Author's Note: This is just a little story I wrote a few months ago as practice. Along with the overall plot, I include a lot of things that I wished had happened in the Percy Jackson series (the original five books). Thank you for taking the time to read my story and enjoy! (oh, I almost wrote "bon appetit"...ughhh... I can tell this is gonna go GREAT)
He couldn't sleep. Swimming was usually his forte, but not swimming in his own sweat. That was a completely different story. A really gross story.
Percy Jackson was unlike any other seventeen-year-old boy in the world. Being the only child of the sea god has that effect. He had traveled across the country (mostly underground or through the air) and defeated monster after monster that had threatened the people he loved most. And last summer, he had, with the help of his countless friends, defeated the biggest threat this world had ever seen: Kronos, Lord of Time, the king of the Titans.
For weeks after their battle on Mount Olympus, Percy would awake in a terror, visions of death and destruction flashing through his mind like lightning. All the friends who had lost their lives to save his would appear to him in his dreams and each one left him feeling like he had been stabbed straight through. He would awake from the sheer pain of seeing their smiling faces, the rosiness of their skin, the tenderness of their breath. In life, all of these things had seemed so meaningless and insignificant, but now that they were all gone the small details were all he could think about.
On these nights, Percy's best friend Grover, who would sometimes pass the Poseidon Cabin in the night on his way to a quick pee, would hear Percy's shrieks and run for help. Grover was a satyr, with goat legs blending into a human torso, fur fading gently into skin. Loyalty and determination were some of his best qualities. He was, though, admittedly, a little horny - due to the two horns sprouting from the top of his curly head.
Whenever Percy was having one of his fits, Grover would always alert Percy's girlfriend, Annabeth. She would rush over to the cabin, still in her pajamas, and would ease him back into a calmness he could only feel when he was with her. Percy would be on the chilled stone floor beside his bed, trembling, his cheeks caked in salt, until her gentle arms would wrap themselves around him and her sweet lips would plant kisses on his head and along his nose.
Annabeth was beautiful, with untamed blond curls and powerful grey eyes. Not a hard, stony kind of grey; more of a stormy grey - warm and dangerous. She got these eyes from her mother, the goddess Athena. Her big brain and smart-assedness were also gifts from her dear mother. Percy, in the same respect, had gotten his father's sea green eyes and shaggy black hair, as well as his general disregard for rules and restrictions of any sort.
Percy cherished these nights, when he would come out of a dark, fear-ridden stupor to find himself alone in his room with Annabeth, encased in her arms, her breath still minty from brushing, her voice tender in his ear.
"It's okay, Percy," she would whisper. "You're okay."
"No," he would hear himself say. "They're all dead…. It's all my fault…."
She would murmur more "no's" and bury her face in his neck, sealing each word with a grace from her soft, rosy lips.
One night, he just couldn't take it anymore. He pressed his lips onto hers, hard, in a fierce desperation he had been struggling to restrain, but it had burst forth from him like a geyser, unafraid of rejection. And she did not reject him. She kissed him back, with as much ferocity.
That night, swimming in sweat hadn't been all that bad. The only downside to that otherwise perfect night was that he couldn't tell anybody - at Camp Halfblood, it was strictly forbidden for a male and female camper to be alone together, and especially to engage in… certain romantic activities. Not that he had ever really cared about rules - it was in his blood not to. But he did care about getting kicked out (he just hoped none of the gods had been watching invisibly).
That night, he had fallen asleep in Annabeth's arms and didn't wake again until the sun was well into the summer sky, until after she had already gone.
But, tonight, sleep seemed, once again, an unconquerable foe.
He kicked off his sheets, but it didn't seem to help. He was still boiling. And his stomach felt as if he had swallowed the back end of a chimera.
He got up and dashed to the corner, where the gorgeous fountain that had been a gift from his father - beautiful, solid stone, and rainbow waters - stood proud and bubbling, and, without restraint, he vomited into it, repeatedly. Wave after wave of nausea crashed over him until he could barely lift his head.
The great, fearless Percy Jackson. Defeated by the flu.
Oh, the irony.
Yay! You've finished the first chapter! Comments are encouraged. And sorry about the really bad Grover joke... Usually I edit those kinds of jokes out, but I thought it was just too funny to get rid of. I like to make myself laugh :)