Bonds

Sally Is Having No One's Sh*t

Paul didn't come home until a little after eleven, which had given Sally plenty of time to cool off. Not that she had any reason to be mad at him, but with Percy's horrifying behavior and her sleep deprivation induced exhaustion, it wouldn't have taken much for her to be set off at some little thing. And she knew that he would understand why if she did, as they were a team and he was going through the same struggles together, but she would feel absolutely terrible for snapping at him for no good reason.

So after a quick shower, reheating that night's dinner, and lulling their daughter to sleep, the two retired to their room for the night, where they hoped to get a few hours of uninterrupted sleep after catching up each other on the day's events.

"Looks like I'm teaching The Odyssey again," her husband sighed as he pulled his socks off, rolled them into a ball, and tossed them into their hamper. "Kobe!" he cried when the socks entered the green hamper. "And you know how I feel about that..."

Sally chuckled as she turned on the heating pad for her back. "I find the irony amusing."

Paul was an English and literature teacher on the edge of forty but looked closer to the edge of thirty (the fact that he recently started dying his hair helped with that) and was very much into more modern approaches to teaching. He believed that the classics were important but were not great for inspiring young minds. He preferred to use modern examples that his students could identify with easier and breakdown the origins of certain themes and ideas. Sadly though, Goode was pretty strict with its approved curriculum and forced her husband to cover things that he considered outdated and frankly dull. Namely, The Odyssey.

"You know, knowing that it actually happened makes it even more boring," he said as he slid under the blankets. "It's like, all these amazing things happened, and this is the best way anyone could write them down?" He shook his head and placed his glasses on the nightstand. "And the story is so well known by now that everyone knows it before they even get to high school, so what's the point in teaching it? So I can say Homer was probably a blind beggar for the hundredth time? Real life altering stuff right there. Definitely going to makes tons of young minds explore the world of the written word."

Sally rolled over and kissed him, interrupting her husband's little rant. When she pulled away, she was delighted to see that his face was cherry red. "You're a dork. You know that, right?"

Her husband shrugged. "Yeah, and it makes me wonder how I ever got someone as beautiful as you."

Now it was her turn to blush. The two of them had been together now for a little over four years, were married, and had a child together, but they could still fluster each other as easily as it was when they first met. "You're just lucky I have a thing for older guys," she smiled.

Paul opened his mouth, only to quickly shut it. She knew what he was going to say, but it seemed he was smart enough to hold his tongue. An exceedingly rare trait among men. "Sooo... Anything important happen today?"

"Nice segue," Sally laughed. "And yes, something... big has happened."

"Please tell me Percy is done moping," he said, as she reached into her nightstand and removed the folded check Hades had given her. "Or that Estelle rolled over on her own. Please let it be something good."

"Well, it is," she gulped. "But you need to have a certain perspective. Do you remember Percy's friend Nico?"

Paul closed his eyes and furrowed his brow as he tried to sort through the hundreds of teenage faces he had encountered over his career. "Yeah. Thin, dark-haired kid. Son of Hades if I remember right. Would probably be a good idea to stay on his good side."