I do no own Percy Jackson soo yea no copy right intended

AN: so yea i know Chapter one was so boring and dumb and yea i'm sorry, but please stick with me it's going to get better. Please review i love any type of review even a flame

Percy POV

A moment later, Percy spotted her. She was on her feet and struggling up the long slope of the hill. He knew where she was headed. There was a big, weathered structure way at the top, the Chase Barn. "Annabeth, what the hell?" he yelled good and loud. "Hold on a minute!"

She didn't stop, she didn't turn. He was tempted to let her go, but who knew what trouble she'd get herself into next?

If something happened to her, he'd end up with a guilty conscience for leaving her. Plus, well, he didn't have a lot of options himself. The floodwaters were all around. He had to get to shelter to wait out the storm and the barn had walls and a roof. It was better than nothing. Annabeth was going to have to get over her aversion of him at least until there was somewhere else he could go.

He caught up to her maybe twenty yards from the barn. She must have finally heard the sloshing of his shoes. She stopped, her arms wrapped around herself to control the shivers that racked her, and turned to confront him. "Percy." Water ran down her cheeks, into her wide mouth and over her chin.

He could see her nipples, hard as rocks, right through her shirt and bra. "What Annabeth?"

"Thank you for saving my life."

"Hey no problem, can we move it along? It's kind of wet out here. I'd like to get to that barn."

She held her arms tighter around herself. "I would like for you to go away and leave me alone."

"Oh, you would, would you?"

"Yes. Please."

He raised his arms out wide "Exactly where should I go look around Annabeth?"

She flung out a hand. "What about your truck?"

He folded his arms across his chest and simply looked at her.

She let out a low cry. "Oh fine all right you can come in the barn. Just ugh!" And she turned around again and continued walking. He fell in right behind her.

When they finally reached the barn she undid the latch and slid in. He went in after her and pulled the door closed. The barn had another door on the far wall. Someone had left the door wide open. It was probably not a bad thing in this situation. The Chase livestock had found what they needed through that wide open door.

Percy spotted a golden Labrador retriever. The dog was headed for Annabeth. She let out a happy little cry. "Frank! There you are!" She crouched and opened her arms so the dog could put his paws on her shoulders. Whining with excitement, he licked her face with his sloppy pink tongue. "You are such a bad, bad dog," she said jokingly.

"Nice dog." He'd had a Rottweiler named Mrs. O'Leary who had passed away last winter. She'd been with him since he was ten and she was an ugly pup, the runt of the litter only he wanted her.

"Down, Frank." She stood up and tried to wipe mud off her shirt and jeans. "He's my dog," she explained, "but he's always loved it here on the ranch, so he lives here more than with me. He was supposed to be staying with me in town, while my parents and Malcolm are out of town." Malcolm Chase, her brother, was the sheriff. "That dog will not stay put. He keeps running off to get back here." A shiver went through her. She wrapped her arms around herself again.

"You're freezing," he said, but it came out unintentionally as an accusation.

"I'm fine." She shivered some more. Her hair was plastered on her cheeks and down her neck she swiped at a soggy hunk of it, shoving it back behind her ear.

Whoa. For a minute there, she'd almost seemed friendly but then she must have remembered that she hated his guts. She turned her back on him and started weaving her way through Livestock. The Lab followed her, panting happily, wagging his tail.

It should have been warmer in there, with all the steaming, livestock, but it wasn't. How could it be, with that far door wide open and both of them soaking wet?

He found a hay bale and sat on it as he thought about what he could do to make things a little more comfortable. He thought about shutting the other door, but the thought of the smell of wet livestock and manure would get pretty strong if he did that so he left it open.

As he thought about what to do next, he watched the dripping blonde haired woman who had spent the past four years avoiding him and now happened to be stuck with him until the rain ended and the floodwaters receded.

Annabeth was busy shivering and ignoring him. She'd always been a fanciful type, even when they were kids. He knew from actual observation. Percy was a wild child he was an only child and his mom let him do whatever he wanted. He went where he wanted and came home when he felt like it. He wandered everywhere. He often found himself on Chase land. Sometimes he'd run into Annabeth. She would be singing songs to herself, making stick houses or reading fairy-tail books.

She never seemed to like him, even then. Once she yelled at him to stop spying on her. He hadn't been spying. A kid wasn't spying just because he hid in the tall grass and watched a neighbor talk to herself as she walked her Barbie doll around in a circle.

Percy scooted to the wall, leaned his head back against the rough boards, closed his eyes and tried not to think about how cold he was.

It would have been nice if he could get to sleep and forget everything, but he had no such luck. He would just start to doze off when he started shivering and wake back up and remembered that they were in the middle of one of the largest storms seen in the area. He hoped no one in town had drowned, that his family ranch was safe. He couldn't help but wonder how much the state was affected.

Eventually, he stopped trying to sleep and opened his eyes. Annabeth stood at the window with the Lab at her feet; she stared out through the endless rain. He rubbed his arms trying to warm up a little and knew she must be staring at her parent's house. The Chase house was at about the same altitude as the barn, on high ground.

He knew he was asking for rejection to try and talk to her, but he was just tired and bored enough to do it anyway. "The house should be safe," he said.

She surprised him by saying "yea I know. I can see it. It's okay, for now…." She sounded kind of dreamy and far away. She added, "It's unbelievable, don't you think? Like maybe this isn't happening. Maybe I'm just asleep."

"Sorry, Annabeth." He meant that. He was sorry. "I think it's really happening."

She looked at him. For once her mouth didn't pinch up at the sight of him. "I lost my phone. Do you have yours?"

"It's in my truck, I think, but there must be towers down. I was getting no signal when I tried using it earlier."

Annabeth sighed and looked out the window again. "Life is fragile isn't it? I mean you go along, doing what you need to do, thinking you're taking care of business, that you're in control, but you're not, not really." Outside lightning flared. "Anything could happen," she said. "It could rain and rain and never stop." Her lips looked kind of blue, he thought.

He needed to come up with a way to warm her up. He began to work his way around the barn, looking for a blanket or tarp or something.

Annabeth kept talking. "Percy I keep thinking of the children in my class last year, and the ones in our summer school program. I hope they're all safe and dry. Our school it's on the south side of town. And my house is on the south side, to…"

He pushed a goat out of the way as he came to a spot where the wall turned at a ninety degree angle. Around that corner was a door and opened it. "Annabeth there's a tack room here."

She sighed again. "Yea, that's right. And a feed room over there." She put out a hand in the general direction of the other shut door farther down the wall.

Percy took a look around the room. There were rows of hooks holding ropes and bridles and bits. He was a saddle maker and he grinned at the sight of one of his own saddles lined up with several others on the wall, and then he saw the stack of saddle blankets on a big storage trunk. He went over and grabbed one. Shooing out the goat that had followed him in there, he shut the door and made his way to Annabeth.

He wrapped the blanket around her. "Thank you."

He took her by the shoulders. "Come on. Let's go." She went where he guided her, back through the cattle and horses and goats, with the dog right behind them. He let the dog in the tack room with them, and then shut the door to keep the rest of the animals out. There were a few hay bales. He sat her down on one and knelt in front of her. She frowned down at him. "What are you doing?"

"He held her gaze. "Don't freak out on me, okay?"

She looked at him in that pinched suspicious way again. "Why not?"

"You need to get out of those wet clothes. There are plenty of blankets. You can wrap yourself up in them and get dry."

She thought about it and shook her head. "I'll take off my boots and socks. I'll be all right."

He decided not to argue with her. "Fine, do you need help?"

"No, thank you I'll manage."

"Are you thirsty?"

She gaped at him. "Thirsty?" And then she laughed. "In this?" she stuck out a hand toward the water streaming down the window.

"Are you?"

And she frowned again. "Well, yea now that you mention it I am a little.

He stood up. "I'll see if I can find some clean containers in the barn. We can catch some rainwater, so we won't get dehydrated."

She blinked up at him. "Yes. That makes sense. I'll help." She started to rise.

He took her shoulders again and gently pushed her back down. "Get out of your boots and shoes and wrap this around your feet." He said while handing her a blanket.

She took it, "What about you?"

"Let me see about setting out containers for water. Then I'll grab a few blankets and try and warm up a little, too."

Later, he had his boots and socks off. They'd pushed four hay bales together and spread a blanket over them. Side by side, wrapped in more blankets, they passed a bucket of water back and forth.

When they'd both drunk their fill, there was still plenty left in the bucket. He set it on the floor, where Frank promptly stuck his nose in it and started lapping. She scooted back, settling alongside him, and then spent a moment readjusting the blanket she'd wrapped around her foot. "There." She leaned back and let out a long breath. "I think I'm actually beginning to thaw out."

"That was the plan." Outside, the rain kept falling. The sky remained that same dim gray it had been all day. "Do you know what time is?"

"I don't know. Six, seven maybe?" she sounded softer maybe a little sleepy. That was good, rest wouldn't hurt either of them. "It won't be dark for a while."

He was feeling kind of drowsy, too, now that he wasn't chilled to the bone anymore and most of the adrenaline rush from the various near-death events of the day had faded a little. He let his eyelids droop shut. But then she spoke again. "It's strange, Percy, being here with you like this."

He grunted. This whole day has been pretty strange."

"Yea, it has been scary, and awful. But that's not what I meant."

He knew exactly what she meant. And why was it women always had to dig up stuff that was better left alone? He kept nice and quiet and hoped she wasn't going there.

But she was. "Maybe this is a good chance to clear the air a little between us."

"The air is plenty clear from where I'm sitting."

"Well, Percy, for me, it's not."

"Annabeth, I..."

"No. Wait. I want to say what's on my mind. It was humiliating for me, that night at the Golden Monkey. It was my first time there, did you know? My twenty-first birthday." She sounded sad and wistful.

He'd known. "I think you mentioned that at the time, yeah."

"Octavian had just dumped me for a sorority girl." Octavian was her high school sweet-heart. They'd graduated the same year and headed off to UCLA together. " Percy, did you hear me?"

"Every word," he muttered.

"Did you know it was over between me and Octavian?"

"Well, Annabeth, I kinda had a feeling something might have gone wrong with your love life."

"You led me on," she accused. "You know that you did." He'd seen her coming a mile away. Good-girl Annabeth chase, out to find a bad boy just for the night. "And then you…" her voice got all wobbly. "You turned me down flat."

"Come on, Annabeth. It wasn't a good idea. You know that as well as I do."

"Then why did you dance with me all those times? Why did you flirt with me and buy me beers? You acted like you were interested. More than interested and then, when I tried to kiss you, you laughed at me. You said I wasn't your type. You said I should go home and behave myself."

He'd had some crazy idea at the time that he was doing her a favor, keeping her from doing something she wouldn't be happy about later, but with Annabeth, no good deed of his ever went unpunished. And was she going to start crying? He hated it when a woman started crying.

She sniffled in her blankets, a small, lost little sound. "I still can't believe I did that- made a pass at you. I mean, you never liked me and I never cared much for you and we both know that." That wasn't true not on his part anyway far from it, but he wasn't in the mood to dispute the point at the moment. He only wanted her not to start crying and he thought maybe he was getting his wish when she squirmed in her blankets and grumbled, "Everyone knows how you are. You'll sleep with anyone except me, apparently."

Mad. Now she was getting mad. As far as he was concerned, mad was good. Anything but weepy worked for him.

She huffed, "I just don't know what got into me that night."

He couldn't resist. "Well, Annabeth, we both know it wasn't me."

She mad another huffing sound. "Oh you think you're so funny. And you're not. You're very annoying and you always have been."

"Always?" he taunted.

"Always." She stated angrily

He scoffed at her. "How would you know a thing about me the last four year? Since that night at the Golden Monkey, all I see is the backside of you. I'm not complaining, because you have an amazing ass. But I come in a room and you turn tail and run."

Her facing getting red and she screamed, "Shut up Percy and why shouldn't I have? You're a complete tool and you never cared about anything or anyone in your whole life but yourself."

"Which is girl talk for 'You didn't sleep with my,'" he said in his laziest tone.

"You are not the least bit clever seaweed brain, you know that?" She had given him the name a long time ago when he had fallen into the creek when he was younger and had come up with tons of vines and grass coming out of his hair. She continued with it in high school to insult his intelligence compared to hers and just to spite him.

"You don't think so, huh?"

"No, I don't. And it just so happens that I'm glad we never hooked up that night. You're the last person in the world I would ever be sleeping with." He tried not to grin. "No argument there, because I'm not having sex with you no matter how hard you beg me."

"Oh, please. I mean just, simply, please." She sat up straight then. Dragging her blankets along with her, she scooted to the edge of the hay bales, as far from him as she could get without swinging her bare feet to the floor. Once there, she snapped, "You don't have to worry. I want to do with you and in case you didn't know, it just so happens that I have a fiancé, thank you very much."

"A fiancé?" That was news to Percy. The information bothered him. A lot and that it bothered him bugged him to no end.

"Yes," she said. "well, sort of."

"Annabeth, get real. You do or you don't."

His name is Leo Valdez and he's an assistant coach at the University of Miami. We met at UCLA and we have been dating for three years."

"Hold on. Answer the question are you engaged?"

She fiddled with her blankets and refused to turn around and look at him. "Well, no, not exactly, but I could be. I promised to give Leo an answer by the end of summer."

He looked back at her. Her hair was a tangle of wild, muddy curls from her dip in the floodwaters. It should have looked like crap. But it didn't. It looked like she'd been having crazy good sex with someone and then fallen asleep all loose and soft and satisfied.

And why the hell was he thinking about sex right now? Was he losing his mind? A few hours trapped in a barn with Annabeth Chase could do that to a guy.

He sat up "You're in love with this guy, and you're not going to see him until September?"

"So? What's wrong with that?"

"Well, if you're in love with him, how can you stand to be apart from him? How can he stand to be away from you?"

"You wouldn't understand?"

"Are you in love with him, Annabeth?"

She squared her slim shoulders. "I just told you that you wouldn't understand."

"That's right I wouldn't. If I loved a woman, I'd want her with me. Where I could touch her and be with her and hold her all night long."

Annabeth gasped. She tried to hide the small, sharp sound, but he heard it. "Oh, please. As if you know anything about being in love, Percy."

"I said if I was in love."

"Well, Leo has gone to Australia until the end of the month. He gets only a short summer break before practice begins again. And do you know how he's spending his limited free time? At a special sports camp, he's helping Australian children learn about American football. Because he's a good man, a man who cares about other people. That's how he is, that's who is….."

There was more. Lots more. Percy let her heated words wash over him. The point was that she hadn't answered the main question. She hadn't come out and said, "Yes I love Leo Valdez."

He was happy with what she hadn't said. She could rant all night about the how great Leo is while talking trash about him. Percy smiled, settled against the wall and closed his eyes.

AN: What did you think hmmmmmm?