AN-
Basic plot:
After two months of being homeless, Jason meets a his saving grace in the form of one Leo Valdez. Only, Leo's idea of rescue involves dragging Jason to a seedy strip club where he is all but sold to the most terrifying woman Jason has ever met, so Leo may be the devil on his shoulder rather than an angel. But, at the end of the day, Jason has food, a job, and somewhere to sleep, so maybe a dance with the devil isn't all that bad.
Age rating-13+
With that, read on!
"Hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies."— Andy Dufresne, The Shawshank Redemption
This was, officially, the weirdest job interview Jason had ever had.
Leo had dragged him by the wrist out of the diner and down a few blocks to a fairly nondescript door that merely had Camp Heartbreak written above it in orange neon lights. The lower floor looked like it would be a club, if they weren't there at two in the afternoon on a Tuesday, but Leo ignored that completely, instead going straight through an EMPLOYEES ONLY sign and up a set of narrow, rickety stairs. He passed two doors before stopping and turning to Jason with a serious expression.
"You just stay out here, okay?" he said like he was giving instructions to a toddler. "I'm gonna go in there and warm her up, then I'll bring you in. I'll do most of the talking, you just have to stand there and be pretty."
Before Jason could really respond, Leo went through the door, leaving him alone in the hall. Jason wasn't really sure how long he was left there, probably no more than ten minutes, but plenty of time to start feeling foolish. To begin with he really, really wished he'd had a chance to shower. It had been better than a week since he'd had access to one, and his desperate sink baths weren't really cutting it. Definitely not enough for a job interview, to say the least. He caught his reflection in a nearby window and combed his fingers through his hair, hoping he could at least make the greasy mess look a bit neater.
Almost as soon as he finished, Leo reappeared, looking delightedly manic. "Okay, I got you in. You're about to meet Annabeth Chase, she's the owner and operator of this fine establishment. Again, I'm gonna do the talking, you just look pretty."
Then, Jason was dragged into the office and came face to face with Annabeth Chase, and he had never felt more like a prey animal in his life. He cleared his throat and offered her a handshake. "Hi, I'm Jason. Jason Grace."
Annabeth didn't take the offered hand, she just looked him up and down critically. Jason felt her stone-cold gray eyes on him like ice cubes trailing over his skin and he resisted the urge to shudder. "Can he dance?" she asked, glancing at Leo.
"Literally who cares if he can dance?" Leo scoffed. "Look at him, Annie."
"Don't call me that."
Leo ignored her. "He could literally get up on stage, fold his laundry and recite his multiplication tables, and you'd still have people eating out of his hand, so long as he took his shorts off."
Annabeth stroked her chin. "That's… not untrue."
"Oh, oh! And check this out!" Leo added eagerly. He turned on Jason suddenly and started gently smacking his cheeks. Jason reared back and leveled Leo with a slightly hurt scowl of confusion, and Leo turned back to Annabeth with a beaming smile. "See that pout? He could put puppies out of a job."
"Oh, that is lethal," Annabeth said, her tone more akin to that of someone buying a used car than potentially hiring an employee. "Plus, he looks like he'd make a good bouncer for when Frank has the day off. Percy hates doing it."
"Exactly!" Leo said, pouncing on the idea before it could escape. "It's literally perfect."
Annabeth just kept studying him for a moment before she heaved a deep sigh. "Alright, fine. We'll do a trial run for thirty days, and we'll review then. If he can keep up, if he can make money, he can stay."
"Thank you!" Leo crowed. "Annabeth, you're the best!"
"Don't thank me yet," she warned him. "He's your responsibility, Valdez. He stays in your suite, you make sure he shows up for his shifts, and if he fucks anything up, it's coming out of your hide."
"You got it," Leo agreed instantly. "It'll be a whole big brother and pledge situation. I won't let him out of my sight."
"You have to keep doing your job, too," she added. "You're a damn good bartender, and if I think he's impacting your work, he's gone; I don't care how many panties he could drop just by blinking."
Jason's face suddenly flushed and he spluttered. "Excuse me?"
They both ignored him. "Go ahead and take him upstairs to your room," Annabeth ordered, typing away on her computer. "His first shift will be tonight, and he can shadow Frank. Percy can start dance lessons tomorrow."
Leo saluted her, if the abomination of a pose he struck could be called a salute. "Ma'am, yes, ma'am!" Then he turned to Leo with a wide, toothy grin. "Come on, roomie. Lemme show you around."
Fortunately, Leo chose not to drag him this time, instead just bounding out of the office without a look back at Annabeth, or to make sure Jason was following him. Which, of course, he was. He wasn't exactly sure where Leo was leading him, other than his "suite" but he figured it was bound to be better than tucking himself next to his favourite dumpster for the night.
Leo went up two more flights of stairs, before suddenly coming to a stop in front of a door with a little bronze 9 on it. "Welcome to Casa de Valdez," Leo exclaimed, grandly pushing the door open. "Or, well, Valgrace, now that you're here."
What laid beyond the door was a modest, but undeniably nice apartment. It was spacious, with a decently sized window that let in plenty of natural light, and cream-colored walls that were completely plastered with all manner of posters and knick-knack shelves. There was even a big, comfy-looking sofa taking up a significant portion of the living room, complete with the biggest, fluffiest orange cat Jason had ever seen, sprawled out like he owned the building.
The only problem was the fact that there was hardly anywhere to stand.
"Uh, sorry about the mess," Leo said, sounding more than a bit self-conscious as he kicked a pile of laundry out of the path. "I'd say that it's normally not this bad, but that would be a lie, and I pride myself on not being a liar."
To be honest, Jason didn't really care. Even with the mess, this was by far the best place Jason had gotten to sleep in almost two months. But he was pretty sure that saying that would sour the mood, weird as it was, so he just shrugged. "Well, I tidy obsessively, it works out. You make a mess for me to clean, and I'll clean up spaces for you to make a mess."
Leo just blinked at him in shock before he let out a loud, barking laugh that startled the cat. The grin he leveled Jason with was blinding. "Well, I'll be sure to keep that in mind. I think I'll let you take a shower before I take advantage of your Cinderella complex, though." Jason felt his ears perk up at the word shower, and Leo definitely noticed, based on the way his eyes sparkled. "Come on, I'll show you to the bathroom. Heads up, the door doesn't lock because I'm in charge of fixing everything in this building, and, well, you know how it is."
"Cobbler's children have no shoes," Jason agreed easily enough, and Leo laughed again.
The bathroom, like the rest of the apartment, was a little cramped, but still nice. Leo's towels had certainly seen better days, and none of them matched (Jason was pretty sure there was a Transformers beach towel tucked at the bottom of the stack) but Leo assured him they would dry perfectly well.
And the shower, oh the shower. Jason had to duck a little to get his head under the spray, but he was used to that, being 6'2" and the water pressure was glorious and it got up to that near-scalding temperature Jason had missed so much. The room soon filled with sweet-smelling steam (Jason discovered that Leo had a whole matching set of honey-scented bath products, which was, admittedly, pretty cute) and he was pretty sure he could have lived the rest of his life in there. He at least could have stayed until the hot water ran out.
But he also figured that if he was going to be living rent-free with Leo for a month, it was probably in poor taste to take all the hot water the first hour he was there. Not exactly a good impression.
He winced as he pulled open the shower curtain, both because he was hit with a wall of cold air, but even more because he was cringing at the thought of putting on his one dirty outfit. However, Leo thought of that, too, because there was a massive hoodie and a pair of threadbare sweat pants folded up neatly on the toilet seat. Jason wasn't sure when, exactly, Leo had snuck into the bathroom to play clothes Santa, but he hoped it wasn't during his mumbled performance of "Bippity Boppity Boo." The clothes, which probably swamped Leo, were ever so slightly too small for Jason, and he did have to put his old boxers back on, but he still felt miles better than he had before the shower.
Leo was fruitlessly attempting to straighten the living room when Jason walked in with a towel over his still-damp hair. It took a minute, but Leo wolf-whistled when he finally noticed his company. "Damn, Grace! I knew you had it in you, but you scrub up nice!"
Jason rolled his eyes and flopped down on the couch, looking around the room. "So, does everyone who works at the club live in the building?"
"Nah, just me, Percy, and Annabeth," Leo shrugged, flopping down next to Jason. "There's spare rooms she keeps available if anyone needs to crash, but everyone else cares about things like 'boundaries' and 'work/life balance.' Me? I care about the fact that Annabeth is a landlord I can trust and the fact that between bartending and handymaning, I don't pay rent."
"That's a pretty sweet deal," Jason agreed. "So, are you and Annabeth friends? Outside of work, I mean."
"Kinda?" Leo said hesitantly. "Like, she mostly keeps things professional, but we do hang out outside of work sometimes, especially with the rest of the crew. She definitely likes me, though. More than everyone but Percy, but don't tell Piper."
"I'm pretty sure she doesn't like me at all," Jason confessed, cringing as he thought about the disaster interview again.
"Nah, Annie's just really business-focused. Her main priority is always gonna be how to make the club make more money," Leo dismissed. "And not in, like, a Mr. Krabbs way. More like she's living in a game of Cookie Clicker and she's got some kind of compulsion for seeing the little number get bigger."
"Oh." Jason considered that for a moment. "I'm not sure if that makes me feel any better."
Leo snorted and elbowed him in the side before taking out his phone. "Alright, what size do you wear? I'm gonna Door Dash some basics for you. If you don't tell me, I'm just gonna assume 2X and hope for the best."
"You don't have to do that," Jason protested, feeling a bit of shame crawl up the back of his neck.
Leo didn't bite, he just arched an eyebrow. "So, you intend to wear a single outfit forever? No offense, but that doesn't sound super sustainable." Jason didn't have anything to say to that, so Leo went back to typing on his phone. "Don't worry about it, dude. I can keep a running tally for you to pay me back, if you really want, but it's not a big deal. I literally dragged you into this mess, the least I can do is help you survive it."
Jason stared down at his lap and swallowed thickly. Everything had happened so fast, but he'd still be passed out in an alley if Leo hadn't been kind enough to offer a stranger lunch. The 'least he could do' was a line far, far in the rear view mirror. "Thanks."
Leo just elbowed him again. "House rules for Monopoly say that if someone goes bankrupt, they can have a new 500 to start with if they wanna keep playing."
"That sounds like a game that's pretty hard to win."
"Maybe," Leo agreed with a shrug. "But it makes it nearly impossible to lose, so everyone gets to keep playing, and that's the important bit, don't you think?"
Jason was quiet for a moment. A game where the goal was for everyone to keep playing rather than winning was a concept that felt more than foreign to him. It was alien. It was wrong. It went against everything that he'd been taught since he was old enough to talk. But at the same time, it cracked open something in his chest, something that he'd kept buried for so long he'd forgotten it existed. "I hadn't thought of it that way."
"Trust me, by the end of a month with these people, you will," Leo assured, grinning. Elbowing him again, third time's the charm, he added, "Now, go take a nap, you'll need the energy for tonight. Living room's still uninhabitable, so you can take the bed for now. Bedroom is second door on the left."
Jason didn't even have the energy to argue anymore, he just nodded and got to his feet. Leo's room was just as big of a mess as the living room, but the bed was clear and so was the little path leading to it, so Jason flopped face-first into the mattress, and immediately felt every last one of his muscles relax. He didn't know what would happen tomorrow, he didn't know what his bouncer shift with Frank would bring. He didn't even know what he was going to do once Leo woke him up from his nap. But for right now, he didn't care. He was safe and warm and clean and fed and comfortable, and that was all that mattered.
Within five minutes, he was fast asleep.
AN-
Solangelo next!