Chapter Text
It was one of the beautiful nights they had had every night since they arrived on Santorini. Monty, curled up in bed, and Percy curled around him, one hand on Monty’s stomach. Sometimes they slept apart. Still on the same bed and close enough to hear the comforting breathing of the other. It was heaven.
At least until the nightmares started.
Sometimes Monty was falling, deep down through blackness. He would flail about to feel for something to grab, something that would stop the upcoming emptiness from swallowing him whole, something, anything! But there was never anything. He would call for help, for Percy, but there was no one. He was alone with the swirling darkness. And it was so cold. He would wake up shivering, and cuddle up to Percy until he remembered what warmth felt like.
Sometimes Monty was stuck. In deep, black tar, he would try to move, but all his limbs were pinned down by the combined weight and stickiness of the solid mass surrounding him. Sometimes Percy and Felicity, or Scipio would be standing far above him on a cliff overlooking the thick, black sea he was drowning in. Again, he would call out for help, but all that would come back would be his father’s voice, ice-cold and condemning: Pathetic. You are underserving of their love. They won’t help you. And Percy would look at him pityingly, and Monty knew it was true.
On those nights, he would silently get out of bed and walk to the cliffs above the beach. There he would sit for hours, watching the waves crash on the sand. And wondering what would happen if he were to slip. He would wait, letting the cold night air and ocean wind chill him to the bone, until the first pale rays of morning passed through the clouds and illuminated his face. But just a little bit, because Percy woke up early. Monty would get back in bed and shiver, feeling cold in the very marrow of his bones. And it sort of felt good.
Sometimes Percy would comment on Monty’s ice-cold toes, but Monty played it off as a joke, pronouncing that it was because he was cold-blooded, and because Percy left the window open, even though he never did.
But they went along their daily routines, eating together, cleaning together, working together, and yes, even sleeping together occasionally. and life was normal. And life was good. And Monty was happy.
Even though he wasn’t.
The reality was that Monty barely felt anything. Everything he did was laced with a flavor he couldn’t quite place. It was a familiar flavor, one he had tasted all his life, yet it still tasted… not quite bad, but definitely not good. Now, it seemed to overpower almost everything, making things he loved taste bland, and sort of bad, the way a pastry might taste if you suddenly found out that it had fallen on the floor. Or if you realized that it belonged to someone else.
It was guilt.