A/N: So basically I was listening to the HoH audiobook and decided that Rick Riordan didn't give us enough juice while Leo was on the island. You know, the good juicy stuff. The stuff that makes you go, "oh that's why he's dying to get back to her!" (Literally) I realized that Rick gave no detail about two whole days that they were working together, and I'm like, it does not take Leo Valdez three entire days to make a small little navigation device. So obviously, there must be a lot of other things that happened in those two extra days besides working.

No it's not smutty. Just very flirty. Come on. They didn't spend the whole time pretending to hate each other.

Disclaimer: The characters, the world, and the two scenes you recognize from the book all belong to Rick Riordan.

Here's the juice.

Enjoy!

Three days.

That's how long it took to make the guidance console. And it was in those three days that everything changed.

The first day, she had come over to ask if he needed any help. She had already collected up a bunch of supplies and food for his journey, and she seemed eager to be productive. So he asked her to make a fireproof baggie for Frank, and to chip off a crystal from her cave. Both requests she waved off as things she could do quickly and easily.

"What can I do now, while my hands are dirty?"

She held up her hands, and Leo felt a strange pull in his gut when he looked at them. They were strong and calloused, covered in dirt from the garden. He had a sudden urge to reach out and touch them.

He swallowed and shook off his odd reaction.

"Well, you could twist some more bronze coils," He suggested, gesturing to his project. "But that's kind of specialized – "

She was already sitting down to look, taking the coils into her hands. He cut himself off to watch as she began twisting the wires, her forehead creased in concentration.

"Just like weaving," she said, her fingers beginning to work faster. "This isn't so hard."

Leo's eyes were locked to her hands as they worked, and he realized he wasn't breathing. His throat went dry.

"Huh," he managed. His voice was hoarse. He blinked and forced his eyes to look back down at his own work. "Well if you ever get off this island and want a job, let me know," he said. "You're not a total klutz."

She grinned and glanced up at him. "A job, eh?" She asked. "Making things in your forge?"

"Nah, we could start our own shop," he replied. Starting a repair shop had always been a dream of his, but he had never really mentioned it to anybody. He had buried that dream a while back since the likelihood of it happening was so slim. But now, sitting on this peaceful island with Calypso, the idea suddenly seemed plausible again. "Leo and Calypso's Garage," he made up a name, "Auto Repair and Mechanical Monsters."

Calypso's smile grew. "Fresh fruits and vegetables," she added.

"Cider and stew," he included. A vivid image of this imaginary life formed in Leo's mind, clearer than it ever had been before. "We could even provide entertainment. You could sing and I could, like, randomly burst into flames."

Calypso laughed. A real, light-hearted laugh that filled the air with joy. It was the first time since he met her that she seemed genuinely happy. Leo's heart soared.

"See, I'm funny," he bragged, proud that he had successfully broken her moody streak.

Calypso quickly dropped her smile, but he could still see the amusement in her eyes. "You are not funny," she insisted. "Now get back to work or no cider and stew."

"Yes ma'am." He snickered quietly, her bright smile still lingering in his mind.

They worked in silence the rest of that day, but her very presence caused him to keep getting distracted. It was those amazing hands. His eyes would wander to look at what she was doing, and his own fingers would periodically go limp. Even the Hephaestus children at camp did not work as swiftly and fluidly as Calypso did. It was like her hands had a mind of their own. She sometimes would start humming quietly as she worked, which made Leo glance up at her eyes. They were focused on her work, but they also looked sad, like she was far away in her thoughts. Something about it reminded him of when he would work with his mother in their mechanics shop when he was a child. There was a familiarity about her that he couldn't explain. He felt more at ease than he had been in a really long time.

As the sun finally started to get low in the sky, Calypso stood up and stretched. "How about some dinner?" she asked with a yawn. "I can bring it out here, and we can eat on the beach."

Leo stood up as well and nodded. "Sounds good to me," he agreed.

Without a word, they walked back to her cave, and Calypso began preparing stew in the small kitchen area of the cave. Leo took it upon himself to look around her home.

Next to the kitchen alcove, the cave opened up into a giant explosion of crafts.

Actually, it looked not that different from his own cabin on the Argo II, but instead of random tools and mechanical inventions strewn over the tables, every surface was covered in fabrics and yarn, canvases and paint, and all sorts of crafting tools. There were piles of art projects everywhere. It looked like Joann's Fabrics had been raided. An old-fashioned loom sat in the middle of the room.

The cave walls were filled with murals. The colors were vibrant and welcoming. Some showed scenes of people, but mostly the murals were of different kinds of flowers from her garden and intricate designs. Many tapestries hung from the ceiling as well. One showed a scene of an ancient Greek town, of people walking along the street with carts and oxen. It looked like an old marketplace, and the scene was framed in rich shades of red and orange.

Leo walked up to it. "Where is this?" he asked, reaching out to feel the soft, neatly woven fabric.

"Malta," Calypso answered, without even looking up from the stove. She didn't elaborate.

Leo looked over at one of the murals on the wall. It showed a woman in a pale blue toga dress who sat on a small rock. Behind her, a dark choppy river flowed. Her face was turned, covered by a black veil. Leo pressed his hand against the wall. "And who is this?"

Again, Calypso did not even look at what he was pointing to before answering. "My mother," she replied. Her voice was guarded, but Leo thought he heard a hint of bitterness. He turned to where she stood in the kitchen. Her back was to him. She clanked some plates loudly. "Come," she said. "Let's eat before it gets dark."

They sat on the sand, the cool sea breeze blowing gently while the fiery orange sun sunk over the horizon. It turned the cloudless sky a bright pink, and the colors reflected like a mirror off of the still water.

As they ate, Leo studied Calypso, her caramel-colored hair glowing bronze in the sunlight. She was incredibly beautiful, Leo admitted, despite her annoying qualities. But it was a subtle beauty. She was not the center-of-attention type who all the popular kids wanted to be friends with. She was more the kind that tended to blend into the group, who the football players may mess around with because she was cute and available. Still, she was way too good-looking to give Leo the time of day. In a high school setting, she probably wouldn't even know he existed.

"Thanks," Leo said, breaking the silence. "For helping me out today."

She looked at him and shrugged. "It's nice to do something a bit different for a change," she said. She looked down at something on the sand in front of Leo. "What are you drawing?" she asked curiously.

Leo looked down. He hadn't even realized that his fidgety fingers had been doodling, but it appeared that he had drawn out a tic-tac-toe game into the sand. "Uh, it's a kind of kid's game," Leo told her. "It's called tic-tac-toe."

Calypso scooted around to look at the indented game board more closely. "It's a game?" she asked. "How do you play?"

Leo was a bit surprised that she was so interested. He couldn't remember the last time he had played this childhood game. "We take turns filling in the boxes. One person draws Os in each box and the other person draws Xs," he explained. "You want to be the first to get three in a row." He brushed his arm over the sand to clear the board and drew a new one. "So it can be like this," he drew three Xs vertically, "or like this," he cleared the board again and drew three Xs horizontally, "Or like this," he cleared it again and drew the Xs diagonally.

Calypso smiled and brushed her arm over the sand, and then copied the way he had drawn the game board. She drew an X in the top left box. Leo grinned, trying to ignore how elegantly her fingers brushed over the sand. He drew an O in the middle box. Calypso tried the top middle box. So Leo drew an O in the top right box. Calypso put an X in the bottom left box, so Leo put an O in the middle left box. Calypso put an X in the middle right box, and Leo put an O in the bottom right box. Calypso laughed.

"Now neither of us can get three in a row!" she exclaimed.

Leo laughed too. "Maybe we need to make it harder." He drew more lines in the sand, creating a game board with more boxes. "Now we need to get six in row."

They tried again, and came to the same problem. They both laughed. "I think we're both too smart to make this work," Leo said.

The sunset had faded to a dark purple and it was beginning to get difficult to see. A few fireflies glinted in the warm night, and the crickets chirped quietly.

"Come on," Calypso picked up her now empty dinner plate and stood up. "I should go make that cloth bag you asked for. And you wanted a piece of crystal?"

Leo nodded, standing up as well. They once again walked back to her cave in silence. It was odd, Leo thought, how comfortable the silence was. Normally he wouldn't be able to spend more than five minutes with anyone without awkwardly trying to make conversation.

When they went inside, Calypso lit several candles and lanterns around the cave, creating a shimmering but workable light. She sat down by her loom and unraveled a roll of thread. Leo placed his dishes on the kitchen counter.

He should have just left her to her work, but curiosity got the better of him. He went over to where she sat by her loom. She glanced at him with an odd expression on her face. Her eyes glinted in the candle light.

"Uh," he murmured awkwardly. "Do you mind if… if I watch?" He asked.

She was visibly surprised, and Leo wondered if anyone had ever expressed interest in her work before. "Um, no?" she said, her voice turning up like it was a question. "I - I mean no," she said more decisively, looking away. "I don't mind." She seemed shy all of a sudden, as she gestured for him to pull up a chair.

Leo did so, and watched as she set up the thread on the loom. Her hands worked confidently, like they had with the wires of his guidance console. She began to wrap and weave the thread along the loom gracefully, pulling the strands tightly together into a thin fabric. Leo was mesmerized. He didn't think he had ever seen anything so beautiful in his life.

"Amazing," he murmured quietly. He heard her let out a soft breath and he looked at her face. Was she blushing?

"You're not used to people watching you work, are you?" Leo asked.

Her eyes flickered towards him before returning to focus on the loom. "I weave as a distraction," she said. "When a hero has left, or – " for some reason she stopped herself. "There are rarely other people here to watch me." She said it so matter-of-factly, but Leo could tell there was an underlying sadness in her tone.

"Well you are incredibly talented," he complimented. He couldn't keep the admiration out of his voice. He just couldn't tear his eyes away from her hands.

She shook her head and let out a small huff through her nose, dismissing his compliment. She looked like she wanted to argue, but she kept quiet.

She was right about the bag being quick to make. In no time, she had removed the cloth from the loom and handed Leo a newly-made, firewood safety pouch. "Thanks," Leo smiled, admiring the finished piece.

"What is it for?" Calypso asked. "You said it would save a life?"

Leo nodded. "It's for my friend Frank," he said. "See, his life is kind of attached to this piece of firewood, and he's terrified it will catch fire. If it's in a fireproof pouch though," he held up the bag. "He won't have to worry."

Calypso's lips curved up into a soft smile. "I would like to hear more about your quest," she said. Her voice was very gentle, and it caught Leo a bit off guard. "Perhaps tomorrow."

"Uh, yeah," he agreed. He suddenly felt warm. Something about the way she was looking at him, and her eyes in the candle light –

Leo quickly stood up from his chair. "Um – thanks for dinner," he said awkwardly. "And the bag." He moved toward the door.

"Wait," she stopped him. He turned back to look at her. "You wanted a piece of crystal as well, yes?" she asked, standing up.

"Right," he remembered. She walked passed him towards the entrance of her cave, and grabbed a tool from her garden outside.

She crouched down at the cave entrance and banged her tool against the wall until a small piece of crystal fell to the floor. She picked it up and handed it to Leo.

He took it carefully. The crystal was iridescent, with a slight tint of purple. It was about the size of a small bird's egg, with a ragged edge and a smooth surface. Leo rubbed his thumb over the ragged edge.

"Am I allowed to ask what it is for?" Calypso asked. Leo looked up at her. He couldn't help but notice how her eyes seemed to sparkle just like the crystal.

Leo tilted his head. "I dunno," he replied, looking back at the crystal in his hand. "I'll let you know when I figure it out."