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ruegarding · 2 days

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Day 7: Family / Hurt/Comfort

Percethan (Percy x Ethan)

Word count - 2894

@them-awesome-rarepairs

Ethan lingered on the threshold like a ghost. Everything about the Jackson abode was completely foreign to him. It was like stepping into another time, or a parallel universe. Picture frames littered the living room with frozen moments of beach walks and colourful baking, novelty nick-nacks that looked like they'd been dragged out from the bottom of a bargain bin filled in the empty spaces on mantle tops and such, while the rich, heavy scent of leftover but still fresh cookies floated in from the adjacent kitchen. The organised mess was free of dust but more than a few items sported discoloured stains. Several small panes of glass were lovingly stamped with years of smudged fingerprints hazing the images sealed behind them. Everything had a meaning, a history, and everything had its place.

It was like a house of glass and Ethan was made of bricks. He crept in, sucking in a sharp breath when the floorboards creaked under his weight. A moment later, Percy poked his head into the room from a dark hallway. His eyes were narrowed into slits as he blinked the sleep out of them but they blew wide when they saw Ethan.

“Oh, hey,” Percy said as he fumbled through the room to meet Ethan by the front door. “What are you doing here?”

“Uh.” Backing away, Ethan tucked himself in as small as he would go while remaining on his feet. Fuck, he knew this was a bad idea. “You said if I needed anything I could just swing by and, um, it’s not really a bother so I’ll just–”

He was midway through turning around to leave when Percy grabbed his wrist and turned him back around to face him. “No, it’s okay,” he said, leading Ethan further into the room. “Take a seat. I was just wondering. Are you alright? Did something happen?”

Percy sank down into the sofa and tried to pull Ethan down with him. “It’s fine, really. I can go.”

“No.” Percy’s grip on his wrist remained light but he looked up at him with an insistence that was impossible to refuse. “Tell me what’s wrong.” Ethan took the seat next to him.

“It’s late,” he said as quietly as he could. “I wouldn’t want to keep you up.”

“I’ve had later nights.” Warmth seeped into him as Percy rubbed the insides of his wrists with the pads of his calloused thumbs. “Now, what happened?”

“It’s nothing,” Ethan tried again to assure him. “Just a rough day at work. That’s all.”

A shadow passed over Percy’s face, deepening the sea green of his eyes to a dark emerald. “A rough day at work means something very different for people like us. What kind of a rough day?”

The words stuck in his throat and Ethan kind of hoped they would stay there. Percy’s eyes bore down on him with an intense focus that made his leg bounce. Averting his gaze, his eye landed on a framed picture on the wall. In it, Percy couldn’t have been any older than nine and was perched on a park bench. He wore a plastic helmet with matching elbow pads and knee pads while a skateboard rested by his feet. A massive grin stretched his, showing off the gaps in his teeth and his bleeding gums. He was holding his arm up before him to show the camera the scrape he’d gotten on the side of his hand and down his wrist but he didn’t look in the least bit deterred. And there was Sally next to him, the smile frozen on her face with her arm looped around Percy's shoulders to shield and cradle him.

“Is your mom still asleep?” Ethan asked, whispering it into the room just in case.

“She should be,” Percy murmured back. He glanced at the picture Ethan had been staring at before flicking his eyes back to him. Then down the hallway where Sally’s room was. And then back to Ethan again. “Did you see Nemesis today?”

A red-hot pain flared up in the back of his throat. “No,” he said, barely getting it out through the tight vice constricting him. “No, I didn’t.” He was happy enough to leave it there, unsure of how much of his weakening composure he’d manage to maintain if he continued, but Percy stayed quiet beside him. Waiting. The silence grew heavy, too heavy to bear, so Ethan blurted, “I got called in to Kronos’ office today.” He glanced at Percy out of the corner of his eye who just nodded for him to continue. “I can’t even remember what it was about but he was in a bad mood. He was talking about loyalty or something. It’s all pretty fuzzy now.” He’d been assaulted with flashes of it the whole way from Mt Othrys to Percy’s place. It left his hands shaking even now.

Percy squeezed them in his to quell the tremors. “What did he do?” he asked. His voice was so soft but laced with a jagged undercurrent. Like a riptide hiding under the still surface of the sea waiting to drag away anyone who stepped too close.

Ethan was well acquainted with swimming in Percy’s waters. He didn’t mind taking the dive. “It wasn’t so bad.” He slipped his left hand free from Percy’s grasp and fumbled with getting the cuff down past his wrist. Percy moved his hands down to help him but when he saw what was under his sleeve, he froze.

“Ethan–”

“Please don’t overreact.” Water was already leaking out of several faucets that were quiet a second ago and Ethan didn’t want to cause any burst pipes or flooded bathrooms.

“Overreact?” Percy demanded. His voice lowered to a guttural hiss that strained around his barely contained rage. The hand he reached out to help with clenched around Ethan’s wrist and shook them both but it stayed away from the inside of his forearm and the angry red scythe burned into it. “He fucking branded you.”

“You’ll wake up your mother,” Ethan warned.

Percy opened his mouth as if to argue but quickly changed his mind, clamping his teeth together. A muscle twitched in his jaw. “Come with me,” he ground out under his breath. “I’ll help you treat that.” They got up from the couch and Ethan let Percy guide him to the kitchen with his hand still wrapped around his wrist, although not as tight as it had been. The kitchen looked like it had been well-used earlier in the day. There was a batch of bright blue cookies cooling under a dishcloth and nearby was a small tub with leftover dough that someone had taken a chunk out of. A big glass bowl, measuring cups and a wooden spoon were drying on a rack next to the sink, which was still lightly dusted with flour.

Percy turned the faucet on to wash it away and held Ethan’s arm out under the stream. Cool water poured over the inside of his forearm and chased away the burning ache still buzzing under his skin. He closed his eye and sighed, leaning into it. “Keep that there,” Percy ordered and ducked the countertop to get something from the cabinet under the sink. He returned a moment later with a small red bag that had a little white cross on it but he set it down beside the sink without opening it just yet. “Does anyone else in the army know about this yet?”

“No,” he answered, perhaps a little too quickly. “Well, I, uh, I tried to contact my mother.”

Percy sucked in a breath. “Oh.”

“I tried I.M.ing her. And praying. She didn’t respond.”

Percy’s hands drifted down Ethan’s forearm and he braced himself for the sting when the fingers brushed over his brand. But it didn’t come. Wherever he touched, the water felt impossibly cool and soothed him right down to the bone. “I see,” he murmured. The faucet turned off with a flick of his wrist and he grabbed a dishcloth to pat Ethan’s arm dry. Though not nearly as intense as it had been a moment ago, the thrumming heat was starting to return. Percy got some burn gel from the med kit and carefully lathered it over the brand, giving it a second to try before applying a sterile dressing to wrap his forearm. “Do you want some nectar or ambrosia?”

“I’ve had some.”

“Right.” Percy brushed his thumb over the inside of Ethan’s forearm to smooth down the dressing while his other hand cradled Ethan’s. It was a delicate touch, soothing. A million miles away from the skin-crawling sensations of Kronos or the fight-or-flight inducing feeling of Nemesis. “How about a cookie, then? My mom and I made them after dinner. Some of them might still be warm.”

His head drooped into a nod and he was too tired to do anything but drift behind Percy as he tugged him to the kitchen table. They sat across from each other at the edge of the table, so close their knees kept bumping together as Percy flung off the dishcloth covering the cookies and picked out a large one to offer. Ethan took it and slumped back in his chair. Percy took one too. They ate in silence.

The cookies were indeed still warm and melted on Ethan’s tongue, with little pockets of gooey melted chocolate that flooded his mouth whenever he bit into one. He could see why Percy never shut up about how amazing Sally’s baking was. Of course her food was what nectar and ambrosia tasted like to him. It was the taste of home. Of family. He let himself soak up the irony of the situation. The boy he was supposed to want dead, his enemy, was caring for a wound left by his master and feeding him homemade cookies. Cookies made by his mother.

“My mom doesn’t believe in luck,” Ethan said after swallowing down a bite. Percy paused with his cookie halfway to his awaiting mouth and flicked his wide eyes up to Ethan. “But I do. And I think you’re very lucky.”

Percy set his cookie down on the table. “Yeah, I think so too.” They hadn’t turned on the ceiling lights, Percy didn’t want the buzzing to wake up Sally, so the only thing illuminating the kitchen was the moon and stars filtering their light in through the window above the sink. It was soft, silver and it settled over the room like a blanket of mist. The light worked well with Percy. His black hair shone and sea green eyes had never looked deeper. They were less ‘lighting in a bottle’ and more like a quiet lagoon in the tropics. The gentle light sanded down his rougher edges and made the sharp corners of his mouth, which often took the form of a snarl, appear as just a neutral frown.

He didn’t look nearly as dangerous as he did whenever they met on demigod business. When they were all fighting for their lives. This Percy, Ethan decided, was much more natural. This was him in his natural habitat, after all.

“Just so you know,” he said after a while, fingers tapping against the table, “I meant it when I said you could visit at any time. Whatever you need, I’m happy to help.”

“Even in the middle of the night?” Ethan asked, flicking his eye up to the boy in the hopes that he caught the little edge of humour in his voice.

“I’m serious, Ethan.” He reached his hand out to bridge the gap between them and placed Ethan’s injured arm in his palm. He graciously neglected to mention the initial flinch in response to the touch but the cold drifting up from Percy’s skin to chase away the thrumming heat in his burn made Ethan melt against him. “You know I don’t like sending you back to that place, but I know there isn’t much I can do to stop you. Just promise you won’t hesitate to reach out when you need help.”

“I’m fine,” Ethan tried to assure him. “You don’t need to take sole responsibility for me. I have people in the army I can go to.”

“Like who?” Percy demanded. “Nemesis?”

Ethan stiffened. “She does care about me.” He knew his argument fell on deaf ears. Percy had made up his mind about Nemesis and there was no changing that. But he had to say something on her behalf. She was his mother. Family was supposed to stick up for one another. “She’s just busy and she doesn’t have time to waste on things that aren’t even that urgent.”

“Oh yeah?” The temperature on his arm climbed. “How much time did you spend trying to contact her?”

Warmth darkened his face as Ethan forced himself to look away. “That’s none of your concern.” His voice was a whisper in comparison to Percy’s.

“Ethan,” he said, his tone firm though not unkind. “I love you.” He bristled at the word. At the baring of such a dangerous fact. “And I don’t like to see you wasting your love on people who don’t deserve it.”

“And who does deserve it?” Ethan snapped. “You?” The second the word left his mouth, he wanted to snatch it out of the air and stick it in a paper shredder. But it was too late for that. He could see it in the way Percy drew back from him, not physically, but a guarded look passed over his eyes.

“You know,” he said, his voice low and broken in a way Ethan had never heard before, “It always frustrated me when my mom stayed with Gabe so long. The way she’d make up excuses for him and talk about how much we actually needed him.”

A wince drew Ethan in on himself. The infamous ‘Smelly Gabe’ was a topic rarely discussed between them. He couldn’t help but recoil at the mention of it, especially when Percy followed up with, “Sometimes, you really remind me of her back then.” His hand drifted up Ethan’s arm and came to rest on his shoulder. “She didn’t really have any family to fall back on when they were together. She had no parents, she had no siblings, no aunts, or uncles, or grandparents to take shelter with.”

“She was trapped,” Ethan finished for him, his voice so thick he could barely push it up his throat. Percy had used that word before. ‘Trapped’. Particularly in relation to Ethan. He’d been trapped in the Hermes Cabin, he was trapped in the labyrinth arena, trapped in the army, trapped by his mother and trapped with his hidden visits to Percy, visits that would spell his doom if anyone in the army found out. Percy was nowhere near as clueless as some people made him out to be, but for all his bullseyes, he did miss the mark in some places.

“I don’t want you to feel like I’m pitying you or anything,” he continued. “I know what it’s like to be on the receiving end of that, trust me.” Ethan didn’t doubt it. “I just want you to know that if you ever need a family or someplace to escape to for the night, I’m right here.” Percy leaned in closer, resting one hand on Ethan’s shoulder and the other on the back of his neck. With his face so close, Ethan couldn’t help but glance up. That was his fatal mistake. Percy’s eyes were a pair of whirlpools that cradled him in their hold and sucked him ever deeper into their depths. They were inescapable, their current too strong to fight against.

So Ethan stopped. He gave up his futile resistance and let himself be swept away. He slumped forward, his face fitting in neatly against the crook of Percy’s neck while his hands pressed him closer. If you ever need a family, Percy’s words replayed in his head, I’m right here. His chest felt tight and the back of his throat burned. Stubborn tears fell from Ethan’s tightly shut eyes and soaked into the fabric of Percy’s hoodie. He heaved in stuttering breaths between his clenched teeth and his body began to tremble.

“That’s it,” Percy murmured, his chapped lips pressed to Ethan’s head. “Take your time.” Ethan wrapped his arms around Percy’s waist and held him as tightly as he held Ethan. By the morning, he’d be returning to Mt Othrys and staring at the face of the creature who seared his flesh mere hours ago. He’d go back to being the loyal lieutenant and dutiful son. He’d be right back into the fray of the storm. Whether Percy was his battered shelter for the night or just the calm eye in the centre of it, Ethan no longer cared. I’m right here. He tucked those words close to his chest and let them warm him. When his tears dried and the sun rose, they’d be all he had left.

But with Percy’s chest against his, with his hands in his hair and his scent between them, Ethan didn’t think he minded. If all else crumbled into the sea and he was left a no one with nothing, he’d be content with just this. Just Percy’s lips on his skin, and his words in his heart.

#ethan #percy #breakdancing

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