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When your best friend-slash-ex-boyfriend begins to date a god, there are certain things one would expect:
Jealousy if you were ever alone with said ex-boyfriend.
A bit of rage if you were ever even remotely sarcastic with said ex-boyfriend.
Maybe some gloating over having said ex-boyfriend in his arms and bed instead of yours.
What one did not expect was for said best friend’s new(ish) boyfriend to appear in front of you in a burst of glitter and light with a thousand watt smile and a very familiar blue lunchbox.
Annabeth sighed and pressed the heels of her palms to her eyes.
Part of her was a little touched, but for the most part all she felt was annoyed. When she’d taken up this quest it’d been with a sense of dread
-- hadn’t she done enough when it came to the divine in her life? Hadn’t the whole Chase family been put through enough? --
and acceptance
-- if she refused then it would have been Percy here instead of her --
While she had every intention of making it home to Grover and her seaweed brain
-- not hers, anymore, he wasn’t hers --
Annabeth scrubbed her hands across her face to quiet her racing thoughts. Then she let them drop to her sides and looked up at Apollo.
At least Percy still cared about her which was the exact problem.
“You don’t have to be so dramatic,” she huffed, “What if I’d been in the middle of something? Or there’d been monsters around? You know you’re not supposed to meddle as much as you have.”
“I’d have helped!” Apollo said, indignant.
Annabeth gave him a skeptical look, counted to ten, and reminded herself of the real reason Apollo would dare look her way to help her. It made her head hurt and her heart ache. Only one person would make the god be here at this hour with a hot meal in his hands.
“Percy had a nightmare?”
He sighed and for a moment Annabeth wasn’t annoyed at him.
“Percy had a nightmare.”
“Tell him I’m touched, but I don’t need to be checked on.”
Apollo shrugged his shoulders. If Annabeth was honest with herself, his romances ended just as much in happiness as they did in tragedy. He could be sweet and doting. She’d seen it first hand whenever Percy had found something she’d forgotten mixed in with his things and she’d come to pick it up. He wasn't the worst god Percy could have wound up with if he had to date one.
“I know that and you know that," Apollo said with a sad smile on his face, "We both know he’ll stress bake himself into oblivion if he doesn’t get first hand confirmation you’re okay."
He held out the lunchbox to her. “Don’t tell me you don’t like getting a fresh hot meal hand delivered by a god."
Annabeth took off her backpack. She pulled out the previous container and exchanged it for the new one. She opened it to find blue cookies, ambrosia squares, macaroni and cheese with hot dogs cut in, and the cucumber salad Percy used to make all the time when they lived together. All of them were in their own little cup or space with no possibility of the food touching.
There was no note with a silly doodle of Black Jack on it, but the macaroni and cheese was still warm. The chocolate chips in the cookies were probably still soft.
Why did Percy have to care so much?
"Do you need any fresh clothes?" Apollo interrupted her thoughts and Annabeth rolled her eyes.
"I’ve got a few changes, thanks." She closed the lunch box and looked up at Apollo. "Do you do this for anyone else?"
"None of his other friends are on a quest right now, so no, and you demanded he stay uninvolved. I haven’t told him directly and Rachel agreed to keep quiet."
Apollo hesitated for a moment. It still made Annabeth’s mind spin to see a god act unsure, even if it was Apollo who she’d seen follow after Percy like a puppy in the months leading up to her quest.
Percy had once confided in her that despite his sunny disposition, Apollo had a tendency to fixate on the bad and he needed to be reminded of the good. That Apollo had become very very aware of his flaws and was actively trying to be better.
That was how Annabeth knew Apollo was better for him than she could ever be.
“You should tell him,” Apollo said, crossing his arms.
Blue eyes bled into gold and Annabeth felt her spine straighten just so. As much as she’d seen the god unsure and insecure and fumbling, he was still a god, could undo her with a snap of his fingers. The only reason he probably didn’t was the boy whose cooking she held in her hands.
“I do know, but he doesn’t need to. Otherwise it’d be him here instead of me and you know it.”
“I’ve been down this path before, Annabeth Chase. I respect you don’t want him to hear it from anyone else, but if this Quest fails it’ll only hurt him more when he finds out.”
Percy could be a bit of a ditz and would rather keep his head down and mind his own business if given the choice. He was the sort it took some convincing that anyone besides his mother had any kind of positive regard for him. Annabeth had managed to win him over by sheer force of will.
She’d also let him go when she realized she could have hurt him far worse than anyone else ever could. He’d have gone the rest of his life thinking he deserved it.
But Percy always noticed and remembered the details -- how Annabeth’s idea of organization looked like a mess and somehow figured out her system, how she liked the infamous Jackson cookies with a touch more vanilla and a little less brown sugar, how she needed any kind of weapon on-hand and when he asked her to move in had already had a knife waiting in the drawer by her side of the bed.
She looked down at the hot meal in her hands. Everything had its own place in the lunchbox and dividers between them.
Giving him up was the best thing she’d ever done for him.
He could never know it could be him here instead of her.
“How is he? Aside from the stress baking?”
“He’s doing well,” Apollo said, reaching forward and pausing when Annabeth flinched. After a moment she nodded and he rested the back of his hand on her forehead.
Good. He was going along with her change of subject.
In a moment the aches and pains in her body were gone, even the vague soreness in her throat and the tension building between her shoulders had melted away. He didn’t have to do this, she knew. It was for Percy’s sake.
If they’d told him the whole truth, he would be here in a heartbeat and that was the last thing Annabeth wanted.
It was probably the last thing Apollo wanted, too, even if he kept telling her that Percy should know the whole truth of this Quest -- only someone born in America who'd walked through Tartarus could see it through.
Will was not going anywhere near this quest.
“We’ve been talking about maybe getting a house,” Apollo decided, “Percy was thinking it could be a safe place for Demigods on their way to Camp Half Blood or New Rome. His parents’ apartment practically is one already.”
“That makes sense,” she said, her mind already going to floor layouts and wiring and supports before she quashed it down. This was something Percy would do with Apollo, even if she knew he’d ask her later for help designing it. She had no right to think of herself in Percy’s future.
“Anything else you need?”
“No. Just… thank you. And tell him I don’t need him to send his boyfriend to baby-sit me!”
“His boyfriend wouldn’t need to baby-sit you if you told him the truth -- that he could be here in your place and there’s a high likelihood you’ll die.”
Annabeth winced and then Apollo was gone.
She had no idea what the next half hour would hold and the food was still warm. She sat down to eat, knowing Percy would be all right and Apollo was doing his best to ease his fear for her. That’s all that mattered.
When one visits their goddy honorary big brother, one expects certain things:
A temple maybe, filled with servants and attendants ready to receive you as a guest even if that sort of deference makes your skin crawl.
A stable filled with magic horses and unicorns blazing brighter than the sun because he would not stop talking about the Sun Chariot and how awesome it was.
Maybe a huge mansion like the ones on television when they could huddle in a motel for the night and watch it.
One does not expect a not-quite-small apartment in California that wasn’t the worst of places, but could be better. Largely because that apartment was where her goddy honorary big brother’s only boyfriend currently lived.
Meg watched Percy clean the apartment. It wasn’t uncommon for her to decide to show up when Apollo was expected to be there. Knocking had long been ingrained into her beforehand, but not cleanliness beyond leaving her shoes at the door. Not when this was more or less Lester’s place these days and, therefore, hers. And sometimes Artemis’s.
“You know he doesn’t care if it’s clean, right?” she said as she walked into the kitchen and helped herself to some juice.
“Yeah, but it’ll keep him from trying to take care of it when he’s not going to be in the best frame of mind.”
Meg drank from her cup for a moment, considering. Apollo had a terrible habit of not telling people what was actually wrong, but it’s not like he needed someone to coddle him. Percy should know that, shouldn’t he?
“Why would he need to be taken care of?” she asked.
“It’s going to storm,” Percy said, fluffing up one of the ridiculous beaded throw pillows that just appeared one day when Apollo started spending more nights here than not.
“What’s a storm got to do with anything?”
“Didn’t it ever rain while you guys were on the road?”
“A bit, why?”
“Didn’t he ever act weird when it got really bad?”
“It's Apollo. He’s always weird.”
Percy laughed, dropping the pillow and moving to the next one.
“True, but a different kind of weird. He gets… Controlling isn’t the right word. But it’s like he needs control, I guess? But he doesn’t know how to ask for it.”
Meg headed to the recliner, thinking, as Percy moved on to picking up the stray glasses0 but left the coloring books and crayons for when younger demigods passed through on the coffee table.
“Like how he’d insist we’d keep driving even though it was dark out?” she suggested as she flopped sideways onto the recliner and somehow managed not to spill any of the juice, “Or yell at me and that arrow about the radio station? Or that I sleep and he’d stay up in case monsters followed us?”
Percy chuckled as he headed towards the kitchen. “Well, the last one was just him being a responsible adult since you were just twelve.”
Meg made a face. At seventeen she wasn’t just a kid and she definitely hadn’t been a child at twelve even if over the course of those gloriously terrible six months she’d finally gotten to be one.
“But it’s like... he gets quiet and kind of stiff and tries to fixate on things to the point he can’t focus on anything else. Like he can’t even divide his attention much when he gets like that. I don’t get why -- he can tell me on his own time, but...”
Percy pulled out a large casserole dish full of macaroni and cheese from the top of the fridge. It made a whump sound as he set it on what little counter he had.
“Do you like plain or with hot dog slices?”
“I like ketchup,” Meg said as if daring him to say something.
It still surprised her when Percy just pulled out the bottle of ketchup and set it on the counter, no questions asked, before pulling out three bowls and spoons.
Something made sense, though she couldn’t quite see the whole picture. Not right then. Apollo was loud and bright and had a heart as big as his head, but he never said anything when it mattered. Like when he got his stomach cut and almost got zombie'd. Or caught a cold on their way back to Long Island until it almost developed into pneumonia. Or that he was having nightmares. He may have had a full blown concussion and broken ribs after falling into the dumpster when they first met but just didn't say anything.
He was kind of like her that way.
Meg’s stomach flipped and her throat tightened up.
How had she not realized her dummy was scared of storms before?
“So you’re trying to do what he does sometimes, when he’d sing a dumb song or make me play stupid games with him that were lame or he’d start reciting haiku or decide to detour to some ridiculous tourist trap that wound up having a weird monster in it.”
“Yeah. Exactly. Trying to lighten the mood and let him know he’s safe here.”
“But he’s a god again.”
Percy looked at Meg and she winced.
She’d seen firsthand how godhood did not necessarily mean safety.
Quite the opposite, in fact.
“So I’m going to have cookies and macaroni and cheese ready and you’re already visiting so it’s one less thing to worry about and I got Mama Mia --”
Meg pouted.
“If I have to watch that one more time -- “
“My house my rules, Meg.”
“I’m the guest!” she cried.
“So’s he!”
“You’re practically his sugar daddy! That doesn’t count!”
“My name is the one on the lease! Not his!”
Meg rolled her eyes and huffed as she leaned her head back over the armrest of the recliner to watch. Percy went about drawing the curtains as the sky darkened outside.
Her eyes narrowed. If she thought about it, Percy was right. Her dummy, even after he got his godhood again, would act weird when it rained.
It wasn’t every time it rained. She’d thought it was some weird God of the Sun thing, but she’d seen him splash through puddles and one time dance in the rain when it was pouring. It wasn’t a storm he was necessarily afraid of. The only time he’d gotten really weird had been…
...when there was thunder and lightning...
Something clicked in her mind. She remembered him mentioning his father a few times, the god of lightning. Now that she understood he was scared of storms -- and a specific kind of storm...
...maybe he had more of an idea of what he was talking about when he tried to talk to her about Nero than she initially thought.
She hoisted herself up from the recliner, walked to another window, and slammed it shut.
“Meg?”
“You said it’s gonna be a bad storm?” she said as she closed the curtains. Now she understood why Percy had such thick ones.
“Yeah. The weather report said it would probably last the whole night.”
“I’ll watch Mama Mia if you’re willing to put on Lord of the Rings.”
That got a look from Percy.
“What?”
“He told me once we’d spend the whole night watching all three and it’s got decent music. If the storm’s gonna be as bad as you say it will be, we’ll be up all night anyway.”
A small smile spread on Percy’s face.
“Do you want to put the mac and cheese in the oven? It’s almost sundown.”