This is a little pre-Percy blurb into the vacationing lives of Poseidon and Sally, though it is Poseidoncentric.

It is rated T for a reason. Mentions of sex (thought defiently not descriptive). If you aren't looking for it at the beginning, you might not even see it.

Poetry

POSEIDON / SALLY… Sally is as sweet as sugar and lovely like a summer day and all Poseidon wants to do is write poetry about her.

Sally is as sweet as sugar and lovely like a summer day. Poseidon knows the irony behind him thinking these things, but that does not make them any less true. Sugar is a mortal compound that is really far too simple for his usual tastes, and like most gods, he thinks it rather dull compared to more complex dishes or ambrosia. Sally is simple and loving and easy to read and that makes her a noncomplex dish in terms of speaking and something he would never normally want. As for the weather reference, everyday is relatively the same on Mount Olympus, save for the few days that it rains, those of which are thrown in for variety. Poseidon really has no appreciation for a nice summer day.

Despite the irony of his attempted simile, Poseidon is sure of one thing. He loves Sally Jackson. He would never be sure of when it happened, or when he himself realized it. The realization wasn't spontaneous in a moment of utter terror, devotion or other extreme emotion that so often clouded the thoughts of mortals. No, the recognition of his feelings was more like a game, where the question was unknown and the player had to guess the answer, and he had guessed only semi-accurately.

The Lord of the Sea was proud to say that he had not become overbearing in his attentions to Sally when he'd realized his feelings. He hadn't tried to push her into loving him, nor had he tried to discover her feelings for him. As a god, he was used to things being taken from him in an unsuitably short amount of time. She was a human and if she loved him and didn't know it yet she could be saved from the small heartbreak of him leaving her. She would be saved, unlike he would…

Poseidon breathes out a heavy sigh and sets his pen down. He had been sitting on the porch of Sally's rundown rented beach house attempting to write haikus about the beauty of her hair and how her eyes compared to the sky. However, Poseidon knew he could barely break out haikus when he was suffering the euphoric afterglow of being with Sally, let alone when he was mulling over the inevitably despairing future.

Sally chose that moment to exit the shack.

She was small, bordering on petite, with pretty eyes and a full thick head of dark hair that was always pulled up into a messy ponytail. She wore no make-up and her dimples made her seem younger than her 19 years. The young woman's clothes reflected her personality: simple and pretty. She was barefoot, wore dark-washed, tight jeans that made him appreciate all of the designers at Levi's and a white button-up shirt that looked like one he had left in her living room a few weeks before.

Sally smiled lazily towards the setting sun as she leaned against the door jamb and Poseidon's heart wobbled a little bit. He felt like the ichor in his veins turned molten in that instant. Sally opened the screen door which was meant to keep mosquitoes out and look pretty, but never really accomplished either. She walked across the creaky porch to the plastic beach chair that he occupied and, after a quick moment of contemplation, decided the best place for her to sit and enjoy the sun would be on his lap. He couldn't agree more.

Together, they watched as the sun set and the light leaked from the world little by little. Poseidon knew that mortals sometimes described feeling the warmth leave them, but he felt as though the warmth of Apollo was simply tucking into its own bed and letting others take the reins of the chariot for a bit, if you caught his drift.

When Sally leaned down to kiss him, he had one last wholly formed thought that he didn't even catch his drift and, honestly, drifts were his thing.

Haha.

Sally had initiated a deeper kiss that would have startled him weeks ago. When he'd first met her she was so shy. He'd taught her well. With that, he stopped thinking and proceeded to lift her and place her on the table to use as substitute for a—

Crackle, crakle.

The noise caught Sally's attention even though he had tried to continue their activities without acknowledging it. She stopped completely and didn't say anything and soon enough he had to stop kissing her collar bone and look at her. He tried his best 'I-am-pathetic-love-me-and-kiss-me-and-ignore-that-sound' look, but Sally was simply too curious.

She cocked an eyebrow at him and jumped down from the table without a thought to fixing her hair (which gave him hope for later) and plucked the crumpled piece of paper from the table. She straightened it out and held it in front of her face.

Poseidon watched her eyes, wary of any expression of humor they might contain. He was preparing excuses to keep him from suffering the horrible humiliation this was sure to bring. I was drunk. Those aren't mine. I found them in a book and wrote them down for us to laugh at. The expressions that he saw merely confused him. Wonder, love, amazement. Emotions that should be reserved for actual pieces of art, not the austere ramblings of a love struck man.

Man. God. Man-god?

His train of thought breaks when he sees her turn her face towards him. She seems to be shocked, like she can't believe someone would write poetry about her. He sheepishly rubs the back of his head, looks at her toes (painted sea-green), and digging his own toes into the wooden boards beneath them. She tries to catch his eyes when he flicks them up to meet hers, but he refuses to acknowledge her.

Finally, she understands that she will have to take the initiative here. It's a good thing that Poseidon taught her how to.

"Poseidon. What's this?" She knows what it is literally, but she's asking for him to be more specific, which he isn't good at in times of stress.

"Uh… uh, poetry." Well, technically it's a list of metaphors and similes that compare her to random objects that he knows she appreciates, like shells and soap and soap that looks like shells. However, the simpler approach to explaining it is all he can force around the pointless foot in his mouth.

She nods like this is very obvious, thank you for explaining. "What is it about, Poseidon?"

Gulp. "Uh… You. It's about you."

She nods her head and continues to read and re-read some of the lines. Her eyebrows furrow a little and she murmurs without turning her head away from the paper, "You really think I'm beautiful…?"

He knows instantly the line to which she is referring. Sally is beautiful like the calm of the sea after a long day of work. He wrote it in because of a something she had told him. She liked coming to the beach on weekends because the ocean relaxed her. It was a metaphor between lovers who were also best friends.

He says, "You're the most beautiful woman that I know" without giving it a second thought, because, honestly, what sort of person, god or no, has to double check the truth?

Her amazement grows as she mumbles things and refers to his little sentences that would really only make any sort of romantic sense to them. In an offhanded thought, he believes Aphrodite might not kill him for saying Sally is the most beautiful thing on Earth (and meaning it), because he is being super amorous in doing so.

Finally, Sally sets the paper back on to the table and the look he receives gives him shivers of pleasure. She walks towards him and takes his large hands into her own tiny ones. He towers over her, but she drags him down to her height so that she can place a large, whooping kiss on his lips.

It's chaste and quick and lust-less, but he feels like he has been rolled over by Aphrodite's limo twice.

She tries to wiggle her eyebrows at him and he follows her into the shack and towards her bedroom. At first he really doesn't want to talk about his poetry, because he doesn't intend to write more and manly men don't write poetry and all that jazz. However, several hours later, after he kisses her and loves her and means it, and she's lying in her bed with her hair out of its ponytail and her arm at a weird angle, he reconsiders that. If simple metaphors can get them there…

Hades, he has to learn how to write sonnets.

This was written as a sort of ode to guys who write poetry and manage not to become Edgar Allan Poe's in the process. Lovey dovey stuff isn't always my style (outside of writting, where it seems to be the only thing I can manage) so I'm not sure about everything in this.

Thanks for reading!

Murks.