─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆
❛ 𝐘𝐎𝐔 𝐃𝐎 𝐍𝐎𝐓 𝐔𝐍𝐃𝐄𝐑𝐒𝐓𝐀𝐍𝐃 𝐔𝐒.
we have seen the worse of each other.
our souls are intertwined. he could be
a decaying corpse, and i will become
the maggots digging into hi...
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LEO PRIDED HIMSELF ON BEING A TOP-NOTCH JUDGE OF CHARACTER. Seriously, he had every reason to believe it—his best bud was Jason Grace, the epitome of coolness, and he totally called it on Tía Callida being downright diabolical. He'd encountered enough mean, pretty girls who treated him like a pet more than a human to know when someone was being real or just putting on a show. So yeah, he was confident he could see through people's facades, through all the smoke and mirrors, and know if they were cool or not.
But Micah? Micah was throwing him for a loop.
There was something just not quite... right with him.
He was a total jerk, of course, sticking his nose in everyone's business, flaunting his know-it-all attitude, and tossing threats around like they were free samples. Bad vibes practically sizzled off him, hotter than a forge; it only took Leo two minutes at Camp Half-Blood to learn that everyone clearly felt the same way.
Leo figured that would be enough to write him off as just another power-tripping pretty boy.
But, now that they are on a quest together, he began to notice that Micah would sometimes get this look in his eyes. A flicker of something that completely overturned Leo's understanding of him.
How could a guy so cruel and arrogant possibly have a heart, let alone a broken one?
It would've been way easier if he was just another narcissist with no depth. But no, Micah had this whole messed-up patchwork on his arms—scratches, bruises, scars overlapping with burn marks. Sometimes he'd shake so violently, his tough exterior cracking like old paint on a beat-up car, that Leo couldn't help but forget his fear of him.
In those moments, he couldn't picture a bully at all. Just a scared little kid needing someone to hold onto.
But whoever he was searching for never seemed to appear, which revealed another side of the son of Hypnos that left Leo absolutely spooked. Because he could handle the ridiculing, the mean remarks, the strange and off-putting threats, and even the tears, if it came down to it, but Leo had no idea what to do when Micah decided he was above everything and simply smiled.
There's this saying one of the behavioral counselors at the Wilderness School loved to tell him, something like, "A smile is the light in your window that tells others there's a caring, sharing person inside."
If Micah were a house, his smile would be a charred, crumbling ruin with shattered windows and decaying beams, riddled with mold and barely holding together. It was never genuine—twisted and snarled, as though he concealed splintered bones beneath his tongue. He could resemble a pretty angel as much as he liked with his soft-turned features and calming voice, but in the end, his smile would always betray him, bearing too many sharpened teeth to be considered anything but the final snare of a predator closing in on its already captured prey.
