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It is easy to forget the violence gods are capable of when faced with their smiles and gentle laughter, their hands carding like oaths through your hair, every whispered word both prayer and worship at once.
It’s easy to forget, but reminders are always just waiting around the corner.
Or trees.
Percy hadn’t seen the monsters until it was almost too late to push Myles out of the way.
The youngest child of Apollo had wandered away from camp, homesick and afraid, and once his absence had been noted Percy was the first to be up and beyond the camp’s borders, the rest of cabin seven and various other demigods split into groups and following behind.
Thing is, Percy feels responsible. Myles had arrived at camp only a week ago, terrified and traumatized after a run-in with a monster that had left him partially orphaned.
Apollo had dropped the tiny boy off himself, staying at camp for four days to assuage the boy’s fears and settle him in with his siblings.
Consequently, Percy had neglected his duties of properly getting to know Myles himself for the moment, resulting in the boy running off to look for his father when he’d been summoned back to Olympus by Zeus.
The monster’s teeth glint yellow as it strikes, darting from its cover, and Percy has a split second to feel bad about Myles startled yelp when he pushes the small boy to the side before the world becomes a cacophony of blazing pain pain pain.
Percy screams. Probably. He’s not sure. But there’s a lot of blood and a lot of pain and between being gutted and falling to the ground he must have blacked out, because when he next opens his eyes it’s to the anguished shrieks of the monster as its eyes start glowing and it burns to ashes from the inside out.
It’s a terrible sight.
Myles is pressed into Percy’s side, sobbing inconsolably, and Percy blinks at the vanishing beast with morbid fascination, trying and failing to lift his head, to assess the situation, because there’s still a tiny demigod depending on his protection and—
A cough forces itself up his throat like a pack of razors, wet and rattling. His head plops back onto the soft earth.
Yeah, not going anywhere anytime soon.
Percy lifts his arm sluggishly, pushing weakly at Myles chest and leaving a smear of dark red on his shirt.
“Run,” he tries to say, but it sounds more like a gurgle and Myles starts sobbing harder.
Above them, through the thick canopy of the trees, the blue sky is darkening rapidly, ashen clouds brewing as the wind picks up and carries with it the salt of the sea.
Another shriek, another monster up in flames and light, and Percy pushes more insistently at Myles, urging him to flee. To find help. Anything but stay and be doomed alongside him. Whatever is slaughtering the monsters will reach them sooner or later.
Sooner, by the sound of things.
Percy grits his teeth. He can’t let Myles get hurt. Apollo would never forgive him. Percy needs to get up, he needs to get up and fight—
Another cough shudders through his body, sending a fresh wave of blood through his teeth. The pain he expects to feel stays absent, replaced gradually by a steadily building cold.
“Dad!” Myles bawls, clinging ever tighter to Percy’s side. “Dad!”
Right. Right.
Apollo.
If he can just reach him somehow— a prayer—
“Dad!”
The sky is black, the sun eclipsed, and Percy thinks, distantly, that he can hear-see-feel the tide crash against the rocks; the heralding of a truly catastrophic storm.
There’s no sun.
“Dad! Help him!”
He’s cold. Everything is cold. They’re in danger, Percy needs to move, but his limbs are frozen to the blood stained grass.
“Dad!”
He blinks and a face swims into view, warm
and golden.
“Percy!”
Oh, Percy thinks.
This is where the sun went.
“Father is furious,” Triton says, eyes distant, “the sea is in turmoil. Someone will have to pay.”
“Someone already has.” Apollo replies, his gaze fixed on the still form of his lover laying between the sheets, pale despite all the healing power Apollo had used. “They’re all dead.”
Triton hums. “Father thinks the beasts weren’t there by coincidence.”
“Yes,” the sun god confirms, watching the slow rise and fall of Percy’s chest, counting each breath religiously. “The one responsible is dead, too.”
Out of the corner of his eye Apollo sees Triton’s head tilt in acknowledgment. “Good.”
A hitch in breath, a crease in Percy’s brow, and Apollo is already by the demigod’s side, fingertips ghosting over the soft skin of his cheekbones.
Veins spread gold from Apollo’s touch, pain relief speeding across nerve endings, and Percy exhales a sigh as he presses closer to the god’s palm in slumber.
Apollo allows himself a few seconds to cup the demigod’s face, to relish in the life he can still feel buzz beneath the layers of healing sleep, in the heartbeat he’d become so attuned to and the shimmering thread in his mind where Percy had carved a place for himself.
He’s alive, Apollo reminds himself. He’s alive.
“How did you know?” Triton asks quietly, uncharacteristically mindful of the fragile scene playing out in front of him. “Even father did not realize until it was almost too late.”
Apollo has to close his eyes then, because he can still vividly recall the feeling of their shared tether splintering. The way he’d stumbled, Artemis’ look of alarm shortly before he’d flashed away.
The sight of Percy in a pool of his own blood, the pallor of his skin, the wet sound of clogged lungs… Apollo’s son, crying and screaming for his father—
He’d lost control. Plain and simple.
Mortality and its meanings elude the gods. For them it’s a fascinating concept, a plaything to pick off a pile of shiny toys and make it their own for as long as it can keep their attention. Which isn’t very long, usually.
Apollo himself has had countless mortals. Temporary amusements he’d picked and discarded as it had suited him. In the early days there’d been little that was capable of holding his attention for longer than a couple sunrises.
Not before Hyacinth, at least.
And still the despair he’d felt upon the prince’s death had paled in comparison to what he felt when Percy’s life was bleeding red into the ground before him, staining the earth and making each sliver of light that hit his battered body howl-howl-howl—
Apollo had grasped for the sun, then, and the sun had come roaring to his fingertips with anguished ferocity, clenching its teeth like a vice around the first beast’s heart it could find in close vicinity.
For the first time in centuries Apollo had felt like burning the world.
Apollo.
“He prayed to me,” Apollo says, adjusting the pillows around Percy for the umpteenth time, brushing his fingers against the demigod’s chilly skin.
He might have to readjust the sun’s rays to fall through the window at a better angle tomorrow, it wouldn’t do for Percy to be cold.
Triton humphs, displeased, “He could have prayed to us.”
Something ugly and possessive rears its head, knocking against Apollo’s rib cage in warning, “But he didn’t.”
“…No. He didn’t.”
The unasked question— why?— lingers in the air, unanswered.
Apollo could tell Triton. Could soothe his worries, but doing so would also mean telling Triton about the true nature of their relationship, and Apollo would prefer to not have Poseidon obliterate him before he’s done healing Percy, thank you very much.
Then again, judging by the constipated expression on Triton’s face when Apollo’s hand lingers a second too long on the demigod’s jawline, it seems they’ve already been found out.
Apollo waits for the subsequent flare of temper, the protective fury he’s come to appreciate on Percy’s behalf, but instead all Triton says after a few minutes of silence is, “Will he live?”
“Yes,” as if Apollo would allow any other outcome.
Triton exhales. “Good.”
The oppressive air of two agitated gods facing off dissipates, and Apollo swears that the distant crash of waves against rocks becomes gentler somehow; relieved.
“Father might not gut you, after all.”
Apollo snorts. “I sincerely doubt it.”
Triton hums, leaning forward to brush a stray curl of hair out of Percy’s face in a rare display of affection. Percy’s near death had rattled all of Atlantis, if the storms out at sea are any indication. A reminder of the boy’s mortality everyone tends to conveniently forget about.
Not that Apollo is the exception there. He wonders if it’s too late to spirit Percy away to Delos.
“Well,” Triton says amiably, settling in the chair at Percy’s side with an air of finality. “I suppose we will find out soon enough.”
When Percy wakes up he doesn’t know where he is, and only the muted buzz of warmth beneath his skin keeps him calm and relaxed.
It is always like this. Apollo’s touch lingers on Percy’s skin long after he’s gone, veins shot through with the sun’s light.
Annabeth had nearly blown a fuse when she’d first seen him like this, thinking the god had done something bad to him.
Percy sits up slowly. Or he tries to, anyway, when there’s a large hand on his chest, halting him.
Percy startles, hand searching for Riptide on instinct before his eyes meet the sky blue of Apollo’s, and the fight drains out of him.
“Apollo,” Percy breathes, frowning at the uncomfortable roughness of his voice. “What are you doing here?”
The god’s expression darkens, his eyes flaring a brilliant gold. “You were injured.”
Percy blinks.
“I… was?”
“Yes.”
Well, he feels good now, so… it probably hadn’t been that bad… What had- wait, hold on—
The glass of water on the bedside table bursts as Percy sits abruptly, grasping frantically for Apollo’s wrists. “Myles! Is he ok? Was he hurt? There were- shit, Apollo, how did those monsters even get this close to camp!?”
“Myles is perfectly fine, Percy. It was you who got hurt.”
Percy slumps in relief, suddenly tired despite just waking up. “Thank the gods.”
Apollo’s eyes narrow. “I don’t think you understand. You nearly died.”
“Yeah, wasn’t fun. Wouldn’t recommend, honestly.”
The temperature in the room rises rapidly, the glow coming off Apollo intensifying as, in hide ire, more of his essence begins to shine through.
Maybe that little stint had rattled Apollo more than he’d thought, but he’s alive and so is Myles. That’s got to count for something
Percy winces when the heat becomes a little too much, and the god visibly reigns himself in.
“Don’t do something so foolish ever again.”
“You know I can’t promise that. Myles would have died.“
Distress flashes across Apollo’s features.
“Why did you not call for me sooner?”
“… you came, then?”
Incredulity washes over Apollo’s face. “Who do you think killed the monsters?”
Percy blinks.
He… frankly hadn’t thought of that, but it does make a terrible amount of sense, the way he’d seen the creatures smolder and burn from the inside out.
“Percy,” Apollo says, resting his forehead against the demigod’s with gentle reverence, and Percy is stunned to hear the god’s voice waver, “Percy, do you not know what I would do if you were to die on me?”
He’s beginning to understand… maybe.
“I’m sorry.”
“Good.”
Percy pushes himself up a little to brush his lips softly against Apollo’s, making the god’s eyes flutter shut. Warmth spreads out from their point of contact, renewing the comforting tingle of the other’s presence rushing through his veins.
They stay like that for some time, content to let the world move on without hem for the time being.
Until someone clears his throat and effectively rips them away from that moment of tranquility.
Apollo looks annoyed as Percy’s head swivels toward the door, mortification settling into his bones.
“Dad! Why- what are you doing here!?”
Poseidon raises an unimpressed eyebrow.
“I think I’ll be asking the questions from now on.”
Oh, gods…