Chapter Text
The Big House porch light buzzed.
Not loudly. Just enough to be annoying if you’d been in the same wicker chair for....approximately far too long. Dionysus tipped the Diet Coke can back, getting approximately three drops of syrup water. He stared at it like it personally betrayed him.
“Fantastic,” he muttered.
He could summon another one, stand up and walk into the kitchen and retrieve another one if he was so inclined. He was not inclined.
Camp was quiet in the particular way that it was only during the school year, when half of the resident demigods and legacies returned home to their mortal families. Not silent, just softer. Wind moving through the trees. The distant shuffle of harpies arguing over leftovers. A naiad—nope, he wasn’t getting dragged into this again tonight.
And then, footsteps on gravel.
He didn’t look up immediately. If it was a camper sneaking out, they’d panic and invent a terrible lie faster if he gave them three seconds of hope.
The footsteps did not panic.
They just kept coming.
Slow. Dragging a little.
Dionysus glanced up and was greeted by the sight of blue.
Not just blue—that ridiculous multicolor fad that so many campers were part of these days. Dark at the roots, pale at the ends, like they had dipped their head into a watercolor painting and decided to commit to the bit. Patchwork pants, jingling bracelets, oversized sweater. Backpack slung over their shoulder like they had no intention of coming back.
Percy Jackson.
2:04am, and they were crossing the yard with their things packed like it was a completely normal thing to do.
Dionysus squinted up at the sky and then back at Percy.
“You’re aware that it is aggressively night, yes?”
“Yeah.”
Silence.
Wind moved through the strawberry fields.
Dionysus waited.
Percy waited.
He sighed. “Well, that was a deeply uninformative response.”
They adjusted the strap of their backpack, tilting their head slightly. “You asked if I knew what time it was. I confirmed.”
“You’re leaving camp at two in the morning.” It was a statement, not a question.
A shrug. Their bracelets clinked softly. “Maybe.”
“Why?”
Another shrug. “Not determined yet.”
“And what, exactly, are you trying to determine?”
Percy considered this question very seriously before responding. “If I’m going to commit a felony. Or move into a decommissioned lighthouse, where I will live at the top. And nobody will know I live there. And there will be a button I can press to launch that lighthouse into the stars should someone get close to my location.” A pause. “Or get ice cream at that 24-hour shop in town. I haven’t decided yet.”
Dionysus stared at them.
Not a dramatic divine stare. Just the kind of look a very tired adult gives when a teenager says something so concerning they don’t even know where to begin.
“....Right.”
Percy nodded, more to themselves than to him, before turning back towards the road.
“Stop,” Dionysus said.
They stopped.
He didn’t get up. That would imply effort. But his voice lost its bored edge. Not angry exactly, just firm in the way he only ever used when a camper was about to engage in something catastrophically stupid.
“Jackson...”
They turned halfway back around. Expression flat, eyes ringed with the bruised shadows of someone who has a casual relationship with sleep instead of the committed one they should. They haven’t slept in days, Dionysus knew this to be true. The lights in the Poseidon cabin rarely turned off until the sun came up.
“You’ve been awake for,” he checked his watch for dramatic effect, “approximately forever. Have not attended a single meal in three days unless bribed, and are leaving camp with nothing but a backpack at an hour in which only raccoons and chaos exist.”
Percy stared blankly at him.
He sighed.
“Explain.”
Percy looked down at the gravel and nudged a stone with their shoe. “Fresh air?”
“Try again.”
Another long silence. The kind that younger campers typically filled with excuses. When Percy finally spoke again, it was so quiet that Dionysus could barely hear them.
“Cabin’s loud,” they said simply.
Dionysus glanced in the direction of the cabins, which were, in fact, not loud at all.
“In what sense? Also, you live alone in your cabin.”
Percy’s eyes remained fixed on the gravel. “Just is.”
Dionysus watched them for a moment. Watched they way they seemed to vibrate around the edges. Not hyper or energetic. More like a wire that’s been pulled too tight.
“You dropped out of school.”
“I’m finishing online.
“You haven’t spoken to your mortal relatives in...a concerning amount of time.”
Another shrug.
“You rarely leave your cabin unless it’s to obtain more art supplies or ship out orders from that weird little online store of yours.” He narrows his eyes, voice turning suspicious. “Or to mail something to your invisible employer that I am convinced is somehow illegal.”
“It’s just graphic commissions and web design.”
“I know what those words mean. I just struggle to understand why a company would hire a seventeen-year-old to draw frogs with hats.”
“Because they want frogs with hats.”
“...Fair, I suppose.”
Percy shifted their weight, casting another look at the road as if they were debating how fast they needed to run to get there before he stopped them.
Dionysus sighed, pushing himself out of his chair. “Oh, absolutely not.”
Percy blinked. “What?”
“You are not leaving camp to go inhabit an abandoned structure like the ghost of a sad Victorian child.”
“I didn’t say I was going to do it for sure!” they protested.
Dionysus raised a brow. “You packed a bag.”
“I take bags with me sometimes.”
“At two in the morning?”
“Best time. Fewer people to ask questions about why you have bags.”
Dionysus walked down the porch steps, gravel crunching beneath his sandals.
Up close, the kid looked worse. The circles under their eyes were more prominent. They were down about fifteen pounds they couldn’t afford to lose, and Dionysus feared that if the wind got even a bit stronger, it would blow them over.
He stopped a few feet away, not wanting to get close enough to make them feel crowded.
“Jackson.”
They didn’t meet his eyes.
“Kid,” he tried again when the silence stretched on. “You planning on coming back?”
Percy hesitated. That was answer enough.
Dionysus rubbed a hand across his face. “Wonderful. So this is what we’re doing tonight.”
Percy seemed to deflate at his comment. “I wasn’t going to make a big deal out of it,” they said quietly. “Nobody’d notice for a bit. Or at all, really.”
“Unlikely. We tend to notice when children disappear around here.”
They flinched. He pretended not to see it.
Another moment passed, and he jerked his head towards the porch. “Sit.”
“I’m not really—”
“Sit, or I inform Chiron you’re attempting to go squat in a lighthouse, and we do this with concerned centaur involvement.”
Percy gave him a long look before trudging over and sitting heavily on the bottom step of the porch, backpack still on. Dionysus lowered himself onto the step next to him with a dramatic groan.
They sat in silence at first. Nothing but the faint sound of nocturnal creatures in the woods, the warm breeze rustling the leaves. The kid kept their gaze fixed on the trees, fingers tapping a repeated rhythm against the wood of the porch.
Dionysus was still not quite used to this version of Percy Jackson. They’re remarkably different from the little brat who wandered across the border years ago after fighting the minotaur. Not different enough to be unrecognizable, but different enough that it, at first, had Dionysus wondering whether this new persona was all a calculated act, or if the kid was finally trying to express themselves the way they had always wanted to.
Definitely the latter, he had learned over the weeks the kid had been back.
After the war with Gaia ended, the kid left camp for a little over a month. They then showed up on a random Tuesday evening at 8pm, a collection of bags at their feet, hair dyed a truly shocking shade of blue, with floral blue ink tattoos snaking up their arms that Dionysus knew in his bones was not signed off on by a parent or guardian.
They simply announced that, after years of fleeing camp with the energy of someone being chased by hellhounds at the end of each summer session and long talks about dreams of living a normal life in the mortal world or in New Rome, they had decided to live here now. Definitely not suspicious. Not suspicious at all.
That cheerful announcement was followed by another series of casual announcements.
1) Their name is Perouze now. The name of an Armenian-Persian grandmother or great-grandmother. Dionysus didn’t remember which. But it was okay to still call them “Percy”, just not “Perseus.”
If Dionysus made a note to not call them by anything other than their preferred name after that particular announcement and viciously corrected anyone who gave them shit about their pronouns, it was no one else’s business.
2) They dropped out of high school before their senior year even began, and gave up on their dreams of attending New Rome University with that little owlet of theirs. They were now “figuring things out”.
Troubling, but the child was not the first teenager to forsake formal schooling to follow their fleeting whims.
3) They had broken up with said annoying little owlet, citing “Growing pains and the late-night realization that their path was always meant to diverge. Especially when the path is filled with unsanctioned horrors and an ever-present, looming sense of inadequacy and existential dread. And also she hates my art projects.”
Inevitable. Dionysus saw this coming for years. He had questions about the “unsanctioned horrors” and the “looming sense of inadequacy and existential dread”, but chose not to ask. Chiron did not have that issue and, in that fatherly way of his, attempted to coax more information out of them and figure out what was going on. To which Percy replied, “Feelings are visitors. Sometimes you have to let them come and go. Or beat them over the head repeatedly with a blunt object until they get the message and leave your property. Or die.”
They then proceeded to abruptly leave the Big House porch and retreat to their cabin to “work on a commission”, leaving Chiron and Dionysus to silently ponder whether to label this as a teenager being a teenager or put them on crisis watch.
Dionysus didn’t need to be the god of madness to see that something was eating away at the kid. Something festering away inside of them that had gone unaddressed for years. A kid doesn’t survive multiple quests, two wars, and an unwanted, all-expenses-paid trip to a pit of eternal damnation without picking up a few issues along the way. But Dionysus also knew that pestering someone about their issues when they weren’t ready to talk often led to extreme and unhelpful reactions.
That being said, when they wander onto his porch under the cover of night, speaking of plans to commit felonies or become a haunted lighthouse keeper, he is obligated to intervene regardless of want.
Dionysus looked at the kid, at the way their shoulders were hunched and how they looked like they longed for nothing more than the ground to open up beneath them and swallow them whole. He sighed again.
“You don’t have to tell me what happened tonight,” he begins quietly, “but you also cannot vanish without a trace and become a maritime cryptid. Your father would never forgive me, and the paperwork would be annoying.”
A weak huff of almost-laughter escaped Percy before they could stop themselves. Progress. He’ll take it.
“We’ll start with ice cream instead,” he said. “Tomorrow. During daylight hours, like reasonable individuals.”
Percy tugged at their sleeves, still finding the trees in the distance very interesting.
“Mint chocolate chip?” they asked, voice very small.
“Whatever you want.”
“Okay.”
And for tonight, that was enough.
______
Morning at Camp Half-Blood arrived loudly, the way it usually does. The ordinary sounds of chaos that accompanied breakfast filled the Pavilion: clattering plates, someone arguing about syrup ownership, a distant explosion from the Hephaestus cabin that Dionysus was pointedly pretending not to hear. The sound of someone from the Hecate cabin placing a curse over the scrambled eggs that he was also pretending not to hear.
Dionysus did not attend breakfast.
He never attended breakfast. Not in all the years he’s been cursed to watch over this nightmare of a camp.
Which was probably why the entire dining pavilion froze when he arrived at precisely 8:37am, sunglasses on, casually twirling a set of car keys in his hand, and announced to no one in particular:
“Jackson. We’re leaving.”
Several campers dropped their utensils. Chiron stared at him incredulously from the table he usually occupied. Percy, for their part, looked just as confused as everyone else. They sat sideways at the Poseidon table, sketchbook resting on their knees, a plate of food untouched in front of them. They blinked slowly, as if their brain was struggling to compute what Dionysus said.
“I...huh?”
“You heard me.”
Percy continued to stare. “It’s before noon.”
“Congratulations. You can tell time.”
“You actually exist in the morning?”
“Don’t get used to it.
Percy looked around the pavilion, at the silent campers watching their exchange in a mixture of horror and fascination. “Wait. Am I in trouble?”
“If you were, I’d be sitting down and sighing a lot more.
“You already sigh a lot.”
Dionysus elected to ignore that comment. “You agreed to ice cream, and I am a god of my word when dairy products are involved.
They stared at him for another moment—suspicious, wary—then they shut the sketchbook, stowing it away neatly in their bag. “You’re serious?”
“Get up before I decide I’m no longer a god of my word.”
Percy immediately stumbled to their feet, hastily making their way over to him. The kid somehow looked worse than they had a few hours ago. Their eye bags upgraded to eye baggage, face pale like they haven’t felt the sun on their skin in weeks. Which, honestly, was probably the case.
“You’re really taking me for ice cream?” they ask, eyes wide and unsure.
“Unfortunately.”
“Can we get coffee at that shop that makes glittery drinks, too?”
“Don’t push it.”
_____
The drive into town was quiet. Not the awkward kind of quiet, just the neutral quiet where neither party was sure what to say to the other. The windows were down, the wind pulling Percy’s hair into soft tangles of blue. They rested their elbow against the door and watched the trees blur past. Dionysus didn’t fill the silence unless necessary. He’d learned long ago that conversations like these improved when you stopped poking at them before they’re ready.
They pulled onto the main street of the town, the sign so decrepit Dionysus couldn’t make out its name. He probably should have learned it by now. But then again, he had made a concerted effort to never visit this place. Monsters rarely entered. The demigods who snuck out of camp to visit the closest beacon of civilization declared it had “weird vibes” and refused to return.
To his knowledge, even the area’s indigenous residents had historically avoided the location as if it were the epicenter of a plague. That was a good enough reason for Dionysus to follow suit.
“Oh, good,” Percy said with relief as they drove down the road. “The post office isn’t screaming anymore.”
Dionysus narrowed his eyes. “Screaming?”
Percy nodded. “Yes. It does that sometimes. Very inconvenient for the mail. It went on for two days once.”
For a moment, he was entirely convinced that Hephaestus had placed hidden cameras in his vehicle, and this was all a scripted joke. But one look at Percy let him know that the teen was serious.
“Just how often are you here that you know about a building’s habits?” he asked instead of inquiring deeper into the screaming phenomenon.
Percy tilted their head. “I like it here.”
“That’s not what I asked, but somehow it still answered my original question.”
They parked outside of a small shop wedged between an antiques mall and a laundromat. A flickering sign promised OPEN ALWAYS: EVEN DURING STREET CLEANING DAYS in optimistic neon. Percy stared at it grimly.
“Very brave of them. Street cleaning days are dangerous.”
Dionysus once again chose peace and didn’t question the rather ominous statement.
The bell over the door jingled as they stepped inside. Cold air, a sugary smell, and the quiet hum of freezer units wrapped around them instantly. A teenager with hair of an equally obnoxious shade as Percy’s own barely looked up from their phone. Percy stopped a few steps in, looking suddenly overwhelmed as they took in the display full of options.
Dionysus nudged them gently. “You said you wanted mint chocolate chip. I’m pretty sure most places have it.”
“What if I don’t?”
“Then pick a different one.”
They took a few more steps forward, hovering anxiously in front of the glass-topped freezer. Their eyes scanned up and down the rows too fast to actually be taking anything in. “What do you get?” Percy asks, turning back to him.
“Vanilla.”
Percy looked at him as if he’d just confessed to a heinous crime. “You’re literally the god of wine and revelry and madness. And you settle for the most boring flavor?”
“I contain multitudes. Now come on, to the register.”
Dionysus ordered for both of them. Mint chocolate chip for the kid and vanilla for him. Percy continued to hover behind him, hands fluttering anxiously while they waited for their ice cream. They take their cups to a booth in front of the window.
For a while, they ate in silence. Percy seemed a bit less enthused about the ice cream now that they’ve actually obtained it. Dionysus sipped on his soda and pretended to be very invested in a napkin. His patience paid off when Percy shifted in their seat slightly, hesitantly looking up at him.
“I wasn’t actually going to live in the lighthouse,” they said softly.
“I know.”
“I just...” they trailed off, searching for the correct words. “I just wanted somewhere that is not anywhere. And for it not to be so loud.”
Dionysus nodded. “Reasonable.”
There was another long pause before Percy spoke again.
“She hated it.”
“Who hated what?”
“Annabeth,” Percy said, stabbing at the melting ice cream with their spoon. “She didn’t like, well, anything really. She got mad when I didn’t do things, or mad when I did things but not how she thought they should be done. Or if I had a different opinion, or if.....you get it. Basically, everything made her upset, and it was always my fault.”
Dionysus grimaced. “I doubt it was actually always your fault.”
Percy shrugged. “And then she kept talking about our plans for the future, like she had actually asked my opinion for any of “our plans”, and I was just supposed to... go along with it, I guess? But what if I didn’t want to do one of those stupid programs at NRU? What if I just wanted to make stuff or go to cosmetology school or something?”
“Do you want to go to cosmetology school or art school?”
Percy let out a frustrated little sound. “I...I don’t know. I never really planned that far. And when I tried, I got told everything I came up with was stupid or a waste of time. And no one wanted to deal with me figuring things out. I just needed to get it together.”
Ah. It was all starting to make sense now.
Dionysus exhaled slowly, leaning back into the booth. “Teenagers say a lot of things during breakups. Most of them stupid and incorrect. My sister’s children all tend to think they know best, even when there’s evidence to the contrary. It’s an inherited trait.”
Percy looked unconvinced. “She didn’t even try to get my name right the last time we talked. She called me Perseus just because she could.”
Dionysus snorted softly. “Mortals have been misnaming me for several millennia. Spiteful use of a name is one of the oldest ways to hurt someone. And probably one of the least creative and most predictable methods, too.”
He took a sip of his drink. “Though admittedly,” he added. “I probably deserved it. You, however, did not.”
Their lips twitched, a barely there smile visible for a few seconds.
Dionysus took the opening to ask another question. “Your mom not on board with the changes either?”
Percy flinched. “Why do you ask?”
“Because you used to be the kid who called their mom three times a week ontop of sending letters. Then you had to be forced to take her calls. And now you won’t speak to her at all. It’s been a pretty big shift over the years.”
“I talk—”
Dionysus gave them a look, effectively cutting off whatever lie they were about to sprout.
“Okay, so we aren’t talking right now.”
“Why?” he pressed.
Percy shrugged, shrinking in their seat a bit. “I don’t think she or Paul cared about the name change or the pronouns. They messed up a few times, but it wasn’t on purpose. It helped that I don’t really hate “Percy” as a nickname. She just...she just gets mad about everything else. Definitely about the school thing and running off to camp. And Estelle.”
“Estelle?”
“My sister.”
Dionysus hummed quietly. That’s right, the child did have a sister, didn’t they? He vaguely remembered them talking about it before.
He stayed quiet, waiting for Percy to continue.
“I guess it actually started with Paul. He’s nice—super nice. But after Mom met Paul, she started getting annoyed with me anytime demigod stuff happened. And it’s not like Paul doesn’t know and we were trying to keep him in the dark. He knows. But every time she would just...blame me? And ask how hard it was to just have one normal night and not scare Paul’s family.”
Dionysus’ fingers tightened around his drink as the kid rambled, though he kept his expression carefully neutral.
“You can’t control when monsters show up.”
“I know that. But I don’t think she cares. She keeps saying Estelle deserves a normal childhood. No monsters, no gods, no emergencies. Just school and birthday parties and scraped knees that are actually just scraped knees.”
Percy swallowed thickly, picking at the paper wrapper around their ice cream cup. “Now I’m being a problem in the house too, I guess.” A little panicky laugh escaped them, and they ran a stressed hand through their hair. “I’m too moody and dramatic. This one time—I don’t even know what happened—I think I fell asleep on the couch and had a nightmare or something. But I made a pipe explode, and it scared Estelle. I got yelled at for an hour. Maybe if—”
Dionysus cut him off again. “You had a nightmare. Your powers reacted. Your sister reacted to a loud noise, as small children do. You didn’t decide to sabotage the plumbing for the hell of it. It was an accident.”
Percy still looked unconvinced.
“I also hide in my room too much. And don’t try hard enough. And I’m ruining my life. And—”
“Percy. Stop,” Dionysus said firmly, but not unkindly.
Percy fell silent, leg bouncing anxiously beneath the table. But Dionysus could still see the internal spiral happening. He made a mental note to curse every plant or fruit in the Jackson-Blofis apartment to rot and die for the foreseeable future.
“People,” he said after a moment, “are uncomfortable with big feelings and things they don’t quite understand. They want simple solutions, and when those don’t work, they get frustrated. Some can sit with the hard things and learn to make sense of them. Others just don’t know how—or aren’t ready or willing to try.”
Percy glanced up at him.
“And you, Perouze,” he added, making sure to say their full name and taking care to use the correct pronunciation, “are currently experiencing big feelings and reactions. Rightfully so, given the shitshow your short existence has been. But that doesn’t make you a problem. It makes you seventeen, exhausted, and in the middle of trying to figure yourself out for the first time.”
Their eyes shimmered with unshed tears, lower lip quivering slightly, but they refused to let themselves cry in public.
Dionysus slid a napkin across the table, pretending he didn’t see them pick it up and dab at their eyes.
“It makes me a mess,” they said, voice cracking ever so slightly as they ball up the napkin.
“A mess that’s doing their best. Which is what matters.”
Percy sniffed. “You’re being really nice for some reason.”
Dionysus scoffs. “I’m always nice.”
They fell back into a comfortable silence, Percy finishing their ice cream, which was half soup by this point. Dionysus stared out the window, giving them space to process without feeling like they were being stared at.
“Thanks,” they said at last, pushing the empty cup away from them.
Dionysus waved his hand dismissively. “Don’t. I did this for selfish reasons.”
“Yeah?”
“Like I already said. If you disappeared into self-imposed lighthouse exile, I would never hear the end of it from your father for letting it happen.”
They snorted in amusement.
Dionysus stood, gathering their collective trash. “And now, we go back to camp, where you will continue to not run away. Or at the very least, alert me when the urge to flee arises. Preferably during daylight hours and not on raccoon time.”
Percy slid out of the booth, adjusting their bracelets. They didn’t look lighter. But they looked more anchored. No longer on the verge of sprinting should Dionysus make the mistake of looking away for too long.
They stared at him with red-rimmed green eyes that reminded him of a sad baby seal he once saw on an animal welfare commercial. “Coffee?”
He folded his arms across his chest, unimpressed. “You’ve been surviving on caffeine and hope since you came back to camp. I don’t think it’s right to enable you further.”
Their eyes continued to bore into him, growing impossibly sadder.
“Please?”
_____
He took them to the coffee shop across from the ice cream parlor.
Dionysus distrusted the place immediately.
Most of the drinks on the menu looked like something one might find brewing in a witch’s cauldron. At a table in the far corner, a woman wearing three scarves that didn’t match, a patchwork cardigan with frog-shaped buttons, and a hat decorated with pieces of driftwood sipped on something violently green and bubbling. A plate with a glowing pink pastry sat in front of her.
Percy gravitated towards her immediately and spent several minutes talking about crystals, uranium glass, and a family of possums that had apparently moved in under her porch.
“That’s Carol. She’s great,” Percy told him when they finally wandered back over. They fished in their pocket and pulled out a string of what looked like beads, tiny pieces of metal, and more pieces of driftwood. “She made this for me last time I snuck out here. Says it keeps the things in the woods away.”
“.....I don’t wanna know.”
They waited in line behind a group of fellow coffee patrons who were slightly less unhinged in appearance than Carol.
“What are you gonna get?” Percy asked, staring at the questionable menu behind the counter.
The barista handed the woman in front of them a frothing, bright red beverage with something black and unidentifiable sprinkled on top.
“Nothing, because my self-preservation instincts are intact.”
Percy gave him a look that said his opinion had been politely noted and completely ignored. They walked up to the barista, significantly more at ease than they had been while panicking over ice cream flavors. But judging by the excited way the orange-haired girl greeted them, they’ve been here before. Which probably explained it.
“I want the usual—and whatever you think he needs.” They gesture to him.
Dionysus opened his mouth to protest.
The barista didn’t even glance at him. “Got it.”
“I didn’t agree to—”
“Trust the process.”
Percy held out their hand expectantly. Dionysus glared, but handed them his credit card he used for mortal purchases anyway.
“Historically, trusting the process rarely ends well for people,” he muttered.
Moments later, Percy is handed two cups. One contained a swirling mixture of various shades of blue and far too much edible silver glitter. The other was a bright purple concoction with gold edible glitter. The shimmering purple beverage was held out to him.
“It’s blackberry flavored.”
Percy watched him intensity of someone witnessing a rare animal approaching a watering hole.
“Well?” they asked.
Dionysus narrowed his eyes at the drink as if it might lunge first.
He took a sip. He didn’t spontaneously combust. And it did, indeed, taste like blackberry. “It’s passable,” he admitted.
Percy’s shoulders loosened, their satisfaction clear as they took a long sip of their own glittering disaster of a drink.
“See?” they said. “I knew you’d like it.”
Dionysus rolled his eyes, already turning towards the exit. “I said it’s passable, not that it’s a beverage I would willingly pay money for again.”
He pushes the door open and steps outside, the kid following closely behind. Outside, the world looked reassuringly normal—asphalt, parked cars, a seagull trying to dismantle a trashcan lid. Percy lingered on the sidewalk for a moment, turning their cup in their hands.
“You didn’t hate it though.”
“And that’s the highest praise a drink filled with decorative metals is ever going to get from me.”
He started towards the car, Percy hurrying to catch up and walking a bit closer to him than before. They get in on their respective sides, and Dionysus starts the engine.
“Mr. D?” Percy asked, buckling in.
“Yes?”
“Thanks for the ice cream. And the coffee. And for...being nice.” Percy reached into their pocket and produced a small amethyst crystal, placing it on his dashboard like an offering.
“...You just carry rocks around in your pockets now?”
“Sometimes.” A pause. “Do you like it?”
He looked between the tumbled rock on his dashboard and the painfully hopeful look on the face of the kid sitting next to him. He sighed.
“It’s a good rock.”
The small, genuine smile on Percy’s face at his response was worth it.