A/N: Happy holidays! Here is the first installment of the Halfblood Holidays series I will be doing this December. Feel free to pop into my ask box on tumblr or PM me with a prompt - I can't guarantee that I'll get to all of them but I'd love to try! Enjoy, friends.
Percy Jackson has a dilemma.
No one ever told him how quickly superglue dried. No one ever told him how easy it was to get your fingers stuck together.
Even more so, no one ever told him that if you try to use glitter it gets everywhere and stays everywhere.
All he wanted to do was make personalized (read: mostly blue with whatever their favorite color is, because blue is the best) holiday signs for everyone's bunks so that they can have little name tags over their beds, but no. Of course not.
Annabeth finds him about ten minutes later as he's still fighting to pull his fingers apart, and at this point his resolve was waning and he's considering chewing off his fingers and calling it a day.
"Percy," says Annabeth carefully, "why are you licking your fingers?"
"Is this another one of those situations where Percy's being an idiot?" comes Piper's voice, and Percy can see her hopping up and down from behind Annabeth, trying to see over the taller girl's shoulder. "Come on, Annabeth, move, I want to see!"
Percy calls her something rather unflattering and she shoots back with an insult of her own, but the grin they exchange makes it clear it's all in good fun.
Until Piper sees exactly what Percy did. "Oh my god," says Piper, her hand flying to cover her mouth. "You glued your fingers together, didn't you?"
Percy grumbles something he can't even translate, and avoids Annabeth's eyes as she starts looking at his hand like he asked to keep a turkey for a pet in her bedroom.
"What was that?" asks Piper, the grin still on her face. "Percy, we can't hear you."
"It's superglue, and shut up, Piper, you got your hair caught in a toaster once. I wouldn't be talking."
Annabeth turns to Piper with the same look she had saved earlier for Percy, and Percy feels an odd sort of triumph that he was finally able to use that moment against her. "Did I manage to interact with the two dumbest people in this camp today?" Annabeth asks, throwing her hands up in the air. "Or was this just an unfortunate coincidence that makes my life harder starting at the first day back at camp? This is supposed to be winter break."
"The toaster thing was last year!" says Piper. "Besides, you have to deal with this idiot," Piper says, pointing her thumb to Percy. He flips her off using his other hand. "Oh, please, Percy," says Piper with a grin. "You think it's funny."
"It'll be funnier in a few seconds," says Percy, fighting back a grin. With his free hand, he grabbed a handful of glitter and then, moving quickly, grabs Piper around the waist and gives her a glitter noogie she would never forget.
"Percy!" Annabeth yells. "Not with the superglue!"
"It's in the other hand," says Percy, waving off her concerns. "Besides, Piper looks good in blue."
"You got more of it on yourself than her," says Annabeth. Percy follows her gaze to his shirt front, and sees that it got all over his chest.
"Why do you have to be so short?!" he exclaims to Piper. Her response is to headbutt him gently in the stomach. "Wait, what are you doing?!"
As Piper shakes her head against his shirt, she yells, "How do you like them apples, Papa Smurf?!" He doesn't have half a clue what she's talking about until she moves away, the glitter now completely covering his formerly grey tee shirt and trailing its way down until it catches in the denim of his jeans.
"Oh no," he says quietly. He silently steps back and grabs another handful as Annabeth and Piper laugh themselves silly, and reaches out to hug Annabeth, sidestepping at the last moment and dropping the fistful of blue glitter into her hair. "Looks like someone else has glitter problems."
Annabeth's looking at him like he just told her Tartarus would be a good vacation spot, and he is suddenly sure he has made a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad mistake. "Please don't kill me," he whimpers.
"Not kill," says Annabeth, far too calmly. "I'm just not going to tell you the cure for superglue fingers. And I'm not helping you clean up these glitter herpes."
"Neither am I," exclaims Piper, still shaking her hair out on the floor. "I'll be blue for weeks."
"Will you be blue, da ba dee, da ba di?" Annabeth asks, strangely seriously.
"No, you dolt," says Piper with an eye roll. "We should all get to dinner now, since that's why we came in here." She looks down at the floor. "Good luck cleaning up that floor with your glue hand before room inspections tomorrow."
Percy's only response is to whine pathetically and wonder how his Christmas presents went so horribly, horribly wrong.
At least one good thing came out of it: he knew at least two people who were definitely not going to get one of his posters.
