Arsonist's Lullabye ──── Leo Valdez

𝟔: 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐂𝐚𝐦𝐩𝐟𝐢𝐫𝐞

─────"𝐓𝐡𝐚𝐭'𝐬 𝐢𝐭!" 𝐕𝐢𝐧𝐜𝐞𝐧𝐭 𝐬𝐥𝐚𝐦𝐦𝐞𝐝 𝐡𝐢𝐬 𝐩𝐚𝐥𝐦𝐬 on the dinner table. He got up from his seat, taking his plate and magic goblet over to the Hermes table where Leo's pal Jason was sitting.

He fumed for a second, not knowing what to do. Ellis had reached Vince's limit now. And short of punching him in the face (Annabeth was glaring at him so he decided not to resort to violence), there was nothing Vincent could do except move.

The other boy flipped him off and started shouting insults.

He plopped his plate down next to Jason. Vincent would have preferred anyone else, literally even that pretty girl was better than having to be stuck with the bland cardboard cut-out of a human known as Jason.

But he was out of options.

Ellis yelled, "Your IQ's so low, the Athena cabin's allergic to you!"

"You're the poster child for the importance of keeping abortion legal." Vincent bit back. The Ares campers pretended to be offended, but Vincent knew sentences with more than ten words were above their comprehension levels, so they probably didn't even understand it.

Jason choked on air next to Vince as the boy lowered himself onto his seat and muttered something under his breath.

"Hi again," Vincent plastered a fake grin as he looked at Jason, "I'm Vincent, but everyone just calls me Vince. We didn't get to talk a lot at the Grand Canyon, but I'm sorry for how intense Annabeth was."

Vincent wasn't jealous of Jason's (fake) friendship with Leo. Really, he wasn't. Okay maybe a little.

Jason gave him a polite smile and it made Vincent feel guilty about being mean to Jason behind his back. Okay maybe Vincent bitched about the guy to Ellis, big deal.

"It's cool, man," Jason shrugged, "It's been a wild day. There's a lot of stuff going on, I get it. And having her boyfriend just disappear like that must have been hard. So this Percy guy must have been pretty popular, huh?"

Despite his negative feelings toward the blond, Vincent tried to make an effort to be civil.

"You have no idea," he snorted, "About half of camp had their gay awakening because of him. And then there's a few bi daughters of Aphrodite who would be lesbians if it weren't for him and that's a direct quote from them."

Vincent wasn't sure how cool Leo or his new bestie were with queer stuff, after all, Vincent hadn't figured out he was pan until he came to Camp so Leo didn't know about him. Percy Jackson just had to be training in the arena the day Vincent came to camp and he looked so good Vincent forgot how to breathe—

Jason shifted in his seat, but didn't say anything.

"How's Piper?"

"She's uh.. she passed out" Jason told him the entire story. Since Leo seemed to trust Vincent, Jason did too. He narrated how Chiron said he should be dead, the goddess that appeared to Jason, all of which sounded weird to Vincent, along with the fact that the centaur refused to share his doubts with Annabeth.

So far the only leads they had were from Clovis who told them Roman gods were split personalities from Greek gods and not the exact same things.

Then there was Piper who passed out when Rachel touched her in Hera's cabin. Vincent didn't know what to think about all that.

By the time they were all told to eat, there was a mellow mood on the table around the two of them.

Technically, Vincent shouldn't be at the Hermes table, but then again, who the fuck was going to stop him? Chiron hadn't shown up for dinner and of course Mr. D, the camp director had been recalled to Olympus a month ago, for whatever reason.