of the center of her chest. The world stood still for a moment before she exploded into gold glitter, revealing the man who had attacked her.
He was a grownup, older than his teacher, but not older than Matt. He had fluffy blond hair that fell down around his ears, and he had the bluest eyes Leo had ever seen. He was also big, like, football-player-big. His shoulders were probably three times as wide as Leo’s and he was so, so tall. His face was twisted up in a deadly serious expression, until his gaze landed on the other person still in the alley, and his eyes went wide. “Leo?”
Without stopping to think, Leo dropped the slushies, getting his shins sticky in the process, then turned on his heel and bolted. The man called after him, but Leo didn’t stop moving, desperate to get as much distance between himself and the man he just watched kill a lady as possible. He couldn’t go to the park anymore. The man probably heard him talking to the lady about it. But that was okay, there was another spot he knew about. He’d be fine, he just had to get there without a tail.
Fortunately, it seemed like the man hadn’t actually been all that interested in following him, because Leo didn’t hear footsteps behind him as he skidded to a stop in front of a pair of dumpsters. Beyond that was a hole in the wall that hid a tiny little alcove, possibly a closet for the abandoned building surrounding it, but Leo couldn’t possibly know. It wasn’t the most glamorous spot in Houston, and certainly not Leo’s favorite, but it was the closest and also nearly impossible to find if you didn’t know where to look for it.
At least, it was supposed to be impossible to find. It obviously wasn’t though, because before long there was the sound of boots on gravel just beyond the security of the alcove. “Leo?” the man called, his tone gentle but without an ounce of pity. “You in there?” Leo went completely still and silent, not even daring to breathe. The man chuckled softly and all of the sudden two slushies appeared: one red, one blue. “Well, if you are in there, I’ve got something for you. I noticed you dropped your drinks, so I went ahead and got you some new ones. Red’s your favorite color, right?”
Leo waited a long while before he slowly, cautiously snuck a glance at the man. Leo knew that at this angle he wouldn’t have been spotted, but even if he could have been, it wouldn’t have mattered because the man wasn’t looking for him. He was just sitting sprawled out on the ground, leaning against the other alley wall with his eyes closed. His hands were empty and visible at his sides and his spear was several yards away. He was still, but not in the tense waiting kind of way, more the relaxed, unbothered way. Leo didn’t trust it in the slightest.
But he was still thirsty, and Houston hadn’t gotten any less hot, so he very carefully crept forward, reaching for the red slushy, heart hammering hard and fast in his chest.
Then, just before his fingers touched cold plastic, the man spoke and Leo froze. “It wasn’t your fault,” he said gently. “That lady in the alley, she was tricking you. She has magic that makes you do things, even if you know it’s wrong. She was cheating, and it’s not your fault.”
Leo felt his breath hitch because no one had said those words – not your fault – since his mamá died. Everything was always his fault and he didn’t really know what to do without that weight on his shoulders, so he retreated a bit, still keeping his eyes on the man. He swallowed thickly. “You killed her.”
“I did,” the man confirmed simply.
“Why?”
“She was going to hurt you, and I didn’t want that.”
It wasn’t an excuse, exactly, just an explanation of motives. The man wasn’t sorry, and he wasn’t trying to justify himself. He just gave Leo the facts, and the facts were that he’d rather kill a monster lady than let said monster hurt Leo. Leo picked at the skin around his fingernails. “Why?”
“Do I need a reason why I didn't want her to hurt you?”
“Yes.”
The man was quiet, probably not expecting that answer, and he took his time thinking. “You’re a kid,” he said finally. “I’m a grownup. It’s my job to make sure kids don’t get hurt, especially kids who don’t have anyone else helping them.”
Leo considered that answer for a while before deciding that he was satisfied with it. It sounded true enough, at least. With that in mind, Leo cautiously reached out again for the red slushy. “I only want this one. You can have the blue one.”
“Thank you,” the man said genuinely. He waited until Leo had retreated back into his little bunker before he crept forward to claim his own drink.
Once they were both settled and quiet for a minute, Leo spoke. “Who are you?”
“My name is Jason V- Grace. Jason Grace,” he said. “I’m… a hero, I guess.”
Leo considered his words again, and found no lie. “That monster lady called me a demigod. Is that what you are?”
“Yes.”
“Is that how you know my name?”
The man– Jason winced, like he’d been bracing for that question but still wasn’t ready to answer it. “Not exactly.”
“How, exactly?”
“I don’t think it’s a good idea for me to tell you,” Jason said. “There’s a lot of danger that comes with knowing stuff too early. If I explain everything, you’re going to see more monsters like that lady. Is it okay if I keep some secrets?”
Leo didn’t like that at all. He hated knowing that there was information being left on the table and he simply had no way to access it. But he also recognized a golden opportunity when he saw one. “Okay, but I want secrets, too. You can’t ask me questions I don’t like. Deal?”
“Deal,” Jason agreed easily. Which was… very odd. Grownups didn’t like it when Leo kept secrets, even if they were keeping secrets from him. He half expected Jason to try and trick him into revealing something, but the man just relaxed against the wall, sipping on his slushy.
Leo stuck his head out of his hiding spot, and nearly retreated like a turtle in its shell when Jason’s eyes immediately snapped open, but he just smiled like he was genuinely happy to see him. Leo felt a little bashful all of the sudden, but kept his walls up. “What are you doing here?”
“I don’t really know,” Jason admitted “I was in the middle of doing a… job. For my boss, but I wasn’t anywhere near here. Then all the sudden I saw that monster lady about to attack you, and I just moved.”
“Oh,” Leo said quietly, stirring his slushy. “Well, you’re in Houston, just so you know.”
“Thank you,” Jason said, though Leo suspected he already knew where he was. He cocked his head to the side. “Can I ask you one question?”
Leo’s hackles went straight up, and he narrowed his eyes. “What question?”
“Are you okay?”
Leo froze and just blinked at him. “Huh?”
“Are you okay?” Jason repeated. “You’re not at school for some reason, so something must have happened there, and then you were attacked by a monster. I just want to know if you’re okay.”
“I’m…” Leo stared down at his hands, the word fine dying on his tongue as his eyes started to prickle. He swallowed hard again. “Why does it matter?”
“Because I care about you.”
“Why?”
“Because I can’t help it. You remind me of my favorite person in the world.” Leo whipped his head up and blinked wide eyes and Jason’s smile went toffee soft and molten with affection. “My husband. He’s a demigod like me, and he’s the smartest person I know, and he’s really funny and very sweet, but he likes to pretend that he’s too tough for that.”
Leo felt himself giggling behind his hand and Jason smiled at him. “Are you best friends?”
“We are. Have been since we were fifteen,” Jason confirmed.
“Wow. That must have been a hundred years ago.”
“Hey!” Jason protested loudly, but he was smiling so Leo decided it was fine if he laughed. “Come on, I’m not even thirty yet.”
“You don’t look it.”
Jason gave him a very fondly exasperated look. “Brat.”
“Old man,” Leo shot back. Jason rolled his eyes, but said nothing, letting the silence settle between them again until Leo broke it. “What’s your husband like?”
“Well, I told you that he’s really smart and sweet and funny,” Jason recounted, ticking things off on his fingers. “But one of the coolest things about him is the fact that he has fire powers.”
Leo’s world immediately narrowed down to those two terrifying words. Suddenly, he was eight again and his hands were ablaze in a desperate attempt to get his mamá out of the warehouse she was trapped in. He was screaming and crying and choking on smoke and she was tapping out that she loved him for the very last time. “Fire powers?”
Jason seemed to know instinctively what Leo was thinking because he went very soft and his voice gentled. “Yeah. He’s had fire powers since he was little. He was scared of them for a long time because there was an accident and someone he loved got hurt, but it wasn’t his fault. Now he uses his powers to help people. His powers are the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.”
“Fire isn’t pretty and it doesn’t help,” Leo said firmly. “It just makes everything worse.”
“Oh, yeah?” Jason challenged, raising an eyebrow. His hands started unbuttoning his shirt and he opened it just enough to reveal a large, terrifying scar in the middle of his chest, just like the one the monster lady would have had if she wasn’t dust. “One day, when I was helping someone, I got hurt really, really bad. I would have died, should have died, but my husband was there. He used his fire powers and he saved me. I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for fire.”
Leo felt his breath hitch at the thought of a world without Jason in it, which was silly because he wasn’t even really friends with Jason, but he still felt it. Without really meaning to, he crawled out into the open, bringing his slushy with him, until he was sitting next to Jason. He carefully reached out for the scar, but pulled back at the last second, looking up at Jason with wide eyes.
“You can touch it,” Jason assured him. “I won’t get mad.”
Leo’s fingers shook just a bit as he traced them around the scar. “Does it hurt?”
“Sometimes,” Jason said. “But most of the time, like now, I can’t feel it. I like having it though.”
“Why?” Leo frowned. “It’s ugly.”
“Because it’s a reminder,” Jason explained, his smile going a little distant as he thought about a man far away. “It’s proof that my husband loves me enough to break all the rules in the world to keep me safe.”
“Oh.” Leo chewed on his lip a bit before he pulled his hand back and settled down next to Jason. “I guess that’s fine then.”
“So glad to have your permission,” Jason teased, and Leo stuck his tongue out. He lifted one arm in invitation, and Leo tucked himself there like it was an instinct he’d never let himself recognize. With Jason’s arm falling around him in a half hug like the bar on a rollercoaster, Leo felt his body relax in a way it hadn’t in a very long time. Jason gently played with his curls for a moment before he spoke, voice soft. “Do you want to tell me why you’re not at school? You don’t have to, if you don’t want to. We can just sit here forever if you’d like.”
Part of Leo definitely liked the idea of just sitting there forever and pretending that Jayden and Daniel and Matt and Ms. Stanton and his teachers just didn’t exist, and the only grownup in the world was Jason. But his chest felt very tight all of the sudden, and he pressed his face into Jason’s shirt sleeve. “I got in a fight at school.”
“A fight?” Jason repeated, but he didn’t sound judgemental or upset, just like he was clarifying the facts. “With who?”
“Daniel and Jayden,” Leo reported. “We used to be friends, kinda, but now they’re just mean.”
“I’m sorry,” Jason said, gently petting Leo’s hair, just like his mamá used to. “They shouldn’t be mean to you.”
“They do it all the time,” Leo said bitterly. “They like to push me down and Jayden kicks me until I cry. I didn’t cry today.”
“No? What happened?”
“I pushed Jayden down.” He felt frustrated tears stinging in his eyes, so he pushed his face even harder into Jason’s arm. “I’m tired of crying because they’re bigger than me and push me around. They made fun of my mamá today, so I made them stop.”
“Oh, Leo,” Jason said, sounding like his heart was breaking. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s whatever,” Leo dismissed, even though it was the least whatever thing imaginable. “I had to run away after, though. Daniel said his dad was gonna call the cops and Ms. Stanton said that if she has to talk to the cops about me again, I’m gonna be in trouble.”
“She said that to you?” Jason asked, aghast.
Leo shrugged. “It’s the rules.”
Jason pressed his lips together and took in a deep breath. “What about your teacher? Can they do anything about Jayden and Daniel?”
“No,” Leo said simply. “I’ve tried, but they only do it where nobody can see, so when I tell the teacher, they just say I’m lying. Mrs. Lomax said it’s two against one, so she can’t do anything, and then Jayden and Daniel are worse because I tried to tattle on them.”
“That’s not fair.”
Leo went stiff at those words, and looked up at Jason, whose eyebrows were pinched in frustration and his mouth turned down in a tight frown, though his hand on Leo’s hair stayed soft. “What?”
“It’s not fair,” Jason repeated. “You shouldn’t have to deal with this, any of this, at all, much less by yourself. You’re a kid, and someone needs to treat you like one, not just like a problem or a target.”
Leo blinked at him in shock. “I’m a kid?”
“You are,” Jason confirmed, his eyes very, very sad. “I’m sorry that anyone ever let you forget that.”
As the words sank in, Leo felt his throat swell up. Every awful feeling he’d pushed down from the moment the doctors had told him that his mamá was dead started bubbling to the surface. Every time he’d been pushed down, every time a foster family decided he wasn’t worth the effort, every time Ms. Stanton or a teacher had frowned at him like he was making their lives harder on purpose, every night where all he wanted was for someone to hold him and tell him the world was going to be alright one day. His breath hitched and a couple tears rolled down his cheeks.
“Oh, sweetheart,” Jason breathed, reaching for him. “Come here.”
For the first time in two years, Leo felt arms wrap around him with nothing but kindness and he tipped his head forward and sobbed directly into Jason’s chest. He was being a crybaby again, just like Daniel and Jayden said he was, but he didn’t care. All he cared about was the fact that Jason was hugging him like he never planned to let go, and was rocking him back and forth while he said nice things into Leo’s hair.
“That’s it, sweetheart,” Jason soothed. “Just let it out. I’ve got you, don’t you worry. I’m right here.”
“It’s not fair!” Leo wailed into Jason’s shirt. “I want my mamá!”
“I know, sweetheart, I know.” Jason pressed a hard kiss to Leo’s hair. “It’s not fair and I’m so, so sorry.”
They stayed like that for a long, long time. So long that Leo wasn’t really sure how long it actually was, he just knew that he was tired and his throat hurt and he had a headache. He’d run out of water for tears at one point, so he’d regressed to just screaming into Jason’s chest, but Jason still held him through every second of it. Even now, with Leo completely exhausted and feeling like a deflated balloon, Jason kept him cradled close to his chest, rocking him softly as Leo’s eyes drifted closed.
“Sorry,” Leo mumbled, hiding his face in Jason’s shirt.
“Don’t ever be sorry for needing help, Leo,” Jason said. “That’s what grownups are here for.”
Leo sniffled. “Are you gonna make me go back to school now?”
Jason checked his watch, then shook his head. “School’s almost out anyway. I am gonna take you to the store and get you some water, though. You need it after all that. Then I’m gonna take you home, okay?”
“Okay,” Leo agreed softly. He would have agreed to anything Jason suggested at that moment, but this idea actually sounded like a good one. He was very thirsty.
Jason carefully got to his feet, Leo still in his arms and looked down at what remained of their drinks, which had melted into puddles and had been kicked over at some point. “Looks like I’m getting you a new slushy, too. You want another red one?”
“Yeah,” Leo said, resting his cheek on Jason’s shoulder and letting himself start to drift off. “I’d like that.”
Jason chuckled and pressed a kiss to Leo’s forehead. “Red it is. Then, after I take you home, I’m going to go have a talk with your principal about Daniel and Jayden.”
“Really?”
“Really. I’ll take care of it. Just trust me.”
Surprisingly, Leo did. He didn’t think Jason would be able to fix everything, but at that moment he believed that Jason would make sure he didn’t have to deal with Daniel and Jayden anymore. “Okay. Can you pick me up from school tomorrow?”
Jason was quiet for a moment, and Leo already knew the answer. “I don’t think so. I’ve got to go home.”
“Oh.” Leo sighed glumly, but he was just too exhausted to really and truly get upset again. “Am I ever gonna see you again?”
Surprisingly, Jason chuckled and squeezed Leo up in a hug. “I know for a fact you are. You’re my favorite person in the world.”
The words were oddly familiar, but Leo didn’t think too hard about it, he just hummed, satisfied with that answer, and fell asleep in the arms of his hero.
Jason and Leo were supposed to be just friends. But there was a glitch in the system?
Podfic of Glitch by @graylilacs
We’re back with day 4 of me posting a podfic every day for @valgraceweek! As always, thank you to the author for giving permission for me to podfic this work! I hope you’ll enjoy it!
Leo stood in the sand watching Jason float peacefully in the water. The waves lapped on the shore, darkening the ground until it painted a gradual descent into the wettest sand. He was too far away for the water to touch him. It was just the way he liked it.
Or, on the shore of Camp Half-blood's lake, Leo reflects on how water has treated him.
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