no matter how many times a snake shed its skin, it would always be a snake. no matter how hard kit dempsey tried to prove he was no longer a traitor, camp half-blood would always view him as the boy who betrayed them for kronos. but not leo valdez...
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CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE: BAD OMENS
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IT WASN'T OFTEN THAT Kit would find himself awake before Leo, but for once he didn't mind the change in their routine. The next morning, after staying on watch until midnight -- when Jason got up to take over for them -- Leo was still in bed beside him, his back pressed to Kit's front, the blankets pushed down around his waist. He was snoring like a freight train but even then he successfully managed to make Kit's heart seize up.
Typically, back at Camp Half-Blood when they were still working on the Argo II, Leo would've been up with the sun. His projects -- whether that was the ship, the hidden bunker in the woods, or whatever else Leo stumbled across -- were a constant thought lingering in the back of his mind. It was only when Kit was around that, for just a moment, those thoughts were forced into silence. Where his body thrummed to life like an electric wire, the rest of his consciousness was struck dumb.
Leo Valdez had it bad for Kit Dempsey. Whatever they were; boyfriends or just good buddies, Leo had grown to depend on Kit. He wanted whatever pieces of himself Kit could give him, even if they weren't worth much in Kit's eyes. A smile, a laugh, a kiss...
Leo would trade anything, maybe even Festus, if Kit promised him a lifetime of kisses.
"Leo," he mumbled into the other boy's neck, smirking when Leo groaned and buried his face into the pillows. "Hey, we need to get up."
"No."
"Yes."
Kit could hear everyone moving around. He swore he heard Coach Hedge yelling, but when wasn't the satyr complaining about something? Soon enough, their absence would be noticed, and as much as he relished in Leo's proximity, he knew it couldn't last forever.
But when Kit removed his arm from Leo's waist, thinking (stupidly) that would do the trick, the other boy rolled around to face him. Before Kit knew it, his back was pressed to the mattress and there were hands gripping his jaw, lips prying against his for kisses he couldn't resist returning. Leo's legs were on either side of his hips, and Kit could no longer remember why he wanted to get up in the first place.
Throwing caution to the wind, he pushed his hands beneath the hem of Leo's shirt, trailing his fingers up the ridges of his back. Leo hummed into his mouth, quickly discarding the shirt with a sense of urgency that Kit hadn't expected from him. The son of Ares was growing dizzy, his gasps for air were shallow when Leo's lips dared to leave his own, and then--
