Leo Valdez x Reader

The Stars Below You

There's those few moments when you first gain consciousness while you're sleeping that you can hear your heart, and only your heart, and you know it's real, and the blackness that clouded your vision was not real, and that it was just an illusion. It's moments like those that are still normal that you love. You liked being on this quest okay, and being a demigod or whatever the heck you were was alright, but you still liked to think back to those days when heroes were all pretend and the only living thing that came back to life was Mario and Luigi. You missed the days where you could play sword fighting, and know that you wouldn't have to use your skills with swords in the next two seconds to save your life from a monster. It's moments like those that you cherish now more so than ever. But you had to admit that everything wasn't so bad now. Leo was in love with you, and you with him, and everything was going so well in your relationship you couldn't believe it.
Yeah, it's going too well, isn't it? That nagging voice in your head said.
Shut up, no one asked your opinion, you told it back. You brushed away the bad thoughts and felt your necklace. Both sides were warm and shining bright. You sat up gently in the carrier, and saw that Leo was gone from his usual perch. Panic filled you until you looked right in front of you and swaps him lying on his back, playing with a few pipe cleaners. They were in the shape of a music note (a single eighth note to be exact) and the pipe cleaners were all different colors and shimmered slightly in the moonlight.
"Why is it that you never sleep?" you asked quietly with a slight giggle. He looked up at you and chuckled a bit.
"Oh, it keeps the nightmares away if you don't sleep." You couldn't believe it. You had been on the quest for a while now (and your McDonald's supply was starting to thin out) and he had had no sleep the whole time. Had he really packed that many caffeine patches?
"You're kidding, right? You've at least slept a little since we came on the trip? I thought I saw you asleep unless you were faking. Were you faking so I wouldn't worry?" He looked down at the floor, and you knew what the answers to your questions were. "Leo!" you scolded him. He jumped at you raising your voice at him, and looked like a kicked puppy (again with the puppy face) while you tried your hardest to give him a disapproving look while you held back tears.
He's been hurting this whole time, and I haven't stopped for two seconds to see if he was okay because I was so wrapped up in myself, you thought to yourself.
"Look, I'm okay. I mean, I'm not dead, so it must be okay for me to-" you cut him off.
"Leo, you need to sleep. People who don't sleep do die eventually, caffeine patches or no caffeine patches. You have to sleep."
"I'd rather stay awake forever with caffeine patches than go through my dreams again. It's worse than the Fields of Punishment. They're not even those demigod dreams that mean something. It's completely useless information." He tried to avoid your gaze. "It's like...have you seen Finding Nemo?" You nodded, remembering the little clown fish with the bad fin that was taken by a scuba diver. You loved that movie as a kid, and still like it now. "Okay, do you remember the part where Dori could remember the address, but only the address, and she didn't know what it was for?" He was desperately trying to get you to understand.
"I don't think that was in the movie...but go on, I understand...I think."
"Okay...well it's like that. It feels like I have a memory block in my mind, and I can only remember useless stuff about it. Except they're dreams, so they're even more confusing," he finished, overwhelmed by everything. You took his hand, and he interlocked his fingers with yours.
"Tell me everything. We'll figure this out together."
He smiled at you, and his eyes read ' I could kiss you right now'. So, you kissed him before he could. The you got to work.
"So the dreams...tell me about them," you said, huddling against his shoulder because of the cold Canadian air. Even though you and he had a blanket over your legs while you sat, you were still cold.
"They're more like nightmares. Or replays of bad memories. The nightmares are about Khione cackling at me and saying 'Yo soy no la persona tú buscas,' over and over while I'm frozen in ice and am forced to watch you be tortured," you felt him shiver, but you knew he wasn't cold. Could he even get cold? He kissed your head and put his arms around you. "Man, I can't bare to see you tortured like that. That's the main reason why I don't sleep." He said softly. You felt really bad for him now. If only there was a way to make him better...but first things first, what the heck did that foreign language mean?
"Hey, what did the words Khione was speaking mean?" you asked me looking up at him. His face was puzzled.
"Well, I know some Spanish, but like I said, my mom died when I was young, so I didn't learn a lot. I know la persona means person. And no means no or not. Or something along those lines, but I can't remember what the rest means..." He trailed off, and you decided to leave it there for now.
"So, what about the other dr-nightmares," you corrected yourself. These weren't worthy of being called dreams.
"Oh, just stuff like the day my mom died, the day you broke your foot and pushed me away, the day I died, when Calypso was sentenced back to Olympus and forbidden to make contact with me, when Festus broke, when I was a kid, it just goes on and on," he said the things as simply as someone would say what they had for lunch that day. It broke your heart. "But, I mean, that stuffs all gone. What matters now is keeping you safe, and if that means not sleeping, I'll do it." He smiled at you, but you broke down and started crying a little.
"Hey, it's alright. I've got you, and I won't let go this time. You're not going to fall." He sat there and held you until you stopped crying.
"Hey, look," he said, gesturing over the side of Festus. There was a city lit up in all different colors and all different brightnesses, just like the stars above you. "We've made it," Leo said loud enough for the sleeping crew to wake up.
"The city looks like stars a million miles away," you stated, totally in awe of the sights.
"Stars?" Percy asked, fully awake now. He turned to Annabeth and gave her a sad look before crawling to sit next to you.
"Bob says hello to you, too."