I have less than zero clue what I'm doing. This is mostly me working on my writing and playing with some of my favorite tropes.

*Pokes moaning mess of ideas and personal experiences in the corner*

Enjoy, I guess?

Pain and confusion lit up Percy's world upon waking.

His head throbbed like Hephaestus was using it as an anvil, his eyes and cheeks crusted with remains of tears. He ached down to the joints of his little fingers, and it felt like there was a monster gnawing on his insides in place of his stomach. The pain, the hunger and aches, he was used to. It had been his constant companion for months now.

No, the confusion stemmed from the wonderfully soft bed, the comforting weight on his thighs, and the soft whispers that surrounded him. Usually when he cried himself to sleep, he awoke to any number of campers Annabeth had recruited to find him, looking down at his sandy body in disapproval. Not warmth, not whatever this is.

A delicate hand ran through his hair and Percy couldn't help but hum and lean into it. Gods, when was the last time Annabeth and he had touched each other in a way that wasn't charged with sexual tension or negative emotions. This was nice; more like his mom's ministrations than anything. Maybe she had fresh cookies for him.

A delighted and amused laugh echoed above him and nails scritched his scalp.

"Ma…" he mumbled, pulling his sheets tighter. "'S too early. I don' wanna get up."

Where was he? Cookies? Cookies were always a good place to start.

The hand stilled its motion, only starting back up at his grumbling. He sighed, content to lay and have his head massaged as Sally used to when he was small and those horrible nightmares of futures-that-couldn't-be would not leave him alone. It usually was followed by a secret midnight cookie to keep a little bit of his mom's love with him when he went back to bed. Sleeping was also really, really nice.

The monster that was his stomach betrayed his efforts to slip back to dreamland and growled. Loudly. He blamed thinking about cookies.

"It seems that your body has decided for you," a woman's voice commented. A woman who was not Sally. That he had just called mom. Oh gods. It's like that time in first grade all over again.

Percy shot up with a blush, startling something that had been curled into his side. It turned out to be an admittedly gorgeous sea serpent with gold-fleck scales. A twin one popped its head up from his lap.

My Queen, my little lordling. We will leave you to your breakfast, one of them hissed. Both dipped their heads and moved in a seamless unit right out the giant window some distance to the left of the weird coral/sponge bed thingy he was in.

Oh. Oh no. He'd called his dad's wife, who didn't seem to want to be all that friendly, mom.

Said Queen of the Seas was watching him quietly. She looked better than last night- more focused and intent on conquering the day. Bright little fish were darting through her hair and her eyes gleamed with some warm emotion he couldn't name. Percy decided it was best for his sanity to question her apparent change of heart. Afterall, the sea could be unpredictable and change rather quickly.

Wait. Last night. Triton had found him on the beach. He had cried all over three gods like some snot-nosed kid. And then he called Amphitrite his mother.

"Er, my lady, I'm sorry- I thought, well, that, that-" Percy cut himself off before he could dig himself a deeper hole.

Amphritrite softly patted his hand and stood up. "It matters not, Perseus. Call me whatever you feel comfortable with."

He cringed. People only ever called him Perseus if he was in trouble or they were trying to kill him.

"Percy," he mumbled. Don't change your mind and smite me pleasepleaseplease-

"Pardon?"

"It's just… um, please call me Percy. It makes me really uncomfortable when I get called Perseus. Only monsters and gods trying to kill me call me that." He blushed again. This was silly. Annabeth would've rolled her eyes at him picking such a small thing to get hung up on.

But his step-mom only gave him a small smile. "Of course, Percy. I want you to feel safe here with your family. Now come, let us get some food in that belly of yours before anything else."

Percy blinked, thoroughly weirded out by how friendly Amphitrite was suddenly being, and followed her silently through the maze of halls like a lost duckling. Entirely too much had happened in the past twenty-four hours for him to process right now. He fiddled with the huge shirt he was wearing and tried not to think about how it was Triton's pajamas.

The goddess settled him into a seat in a medium-ish dining hall, and they were shortly joined by his dad and Triton. Triton flashed him a grin and patted his shoulder as he sat in the place next to him. Which, okay, when did he slip into the Twilight Zone?

A wide variety of dishes were laid out before them on the table, many Percy couldn't hope to name. He didn't know where to start dishing up.

"Can I get you a plate?" Triton asked softly, eyes oddly hopeful. Was this what everyone else saw when he turned on the pout?

"Er, sure dude." What else was he gonna say to a god that didn't normally like him? No?

In short order, a plate with a small bit of everything was in front of him. Percy was hungry enough not to dawdle and dug in. The seaweed stuffed with something creamy and refreshing quickly became his favorite. The crunchy green things were too bitter for his liking, but he was raised to eat the food people give him, so Percy swallowed them as fast as he could to avoid the taste.

He stuttered, however, at the tuna. It was succulent and seasoned with something wonderfully tangy - that wasn't what gave him pause. It was raw.

"Something wrong, my pearl?" his dad asked in concern. Percy ignored how oddly warm and comforted the nickname made him.

"'S raw."

"Yes?" he replied slowly, visibly confused.

"I'm not a monster for liking it raw, am I?" Annabeth said monsters ate their kills fresh and raw, not humans.

Comprehension visibly dawned on his dad as he left his seat to pull Percy into an awkward hug. The chair's arm was digging into his side. "No, my son. Nothing you could do would ever make you a monster, least of all liking raw fish. Humans enjoy sushi and poke, and that is raw fish, isn't it?"

He hadn't thought about that before.

"Try to eat some more, Percy," Amphitrite added. "You must understand that your needs are different than any surface dweller. It's no different than an athlete requiring more protein, or a woman more iron. It simply is, and we want to help make sure you have everything you need to be healthy."

As if to prove her point, the goddess raised a slice of uncooked salmon and savored it with relish. She pointedly looked at his fork, which Percy slowly brought to his mouth. The tuna was delicious…

Meaty flavor burst across his tongue and Percy sighed in contentment as the cramping pain in his stomach lessened. His dad grinned and placed a soft kiss on his brow before retaking his seat.

Gods. He couldn't even make it through breakfast without causing a scene. No wonder everyone was tired of him.

He was studiously making his way through a cluster of bright blue berries and popped whenever he bit one and released a surprising mellow flavor adjacent to bananas when his dad set down the utensils he'd been using and leveled him with a serious look. Unconsciously sitting straighter, Percy slowly and swallowed the last of the fruit.

"Percy… my pearl, Triton found you in quite a state last night. From the deep bags under your eyes, this was not the first time. We want to help you. Please, can you give us the full story?"

He lowered his eyes and fiddled with his borrowed shirt. His father had never been very invested in his well being outside of making sure Zeus didn't smite him. Why choose now to get involved, when it seemed everyone else was content to drop him like a flaming pile of trash? Triton's big hand settling on his own and the concerned look the god shot him only increased the confusion he'd been feeling since he woke up.

"It's silly, guys, really. I just… I do freaky things sometimes and it scares people a little. Annabeth is helping me to control it, but I slip."

"Like eating a fresh kill?" his father asked softly. It was nice; Poseidon wasn't trying to goad him into thinking or acting a certain way. He wanted to understand Percy where he was.

"Y-yeah. Food at Camp hasn't been settling right lately. It either makes me nauseous or like I haven't eaten anything at all. I was out swimming in the lake with the naiads to get some space and clear my head and I… snapped? I guess? I don't really know. One second, there was a trout darting in front of me, the next, I had swallowed two mouthfuls of the thing, Annabeth was yelling for me to stop, and the nymphs were crowded around me, hissing at her."

All three gods were looking at him like this was legitimately sane behavior. Poseidon even muttered something along the lines of rewarding the naiads for attempting to care and protect him.

But, now that he had finally started, everything gushed out of him like an open faucet.

"That's just part of it, though. I feel like I'm half a step off from everyone at camp. Everytime I do something, someone looks at me horrified. I'm walking on eggshells so that all the campers feel safe around me, so they don't look at me like a monster. Sure, I mean, I still have friends, but Will and Nico are so wrapped up in eachother, Thalia rarely visits, and Clarisse isn't the 'hug it out' type of friend. And, and there's the whole thing with Annabeth."

Tears stung his eyes. Wow. He was really on a roll, huh? He finally had some one listening to him, really listening, and he just had to get it out. Percy'd read somewhere about trauma dumping and he was pretty sure that's what he's doing.

Triton had pulled him into his lap for a hug at some point and Percy didn't have the energy to fight it while he was spilling his guts to his dad and step-family.

"Athena's spawn?" Triton prodded in a deathly calm voice. It was like when the waves stilled right before a hurricane hit.

"She wants me to be a normal mortal. I use my powers too much and I know that scares her and a lot of her friends at camp, but it's not just that. She can help me with that. Annabeth… she wants to take the next step in our relationship and I'm still trying to sort through other issues and the monster in my head. I'm not ready. But she just won't listen and I really don't know how to say no to the only support in my life. She pushes and pushes and she does so much for me and is always there when no one else can make time for me, so I hate it and I feel gross afterwards, but she usually gets what she wants. I know it's probably not right, but I just really, really don't want to be alone."

Triton made a snarling, hissing noise as twin tails came to twine around him. His older brother, who could never spare more than a cool glance for him, clutched at Percy like the fates had come to tear him away.

"Calm yourself, my heir," Poseidon demanded, even though the too sharp, too many fangs belied he, himself, was far from calm.

"Athena and her ilk are poison! They seek to destroy all that is mine! My daughter, my brother, who will be next!"

Amphritrite, Percy notices detachedly, had pearlescent tears dripping down her beautiful face. Percy felt as if he was witnessing this all from a distance, as if this were some tv drama, from outside his body. He was oddly light and floaty after admitting everything. It was as to strange and off.

It's just… his divine family had suddenly taken an interest in him after it felt like an eternity of only having his girlfriend to turn to.

Sure, not everything was perfect with their relationship, but Annabeth was his rock. They'd been through literal Hell together and she knew him better than any other person on the planet, besides maybe his mom. Sally was just awesome like that.

Percy blinked. At some point, he'd been moved so that he was sandwiched between his dad and step-mom, Triton nowhere to be seen. He swallowed thickly. Spacing out like this had happened less and less the more time passed since the wars. He was bitter that it had occurred again; Annabeth would be disappointed in him.

Amphitrite was running her fingers through his hair, carefully avoiding the pearls and flowers and braids she'd placed last night. He leaned into the very welcome touch, using it to ground himself.

"Back with us, sweet one?" she asked.

He hummed in response, smiling at his dad gratefully as a glass of nectar was passed to him. Once more he was reminded of when his mom had done something similar after his night terrors as a child, feeding him warm cookies and cool milk to wash away the taste of bile that would always cling to his throat. While Sally was a wonderful mother and parented and cared for him greatly, those were always the moments when he felt as if all of a grown-up's attention was on comforting and protecting him. Until, like, literally the last twenty-four hours, no one in his life besides her had acted so viscerally like a parent.

He sipped at the golden liquid slowly. It tasted like those creamy roll things Triton had put on his plate.

"Triton went to blow off some steam. I have a few things to see to as well," Poseidon murmured in a dark voice that growled and rumbled like the earth cracking open. "Your stepmother and her ladies are going to help you settle. I love you, my pearl, and I am so very proud of you and your courage in trusting us with this information. I will see you later."

With one last kiss pressed to his brow, his dad stood and prowled from the room. Amphitrite offered him a warm smile as the hand in his hair migrated to hold his own. It was weird to notice that even her slim appendage was larger than his own.

"Well then, sweet one. Is there anything you'll be needing from the surface from an extended stay in Atlantis?"