Work Text:
"This sucks more than my sixth grade maths teacher."
It starts like this.
Percy had been chosen to go on a mission aside from the constant quests to stop a giant, weird monster thing who apparently woke up on the wrong side of the planet and wanted to kill all of mythology and materialistic world alike. You know, the normal stuff.
The mission Percy had been on was a short one. There was an annoying as hell sea monster that had been following them for a few days. It messed with the currents and pulled their boat off track. The vote on who should kill it was unanimous. It was a sea monster. They had a child of Poseidon. Obviously you're going to go with the child of Poseidon who could breathe underwater and control ocean currents. Duh.
The plan was simple. From what the monster had demonstrated, it was pretty peaceable. Leo even felt a little bad for killing it. They didn't think it had very many extraordinary powers, otherwise it would have used them by now.
Step one: kill the monster. Step two: don't fuck up step one.
Simple.
From what few stories Leo had been able to pull from Annabeth in the time that he'd known her, Percy was insanely powerful and talented with a sword. So he had little doubt that Percy would be fine at the bottom of the ocean with only a playful little sea monster to take care of.
So he started getting a little anxious when Percy didn't show up, even after twenty minutes had passed. Annabeth did, too, which made Leo even more nervous. She kept looking over the edge of the deck to try and spot any sign of him, but there was no way of telling weather the small ripples in the water were from a current or a boy.
Twenty more minutes passed and Leo started feeling like a sitting duck. They couldn't leave, Percy wouldn't know where to find them when he came back. But staying in one place for any extended period of time was dangerous and horribly risky for a group of seven half-bloods, one of which had the entire population of greek mythical monsters after him.
They had no choice, though. Leaving Percy behind was out of the question (Annabeth freaked Leo out, man) and they were capable of defending themselves from any impending monsters. Hopefully.
Ten more minutes passed and the remaining crew had dragged Annabeth down below deck to get her mind off things. They were in the middle of a pretty heated game of snakes and ladders when there was a loud bang from upstairs.
All of them, battle trained as they were, hurried up to find out what happened. Leo was very annoyed yet relieved to see that it was Percy who had returned. He wasn't looking too great. There were several cuts all over his body and his whole face was dripping blood.
Annabeth ran to him at once.
"What in the hell happened to you, Seaweed Brain? I thought the monster was calm!"
Percy looked up at her, exhaustion settled deep in his ocean green eyes. But he smiled. "I thought so, too. Turns out he was smarter than we gave him credit for. Gave off the vibe of a calm little creature, but I think that was to get one of us to deal with it alone. Went under the water and he was pretty lethal. Don't ask me what monster it was, you know I'm not good at that."
Annabeth rolled her eyes. "It might've been one of the knockoff monsters Poseidon bred in his free time. They were known to be pretty smart."
Percy made a face, his handsome features (totally platonic, people!) scrunched together. "You mean I fought another one of my brothers who wants to kill me? That's awesome," he muttered sarcastically.
"Shut it, Percy," Annabeth grinned. "Why are you bleeding? I thought water healed you."
Percy shrugged. "Must've been the aura. Cut off my powers. I could still breathe and everything, thank the gods, but everything else I tried didn't work."
Annabeth blinked. Leo could practically hear the gears turning in her head. "Sounds pretty powerful. We should probably think of some way to identify it so that it doesn't come back. No telling if it could affect everyone's powers or only yours, since you're the son of the sea god."
"Yeah, sounds great, Annabeth," Percy groaned from the ground, "but can you get me some nectar or something? The thing got me good in the head."
Leo finally drew his attention to Percy's face. Besides the dripping blood, there was also a good sized gash on his forehead. He looked barely able to stay conscious, face dazed and weak.
Annabeth cursed, apologizing for not doing anything sooner, and she ran off to get some nectar.
With her gone, it seemed everyone had the courage to move again. Leo sat down on a seat and waited for Annabeth to return, not knowing what else to do. But the girl Hazel and her boyfriend Frank dropped down closer to Percy.
"Are you okay, Percy?" Hazel asked.
Leo saw Percy's eyes soften when he looked at her. If he were anyone else, Leo would have thought that Percy might have had a crush on her, but since he knew that Percy's heart reached for Annabeth, and the other way around (seriously, how did he do that?) Leo knew that the look was only platonic. Maybe some sort of sibling love. There was significant difference in the way he looked at Hazel and the way he looked at Annabeth.
"I'm fine, Hazel. Idiot didn't know who he was messing with."
Leo grinned. He had easily figured out that Percy hated bragging about his accomplishments. He hated getting any recognition for them, even if he deserved it one hundred percent. So he knew that the boy was just trying to placate Hazel's worries.
"We should have helped," Frank said, annoyed at himself.
Percy shrugged. "No need. He was easy to kill. Just fast. Kept getting away from me. Got me once on my face and then not again. I spent most of the time down there trying to catch the thing."
Frank shook his head. "We still should have helped. We didn't do anything special up here anyway."
Percy shrugged again, seemingly too exhausted to do anything else.
Leo thought about contributing to the conversation, but hesitated. It was so stupid! He shouldn't be scared to talk to Percy. Even though he was the greatest swordsman in 300 hundred years, the savior of Olympus, the most powerful half-blood there ever was (according to Death Breath), a five time quest smasher, and wickedly intimidating on his own, without all of that, Leo wasn't any less than Percy.
Who the fuck was he kidding? Of course he was less than Percy.
Against his own will, he found his voice building, probably about to make a stupid, inappropriate joke.
Thank the gods Annabeth burst back onto deck at that moment, making Leo's voice die in his throat.
She held a canteen of nectar, one of their many on board. (Hey, traveling with seven danger magnets got messy sometimes.)
Hazel and Frank scooted back to give Annabeth room.
She dropped to the ground and started drizzling nectar onto the open wound.
Percy cursed loudly. "Oh my gods, that stuff burns!"
Annabeth grimaced. "I thought you were used to it!"
"I did this once, Annabeth. Once. And that was in the underworld! On a scratch! How could that be any worse than this?" Percy cursed again, teeth clenched.
Annabeth rolled her eyes. "A scratch with poison! Poison from a Keres! Of course that's gonna hurt worse than this!"
Leo blinked. He knew Percy had been to the underworld, but he'd never heard of Keres in the story before. Hell, he didn't even know what Keres were. How many times had Percy been to the underworld?
Jason hissed. "You were poisoned by the Tenebrae? In the Underworld? How in the world did you survive?"
Percy looked at him, eyes starting to slip closed. "Titan who jumped into the River Lethe after me. Lost his memory. He healed me. After I lifted the whole river from the bed."
Jason stared. "What?"
Percy gestured vaguely. "Went on a quest to the Underworld. Again," he added after a pause. "Got scratched by the Keres because I was still in my school uniform. My hellhound didn't wait for me to change into armor. We met a titan. Iapetus, I think. I fought him and he nearly killed me. Or was it the other way around? No. Definitely not. He almost killed me. But then I dove into the River Lethe, the one that erases your memories, right? And he dove after me. Now he's named Bob."
Well that didn't clear it up at all.
"You met a Titan?" Leo asked despite himself.
Percy nodded. "I've met several. Killed several, too. They're annoying."
Piper let out a hesitant laugh. "What the heck, Percy?"
"Uh huh, yeah," Percy was quickly falling into exhaustion. "Fought a war. Titans. Hope. Hestia. All of the normal stuff."
Annabeth laughed. Leo was sure she would turn around and tell them all that Percy was just joking, but she didn't.
"You skipped over a few details, Seaweed Brain."
Percy shrugged, grinning. "Yeah, I did. Like how badass you looked fighting an army."
Annabeth slapped him lightly. "Shut up."
Leo grinned. He feigned falling to the floor. "Come on, Jackson, why do you gotta raise the bar so high?"
Percy laughed. "You'll get a girl, Valdez. Maybe you can build one."
Leo's mouth fell open. He knew Percy was one to joke around a lot, but Leo didn't know he did it about as much as Leo himself did. Plus, that was a solid burn.
"Touché, Jackson," he said grudgingly.
"I have a few moments," Percy said, grinning.
"Yeah, yeah, Percy. You need to sleep. But walk to your own room to pass out, okay?" Annabeth said, effectively ending the conversation.
Percy pushed himself up, having surprising strength for someone who, just five minutes ago, was laying on the ground bleeding to death.
Annabeth surprised him and threw a bucket of water into his face. Percy paused.
"What the hell was that for, Annabeth?" he asked, spitting the water out of his mouth.
She laughed. "There, now you're clean."
He groaned. "And wet."
She rolled her eyes. "Oh hush, you."
Percy laughed. He flicked his wrist and the water almost melted off of him. Each droplet was running off of his clothes and hair smoothly. Leo stared. He knew he was staring, but he couldn't help it. How many powers did this dude have?
Percy pushed himself off the ground and leaned heavily against the railing.
"This sucks more than my sixth grade maths teacher," he groaned.
"No," Annabeth disagreed immediately, "she was way worse than this."
"Do I even want to know?" Leo asked with a raised eyebrow.
Percy grinned. "She was a fury. I was twelve."
Jason blanched. "Twelve? Twelve? What did you do?"
Percy shrugged. "Stabbed her with a sword."
Yeah. As if that explained everything.
"What?"
Percy shrugged, rubbing the back of his neck, a tell tale sign that he was out of his element and uncomfortable.
"Anyway," Annabeth said quickly, "Percy, you need to not die first."
He grinned tiredly. "Yeah, yeah, sounds ideal. Dying wouldn't be great."
As he struggled to the stairway, Leo turned away. He was so perfect. He would have no trouble ever finding a girl if he wanted. How in the world could Leo compete with all of that? Modest, funny, strong, cool, smoking hot, powerful. Everything Leo was not. He was so effortlessly badass, it was frustrating. Leo felt like he could never even come close to any of that. Never in his foreseeably short life could he imagine being half of what Percy was.
Leo shook his head, going down to the engine rooms.