Inspired by Community S4E8: "Herstory of Dance."

Leo POV

Leo can get by pretty well on a night of poor sleep. He pulls accidental all-nighters when he gets wrapped up in a particularly fascinating project, and not without consequences. Still, he's the guy that can chug a couple of Monster Energy drinks and be on his merry way by about noon. Beyond that, he maintains a regular bedtime of about two or three in the morning, unless he has an assignment due. In that case, he'll pull the aforementioned all-nighter.

In conclusion, Leo can recover from that kind of thing with minimal hardships.

His friends, on the other hand, cannot, but he would be a bad friend if he let them miss the MythoMagic: The Movie midnight premiere for that full eight hours of sleep they seem to enjoy so much.

Hazel takes a sip from her coffee. She never drinks coffee. "Piper, why are there two of you?"

Piper doesn't answer. She is asleep on the table. Leo knows this because she snores a little, but not nearly as badly as Jason. He should probably take his roommate to a doctor soon.

Frank slips out of his chair a little and grabs Jason for support, but accidentally takes him down with him. "Shoot, sorry. I'm just so dang tired."

"You said it, man," Jason agrees. "I'm not so sure I needed to be up that late."

Annabeth snorts. "You mean you didn't need to learn about the power of friendship?"

"I did not need to learn about the power of friendship," Jason complains. "I think we were the only people in that theater without children."

"Hey, Katie Gardner doesn't have kids, and I think I saw her there with Travis," Leo interjects.

"They were babysitting his cousins," says Hazel. She gags on her coffee and then pushes the cup to the center of the table.

Percy clears his throat. "I liked seeing the power of friendship in action."

Here they go again. The movie sucked, a fact even Leo will admit. He thought they'd spend the morning commiserating about a wasted time and it would turn into an inside joke they'd reference randomly on the discussion board assignments Mr. Brunner likes assigning to their history class. It did not turn into an inside joke because Percy genuinely enjoyed the movie. At first, Leo thought Percy's comments might be sarcasm because he has trouble picking up on that sort of thing in other people and Percy tends to be a sarcastic guy, but that was not the case. Percy thought Chris Pratt was the perfect choice for Pegasus, laughed at the minions dressed as gladiators at the beginning credits, and even begged the group to stay through the credits in case there was a post-credit scene.

There was no post-credit scene. There was only the tacky song that The Weeknd wrote for the movie. The Weeknd should not be writing songs for children's movies. He should stick to his sexytime music.

Leo is snapped out of his thoughts when Jason scolds Percy. "Dude, they defeated Kronos with their friendship, and then when Pegasus died, he came back to life when someone cried on him."

Percy beams. "Magical tears of friendship..."

Annabeth facepalms. "You are such an idiot. Back me up, Pipes."

Piper snores because she is out cold. For someone who claims to not be like other girls, she sure does need her beauty sleep.

And as if this morning couldn't get any worse, Dean D barges into the study room dressed like Rosie the Riveter, and for some reason, Leo feels like this is offensive.

"Good morning, brats. Oh, coffee." He takes Hazel's coffee and chugs the rest of it before throwing it away in the trash can. It's fine. She wasn't going to drink that anyway.

He clears his throat and then addresses the tired study group. "Aren't you going to ask me what I'm doing here dressed in drag so early?"

Frank rubs his eyes. "I don't believe anything I'm experiencing right now is real. I might be in my REM cycle. I might be hallucinating because I'm so tired. Who the hell knows."

"Well, I'm here to announce New Rome's first-ever Sadie Hawkins dance," says the dean.

Hazel says dreamily, "Oh, that's nice."

Jason cocks an eyebrow. "Is this like the time you tried to throw a Barack Obama-themed dance?"

"No," says the dean. "The board said I need to reach out to the feminist community on campus, so we're having a dance where the girls will ask the boys."

Annabeth sits back in her seat and crosses her arms. "How will you account for students in same-sex relationships? How about non-gender conforming folks?"

Dean D rolls his eyes. "Yes, you can take another girl or a they/them to the dance, Annie Bell. Don't get your panties in a twist."

"I think that might be misogynistic," Percy says. "We talked about that in my gender studies course."

"Whatever."

Annabeth isn't done. "And doesn't this imply that women need to have dates to go out and have a good time? We really should be past this as a college, don't you think, Dean?"

"You could have raised your concerns had you joined the committee that's been meeting biweekly since October."

"You know what?" Annabeth says, her drowsiness disappearing. "I'll plan my own stupid dance! Yeah! Screw your gender norms, Dean D!"

"What is it the kids say these days?" Dean D asks. "Oh, yes. You do you, Anastasia."

"Maybe I will, Dean. Maybe. I. Will."

The dean leaves because he only came into the study room to bother the group about some lame dance that Leo probably won't get asked to. At least it'll spare him the embarrassment of rejection.

"Frank?" Hazel asks. "Would you like to go to Sadie Hawkins with me?"

Frank shrugs. "Sure. As long as I don't have to dress in drag. I can't pull it off as well as the dean."

Hazel giggles and starts rambling about dresses and corsages and all that mushy stuff that people who have dates to dances do.

Annabeth bangs her fist on the table, effectively waking Piper up.

"What?" she groans, still groggy from sleep. "Did I miss something?"

"You're helping me plan an anti-dance."

"There's a dance?"

"There's two now," Annabeth says.

Piper wipes some drool off the corner of her mouth. "Whatever you say."

"Come on, Piper."

"Where are we going?" Piper asks.

Halfway out the door, she replies, "We're going to the residence life office for some streamers and posters and shit."

"But we're not RAs!" Piper yells as she chases her friend out of the study room.

"Can I borrow your blue blazer?" Jason asks Percy. "I feel like it would be nice for a winter dance."

"The pants won't fit you," he answers.

"I'm not asking for the pants."

"Fine."

"Can I come over and try it on?"

Percy throws his backpack over his shoulder and teases, "You just want to play Smash."

"Of course, I want to play Smash. Let's go."

And with that, the bros leave Leo alone at the mercy of the world's mushiest gushiest couple.

They're staring at him. Does he have food in his teeth? No, he couldn't; he hasn't opened his mouth this whole time.

"Take a picture. It'll last longer," Leo says.

"Are you going to the dance?" Hazel asks.

"Which one?"

"Either."

"Probably not."

Hazel frowns. "Why not?"

Because I can see that this situational comedy is turning into a romantic comedy in which I have somehow become the funny single friend whose only discernable personality trait is being a complete failure at relationships.

"Because I don't want to start a riot. You know what happens when the ladies get a taste of the Super-Sized McShizzle in formal attire," Leo jokes. And then because he's curious as to why Frank and Hazel would want him to crash their date night, he asks, "But why?"

"Hazel has this idea," Frank says.

"Let us set you up!" she says.

Oh, great. Now they think because they've found love, everyone deserves to feel it too and they feel bad for any single people out there.

But still, Leo's Lonely Hearts Club Band hasn't put out a good album in a while—metaphorically speaking—and he only needs to attend one more school dance to get the free t-shirt.

"Who're you thinking of?" he asks.

Frank starts, "Well, there's this-"

"We're still thinking," Hazel says.

Leo tugs on his sweatshirt strings and tells the tooth-rottenly happy couple, "Sure, but it won't be easy finding someone good enough for this Bad Boy Supreme."

Frank chuckles. "You're the one always saying the ladies love a bad boy. I'm sure there'll be plenty of options."

Leo's not so sure of that, but his friends think they're up for the challenge, and he's not quite ready to download Hinge.

✎✎✎

"Leo! Hey!" Jason says, waving from the printer in the corner of the library.

Leo knows what he's about to ask for. That printer has a photo of Bob Marley on it because-

"It's always jamming!" Jason complains when Leo reads the screen on the machine.

"Yeah," Leo agrees. "You didn't think to use the other printer?"

He groans. "Cecil is printing out his computer science textbook. Final exams are next week, for crying out loud! How has he not even looked at the textbook until now?"

Leo takes the paper out of the printer and then notices the half-finished text. "What's all this about?" he asks.

Jason's voice drops to a whisper. "Listen, she'll never admit it, but Piper's a hopeless romantic. I'm trying to come up with a cute way to ask her to the dance, and I thought one of those compliment jars would be—you know—meaningful or whatever."

Leo raises an eyebrow. "A what?"

"Basically, I fill the jar with a ton of compliments, memories, and stuff like that, and I'll label it 'a jar of reasons to ask you to... whatever Annabeth's dance is called,' and I'll give it to her and hopefully she'll say yes."

"Hopefully?"

"Did I mention that my girlfriend is a hopeless romantic?"

He did mention that his girlfriend is a hopeless romantic.

Leo pushes some buttons and then blows into the paper tray, coughing when the dust tickles his nose.

He holds out his hand for the stack of blank computer paper he passed to Jason for safekeeping.

"Oh." Jason passes the papers to Leo, who situates them on the tray.

The printer whirs to life and Jason's tacky notes for Piper emerge, hot off the press.

Jason grabs the stack of paper and presses his palm against the top piece. "Nothing like warm paper."

Leo nods because he gets it. What he doesn't get is using all the colored ink to print out a bunch of notes for a girl who probably already knows she has a nice smile.

He turns to go back to his work, but Jason just isn't done with him. "Think you can spare one more favor?"

"Depends."

"I'm trying to put on his big show of asking her to the dance and I was hoping for some help setting up the-"

"Nope," says Leo. "That would be too much like a rom-com. This is a sitcom."

Jason chuckles. "Whatever, man. If you don't want to help, you don't have to. I'll just get Percy to help with the confetti canons."

"Okay, just make sure you use paper confetti 'cause Piper will lose her shit if you use something that isn't biodegradable." With that, he takes a seat at the work desk he found by the window—his favorite spot—and pulls up the study guide his mechanical engineering buddies shared with him on Google. It's flashcard time, baby!

After converting the entire thing into that nice dyslexia-friendly font, eating a mint, playing the dinosaur game because the internet went out, and then choosing just the right pen, he's ready to write down his vocabulary words.

"Thought I'd find you here!" Frank says. "Can I borrow you for a second?"

"I've got this huge final exam for my mechanical engineering class and if I don't pass I might not graduate on time-"

"It'll only take a minute." He smiles and clasps his hands together, nervously glancing at something next to him.

Accepting that this just isn't his day, Leo leans back in his chair and crosses his arms. "What's so important? I don't have Lactaid on me if you chose to eat the soft serve. I mean, come on, man, that's on you at this point-"

"No! I mean, yeah, I did if you happen to come across some Ginger Ale, but there's someone I want you to meet," he says.

"Who?"

"Leo, meet Echo."

"Echo!"

"Ah! Jesus Christ!" Leo swears. How did he not see that girl standing right next to Frank? It's like she was camouflaged with the bookshelves or something.

Frank facepalms. "And Echo... meet Leo."

"Nice to meet you," Leo says. He holds out his hand but immediately retracts it when he realizes he's covered in ink from the pen he tried to fix.

Echo pushes a strand of hair behind her ear. "Nice to meet you." She's plain, but she isn't unpretty. Sure, if they end up hitting it off, Leo's going to struggle to pick her out in a crowd, but she has nice blue eyes. He stares for a minute, taking in the zit on her chin and her plain white t-shirt and jeans. He's never been the best at reading people, but Echo is especially hard to read. Still, she might be nice to hang out with for a night.

Leo should probably ask her a question. "So, are you more into the dean's dance or Annabeth's weird alternative dance?"

"Annabeth's weird alternative dance?"

"I mean, I guess I am friends with the girls putting it together," Leo says, "so we should probably pick that one."

"We should probably pick that one," she says, her eyes darting between the floor and Leo's shirt. She won't make eye contact. That's good. Leo can't say he's a fan of eye contact.

And she's agreeable. That's always a plus considering Leo's eccentric lifestyle. "Cool. So I'll see you there."

"See you there." Like a tacky eighties movie transition, Echo just fades away back into the bookshelf.

Leo squints to see where she went off to.

"I promise she's a lot cooler one on one," Frank says. "She's just nervous."

"Who wouldn't be nervous around this?" Leo says, gesturing to his scrawny body.

Frank chuckles and then promises to leave him alone to his work, even wishing him luck on his test.

Leo clicks the button on his pen and starts to write on his notecard in blue ink.

"Oh, Leo!"

He knows that sing-song voice anywhere. "Hey, Hazel, what's going on? I'm studying for a test."

"I found you a date!"

Shoot. He thought Frank and Hazel picked Echo out together. He can't go to the dance with two girls. "Actually, I..."

And then he stops himself.

He wants his life to be a sitcom again. Sitcoms are about the power of potentially toxic friendships, not about all your friends hooking up with each other and pretending you don't know.

Then, his brain does a little scan of his extensive library of comedies: The Office, The Brady Bunch, Saved by the Bell, Community, Sex and the City, Cheers... They all have something in common—something Leo hasn't tried yet.

The gears in his brain start turning, start tuning out Hazel's speech about how she found some Canadian exchange student on a student Facebook group and-

The two-timer date trope.

"Yes," he says automatically. "What's her name?"

"Khione. She likes to watch hockey and she's interested in-"

"Great," says Leo. "Tell her I'll meet her at the dean's Sadie Hawkins dance."

"Leo?" Hazel asks. "Are you up to something?"

"Nope."

She raises an eyebrow. "Have you spoken to Frank yet? We had some disagreements about who you should take to the dance and I just want to make sure one of us lets him down easy."

"Don't worry," Leo says. "I've got it covered."

"Thanks so much, Leo!" she squeaks.

And finally, Leo is left alone to his work. He starts to write the first vocabulary word and then looks around the library with suspicion before flipping it over to write the definition. At this rate, anything could become a distraction from the task at hand.

Jason is sitting at a table cutting the paper he printed for his big production of a proposal, humming some old One Direction song to himself as he does so.

Hazel's half-brother Nico is in the stacks on his hands and knees looking for something under the shelves. Hopefully, he finds it soon, because Leo is not about to get roped into looking for it.

Butch Walker is at the desktop computer in front of Leo Googling photos of rainbows and downloading them to a folder called "MACHO STUFF."

That guy Clovis from Leo's Intro to Duct Tape Crafts class is passed out face-first in a Chick-fil-A sandwich.

The coast is clear. It's time to grind. Leo Valdez is about to get so much freaking work done.

"Look, I know you've got this big test coming up, but I need to make sure you're not about to do something stupid," Jason says, leaning onto the desk.

"I'm being stupid by not studying for my final."

"Everyone knows you procrastinate until the night before," Jason hisses. "Now, are you taking two different girls to the same dance or not?"

Leo folds his arms over his chest. "No. As a matter of fact, I'm taking two different girls to two different dances... on the same night and at the same time."

Jason frowns, the scar on his lip contorting with it. "We really need to talk about your sitcom impulse."

"What's there to talk about?"

✎✎✎

Probably because of his soft spot for Annabeth, Mr. Brunner at the Campus Activities Office approved her alternative dance for the same time and location as Dean D's Sadie Hawkins dance. How does this work? It shouldn't work, not without cross-contamination of decor and attendees, but as it turns out, a red line of duct tape down the center of the dining hall works wonders. It's like Leo's in a bubble and there's no such thing as Annabeth's anti-dance. The only feature they're sharing is Austin Lake, the student DJ who has no idea if he's allowed to take requests from both dances, but has no qualms against playing "Baby Got Back."

Dean D went all out with the decor. Blue and white balloon arches decorate the floor, and paper snowflakes and twinkling Christmas lights hang from the ceiling. It's the perfect winter wonderland.

"And that's the story of how I ghosted my ex-boyfriend," Khione says, "but I mean if you're not going to give me one hundred percent of your attention one hundred percent of the time, you're missing out, and I deserve better."

Shoot. Leo was not listening to any of that. Then again, can you blame him? He's been in this one-sided conversation with Khione for only about ten minutes, but he's already learned her entire medical history including STDs, and all about her ex-boyfriend's poor performance in bed. He doesn't like to pass judgment on people so quickly, but he's starting to think she might be a bad person.

Then again, he's not very good at getting a read on people, so he's probably just overreacting. This is normal. A girl can disclose her ex's penis size on a first date.

Plus, she's drop-dead gorgeous. Her platinum blonde hair and light blue dress give her this frosty vibe that says "Elsa from Frozen." Most people find it weird when Leo compares them to cartoon characters, but Khione liked that, so she can't be all that terrible.

"Gee, it's getting kind of hot in here," Leo says. "I'm going to go hang up my coat."

The other point of crossover between the two dances is the coatroom, which is just a supply closet with some coatracks and hangers in it, but nonetheless, it's a coatroom. It's fancy.

Leo takes off his Doctor Who-inspired trenchcoat and passes it to the young woman tending to the coats. "Could you not put it next to that one that looks like a Muppet hide? Thanks," he says to her.

She grunts some kind of greeting and hangs that coat up next to what might have once been Elmo's skin. Then, she sits back down on top of an old cooler and opens her book back to the page she has marked.

She isn't very nice. At least Khione wanted to talk to him.

But she's just the nerdy coat girl, and Leo isn't going to Annabeth's dance with her. He's going with that nervous girl Echo that Frank found for him.

Leo switches his outfit up a little, swapping his emerald fedora out for a maroon velvet one, and losing the suspenders as well.

He turns to the coat girl again. "One of my friends left a blazer here for me. It's grey with checks on it."

The girl slams her book shut and glares at him. She stands up and rifles through the various coats for Leo's borrowed blazer, but she sure isn't happy about it.

She thrusts her arm out, a hanger and the blazer on the other end. "There you go."

"Thanks." He shrugs the blazer on and cracks his knuckles because he's pretty sure he hears the Wobble and he cannot wait to bust some more moves.

At first, he can't spot Echo in the crowd. He was afraid this would happen. She's just so good at blending in. How's he supposed to check another sitcom trope off his list if he can't even find his other date?

Then she waves.

"Echo, hey," he says.

"Hey..."

So they're back to this repeating-everything-Leo-says thing. He doesn't completely mind, but he feels sort of rotten about not being able to tell Jason anything about this girl.

Leo feels himself sweating in his blazer, but he can't take it off. He has to commit to having a different outfit for each dance.

Looking around the room, he realizes he certainly chose the right fedora for Annabeth's dance. Red streamers leftover from last year's Valentine's Day dance litter the floor and there are cutouts of cacti and cow skulls on the wall, leftover from the Western Dance-A-Thon for pediatric cancer awareness that Dean D hosted last month.

Romantic Cowboys isn't exactly a conventional theme, but Leo likes it. Khione wouldn't like it though.

Speaking of, Leo needs to go back to the Sadie Hawkins dance and like, dance with Khione or something, so he offers to get Echo a cup of punch and dances his way over to his coatroom headquarters.

"Hello," he says to that grouchy coatroom girl. "I'd like to check my blazer."

She looks up from her book. "I know what you're doing."

Shoot. Now she thinks he's a horrible person, and to be fair, he's not exactly doing a nice thing, but he's not the one being outwardly mean. "Uh, you do?"

"You're doing the two-time date. Classic trope," she says, picking at her long caramel-colored braid.

She's going to tell, and it'll be justified.

"I want in."

"What?"

She holds up her book, revealing it to be a Christian Bible. "Do you really think I want to sit around and read the Bible? I'm not even Christian."

"Uh..."

"That was a rhetorical question," she says, pulling the blazer off the rack and handing it to him.

"Sorry," Leo says. "I don't always pick up on those."

"S'okay," she says. "I'm Calypso."

He accepts her handshake and introduces himself.

"I know," she says. "You're kind of a campus legend."

"I am?"

She snorts. "Don't get so full of yourself. It's just because you're the guy behind the camera."

Leo puts his suspenders back on and explains, "I'm sort of the guy in front of it today." Then, he turns to go back to his date with Khione.

"Wait!" Calypso says. "You're wearing the wrong hat."

"Huh." Leo swaps his red fedora for the green one. "Guess I could use your help. Thanks... Calypso."

And with that, he's back at the Sadie Hawkins dance with Khione, who won't stop complaining about how Malcolm accidentally stepped on her designer shoe when his boyfriend Connor spun him around too fast.

Leo nods and offers some words of agreement, and then says, "Yeah, I'm gonna get some water. Would you like anything?"

"Just a cup of ice," Khione says. "I like to chew on it."

Leo resists the urge to call her a psychopath and then runs off to swap outfits again.

Calypso is waiting for him in the coatroom, his red hat and grey blazer set out. "How'd it go?" she asks.

"Awful! Don't let me go on a second date with that woman."

She rolls her eyes and chuckles. "She can't be that bad."

"She won't stop complaining about her designer shoes and her ex-boyfriends," Leo groans.

Calypso crinkles her nose, causing her glasses to slip. "Okay, I rescind my previous statement. She sounds like a total bitch."

Leo smiles. It's nice to have a partner in crime.

She clears her throat and opens her Bible. "Don't you have another date to be on?"

"Oh, right." He's not sure how he could have forgotten about Echo and his two-timing mission.

As he struggles to pick out his date in the crowd, he overhears a conversation between Annabeth and Dean D.

"Well, I sure am looking forward to seeing how you'll wiggle your way out of this one, Abigail."

"Jesus, that isn't even close!" Annabeth yells. "And it's gonna happen! Somehow..."

Dean D crosses his arms. If this were a cartoon, steam would probably be pouring out from his ears. "You cannot insinuate to a bunch of college kids that Mason Ramsey is going to make an appearance at your weird alternative dance and then not follow through!"

Leo doesn't have time to unpack all of that, but it seems like Annabeth might have accidentally locked herself into a sitcom plot of her own.

At last, he finds her. Is it just him, or is it getting harder to pick her out? "Ready for another dance?" he asks.

Echo nods. "Dance!"

He boogies a little bit to a Lady Gaga song, and then spins Echo so hard, he loses her in the crowd. It's a perfect opportunity to run back to the coatroom and do another switcheroo with Calypso.

"Everything's laid out!"

"Cool. Cool, cool, cool." Leo takes off the blazer and replaces it with his suspenders.

"Is your other date any better?"

"Who? Oh, Echo."

"You couldn't remember her name?"

Leo frowns. "See here's the thing: she's nice, but she doesn't have any discernable personality."

"Harsh."

"I've been told I tend to be brutally honest."

Calypso nods slowly. "You do, but I can't say it isn't refreshing."

He swaps his outfit and then brings Khione that glass of ice he promised. Once he's through watching her eat all of it, he figures it's time to pay Calypso another visit.

"Where are you going?" she asks.

He makes up some bullshit excuse about having to pee and then goes back into the closet.

"That was a fast one," Calypso notes.

"Do you think I should have stayed longer?"

"Depends. Are you trying to get caught?"

"Isn't that what usually happens on TV?"

The corner of Calypso's mouth turns up. She shakes her head as she retrieves the blazer from the closet.

And when he leaves the coatroom, he comes face to face with Frank and Hazel, the happy couple responsible for this episode of Leo's life at New Rome Community College.

"Hey!" he says. "I thought you guys were going to the dean's dance."

Frank shrugs. "Yeah, but then we heard that Annabeth got Mason Ramsey to perform only for people at her dance."

"Is that the yodeling Walmart kid?"

"Yes," says Hazel. "Yes, it is, and we are all wondering what he's been up to since he went viral."

"Speak for yourself!" Percy shouts, having eavesdropped on their conversation. "I've been practicing my two-step!"

"Very cool, Percy," says Frank.

"A lot of people are leaving Dean D's dance for this one now," says Hazel. "I thought Annabeth's dance was going to be a bust."

Now this poses a threat to Leo's double date, and he's not quite ready for the charade to be over.

"Are you having a fun time with Khione?" Hazel asks.

Frank furrows his eyebrows. "Wait, Khione? What about Echo?"

That's Leo's cue to leave!

"Calypso!" he pants as he bursts into the coat room. "They're on to me."

"Rising action, much?" she asks. This woman is so meta. Where has she been all this time? Does she even go to New Rome?

This is no time for questions. "Pass me my other hat, will ya?"

Calypso hands the hat over, and Leo is ready to go!

"Wish me luck-"

"Wait!" Calypso holds Leo's suspenders in the air. "Forgetting something?"

"Shoot, thanks so much!" He takes the suspenders from her and snaps them onto the belt loop just above his ass because that one is always the hardest to reach. Then, he pulls the right side over his shoulder but accidentally drops it down to his ankle. He swears and reaches for it, but Calypso rushes in.

"I've got it," she says, hooking the suspenders to his belt loops and tugging them over his shoulders. She doesn't need to do that. It's really not necessary. Her fingers linger on Leo's waist and then she looks up at him, her dark eyes wide beneath her glasses. For some reason, Leo notices the redness creeping up her face and to her ears, which are decorated with earrings shaped like flowers. Her fingers are thin but calloused. There's dirt beneath her nails, which doesn't really complement the black ring around her middle finger, but then again, Leo's had grease up his nails since he could hold a hammer.

He backs away, and Calypso's hands drop from his waist. "Cool," he says. "I'm going to go dance with Khione."

"Oh, erm, have fun..." she trails off, twisting her ring.

"Thanks!" he calls behind him.

As he suspected would happen at some point when living out his sitcom fantasy, Frank and Hazel block his pathway back to the Sadie Hawkins dance, accompanied by...

"Oh shit," he swears as if he never saw this coming.

"Wanna tell us what's going on here?" Hazel asks.

"What's going on here?" Echo repeats.

The confrontation goes exactly how Leo anticipated, except with less slapping. He thought Khione would slap him at least. He's very disappointed to have not earned a bitch slap, but check! He did the two-time date trope. His college experience is practically complete. All he needs is a Christmas special, body swapping, a heist, a wedding, and some more meta stuff for sure. Also, there's the problem of being in his senior year and still not having been on a successful date. Sure, he'd like a girlfriend to cuddle and watch movies with, but at this point, he'll settle for a date that doesn't end in him not getting bitch slapped. Or a date that doesn't end in him getting bitch slapped. He can't afford to be picky anymore.

Now, he's got to go back to the coatroom and report to Calypso.

"It's all over," he says, "and I didn't even get slapped!"

The woman in the closet belches and takes her feet off the makeshift desk. It's not Calypso.

"Sorry to hear that, little dude!" Clarisse bellows. "You better get back out there though! You don't want to miss out on Annabeth's big failure. No freakin' way is Mason Ramsey going to yodel on this campus!"

"Where is Calypso?"

"Who?"

Leo balls his fists. "Calypso! The girl that was working the coatroom before you got here! The one with the caramel hair and short dirty fingernails and cute nerd glasses! Calypso!"

"Oh, yeah!" Clarisse says. "She's like, secretary of the Environmental Club or something dumb like that."

This stupid frat girl doesn't understand the urgency of the situation. "But where is she?" Leo begs.

"Oh, she left a few minutes ago for the parking lot. She was crying."

"Why was she crying?" Leo asks.

"I dunno," Clarisse says. "She blubbered something about a stupid boy. She forgot her jacket though."

Leo snatches the denim jacket from Clarisse, making sure not to lose any of Calypso's pins, and makes a beeline toward the parking lot.

"Leo, Annabeth's about to make an announcement—Hey, where are you going?" Percy asks, spilling his punch as Leo speeds by.

He doesn't even stop to apologize to Khione and Echo. He needs to get this jacket back to Calypso and tell her how the story ended.

It's freezing in the parking lot. He doesn't care.

Then he spots her by a little silver Mercedes.

"Calypso!" he shouts.

She turns around, her puffy eyes widening when she sees him. Shoot, she was crying. She sniffles and says, "Leave me alone."

"I brought your jacket." He helps her put the coat on and then picks up her asexual pride pin. "You dropped this."

"Oh, thank you." She takes the pin and pokes it through the pocket of her jacket.

"I'll leave you alone now," Leo says.

"Wait, I don't actually want that."

"But you said-"

"Sometimes, people say things they don't mean, Leo." Calypso's voice cracks as she speaks.

"I'm sorry you're upset," Leo says. "I'm also sorry because I'm not really good with feelings and I don't know how to respond to them."

She chokes on her laughter through her tears.

"Is there something I can do?"

She holds out her arms. "Can I please hug you?"

"Oh." Leo doesn't usually do the physical touch thing, but he supposes he could give it a try for this nice girl who helped him almost get bitch slapped. He opens his arms, not expecting to be borderline pummeled by this sad girl. "You good?" he asks.

She nods into his shirt, which is probably stained with her mascara. At least she wasn't wearing that much makeup. She shivers a little. She must be cold.

"Would you like to go back inside?" Leo asks.

"Just... hold me a little longer?" she asks.

So naturally, Leo's ready to hug her longer than what feels comfortable, but then she pulls away, and he's once again super confused. Why can't she say what she means?

"I'm sorry, this is probably really weird for you..."

Then Leo has this epiphany. This was never a sitcom. In trying so hard to keep his sitcom life, he was too meta and ruined it. That's why he never got his bitch slap.

Maybe if he'd gotten his bitch slap, he'd have realized it sooner.

This isn't a sitcom. This is a rom-com, and he might be okay with that.

"Calypso," Leo says. "I brought two girls to two different dances tonight, but I think I'd rather just go watch Annabeth apologize for promising Mason Ramsey with you."

She wipes her glasses against her t-shirt and smiles at him. "We can... We can catch a movie after that, right?"

"Totally, but I mean, she's my friend..."

Calypso pecks him on the cheek. "You're a good friend, Leo."

"I would hope so."

"Can we go back inside now?"

✎✎✎

Annabeth takes the stage and holds the microphone in front of her face. "Hey, guys-"

"Woo!" Silena shouts.

Travis cups his hands around his mouth and yells, "We love Mason Ramsey!"

"Um, so here's the thing..." she starts. Mason Ramsey is not going to come. There's no way she managed to get him on such short notice, and now this is going to be really awkward. Leo kind of wants to look up some movie times and ask Calypso if she's ready for their... their date?

"Hey," he whispers to her.

"Yeah?"

"Are we going on a date?"

Color rises to her cheeks as she says, "Depends. Are you buying the popcorn?"

"I don't like how it gets in between my teeth, but I'll buy you some gummy worms."

Calypso grabs his hand. "That sounds nice."

Percy struts onto the stage and takes the mic from Annabeth, who is sheet white with fear at this point.

She hisses something to him, probably something along the lines of, "What the hell are you doing, Seaweed Brain?"

"Everyone, put your hands together for Mason Ramsey!" Percy shouts and gestures to a fifteen-year-old boy in a leather jacket and cowboy boots.

"Oh my god, she actually got Mason Ramsey," Jason says to Piper.

"Ya done well, Beth," Clarisse says, offering a slow clap.

Leo looks at Calypso, who seems just as confused as he is.

Will Solace and Percy Jackson take the dancefloor and lead the group in a two-step, which is certainly out of pocket, but not unwelcome.

Piper takes advantage of the commotion and spills a flask into the punch.

Annabeth leans down into the microphone and sings the chorus of "Twang" with their special guest star.

Leo and Calypso hold hands and sway back and forth to the yodeling.

He forgot one important part of that two-timing date trope. Most of those situations end with the main character falling for a completely different person altogether, someone who sees his true colors and loves television about as much as he does. She's perfect, and he found her without Frank and Hazel's help.