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Piper hated being sick. She doubted anyone loved being sick, but it held a special spot on the shelf of “Well, this sucks” in her heart. When she was little, being sick meant bowl after bowl of warm black bean soup while her dad coddled her and brushed her bangs off her forehead and recited any story she requested in her weak, scratchy voice. But it had been a long, long time since he’d done that. Instead, being sick started to mean disinterested assistants coming into her room every hour on the hour to make sure that she hadn’t died since the last time they’d checked, and maybe a phone call from her dad, assuming he even remembered she was sick in the first place. And even that was only if she was lucky enough to be sick at home, of course. If she got sick at whatever school she’d been most recently shipped off to, she had to brace herself for even less than that.
There had been one time at Wilderness when she’d come down with the flu during that time she and Leo had been roommates. She’d woken him up with her coughing and sneezing in the middle of the night, and she begged him to go back to sleep and just ignore her. At first, it seemed like he was going to do what she’d said, but then he’d mysteriously wound up with a 102 degree fever the next morning, which had miraculously only lasted for as long as she was sick, too. He hadn’t done much, he couldn’t really, but he sat at the foot of her bed and chattered while he tinkered with his little contraptions and made sure she had plenty of water. He’d even snuck into the communal kitchen and made her a bowl of instant ramen with what he swore was vegetable broth instead of chicken. Unfortunately, she’d been hit with another wave of nausea and puked it up less than an hour later, but the gesture was still appreciated.
That’s where her mind wandered when she woke up in her bed on the Argo II, feeling like she’d been run over with a truck and her skull had been over-inflated. Great. A summer cold. She got them basically every year, for some reason, but she’d been convinced that her shiny new (well, new-ish) status as a demi-god would ward it off this time around. She should have known she wouldn’t be that lucky.
Without wasting what time and little energy she had on an internal debate, she was on her feet, shuffling down the hall, and knocking on the door to Leo’s cabin.
Surprisingly, he answered. If she’d been even a little more cognizant, she would have expected him to be in the engine room and covered in grease, but he was neither. She blinked slowly at him and squinted. “What are you doing in here?”
He laughed at her, the sound loud and bright and ringing painfully in her skull. “This is my room, Beauty Queen, remember? Better question is what are you doing here before you’ve downed your usual pot of coffee?”
She furrowed her brow at him, ignoring his question. “Why aren’t you covered in gunk?”
He looked a little exasperated now, and his cheeks were starting to flush pink. “I do know what a bath is. You know that, right?”
“Yeah, but why?”
“You’re the one who said that a man’s gotta make a good impression when he goes out, even if it’s not a first impression.”
Piper froze. She suddenly remembered Leo barging into her room a few nights before, his whole face scarlet and near-about hyperventilating as he recounted Jason sheepishly asking if maybe they could go get ice cream or something next time the Argo II had to make a pitstop. She’d shrieked right along with him, and together they picked out his least grimy pair of cargo shorts and his least embarrassing t-shirt. “We’ve stopped somewhere?”
Leo nodded, and the frown he wore dug a little crease between his furrowed eyebrows. “Uh, yeah. We’re right outside of Barcelona. We talked about this at dinner last night, remember?”
“I– yeah, of course I do,” she lied. “Sorry, you’re right. I definitely need to properly wake up.”
Leo didn’t look entirely convinced, but he still gave her a little smile. “Yeah. You want us to get you anything while we’re down there?”
She shook her head, then squeezed her eyes shut to fight off the wave of dizzy nausea that followed. She took in a short, sharp huff of air and flinched when she felt Leo brush his knuckles across the back of her wrist. She blinked a couple times until Leo’s concerned frown finally came back into focus. His mouth was still moving, so it was obvious he’d said something she didn’t hear. “Huh?”
“Are you okay?” Leo asked gently. She nodded, careful to keep her sight set on one point above Leo’s shoulder in order to avoid getting dizzy again. Leo looked even less convinced than before. “You don’t look too good. C’mere. You can chill out in here with me and we’ll–”
“No,” she interrupted sharply, taking a step back from him. “Look, I’m fine. I told you, I’m just tired. You and Jason go have fun on your date, okay?”
“What? No, are you–”
“I told you I’m fine,” she insisted, her tone turning a little snappish. She turned to make her retreat back down the hall, but before she could go anywhere, she felt overly-warm fingers wrap around her wrist. She looked over her shoulder to see Leo frowning down at their connected hands in shocked confusion, and she snatched her wrist back before he could do some weird fire power thing and deduce her temperature down to the tenth decimal or something. “Bye, Leo. Have fun with Jason.”
Before he could say another word, she fled.
She stumbled her way back to her bed where she collapsed in a heap. She shivered violently and burrowed her way under her blanket. She’d be fine. She’d been sick before all by herself, and she could do it again. She just needed a nap, and when she felt a little better she’d go get some Nectar or Ambrosia or whatever out of the bathroom medicine cabinet. If thad didn’t work, and she was feeling really desperate, she’d go ask Coach to give her some of that gross Nature Healing Gatorade he’d given her on their quest to rescue Hera. It was gonna suck, just like being sick always did, but it was gonna be okay.
She’d be fine.
Piper was not fine.
She wasn’t sure how long she’d been asleep, but her body ached like she’d been suffering for a thousand years and her head was stuffed to the brim with cotton balls. She was still freezing cold, so she shuddered and pulled her blanket tighter around her shoulders. With a soft, pitiful groan, she rolled over and pressed her face into the firm stomach in front of her, determined to only emerge when the world was a less awful place to be.
Wait a minute.
She froze to let her brain sluggishly get back up to speed before she tilted her head back and pried open her crusted over eyes to see Jason beaming down at her with warm affection and amusement. “Hi there.”
She just squinted at him. After a moment, she opened her mouth to ask what he was doing there, but that was definitely not what came out. “Who are you?”
“That’s Mickey’s friend Pluto,” Leo’s voice piped up from behind her. She made a half-hearted effort to roll over and look at him, but Jason’s stomach was warm and she was very tired, so she gave up pretty easily.
When Jason spoke, she could practically hear the way his face puckered at Leo’s claim. “I don’t know who that is, but I don’t think it was a compliment.”
“It wasn’t,” Piper confirmed on an exhausted mumble, hiding her face away again. “I hate Pluto. And Goofy.”
“Yeah, yeah, you can tell Superman all about the injustices of the anthropomorphized world of Mickey Mouse and friends later,” Leo told her. “Right now you have to eat this.”
She whined, but let Leo roll her over onto her back and force feed her a spoonful of pudding. Instantly, the flavor of ramen noodles flooded her mouth and her face twisted up in displeasure. “Gross. What did you just make me eat?”
“Well, it’s Ambrosia, so you’re the one in charge of the flavor, not me,” Leo defended. He pressed the back of his wrist to her forehead and frowned. “Geeze, Beauty Queen, you’ve still got a nasty fever. No wonder you mistook Jason for a yellow cartoon dog.”
“She did not! That was you!”
“Literally whatever,” Leo dismissed. He sat down on the floor next to her bed so they were practically nose-to-nose, and he frowned at her. “Why didn’t you tell me you were feeling bad earlier?”
“You shouldn’t be here,” Piper warned, ignoring the question. “You’re gonna get sick yourself. Both of you.”
Leo made an incorrect buzzer sound at her, but thankfully it was a lot quieter than the obnoxious noise they normally did. “Try again. I literally can’t catch whatever you have. Unlike you squishy organics, I’m too hot for germs and shit.”
“Well, what about Jason?”
“I had Coach make some immune-boosting Nature Healing stuff, so I’m good,” Jason said. His nose wrinkled. “It’s still gross, in case you were wondering.”
Piper chuckled, but quickly ran out of breath, so she quieted down. Then she frowned again. “Wait, I thought you two were getting ice cream. What are you doing here?”
“We were down there for maybe fifteen minutes before Leo spilled about you acting weird earlier,” Jason told her. “It sounded pretty bad, and we were worried, so we came back and checked on you.”
Piper grimaced. “You didn’t have to do that. Sorry.”
“Well, I’m glad we did it,” Leo frowned. “Piper, you looked… bad. Why didn’t you say something? You were, like, sick-sick. I’m talking full-on unresponsive, we’ve been giving you Nectar on and off for the past hour kind of sick.”
She shrugged and let her eyes slide shut. Their conversation hadn’t been long, but it was exhausting. She kinda just wanted to go back to sleep. “You were busy. I didn’t want to bother you.”
A heavy silence fell over her little cabin, and she felt like she’d said the wrong thing. She squeezed her eyes shut and took in a deep breath through her nose, determined to deal with whatever they said next with at least what little dignity she had left.
Then, a set of calloused fingers combed through her bangs, gently brushing them away from her forehead. “You’re not a bother, Piper,” Leo said softly. “You’re never gonna be a bother. Not to us. You and me, remember?”
Don’t cry, Piper told herself firmly as she squeezed her eyes shut tighter. She didn’t normally have a problem with any over-emotional bawling sessions she deemed necessary, but they usually left her feeling dehydrated and a little light-headed, which was the opposite of what she probably needed right now. Instead of crying, she grabbed Leo’s wrist and pressed her face into his palm and took in a deep, shuddering breath when he brushed his thumb over her cheekbone. “I’m tired.”
“Then sleep,” Jason ordered kindly. “We’ll be here when you wake up.”
“I’ll get you something to eat, too,” Leo added. “Maybe something better than shitty instant ramen, yeah?”
She sniffled, but she couldn’t help but smile. “Promise?”
She kept her eyes shut, but she could hear their answering smiles. “Promise.”