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“Thank you, Percy,” his father said, when he had stopped trembling enough to form a full sentence.
He fiddled with the satnav, not wanting to look at his father’s face. When he had seen Poseidon, right after the explosion of the Princess Andromeda, he thought that the old man form of his dad, the one that reflected the state of his realm, was bad.
A Poseidon, trembling in the passenger seat of his car, still dabbing blood — red, human, mortal blood — from his nose? A Poseidon whose hair was messy, not because he was going for a sick, kicked back surfer vibe, but because he looked like he’d been dragged out of an increasingly disgusting series of trash cans and garbage dumps? And smelled like it too? It was so much worse.
He set the course for the drive-thru he’d seen on the way out here. Needless to say, he would also be needing a coffee to make it back to New Rome at this time of night, since he wasn’t currently actually medicated, and that was assuming he wasn’t going to be attacked by monsters, or whatever. Eyeing his dad as he was right now? He doubted he’d be able to hold his own in a fight right now.
“It’s no problem,” he said slowly. “But— what happened? I thought your quest was going well?”
“It was,” he said darkly. “I thought I had everything under control.” His brows collapsed in on each other in the middle of his forehead. “I thought wrong.”
He swivelled his head, half expecting to feel the beginnings of an earthquake, or sense some increased storm activity out at sea. But nothing came from it. Nothing could, right now.
“Do you… want to talk about it?”
He shook his head. A splatter of blood landed on Percy’s face. He could almost feel Poseidon’s gaze zeroing in on it, but he didn’t reach up to wipe it away. They were still hours from home, and he needed to focus on the road.
The drive-thru was shitty, but it was cheap. Percy ordered two coffees for each of them, noticing how Poseidon’s hands trembled around his cup, trying to warm up, as they sat in the parking lot. He wolfed down two burgers, and housed three servings of fries on his own, before drinking his first coffee with so much speed, it would be reasonable to mistake that he was shotgunning the damn cup.
“Are you done?” his dad asked at one point.
“Hm?” he looked up, brushing crumbs away from the side of his mouth with the backs of his knuckles. “Um, for now. You want your food?”
“If it’s not too much trouble?” A crease appeared in the middle of his forehead. Crinkles formed at the sides of his eyes. For the first time since his father had appeared on his doorstep in New York, bedraggled and miserable, he actually looked amused.
“Amphi’s like that too,” he said. “Can’t ever take her out to eat above the sea, not that she likes the food, except for sashimi, I guess.”
“Do you mean Amph—” he coughed, starting to choke on a crumb, then saving it. “Queen Amphitrite?”
“Mmh,” he bit into the burger, and then lifted it away from his mouth. “Has this cow been sent to the Fields of Punishment to be made into such a thing?”
Percy shrugged, “Welcome to America.”
He made a face, but he kept eating, “I think this might be a sin against gastronomy.”
“’S that?” he asked through his next burger.
His dad just smiled and finished his burger.
They only stayed for a little while longer. Percy hadn’t spent over a decade in the world of Greek demigods and also the gods or whatever, to not be wary of sticking around in these sorts of places. He was just lucky that he hadn’t accidentally come across a monster doughnut place this time. After they’d disposed of their garbage, and gone to the bathroom — Percy to use it, and Poseidon to try to clean up as best he could in a sink (he recalled only too many quests he’d spent trying to replicate the effects of a shower or bath out of a shitty sink with a leaking faucet) — they were on the road again.
He knew the way from here. It was one long road to Beverley, then a few turns, until he hit the hill he’d once half-fallen down, being chased by gorgons, then the service tunnel, then he was home free. The satnav stayed on, just in case, but he let Poseidon fiddle with the radio, turning on something that was probably hilariously new to his dad, which was to say, like from the 1950s or something. Maybe Elvis? He didn’t know jack about Elvis, but he was from the 1950s, right?
The song changed though, to a woman’s voice, singing about the moon, and loss and longing. He peered over at his dad, just checking his mirrors, really, to see him mouthing along to the words, a look on his face that was half-dreamy, and half-sad.
“You know that song?” he asked, when it went to an ad break and he turned the volume down on the radio.
“Billie Holiday is a classic,” he said, looking far away, despite technically making eye contact with him, before Percy felt compelled to break it again. There was the road to consider, after all.
He decided to push his luck, “Who were you thinking about?”
“It’s whom, Perseus. And no one, really. Lots of people. Take your pick. Being a god… it’s great. I’m not going to come up and tell you that having my own kingdom isn’t incredible, that getting to rule and take care of my people isn’t what I was made for, as a being. But— I lose a lot of people too.” He heard his dad swallow. “And if I might ask you a question now?”
His fingers tapped a tune against the steering wheel. His eyes fixed to the road. “Shoot.”
“Why don’t you want to be a god?”
He let it sit for a moment. Percy Jackson might have had a reputation for being impulsive speaking’s number one poster boy, but it didn’t mean he didn’t think about what he said sometimes. “I didn’t want to lose anyone. I didn’t want to lose myself.”
He didn’t look. He didn’t want to see the anger he imagined on his father’s face. Or the sadness. The air hung heavy, a storm in their midst.
“I think I can understand that,” he said finally. Percy breathed, feeling the air pressure return to normal. “To be a god is to be defined by anyone who is not you. I’ve been Mycenaean, I’ve been Peloponnesian, from Attica, and Roman, and French, and British, and American. I don’t really get a lot of choice in that. There’s things we can do to influence the modern world, but the Fates pick. You pick. There’s a lot of freedom being mortal. I can’t lie and tell you I’m not selfish though. When I lose you, it will be a dark day for the sea.” He said it like he was already planning out his epitaph, like there was going to be a memorial to Poseidon’s weird kid somewhere at the bottom of the sea. Like Percy was already dead, and this was just the echo of him here now.
The knob on the radio turned as he twisted it again, trying to swallow past the lump in his throat.
He hit some hip-hop right as his midnight burgers and fries hit his system, and let that power him all the way back to New Rome. Poseidon didn’t make him respond to him the entire time. Percy hoped his dad would understand his answer anyway.