Scattered Memories on the Floor [Percy Jackson and the Olympians Fanfic]

I'm a Little Drunk and I Need You Now

Luke is dead. He’s gone. His son was dead.

Everyone is celebrating, but he is far from being celebratory. He seeks to be alone, and to mourn his son whose death helped to end this war. Instead, he stumbles upon Percy Jackson sitting quietly by himself in one of the guest rooms of Mount Olympus. He briefly recalls not seeing the boy at the party and had wondered where he’d gone. Hermes supposes here was where Percy had been hiding.

He looks tired. He’s just sitting on the bed against the headboard, a leg stretched lazily while the other was bent haphazardly. Percy just simply seemed out of it.

Hermes isn’t sure what to make of it.

“Bastard. Stole my first kiss, stole my first time, stole everything from me. Now he’s dead. I didn’t even get to scream at him like I wanted,” Percy mutters.

The implication is startling, obvious in a way, and yet no one had even had a clue. Hermes feels like perhaps he had been more than harsh on Percy before, and that his recent reconciliation with Percy needed to be redone. He hadn’t understood Percy’s side, but had begged him to understand his.

But there had been more to it, he sees now, and perhaps he should make it up to the boy.

“Are you alright?” he asks softly.

Percy blearily looks up and he sees the boy isn’t aware, and is actually very, very drunk. Hermes hesitantly walks into the room and sits down by him. The bed creaks a little under his weight, but then it’s quiet.

“You’ve been drinking,” he states quietly.

Percy gives the god a sloppy grin, “Come to lecture me?”

He shakes his head, “I’m not your father.”

“No, you aren’t. You’re Luke’s,” Percy drawls, but then he leans closer and squints. “I mean you really look like Luke,” it comes out as a mumble. Then uncomfortably, but then a part of him is actually okay with it, Percy is too close and sniffs at his neck. “You even smell like him,” he says wistfully. “Maybe it’s you and your kids.”

Hermes pushes him gently away and back to lean against the headboard.

“You’re right. I am Luke’s father. And you were right before. I did abandon him. I may not have thought so and I may not have wanted to…but what mattered was that that was what he’d thought. Luke thought I abandon him and that’s how he’d felt in the end.”

Percy is silent, staring at him. Then the boy’s lips twist sardonically.

“Luke was…no matter what, he just was,” Percy murmurs. “Even after everything, I don’t think I ever told anyone how much I still admired and liked him.”

“But most of you hated him,” Hermes answers back, staring intensely.

“Too true. I hated him just as much as I secretly liked him. And that was the side I showed the most to everyone, and the only one I would admit to myself. Annabeth, especially, couldn’t stand it. I always told her I didn’t see what she saw in him, but the truth was that I did. He was charming, utterly charming. And handsome. And a real smooth-talker,” and then Hermes realizes that Percy is starting to enter his private memories and starting to forget that Hermes is there.

The god feels like he’s invading a private moment and that he should leave, but instead he sits and listens.

“And Luke was very gentle. So sweet,” Percy sighs, and Hermes knows for sure the boy is lost in memories.

“Go on,” he encourages, hand automatically reaching over to softly caress the bared skin of Percy’s stomach, shirt ridden up enticingly. He doesn’t know what he’s doing and he’s pretty sure he’s not thinking right now.