Just one example of Steve reacting to Owen being a dick...
This might be a weird and biased interpretation, but to me all their interactions in these episodes read as Steve thinking "why do you insist on opposing me, I'm gonna have to take you down now".
Which is interesting, because he's new to the whole being in charge thing, he said himself he's never been in a position of power before, and for better or for worse he takes it very seriously. He's got an earnest desire to be a good leader and take care of the people, but also a perhaps unearned confidence in himself and the somewhat naive belief that he's secure in this position and his decisions by and large won't be questioned.
I think... I think in his mind Owen's attempts to undermine his authority are, while annoying, not a real threat; and he genuinely believes it's gonna be almost unfairly easy to deal with him should he push too hard. In the end he's even right about that, for a while at least.
Ain’t No Sunshine, modern royalty, 1970s au [read on ao3]
thank you as always to my darling @darkmagyk for taking a true story off the rails
May 3rd, 1979. The date seemed to jump off the page, the loud, bold text almost mocking her.
Not that she was keeping track, but it was just about four years to the day.
She’d woken up this morning, feeling kind of off, wandering around her apartment in a daze as she hustled her children out the door for daycare, losing time on her bus commute to work. It wasn’t until lunch, as she took the time to go through her day planner, that she realized: four years ago was when she had last seen Percy Jackson.
Though why Annabeth was thinking about him right this second was anyone’s guess.
Oh, sure, she’d thought about him a lot all throughout her pregnancy--thought about him, cursed his name, dreamed of strangling him for leaving her alone with these two absolute terrors--but as the years had gone by, and she had lost all hope of ever making contact with him again, he’d sort of fallen by the wayside of her thoughts. Something must have been going on with the navy mail system, because absolutely none of the letters or postcards she’d sent had ever been received, and she couldn’t reach out to Sally, since Annabeth had lost her address as well.
There was always the possibility that he… well, that he wasn’t around to receive letters anymore. But she tried not to think about it.
She tried her best not to think about him at all, these days.
Today, however, her childhood best friend turned US navy midshipman had popped up on her internal radar, and had just decided to take up residence in her brain. Her normally mind-numbing job couldn’t even properly distract her, and she spent all afternoon daydreaming about his messy, perpetually windswept hair, and his toothy, contagious smile, and his gorgeous green eyes like she was some kind of pathetic, lovestruck teenager, obsessing over her rockstar crush. Taking calls, scheduling appointments, and dodging the creepy advances of the assistant CFO were slightly more palatable if she had something pleasant to think about.
Old-fashioned romance was for suckers, anyway. Who needed it?
At least it was Friday. Fridays were KFC days, and she really did not need to accidentally burn dinner today. Again.
She hated it, but her kids loved it. God knows they could barely stomach whatever she usually attempted.
She sent them to bed early-ish, and settled down in front of the TV with a glass of wine. She didn’t usually indulge, but she had had such a weird day, she felt she deserved it.
Taking a long, long sip, she could no longer deny it: she really fucking missed Percy.
She missed him like she’d miss a missing limb, and it was all the more cruel because she’d lost him once, and miraculously found him again, on that fateful trip home from Athens. A military brat stuck at the American naval base in Spain to save money, waiting for a spare seat to open up on a plane so she could go home, by the sheer force of luck, she’d practically tripped and fallen into the lap of her childhood best friend.
And then she did trip into his lap. And then into his bed. And stupid, stupid, Annabeth, she’d always been so bad with her birth control.
Her little boy, he had blond hair, but sometimes he would look at her, or laugh at something, or drool in his sleep just like his daddy, and Annabeth thought she might just fucking die from it.
She loved her children, of course, how could she not? But she wasn’t about to deny it--sometimes, alone in parenthood, juggling dishes and laundry and schoolwork and life, she felt like she was drowning.
Sharp, piercing, the doorbell rang, knocking her out of her reverie. A little tipsy, still in her rumpled work clothes, she set the glass aside, and made her way to the door. “Mr. D,” she said, opening it, prepared speech all ready to go, “I told you, I’d have the rent for you by--”
She stopped, blinking, speechless. It was not Mr. D.
“Hey,” said the man outside her door. The ghost from another world that she had, apparently, conjured with her thoughts.
“...Hey.”
He smiled, a little strained, the light of the streetlamps casting harsh shadows on his face. “It’s good to see you.”
“How did you know where I lived?” It was, perhaps, not the most elegant thing to say, but she hadn’t exactly planned for what would happen when Percy Jackson, love of her life, father of her children, long-lost best friend wandered back into her life.
“Can I come in? Maybe for a Coke or something?” he asked, not answering her question.
She almost wanted to say no. For every letter never returned, for every month gone by without a word, for every day spent raising their children without him, not knowing if he was alive or dead--she almost said no.
But this was Percy. She could spare him a Coca Cola at least. “Sure,” she said, leaning away, “come on.”
“Great,” he said, and this time, his smile was all real.
So focused had she been on him, she hadn’t even clocked the older man who stood behind him. “Sir,” said the other man, with the air of a beleaguered secretary--and Annabeth would know, “I really must advise--”
“I’ll just be a minute,” said Percy, not even bothering to look back at him, pushing past Annabeth’s half-extended arm.
“But, sir, your father--”
Percy let the door shut in his face.
Annabeth raised an eyebrow. “Harsh.”
He shrugged. “Yeah, well… I’ll make it up to him later.”
“Who is he?”
But Percy didn’t answer. “Nice place you got here.”
He was being nice, of course. It was a craphole apartment in a craphole side of town--but the rent was cheap and the bus was convenient, and she only felt the slightest bit of shame as she led him to the craphole couch, handing him a coke from her craphole fridge. Christ, his suit looked like it cost more than her TV.
“Is your… husband home?” he asked, delicate.
“My what?”
“Your husband. I saw, um…” Embarrassed, he flicked his eyes to the ring on her left hand.
“Oh, this? It’s--it’s not--” Hastily, clumsily, she fumbles it off, pulling around the knuckle. “I’m not--I’m not.”
He blinked. “Oh.”
“Yeah, I just--it’s to ward off creepy guys, right? Like, they won’t take no for an answer unless they think they’ll have to deal with an angry husband, so I just…”
In her more pathetic moments, she pretended that it had been given to her by the man before her. She had picked something small and simple, something that she thought he might have gone with, and pretended he had slipped it into her pocket the day she left the naval base.
“That’s--cool. That’s great, I mean. I mean, that’s--”
“What do you want, Percy?”
Not at all bothered by the shortness of her tone, he sighed, closing his eyes. “I have a… personal question I need to ask you. And I’m sorry to bother you with this, I just--I have to ask.”
Ominous. “Okay?”
“Did we…” He sighed again, mouth twisting. “Did you, as a result of our repeated sexual encounters four years ago, happen to have any children by me?”
He just rattled it off, as if it was something he’d said over and over and over again, tired of receiving the same answer, but never expecting anything different.
“Excuse me?”
“I know, I know, it’s an extremely rude question, and I know I have no right to ask you, especially since it’s been so long, but I swear, there’s a reason I--”
“Did you never get any of the letters I sent you?”
At that, his head shot up. The look in his eyes could only be described as ‘terror.’ “What?”
“I must have sent you half a dozen,” she said, crossing to the kitchen, the wine making her a little bit short. She had, in fact, sent him eight letters, with pictures, and never received a single response, but since he seemed genuinely lost, she decided not to tell him. Plucking the most recent photo down from the fridge, she returned to the man in her living room, his knuckles white around the can.
Standing before him, she handed him the photograph. He took it, fingers shaking. “We… you…”
“Percy Jackson,” she said, like she was introducing him to someone at a party, “meet your children.”
Even after they had just been born, Annabeth had seen how obviously they were his. Only their daughter had the same messy black hair, both both had the same long, straight nose, the same intense, brooding brow as their father--and when her son smiled, or her daughter laughed, it was hard not to see the shades of Percy so strongly in them. It was hard to see them, too.
Percy’s mouth was trembling. His eyes were wide, glassy, fixed on the photo. “My--” he swallowed. “What--what are their names?”
“Alexander,” she said, softly, “and Anne--”
“Annemarie,” he breathed. “Alexander and Annemarie.” He looked up at her, his eyes shining. “You remembered?”
Of course she remembered. Two lonely kids, she and Percy had spent so much of their childhood together, playing house, building their perfect family, even if only in their imagination. Alexander for his mother’s cousin, and Annemarie because he had wanted to name their daughter Annabeth, and she wouldn’t let him. Twenty years later, alone and in pain, holding her newborn children and alternately cursing the man who made them and desperately wishing he were with her, Annabeth had known that they could only have one set of names, even if their father might never meet them.
His face crumpled. He dropped his head into his hand, and groaned, like someone had pressed on an open wound.
“Percy!” Annabeth sat down next to him, one hand on his shoulder, the other on his leg. Four years later and it still felt so natural to touch him like this. “Are you okay?”
Nodding, he grunted. “Yeah,” he croaked, voice hoarse, “I’m okay. I’m fine. I just--” And then he shuddered, a hand coming up to scrub at his eyes.
He was crying, she realized suddenly. Annabeth used to be the one that cried. She could count on one hand how many times she’d seen him cry. He hadn’t even cried when she had finally left the naval base.
Taking a shaking breath, he wiped his nose on the sleeve of his expensive suit. “I’m so sorry,” he whispered, shattered. “I didn’t--I never--if I had known, I swear, I would have left the navy. I would have come home.”
The silent, unspoken “to you” echoed in the dead air of her apartment. “Why didn’t you?” she asked, quietly.
They held each other’s eyes, an eternity passing in a heartbeat. Neither wanted to break the sacred silence, to bring words into the crystalline moment that hung in the balance between them.
“I never got your letters,” he said, tears in his eyes. “I… after you--left, I…” he sighed, aching. “I… got hurt. Bad.”
Annabeth couldn’t breathe.
“And,” he huffed a laugh, wet and messy, “and then I met my father. Can you believe it?”
Her eyes bugged out of her head. “You what?”
He nodded.
“He’s alive?”
Sally rarely spoke of him, and Percy had always refused to. Annabeth had just assumed he had died, years and years and years ago.
Percy laughed again, humorless. “He’s the king of Thera.”
Her jaw dropped. “He…”
“Yeah.”
“Are you shitting me?”
Shaking his head, he smiled, rueful. “I wish.”
Words from a half-remembered newscast floated through her mind. Alexander and Annemarie had been right terrors that night, and she had only been half-listening as the reporter informed the world that Triton, hereditary prince of Thera, had died, killed in military action. “He… found you?”
Percy nodded, miserable. “He told me--asked--told me to--to find anyone I might have…” And then he swallowed, tears in his eyes again, real, glistening tears. “And I am so, so sorry, I know--I know your job is here, and your whole life, and the children, but I--”
She took his hand in hers, squeezing gently so he didn’t fly away. “It’s okay,” she said. “Just say it.”
“I’m supposed to--I’m supposed to… if you would… come with me,” he trailed off, suddenly shy.
For the second time tonight, she felt like she’d been hit with a sledgehammer. “...What?”
“He… my father… the king wants--needs heirs. He… he asked for a list of women, and I… gave him your name.” Stomach hot, Annabeth wished she had the courage to know about the other women on that list. Or to ask why Percy, young and handsome as he’d been at both twelve and twenty, wasn’t out there making some new ones himself. Why was he chasing down old leads? Why was he chasing down Chase bastards? “You’d--you’d live in the castle,” he said, like he was trying to sell her on it, though she could tell his heart wasn’t really in it, “and we, well, we’d technically have to get married, but that doesn’t need to be a big deal. You’d get your own rooms. You can set them up however you want. And you’d have a personal staff, a stipend, and the kids would get private teachers, and--”
“Staff?”
He blinked, caught off guard. “Yes?”
Staff. Someone to do the laundry and clean the dishes. Someone to cook dinner and look after the house. Someone to help. Someone to do all the parental things that she just could not do, not by herself. Not without him.
“I know I have no right to ask this of you,” he said, squeezing her hand. His hand was just as big as she remembered, and just as warm. “And I would never, ever force you to do anything that you wouldn’t want to--”
“Yes,” she said, interrupting him.
He blinked, dumbly. “What?”
“Yes. I’ll come with you. We all will.”
“...Oh. Uh, great. That’s--that’s good. Are you sure?” He looked like a lost little dolphin, eyes huge and uncertain, and then, Annabeth did the one thing that she’d been desperately wanting to do for the last four years.
She pulled his face to hers, and she kissed him. Shocked, he stiffened, almost pulling away--before relaxing into her, cupping her face in his big, warm hand. Eyes closed, they leaned their heads against each other, sharing air once more for the first time in years. She had lost him twice already: once as a child, when her father had decided to move her across the country, and once as a lovestruck college girl, when she had to leave the naval base, four years ago. She wasn’t about to lose him for a third time.
And for the first time in forever, she no longer felt like she was drowning.
