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Paul is standing in the hallway outside of the apartment and it has been a few moments too long for the time to continue to matter. He has been there before a few times but it never felt like this because there was always only one person on the other side of that thin door with the peeling paint and the rusted handle. He must look strange to the neighbours if any of them are peering through their peep-holes into the narrow hallway where the lights flicker and there is never not a draft in spite of the lack of windows.
He had met Sally Jackson in a creative writing class, one which he took to keep engaging with English for himself outside of what he did for his students. She was the only other mature student and she wrote like it was breathing, an endless wealth of ideas in her head that Paul couldn’t help but envy. He asked her out to lunch one day after class, meaning it as nothing more than a friendly dinner, to talk to her about where it all came from and what else she held in her head.
He told her about how boring he was and she frowned like she resented that he would call himself that, and he told her that his most recent relationship had ended in proverbial flames so he hadn’t dated in a very long time. Then she smiled sadly, how his students did when the themes in the books were getting a bit rough or a bit personal for them. “I’m recently widowed,” she said and he tried to apologise but she shook her head. “Don’t be sorry. I’m not. He’s missing, presumed dead, and I am at peace with that,” It didn’t take a genius to make an inference about what sort of husband he had been to her.
Over coffee and a slice of cake she managed to make last her half an hour, she told him about the idea she had, for a book or a short story, depending on how it came to be when she finally got around to writing it. A man named Poseidon on a Montauk beach. “Or maybe a man,” she mused, frowning at the dregs swimming in the bottom of her mug, she shrugged, “Maybe a god, maybe a monster. He tells the protagonist he is the god but she doesn’t believe him, or maybe not at first. It’s never really clear, or it won’t be when I actually, y’know, write it,” Her smile was soft, amused and Paul couldn’t help but listen as she talked about the man named Poseidon on a Montauk beach and how the sea was more grey than blue and the sand was coarse and gritty and there were spiders all over the little beach hut. It didn’t sound very godly but she kept going with this terrific grin on her face that made Paul think that was kind of the point. She talked about the narrator who was so enamoured with him, a pretty young thing with what might be life behind her eyes or otherwise naivete or maybe something worse. As she spoke he tried not to see Sally in her place but, not even ten minutes later, Sally disclosed to him how lonely it had been turning 20 and being 4 months pregnant and how she loved her son more than anything, but becoming a mother so young had kind of boxed her into something she was only just breaking out of.
Paul thought about the man named Poseidon on a Montauk beach and wondered if he was supposed to be a god, a human, or perhaps a monster. He wanted to ask Sally about how the narrator saw him but the more he turned the words unreliable narrator over in his head the more they sounded like an insult.
So Sally Jackson, who still tells him about how far she is into writing what is turning into a novel about a man named Poseidon on a Montauk beach whenever he asks, is why he is standing there in the chilly apartment complex, feeling like a scarecrow more than he does a man. He holds his hand up to the doorbell and tries to gather the courage to push the button. He is there to meet Sally’s son--the very definition of a troubled child who has never had good experiences with father figures--but he cannot stop thinking about a man named Poseidon who Sally always describes with these incredible hyperboles and metaphors that make him seem like an alien carved out of marble into the image of a perfect man who cannot escape the uncanny valley. He doesn’t know if she does it to convey that the narrator is not in her right mind, or perhaps is not seeing him properly, or perhaps to indicate that he is actually the deity he claims to be, but he likes knowing that the blurry line it creates is exactly what Sally is going for. It is easier to think about the man named Poseidon on a Montauk beach and how Sally can never seem to stop complaining that it doesn’t have a title yet, even though paul is fairly certain it does, than the teenager with the expulsion and disciplinary record longer than any he has ever seen who is waiting for him on the other side of the door, so he presses the doorbell, thinking about the slate waves meeting the edge of the fragile shore with a gentleness that will soon give way to aggression.
Sally is the one who answers the door and Paul is very grateful to it as she ushers him in, takes his coat, and introduces him to her son who is sitting on the worn-out sofa in front of their TV with something unreadable passing across his face as he looks at Paul from under this unruly mop of hair that Sally had always laughed when she tried to describe. Paul says hello and Percy says “You were standing outside for a while,”
“Oh,” he says back, “You saw me?” Percy shakes his head and Paul has a feeling that’s the best answer he’s going to get.
“Be polite,” Sally tells Percy and Paul watches him nod as Sally walks into the other room. He takes his own seat and pretends it isn’t unusually unnerving to have the thirteen-year-old’s eyes fixed on him. He teaches teenagers so he should be used to it but there is something about him. It could of course be that Paul cares a bit too much about what Percy thinks of him because he’s Sally’s son but that feels more like an excuse than an explanation.
He realises it might be because all of the hyperbole that makes the man named Poseidon on a Montauk beach seem so inhuman is sitting in front of him, short and still wearing baby fat Paul is sure he will soon shed. The roundness in his face is Sally’s but they look very little alike and Paul can’t shake the feeling that the resemblance he sees isn’t permanent. Of course, the descriptions Sally gave him of her son when he asked are all accurate. He has sea green eyes, jet black hair that has a mind of its own, and a Mediterranean complexion and strong features but Paul keeps defaulting to the things that Sally writes about the man named Poseidon rather than how she talks about Percy.
His eyes are the colour of sea glass and the waves that crash over parts of the Caribbean seas, and the way they look in his face seems almost artificial, like you can’t help but notice them. His skin is bronze like a polished weapon, semi-precious and sturdy. His cheekbones are high as though his features themselves are elevated, and his nose bridge is straight and strong like the dorsal fin of a white shark, a warning sign. His hair is as black as ink, sea-swept, and it looks a little bit like that spot at the bottom of the sea where horrors lurk, from which anything could emerge at any moment. He looks like the man named Poseidon.
What Paul already knew seems like it has been confirmed.
“What are you watching?” Paul asks tentatively, looking over at the TV. The screen is aquatic blue and the TV is on mute.
Percy shrugs, “Blue Planet,”
Paul nods. “You don’t want to turn the subtitles on?” He honestly isn’t sure why it’s on mute but he assumes that it’s Sally’s doing, an attempt to force them into conversation.
Percy blinks at him slowly and there is a moment where the too-bright colour of his eyes is gone and Paul feels like he can breathe before he is suddenly submerged again beneath a climbing wave. “I’m dyslexic,” he says, because of course he is. Paul knows that he is and can’t believe that he had forgotten that. He has met a lot of dyslexic kids in all his years of teaching so he should really be used to it.
“Of course,” he says calmly, wincing inwardly, “Sorry,” Percy raises an eyebrow and Paul tries to decipher what he means by it. He contemplates that the apology and the acknowledgement mean he has maybe passed some kind of test that his late stepfather failed. He doesn’t like that thought so he attempts to shut it down but it is already there. “So, Blue Planet?” He can't help but think it seems a little bit on the nose but Percy grins and, in spite of the sharpness of his teeth and the way the tilt of his mouth spells trouble. Paul can’t help but return it. Percy leans forwards in his seat and Paul realises that at least some of the act has dropped and he is seeing the son Sally told him he would. He opens his mouth to speak and Paul leans back, prepared to listen, and the room suddenly flashes black.
Percy sighs before he groans and, in what little light is left from the evening through the windows and the single-wick candle on the coffee table, Paul sees his body fold in half. He’s short to begin with and the action makes him look tiny, vulnerable. “Gods,” Percy mutters to himself and Paul doesn’t notice anything strange about how he says it, “That landlord needs to fix the fuses,” Paul nods because he thinks he should.
“You can still tell me what you were going to say,” he tells Percy and he only marginally hates that he can’t read the teenager’s expression.
“I can’t,” he returns, “I can’t remember what it was,” and it feels like there’s a wall back up.
“Okay,” Paul says quietly, “Then tell me something else,” What he really wants is for Percy to tell him something about himself, perhaps about the camp that he has been at the entire time Paul has known Sally, or the friends he met there, or why none of his numerous expulsions were actually his fault. What Percy actually tells him is a lot of facts about sharks. He continues to talk with his cascading fluency as he crosses the room and pulls candles and torches from the junk drawer and sets them on the table so he can see Paul properly as they have their conversation. He pulls out a lined notebook and draws a little picture of a goblin shark that, in spite of the fact that Paul has never seen one before, he can tell is scarily accurate to life. He holds the paper up to his face and takes in what the beast looks like. “Ugly fucker,” he laughs and Percy smiles back, wide and genuine and it has been a while since Paul last saw something so rewarding. Paul folds up the doodle and puts it in his wallet next to his niece’s baby photo.
Sometimes Paul spends time with Percy and every time he does it feels less and less like it has been forced. What he realises quickly is that the thing about the Jacksons, as much as he can’t help but love them, is that they make him feel boring. He’s no stranger to the feeling.
His name is Paul, he works at a high school where he teaches English, and he drives a Prius. Sally writes about the man named Poseidon on a Montauk beach and he writes about how he once helped a lost 8-year-old girl find her older brother in Central Park and switches out Paul for Peter and decides it rained that day even though he remembers the sunburn that had the skin of his nose peeling. He hands his creative writing assignments in and gets them back with comments like “I’m always so impressed by your prose but I can’t help but wish you used it to say something”. He knows who he is.
He goes to get lunch with Percy whilst Sally runs errands. He is fourteen and has worrying scars wrapping the skin of his arms and his eyes change constantly, and there are blood stains on his shoes and a grey streak in his hair, and he looks around himself like he can’t trust himself not to. He can stay home alone but he still doesn’t protest when Paul offers to take him out for coffee and a bagel, except to say “Coke and a bagel, or sprite, maybe. You could not force me to drink coffee,”
“Happy Father's Day!” The college student who sells them the bagels says and Paul didn’t even stop to consider what day it was before he walked around in public with a teenage boy he knows looks nothing like him. It happened quickly but Percy is taller than both Paul and Sally now, and the baby fat is dropping off. He looks less like Sally every time Paul sees him and he wonders sometimes if it was hard for Sally to watch the resemblance fade more and more over time. Percy smiles and says it back and Paul doesn’t know if he’s allowed to react so he doesn’t say anything but smiles when Percy sits across from him with a cream cheese-filled bagel and a bottle of coke.
He is maybe three bites in when he excuses himself to the bathroom and Paul doesn’t think twice about it when he waves him off, tells him to make sure he washes his hands. Percy makes a face to say of course then walks away. Paul can’t see him anymore but the noise he hears makes him think that Percy is running.
He takes too long and when he comes back his hair is more of a mess than usual, covered in glitter. Paul doesn’t mention it because Percy doesn’t. He apologises for taking so long--“There was a line,”--and basically inhales his bagel. He drinks his coke quickly and a sticky trail of it spills down his chin, managing in some tiny little miracle to make an unnatural-seeming turn and avoid his Led Zeppelin shirt. He wipes his chin on his bare forearm and Paul can’t help but wince at the bruise on the inner side of it he suddenly catches sight of. It looks fresh.
Percy’s dad shows up at his fifteenth birthday. He doesn’t stay for long but it’s enough for Paul to notice a couple of things. The first is that he is strange. Paul would be lying if he said he assumed he wouldn’t be. The next is that he is a man named Poseidon and Percy is the spitting image of him. The main difference really is the facial hair and the height (and the fashion sense) and it all fits together a little too well. He doesn’t need any confirmation about Montauk beach but that doesn’t stop it from being there. At least until Poseidon leaves from the fire escape and Paul can only think of the Sally he never knew personally, nineteen and too vulnerable.
Paul hates the way it makes sense when Percy and Sally pull him into their tiny kitchen and sit him at their table with a bottle of water right in front of him, like they know he will need it. Sally is sitting across from him with a smile plastered on her face like she is scared to drop it. He had sworn to himself a while ago that he wouldn’t let her be scared of him, not after Gabe Ugliano, so he weakly hopes, against all instincts, that she is scared for him. Percy has stayed in the doorway and he’s taller and his shoulders are broader and he seems like he isn’t a fan of how much space he takes up now.
“I promise I’m not crazy,” is the first thing that Sally says and her eyes are twinkling with a hint of that madness that made him fall in love with her in the first place. He thinks she might be, just a little bit, but he doesn’t say it, knows it’s not the time.
“I would never think you were,” he promises and his heart is playing loud percussion in his chest that almost drowns out the sound of his voice entirely.
“Can we wait until we’re done with this before you make claims like that?” she requests but he sees her visibly relaxed and there’s a slump to Percy’s shoulders that might be a hint of relief amongst the exhaustion.
“We can,” he says and Sally tells him that the man names Poseidon on a Montauk beach had always been the god and he had never lied about it, and Sally had been easy to convince because she spent a long time thinking about and seeing all sorts of monsters and men that toed that line that nobody around her could. Paul feels a bit like the world is crumbling around him and when, in a panicked fumble to reach for his uncapped water bottle, he bats it over the edge of the table he almost feels his heart stop when it doesn’t spill.
“Bad timing,” Sally tells Percy gently, who has the good grace to look embarrassed. The bottle falls the rest of the way to the floor but the gravity does nothing and the water contained within stays wonderfully still. Paul picks it up and his head swims and he tries to pretend that feeling isn’t nausea.
“You’re okay?” Percy checks when the water bottle is empty and Paul is staring at the ceiling like he might be able to see the gods through it if he tries hard enough. The answer is definitely no and he doesn’t like to lie.
“I will be,” he says and Percy draws back. “I’m not mad at you,” he says. His first thought is that the Jacksons were wonderful people with horribly bad luck and he supposes that is as good of a sign as any. “None of this is your fault, it’s just kind of-” he mimes an explosion with his hands around the sides of his head, making a soft sound with his lips. Percy looks at him and smiles, just barely, stepping a little further into the room.
“You’re good at this,” Percy tells him earnestly. Paul doesn’t think he is but he also thinks his brain has turned to mush and he is having trouble making sentences because there are gods out there who could strike him down and he doesn’t really know what he is and isn’t allowed to say about them. He has never been a particularly religious man but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t go to church three times a year--Christmas, Easter, and one other time each year so he isn’t one of those people his grandmother always tutted at--and his parents don’t talk about God with this big smile that always makes him come back to their faith, no matter how loosely he followed it. He doesn’t know if it will be enough any more.
Ideally they would have had another few months to put the wedding together but he, Sally and Percy all know there is no guarantee of those months for his soon-to-be stepson. There is a prophecy looming and Paul has become accustomed to that knowledge even if it makes his skin crawl when he thinks about the son of Poseidon who sits at their kitchen table and stares at his textbooks like he can will the letters to slot into place and start to make sense, and how his fate is looming.
Paul’s family haven’t had the chance to meet Percy before the day of the wedding comes. Something demigod-related had happened on the day of the practice dinner and Sally told everyone that Percy had a high fever. So that leaves him and Annabeth, his plus one that definitely isn’t his girlfriend, as some stand-out figures amongst a familiar crowd.
Percy is the only family Sally has, so most of the guests are his. His family are all short and soft at the edges, much like himself, so the length of Percy and Annabeth’s legs, the height and the prominence of their cheekbones, the strangeness in their eyes, all scream that they are new, unfamiliar. Paul sees his niece’s best friend staring at Percy with her cheeks red and her eyes wide and he snorts (he still can’t believe she’s fourteen, his brother still feels like he’s barely older than that in spite of the twenty eight years that have passed since he was).
He and Annabeth talk with their faces close together and they look like they’d make a great couple. Paul wants to tell Percy to ask her out already, but he isn’t sure he could stand to ask anyone out when he was fifteen, even without the added torture of knowing it was more likely than not that he would die at the same time as he turned sixteen.
As Paul worries about Percy whilst knowing he is powerless and there is a horrible week left before the fateful day where everything will end, he forces himself to think of other things. He tries to concern himself with his job, whether or not his students are doing their summer homework and how many of the book reports he has to read are actually going to be written by students that read their book all the way through. As he thinks about his work he can’t help but think about how much time the school will give him to grieve before he has to go back and stare at his stepson’s empty desk. He pushes all thoughts of Goode out of his head and thinks instead about the woman who came before Sally.
They were so young and they argued too much to ever really think they were going to last forever, but they got a couple of good years out of the relationship and it meant a lot to him, both at the time and retrospectively. In the end they hadn’t even broken up, and instead it had ended in blood, making it the perfect thing to pop into his head as he thought too hard about Percy as he attempted to think about anything but. Her name was Violet and she always smelled like flowers. She wore purple lipstick and her hair was dyed dark even though it made her skin look like it hadn’t seen the sun in a year. She died quickly, couldn’t have known it was going to happen. He had the misfortune of witnessing the event but he hadn’t really considered until he was forced to, how it was better that way because the apprehension of knowing made it all worse.
Sally comes in and tells him about the publishing house that wants to make something of her novel about the man named Poseidon on a Montauk beach. Then they both sit there in stone cold silence, wishing they could feel excited instead of wishing the clocks would stop. He thinks Auden had the right idea, even if the poem had started as satire.
Percy is home and safe and working his way through school with his head down. Estelle is perfect, ten fingers, ten toes, old enough now to be babbling her first sounds that sort of found like they might be words. Paul hadn’t let himself hope for this outcome but he had clung to it when it was presented to him like it was a lifeline that he couldn’t imagine going without.
He pretends he’s more jealous than he is as he hears Estelle calling out for Percy as she grips at the air with her chubby fists and her blue eyes shine brightly in her soft, little face. She still can’t say the letter ‘p’, can’t figure out the plosive. Percy clearly doesn’t mind. He almost cries when she shouts his name back at him for the first time and Paul almost cries himself when Percy turns around to hug him just because he’s there and he’s feeling a lot. He thinks that Percy might have worried that there wouldn’t be a place for him when he came back but they would never have allowed that to happen.
He takes Percy and Estelle to the aquarium. Before he even suggests it he makes sure that the aquarium they go to is one that cares about the wellbeing of animals, runs conservation programs and research for marine wellbeing, doesn’t keep animals that can’t be happy in captivity. He had never thought so much about the feelings of fish before but the way relief passes across Percy’s face when he lays everything out makes it worth it.
It’s almost Christmas and Paul is still struggling to come to terms with how he can have a Christmas when he knows about the Greek and Roman gods and how much they affect his life. (Sally suggests he makes his Christmases secular, like the ones Percy grew up on. Percy suggests he says “fuck it” and swaps out Christmas for Saturnalia. He is tempted, even if just because it will confuse his co-workers.) It is cold and they are all wearing jumpers and walking from the still-dented Prius to the building that stands there, waiting to welcome them. There are holes in every item of clothes that Percy owns and Paul can’t imagine that he’s not even slightly too cold.
They walk past the tanks and Estelle is wide-eyed as she looks at the bright colours of the fish, all their shapes and sizes making pretty pictures in front of her. She is transfixed on a clownfish--”Nemo!” she calls with a smile and a point--so it starts swimming around in front of her. Paul looks to Percy who turns away from the tank and whistles nonchalantly like he is living in a cartoon.
“Thank you,” Paul says.
“You ain’t seen nothing yet,” Percy says back.
Paul wonders what that means as they walk around and Percy doesn’t spare a single glance at the signs of information as he leads Paul around, telling him everything he could hope to know and more about all the fish they pass.
A boy who reminds him a little of Nico (who still creeps him out a little (a lot) if he’s completely honest) taps him on the elbow and asks how much he paid for the guided tour. There is another boy holding his hand, his hair dyed an impressive green that almost matches the seaweed he is standing beside.
“Oh,” Paul says, “I didn’t. He’s my stepson,” then he looks at Percy how he feels he never used to feel like he was allowed to, “He’s just a bit of a nerd,” Percy snorts. Paul knows it’s not a comment he hears often.
“You’re welcome to tag along,” he says and they continue around the aquarium, the crowd around them steadily growing.
Paul finally figures out what Percy was talking about when they cross in front of a tank of seahorses. Estelle watches them, giggling all the while, as they form a heart and the couple who have been tagging along for at least half an hour are pointing, staring. Paul smiles at Percy who makes a confused face and shrugs like he doesn’t know what is going on. Paul rolls his eyes and catches him in a hug from the side, shoving him ever so slightly and keeping their surroundings in mind.