Hello everyone and HAPPY BIRTHDAY PERCY JACKSON! My amazing friend and I have a date tomorrow which will consist of buying juice, French fries, buying a Percy Jackson colouring book that we will then mail to each other back and forth across the country, and colouring in the mall. It will be glorious. Also I am fully energised by the glorious tweets of Rick Riordan, as I always am, and am pleased to know that we will be FINALLY AT LONG LAST meeting Percy's baby sister in the next Magnus Chase book. All of these factors mean BOOM, birthday story.

Disclaimer: I own nothing. Still. As you know. Seriously, I've been doing this for six years.

tw: domestic abuse

Sugar and Spice

Percy's birthdays at Camp were pretty routine. He woke up. The Hermes Cabin would have TPed his cabin. Chiron would call Cabins 1-3 to the service table first at breakfast, and Jason and Nico would even let Percy go first (at least for breakfast). Annabeth would kiss him once for every year he'd been alive during the day and swore to murder him for every year if he died. As a birthday present, the counselors would switch out their chores so that Percy would be doing something fun (like swordfighting classes) or easy (like pulling the canoes in and out of the lake at the start and end of every day). It was a day of mourning as well, so people liked having something to take their minds off of things. Percy and Annabeth had taken to wearing their bathing suits under their clothes because at some point an angry mob would plough across camp and dump Percy and Annabeth into the lake. They would stay there for a while. Grover would make some time to play hacky sack or kick-the-can or sit in the shade under Thalia's tree for a while. He would open the birthday care package that Mom always oh-so-sneakily hid in his trunk, and he'd send her an Iris Message to say thank you for the blue candies, blue balloons, new socks dotted with whales or fish or octopi, sunglasses, Pringles, whatever it was.

What Percy didn't expect was what Mom did on his nineteenth birthday, when they were all supposed to go to Montauk for the first weekend after school started again. Since they never vacationed all together in the summer, this was Mom's compromise. Besides, now Harper was old enough to walk and so he could waddle with her into the waves now and dig holes in the sand big enough to plop her down in. She'd think that was hilarious.

Anyways that was the plan until they pulled up to the cabin and he saw ten other people sitting in front of the cottage wearing birthday hats, bathing suits and bigass smiles. There was Annabeth, of course- with the biggest grin of all. Jason and Piper, Hazel and Frank, Leo and Grover, Reyna and Nico, Tyson and Thalia…

« What? » He asked, propping Harper up on his wrist and climbing out of the car.

"Happy Birthday, sweetheart!" Mom smiled. "Surprised?"

"How in the world did you get everybody here at once?" Percy said. "That's… like… impossible."

"As it turns out your mother and I are basically undefeatable when we join forces," Annabeth said. She kissed Harper's forehead and then Percy after. That was fair.

"Can you come in the water now, Percy?" Hazel asked. "I bought my first swimsuit ever for this but I need you to be in the water so your dad doesn't drown me."

"You go ahead," Paul said taking Harper from Percy's arms. She giggled as Paul swung her around. "I'll get lunch started."

"Oh don't worry Mr Blofis," Jason said. "We got started on the BBQ."

"Of course you did," Percy said. "A Lakers jersey Jason? Really?"

"I'm sorry, have you seen the Knicks recently?" Jason said.

"Okay but that last call when they played the Celtics-"

"Did I mention that I picked this swimsuit because it has polka dots?" Hazel said.

"Percy, get in the water," Frank said. "She's been excited for weeks."

And so they did. Jason and Thalia only went up to the water to their ankles, which was probably safe. Percy wasn't sure how much he could do given the millennia of animosity between Zeus and Poseidon. Nico, however, was dragged in by Hazel (with Reyna's complete support, both emotional and physical). He looked miserable, but in the end he joined in on splash-offs, handstand competitions, and floating around like everybody else. Percy showed them one of the aquafit routines he taught to the little old ladies at the pool. When lunch was set, they all headed back to the cottage where hotdogs and a Portobello mushroom for Piper were waiting with chips and apple slices. Thalia squirted ketchup into Percy's ear and told him that Artemis would reduce him to ashes if he retaliated. Percy wasn't sure, but he sat it out just in case because he knew that if he fell out of Artemis' good books he was never getting back in. Grover asked if he could polish off everybody's soda cans. They sat on picnic blankets to eat, Annabeth leaning on Percy's shoulders with her toes digging into the sand. The others had pitched tents on the grass near the cabin to spend the night. Percy made the point again that he was mad that none of them had warned him about this. Leo made a dirty joke again about Percy and Annabeth had a four-man tent to themselves.

"Annabeth would have hurt us," Leo said.

"He's not wrong," Annabeth said, carefully arranging her apple slices and carrot sticks into a geometric pattern on her plate. That design would end up on the floor of Olympus.

That was when Mom came out with a cake decorated with blue icing waves and sea glass made out of candy. Percy let Harper have the first piece which she proceeded to smash onto her face which was even cuter than watching her eat it by the fistfuls would have been. They ploughed through it, and then went back into the water, and then played beach volleyball, and then Marco Polo, and then borrowed the neighbor's kayak (at which point Jason agreed to get more than twelve inches from solid land, though he promised to murder Percy if he tipped them over). Percy sat on the shore with Harper and refereed a chicken tournament. He laughed every time the waves came up and tickled Harper to make her laugh (which, as he was a son of Poseidon after all, was basically whenever Percy wanted to make her laugh). Mom and Paul joined and started making bets on the contests (the winning team was Frank and Hazel, barely defeating Reyna and Annabeth. Mom called it).

When it was suppertime, Percy wanted to scream. It was a candy supper.

"This was the only possible way to make Percy excited about school when he was little," Mom said as she added a bowl of MnMs to the spread. Fuzzy Peaches, gummy worms, jelly beans, Hershey's Kisses, licorice of all kinds, Skittles, Cherry Nibs, lollipops, cookies and cream bark, cinnamon hearts, and a thousand other things. "Candy suppers. We always had one on his birthday, and one on the first day of school."

"That's adorable," Piper said. She pinched Percy's cheek. "Weren't you the cutest."

"I still am," Percy said.

"That's true. This is exactly what he eats every day during college."

He could have told Annabeth not to rat it out, but he was drooling over the spread. He saw Snickers, Reese's Peanut Butter cups, chocolate coins, Tootsie rolls, Rolos, nuts, Rosebuds, Rockets, saltwater taffy, maple candy, Sour Keys, even Scott Mints!

"Mom, you think of everything," Percy said giving her a hug. It was such an enormous amount of candy- so much candy that it could feed a platoon of demigods.

"Paul and I are going to be grownups and eat some real food," Mom said. She kissed his forehead. "If you need anything at all, let yourselves in sweethearts."

"Will do," Percy said. "Thanks Mom."

And so they sat outside and ate candy. Jason and Reyna built a campfire when it started to get dark and they exchanged monster stories and looked at the stars and laughed. And then Percy went in to go get an extra pack of hotdogs because Nico and Hazel and Jason had no ideas what Spider-Weenies were because... well, in the 1940s you were lucky enough to eat without dying of tuberculosis or some other disease that penicillin could handle, Percy supposed.

"Hey," Percy said. Mom was sitting at the kitchen table reading a book. She'd thrown a long peasant skirt over her bathing suit and had loosened her hair from its braid so it hung long and curly. She turned around to face him and smiled.

"Hi," she said quietly enough not to wake up Harper who was sleeping in her crib. "Did we get you?"

"You did," Percy said. "That was an awesome birthday surprise."

Mom smiled and Percy rested his chin on the top of her head. "Where's Paul?"

"We weren't sure if Tyson was going to make it, but now that he's here, he ran out to get a second carton of eggs for breakfast tomorrow. What were you looking for sweetheart?"

"Extra hotdogs, Annabeth said we had some."

"For sure. Did you need buns?"

"No, just ketchup."

"Spider-weenies?"

"You know it," Percy said. Mom got up and checked the fridge. She swept her hair up into a bun as she went, and Percy noticed a patch of red, raw skin on her shoulder.

"Mom, what happened to your shoulder?" Percy asked. She stood up quickly and turned around.

"Oh, that's old, sweetheart," Mom said.

"It looks like a burn." Lacy had those same marks all over her arms, from a drakon incident during the War with Gaia.

"You're right," Mom said. "It's from the time with Gabe. Don't worry about it, sweetheart."

"Oh my gods," Percy said quietly.

"Hey," Mom said. She put the spare pack of hotdogs on the table and touched his cheek. "It's old. It's over. It's easy to hide. It has passed."

Percy shook his head. "Sorry. I… I know you don't like to talk about it."

"It's alright, Percy," Mom said.

"I just… I feel guilty whenever I think of him."

"I hope you don't think of him too often."

"No. But I feel bad. You have done so much for me. And I thank you for things like surprise parties and rides to camp, but I don't… you made me, and you raised me. You worked so hard and gave so much to keep me safe and happy and provided for. You made me into the person I am today and he… He has friends, and a sister, and Annabeth, and that person's doing alright. They're an okay human being, and I don't know how to thank you for that."

"You don't have to," Mom said touching his cheek. "Life's like that, sweetheart. You know this, you have since you were little and noticed the difference between candy suppers and Brussel sprouts. It's not always sweet. It's sugar and spice, with good moments and others that leave bad tastes in your mouth. Percy, you should have seen me when you came along. I had wasted my time and energy on an uncle that had never done me any favours, I couldn't go back to college, I was out of options, working dead-end jobs, holding the short end of virtually every stick... You gave me purpose, someone to love, someone to nurture and share my time and forget my pain with. You are and always have been the best thing that ever happened to me."

Percy smiled.

"Although you're currently sharing that position with Harper," she said. "I hope you know that."

"Is it at least a close second?"

Mom laughed, and Percy put his arms around her neck and hugged her tightly. Mom kissed his hair.

"This is the sweet part," she said quietly.

"I know," Percy said.