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“So what’s up, G-Man?” he put down the dishrag, ready to stop Grover from devouring any of his new crockery. It was like third hand, but it had been a really good deal and both he and Annabeth had been really happy to find a mostly not chipped mostly matching set.
“I gotta tell you something.”
“Right,” he said, running his options through his mind. “Would you like a drink? Like coffee or tea or soda or something?”
Grover collapsed down at the other side of the kitchen table. “Can I please have the contents of your recycling bins?”
Percy pulled it out without a word, positioning himself opposite from him. The dishes could wait. Grover munched down on cardboard boxes, and cleaned yogurt containers,
“Your side of the empathy link feels like you’ve been chewing through a dozen red bull cans. What’s up?”
He twisted his fingers around the ends of his hair, glancing from side to side. “Um, right. Yes. News. I have news.”
“Is it… good?” he narrowed his eyes. “You don’t have cancer, do you? I didn’t think satyrs could get cancer.”
“Percy, if humans can get cancer and goats can get cancer, why couldn’t satyrs?”
“Goats can get cancer?” His heart dropped. “Wait, are you going to get chemo, because I can sit with you—”
Amusement and second hand embarrassment wafted up from the other end of the empathy link. Grover pressed his hands up, “Percy, no. I don’t have cancer.”
He deflated, all his panic and worry fleeing from him. He’d briefly been working out a way to marry Grover so he could get his benefits, except for the fact that Grover would have to divorce Juniper first. At least he and Annabeth had only bothered with the domestic partnership so far, and she would understand. Though, he wasn’t actually sure how you split up with your domestic partner, maybe it was as complicated as divorce could be.
“Juniper’s pregnant.”
A trickle of saliva dropped onto the table. Percy slammed his mouth shut hard enough to make his teeth tingle. “S— she is? Um, is this good news?”
Grover smiled. It was a sun coming out from behind a cloud after a storm. “I’m so— I don’t even know. Happy seems a bit weak for it, I guess? Elated, amazing, wonderful, astonishing? I don’t know. None of them are good enough.”
“Holy shit, congratulations, man.” Without even thinking about it, he was on his feet and pulling him into a hug. Grover grasped him back, and through the empathy link he could feel something electric.
“You’re going to be a dad!”
“I’m going to be a dad!” He was smiling so widely that it had overtaken his face. His whole body, in fact, was almost buried under the sheer joy he was feeling.
“That’s incredible. Um… how far along?”
“Three and a half months, we think?”
“And are satyr/nymph pregnancies like… the same length of a human? I’ve never really thought about it, to be honest.”
“Yeah, there’s a few weeks difference, I think, more like eight and a half months, not quite nine, but yeah.”
“Damn. So in five months… you’re going to have a baby. Like a… like a whole baby.”
“Probably,” he nodded.
“Holy shit,” he said, sitting down again. His chair tilted on the back legs for a second before he got it under control. “Holy fucking shit.”
“You kiss your mother with a mouth like that.”
“I’m a New Yorker? Obviously, dude. Damn.” His head rested on his hands as he stared at Grover through half lidded eyes. “This sounds a little dark but… is it weird I never expected to make it this far? Like for people our age to be having kids and everything?”
“I don’t know,” he said honestly. These days Grover looked a lot younger than him. Sure, the guy was forty one years old, but he didn’t look a day over twenty.
Percy had had a time, right after the Titan War, when he had had to finally pick up the pieces of homework he’d never bothered to do because he’d not expected to live past his sixteenth birthday and suddenly, the expiration date on his life had just disappeared. Even now, he struggled to really conceptualise a future past tomorrow. It was better some days, worse in others. His book going through editing right now, with deadlines he was excited to hit, was helping. Signing the domestic partnership paperwork with Annabeth last year, signing the lease on their apartment, also helped.
But kids?
He was glad that his mom and Paul wasn’t like some of his coworker’s parents, nagging them to have children every time he saw them, or having a look in their eye, as Laurie who always took up too much space in the communal fridge put it, t hat means they want to say something, but won’t.
He didn’t think his mom was over-desperate for grandchildren. Or that she’d be unhappy with him for not having kids. She wasn’t like that. Plus, Estelle was only eight. She still had a clear memory of being up at three in the morning, changing her diapers.
When he had first seen New Rome, been able to see it as somewhere to have a future, safe from monsters, he’d let himself have the idea about it, even though it was a little too early, probably. But it had been far off still. A pipe dream he was only beginning to be able to think about.
Now it really could be real, and he didn’t know how to feel about it.
He could have kids. There was a reasonable assumption that both he and Annabeth would live. Maybe they’d have to move to New Rome to be able to raise them without looking over his shoulder for his whole life, but it was possible.
“But I get what you mean,” Grover said.
Percy jolted back into the real world. He hadn’t realised that the room had been silent for so long but now it was oppressive. His downstairs neighbour dropped something, and started swearing up a storm about it. Probably just stubbed their toe.
“I didn’t think it could be for us,” he said, much quieter than he had been before. Like he was in some kind of confessional, and this was the worst sin imaginable.
“Me neither,” he admitted honestly. “But I think the whole future could be for us now. We’re here now.”