Leo has a complicated relationship with bedrooms.
He’s only really had one, he thinks. The one back in an old apartment building in Texas, full of Lego and grease and Rune Goldberg contraptions. Where crayons littered the floor next to forgotten drawing of ships and robots and steel type Pokémon. His blankets were stained and worn, but they smelt like him, like his mother, like their machine shop. There was an old Eeyore plushie at his pillows, because for some reason Leo had felt seen when he saw the old donkey. Right next to it was Crane from Kung Fu panda, and at 6 years old he’d felt sure the two of them would have been best friends for some reason.
He figured he forfeited the right to feel at home the second his mother had died.
The first foster home he’d gone to he’d had to share the bedroom. It was a stark difference to his room, most of the floor taken up by beds instead of toys. None of the kids seemed to appreciate him leaving contraptions by the foot of his bed, so he stopped. There were remains of pencil marks on the wall, some that had been subjected to a harsh eraser. They persisted though, crude drawings of penises, simple flowers and a half-drawn Sasuke. The blankets were itchy, old in a way that made Leo’s skin crawl. He’d dreamt one night that Gaea had been rolling over him again, dirt scratching against his skin, and he woke up, fighting to get his blanket off. It had been the first time he ran away, feeling like there was fire flickering under his skin ready to jump out and burn. That feeling had only gone away after he’d jumped into a freezing river and nearly drowned.
Most of the bedrooms since then had followed that pattern. Shared with other kids who’s breathing kept him up at night, and bedding that stimulated his senses enough to keep him from sleeping. Sometimes he had a room to himself, but he could always see the traces of other kids, notches in the bed frames and stickers on desks. Afterwhile, it became comforting in a way. Knowing that he wasn’t the first and wouldn’t be the last to use a room. Sometimes he’d leave his own mark, a helicopter made out of pipe cleaners or a drawing of Klinkklang on the wall.
Camp Half Blood and the Waystation had been maybe the only places to come close to being his bedroom. His bed in both were full of machine parts, grease colouring their sheets more than the dye. Cabin 9 was the same as many foster homes, a place where he could hear his friends – his siblings – breathing. For some reason it hadn’t bothered him as much, maybe it was because there’d also always been machines humming in the background. Maybe not being completely alone had become reassuring to him. The Waystation gave him a room to himself when he moved in, and he’d mistakenly thought he could stay there forever. It had come already personalised, looking more like a workshop than a bedroom, and Leo had been grateful for the building’s apparent understanding of him.
The only other bedroom that felt quite as safe was Piper’s, where the walls were painted mint green and fairy lights decorated the roof. She had a wall full of photos of their friends, most of them having Leo himself in them, and sometimes whenever he was alone, he’d stare at them and think about how lucky he was to have found them. A weird feeling bloomed from his chest and would fill his body with a light warmth, one that reminded him of laughing with his mother instead of fire. Piper’s bed was full of pillows and plushies that they’d use to make pillow forts, or simply to throw at each other. Her dirty laundry decorated the floor until Thursdays, where she’d reluctantly gather them up to go wash. It had been where he’d stayed for quite a few sleepovers since Jason’s death, where they’d sneak a bottle of vodka and climb out the window onto her roof. They’d cry and laugh and reminisce and they’d fall asleep in each other’s arms, kicking the other periodically through the night. It was only then when the word family felt safe to him.
It's what made this new room so eerie. The walls were plain white. There were no dents or pencil marks, not even a spot where the paint had started to peel. The desk was simple and sleek, with a laptop sitting perfectly in the middle and a desk organiser to the left. Leo made sure to ignore it. The bed had slate grey sheets, and brushing his hand over them he could feel no lint. It was smooth, non-committal. Dead, in some weird sort of way. If he pressed his fingers into the mattress, he knew it would give way with little resistance, cupping his hand in a gentle embrace.
He pulled away before he could test that.
The window looked out into the backyard, and Leo was struck by how boring it looked. The grass was mowed flat, lined with sleek black fences. Neatly trimmed hedges lined them, dark green and empty. The only interesting thing there was a pool, which looked just like how it would in any other modern designed house. Rectangle and pristine with no character. There was something so alienating about being there. This was a house for wealthy people, one that rewarded a certain kind of conformity that Leo would never and could never adhere to. It was perfectly geometric and grey scale, and Leo was an inferno of reds and oranges with sharp edges and humming parts.
“How do you like it?” a voice pulled him from his thoughts, and Leo turned around rather abruptly to looked at Mrs. Thompson. There was an underlying hint of anxiety in her tone, and she stared at him like she was trying to read his mind. “I figured you could decorate it a little yourself.”
Leo thought back to his old Eeyore plushie and his Crane friend, back to all his foster homes who’s walls he’d left dented and blemished and all the blankets he’d stained with machine grease. He thought of cabin 9 and the Argo II where his bed was full of contraptions and screws. He thought of the Waystation, and the half-finished toys he’d started for Georgie and the piles of blueprints he thought up at 3am. He thought of photos and the taste of vodka and confessions of sorrow on his lips.
To damage this room in the same way seemed disrespectful, especially when he knew it wouldn’t last. To leave a mark that was so him in this perfectly sleek place would be wrong on such a fundamental level it made Leo’s skin want to crawl. But he couldn’t say that, he knew better than to expect Mrs Thompson to understand it. So instead, he smiled, ignoring how easily he fell back into lying.
“It’s great, thanks.”