Riordanverse Oneshots

This Is Home

Basically a trans aro/ace Leo Valdez one shot based on the song This is Home by Cavetown. The italics are the song lyrics. Consider this my aro week contribution. Also, this is in the third person POV of Jo from Trials of Apollo (If you've read and forgotten Jo and her wife, Emmie are basically Leo's adopted moms) Anyway, enjoy! 

Jo walked through Waystation, grease staining her clothes and the welder's mask she had propped precariously on her close-cropped gray hair, looking for her foster son, Leo Valdez. "Waystation," she said softly, after her attempts to find him proved fruitless. "Bring me to Leo." A door appeared, and Jo reached for the handle, her calloused hands rough against the smooth metal, and pulled down, waiting for the soft crack of the door opening.

She stepped inside, and instead of finding herself face to face with Leo, she found Emmie and Lityerses cleaning fruits for a basket. "Have either of you seen Leo?" asked Jo. She wiped the palms of her hands on her work apron so she could grab an already clean Granny Smith Apple and place it in the basket. "I asked Waystation, and it brought me here."

Her wife looked up from the plum she had underneath the sink's water. "I think he's with Georgie."

Lit nodded, a dangerous feat given the fact he was currently chopping apricots. "He wanted to teach her something, I'm not quite sure what."

Jo nodded, turning to face the door she just entered. "Waystation, can you please take me to Georgina?"

The door glimmered and Jo grabbed the handle again, walking through.

Emmie and Lit had been right; the door led to Georgina's room and she found Leo and Georgie on the bed, the latter asleep. Despite the fact that Leo was much older, Georgie looked giant the way she curled herself on her older brother's lap. Her short tufts of brown hair rested against the denim fabric of Leo's paint and grease stained overalls, her features free of night terrors, something that Jo rarely ever sees in her daughter.

As quiet as a mouse, Jo made her way to her children and sat beside Leo on the side where Georgie's legs weren't located. She was going to ask if Leo wanted to help her when Georgie woke up from her nap when she caught sight of his own features.

He had tear streaks running down his cheeks, singular spots sporadic against his tan skin, some landing on his chapped lips and some falling just beside Georgie's face.

Silently, Jo reached out and whipped away his tears, acutely aware of how her calluses must feel against his raw skin. "What's wrong, Leo?" she whispered.

The reply was so soft, Jo barely heard it. "Often I am upset that I cannot fall in love but I guess, this avoids the stress of falling out of it."

Jo's mind flutters to the week before, when Leo tearfully told her and Emmie that he and Calypso were no longer dating, that he realized he'd fabricated those feelings for her long ago. Even if he couldn't fall in love, as he put it, he had still seemed stressed over the fact, as if more afraid of Calypso's heart than his own. Calypso still lived with them, and the two weren't on bad terms, as far as Jo could tell. Jo was brought back to reality by Leo's quiet murmur again.

"Are you tired of me yet?" His nimble fingers ran through Georgie's curls, "I'm a little sick right now but I swear, when I'm ready I will fly us out of here."

Jo pressed a soft kiss atop Leo's own curls, murmuring, "We could never tire of you." She wasn't the softest person alive, but she would sure try when it came to her children.

"I'll cut my hair." His fingers tugged softly at one of Georgie's tufts, extending it to her shoulder before letting go, the curl bouncing up to its original spot. "To make you stare."

Jo's eyes glistened with tears of their own, but she refused to let them fall. She wished Emmie was here, she was far better with these types of interactions that she was. Sure, she knew plenty of boys who had left the hunt in recent years after a bout of self-discovery, and she and Emmie housed them, but she still had a lot to learn. It will always be hard to fully understand something you're not going through, but she and Emmie tried their best for Leo. They managed to find a trans-exclusive doctor for him (his first ever as he'd never gotten trans-affirming health care due to his place in foster care. From what he told them, he'd just cut off his hair during his first placement and introduced himself as Leo.) And they were set to start him on testosterones when he turned seventeen the following July. Leo never spoke much about his trans identity, only ever mentioning it when he awkwardly asked for pads or tampons when he ran out. Jo was suddenly worried she and Emmie weren't doing enough to help ease his anxiety and help stop bad people.

"I'll hide my chest, and I'll figure out a way to get us out of here." Leo's face stayed put, but Jo caught his eyes dart towards her, as if conveying the emotion behind the pronoun "us".

Jo wanted to reply, but the words seemed stuck inside her throat.

"Turn off your porcelain face," Leo's lips barely moved as he continued to speak, "I can't really think right now in this place. There's too many colors, enough to drive all of us insane."

Jo looked around at the colored drawings littering the wall. Even Leo's rather plain outfit—a white t-shirt underneath his overalls—was so colorful the blue seeker was like a canvas.

"Are you dead? Sometimes I think I'm dead." A tear escaped as he said those words, and Jo wrapped her arms around him, careful not to wake Georgie or interrupt Leo's fingers as they played with his little sister's hair. Once in a while, Leo would show up in hers and Emmie's room late at night, soft tears not too unlike the tears now, afraid of Thanatos knocking on the door to take him away again. Emmie would always pat the spot between them and allow the sixteen year old to climb into the bed, and curl up against her. "'Cause I can feel ghosts and ghouls wrapping my head. But I don't wanna fall asleep just yet."

"It's okay," Jo managed to whisper. "You're safe now."

Leo spun a curl of Georgie's around his finger, "My eyes went dark. I don't know where my pupils are, but I'll figure out a way to get us out of here."

"Get a load of this monster, he doesn't know how to communicate." The tears were heavy now, falling like the rain in a thunderstorm. "His mind is in a different place. Will everybody please give him a little bit of space?"

Jo instinctively unwrapped her arm from around him, but Leo laid his head against her shoulders, ignoring the grease stain.

"Get a load of this train-wreck, his hair's a mess and he doesn't know who he is yet."

"You don't need to," whispered Jo softly, remembering the feelings she felt when she first met Emmie, not knowing who she was.

"But little do we know, the stars welcome him with open arms." The tears welled up on Jo's sleeve, but Jo welcomed them.

She could feel Leo's staggered breath on her arm as he rasped out, "Time is slowly tracing his face." She felt a hand intertwine into hers. Small, nimble fingers with calloused palms. "But strangely he feels at home in this place."

Jo pressed a kiss onto his curls, "You have a home here, Leo. You're our son."

Leo's eyes locked into hers, and Jo could almost see her reflection in the glassiness. "Love you, mom."

"I love you too, Leo."

They stayed in silence for a moment until Georgie shifted on Leo's lap, tangling her hair around the fingers of the hand Leo still had in her hair. She blinked slowly, as if adjusting herself to the light of the room, oblivious to the pool of tears just beyond her head.

Leo leaned over and pressed a kiss against her forehead, similar to the one Jo pressed on his own moments before. "Love you, Georgie."

Georgie sat up, wrapping her arms around Leo's neck, "I love you too."

Jo unlatched her fingers from Leo and stood up, "You're a great brother, Leo. And a great son."

She left the room before Leo could see the tears on her cheeks.