FIC: The Origin of Blue Foods (Sally Jackson, Gen)

[shiiki]

Title: The Origin of Blue Foods
Author: shiiki
Rating: PG
Characters/Pairings: Sally Jackson, Percy Jackson, Gabe Ugliano
Fandom: Percy Jackson
Word Count: 1,830

Summary: Sally Jackson will do anything for her son, whether that's marrying a jerk to protect him, or making blue food to promise him the impossible.

Notes: This is a combination of two connected ficlets (The Origin of Blue Foods and No Price Too High) that were written for the first two days of percyjacksonweek2k17 on tumblr, for the prompts blue and family / Sally Jackson/Blofis

Read original ficlets on tumblr: The Origin of Blue Foods | No Price Too High


'How was school, honey?'

In response to Sally's question, her son held up the piece of scrap paper he'd been scribbling on assiduously with his crayons. Her heart did a nervous skip when she saw what Percy had drawn-roughly, in the exuberant and none-too-precise scrawl of a five-year-old, but unmistakably a horned beast with claws and what looked like scales (if that was what Percy meant by the repeated curvy lines down its thick tree trunk legs).

'Did you-see that at school?'

Percy nodded happily as he crawled into her lap. She smoothed his hair back from his forehead and planted a kiss there. Percy wriggled in her arms.

'It's a wild thing,' Percy said. 'Miss Popples showed us. But they were stuck in the book so I drew one here so he can get out!' The earnest, proud expression on his tiny face was so cute, Sally couldn't help laughing. She vaguely remembered her own battered copy of Where the Wild Things Are that she'd pored over incessantly as a child.

It was a book. Only a book.

Sally hugged Percy closer to her, relief and amusement bubbling up to dissipate the tight pinch of fear.

'Mommy you're squishing me!' Percy protested and wriggled free.

'Sorry, honey.' She released him. 'What else did you do in school, then?'

'We sang the colour song!'

Sally let Percy's sweet, childish voice wash over her as he repeated the song and proceeded to name all the crayons in the box by colour.

Fifty-one days and counting, she thought. Fifty-one days since the last monster had showed its ugly face around her son.

Fifty-one days since her wedding-a hurried, perfunctory affair at city hall, followed by a celebratory drink after (not that marrying that boorish, uncouth jerk who was now her husband should have been any ground for celebration).

But when she'd picked Percy up from the babysitter's that night, sleeping innocently with, for once, not the slightest sign of the supernatural hanging around, it had reinforced every reason she'd had for marrying Gabe Ugliano.

She'd never have given him the time of day if it hadn't been for Percy. That first time he'd turned up at their door, all false flattery (and even faker flowers), she'd been prepared to slam it shut in his face when she'd heard them. The pair of dog-headed creatures who'd just moved into the apartment down the hall and had been prowling around from day one, inordinately interested in her home.

Sally had grown accustomed to the weird (and sometimes terrifying) things she saw from time to time-people with wings and fangs, trees that turned into dancing girls, humans who were part-animal or something-though she'd learnt early on in life that it was better not to admit you saw stuff others didn't. It was only after she'd met Poseidon that fateful summer at Montauk that it had finally made sense. But the rate at which the mythical monsters appeared had been steadily increasing ever since her baby had been born. The older Percy got, the more of them he seemed to attract, until she'd been monster-spotting on almost a daily basis.

And that was when she was with him. Who knew what would come after him when she was at work? Sally thought her heart might never recover from the shock she'd gotten that time Percy's nursery school teacher had called in hysterics, babbling about her son and two dead snakes at nap-time.

Her dog-headed neighbours had been sniffing around again, the day Gabe showed up to ask for a date, and Sally had heard one of them say, very distinctively, 'I don't get it. I smelt it, and then it was gone!'

Sally had stared from Gabe to the retreating dog-headed pair, a crazy idea forming in her head. And with that, a plan.

Much as she wanted to, she couldn't always be with Percy. And even if she was, how much use was she against the monsters who were out for his blood?

But if there was another way to keep Percy safe, to throw the monsters off his scent (quite literally!), well, then …

And so she'd accepted Gabe's overtures and flirted right back, all with the systematicity of a scientist testing a hypothesis. The more Gabe came around, the fewer her monster-sightings. The dog-headed neighbours moved away after a mere fortnight of her dating Gabe. Her observations of anything odd around Percy coincided with the times he hadn't visited for a while.

The pattern was impossible to ignore.

By the time he finally proposed-a mere two months after they'd met, as though he didn't want to give her enough time to wise up and cut loose-Sally had enough proof.

It had still been a difficult decision. As certain as she was that Gabe repelled the mythological danger to her son, Sally also knew he posed a different potential danger.

But she could protect Percy from Gabe.

She couldn't protect him from the monsters.

That stunt with the snakes had been way too close. And if Gabe and his sickening smell, which now permeated every inch of her apartment, disguised Percy as a regular mortal … well, Sally would put up with it. Along with his leers and volatile temper and misogynistic attitude.

As long as Percy was safe.

And it had worked, hadn't it? Here he was, her beautiful boy, the dearest thing to her in the world, blissfully unaware of Sally's sacrifice (oh Poseidon, keep him from every knowing), chirping out in his sing-song voice, '… and bees are YELLOW, and grass is GREEN, and the-'

'God, he's a right noisy brat, isn't he?'

Sally smelt Gabe before he shuffled in, that overpowering sour stench of body odour, like a week's worth of unwashed laundry, which always preceded his entrance into any room.

My husband, she reminded herself wearily.

Percy looked up and, a defiant look in his eyes, finished recounting the colours he'd learnt in school that day in an almost deafening volume, 'And the Cookie Monster is BLUE!'

She could have sworn he'd raised his voice just to torment Gabe. Percy might be only five, but her boy was smart as a whip.

Gabe's fists came up. 'You gonna shut him up, Sally, or do I gotta?'

Sally hurriedly turned Percy's face away so that he was no longer glaring at Gabe.

'Good job, sweetie!' she praised. 'But let's not forget to use our indoor voices, okay?'

Gabe grunted and dragged himself over to his La-Z-Boy, where he plopped down and picked up the TV remote. 'How about getting me some grub, then, eh? I been working hard all day to keep you in style, least you could do is have dinner waiting when I get home.'

Sally bit back the retort she would have dearly loved to throw at Gabe. She couldn't turn him off. They needed him.

Percy needed him.

'Right away, dear,' she murmured. To Percy, she said, 'Come on, sweetie, you want to help Mommy cook, don't you?'

Gabe didn't even bother responding. He'd already cracked open a beer and settled in to watch The View.

'He's mean!' Percy complained as she steered him into the kitchen. 'He's mean and he's a stupidhead and he's smelly-'

'Percy,' Sally admonished. 'What have I said about calling people names?' Even if they deserve it, she thought to herself. It wouldn't do for Percy to go saying it to Gabe's face.

'He's smelly,' Percy repeated stubbornly. 'Smelly Gabe.'

Sally fought the urge to laugh at the apt nickname. Instead, she pulled a few tomatoes from the vegetable crisper. 'How about you tell me more about the colours Miss Popples taught you? What colour are these?'

'RED!'

'Very good!' She waggled a carrot at him next. Percy struggled a bit with this one.

'Ummm, ORANGE!'

Having successfully diverted Percy's attention from the subject of Gabe (Percy, thank heavens, was nothing if not easily distractible), Sally returned to her task of making dinner. Percy sat happily at her side, naming the colour of every ingredient that she chopped up and threw into her stew.

'Very good, Percy!' she said.

'Sally!' Gabe bellowed, interrupting them. 'Where's dinner?'

'I'm coming, Gabe!' She ladled out a single bowl-she and Percy could come back and eat in the kitchen.

Percy trotted beside her as she carried the bowl of stew back out to the living room and laid it on the tray table in front of Gabe. He had the television talk show blasting so loud, she barely heard Percy asking her a question.

'What is it, honey?'

Percy raised his voice over Barbara Walter's. 'Why aren't they blue, Mommy?'

'Why aren't what blue?'

'The food! Tommy-toes are red and carrots are orange and corns are yellow and coo-coo-bers are green but there's no blue!'

Gabe tore his eyes away from Barbara and her co-host. 'Don't be ridiculous,' he sneered. 'Food can't be blue.'

'Why not?' Percy demanded. 'There's blue crayons and blue fishies and blue birdies so why not blue food?'

Sally racked her brains for an answer for Percy.

'Blueberries,' she said. 'Blueberries are blue.'

Percy grinned. 'Can we have blueberries for dinner?'

'You'll damn well eat what you're told to, runt.' Gabe snorted. 'And blueberries are a stupid name. The little shits are purple, not blue. I oughta know. Some idiot got the stains all over one of my appliances last week.'

Sally mmhmm-ed in what she hoped Gabe would consider an appropriately sympathetic manner, although she really couldn't bring herself to care that much. What sort of appliance got permanently stained by berries, anyway?

'They are so blue!' Percy retorted. 'Mommy said so!'

'Blue foods don't exist!' Gabe thundered. 'And you can shut up about it, piss-face, before I punch you black and blue. Can't a man watch his show in peace around here?'

Sally ushered Percy back to the kitchen before Gabe could antagonise him any further. Percy stabbed his spoon into the bowl of stew she lay before him, disappointment written all over his face.

'It's not fair.' He poked at his vegetables like they were silly putty. 'All the other colours get to have foods. Why not blue?'

The spark of rebellion grew somewhere between Gabe's close-minded insistence that blue food didn't exist, and Percy's crestfallen wish that they did.

So what if nature hadn't made food blue? It didn't mean it was impossible.

'Tell you what,' she said, pulling open the kitchen cupboards. She had to rummage for a bit among the baking ingredients before she found it: a small bottle of food colouring. She set it on the table, along with some flour, vanilla essence, and a little bag of chocolate chips. 'How about we make our very own blue food?'

Percy's eyes grew wide and eager. 'We can make it?'

'Percy,' she said solemnly, 'as long as we believe it, we can make anything happen.'