Chapter Text
Percy clutched his turtle plushie tightly while his mom finished putting his things away in the dorm room. It was a tiny room, where a bed barely fit alongside one wall and a small, scratched up desk was shoved under the window with a chair that wobbled when he sat on it.
The only other item in the room was an ugly mustard yellow dresser where his mom put away his nicely folded clothes. Percy didn’t know why she bothered to do that since they would inevitably end up squirrelled away under the bed or on the chair, but whatever.
“There, all done.” Sally said with a smile as she closed the ugly dresser. It didn't close all the way even when she tried to push it a little harder. She sighed and crouched down in front of him, her smile now a little tighter. “I want you to try to keep your room clean, alright darling?”
Percy scowled and buried his fingers deeper inside Crush the Turtle. He named it after the turtle from Finding Nemo; it was the only movie he ever saw in a cinema and he loved it. The plushie was very soft and somehow always made him feel like he carried with him a bit of home, if home felt like the sea breeze.
Percy decided not to think about that since the day the turtle plushie showed up on his bed and when he thanked his mom, she just smiled tightly at him with confusion swimming in her blue eyes.
“It’s not my room.” He muttered mutinously. Oh goodie, the fake smile his mom wore got even faker.
“I know it’s hard sweetheart, but you will be having fun in no time, you’ll see. I heard that they have a lot of fun trips here,” She leaned in and whispered conspiratorially, “Apparently, you will go to an aquarium, how cool is that? I bet they even have real turtles there.”
Percy perked up a little at that. He always wanted to go to the aquarium and see all the cool creatures from the picture book his mom got him for his fifth birthday.
He quickly got back to scowling, now even harder. He wanted to go there with his mom, not some stupid kids.
He didn't want to admit it, but he was scared. It was the first time he would spend so much time away from his mom and even though he was happy that he wouldn’t have to see Gabe for such a long time, it still meant that he would be totally alone.
His mom wouldn’t be there to pull him out of his daytime dreams and to comfort him when he woke up from yet another nightmare about the Greek world. He would only have his warm current to keep him safe.
Percy never told her about the dreams. There was one time in kindergarten when he zoned out during story time, instead watching as Achilles fought with Hektor. The teacher kinda snapped him out of it when she used that stupid concerned voice, the one which half the adults in his life used when he “went away”. The other half scowled and shouted at him, like he was an inconvenient worm under their shoe.
Percy wasn’t sure which one he hated more.
She led him away to a quiet corner where he could draw, still talking all slowly and quietly like he would blow up if she even slightly raised her voice. He ended up lost in the vision again, his hand moving the pencil on paper without seeing it.
When he returned to the real world, he saw that he drew Achilles dragging Hektor’s body behind him on his chariot. It was done in incredible detail - the grief and rage swirling in Achilles’s eyes, Hektor’s broken body bloody and dirty.
This is how he ended up in a psychologist’s office with his mom sitting next to him with tightened fists, a stormy look in her eyes and an incredibly fake, polite smile on her face. The guy was yapping on about “violent tendencies” and “dissociative episodes" or something; Percy wasn’t exactly listening. He was more focused on his mom’s feeling. Or, well, vibe maybe? He still wasn’t sure what to call it and there weren’t any other people who could feel it from what he saw.
Not counting the Sunshine Man of course.
Anyway, he could feel a vibe from every person he met - some were more intense than others. When he was around his mom, he could taste blue jellybeans on his tongue, hear the sound of waves lapping on the beach, feel a pen in his hand as he wrote fantastical stories and feel relief at finally resting after a long day. It always made him feel all warm and gooey inside.
When the man kept talking about how disturbed Percy was and how he should be put on medication - for, something? Percy still wasn’t listening - Sally’s vibe was battering against the man in angry waves. She rarely got angry when Percy was around, so it was kind of fascinating to watch, even though it hurt his head a little.
The waves grew and grew and grew until suddenly they stilled, and Percy was surrounded by fear so potent he could taste it. It snapped him out of his watching and spat him out into the real world, where his mom was holding the drawing with a pale face and shaking hands.
They never really talked about it. Percy didn’t think she was scared of him, but he still made sure to hide or burn all the drawings he made. He thinks that she knows something, but she never spoke a word about anything mythical, as if acknowledging it would make the gods descend on them.
It suited Percy just fine, since he didn’t want anyone finding out about his dreams. The warm current always warned him against it when he poked at it.
They didn’t talk about things like that, but Percy tried to explain the warm current to his mom once.
He couldn’t find words for it and her vibe felt increasingly scared the more he tried to explain, so he just gave up. Maybe it was hard to explain, because it couldn’t exactly be described with words. The warm current was a place deep somewhere inside him, which told him things. But not with words? It was more of a feeling, like when he thought about telling someone about his sight, it sent warning bells inside him and he instinctively knew that it was a bad, no-good, horrible idea.
It also told him when it was safe to swipe some food from the fridge when he was alone with Gabe, or when it was better to forget about something, like where the plushie came from. Percy called it his warm current, because when he poked at it, it felt like a sun-warmed current in the sea.
Now, his warm current was telling him that he should pay attention to the real world. Oops. Percy shifted and the stupid chair wobbled again. His mom was still crouched in front of him, her lips pursed in concern.
When she saw that his eyes cleared, she reached out and grabbed his arm gently, making sure that she wasn’t touching his bare skin.
“I have to go now honey. Can I please hug you?” She asked, her voice shaking a little. Percy looked away from her, anger suddenly rising up in his chest.
He didn’t want to be in a stupid boarding school, he wanted to go home, eat candies with his mom and pretend that he was normal at least for a little while.
Instead, she was leaving him here. Percy loved his mom lots, but at this moment he hated her a little. He closed his eyes and drifted for a while, watching some kind of boring council meeting on Olympus.
When his vision returned to his physical body, the room was empty.
With tears making everything blurry, he got up, kicked the stupid wobbly chair and curled up on the stupid bed with Crush the Turtle clutched tightly to his chest.
The first week of the first grade passed Percy in a haze. He went to classes, ate when he had to and spent the rest of time in his room. He always stayed silent and when he had to speak, he gave monosyllabic responses.
The teachers seemed to think he was homesick, so they mostly left him alone. While maybe he was a little homesick, it wasn’t the reason he retreated so far into himself; everything was simply too loud.
The other children were screaming constantly, but the vibes they gave off were the worst. Percy has never been for so long in a place where there were so many people and now he was constantly surrounded by the feelings. They drowned him, consumed him and everyone kept touching him.
When he wasn’t in his room, the kids kept brushing against him and shoving him and the teachers were grabbing him to get his attention when he didn’t respond, which made the vibes even more intense.
To escape it, he drifted in his visions, which meant that he was even less present, which meant that there was even more touching. It was a never ending cycle.
Percy was ready to grab his things and make a run for it, but his mom would probably just take him back to the school and she would be disappointed that he didn’t even try. But he tried! He tried so hard, but it was just so difficult. He didn’t know what to do. It all sucked so much.
On Friday the last lesson of the day was English. Percy hated English. With passion. The letters never stayed in one place and he had no idea how people could possibly read anything from them. The only good thing about this class was that the teacher, Mr. Wilson, was very easily distracted and hadn’t noticed yet that Percy never wrote anything down.
Instead, he lost himself in his sight and drew. When the bell rang, Percy jumped up in his seat and quickly stuffed the drawing in his backpack without looking at it.
As he booked it out of the class, he felt a spark of excitement at the fact that it was now officially the weekend. No more classes! He could hole himself up in his room and pretend that other people didn’t exist. Maybe he could sneak out and explore the woods next to the school, they could be a good hiding place.
Technically, first graders weren't supposed to leave the building without supervision, but Percy was good at going unnoticed. He wouldn't survive being left alone with Gabe if he wasn’t.
Percy was so caught up in his fantasies, that he didn’t register the warning his warm current was giving him until it was screeching at him at full volume, seconds before someone pushed him hard onto the ground.
He looked around quickly, still dazed from the rude wake up call, and saw a group of four kids standing above him, laughing at him.
“Hey, look at this weirdo!”, the biggest kid jeered, the rest exchanging smirks with each other at Percy’s confused expression. “You’re the freak that never speaks, right?”
Percy felt indignation well up in him and he tried to get up to tell the bully to piss off, but before he could, the one he decided to call Stupid One kicked him in the stomach, hard.
Suddenly, they all got closer and the vibes coming off them poked sharply at him. Percy got overwhelmed instantly, the whole week worth of suppressed feelings threatening to pull him under. Embarrassingly, he heard himself let out a pathetic sounding whine, to which the kids laughed even harder.
A waterfall of blows rained down on him and all he could do was curl up in a ball and try not to cry, the warm current not letting him float away.
Stupid One was just about to kick Percy once more in the ribs, when a small girl pushed him away with surprising strength, causing him to actually fall down on his ass, all the while screaming a wordless war cry. All of them, including Percy, were gaping at the scene with their mouths hanging open while the girl screamed at them to “back the fuck off!”.
The stupid kids were so stunned that they ran away, scrambling to put distance between them and the child who stood with her arms crossed, heaving big breaths, as she visibly tried to calm down from the all-consuming rage coursing through her body.
Percy still laid on the ground, stunned, when she turned around to him with a scowl etched on her face - that was when he finally registered her vibe and he felt his breath leave in a big whoosh at the feeling.
She was the call to arms, calluses forming on the palm of the hand from long training with a weapon, the feeling of protective rage burning away every other thought; all of that punctuated with a steady beat of a war drum echoing to his very bones.
Bum bum.
Oh no. Nope. Absolutely not.
Bum bum.
Percy never felt a vibe this strong from anyone he met in real life; the only times he felt something like this was in his dreams. No ordinary person could feel like this. What were the chances that he would meet a demigod in his school? He thought the answer was a resounding zero.
Bum bum.
The girl narrowed her eyes at his wide-eyed look. She opened her mouth as if to speak. Ha, yeah no. Percy was not dealing with this. He prepared to run the hell away from there, but before he could do more than get up from the floor, a teacher showed up in the hallway with Stupid One in tow. Apparently, they both attacked the bully without a reason and were going to serve detention. Together.
Bum bum.
Percy would really like to go home now.