Chapter Text
Their new place (they’ve lived here for going on three years, it’s not that new anymore, but Percy will never stop thinking of it as new, the sheer novelty of an open floor plan and a doorman might never wear off) has rooftop access, which Percy has a hunch was a deliberate choice on his mom’s part. It’s tight, but it’s just about the right size for a Pegasus landing pad, just in case he ever needed a quick, supernatural pickup. It’s also where Paul has been for the last half hour, processing the huge revelation the two of them just dumped on him.
The door to the roof isn’t quiet at all, but Paul doesn’t turn around from where he’s folded over the high ledge of the building. “Hey, Paul,” Percy calls softly. “We, uh, just wanted to make sure you were doing okay?”
Paul’s shoulders slump even further, his head disappearing beneath the curve of his back. Percy winces.
When Paul had arrived for dinner, he had been practically glowing: he’d had a damn spring in his step, a weird little gleam in his eyes, but now, Percy easily recognizes the heaviness weighing him down, the weird tension between shoulder blades that speaks to new knowledge poorly dealt with. But eventually, Paul uncurls himself, turning around to face Percy--kind of. His face is pressed into the safety of his curled hands, even as he leans back against the ledge.
“How are you?” Paul stares at him through his fingers like Percy just spoke ancient Greek, for long enough that Percy has to mentally check in with himself just to be sure he’s not actually speaking ancient Greek again, before he sighs.
“Gonna be honest with you, Percy,” he says, muffled, “This is a lot to take in.”
Percy nods, even if Paul can’t see it. Paul had just sat there on their couch, shoulder to shoulder with his mom, absorbing it all, listening to Percy ramble on and on about his father and his weird, weird demigod world, anything to fill the silence, to stall the inevitable moment when Paul would snap and start screaming at them, but Paul had just listened, quietly, demurely, with the barest of frowns on his face. And when Percy had finally run out of steam, drawing Riptide in a final, desperate bid to prove that they weren’t crazy, he had taken one look at the bronze xiphos that had appeared out of nothing, and asked if he could go up and get some air. He’d been up there for long enough that his mom had started to fret that something had decided Paul would make for a great late night snack. Percy didn’t really have the heart to correct her on what they both knew full well, that the monsters probably wouldn’t give two shits about him, not when Percy was there and smelling oh-so-very delectable.
On some level, it would have been easier if Paul had been attacked by some monster. At least then, he might have been too grateful to Percy for saving his life to yell at him.
Paul’s not gonna yell at you , he chides himself, as strongly as he can against the annoyingly persistent voice in the back of his head that insists otherwise. “Yeah,” he says, lamely. “It’s a lot to deal with.”
It’s then that Paul finally lowers his hands, and he fixes Percy with a stare. Not a--a threatening stare. Just a stare. It’s a patented teacher stare, piercing and unreadable, and Percy can’t help but fidget under its weight. Paul’s mouth twists, like he’s chewing on the inside of his lip. “When,” he swallows, looking up to the darkening night sky, “when Sally said that you wanted to talk to me about your father, I thought--well, I thought that he had sued for custody, or something.”
Percy snorts. “Yeah, not likely. That might start World War 3, for real this time.”
He blinks. “What?”
“What?”
“World War--what?”
“Oh.” He almost starts laughing at the naked shock and horror on Paul’s face. So that’s what the correct reaction to the threat of global annihilation looks like. “Okay, so, like, sixty years ago the Big Three gods made this pact not to have any more demigod kids--”
“Big Three?” Curled around the fear and horror is just the slightest hint of curiosity, a detached, morbid interest in the forces that have just turned his world upside down.
“Yeah, you know. Zeus, Poseidon, and Hades.” Reflexively he looks up, waiting for the distant thunderclap that, thankfully, doesn’t come this time and freak Paul out even more. “The Big Three. Their kids are always, like, really powerful, so they promised not to have any more, but, well. You know.”
Paul nods, eyes still wide beneath a furrowed brow. “So, your brother, Tyson. Is he also, uh, one of these… really powerful demigod kids?”
Honestly, Percy is surprised Paul even remembers Tyson. The Mist tends to wipe the guy away, no matter what kind of property damage he leaves in his wake. “No, Tyson’s a cyclops.” Paul deflates, face about to crumple. Percy barrels forward. “Nico is, though.”
“Nico? From your birthday party?”
And the handful of other times he’d shadow-traveled into the apartment on school nights, but-- “Yeah.”
Paul, maybe, cracks a smile. Possibly. “Can I assume that his godly parent is Hades? Or is that stereotyping?”
Percy smiles too, unable to help it. Maybe there’s hope for him after all. “He could give Nathan from our Shakespeare class a run for his money, huh?”
The maybe-smile spreads across Paul’s face, slowly, inexorably. “I think even Nathan would tell Nico to tone it down a little.” He laughs then, a quick huff of air through his nose, about as much amusement as a teacher could possibly show when making fun of a student with another student.
But when he brings his gaze to Percy’s again, whatever brief joy they shared is smothered in a second, the look in his eyes replaced with something almost sad, something Percy can’t quite place. “I just can’t believe…” he trails off, chewing on the inside of his mouth again. “Is it weird that the part I’m finding hardest to wrap my head around is the fact that it’s the Greek pantheon that’s real? I mean, I knew Hellenic Paganism was on the rise again, but this is--” he shakes his head.
They stand for a while, awkwardly stalemated. Percy doesn’t really want to interrupt Paul’s internal monologue with another emotionally devastating stat from his wacky, wacky life, but it is kind of chilly up here, and they’ve left his mom waiting for a while now.
A few more minutes pass before Paul finds his voice again. “So, what are they like?” At Percy’s blank look, Paul flicks his eyes skyward. “You know. The gods.”
“What are they like?” What can he say without getting blasted off the rooftop? “I don’t know. They’re… the gods, I guess. I mean, you met my dad.”
Paul grins as best he can. “I’m not sure that him showing up for five minutes at your birthday party really counts as me meeting him.” Even now, months later, Percy can’t help but smile at the memory, at the weight of his father’s hand on his shoulder, his smile like the sun over a sandy beach, and his quiet, earnest declaration, You, Percy, are my favorite son . “What was it like? Growing up with all…” Paul waves a hand. “This?”
“Well,” says Percy, crossing over to the balcony, bracing himself on the chilly rail. Like a magical compass needle, he finds his head turning towards the direction of the Empire State Building. They can’t see it from here, of course--that would be ridiculous--but ever since he first went up the 600th floor and came back down alive, he can feel it almost, like the buzzing of a particularly irritating fly, up and down the back of his skull. He tries to make sure he knows where it is at all times. Tonight, it happens to be just to the right of Paul, and Percy is a little glad for the excuse not to look the man in the eye. “It wasn’t--I didn’t, really.” He taps a thumb against the railing, his foot bouncing in time. “I mean, weird stuff happened to me, like, all the time, freak accidents or whatever, but I always thought I just had really crappy luck.” Back then, Percy used to think that he was cursed. Nowadays, he knows that he’s cursed, but at least now he knows there's a reason why. At least he knows who to blame when things get crazy. “And whenever I would ask about what happened to my dad, Mom would only say that he had been lost at sea, so... I don’t know.” He shrugs, because what else is there to tell? He’d grown up fatherless and friendless, an outcast, another troubled kid, one of thousands littered across New York City.
“She never told you?”
Percy shakes his head. “I didn’t really care. I mean, I was curious, yeah, but, like, it didn’t really matter. I had mom, and she had me, and we didn't need anything else.”
“It must have been hard, though, not knowing what happened to him,” Paul says, softly.
He shrugs. “The less you know about your parentage, the harder it is for the monsters to find you. Like, my friend Annabeth, her dad told her up front about her mom, and then she ran away from home when she was seven because monsters kept coming after her.”
It’s like the whole world has just shrunk to the two of them, Percy and Paul and that weird, sad look that’s on his face again, and it makes Percy’s skin crawl. He’s not telling him all of this for his pity. “How did you find out?” Paul asks, so quietly it doesn’t even travel past the edge of the roof.
The memories are painfully vivid even now, years later, painted in technicolor in his mind by fear and adrenaline. The howling storm, the smell of wet fur, the bone-deep growl ripped from the Minotaur's throat--he shivers. “The summer I turned thirteen, Mom and I were out at the cabin on Montauk when we were attacked by--” He cuts himself off, casting a glance towards Paul, who probably doesn’t need to hear about the time his girlfriend nearly died at the hands of the Minotaur, then was subsequently kidnapped by the Lord of the Dead. “Anyway,” he clears his throat, “we escaped,” sort of, “and Mom took me to Camp Half-Blood for the first time. I got claimed by my dad a few days later.”
“Claimed?”
"Like, acknowledged." A weird sense of deja vu settles over him. He's never been on this side of the conversation before. “A lot of demigods don’t know who their godly parent is, unless they send some kind of sign to claim them.”
“And everyone gets claimed?”
“Well…” He thinks about his brief stay in the overstuffed bunks of Cabin 11, the bitter and jealous glances that followed him around after he left. Cabin 11 is a lot emptier these days than it was when he first arrived. “No. Not always.”
Paul frowns. “So they get attacked by monsters, come to camp, and then they just… wait? For a sign that might never come?”
“It’s--” He swallows, blinking away the memory of Luke’s anger, his cold, hard voice, the phantom prickle of scorpion legs crawling all over him. “It’s not that simple. They’re, like… busy. But,” he blurts as Paul’s frown deepens, “that doesn’t mean they don’t care! There are just laws and stuff that they can’t break, and anyway, having a deadbeat dad doesn’t give you an excuse to--”
Paul puts his hand on Percy’s shoulder, and Percy can’t help it, but he flinches at the sudden touch. Paul retracts his hand faster than Percy can blink, going to scratch his nose instead. “I--” he coughs, dry and unconvincing, “Sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you.”
His stomach sinks. “No, no, it’s okay. Uh, battlefield reflexes, right?”
“Oh.” He blinks. “Right.”
Paul slides his hands into his pant pockets. Percy looks out on the city. The night sky stretches before them, purple and gold and grey. Light pollution doesn’t reach Camp Half-Blood, but here, all the stars are wiped away, replaced by the lights of buildings and cars and billboards, with constellations that change and shift with the will of all the people below.
With a tiny grunt, Percy pushes himself up off of the railing, turning to look at Paul, whose gaze is fixed on his feet. “There’s something else I should tell you.” Paul looks up at him, face pale, and Percy really wishes he didn't have to drop this on him, too. “So, in my world, there’s, um.” He runs a hand through his hair, like he can dislodge the best way to put this from where it’s hiding in his brain. “Well, there’s a war going on, between the gods and the titans. And I’m sort of a target.”
Paul raises an eyebrow. “Sort of?”
“See, like, sixty years ago, there was this prophecy that said a Big Three demigod would have the power to… well, to destroy Olympus.” It’s not something he likes to think about, but more often than not, he’ll wake up in a cold sweat, his stomach aching, fingers frantically brushing away the phantom feeling of volcanic fire from the heart of Mt. St Helens. After their quest ended, Percy had gone to the library to look up a picture; the mountain had been split in two. Officially, scientists had determined that an ancient glacier had come too close to an underground magma pool, and the resulting steam pressure had blown the top of the mountain clean off--although, the scientists pointed out, a reaction like that was completely unprecedented. Totally singular. Terrifyingly sudden. “And I’m the only Big Three demigod around now, so a lot of people think the prophecy is about me, and that I would be better off dead, and they… you know. Try to make that happen.”
“But you’re not the only one,” Paul points out. “What about your friend, Nico? Couldn’t the prophecy be about him?”
“Well, yeah." Nico clearly doesn't want it, with how hard he's pushing Percy on the nuclear option, and Thalia gave it up without a second thought. Moreover, they trust him above themselves, a weight heavier and more overwhelming than the dome of the sky. "But, the prophecy states that something is going to happen on their sixteenth birthday, and I’m older, technically, so.” He blushes for some reason, face hot against the cool night air. “He’s had a rough couple of years. His sister died, and he was taking bad advice from some bad people, and I didn’t want him to deal with this on top of everything else, you know? So, it’s just me. I decided it would be about me.”
Paul tilts his head, thoughtful. “That’s a lot of pressure,” he says. It’s a teacher-phrase, through and through, but he still sounds sincere.
Percy shrugs. “I guess.” A cold breeze ruffles his shirt, and he shivers, shoving his hands into his pockets. “I just wanted to tell you, because sometimes monsters will try to get to me through the people I’m close to. You should be safe since you’re mortal, but I still thought you should know, like, just in case.”
When he meets Paul’s eyes, he’s expecting to see--well, he’s not entirely sure what he’s expecting, but it’s definitely not this. Paul considers him like he had back at Percy’s birthday party, when they had briefly talked, “man to man,” and that weird gleam from earlier is back in full force. Lips pursed, Paul nods, coming to the end of some kind of internal conversation, then makes for the door to the roof. When Percy doesn’t immediately follow, he turns over his shoulder, an odd smile on his face. “You coming? I want to ask your mom something.”
Paul takes the stairs down two at a time, Percy scrambling to keep up, and unlocks their apartment door with a key Percy didn’t even realize he had. His mom is still on the living room couch where they had left her, frowning down at a steaming mug of tea. “Oh!” She gasps, making to stand as he barges in. “Paul!”
Fueled by whatever decision he’d come to upstairs, Paul barrels right ahead. “You’ve raised an amazing kid, Sally.”
He flushes, face hot like a thousand fire ants crawling beneath his skin. “I didn’t tell him to say that!” Percy half shouts.
“He didn’t have to,” Paul says. “Percy here is one of the most mature fifteen year olds I have ever met in my entire life, and I have met a lot. Not many kids could shoulder the kinds of burdens he’s been given and come out the other side as well as he has. Given what you told me about--well, I had suspected… but now I know he doesn’t get that from his dad.” His eyes flick to Percy, suddenly panicked. “Uh, no offense to Lord Poseidon.”
Well, it's not like he's wrong.
“What I mean is," he turns back to his mom, "Percy may be a demigod, he may fight mythological monsters, but his heart? His compassion? His loyalty? That all came from you, Sally. Of course it did--you are the strongest, the most amazing, compassionate, generous woman I have ever had the privilege of knowing.” His mom gapes at him, dumbstruck, as Paul crashes to one knee, and for the first time in his life, Percy figures out what’s going to happen before the other person does.
“And all this--this stuff about Greek gods!” Paul laughs, giddy and weightless. “I guess I’m diving in headfirst, because there is nothing and no one that could stop me from wanting to be with you. Not even the god of the sea.” From his jacket pocket, he produces a small, velvet black box, offering it to her. “Sally Jackson, will you marry me?”
There's a long, eternal moment, as they take each other in, the air between them thick with static. Finally, with steady hands and wide, wet eyes, she takes the box from his hands, opening it. There's a small, uncomplicated ring inside, with a dainty diamond on top, but her face shines as bright as a freshly polished shield as she slides it onto her bare finger. “I was so worried,” she says, so softly, so quietly, like a terrible, terrible secret she can finally get off of her chest, as she runs her thumb over the thin, golden band, “I thought we had scared you away.”
Paul brushes her cheek with such painstaking tenderness and care, tucking her curly hair behind her ear. “I’ve never thought of myself as brave,” he murmurs, voice thick, “but you make me feel like I could go up against the gods themselves.”
“Oh, please don’t,” she chokes out a wet laugh. “I just got you; I’d like to keep you for a while.” Then she takes his head in her hands and kisses him, pressing her trembling smile to his.
Percy's cheeks ache from the force of his smile, and he’s almost afraid to breathe, to break this moment, but his mom seeks him out as soon as she can tear herself away from him, her arms outstretched as she steps up into Percy’s waiting hug. “Congratulations, mom,” he says into her shoulder, throat tight around a lump the size of the Hudson, and she squeezes him harder, rocking him from side to side.
“Thank you,” she whispers into his hair. “Thank you so much.” He just shakes his head, burrowing as deeply as he can, and stops pretending that he isn’t crying into her hair.
When they pull apart, Paul is there, one hand taking hers. “And Percy,” he says, turning to him, “I don’t want you to think I was just saying all that stuff about you to be nice to your mom. You deserve a lot of the credit, too.” His free hand, hanging at his waist, twitches towards Percy. “It is abundantly clear that you do not need me to be your father. And,” he glances upwards, “I certainly don’t want to step on anyone’s toes. But if there is anything you need--a ride, or some homework help, or someone to talk to--” Slowly, each inch telegraphed, he brings his hand up to Percy’s shoulder, squeezing lightly. “If there’s anything I can do for you, mythological or mundane, all you have to do is ask. No matter what. Okay?”
He doesn’t trust himself to speak, wiping away his tears with the heel of his hand. Paul grins at him, as warm and soft as the last embers of a campfire, and brings them in for another embrace, one arm slung over each Jackson, and he pulls them in tight.