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It started with Annabeth.
Most parents wouldn’t even dream of letting their seventeen year old son’s seventeen year old girlfriend move in, but everyone was just a little on the desperate side. Percy had been missing for an entire semester of his sophomore year, and getting him back on track was going to be a difficult – nearly impossible – task. Annabeth, who was, after all, a daughter of Athena, was up to the challenge, though knew that she would need to be standing over his shoulder every moment to make sure he did all his makeup work. Her moving in was the only logical solution.
(Plus, both she and Percy had a hard time sleeping after everything they’d been through in the past year, and Sally knew that. There were far fewer nightmares for the two once they were together again. Though Sally and Paul were always a little scared that they were going to walk in on something.)
The next was Nico, who was never really meant to stay more than a night here and there, when he needed somewhere besides the Underworld to sleep. Somewhere along the line, one night a month turned into one night a week which turned into Sally leaving a pillow and blanket out on the couch every night until she and Paul decided that it was worth the investment of getting a fold-out couch so the boy could at least sleep on a mattress.
Eventually, Nico just stopped leaving and enrolled in school for the first time since he was ten. He opened up, smiled more, and began to regain the color that life had leached from his skin. He even went on a date, which brought out Jason and Piper so they could meet the boy and decide whether or not he was “worthy” of Nico. The combination of them plus Percy and Annabeth, plus Sally and Paul, scared the poor mortal boy half to death, and nearly made Nico die from embarrassment.
For Sally, having Nico around was like having a second son. For Nico, being around Sally and Paul was like having parents again, in the best possible way. It was a good feeling for all involved.
Along with Nico came the occasional visit from Hazel, though she never truly moved in. She chose to continue living in New Rome, which had been her only home since coming back to life. When she stayed – and it was never for very long – she and Nico would curl up together on the fold-out like kittens, glad for the contact of the only other person who knew exactly what it felt like to be them.
Sometimes, Frank would come with Hazel, excited to see his friends again, but these visits were rare now that he was a Praetor. When he stayed, he brought along a camping cot that he would set up in the living room, next to the fold-out.
Leo was a bit of a surprise.
He just kind of… showed up one morning, curled up in a ball on the floor, using his jacket as a pillow, having picked the lock sometime in the middle of the night. He gave little explanation besides, “Well, I heard that the Jackson house was the place to be!” and within a week of crashing on the floor, he had installed a murphy bed in the living room, which probably should have made Sally and Paul mad, since he did it completely without asking, but it took up no extra room when not in use (one of Leo’s own designs, which folded into the wall so perfectly you couldn’t even tell it was there), so they figured it was okay. He seemed to crave a normal family life, one outside of camp. It had been a long time since he’s hand one.
In the course of a year, their apartment went from housing three people to two people to six people plus guests, and it was starting to feel entirely too small.
So when Sally finally was able to sell her first manuscript, she and Paul sat down at the kitchen table with all their finances spread out in front of them, checking and double checking each number until they were positive that they could afford to move into a larger space.
(Some of the money may or may not have been supplemented by Rachel Dare, who called in the middle of their fretting to say that it was a great idea and that she could spot them anything extra that they needed, which they normally wouldn’t have even considered, as she was the same age as two of the kids they were trying to provide for, but they were coming up short and Rachel insisted, so long as there would be room for her to stay when she visited.)
They packed up everything and moved into a large four bedroom apartment with a study, so Sally could continue writing to help keep the bills paid. Percy and Annabeth shared one room while Nico and Leo shared another, leaving the Master to Sally and Paul and the last room for when more demigods showed up on their doorstep. Leo equipped each room with several of his magic murphy beds and combination desk-and-dresser-drawers to maximize the space. Their old four person kitchen table was replaced with one that could seat eight comfortably and ten if you squeezed in, and their fold-out was now joined by another couch, loveseat, and recliners.
It was all so strange to Sally. There was a point in her life where the thought of one day living in such a large home was a pipe dream, back when she was still married to Gabe and home was a filthy little apartment that was practically her prison. Most of the time, she walked around their new home with a bemused smile, as though it was all still a dream. But it wasn’t a dream. It was reality. She really was living in this beautiful house with her wonderful husband and son and three other teenage demigods that they adopted as their own for the time being.
A stream of other demigods was constantly in and out of the Jackson residence. Some would stay for the night, others for a week or more, depending on their situation. The Stole brothers would visit from time to time, mostly just to hang out. Chris Rodriguez spent a weekend with them after a particularly hard week at Camp. Even Clarisse la Rue once showed up on their doorstep, a combination of anger and pain written on her face, ruefully asking for a place to crash for the night, offering up no other information. She was unusually quiet as she joined the extended family for dinner, but strangely polite for a daughter of Ares. She left in the morning to “sort things out again”, and threatened bodily harm on anyone who said anything about her staying with the Jacksons, leading everyone to breathe a sigh of relief that everything would work out okay for her.
Life was never dull when you had a group of teenagers living together under one roof, but Sally and Paul both enjoyed the excitement. So much so that when summer came along and their flock packed up and headed back for Camp Half-Blood, their home felt entirely too empty once more.
Luckily, summer is only a few months a year.