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Seeking -- roommate for woman and baby. 2bed, 1 bath. East Harlem. Serious inquiries only. Call number below.
“I guess the whole ‘baby’ thing was a dealbreaker, huh?” Sally whispers. The walls here are paper-thin, and her neighbors thinking she’s crazy and talking to herself is about the last thing she needs right now. “We’ll find someone, don’t worry. Someone will call tomorrow, I’m sure of it. We’ll figure something out.”
Percy says nothing in response. He’s kind of a baby, and also asleep, tucked into his little crib next to Sally’s bed.
“Or I’ll just talk to the landlord again. Get an extension on rent,” she muses as she heads into the kitchen. She’s deserved a cup of tea or something after the day she’s had. Her stove is kind of terrible and leans to one side, but it holds the kettle and it turns on, so Sally really has no right to complain. She turns from the sink with a full kettle, ready to put it on her stupid stove and--
There’s a goddess at her kitchen table.
The kettle clatters to the floor, water spilling over Sally’s socks. She doesn’t pay it any attention. There’s a goddess at her table.
The woman’s skin is shifting between shades of blue and green. Her hair is a mass of coral pink curls bound up in a net of white pearls. Her face-- with a square jaw and a bright eyes-- is set in a scowl, her look appraising and suspicious.
“What did he see in you?” the goddess wonders. Her voice breaks over Sally like a wave, low but powerful.
Sally wracks her memory-- this is almost certainly Amphitrite, AKA the wife of Sally’s child’s father. But she doesn’t remember any stories of Amphitrite, other than that she didn’t want to marry Poseidon. What can she say to get out of this? Historically speaking, the mistress meeting with a goddess doesn’t tend to end in the mistress living to tell about it.
She forces herself to calm down, using those breathing techniques that a friend of a friend of a friend learned at therapy.
“Does it matter?” Sally eventually squeaks out. “He left. So it must not have been all that great.”
Amphitrite scoffs. “And yet he lays in our bed and doesn’t even try to pretend he’s not pining for you. So. What’s so impressive about you?”
“No idea.” Swallowing and shrugging, Sally bends down to pick up the dropped kettle. She should be courteous. “Would you like some tea?”
The question catches Amphitrite off-guard-- good. Knowing that the other woman is just a person capable of being surprised will help Sally calm down.
“It’s passionflower. Supposed to be good for sleep,” she continues, hoping that it will entice the goddess to answer.
Out of the corner of her eye, Sally watches Amphitrite’s stance change. She straightens her posture and cocks her head. “I would.”
Sally nods, and refills the kettle. While it boils, she mops up the water from the floor, because she doesn’t need water damage for the landlord to get mad about, and thinks about what else she can offer. The gods like good hosts, right? She’s offered tea, does she have cookies? Nothing that goes with tea, but a quick check of the cupboard above the stove reveals an unopened thing of Oreos. She opens them and sets them in the middle of the table.
“Do you have a preference for mugs? I only have a few, but you can take your pick.” She gestures to another cupboard, open to show her impressive collection of 3 whole mugs. When Amphitrite stands, she’s shorter than Sally. Her feet are bare, and her toes are webbed.
She picks up the mug with a crab on it, which says “DON’T BOTHER ME -- I'M CRABBY”. She smiles a bit at it. “This one.”
When the water is done boiling, Sally fills the crab mug as well as her obligatory “I <3 NYC” one, then pokes the teabags down under the water with a spoon and carries them back to the table. She lets Amphitrite sit first, then takes the other seat for herself.
The silence is crushing while they wait for their tea to steep.
Women who sleep with gods don’t make it out alive. Sally knows this. “I understand if you want to kill me,” she states. “But my son hasn’t done anything to deserve your anger. He’s just a baby. It’s not his fault that I slept with Poseidon.”
“Is that what you think I’m here to do?” Amphitrite demands, suddenly angry. “Kill your son? Do I look like Hera?”
“Of course not,” she corrects quickly. “Just please, make sure he’s cared for once you kill me. I’m the one who wronged you, not Percy.”
Wrapping her fingers around the mug turns the skin there greener. Sally wonders how that works-- does she just adapt to the temperature of whatever’s around her? Will it hurt if Amphitrite touches her with hot water hands?
“You’re not like the others. The other women my husband has bedded. They all begged for their lives. Offered excuses. Offered their children to me, like their lives and their childrens’ were interchangeable,” Amphitrite muses. “Why haven’t you done the same?”
“Because it’s not his fault. It’s mine, for agreeing to it. I didn’t have to sleep with Poseidon, and I didn’t have to carry Percy to term, and I didn’t have to keep him once I did. But I chose to, so if anyone is going to be punished for that, it should be me. Not him.”
Smiling ruefully, Amphitrite looks at her with something unidentifiable in her eyes. “You’ve thought about this.”
Sally shrugs. “To be honest? I’ve been waiting for this. Ever since Poseidon told me who he was, I’ve been waiting for you to show up.”
“And you were prepared to die for your son.”
“Of course.” That’s one answer Sally doesn’t have to think about. “I’m the only thing protecting him. He’s three months old. It’s not like he can hold his own against you.”
“But you think you can?”
“I think I have to try.” Sally pulls the teabag from her mug and drains it against a spoon. She tosses it into the sink. This turns out to be a bad choice, seeing as how the loud noise startles a cry out of Percy in the next room. And then the crying doesn’t stop.
Cursing, Sally abandons the goddess at her kitchen table, rushing back to her bedroom to see to her son. Percy generally isn’t a fussy baby, but if he’s crying then he’s crying and that’s how Sally has racked up an unfortunate collection of noise complaints from her neighbors. Even after checking his diaper, holding him close, turning on the light, and singing to him, the only solution Sally tends to find for him crying is to just let him cry it out.
“Give him to me,” she hears from behind her. Amphitrite steps into the room, her arms outstretched for the baby. “I’ve raised four children to adulthood. I can calm him.”
The idea of handing over her baby to anyone, much less his father’s likely vengeful wife, isn’t at the top of Sally’s list, but she’s closer to eviction than she’d like. She can’t risk many more noise complaints. Reluctantly, she hands Percy to Amphitrite.
“The trick,” she explains, “is white noise.” She purses her lips as if to shush the baby, but the sound that comes out is instead the rhythmic rumble of waves against a shoreline. And sure enough, Percy calms right down, his big green eyes fixed on Amphitrite’s bright hair in its pearly net.
Sally slumps onto the bed. “That was so fast.”
Amphitrite doesn’t stop her shushing, but the corners of her lips do curl up a bit and her white gaze flicks to meet Sally’s. Once she has Percy back to sleep and settled back into his crib, she leans against the side of it.
“Since you’re going to kill me, please give him to someone who can calm him like that.” Sally wraps her fingers around the bars of the crib.
“I’ll just teach you.”
Sally’s head jolts up to look at the goddess in her bedroom. Catching her gaze, Amphitrite shrugs. “I was never going to kill you. I really did just want to see what Poseidon saw in you that was so special. I called it ‘pining’ earlier, but ‘moping’ would probably be a better descriptor for his mood lately. Has he met the baby?”
Sally shakes her head. “I told him not to come back.” At Amphitrite’s look, she continues. “Last time I saw him, he told me that I was pregnant, he was a god, and that he wanted to build me a palace at the bottom of the ocean and keep me as his queen. I refuse to be a homewrecker. Voluntarily, at least.”
She can’t quite identify the look Amphitrite is giving her. She hopes it’s good. They’re both quiet for a few moments, looking down at the sleeping Percy.
“Percy, you said his name is?”
“Perseus. He was the only Greek hero I’ve ever heard of who got anything close to a happy ending. I guess I hoped that would rub off on him.”
Again, Amphitrite stays silent. Then, when she speaks, Sally almost can’t believe what comes out of her mouth. “Teaching you would be too much trouble. I’ll just have to stay and do it myself.”
Mouth gaping, eyes wide, Sally can hardly respond. “What?”
“I heard you. Earlier. You’re looking for a roommate, yes? I’ll help you.”
Amphitrite walks back out into the kitchen, where her tea is almost certainly oversteeped by now. Sally follows like a lost puppy, unable to do anything else. “Won’t Poseidon--”
“Poseidon never notices when I’m gone. We haven’t had a real conversation in millenia. Kymopoleia is more likely to notice that I’m gone and she doesn’t even live in the same sea as us. I’ll be back in the morning to… you still sign leases in this city, right?”
Mizuha Uchiume shows up the next day, an otherwise inconspicuous woman with coral-pink hair showing black roots. She doesn’t bring much with her, just a box of clothes and some other knick knacks. For all intents and purposes, she’s just a recent college graduate looking to make her fortune in the Big Apple. The landlord doesn’t care, so long as she doesn’t bring anything unsavory into the building and can pay her rent (she can, though Sally doesn’t know where the money comes from), and so within days Sally goes from having her son as her only friend in the world to having a roommate who probably doesn’t want her head on a pike. Little victories, right?
Behind closed doors, Mizuha morphs back into Amphitrite, but keeps the overalls and striped turtleneck. “It’s easy enough to swim in robes,” she explains when Sally asks, “but for the land, trousers really are a must.”
That trick with the white noise? Amphitrite was right, Sally couldn’t replicate it if she tried, but that’s why Amphitrite is there. Not to mention that having a roommate who doesn’t have to work means Sally doesn’t have to worry about hiring a babysitter.
“Why don’t you just let me take care of all the rent?” Amphitrite asks as Sally leaves for her job. Percy is burbling in her arms, still quite taken with her hair but still unable to reach it. “I’m already just making it up for myself.”
Sally shakes her head as she laces up her boots (a necessity in all this snow). “I can’t just freeload off you. It’s a pride thing. If I just sat down and let you take care of us like that, it would have been easier for me to just say yes to that whole ‘palace’ thing.”
She watches Amphitrite tense at the mention of Poseidon’s offer, but she doesn’t acknowledge it. The sooner they get over having shared a man the better, and Sally figures the best way to do that is to treat it as something casual and desensitize her new roommate to the idea.
“Pride.” Amphitrite shakes her head dismissively. “Letting people care for you isn’t an insult, right? All it is is an assessment of your needs by the people around you and a willingness to ease your burdens,” she explains to Percy, who has decided that Amphitrite’s puka shell necklace will do in lieu of her hair. He gives her a gummy smile, and Sally watches as Amphitrite’s own lips curl up at the corners.
Sally returns from work that night to find Amphitrite looking through the fridge with Percy on one hip. Percy squeals when he sees her enter the apartment, and lifts one of his chubby baby arms at her. Sally grins and wiggles her free hand at him.
“You don’t have any food here.” Amphitrite can’t even be bothered to turn around. Thankfully, she hasn’t made any appear, even though Sally is sure she has the power to do so. She can create money out of thin air, so why not pizza? Sally would have to find some way to repay her if that were the case, but what can she offer a goddess who can literally materialize anything she desires from nothing?
After she shakes the bag in her hands, Amphitrite turns to look at her. “I brought takeout. To celebrate you moving in. I didn’t know what you like, so I picked up some kofta. I hope that’s alright.”
She sets the bag down on the table and reaches out for Percy. Amphitrite dutifully passes Percy off to her, then starts rummaging through the takeout containers. Poseidon had never been picky about food, nor had Sally ever been the one to pick where they ate (if they ate at all past shaved ice from a vendor on the beach), but now she’s regretting never asking about his eating habits. Do Greek gods have a special diet? Is there some ancient Greek equivalent of the kashrut that Sally just violated?
Amphitrite lifts a skewer of lamb from a bag. She inspects it, surreptitiously sniffs it, and then sets it back down. “It’ll do. You need more food around the house, though. Takeout cannot sustain us forever.”
Retrieving plates, Sally relaxes. “I have the day off tomorrow, we can go to the store then. Pick up whatever you want. If we’re going to be living together, I should probably learn to make things you like.”
“Nonsense. If you insist on working, then I can cook.” Amphitrite dismisses the notion.
“You don’t have to do that, really. You’re already taking care of Percy--”
“Again. I’ve raised four children, and godlings stay babies longer than humans do. I can care for Percy with my eyes closed.”
Sally tenses. “Please do not do that.”
“I said I can , not that I will . My aim is not to kill you, remember.”
Amphitrite helps herself to the kofta while Sally fixes up a bottle for Percy. “Maybe godlings are different, but Percy won’t stop going for your hair if he can see it like that.” Sally nods to Amphitrite’s hair, still in its pearl net.
One of Amphitrite’s hands flies to the curls by the side of her face. It’s attractive, Sally will admit, but it’s not conducive to a baby with grabby hands. “And yours is better?”
Sally’s own hair tends to stay in a bun, where Percy can’t see it, or in a ponytail, where he can’t reach it. Whatever curls that escape are too short for Percy to get to. She shrugs at Amphitrite. “He can’t pull it, can he?”
Amphitrite hums, considering it, then goes back to her kofta. “My hair was different then,” she muses. “I wore it in braids.”
“When did you stop?” Sally sits down across from her. Percy is calm in her arms.
“Rhode-- my eldest daughter-- when she married Helios, I gave her the pins I used to hold the braids in place. They were always her favorite.” Amphitrite’s voice is distant, her eyes unfocused. “I haven’t seen her since, but I hope she’s been able to give them some use.”
“I’m sure she has,” Sally reassures her. “If I had anything from my mother, I would use it until it fell apart.”
“Do you not have anything from her?”
Sally shakes her head. “She and my dad died when I was little, and my uncle sold all of their belongings to pay for funeral costs. If he kept anything of hers, it didn’t make its way to me. That’s alright, though. I have memories of her, and that’s enough.” She also sees her mother every time she looks in the mirror, but that’s neither here nor there. “Things are just things.”
“Truly.”
The next morning, Sally wakes to find Amphitrite already prepared to leave for the store. Before going to get herself ready, she teaches Amphitrite how to work the coffee machine.
Amphitrite, it turns out, does not like black coffee, and certainly doesn’t understand why Sally drinks so much of it if she doesn’t like it either. Apparently gods don’t need as much sleep as humans.
“It’s not about liking it,” Sally explains. “It’s about the effect it has. Like alcohol.” She presumes.
The scrunch of Amphitrite’s nose makes it worth it. “False. Alcohol tastes wonderful.”
“Well, I wouldn’t really know.” Sally was never much of a partier in high school, her uncle didn’t keep alcohol in the house, and she was pregnant when she turned 21, so she hasn’t exactly gotten the chance to figure out if drunk is a thing she wants to try being. Probably not. She’s seen the effect it has on other people, and she doesn’t need that kind of behaviour around her son. “I’m not a huge drinker.”
“Hm,” Amphitrite hums instead of actually responding. While Sally’s back was turned, putting Percy into the chest carrier she got at a thrift shop, Amphitrite has put Mizuha back on. This time, she has a pair of clips keeping her hair out of her face, shaped like crab claws.
Her last roommate, someone she’d met through friends and who had to move home to take over the family business, had always been the one to do the grocery shopping. Sally would work during the day at whatever job she could get, Francis would pick up night shifts as a hospital secretary, and whichever of them was home would take care of Percy. Being on the home guard during the day meant going to the store while it was open. Sally can’t remember where Francis used to go for groceries, having only gone alone once or twice, but there’s a series of shops a few blocks down that will do for the time being.
“Will this… bodega have alcohol? I don’t think you’ve had the right kind, if you think it’s just for the effect,” Amphitrite asks as they walk to their first stop.
Sally chuckles. “Nothing worth what you’ll pay for it. Good alcohol is expensive. The stuff you’ll find here will get you drunk, but you won’t enjoy a sip of it.” Or so she’s heard.
Sure enough, between the bodega (which is more of a necessary cultural experience for Amphitrite than anything else), the butcher, the bakery, and a farmers’ market, they find everything they need for the next few days. Sally insists on paying for it all.
“Last I was aware of it, roommates would split costs,” Amphitrite observes loudly when Sally pulls out her wallet for the bodega attendant.
Shaking her head, Sally settles the bill and leads Amphitrite back out to the street. “You’re taking care of Percy all day. Consider this your payment!”
Amphitrite doesn’t look the least bit convinced, but she doesn’t argue the point further which is good enough. “What else do we need?” she asks instead of pursuing the argument.
“That depends,” Sally says. “Do you have any dietary restrictions? I don’t know about ancient Greeks, but I know that a lot of religions have rules about what you can and can’t eat and how it has to be prepared and all that.”
“Nothing of the sort,” Amphitrite states. “Although… I have eaten little but seafood for the past several thousand years and could do with any change you can provide.”
Sally, who doesn’t really do seafood anyways (her parents and uncle had disliked it, so she never got the chance to try it growing up and then had no inclination to it as an adult), has no problems with this, and knows a great recipe for pork chops.
Amphitrite, they find, likes pork chops.
Among other things that Sally learns about her self-appointed roommate over the next few months, Amphitrite isn’t a jealous goddess. She explains that the definition of marriage she’d learned as a child had merely been a promise to have children-- marriages that didn’t produce children could be annulled on that basis alone. As soon as Triton, their eldest child, was born, Poseidon and Amphitrite’s marriage broke even. Amphitrite understood that her husband was fair game again.
“I really was just curious about what drew Poseidon to you.” Though Mizuha isn’t a face she wears around the house, Amphitrite has adopted a few traits of that form-- namely, she keeps her hair shorter now, though still long enough to tie back when the mood strikes her. “Though I’m quite intrigued by your culture’s take on marriage. ‘’Till death do us part’, is that right?”
This of course means that Amphitrite herself has no obligation to return to Atlantis. Poseidon does much of the governing himself, with Triton doing the rest in preparation for the day his father fades (not anytime soon, but nothing lives forever), leaving Amphitrite to do as she wishes most of the time. If they need her help, they apparently know how to reach her, but for some reason Sally doesn’t think that anyone will be reaching out. She gets the idea that Amphitrite didn’t decide to come meet her on a whim, and that she didn’t leave Atlantis on a happy note.
But in the meantime, she’s a wonder with Percy.
All of the problems that Sally had been having? Amphitrite knows how to solve them. Like how Percy’s always been a terror to bathe, because he refuses to be wet. Amphitrite can apparently nullify that power in him. Sally kind of feels bad for laughing, but watching the confused look on Percy’s face when the water wouldn’t bed to his tiny will? It doesn’t get much funnier than that. Or how she can just make his clothes appear on him, no fuss needed. Naked baby one minute, clothed baby the next. Everyone is happier without those fights every day.
So, yeah. Life is easier with Amphitrite around. Sally had resigned herself to being a single mom. She has a problem with accepting charity, and Poseidon’s whole “palace” offer had been a big no-no. Amphitrite’s presence had originally just been Sally trying to delay her inevitable death, but now she realizes that Amphitrite really is getting something out of this: Percy.
Sally gets the feeling that Amphitrite has missed having a baby to take care of. She’d explained that godlings just decide to be grown up one day, and four times she’d turned around to find that her children-- the equivalent of grade-schoolers-- had become strapping adults without warning, and after that it was just a matter of time until she and her son grew apart and her daughters were married off and sent away to every corner of the world.
With Percy, there’s no danger of that. He’ll have to grow up the boring, mortal way, complete with puberty and birthdays and K-12 education, and marry whoever he chooses and, in all likelihood, stay close to home. And with Amphitrite around, Percy growing up may even be possible. Monsters, which had been snuffling around the edges of Sally’s life for the past year, don’t dare to come within a block now. To them, it seems, a baby demigod snack isn’t worth fighting the queen of the oceans. The celestial bronze knife she’d conned out of Poseidon now gathers dust in her nightstand.
And, of course, Amphitrite is much more pleasant to be around than Poseidon.
Poseidon was a nice man, charming enough to sweep Sally off her feet in a whirlwind romance, but Amphitrite is actually interested in Sally as a person. They cook together sometimes-- an activity Amphitrite enjoys more than Sally does, who’s come to see it more as a chore but still demands to do it herself when she arrives home before Amphitrite can do it herself-- or they just joke around. Amphitrite has some thousands of years of pop culture to get caught up on, and Sally is just plugged-in enough to point her at the things most worth her attention. The books, the films (Amphitrite really got a kick out of the TV), current events. About three months into their cohabitation, she returns from work to find that Amphitrite procured an NES and a game called ‘Bubble Bobble’, which fascinates Percy to watch and gives Amphitrite and Sally something to experience together for the first time within the confines of their tiny apartment.
After one last round of Bubble Bobble, Percy already tucked away for the night, Sally lets her head slump back on the chair. “This is nice,” she comments. “I haven’t just gotten to lay back and have fun with a friend for a while.”
Amphitrite lets the controller come to rest in her lap. “Why not?”
Shrugging, Sally puts her controller down too. “Well. Working at all hours has kind of been how I conduct my entire life, which didn’t leave me with a bunch of time to spend with other people, and then I got pregnant. And no twenty year old can have fun with a pregnant girl around. Then between work and Percy, I didn’t really have the time or energy to go hang out with anyone. Any friends I had were just people from work, who I would inevitably stop talking to when I got fired.”
She stands to turn off the system. “I’d forgotten how nice it is.”
Amphitrite frowns. “That’s rude of them. Right when you needed them most?”
“Yep.”
“That was shitty of them.” Another thing Amphitrite has picked up-- 20th-century cursing.
“I don’t think so. I’m not much fun to be around while I’m distracted with a baby.”
“Why do you insist on doing that?”
Sally looks back at her roommate. Amphitrite’s pretty face is screwed up into a scowl. “What?”
“Blaming everything on yourself. You always do it.”
“What, is it so bad to take responsibility for my life?”
“I think that the problem isn’t always with you. That wasn’t about you not being fun anymore, that was about your friends not being willing to support you in your greatest hour of need. What would you do if Percy did that to any of his friends?”
Sally reels. “I--”
“If Triton or Rhode or Kymopoleia or Benthesikyme did that to any of their friends, I would be embarrassed to call them my children. It’s abhorrent. Sally.” Amphitrite rises from her seat as she speaks, her voice lowering and her eyes glowing faintly. She steps closer. Sally almost instinctively backs away, but Amphitrite still approaches. Within moments she’s close enough to touch, and she rests her frigid hands against Sally’s arms.
Her eyes fade back down to just their normal brilliance, and her expression twists again into something softer and… more desperate? “You’re deserving of basic respect and kindness. You know that, right?”
Sally pulls her arms tighter against herself, and out of Amphitrite’s cold grasp. “I know,” she echoes. Even to her own ears the words are empty. Insincere.
“What will it take for you to respect yourself?” Amphitrite demands.
Backing away, Sally retreats towards her room. “Good night, Amphitrite.” She shoves the door shut behind her.
Amphitrite knows his presence better than she knows her own.
It wakes her from her slumber, but she doesn’t mourn the loss. She doesn’t need sleep, after all. The little alarm clock Sally had insisted on glows on the nightstand, red numbers declaring 2:27. She slides from her bed-- the sheets are worn and soft, secondhand, but they’re the best sheets Amphitrite has ever known-- and ghosts down the hallway.
She finds her quarry in Sally’s room. As she enters, she whispers a spell to keep Sally from waking. It wouldn’t do to wake her. She has work in the morning.
“Husband,” she whispers.
Poseidon’s back is to her, but she doesn’t need to see his face. It changes with his whims. She can tell even without seeing that he’s holding Percy.
“You shouldn’t be here.”
He turns slightly, finally acknowledging her. “Neither should you, Wife.”
“She hasn’t told me to get out, has she?” Amphitrite comes around to the other side of the bed. Poseidon has never been fond of keeping smaller forms, and that holds true now-- Percy is absolutely dwarfed in his hands. “You definitely shouldn’t be holding him.”
He pouts. “Begrudge a man to hold his son, Amphy.”
She effortlessly appropriates the child. “Don’t call me that. And I absolutely will not begrudge you this. Sally doesn’t want you here,” Amphitrite hisses.
Raising his hands placatingly, Poseidon steps back. “I can’t recall the last time I heard such hostility from you,” he notes, but it’s clear in his voice that he doesn’t see her as a threat. He’s probably right to not fear her, not here. She wouldn’t dare risk Percy or Sally.
“They’re worth it,” she explains. “And they’re vulnerable. To people like you .”
“Amphitrite.” His voice washes over her, and if she didn’t know he knew better, she would say there was calming magic in the name. “I didn’t come here to hurt them. Or take them. I just wanted to check up on them. You haven’t spoken to us in months.”
She lays Percy back down in his crib. “I figured you wouldn’t notice my absence.”
“Of course I would. You’re my wife.”
She finally looks up to meet his gaze. He looks like he did on the day she met him as a new god, with dark curly hair and stunning green eyes that both make her want to declare her eternal love and fall to her knees begging for mercy. It’s no wonder she’d run from him then.
“I’ve missed you,” he tells her.
“And I, you,” she admits. “But I had to see what was so appealing about this one. You were so sad when she dismissed you.” Amphitrite looks down to where Sally is sleeping, her face turned as always towards Percy.
“And have you seen it?” he asks, drawing her attention up to him and his kind, deep eyes.
Amphitrite can’t help but let her gaze fall back to Sally. Her brown hair is all beneath her head or behind it, and her lips are parted in slumber. She’s beautiful. “She has been nothing but kind to me since I appropriated her apartment and demanded to help raise her son. She has taught me how to live in a world unfamiliar to me. She has listened while I complain about everything and hasn’t asked a thing of me other than that I not give her the help she needs. Without question, I have never met a person more deserving of the kindness they show others. Nor have I met another person so obstinately against receiving that kindness.”
Poseidon grins. “She’s an easy person to love.”
Grinning back, Amphitrite closes her eyes and huffs out a laugh. “The easiest.” They stand in silence for a few minutes. “She’s infuriating.”
“That, too.” He reaches out to her, one thick hand brushing a stray lock of hair behind her ear. “I like the haircut. It suits you.”
She slowly raises her own hand to lay over his, keeping it where he’d let it rest against her cheek. “You think?”
He hums affirmatively, and now with the contact between them she can feel the sound rumble in his chest.
Gods aren’t made with fidelity in their bones. They live too long to be content with that kind of stagnancy, and Poseidon is among the worst of them: the sea flowing through him won’t let him stay in the same place too long. Amphitrite was that way in her youth, too , but just as she taught it to her own children, her mother made sure she knew when to plant her feet.
“Wait for me, Husband. I’ll see about talking her around to letting you visit.”
He presses a hairy kiss to her other cheek. “No rush. Take all the time you need.”
“Thank you.”
Sally makes a noise from the bed, turning over in her sleep, and Amphitrite knows that her spell is running out. She drags Poseidon’s head down to kiss his brow, and whispers a quick goodbye. “Don’t let her catch you here until then.”
“Of course, my pearl,” he whispers back, and dissolves into mist before her eyes. “ Beloved Amphitrite ,” she hears as she absconds from the room.
“Beloved Poseidon,” she answers when she returns to her room. She lays back down, and returns to sleep, remembering how nice it was to have someone to call her beloved .
Well. She’s a convincing person. Let this not be where Sally learns to put her foot down.
“You seem chipper,” Sally notes. Percy is still asleep, so they’ve left him in his crib: as long as he’s asleep, he can’t be causing trouble as he’s been so fond of lately. Eventually he’ll wake up and start being a menace, but by that point Sally will probably already be on her way to work and Amphitrite will get to deal with it.
Amphitrite nods as she takes a sip of her tea. She makes a face at her mug, and instantly the steam wafting from it lessens. Sally smiles at the scene as she turns to make her own hot morning energy beverage. “Poseidon was here last night.”
Nearly fumbling the coffee creamer, Sally’s heart stutters in her chest. “Was he, now.”
“He wanted to talk to me,” Amphitrite explains. A tiny smile graces her lips. “He’s missed me, apparently.”
Sally nods along and prays to whatever god is listening that Amphitrite can’t tell how anxious such a simple statement has made her. “He wants you to go back to Atlantis, I presume?”
“Eventually, yes. But there’s no rush.”
Sally does her breakfast dishes slowly as an excuse to not turn around. “I don’t mean to be rude, but how long do you plan on staying?”
There’s the sound of the mug making contact with the table. “Until Percy is grown, or until you decide it’s time for me to leave. Whichever comes first.” There’s something unidentifiable in the goddess’ voice.
“If they need you back in Atlantis--”
“Sally,” Amphitrite says, halfway between sharp and gentle. “As long as you want me here, I’ll stay. The moment that isn’t true, I’ll leave, but I want to help you. Let me help you. Please,” the goddess states. Says. Asks. Begs.
Turning, Sally meets Amphitrite’s pleading gaze. Her white eyes, her pink brows furrowed into an expression foreign to her. The sight of it makes Sally’s eyes well up-- when was the last time someone looked at her like that?
“Please,” Amphitrite repeats. “Let me do more than wash the dishes and care for Percy. Let me cook for you. Let me give you gifts. Let me repay the kindness you’ve shown me. Let me show you just an ounce of the kindness that you’ve shown to every person you meet.”
Sally coughs out a watery laugh, willing the tears to stay where they belong in her eyes. “Do I have a choice?”
“Of course you do.” Amphitrite stands and walks over to her, her feet silent against the tile and her hands warm from the tea when she cups them around Sally’s cheeks. She drags her thumb under Sally’s eyes and wipes away the tears. “The choice has always been yours.”
They stand like that for a long moment, neither of them saying anything while Sally tries to compose herself.
Finally, finally plucking up every ounce of courage in her body, Sally assents. “Alright. Take good care of me.”
Amphitrite presses a kiss to Sally’s forehead, and she can feel the grin against her skin. When she pulls away, the smile on Amphitrite’s face is nothing short of beatific. “At last. Wonderful. Thank you, beloved Sally, thank you for letting me.” She showers Sally’s face in more little kisses, and heat rises to her cheeks like water being pulled up from a well.
Pulling away and rubbing her thumb over Sally’s cheek one more time, Amphitrite rounds back to the table and reaches for the newspaper.
“What are you doing ?” she asks, her emotions running all over the place and pulling a laugh unbidden from her chest at the sight of a goddess in an oversized, second-hand NYU sweatshirt flipping through the morning paper.
“First things first! A nicer apartment,” Amphitrite declares. Sally can’t see it, but she can still hear the smile in her voice. “The water pressure here can’t be saved. How do you feel about this one?”
Sally looks down at the advertisement Amphitrite is pointing out to her, and balks at the price listed. “Not a chance--”
“I’ll take care of it, of course. The rent. I’ll cover rent and utilities, you can cover groceries and such.”
“Let me take half, at least, Amphitrite, please.”
Amphitrite grins at her again. “This is my way of taking care of you, Sally. Let me?”
Sally looks down at the listing again. The place is nice, and if she thinks of it as Amphitrite paying her for an excuse to stay out of Atlantis…
“Fine. If you insist.”
Giddily, Amphitrite presses another exuberant kiss to her cheek. “I can’t wait.”