Knock knock.
"Door's open," Annabeth calls. She can't be bothered to move from her bed – she might disturb the precarious stacks of paper surrounding her.
Percy pushes the door open with his foot, arms full of junk food and caffeinated beverages. "Hey beautiful. How's the studying going?" he asks, setting the snacks down and pressing a hello kiss to her cheek.
She runs a hand through her hair, curls flying everywhere. "Terribly. None of these articles make sense! Why the hades did I decide to take a class that requires a research paper? I HATE EVERYTHING." Annabeth sighs exasperatedly and flops backwards, glaring at the ceiling.
"Everything?" Percy asks, popping open a soda. "Even me?"
"Yes, Seaweed Brain, even you." Annabeth says, but her words carry no venom.
"Sounds like someone needs a break," Percy remarks, unperturbed.
"I don't have time for a break. I don't have time to BREATHE." Annabeth pulls a pencil from behind her ear and scribbles a note in one of the numerous notebooks littering her bed.
"How about you do something else, Annabeth? You're gonna explode if you keep going, and then your research paper will never get done." Percy pantomimes a volcano erupting, and Annabeth can't help but smile.
"What do you suggest?" Annabeth hopes he'll tell her to take a nap. She needs some sleep like Mrs. O'Leary needs a drool-catcher. Gingerly extricating herself from the mound of papers, she plops down on the floor next to Percy and lays her head on his shoulder. He twirls a strand of blonde hair around his calloused finger.
"I dunno. Just not…THAT."
Annabeth swats him playfully. "You're so incredibly helpful, babe. No wonder I keep you around."
"And here I thought you liked my cooking expertise. Well, don't you have another assignment you could work on for a while?" Percy suggests.
Annabeth trails a fingertip in circles on his knee. "I do have to read for Contemporary Poetry. I suppose I could get that out of the way."
"Go for it. I'll be here, eating these sprinkled donuts I brought for you." Percy demonstrates by taking a large bite of the donut in his hand.
Annabeth smirks as she gets up, ruffling his hair. She locates her textbook underneath all the papers on her bed, stacks the papers on her desk, and then nests herself in her pillows. She finds the page and her face softens as her eyes flit over the words.
"Hey, Percy, do you mind if I read out loud?" Annabeth asks. With her dyslexia, reading out loud sometimes helps her understand better.
"Whatever you need to do, Wise Girl."
She clears her throat and begins to read.
"I think, maybe, I fell in love with your patterns and inconsistencies. Like the way you moan on your way to sleep. And the way your heart beats." Annabeth looks up from the page, and Percy has propped his chin on the end of the bed, listening. His bright green eyes look up at her, attentive.
"I want to be your heartbeat, just to be that much closer to you, living there inside your chest, making a home under your flesh." Percy levers himself up on his arms and presses his lips ever so gently to the inside of one ankle, then the other. She pauses.
"Keep reading, babe," he prompts.
"And waking up to sunshine is nice, I guess, but waking to your smile is like having sunshine in my bed every morning, warmth radiating from your side of the mattress." Percy's lips make a ladder up past her knees, to her inner thighs, teeth pulling at the hem of her shorts.
Annabeth's breath hitches, but she doesn't miss a word.
"And I would love to make you a regular thing-"
Percy carefully tilts the button on her shorts out of its hole.
"-pillow talk in the evenings-"
He tugs her zipper down slowly, slowly, the teeth disengaging nearly silently.
"-and coffee and cigarettes in the morning-"
Curls his fingers around her waistband, pulls it down a few inches so he can kiss each iliac crest, tracing a line between them with his tongue.
"-making every day as stunning as this one."
He eases the denim down her legs.
"Take me in small doses."
Fingertips trace hipbones, the crease where leg meets waist, the soft curve of pubic mound.
"I'll take you all at once."
Percy's eyes glance up to meet Annabeth's. "Another?" he asks, uncharacteristically concise.
She nods, turns to the next page, and begins a new poem. This time her words are even more carefully measured, as though she's determined to stay in control.
"I like my body when it is with your body." She unconsciously glances back at Percy, whose eyes flash a mixture of mischief and lust as he kisses her through the cotton of her underwear. Annabeth's free hand clenches ever so slightly. "It is so quite a new thing."
"Muscles better and nerves more." Teeth scrape across the flesh of Annabeth's hip, in contrast to the feathery strokes of fingertips along her inner thighs, gently nudging her legs apart.
Annabeth takes a deep breath. She will not be shaken, gods damnit.
"I like your body. I like what it does, I like its hows. I like to feel the spine of your body and its bones – " She breaks off and involuntarily flicks her eyes down to Percy. From this angle, she can see how his t-shirt clings to the planes of his shoulder blades (so perfect for scratchmarks) and the bumpy trail of his spine (just begging to be played like an instrument) and the slight swell of his ass (such a convenient place to grab when they're pressed together and she needs moremoremore more pressure, more everything). Percy latches onto a smooth patch of thigh and sucks, jolting Annabeth back from the fog.
"Uh – and the trembling-firm-smoothness and which I will again and again and again kiss," Annabeth stutters a bit, then regains (most of) her composure.
Percy takes the waistband of her underwear between his teeth and pulls, his hands helping to pull it from under her. His hair tickles her legs as he drags it down. He slips her underwear off of her feet and drops it beside the bed. Immediately, his head is back between her thighs.
"I like kissing this and that of you." Annabeth's free hand clenches again when the flat of Percy's tongue swipes across her clit, finally, finally. He begins licking up and down in light, wet strokes.
"I like, slowly stroking the, shocking fuzz of your electric fur, and what-is-it comes over parting flesh…and eyes big love-crumbs." Annabeth's toes flex and her legs tremble.
"And possibly I like the thrill – " her breath hitches for a split second "– of under me you so quite new." As she breathes out these last words, she closes her eyes.
"I have one more poem to read," she nearly pants.
Percy doesn't even lift his head, just stops licking and kissing and stroking long enough to say, "Nothing's stopping you, sweetheart," before returning to his task at hand.
Annabeth's hands are shaking as she turns to the last assigned poem. "Styx," she hisses, knowing it's about to get a lot harder to maintain her calm and hold off her orgasm.
She begins in a low voice, the voice Percy loves to drag out of her in the crevices of his embrace.
"I crave your mouth, your voice, your hair." She grabs a handful of inky black hair and tugs, unable to help herself.
"Silent and starving, I prowl through the streets. Bread does not nourish me, dawn disrupts me, all day I hunt for the liquid measure of your steps."
Annabeth reaches deep inside for that inner calm, that remaining strand of concentration.
"I hunger for your sleek laugh, your hands the color of a savage harvest, hunger for the pale stones of your fingernails – " Annabeth's nails press into Percy's scalp " – I want to eat your skin like a whole almond."
Percy shifts his weight onto one elbow so he can slip a finger into Annabeth, so slick that a second joins the first with no resistance. Annabeth's eyes close for several long seconds as Percy's fingers work inside of her.
"Don't stop now, Wise Girl," he encourages her.
"I want to eat the sunbeam flaring in your lovely body, the sovereign nose of your arrogant face, I want to eat the fleeting shade of your lashes – " Little moans escape Annabeth's mouth, slipping out between words. Percy closes his lips over her clit as he increases the intensity of his finger movement.
" – and I pace around hungry, sniffing the twilight, hunting for you – " The moans outnumber the words now, coming out of Annabeth's lips in open-mouthed gasps " – for your hot heart, like a puma in the barrens of – " The last word is cut off as Annabeth falls off the mountain top that Percy had been helping her climb, the syllables turning into urgent, high-pitched moans. Her arms lash out through her orgasm, sending papers flying in the air. A hour ago this would have made her groan in frustration, but right now all that matters is Percy's mouthlipstongue and Percy's fingers and the small screams that he pulls from her, all of the tension leaving her body as it dissolves into effervescent pleasure.
The waves wash over her one, two, three times before she has to pull Percy away by his hair, the stimulation unbearable. He lays his head on her soft stomach, covered in a thin layer of sex-induced sweat. They lay there, both breathing heavily, until Annabeth breaks the silence.
"Oh my gods, Percy."
"Yes, Annabeth?" he replies with a small, self-satisfied smile.
"We've been in college three semesters and you just now thought of sex as a stress reliever?" She pulls him up next to her to press her mouth filthily to his, tasting herself on Percy's mouthlipstongue.
"You never wanted to stop studying long enough to have sex during finals before now!" he playfully accuses her.
"Shut up and kiss me, Seaweed Brain."
"Whatever you say, Wise Girl."
Annabeth maneuvers herself on top of Percy and shoves the rest of her papers onto the floor. They could wait for a while. Annabeth, on the other hand, cannot.
Poem credits are, in order of appearance: untitled by Charlotte Scott, i like my body when it is with your body by e. e. cummings, Love Sonnet XI by Pablo Neruda.
