Hi everyone!

Once again, thank you so much for your responses to the last chapter! I just love opening up my email to see my inbox flooded with reviews, follows and favs. It makes me so happy to know that you're all enjoying the story so much.

I'm sorry this took so long but school really hit me like a wrecking ball and then kicked me in the ass. Now that I (somehow) survived, I'm beyond excited to be writing again.

Happy reading!

Disclaimer: I do not own Percy Jackson and the Olympians.

The Problem with Doorways

I'd fallen in love with the theatre the minute I'd stepped through the glass doors of Goode Auditorium just a little over a year ago.

Under usual circumstances, I would never even have dreamed of joining the drama society. It had no place in the plan I'd had for my future, the plan I'd mapped out strictly every step of the way, even at fifteen. I was going to Columbia, majoring in architecture, working in my father's firm, and then opening my own – all before the age of thirty.

Everything I'd done, every grade, every class, every extra-curricular activity, and internship, had been geared towards getting me into Columbia. I couldn't afford slip-ups or luxuries, not if I wanted to stay on track. I had to focus on what would pad my resume and give me the best possible chance of acceptance to one of the most competitive programs in the country.

And I had – up until the day I'd found myself staring at the half-ripped poster on the bathroom wall, proclaiming that auditions for the drama society were now underway for the upcoming school year. They were putting on a production of The Merchant of Venice, the play we'd been studying in English and which I absolutely loved.

It had been a single moment of indecision – but long enough for Thalia to notice.

At the time, Thalia had been the only one who'd known of my secret love for the theatre. She was my oldest and dearest friend, and of course, it was hard to keep secrets when you were seven years old and got caught belting out The Music of the Night in your bedroom. That kind of thing was somewhat difficult to explain away.

I'd protested vehemently, citing homework, student council duties and even time for a social life, but finally relented when Thalia had put her foot down and threatened to carry me into the audition herself.

After all, what harm could just trying out do? I'd assured myself, promising that Thalia would be eating her words when I inevitably didn't get in.

I'd instead found myself half-deafened by her screams of delight in my ear the day the cast list had gone up and my name had been printed on it in neat block letters.

Just this one play, I'd told myself. Just one chance at breaking away from the rigid schedule of my life.

I kept telling myself that even as I fell more and more in love with the theatre, even as my resolve weakened every time I stepped through those double glass doors, every time I felt the pulsing thrill of falling into another world, of being someone else. I kept telling myself that until I was standing on the polished wooden stage on opening night, squeezed into a dress that choked my ribcage and a wig that yanked painfully at my hair, bathed in golden light and the silent hush of an expectant crowd and knowing that I never wanted to be anywhere else.

I glanced around the cavernous auditorium as the chattering crowd settled down, feeling the quiet familiarity of the theatre wash over me. Here, it didn't matter that my mother didn't love me, or that I would never be enough for my father. Here, I didn't have to care about Mr Brunner or Percy Jackson or anyone at all.

I let that knowledge settle on me, lifting my spirits, washing away Mr Brunner's confusing statements from earlier.

He'd probably just been playing a joke on me, anyway. My teacher was well known for his eccentric ways, after all.

"Settle down everyone!" the man himself called as students milled about the terraced rows, trying to find seats with friends and catching up with those they hadn't seen over summer break. The cacophony of laughter and gossip nearly drowned out Calypso's voice bellowing my name, calling me over to where she'd grabbed a seat with Rachel and Piper.

I squeezed my way through the throng and dropped down next to my friends, leaning back into the plush crimson fabric, and watching with amusement as Mr Brunner desperately tried to restore order to the laughing, talking masses.

Zoe Nightshade was still bent over her papers, seeming utterly unperturbed by the sudden explosion of noise as her pen flew swiftly across lists of costume budgets and set proposals. She flipped a final page with a decisive flourish, then seemed to notice the rest of us for the first time.

She took one look at Mr Brunner politely trying to enforce some sort of civility, leaped to her feet, and yelled "QUIET!"

The auditorium hushed in the fraction of a second.

"Thank you, Zoe," Mr Brunner said genially, turning his attention to us as the senior girl slipped away – probably to find some poor soul backstage to harangue. "Now for the rest of you barbarians, welcome back to the theatre!"

A chorus of cheers and whooping broke out, cutting him off and nearly deafening me. Callie, gods bless her soul, had absolutely no mute button and was hollering right in my ear. It was a good thing that I'd long ago accepted sacrificing my hearing in return for her friendship.

Mr Brunner grinned around at us all. "Good to see everyone raring to go. Now you are all aware that Anastasia is a beast to tackle, so I hope I see that motivation throughout the rest of rehearsals. I need hardly remind you all that this will be our only production for the year, so do me and yourselves proud and make it the best one yet."

Another round of applause and catcalls rang out at this statement, interspersed with yelled affirmations and enthusiastic declarations of success. I tightened my fingers around the armrest, feeling that familiar cocktail of anxiety and excitement curdle in my stomach.

Anastasia would be the best production we had ever done, I vowed to myself. I would make it so, no matter what I had to do.

"We have a lot to get done so let's skip right to the good stuff," my teacher continued, perched against the side of the stage. "I'll leave you to find your respective group heads and get started but remember to debrief me before you go off for the day. Cast, I will see you in the read-room. Rachel, Silena, Drew and Mitchell, can I see you guys at the front of the stage for a minute?"

Callie, Piper, and I bid farewell to Rachel as she headed down the stairs. Rachel was head of art production, which put her in charge of the sets and props. It was the most challenging department in the club, but I had never seen Rachel anything less than calm and cool, cracking jokes even as huge installation pieces fell over the day before opening night.

"Someone needs to teach that girl subtlety," Piper snorted, shaking her head as Rachel made a wide tangent on her way down the stairs to avoid Drew.

"Can you blame her?" Calypso asked as the three of us trooped down the stairs and joined the rest of the cast. "Drew's positively poisonous. I wouldn't be surprised if you got cancer just by spending longer than five minutes in her presence."

"She does all our costumes, so you better keep comments like that to yourself," Piper warned. "I wouldn't put it past her to rip a huge hole in your dress thirty minutes before you need to go on stage."

"Just let her try," Calypso muttered darkly as we filed out through the stage door and entered the maze of hallways backstage. Doors opened out into rooms filled with ballgowns and flapper dresses, peeling painted walls and fake pillars. The true heart of the theatre, Mr Brunner had always called it.

I'd spent countless hours dashing through the winding corridors, searching for an elusive prop, or trying to locate one of the costume heads to take in a too-wide seam. It always smelt faintly like turpentine and my Aunt Natalie's musty tablecloths, but I loved it all the same.

"Can we please not start drama with Drew?" I asked exasperatedly as we wound through the labyrinthine passages to the read-room. "I already have enough on my plate, and I do not need to deal with the Beauty Queen Bitch on top of it."

"Oh, sure," Calypso said sarcastically. "We'll leave her alone and play nicey-nice, and I'm certain she'll repay the favour and we can all sing Kumbaya around the campfire."

"I'm serious, Callie," I insisted, stopping and turning to face her. "I have more than enough to worry about, and the last thing I want is Drew Tanaka to be the cherry on the wonderful shit sundae of my life."

"And I'm serious – " Callie began, but then seemed to forget her words entirely as her eyes fixed on a point somewhere to the upper right of my head. A slow grin spread across her face, her eyes sparking with salacious mischief, and I knew instantly that my day was about to get a hell of a lot worse.

"Speaking of a tall, delicious, sundae," my traitorous friend said, smirking. "Sexual tension coming at you, three o'clock."

I had one-sixteenth of a second to comprehend whatever had just come out of Calypso's mouth before the horrifying realization dawned. Oh for the love of all that is good and holy-

"So should I be calling you Princess now?" a regrettably familiar voice sounded in my ear. "Or is Chase still acceptable for us commoners?"

I didn't have to look to know what I was going to see, but I turned anyway.

Percy Jackson grinned at me, running a hand through his hair in that way I knew was just to make himself seem more irresistible. He was brimming with energy, as effortlessly gorgeous as always, and again I cursed myself for whatever hallucination I'd had earlier. He clearly wasn't tired or upset or whatever nonsense I'd been imagining. In fact, he looked quite ready to irritate the life out of me.

I smiled back at him, saccharine sweet, and hoped he knew that I was fantasizing about setting him on fire and dancing around his body as it burned.

Then again, he probably enjoyed that.

"Duchess, actually," I corrected. "But good to see you're taking so quickly to being a peasant. Then again, being inferior to me probably comes quite naturally to you."

As always, my snarky remarks seemed to slide right off Percy like water off a duck's back. "Duchess, Princess, whatever," he dismissed. "Only you would know something so obscure, Chase."

"You'd know it too if you spent history class actually, you know, in class and not Drew's cleavage," I said sweetly, speeding up so that I could hopefully leave him behind.

Calypso snorted, and quickly tried to turn it into a cough.

"Come on, Annabeth, I'm a teenage boy," Percy argued, meeting me stride for stride with irritating ease. "Find me any dude who would prefer history when more…appealing alternatives are right there."

"Nico," I shot back promptly.

"Doesn't count, he's gay. Though it's sweet that you're so interested in how I spend my time. Jealous, Wise Girl?"

"Don't flatter yourself," I scoffed. "You weren't exactly being subtle, Seaweed Brain. Even a monkey would've noticed that."

Piper and Calypso had ditched me like the loving friends they were, leaving Percy and I to fall to the end of the crowd as we walked. I noticed that the treacherous wretches had made sure to stay within convenient eavesdropping distance, probably to get more evidence of this ridiculous "sexual tension" Percy and I were supposed to have.

"You know, if you want a piece of this, you only have to ask," Percy said, spinning around and winking as he walked backward.

"Pity I can't say the same to you," I retorted, spying the read-room just paces ahead and putting on a burst of speed. Salvation was so close, I could almost –

Percy reached it first, annoyingly long legs letting him outpace me easily, and braced his arms on the doorframe to block my way in.

"Oh, so you are an actual child," I scoffed. "Very mature, Jackson."

"You are breaking my heart, Wise Girl," Percy sighed, his irritatingly perfect face twisted into the picture of abject misery. "Here I am laying it open for you, and you stomp your merciless feet all over it."

"You're going to get stomped on all right," I retorted, wishing nothing more than to punch Percy Jackson right in his smug face. The detention might almost be worth it. "Now get out of the way before my foot becomes very intimately acquainted with a certain part of your anatomy."

"Which part are we talking about exactly?" he enquired, a cocky glint in his eye that let me know he was aware of exactly what I was referring to.

"Would you like to find out first-hand?" I asked. "I can promise you my aim is excellent."

"And I can promise you, Wise Girl, that it would be your loss if you did," he drawled, leaning forward so that his face was mere inches from mine.

I had no idea what made me say it.

I had no idea of anything except for the fact that Percy Jackson was blocking my way, that I wanted to shake that infuriating smirk off his face and make him move and also, strangely, that his arms were leaner and more muscled than I had realized –

The words left my mouth before I could think them through, shakier and breathier than sarcasm should have been.

"Then why don't you show me exactly what I'm missing?"

I fully expected a flirty quip, another round of witty banter. Nothing I couldn't handle.

I didn't expect the sudden sweep of his eyes down my form, lingering for barely a second on my mouth before he met my gaze again. Percy was a full head taller than me, but close as we were, I could hardly miss the sudden darkening of his eyes, the turquoise green of his irises swallowed by black. They were strangely magnetic, the startling aquamarine of the sea circled by the infinite darkness of galaxies.

My skin felt superheated, warmth suffusing the back of my neck and the apples of my cheeks, exploding in the pit of my stomach like my own personal supernova. Look away, a small voice whispered in the back of my mind, but I didn't want to, not when Percy's eyes were like swirling whirlpools and the line of his jaw like cut glass and it would have been easy – so easy – to just reach up and close the distance between us –

There was the sound of a throat clearing, loudly and pointedly, from behind us.

I stepped backwards just as Percy dropped his arms, somehow unable to meet his gaze. I felt strangely drugged, as though I had just awoken from a dream to find that real life beckoned.

What the hell just happened?

Mr Brunner stepped up between us, his gaze strangely piercing as he looked from one of us to the other. I opened my mouth to say something – anything – to explain what had just happened, when Percy suddenly cleared his throat and spoke.

"Sorry, Mr Brunner, I didn't see you there."

"That," my drama teacher said wryly, "seemed rather obvious."

Percy's eyes met mine, back to their normal sea-green, but there was something different about them – something faintly familiar, as though I'd seen it once before in a dream. He was looking at me as though he'd never seen me before, like I'd sprung into existence right before him, and I almost thought he was about to say something before he abruptly turned and walked into the room.

I followed, dumbstruck, finding a place between Callie and Piper on autopilot as I tried to make an iota of sense out of what had just happened.

"What was that you were saying earlier about avoiding drama with Drew?" Piper whispered to me as I sat down, looking at something further down the table. I followed her gaze to find Drew's eyes locked on me, her lips twisted into a scowl and glaring so fiercely I thought she was about to burn me to a crisp where I sat.

I collapsed further into a puddle of frustration on the inside, trying my best to keep my face as composed and professional as I turned away from Drew – to find Percy sitting directly opposite me. He was facing the head of the table, strictly away from me and Nico, who was sitting on his left and currently sporting the biggest shit-eating grin I had ever seen on his face.

"I do so love being proven right," Callie gloated beside me, her expression mirroring Nico's, and her voice full of the sadistic glee of being able to say I told you so.

"Don't," I hissed, "say another word unless you would like me to cut your throat in your sleep tonight."

"Touchy, touchy," Calypso murmured, but thankfully left it alone.

My thoughts, however, would not do me that simple courtesy.

Although, strangely, I wasn't thinking about the fact that the entire cast had seen whatever the hell had transpired between Percy and I, or that the whole school would know about it by the end of the day. I wasn't thinking about Drew and whatever she was inevitably going to do to me. I wasn't even thinking about Mr Brunner, or Calypso's stupid sexual tension, or any of my friends.

Strangely, all I was thinking about was the Percy's face the minute those fateful words had left my mouth, the sudden flash of heat in his eyes and the way he'd looked at my lips – as though, in that moment, he'd wanted nothing else in the entire world.

And even more strangely – I'd let him. I hadn't slapped him across the cheek or yelled at him or even shut him down with a sharp remark, the way I always did when he flirted with me.

I didn't know what that meant.

But what I did know, with a kind of absolute certainty that emanated from my bones and radiated throughout my entire body, was that I was in much, much deeper trouble than I'd previously believed.

Sure, Annabeth. You really don't know what that means, huh?

Honestly, you guys, I am blown away by how many of you are still here – and joining! – after five years. I'm not going to say that this is my best written fic, or even my most original one. But it's giving me a heck of a lot of joy writing it, and I genuinely hope it does the same for you. You all deserve a little bit of happiness in these truly shithole times.

This chapter's a little shorter than the last but that's because the next one is almost done! It was originally part of this one, but it was getting rather long so I figured it would be better to end this here. I'm hoping to get the next chapter out to you guys by next week!

In the meantime, please let me know your thoughts on this chapter (or on anything, really, I just love hearing from you all). And as always, stay safe and healthy and take care!

Till next time!