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“I think I can,” the god - that was a god? - said. “Son.”
“Dad?”
“Yes Peter.”
“It’s Percy.”
“Exactly.”
Grover looked like he was going to say something, but his mouth just fell open instead. He was looking at something above Percy’s head. Something faintly glowing purple. He glanced up just as it was fading away and noticed Dionysus’ mouth falling slack.
“Well,” he clapped his hands. “Congratulations on being claimed, Perry-”
“Percy.”
“Cabin Twelve for you, just as soon as you do something for me, it’s very important.”
Percy nodded “What?” He felt a brief sinking feeling. His own father wouldn’t do anything for him unless he got him something? Was he not a person, a son, if he didn’t serve a purpose first?
“In the galley,” he pointed down the path. “There is a bottle of 1985 Château Haut-Brion. Will you go fetch that for me?”
He blinked, disbelieving, “Is that all you really have to say to me?”
Grover opened his mouth. Grover closed his mouth. Grover looked up at the space above his head where a pine cone staff had been glowing purple a second before. Grover opened his mouth. Grover said, “I’ll come with you, Percy.”
He was still pissed at him, but he let him come anyway. He needed someone to talk to on his way down to the galley.
“You don’t- Mr D claimed you,” he said outside, almost flabbergasted. “But-”
“Sorry, what did you say Grover?” Percy turned around. Why the hell was his old Latin teacher a horse? He just wanted to get this wine and then to talk to his deadbeat father who hadn’t even sent a single child support payment for his entire life.
“Um, Mr D claimed Percy as his son.”
Mr Brunner’s eyebrows knitted together. “Repeat that, please?”
“Mr D says he’s Percy’s father.”
“Right, I will, ahem, deal with that. Percy, how are you? This must be quite difficult to process.”
Percy had no good way to answer this question. He’d met his dad and his mom was dead and his old teacher was a horse, and his best friend was a goat. Something truly stupid was going on right now. “I’m fine. Everything is just fine.” So fine. He was great. Fantastic, really.
Mr Brunner seemed oblivious to this, “Good man. Keep it up. I need to go talk to Mr D, Grover can you show him around please?”
“Which Cabin do I put him in?”
The centaur paused, “Has Mr D claimed him properly. A true claiming?”
“I think so?”
“Right.” This seemed concerning to him. Percy had no idea what was going on. “Cabin Twelve then. You can introduce him to Pollux and Castor I suppose.”
He trotted off, and Percy and Grover continued on to the galley, to find the wine his dad so desperately wanted apparently. He was going to have some words with him, at the first opportunity possible. He was nothing like how his mom had described, but he knew as well as anyone how deceiving people could be at first.
If this was his dad though, he was going to make sure he never heard the end of it.
Cabin Twelve was nice, and he had brothers! Twins, who looked way more like their dad than he did. Percy had always assumed he’d looked like his father, because there was little resemblance between him and his mother, but there was only the faintest similarity in features between him and Mr D.
“We don’t really do Cabin counsellor stuff because we’re the same age,” Pollux said, gesturing between himself and Castor. Percy remembered something his mom had said about twin sons of Dionysus called that, and wondered why on earth their mother had named them after their own brothers. “And because our dad is here, but you could, if you wanted to. We could do with making better alliances for Capture the Flag.”
They were older than him, like thirteen or fourteen, but they seemed nice, “Come on,” Pollux picked up an orange t-shirt and tossed it at him. “Let’s see what you can do in the strawberry fields.”
Not much, apparently, at least not in the way the twins were able to make the berries grow, but he was better at keeping them hydrated. Something just told him where the driest soil was, and he was able to sort of, in a way he didn’t understand, redirect water from overhydrated areas, and the groundwater itself, towards those areas.
It had gone rather well, until he got overconfident, and a pipe burst over all three of them. Castor and Pollux walked back to their cabin, completely soaked through. Percy was dry.
“Why can I work with water?” he asked Mr D at dinner.
The god just drank two diet cokes, and ate a punnet of strawberries - still warm from the sun - before he answered, “Another of my sons had a predilection to water, Pete-”
“Percy.”
“Yeah, yeah, whatever. I’m trying to tell you something. This other son of mine could turn it into wine, maybe you’re like that.”
“Water into wine?” He thought for a minute, “You mean like Jesus.”
Dionysus shrugged, “Not really like Jesus, per se.”
A beat, “Jesus is my half-brother?”
“If you like.”
Chiron (whom Grover had informed him was called that, not Mr Brunner, and had only been posing as a Latin teacher to keep an eye on Percy) frowned at Mr D from the other side of the mess, and Percy suddenly got the impression that they were old enough, and had known each other more than long enough to have an argument through just eye contact, and the occasional raised eyebrow, or muscle clench at the jaw. Chiron was furious about something though.
“My mom said you guys met at Montauk beach,” he said, drawing back the god from his attention.
“Yes, lovely place this time of year. Speaking of, do you think if I got you a fake ID, you could go and get me a bottle of Long Island wine? It’s technically blasphemy against me, but I’m always interested in the horrors people can make with alcohol. It’s a shame demigods can’t use the internet, you should see some online bartenders,” he shuddered. “So? Fake ID? Yes, for your favourite father?”
“Tell me about my mom, and teach me to play,” he searched through his head for a game, but came up blank except for Gabe’s shitty ways to lose his mom’s money, and one more, “Pinochle.”
His dad groaned, but waved his hand, and from nowhere there was a drivers licence, and a passport, both titled to Peter Johnson. “You know this isn’t my name, right?” Percy took them both, and tucked them away before Chiron could see. He hadn’t known the centaur very long as he was, but he knew his old Latin teacher would probably disapprove of this. “You mom was a very nice lady.” He snapped his fingers, “You should go now, before you’re missed at the campfire.”
“I need money.” Another card was pressed into his hands, “You can keep that.” A black AMEX, holy fuck.
“Thank you, father.”
Dionysus looked annoyed. “Just get my alcohol already. See if they have a merlot, or a cabernet also. Then we can do,” he scowled even further, and slurped at another diet coke. At least they had that in common. “Bonding activities.”
“What did you think of my mom?” He put a card down.
Dionysus sighed but he seemed a lot happier with his wine now. He kept glancing between the bottle of pretty nice wine, the sky, the Long Island Sound, and Percy himself. “Nice lady. Very kind. Clever. I suppose.”
“Cool.” Percy didn’t know exactly what to ask otherwise. He didn’t want to go anywhere near any embarrassing details, and he knew enough about the depravity of the Olympians (not in the least because of the existence and population of this camp) to know it wasn’t worth risking it. “Do you like the wine?” He’d gone for the most expensive stuff, and then gone to an ATM to pull out as much cash as he thought wouldn’t be missed. Wine was pricey . And it smelled awful .
“It’s fine.” He sipped, “Quite nice. Made with care. Not enough sun on the grapes maybe. Aged in oak?” Percy had no idea. He had been pretty sure that kind of wine thing was made up as a joke, but maybe he ought to reevaluate that now. “Have you any,” he made a face. “Plans for Capture the Flag? You’re representing my cabin now, remember.”
“We’re allying with Athena and Hermes, since Clarisse thinks I’m a liar about the minotaur, and also she sucks.”
“She’s her father’s daughter, that’s for sure. No doubts about the paternity there.”
Was it his imagination, or did the ground rumble for a second. His father’s expression gave nothing away. “You’ll be well put with Chucky. She’s, what’s the phrase again… playing 5D chess.”
“I’m not sure that exists.”
“Regardless.” He examined his cards, “Plans on plans, that girl. You might even be involved in some of them yourself.”
Chiron and his father had been fighting. Percy knew that much when he came in. He hadn’t slept well, their cabin’s victory at Capture the Flag, and his strange water healing, and the moment the sea got very dark, and the earth shook around it, had kept him and his brothers talking till the small hours.
“Pyke! Come in.”
“Hello, Percy.”
“You wanted to see me?”
Chiron frowned, “Yes. There is a quest. We think you ought to be the one to undertake it.”
He craned his neck back, examining the centaur at full height. “Why?”
“Filial duty,” his father said. “I would like you to.”
“I mean, I guess you’re alright and you claimed me,” he didn’t miss how Chiron rolled his eyes. “But why would I do this? Like otherwise?”
“You are my son. I gave you a black AMEX card. Therefore, you will do it.”
Chiron put his head in his hands, and Percy was reminded of a lesson he did on iconography when he was still at Yancy, specifically cephalophores. He’d be a good model for one right now, if they had a sculptor nearby. Or Medusa, in a pinch.
“Percy,” Grover rushed in, and ignored every protest the adults made.
Filial duty to his father wasn’t much of an incentive, but his mother? He had nothing but that for her.
“You’re leaving tomorrow,” his father put his head around the door of his cabin. “I wanted to wish you luck.”
“Thanks dad,” he stuffed another bit of clothing in his pack. “Any advice?”
“Try not to die. Don’t be stupid.”
“Thanks.” Very comforting stuff. But he didn’t have to be dad of the year. At least he was there.
Poseidon frowned when he walked into the throne room, and Zeus started laughing uncontrollably, interspersed with glaring at both of them.
“Lord Zeus,” he bowed.
“Shouldn’t you acknowledge your father first, boy?” Poseidon asked.
Percy looked around, but the room was empty otherwise, “But Dionysus isn’t here.”
Tears of laughter streamed from Zeus’ eyes, “I wish Mother were here to see this.” He sobered, “Now tell me of your quest, I see you have my Master Bolt.”
Percy returned the bolt, which was held by Zeus with more care than he’d probably given to any child of his, and told them both of his quest, and his suspicions about the voice in the pit. When Zeus left to wash his bolt clean or whatever, he was giggling. Percy had expected sternness, or at least some kind of austerity from the king of the gods, but apparently this was the funniest thing in the world to him. He had no idea what should be funny to a guy who’d been around four thousandish years though, to be fair. But it was confusing as hell.
Poseidon stood from his fisherman’s chair, and shrunk down to a more reasonable height of six foot seven, “You have been deceived, Perseus Jackson.”
“About what, my lord?”
“Your parentage.”
“Dionysus is my father.”
There was a hurricane swirling in his eyes, and he looked in them, and he saw his own death, and that of thousands of people, dashed on rocks, and drowned, crushed by rocks in earthquakes, and stampeded by horses, swallowed up by storms, “No, I am your father.”
Percy did his best not to make a Star Wars joke.