Taisi-san

A text on his phone told him where to be- an intersection only a few blocks east of the fire escape he was lounging on- and Mikey made it there at roughly the same time Woody's old boat of a Coupe de Ville pulled around the corner. He dropped from his perch on top of a streetlight to the curb, and Woody leaned over from behind the wheel to pop open the passenger side door with a grin. "Hop in, bud." And Mikey certainly didn't need telling twice. The car was warm, the pizzas in the back had it smelling like the best of Little Italy, and Mikey wasn't sure the passenger seat hadever looked as good as it did then. As he pulled his seatbel

It was hard to talk about Christmas. Leo knew his new family was trusting and accepting and would never push him away- he'd told them about his fire, after all, and he'd even told his older brothers one night how exactly he became an orphan. They had hugged him so tight, all at once, he didn't have the breath to cry and Leo knew that he could trust them with anything if he could trust them with that. His new family was wonderful, and fun and brilliant and like him, creative and tinkery and he was at home and at peace with them. But that didn't make it any easier to talk about Christmas. He could joke about the sewers. About how many house

"Leo? What are you doing way over here?" He was sitting on a big rock right on the edge of the clearing in the forest of skeletal trees, and grinned when he saw Percy peering up at him through the snow and his mop of wind-tossed hair. Percy came back to camp quite a bit during the winter, as if he couldn't bear to be away for longer than a week at a time. Leo stretched a hand down to him and Percy clasped it, climbing effortlessly up the side of the boulder in a few steps and sitting next to him, right against him, because there wasn't much of a flat surface at the top before the edges curved down at the sides. Leo didn't mind. After a mom

It wasn't the first time his brothers snuck him out of camp, and he was sure it wouldn't be the last. Apparently, according to Jake, Chris and Shane, he worked too hard. Which wasn't true, really—he actually needed to work harder on the magnificent Argo II if they ever wanted to get it finished in time to cross the seas and rescue camp favorite Percy Jackson. There was so much left to do and so much they could try to make sure their ship of fire was every bit as awesome as a ship of freaking fire should be. Of course his brothers didn't feel the same way; because every meal Leo skipped, every night he missed a few hours of sleep, only c