The visit to the Long Island Aquarium was a blatant attempt to get into Percy's good graces, but he couldn't bring himself to care; it was the most he'd had to look forward to in months, and he was wriggling in place the entire time they were on the subway, bouncing on his toes.
Foggy watched him with clear amusement. "I'd've thought Sally took you to aquariums all the time," he commented, leaning on the pole.
Percy shook his head. "When I was younger I think she was worried that I would notice something – or worse, someone else would notice something." He smiled and bounced a little more. "And I didn't think of it, I guess. I usually just go into the bay."
Foggy winced. "I guess an aquarium just isn't the same, huh?"
"No," Percy said decisively, and then amended, "I mean, yeah? They're just different. For one thing, I mostly go into the bay when a dolphin or something gets tangled up in a fishing net." He scowled at the thought, but it faded quickly. "But like- aquariums are set up to teach you things, right? And that's super cool. Uh, I went to one for a school trip," he explained, when Foggy looked confused. "I know some stuff instinctively, but not everything, and..."
He cut himself off, embarrassed, but Foggy was still looking at him. Percy squirmed and rocked on his heels, abruptly aware of the confined space of the subway car. He reminded himself that they were only five stops away, and glanced compulsively each way, checking for monsters.
"I mean," he said, a little quieter, "if I grow up, I think that's what I'd want to do. Marine rescue." He shrugged. "It's pretty easy for animals to get hurt out there, with all the plastic and dropped fishnet and stuff. I could help with that."
"Sounds like the perfect job for a kid like you," Foggy told him firmly, eyes bright with his smile. "And hey." He leaned down a little, so he was eye level with Percy. "You are gonna grow up, okay? I heard from Matt you kicked his ass the other day. That's not easy to do, I'm pretty sure."
He winked, and for the first time, Percy could kind of tell what his mom saw in Foggy. He smiled hesitantly back, quick and fleeting.
They got off a few stops later, and it wasn't a far walk from there to the aquarium. Foggy kept his hands in his pockets, and Percy twirled Riptide in his hands, back to buzzing with excitement.
There was a large seal exhibit right by the main entrance, so a chorus of excited barking greeted their approach. Percy smiled and veered off the path toward the pool. He stepped right up to the edge, looking through the gap in the glass panes, and found most of them making their way toward him, flopping and splashing through the water or over the small rock shelf to crowd closer.
Son of the sea god, son of the sea god! a few of them chanted, like people whispering to each other about a passing celebrity.
"Holy shit," Foggy said quietly. Percy beamed and leaned over, bracing himself against the glass pane.
"Hey, seals," he greeted cheerfully. "Have everything you need in there?"
Yes, yes! a few barked, bouncing up toward him and a few even flopping against the wall before they fell.
Visitors, treats! one cheered, splashing eagerly in place.
Fish and pats! another agreed, slapping their tail against the water. Games!
But no little ones, one in the back put in, audibly disappointed. Too long since we've had a little one.
"A baby seal?" Percy asked, glancing across the crowd. Sure enough, all of them looked fully grown, and a good few even looked old. "You miss having babies around?"
Yes, son of the sea god!
"I'll ask about it," he promised them, ignoring the looks he was starting to attract.
"What'd they say?" Foggy asked, unable or not bothering to hide his fascination. Percy shrugged.
"Sounds like they're being pretty well taken care of," he said, pleased. "They're not bored, they're not hungry- biggest problem is just that they miss having kids around, apparently." He glanced around. "I'm not sure the pool could support many more though. It's pretty full as it is."
"How do you know?" Foggy looked back and forth, like he could see what Percy did.
"Uh. Good question," Percy said sheepishly.
He chatted with the seals for a few more minutes, but to be honest, there was only so much he could talk about with a crowd of excitable mammals that spent all day swimming in circles. Eventually, they moved on and went inside.
There was a touch tank just inside, and Percy beelined right for it, where the stingrays reacted almost exactly as the seals had. The touch tank was different, though, and there were a handful of kids with their hands in the sand, looking wide-eyed and excited for now, but he bet that wouldn't last long.
He reached out to stroke and pet them as they floated near him, murmuring with excitement. He couldn't help but smile, feeling warm and pleased.
"Come on, it's good to see you too, but you have a job here, remember?" he cooed softly, nudging them back toward the other parts of the tank. "All those little kids are so excited to see you, don't you want to meet them?"
A few of them immediately chorused in agreement and sailed back to the other parts of the tank, greeting and brushing against the overjoyed children with renewed enthusiasm, but a lot of them stayed too. He patted them indulgently and cooed nonsense, steering them back toward the kids when they seemed satisfied.
"Oh, that looks like it hurts," Percy said to one of them, tilting it up a little to where he could see a scrape on the underside of its fin. "Do you want out of the touch tank? I'm sure the kids aren't exactly careful."
Yes, my lord, the ray said, flapping itself in faint agitation. Percy looked around, but it turned out Foggy had gotten there first, signaling a worker nearby who came over to investigate.
"Hey, this one has a scrape on its wing," Percy said, tilting it up gently to show the guide. "Should it be in the touch tank?"
"No, it shouldn't," the guide said with certainty. "Thanks for pointing it out. Can you keep track of it for a minute? I'll get one of the rehab guys to take it out."
Percy nodded, so the woman took off at a purposeful stride.
"You know what, I'm starting to see why your mom didn't take you to aquariums as a kid," Foggy said to Percy, and Percy laughed.
"Thanks for calling her over," Percy said, petting the ray patiently. "It's probably better if they just keep the happy rays in here."
"Unhappy rays are how people get stung, I think," Foggy said, and Percy chuckled and nodded.
The guide returned with a lab tech in tow only a few minutes later, and the hurt ray was transferred to a small tank. It waved to Percy as it was carried away, and he waved back.
"So like, do fish suddenly gain human intelligence around you, or are they like that all the time?" Foggy asked. "Cause that's a creepy thought, I gotta say."
"Hell no," Percy said before he could think better of it, patted a ray one last time, and got up to move along to the rest of the aquarium. "I don't wanna be mean, but fish aren't that smart, honestly. Like, most of what the seals were saying outside is kind of what you imagine a dog would say to talk about its life. 'I get table scraps and long walks so I have everything I need!' That's about as much as they worry about."
"Thank fuck," Foggy said, seeming genuinely relieved, and Percy snickered again.
They kept moving through the aquarium, Percy greeting each animal in turn and cooing over it for a minute before moving along. Foggy didn't seem that interested in any of the displays, but he kept pace with Percy, apparently content to hang around.
"Hey," Foggy said, just as they were moving outside. He didn't look at Percy, keeping the same easy stride, but something about his tone made Percy tense. "Am I doing something to freak you out? Sally tells me I'm still formally barred from the apartment."
Percy hesitated, and then tilted his head to look up at Foggy, considering him seriously for a long moment. He clasped his hands behind his back, uncomfortable again.
"...No," Percy admitted grudgingly. "I'm just- really, really touchy about our apartment, and uh, kind of too stressed out to handle that right now. Sorry."
"Nah, don't worry, I get it," Foggy hastened to assure him. "Trust me, if you knew what Matt was like when we were in college, you'd be a lot less worried about scaring me off. Man had more walls than a citadel."
Percy tried to smile, but now he was distracted. Foggy picked up on that pretty quick.
"Is this prophecy thing really that big a deal?" Foggy asked softly.
Percy slowed to a halt, coming to a full stop not far from the fountain. He stared at it blankly, wondering how his good mood could have disappeared so quickly.
"I still don't know the whole thing, you know," he said. "Just that the next Big Three kid will choose whether Olympus lives or dies." He stuffed his hands into his pockets. "It was almost Thalia. I mean- she would've been sixteen in another day. But she didn't want it. Took a vow to Artemis so that she would never turn sixteen." He shrugged, expression crumpled. "A lot of the gods wanted to kill me so I wouldn't either. Zeus, Ares, Athena, and Dionysus all argued for me to die last December."
He's just a sea creature! A really nice sea creature!
Roughly, Percy shook himself and started walking again, hoping to find something to distract himself with.
"Did you tell Sally about this?" Foggy asked awkwardly, looking down at him.
"I don't wanna scare her," Percy mumbled.
"Okay, but you're obviously terrified out of your wits," Foggy pointed out. "You know she'd want to help. You're her whole world, Percy."
"...Yeah."
Thank the gods, there was another interactive exhibit not far ahead – a set of stairs down to a marsh where you could wade in shin-deep water and look for shellfish. Percy rolled up his jeans, took off his shoes, and hopped right in, and to his surprise, Foggy joined him, the sleeves and pants of his suit both rolled up high. He shrugged when Percy looked at him.
"May as well," he said, as if that made any sort of sense. They cut through the water for a while, only a few others scattered around the marsh, and Percy managed a smile as a few clams and whelks started to bounce and roll toward them. "Wow, I've never seen a clam move before. I hate it."
Percy chuckled weakly, catching the clam and tilting it to peek inside. He didn't speak this time, just patted it, and then held it out for Foggy to see. Foggy accepted it and looked at it, and then he spoke.
"You know, I didn't remember the whole kidnapping thing when I first started dating your mom," he said suddenly, wrinkling his nose when the mussel bobbed out and 'licked' him. "Karen recognized Sally's name though. I watched the video of the fight you had with that guy after that. Could barely believe it."
"What about it?" Percy asked, a little bemused. "I thought I did well in that fight."
"You did," Foggy agreed without looking up. "But all I could think about the whole time was that when I was twelve, I still spent most of my time, like, crying in bathrooms 'cause kids were calling me chubby."
Oh, Percy understood what he was getting at now. He shrugged, accepting the mussel when Foggy handed it back to him.
"Believe me, I was doing plenty of that too," he said, with a hint of bitterness. Moron, stupid, brain boy, r- "It just wasn't the only shit I had going on."
"Guess some things never change," Foggy said, and Percy nodded.
Rachel Elizabeth Dare caught up to Percy during one of his now-routine jogs around the park. Speeding up unfortunately did not work, nor did turning around several corners, and by the end of the whole song and dance she was mostly just annoyed.
Reluctantly, Percy paused the audiobook he'd been listening to – ugh, he'd have to skip back at least ten minutes to figure out what he'd missed – and popped out his earbuds, eying her warily. "Rachel Elizabeth Dare."
"Percy," Rachel said back, and walked right up to him until they were almost nose-to-nose. She looked pale and determined, almost glaring into his eyes. "You owe me an explanation."
"Oh my gods, did you track me down across the states just to ask me about the skeletons?" Percy demanded.
"No," Rachel said, "although I should have." She crossed her arms. "Activism is my hobby, so I'm usually on the lookout for up-and-coming nonprofits. I was actually looking at that blue food stuff when I recognized your picture."
Percy's face may as well have been on fire. "Seriously?"
Rachel paused, and then grudgingly admitted, "Alright, maybe that was inappropriate. But." She looked determined. "You're the first person I've ever met that saw the same stuff I did. And you knew what it was, didn't you? You can tell me about it?"
Most of Percy's frustration fell away, and he remembered Karen's near hysteria about the hellhound. He'd never really thought about what it was like to be on the outside looking in before.
"Yeah, I can tell you about it," Percy admitted. "I mean, like- the basics. But my mom, she's like you, so she'd probably be better for you to talk to. My experience is sort of, uh. Different."
"Tell me the basics," Rachel ordered him.
They went to grab ice cream first, and sat on a bench in the park while Percy tried to figure out how to explain it. It was a little easier than it might have been; they'd only recently done the same for Matt, Foggy, and Karen, after all.
"I figure you see monsters from Greek myths," Percy said at last, without looking at Rachel. "Right?"
"...Yeah," Rachel said, softer than he'd come to expect from her.
"They're real," Percy said. "All of them." He turned his head and met her eyes, and it was pretty clear she wasn't struggling with this part. She knew that; she was living that. "The way it was explained to me, the Greek world is a lot older than the Norse stuff, so the magic is a lot more powerful, and so are its gods. But the reason most people don't know about it is 'cause of this stuff called the Mist. It makes it so most people can't see monsters or whatever, but there are some people that can see through it. Like you."
"And your mom," Rachel said. "So you can too?"
Percy shrugged. "I mean, better than most mortals can, but not as well as you or Mom, honestly. I don't know if it's even genetic." He bought himself some time by licking at his ice cream, and belatedly, Rachel started on hers too, looking pensive. Finally, he said, "I'm kind of... more directly involved. My dad's a god."
Rachel stared at him, looked him up and down, and tightened her grip on her ice cream cone. "Is it weird that I can sort of believe that?" she asked, surprising Percy. "Was it... was that how your mom found out about this stuff?"
Percy shook his head. "I don't know the whole story, but she said she found out like this." He waved vaguely. "A demigod told her."
"And how do demigods find out?" Rachel asked.
"Well, demigods smell like monster food," Percy said dryly. "So, we find out or we get eaten. Usually both, I think." He softened, reminding himself to try and explain better. "Uh. Most times, either their mortal parents know and take them to camp, and they learn there. Or their parents don't know, or like, never tell them, and a satyr sniffs them out instead, and the satyr takes them to camp."
"Great," Rachel said. "Sounds like a really well-organized system."
Percy smiled a little. "Yeah," he admitted. "I got the explanation after I got chased to camp by the Minotaur. Which, let me tell you, was still a shock, but definitely not as much as it would've been before that." Though there had been Grover and his furry pants too.
"I can definitely believe that," Rachel said, but she was frowning now. "I don't get what this has to do with the DV stuff though."
It took Percy a moment to place the abbreviation, and then he scowled. "Does it have to?" he snapped. Rachel winced.
"I guess not. Sorry."
Percy exhaled, focused very hard on his ice cream for a moment, and then said reluctantly, "Mom married Smelly Gabe because it helped hide me from monsters. She never loved him; I don't think she even liked him. It was kind of a lose-lose situation."
Rachel whistled, grimacing in sympathy. "How's that for coercion?"
Percy managed a flash of a smile. "No kidding." He shrugged. "It's not as uncommon as you'd think. Athena likes to give surprise babies to career men, Aphrodite is shallow as often as not, Ares takes initiative and hits his own kids..." He scowled. "Sorry. There's a lot to say when it comes to the gods and their kids."
"Sounds like it," Rachel said. "I guess I never thought about what it would be like to have a god as a parent." She was quiet for a minute, staring thoughtfully at her ice cream. "Hey. Do you think your mom would mind if I helped out a bit? I know a thing or two about charity work."