Percy

I was hanging out with Grover, and he was talking about this one girl that he has his eye on now that Juniper and him have been broken up for a while now.

"What about you?" Grover asked me. "Any girls you want to go on and on about? Had I gone with earlier, I'd probably know. But I figured you'd tell me."

"Go with?" I questioned. "Where?"

"To your cabin." My best friend insisted, almost like it should be obvious. "Everyone else went to your cabin earlier. I don't know why. Something about you and Nico getting together? Annabeth and I both insisted that you were straight. But yeah. Did you not know?"

"No!"

And then I realized that the sketchbook Annabeth gave me, had she just seen, I wouldn't care. She has more respect than to use this against me or tease me or anything.

"Was Annabeth there?"

"Yeah," Grover told me as I had to stop walking just to make sure I would still be able to breathe. "Why? That's where she got the sketchbook."

I'm not taking a second shot of my inhaler in two days. Nope. I'm not doing it. I can do this on my own. I can control my breathing.

"Percy?" My best friend asked once he realized I had stopped walking, and he turned around. "Dude, what's going on?"

He starts frantically looking through my stuff, and he found my inhaler. But I shook my head. He knows I have asthma. I've had a few attacks around him. We we're roomates. It happens.

"Did you recently take a hit?" He asked and I nodded my head. The more hits I take, the more susceptible I am to have another attack. So he kept looking through my bag.

A few minutes later, Grover found my breathe easy stuff that just helps open your airways to make you breathe easier, and that helped a lot.

"Can you breathe?" Grover double checked that I was okay and I slowly nodded my head. I'm breathing.

"What was it about?"

I sighed.

"They have no business in my cabin," I explained what was going on to him. "Or my room. Had it just been Annabeth, I wouldn't care. She can keep her mouth shut. But nobody else can. And if everyone else knows... I'm boned."

"Percy what... What are you talking about?"

I patted next to me and he sat down. If everyone else knew, he should know, too. He's my best friend.

"I probably should've told you about this a long time ago," I was honest about that right away. "I should've told everyone a long time ago. But I didn't. But I didn't. And uh...it came back and bit me in the ass."

"Percy."

"Okay, okay..." He had figured out that this was a big deal. "I dated a straight girl. I dated Annabeth."

"What about it?"

"I'm gay. And I dated a straight girl."

"Well that's... Oh..." And then he realized what I actually said. "Why did you date her in the first place?"

"I didn't want people knowing."

"You can do that by just staying single." He insisted, rolling his eyes. "Percy, who gives a shit? None of us do. You saw how they reacted to Nico. Our friends don't care. Why bother hide it?"

"Because," I explained to him as I didn't realize our friends were coming to meet up with us like they said they would. "Gabe literally beat me, and he beat the shit out of me for it. All the time."

"He... I'm sorry." I didn't think that I didn't tell Grover about the abuse. "He beat you?"

"For lack of better word, he abused my mother and I, yes," I confirmed for him. "I thought you knew about that. But yeah. That's why."

A few minutes later, the others had shown up and some shit kind of happened.

Grover

He never told me. But I always kind of fucking knew. Annabeth just assumed he was bi when he didn't say no to her.

But he's not. He's just really not confident in himself. Because of that asshole called Gabe.

It's going to be okay, though. We we're going to show him that it was okay.

So we had a movie night that night. And Percy always takes the floor. He can have more room that way. And Nico came over with a bag of popcorn. It wasn't open yet. Went to sit down.

Jason, who was sitting on the couch, pushed him onto the floor. Giving him a wink.

"Fuck you." Nico responded as he opened the bag of the popcorn.

"Save it for your boyfriend."

The movie went well. Percy uh... He didn't say much during it. But then again, neither did any of us.

Percy

I don't know why I was mad. It's been a year and a half. And it still pisses me off. And it pisses me off that it pisses me off.

After everyone left, I just couldn't fall asleep. My brain wouldn't let me do that. It thought about last night. It thought about today.

How everyone knows. How I don't want them to know, but now they do and that scares the shit out of me.

It brought me back 6 years now. To when I first came to this place. When I thought that this could be my happy place. Where I could go to do whatever I wanted. And I could be happy myself.

I remembered Luke. How much I haven't thought about him. How losing my memory just halted my entire life.

How he's right. And how he was wrong.

I thought about how none of that mattered anymore. Because he's dead.

And I miss him.

And I'd do anything just to see him again. To say goodbye. To tell him that this wasn't worth it. There were other ways. He could just leave camp.

He didn't need to fucking die.

I just had this out of body experience after that. I looked at my anxiety meds. I looked at Riptide.

My gods, I thought to myself. Maybe I should just do it, too.

And I grabbed my pills.

Then I realized what I was doing.

Throwing my meds bottle to the ground, I just kind of sat there for a second. It was like 5:30. I can't sleep, I haven't eaten in 29 hours, and I just picked up a pills bottle with the intent to OD.

There was something wrong with me.

I got up and threw on something quick, keeping Riptide and my pills here. I really didn't trust myself.

But I started to head towards the Big House. And as I did so, I sent a text to Grover, Annabeth, and Nico.

Hey, guys, sorry :( I might not make it to breakfast, though. I have a meeting with Chiron so don't wait up.

On the way, Annabeth responded. She's always up early.

Okay! She responded. Anything to worry about? Changing the entire fucking camp on us?

No. I insisted, stepping onto the porch of the Big House. Just the yearly check ups he does. Nothing to worry about.

After raising my hand to knock on the door, I put it back down.

It's like 5:40 in the morning. I'm a fucking wreck standing outside of the Big House. And Chiron probably just wants to sleep.

Either way, I wasn't allowed to back out of this. Before I could even decide that this was a bad idea, Mr. D answered the door. Holding a glass. A wine glass. With grape juice in it.

Take what you can get, right?

He didn't even look at me.

"Chiron!" The god of wine yelled out, sounding wide awake. "There's a brat here for you!"

Stepping out of the doorway, Mr. D let me in and gave me a weird look before Chiron came into the entrance.

Like I said, I looked like shit right now. I felt worse. But I just... I mean, I just almost killed myself. Without a second thought, I was going to down a bottle of anxiety meds.

I really didn't care that Mr. D was there. Both of them sat down with me in one of their offices. I'm not sure who's. But Chiron was more in charge. Mr. D just listened.

"What's going on, my boy?" Chiron asked.

And I was at a loss for words.

"I just... I don't know." I snapped last night and my life has just been falling apart faster than it needs to. "My anxiety is just fucking everywhere, and because of that, so is my asthma. I haven't eaten in like 30 hours. I haven't been able to sleep for two days, aside a few hours after the first night of summer session because I cried myself to sleep and wore myself out. Um... My meds schedule is fucked up now because I'm not sleeping and I can't eat."

For a second, I stopped to let myself  breathe.

"I just store at my wall for like 8 hours and started crying out of nowhere and then I started to think about shit I really shouldn't and then I grabbed my meds and almost took them all in one shot like it was nothing. Before I, you know, realized how fucked up that is and hauled my ass here because I'm pretty sure I'm going mental at this point in time."

"Why aren't you eating or sleeping?"

I shrugged.

"I don't know," I was lost at this point in my life, and I needed a map. "I'm just not hungry. And I mean, I'm fucking exhausted all the time. But I can't shut down."

"Is there anything that's been troubling you lately?" Chiron took a step out of this to deal with other kids that were here. Letting Mr. D take control of this.

"Um..." My entire life sucks. How do I explained that everything troubles me because I have anxiety? "Maybe? I don't know, I have anxiety. Dumb things get the best of me."

"Well if you just store at a wall for the last 8 hours," the god reasoned with me as he found my file and opened it up. I've never had a depressive history. This was new to all of us. "What were you thinking about?"

"I... Well," I thought back to the past eight hours. That's a long time. Eight hours. "I thought about a lot of stuff. Um... How like my childhood was. How it was when I first came here. Luke and Beckendorf's death. More so Luke. Tartarus popped into my head, but just for a few minutes. Um... Just how pissed off I am for no reason. How it pisses me off even more if I think about them."

I mean, I did punch my wall. Like four times. And because it's brick, I didn't do shit to it aside probably break my wrist. It fucking hurt right now.

Mr. D told me to go on.

"And if I stopped thinking about it, it's about how pissed off I am with who I am," I had no filter anymore. It was beyond censoring anything about this. "Because I just fucking hate myself and I just thought I could kill myself and nobody would care and that scares me. And people are starting to find our things about me that I don't want them knowing because I'm still not okay with knowing it. And I don't know how to tell them that I'm not okay. That I'm in pain, and I'm miserable, all the time. And at the same time I just want to fucking punch a wall and scream. But when I do, it helps nothing when I'm still angry. I just hurt more. And it never fucking stops."

Mr. D ended up asking me a number of questions and he did a scan. I was texting the others while this was going on, just lying through my teeth until Mr. D came back with results.

"So it is what I thought," the former god at least knew his shit. "A small part of it is grief, yes. That's what set it off, that's what brought the attention to you. But you do have depression. We're going to have to put you on a med for it. Take you off of the ADHD, because it's just waster money. And um..."

He paused for a second.

"We have to send you home, Percy." At least they weren't sending me to an institution or anything. "I'm sorry, I know you like being here when we don't have a war to fight. But if you're suicidal, we can trust that you won't do anything under no supervision. If you want, you can make the call. If not, we can. Chiron already has all of your stuff ready by the door. Does that make sense?'

I nodded my head.

"Yeah." I responded. "It does. I can call her."