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When he first met Percy Jackson Peter didn’t think they would ever be friends. There was nothing wrong with the kid, not really, but he looked sad in a way Peter, orphaned and unhappy himself, didn’t think he could handle in his life. And he was perpetually alone. Not how Peter was alone, though: not because he was sad and shy and quiet, but because there was something about him that just made people nervous. The kid showed up to school with dark bruises that always faded too quickly, and he was always getting pulled around corners by worried teachers but he always came back without anything ever changing, always more bruises. He sat alone at lunch and ate strange-looking meals with jittery hands. He fidgeted, stared into the distance, and never made an effort with the other kids in their class. But Peter joined the year late and he got the feeling that was only because they had never made an effort with him.
It wasn’t that Peter tried to avoid him, just that they never really crossed paths. Peter liked to spend his recesses in the library, and went there after finishing his lunch, but Percy Jackson was a back of the field kid, the one who sat on the grass alone pulling up handfuls of it and came back with dirt under his nails, claiming to have seen strange things through the bushes. He once claimed that he was being followed by a strange man wearing a trench coat who had only one eye and, from that point onwards, the ostracization only got worse and the teachers only got more worried and Peter watched the whole thing in fascinated, intimidated silence. And then they found the man in the trench coat. He had two eyes, they said, but Percy Jackson wasn’t lying about being followed and all the adults were scared for him but the children’s worry found him as a target. He stayed alone.
Peter would have kept it that way, but they were paired together to do a task in a science class and Peter was too excited about the task at hand to really realise it was happening until Percy Jackson sidled up to his desk with his pitch black hair and his too-bright eyes, his pointy teeth and his awkward limbs, his smile that stretched further left than right and only dimpled on one side, and a brand new bruise over his orbital bone. He was trying his hardest to look disarming and friendly and it wasn’t really working, but it was the closest Peter had ever gotten to the kid. It was the first time he was close enough to really realise what it was he was wearing. There was a faded Lego logo on the grey shirt, Peter could appreciate that, but more than anything he could appreciate how soft and worn-out the fabric looked, how there were little holes developing at the hems and the t-shirt hadn’t been thrown out yet. The jeans were blood-stained at the tattered knees, too big and belted with the desperation of a parent doing their best with what they had. The belt itself was old too, fake brown leather that was crackling like scales. Peter understood that, empathised with it. At a glance,a close one, Percy Jackson might have been the closest he could get to himself in his class.
Percy sat down and Peter looked at him excitedly, avoiding his eyes because nothing could make them less disconcerting--they looked unnatural!--and the bruise blooming on his tan skin. “Lego!” He exclaimed. He couldn’t keep his hands still when he was excited but, in the end, it was fine because Percy Jackson could never keep his hands still. “Do you have much of it?” Peter could have talked about Lego for days, but Percy shook his head. His hair fell into his eyes and he didn’t bother pushing it away.
“Not really,” he spoke quietly, with the apprehension of a person able to predict that the conversation wouldn’t end well. Peter was determined to make sure that it did. “We can’t really afford it,”
Peter shrugged. “That’s fine,” he said, “I can ask my aunt if you can come over and play with mine!” and that was that.
Peter is alone in the world. He knows it. His parents are dead, his uncle is dead, his aunt is dead and he has made the whole world forget he is even amongst them. If ever he sees a spark of recognition ignite in someone’s eyes as he passes them in the street, especially a person he once knew by name or perhaps more, he has to dull the feeling of hope because he knows he probably just served them their lunch once. There is nothing in this world for him. Not anymore.
One of the reasons Percy Jackson was so left out was his anger. Peter knew that, had heard all about his short fuse from teachers who tried to be polite when they warned Peter not to go near his classmate, but he had never seen it first hand.
Until he did.
When Peter decided he was going to make a friend of Percy Jackson he may as well have also agreed to being kept at an arm’s length by the other students who couldn’t really defend why they did it. He didn’t mind it so much, because it wasn’t like any of them were ever close to him, but there was a point where they just became mean.
It seemed like they knew to leave Percy alone, because whenever one of the more daring boys in their class, desperate for attention or power or whatever it was that drove children to mistreat each other, whatever it was they were lacking at home, he would snap shortly and they would turn around with their tails between their legs at a glare or a growl or their feet being sandwiched between the hole-rife sole of a trainer and the concrete of the pavement. But Peter was different and they would do it where Percy couldn’t see. It was chunks of lunches thrown at the back of his head, it was spitballs and the ink from biros ruining his clothes, it was making fun of the parents they must have known he didn’t have, the impact of a fist against his arm, a conspicuously taunting laugh he couldn’t figure out the cause of.
And, as was bound to happen, one day one of them messed up. One day Percy saw it and it was like his bright eyes changed into something inherently angry, something stormy and tumultuous and strangely old in the round shapes of his young face. He said something biting in a voice, loud and booming and not his own, that found its way into the depths of Peter’s memories, to remain even when the words themselves fell apart, forgotten. He punched the kid, sent him crying back to their teacher, waddling on thick, little legs and clutching at his blood as it streamed blood down his front.
Percy wasn’t welcome back to that school anymore, but Peter knew where he lived, and aunt May knew Percy’s mum’s number so they stayed friends, met up whenever they could. It wasn’t as often as Peter would have liked and he didn’t understand why.
Peter is keeping Spider-Man alive, is keeping himself in shape and familiar with the city. Sometimes he wonders if the Avengers might notice him again, might pick him up and he might be able to get at least some of his relationships back. But most of the time he is just sad. He walks through neighbourhoods, treads filthy streets and tries to commit their layouts from just about every orientation to his memory. Vermin scuttle in gutters and children giggle, holding their parents’ hands. Teenagers walk in packs, chewing gum and drinking iced coffee and being loud and young as Peter is all alone, his prospects lost with his life.
He is just walking, like he tends to, when he sees someone across the street looking at him with something more probing than the usual level of recognition he is given. The person across the street is alone, too, but Peter doubts their isolation is of the same profundity, much taller than Peter, and much more evidently muscular. He is classically handsome in the manner of a Greek statue yet he also looks very much like a skater, Mediterranean, with hair so dark it feels like it is swallowing up the light around it, painted with a grey streak. Peter knows not to get his hopes up, doesn’t think he even knows who this guy is, anyway. At least until he realises his eyes are a familiarly alarmingly bright sea green.
Peter’s friendship with Percy fell apart when they were twelve. And he had been so looking forward to summer for Percy’s presence and precisely no other reason.
Percy had been sent to boarding school for troubled children after boarding school for troubled children and Peter had never understood why. Percy had some anger issues, sure, but he never did anything unprovoked. He made stupid mistakes a lot, had ADHD and dyslexia and luck that was about the worst Peter had ever known, but he was also funny, he was nice and compassionate and steadfast in a way kids their age typically aren’t, and he could even be smart and capable whenever people were willing to give him the time and aid he needed. It was just his luck that people rarely were. So getting to see him had become a rare thing, an especially exciting incident.
He practically sat by May’s feet as she called Sally Jackson even though he felt like he should have grown out of that jittery sort of excitement, and then the whole feeling wa crushed when Sally didn’t pick up their phone and, instead, an angry, gruff voice that slurred its words answered with a “What?” that made May turn and speak quietly as though hoping Peter wouldn’t be able to hear. He knew who that man was and knew it wasn’t a good sign. Every word Percy had ever said about him gave Peter that impression.
May turned around eventually with a sad shake of her head. “They’ve gone missing,” she said, her cadence a clear communication that she couldn’t quite believe it herself. Peter didn’t respond, only ran to his bedroom to sob into his pillow, hoping it was all a big misunderstanding and Percy would just show up outside Peter’s bedroom on the fire escape like he had done in the middle of the night a few times, always without explanation but always a desperate sort of need.
Peter spent his summer keeping up with the updates in the Jackson case, hearing that his only friend in the world was a criminal and Sally Jackson, who made him cookies and dinner and smiled at him whenever she saw him, was probably dead, hadn’t been seen in weeks even as Percy Jackson ran around the country like a fugitive. He didn’t believe it, couldn’t. When it all ended, when Percy showed up on TV, alive and well enough, and supposedly having just escaped from being kidnapped, Peter felt vindicated. He was glad that everything had ended, and angry in a way he had assumed he didn’t know how to be because Percy’s stepfather had shown up on TV, started all the suspicion in the first place, labelled Percy a delinquent in a way that made it seem like he didn’t know how to care when it was clear from every moment Peter had ever spent with him that he felt strongly about pretty much everything.
Percy and his mum might have been home safe, but that didn’t mean Peter got to go back to him. Percy’s step-dad went missing next and the news media barely bothered to run it as a story, but Percy and Sally moved away and got a new landline with a new number and Peter had no way of getting to them, not anymore.
He went back to school and knew he had to make new friends. That was when he met Ned who was brilliant and, despite being almost nothing like Percy, had the uncanny ability to make Peter think about the friend he didn’t know how to check up on. He thought it might be that they had similar laughs. Sometimes when Ned laughed a little too hard at one of Peter’s bad jokes he couldn’t help but wonder if Percy still remembered to miss him.
Peter is certain he is staring at Percy Jackson from across the street even though he knows they haven’t seen each other in years and Percy looks almost nothing like he used to. He used to be short, all knobbly limbs and a smile that was too big for his face, but now he is tall, built like a swimmer even with a lingering sign of hunger pangs in his frame, and he has grown into his features, found a way to make them suit him. Peter doesn’t remember having seen Percy since he was all but deleted from the world, but Percy is looking at him with too much familiarity for it to be coincidental. Peter is frozen and Percy is running across the road with the boldness of a born New Yorker who trusts cars not to hit him and himself to dodge any that decide they don’t care.
“Peter!” Percy says with a wave. His clothes are as ratty as they ever have been, and his hair is the same kind of scraggly and unkempt as always, but he is covered in scars now, like his luck never got any better over the years. There is one in the centre of his raised palm, it’s old and not that big, especially compared to the rest of the scars Peter can see, including the one’s on his face, but it’s shaped kind of like an asterisk. It looks angry in spite of its age and size in a way Peter can't quite explain. He focuses on it, wonders when he will wake up from what is almost definitely a dream. He is getting closer and Peter really wants to cry. “Peter Parker!” Percy repeats. He sounds so excited and so sure that Peter can’t stop the tears from trailing down his cheeks.
Peter only ever saw Percy cry once. It wasn’t that he particularly tried not to, he just wasn’t much of a crier. Peter could never seem to stop himself from welling up at the smallest things, but even when Percy showed up, dishevelled and frantic and wearing the fresh red precursors to dark bruises, he somehow managed to turn everything into frustration, into anger.
One of May’s friends was having a party and she had told Ben and May that Peter was welcome to bring a friend because the only other kids that were there were either much older or younger than him. So Percy ended up tagging along wearing the only pairs of jeans he owned that weren’t full of holes, his hair still untamed but clearly with more effort put into it than usual. It hadn’t worked but Peter appreciated it and the way that May smiled at Percy made his face turn red. Peter had laughed and they had left and, for hours, it was fun.
He and Percy ran around the rented space, listening to music and dancing along in their uncoordinated eleven-year-old way, laughing so loud it must have sounded obnoxious even though none of the adults around felt the need to tell them that, stealing snacks and finding corners to eat them in. They didn’t even try to talk to any of the other kids, although one of the teenagers did steal Percy for a few minutes to talk about the band shirt he was wearing.
“I never went to a show,” he admitted when asked, “But I like the band and I found it at a thrift store,” Percy didn’t get along with many people, but whenever somebody approached him without ill-intent he always managed pretty well. The teenager looked like a skater, like someone Peter might see when he sat by the skatepark watching Percy fight against physics and, more often than not, win.
“Nice!” the teenager grinned. One of her front teeth was chipped. Peter knew that if he was asked he would have tried too hard, stumbled over words that fell apart into disparate syllables that could never hope to communicate meaning. “What thrift store?” She seemed genuinely interested, genuinely excited.
It was a good night until it wasn’t.
The adults were drinking and it was fine until it wasn’t. A few women started stumbling when they danced, talking a little too loud and getting a little too touchy with everyone that crossed their paths, and Percy started to look kind of uncomfortable but he just turned his back and continued laughing, was easily distracted from it. And everybody kept drinking until a man Peter didn’t recognise raised his voice and let his words all run into one. He sounded angry and Percy snapped his head in the man’s direction like he was scared, and flinched so dramatically Peter suddenly almost didn’t recognise who he was looking at. The man kept shouting and people started trying to calm him down, and Percy kept staring and Peter kept staring at the back of Percy’s head. He shook it eventually, then turned around in haste and clutched Peter's wrist with his bony fingers. He was pulled out of the building and onto the grass outside where Percy all but crashed as Peter tried to catch his breath.
“What-?” he gasped out as Percy slumped against him, sniffling and crying. Peter stopped trying to figure out what was going on, because he really didn’t get it, and just reached his hands around Percy’s body, rubbed his back and hoped it was enough, that he was helping at least a little.
He told May about it after they dropped Percy off back home and he looked desperately like he didn’t want to go back into his apartment building in spite of the rain outside. She looked at him meaningfully but didn’t explain the understanding on her face. “I mean,” she muttered to Ben, “I always kind of assume but that fucker!” Peter knew that was a word he wasn’t supposed to say or hear but he didn’t remind May of that. Percy used it sometimes and Peter always thought he was cool when he did.
When Percy showed up on Peter’s fire escape strangely early the next morning, soaked through and shaking like a leaf, still wearing his nice jeans and band shirt, Peter wondered if he actually hadn’t gone back to his apartment. Aunt May looked beyond relieved to see him when she woke up and Peter could make a conclusion from that easily. She hugged Percy even though it wasn’t a thing she had done before, and made him and Peter hot chocolate despite it being a thing they saved for special occasions, gave Percy dry clothes and set them up on the couch with a big blanket and a movie of Percy’s choosing. He chose Nemo, they all knew he would.
Eventually Peter was old enough and aware enough to figure out what was going on. Maybe he was just angry when he did, because he decided Percy Jackson was a coward for never doing anything about it. When he later realised why Percy and his mother probably hadn't spoken up he was glad he never got the chance to obliviously insult Percy to his bruised face.
That was one of the last times Peter Parker ever saw Percy Jackson. He hadn’t known it would be.
“Woah, dude!” Percy says and Peter is embarrassed that he can’t really see him as anything other than a moving blob of colours through his tears but he also can’t stop himself from crying. He wraps an arm around Peter’s shoulders and moves him away from the busy streets until he stops at a bench by a park. It’s a cold day, biting, so it’s fairly empty, but Percy is still only wearing an orange t-shirt and a blue zip-up hoodie, and Peter is wearing the only coat he owns. Percy is steady as he leads Peter, he feels reliable, almost as though he was made to be leaned on, or at least is well-practised in the art of holding people up. He eases them both onto the bench and Peter sniffles.
It’s humiliating, really. There is apparently one person in the world who knows him even though they haven’t seen each other in years and the first thing Peter did when his name was called was burst into tears. He doubts Percy expected to become a shoulder to cry on today, but he accepts it without question. He’s always been this person with Peter--comfort now and question later.
“Are you okay?” Percy asks eventually, gently, when Peter has composed himself somewhat. He wipes his eyes on his coat sleeve and Percy smiles at him softly. He has aged well, unfairly so, but there are a number of scars cutting through his face, as though dissecting it. It is as though a classical statue and a blender met and that union is the one that has created what Percy Jackson has become. When Percy thinks Peter isn’t looking he runs his fingers gently over a long scar that extends up from his jaw. Peter doesn’t really understand why: it’s far from his worst.
Peter nods and wonders what the right way to explain the scenario is. He could say it’s just about Percy, the shack of seeing him after everything and all this time, but it feels intrinsically wrong. He feels like he shouldn’t lie even though he can’t really put words to why. “You’re never going to believe me,” he laughs thickly and Percy’s smile turns from purely concerned to something betraying a hint of intrigue. Peter’s throat hurts. He can’t help but wonder why exactly it is that Percy can remember him. He shouldn’t be able to. There should be no way that’s possible. And yet it is happening.
Peter really should be used to all of this by now, to everything he knows being contradicted. He really isn’t.
Percy kind of scoffs. “Good luck with that,” he says, amused. He sounds more sure than Peter could have ever predicted he would, and it feels like the final push Peter needs to admit everything he was contemplating telling Percy.
“Don’t get cocky,” Peter warns. His eyes are bloodshot and his eyelashes are damp and his cheeks feel warm and tight, but he can’t help but be enjoying this. Somehow Percy Jackson is still easy to talk to, too easy to talk to, even though Peter hasn’t seen him in years. Peter knows he has been through plenty since he last saw him, that they both have; there is no way they are the same kids they were when they last spoke, but it still feels right, comfortable. Peter doesn’t get much of that these days.
He explains the whole thing and Percy, still himself, can’t help but interrupt and always looks guilty when he does it, always apologises, and listens as silently as he is able, nodding along and not even once gently suggesting he takes Peter to a nearby hospital to have them check him out.
“Wow,” Percy says eventually. His eyebrows have inched closer and closer to his hairline and his eyes, startlingly fathomless this up close, even more unnatural than they seemed when Peter first saw them, are wide. But that is it. His reaction doesn’t seem like enough.
“Wow?” Peter checks.
“Wow.” Percy reiterates with a sure nod. His face relaxes and he shifts on the bench, his leg jiggling madly like he can’t stand how still they are. Peter stands and Percy, looking grateful, follows suit. Peter leads them both to a coffee shop he knows is close by.
“Why do you believe me?” He asks eventually. This time Percy’s smile is sheepish.
Even when he was Peter’s favourite person in the world, he was never quite able to ignore the fact that Percy Jackson was weird. He got into all these weird, improbable situations, and seemed to know all sorts of weird and improbable things.
When they were ten and bored Percy suggested they go to an aquarium and Peter, eager to learn about whatever he could, agreed readily. He was a bit less excited when Percy disclosed that the plan was actually to sneak in rather than pay admission, but he was starting to get worried that Percy Jackson, troubled kid he was, would get tired of his good two shoes thing, would start thinking that Peter wasn’t cool enough for him and just leave.
“It’s fine,” Percy waved his hand, but Peter was certain it wasn’t. There were a row of small bruises on his wrist that Peter couldn’t stop staring at. They looked like fingerprints. “I’ve done it before and never gotten caught,” Peter made a face at that but didn’t say anything.
“If you’re sure,” he said tentatively, hoping that Percy would say that he wasn't. No such luck.
They got in just fine, well-advised by Percy’s prior experience, and Peter grudgingly admitted that they wouldn't have been able to afford the entry fee if they tried to get in legitimately. Percy grinned at that, his own silent I told you so . He always was good at communicating without words.
As they walked the tanks Percy stopped and stared even though Peter knew he had definitely seen them all before not too long ago. It was as though he was mesmerised by each, and he had far more to say about each species of fish than the occasional informational plaques by the tanks did. He seemed to know what every fish was at a glance and Peter didn’t know how but he was happy to listen along. It was strange but not so strange he was willing to ruin Percy’s fun over it. Afterall, most of the ways Percy chose to have fun left Peter wheezing and gasping with his hands on his knees despite them being sore and tender with forming bruises.
He told Peter as they sat in the café with hot chocolates that he had been kicked out of his latest school for an incident involving a shark tank and he looked almost proud of it, yet equally sincere as he swore it wasn’t actually his fault. “Someone definitely told me to do it!” he defended, without proffering so much as a theory as to who that someone had been. Then he shrugged his narrow shoulders and stared at the scabs that had formed over his knuckles. Peter never asked where all of Percy’s injuries came from. He never knew why not. “It doesn’t matter anyway,” he said like he believed it. Peter wondered if he really did, or if he was just a good liar. It would make sense if that came with the troubled child territory, but Peter supposed he would have no way to know but to ask Percy himself and something about that seemed wrong. “I hated it there. My roommate smelled like cheese and sweat and the teachers always looked at me like they expected me to be the worst kid there! And don’t even get me started on the teachers themselves. I don’t think the science teacher understood a word that came out of her own mouth!” His excitement seemed exaggerated, but he always did seem to feel everything with his whole being. He doodled on their receipt, and Peter was kind of jealous how much it looked like the guitar shark Percy had spent ten solid minutes staring at wide-eyed.
Eventually they went back into the aquarium itself. “I do love this place,” Percy said as he walked and Peter nodded along. He did a lot of that. “But it’s always so noisy!” and Peter kept nodding even though he was sure it wasn’t.
Percy sips his coffee--a caramel iced latte despite the cold and his weather-inappropriate outfit--as though nothing is strange or wrong. Peter can’t help but stare at him slack jawed, trying to piece the world back together.
“I shouldn’t be that shocked,” he tries to convince himself, “I mean, the Asgardians are gods, kind of. Or they’re aliens?” They’re walking down a back alley that is secluded but also categorically unsafe. But apparently neither of them needs to worry too much about that danger, because he is Spider-Man and his childhood best friend is the son of a Greek god and things never stay the same for long enough for Peter to adjust to them before he is thrown for another loop.
“Asgardians?” Percy inquires with a chuckle, “They’re real gods,” he says, “All of those old mythologies are more truth than myth,” Peter groans into the heel of his own palm.
“Okay,” he says. He has to just accept everything Percy has said for now and work through the whole lot of it in detail later or this will go nowhere. “How does that all work then?” Percy explains it competently, but Peter still can’t really wrap his head around it. It’s frustrating: he is a person who is very used to understanding everything that is said to him.
They’re just walking, friends reunited with far more to catch up on than either of them knows how to explain, when everything goes wrong. It is both of their luck, really, that it would have to. “Give me your wallets!” A voice behind them demands and they don’t even look at each other as they sigh.
“Asshole.” Percy mutters with clenched fists.
“Wallets!” The man orders again. His voice is audibly wavering and Peter and Percy both turn to look at him. He is short, balding, wearing a tattered hoodie and sweatpants with old boots and a knife held shakily in his hand. He looks uncomfortable with it and Peter almost feels a little sorry that he has chosen to confront the people he has. He probably supposes that when Percy doesn’t have a weapon it doesn’t matter that he is much physically larger than the man, but he doesn’t know the whole picture, he can’t.
“Come on,” Percy sighs. Peter wonders if he is taunting the man or just speaking without thinking, but either way he is kind of amused. He understands that an incompetent criminal can’t hurt them, that there’s nothing to fear here. “You aren’t even holding it right!” Percy flings his hands out wildly, a very honest gesture of frustration, The shaky would-be mugger decides to forgo words this time and just jabs the knife aggressively at them. Percy rolls his eyes and steps forwards. He stamps meaningfully on the man’s foot and grabs him by the elbow, easily knocking the knife out of the man’s hand before kneeing him hard in the groyne for good measure. He whimpers and Percy picks up the knife and moves it far away from the criminal. He scrapes it against the brick wall to blunt the blade before throwing it nonchalantly into a nearby dumpster and the man looks like he wants to protest but he doesn’t.
“If you don’t mind,” Peter says, “We’ll be going now,” and the man, curled into a protective ball on the grimy floor, doesn’t try to stop them.
As soon as they’re far enough away Peter can’t stop himself from asking. “Why have you never done the superhero thing?”
Percy looks as though he is passing through every stage of grief in an instant. He sighs and ghosts his fingers across the scar on his jaw again. “How much time have you got?” Peter immediately regrets asking.
“I’m not sure how you do it,” Percy admits after he has offered his own explanation and let it sit in the air like a dark shroud. “How you volunteer to protect people like that. I’ve lost too many people being forced into those sorts of positions; I don’t think I could ever choose to do it again,” he looks up at the sky. It’s getting dark and a storm isn’t far away. “I always have a bad feeling I’m going to need to do it again.”
“I don’t think I chose it, I guess. I got bitten by the spider and everything happened,” he doesn’t want to say it again and Percy nods sagely, so he knows he doesn’t need to. “And I’d already started. It felt like it was my responsibility because I was capable of doing it, I guess.”
“I probably would have done it anyway,” he says it like it’s true but he doesn’t want to admit to it. “I couldn’t have watched all of that shit and known I could help but just chose not to,” his voice gets lower, softer, and Peter almost loses it to the wind. “I would have lost way more people and felt guiltier about it.”
“No offence,” Peter says, “I know they’re your family and all that jazz, but the gods sound like they suck.” Percy snorts.
“None taken,” his hands are back on his face, probing at his own skin like he can’t believe it belongs to him. “He may have been misguided, but I’d be lying if I said I thought Luke’s sentiment was wholly wrong,” Lightning shocks the sky above them and, shortly after, thunder rolls. Percy looks at the sky with tired eyes and raises his middle fingers up to the storm clouds. They begin to pour cold water down on the world in torrents so heavy it seems as though the rain is falling in a sheet rather than in droplets. Peter braces himself for it to hit him, to soak him through, but it never comes. Percy winks at him.
“Do you think,” Peter twists his fingers together as though trying to weave his hands into one. He kind of can’t believe that they’re dry. “That you might be up for joining me for patrol? Just tonight?” He’s so lonely in life and so not willing to let Percy Jackson go, not again, not when he has a choice and very little else.
Percy makes a face that makes Peter think he might be about to turn the offer down. “Okay,” he says, he nods, “Okay,” he repeats, “I’ll join you tonight.”