16 Habits of Percabeth
i. Persistence
"Percy." Warning and irritation colors her voice.
Whining, he flops onto the couch beside her, hands thrown up in exaggerated exasperation. "But Annabeeeeeeth, I need them!"
"It's the last week of summer and you are so not cheating me of my fair share," she adamantly states, intelligent eyes now refusing to land anywhere near the pleading face he's desperately giving her.
"That's no fair," he pouts, arms crossed in front of him and sinking down into the plush cushions. "I only got - "
"Only twenty or so cookies already," she deadpans, refusing to waver in her determination. "There's ten left."
Unfortunately, he's just as stubborn in his decision. "Annabeeeeeth," he complains again, in lieu of responding to her ruthless logic. "I need them more than you do! Haven't you heard of the saying 'a growing boy needs to eat'?"
She rolls her eyes. "Seaweed Brain, that probably was thought up by some random guy in the same situation you are in."
A blessed silence follows, in which she dares to relax a bit, breathing a small sigh of relief. Then, in the quiet, a stretched out: "Please?"
She knows if she glances at him now, she'll cave almost immediately. Fixating her gaze instead on the wall of pictures behind the raven-haired boy, she replies with an instant, "No."
"Please?"
"No."
A few heartbeats pass in the silence, followed by another, "Please?"
"Seaweed Brain, what do you not understand about the simplest two-letter answer? No."
A moment of contemplation from him, most likely planning out his next attack. She uses the slight respite to focus on keeping her arm, which is beginning to ache, in the air, stretched away and out of reach from her boyfriend.
"How would you think Mom would react when I tell her you're starving me?"
She snorts in return. "Starving?"
"I'm serious."
"She would side with me, of course," she states airily, her stare at the wall faltering a bit to unconsciously move towards him.
A mischievous spark enters the familiar sea-green eyes, a smirk spreading slowly across the features previously arranged in an impossibly adorable pout. "Let's test that statement." With the suddenness only ADHD demigods could have, he launches himself at her. More specifically, the bowl of blue chocolate chip cookies she had been holding.
"Percy!" At her outraged shriek, footsteps pad towards the living room, and Sally's head peers in curiously.
"Is everything alright?" Even as the words leave her mouth, the older woman knows it's not as she takes in the scene before her. Her son, mouth full and stuffed with those cookies she had made earlier, blue crumbs trailing down the front of his shirt, eyes guiltily staring up at her. Annabeth, perched on the edge of the couch, flustered and glaring vehemently at the ravenously eating Percy.
"Your son," the angry blonde starts, enunciating every vowel, eyes never straying from him, "is a cookie thief."
They way she manages to make the sentence sound like a scathing insult makes Sally suppress a smile. "I'll make more tomorrow." Their eyes immediately snap towards her, one infuriated and slightly hopeful, the other triumphant and sparkling.
When she leaves to slip back into the kitchen, she thinks she hear's Annabeth's voice vowing, "You are so not taking the next batch of cookies from me again."
The faint reply floats back to her as she busies herself preparing for dinner. "Oh, I wouldn't be so sure about that."
ii. Managing Impulsivity
"Percy, shush! I'm trying to concentrate!" she hisses under her breath, hand propped up on a heavy tome filled with a mass of tiny words.
"I'm not doing anything!" he protests.
"Yes you are. Stop moving around - sit still for just one second - !"
A pause, and she gratefully returns her attention to the text. However, only a few seconds pass before he shatters the silence once again. "You've spent the whole afternoon in this library. Haven't you already found what you needed?"
She had, but one interesting fact that had caught her eye led to a hunt all over the aisles and a towering stack of books beside her. Ignoring his question, she replies with one of her own. "If this is so boring, why don't you go somewhere else?"
"Because I don't know where to go and you're usually more interesting than this." The words slip out of him before he registers what he said. At her murderous expression, his face visibly pales several shades, and he quickly amends the previous statement. "I mean - not that this is boring - well, it sort of is for me, but - I'm not saying that you're boring, it's just that with you reading - not that reading is always boring either and - I'm messing this up, aren't I?"
She stares at him amusedly. "Yes, yes you are."
iii. Listening with Empathy and Understanding
" - so you should stay away, you little disgusting - "
"Annabeth." Percy's voice of reason, if not a bit taut, cuts through her rage mid-rant. She suddenly becomes aware of a reassuring hand on her arm, gently steering her away from what must've been the twentieth disturbing boy that had interrupted her thought process this week.
There was nothing particular about the boy that had made her fly into a frenzy, and looking back on it, perhaps standing up and shouting obscenities at him in the middle of a bustling cafe probably hadn't been the best idea on her part.
"I'm sorry," she breathes out through gritted teeth once they walked a considerable way from the shop, the pounding current of annoyance and anger hot in her blood cooling. "It's just - they won't take a hint, will they?"
"To be fair, that was more than a hint," he replies, a ghost of a grin tugging at his lips.
"Don't. Start." She did not need another irritating boy to deal with right now.
"Okay, okay." Surrendering with a dramatic lifting of the hands, he falls silent for a grand total of five seconds before adding, "You could've been more understanding, though."
She huffs, knowing that she would never be able to have more than those few precious moments of quiet with him. "Define 'understanding'."
"I don't suppose that's in your vocabulary."
"Nope," she says briskly, popping the p at the end. "At least, not with the vocabulary reserved specially for stupid teenaged boys like you."
An indignant 'Hey!' follows her proclamation, and she lightly punches his arm. "Kidding, Seaweed Brain."
iv. Thinking Flexibly
"...I don't get it," Percy states, staring dully at the screen in front of him. "Is that supposed to be a cup or two faces?"
Annabeth rolls over on her bed, glancing at the optical illusion displayed in garish colors. "It's supposed to be both."
His brows furrow even more in concentration. "I never got the point of these. Why waste your time making one of these things that's not a cup but a cup at the same time?"
Blowing an exasperated breath out, she manages to prop herself up in a respectable sitting position. Avoiding a long and inevitably confusing explanation, she responds the question with, "Why are you looking at these anyways?"
"I don't know."
Well, that path of conversation led to nowhere. Sighing, she refocuses on his original query. "It's supposed to teach you to see the two different sides of things. If you look at only the red in the middle, that's the cup. If you look at the negative space, you see two faces."
"Oh," he replies blankly. Then, after she rolls back under her covers and prepares to fall asleep once more, he shatters the half-awake trance she had fallen into with a: "I still don't get it."
Groaning, she turns her back to him. "Why do you do this to me?"
"Because I love you," he says cheekily.
"Your definition of 'love' is more like my definition of 'death'," she answers, voice muffled by the layers of covers.
"Two different perspectives of everything!" he chirps brightly, throwing her words back into her disbelieving face.
A pillow hurled with deadly aim to his smugly smirking countenance is her grumpy response.
v. Metacognition
"Annabeth?"
"Hmm?"
"I've been thinking about if it's possible to think about thinking."
"What?" in her sleep-slowed, dreamlike trance her mind is in, the words are lost on her.
"Thinking about thinking about thinking."
She chooses to not use her oh-so-eloquent 'what' again, instead settling with a neutral silence.
"Annabeth." A finger prodding insistently at her side. "Annabeth. I know you're awake."
Contrary to popular belief, she did have a limit to the number of pokes she could receive before snapping. "What."
Her glares and poisonous tones have lost some of their touch on him, she's noticed. Always a shame. When he speaks, it's the same as before, equally insistent and equally loud, if not even more. "I need you to answer my question. Is it possible to think about thinking?"
"Why are you asking me at two in the morning? Why are you even awake at this ungodly hour?"
"Because you're smart and because the ungodly hours are the best times for thinking about thinking about thinking."
"I'm not even going to try to answer that unless I'm fully awake with a cup of coffee in my hand."
"But Annabeeeth - "
"It's too early for this," she grumbles under her breath. "Why don't you think about thinking about thinking about thinking by yourself without dragging me into it?"
" - that's one more 'thinking' than I needed."
"Do I look or sound like I care?"
vi. Striving for Accuracy
"Percy, are you even trying?" she accuses in frustration.
"I am! It's just-" he looks down at the previously-blank page now crammed with messy scrawls of numbers and 'x' and whatnot. "It's been hours and this isn't getting any better."
Sighing, she rifles through the stray papers on the desk for a clean sheet, placing it in front of him and writing neatly, 9(x-4) = 5x+4 "There. Now, do you know how to solve?"
Slumping backwards in his chair, he glares at the incriminating paper. "Annabeth - do I have to do this?"
"Yes, you do," she says firmly. "I'm not leaving you in peace until you get one of these right."
She sorely, sorely regrets ever uttering those words when it's midnight and it's just about the fiftieth time he's staring at an untameable fraction of 112/263 because of some small error in calculation on his part.
The next time he misses a simple five times five and blames it on lack of sleep, she gives up altogether and collapses onto her welcoming bed. "We'll continue tomorrow," she promises him, not believing in her own words.
The way his eyes flash with something akin to triumphance as he flops onto the bed beside her makes her eyes narrow in suspicion.
"You didn't do that on purpose, did you?"
"No," he says innocently, not a trace of a sly smile on his outward expression. "Not at all. What would make you think that?"
She sits up and abruptly grabs her pillow before flinging it at him. "Perseus Jackson! You dare - " Hand reaching for another pillow-turned-projectile, she glares at him murderously. "Don't tell me I wasted a whole afternoon with you when I could've - Argh!" Every single pillow thrown at his figure hits its mark, bouncing harmlessly off him as he scrambles out the bedroom door, laughter trailing behind him. "You get back here right now - !"
She spends the rest of the night throwing pillows at him with deadly aim and intent, and in the morning, when she emerges from her room still flushed with anger, Percy greets her with a impish grin that causes her to wish she had the foresight to bring some of her ammunition down with her.
"Good morning," he says smoothly, as if he hadn't been bombarded by fifty pillows only two hours before.
She promptly snatches one of the decorative cushions in the living room and throws it at him once again, smiling wickedly as her aim proves true. "Good morning."
vii. Applying Past Knowledge
"Why do I think this isn't a good idea?" she whispers as she reluctantly trails behind him into the dizzying neon lights of the club.
He flashes her one of those brilliant grins, a streak of white appearing in the teeming darkness. "That's because it isn't."
"Percy." The look she gives him is enough to wither a plant on the spot.
"For one, I'm probably going to spend the night being hit on by these drunk girls who don't know which way is left or right or spend the night watching you be hit on by equally drunk guys."
"Percy."
"Or I'll accidentally get drunk and you're going to have to deal with a hyperactive demigod who's on the verge of collapsing to the floor but still is bouncing around anyways, like that time when Travis though it was a great idea to sneak in a bottle of - "
"Percy," she cuts through his various speculations of disastrous scenarios. "Why did you bring me here in the first place?"
He offers her a careless shrug. "I don't really know, to be honest. But the music's supposedly pretty good, and I felt that maybe we could loosen up a bit?"
She doesn't know whether to smile at the typical spontaneous actions of the boy standing unsurely in front of her or to rage at him on how he dragged her to this random pocket of pulsing lights and dancing crowds when she was just settling down to read a book.
Debating between the two, she ends up choosing neither as her mind catches on what he had just said. "What about Travis and hyperactive demigods?"
"Uh," he trails off, suddenly becoming inexplicably interested in the dark masses of people on the dance floor.
"Don't tell me he sneaked alcohol into camp."
His uncomfortable, fidgeting silence is all the answer she needs. Groaning at the pure stupidity of the action, she dares to ask, "When?"
"At his going-away party."
She had actually been at the loud, riotous celebration, but had left before it had gotten too out-of-hand. With the night a blur of silly pranks and rowdy laughter, she wouldn't doubt that Travis had taken out some bottles of alcohol and passed them around in the wee hours of the morning. Shuddering to imagine the consequences left by a group of drunk demigods, she asks suspiciously, "And how exactly do you know this?"
She could've sworn his cheeks darkened several shades, but with the chaotic lighting, it was hard to tell. An extremely intelligent "Um" is all he manages.
Sighing, she rolls her eyes. Seaweed Brain. "Now that you've learned your lesson, you're going to stay far away from that bar and stick close to me. I do not want to drag an intoxicated demigod back to the apartment."
He nods in understanding, and lets out a yelp of surprise when the blonde determinedly jerks him away from the bar and into the midst of the dancers, the tight spaces of air between the swaying bodies pressing them close. "What are you - ?"
She smirks in response. "Weren't you the one who wanted us to, I quote, 'loosen up a bit'?"
"Yes, but I - "
"But what?" She leans in, teasing, so that they are but a breath apart. His heart beats a frantic pattern under her fingers, and she allows a catlike smile to slip onto her features.
"I wasn't thinking - "
She replies his flustered murmur with, "Shut up and dance."
viii. Questioning and Problem Solving
"But why?"
She swears, those two words are among her most hated now. "Because, Seaweed Brain. It says it right here - "
"But why?"
"Because the book was printed out, that's why," she spits out in annoyance.
He still persists in this endless questioning. "But why?"
"Because they wanted to bless the world with their knowledge."
"But why?"
"Because they had something to share."
"But why?"
"Because they clearly did something worthy of sharing."
"But why?"
"How am I supposed to know?" She throws her hands up in exasperation. "Who told you of this stupid question anyways?"
He gives a sly grin at having gotten to her. "Leo."
She groans, making a mental note to give the mechanic a piece of her mind when she next saw him. "Why do you insist on being this irritating?"
"Because."
A grin of her own gradually materializes at this perfect opportunity to retaliate. "But why?"
Knowing exactly what her trap is, he responds again with a simple, "Because."
"But why?"
"Because."
"But why?"
"Because."
"But why?"
"Because."
"But why?"
"Be - "
The monotonous cycle is broken by Sally's faded voice from the kitchen worriedly remarking, "Oh, dear."
The pair glance back at one another, humor growing steadily more apparent in their expressions, before collapsing into gasping fits of laughter.
"We should use that sometime on Leo," Annabeth wheezes out between giggles.
"Agreed," Percy replies.
ix. Thinking and Communicating with Clarity and Precision
"Ten!" The countdown towards the coming of a new year begins, the air laden with excitement. The ever-shifting crowd jostles her at every turn in their eagerness, the thousands of voices deafening.
"Nine!" Percy's hand finds its way into hers, and she grips it tightly, anticipation thrumming through her.
"Eight!" She pulls him closer, the cold air whipping her exposed face. With the heat of the tightly packed bodies beside her, the night chill doesn't reach quite as far as it usually would.
"Seven!" Their eyes meet, sea green to grey, each alight with the fire of giddy eagerness and celebration.
"Six!" He mouths something to her, but it's lost over the crowd's chanting.
"Five!" What?! She yells back, though he's right next to her, since she can hardly hear her voice through the clamor.
"Four!" He leans in closer, mouth to her ear, the only way she can possibly understand his words. A small shiver runs through her at his closeness.
"Three!" There's this tradition - you know, the one at New Year's when it's midnight - and I was wondering - he breaks off the unsure explanation as the undulating crowd erupts in another shouted number.
"Two!" - maybe, I'm not sure, do something like that - since this is the first year we can actually celebrate it properly - She can feel him shifting nervously beside her, unable to call upon the proper words, and she allows herself a small smile.
"One!" So - he begins, daring to look at her again. A split second before the turning of a new year, she replies, Kiss me already, you idiot.
"Happy New Year!" An explosion of jubilance in the crowded square welcomes the cheered words, thousands of fluttering confetti tossed into the air drifting down around them, a culmination of the shared alacrity of the hours before. In the middle of the dark crowd, one of the many couples there, the girl pulls away after several seconds and sends a teasing smirk in the boy's direction.
"Why do you seem to have an inability to just say 'kiss me'?"
x. Gathering Data Through All Senses
"Percy." Elbowing him in the side sharply, she hisses, "Wake up."
A drawn-out groan is his only protest, and he stirs to shift farther away from her.
"Percy!" she warns.
This time, a slurred, half-formed "What?" is his reluctant answer, and a sliver of green is visible beneath drooping lids.
"Wake up. Stay awake. We're almost there," she orders, hand heavily hitting the horn button multiple times while muttering curses on the driver before them. "The stupid - I know it's New York, but really - "
"But-but-it's so hard to stay awa-awake," he stutters, speech interrupted by multiple yawns.
"Listen to the radio, stare at the obnoxious car in front of us, I don't know. Do something."
"Sleep is better," he blearily protests.
"You don't do anything while sleeping. While awake, on the other hand, you actually get to use all five of your senses."
"While sleeping you can see black. Or see what you're dreaming."
"Yes, because that is a very legitimate reason to sleep your life away," she retorts, voice layered with sarcasm.
"Well, you can hear and feel annoying people trying to wake you up when you clearly don't want to," he pointedly replies, glaring at her tense form. "That's using three of the senses."
Still venomously scowling at the driver she was stuck behind, she rolls her eyes and asks, "What about the other two?"
"You can smell blue chocolate chip cookies baking."
She snorts. "Are you serious?"
"Serious. It's woken me up several times," he deadpans, vibrant green eyes now fully open.
A small smile, despite herself, flits across her face. "And taste?"
"Uh…." He falls silent for so long she's half afraid he's slipped back into sleeping. "You can taste things in your dreams…?"
"Nice try."
"Just this once," he groans. "Couldn't you have let me win the argument?"
A smug, self-satisfied grin settles into her expression. "Nope. Never."
xi. Creating, Imagining, and Innovating
"What are you doing?" His questioning glance lands on the sea of crumpled papers forming a trail from her slouched figure to the trash can.
"She expects me to design a temple for her. A temple. None of hers even was ruined in the war-!"
"Who?"
Her scowl deepens, and she spits out, "Hera."
A quiet "Oh" is all he manages in the face of her obvious frustration.
"I am not designing a temple singing her praises because she's already too full of herself anyways and she's also a despicable pain in the neck."
"You could just, I don't know, draw something that pretty much tells her what you think," he tentatively suggests.
"And have her take away your memory just to spite me again? No, that won't work." Falling silent for a short while, she then adds slowly, "At least, not outright." The idea unlocks a torrent of inspiration in her mind, and she remembers what it feels like to have her thoughts as a rapid stream of revelations. "If I could somehow incorporate the insults into the design without being too obvious-Percy, you're a genius."
"I am?" He blinks, shocked. "Did you just say that-"
"You're a genius?" she finishes. "Yes. Don't act so surprised. Occasionally you do have a brilliant idea."
Mock indignation and hurt flits across his features. "Occasionally?"
"You do have to admit you get the most spontaneous ideas at the randomest times. And only a small percentage of those actually have any value." The previously anger-darkened eyes now take on a lighter sparkle.
"I just helped you figure out how to design a temple for the most irritating goddess you've ever known!" Throwing his hands up in exaggerated exasperation, he collapses onto the bed beside the brightly-lit desk and turns to glare at her. "Is this how you repay me?"
"Yes." A sly smile tugs at the corners of her mouth. "And by telling you I ate the last of the cookies while thinking."
He jolts upright, eyes widened in comical horror. "You didn't."
A mischievous grin steals across her face. "I did."
xii. Responding with Wonderment and Awe
"I can't believe we haven't been attacked yet."
Sighing, she replies, "Every single time you say that, we get attacked a few minutes later."
"There's always a first!"
"There never will be a first because the Fates hate us."
"You never know."
She gives him a withering stare. "You, of all people, should know how the gods and Fates love throwing us into life-and-death situations every chance they get."
"Well," he hesitates, unable to call upon a proper retort. "True," he finally concedes. "But you don't have to be so pessimistic."
"Not pessimistic, just realistic," she reasons. "So I can say, 'oh, look' when a monster attacks us."
"If, not when," he corrects. "Now that's being depressing."
"With you in tow, we might as well have a flashing neon sign over our heads. And," she adds, glaring at him, "I'm not depressing. All demigods pretty much learn their lesson after a few years." Upon seeing him open his mouth to object, she cuts across him and amends her previous statement. "Most demigods, anyways."
"You should know by now that I'm not included in 'most demigods'," he says, grinning.
"Yes, because you're about ten times as annoying, and ten times as stubborn."
"I learned that from you, you know."
"No, you were already that way when I first met you," she responds.
"Well, you enhanced it."
"Are you so sure about that?" They'd stopped walking altogether, a couple standing in the middle of the sidewalk, eyes bright with laughter as they bickered. "From my memory, you were as irritating and stubborn as you are now when you were still twelve. Maybe even more."
"From my memory you basically taunted me every chance that you got."
"When?" she challenges, eyes meeting his defiantly.
"The first words you said to me after I woke up from a near-death experience was 'you drool in your sleep'," he answers sardonically. "Very considerate of you."
"Well - " she breaks off her remark at a sudden movement behind her. Immediately, her hand flies to the dagger concealed in her clothing, tugging it out while spinning to face the threat. Gaze landing on a growling hellhound, adrenaline thrumming through her veins, she states calmly, "Oh look. There's a monster."
xiii. Taking Responsible Risks
"Do you think I would be okay if I fell out of an airplane while it's flying over water?"
She's almost stunned speechless at the idiocy in the sentence. Then, slowly, she dares to ask, "What would make you think that?"
"I did jump off the Gateway Arch and I'm sitting here next to you right now in one piece."
"No, why you thought of the question in the first place." She would learn new things every day on how his rather spontaneous mind worked.
"I'm...not entirely sure. I think it started with that airplane ad thing by the side of the screen, and then I was thinking about flying and how much I hated it, and then that led to Zeus and how he probably would kill me if I ever flew again, and that made me think about if that happened and he zapped me out of the sky and if I was flying over the ocean or something would I still be able to survive…?"
It takes her several seconds to process the long explanation and the logic behind the jumps from topic to topic. "You do realize," she starts haltingly, "that airplanes fly about 57 times higher than the Gateway Arch?"
"...Really?"
At his disbelieving response, she fixes him with a glare that screams Of course I'm right you idiot.
"Okay," he says, drawing out each syllable. "What about the Grand Canyon?"
The incinerating look falters and morphs into a curious glance. "Where did that come from?"
"I mean, since airplanes are too high, I was thinking about other places with water and someplace high to jump off of."
"You seriously want to try and jump off the edge of the Grand Canyon."
"Well." He fidgets uncomfortably. "I'm not sure…?"
"Let me just shoot that idea down with the fact that it's about nine times deeper than the arch is high."
Silence ensues, a few moments long before he cautiously suggests, "You never know until you try?"
A sigh follows, and the withering stare returns. "That might just be one of the most idiotic things I have ever heard you say. And that is a lot coming from you."
"What? Hey!"
"You literally just said that you are willing to try to see what might kill you."
Sheepishly rubbing the back of his neck, he offers an uncertain smile. "Taking responsible risks?"
An incredulous pause. "Responsible." That one word from her drips with skepticism.
"Okay, maybe not responsible, but a worthy experiment?"
"Worthy experiment," she states, her voice again layered with sarcasm.
"Are you just repeating what I'm saying?"
She sends him a smirk at having irritated him. "Only the stupid parts."
xiv. Finding Humor
He finds them huddled together in the center of piles of pictures strewn haphazardly across the floor, giggling over something he doesn't dare to want to know. Still, curiosity gets the better of him. "What is that?"
It's in the middle of one of her laughing fits, and after she calms her breathing once more, she answers, "Oh, nothing much. Just - " she trails off and sneaks a glance at Sally, a question in her eyes.
"Some pictures of you when you were still just a tiny baby," the older woman finishes, laughter evident in her features.
Horror seeps into his expression, embarrassment creeping into his cheeks as a red flush. "Don't tell me you pulled out all of them." Even as he attempts to deny it, he knows from the amount of boxes and photos scattered on the carpeted living room floor that she most definitely tracked down all of them. "No," he groans. "Not this. Anything but this."
"I don't know why you're so ashamed, Percy," Annabeth teases, reveling in his humiliation. "You were absolutely adorable then."
"You haven't even seen this one where he was still in a phase and he refused to move to go anywhere except to the swimming pool or the aquarium," Sally chimes in. "Where is it? I think I spotted it somewhere around here…There it is!" Snatching it up from the chaotic pile, she triumphantly displays it for all to see.
"Aww," the blonde theatrically coos. "Look at that stubborn pout, Percy…."
"No," he repeats, voice muffled by his hands that now covered his face. "I refuse to. Why must you do this to me?"
"And this one!" Sally holds up a shot of a wide-eyed Percy covered in cake frosting. "This was on his second birthday - "
Upon taking one look at the picture, Annabeth dissolves into another fit of snickers at the innocent, bewildered expression the chubby-cheeked baby wore.
"I don't get why it's so funny," the now-grown teenage counterpart complains at her laughter. "It's just pictures."
"Oh, no," she breathes out between giggles. "You don't understand exactly how priceless this is."
"So you can tease me for the rest of my life?" he whines.
"Exactly."
xv. Thinking Independently
"Can you just tell me all the answers?" he implores, eyes pleading.
Pointedly avoiding eye contact with him, she replies, "No, Seaweed Brain. You have to think for yourself."
"But it's so hard…."
"Yes, it's harder than sleeping in class when the teacher is trying to explain something important."
"I was counting on you to not be so heartless."
Yet again, he's on the receiving end of her patented glare. "Who said I was heartless? This is for your own good."
Defeatedly slumping in his chair, he grumbles, "That's what they all say."
"That's what they all say because they're all right." Picking up a pencil and shoving a piece of paper in front of him, she orders, "Here. Work that problem out."
His discouraged gaze moving from the page of doom to the blank sheet, he slides lower in the seat. "But-"
"Do you know how to start?"
There's a blurry line of words surfacing in the back of his mind-something about factoring-but he still shakes his head.
"Here, so you do this-"
In the end, she's pretty sure she completed more than half his homework for him. Closing his math book and throwing it out of the way, he places his history notes in front of him, staring blankly at the messy scrawls. A few heartbeats of quiet, then, "Can you help me study? Or somehow give me all the answers to the test?"
She blows out a breath at the question, knowing arguing is futile. "So, the reason why the Civil War started was not entirely because of the morality of slavery-" she begins, steeling herself for the long hours to come.
So much for thinking on your own.
xvi. Remaining Open to Continuous Learning
"But I'm already okay with the basics!" he protests as she adamantly pushes him towards the archery range. "I swear I am!"
"Uh-huh. And that's why the range clears out whenever you go there," she retorts.
"Because - because they fear my deadly aim!"
"Your oh-so-deadly aim," she deadpans, eyebrows raised, "that narrowly misses Chiron when you're shooting at a target about four feet away."
"I...um…." Whatever response he may have been able to think up evaporates as he yelps in alarm when she plucks an arrow from the quiver and levels it menacingly at him. "Okay, okay! I'll go! I'll practice!"
"Good. Because you need practice," she says, satisfied. "You do know how to shoot properly, right?"
"Yeah…?" It's more of a question than a statement, and one cursory glance at his form shows just how much work she had just brought upon herself.
Sighing, she sets about adjusting his grip on the bow. "So you need to loosen the grip you just need to let it rest on - here, keep it there, and the other fingers are only for support."
He shifts from foot to foot as she laboriously pries and adjusts each individual finger. "Is it really necessary?"
"Yes. Now keep it in that position," she orders, though it clearly is futile as his hand begins sliding back towards his previous grip. "No - !"
Sighing, she repeats the uncomfortable process and secures his hand in the grip. Squirming at the forced relocation, he complains, "I told you, I already know how to shoot - "
"Well, clearly you have an affinity for aiming at innocent bystanders and having the arrow land perilously close to them."
"That's not fair. I try to aim for the target. It's not my fault they get in the way."
An amused smile flits across her face. "How can they get in the way from several feet away from the target?"
"They - they just get in the way of the arrow's path."
Shaking her head at the flimsy explanation, she spends the afternoon arduously instructing Percy on the importance of stance and grip, and by the time he finally hits the target three times in a row - no matter that it's on the outermost rings -she's ready to shun archery class for the rest of her life.
"Fear my deadly aim!" he jokingly declares as they wearily trudge back from the range.
"Please. No. I've had enough archery to last me a lifetime."
"What? So you don't enjoy lecturing people on the importance of proper back tension and the anchor points for shooting? Or how the correct stance aligns with your body's centering efforts -"
"Shut it," she half-heartedly grumbles.
"Or the importance of keeping your head in its centered position so there are less inconsistencies?"
"Perseus Jackson." Her grey eyes flare with irritation, and she turns to scowl at him.
"What are you going to do about all the wonderful archery terms and technique's you've hammered into my head?" he teases.
"I said to shut it," she says, involuntarily leaning in, breath ghosting over his face in their proximity. He abruptly stills, green eyes unblinking as they stare into her own, all traces of humor gone. Drawn to each other, closing the distance ever so gradually….
She hovers in that position, lips a sliver of air away, heart pounding, world melted away to only the depths of emerald before her. Then, suddenly drawing away, noting the surprise on his expression as he relearns what it is like to breathe.
"You - you - " he splutters indignantly as he finally regains movement.
A small smirk lingers on her features, grey eyes sparkling wickedly. "I did say to shut up."
-End-
It's been awhile since I've written anything like this, and probably the first fluff I've written ever... so I hope you enjoyed and please tell me how you think I did/how I could improve. Reviews make everyone's day :)