Working With The Thief (Percy Jackson)

Part II, Chapter Four: The DSM-5 Had A BOGO Deal That My Brain Couldn't Resist

Travis Stoll

I did kind of deserve that.

Upon further observation (aka seeing him in better lightning) it was easy to tell that he looked like shit because it seemed to be that he was feeling like shit.

Walking into his cabin, the two of us stood in the entry room/commons of the Poseidon cabin as Percy leaned against the couch he had in here, arms crossed, staring at the floor. It was hard to tell, but it looked like he was concentrating on not having some sort of emotional reaction.

"Percy, I..." but being at a loss for words wasn't exactly helpful at the moment. "I'm sorry. I..."

"For what?" He asked in return, but I couldn't gauge what it meant. "Did you and your siblings hide a stink bomb in here or something? What's there to be sorry for, I've only been back for a couple hours "

I shrugged.

"I... I think I hurt you." And even though he wasn't looking up at me, I could see Percys expression change. I could see him shift from a saddened state to a more frustrated state, which only confirmed what Clarisse just lectured me about. "I didn't meant to, that wasn't what I was trying to do, but based on how your expression just changed, I'm pretty sure I hurt you last summer by accident when that wasn't my goal. I just..."

"You just what, Travis?" Percy questioned, crossing his arms. "You just decided that one day you didn't want to be my friend or my... my whatever we were anymore or that if I wasn't going to be here all year we couldn't be friends or..."

The son of Poseidon stopped himself, taking a breath.

"I don't get it," he admitted, sounding more overwhelmed by the second. "I've spent the last nine months trying to understand why our trying to remember what happened that would've changed and I don't..."

"No, no, Percy, it wasn't that I didn't want to be your friend, it was just—" and as I'm trying to put this in a better perspective for him, I reach out to put a hand on his shoulder.

But for the first time, he pulled away.

"Please don't..." Percy asked, crossing his arms even tighter and sealing his eyes shut. "If you're going to do the same thing, I can't..."

For a second, I didn't know how to respond.

"No, Percy, I'm not..." I took a breath to steady myself. "I'm sorry that I hurt you, I wasn't thinking about how it would sound because I just... I was afraid."

He let off a half assed smile.

"Of what? Taking a taxi? My parents? Me?"

And while I think the first two were more jokes than not, the last one was not something I was okay with him joking about.

"Losing you," I admitted, which got the son of Poseidon's attention. "It's stupid, I know it's stupid now because a lot of us will die young anyways because we're demigods and that's life, but having a date..."

I took a breath.

"I don't know what Chiron or Mr. D or anyone else has told you about the big prophecy, and like I said, I've never heard it myself, but I just... I know that it says that when you turn 16 something will happen and you'll probably die and I didn't let it bother me until you said you were going home and then I just... I was worried that if you went home you wouldn't actually come back, even though you'd just said that you had plans to visit over Christmas and that if you never came back it could've because you killed yourself and died early or just... I didn't want to hurt you, I just... was rash and didn't want to get hurt, either. I'm sorry."