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: Eeeeeep, here we are! This chapter is a rollercoaster, I'm just going to say that now. And that's all I'll say for now. ;)

As always, I hope you enjoy! Until the next chapter,

~TGWSI/Selene Borealis


~The Finding Home Saga~

~Finding Home~

~Chapter 78: The Stomach Flu To Beat All Stomach Flus~


A month and another date with Luke (in which we went to the movies and watched Sweeney Todd, which had come out the month before) later, I was sick with the stomach flu.

I woke up on the first Monday of February, the 4th, and before I was even fully aware of what I was doing, I was rushing to the bathroom. I didn't bother turning on the light or closing the bathroom door behind me; there was no time for that. All I had time to do was kneel before the toilet and throw up into its bowl. Not surprisingly, not a whole lot came out because too much had passed since I'd had dinner the night before. But I couldn't stop myself from retching nonetheless.

How long it took me until I stopped, I wasn't sure, but finally my gag reflex wasn't being triggered anymore and I was able to rest my forehead on the toilet seat as I gasped for air, trying to catch my breath.

It was pretty much the most opportune time for it to stop. Only a second later, the lights to the bathroom were turned on as my mom asked, "Percy, are you alright?"

"Urgh," I managed to groan out. The sudden brightness was too strong for me to manage anything else.

Thankfully, my mom turned off the lights to the bathroom, on the lights to the hallway, and closed the door behind her enough that it wasn't too bad. She crouched down next to me and immediately pressed her hand to my forehead; I couldn't help but notice how warm she felt. "Did you just throw up?"

"What else does it look, and not to mention smell, like?" I wanted to say.

Rather than that, all I did was nod my head numbly.

"Hmm. Well, you do feel a little warm," she noted as she drew her hand away. She then put it on my upper back and started to move it in small circles comfortingly. "Do you want me to call the school? Tell them that you're sick?"

Now, maybe this seems a little paradoxical to you: I was throwing up, most schools (at least in the United States) have a policy of not letting students who threw up attend school in case of some sort of highly contagious illness, so of course I couldn't go to school if I was sick.

But, I knew my mom. She was simply making sure that I was okay with the idea of staying home today...even though she undoubtedly would've called me in anyways if I wasn't.

Yet, I was. The vomiting aside, I felt absolutely miserable. Going to school and potentially throwing up there as well, because while my stomach had stopped, I had a feeling this wouldn't be the last time I did today? Yeah, no, hard pass.

"Yeah, Mom," I rasped. My voice was ragged from my stomach acid. "Thanks."

"Okay, sweetie," she replied as she stood up. "I'll go call the school and get a glass of water and some saltines ready for when you're ready for them. The bucket's underneath the sink if you need it."

Ah, yes. The bucket. It had once been one of those one-gallon ice cream pails which my mom had gotten for me (and Gabe) well over ten years ago, but had since been given another purpose: to be used for vomiting. I'm not actually sure why she repurposed it, because I didn't get sick all that much as a kid (perk of being a demigod) and Gabe refused to touch it at all. Maybe she just wanted to make sure that she had something handy if I was sick and couldn't get to the toilet in time. It's hard to say.

And in any event, I digress. I nodded again, and she left me to my fate. While squeezing my eyes shut, I heard her leave a message for the school, because it wasn't even six o'clock in the morning yet and thus too early for anybody to be there, before she did the same with Mr. Blofis – I guess because she wanted to make sure that Callie wouldn't be worried about where I was when I didn't show up.

When she walked back down the hallway to go back to her bedroom and get ready for her own day of work, I don't know why the sound did it, but it re-triggered my urge to vomit. Thankfully, I hadn't moved from my position in front of the toilet, too scared to otherwise with how my stomach was feeling. All I had to do was move my foot to close the door all the way, and then I was as good (relatively speaking) as I could be.

Strangely, in spite of how I felt, I only puked two times more that day, both also in the morning, and wasn't running a temperature at all when I checked throughout with the thermometer that was usually kept in the bathroom cupboard. By late afternoon, I was even starting to feel better – still very tired and a little bit queasy, but better.

Not wanting to chance things, though, I stuck to taking it easy. I laid down on the couch with a blanket over me and Bob joined me for most of the day, and we both napped a little as movie after movie played on the TV at a quiet setting and captions (redundantly, due to my dyslexia) turned on. The bucket was on the floor next to the couch in the event that I needed it, but both of the times that I threw up again, I was able to get to the toilet in the nick of time.

I told my mom all of this when she got home and asked me how I was feeling, which I could tell confused her a bit. Her lips pursed and her eyebrows knitted together. "Maybe it was just a twenty-four hour bug?" she suggested lightly. It gave me the impression that, if she hadn't seen the sick in the toilet herself and knew that I was generally trustworthy, she wouldn't have believed that I was sick at all.

C'est la vie for a teenager, I guess.

"...'Maybe?'" I echoed.

For some reason, I wasn't sure if I believed that explanation, either.

It was for good reason, I suppose. The next morning was a repeat of the one before: I woke up with my alarm this time, but I was still rushing to the toilet before I was fully awake.

"'Guess it wasn't a twenty-four hour bug after all," I told my mom when she woke up and came in for the second time in recent memory to check on me.

"I guess not," she agreed. She rechecked my temperature with the hand-to-the-forehead method. "Still no fever. But you're still staying home from school."

The day was a repeat of the day before, except I threw up five times instead of four. So was the day after that, although it was four times once again and my half-sister, recognizing that I had to be down pretty bad to be missing school like this, came to visit me.

"Gods, Percy," she remarked when I opened the front door for her. She was holding what looked to be a container of soup in her hands. "You look awful."

"Gee, 'hanks," I snorted. As a side effect of puking so much, I'd developed the sniffles – but they weren't another symptom of me being sick-sick, of that I was sure. "What's 'hat?"

"Soup," Callie said. "Chicken and gnocchi soup. I got it at a place on the way over here, the guy running it said this was the best thing for any sort of contagious illness – but you better not give me whatever you have, you hear? Oh, and I also brought you your work from the past couple of days."

Oh, just what I wanted: schoolwork on top of being sick.

But, that being said, I let her in anyways. What else was I going to do? "My mom hasn't gotten sick," I told her as some solace. "I don't think you have anythin' to worry about."

"Do you guys know what's wrong with you yet?" she asked as she walked in and closed the door behind her. She set the container of soup on the counter and crouched down to give Bob scritches when my cat sauntered over to her in demands of them.

"We think it's just a stomach flu," I reported dutifully. "It's kicking my ass, though."

"Yeah, I'll bet."

Callie didn't stay long, so as to not catch my germs. My mom knew that she came because I told her as much so I could explain why I was trying to do my homework when she came home. I didn't want to get too far behind on it. Fuck, I was honestly kind of wanting to go back to school. Being forced to stay in the apartment for the past three days was making me antsy.

This was not to be my fate, however. Thursday and Friday both I got sick again in the morning, although my symptoms wound up abating some: I only threw up three times on those days. Saturday was twice.

And Sunday was only the once. Yet, after an entire week of throwing up and giving some muscles that I didn't even know that I had quite the workout, I was nonetheless all but down for the count. I dozed for most of the day on the couch just like I had every other day that I'd been sick thus far, an arm wrapped around my torso. Since my mom had finally gotten a job where she had the weekends consistently off, she spent most of this day with me, just like all of the day before.

Emphasis on the word "most." At some point, probably around two o'clock, I was roused somewhat from my sleep by the feeling of my mom kissing my forehead. "Percy?" she said softly. "I'm going to go to the store, okay?"

"Mmph?" was my response. I hadn't quite heard her.

She repeated her intent, following it up with, "Do you have anything that you want me to get you?"

Thinking about if there was anything I wanted from the store was a struggle. My mind seemed to have the consistency of soup, like the soup that Callie had gotten me. I'd unfortunately thrown that up not long after I'd eaten it, which made me feel bad for her money going to waste.

"...No," I finally decided.

"'No?'" she quoted me. "Alright, well...I'll be back as soon as I can, okay?"

There was something off about her voice, I sluggishly realized. It sounded like she was on the verge of tears.

For the life of me, I couldn't figure out why. I didn't have the physical, mental, or emotional capacity to.

"'Kay," I mumbled.

My mom left for the store, and I fell back asleep before she was probably even halfway down the hallway to the elevator of our building. Like most of my naps during the duration of my sickness, the sleep was restful. No demigod dreams or anything like that – which, in retrospect, probably should've been weird. It wasn't like me to have restful naps, or to really have naps at all even when I was sick, given my ADHD.

. . .

. . .

Little did I know it, but this was the last restful sleep that I was going to get for...well, probably ever, if I'm really being honest.


There was a hand shaking my shoulder.

"Percy," my mom said.

Groggily, I opened my eyes. My mom was crouched down in front of me. Her face was unusually hard, though it still had some of the softness to it that it always did. The only thing that I could think of to describe it as is a "war face." Like she was prepared for a fight.

In spite of my drowsiness, it made me a bit more alert than I would've been otherwise.

"What?" I asked as I sat up, pausing at the end to yawn. I saw the time on the DVR: it was four o'clock. So much for "being back shortly" from the store, I thought. "Everything okay?"

My mom took in a deep breath.

...No, I thought. Everything was not okay.

"Percy," she began quietly, pausing long enough to wipe at her eyes, "I need – I need you to answer the question that I'm about to ask you honestly. I'm not going to think any less of you for your answer, you are my son and I love you, no matter what. But you have to answer me honestly, okay? You have to tell me the truth."

I don't think that my mom had ever made a request like that of me before, at least not one with so much severity. For a moment, I stared at her, dumbstruck.

What was she going to ask? What was so important for her that she had to know, but at the same time she thought I was going to lie?

"O...kay," I said.

My mom locked eyes with me. "Percy, have you had sex in the past two months?" she asked. "Specifically, sex with another boy?"

...Abruptly, my mind blanked. I don't know how else to describe it. Staring at my mom, my eyes widening, I spluttered out, "What?"

For the first time in a long time, I saw my mother's patience shorten. "Just answer the question, Percy!" she insisted.

I thought about lying to her. It wouldn't be hard to do: I'd been consistently lying to her for a while, after all.

But there was something about her current state that told me not to, that things would not bode well for my future if I did.

So, numbly, I told her, "Yeah."

My mom's eyes became more watery. "Were you the one who was...receiving?" She sounded like she would rather do anything else than ask that question, but she did. "Did he wear protection?"

These were two more questions than she had said that she was going to ask, however I didn't comment on it. To be honest, her reaction was beginning to scare me. The other times that I'd seen my mom like this before, I could honestly only count on one hand, and I'd probably have at least two fingers remaining.

"Yes...and no," I answered honestly. I wasn't going to lie to her when she was like this.

My mom's breathing shuddered. She put a hand to her mouth, then looked down at the bag that was laying on the ground next to her. I hadn't noticed it until now. Removing her hand from her mouth, she pulled the bag into her lap and took two boxes out of it.

"Then I think you need to take these," she told me.

My mind once again blanked. I couldn't believe what I was looking at.

The boxes were pregnancy tests. Even without having to squint my eyes because of my dyslexia to read the text on them, I knew what they were. I'd gone to the store enough times with Silena and/or Callie when they needed...err...pads and tampons to know this. The tests were always placed close to those items. Neither Silena nor Callie had ever bought one before, but my eyes had a tendency to wander from everything besides the products that they were buying when we went on these excursions.

"Mom..." I started to laugh nervously. "Uh, nice joke, but there's just one problem here...I'm a guy. A cisgender guy."

She gave me a smile, but it didn't reach her eyes – they didn't crinkle at the edges like they always did. "I know, Percy. I know that better than anyone else: I'm the one that gave birth to you, remember. But...there's something about you, because of you being a son of Poseidon, that I should have told you a long, long time ago. I'm sorry that I didn't. There's no excuse for it, really. You just – you never gave me any sign that I needed to, and then when you went off to camp I was sure that they would've told you there, but I guess they never did..."

Her expression crumpled. My mom let out a short sob, her shoulders shaking, but she steeled herself quickly, taking in another deep breath. "When I was still pregnant with you, before we found out the gender, your father told me that, well...the sea is fertile, Percy. You know this. Many sea deities also function as fertility gods or goddesses, and your father is one of them. In his mortal sons, this manifests in the ability for them to both father children and...bear them."

Some of my shock was starting to give away. "And none of you ever told me this?" I blurted out.

"I know, I should've, or – or made sure that Chiron, or your stepmother, or your father did," she agreed. She sniffled. "There's nothing for it now, other than for you to take the tests. They're fairly simple. All you have to do is pee on the right side of the stick and then set it on a flat surface for about three to five minutes. If you don't believe me, you can read the directions..."

"Believe."

I believed – or I wanted to believe, anyways – that this was all a prank. It had to be. Any moment, my mom was going to abruptly give me a shit-eating grin and laugh as she pointed at me, telling me that this was all a joke she'd come up with to make me come out to her, fess up about Luke, or both. That would be uncharacteristically cruel of her, of course, but it would be better than...this. The alternative.

"Mom – "

"Just go to the bathroom and take these tests, Percy," she ordered, her voice containing no room for my nonsense. She put the tests into my lap. "If they're positive, you'll know that I'm telling the truth and...we'll figure it out. If they're negative...I'm still telling the truth, but you can just consider this a scare and we'll talk more about it later, okay?"

I didn't answer her verbally. Or, really, at all. Instead, I robotically stood up, clutching the pregnancy tests in my arms, and went off to the bathroom feeling like I was in a daze. A dream.

A nightmare.

Closing and locking the bathroom door behind me, I put the pregnancy test boxes on the sink counter. Each box was revealed to have two tests inside. They were some of the fancier ones, with caps on them and everything. I figured out I had to take the caps off them in order to take the tests when I opened up one of the instruction pamphlets and saw the pictures telling me as much.

I sat down on the toilet to take the tests, although I couldn't tell you why I decided to go through with taking them. None of this seemed real. It'd been a while since I'd last peed, so I had no problems in that regard. After I peed on each stick, I put them back on the sink counter. When I was done with all of them, or at least thought that I'd peed on them enough for them to work, I remained sitting on the toilet and just stared off into space for what felt like an eternity, but was in all likelihood only five or so minutes.

My mind was racing, and yet I couldn't think about anything at all. My heart was pounding away so hard I could hear it inside my ears. My throat and mouth were dry, but my eyes were wet more than enough to make up for them.

But I didn't cry.

The tears, I knew, would come later, regardless of what the results of those four tests were.

When I was finally able to rouse myself out of my stupor, I grabbed the instructions off of the counter, not daring to look at the tests quite yet. I wanted to make sure that I knew what I was looking for. One pink line was negative. Two pink lines, no matter how faint, were positive.

Standing back up and pulling up my pants and underwear, I looked first at my reflection in the mirror, noting how pale and shiny from sweat my face was, and for reasons other than the fact that I was beginning to feel like I was going to throw up again.

Then I looked down at the sink counter. At the pregnancy tests.

I counted the lines. There were eight of them.

All four were positive.

If I was to put my trust in them, then it was undeniable. I, despite being fully male, because I was a son of Poseidon, was pregnant. At sixteen years old.

I was going to have a baby.

I was going to have Luke's baby.

There was only one thing I could think of to say to this:

"What the fu – !"


Word Count: 3,548

Next Chapter Title: I Blow Up On My Parents