𝐩𝐥𝐚𝐧𝐬 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐟𝐨𝐫𝐦𝐮𝐥𝐚𝐬

This series of seven oneshots; Lightning Kisses, Bear Claws, Plans and Formulas, Soulmate Theory, Architectural Wonder, Pegasus Wings and Breaking the Mist are based off artwork made by @savysamiart. I have gotten permission from the artist to be using their artwork to show and make oneshots off of. Please find this artist at @savysamiart on Instagram or @savysami on tumblr and tiktok to show them some love and appreciate all of their art

          𝔗he one downside of owning a café in the centre of New Rome was that you always had to be up ridiculously early to open it every single day. The soldiers living in the barracks, the centurions, the Praetors, all of them, were up ridiculously early, going about their day before most of the general New Rome population was awake. So, to get their business, you had to be up early to catch them.

It was the reason that I often found myself walking to the café in the early morning mist, that rolled in from the sea each night, with no one else around me apart from the lares, fauns and of course-

"Perfectly on time! And no weapons, wonderful!"

"I never have them, Terminus." I sent him a slightly grin, trying to fight the roll of my eyes. No matter how many times he saw me, for gods knows how many years, he always said the exact same thing. 

"Very well. Move along, young lady." I yawned again, moving past him as I pulled my keys from my pocket. I had a lot of them, each for a different thing, but I knew the one to my business easily. The bell dinged above the doorway, as I pushed it open and began to prep for the day ahead. I had to do wages for my workers, clean out the coffee machine and do a stock take that I'd put off from two days earlier.

"Morning," I glanced up from wiping the tables at the sight of one of the Praetors of the legions, Reyna, who already looked ready for the day ahead, not a single hair out of place. I had barely managed to get clothes on for my shift. I smiled at her, placing the coffee and treat down for her to take. "You, my friend, are a life saver."

"I try. Long day ahead of you?" She nodded in agreement, leaning on the counter top as she took a long swig of coffee, despite the fact that I knew it was going to burn her tongue. "That bad?"

"I've got a meeting with the Senate," Reyna replied as even I pulled a face. I'd heard many tales of horror about these Senate meetings. "A three hour long meeting with the Senate."

"That is bound to run over," She nodded at the thought, groaning already at the thought of it. "Just shoot me a text and I'll come and run you another pastry. Distracts me from college work anyway."

"How's that going?"

"My idea to do a business course is coming back to bite me," I scowled at the thought, staring at the bag on the other side of the shop. It was full of papers for me to read and work through whilst there was a slow times in the café. "You'd think that after running a café for three years, that would help me complete a business degree. But, alas, no."

"I'll let you get on with it," I nodded, sliding a coffee over to Jason, who had also just walked into the café. He nodded, yawning before he walked straight back out. Not a word being said. Surprisingly enough, the other Praetor was not a morning person in the slightest.

"You should go and make sure that he doesn't accidentally walk into a glass door again," Reyna hummed in agreement, waving goodbye as she left the shop after Jason. Cracking my wrists and then back, I set up the remainder of the café and then began to go through the work that I needed to do that day.

There was way too much of it.

I sat down behind the counter, flipping through the page, before I glanced at the palm of my hand. Much like most in New Rome, and Camp Half-Blood, when some of the children of Apollo had set up their tattoo parlour, I had gotten a tattoo. I had a few, but my favourite was the one on my hand, mainly because it showed what problem I should work on next. So, if I was struggling with a math problem, it would write it in simpler form, and help me do it step by step which was a blessing.

Best fifty bucks I ever spent.

Except today, it wasn't showing me a simplified version of the math in front of me. No, this was showing me something that made my brain shut down at the sight of it. It was horrible and there were way too many letters and weird symbols involved. I shuddered in horror.

"What in the ever loving...?" I trailed off, trying to wrap my head around it. The bell dinged, and I quickly took and made the demigods order, passing it on to them, before looking back at the palm of my hand, my eyebrows knitted together in confusion.

Finally, my tattoo seemed to remember what it was used for, rearranging the numbers until it became more manageable. I pulled a face, before working out the equation step by step and writing the answer down each time on the side of my coursework as I tried to work out what it was being used for.

It took three more breaks in between customers, and two wrong answers, before I finally got the right one. The number that I had just written down glowed green momentarily, before the entire tattoo wiped clean and replaced with an equation that was far more familiar to my eyes.

∘☽༓☾∘

This continued on. Each day, I would get a new weird, slightly concerning, extremely difficult, not to mention highly detrimental to my mental health, equation that I would have to solve before my own equations appeared again. I was now beginning to be perfectly sure that they weren't my equations, or future equations, which brought up the questions, who's were they?

"Are you coming?"

"Yeah!" I wrote the final answer down, giving myself a mental high-five as it glowed green, before running out of the door with a bag over my back. Reyna was waiting at the door of the barracks, sunglasses covering her eyes as she grinned at me. "Finally! A day off and I just want to lie in the sun and not do anything."

"Sounds like a plan." Reyna giggled, both of hooking our arms together as we headed for the beach that lay by the Little Tiber river. It was our first simultaneous day off in forever, and we both just needed to unwind and relax a little. "Gods, it feels so nice to not have to do anything."

I hummed in agreement, waving at others I knew who were already lying on the beach. They sent salutes back, before we found an open spot and threw our stuff onto the ground. I rolled out my towel, lying on top of it, as I pulled my shirt off and basked in the sun with a sigh. It was so nice to not have to do anything.

"Didn't know you got a new tattoo. When was that?" I opened one eye at Reyna's words, before she nodded at my stomach. I sat up more, looking down at my stomach and seeing another set of equations, with answers written in black ink beneath them.

"No, it's not one of mine. Haven't had the time to get one." I replied, reading the equations carefully before my eyes went wide. "These are the problems that I needed to solve for my assignment!"

I laughed at that, making a note of the answers before they faded away. Reyna raised an eyebrow at me, waiting for me to say something.

"What?" She shrugged.

"Don't you wonder who you're connected with?" I paused, thinking the question over, before lying back down. "I'd be curious to know about it."

"I don't know really. Of course, I'm curious. Who wouldn't be?" She nodded, lying down beside me. "But, like, it could be some random demigod that I've never met before. What if it's a creep?"

"Would a creep be helping you out with your business homework?"

"Probably not. You raise a good point."

"I've been known to make them," We both laughed, before falling silent as the sound of children screaming and splashing around in the water and adults chattering reached our ears. It was peaceful and quiet.

For a moment, it felt like we weren't on the brink of war once more, that we were back when everything was much more simple.

"I was wondering," Reyna broke the silence first, as I applied some more sun cream to my body. "I need someone to go to Camp Half-Blood and deliver some messages in person, check to see how everything's going over there. I thought you might like to do it."

"Why me?"

You haven't been since the previous war," I pulled a face, lying back on the ground as I ignored Reyna's imploring eyes. She called my name and I sighed.

"What about the café? And my degree? I can't really up and leave in the middle of those." I pointed out. "Maybe I just don't want to travel half way across the country."

"One of the others can surely take over running the café, and your lecturers will understand," I sighed at Reyna's words, causing the woman to grin. "If not, just tell them that the Praetor commanded it. Can't really argue with that. You always said you wanted to go and see New York, so take the chance. One of us should have a holiday."

"You're tempting me with this." I replied, laughing at the thought. "Fine. I'll go and deal with all of that."

"You are a lifesaver and I love you for it."

∘☽༓☾∘

Camp Half-Blood was completely different from Camp Jupiter, both in the location, the people and how it was set out. The last time I had been there, we were fighting and it hadn't been a particularly pleasant experience.

But now, I appreciated that I was able to come back here in times of peace to admire it.

"You must be the Roman messenger," I wrinkled my nose, before nodding and shaking the blonde girl's hand. They'd sent her to meet me and I appreciated it, still not sure quite how their camp worked. "Annabeth Chase."

"Pleasure. I was told to come and hand some plans over to Chiron, yourself and a Leo Valdez? Reyna said it was from the children of Vulcan at our end." I explained, patting my bag.

"Oh, thank the gods. We've been waiting for these," I passed her the large amount of paper from my bag, following her down the hill and through the strawberry fields. Looking around, I picked a ripe one, nibbling on it as we reached a large, three storey house, painted sky blue. "Chiron!"

An older man sat in a wheelchair, his eyebrows furrowed as he looked at the board in front of him. His hair looked like someone had taken a salt and pepper shaker to it, though he turned to smile at us as soon as we came into view.

"Annabeth! And this must be our Roman messenger," I shook his hand, telling him my name in the process. "It's a pleasure. You brought the new plans I see?"

"Yes, Reyna sends her regards as well," I told him. "She would have delivered them herself but we're a little busy on our end."

"It's quite alright," Chiron smiled, motioning for us to take a seat at the table. "Ah, I see that Leo is late."

"Probably got caught up on working. You know how he is," Annabeth said, though she seemed distracted as she flicked through the plans. "They've had a good idea for the Hermes cabin's new upgrade, designed to look a bit like one of their barracks. Optimises space."

"Starting without me?" I looked up at the male voice, watching as a boy strolled towards us. He had a grin on his face that screamed trouble, his brown hair a mess a top his head and oil splatters on his shirt. "Oh, hi. Roman messenger?"

"That's me," I smiled, raising my hand for him to shake. He looked at it, before quickly wiping his own on his shirt to try and get rid of the grime and dirt that had accumulated on it, presumably from working on some project or another. I could bet he was a child of Vulcan.

"Hey," He trailed off, before turning my hand over to look at the palm of it. "No way."

"What?" The boy, who I now assumed was this Leo Valdez that Annabeth had mentioned, pulled his shirt up slightly until I could see the outline of a equation on his stomach. My eyes widened, seeing the horrible letters and numbers and weird symbols that could only mean one thing. "You!"

"That doesn't sound good," Leo winced at my glare, stepping back quickly as my eyes went wide.

"Do you know how horrid your equations were? Every morning, I had to work through them and I had to learn so much maths to do it!" He laughed at that, his head tilting back as I glared at him.

"Oh, you got my equations for..." He couldn't finish the sentence because he was laughing so hard. "I'm so sorry."

"I've never felt so dumb in my life,"

"I know!" He replied, the both of us staring to laugh. "Your work was such a nice break from all of that."

"Are we missing something here?" Annabeth asked, having stopped reviewing the plans to look between the two of us.

"I'll fill you in later," Leo replied, before turning to look at Chiron. "Do you need me here or can I...?"

He motioned to leave, and Chiron nodded, causing Leo to grin.

"You're the best," Leo replied, before grabbing onto my hand and pulling me off of the porch and taking me down towards the main part of the camp. I yelped, not used to being dragged along but accepting it as the teenager turned back to grin at me. "I've got to show you what the equations were for! You're going to love it."

∘☽༓☾∘

epilogue

"I'm home!" I shouted over the loud sounds from the back shop of the garage. There was no reply, not that I really expected one. Placing the shopping away, I opened the door to the warehouse behind the house, ducking as Festus shot a spurt of flames at me. "Not an intruder! It's me! Gods above!"

"Festus!" The dragon spluttered, choking out black smoke as I winced and prayed that he hadn't singed my eyebrows off. He'd done that once and I didn't leave the house for a good few days. "Sorry!"

"I'm not burnt, so it's fine," Leo appeared from behind the dragon. The son of Hephaestus's shirt was wrapped around his waist, hanging below his tool belt as I watched the tattoo of the Argo II fly around his bicep. "I got the groceries. I brought some stuff to make pizza tonight for movie night."

"That sounds perfect," He replied, wrapping an arm around my waist to pull me in for a kiss as I struggled for a moment.

"Leo! You're covered in dirt," Leo didn't respond, peppering kisses all over my face as I laughed hysterically at the feeling, trying to push him away gently. "Stop it, you dork!"

"Can't I kiss my girlfriend?" I scrunched my face up. "Oh, made something for you whilst I was waiting."

"What?" He handed me a necklace. "What does it do?"

"It turns into a calculator," Leo's smile turned troublemaking as my eyes narrowed. "I saw that it took you longer than normal to finish the equation."

"You are so lucky that I love you," I glared at him, pinching at his sides as he dodged. "I was driving! Did you want me to crash?"

"I could always make you a self-driving car," His expression turned serious a moment later and I recognized it immediately. "That could work. I'd need to add the sphere to the panel control."

"No, no, no," I pressed a kiss to his lip, stopping him from rambling as I took the tool belt from him and began to drag him out. "If you get started on this, I'll never be able to remove you from your workshop and we've got movie night tonight."

"I suppose I'll do it tomorrow," He murmured, as I grinned, pressing another kiss to his lips, before untangling the goggles from his hair.

"Test it out on one of the spare cars before mine, yeah?"

"Yeah, course," Leo followed me back into the house, toeing his shoes off at the door. "Wouldn't dare risk you getting into the car if it hadn't been tested."

"Thanks, sweetheart," I replied, as he nodded. "Now can you please go and shower?"

"Are you saying I stink?"

"Yes,"

"That's fair,"

∘☽༓☾∘

Hiya,

So, Leo oneshot and I quite liked that they kept seeing one another's problems that they couldn't solve, and the other could help. Also, I feel like Reyna is just a lot of fun to be around. Anyhow, this was cute and I loved it so send me more Leo requests, as well as Frank, because I will love it.

Requests are open (and I'm writing the requests I've got at the moment, don't worry). Next up is a certain daughter of Aphrodite. Let me know what you think,

Love Li xx