And here is chapter nine, guys. So sorry for the long wait; there was a rather huge flood in my state and we've been busy running around to camps and stuff. But anyway, thank you to all those who took time to review and follow/favorite this story. I apologize for any mistakes I may have made in this chapter; it was typed out in a rush.
Half-Blood High
Chapter-9
~0O0~
Annabeth fought off the cold chill as her eyes warily traced the outline of the dark corridor, the floor made of rough stone which seemed to be in a permanent state of dampness. She idly wondered why this part of the school was so isolated as she fidgeted nervously in the middle of the hallway. Her watch informed her that it had gone five minutes after nine and she chewed her lips as she once again turned around and regarded the corridor. Empty.
He wasn't coming.
Annabeth didn't know why, but a wave of utter dejection swept over her. She supposed she would be angry a bit later but right now she couldn't quite swallow the huge painful lump that had settled in her throat. She scoffed a minute later when she realized how absolutely stupid she had been, holding onto words spoken by Jackson of all people. As though he even knew the value of those.
She turned on her feet angrily, determined to forget the whole night, and spent the rest of it with her friends even if they didn't particularly want her there.
"Six minutes and forty two seconds." A voice echoed and Annabeth felt her heart leap into her throat as she stood rooted to the spot in the deserted hall way. Only now it wasn't so deserted as she watched in amazement as a tall shadow emerge from one of the alcoves, pitch black as not a sliver of light dared to pierce it. A moment later Jackson stood before her, leaning against the wall, his face filled with mocking amusement.
"Six minutes." He tittered, shaking his head disapprovingly "That's how much you gave stock to my promise."
"I'm pretty sure that's the same amount time you've ever spent in a relationship!" Annabeth snapped back fiercely, a part of her still rattled at his sudden appearance, so much so that she had not the faintest idea on what she was saying and why exactly she had dragged her miserable carcass down to the dungeons.
Jackson's lips quirked into a smirk and Annabeth felt her something sharp stab her heart as she once again realized just how fucking attractive the man was. His midnight hair was tousled, a few strands falling into his eyes, creating just a hint of enchanting shadows under his eyes. His face was all hard lines, with silky tanned skin. And his eyes…she wished she could poke them off because it wasn't fair that Jackson had such eyes, so full of life and brightness, something completely out of this world. He was still clad in his white button up school shirt, the first few buttons left open, whether deliberately she wasn't sure, and she licked her lips nervously when she remembered her new resolution. Mission seduce Jackson had just begun.
If only she knew how to proceed that would have him in her palm.
"Done checking me out, Chase?" Jackson smirked, unfolding his lean form from the wall "With the rate you're going I'd say it would just be more convenient to take a picture."
"Still full of yourself, Jackson?" Annabeth tittered, trying to imitate the same patronizing tone that he had used on her before, while trying to ignore the fact that her face felt uncomfortably warm. "It's a mystery why your head hasn't swelled up and floated off, isn't it?"
"It would have been" Jackson nodded thoughtfully "if my body didn't follow the basic principles of science. One doesn't simply lift off the ground, Chase, just because they happened to be filled with a particular emotion. Quite fortunate, if you ask yourself, else you would have sunk into the floor with all the misery you carry."
"Misery? You think I'm miserable?" Annabeth shrieked offended, and a bit impressed with his reply, but she very well couldn't admit to that now, could she? "If I'm miserable, then you ought to be dead-"
"We can hang around, calling each other names all night, Chase." Jackson said, pushing his palms into his pockets and leaning against the wall casually "I, for one, have come here with the fullest intention of behaving my age, but if you continue to hold onto you're childish tendencies, this night won't be very productive and I admit I would be very disappointed, since I had very high expectations from this meeting."
Gods, what boy talked like that? More importantly, why the fuck did she find that so sexy?
"If you must know, I'm here because of this!" Annabeth huffed annoyed, pulling out the green parchment from her back pocket "What is the meaning of this?"
"I think you know exactly what it means, Chase" Jackson gave her a razor sharp grin "And the fact that you're here means you agree to it as well."
"I wish you would stop speaking in riddles, Jackson" Annabeth replied coolly "As you pointed out, I would like to act my age by going to bed at a respectable hour and not falling asleep in my classes, so if we could please get to the point of this completely pointless meeting?"
"You are seventeen, Chase. You seem to have a habit of forgetting that sometimes." Jackson smiled fascinated "Tell me, is that really what you think a person of our age does?"
"Well it ought to be!"
"My, my…you must have been a nightmare as a child" he laughed softly, shaking his head "No Dora the explorer or Thomas the train in your childhood I take it."
She was not going to admit she watched the Discovery Channel from the age of five. No way in hell.
"Interesting observation" she smiled "And I find it cute that you used to watch Dora. But it hasn't seemed to help you a lot, since even after seventeen years you haven't managed to find your brain."
"I watched it in Spanish, that might have been it." Jackson said good naturedly.
"You get good grades in Spanish." Annabeth said suddenly, and then felt like hitting herself. What on earth did that had to do with anything going on?
"Yes." He looked a bit taken back "Yes, I suppose I do. But I assure you that wasn't the case ten years ago."
Jackson stared off into space, a thoughtful expression crossing his face and Annabeth fidgeted in her spot. It was almost ten and her friends would be wondering what she was doing and she was frustrated that she herself had no clue.
"Well, good conversation, Jackson." Annabeth said, breaking him out of his trance "I think I'll go up to bed…unless you want to explain the note?"
Jackson stared at her for a moment then issued a sigh, walking toward her slowly, agilely like a panther ."If you still wish to act juvenile, I'll spell it out for you. It's all rather simple really."
He had reached her now and she could feel his breath on her cheeks as he ducked his head down to her face. She could feel his warm body against her, and the way her own body ached to press itself closer. He nipped her ear, and started to leave a trial of open mouthed kisses from her ear, down her neck to her collarbone. Annabeth moaned and clutched his hair, hating herself but not able to stop, and bit her lip as he started to suck on her collar bone.
"I want you, Chase." He growled and Annabeth closed her eyes and fought the shiver that ran across her body at his words. "I want your body against mine, to have you cry out my name as I-"
"Shut up and kiss me, dammit!" Annabeth growled and in an instant his lips were on hers again, so warm, so demanding, so him and she wasted no time in slipping her tongue into her mouth. They kissed for what seem like hours and then broke apart for breath.
Jackson leaned his head against hers "Fuck, Chase. You have no idea what you do to me."
She could hear every beat of his heart and once her lungs had gulped in enough oxygen to survive, she reconnected their lips after a muttered "I thought I told you to stop talking."
~0O0~
"Where's Annabeth?" Leo asked suddenly, looking up from his English essay.
Piper bit her lip, carefully outlining the figure of a cockroach and neatly labeling it Periplanata Americana. "I don't know. I haven't seen her since…maybe she's in the library?"
"Yeah…." Leo murmured, wrinkling his brow, then spoke quietly "I'm not sure why but I just have a feeling that something's wrong."
"It is rather late." Jason muttered, his blond strands falling into his eyes "Maybe I should go check on her."
There was a pause in the conversation.
"Let's give her an hour more." Piper said at last, flipping over to a section of snails and studied the diagram of Pila globosa intently "I'm sure she's fine."
~0O0~
"What are we doing, Jackson?" Annabeth asked, her breathing haggard after breaking apart from a kiss, while he tugged on her hair and started sucking on her exposed neck.
"Enjoying ourselves, Chase." His voice was hoarse as he briefly met her eye,s before slipping his hands under her shirt "Until you started asking pointless questions."
She couldn't fight back the moan that escaped her when he tweaked one of nipples.
"I'm-I'm serious, Jacks-stop it!"
Jackson, who had just ducked his head inside her shirt, withdrew it out, and met her gaze with an impatient look. "What is it, Chase? I recall it was you who had forbade all means of conversation a while earlier. You didn't see me complaining."
"Right. Right. Just-"Annabeth tried to calm her breathing but it took a monumental effort, as his hands were still wrapped around her exposed stomach "What are we doing? What is…this?"
She pointed a finger between them and Jackson sighed resignedly and took a step back, his hands falling at his side. "You're irrational urge to label things is completely infuriating."
"I mean..."Annabeth murmured, already missing his touch "Are we going to do it again?"
"We can, we have plenty of time" Jackson grinned, consulting his watch dramatically.
"You know what I mean."
The grin vanished from his face and he stared at her coolly, and his eyes once again reminded her of frigid arctic waters "Only if you want to."
Annabeth avoided providing a verbal consent, somehow feeling she would lose something integral if she did and instead laid out a condition "No one can know."
Jackson rolled his eyes "Obviously, Chase. That's what makes sneaking around exciting."
"Sneaking around. Is that what we're doing?" Annabeth frowned.
"Yes." Jackson's voice was firm "I don't want to mix up any sort of emotions into this. This is purely for pleasure."
Annabeth nodded satisfied, her body aching to go closer to him "That works fine for me. Of course, I still hate you. This doesn't change anything."
"That goes for me as well" Jackson said "I'll still be an utter ass to you in class."
"Okay." Annabeth had barely heard any of his word, her gaze drawn towards his lips.
Jackson seemed to notice this and his eyes turned dark with lust as he pulled her closer to him and started to work on the buttons of her blouse, in the end ripping out a few. "Ooops. Any more questions, Chase?"
"No" she whispered hoarsely ,her eyes shut, as he deftly pulled her shirt off and placed his hands on her on her soft skin "None at all."
~0O0~
"Two cubes of sugar, Frank?" Jason asked amiably, holding up a small silver pot at breakfast the next morning. Annabeth, having just taken her seat at the table and failed to notice the strange addition to its occupants, looked up to stare at the East Tower member in utter amazement.
"Yes, please." Zhang replied with an easy grin and went back to his conversation with Hazel, who met Annabeth's eyes sheepishly, threw a distracted glance in Leo's direction, then nervously proceeded to fill her boyfriend on her new companion, a steed named Arion , that she was planning on taking out for a ride after breakfast.
Leo had his head bend low over a bowl of oats and this caused Annabeth a great deal of uneasiness, as she knew he would in no way consume anything remotely healthy in his right mind. She gazed around the table, looking for some form of solidarity, and she met Piper's multi colored eyes latched on to hers. The brunette seemed to have twigged the cold silence that had erupted between Leo and Hazel in the past few days and in a desperate attempt tried to snatch everyone's attention into a common topic.
"Hey, Annabeth! What are you reading?" Piper asked in a suspiciously high voice, drawing the table's attention to the Some Basic Principles of Chemistry that the blonde had forgotten was in her hands "Is that chemistry? Don't you have it with Leo?"
"Yeah." Annabeth said, trying to make herself sound interesting, and failing miserably, as Hazel and Frank hadn't even bothered to look up and Jason just had a vacant expression on his face, while he absently continued pouring milk into his cup of tea, which was now a pale brown "Its uh…organic. We've got a rather important test today and Professor Salt mentioned it would be taken into account in the end of the term report."
This unthought plan of theirs backfired almost immediately, when Leo straightened up wildly, toppled over his bowl, and swore loudly "Shit. That's today? Bloody fucking hell-"
He made a mad dash for the dormitory to get his text, ran into Dare who was walking over in their direction and was out the main door in a few minutes, though Annabeth had held up her own book in silent invitation. Hazel looked positively mortified and turned back to Zhang, her face completely red. The only people completely unaffected were Zhang, who kept smiling stupidly at Hazel, and Jason, who had finally run out of milk and had taken a large sip of tea, which he spat back out promptly, looking confused.
Piper shrugged guiltily and muttered "Well, at least he's out of the room. The last hour was just plain depressing."
Hazel's ears turned pink and the blonde concluded that there would be two less people joining them for mealtimes from then on. Annabeth checked her watch, polished off the last bit of toast remaining on her plate and was about to leave for Chemistry with the intention of a last minute revision, when a high, nasal voice spoke behind her.
"McLean" drawled Dare, her crimson hair put up in a messy bun and her white blouse ruffled, suggesting that she had probably been enjoying a snog somewhere in a broom cup board, and Annabeth felt a strange pang spread across her chest and had to bite down hard on her cheeks to refrain from asking who she had been sinning with. Or, most importantly, if it had been a certain green eyed man who had been driving her up against a wall lately. Literally. Annabeth felt another pang somewhere in her, a different place, a much more pleasurable feeling that had been induced when she thought of his hands ghosting over her-
"-and the selection is tomorrow, directly after lunch." Dare was still speaking , her perfect face set into a bored scowl " Though I don't know what exactly you're trying to achieve, Mclean, by trying to join the cheerleading team, and if it weren't for that bloody Beugard you wouldn't even be invited for try outs-"
"I hardly need a letter of invitation from you, Dare. It seems as though you haven't quite grasped the fact that the cheerleading squad is a public club, open to all the students of the school." Piper interrupted sweetly "And the fact that it is to be conducted in a democratic manner, with a leader voted by the members. I'm afraid, with Selena leaving this year, some people might try to degrade the club functioning. It is my intention of course, as you very well already know, to ensure that little misfortune does not occur. Scones Jason?"
Jason who had followed the conversation bewilderly, blinked for a few minutes as his face tried to settle upon an appropriate emotion, any emotion, and having failed, mutely accepted the baked good from Piper. Rachel was now seething openly and Annabeth clutched her text tightly, prepared to use it if things got out of hand, which looked like it might, judging from the utter calm expression on Piper's face that generally meant nothing less than two broken nails were about to follow.
"Feel free to preach your stupidity, McLean. As though anyone's ever going to give two shits about what you have to say." Dare snapped "And that too on cheerleading, of all things! I mean, have you ever looked at yourself in a mirror? I'm surprised you're mother didn't go mental when she saw you!"
Jason and Annabeth leapt up furiously, but Piper shook her head at them, and after a moment, both the blonds sat back down reluctantly though Jason's hands were still shaking and Annabeth wanted nothing more than to scratch out Dare's eyes and punch her in the face and see if she didn't go mental when her nose was on the wrong direction. That cow, had that remark been just co incidental, or did she know? Did she somehow find out and was now trying to fucking break Piper down-
Annabeth felt the urge to rise to her feet again and tackle the little bitch and her gaze locked onto Jason's, who seemed to be along the same line of thought, but he shook his head as well and instead settled for glaring at Dare, and Annabeth followed his example, though extremely reluctantly.
"Fortunately, Rachel, your opinion on my appearance doesn't really affect my decision. And I shall see you tomorrow after lunch. Till then you shall kindly refrain from crossing my path. I shall not be held responsible for my actions if you open that thing you a call a mouth again." Piper quipped, neatly setting picking up her cup, her fingers clenched around the delicate handle.
"Please Piper, I'm not fucking afraid of you!" Dare scoffed, leaning on her hips "As though one person like you can change the way how I run things."
"Oh, I won't be alone. Annabeth shall be accompanying me for try outs." Piper took a small sip of tea,( the blonde reeled in shock), then smiled widely "We plan-Oh, you've gone all pale, Rachel. Do you not think Annabeth can make it to the team? Is she not pretty enough, as you have put it?"
Annabeth squirmed uncomfortably, well prepared to hear the No. She looks like a dung beetle! that was sure to ensue from the red head, but Rachel stared at her for a few minutes, opened and closed her mouth a few times, then angrily flounced away from them.
"That was….interesting." Jason broke the silence. He stared at the scone in his hand as though not really sure what to do with it, then took a hesitant bite. He seemed to like it, and took it with him as he left for double biology, still shaking his head.
Annabeth leapt to her feet as well, shocked to see there was only five minutes for the bell. She turned to Piper who was shouldering her satchel, who calmly informed her "I have a free hour. I'll walk you to chemistry."
"What was all that about?" Annabeth inquired annoyed, not in the least bit interested in joining a club, that was in her opinion, a waste of time "And why on earth do you suddenly want to join cheerleading, Pipes? They're a fucking joke."
Piper was silent for a beat, gazing resolutely on her swinging satchel, then spoke very softly "My mother joined cheerleading in her fourth year. I thought…"
Annabeth stopped short then hastily continued walking, to appear normal "I'm sorry, Piper…all that stuff she said about your mom…I'm sorry I didn't….I hadn't known about the cheer leading …they aren't really rubbish, you know…just wrongly lead…"
"Exactly" Piper said, a hint of a smile in her face "They just follow Dare and do stupid shit. I want to…rebuild her legacy, you know. She had been a leader in her time."
Annabeth nodded, then sighed resignedly, having made up her mind "I was planning on nagging you and refusing to join but now…well I'm in. Just hope I don't fall flat on my face tomorrow."
"You won't." Piper said confidently, and Annabeth tried to absorb some of it, for her heart had started to do high jumps just thinking about the try outs in front of all those people. In front of him. Fuck. What had she gotten herself into?
"Piper, I-"
"What are you still doing here?" a voice demanded and the girls turned around to see Leo standing beside them, out of breath, his text opened to a page of revision questions "I thought the test started at nine?"
Annabeth looked around at the empty hallway then swore loudly "Shit, we're late! See you at lunch, Piper."
The topic of cheerleading left her mind then but she was sure it would surface that night and prevent her from getting any sleep. Among other things, of course.
