Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Even before Leo was getting chased through the streets by the police, he was having a pretty shitty day.

It all started when his foster mom, Lisa, was lecturing him about his grades in school for the umpteenth time.

"I just don't understand how you can get such low grades. Do you even try?" she chided him, waving his report card in his face.

"Yes! I study for all my tests and do all the homework," Leo always said this, but nobody ever believed him.

He just couldn't process the information like everyone else could. Every time he looked at the textbook, it was almost like the words danced around on the page, and he couldn't arrange them back properly.

Lisa had slapped him after he said that, and he fell backwards into a wall, "I'm sick of your lies! You either start getting your grades up, or I'll send you back into the system! Do you want that?"

Leo shook his head, blinking quickly to make sure his tears didn't fall, "No ma'am. I don't want that."

Lisa threw the report card in his face and stormed away. Leo stalked to his room with his head hung low, and when he walked through the door, he let the tears fall down his face.
It wasn't the first time this had happened, but Leo was determined to make it the last. He emptied his schoolbag of all of its contents, collected all of his clothes and personal items, not like he had much, and shoved them in. He didn't even think before opening the window and climbing out.

This was all just a part of his cycle; get put into a foster home, make a few friends, try to fit in with people who hated him, deal with a new family, eventually run away, live under a bridge or in a sewer for a few weeks, get caught by the police, and go to the next home. Wash, rinse, repeat.

He thought he had perfected his escape route, but the police officer who was six feet behind him said otherwise.

"JUST GIVE IT UP, VALDEZ!" The all too familiar voice of Officer Schmitt yelled from behind him.

"WE BOTH KNOW THAT'S NOT GONNA HAPPEN, BUDDY!" He yelled over his shoulder.

If only he hadn't been so cocky, he would've known to avoid the traffic cone in the middle of his path.

'Who the fuck puts a traffic cone in the street?' He asked himself as his face hit the pavement.

Just as he started to get up, he was thrown back down and placed into handcuffs.

'Dam it,' he chided himself as he stood up.

"Gotcha again, Valdez," Officer Schmitt bragged.

"Pleasure to see you too, Officer," he responded sarcastically with a smile pasted on his face.

"When are you gonna give up with all of this runaway delinquent nonsense?" He asked with aggravation evident in his voice.

"Probably when you stop chasing me," Leo responded with a crooked grin.

The officer rolled his eyes and called for a police car on his radio.

"Too tired to race me back to the cop car?"

"Shut up, Valdez."

Leo hated this. He hated being treated like shit by his foster families. He hated the people who bullied him. He hated running away and sleeping in the streets. He hated being chased by police officers and dragged to new places. He hated his Aunt Rosa for turning his family against him. And most of all, he hated himself for causing it in the first place.

"You're really starting to become a thorn in my side, Valdez. Why do you keep running anyway?" To Leo's surprise, the officer had a small amount of pity in his eyes. Leo hated that too.

"Why are you asking? It's not like you care."

"You're right, I don't. But I do hate running after ya every time, so do us all a favor and stop it."

"If it bothers you so much, then stop looking for me," Leo replied, his voice oozing with annoyance.

The officer opened his mouth to say something, but just then, the police car pulled up beside them and Leo was shoved into the back seat.

Wash. Rinse. Repeat.

*

Leo was in an office, sitting across from Officer Schmitt. Every surface of the room was covered in tall stacks of paperwork, and the walls were decorated with honorary plaques and medals.

Leo was used to offices that looked like this. Principal's offices, guidance offices, law enforcement offices-they all looked the same: boring and uninviting.
"Look, Valdez, I'm gonna give it to you straight," he started.

Leo's insides squirmed. 'I'm too pretty to go to jail!'

"The foster care system is tired of dealin' with ya, they're sick of huntin' you down every time you run away."

'Well, that's a shocker,' he thought.

"They wanted to send ya to Juvenile detention, but I talked 'em into something different: Boarding School," he made jazz hands when he said the last two words.

Leo's eyebrows shot up in alarm, "Boarding School?"

The officer grinned at him, and Leo squinted in return.

"It's technically a Wilderness School. It's in Nevada, and it's for kids like you who can't seem to stay out of trouble," he explained, sliding a pamphlet across the table.

Leo opened the pamphlet, and there were pictures of a small campus in the middle of an empty desert, surrounded by a barbed wire fence, and several intense-looking obstacle courses. A short man was holding a baseball bat, screaming orders at a line of sweaty kids running around on a track. And, worst of all, there was a paragraph describing 'educational field trips'. It looked utterly miserable.

Leo threw it onto the desk in disgust.

"You're sending me there?" He asked, pointing at the pamphlet.

The officer nodded smugly.

Leo's face fell. "I hope your wife leaves you."

Schmitt's eyes hardened. "You just added a month to your sentence."

"Fuck," he mumbled.

Schmitt smiled sickly, "That's 2 months."

"Okay! How long do I have to stay here?"

"Until I believe your behavior has been corrected."

"Okay, what if I correct my behavior now? I'll go back to my foster house, and I'll do good in school! I-I'll be good!" He nodded vigorously to get his point across.

The officer tilted his head; he had that same look in his eyes that he had earlier. As if he had a little pity for Leo.

"Look, kid, it's either you go here, or you go to juvy. Believe me, you'd rather go here."

They made eye contact for a few seconds until Leo broke it (he hated eye contact.) After going over every possible escape route in his head, he nodded in defeat.

"Okay, I'll go."

"Wonderful. I'll tell them to send a bus for you."

Leo slumped in his chair. He had been in a lot of bad situations before -homeless, living in a sewer, running from the cops, beaten up by bullies, screamed at by his Aunt Rosa, abused by his foster families- but this was the lowest he had been in a long time.

*

The bus smelled like corn chips and stale body odor. The bus was pretty much filled to the brim; apparently, there was no shortage of "troubled teens" in Los Angeles.

There was a boy with shockingly white teeth, his name was embroidered on his red football jersey, 'Dylan'. Leo scoffed at the stupid name. Dylan was surrounded by other boys who looked the same.

There was a large group of girls wearing matching outfits. They were all subtly gesturing to another girl sitting in the very back of the bus, giggling.

'Now she looks like the kind of person I would get along with,' Leo thought.

She was a pretty girl, with short brown hair that had little braids and feathers throughout, it was choppy like she cut it herself. She glanced at the giggling girls and rolled her eyes, like she was used to this. She wore pretty shabby clothes, her t-shirt was fraying around the edges, and her jeans had rips scattered all over.

He decided that she was going to be his new best friend as he walked toward her seat.

"Can I sit here?" He asked, trying to sound nonchalant.

She looked up and nodded.

The girls were still chuckling softly and sending glances towards her, and the boy with the shiny teeth looked like he wanted to make a move on her. It was starting to aggravate Leo; he didn't like bullies.

"What's your name?" He asked.

"Piper, you?"

"I'm Leo. Are those kids bothering you?" He pointed towards the groups with his thumbs.

She glanced to where he was pointing and rolled her eyes, "I'm used to it at this point."

"Hmmmm, I see."

Without thinking -as usual- he got up, puffed out his chest trying to look more "intimidating", and walked over to 'Dylan'.

"Why're you looking at my girl?" Leo asked, lowering his voice to sound 'tough'.

Dylan looked surprised, "ummmm what?"

"I saw you lookin' at my girl over there," Leo reiterated, pointing at Piper.

"Hey man, I don't want any trouble, I was just looking."

Leo raised his eyebrows, "Well, you better stop."

"Or what?" Another boy chimed in.

'Oh shit', Leo hadn't thought that far ahead with this plan.

He decided to double down with his 'tough guy' act, "or I'll knock you upside the head, I used to fight gangs all the time, you don't scare me."

Dylan raised his eyebrows like he wanted to test that theory.

Just in the nick of time, a short man with a baseball bat blew his whistle, "Is there a problem back there?" He yelled.

'The guy from the pamphlet,' Leo remembered. He was even shorter in person.

Dylan shook his head, "No, Coach Hedge."

Leo exhaled in relief; he wasn't going to get beaten up today.

The coach gestured for Leo to come closer.

'Oh shit, I'm screwed.'

He approached Coach Hedge, trying to look confident.
"What's your name?" He asked through a megaphone, glancing down at a clipboard.

"Leo Valdez."

The coach found his name on the list.

"You ain't never fought no gangs cupcake," he said, putting down the megaphone, "says here you're a runaway," the coach looked amused.

"Ummmmm-"

"Go sit down, Valdez."

'Thank God, ' Leo thought.

He walked back to Piper and sat down.

"I don't want any more trouble!" Coach Hedge yelled into his megaphone, looking at Leo and waving his bat threateningly.

He turned to look at Piper, and she looked simultaneously amused and aggravated.

"You've fought gangs before?" She asked in disbelief, looking at Leo up and down.

Leo shrugged, "Never said I won those fights."

Piper chuckled.

"I didn't need you to do that. I can take care of myself."

"Fair point, but they aren't gawking at you anymore."

She glanced over at Dylan, "he definitely isn't looking at me anymore."

He was looking at Leo as if he were some kind of disgusting insect. Leo smiled widely back at him.

"So, Piper," he started, turning back to the girl, "what are you in for?"

"It's complicated, my dad thinks I stole a BMW, but I swear I talked the dealer into it!"

Leo raised an eyebrow, "You... asked the dealer for a BMW, and he gave it to you?"

"Exactly," Piper said.

Leo nodded in disbelief.

"What did you do to end up here? I know you didn't beat up a gang," Piper giggled.

Leo smiled, 'She thinks I'm cool.'

"I didn't do anything as cool as Grand Theft Auto, I ran away from my foster home."

Piper raised her eyebrows, "Why'd ya do that?"

"My foster mom said I was 'falling into the wrong crowd'," he explained, mimicking Lisa's high voice. It wasn't necessarily a lie; she had said that.

"Oh, did you join a gang?" She asked sarcastically.

"Oh, of course."

They looked at each other and burst out laughing.

"Quiet back there, cupcakes!" Coach Hedge called through his megaphone.

Their giggles chimed down, and Piper said, "You're weird, Leo."

"Yeah, I get that a lot."

"In a good way. You're funny."

'She thinks I'm 'funny'?'

"What happened to your face?" she asked, pointing at Leo's nose.

Leo touched his nose, 'Oh, yeah.'

"Funny story; I tripped over a traffic cone while a cop was chasing me."

Her eyes filled with amusement, "A traffic cone?"

"Yeah. Who the fuck puts a traffic cone in the middle of the street?"

They both started laughing again, followed by another complaint from Coach Hedge, "Quiet!"

"So Piper, do ya wanna be my best friend?" He asked with a grin.

She rolled her eyes, "Sure." 

Chapter Text

Leo was very strange. He made stupid jokes, complained about the Wilderness School loudly, obnoxiously laughed about everything, he couldn't hold still, his hands were always moving around absentmindedly, and he was obviously hiding things about his past. Piper didn't press, though; she understood what it felt like to keep secrets.

Leo reminded her of a Latino Santa's Elf, but with a crippling nicotine addiction.

He snuck onto the roof every night and chain-smoked cigarettes -it was surprisingly easy to access them in the Wilderness School.

"You know that's, like, really bad for you, right?" She asked on their first night at the School.

Leo shrugged, "Yeah, I know. It's a habit I picked up at one of my old schools."

"Did you 'fall into the wrong crowd'?" She asked, mimicking the voice of his foster mom.

"Yeah, basically," he said. He had an odd look in his eyes, as if there was more to the story than he was letting on.

Piper nodded. As strange as Leo was, he was a really good friend. He had offered to pretend to be Piper's boyfriend, so that the other students wouldn't harass her as badly, but she didn't want to do that. Piper hated lying, and she hated deception.

"What's it like being in foster care?" She asked.

Leo's eyes twitched, as if his memories of foster care weren't so good.

"It's not bad for everyone, some people get really good families. I wasn't always so lucky, some of my family members had very...questionable parenting methods," he explained, taking a drag from his cigarette and exhaling the smoke. "What about you? What was your life like before you came here?"

Piper swallowed. Did she really want to tell him about her secret? They had only known each other for a few hours, but for some reason, Piper trusted him immensely.

"Can I let you in on a secret? You have to promise not to tell anyone," she said, holding up her pinky.

Leo raised his eyebrows, "A pinky promise?"

Piper raised her eyebrows in return, and Leo accepted the pinky promise, "Spill, beauty queen."

"My dad's Tristan Mclean," she said.

Leo stared at her awestruck, and then he burst out laughing, which caused him to cough up his cigarette smoke.

"Really? First, you talked a car salesman into giving you a BMW. And now, your dad is Tristan Mclean?"

Piper's face fell.

'Of course, he doesn't believe me. Who would?'

"I'm serious, Leo," she said, demanding that he believe her. She was so tired of nobody believing what she said, first her dad, and now him.

His eyes glazed over slightly, and he nodded in agreement, "I believe you, Piper."

He shook his head, like he was coming out of a trance, and he took another drag off his cigarette.

Piper's curiosity piqued. She had always wondered what it felt like to smoke. Her dad's assistant, Jane, smoked. But she swore that it was 'horrible' and that Piper should 'never do it.'

'Well, she's the reason I'm here in the first place, so I don't really care what she thinks.'

Maybe it had something to do with the fact that she had been wrongfully sent to a Wilderness School for troubled teens on false pretences, but Piper was feeling a little bit rebellious on this day.

"Can I have one?" She asked her new friend.

Leo looked at her quizically, "Have you ever smoked before?"

"Of course I have."

He nodded, "Yeah sure."

She pulled a lighter out of her back pocket (she stole it from Jane, just to annoy her. It was lilac purple with palm trees all over it) and lit the cigarette that Leo handed her.

She took a drag off of it and regretted it immediately. It felt like she had swallowed scalding hot ashes; she doubled over and started coughing like someone on their deathbed.

"Woah there! I'm assuming you haven't smoked before," Leo snickered, picking up the cigarette that Piper had dropped and popping it in his mouth, along with the other one.

He reached to his side and pulled out a bottle of water, handing it to her. She instantly grabbed it and started chugging.

"Why do you do that shit?" She asked, after drinking her body weight in water.

Leo shrugged, "Old habits die hard."

He had a look in his eyes that suggested there was more to it than that. Piper was starting to realize that her new friend might be full of surprises. But then, so was she, so it didn't really matter.

"Your dad's Tristan Mclean?" He asked.

"Yeah, I'm Piper Mclean."

"What's that like?"

She didn't know why she trusted him so much, but she did, "It's not as wonderful as you would think. Everyone knows who you are, they know what you look like, everyone stares at you all of the time, and you can't retaliate or you'll get bad publicity. And my dad is always too busy filming movies to do anything else, so I'm always alone."

Leo hummed; he was smoking two cigarettes at once now. With both in his mouth, he looked like a walrus whose tusks were on fire, "So, that's what you meant when you said you were 'used to' unwanted attention?"

Piper nodded, "Yeah, the women in Hollywood aren't usually too nice, and most of the men are kinda creepy."

Leo nodded, "Sorry, you have to put up with that."

Piper shrugged, "It's okay, at least I don't have to put up with that stuff now."

Leo nodded, finishing both of his cigarettes and flicking the butts off of the roof.

They sat there in silence for a few minutes, looking at the night sky and questioning the choices that led them to this moment. All of a sudden, Piper thought of something she hadn't asked yet.

"Hey Leo, what happened to your paren-"

"It's late, I think we should go back to bed," he cut her off, "I have a feeling that tomorrow is going to be pure hell."

Piper nodded, not wanting to push the boy if he didn't want to talk. The school was split into two buildings- one for boys and one for girls (so that no "nefarious activities" went down, according to Coach Hedge).

They stood up, and Leo helped Piper climb back into the girls' dormitories. He wished her goodnight before setting off back towards the boys' dormitories.

Leo was very mysterious, often dancing around questions that he didn't want to answer, or cracking jokes to distract you from asking more. Piper had a feeling that there was more to his story than he was letting on, but it wasn't really her place to question him.

She snuck back into her bed and lay awake for hours, tossing and turning. It was impossible to sleep in such a new environment.



*



The Wilderness School was pure hell. Coach Hedge made everyone wake up at 4:30 in the morning. They started every morning with a 10-mile run before breakfast. Piper was horrible at this; she hadn't had to run very often while living in a penthouse with her dad. Leo was a little bit better at it, due to his experience with running from the police, but he still couldn't run such a long distance.

All of the students ran around the track in a group, while the Coach blew his whistle and screamed at the people who were falling behind. He would wave around his baseball bat and threaten to knock them all upside the head for good measure.

Piper felt like throwing up after the fifth lap around the track, and Leo didn't look much better, but the Coach didn't accept excuses.

"This has to be unethical, I guarantee this is a HIPAA violation," Leo argued with the coach.

The coach blew his whistle, "Valdez, every time you complain, I'm adding a lap for everyone!"

Leo's face turned scarlet, and everyone gave him dirty looks until he closed his mouth. He looked so angry, Piper could've sworn she saw smoke coming off his head.

The coach blew his whistle in Leo's face, and they kept running.

"I hate that guy so much," he said with a vengeful look, as if he was going to get his revenge soon.

"Calm down, I have a feeling you shouldn't get on his bad side."

"What's he gonna do? Bite my ankles?"

They both laughed at the irony; Leo was even shorter than the coach was.

"I feel like my kidneys are gonna spontaneously combust," Piper said, clutching a stitch in her side.

"Me too. I'm gonna make that coach's life as miserable as this," he replied, gesturing to their current predicament.

"PICK UP THE PACE, VALDEZ!"



*



Breakfast was gross. Everything was cold and mushy; it was what Piper imagined prison food would look like. But she was starving after running for 15 miles (Leo ended up complaining five more times, to the disdain of everyone).

She noticed that Leo wasn't eating any of his food, which struck her as a bit odd. I mean, yeah, it looked disgusting, but it was all they had.

"Are you going to eat that?" She asked, gesturing to his tray.

He looked down at it regretfully, "No, I'm not a breakfast person, you can have it."

'That makes sense, it is 5:30 in the morning,' She thought.

She grabbed the tray and combined the food with hers.

"I hate this place," Leo said, "I would rather live in a sewer."

Piper chuckled, "I mean it's not that bad, right?"

"I mean it, I would actually rather live in a sewer."

They both laughed at the absurdity of the statement. Leo looked down at Piper's tray, and his eyes lit up.

He reached down and took a handful of her salt packets. "Can I have these?"

Piper nodded, "Yeah, sure. What are you gonna do with them?"

He grinned, "You'll see."


*


They were sitting in a classroom the size of a cardboard box, and each desk only had about one foot of space between them. Coach Hedge was seated at his desk in front of everyone, cup of coffee in hand.

"So, Cupcakes! Today we're going to start learning about World War One, there are a lot of awesome battles with this one!" He said this last part as if he were offering the class a million dollars.

Leo was grinning widely, which concerned Piper.

"What are you smiling about?" She whispered.

He winked at her, "Just wait."

Leo was staring at the coaches' coffee as if it held all of the secrets to success in life.

'Surely he didn't poison the coach.'

"Okay, Cupcakes, get your pens out and start taking notes! I'll be checking them at the end of class. Anyone who skips has to do push-ups!"

Leo continued staring at the coaches' coffee, like he was trying to make it explode with just his gaze. He continued to watch the cup for the first half of class, completely disregarding Coach Hedge's previous comments about taking notes.

Piper couldn't figure out what was going on, and Leo was being annoyingly cryptic about it. He refused to give her a straight answer.

The coach finally sat down in his chair after passionately preaching about World War I for thirty minutes straight. As if in slow motion, he picked up his coffee, took a large drink from it, and then promptly spat it out all over his desk.

Piper caught Leo's eye, and he was suppressing his laughter so hard that his whole face turned red. He pulled something out of his pocket and showed it to her; it was an empty salt packet.

The whole class was laughing, the coach was sputtering and coughing, and all of the papers on his desk were drenched in coffee.

"Who did this?" He yelled, waving his baseball bat around. His eyes instantly landed on Leo, the obvious culprit.

Leo had a look of innocent confusion on his face, as if to say, "Why are you looking at me?"

They stared each other down for about thirty seconds before the coach realized he had no proof that it was Leo.

"Your notes better be perfect, Valdez," he threatened, before reaching for paper towels and mopping up his desk.

Piper and Leo grinned at each other. The Wilderness School was awful; it was borderline child abuse, but they had to make the best of it.