Work Text:
The boy had woken up with a pounding head and an all-too-warm right wrist. For a moment, his vision was cloudy, and his limbs heavy, like he had woken up from a slumber like never before, but it quickly cleared with an all-too-sharp shock of light, and he recognized that he was sleeping on a bench at a bus stop.
The boy, looking down at his thin brown fingers jutting out a ragged army jacket, had no idea where he was or who he was. So the phrase, Toto, I have a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore, came to mind, but he had to go, well, what the hell is a Toto?
Rather than dive into that issue of not remembering anything but his own name, he needed to confront a very different issue because, for reasons unknown, he woke up at a bus stop on a snowy mountainside, handcuffed to a blond boy holding onto a paper map.
The boy was serious-looking but handsome. His clear blue eyes were in deep thought as he scanned the paper. A frown pulled at his lips in a way that didn't detract from his appearance but looked uncomfortably natural, as if the boy had been born tense and tragic. A puff of water vapor came with each breath as his unhandcuffed arm fiddled with something in his black winter jacket pockets.
The fair-haired boy glanced at him. “Good morning. Not even a thanks for carrying your ass here?”
He gaped. “Um. Who are you?”
The other boy’s eyes narrowed. The brown boy yanked his arm, and the chain jingled like a light bell, following his movements. The blond glared and pulled to his side, pushing the boy off the bench and onto the ground.
Head still spinning, he could at least see the backpack under the bench. Under the curve of one of its worn and fraying straps, the name JASON had been etched in Sharpie.
The boy was jerked upward off the ground by who he assumed was the ridiculously strong Jason in question. “Stop messing around, Leo. I’m not in the mood.”
Leo. That sounded right. Leo tasted his name on his tongue: “Leo?”
Jason folded his arms, jostling Leo back and forth.
“Leo,” he warned, though Leo had no idea of what outside of the fact that he definitely did not want to face it. He tried slipping back onto the bench, but Jason had opened the map again, which made it hard for Leo’s shoulder to get comfortable. So he settled uncomfortably close, entwined with a rather attractive but admittedly threatening stranger, and he still had no idea where he was.
It was snowing, and it was definitely on a mountainside. That was easy enough to see from the blinding white rocky expanse stretching miles ahead into hazy blue mountain peaks and valleys. The thing was, Leo had the oddest feeling that he wasn’t supposed to be here- wherever here was.
Jason muttered something in a different language that made Leo’s ears burn. Whatever Jason spoke didn’t seem to match the foreign lettering on the bus stop sign. Were bus stops even normal to be on a mountain? There was no road or vehicles nearby.
Or, really, a sign of anyone nearby. Just him and his forced handcuff pal.
“Octavian should be here,” Jason’s breath ghosted in front of Leo as he pointed at a squiggle on the paper. Leo stared at him because he had no clue what an Octavian was, and it did not sound pleasant.
Then, he squinted at the map because, for some strange reason, the drawings moved. He could feel the water spraying his face from the river and watch the clouds drift across the page.
“Are you two still linked?” Jason asked him tersely.
“Um… no? We are?”
“No, I mean-” Jason muttered that strange curse again and scanned the map again.
If he was reading it right, and Leo had been facing a lot of weird things in the past three minutes, the map declared that they were in Siberia… because that made total, complete sense. He didn’t think he was Russian, nor did he think Jason was, so it was possible that he was just hallucinating the whole thing.
Leo squeezed his eyes shut, hoping that it would go away.
Instead, he felt a cold finger poke him. “What are you doing?”
“I don’t know. You’re not real.”
Jason poked him again. “Stop messing around. We’re still on a schedule. Unless you want Octavian to die, then focus. I don’t care, regardless. Can you warm us up?”
Warm them up? How the hell was he supposed to do that? And why was it his job? Leo opened his eyes, and something in his face made Jason hesitate. His furrowed blonde eyebrows slipped into a look of contemplation.
“Leo,” Jason said slowly. “What’s going on?”
“Dude, if I knew, I’d tell you.” Leo slumped over, rubbing his hands over his face. The handcuffs jingled with each movement. “We’re on a mountain, I don’t even know my last name, and we’re in freaking Russia. And what the hell is an Octavian?”
Jason folded his arm again, forgetting they were linked and tugged Leo around. “You did get hit pretty hard by the achlis. Maybe you have a concussion or got hit by a spell?”
“That’s not even a real thing,” Leo bemoaned. “I’m going crazy. None of this is happening.”
“Stop blabbing,” Jason told him. “You’ll be fine if it’s just a head hit. Trust me, I would know.” He rolled his eyes, and Leo stared at him blankly. Cheeks growing ruddy, Jason sighed. “It’s something you used to say... you really did lose your memories, huh?”
“Would I ever lie to you?”
“Yes,” the answer came with no hesitation. “Easily.”
Leo shook his head. “That doesn’t sound like me,” he joked. He barely knew who he was, but it totally sounded like him.
He must’ve not been as funny as he thought because Jason looked very troubled by his statement. Oops.
“... Maybe we’ll take a detour,” Jason faltered. He glanced at the bus sign and then Leo’s watch. “Another day with handcuffs won’t be that bad, and Octavian can survive. I guess.”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Leo lifted his arm. Under the sun, the chains glinted a faint golden. “Another day with these handcuffs? Does this Octopus guy got the keys? Let’s go find him. Is he less crazy than you?”
“Wow,” Jason’s eyes widened. “You really don’t remember anything. Octavian? Our quest? Fides? Monoceros? Camp? Any of this sound familiar?”
Leo was pretty convinced Jason was making up words, and maybe he was on a prank show, but the word camp stirred something within him. He wasn’t clear what exactly the emotion was, but Leo thought it better to keep this to himself.
“I don’t think I’m who you think I am,” Leo murmured. “I don’t even know who I am.”
Jason stared at him, and Leo dug his foot into the snow. He folded the map, and pushed it into his backpack, standing. The movement drove Leo to stand too.
“Come on,” Jason whistled to the open air. “Maybe this is what Fides was talking about-” At Leo’s confusion, Jason shook their handcuffed arms. “The goddess you kept making fun of and punished us for it.”
“Oh, yeah. Sure. Totally. Goddess. Right.”
“She’s the goddess of trust,” Jason continued, ignoring Leo. “So maybe this is part of our trust test.” Jason whistled again, and the cold wind began to stir. “Do you trust me?”
“Not really,” Leo said, zipping up his jacket, hiding away his stained orange shirt. “I don’t think I have a choice.”
“Yeah. Exactly.” Jason smirked, albeit his attention was more focused on the sky. “Now you’re getting it. You never have a choice with these things. Hey, step back.”
Leo stepped back just as a small tornado blew in front of them, shocking his skin and whipping his hair around. The tornado settled, dispersing until a murky silhouette of a horse made of clouds appeared. If Leo thought he was going crazy earlier, then he was definitely losing it here.
Jason reached out to pet the horse that chattered angrily back.
“Yeah, yeah,” Jason huffed. “We’ll get you batteries next time- No, you’re still not allowed to drop him in the ocean. He’s brain-damaged right now. Yes, I know, more than usual.”
“What-”
“Just a joke. You know.” Jason said quickly. If wind horses could be hateful, this one definitely had malice in its eyes for Leo. “Come on, and hop on. We can see about that memory first before we get the unicorn horn and your boyfriend.”
Jason didn’t leave Leo any room to talk, a strong gust of wind lifting the two boys up and onto the stallion. Leo’s arms squeezed around Jason’s torso, not entirely trusting the stability of cloud horses nor the crazy sweeping winds moving them. Jason, at least, was warm. Unfamiliar, certainly, but… it wasn’t too bad.
Then, Leo registered what was said just as Jason snapped at the horse to launch. “MY WHAT?-” though his voice cut into a scream as the crazy evil horse of air and lightning carrying two strangers bounded off into the sky.