meet me halfway. | caleo royalty au

| chapter 7 pt. 2: calypso ♡ |

When we finally arrive at our destination, it's hard for me to focus on anything.

It turns out our way to Jupiter is by ship- a ship filled with and run by pirates that'll take us across the sea surrounding Othrys in a week or two. The pirates have just introduced us to where we'll be staying, and luckily everyone seems to be getting along.

Piper is having an energetic conversation with the crew's captain, Shel, out on the dock of the ship. Leo, with nothing to do, has been talking to me ever since we boarded. But I can't hear a word he's saying.

How is it possible? Leo making me happy? Well, it's certainly not every day. Leo does nothing but ruin my mood. Everything he does is unreasonable and stupid. He never thinks before he acts. It's so incredibly dumb that I just can't help but laugh. But that's in spite of myself, isn't it? And why is he always smiling? Nothing's funny.

"Earth to Calypso?"

I look up at Leo with irritated eyes.

"You okay?" He scans my face. "You look like someone just threw something at you."

"I'm fine." I say, and cross my arms. "Shouldn't you be in your room?"

"Jason's finding our key."

"He found it." Reyna's voice cuts in, and the swoops in and grabs my arm. "We'll see you around, Prince Leo." Leo shoots a glare at Reyna. With the flick of a not-so-kind finger, he's off.

I frown at Reyna, and she returns the frown in response. I watch him skip down the hall, bouncing off the walls and slapping any high surface. Reyna's hands pull me into our room, and she locks the door behind us.

"Now that he's off your back," Reyna starts, sitting on a bed in the room. "Breathe."

"What do you mean?" I ask, walking around the room.

She shrugs. "You've seemed tense ever since we've been on the ship."

"I've been tense ever since we've left Othrys." I correct her.

"Yeah, but..." She walks over to where I'm looking out the window and puts her hand over mine. "I don't know. You've been kinda sharp. Maybe even snappy?"

My head flips towards her. "Snappy? No, I haven't."

"You just snapped."

"I don't know what you mean."

Reyna's eyes find something on the deck outside at the same time as mine. "So," I start, desperate to change the conversation. "You and-"

"How many times are we going to talk about Thalia and I?" Reyna rolls her eyes, but still doesn't take her eyes off the girl outside- Thalia is working the sails on the deck. "What about you? The thing that happened with you and Leo back there was weird. How you got mad at him for bringing up Drake isn't the weird part, really. But you got this strange look on your face after he smiled at you."

I felt my face burn. "I did?"

"Yeah. It was like you were trying really hard not to smile. But you were also failing." I looked up at Reyna, ready for her reaction. "Either you're getting really good at this 'getting along' thing, or you don't actually hate Leo."

"I-"

"Which isn't a bad thing!" Reyna interrupts. "We could all use one less headache, y'know?"

I resist the urge to explain to Reyna that getting along with Leo is in fact not a good thing, that if we got along I wouldn't know what to do with myself, and everything would become more complicated than needed, and that getting along with Leo would confuse me to a point where I didn't know just where exactly we stood in each others' lives after these past eighteen years of arguing either genuinely, or to distract ourselves.