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Percy Jackson was weird.
He had this punk look to him, with tousled hair and eyes that seemed to hold a never ending glare – unless they were scrunched up with his smile, then they just plain out glowed. He slouched when he sat and was a solider when he stood. He wasn’t smart, but he was dedicated to his education. He used his study hall like it was a lifeline, and if he wasn’t surrounded by his teammates or school underdogs at lunch, then he was in the library, staring at his textbook as if he was willing it to spontaneously combust.
If he didn’t like his teacher then he made it known, and he didn’t give a fuck about it. He excelled in swimming, and somehow managed to snag a spot on varsity baseball during swim's off season. He was fast around the bases and was the king of butterfly.
His girlfriend was seen once in a blue moon, and that was just through a quick Facetime some kid from Spanish II caught a brief glimpse of.
Not to mention his stepfather was THE English teacher at GHS. But it wasn’t like the student body hated him. No. No. Nonono. Percy Jackson was THE favorite. He was popular, he was kind, he was hot – everyone swooned over him, even the straights -, and he was humble as fuck.
He stood up for those who couldn’t, took idiots and bullies down a peg, and helped put Goode on the sports map. There was nothing to not like.
It was just the fact of what the hell he did in his spare time!
Outside of sports and studies, there were only three things Percy’s school friends knew about him.
- His girlfriend had him totally and utterly whipped
- He took to blue food as if it was a religion
- He been in enough fights to have scars everywhere. E V E R Y W H E R E
Seriously, the first time he’d gone to the changing rooms his teammates almost flipped their shit. Percy just shrugged and said he was danger prone - it was a flat faced lie and they all knew it.
His teammates had also met with other friends briefly (“Summer camp. A classic, I know”), and – whew - were they an odd bunch.
One looked like he wanted to beat Percy to death (“Jackson.” “Grace.”), another looked like he wanted to pants everyone in the vicinity (“Whoa, nice pool. Would be a shame if something happened to it.” “Leo, no.”), and the third just looked done with the world (“Why am I here?” “To be happy and supportive. Now shut up and cheer.”).
A girl came, too, one who looked like she’d just taken a bath in a vat of paint (she wasn’t his girlfriend, that one dude from Spanish II said that she was a blonde and everyone took his fucking word on it). She’d just kind of stared at him, then the pool, the him again before asking: “Do you…”
“Gods no.” had been the response.
That was another thing. The plural ‘gods’ he used all the time. “Oh my gods!”, “gods no!”, “gods why?”, and the occasional “gods fucking-!”
No one knew if Percy was just polytheistic or if he just did it for kicks. He didn’t really seem to have any religious affiliation, for a while everyone had thought he was atheistic, but after what looked to be a prayer before a really hard meet, that’d been thrown out the window.
Religion was a hard topic and was rarely brought up, outside of the occasional “you don’t celebrate Christmas but can I still get you a gift?” stuff that popped up in the winter.
So that was added on to the List o’ Things We Don’t Know About Percy JacksonTM.
Such a list included:
His favorite foods, not chosen by color; the name of his girlfriend; the name of his best friend, who happened to be a vegetarian; the name of the summer camp he attended; and the ever important name of his opinion on being ‘most bangable in GHS,’ to which he, upon being asked, had dropped to the ground and fucking lost it.
Percy was someone everyone looked up to, even his fellow seniors.
But no one knew who he really was or what he really did and, sure, he’d talk about maybe giving oceanography a look, but people didn’t want to know his career options.
They wanted to know about what happened when Mr. Blofis burst into Percy’s study-hall and whispered about something frantic enough that Percy grabbed his bag, leapt the table and burst out one of the many ‘no exit' doors.
They wanted to know what it was like being kidnapped as a kid.
They wanted to know why he’d missed six months of school, wanted to know why he’d been so quiet after coming back, wanted to know how he got that one scar on his face or that weird, white lock of hair.
And maybe they did get their answers.
Maybe they got them through that one moment on the bus when Percy woke up from a nap, sweating like crazy, his eyes frantic and wide and just plain fearful.
Maybe they got their answers through him dropping to the ground and curling into a ball when a Freshman set off an accidental sulfur bomb in Bio.
Maybe they got their answers through all the shit they knew Percy went through.
They knew he flinched when someone raised their voice, they knew he jumped when people bumped into him, and they most certainly knew he flipped shit like no tomorrow whenever someone said ‘Perseus.’
No one knew much about Percy outside of school or sports or simple socialization, but they didn’t always have to.
Graduation came, and they accepted the fact that they would never know certain things about the great Percy Jackson.
They did know, however, the gratefulness that oozed out of his every pour: the smiles and the sass and the sarcasm and everything positive that was associated with Percy. They knew the good that was in him, the good that would always outweigh any kind of bad in any kind of situation on any kind of day.
And the joy on his face that one time when a blonde threw herself into his arms after graduation? The grin that split his skull when what looked to be a whole horde of teens dog piled on top of him, shouting and hooting and laughing?
They knew that was all real.
And that’s all his friends really needed.