This is based off the first line from the Taylor Swift song "Sparks Fly," which reminds me somewhat of Percabeth.
The way you move is like a full-on rainstorm / and I'm a house of cards.
I liked to make card houses when I was little.
I would sit there, alone in my room, my too-easy first grade homework already done, and build elaborate houses out of cards while I waited for my dad to come home.
I kept the door shut because I wanted to keep my stepmother out.
After the masterpiece was complete and I had admired it for a few minutes with my six-year-old eyes, I poked a card towards the bottom and the entire structure collapsed, sending cards all over the floor.
It was the beginning of my obsession with architecture.
Sometimes, after I ran away, I felt like I was a house of cards, the ever-present tension in my body keeping me together. Keeping the glossy little rectangles of stiff paper with rounded edges from slipping and falling apart. Certain things – like Luke carrying me piggyback when I got tired, or Thalia holding my hand like the surrogate big sister she was to me, helped keep my cards from tumbling down.
Then Thalia got turned into a tree. Cards slipped and I slowly rebuilt myself.
Later, in my cabin at Camp Half-Blood, I would sit cross-legged on my bunk with a sketchbook and pencil from Chiron – creamy white paper and sharp graphite – and sketch pictures of houses.
Annabeth Chase. 9-year-old handwriting.
Luke and I grew apart.
I fell for him hard, though. An eleven-year-old girl's feelings for a boy already eighteen. Tall and handsome.
When he came, I was twelve. Already I'd carried too much weight for my years, Chiron had said, and I still felt like a house of cards sometimes.
He made my card house self feel like falling apart, every so often. He was so infuriating. Green eyes, black hair. Such a seaweed brain.
We became best friends anyways. How could we not? We had defeated monsters together. He had my back. I had his. Crazy as it was, I trusted him. I hoped he trusted me.
Luke betrayed me. Thalia came back.
Cards slipped again and Percy helped me rebuild myself without even knowing. He made me smile. I still got frustrated with him, though.
Then things changed. Slowly but surely.
Looking into those green eyes sometimes made me feel like a soft breeze was fluttering my house of cards. Sometimes it made me think of the gentle, deceiving breeze before a rainstorm.
He was a rainstorm and I was a house of cards.
We held the sky. He had looked everywhere for me.
By the next summer the sight of his green eyes and crooked smile made my heart race and I was so happy whenever I was by his side. I wanted nothing more than to kiss him.
And I finally did, inside a mountain, heat all around us and heat inside of me and I felt like my house of cards might fall apart again but this time it would be like melting.
A few days later, my house of cards did fall apart. But not melting. It fell apart drowning in tears.
It lay there on the floor until the moment I saw him, alive and well, and as I held on tight, as if for dear life, my house of cards rebuilt itself within a minute.
He was back.
Then jealousy set in.
The war.
I thought nothing of getting wounded to save him.
His "Achilles heel". When I touched it, sparks shot through me, but my cards didn't catch fire.
Blue birthday cake. A kiss in a lake.
Dreams come true.
Happiness.
The rainstorm had come and it was the best rainstorm ever. My house of cards threatened to fall apart every time he kissed me, but it was a good falling apart. Like I was melting inside. It was like falling apart and being made whole at the same time.
He was my rainstorm and I was a house of cards.
Hope you enjoyed it! Another one focusing on their relationship throughout the Heroes of Olympus series coming soon.