Pairing: Percy/Annabeth
Category: Percy Jackson & The Olympians
Rating: PG-13 / T [For swearing]
Summary: [story edited 11/6/10] You're not sure why in Hades people even celebrate Halloween, walking around in those costumes, celebrating vampires and death. But you're about to find out that even Halloween has a good side. PULL Submission for Bookaholic's challenge: see here for more details Project P.U.L.L.
The Perks of Halloween Costumes
(Inspired by a week of Fall Break, lazy—sick—days, and endless episodes of Justice League and Justice League Unlimited.)
Happy freaking Halloween.
You're not really the strongest supporter of the particular holiday, you've gotta admit. But for Audrey's Halloween-fetish (sweet little 5'4" Audrey who enjoys writing songs for anyone who compliments her on the smallest things), you put away your feelings for the holiday and help out anyway. Now you're stuck attending the inter-school Halloween Dance planned for Goode High, Manhattan High School for Girls (your school) and two other schools. The very dance you helped a very psyched-out-Audrey plan.
(Okay, personally, you don't even know why the Headmistress of MHSG allowed this dance to happen. All you know is that you saw someone sneak into her office with a bottle of something right before you asked for permission and when you walked into her room and requested to use the gym for the dance, she automatically—and dazedly—said yes. Which was not normal. But still. There is no logical reason why this dance is even happening.)
Nonetheless, everything is set. The lights are in place, dimmed to the right amount of light to give the atmosphere of the gym a creepy, yet slightly enticing aura. The DJ is also ready, and you made sure to get one of the most reliable DJs out of the list you were to choose from. Apparently, other than being responsible and on-time, he's also pretty badass at the turntables. Props to you on that.
In about five minutes, the first students enter the dance floor, walking around slowly, mesmerized and taking in their surroundings. They're all dressed up like zombies, witches, sex-manifested devils, and someone even dared come as a Greek goddess with a much-too-small toga. In no time, the whole dance floor is pulsing with the hot, sweaty, dancing bodies of intoxicated upperclass-men. You notice that the freshmen and sophomores litter the place, too, and you're relieved that no one's too scared to take on the dance floor.
After a while, someone touches your arm and you successfully avoid flinching, which proves to be hard in such an Underworld-like atmosphere.
Good on you.
When you turn to look at whoever it was, you notice it's Grover, and you visibly relax.
"Annabeth, gods, is that really you?" he asks, a little startled. Offended, you scoff and snap back, "Oh, I can't look good in a dress?" Grover blushes and his eyes widen as he realizes the real effect of his words.
"No, no, I didn't mean it like that. I mean... you always look great but ... tonight you look greater ... and you usually don't wear dresses and mostly wear jeans and pants and normal stuff but ... you know you're dressed up as a princess right now — not that that's a bad thing—" by now you're sick of Grover attempting to stutter an apology and laugh a little. You assure Grover that you were just overreacting and that he need not apologize.
"Well, I mean it. Y'know. You look wonderful tonight. Princess, right?" You smile, roll your eyes and nod. Then you explain that it's the one costume you know how to dress up as and it's the simplest costume. Princesses. Dresses. Tiaras. Shoes. Glitter. Thankfully, you got away with a white dress and still didn't manage to look like Cinderella. Score.
You tell Grover to make sure that he has fun during the dance because you worked your ass off to finish it. He clears his throat, "Of course I will!" and hurries off to some of his other Eco-Loving friends.
Someone taps you on your shoulder. It's Audrey. Great.
"So. Is everything going alright?" she asks. You look at the dance floor and wave your hand towards the sweaty, stoned and possibly drunk people.
"Unless spiking the punch is a bad thing, everything's going perfectly," you reply, making the tiny blond laugh. She grabs your arm and tugs you gently to the dance floor.
No, no, no, bad idea. You don't move an inch.
"Come on, Annabeth! You deserve a little fun after helping me plan all this! It looks amazing, by the way, just like I asked for. Hellish!" she grins widely like an innocent child and you can't help but feel a little afraid for yourself.
"Yeah, I hope there're enough torches and bloody walls, Audrey," you comment sarcastically. She laughs at you and uses both of her hands (she's dressed like a fairy, for goodness sakes. Doesn't she know that fairies don't exist?) to continue to try and pull you towards all the sweaty, dirty people but you're too tall. The cocky side of you cheers, thinking how much all that sword fighting, rock climbing and all the work outs had paid off. No, you're not muscular like Superman or anything—Gods, no—but you've certainly disciplined your body to the point of physical perfection that any girl would want.
Plus, you're strong.
Meaning Audrey doesn't stand a chance. You don't even budge when she starts pushing you from behind.
"Why are you so tall, Annabeth?" Audrey throws up her hands and gives up, crossing her arms across her chest.
"You're just short," you smirk, grinning down at her. She rolls her eyes.
"Come on, please? Just one dance! Have some fun!"
"This is fun!" you protest. She raises an eyebrow.
"You're standing in front of the main doors like one of Obama's guards. Yeah, that's definitely fun," she rolls her eyes and fixes her dress.
"I'm waiting for Percy, Audrey," you say. A second later you realize, yes, you are waiting for that Seaweed Brain. He promised he'd be here... so where is he?
"Of course, lover girl," Audrey teases lightly. You make a face at her. She laughs, "I'm coming back for you, later," the girl warns you loosely before disappearing into the mix of dancing bodies. You shudder and turn away, continuing to welcome guest after guest, surprisingly remembering who's who and what school they're from. (And where is that Seaweed Brain? All his friends from Goode High were here...)
After a while, you feel a little self conscious because yes, you're starting to look like one of the president's guards on-duty. Back straight, eyes scanning the room (for Percy), not smiling and not really ... moving. Just standing there.
You walk over to the drink bar. Not caring how spiked the punch is, you douse an entire cup of fruit punch and start coughing, realizing that the punch is spiked.
You toss your cup into the waste basket before sneaking out of the gym and onto the school's yard. People are still arriving but by now, you don't even bother even waving at them. First of all, your boyfriend is about an hour and a half late, and secondly, this holiday just gets you down so much.
It reminds you of Tartarus, reminds you of Hades—not that that's a bad thing, because Hades is a good guy… somewhat—and the Underworld. It reminds you of demons and dracenae and echidnas and chimeras and minotaurs. Not to mention it reminds you of the insides of Mt. St. Helens when you first had to bid your boyfriend goodbye, then come to believe that he'd died after blowing up, then realize later that he'd been vacationing on the utopia of Ogygia with Calypso. Yeah, that's depressing enough even for you.
But on a more serious note, Halloween reminds you of Luke, of all the blood that you witnessed, all the black pain that you suffered, and all the horrors other brave warriors suffered during the Titan War. It doesn't even matter that people have fun trick-or-treating through friendly neighborhoods and gaining cavity after cavity because of all the candy they consume. Honestly? That sounds fun and great and all, but you've never even cared about that. At five to seven years old, other little kids had fun during Halloween while you caught glimpses of and saw the real monsters. So how are you supposed to have fun during this godsforsaken event?
Your mind stops ranting immediately when your phone starts ringing shrilly and you fumble with it before snapping it open.
(Why in Hades you still have a phone, you don't know. The last time it started ringing, a Telekhine scout was lucky enough to find you and unlucky enough to be beheaded by you. No, that wasn't very pleasant.)
"Hello?" you say brusquely.
"Jeez, hi to you, too, Annabeth," Rachel's voice pipes through the line.
"Oh. Rachel. Sorry. Bad mood."
"I know. How's the dance?" she asks calmly.
"How d'you know about the da—oh. Stupid question."
"Uh-huh. Oracle? Remember? Now what I don't get is why you guys didn't invite people from St. Clarion's Academy. What about me?" Rachel whines. You can just see her glomping* her bed with a pillow under body, flipping through her latest sketches with her phone stuck to her ear.
"Because Rachel. The girls from St. Clarion's are... erm... rude, you say so yourself!" you reason. You settle down on the garden bench in the yard with your legs tucked under your dress and tune out the pounding music from inside the gym.
Rachel sighs, "True. But I never said they were rude." You scoff.
"Yes, you did! I specifically remember you saying that—"
"I called them bitches, if I may." You pause. This girl.
"Anyway. What do you want, Oracle?"
"What do I want? Can't an oracle catch a break? I just wanted to talk," she says. You sigh.
"I'm not really in the mood for 'talking', Rach," you glance around. It's gotten deathly quiet.
"What's up, Annabeth? I can read the future every once in a while, but I can never quite read you."
"It's this wretched 'holiday'. Halloween, that's all," you reply. Now it's gotten too quiet. Nothing was moving, not even in the shadows. It seemed that even the gym had become silent, even if Annabeth knew that her ADHD was just kicking in, tuning out everything unimportant. But there was no one on the streets of New York, there were no taxi's at all, no angry drivers. Nothing. Just silence. You decide to act like nothing's wrong for now and catch whatever's out there off guard.
"What's wrong with Halloween? Personally, I think it's a great opportunity for some good artwork," Rachel blabs. She then goes on and on about her latest plan to escape the clutches of the mistresses in St. Clarion's but you can hardly hear her now. There's something going on out there, and you know it's getting closer.
"Annabeth? Annabeth, are you even listening to me?" And there, a few meters from the school itself, you spot one of Nico's shadow-travel blotches begin to grow.
"No, not really, sorry Rachel, gotta go!" and you hang up on the oracle. (Of course, you know that the girl will be quite pissed at you later but you could hardly care less now.)
Out of nowhere, a body wearing a tux and a green tie flies over your head as you duck in time to prevent getting hit. You glance behind you quickly and notice that the tuxedo'd body landed on the bench you were just sitting on and that the body had pitch black hair. The body groans but before you could rush to help him, another voice, this one younger, cries out, "Percy, dammit! You're invulnerable! Gettup!" You whip around, and it painfully occurs to you that you recognize the voice as Nico di Angelo's. He's clinging onto the neck of a hyperborean giant that's flailing its arms and bouncing up and down on the ground, adding cracks on the pavement with every landing it made. The only thing off about this picture was that ... the giant was smiling.
You yell out Nico's name to catch his attention and let him know that you're in the picture now, too. Behind you, you can still hear Percy groaning and not bothering to get up. You growl at him, "Get up, Seaweed Brain," without turning around. From under your dress, you unsheathe your celestial bronze dagger from a band around your left thigh and use your hands to rip the white princess dress to right about your knees. You hold onto the long length of cloth, leave the tiara in your hair, leave the bangles on your wrists and keep your white pumps on because you kinda feel like Wonder Woman in this outfit. Or maybe some Ice Queen or something. No, scratch that. You definitely feel magnificently like Wonder Woman. So you leave everything as is.
Plus, you can feel Percy staring at you.
Holding the dagger between your teeth, you run (easily, even in your heels. Yes, you're also surprised) to the giant and jump onto his arm when he tries to swipe at you. The heels help when they sink into the hyperborean's skin and help you climb up to his head. Maybe you'll wear heels more often now.
"Hey Annabeth!" Nico cries, somewhat happily. You glare at him, remove the dagger from your teeth and scold the boy, "This is not the time to be cheery, Nico. What happened?" He gives you the condensed version of what happened. Percy'd asked Nico (who currently lives a few blocks away) to shadow travel him to MHSG because he was running late for the dance when Nico lost focus and landed right in front of the giant. From there, the two had been shadow traveling all over the state with the hyperborean giant stuck with them, never getting an open shot to send it to Tartarus permanently.
"An open shot, my ass. I'll give you an open shot," you dare, "Nico, let go of this thing," you instruct him. He hesitates for a few seconds but lets go and drops down gracefully onto the cracked asphalt.
You hear Percy shout your name, warning you to be careful.
From where you stand (on the giant's shoulders), you can see a tall tree that reaches up to the middle of the giant's arm. The monster's currently facing the tree, but you need it to face away from the tree. It's moving so wildly that you're almost flung off the monster but you keep your grip on the giant's neck, ignoring the cold feel under your fingers. You're head is facing the giant's mouth and you gag at the smell of ... rum.
Rum? you think. This bloody thing was drunk, for heaven's sake!
"Guys, where did you find this thing!" you keep holding on to the giant's shirt and try to clamber onto the monster's back while the two glance at each other nervously.
"Alley 58**?" Nico answered. You sigh. Those two. They just could not stay out of trouble.
The tree is right under your feet now. With the strip of cloth that used to be part of your dress, you quickly hook the length of white cloth around the giant's neck to choke it and jump down from his shoulder's. You make sure that the branch comes between you and the giant's body, and after tugging down hard, you make its neck cracks violently against the rough branch. You twist its head sideways with the cloth for another nice crunch, just for good measure.
A few seconds later, the giant freezes into ice and with a sharp stab of your dagger, the lump of ice shatters into small shards that slowly melt into nothingness. You grab the white length of cloth from the ground and tie it around your hand. You're definitely making it a keepsake. You also slide the dagger back into its sheathe on the band around your thigh. Turning around, you remember that your boyfriend and his sidekick are still standing in awe after your little show.
"What?" you ask innocently. Nico rolls his eyes and mutters something that sounds suspiciously like, "Show-off." He bids you guys a lazy farewell, makes a futile attempt to threaten Percy that if he 'ever called me on a Friday night to shadow travel ever again, he would—" and stalks off into the shadows and disappears into the night. A tiny voice in your caring heart hopes that he won't shadow travel into another dangerous place or at least not Alley 58.
You begin to brush off the dust from your costume. Realizing that there can be some perks to Halloween—ehem, the costumes?—you conclude that you'll keep this dress. It's torn, yes, it's worn and ripped and covered in hyperborean slime that smells like rum on a bad day, but it made you feel powerful... on Halloween. That's reason enough to keep it.
"Listen, Annabeth," Percy starts, "about the Halloween dance—"
"It's okay, Percy," you interrupt. "There was proof a minute ago that you couldn't make it. Even when you promised. It's all good." Percy winced.
"Yeah, but I didn't have to call Nico and shadow travel with him, right? It's my fault and I'm sorry," he said, looking so apologetic. You frown at him and look at the floor.
"You should be," you mutter. Percy sighs and takes you into his arms. You don't really react but eventually you wrap your arms around his waist and squeeze tight.
"Is it just me or does Halloween freak you out as much it does me?" Percy whispers. You look at him straight in the eye.
"You, too?" you whisper. He nods once and looks to the side. "From this day on, I hate this holiday. Makes no sense to me." He looks back at you, though, and smiles, brushing a a grey lock of hair away from your eyes and tucking it behind your ear.
"So, should we go dancing? Just us? Away from ... this?" he gestures at MHSG and you realize that you can hear the pounding music and it seems to have gotten louder.
"Not now. I'm done with Halloween. Let's just... watch a movie or something? Your place? Chinese take-out?" you suggest. Percy grins and almost looks relieved.
"That's what I like to hear." You both start walking towards the direction of the Chinese take-out place near Percy's apartment when you recall something important.
"But there is something kinda cool about Halloween, I guess," you say. Percy scoffs, "What could possibly be cool about Halloween except for the candy?" you laugh shortly.
"Not the candy, you dork. The costumes," you gesture to yourself. Percy laughs after eyeing you down.
"What're you? Cinderella from the third movie?" he yelps when you jab him with your elbow.
"I was a princess. But after remaking this dress, I feel like Wonder Woman. Besides, I don't think you should be talking. I don't see you in a costume," you challenge. Percy drops his mouth open and clutches his heart as if he's insulted and shocked.
"You don't recognize me, Princess Diana?" he pauses, and realizing something he says, "Oh, my gods. This is perfect." You smile and nudge him, "Who're you dressed up as, Seaweed Brain? You look like the Kingpin in that funky suit."
"Bah! The Kingpin's from Marvel. I, on the other hand..." you stop walking as he rushes forward a few feet directly in front of you and stands in a superhero pose.
"I'm Bruce Wayne, princess," he drawls comically. You burst out laughing and shake your head at your boyfriend.
"You're impossible, Percy. The tie doesn't even match! He's all black, no part of him is even the darkest shade of green!"
"Hey, but it makes it Percylicious," he reasons. You roll your eyes as he reaches out for your hand and, using his lowest and 'best' Batman voice, says in a sultry manner, "Now, would you like to come to my Batcave?" You laugh out loud, pull away and run faster towards the Chinese take-out place.
"Stay away from me, Bats. I'm supposed to stay virginal like all my other Amazonian sisters. You can keep dreaming!" you shout back at him as you keep running. You love the feeling of never tripping on these high heels, by the way. When he captures you (everyone knows that Percy runs faster than you, it's a common fact) and wraps his arm around your waist, you turn your head and peck him lightly on his cheek before slipping away again and continuing to run, knowing that the night was young and would be filled with a lot of superhero role play. When you both (finally) end up at his apartment and you're curled up on his couch; when Percy's finally falling asleep in your arms; even when you still feel like Wonder Woman and you're positive that Percy's having the time of his life playing the role of Batman, you kiss his forehead, thanking him for showing you the perks of Halloween.
*I'm not sure glomp is even a word but I saw it used on DeviantArt. Therefore, I used it. End of.
**That should appear some other time. I promise. :) It's a dangerous (and silly) place, Alley 58.
Heh. So, just edited this. :) Hope it's better. Again, it's my second PULL submission. Thought all my fellow PJO fans might enjoy this. If not, then [YOU CAN GO DIE] that's perfectly fine! :p
Anywho, once again. Batman x Wonder Woman, you can't miss it. DianaxBruce is the most epic and dramatic coupling there ever was. If the real comics don't get them together, I might just—
Never mind. On this note, please don't hesitate to inform me again if there are any errors (thank you Aurelia Roschelle for pointing one out! Love you, honey!) and I should really get started on my next submission now, shouldn't I? :) Thanks guys and Happy Halloween (belated now) again!