Chapter Text
When Jason came to, it felt like his body was filled up with too many people. Except, unlike the time he’d been possessed, this time he knew it was all him. But there was just far too much of him. Memories of every part of his life were ghosting around his head in a way they had no business to—all of them vivid like they’d just happened, despite the fact that many of them had happened years ago. All these different versions of him that should never have existed simultaneously were fighting for space in his head.
Jason felt like his skull was going to crack.
He was Thalia’s little brother, small and scared as he clung to his sister’s pant leg. He was Camp Jupiter’s Jason—destined to be a leader, whether he liked it or not. Unable to escape that fate, no matter how hard he tried. He was Reyna’s Jason, collapsed into an exhausted heap after training, laughing as she asked whether he’d let himself be bested so easily. He was Leo and Piper’s Jason, sitting in front of a video game console, marshmallow remnants still stuck in his hair.
He was a terrified child and a fifteen year old praetor and dead at sixteen, all at once.
It was too much. Jason wanted to curl up and cry. Or maybe he wanted to punch something. Or maybe he just wanted to scream.
His mind and body couldn’t seem to agree on anything—not even on the correct way to be overwhelmed. Predictably, this fact did not help him feel any less awful.
The world was blurring back into being around Jason, dark and wrong and awfully unsteady. Both of his hands were being held. Someone pressed a kiss to his forehead.
“Hey, Superman. How are you feeling?” That was Leo’s voice. Even overwhelmed and confused out of his mind, every part of Jason knew he would follow that voice wherever it led him.
His vision slowly cleared. His boyfriend and his best friend were sitting on either side of him, eyes filled with worry.
“Leo? Piper?” Jason asked. His head throbbed. His voice sounded odd. Too stern. Not nearly stern enough.
“That’s us,” Piper agreed, sounding hesitant in a way that made Jason feel a little ill.
He sat up, his body not quite seeming like his own. He felt like a puppet on strings.
He took in his surroundings—the dark cave and the darker water and the way the walls and ceiling of the cavern still looked all wrong, despite the fact that things weren’t quite so blurry now. The dark river’s flow was slowing and it was thinning to a small creek, as if, after centuries of residing here, the Fountain of Memory had suddenly dried up abruptly. There were little cracks spreading out across what had previously been semi-solid rock. The magic of the place had grown unstable after last year’s incident, and their interaction with the Mnemosyne seemed to have been the final straw. The place was relocating, without a care for the lives it might squash in the process.
Leo and Piper hadn’t noticed yet. They were too preoccupied with taking care of him.
Jason cursed inwardly. They’d come along to help him, and now they were all going to die down here and it was going to be his fault.
He was supposed to protect people, but nothing he did was ever good enough. He was fifteen and Reyna was bleeding out in his arms. He was sixteen and Leo was gone. He was seventeen and Dakota was dead—Dakota, who Jason had known since he was ten years old, and who he hadn’t even remembered well enough to properly grieve up until now. The pain had been a dull ache, but now the wound throbbed and pulsed like a newly broken bone.
Jason’s sacrifice had protected Piper, but he’d failed absolutely everyone else, and so many demigods at Camp Jupiter had ended up dead because of it.
He couldn’t lose anyone else. He couldn’t.
“Get up. We need to move,” he said, pushing himself to his feet. It was a relief to let the praetor part of his brain take over. He couldn’t afford to stop and explain—not with the cave about to come down. He just needed them to listen. But Leo and Piper weren’t moving. They were just standing there, frozen, as the cracks began to spread further and further along the walls and ceiling. “I said move!”
Leo flinched. Piper put a hand on his shoulder to comfort him, her face hardening.
“Watch your tone,” she hissed, which just made Jason feel irritated.
It wasn’t like he’d yelled at them. He’d just spoken a bit more forcefully to get his point across when they hadn’t listened to his initial command the way they should have. They didn’t have time for this. They were all going to be buried alive, and it was Jason’s fault for failing to keep them safe the way a good leader needed to. He never should have let them come on this quest, especially not if they weren’t going to listen to him.
“This cave is going to come down,” he said, wasting precious seconds they didn’t have to re-establish some ground rules from training that they’d apparently forgotten. “If I’m going to get us out of here, I need you to listen to me without questioning my orders.”
Piper looked like she was about to say something else, but Leo nudged her and pointed at the ceiling. “Pipes, he’s right. Structural integrity of this place is not looking great right now. We need to get out of here.” He took Piper’s hand and squeezed it. “I did not cheat death twice just for all of us to be flattened into demigod pancakes by a stupid cave-in.”
“Okay. Yeah. Let’s not get squashed,” Piper agreed, but she still looked at Jason uncertainly. “So, which way do you suggest we go? I’m assuming doubling back isn’t an option, but we don’t exactly have a map of this place.” Her tone wasn’t exactly pleasant, now, either.
Jason blocked her out. He focused on the three pathways ahead, specifically the way the air moved through them. There was a draft—just slight, but definitely there—that came from a pathway to their right.
“This way. Come on,” he decided, and to his relief, they did follow him, then.
Not a moment too soon, either. Shortly after they’d stepped into the tunnel, they heard a crash behind them, so close that the ground shook slightly and the sound reverberated through the whole tunnel.
Jason flinched. After everything they’d been through with Gaia and the death prophecy he’d gotten in the Labyrinth, he didn’t exactly love being underground, even without factoring in the immediate risk of a cave collapsing on top of them.
“Well, on the upside, we didn’t get squashed by a giant rock just yet,” Leo announced, and it was only then that Jason realized he’d turned to look. “On the downside, I really hope you’re right about this tunnel, because we won’t be going back that way and we do not have Hazel or Frank to dig us out of here.”
Great. So it wasn’t just Piper who was questioning him. Even Jason’s boyfriend thought they’d be better off with someone else leading this quest.
“It doesn’t matter what’s happening behind us. Keep moving,” Jason said. It came out more harsh than he’d intended.
“You’ve got it, boss,” Leo shot back, but his tone was sour and the salute he gave was more mocking than anything.
Jason tried not to think about it. They could hash this out later.
Jason could feel the air flow getting stronger, but it wasn’t fast, which was a problem considering the cave system kept shaking apart behind them. This situation would have been bad enough under normal circumstances, but Piper kept pestering him about whether he even had a clue where they were going every time they took a turn, and he could tell Leo was starting to have trouble keeping up. Even before his ankle injury, he’d been more of a sprinter than a long-distance runner. Now, sprinting sometimes gave him trouble, too.
“Leo-” he started, but Leo just said, “I’m fine,” through gritted teeth and picked up the pace, pointedly ignoring the fact that he winced every time he put weight on that leg.
“You’re clearly not fine,” Jason protested. “And we need to hurry.”
Before he could get to the point he was trying to make—the fact that the reasonable course of action would have been to just let Jason carry him—Piper apparently decided she needed to start another fight.
“Oh, is that the thing you want to be focusing on right now?” she snapped, glaring daggers at him. “The fact that your disabled boyfriend is struggling to keep up military pace? Maybe you should try being better at fucking cave navigation if you want to keep ordering us around!”
“Guys-” Leo started, but he was interrupted by a piece of cave ceiling coming down in front of them, narrowly missing his head. He stumbled back, startled, then fell. It happened so fast that Jason was barely able to catch him.
Jason’s relief about having his boyfriend safely in his arms was extremely short-lived.
Leo groaned softly. His eyes seemed unfocused. Jason checked to make sure that he hadn’t been hit by a falling rock, after all, but when he carefully set him down, he saw that that wasn’t the problem.
“I don’t think my ankle liked that very much,” Leo muttered, his voice coming out strangled. “It keeps not realizing that it’s not supposed to bend that way.”
It looked dislocated. Maybe broken. Shit.
Jason felt ice cold all over. This was his fault. The only reason Leo’s ankle caused so many problems was that he’d messed it up getting Jason out of the Underworld.
“I told you to put on your damn brace this morning!” Jason cursed, his jaw clenched. Leo had been difficult about that for a while now—about insisting he didn’t need the brace, especially whenever they might get into situations where it might get damaged. Aka, the very situations where he most needed it for ankle stability. Jason understood that Leo had made the brace with his mom. He understood that Leo was terrified of anything happening to it. But there was a reason he was supposed to be wearing it. It took so little for him to re-injure himself when he refused to wear it. “This is what happens when you don’t listen to me.”
Leo didn’t say anything. He just looked startled, and a little like he was going to cry.
“What the hell is wrong with you?” Piper snapped. She kneeled down beside Leo, but she kept her eyes on Jason, looking at him like he’d grown a second head. “I don’t know who you think you are, but I need you to get your shit together! And if you’re gonna be like this, get your fucking hands off of my best friend.”
Her voice was frigid.
Jason froze, slowly stepping back from Leo. He didn’t realize she’d been charmspeaking him until he’d already backed away.
His whole body bristled at being made to do this against his will. Both as the quest leader and as Leo’s boyfriend, helping him was Jason’s responsibility. He hated that he’d gotten loud—how were they ever going to listen to him when he was so obviously emotionally compromised?—but that didn’t mean Piper got to just tell him not to do his job.
“Piper-” Leo started. He was trembling.
“You’re okay,” she said gently, brushing a hand through his hair. “Do you think you can stand up?”
“I- argh. Sure. Definitely,” he claimed, but even with Piper’s support, the attempt only resulted in a pained noise and his face growing even paler. “Actually? Maybe not.”
“I’ll carry you,” Jason said, kneeling back down by his side. He didn’t have time to get into it with Piper, regardless of how obviously out of line she’d been. He could still tell her off for it once they were out of immediate danger.
Piper glared at him. “You can’t just decide-”
“Pipes,” Leo said, his voice still coming out strangled, “we’re still sort of in the middle of a cave collapse here. And no offense to you or your noodle arms, but Jason carrying me is the obvious solution here. We’ll figure out what’s wrong with him later.”
“Nothing’s wrong with me,” Jason told him. He gathered Leo up in his arms, careful not to jostle his injured ankle. They’d done this a few times before—being a child of Jupiter meant Jason had his fair share of stupid monster encounters, even when he was just trying to go to the cinema with his boyfriend, and sometimes Leo actively asked to be carried so Jason could fly them out of whatever mess he’d also gotten them into. Not that that was an option right now. “I’m just trying to keep you both safe.”
“Yeah, and what a fucking fantastic job you’re doing,” Piper hissed, looking pointedly at Leo.
She wasn’t exactly wrong, but that didn’t mean Jason was going to let her bait him into a fight. She wasn’t the first legionnaire who’d tried it, and she probably wouldn’t be the last.
“Yell at me all you want later,” he told her, the tension in his jaw so bad that it was starting to hurt. “But right now, I need you to follow my lead, or we’re never going to get out of here.”
She balled her fists and scowled, but she did follow him without any further protest, which was good enough for Jason.
Leo nuzzled up to him as they ran.
“I know you’re trying, Jase.” His voice was gentle, almost like he was trying to soothe him.
Was it that obvious Jason was barely keeping it together?
He pushed the thought away. They needed to keep moving.
Navigating past the collapsed section of ceiling was tricky, but not impossible. The air currents grew stronger around them. Not too long after, Jason finally found them an exit.
It wasn’t until after they’d made it out, Jason was sure that no one had been injured any worse and they weren’t in any other immediate danger, that he could remember how to breathe.
“I’m clearly getting too old for this shit,” Leo complained when Jason carefully set him down in the grass.
They needed to get him back to the Waystation, but he needed some basic medical attention first.
Before Jason could as much as ease Leo’s shoe off, Piper barked “back off!” at him with so much charmspeak in her voice that Jason all but scrambled backwards away from Leo before he even realized what was happening. “I’m gonna take care of Leo,” she informed him, her voice icy.
Jason couldn’t remember the last time he’d felt this genuinely angry with Piper for anything. He wasn’t sure he ever had.
“If you have a problem with me, just tell me instead of-”
“Instead of what? Ordering you around?” Piper snapped back. “Not so fun when someone does it to you, is it? Maybe take a minute to reflect on that.”
She was looking at him like he was a complete stranger. Jason realized with a start that she had tears in her eyes.
The anger drained out of him in an instant. Now that the adrenaline of the near-death situation was fading and his praetor brain was slowly taking a backseat again, it didn’t take much for him to realize just how badly he’d screwed up.
The horror of the entire situation set in a moment later. Jason felt ill with the realization that, back in the cave, Piper had used her charmspeak on him because she’d decided Leo needed protecting from him. Because his boyfriend was hurt and Jason’s first instinct had been to chide him for not listening when he should have been comforting him. Because the way Jason had behaved—barking orders at Piper and Leo and expecting them to be followed without question—wasn’t how he talked to them, ever. They trusted him to lead them, but not like this. They were the two most important people in the universe to him, not some troops for him to order around.
Dakota had told Jason off for this before, back during the Titan war. About how he tried so badly to fit himself into that mold of the perfect leader in his attempt to keep everyone safe that leader became the only thing that was left of him, even around his friends.
Dakota, who Jason had failed so horrendously at protecting.
The memories made Jason’s knees buckle. He sank into the grass, pulled his knees to his chest and started sobbing.
He’d longed so desperately to remember who he used to be, and now he wasn’t even sure he liked that person very much.
He thought of Piper holding his hand earlier when he’d been overwhelmed, and of Leo tucked comfortably into his side, and was suddenly terrified he’d never get to have that again.
He was terrified, period. He was a child abandoned in the woods with empty promises and a fifteen year old missing person no one cared to look for and a sixteen year old high school student none of his classmates remembered well enough to grieve. No matter what he did, he could never protect anyone he cared about. He never got to keep any of them.
He’d just messed things up so badly with two of the only people who’d ever come back for him that he wasn’t sure they’d ever forgive him. He was going to be alone again.
“Jase?” Leo’s voice pulled Jason out of his spiral. It was so infinitely more soft than he deserved. “You’re shaking.”
Jason looked up to find that both Leo and Piper had moved to sit beside him. Leo’s leg was bandaged, and he looked a lot more perky than he had a moment ago. Worry was written all over his face.
Piper had her arms crossed. She still looked uncertain.
“I- I don’t-” Jason sobbed, trying to press words past the lump in his throat. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I-”
“I know, mi cielo. I know.” Leo reached for him. There was nothing but kindness in his eyes. “Come here.”
“But-”
Leo didn’t let him get another word in. He just pulled Jason into his arms, gently cradling his head against his chest.
“You’re okay,” he said, running his warm fingers through Jason’s hair. “I don’t know what happened in there. I’m not going to pretend that it wasn’t rude as hell, or that it didn’t scare me, because it was, and it did. But whatever it is, we’ll figure it out. I promise.”
“You were acting like a fucking prick, Jason,” Piper chimed in, but her hard expression had softened. “You seem to realize that, though, so there may be hope for you, yet.”
“I’m sorry,” he said again.
“Yeah. I know.” And then she was hugging him, too. “I thought we’d lost you for a second there.”
“I’m not even sure who I am anymore,” Jason said, voice so quiet it was barely audible. He was trembling like a leaf between Piper and Leo.
Their arms seemed like the only place in the world that was safe right now.
“You’re my boyfriend. That counts for something, right?” Leo asked, pressing a kiss to the top of his head. “I found the memory stuff kind of overwhelming at first, too, and I didn’t get fifteen years’ worth of trauma shoved back into my head. I think it’d be insane to ask you to have it all figured out right now.”
He felt like a heated blanket the way he was wrapped around Jason.
And for all the conflicting information that was going through his head, he knew he loved Leo with every fiber of his being.
“You don’t appear to be a total jerk, at least,” Piper said encouragingly. “You don’t have to be sure about everything right now. You just got all your memories back. That has to be disorienting.” She reached for his hand and squeezed it gently.
“So much.” His head hurt like hell from all the info that had been stuffed back into it in a matter of minutes. “I just don’t want to lose you guys.”
“You’re not going to lose us, dumbass,” his boyfriend reassured him, squeezing his shoulders. “We’ve already established that not even death is getting you out of this relationship.”
“Yeah, what he said—you know, minus the relationship part.” Piper punched his arm with her free hand, the other never leaving his. Her voice sounded much lighter than it had. “You’re stuck with us now. We’re very hard people to get rid of.”
“Most of the foster parents I ran away from would refute this statement,” Leo chimed in. He was still brushing his fingers through Jason’s hair. “But yeah, I sure do love playing hard to get rid of with Jason specifically.” He pressed another kiss to Jason’s head. “Besides, I did sort of promise we’d be right here with you whatever happens. That does tragically include you being a bit of a jerk.”
Jason just sniffled quietly.
“I don’t deserve you two.”
“I’ve been there, and I’m more than happy to inform you that’s not really how that works,” Leo commented, his voice back to its usual teasing tone.
Jason couldn’t deal with that right now. Couldn’t deal with being loved so much when he felt like he didn’t deserve it.
He made himself move off of Leo’s chest so he could properly look at him.
“How’s your leg?” he asked, voice brimming with guilt.
“Definitely broken,” Leo announced cheerfully. “But Pipes force-fed me some ambrosia, so it doesn’t hurt as much anymore. Long-term, it’s nothing Emmie and a few days of rest can’t fix.”
“Ambrosia or not, I doubt anything under two weeks is gonna cut it,” Piper pointed out with a grimace. “Not sure how you managed to fuck it up worse by stumbling than on your little trip to the Underworld, but it’s honestly a little impressive.”
“What can I say? I’m a guy of many talents.”
“I shouldn’t have snapped at you,” Jason said. He felt even worse now.
“Yeah, that was kind of a dick move.” Leo shrugged. “Honestly though? The ‘I told you so’ was sort of warranted. I know I’m being stupid about the brace sometimes. Besides, you were obviously freaking out. I’ve done dumb shit when I was freaking out before—including shutting you both out when I shouldn’t have. No hard feelings.”
“I’m still pissed on Leo’s behalf,” Piper informed him, her tone only half-joking. “I think I need to give you a shovel talk sometime. Because Leo is my person, and I will not put up with you hurting him.” She squeezed his hand again. “But you’re my person, too, so I’ll probably forgive you eventually.”
Jason still didn’t feel like he deserved it, but hearing that made him sob with relief.
“I can give my boyfriend shit about this just fine myself, thank you very much,” Leo commented, patting Jason’s head, and it felt so much like normality that Jason’s whole body relaxed a fraction.
“I love you,” he muttered, letting his head drop down on Leo’s shoulder so he could gently head-butt him in the neck.
Leo laughed.
“Sap,” he said teasingly, but Jason heard the smile in his voice. “Love you, too.”
“Good. Keep this up and maybe I won’t have to murder you for hurting Leo,” Piper butted in, her voice tinged with amusement. “So, not to completely kill the mood, but do you want to talk about how you’re feeling about everything?” She asked it gently, but Jason was still glad he had Leo to steady him.
He couldn’t think about any of it—could barely think, period—without all the memories and feelings in his head overwhelming him at once.
“Really, really awful,” he admitted, face still buried in Leo’s neck. He was full of grief he’d forgotten and was suddenly remembering. He’d spent his life lighting too many funeral pyres he’d felt personally responsible for and had colossally fucked things up with some of the most important people in his life and he wasn’t sure where to even start coping with any of it. He thought of Reyna and the fact that he’d treated her like a complete stranger after everything they’d been through together. It made him wish the ground would open up and swallow him whole. He wasn’t sure how she could stand to look at him. “I miss Reyna.”
Missing didn’t feel like a nearly strong enough term. Missing Reyna was what he had been doing up until this point. It was that vague ache he’d gotten in his chest whenever he’d thought of her.
But all of their memories had been slammed right back into him. He remembered the exhilaration of their first time working together during War Games and years of sparring and quests and hanging out by the stables. He remembered their post-quest tradition of eating cake at ForSnax and long nights spent strategizing and poring over New Rome’s laws and traditions to change the legion for the better. He remembered those awful few days after the Battle of Mount Othrys that he’d spent at her bedside, terrified that this time, he’d lost her for good.
And then he had lost her—not to some monster he could at least seek out and take revenge on, but to his own missing memories and his fear that she couldn’t love this changed version of him the way she did the fellow praetor who had left her.
He wasn’t so much missing her as suddenly wondering how he’d spent almost two years breathing without one of his lungs.
He wasn’t sure he could ever face her again. He wasn’t sure how he could stand living in a world where she wasn’t one of his best friends.
“She misses you, too. You know that, right?” Piper said gently.
Jason nodded, but his eyes stung with fresh tears. “I don’t know how to fix this.”
“We’ll figure it out.”
Piper had been saying that pretty much since Leo had led Jason back out of the Underworld. She’d been trying to encourage him to reach out more ever since.
But it had always felt so unfair towards Reyna—for her to have already spent the effort to be his friend and have to put it in a second time just because he didn’t have some of their shared memories and had lost the emotional connection to the few he’d gotten back.
He had hoped getting his memories back would make things easier. So far, the only thing it had done was make everything hurt a lot worse.
“I wanna go home,” he said quietly. He wanted to curl up in his room at the Waystation and spend all day surrounded by familiar ambient noise while he just processed things for a little while. Unfortunately, that wasn’t really an option. “But we need to get the flask back to Zac. We should just drop Leo off, and-”
“You’re in no condition for a cross-country trip right now,” Piper pointed out. “I’ll just call Hylla. Have the Amazons do a same-day shipping thing. She still owes me a favor.”
Jason’s shoulders sagged with relief. “If it’s really okay with you, let’s please do that.”
He wasn’t sure if that counted as cheating on his quest, but Mnemosyne had promised he’d have the recommendation letter as long as the waters made it back to Camp Jupiter safely, and he was certain that Hylla would ensure they would. Even if that hadn’t been the case, though, Jason wasn’t sure he would have cared at the moment.
It wasn’t just the trip itself or the fact that he was incredibly overwhelmed. It was that Jason wasn’t sure how well he’d handle being back in New Rome right after getting his memories back. He had no idea how he would react to seeing all those places and people that had once been his home, then nothing more than a vague feeling of familiarity, that were suddenly both of these things at once. The Titaness of Memory had warned him that regaining his memories would be overwhelming, but this was so much worse than he’d imagined.
“I offered for a reason. Let’s get you home.”
When Jason handed over the flask to Piper, it felt like a huge weight had been lifted off his shoulders. The tears finally stopped for the moment.
“Hang on. Pause.” Leo looked at Piper incredulously. “What the hell did you do for Hylla to owe you a favor?”
“I’d tell you, but then I’d have to kill you,” Piper said sweetly. “Either that, or Hylla would kill me. One of the two, definitely.”
“Riiiight.” Leo raised an eyebrow at her. “Speaking of: how’s Reyna?”
“Good.” Piper pushed herself up off the ground. “Anyway, we should get back to the car before it gets dark.”
“Extremely subtle change of subject there, Pipes,” Leo teased. “I’m just saying, now that you’re both perfectly single…”
“Reyna’s with the Hunters, if I may remind you,” Piper told him. “Even if she wasn’t, I’m not looking for a relationship right now. I’ve got absolutely zero desire to start dating someone again and end up right back at ‘actually, I think we’re better off as friends’ for the third time in a row.”
“Right. Whatever you say.” Leo lifted his hands defensively. “I’m just pointing out that you guys have daily Iris Messages of almost an hour. Meanwhile, when I try to talk to Reyna, I can barely get more than a few sentences out of her.”
“Have you considered that maybe Reyna just doesn’t like you?” Piper teased him right back.
“Nah. She likes me just fine. She’d knife me for teasing her if she didn’t.” Leo grinned. “Hey, I’m just pointing out the obvious fact that Reyna acts differently around you than she does around other people. What you do with that knowledge is your business.”
Leo was right on both accounts. Reyna liked him just fine. Jason had seen the way she acted around him, relaxing a little more into herself and exchanging the occasional jab with him. She never would have done that with someone she wasn’t comfortable around. But her relationship with Piper… he’d never seen Reyna be comfortable in that way with anyone before. Reyna had always been a person of carefully chosen words and guarded expressions. He didn’t think he’d ever seen her smile as openly as she did at Piper.
What was or wasn’t between them had never really felt like Jason’s business. Memories or no, it still wasn’t. But he quietly wished that, whatever it was, the two of them got to keep it. It clearly made them happy. And he wanted Reyna to keep smiling like that—even more now that he could properly remember the stone-faced girl that had become his best friend and knew exactly just how hard-won that smile had been.
“Keep telling yourself that, Leo,” Piper said, sticking her tongue out at her friend. “Seriously, though, we should get you both home now. You need proper medical attention from someone who isn’t me, Jason desperately needs a break and I’m honestly starting to get hungry.”
“Point taken.” Leo sighed dramatically. “Guess I’ll limp myself back to the car.”
“I can carry you,” Jason said—an offer this time, not a command. It wasn’t hard to guess that this was what Leo wanted, from the way he’d just complained, but still.
His boyfriend put his chin into his hands like he was thinking about it.
“Hmm. Only if it’s piggyback this time. I want a vantage point.”
Jason snorted. “That can be arranged, I think.”
“See, Pipes?” Leo beamed. “This is why I’m gonna marry him.”
Joke or not, Jason felt a jolt go through his nervous system. He shook the electricity out of his fingers so he didn’t accidentally shock Leo when he picked him up, but chances were he’d still make his boyfriend’s hair stand up in all directions after that comment. He was going to melt and/or cause a state-wide blackout if Leo kept saying things like that.
A moment later, Leo was clamped onto Jason’s back like a koala, radiating warmth as he snuggled up to him. Walking back to the car like this, with his best friend and his boyfriend bickering back and forth the way they usually did, Jason was finally starting to feel like he might one day end up back in the general realm of okay. So long as Leo and Piper were by his side, he would probably be alright eventually.