It Takes Two

By: dnrl

Percy is a suffering student of marine biology at NYU. Against his wishes, his cousin signs him up for a tutor, and he resigns himself to endless boredom...but the tutor he gets definitely isn't what he was expecting. Percabeth, AU

Chapter Three: Maybe Misery

I paced.

Athena and Nico watched me, waiting.

I paced some more.

Athena stared. Nico stared.

I stopped and looked at them. "Is she insane, or just stupid?"

"Insane."

Athena looked as though she agreed with Nico, and I shot her a look. "Shush, you. You don't even know who we're talking about."

Nico raised an eyebrow. "I thought we were talking about Thalia."

"We are."

"Well then. I do know her."

"Not you," I said, rolling my eyes. "Her. Athena."

"...The kitten?"

"Look at those eyes. She's agreeing with us, and she doesn't even know Thalia yet!"

Nico shot me a worried glance - a should I tie him down before the men in the white coats show up? look. I've seen that look a couple of times before. Hell, I'd given that look. A lot, especially with my family.

"Anyway," I said, moving on from Athena and her supernatural ability to understand human-ese, "did I not tell her no tutor? No way in hell? Did she not agree to respect my wishes?"

Nico snorted. "Maybe you really are insane, Percy. Thalia? Respect? Pah. Y'know, I thought that you'd have learned that after the cockroach incident."

I shuddered. Thalia, Nico, and I had been six, and Thalia had been my idol. I'd told her my greatest fear: cockroaches. She had nodded, all serious, and told me to go into the back bedroom in the house and she'd kill all of the roaches and make it safe for me.

She locked me in the room and then told me about the seventeen cockroaches that lived in the king-sized mattress.

"Cockroaches aside," I said, shaking off the vestiges of childhood memories (ah, memories...), "how did she not understand that I didn't want a tutor?"

He frowned, looking at the floor. He absentmindedly stroked Athena's fur. "I don't know that it's so much a case of misunderstanding as it is of complete and utter disregard for your wishes. Although that could be just me."

"If I had the energy or the time I'd throw something at you," I told him.

"You'd miss. You have horrible aim," he replied, waving away the threat as though it were nothing. Which, in reality, it was. But I digress.

"I just don't see - "

I heard a loud pounding on the door and I groaned. "She was drunk off of her ass last night, and yet she still managed to wake up before me, get to classes and an appointment with my nerdy tutor on time, and come over here to harass me while I'm still in my boxers. Does that seem human to you?"

"...yeah, we established that Thales wasn't human like, oh, twenty two and a half years ago. You know, when we first met."

I rolled my eyes at my cousin and went to answer the door, cursing under my breath.

"Thalia, please - "

"Percy?!"

I jerked back, eyes wide as they took in the sight in the hallway.

Thalia stood, looking gorgeous and fashionable as ever, blinking in surprise at the person next to her - the person that had shocked me. The person that knew my name. The gorgeous person with a killer fashion sense and gorgeous blonde hair and stormy gray eyes.

"...Annabeth?"

"So wait, let me see if I've got this straight," said Thalia. We (Thalia, Nico, Grover, Annabeth, and myself) were dressed (surprisingly) and sitting in a circle of plushy couches at out neighborhood coffee shop (not so surprisingly). "Grover sets himself, Nico the Emo, and Percy the Surfing Wunderkid up on a triple blind date with the only female captain of the archery club, the captain of the women's football team, and the president of the National Honor Society. Zoe winds up with Grover, Nico gets stuck with Clarisse, and Percy, by some fluke, catches Annabeth. In the half hour it takes Annabeth to get to the restaurant, Clarisse is gone, Nico is M.I.A. and possibly dead, Grover is stalking Zoe back to her dorm room, and Percy is left all by his onesies in the parking lot waiting for Annabeth. Said couple meet, shake hands, maul a Walgreens clothes rack, get pizza, and go home, at which point Percy realizes that I am missing in action and drunk and alone and very, very vulnerable."

Here Nico snorted. Thalia hit him with her laptop case and continued.

"So Percy somehow tracks me down and brings me home, where we see - well - um - he leaves me on my couch (thank you for the can, by the way) and returns home, where Bianca has brought Nico back to his dubiously named senses. Shut up Nico. Yes, I know you haven't said anything, but you're thinking it. So stop. Now. Anyway, so I wake up, do my whole technicolor yawn schmuck - oh, stop being such a baby, Grover, I didn't say puke...whoops - and I get a call from the tutoring service I signed Percy up for. They've found a tutor, a good friend of mine who saw my name on the board and volunteered."

"A good friend?" I asked.

"We've known each other all throughout college," Annabeth said, sipping some kind of chocolate swirling thing. "We met on orientation. She called me an idiot and slapped me."

"I was on my period," Thalia defended, scowling. Annabeth laughed.

"It's okay, Thalia. I've told you that for four years now."

"And I've not believed you for four years now."

Annabeth rolled her eyes and looked at me. "Has she always been like this, or is it only since college?"

"Always," Nico and I confirmed together. Thalia glared but said nothing, sipping at her cappucinno and idly plotting our slow deaths. "Always."

"Nico, come on," Grover said. Nico shot him a confused look, and Grover rolled his eyes. "Biology? Project? 200 points? Due tomorrow?"

Nico's pale skin grew paler still. "Shit."

"No, decomposing human flesh, but close enough."

Thalia raised an eyebrow.

"Study on the effects of rainwater, damp earth, and pressure on a cadaver," Nico said, rising. "I love Biology."

They left, leaving behind their coffee cups and used napkins. Thalia also stood, brushing crumbs off of her skinny jeans. "Yeah. Cool. I'm gonna go hit the pool for a couple of hours...then run by the TA's office and pick up an extra study guide. See you...on Friday, yeah? We are driving to the airport together, right?"

I nodded. "I hate our family."

"Me too," she said. "Reunions are death."

"Hell," I agreed. Annabeth cast a bemused look towards us. Thalia waved farewell and exited, her bag swinging at her side.

"Family reunion?" she asked. I grimaced.

"Yeah. My family...weird as it is, my dad and his siblings try to keep some sort of semblance of passable relationship between them. So they have this reunion every two years. It's this weekend."

"Ugh," she said. "Finals."

"Yeah."

"So...um...what's so bad about your family?"

I shrugged. Uncomfortable topic. "Like...our moms - Nico's, Thalia's, and mine - were all best friends in high school. Not like, 'oh my god, bffs!' but the real deal. They went to the same college...and then after they graduated, they met our dads. They got married...tried to fix some of the tension in the family. It backfired. Things are just...really awkward right now."

She got the message and backed off. "So, anyway," she said, sipping her frappucino, "Stats, huh?"

"Sadly," I agreed, eyeing my lone bagel that sat forlornly on its plate. I had originally bought three. Thalia was hungry and Nico and Grover split on, which left one for me. God, I was so hungry -

"Cool, bagel," Annabeth said with a grin, swooping down and seizing my breakfast. I sighed mentally. She was cute. I let it go.

"So, like...how is this gonna work, exactly?"

"Well," she said slowly, spreading cream cheese over my breakfast, "I figure that we can meet on the days you have Statistics to review the material you covered in that class...but that's after we play catch-up."

"Ketchup?"

She snorted and grinned at me. "Catch-up. We need to go over the notes that you already have for Statistics so that I can see what we really need to focus on."

"Everything."

"You can't be that bad."

I shot her a deadpan look. "Are you serious? Yes, I can be and am that bad. I am a hopeless cause. I am an idiot with less memory than a goldfish. No, seriously. Do you know their memory span? Three seconds."

She was laughing now.

"And you're laughing at me," I teased, grinning. "Great, that boosts my self-esteem."

She laughed harder, her gray eyes sparkling. I felt my breath catch in my throat and my heart skipped what felt like five beats as the sunlight from the window hit her loose golden curls, throwing a halo over her. Beautiful.

"Percy...Percy?"

I blinked out of my trance and grinned. "Yeah. Still in here...as much as I can be, I guess."

She smiled at me. "C'mon. Let's go back to your dorm...we can go over your notes. When do you have the exam?"

"Last, thank god. It starts at ten on Thursday, and end time is set for two. So I have four hours to take a five hundred question exam, plus short answers, plus essays, on a subject that I do not get at all." I turned to her, my face pleading. "Please tell me you can work miracles."

She shook her head with a smile and tugged me out of the chair. "Great time to find out, isn't it?"

I stood abruptly, and the surge of force flung her against me. We both fell back into the chair in a heap of tangled limbs, blonde curls tickling my cheeks. She was so soft in my arms for the brief moment in which we were too shocked to do anything - it was like she fit. She clicked. She was made to be here, in my arms, on my lap, her head tucked beneath mine.

And then the moment was broken, and sorrys were exchanged...but I couldn't forget that feeling of rightness that I had had when she was on my chest, leaning into me like she belonged there. It was perfection, poetry in motion, as it were. I had only had that feeling once before in my life; it was my first trip to the beach. It didn't matter if it was raining or if there were no waves, the ocean was beautiful, amazing, and an inexorable force in my four-year-old life.

The fact that I had this feeling about a girl that I met the night before - a girl who I barely knew - well, it...

It scared me.

A/N:

KILL ME PLEASE.

D:

Sorry for the delay...I'm also working on the second chapter of Into the Ocean, but no promises on quality. And yes, I know that this chapter is shorter than normal...I'm not really that fond of it, but it was the only thing I could yank out. DDDD:

So um yeah. Review with pointers, ideas, corrections, anything really. Flames are cool to, if you want. Marshmallow roast! :D Make my day.

Thanks so much for reading...see you guys next month. For this fic, anyway. ...Have a cookie.

- dnrl