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Paul is strategic about the nights he spends at Sally’s. Unless it’s a (rare) impromptu lucky moment, they plan their sleepovers around Percy. Or rather, Percy’s absence.
Doing the walk of shame out of his girlfriends apartment is one thing, but to potentially run into her son on the way? The embarrassment would be unimaginably horrific.
But of course, because Paul used all his luck up just getting Sally to look his way, he no longer has to worry about imagining. Because it’s happening. Today. In real time.
Percy stands frozen at the kitchen counter, pouring cereal pouring into a bowl with a gallon of milk sweating with condensation beside him. Paul, overnight bag in hand, clothes still rumpled from Sally’s (who’s now fast asleep) insistence on one more round before he went, feels his jaw drop slightly. He likes to think he picks it back up relatively quickly.
“Hi,” he says, straightening himself and trying to look a little less guilty.
“Goodmorning?” Percy asks slowly and Paul doesn’t think he’ll ever not be surprised by the grown-man timbre of Percy’s voice that decided to show itself a couple months ago. The teenage body is a marvel.
They blink at each other. One. Two. Something hits the window outside, disrupting the unbearably awkward silence, and Paul blurts,“You were supposed to be home at noon.” If it’s an explanation or a question, he’s not quite sure.
Percy nods awkwardly, eyes falling and then resting firmly on the bowl he’s filling with cereal. “Snowstorm’s rolling in. Ms. Peterson woke us up to send us home at like 7:00. Weather’s terrible, it took me forever to walk over here.”
A glance towards the door confirms that his coat and hoodie and shoes are there, dripping but not completely soaked, and the microwave clock says that it’s already 8:00. Paul freezes. Ms. Peterson’s apartment to here’s like a 30 minute walk on a bad day (which this clearly is), how long has Percy been home?
Oh god, they weren’t exactly screaming but neither of them had put any effort into being quiet, what if he heard them?
No, if he had he would’ve noticed something in his demeanor…Right? Or maybe he’s just hiding it, Percy’s good at stuff like that.
Not to borrow his students sense of melodrama, but Paul is honestly considering throwing himself of the Brooklyn Bridge at this point. Alas, he has to be an adult about this.
“Ok,” Paul answers, lips puckered a bit as he nods, hoping none of the stages of grief he’d just gone through had shown on his face. “Ok. Well, I guess that means I should get going before it gets worse. Bye Percy, have a good day-“
Percy shakes his head before Paul can take more than a step. “Can’t. Look.” He pushes aside the curtain on the kitchen window to reveal that the street is blanketed in snow. A lot of snow. With more still falling. “Everyone’s saying it’s the worst we’ve had since they still made Christmas movies here. And it’s way below freezing. Mom’ll kill us both if I let you leave.”
Paul puts his head in his hands, figuring he’d lost enough standing for it not to matter at this point. Damn, what to do, what to do?
He finally raises his head to find Percy staring at him awkwardly. Paul’s eyes flicked towards the cereal bowl. Well, if he was staying…
“Want me to cook some breakfast? It'll probably be better than cereal.”
The corners of Percy’s mouth quirk upwards. “Just probably?”
Paul smiles a little. “I’m uh, more of a dinner guy.” Percy doesn’t hesitate to pour his cereal back in the box and Paul can’t help but chuckle at him, tension beginning to release. “Alright, out the kitchen then I can’t cook with you in here.”
Percy doesn’t have to be told twice, walking into the living room and making the couch creak when he jumps onto it. It’s probably only because he knows Sally isn’t awake. She’s always worried about a day coming where that couch, which has apparently been through three houses and many, many years before it reached her, gives in. Paul would never let her know this, but he actually agrees with Percy on the front that if that couch can take all that, it’s not gonna give up on them now, so he doesn’t say anything.
It’s second nature to Paul to tuck his bag by the door and navigate the kitchen. Gag gift apron hung on the fridge with a magnet, pancake mix in the second cabinet from the right, eggs in the bottom drawer of the fridge, and if he was lucky…yep, bacon in the drawer. Then under the oven and over the stove hood for pans.
He listens as the TV lights up with his HBO subscription and then the sunny classical of a Ghibli soundtrack. Paul had managed to get both Percy and Sally hooked on those movies (Sally with Howl’s Moving Castle, Percy predictably with Ponyo).
He sighs in satisfaction as he begins to pour the milk on the counter into a bowl with the pancake mix. He could probably do this every single day and not complain at all. His household had been noisy when he was young. He’d been an only child until he was like 15, but had lived in the same neighborhood as all his cousins and his Dadi and Dada, so mealtimes, in his house or others, were rarely just him and his parents. The noise was as warm and familiar as it was suffocating, as a quiet, introverted child. He thought he’d relish the complete 180 of moving to New York alone but the silence had its own way of sucking the air out his apartment.
He hadn’t ever thought he’d find such a happy medium as he has in this apartment. It’s so very easy to breathe here, when he knows Sally is peacefully snoring in her bed and Percy is (despite his best efforts) alive and whole in the next room and the noise is all a gentle hum.
He sighs again, this time feeling a little pensive, as planes whirred their way through the Italian sky on the TV behind him. If only he could do this every morning. Thoughts like that had been constant and inescapable lately, he could hardly step foot in this place without mourning the fact that he had to leave.
It was only natural, he supposed, considering what was weighing down his coat pocket.
He waves a hand over the oil he’d poured into the pan and, deeming it hot enough, starts to pour the pancake mix in. While that’s going he uses the other pan to lay out the bacon, reveling in the sizzle.
“Wait, what are you making?” Percy asks. “Is that bacon on the stove?”
Paul peeks over his shoulder to find Percy looking over his own, trying not to look too interested.
“Mhm,” he confirms. “Tell Porco Rosso I apologize.”
No response, but if he listens close there’s a breathy sound that could pass for a laugh. Percy’s a big fan of his corny jokes, even if he doesn’t like to show it.
Paul cooks in silence for a while after that until his phone buzzes three times in his pocket. His battery must be low.
“Percy!” he calls.
“Hm?”
“Can you grab my charger?”
“Sure, where is it?” he asks.
“My inside coat pocket!”
“Got it!”
The floor creaks as the boy pads across it, then he lets out a yawn so loud in infects Paul as he pulls the last pancake and all the bacon off of the pan. Next, the eggs and they’ll be ready. He sets to work cracking them into a bowl to season and gets through three before he realizes that Percy’s taking a while to get the charger. He lightly trills his lips, wiping his hands in his apron and walking out of the kitchen, figuring he’d had trouble finding the pocket, but when he sees him every tiny little nerve in his body freezes solid because he sent Percy to look in his inside coat pocket.
And there the boy is, a little velvet box in his right hand, the hinges swung open. Similar to both of their jaws, actually. As Paul is freaking out, Percy hasn’t even noticed his presence and is instead more concerned with the ring itself. Paul barely holds in a hysterical laugh when his almost-stepson slaps a hand over his mouth, turning the box over and around to examine what’s inside.
Paul admits that it isn’t the flashiest thing in the world, but then again neither is Sally. She has a patent appreciation for the practical, preferring her beauty in the details. He’d gotten the diamond from a ring in a pawn shop so ugly that the owner subtracted the entire price of the band and then a little more after five minutes she’d made the mistake of asking him what Sally was like and giving him five minutes straight to gush about the love of his life.
Then the band from, and don’t laugh, an extremely reputable Etsy seller. He’d had ideas that required the band to be custom, and that was the most affordable option. White gold and carved with miniscule designs that curled into moons. Then, etched on the inside,“A love more than love.” They’d done a prompt on Annabel Lee to warm up the day they’d met in that creative writing workshop. He could see it like it was yesterday. Sally, the most beautiful woman in the building, looking at him intently. Him, trying not to stutter through the poem he’d written while thinking only of her.
They’ve come so far since then. He could say full sentences in her presence. She kisses him deeply and often. They’ve danced night upon night away and she sleep peacefully in his arms. He’s making breakfast in her apartment while she slept. He drives her son home from school most days, and they have all of his useless subscriptions on their TV and he keeps an extra pair of reading glasses here. They have favorite songs, and restaurants, and he has counted her freckles a million times over.
He’s going to ask her to marry him.
It had all felt kind of…far off, when he’d been buying and planning. Obtain the ring, plan the proposal (trip upstate when he has that long weekend in March, early dinner cooked by him with desert from D’Angelo’s, and down on one knee under the stars when she inevitably asked him if he wanted to sit outside and cuddle ‘while they digested’), then ask her son, enact the proposal, hopefully live happily ever after. Easily itemized and romanticized.
But this is different. He’s been caught in the act by a child he’s about to call, in many ways, his own. He is about legally build a little family. He’s going to be a stepfather. He’s going to be a husband. Paul Blofis is about to have a happily ever after kind of life, the kind of thing you see in romance novel epilogues, where the book has to close and the soaring become planting your feet on the ground.
He thinks he gets the tears, now. Not just the stressed ones, the worried ones, the what-if-she-doesn’t-say-yes-my-heart-won’t-survive-it ones, but the happy ones. He’s gonna ask the love of his life to marry him, and there’s no getting out of that now. Isn’t that the best thing you’ve ever heard?
He takes a step towards Percy and the stupid floorboard creaks, making the boy look up, still floored. “Paul are you really-“
“I was gonna ask you!” he blurts in promise. “I had this whole thing planned, I was gonna ask your mom if I could take you to lunch, and I was gonna ask-”
“Paul I-”
“I really love your mother, Percy,” he confesses. “But I would never spring this on you-”
Percy’s eyes widen. “Paul-”
“Please,” he pleads. “Just let me finish.”
Percy stares into space behind Paul for a moment before slowly nodding and relaxing. Paul takes a breath. “Percy. Me and your mom have been dating for a while now, and I know it hasn't really been that long, but…” he shrugs helplessly and laughs a little. “One day, you’ll come to understand that in love, sometimes, when you know you know.”
Percy nods again, at a more normal speed this time. “I get that now.”
He clearly has someone on the brain. Paul is first inclined to think of Rachel, maybe because of the gossip he hears his students tossing around and the fact that she definitely takes runner up behind him for most frequent visitor of the Jackson home. But then he remembers that sketchbook Ms. Olsen had confiscated from him, with his friend, that girl Annabeth who'd been listening at the door when he and Sally fought so long ago, captured so many times in such a way that it really couldn't be anything but love. He did think they’d look nice together. Percy needed someone like that.
He nods in understanding before continuing. “I love your mother, Percy. She’s the most special woman I’ve ever met and I will spend my entire life living with great regret if I can’t spend every single day of it with her. I really want to marry her. But I also understand that she's a huge part of you, and you're a huge part of her. From what she's told me it sounds like, for most of your life, all you really had was each other. I understand this would change a lot, and I don't want you to be shut out of this at any point. I understand we’re not super close yet, and it's weird sometimes because I'm definitely gonna teach you at least twice in the next four years, but I truly do care about you. I don't want to take this step without your involvement. So. May I have your blessing to marry your mother?”
Percy’s baby blue eyes blink hard as he processes and deliberates and Paul thinks he might actually puke, in which case he’d definitely have to visit the Brooklyn Bridge, storm be damned. How the hell is he gonna get through asking Sally if this is what it feels like with her son?
“You want my blessing,” Percy says lamely, half question, half statement. Paul nods and Percy tilts his head to the side and drops his shoulders, dumbfounded as if he hadn’t expected this at all, which baffles Paul somewhat. It would take a real dumbass to see Percy and Sally together, to know of their history, and not know that there is no Sally without him. There is no world where Sally marries a man her son doesn’t approve of, not again.
Paul nods again. “Yes. If I’m going to marry your mother, I want to make sure that the person she loves and values the most in this world is ok with that.”
Percy sighs, incredulous. “Well first of all, yeah, sure, go nuts. Don't go nuts, I didn't say that, but yeah, you’re…blessed or whatever.”
Paul lets out the breath he'd been holding for the past three weeks. “Oh thank fu- god. Thank god.”
“Second of all, I need you to do something for me.”
“Sure, what is it?”
“Turn around.”
“What?”
Percy starts to smirk. “Turn around.”
Paul does as he says and nearly jumps out of his skin because right there, in her christmas pajamas and messy bun, with teary eyes but the biggest, brightest, most gorgeous, most amused smile on her face, is Sally Andrea Jackson herself. The second they make eye contact he feels his whole body light up like a candle. There’s a loud, wheezing laugh from Percy behind him.
“Hey,” he squeaks.
Sally giggles through her tears. “Hey yourself,” she squeezes out. Paul goes even redder and she giggles even more, nearly bent over with laughter. He takes a little comfort in that. At least he's managed to put a smile on her face.
As laughter finally releases its grip on Sally, she leans on the doorframe, what must be every tooth in her mouth showing in her grin. "I really want to marry you too," she says, shrugging as a couple more happy tears escape. "Just for the record."
(Sally will, of course, tell this story with glee and to the response of raucous laughter for the rest of their lives. Paul will be there, blushing like a schoolgirl and grinning like an idiot, every single time.)