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New York was a crazy city, the type of city in which you don't question your mental sanity at the sight of the strangest situations. Well, that's what Mark thought before meeting his new roommate.
Mark had been living in this two bedrooms apartment for all his college years and, for his final year, he needed to find a new roommate since the last one had moved to Italy for his master's degree.
He met this new roommate through Leo, a mutual friend that studied mechanical engineering with Mark, whom, in hindsight, he really shouldn't have trusted: Leo was himself the weirdest guy Mark had ever met.
Well, that is until he met Percy.
Percy was a six foot tall, well built guy with black unruly hair, perfectly tanned skin, a charming smile, watercolor sea-green eyes and a perpetually tired demeanor. All in all, the perfect guy if you only looked at him from a distance. But then he actually spoke to him.
It was a perfectly hot day of September when Percy moved in and Mark was excited to finally meet his roommate. From what Leo had told him they had literally nothing in common but apparently Percy was a super friendly guy which, from Mark's perspective, it was already an improvement from the last one.
"Hey, I'm Mark Bennett." Said Mark, he thought the first introduction should be quite formal.
"Hello, Percy Jackson." Answered Percy with a nod and a smile on his face, his hand reaching forward to shake his flatmates extended one.
"Is Percy short for something?" Asked Mark.
"Yeah" said Percy chuckling lightly "it's actually short for Perseus but I never really use it, I just go by Percy."
And oh boy, did the name ring a bell. Mark wasn't really big on conspiracy theories but he had been on the internet enough to have heard the name Perseus Jackson, the guy who blew up the St. Louis Arch at age twelve, survived the drop in the river next to it and was, subsequently, wanted for domestic terrorism for a while before all charges were mysteriously dropped.
Maybe it was just a coincidence but the damage had been done because Mark, who couldn't really stay put, blurted out: "Your name's really familiar."
Percy cringed a bit, one hand swiftly going towards his right pocket as he nervously laughed and answered: "You probably heard my name around because I hold the state's record for several swimming specialties. It's probably that."
Mark didn't have the heart to tell him that it definetely wasn't the reason and that he he knew literally nothing about swimming. He was impressed about it though.
"I mean... you also look very familiar so... yeah." Said Percy awkwardly.
"We could have met somewhere then." Stated Mark smiling "Or maybe it's just magic!"
A silly sentence that had made Percy nod seriously before he disappeared to fix his new room.
After that, living with Percy went great, he was respectful of their shared spaces, he baked a lot (and shared!), he had no problem with Mark hogging the wi-fi and he was, all in all, what everyone would want as a roommate.
Hell, Percy didn't even question him when he heard weird names being thrown around his room when he played Dungeons and Dragons on Discord with his friends.
One cold November day though, after a couple of months of living together, he bled himself out on the bathroom floor.
Now, crazier stuff has happened before in New York but Mark thought it wasn't weird for him to be worried for Percy. For fuck's sake, that was a lot more blood than he had ever seen in real life.
Yet Percy was adamant that it was nothing.
"Oh, Mark c'mon, it's just a little bit of blood, nothing a long shower isn't gonna fix." Said Percy laughing "And besides I'm pretty sure you've seen more blood before."
And no, Mark wasn't going to argue about seeing blood because Percy probably didn't know what a person who wasn't wanted at twelve for domestic terrorism categorized as 'a lot of blood' but, for Percy's well being, he did try to raise a point about the shower method that his flatmate was suggesting.
"Hem... not that I know a lot about curing open wounds, it's not really my field" said Mark scratching his head "but aren't you going to bleed out even faster like that?"
"Don't be silly." Answered Percy before closing the bathroom door and turning on the shower.
Mark's head was clouded with thousands of questions. What happened? Why wasn't he even flinching from the very deep wound on his arm? What the heck sliced his arm like cured meet?
He sat in silence on the couch, listening to the water flowing in the bathroom and his own nervous breaths.
When Percy was finally out of the bathroom Mark had almost abandoned himself to sleep yet he swore he saw only a pink stripe under Percy's short sleeved shirt where, just half an hour before, stood the long deep wound.
The next day Percy behaved like nothing had happened and his arm looked so not wounded that Mark started to question his own memories from the day prior.
After a few months of Percy moving in, all the water faucets were leaking.
And like, Mark hadn't minded when it was just the bathroom's sink's faucet since it hadn't been working well even the years before, but now every faucet was just leaking like crazy.
One day, at breakfast, Mark brought it up to a sleepy Percy who was frying sunny side up eggs on the stove wearing a blue tank top and white shorts (it was December, how was he not cold?)
"Percy, have you noticed the faucets leaking?" Mark asked nonchalantly, hoping Percy would split the payment for the plumber.
"Oh, sorry" He answered, throwing a look at the kitchen sink and sighting "it's my fault, let me fix it."
Then, all the leakage noise in the house, just stopped.
"I'm just stressed about midterms, it happens." Continued Percy cryptically, no further explanation given.
Mark had noticed Percy's weird affinity with water, he just didn't want to assume he was a freaking waterbender though. But no, Percy just had to pull out the crazy stuff again with no explanation, as if Mark already understood everything!
Apparently his flatmate was Katara of the Southern Water Tribe. Cool cool cool cool cool cool cool cool. Totally not scary. At all.
The idea that Percy had powers related to water was definetely cemented into Mark's brain after an evening in which they were playing videogames together.
They were sitting on their couch, Percy in a position that made Mark question if he was a gymnast too, and two full glasses of water were sitting on the coffee table in front of them.
They were playing Smash Bros on Mark's old Wii and, as always, he was getting a bit too excited about winning the match. When his Kirby gave Percy's Mario the last critical hit before his victory Mark jumped up knocking down both cups of water which spilled all over the table.
Percy laughed as Mark quickly ran to the kitchen to get some paper towels and then, when he came back, Percy said: "Isn't it just easier if I do this?"
And with a nod of his head the water just flew back into the two glasses.
"Or you can just do that... hem... yeah." Mark answered nervously before sitting on the couch again and staring at the void in front of him, a full interiorized panic attack starting.
"I'll go to sleep now, I have class at nine tomorrow." Said Percy apologetically before getting up from the couch and going to his room.
Hypothesis about his flatmates nature started flowing through Mark's brain but he couldn't quite shake the feeling that whatever made Percy special was so brain shattering that he really didn't want to look into it more than he had to.
Mark also quickly learned that Percy came as a package deal with a group of seemingly caffeinated people.
The first one was his girlfriend, Annabeth, who Mark had seen tons of times and was genuinely the only one of Percy's friend group who didn't seem completely batshit insane all the time.
She had majored in architecture a couple of years in advance and was now studying for her master's degree in something super specific that neither Mark nor, funnily enough, Percy were able to pronounce.
Then there was Grover, Percy's best friend. Whenever Grover was around Mark tended to disappear because they never spoke a word and just nodded and laughed to each other as if they were telepathically communicating. Mark couldn't wrap his head around it.
Annabeth and Grover were the ones who came over more often but sometimes other friends tagged along such as Nico, who Percy introduced as, quoting, 'his ghost enjoyer and conosseur cousin', Will, who Mark understood was Nico's boyfriend and who looked like he had a faint shiny halo all over his body, Rachel, who Mark knew because she was lowkey famous online but he didn't have the courage to ask for an autograph, and tons of other people.
When the whole crew came together it included Leo, who Mark knew too well for his own comfort, Jason and Piper, who were Leo's best friend although Mark was couldn't stand the sexual tension between the three of them, Hazel, who apparently was also Percy's cousin and Nico's sister yet there was no similarity between them, and Frank, the only guy in that friend group that looked remotely normal yet was a foot taller than their front door.
Now, Mark was the type of flatmate who left the house whenever his roommates had people over however Percy kept telling him it was really no problem if he wanted to stay home when his friends where there so Mark just accepted to stay in his room the day they were having a get together before Christmas (who they all were calling 'Yule' but that was definetely not the weirdest thing of all.)
Mark woke up from his afternoon nap and heard Percy's group's voices coming from the living room and he couldn't help but listen in a bit.
"Oh gods, remember when Piper accidentally charm-spoke herself out of a speeding ticket?" Said a voice that Mark recognized as Leo's.
"Ah yes, it's always the rich getting out of this shit." Said another guy's voice that Mark couldn't quite place.
"Your mom is freaking Naomi Solace, shut up Will."
Mark should question why Percy's friend group was packed with nepo babies, shouldn't he?
"That is probably the only mundane reason I still use charmspeak for." Chuckled a female voice, probably Piper.
"So not true." Laughed Leo again.
The group broke into laughter after that and Annabeth said: "Well, there's nothing wrong in using our powers if it helps a bit, we don't hurt anyone and we aren't too obvious. Hell, Percy spoke to a shark for an hour to write an essay about shark migration patterns."
"It must be good, studying marine biology in your situation." Sighted Hazel.
"It is fairly easy, not gonna lie." Answered Percy amused before saying "anyways, who's hungry? Shall we order pizza?"
And that was when Mark stopped listening. He had figured out Percy had, for some reason, water related powers already but his friends were all apparently not entirely human as well.
Mark had a long mental breakdown after the faucet leakage incident and a couple of other instances in which Percy had moved water with his thoughts but who was he to actually ask about it? He really didn't wanna know more than he should.
If there's one rule he had to impose to himself in this situation was to not stick his nose where he shouldn't, especially when he knew his roommate could potentially bloodbend (that was a theory he had that he really didn't want to look into).
Months passed with everything going as usual, well, as much as living with a real X-men could be considered 'usual' at least.
Mark was so used to it now that he barely even flinched whenever Percy randomly used his powers to do completely mundane tasks such as making express ice cubes, boiling pasta water in seconds, retrieving bottles of water with his mind and so on and so forth.
It wasn't really Mark's business and besides, it's not like he was doing anything dangerous with it.
Once though, Mark had his friends over for a change and he forgot to warn Percy about it.
When Percy got out of his room to question what was going on, Mark pushed him in the kitchen and whispered to him: "Percy please, no water stuff with my friends around, okay?"
"Oh, they're mor... yeah okay, no problems!" Answered Percy with a smile before taking a snack from the pantry and disappearing to his room for the entire night.
What 'mor' ment was completely lost on Mark but they were playing Dungeons and Dragons that night so it wasn't time to think about that.
The following morning, when eating breakfast, Percy was the first one to make conversation saying: "that was an interesting battle plan to fight a Hydra but I have to ask, what were all those numbers you were throwing around? Sorry, I couldn't help but overhear a bit."
Battle plan?
"We were just playing D&D." Answered Mark shortly, too distracted by his own drowsiness.
"What the heck is a D&D?" Asked Percy confused.
"You know, the role-playing game."
"You have me even more confused now." Said Percy chuckling.
"It's like play pretend but for adults. And with rules." Answered Mark briefly, ready for the roast of the century.
"Oh, so you weren't making battle plans to take down a Hydra... but if you were, I think that plan would have worked out pretty great."
"Percy, in which circumstance does one find himself fighting a Hydra?" Asked Mark shocked.
"I mean, it's not the most common monster to encounter but it can happen." Said Percy "And besides, it's always useful to know what to do in case you happen to meet one."
"What are you talking about?"
"Hello? Mark? Are you awake?" Asked Percy completely confused "You know when monsters attack us because we smell like a tacos or take out vietnamese? I mean, maybe it doesn't happen as often to you because you aren't a big three kid but we're not the only ones constantly in danger, other halfbloods are too!"
Mark was so confused he thought his brain was going to explode.
"Percy, I wholeheartedly guarantee you that no, I've never been attacked by a monster before and no, I've never encountered a Hydra outside of Dungeons & Dragons."
And that was the moment Mark saw Percy hesitate.
"Wait, you've never been attacked by a monster? Like, never never?"
"Never never."
"But you're a halfblood?"
"If you mean that one of my parents isn't American then no I'm not an 'halfblood' and that word sounds pretty racist so you shouldn't be using it."
"Oh for fuck's sake Mark, you know that's not what I mean!" Exclaimed Percy, the sink bursting open, followed by a plastic water bottle exploding.
"Maybe calm down a bit please?" Said Mark, a terrified expression taking over his face.
"Yeah, sorry..." murmured Percy as he composed himself.
Percy took a deep breath and started again: "Okay so... I think I fucked some stuff up and I only have one way to prove I did, but you have to trust me."
Mark nodded, still a bit shaken up.
Percy reached for the right pocket of his jeans and took out a regular blue ballpoint pen, put it on the table and said: "When I'll uncap it, tell me what you see, okay?"
Mark nodded again and Percy uncapped the pen. It grew in lenght and width right there in front of Mark's incredulous eyes, leaving a full baseball bat sitting on the table in the pen's place.
"A magic baseball bat?"
"Oh fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck..." Said Percy "you don't see a sword at all, do you?"
Mark had to admit, he couldn't really see what it was, the more he looked at the object the more it flickered between a baseball bat, a sword, a pen, a full sized umbrella, a giant knife, a lacrosse stick and a dozen other things.
"Yeah sorry, it's... I don't know Percy, it looks very weird."
That, of all the magic he had seen Percy use in the past few months, was the most confusing and mind blowing one he had seen.
"Okay, last short test. Can you please give me your hand?"
Mark, with probably more naivety than he should have had, reached forwards with his hand and Percy used whatever magical object he was handing to nudge Mark's hand gently.
Except it passed right through his hand, as if the object was incorporeal.
"Oh yeah, that's so not good." Said Percy again, nervous laughter coming right out of him without control, the water in their glasses shaking a bit.
"Percy calm down, the water's vibrating again." Said Mark, now fully conscious that he probably should have questioned that ability way more than he had.
Percy, yet again, collected himself.
"Last question. You're not Mark Bennet from fifth cohort, son of Vulcan, right?" Asked Percy.
"I literally have never heard half the words that you just pronounced outside of fantasy or sci-fi." Answered Mark with a straight face, trying not to show his slight panic too much.
"Oh yeah, I screwed up so bad. I'm calling Annabeth, give me like, five minutes top and I'll be back with an explanation, okay?" Asked Percy, running out of the room before hearing an answer.
Mark's brain was traveling at the speed of light trying to make up some explanations about what was going on but shock and panic were flooding the entirety of his mind, leaving no space for coherent thoughts.
Then, after the longest five minutes of his life, Percy sprinted back in the kitchen and sat at the table in front of him and asked: "Do you want to know or do you prefer to forget?"
"Please, just tell me" Answered Mark "I've lived with you for six months, I fear that if me knowing was such a big deal you would have already felt the consequences from your ministry of magic or whatever magical goverment you have going on."
Percy bursted out laughing at the last sentence Mark said and exclaimed: "Well, the closest thing to a ministry of magic there is kinda doesn't care about what I do as long as I don't create too much chaos so, as Annabeth suggested, I can just tell you. So, what do you know about Greek Mythology?"
And that's when everything Percy had said in the past six months clicked in Mark's brain.
"Oh shit, you're a Greek God?" Asked Mark, his eyes blown open in complete shock.
"Well, not quite" Chuckled Percy "although my dad sometimes wishes I was actually immortal. I am the closest thing a mortal can be to it though, I'm a demigod."
And yeah, Mark believed him. Look, when your flatmates doing magic on a day to day basis with no scientific explanation behind it whatsoever, even the most illogical story sounds like the truth. To add to it, if Mark had to believe someone was a demigod in real life, Percy would be for sure on top of that list, he looked just like one of those ancient marble statues.
The only thing that Mark couldn't really understand was which one of Percy's parents was supposed to be a god since he had met both and none of them seemed particularly divine. Well, Sally Jackson's cookies were indeed divine but he didn't think a goddess of cookies existed (but if it existed it would have been Percy's mom for sure).
"Okay... yeah..." Answered Mark "But if that's true, which one of your parents' is a god?"
"My dad." Simply said Percy with a shrug.
"Don't get me wrong, Paul seems like a great guy but a god? Really?" Asked Mark a bit perplexed.
Percy chuckled: "Paul's my step-dad, you've never met my real dad, whenever he swings over he just appears in my room since he has no real reason to use a door."
"Yeah fair, I would do that too if I had mystical powers that gave me teleportation abilities." Stated Mark before asking "So... which god is he?"
"Guess."
"Isn't it Neptune? Like, all I've seen you do is water related." Answered Mark.
"Technically you're not wrong." Said Percy "but Neptune is his Roman name and expression of self, my dad is Poseidon, his Greek version. I'm really the furthest thing there is from a Roman demigod honestly."
"Oh, why is that?"
"Let's just say... Roman demigods are very precise and disciplined. I'm definetely not." Answered Percy with a grin.
"So wait, all your friends are also demigods?" Asked Mark, questions arising as he thought more about it.
"Exactly. Well, except for Grover and Rachel, they're a bit of a special case. Gover's a satyr and Rachel is the Oracle of Delphi."
Mark's face morphed into a surprised expression as he said: "How does someone become the Oracle? Wasn't it supposed to be like a spirit or something?"
"Kinda, now the spirit just lives in Rachel's body. It's complicated honestly, I don't really understand how it works." Said Percy, a confused expression appearing on his face as if mimicking Mark's own frown.
As the conversation kept going it was Percy's turn to ask Mark something: "if you aren't a demigod, why have you never questioned my powers?"
"Pft man, we live in New York, I'm not gonna question anything here."