A/N: I'm serious, this will not make sense if you haven't read "Meeting Leo." This will not feature/explain every major plot point.

Anyway, so this is a thing. Let me know if it's a thing you like.

Disclaimer: I own nothiiiiing.

Leo liked many things. Girls, of course, were at the top of the list. Under that, shoving pizza in his mouth and fixing things and talking in Spanish—not that this last one came around much anymore. At Camp Half-Blood, everything was English or Greek. Lame.

Granted, at the moment he was lucky just to be alive. That anti-Gaea tanker engine had really gone wrong—he wasn't entirely sure why yet, since he was still stuck in the infirmary—and somehow the command "take out Dirt Face" translated into "explode into a billion tiny pieces and almost kill Leo." Hence the infirmary. So not only had Leo officially and spectacularly blown his chance to make good on his promise to "face-plant her hard, Leo-style," he had also landed himself an extended stay in The. Most. Boring. Part. Of. Camp.

Sure, great. Gaea was defeated (not by him, what else was new?). They didn't lose as many demigods as they could have. But still—being stuck on a cot in a corner all day? Bo-ring. Piper and Jason were taking a romantic, er, leisurely tour of Greece and Rome at the moment, too, and hardly anyone else had bothered to come see him in their absence. Leo was going insane.

To make matters even worse, two of the Hephaestus kids had been recruited to take the Argo II all the way to Camp Jupiter and back. Shane and Christopher, if he remembered right. Festus didn't like any of the other demigods; there was no way he'd cooperate with two noobs who had suddenly replaced Leo. But nooo, Leo was "in a really bad way" (as Will Solace had put it), so someone else had to pilot his ship across the entire continental Estados Unidos while he ate lemon jello and stared at off-white curtains.

Percy poked his head in. "Hey, dude. Doin' okay?"

Leo immediately brightened. The son of Poseidon was one of the campers least irritated by his puns. "Yeah, I've been fine for days, man, I told you. Hey, want to know where Satan gets his mail?"

"Not right now, sorry. The Romans are due to arrive any minute. But Will said you're good to go, if you want."

"Yes!" Leo pumped his fist and threw off his sheets. He was so excited to get out of these stiff infirmary clothes—all white, perfectly pressed, no grease stains at all. Bad look for a mind-bogglingly brilliant mechanic like him. So bunker first, then off to locate some caffeine. Another dumb thing about being bedridden: the infirmary had a strict no-coffee policy. If you asked Leo, it was their way of making people want to get better and leave.

So Leo ran as fast as he could (not very) to Bunker Nine, which was still basically his even though the rest of his cabin now knew about it, because no one quite dared to spend that much time with him and his catastrophe-causing pyrokinesis. He threw on a ratty CHB shirt (well stained, and he could name the projects each stain came from) and his favorite work jeans, and when he burst back out into the forest he recognized the shape of the Argo II in the sky. Already gasping, he took a deep breath and headed for the center of camp, the effective landing base.

He arrived just after the ship touched down, and as the serious-looking Romans came onto land in formation (the heck?), he went straight for Festus, who was whirring and clicking some shocking obscenities at Shane and Christopher, who appeared unaware. He lurched over to them, side stitches stabbing his—well, his sides. Being out of shape was one more lame thing about his life.

"Your dragon is insane," Shane complained, earning another rude name.

Leo clapped Festus on the neck in a friendly reprimand. "Aw, Festus is as sane as you or—you. Me, I'm pretty much nuts."

"We know."

He bowed and then continued in a hurry: "How did the carborators hold up? And what about the magic coat of grease up in the topsail mast, did that work? I wasn't really—"

Out of nowhere a purple-shirted force of nature slammed sharp into his chest, shoving him out of the conversation and into the side of the ship. Still recovering from his little run five minutes ago, it took Leo a minute to realize what had happened and focus.

The force of nature was a girl, a pristine flawless Roman girl probably his age, with dark brown hair perfectly French braided and an aquiline nose and the angriest black eyes he'd ever been glared at with. She scowled at him, fury blazing in every inch of her, and the strength of her forearm into his clavicle made him realize that the Fates really had in in for him. First Piper, then Thalia and Khione, and now her. She was exactly his type, strong and beautiful and eager to kill him. He felt his hair, his dirty unbrushed hair, heating up, and immediately he tried to smooth it back before it could catch fire.

"Hey, lovely," Leo said with his most fabulous grin.

Her expression somehow managed to darken even more, and she pulled an Imperial gold knife out of nowhere, pressing the blade cold and sharp under his chin. She shoved him harder against the Argo, calling him a string of unfriendly names. He didn't understand the ones that sounded like Latin, but the Spanish ones were unprintable. Wait—Spanish?

"Please don't break him, Reyna. We like him." Of course her name meant queen. The voice sounded like Percy, but Leo's vision was going a little blurry. "Plus he's the best repair boy we have."

Great, thanks, Percy, point that part out, he thought, but she did at least release him. Reyna—now that he could think straight, that was the name of the other praetor, the one he never got to meet. The one that apparently held really big grudges. Hot flaming damn.

Reyna strode back into formation, her posture regal and unapologetic.

"Is she insane?" Leo asked Annabeth in awe, rubbing under his chin where the blade had left a lingering coldness. Frankly, the gorgeous praetor could be loonier than Annabeth without Percy, and he would have trouble caring. Annabeth rolled her eyes. She knew him a little better than he liked.

But who cared? Something not lame had finally happened to him.

His usual methods having the stellar success rate that they did, Leo decided to stick with them to catch Reyna's attention again. When Annabeth made the questionable decision to keep him around, he summoned all his non-caffeinated energy and bad jokes kept in reserve and he treated the girls to Leo At 150 Percent as they showed the Romans around camp. Annabeth barely tolerated him with a thin smile, but Reyna completely shut down, a coldly neutral mask that occasionally gritted her teeth. She was so not interested, but that had never stopped him before.

Eventually he needed a drink to refuel, though, so just for a moment he ran into Cabin Nine for his favorite coffeemaker—but when he came back out, the Romans were dispersing to move into their temporary cabins, and Annabeth and Percy (and Reyna) were nowhere to be found. Deflating a little, he flipped open his travel mug and took a looong draught.

Someone clapped him on the shoulder. He turned in surprise to see Nyssa, her hair pulled back in its usual bandana. Maybe she had come to congratulate him on surviving the tank explosion, or to profess her undying love (as girls were wont to do).

"Jake's iPod's acting up again," she said. "You think you can come take a look?"

Jake's iPod was actually a conglomerate of Apple and Olympian technology, and it was on the fritz more often than not. Leo nodded, trying not to be disappointed that repairs were all anyone ever wanted him for. "Yeah, sure, no problem."

"Great." As they headed back into the cabin, the lack of conversation led her to comment, "Are you not excited for the celebration? You seem awful quiet."

Dios forbid he stop running his mouth for ten consecutive seconds. "Yeah, I'm great!" He grinned broadly, and if she could tell it was fake, she showed no sign of it. "In fact, you want to hear where Satan gets his mail?"

"No thanks," she said hastily, looking much too relieved to hand him off to Jake.

"His sinbox!" Leo finished triumphantly. Nyssa rolled her eyes, but she stopped asking if he was okay. Fantástico.

When dinnertime rolled around, Leo was less hungry and more frustrated. Really, he should have been used to people looking through him, but it would have been nice to get one single "hey, Leo, glad to see you're in one piece." On a whim he decided to skip the dining pavilion and instead went to a shed behind the strawberry fields to get some fresh air. Thankfully no one was around, because nothing screamed "lame" like a camp counselor–slash–Hero of Olympus sitting alone behind a crappy tin shed.

Holy Hephaestus, he was tired. Not from being almost blown up, but from being lame. Gods, the rest of the Seven had all these cool powers and love interests and intense skills, and what was he? The son of two mechanics, scrawny and short, useless and unimportant with an unappreciated sense of humor. For all of Tía Callida's promises of greatness, the greatest thing he'd done was accidentally start a war between the Greek and Roman camps. Yeah, good going, self, he thought, giving himself a sarcastic mental pat on the back. Pulling a screwdriver out of his tool belt, he began to scrape hash marks into the dirt.

But his pity party was interrupted by a clang from the other side of the tin shed. Leo jumped—he hadn't realized someone else was around. Geez, even his ADHD didn't work for him like it did everyone else. He called around the side, "Hey, is someone there?"

No one responded, so just to make sure it wasn't a loose monster or anything (that'd be just his luck), he clambered to his feet and stepped around the shed—and almost ran into Reyna. Gods, of course it'd be her right now. Her eyes narrowed and her hands went to her side like she was going for her knife again, but he held up his hands and backed up.

"Whoa there, pretty lady," he said hastily. "No need for violence. I'm not here to talk to you, sad to say."

She clenched her hands into fists but didn't kill him. Progress. "Why aren't you at dinner?" she asked coldly.

"Not hungry," he said, and without thinking he added, "Not that they're likely to notice whether I'm there or not." Reyna looked doubtful, and he wasn't sure he wanted to explain that train of thought to a semi-homicidal stranger.

"But anyway," he continued, trying to sound upbeat, "I'm just, you know, hanging out over here on this side of the shed. You can sit on that side of the shed, and that way neither of us has to leave, and you don't even have to look at me." She looked him over suspiciously, but when he didn't, for example, pull out a gun and start shooting, she slowly backed up to her side, and he turned and sat back down on his.

Leo was now interested in something other than examining his life failures: why was the gorgeous and praetorly Reyna skipping dinner and hanging around a rundown shed? He itched to ask, but he knew as soon as he opened his mouth she'd be gone, so he went back to scraping lines in the dirt. At least if he could keep her around for a little while, she'd see he didn't usually attack Romans on sight. Of course, when she stopped wanting to kill him, she'd start ignoring him altogether, but he'd long been used to that pattern in girls.

But he got a second big surprise, because after a few minutes he heard her ask, "Are you usually this accommodating?"

He chuckled, more out of shock than anything. "No," he called back. "Normally I try my best to be as unaccommodating as possible. It's part of my ability to simultaneously charm and annoy the infierno out of people."

"That I believe. The annoying part, anyway."

Though her tone was coldly neutral, merely stating fact, he laughed again. She found him irritating; she'd fit in well here. "I told Jason once, don't insult my ability to annoy. I'm glad you can appreciate it."

"I don't think 'appreciate' is the word I would use," she said.

"I know." He was quiet again for a moment as the thought sank in. "I don't think anyone would use the word 'appreciate,' actually." Nyssa certainly wouldn't, or Annabeth, or even Jason and Piper.

"Probably not."

Shifting into a grumpy crouch, Leo kicked the heel of his shoe against the wall of the shed. "You want to know why I'm actually out here?" he asked, his smile gone. She probably couldn't care less, but semi-homicidal stranger or not, he wanted someone not to overlook him.

A second passed, and he was preparing to sit back down, but then she asked in an inscrutable tone, "Why?"

"For the next two weeks we're going to celebrate a war that almost killed us all, me included." He wasn't sure if she'd heard about his big explosion, but if nothing else, the fact of war put everyone's lives in danger. "But if I'm not the most enthusiastically insane person there, it will be all, What's wrong, Leo? Aren't you happy, Leo? Here, do you want to fix my iPod, Leo? Because Dios forbid I ever be upset about anything." And there was no middle ground: he irritated people whether he was excited and nuts or shut up entirely. He kicked the shed again, feeling the reverb in his toes.

Reyna was quiet. Maybe thinking, maybe looking for the most PC way of saying man up, stupid. "Have you mentioned this to any of your friends?" she asked finally. "The rest of the Seven, or the Vul—Hephaestus cabin?"

Leo snorted. "The other six are so happily paired off, Gaea could start to wake again and they probably wouldn't even notice. And the other Hephaestus campers . . . I don't know. I've never really fit with them. They all think I'm a scary freak." He could just hear her thinking what, did you shoot at this camp too? so he hurried to say, "Not because of the eidolon. Because—" Suddenly he cut himself off. If there was any way to scare off a pretty girl, mentioning that you catch on fire was it. "Never mind."

She didn't ask. She probably didn't care all that much. But eventually she said, "You could just not show up at the celebration."

Leo shook his head even though she couldn't see him. "That's not an option, and you know it. They'll want to have me there with the Seven."

"I don't know, I was considering not going."

He was skeptical. "Praetor of New Rome? Yeah, no chance. They'll want you there too." Tapping on the dirt with his screwdriver, he screwed up the courage to ask, "Why don't you want to go? Too undignified?" Oh, too far. Dios mio, she's really going to kill me now, he thought, but at least he would go down swinging.

But no blades flew around the shed. In a regal voice worthy of her name, she said, "Not quite. I'm just aware that I don't have much of a place there."

He hadn't thought about that. He'd assumed that, like Percy and Jason, she had mobs of fans and friends, but if she was normally as serious and solitary as he'd heard, maybe her being an outsider wasn't such a long shot.

"It's not a problem," she continued. He could practically hear her raising her chin. "I'm perfectly used to it. I just usually have duties as a praetor that make it inconspicuous."

A person in authority whose solitude was constantly overlooked. Gee, that sounded familiar. Even if his being a camp counselor was outweighed by his being an insignificant repair boy. "Qué cabrón, who'd have thought a praetor and a repair boy would have the same problem," he muttered.

Reyna said nothing. Maybe she hadn't heard him; maybe she'd been so offended at being compared to him that she'd decided to stop talking to him altogether. Well, no time like the present to annoy her further.

"If you want somewhere out of the way to hang out," Leo offered, "you can come watch me work in Bunker Nine. Nobody else really goes there." He hoped she would, but he wasn't getting his hopes up or anything.

Her pensive "I might" was the best thing he'd heard all day.