Dinner that evening was somehow even more awkward than it had been the night before. Vicky ended up leaving me alone on the beach soon after our surprise kiss so she could go pick up her sister from the hospital where she was volunteering. As much as I wanted to talk to Vicky about what in Hades name she thought she was doing, I welcomed the opportunity to clear things up with Crystal before I had to open a whole new pandora’s box, so I headed back to the Pelhams, hoping that she would be done with her classes by the time I got there.

Instead, by the time I finally made it back Vicky and her sister were already there, having invited themselves over for dinner since Carol had gotten stuck in the office and wasn’t going to be home until late in the evening. I tried to pull Crystal aside, but things just kept knocking me off track.

First Neil asked for my help bringing in groceries, than I got talking with Sarah about my food preferences, next Eric insisted on a retelling of my patrol with Triumph and Velocity, and so on until suddenly I found myself sitting at the dinner table flanked by two very pretty girls with no more answers and a lot more questions than I’d had that morning.

For what was probably the very first time in my life, I wished that someone from cabin ten was here. Most of the time dealing with them was something of a nightmare––they caused nearly as many problems as the Hermes kids and often shirked their less glamorous duties––but this seemed like exactly the sort of situation where their expertise would have been helpful.

Tartarus, I’d honestly settle for their mom too! I hadn’t had the best relationship with her over the years, but maybe Aphrodite could tell me what was going on and what I was supposed to do about it. Preferably before I messed up, hurt someone, or had everything blow up in my face.

Like I’d told Eric yesterday, I didn’t want to hurt Crystal, nor Vicky, but I didn’t know how I was supposed to avoid doing so. Give me a titan or a horde of monsters any day and I’d kick their asses six ways to Sunday. I could even totally go for an ominous, cryptic prophecy that may or may not directly mention my death right about now.

This however was not in my wheelhouse. Right at this moment I didn’t know what scared me more, the horrifying piles of paperwork I’d seen at the PRT or the way Vicky and Crystal were crowding me from either side like sharks herding a lone seal away from its pod.

Unfortunately, no divine messenger or helpful demigod of love arrived to answer my prayers for salvation. I momentarily wondered what my dad would tell me if I tried to ask him for help, then remembered that male Greek gods did not exactly have a stellar reputation when it came to relationships. Sure he wasn’t as much of a horndog as Zeus, but who was? He’d probably make a crass joke, then encourage me to go for both cousins…at the same time. Maybe in Zeus’s cabin for good measure.

Doing my best to ignore Crystal’s hand on my right thigh, I smiled at Amy, who was sitting across the table from me, and tried to engage her in conversation. “So Amy, how was working at the hospital today? Have you been doing that sort of thing for long?”

Before Amy could respond, Vicky reached past me to grab the tray of tater tots sitting between me and Crystal, very deliberately using the action to press her chest against my side and give me a clear view down her low-cut top. Vicky, it turns out, was wearing a very frilly blue bra that matched her eyes. That was absolutely not the sports bra she’d been wearing during our outing earlier and it did a lot less to hide her…prodigious assets.

Amy’s resting frown shifted into a momentary glare and she violently jabbed a meatball with her fork. “It was fine. I’ve been volunteering almost every week since I’ve gotten my powers.”

I tried to not let her hostility get to me. Her attitude made perfect sense after what had happened with Crystal and she honestly looked exhausted to boot. “That’s amazing, I can’t imagine how many lives you’ve saved over the years. We had some…capes with healing powers back home, but none of them were anywhere close to as good as you are. Will could have probably healed Crystal’s leg, but she would have been stuck in bed for a few days, maybe even weeks, and it would have taken much longer to boot.”

Amy didn’t respond, choosing to instead aggressively bite into her meatball while continuing to fix me with an angry stare. Instead, Vicky beamed at her sister, a wave of her aura washing over the table. “Yeah, my sister’s pretty amazing, isn’t she! I’m taking Parahumans 101 at Brockton U this semester and she actually came up in class a bit ago. There’s not very many capes out there that can heal at all, only a tiny handful in the entire US, and among them Amy’s one of the very best!”

Amy’s frown faded slightly and she ducked her head in embarrassment. “Vicky––” she began, but her sister cut her off before she could continue.

“It's true! Brockton Bay is super lucky to have someone so amazing living here, but way too many people take her for granted.”

“Your sister is right,” Neil boomed from his place at the head of the table. “New Wave is very lucky to have you, Amy! You are a credit to our family. Really, all of you kids are! Carol, Mark, Sarah, and I, we’re all getting old, letting things slip in our old age. It's all of you that are keeping the heroic spirit of New Wave going strong.”

“You’re not that old yet, dad,” Eric drawled.

“Perhaps not, but I’m certainly not as young as I once was. Times where I’d go on a late evening patrol, stay up all night with your mother, and be ready for work the next day spry as a spring chicken, but that's in the past now I’m afraid. Best I can manage most nights is two out of three.”

“Dad!” Crystal exclaimed loudly, her cheeks blazing red with embarrassment.”

Sarah tilted her head to the side and fixed her husband with a playful glare. “Two out of three, huh? Well, I think you can do better than that darling. I see a lot of late night…patrols in our future. Perhaps together, down by the bay. Like we––”

Crystal made a strangled, choking sound and Vicky looked like she was about to burst out laughing. “Mom!” Eric cut in, sounding rather scandalized. “Get a room!”

Eric had barely stopped talking when Neil immediately pounced. He wiggled his eyebrows and smiled at his son, his pearly white teeth flashing. “Maybe we should, Sarah darling. I’m sure Eric can take care of cleaning up and––”

Eric quickly backpedaled, the threat of extra chores instantly making him reconsider his words. “After dinner, I mean. And dessert. And maybe just wait until after I’ve gone to bed like normal parents.”

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While the Pelhams were distracted, Vicky, who had been watching the proceedings with a big smile on her face, leaned in towards me and whispered, “You know, I could go for a late night patrol too, you know. Just the two of us. I know a lot of great, out-of-the-way spots where two heroes can patrol…vigorously.”

I knew I could be oblivious sometimes, but even I couldn’t miss the obvious connotations, nor the way her voice dropped at the end of her sentence. My heart skipped a beat and my breathing hitched momentarily as I remembered the touch of Vicky’s lips against mine and the promise of more blazing in her eyes.

I didn’t know how to respond. Everything was moving so fast. I still hadn’t talked to Crystal, whose hand had at some point creeped dangerously far up my leg without me noticing, and right now I didn’t even know what I wanted to say when I did. I felt a bit like I had towards the end of the Titan War, pulled in too many directions by fires I needed to put out before it was too late, but this time I had no idea who I could turn to for help.

At least the stakes were lower. If I fucked up, I’d just ruin two of the few positive relationships I’d managed to form since I’d arrived in the bizarre land of superheroes and not doom the entire world to Kronos’s tyranny. Somehow that didn’t actually make me feel any better, Olympus damn it.

“I’d be happy to go patrolling with you sometime,” I said quickly, then shoved another bite of pasta into my mouth before I could put my foot in my mouth more than I already had.

Vicky’s smile turned sultry and she slowly licked the bright red sauce off her fork. Despite my best efforts, my eyes were briefly drawn to the way her tongue trailed along the shiny metal, then down to her chest and the deep square neckline of her blouse. I quickly tore my eyes away, but not before Vicky noticed where I had been looking.

I bit my lip and hurriedly refocused on the conversation going on. At some point while I’d been distracted, the topic had moved away from Sarah and Neil’s flirting and onto the merits of different desserts. Also Amy was glaring at me again, and honestly I couldn’t blame her this time either. She’d obviously caught me checking out her sister and I sheepishly looked away when our eyes met.

Crystal’s voice shook me out of my reverie. “What do you think, Percy?”

“Huh? Oh, uh. Honestly, as long as the dessert is blue, I probably like it. My mom used to make me all sorts of blue foods and desserts and they bring back a lot of good memories. Blueberry pie and those sorts of things are great, but I also like blue candy. If I really had to pick…chocolate chip cookies. My mom makes these amazing blue chocolate chip cookies and I just can’t get enough of them. I––” my voice caught in my throat.

I missed my mom. I really, really missed her. I wished I could talk to her right now. She wasn’t a god or Chiron, but there was no one else whose opinion mattered more to me than hers. I hoped she was okay. I wondered if she knew I was missing yet. Had anyone bothered to tell her? Did they even know I was missing? It was more than possible that people just thought I was out in the depths of the sea somewhere. I’d disappeared for longer than a week at a time before, and there were plenty of places out in the world where even the gods’ power couldn’t reach.

Crystal’s hand squeezed down on my leg comfortingly and I cleared my throat. “Or maybe brownies. I do love brownies. Anything with a lot of chocolate in it, really.”

It was obvious that everyone had noticed my pause, but I was thankful when no one commented on it. Still, the mood at the table dropped noticeably. Great going, Percy! First you let everyone down, then you get everyone down! That’s the Percy Jackson way!

After a few awkward moments, Neil loudly cleared his throat and clapped his hands together. “Well, it looks like everyone’s finishing up. They won’t be blue, but I’m pretty sure we’ve got some cookie dough left in the freezer. How do people feel about having those for dessert?”

“That would be great, dad,” Eric said softly when it looked like no one else was going to respond.

“Great!” Neil stood up quickly, his chair scraping loudly against the floor as he pushed it away from the table. “I’ll go pop those in the oven, then.”

I sighed heavily and looked down at the remaining food on my plate. The pasta and meatballs were both great––Sarah Pelham was a fantastic cook––but suddenly I didn’t feel nearly as hungry as I had just a few minutes before. I was still going to eat it all, the Curse of Achilles meant that I always cleaned my plate even when stress took away my appetite, but my next bite tasted like nothing, as did the one after that.

I picked up a meatball with my fork and stared blankly down at it. “Everything alright, Percy?” Crystal asked softly.

“Yeah Percy, you don’t look so good,” Vicky chimed in. “We can take a rain check on that patrol later if you’re not feeling up for it.”

“That…” I sighed again, “might be for the best. Sorry Vicky. It's been a long couple of days.”

“I get you, don’t worry about it. The offer is always open.” Vicky looked me straight in the eyes and slowly licked her upper lip. “Any time, but maybe don’t wait too long, ‘kay?”

“I won’t,” I told her, doing my best to project more confidence than I felt.

“Great! You know, I’ve never tried to make them blue, but I know a great chocolate chip cookie recipe. Maybe when the PRT finally gets you your own place I can come over and we can make some together. Christen the new kitchen, you know?”

Vicky grabbed her glass and stood up. “More water?”

“Yes please.”

She grabbed my glass and then Crystal’s when her cousin shoved the empty cup towards her, then headed towards the kitchen.

“Maybe we could both use an early night today,” Crystal told me after Vicky was out of sight. “You’re right, it's been a long couple of days. I could use some time to destress.”

“Yeah.” I took a deep breath. “We need to talk sometime. About what happened yesterday, I mean. Sooner than later. You don’t have classes tomorrow morning, right?”

“I don’t.” Crystal bit her lip and looked away. “Yeah,” she echoed, “we do.”

I thought that would be the end of it for today, but apparently Crystal and I had very different ideas of what our ‘talk’ was going to look like. Two hours later I was sitting on my borrowed bed, Annabeth’s magical Yankees cap held loosely in my hands. The house was silent, Vicky and Amy long gone and the other inhabitants all dispersed to their own rooms.

The door to my room creaked open and I looked up to see Crystal peeking in through the door. “Can I come in?” she asked softly.

I set the hat down on my bedside table. “Sure. I thought you were going to bed?”

“I am.” She padded into the room, her bare feet nearly soundlessly on the carpeted floor, then closed the door and locked it behind her. She was wearing a bathrobe, the heavy fleece fabric drawn tightly around her.

“You know, our house has some great soundproofing. The family that lived here before us were musicians you see. With the doors closed, you can’t hear a thing even from the neighboring rooms.”

“Okay?” I began, and then my voice abruptly cut out.

Suddenly, Crystal was no longer wearing a fleece bathrobe. Nor anything else, for that matter. She hung her bathrobe up on one of the hooks on the door, then turned back towards me and planted her hands on her bare hips. “You’re a bit overdressed for our…talk,” she cocked her hip and leaned forward slightly, “would you like some help with that?”

I opened my mouth, but no sound came out.

“I’ll take that as a yes.”