madness and ecstasy // leo valdez

-i am not a woman i'm a bob-

give it up for hit me hard and soft y'all she's the loml <3

Teqi rubbed her eyes, stuffed her fists into the pockets of her jacket, wait, no, Leo's jacket, and trudged upstairs. She could feel the nothingness creeping over all her nerves again. She need something like adrenaline. Maybe that was it. 

...No. Adrenaline was for when you felt a bit sad. She needed enough cocaine to kill a minotaur. 

I just wanna feel something, tell me where to go                                                                                                'Cause everybody knows something I don't wanna know

Everybody knew something she didn't wanna know now. She was a god. Or a goddess, or whatever word summarised 'clinical overpowered child-neglecting maniac'.  

She cracked her knuckles in the pockets of her jacket, wait, no, Leo's jacket, and stopped at the doorway. But she'd already said it wasn't her jacket, that it was Leo's. Shit. Mist covered the ocean lapping around the Argo II. Which she couldn't see. The fog was so thick, and warm drizzle hung in the air like a bead curtain. Teqi could see two figures standing at the front of the ship, only visible because of Festus's faint gold glow in the miserable weather that was already turning Teqi's mood sour.

"Oh fuck off," she hissed at herself, trudging up to the top deck and pretending she wasn't worried about dolphin mutants leaping from the tendrils of fog to cut Leo's face in half and cart her friends away. 

Hands back out of the pockets. She shook them out and tried to crack her knuckles again.

I hurt myself to make sure I exist
I pinch myself to make sure that I'm real

This music thing going on was actually going to drive her insane all over again. The beats and melodies circled around her head like crows over a carcass. And it was so painstakingly right. The author must spend a lot of time reading the lyrics to every song they listen to just to find a connection. If only Spotify hadn't blocked lyrics for people who didn't have premium. 

Teqi was going to chop her ears off. 

Buttons were clicking at lightning speed. Annabeth was bent over the control panel, a scrappy instruction book -probably written in Spanish- in hand. The hand with the fingers, of course. She seemed to be dealing with her injury the exact same way Teqi was, bandaging it up and pretending it wasn't there.

Percy had embraced his wholeheartedly. There was a barbie arm stuck to his scarred shoulder using some Steven Universe stickers and a massive wad of duct tape. He waved with it. "Hey."

"You're so weird," Teqi said, and sat down next to him.

The thin stick like monster with big teeth and endless whirlpool eyes and a broken down schoolbus behind it watched her intently, just like Percy was. She shouldn't have admitted to killing him. And here she thought Percy might understand the tiniest bit. Being a murderer and all. Bob kept sweeping the altar. She stared ahead and ignored them both.  

She ignored the echoes of demons and Halsey in her ears. She glanced at Annabeth, who was now writing out equations on the floor with a glitter gel pen she'd pulled from her frizzy mess of hair. "...What's she doing?"

"Pretending not to think about Tartarus," Percy said, and took a sip of the box made lemonade they'd had after dinner. 

Annabeth dropped her pen. It rolled away along the deck. The planter box on the other side groaned under the weight, and a vine trailed over the banister, grapes pushing the pen back to the blonde.