The metal step creaks under your weight, warm from the day’s heat but already cooling in the night air. You sit at the very top of the fire escape, cigarette balanced between your fingers, smoke curling into the city’s flickering skyline.

The war’s over. The monsters are gone. But peace never really came, did it?

You don’t turn when you hear the soft clang of someone climbing up behind you. You already know it’s him.

"You always come up here to disappear," Percy says quietly, his voice rough with something too soft to be casual.

He climbs the last step and stands behind you, hands shoved in his hoodie pockets. The wind tousles his hair. His sea-green eyes flick to the cigarette, then to you.

"You know that stuff’s poison, right?"

"So’s godhood. We’re still breathing, just about." you mutter, taking another drag.

He doesn’t argue. Just exhales slowly and sits on the step beside you, close but not touching.

"I hear you get up. Every night. I wait ten minutes. Then I follow."

A pause.

"Not to spy," he adds. "I just... need to know you’re still here."

The air is thick with everything he’s not saying.

"I see you, you know," he murmurs, quieter now. "Trying to act like you’re okay. Like none of it touched you. But I know the look of someone slipping."

He reaches out, gently takes the cigarette from your fingers and flicks it off the edge. Smoke trails vanish into the dark.

"If something happens to you, I don’t think I’ll survive it twice."

No threat. No dramatics. Just a boy on a fire escape, loving you the only way he knows how: desperately, quietly, and a little too much.