vatheon | (no subject)

Who: Leo Valdez, and anyone coming to his birthday party!
When: July 4th
Where: Coral Corral 8, Demigod house
Style: Pick what you'd like.
Status: Open like Leo's presents will be

Today is the kind of day for a party. A birthday party. But not the birthday of a country, or anything, that would just be stupid, especially when there's no USA in Vatheon (The only country is Italy). No, today is Leo's birthday, and this is a surprise party for him.

There's a lot of planning and preparation that's gone into this. The inside of the house is covered in decorations, all thankfully not fish themed. There's a table for presents, and a table with food, including an enormous cake. There's even a birthday playlist in the background, though "You're A Grand Old Flag" seems to have gotten mixed in here and there.

A surprise party isn't complete without a surprise at the beginning, so when Leo gets into the house, everyone had better be ready to shout "surprise!" Other than that, though, there isn't much structure to the party. People are free to mingle, get food, give Leo presents in person, or get angry at him for all those pranks he pulled.

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Nothing more needs to be said about that. RoboEquius explains himself, even when Equius doesn't. Instead of continuing to contemplate that, Dirk decides to switch the topics. "so about those other presents I have," he says.

"Yeah, been wondering what they are all day. You really know how to keep me in suspense." He tries not to look too eager, but come on, this is Leo. He looks as excited about whatever the gifts might be as a kid on Christmas morning.

After a few quick rapped lines, a metal box drops out of Dirk's sylladex. The lock comes in the form of a puzzle. Dirk hands it over to Leo. "Here you go. Shouldn't take too long for you to figure this out." And it shouldn't. It just involves a little math.

It's a good thing that Leo's great at math and enjoys a good puzzle. It doesn't take him very long at all to unlock the box. But he doesn't open it just yet.

"Nothing's gonna jump out and bite me when I open it, is it?"

"Of course not." The way he says it might not inspire confidence, but there's nothing like airholes in the box to make Leo nervous.

Once Leo opens it, he'll find a very hipsterish hat as the first thing inside.

It could have been something mechanical that jumped out and bitten him. But maybe that's something only Leo would think of doing.

"You trying to tell me something, dude?" He asked, eying the hat.

"That's for you to decide. I'm not about to decode it for you." He does, however, take it out and drop it on Leo's head.

The part under the hat is a package wrapped in fish-themed Christmas wrapping paper.

"I'm thinking you're trying to tease me about that stupid curse." Thankfully, it didn't affect him like the one he'd worn during the hat curse. He was the same old Leo.

Leo pulls the wrapped gift out of the box. "Nice gift wrap." He grins as he carefully opens it. That wrapping paper is a gift in and of itself.

It's a very good thing, though it brings a question to mind. "What happened to that outfit of yours, anyway?" He hasn't seen Leo in it ever since. It's really too bad.

The box, once unwrapped, has a number of items in it. There's a copy of "Robots for dummies," that a post-it note on the front identifies is "as edited by Dirk Strider." There's a custom-made pocket knife, with lots of weird tools on it and the symbol of Hephaestus emblazoned on it in bronze. Each of the parts of it have been made whole, but have possible spaces for celestial bronze add-ons.

And at the very bottom is a bottle of lemon pledge.

"I still have it in my closet," he say with a shrug. "Not really the best thing to wear while messing around with tools." Which is something he does pretty much all the time. Even though the clothes didn't cost him anything, he doesn't want to ruin them with grease and oil.

Leo takes out the book and briefly flips through it. He's gonna have to give that a better look later, but it looks amusing to say the least. He notices the Lemon pledge lurking under the pocket knife and laughs. Then he inspects the pocket knife very carefully, checking out everything on it.

"This is really sweet. You made it, right? I'm impressed."

The intent behind it, that it's meant for him to add onto with the celestial bronze weapons doesn't go unnoticed. And it's probably the most thoughtful gift he's ever received.

He waffles for a moment on whether or not a fist bump is the appropriate response and decides it isn't enough. Not for gifts this well thought out. He moves in for a hug (a manly bro hug, of course) and says "Thanks, man."

"Course I made it." Making gifts is one of the things he always does for birthdays. It's easy to find something that sort of fits, but he's always figured that if you want to make a gift that actually works for a person, you make it yourself.

He doesn't get the chance to say anything else before Leo moves in to hug him, and for a few moments after that, he's too surprised to say anything. It's not that he doesn't want the hug. It's more that he's not sure what he wants to do with it. "It's what I do," he says finally.

"Yeah, well, it's a good thing I have until December to come up with a gift for your birthday. It's not gonna be easy to top this." He releases Dirk from the hug and maybe it went on a little too long for just a thank you hug.

If Dirk complains about it, he'll just say it was to help stave off the cold that was bound to come soon because of the stupid curse. If he doesn't complain, maybe that's something he can take as a good sign.

Like Dirk knows the boundaries on hugs. This one didn't go on long enough to make him (or hopefully Leo) uncomfortable, so he doesn't give a shit if it wasn't a "proper thank you hug." The fact that it warms them both up is a bonus he can't say he minds.

"Don't sweat it. I don't need anything special." In fact, getting birthday presents to him is usually more trouble than it's worth and he hasn't usually let his friends bother with it.

"Whether you need it or not isn't gonna change the fact that you're gonna get it. I will shove them at you and force you to open and accept them if I have to." He's not entirely sure how he'd accomplish the latter, but he hopes it doesn't come to the point where he needs to consider it.

"Did I say I was refusing? There's no need to go to those extremes." He's not about to say that he doesn't deserve presents, or something stupid like that. Just that Leo didn't have to go out of his way to get something. "I'll be waiting with bated breath all the way until winter."

"Just under five months, right? So not technically winter yet." He didn't need confirmation, Davesprite had already informed him. What he wanted was for Dirk to know he knew exactly when his birthday was.

Dirk gives him a thoughtful look from behind his shades. "You'll just have to find out, won't you." He wouldn't be surprised if Leo had learned the right day, since it wasn't difficult to find out. Sharing your birthday with two other guys tended to have that effect.