Chapter Text
Montauk, New York
October, 2:17 AM
The sea was quiet.
Percy Jackson sat on the cold sand, knees drawn to his chest, watching the tide creep toward his bare feet. The moon hung low and fat, spilling silver across the water. It should have felt peaceful. Instead, it felt like a held breath.
He hadn't slept in three days.
Not because of nightmares— though those came too. But because sleeping meant dreaming, and dreaming meant her. Annabeth's face, the last time he saw her. Not angry. Worse. Tired.
"I can't save you from yourself anymore, Percy."
She'd left her key on the kitchen counter. Six months ago. The apartment still smelled like her books.
He heard footsteps on the sand— light, unhurried, almost musical. He didn't turn around. He knew that rhythm.
"You're hard to find," Apollo said, sitting down beside him. The god was in his favorite mortal form: lean, golden-haired, wearing a faded hoodie and sneakers that had definitely seen better days. No chariot. No glowing aura. Just a man, settling into the sand as he belonged there.
Percy didn't answer.
Apollo didn't push. He just sat, shoulder-to-shoulder, looking out at the water. After a long moment, he said, "I wrote you a song. It's terrible. You'll hate it."
Despite himself, Percy's mouth twitched. "Let's hear it."
Apollo cleared his throat and sang, softly, off-key on purpose:
"His eyes are green like sea-glass,
His sarcasm cuts like a blade,
He saved the world about six times,
And now he's not getting paid—"
Percy snorted. Loudly. The sound cracked open something tight in his chest.
"That's the worst thing I've ever heard."
"I wrote it in the car," Apollo admitted. "The rental. The one with the weird smell."
"You drove here? From where?"
"Delphi. Then New Jersey. Then a really questionable gas station." Apollo paused. "I don't have to be anywhere. I wanted to drive."
Percy turned to look at him. Really look. The god's face was soft in the moonlight— no divine arrogance, no dramatic posturing. Just a tired, earnest expression that Percy had learned to read over the past few months of... whatever this was.
They'd started as something undefined— late-night conversations at Camp Half-Blood. Apollo showing up after the Trials, broken and mortal and real in a way he'd never been before. Percy had hated him once— the old Apollo, the one who turned a girl into a tree, who played with mortals like toys.
But this Apollo? The one who'd scrubbed toilets as a human? Who'd watched his friends die and couldn't do anything about it? Who'd learned, the hard way, what it meant to be small?
Percy trusted him. That was the terrifying part.
"Why are you here?" Percy asked.
Apollo's gaze didn't waver. "Because you're sitting on a beach at two in the morning, and you haven't called anyone in weeks, and I know what that looks like." He reached over and gently took Percy's hand— cold fingers against cold fingers. "I used to think being a god meant never hurting. Turns out, it just means hurting alone. You don't have to do that."
Percy's throat tightened. He looked back at the ocean.
"I don't know who I am anymore," he admitted. The words came out raw, scraped clean. "I was a hero. Then I was a weapon. Then I was someone's boyfriend. Then I was no one's anything. And now I'm just... here."
Apollo was quiet for a long moment. Then he said: "When I was mortal— really mortal, not the fake kind—I woke up one morning and couldn't remember why I mattered. No one bowed. No one prayed. I had to ask a teenager for bus fare." He squeezed Percy's hand. "I learned something, though. Worth isn't what you do. It's who you let see you when you're empty."
Percy turned his hand over, lacing their fingers together.
"What are we doing?" he asked. Not accusing. Just... wondering.
Apollo smiled—small, real, nothing like the radiant grin from old statues. "I don't know. But I'd like to find out. If you want."
The tide came in. Water curled around Percy's ankles, warm despite the October chill. The sea recognized its son. And for the first time in months, Percy didn't flinch away from it.
"Okay," he said. "Let's find out."
Apollo leaned his head against Percy's shoulder. The moon kept shining. The waves kept coming.
And somewhere above, Zeus looked away from his scrying pool, muttering: "This is going to be a problem."
Present Day – Montauk, New York
7:34 AM
Percy woke to sunlight and ukulele.
Not the worst combination.
Apollo was sitting cross-legged at the foot of the bed, wearing nothing but boxers and Percy's old Camp Half-Blood T-shirt, strumming something that might have been a lullaby if it had more than three chords. The morning light caught the gold in his hair, and for a moment, Percy just watched.
Two years. They'd been doing this for two years.
The apartment was small—one bedroom, a kitchen that barely fit a table, and a balcony overlooking the Atlantic. Shells on every surface. A half-finished model of the Argo II on the bookshelf. The cat, Damasen, was a gray lump on the windowsill, judging them both.
"You're staring," Apollo said without looking up.
"You're playing the ukulele at seven in the morning."
"It's a love offering."
"It's a noise complaint waiting to happen."
Apollo grinned—that crooked, human grin that still made Percy's stomach flip. He set the ukulele aside and crawled up the bed, draping himself over Percy's chest like a very warm, very dramatic blanket.
"We have bagels," Apollo murmured against his collarbone. "And that fancy cream cheese you like. The one with the chives."
"Marry me."
"You haven't proposed."
"I just did."
"That doesn't count. I'm a god. I need spectacles. Fireworks. A sonnet."
Percy ran a hand through Apollo's hair, and the god melted against him like a cat. This— this quiet, ordinary intimacy— was still new enough to feel precious. After years of war and loss and prophecy, Percy had never imagined he'd get to have this. Mornings. Bagels. Someone who stayed.