Disclaimer: I only own the plot and my OCs. Anything you recognize as not mine belongs to Rick Riordan, Greco-Roman Mythology, and/or their otherwise respective owners.
Author's Notes: Hi, everyone! Sorry for the later update. My writing schedule is still recovering from my medical stuff. But, I'm hoping to get caught up this week, so never fear! :P
As always, I hope you enjoy. Until next week,
~TGWSI/Selene Borealis
~The Finding Home Saga~
~Finding Home~
~Chapter 48: I Play Out Some Teenager Stereotypes~
It felt good to be home – or, should I say, back to my mom's apartment.
I set my bag down on my bed, looking around my room. It hadn't really changed at all since the last time I had been here. Well, I mean, my mom had cleaned it up some, and she'd put some more clothes she'd bought for me on my bed, but other than that everything looked like how I'd left it. My bed still had its dark blue bedding, and my posters of my favorite bands were still hanging from the walls. Even the Ancient Greek textbook that had been laying open on my desk was still there, albeit my mom had closed it and put a bookmark in it. It was a nice sense of normalcy to return to after my summer, and not the only aspect of my life that was going to be that way.
Somehow (read: because he was a teacher there), Mr. Blofis had worked with Chiron to get Callie and I able to go back to Goode High School for this coming up school year, which was a year longer than I had stayed at for any school during my academic career. We were going to be sophomores. I was sixteen years old, which meant we still had two more years until the Great Prophecy took effect...presuming that I was still the child of the Big Three it referred to.
After Thalia had come back to life and I'd helped her to the infirmary, Will Solace and every single other kid in the Apollo cabin with healer abilities had done a full workup on her. I remembered sitting on one of the nearby beds, gobsmacked as I'd watched them and tried to make sense of what I was seeing.
Thalia Grace, the daughter of Zeus and Luke's first romantic partner and only girlfriend, was alive once more.
She'd fallen asleep pretty much the moment the healers had finished up their work. Like with the gods, a meeting had been called in the Big House for all of the cabin counselors and Chiron to talk about the medical results. We'd sat in the rec room around the pingpong table – me, Katie, Clarisse, Annabeth, Lee, Beckendorf, Silena, the Stolls, and Pollux and Castor. All of our faces had been grim.
"She's in perfect health," Will had told us. "At least, as in perfect health as a demigod can be, anyways. The...wounds she'd sustained before coming to camp – " meaning the wounds that had been killing her, up until Zeus had turned her into a pine tree " – look like she's had them for a while. They've scarred over."
Annabeth had frowned. "How old do you think she is?"
Nobody else had really reacted hearing this news, outside of me, Silena, Katie, and of course Chiron. Of the people present, we and Annabeth (and I didn't know how she'd found out, just for the record, Chiron had just informed me she had before I'd ever come to camp) been the only ones to know of the Great Prophecy's contents.
It wasn't like it was really all that far out there of a question to ask. Time could act weirdly in the world of the gods: Bianca and Nico had stayed in the Lotus Hotel for almost seventy years without aging a single day. It was actually kind of surprising that our time in the Sea of Monsters hadn't been affected by this at all, or so I'd learned.
"...I don't know," Will had replied with a shrug. "She's obviously not thirteen anymore. I'd say somewhere around fifteen, maybe sixteen; definitely not as old as she should be."
That had made the five of us in the know all share looks, and everybody else in the room had picked up on it. "What?" Travis had asked.
"It is nothing," Chiron had said.
Nobody had really believed him on that, but they hadn't called him out on his bullshit, either.
There were two options: either Thalia wasn't the prime candidate for the Great Prophecy, and that was either because the biological age of the demigod didn't matter (which meant Bianca and Nico weren't candidates for the Great Prophecy as well, and a large part of me hoped that was the case, in spite of the extra pressure it put on Callie) or because she was biologically younger than me, or she was. And that...that was problematic, for multiple reasons.
Mainly, because I didn't know which side she would be on, if that was the case.
Thalia was like a wild card. It'd taken her a few days to adjust to camp and the fact that she'd been dead for six years. But, once she had...
She'd been angry for days. The only person she'd allowed near her was Annabeth, so we'd all only gotten the news from her. "She's angry at Luke, for betraying the gods," she'd told Silena, Katie, and I in private when she'd been able to. "She's angry at her father for turning her into a tree instead of letting her die. She's just...angry at the world, really."
But just because her anger had stopped after those days, that didn't mean her antisocial nature had. For the rest of the summer, she'd avoided everybody like the plague – especially me, Callie, and the di Angelos. It had been heartbreaking to see, because Nico had been so excited at having another cousin besides me and Callie. And then each and every single one of his attempts had been rebuked.
"It's not you, Neeks," I'd had to tell him. He always pouted at the nickname, claiming to not like it, but I knew better. "Thalia's just...she's undergone a lot of change recently. She needs time to adjust."
"...I know," he'd replied, but he hadn't been looking at me as he'd said it. "I still just wanna be friends with her..."
"Give it time," I'd said. "And you will be."
But I hadn't sworn to the River Styx on it.
I wanted to be friends with Thalia too, just for the record, and not just because I wanted to pick her brain on Luke and see if maybe there was a way I could convince him to come back to the side of the gods in the end. But until she was ready, I wasn't going to push it. I knew better than to do that.
A knock at my door broke me out of my reverie, and nearly caused me to jolt out of my skin. "Percy, are you alright?" my mom asked me.
"Fine, Mom!" I told her through the door. "I think...I'm just gonna lay down for a bit. Is that okay?"
"Yes, that's alright."
As I heard her walk away, I went over to my window and pulled it up. There was a nice breeze outside. It didn't smell fresh and beautiful like the breeze from the Heliades did, but I was willing to take what I could get.
I was tired. It felt like, now that I was home and had a break from the insanity of this summer between the Sea of Monsters, Luke, Thalia, and everything else, my body needed a reset.
Pushing my bag and the new clothes down to end of the bed, I laid down on my side, my face facing towards the window as I closed my eyes. I wasn't really expecting to get any sleep; when you're a demigod or even have ADHD similar to how we do, you know a nap's never really something you can hope to achieve. And true to form, I didn't really fall asleep. I existed in that half-conscious state that comes instead of sleep sometimes: the one where most sounds are blocked out but your thoughts are still mostly coherent, and when you wake up you feel groggy as shit.
Oh, well. It was a tradeoff I was willing to make.
I wasn't sure how I long I was "asleep" for. But when I heard the sound of my window closing, I knew it must've been a while, because my mom wasn't the kind of person to just come into my room after I needed my space, and certainly not without knocking first.
"Ugh," I groaned, rubbing at my eyes. "S – sorry, Mom. Didn't mean to sleep this long..."
A deep chuckle had me stopping in my tracks. "I'm not your mom. Nice guess, though."
I scrambled into a sitting position as my eyes flung open.
For a second, I almost thought I was dreaming. Here Luke was, standing in my freaking bedroom. He looked just like he had on the Princess Andromeda – good, healthy, and was wearing a navy blue shirt with lighter washed jeans, along with a pair of brown converse. His hair was styled nicely. He looked almost like...you know what, I'm not going to say that. It'd probably be blasphemous if I did.
"I hope you don't mind that I used your window to come in," he said, briefly glancing behind him. "And that I came here instead of intercepting you somewhere else. It's just been so long, and – "
I cut him off. "Luke?"
He raised an eyebrow. "Yes, Percy?"
He was nervous, as made obvious by his expression. And perhaps he had reason to be. I was angry at him for not telling me that there had even been a possibility of Thalia coming back to life. I wanted to ask him what it meant for us, now that she was alive.
But, he was here now, and that was nothing but a good sign for our relationship as he'd proposed it. Like, he wasn't with Thalia instead right now, was he?
And yes, I knew how much of a petty bitch that made me sound, but I didn't care in the slightest.
Standing up from my bed, I calmly walked forwards until I was right in front of him. I wrapped my hands around his neck and stood on my tiptoes – even with my most recent growth spurt, he was still so fucking tall, dammit.
Then I proceeded to kiss him like there was no tomorrow.
Luke made a surprised, but happy noise in the back of his throat. I felt his arms lock around me just like they'd used to, keeping them in a firmly PG place. It made me a little annoyed, though unfairly, but I let him push me back onto my bed without complaint. He wouldn't hurt me again, I knew that.
...And also yes, I know how insane that sounds without the context...or hell, probably even with the context, but whatever. I don't care.
He was the one to break off the kiss, pulling away. "That was...quite the welcoming," he said quietly, so as not to alert my mother.
I almost lost it. It took everything in my willpower to just snicker, and not break out laughing. "Yeah. But it was a good welcoming, I hope?"
"A perfect one," he agreed. "I take it this means...?"
I snorted. "You need verbal confirmation of it? Fine. I thought about what you said back in June, about us having a relationship beyond the scenes without almost anybody knowing, and I decided that it's something I want. Now, shut up and go back to kissing me."
He chuckled again, but gave in to my demands.
"You're wearing your pendant," he noted the next time we came up for air. "Do you like it?"
"Yeah," I said breathily.
"I got you another birthday present."
"And I got one for you."
He smiled bewilderedly, laughing quietly. It was so relaxed, so natural, so utterly Luke, with no strings or anything else attached. "You got me a birthday present back in March, back when you were still hating my guts?"
I shrugged. "I saw it in a shop and thought of you. I wasn't sure if I'd ever get around to give you it, but. I have it. It's nothing bad, I promise."
"That sounds so reassuring."
"Shut up," I repeated. "Hold on, let me go get it."
I moved out from underneath him to go over to my closet. I'd stuffed his gift as far in it as I possibly could, so that it was in the same area my old projects from elementary school were. Like most moms of teenage boys, I knew that my mom wasn't really all that interested in looking in my closet if she didn't have to, so putting it there had been to my advantage.
The gift was small, located in a small box. But, when I turned around, Luke didn't seem to be bothered by it. "You're going first," I told him, sitting back down on the bed and handing him his gift. "Happy belated eighteenth birthday, Luke."
He accepted it, and grinned from ear to ear when he took out the item. "A bracelet," he said.
It was a leather bracelet, to be precise, braided, with two gem beads woven into it. "They're your birthstones," I informed him, just in case he didn't know. "Aquamarine and bloodstone."
He slid it onto his right wrist seamlessly. "I love it."
I felt my chest warm up. "Yeah?"
"Yeah," he repeated, before smirking. "Alright, your turn."
From his jeans' pocket, he pulled out a wristwatch. It, too, had a leather bracelet as its base. The clock itself was a bronze color – celestial bronze. The numerals on it weren't Arabic or even Roman, but what I had learned from Ancient Greek lessons with Annabeth to be Attic, with Π representing the number 5 and Δ ten, since those were the letters that the Ancient Greek names for the numbers began with.
This, I realized, had to be a magical gift.
Luke really went out of his way to treat me, didn't he?
I wished I could do the same. But, my mom and I weren't exactly rich. And I'd get a part-time job, but I had a feeling that wouldn't wind up going well. My track record with schools was already bad enough.
"Can I put it on you?" Luke asked. When I nodded, he put it on my left wrist, before he told me, "Stand up."
I did.
"Now press the button on the side of the watch."
I did that, too.
"Holy shit!"
I jerked back in surprise as a shield spiraled out from the watch, and as the leather bracelet expanded, becoming an outright strap. And it was a huge shield. It had to be at least four feet in diameter, enough to fit me and probably even another person behind it like Silena or Katie, although it would be a tight squeeze.
Before I could admire it any further, there was a knock at my door. Again.
"Percy? Is everything alright in there?"
...Shit.
Shit.
My mom could not find out that Luke was here. If she did, I didn't even want to know what she'd think. Because either she'd think that I was betraying the gods after all, and that was not a conversation I wanted to have, or she would put two and two together and figure out that I'm gay and in a romantic relationship with him, which was a conversation I did not want to have even more than the other one.
"Uh, I'm fine, Mom!" I said, internally cursing. Dammit, why did my voice have to crack now? "Everything's fine!"
"Are you sure?"
"Yes!"
But I both heard and saw her twisting the doorknob around anyways.
I spun around, ready to tell Luke to do something, although I didn't know what, since there wasn't really any time for him to –
Except, he was gone.
And my shield was back to being a wristwatch again.
My mom opened the door and eyed me critically. "Percy, are you sure everything's okay?"
I felt bad about lying to her, but it had to be done. "Yeah. There was just this huge...spider," I decided to say, gesturing with my hands as to its size. "I was gonna kill it, but it ran away on me."
Her eyes crinkled at the edges. "A spider?"
"Yes. But it's fine. It's not a big deal." I made a show of yawning. "I'm still tired. I think I'm gonna go back to laying down for a bit."
...Judging by the look on her face, she didn't quite believe me.
But she didn't press it, either. "Okay," she said. "I think I'm going to order pizza for dinner tonight. Do you want the usual?"
"Yes, please."
"I'll wake you up when it gets here. Love you."
"Love you too, Mom."
When she closed the door behind her, I nearly sagged with relief.
"Luke?" I asked, careful not to speak too loudly. My mom barging in was a reminder we weren't the only ones in the apartment. "Luke, where – you hid under my bed?"
"I needed some place to hide," he said, looking a little disgruntled. Honestly, though, I was impressed: he was like six-foot-four, yet he'd still been able to shove himself under my bed in a matter of seconds. "I guess I could've gone out the window, but I didn't think I'd have the time for that."
"No, probably not," I agreed. I still snickered. "Shit, you hid under my bed. That's like, so stereotypical. Like something you'd see in a teen movie."
"If you say so."
...Right. Luke had lived on the run for years before he'd arrived at Camp Half-Blood, where he'd remained a year-rounder up until he'd left. He didn't really have that much experience with pop culture or the mortal world in general.
Baby steps, I reminded myself. If we were gonna do this, I needed to be patient with him, and for a lot more reasons than just that.
Not wanting him to think I didn't like the gift, I pressed the button on the side of the watch again. This time, when the shield came out, I turned it over so I could look at its front properly. "Wow," I said. "It's beautiful."
Luke's expression brightened. "You think so?"
"Fuck, yes. It's gorgeous."
The front of the shield was a simple design, but it was perfect. A pegasus that actually kind of reminded me of the mare that had escaped from the Princess Andromeda looked like it was running towards the viewer, its wings outstretched. The Tristar pegasus had absolutely nothing on it. In the background, foamy waves rose up, and when I tilted the shield even slightly, the light made it look like they were actually moving.
"Thank you, Luke." I figured out how to get the shield back into the wristwatch form, which was a good thing. It allowed me to go over to my bed and show him just how thankful I really was with a hug that pinned him down onto the mattress. "Thank you, thank you, thank you..."
He laughed again – and gods, had I missed his laugh. It was better than sunshine on a cloudy day. "You're welcome. Happy belated sixteenth birthday, Percy. And thank you again for my gift, too."
Silence fell between us. It was a comfortable one, as we were just content to bask in the other's presence after so, so long. He was laying on my bed, and I was laying on top of him, happy as he played with the hair at the nape of my neck.
But, as much as I wanted it to, I knew it couldn't last forever. My mom would be coming back in here eventually to let me know that our pizza had arrived, and I needed to talk with Luke before then. It was an understatement to say there was stuff that we needed to go over.
"...So," I said finally, shifting my position enough that I could look at him comfortably. "About Thalia."
Predictably, he cringed. "I'm sorry I didn't tell you that she was going to be resurrected," he started. "But not even Kronos knew for certain that it was going to happen. He had his guesses, but – "
"That's not what I'm talking about, and you know it," I interjected.
He wilted. "I know."
When no further response from him was forthcoming, I knew I had to press on. "Luke, if this is going to work out, even before we figure out everything else, I need to know: are you still in love with her?"
"No," he said immediately, with zero hesitation. "Thalia was the first person I ever fell in love with, and a part of me isn't over that because of what happened to her, but...it's been six years since she died. I'm a different person now than I was then. Am I happy she's alive? Yes. But I don't want her back. I just want you."
That was a good enough answer for me. I could tell it came from a place of pure honesty. "Okay."
His eyebrows furrowed. "'Okay?' You're not even going to ask if she's now the child of the Great Prophecy?"
"That's not an answer I need to know right now," I defended myself. I wasn't really feeling like spiraling into a panic attack today. "Besides, we have other, more important things we need to talk about."
Luke sat up some, forcing us both to readjust our positions. "I'm not going to hurt you," he spoke. He grabbed my hands in his. "We're going to have to put on a show for the gods, for everyone. But when it's just the two of us, I am never going to hurt you. I promise."
This wasn't an oath made on the River Styx, either.
But I appreciated the gesture nonetheless. "I know. That's not what I'm talking about, though. Like, when we're able to...do we go on dates? Go out to dinner? Visit the museum? Do...more, when we're ready to?"
I wanted to do more with him. I was sixteen now; I wasn't a kid anymore. But, at the same time...
Luke picked up on this. "We can work up to that," he said, squeezing both of my hands tenderly. "But, for now...or I guess our second first date, whenever that is – "
I snorted. "'Second first date?'"
"I think it would be good to call it that, after everything that...happened. A nice chance to start over," he explained patiently. Well, I couldn't fault him for that. He smiled, a spark of that mischievous glint coming to his eyes. "Anyways, I think going out to dinner for it sounds like a very good idea. And I know just the place to take you to."
Word Count: 3,786
Next Chapter Title: My Perfect Second First Date
