Percy

Instead of therapy, he wrote. He said that if he needed to talk, he could talk to me.

He didn't quit his job. For a while, for about a week, he'd call in sick. And after about four days, his boss said that hey, we understand that something has happened. If you would like to come get you equipment and work from home, they'd pay him by frame submitted rather than hours worked.

So he did that. For about a month, he kind of drifted away from us. Not too much. Not like he did with Bianca. But he was quieter. He didn't really want to go out as much.

I mean, there was a day where all he did was write. That was it. He ate lunch, I had to bring it to him. But that was it. At least it was a Tuesday, otherwise he would've never gotten anything to eat.

But right now in my class it was like a project time. On whatever you want, with art, obviously. It had to involve the history, 3 famous artists of the art, or if it's a piece, 3 facts in general, in depth, and a bunch of other stuff. It's the final for this class.

I don't do tests in this class unless they're computer corrected. I have dyslexia and my students love it.

But one of my students comes up and he was actually doing my photograph of the Auschwitz gate. After Nico's panic attack, I took it out of the house and put it in my class. Of course, my name isn't on the image anywhere you go, when I published it I remained anonymous.

So he's doing my photo.

"Professor Jackson," he said and I turned around, giving him a small smile. I had finished critiquing their stuff this morning so I was doing a drawing of my own. "Sorry to interrupt, but I just had a few questions."

I told him to sit down and ask away.

"So the piece I'm doing for my final project, the gate," he started off. "I have a lot of history being it's the Auschwitz gate and all, it's very famous. But I can't find anything on the photographer. Like, at all. Am I just not on the right website or...? I was on quite a few of them."

"No, don't worry." I assured him, noting that down for the next lecture I had with this class. I needed to fill it in anyways, being our guest speaker had to cancel. "I actually have a lecture on that image during our next class. You won't find anything online about it, he's anonymous being he didn't want to make royalty off the image after he sold copies to it was like 10 museums. That was enough money for him."

I mean, hell, that's how I paid for moving here and the house. It's paid off already, one museum paid me $1,000,000 for a copy. They claimed they would've paid four times the amount for the original, but I didn't want to give it up.

So I'm a millionaire. Not by much, with the house and all being paid for all at once. But it's a lot of money. I told my kids that I would pay for their first car, half of their wedding, no matter how expensive, and their first two years of college. To get their generals. Which, to me, seems really generous.

But they did have to work for it. I refuse to pay their way into college. They have to be fairly accepted.

I could probably retire, but I'd get bored.

Plus, I like teaching college.

"Oh, okay!" He said. "I'll just work on a different part, then. Thank you!"

"Any time." I assured him and decided to walk around and just check on people. The class only has 10 people. My other one has 11. For this course. A day class and a night class. I have other courses, of course. I teach 3 courses.

One of the girls in my class, though, reminded me of my mom. One, the personality. She was younger. I believe 20, 21.

But like my mom when she was younger, she was a single mom. She conferenced with me before classes started this year and told me that she was a single mom, the dad left and whatever else. Is it okay that, if she can't get a babysitter for the day, if her baby comes with.

Do you want to know how many times I had to bring Finn or Luana to class with me in college?

Of course I said she could.

So today she had her baby girl with, and she was struggling because Amelia was trying to like climb and it wasn't going well and she's trying to work.

So when I got to her, I took Amelia and put her on my shoulders. Finn did it all the time, he actually managed to get on top of the fridge when I went to the bathroom once.

That was terrifying.

"Sorry, she's been really energetic today." Maddy apologized as I picked up her kid.

"It's fine," I insisted, and Amelia giggled when she was up on my shoulders. "She's nice to have around on days like this. I like kids."

"Then why don't you have any?" She questioned.

"Yeah," the guy next to her, Zander, questioned. "Why don't you have kids? You enjoy them."

"I have kids," I corrected them, sitting on one of the empty tables. "They're just older. Finn is 16, and Luana's 11. Carlos just turned 16, I have kids, they just don't come here because they have to go to school"

"Finn and Luana," Maddy remarked. "You must like Germany."

"I lived in Germany for 20 years." I confirmed for her, nodding my head. "Yes, I enjoy Germany. It's a nice country."

For the rest of the class time, I told them about Germany because they had questions galore.

When I got home, the kids were all at friends houses being it's Friday night and Nico must've just gotten home. It was his first day actually going to work just to try it out again and he looked exhausted.

I took my jacket off and walked over to my amazing boyfriend. Sitting down behind him, I pulled him into a hug.

"How was work?" I asked him, his head resting on the front of my shoulder our fingers interlaced.

"Exhausting," he told me, sighing. I was proud that he went back. that he tried to do this. It's been a hard month for him. For the entire family, really. "I probably should've only done a half day. I think I'll do that on Monday. Leave after lunch and just do stuff at home."

"Yeah," I agreed, finding that getting through this was worth it. "I'm proud that you at least tried, too. Trust me, eventually life will go back to normal and this will stop hurting. If you could get through Tartarus and the Jar, you can get through this."

But let's be honest, I'm still closing off memories from Gabe and when those break through, I'll probably be just as bad.

"Gods I hope so."

"You can and you will," I told my boyfriend, holding him close. "You've already stopped having constant nightmares and you haven't had a flashback in two weeks. That's huge, Nico. I'm proud of you."

"Percy..."

"Seriously," I went on, moving to now face him. "I'm proud of you, babe. Even if you don't notice it, you are getting better. Sure, it's slow. But you've only had one nightmare this week. You're eating normally again. You're doing really good with this, and I'm seriously proud of you. I love you, and I want to be here to help you through this."

"Really?" He asked me and I smiled, rubbing his cheek with my thing.

"Always."

He chuckled, a tired laugh.

"What?" I asked him.

"Always," he told me. "it seems like a cheesy word. It's kind of funny."

I rolled my eyes, humored, and gave him a kiss on the forehead.

"I think I'll order take out tonight." I told Nico, figuring he'd want to sleep like right after he ate. "We can watch a movie while we eat if you want. You seem tired."

He nodded his head, tired.

So I ordered some Chinese and it was here probably twenty minutes later. We watched Mulan and he enjoyed it. Fell asleep like half way through, I did at the very end.

It was a long day.

Carlos

It's still kind of weird, not going to the house I've lived in for like all of my life. But I also do like living here. It's a good thing that we moved when we did, too. That's when Dad had his like episode.

When Finn and I got home, Luana was already home, sleep. It was late, not too long before curfew. But we went down to the basement, figured we could play a game or something.

That wasn't happening tonight.

I think the one weird thing about living here is that now we see more of Dad and Percy together. Before they'd like to out on a date or do it on like a day Dad doesn't have class, but it's not so much of that anymore. Now they sleep together every night and they eat meals together and we're a family.

Family is weird, I've never had one outside of dad. Grandpa never really was too interested in me or Dad so he was around and my aunt like hates Dad.

So it's always been just us. And now there's Luana and Finn and Percy, plus Percy's parents and yeah.

It's not much, but it's more than that we have.

When we got downstairs, they were both sleep. It was early for them, but Dad also went back to work today, so he was probably tired.

It was nice to know that when I move out, there'll be somebody there for my dad, though.

That was my number one concern. He'd get lonely.

But now my dad has Percy, and I'm crossing my fingers that Percy asks me if it's okay to propose because shit, it was so good. And he told me if he ever were to propose, he'd talk to me about it because he's my dad before he's Percy's boyfriend, in his eyes.

So we headed up to our room and we we're on our beds. We share a room being mine doesn't have everything in it yet.

"Hey, Finn," I said from my bed, which was on the other side of the room from him. "I know we've talked about it, but we really have since it's been official."

"What?" He responded with.

"How do you feel about our dad's dating?"

"Well, I mean," Finn told me after a moment of thinking. "I think it's a good thing. We did good, even though they were together before we like set them up. Dad's been a bit happier, I think. When he adopted Luana he like stopped dating for a while because stuff happened with his like real dad and then he finally got a date when she was like 4 and dating is just hard for him, I guess. He has trust issues I think. I get why. But still."

For a moment it was silent.

"Why?" He asked me. "How do you feel about it?"

"I mean, it's weird." I was honest about that part. "Like, I didn't want to trust your dad at first because my dad's relationships never really ended well, but I mean, it's good. I'm happy about it now that I like trust hour dad and see them together. I'm glad that he'll have somebody now, when I go to college. We really didn't have family, I didn't want him to get lonely."

"Yeah, I guess that's how my dad was about Grandpa." At least Finn wasn't offended by me saying that. "because like he doesn't have a good relationship with his dad. So he didn't trust him for a while. But when he did, it was more so about Grandma having somebody there, I guess. Him and Grandma are close, I don't know."

"It's weird." I agreed.