YOU ARE IN LOVE ↬ leo valdez x reader, book two

10. small talk, he drives

"And now...the worst insult of all. The gods mock me by sending you." Leo knitted his brows together, an angry look flashing over his face.
"Fine," he said. "We'll leave you alone. I'll build something myself and get us off this stupid island without your help. Come on Y/N."
She shook her head sadly. "You don't understand, do you? The gods are laughing at both of us. If the raft will not appear, that means they've closed Ogygia. You're stuck here the same as me. You can never leave."

The first night, Leo was sulking in his anger the whole night. All I heard was him muttering about Calypso and her being angry for no reason. Calypso had a point, being frustrated at the gods, but she didn't need to take it out on us – well, on Leo. And Leo had the right to be upset, scared even, but he didn't need to take it out on me. After Leo stormed out of the cave, I meekly walked up to Calypso.
"Sorry to bother you. I know it's an inconvenience but do you have something I could keep this in?" I shook the aloe vera in slight impatience.
She nodded solemnly, turning to go behind one of the white curtains and returning with what looked like a mortar made of granite stone. "You're not an inconvenience." She said quickly. "It's that fool, he's an embarrassment to the past heroes who have been sent to Ogygia."
"How do you know that?" I asked, stroking gel off the aloe and scraping it into the mortar.

"Because he hasn't taken me nor anything seriously. You're his girlfriend?"
"No." I said quickly.
She wiped her hands on her legs. "Good. You should pursue a greater use of your time." She gestured to the aloe vera. "How did you know to treat your burns with that? I could've gotten my servants to help."
"I'm not a fighter like Percy, or an inventor like Leo. I work on the sidelines." I glanced at the charred ravine of flesh on my forearm. "By any chance do you have honey or a cool compress?"
"You can stay here for the night, since you're not a nuisance."
"Thanks for the offer, Calypso, but I think I'd better stay with Leo. I appreciate your help though. And if you're willing, I'm happy to teach you the medicinal uses of all your plants."

I found Leo stomping on the sand, kicking it and murmuring angry curses.
"You alright?" I asked. He whipped around and waited for me to catch up to him. "She's not that bad Leo."
"Oh, no, but I am." he waved his hands around sarcastically. "She's not gonna let us stay with her, so we'll have to manage our own way ourselves."
We slept outside on a bed of drop cloths under the stars. Leo got the remains of Calypso's dining table and created a fire on the first night, to warm us up. We lay on our backs, staring at the stars. I was heavily exhausted so I was asleep in a millisecond. Every day, Leo would mope and barely talk but every night we exchanged stories of our childhood. He told me all about his mom, which warmed my heart to listen to. He sounded really passionate about it.

"Come on, teach me!" I had said on the second night. He rolled his eyes, a grin planted on his face.
"Alright, alright." He sat up more, extending a knee and his hand. He began to drum on his knee, a mischievous look on his face.
"What did you say?" I asked. He shook his head laughing. "You said you'd teach me Morse Code but you're just insulting me."
"We'll go through the alphabet, I'll tap it out and you translate it. I'll stay up all night if I have to."
After a lot of memorizing and laughing, he tapped out his fingers on his knee and I closed my eyes to focus.
"I... lose– no, love you. I love you." I opened my eyes and saw that he was extra close to me. "Why did you say that?"
"Festus says it to me." He slumped onto his back, clearing his throat. "And my mom."
"Thanks for teaching me, Matches."

"How many days have we been here?" Leo scared me awake.
"Four." I said, almost certain. But then I wasn't. "No, last night was the second day but today is the fourth."
We went to confront Calypso in the garden, but she just shook her head. "Time is difficult here."
As we walked away, Leo groaned. "What if all of our friends are in aged care homes and we're not even finished puberty?"
"Don't say that." I said. Not even because he was worrying, but the idea was starting to scare me.