Chapter Text
Will was silent as he checked and cleaned his eye sockets and changed his bandages, saying only a terse, “Good to go. Come back tomorrow,” when it was over.
“Will, I —” Jason started to say, standing up.
“Just go,” Will said tightly, voice already further away as his footsteps receded. “I need to think.”
Jason’s chest tightened.
“Come on,” Leo said, taking Jason’s arm. “Dinner. You can sit with my cabin.”
The only people who aren’t mad at me, Jason thought numbly.
He was all talked out for the day, so he was quiet during dinner, instead choosing to listen to the conversations swirling around him as he ate.
After dinner, Leo walked him to Cabin One and said, “Wait here, okay? I’ll get your overnight stuff from Cabin Three so you don’t have to face Percy yet.”
Jason agreed gratefully.
Leo took longer than expected. When the door opened again, a muted thud sounded as though something soft but heavy had been dropped on the floor. A duffle bag?
“I’m back,” Leo announced, shutting the door behind him.
Jason heard a sharper thunk. “What’s that?”
“What’s what?” Leo said in a tone of mild confusion. Then he seemed to remember that Jason couldn’t see. “Oh! I kicked a wedge beneath the door so no one can barge in. We’re having a sleepover.”
His stomach swooped. Leo’s footsteps moved around the room. Jason heard the whining scratch of metal sliding against metal — the sound of the curtains closing, he realized.
He stood up and cautiously moved in the direction of Leo’s footsteps. “So—”
The rest of the sentence was erased from his mind as Leo’s fist balled in his shirt and slammed him back against the nearest wall. Leo’s lips captured his, and his insides melted.
The kiss was hungry, demanding, urgent. It was fire injected directly into his veins. Leo’s hands found Jason’s shoulders and his fingertips dug in like claws, hard enough to bruise. He welcomed it — welcomed any indentation in the shape of Leo on his skin — any mark he left may as well be tattooed in gold.
Jason could only handle so much. Leo fit against him too right, puzzle pieces slotting together. He was breathless, burning up, riding a fever-dream high. He pulled slightly back and gasped, “Leo. . .”
The hot breath on his neck made Jason shiver as Leo murmured in his ear, “We’re long overdue.”
Leo’s hands moved downward, and Jason’s phantom vision went white.
Jason sat on one of the high workbenches, legs dangling, strumming a cheerful tune. Leo puttered around the workshop, muttering in Spanish, scribbling on paper, clanking things. The earthy smells of the forest drifted in through Bunker Nine’s open door.
They hadn’t gone to the pavilion that morning. Leo had grabbed them breakfast burritos to-go, then snuck Jason away. (The taste of jalapeños lingered on his tongue. Leo believed firmly that no meal was complete without some capsaicin or allium.) Now he was beginning the assistive cane design, and Jason was providing background music to help him reach flow state.
Human voices caught the edge of his hearing, and he stopped playing to listen. He grinned as he recognized them.
“Leo!” he called. “Hazel and Frank are here!”
A multi-layered clank sounded as Leo set down several metal objects at once. “What?”
“They’re outside,” Jason said. “With Nico.”
Leo’s footsteps rushed past him to the bunker door. After a moment, he called out into the open air, “Hey, guys! Long time no see!” They called greetings back.
The echo of the bunker returned to his voice, as if he’d turned around to face Jason again. “You heard them from really far away.”
Jason shrugged and idly picked a string. Leo’s feet shuffled and his voice lost the echo as he turned back around and called out, “Come on in!”
Leo’s footsteps stopped in front of Jason. He set his guitar next to him on the workbench.
Frank’s heavier footsteps sounded at the doorway first, then Hazel’s lighter ones. It was uncertain whether Nico also entered the bunker; he always moved quietly.
Both pairs of audible footsteps rushed toward them and then stopped. Leo’s squeak told Jason that they were probably hugging him, probably very tightly.
“I can’t—” Hazel’s voice broke. “I can’t believe—” she sniffled, and then her sniffles became muffled, like she’d covered her face. Jason guessed she was crying into Leo’s shoulder.
“Nico told us everything,” Frank said hoarsely. “We—” His voice broke, too.
The workbench groaned beside Jason as though a new weight rested on it. “Hi, Nico,” he hazarded.
“Hi,” said Nico from his new spot beside Jason. “What are you two up to?”
“He’s designing my cane. I think. I’m providing the entertainment.”
Nico was silent. Then he blurted out, “I’m nodding. Sorry. Forgot you can’t see it.”
Jason chuckled.
“What’s it like, anyway?” Nico asked. “Being blind.”
“Well,” Jason said. “I can’t see.”
Nico snorted. “No shit.”
“Um, it’s not just dark, though,” Jason said. “My eyes are gone, but the optic nerve is still there sending my brain random signals, so I kinda see colors floating around sometimes.”
“Frank, man,” Leo wheezed, “You’re gonna crack my ribs.”
“Sorry, man,” Frank said as Leo sighed in relief after being released. “I just missed you. It’s hard to believe you’re back.”
“Believe it,” Leo replied in a rare serious tone. “Jason lost his eyes for it.”
There was a beat of silence. Jason guessed Frank and Hazel had turned to look at him.
He shifted uncomfortably and said, “It’s a low price to pay.”
Leo’s hand — he recognized it immediately from the callouses, though it was an unannounced touch — picked up Jason’s hand. Leo kissed his knuckles, and Jason felt his skin flush with heat from collar to hair.
“You two are so in love that it’s disgusting,” muttered Nico.
“Well, yes!” Leo said proudly. “We are boyfriends!”
“Finally,” said Hazel. “Everyone on the Argo II was sick of watching you pine for each other.”
Jason groaned. “Did everyone know?”
“Yes,” Hazel said primly.
“Jason, are you. . . feeling okay?” Frank asked haltingly. “After, you know. . . scooping your eyes out and then spending six or seven hours climbing out of the Underworld?”
“Never been better,” said Jason airily.
“Jason, seriously,” Hazel chided.
He laughed and squeezed Leo’s hand. “I’m good! I promise. Blindness is. . . an adjustment, but I literally could not be happier. I mean, Leo’s back.”
“That’s right, boys and girls and other configurations of being, Uncle Leo is back and hotter than ever.” Leo let go of Jason’s hand, and he somehow knew that he was stretching his arms wide in a Check out this place! gesture. “Belatedly — Welcome to my humble abode. The one, the only, the myth, the legend, the birthplace of the Argo II. . . Bunker Nine!”
“It sure is an underground metalsmith’s workshop,” Nico deadpanned.
“Yes, my friend, but it is so much more than that!” Leo said in his dramatic showman’s voice. “Bunker Nine has hosted the greatest of parties! Captured the craziest of girls drunk on eggnog! Held the world’s baddest engineer building the world’s most spankin-hot war machine — and now, that engineer is back from the dead to build the coolest assistive cane that the blind community has never seen!”
“Leo!” Hazel gasped. “That joke could be offensive!”
But Jason was laughing his ass off. “No, that was a good one,” he wheezed.
Nico was chuckling next to him.
“My boyfriend, who is blind, says it was a good one,” Leo repeated to Hazel.
“Yes, Leo, I heard him.”
“Just making sure. That you heard my boyfriend.”
“I think you’re looking for reasons to say boyfriend,” said Frank.
“This place also saw that engineer design the guitar that would later break him out of the Underworld, if I’m not mistaken,” Jason added.
“Hey,” Frank said. “Speaking of that guitar, I haven’t gotten to see you play yet. Show us a little something?”
Jason was all too happy to oblige. He grabbed and positioned the guitar and thought for a second about what to play.
It occurred to him that there was something that only Leo had heard.
“This is the tune I played to open the Door of Orpheus,” he said, “and all the way through the Underworld.”
He played it for a couple of minutes. When he stopped, he was met with silence.
“Frank and Hazel are both crying,” Nico informed him.
“I. . . I could feel the grief,” Hazel sniffled.
“It was palpable,” Frank agreed. “Also, this sounds weird, but it. . . sounded like Leo somehow?”
“Yes,” Jason said proudly, “I did that on purpose.” He fingerpicked his addition to the piece that made it his own. “Those notes have the cadence and tones of Leo talking to himself when he’s working. I— I had the sound of it memorized, so when I was thinking of him and playing, it just. . . came out.”
“Holy shit,” Leo breathed. “I didn’t even realize that.”
Jason set his guitar down, feeling self-conscious.
Then he heard something and tilted his head to listen. Yep, there were voices approaching outside. “Who else is coming out to the Bunker?”
“What do you mean?” asked Leo.
“There’s people walking this way,” Jason told him, still listening intently. “There’s. . . three voices.”
Leo must have looked confused, because Hazel said in an explanatory tone, “His hearing is sharpening to compensate for the loss of his vision. It happens with blind people.”
“Oh,” said Leo.
“It’ll happen with his other senses too. Smell, taste, touch — they’ll all get more sensitive.”
Leo clapped his hand on Jason’s thigh and said suggestively, “Oh, I know how sensitive his sense of touch is.”
“Leo!” Jason shrieked, putting his face in his hands. “You can’t just say that!”
Nico was guffawing beside him. He took a controlled breath and said, “Did you two really already. . .?”
“None of your business,” Jason snapped.
Nico broke into a fresh round of laughter. Frank and Hazel were silent, and Jason knew they were both blushing, uncomfortably staring at the ground, definitely not at each other.
Then the people outside got close enough for Leo to hear. He moved towards the door and announced, “It’s Percy, Annabeth, and Piper.”
Jason wrung his hands nervously. He hadn’t seen any of them since the meeting last night.
Their footsteps crunched outside, then took on an echo as they reached the door of the cave. “Heard this was where the party’s at,” Percy said casually. “Frank, Hazel, how are you?” This was accompanied by the hand-slapping sounds characteristic of a California-style bro hug.
“Pretty good,” Frank said. “Yourself?”
“Hazel, it’s been too long,” Annabeth greeted her.
“We’ve missed you!” Piper added.
Conversation bubbled. Content to listen, Jason contributed little. Nico seemed to feel the same way.
Their visit was mostly about Leo, anyway; he was the one who’d returned from the dead. Frank and Hazel seemed to choke up over that fact every ten minutes. Jason proudly listened to them fawn over him.
He didn’t realize he’d dozed off until Nico poked him and he jerked awake.
“Sorry,” he mumbled. “What happened?”
“Are you okay?” asked Annabeth. “You went to bed pretty early last night to still be tired now.”
“Didn’t you notice that Leo went with him?” Nico asked with a smirk in his voice. “From what I heard, not a lot of sleep happened.”
“Nico, shut up!” Jason hissed.
“TMI! Gross!” Annabeth objected.
“Eyyyyy, Jason, get it!” Percy crowed.
Jason buried his face in his hands and groaned.
“Come on, man,” said Percy. “Slap me a five!”
Jason unwillingly put his hand up. Percy slapped it.
“Do I get a high five?” asked Leo.
“It’s a bigger accomplishment for Jason because he’s such a repressed Roman,” Percy said.
“Hey!” objected Jason, Frank, and Hazel.
“Whoah, guys, I was kidding! Gimme five, Leo.” The slap of hands echoed through the bunker.
“Frank, Hazel,” Leo said. “Let me give you the full tour of Bunker Nine. There’s some really cool stuff the others have seen that you haven’t yet.”
Three sets of footsteps walked away, which Jason could only count because they all sounded different; Leo was skipping with excitement.
No time like the present, I guess, Jason thought.
“Alright,” Jason said when the steps and the sound of Leo’s chatter became distant. “Who’s all here?”
Percy, Annabeth, Piper, and Nico identified themselves.
“Well, since we’re all here.” Jason took a deep breath. “I owe you guys an apology.”
“Damn right, you do,” Nico muttered.
Jason ignored the interruption. “The way I jumped into that quest was underprepared, reckless, and literally suicidal. And shitty to all of you. I should’ve kept you all in the loop, taken a few days to prepare and plan before going down there. I just— when I realized there was a chance of getting Leo back, I kind of lost my head. And I’m really sorry for that.”
Silence stretched out for several long moments.
Then Percy sighed and spoke in a rough tone. “It was. . . understandable. You were right when you said I’ve done the same thing. I was just really mad at you for it because I don’t want to lose you.” A tremor grew in his voice, and Jason realized that the roughness came from holding back tears.
“Lately,” Annabeth added thoughtfully, “You’ve seemed so. . . stable, it’s easy to forget how recently we had to keep you under observation. This lapse in judgment isn’t exactly odd when we take that into account.”
“Yes,” Nico snarked, “We all should’ve known that you still don’t have your head screwed on straight.” He harrumphed, hopped down from the workbench, and stormed out of the bunker.
“You’ll have to give this apology to Will too, you know,” Piper said.
“I know.”
At that moment, Leo’s voice and the entourage’s footsteps drew closer again. Jason smiled, picturing the way Leo’s hands danced around as he explained things to people, as though he was painting pictures in the sky.
“Hey, where’d Nico go?” Leo asked when he got close enough to notice.
“He got irritated and left,” said Annabeth. “Nothing unusual.”
Frank and Hazel would stay the night and return to Camp Jupiter first thing the next morning. They spent a significant portion of the day grilling Leo and Jason for every detail of the Underworld they could get. (Leo informed Jason that Frank was mostly sketching maps and diagrams while Hazel was writing notes.) What happened during the judgment process? What did a “day” in Elysium look like? Where was every distinct place located, and how big was it, and how far away from everything else, and what direction?
“Heroes visit the Underworld rarely enough that we rarely get new information on it,” Hazel explained when Jason asked why. “Most of what we know is from millennia-old mythology.”
“But Nico hangs out in the Underworld all the time,” Leo said.
“It’s best to have multiple accounts and perspectives,” said Frank.
“And,” Hazel added, “Unlike you, he hasn’t died, been through judgment, stayed in Elysium, and come back to life with Pluto’s permission. I haven’t even done that. I went to Asphodel, and our father turned a blind eye to Nico bringing me back.”
When Jason went to the infirmary for his checkup and made his apology to Will, he had already heard it.
“Nico came directly here from Bunker Nine,” Will told him as he dabbed the eye sockets with disinfectant. “I’m glad you see sense now. You may be dense, but at least you’re not stupid.”
“Uh, thanks?”
“Anytime. Look, you have to give Nico some time to get over it. He was scared of losing you before, when you were bedrotting after the war. Even when you were out of your cabin, you couldn’t keep food down very well. Realizing you were in danger again. . . well, he didn’t take it well.”
Jason pressed his lips together pensively. “Why is he so much more upset than the rest of you are? I mean, I know it freaked out everyone, but he’s the only one acting like I tried to stab him.”
“This is why I call you dense,” Will scoffed. “You were the first person he ever considered a friend after Bianca died. The first person to find out he’s gay and accept him. You have to know what that kind of thing means to a queer person raised in the wrong environment.”