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Leo had done everything right. Everything. He made sure of it. He’d memorized every book on the subject, followed all of the rules, accounted for every variable, curated redundancy after redundancy. He’d done everything, and then dug even deeper to find a second everything that nobody had ever really considered. For six years, he’d kept his record flawless, but six years didn’t change the gut-churning numbers in front of him. No, if anything, the numbers proved that his success was a fluke, that he’d always been destined to fail.
Jason came up behind him and cupped his big hands around Leo’s biceps with a gentleness usually associated with soothing feral animals. “Leo, sweetheart–”
“Don’t you ‘Leo, sweetheart,’ me,” Leo snapped, jerking out of his hold.
“I think we need to take a minute and calm down,” Jason continued like Leo hadn’t said anything.
“You don’t think we need to calm down; you think I need to calm down!”
“Sofía is fine,” Jason said firmly. “Will even stopped by and said she’d be up in no time.”
“Will is a battle medic,” Leo accused, spitting out the word like it tasted bad. “His baseline for ‘alright’ is not actively bleeding out. Sorry if that’s not the frame of reference I want applied to my six-year-old.”
“He trained as a battle medic,” Jason corrected. “Currently, he’s a pediatrician.”
Leo didn’t exactly have anything solid to counter that, so he fell back on his first and best love: numbers. He shoved the thermometer that had been taunting him under Jason’s nose. “If she’s fine, then explain this!”
Jason read the numbers and arched an eyebrow. “This says 99.7 degrees.”
“Which is better than a 1.08% deviation from normal human baseline!” Leo argued. “And that’s not accounting for the fact that her standard operation window is .7 degrees cooler than average.”
“I’m pretty sure she had a higher temperature than this when we took her to the beach last year, and she got cranky after spending too long in the sun,” Jason pointed out in that infuriatingly reasonable tone. “Sweetheart, I know you don’t get sick, but I promise you that this is perfectly normal. She’s fine. Will said it’s just the flu.”
It’s just the flu. The words echoed in Leo’s head like a warning siren. Hundreds of children died every year because their parents thought it was just the flu. Parents who allowed their carelessness blind them to the danger of loss. Parents who hadn’t grown up without their mothers and been forced to drag their loved ones back from the grave because nothing was ever just anything in their lives.
Leo refused to let that fate befall his daughter. He and Jason didn’t get sick; the fire in Leo’s blood burned too hot for anything to ever survive for long inside him, and Jason could always rely on Nectar and Ambrosia whenever he was feeling under the weather, but he knew Sofía couldn’t do that. She wasn’t fully mortal, but Legacies didn’t interact with magical healing all that well, leaving her painfully, terrifyingly exposed to the world and every awful thing it had to offer. So, Leo had done everything within his power to make sure that she never, ever got sick in the first place. He kept everything around her clean and disinfected, he made sure she got each and every vaccine known to modern and mythical medicine, and he tricked her into eating the healthiest, most balanced diet of any six-year-old on the planet. And, for those glorious six years, it worked. Sofía was an almost eerily healthy baby, whose worst case of illness was the occasional bout of colic as an infant, and two cases of the sniffles during winter.
Unfortunately, she was growing up, bit by bit, and that meant she needed to learn. Seeing as Leo and Jason were doing their best to raise her normally, all things considered, that meant sending her to public school. Leo hadn’t thought anything of it at the time, but within the first week of school, he was brutally reminded of the fact that children were walking, talking petri dishes. He’d sat there in horrified silence as she’d told him about her day and how her seatmate, Benny, was seeing how many crayons he could fit in his mouth, and that she’d very generously offered to share hers when he ran out of his own. She even gleefully showed him the teethmarks in the wax of her favorite purple crayon to prove her story, not realizing that she was steadily marching her Papá to an early grave.
Jason had refused to let Leo design some sort of automatic disinfection suit to put Sofía in every time she breathed air that wasn’t perfectly regulated by Leo himself, but he wasn’t about to let Jason’s well-meaning but short-sighted ideas stop him now. “Get out,” he said softly, pointing towards the door.
Jason blinked at him, his brow furrowing. “What?”
“Get out,” Leo repeated, firmer this time. “You’re obviously not taking my daughter’s health seriously, and if you’re just going to stand there questioning every decision I make, I don’t want you getting in my way.”
“She’s my daughter, too,” Jason reminded him, his tone biting enough to warn but not harm.
“I know,” Leo said, and as the words left his lips, his big, billowing bluster collapsed inward, leaving a little knot of desperate determination behind. “But I’m serious. I can’t have you in here right now. Besides, it’s best if you’re not in here anyway; she might get you sick, then you being sick will get her sicker, and it’ll just spiral. I can’t– It would just be better if you let me handle this one. Please, Superman.”
Jason pressed his lips into a thin line, and his eyes darted back and forth across Leo’s face, looking for something that Leo couldn’t quite name. Whatever it was, he must have found it, because his expression softened. “That’s what you need me to do?” he asked quietly. “You need me to leave you alone and let you do it by yourself?”
“Yes,” Leo said just as quietly. His gaze had dropped to the floor, and he couldn’t force himself to pick it up. He couldn’t make himself look at Jason because that would make something in his chest that terrified him crack wide open. “That’s what I need right now.”
Jason let out a deep, heavy breath like he was about to lift a massive weight. Instead, he just cupped his hands around Leo’s jaw and tilted it up until their eyes met. He leaned down and brushed a kiss between Leo’s thick, furrowed eyebrows, the same ones he’d been obsessed with for years. “Okay, sweetheart,” he promised. “If you need me to go, that’s what I’ll do. I’ll be just down the hall, if you change your mind, though, alright?”
Leo blinked hard a few times as he looked at his husband. He knew getting those words out had been like pulling teeth for Jason, even after all these years, but he’d still done it. For Leo and for their daughter, Jason would do anything. “I love you.”
“I love you, too,” Jason responded immediately, just like he always did. Then he kissed Leo properly and gave him a smile. “Now, you go take care of Sofía, alright? Let me know if you need anything from the store.”
“Okay,” Leo said, nodding. He took a deep breath to center himself. “Yeah, I can do that.”
“I know you can.”
And with those final words of encouragement, Jason left the room, and Leo was finally alone with Sofía. She was dozing in her bed, several layers of blankets pulled up to her chin and tucked in tight. She had a slight frown on her mouth and a sheen of sweat on her forehead, and Leo felt his throat get tight. He smoothed another blanket on top of her, his favorite wool blanket from a trip he and Jason had taken to Texas years before Sofía was even considered. When the blanket was situated, he leaned down and brushed a kiss over her forehead.
“It’s gonna be alright, mija,” he murmured softly. “Papá’s gonna make everything alright for you.”
Sofía just slept.
Leaving Leo behind in Sofía’s room had been the hardest thing Jason had ever done. No fight against any Giant or Titan or monster could compare to the agonizing feeling of turning his back on his husband and sick daughter and walking out of the room. Every instinct he had was screaming for him to go back and tuck Leo and Sofía into his chest where he could keep them both safe and close and protected. Every step away, every moment apart from the people he loved most in the world made him queasy. He knew that Sofía would be fine under Leo’s watchful gaze, but logic had always done a poor job of soothing his nerves.
Still, Leo had needed him to leave, and if Leo asked for something, Jason would suffer just about anything to make it happen.
It had been a little over two days since Leo had banished him, and Jason hadn’t seen any sign of Leo since. Jason had slept alone those two nights, and while part of him optimistically hoped Leo had slept on the floor of Sofía’s room, the rational part knew what was more likely. Leo had done something similar when they’d first adopted Sofía, going days on end without rest, insisting that his Hephaestus Hyperfocus would be enough to keep him going. Unfortunately, childcare didn’t fall into the same category as an engineering project, meaning his ability to run on sheer demigod force of will didn’t work, and even when it did, the experience always left Leo wrung out and frayed at the seams, ready for Jason to pick him up and put him back together.
Jason was preparing for that exact moment now. He was putting together a big pot of chicken soup from a recipe Leo had given him years before, something light that Sofía’s sick body and Leo’s fatigue could handle. He couldn’t stop Leo from breaking, he’d learned that the hard way many, many times, but he could be there to help gather the pieces.
He was in the middle of chopping celery into pieces small enough to hide from Sofía when he felt a tug at the hem of his shirt, and when he looked down, his eyebrows shot straight up. “Sofía? What are you doing up?”
Sofía’s eyes were blurry and glassy in the way eyes did after waking up from a hard sleep and her cheeks were flushed and she was wearing that scowling pout of hers, but otherwise she looked fine. “Daddy, I want juice,” she said thickly.
“Okay. Did you ask your Papá?” Jason asked, looking around like he was expecting Leo to just materialize like a hovering, overprotective shadow. “Where is he?”
“He’s asleep,” Sofía told him. Her blinks had slowed and she was starting to sway, but she still stood determined. “I want juice.”
“Alright then,” Jason agreed easily, bending down to scoop her up before her little legs gave out. “What kind of juice do you want?”
“Apple,” Sofía mumbled, resting her cheek on Jason’s shoulder.
“I can get you some apple juice,” he promised as he sat her down on the left hand corner of the couch, her favorite spot to steal because it was where Leo always sat, and got her propped up on some pillows and tucked a blanket around her. “How do you feel?” he asked gently. “Are you hot? Does your tummy hurt?”
Sofía heaved a deep, put upon sigh and made a little disgruntled noise, making it very clear that she was being patient, but that her patience had an expiration date. “I want juice.”
“Let me go get you some juice, then. It’s gotta be in your kitty cat bottle, okay? All the big girl cups are dirty.” That was a lie, but Jason had steam cleaned the couch that weekend, and he wasn’t thrilled about the idea of Sofía spilling apple juice all over it and herself when she inevitably fell asleep mid-cartoon.
“Okay,” she mumbled lazily. “I wanna watch the llama movie.”
“Then llama movie it is,” Jason said. He stood up, paused for a moment, then tucked another blanket around her, just in case. “I’ll be right back. You okay there?” Sofía nodded, so Jason turned on The Emperor’s New Groove before heading to the kitchen to get Sofía’s juice. He noticed that the threads on the Hello Kitty bottle top were starting to wear out, so he made a mental note to buy another one of those ridiculously expensive character juice bottles next time he and Leo took Sofía to the grocery store.
Jason sat down on the couch next to Sofía and she immediately leaned into his side, sucking on her juice while she watched the TV, so Jason started combing his fingers through her curls. “How do you feel, baby pup?” he asked her again, hoping to get a more detailed answer, now that she’d gotten her juice.
“M’ head hurts and I’m tired,” she reported. She squirmed a little closer and hummed along with the music.
“Have you and Papá had lunch?” She just shrugged, which Jason figured meant that Leo had probably kept her on a strict diet of toast and crackers, and while she wasn’t hungry, she wanted something else. “Okay, how about when your movie is done, you and me have some soup?”
“Don’t put yucky stuff in it.”
“No yucky stuff,” he lied like the words were a vow. “Just chicken, noodles, and broth. Just like you like it.”
“Can you put green chicken in it?”
“Soup wouldn’t be soup without green chicken,” he agreed, thinking to the celery waiting for him. “Now, I’m gonna go check on your Papá, then go make lunch, alright? Call me if you need help.”
“Okay, daddy.”
Jason pressed a kiss to her hair and stood, pausing long enough to make sure she was resituated before creeping down the hall to Sofía’s room. As expected, Leo was there, passed out in the kid-sized armchair they’d gotten Sofía for her birthday. His face was twisted up, even in sleep, and the deep frown on his face matched the heavy bags under his eyes. Jason crouched down in front of him and started combing his fingers through Leo’s pretty curls. “Hey, sweetheart,” he cooed, too softly to wake him up, but loud enough to reach him through his dreams. Leo’s face slackened just a bit, and he leaned into Jason’s touch. “I’ve got baby pup in the living room, watching TV and drinking juice. She’s feeling a lot better thanks to you. You do such a good job taking care of her.”
Leo made a soft whining noise in the back of his throat and Jason chuckled. “Of course I can take you to her. Just hang on, alright?”
Jason very carefully scooped Leo into his arms, noting the way that Leo seemed even lighter than usual now, and adjusted him so that Leo’s cheek was pillowed against his chest. After making sure that Leo wasn’t even a little bit awake, he carefully carried his husband to the living room, where Sofía watched them with sleepy, curious eyes. “Is Papá sick, too?”
“Sort of,” Jason agreed, not really ready to explain the concept of literal burn out to a six-year-old. “He’ll be better after a nap.”
“And soup.”
“And soup. But that means you gotta let him sleep, now, okay? If he wakes up, let me know.”
“Okay, Daddy.”
Jason carefully arranged Leo on the other end of the couch, laying him out so that he looked at least a little comfortable. Then he pressed a kiss to Leo’s cheek, then stepped over to kiss Sofía’s, much to her grumbled dismay when his “big daddy head” interrupted her view of Kronk. Then, with everything in the living room stable, he finally, finally made his way back to the kitchen to finish his soup.
Leo woke up slowly. The first thing he noticed was that he was warm. Not hot, just warm in that one particular cared for way. Like he was something someone thought was worth having around for no real reason, so they wrapped him up to keep him in good condition. That soft, gentle way that still made his chest ache and his stomach flutter when he thought about it for too long. He also noticed that his body wasn’t aching unpleasantly like it definitely should have been, seeing as he’d fallen asleep in Sofía’s little chair.
Leo sat straight up with a terrified gasp and frantically looked around. He was in the living room, not Sofía’s bedroom, and that definitely wasn’t right. If he was in here, then she was alone, and if she was alone and no one was watching her then she might–
“Good morning, Papá.”
Leo whipped his head around to see that Sofía was sitting at the other end of the sofa. She was still bundled up in Leo’s blanket, but her gaze was focused and she was steadily shoving inhumane amounts of dry Froot Loops directly into her mouth from her hand and her eyes were glued to her cartoon about super-genius elementary schoolers and their secret agent platypus. Leo didn’t care, he just scrambled across the distance separating them and pulled her into his arms. “Mija!”
“Papá, you spilled!” Sofía accused. “I’m telling Daddy! He speficially told me to not spill.”
“Daddy and his steam cleaner can get over himself,” Leo muttered distractedly. He pressed his lips to Sofía’s forehead, and waited to get a reading. 98.1. Less than .2% above her recorded standard. He felt a knot in his chest loosen and he squeezed her tight for a moment before pulling back to get a good look at her. “How are you feeling, mija?” he asked, brushing her curls out of her face. “Are you tired? Does your tummy hurt? Are you cold?”
“I’m okay,” she grumbled, trying to squirm out of his arms. “Daddy gave me cereal and you spilled it.”
“I’ll get you some more,” Leo promised.
“Don’t worry about it; it’s almost time for her to have some real food, anyway.” Leo whipped his head around to see Jason smiling gently down at him. His hair was pulled back into an array of various clips and ponytail holders – a sure sign that Sofía had been conscious long enough to demand the activity and get bored of it – and his blue eyes were tired behind his gold glasses, but Leo was pretty sure he’d never been more devastatingly handsome in his life. “Hi, sweetheart. How are you?”
“I, uh, fine, I guess,” Leo stammered. “How’s So-”
“Better than fine,” Jason reported. “She came in this morning and she’s been napping on and off all day.”
“Daddy let me watch two movies and cartoons,” Sofía bragged, sounding like a smug little tyrant, which made sense, seeing as that was well above her usual screen limit. Then her face lit up and she tugged on Jason’s sleeve urgently. “Daddy, Daddy! Papá spilled my cereal. I told him you said not to and he did it anyways.”
Leo looked at his daughter with a betrayed expression. “Tattle tale.” Sofía just stuck her tongue out at him.
“I’ll make him clean it up later,” Jason promised. “Do you think you can go wash up for dinner? If you want we can watch another movie with dinner, but you’ve got to do a really good job of washing your hands and face, alright?”
Sofía’s eyes gleamed like she’d just been offered a million bucks. “Okay! I’ll wash extra good!” she promised before jumping to her feet and racing down the hall towards the bathroom.
As soon as she was gone, Jason sat down on the couch and pulled Leo into his lap to hold him close and press a kiss to Leo’s temple. “She really is doing okay,” he promised, running his fingers through Leo’s greasy, knotted curls. “I made some of your chicken soup, and she had a bowl of that about four hours ago, along with some Tylenol. Fever broke around 11 and there has been zero puking all day. I’m pretty sure if she’s not back to 100% by bedtime, she will be in the morning.”
“Her fever is pretty much gone,” Leo agreed, thumping his head down on Jason’s shoulder. He thought about Jason, alone for the past two days because of Leo’s issues, then calmly stepping in and taking care of everything after Leo royally screwed it up. Leo pressed his lips into a thin line and he was too exhausted to pretend that his eyes weren’t beginning to burn. “Sorry I did… all that.”
“I don’t mind,” Jason said, and Leo knew that it was completely and totally the truth. Jason didn’t mind, he’d never mind because he was a better man than Leo could ever hope to deserve. “Everyone’s got their hangups, this is just one of yours.”
“Still, it was shitty of me,” Leo said, staring at his hands. “I didn’t mean any of that stuff I said about you. It’s not true.”
“No, it’s not,” Jason agreed. “But, Leo, listen to me.” He cupped Leo’s jaw in his hands so that they were forced to lock eyes. “We’re a team. With Sofía more than anything else. And we can’t be a team if you lock me out every time things get hard.”
“I know. I’m sorry. I don’t mean to. I don’t know, I just–” Leo squeezed his eyes shut and took a couple deep breaths. “I’m sorry.”
Jason hummed in that way he always did when he was waiting for Leo to get out of his little self-loathing spirals. When Leo opened his eyes again, Jason was smiling at him just like he had since they were dumb stupid teenagers asked to save the world from their parents’ mistakes. “I love you,” he reminded Leo because he believed it was a fact that always bore repeating. “This doesn’t change that. Not even a little bit.”
“Not even at all,” Leo smiled back as helplessly as he always had. “I love you, too.”
Jason leaned down to kiss him, which would have been nice, except for the fact that Sofía chose that exact moment to return to the room and immediately let out a high-pitched shriek that Leo was certain had every dog in the neighborhood whimpering. Leo let out his own warcry and leapt off Jason’s lap to chase her around the living room, turning her shrieks into equally shrill giggles that had Jason rubbing his ears even as he chuckled softly. When Leo finally caught her, he scooped her into his arms and covered her face in loud, wet kisses that had her kicking and howling with laughter. Jason put a stop to their game after that and told them to sit down so he could bring them dinner. Leo sat in his usual spot, and Sofía climbed into his lap without question. Jason joined them on the couch, bringing his offering of deliberately bland rice and carrots, but he sat close enough that Leo forgave him for forcing the BRAT diet on him, too. Sofía originally wanted to watch Hercules, but after seeing Jason’s nose wrinkle, Leo managed to convince her that Kiki’s Delivery Service would be the better evening entertainment.
It didn’t take long for Sofía to fall asleep after finishing her dinner, but Leo was in no rush to take her to bed. He just hummed along with the familiar piano music of the movie and pressed a kiss to her hair. He held her a little closer, just to remind himself she was alright. She was safe. He hadn’t magically fixed everything, he was slowly but surely learning that he couldn’t, but he and Jason had both been there for her in their own ways. “I love you,” he said and he wasn’t sure if he was talking to his husband or his daughter.
Jason made the decision for him and kissed the corner of his eye. “She loves you, too.”
With those words, Leo sighed, and a weight he didn’t realize he’d been carrying slipped quietly off his shoulders. He closed his eyes and leaned into his husband with a small smile on his lips, ready to finally rest.