Physical education, Leo had decided, was the one part of the school day where he could reliably disappear.

The logic was sound. On the sports field there was space - real space, the wide green expanse of it - and space meant distance, and distance meant he could position himself at the unfashionable edge of things, do the minimum required, and let the period pass without incident. Nobody clustered around you on a running track the way they did in a corridor. There was too much to actually be doing. For forty blessed minutes, Leo could be just another kid in a gym kit, jogging unremarkably at the back of the pack, gloriously ignored.

That was the theory.

The theory had one flaw, and the flaw was named Aria Blake.

Leo had heard the name before he'd ever seen her - it was unavoidable; she was woven through the school's conversation the way a celebrity is woven through a town's. Aria Blake held three regional records. Aria Blake had been scouted by athletics programs that didn't scout teenagers. Aria Blake was Silverleaf's golden girl, its idol, the face on the wall of the trophy cabinet, and when she was on the field the field arranged itself around her like iron filings around a magnet.

She was, Leo had to admit, watching her from his unfashionable edge, genuinely something to see. Where Scarlett was all controlled stillness, Aria was the opposite - pure kinetic energy, bright and loud and impossible to ignore, laughing as she ran, calling out to the cluster of admirers who tracked her every lap, putting on a little extra speed at the bends just to hear them cheer. She moved like movement was her native language. She had the easy confident swagger of someone who had never once in her life been the least interesting person in a room and didn't expect to start now.

She was, in short, exactly the kind of dazzling that Leo's entire being instinctively wanted to keep a safe forty metres away from.

So of course he was watching - everyone was watching; it was impossible not to - when it happened.

She was showing off. That much was obvious even to Leo. The class had been set to do timed sprints, and Aria, who could presumably have won them in her sleep, was making a performance of it, flashing down the track at the front of the pack, glancing back to grin at her audience, milking the cheers. She hit the final bend at full tilt, still half-turned to call something over her shoulder -

and her foot came down wrong.

Leo saw it with the awful clarity of these things - the ankle rolling, the leg buckling, the swagger collapsing into a graceless tumble as she went down hard onto the track. There was a collective gasp. For a second the whole field froze.

And then everyone moved at once, and Leo watched the strangest thing happen - watched a dozen students rush toward her in a flurry of distress, and watched not one of them actually do anything useful. They crowded. They cried out. They hovered and wrung their hands and asked, over and over, oh my god are you okay, Aria, are you okay - but it was all panic and no help, a flock of alarmed birds, nobody thinking to check the ankle or clear space or do a single practical thing, because - Leo understood this dimly, watching - they didn't quite know how. They adored her. They didn't know how to take care of her. Those were not the same skill, and in this world the second one had quietly atrophied.

And Aria - this was the part that caught at him - Aria was already trying to wave them off.

"I'm fine," she was saying, breathless, pushing herself up off the track with a grin that was a fraction too wide, too bright, manufactured on the spot. "I'm fine, guys, seriously, it's nothing - just clipped it, give me a sec - " She was trying to put weight on the ankle even as she said it, trying to stand, to laugh it off, to get back on her feet and back in motion before anyone could see that she'd fallen, and Leo watched her face spasm with pain she was absolutely refusing to show. "See? Fine. Totally fine. Let's go again, I'll beat that time - "

She couldn't put weight on it. Leo could see that from forty metres away. And she was going to try anyway, was going to grind herself back upright on a hurt ankle in front of her whole audience rather than let a single one of them see her stay down, and something about that - the desperate brightness of it, the absolute refusal to be anything but golden even bleeding on the track - pulled Leo off his unfashionable edge and across the field before he'd consciously decided to move.

He arrived at the outside of the panicking flock, slipped through it - they parted for him; they always did now - and crouched down in front of her at the level of the hurt ankle, and didn't gasp, and didn't ask if she was okay, and didn't tell her how amazing she usually was.

"Hey," he said, calm and low, just to her, under the noise. "Does it hurt?"

Aria stopped.

Leo watched her stop - watched the manufactured grin stutter on her face, watched her actually look at him, this boy crouched in front of her who'd asked the one question nobody else had thought to ask. Not are you okay, the question that demanded the answer yes, I'm fine, the question that was really asking her to reassure them. Just - does it hurt. A question that left room for the answer to be yes.

"...What?" she said.

"Your ankle." He nodded at it, not touching, just looking, assessing the way he'd assess any injury - the swelling already starting, the angle she was holding it. "Does it hurt. You don't have to do the fine thing. I'm not going to tell anyone. Does it hurt?"

And Aria Blake, regional record holder, school idol, golden girl, looked at the ordinary boy crouched in front of her asking if she was in pain like it was a real question that deserved a real answer, and something in her chest did something it had never done before, and to her absolute horror she heard herself say, small and honest and entirely unlike herself:

"...Yeah. Yeah, it really hurts."

"Okay," Leo said, like it was the most normal thing in the world to admit, like admitting it was allowed. "Okay. That's okay. Don't stand on it. Here - "

And then he was helping, smoothly, without fuss - turning to the hovering crowd and saying, in a voice that somehow got listened to, "Can someone grab a teacher? And someone clear a path to the nurse's office - thanks - " parceling out the useless panic into useful tasks, and they scattered to obey, relieved, Leo realized, to finally be told how to help. And then he was turning back to her, sliding an arm under hers, careful, steadying.

"Can you put any weight on it at all? Lean on me. I've got you - don't try to be tough about it, just lean."

Don't try to be tough about it.

Aria leaned.

It went against everything in her. She had spent her whole life being the strong one, the fast one, the one who didn't need carrying, who got up faster than she fell, who would have crawled to the finish line before she let anyone help her across it - because being strong was the deal, being the best was the deal, that was why they loved her, that was the only reason anyone loved her, and the moment she stopped being golden the cheering would stop and the crowd would melt away to find someone who hadn't fallen. She knew this. She'd always known this. It was the thing that kept her running.

And here was a boy telling her, quietly, with an arm braced solid under hers, that she didn't have to be tough about it. That she could lean. That falling didn't disqualify her from being helped up.

She leaned on him, hopping awkwardly as he took her weight, and her face was hot and her heart was doing something fast and unfamiliar that had nothing to do with the sprint, and she covered it the only way she knew how - by talking, loud and fast, filling the silence before it could mean anything.

"Okay, well, this is embarrassing, I never fall, I literally never fall, you must think I'm a total disaster - I'm not, by the way, I'm actually really good, you should see me when I'm not eating track - " She was babbling and she knew she was babbling and she couldn't stop. "What's your name anyway? You're the new guy, right? The one everyone's - " she stopped, recalibrated " - the new guy. You're really calm about this. Are you always this calm? It's kind of weird. In a good way. Weird in a good way - "

"Leo," said Leo, amused, steering them both toward the path the crowd had cleared. "And you're not a disaster, you rolled an ankle, it happens to everyone. Even fast people." He glanced at her, and there was no awe in the look, no idol-worship, just an easy friendly attention that took her in as a person rather than a poster. "Lean more. You're still trying to carry your own weight. I can feel you doing it. Stop. That's what I'm here for."

Aria leaned more.

And somewhere in the careful, unhurried walk toward the nurse's office - his arm steady under hers, his pace matched patiently to her awkward hop, his attention entirely and undramatically on the simple task of getting her there safely - Aria Blake, who had been adored by hundreds and known by almost none, who had spent her entire life sprinting away from the terrible suspicion that she was only loved for her speed, felt something she had no framework for at all.

She felt taken care of.

Not worshipped. Not cheered. Not watched. Taken care of - which was a quieter and far more dangerous thing, and she didn't have the first idea what to do with it, so she kept babbling, and Leo kept patiently not minding, and the noise of her chatter covered, just barely, the loud uneven hammering of a heart that had, without her permission, just started running a race she didn't know the rules of.

"- so anyway it's really not a big deal, I'll be back on the track by next week, probably tomorrow, the school nurse loves me, everyone loves me - " She caught herself, flushed. "That sounded - I just mean - "

"It's okay," Leo said gently. "I believe you. Easy on the ankle, though. Tomorrow might be optimistic."

They reached the door of the nurse's office. And Aria, hopping, flushed, babbling, her arm looped through the arm of a boy who'd asked if it hurt and meant it, realized with a small jolt of something like panic that she did not, particularly, want to let go.

"Right," she said, too brightly, not letting go. "Well. Here we are. The nurse'll - she'll sort it. You can - you don't have to stay. I mean. Unless. You could stay. If you wanted. To make sure I don't, like. Die. Of ankle."

Leo laughed - a real laugh, easy and warm, and Aria felt it land somewhere in her chest and stick.

"I think you'll survive the ankle," he said. "But yeah. I'll stay. Make sure you don't try to sprint out of here on it." He pushed the door open with his free hand. "Come on. Let's get you patched up."

And Aria Blake, who never let anyone help her, let the new boy help her through the door - and did not, for the life of her, understand why her face wouldn't stop burning, or why, for the first time she could remember, falling down had turned out to be the best thing that had happened to her all week.