madness and ecstasy // leo valdez

-leo's basically garfield btw-

okay so i know i'm posting like a chapter a month and my quality AND quantity have turned to shit but i'm in year 11 (senior school w serious classes) now and its so hard, i want to have this story finished by maybe end of this term but i don't know if that's a stretch like, in two months?

also your comments mean so much thank y'all who're still here <3 four years later <3

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"Hot hot hot!" Teqi whispered to herself, scurrying across the kitchen as her fingertips burned. She dropped the piping hot glass tray on the bench with a clatter and hissed, pressing her hands on the fridge door for relief.

Then she began dishing out messy chunks of lasagna that spilled over the spatula and landed on the floor. Her leopard licked them up, his soft tail curling around her ankles. Teqi scratched his head and dropped him grated parmesan. The squares of cardboard she'd used to separate the vegetarian section and the cheese free section and the blue section had managed to become both burned and soggy at the same time.

Her song ended and she fiddled with her ipod until she could skip it back to the start, tangling the spatula in the cords of her headphones.

"I'm a scary gargoyle on a tower."

The cardboard went in the bin, and the bits she couldn't extract were pushed further between the pumpkin and the mince so no one would find them. If anyone showed up for dinner. Piper and Annabeth had returned, battered and bruised, and reluctant to talk about it, from their cave quest.

Now the Argo II was sailing through a maze of cliff islands.

She nodded her head and sung under her breath. "That you made with plastic power."

"Your rhinestone eyes are like factories far away," Teqi whispered, grating more parmesan over the top of everyones* plates. She scrubbed the dishes while the food cooled, the sleeves of her jersey jumper rolled up like soap wasn't rolling down her arms every time she lifted them anyway. "When the paralytic dreams that we all seem to keep, Drive on engines 'til they weep, With future pixels in factories far away."

The sound of the song, Rhinestone Eyes, the synthesized electronic parts and the guitar that sounded like insanity personified, felt like it was coming right out of her head. Like it was made with her in mind. Or more specifically, without a mind.

Listening to it made her feel sane.

Someone else felt as manic as she did when there was blood and wine dripping from every surface.

Speaking of. She stepped around Leopard, who'd made himself comfortable in the middle of the licked clean kitchen floor.

Teqi opened the fridge and pushed the cans of coke out of the way, grabbing the red wine.

She poured it into a wine glass and set it on the table, the cracking of the seal on the bottle felt a lot like crunching bones in her hand, where it was surrounded by plates of lasagna and jugs of juice. Orange and apple and blue cordial.

The song was coming to an end as she stacked the washed plates and jumped. The volume had covered the sound of Leo's footsteps, so she only noticed him when he bumped into her from behind, his hands in her jumper pockets.