A/N: hello all!
So "at once i knew" is nearly a year old (how has it been a year since i stopped being burdened by this 50k beast) (also happy baps to one of my proudest achievements 3) and even though it has in fact been a whole year i still haven't quite been able to let go of this verse just yet so i thought i'd do a little follow-up! This actually initially was in the plan to be in the og fic but for some reason i never did so i hope u enjoy! See u in a year when i write part 3 (im kidding or am i).
(also mandatory taylor swift album report: fearless taylor's version. No i am not ok. That's all. Thank u. also sour by olivia Rodrigo.)
If u r the type for listening to music while reading i highly recommend the trying season 2 soundtrack by Maisie peters which is what i listened to on repeat while writing! title is taken from holocene by bon iver and i hope u enjoy!
Percy's at a party.
The lights are turned down low, one of Piper's eclectic girl power playlists playing in the background, and in one hand he has a cup of something that smells of vodka, or acrid orange squash, and other he has propped on the mantlepiece, next to a framed photo of Piper aged seven with braids and a gap-toothed smile. He's talking to the blue-haired friend, Thalia, who is still upright and remarkably lucid considering he's also pretty sure he's seen her take around seven shots across the duration of the night, and she's chatting to him about Billie Joe Armstrong, but he's not really listening anymore, because his eyes are aimlessly drifting around the room (or maybe aimlessly isn't the right word. He doesn't think anything's ever been truly without intention, recently), and then:
And then, they land on Annabeth, across the room, standing with Piper and Chiron, and Piper's midway through a story, gesticulating wildly, probably a little drunkenly, and Annabeth's wearing those dangly owl earrings that make her eyes look like burnished silver, head thrown back in laughter, eyes screwed shut, cheeks flushed with exertion, the loveliest, brightest thing in the room.
I love you, he thinks, but doesn't say it aloud; just pours himself another cup of punch, and swallows the words down with it.
Percy has to jog to make it to Merriweather on time, but it's all worth it for the look on Annabeth's face when she comes out of school at the end of the day to see him by the gates.
He feels a smile of his own smile tug at his lips as he leans against a lamppost, watching as she says something to the blue-haired girl stood next to her. The girl rolls her eyes but lets her go, and Annabeth heads down the front steps to where Percy is stood.
"Well, well, well," she says, when she gets near enough, pausing right at the very base of the steps. Her hands are in her pockets, long hair down and around her shoulders: they've finally come out the cold snap that had the April daffodils frosting over, so she's not wearing a jacket for the first time since they've known each other, and the spring looks lovely on her. "You actually showed up."
Percy grins. "Said I would, didn't I?"
"Mm." Her eyes are bright, and she bridges the last few feet to where he's standing, producing a crumpled piece of notepaper from her back pocket. "This was a nice touch, by the way. Very cute."
"What's the point of still sharing your locker if I can't reap the benefits?"
"Oh, you mean like getting crumbs in my textbooks," but any heat is marred by the warmth in her eyes as she stops in front of him, smiling in that way she does where she presses her lips together like she's trying not to. Before he can reach out to take her hand, he hears from behind him a voice say, affectionately, "Get a room,", and Annabeth's gaze goes soft with amusement, fixing at a point over his shoulder. He turns to see the blue-haired girl stalking away from what looks like Jason and Piper making out right by the school gates, Piper's hand that isn't twisted into his hair stretched out and blindly flipping her retreating form off.
"Oh, wow," Percy says. Because he can't help himself, he calls, "Touch his ass!" and Piper's middle finger revolves to his direction. (Though her hand does, in fact, slide into his back pocket. Percy would like to take credit but Jason does also have a very nice ass.) "Why must they be so voyeuristic? They're in public."
"I think that's the problem," Annabeth says to him, but her eyes are fond. (A little disgusted too, but that's sort of a natural reaction, considering how increasingly R-rated it's becoming.) "Eh, we'll give them a pass. They're cute."
Percy glances at her, but she's not looking at him, gaze still fixed on Piper and Jason. He looks down to the inches between them on the pavement, how they haven't even touched hello, and then back at Piper and Jason, who are at this point near dry-humping against the wall.
Something almost like anxiety twinges in him.
They've only been together for a short while, two months, next week, and in those two months Percy's learned a lot of things about Annabeth, like her favourite food (pizza) and what she smells like (lemon drops), but he's also learned that she's sparing with physical affection, only holds his hand sometimes and never kisses him in public. It's not like he doubts that she likes him, becomes sometimes the way she smiles at him feels as ruinous as a kiss in public, and in the beginning when he'd initiate it she'd follow without complaint, but—
He has no complaints. None. She's wonderful.
But sometimes it's difficult not to wonder: is it me? Is she ashamed?
Before he can say anything, though, she finally pulls her eyes away from Jason and Piper to meet his gaze, lips pressed together in a mischievous smile like they're sharing a secret just between them, and he forces himself to beat that train of thought to the back of his mind. "Well, I think that's our cue," she says.
Percy grins at her, holding out his hand. "And I heed that call," he says seriously, and she rolls her eyes. "You coming?"
"Hm," she says, but takes his proffered hand anyway; squeezes like she's saying of course. "Yours?"
Percy doesn't know if she knows he's noticed, how she's always hesitant to invite him over to her own house. It's not something he minds, because he loves her in his room, stretched out over his bed doing homework, reading aloud a funny article, or pressed up next to him as they watch Big Brother together and bitch about their least favourite contestants, making guesses as to who's going to get voted out next (Annabeth thinks there's a formula to it, Percy thinks it's all dependant on the week). Maybe it would be something that made him a little insecure – doesn't she want him over? – only on the rare occasions he does go over to hers, she's always a little dimmer, or at least until her bedroom door closes behind them, like the air outside sucks the life out of her, even though her house is nicer and bigger.
"It was my grandparents'," she explains the second time Percy visits, two weeks after the first time he'd stayed the night, when he makes an offhand remark about how he likes it. "It's a little too big when it's just the two of us." That's all she says, but Percy knows what else she's not saying: that even if it had all six members of her family it would still gape wide, because it's a house made for boisterous laughter and four children who run and play, not who scatter to the winds, with one brother at college and the other two staying with her mom.
She tells him this up in her room, after she had corralled him there so quickly he'd barely had the time to kick off his shoes at the front door, pointedly not introducing him to the older man sitting at the kitchen table who blinks at them owlishly behind his glasses as they pass. They play Monopoly on her bedroom floor, which quickly turns into making out on her bedroom floor when Percy learns that seeing Annabeth get fierce and squabbly over her property was kind of a turn-on. Afterwards, as they lie there, breathless, she says, "Sorry I was weird with my dad earlier."
Percy rolls his head over to look at her; feigns ignorance. "He's here?"
She smiles at him, small and a little wry. They both know Percy knows her dad is here.
"Before you go I'll introduce you," she says, and Percy doesn't ask why she didn't do it after they first came in, because he already knows – or, he doesn't really, but he understands, because family means different things to both of them, and has meant different things to both of them, and Percy knows her relationship with her dad is something she's still working on. "It's like," she says, later, "we're on opposite sides of the same planet that's been thrown out of its orbit. Like we're just moving through space in a straight meaningless line, frozen and alone, the two of us, and we think we're the only survivors, only we don't know that on the other side of the planet there's someone else too."
"Lonely," Percy says, to that.
She smiles at him, small, but genuine. "You make it better," she says. "You and Thalia and Piper. It doesn't feel so empty when I have you around."
Back at the second visit, when Percy is going home, Annabeth introduces him to her dad, who has moved from the kitchen table to the basement. She knocks at the door, and from behind it a voice says, "It's open" in a way that doesn't seem particularly pleased with this fact, like not locking it was an accident and now he's accepted his fate of other people intruding. It's enough for Percy to want to turn and go but Annabeth's grip around his hand is tight and a little sweaty and when she moves forward down the steps he can't do anything except follow her.
Frederick Chase is a tall man whose skin, hair and clothes are all the same colour. He looks like a creature that lives underground, and Percy will think of Annabeth's planet metaphor and realise how appropriate it is, both Annabeth and Frederick clever, quiet things at the top and bottom of the house respectively. He is stood by a table covered in tiny intricately made tanks and soldiers, aeroplanes carefully strung from the ceiling, and he blinks at the two of them through his landscape, like an unwieldy, uncomfortable god.
"Hello," he says; shifts, a little. It's clear this is the first time in a while someone else has been down here. He doesn't make a move to come up to them, just stays standing behind the table and the dangling aeroplanes like they're real and can protect him from intrusion.
Annabeth powers through like she doesn't realise or doesn't care. "Dad," she says, "this is my boyfriend Percy. I wanted you to meet him."
For the first time since walking in, Frederick's gaze flickers to where Percy is stood half a step behind her. His eyelashes are sandy. In the dim light his eyes look the same colour too. "Hello," he says again, awkwardly.
"Hi," Percy says.
There is a long silence. Annabeth stares stoutly at her father. Frederick doesn't seem to know what else to do.
Finally, out of nothing to say, Percy lamely decides on, "I like your… planes."
Frederick blinks, looking a little surprised by this. "Do you have an interest in military strategy?"
Unfortunately, he also looks sort of pleased, like he's not used to hanging people share his interests, and clearly Percy way overshot here. Annabeth must see that, because she says, "Percy was actually just leaving—"
Except then, like a saving grace, Percy recognises one of the aeroplane models. "Is that a Sopwith Camel?"
Frederick's eyes go wide and glad behind his glasses. "You know it?"
Annabeth glances at him, surprised too. Percy explains, "I, uh, know it from my mom's research. She's writing a novel set during World War One."
"The one about the bookseller?" Annabeth says.
"Yeah, that one."
"Oh," Frederick says again, but this one sounds almost cautiously hopeful, and not like Percy's an invading termite into his domain, "that's certainly very interesting."
"Yeah, it's cool. She's reading a lot about artillery for it."
"Maybe she can come over too one day?" Annabeth offers, and Percy glances at her. She watches him with careful eyes, before glancing at her father. "I mean, it might be helpful. Dad knows a lot."
Percy half-expects Frederick to disappear into the wall at that, but he actually perks up, sand-coloured hand reaching up to adjust his glasses. "Well," he amends, modestly, "I do know a little."
"He's a history professor," Annabeth explains. "He knows a lot."
"I would be more than happy to discuss with your mother about her book," Frederick says, and it's mostly to Annabeth, because he hasn't really made eye contact with Percy this whole time, or maybe he has (his reflective glasses keep his vision mostly obscured), but Annabeth glances at him, and there's something almost like awe and disbelief in her gaze, like she's not used to conversations going this well. Her grip tightens on his hand. "She is… she is welcome at any time."
"Cool," Percy says, and he's a little overwhelmed himself, because this is the first proper time he's ever met the parents of someone he was dating and it sort of seems to be going… surprisingly well? "I'll let her know."
"Thanks, Dad," Annabeth says.
Frederick nods at her, once, and keeps his head down after, his hand creeping out to adjust one of the soldiers on the battlefield. Annabeth seems to know that this is the end of the conversation, because she squeezes Percy's hand and then steps back up the stairs, him following. He can't help it but glance over his shoulder at Frederick before the knoll of wall above the stairs that has them both ducking obscures him from view. He is very still, his gaze down on the soldier, and then he pulls his hand back in, clasps it with the other in front of him.
He looks a little in disbelief too.
At the door, Percy zips his coat up, because it's still cold outside, and Annabeth leans against the wall, weight on one hip, her other foot propped on the ball of it.
"That went well," she says.
"It's a little discouraging that you sound so surprised," Percy says, though it's only to get a smile out of her, and she gently socks him in the arm.
"You know what I mean."
Yeah. He does. "You think he actually wants my mom to stop by?"
"He won't say it, but he loves talking to people about things he likes. It's why he's a professor." She hesitates, a little, like she can't believe she's saying this, and then, "I think… I think he'd like it. If she came."
"Okay," Percy says, and he wasn't going to, until she said that, because he doesn't think Frederick's the only one who would like it. "I'll let her know."
So now, when Annabeth looks at him, grey eyes almost blue from the reflection of the sky, pink cheeks framed by golden curls, and says, "Yours?", he swallows his anxieties, squeezes her hand and says, "Let's go."
"Higher," Piper orders.
Straining on his tiptoes, Percy inches the banner up along the wall. "Good?"
There is very telling silence.
"Oh, God," he groans, "not any higher, my arms are about to pop."
"I wasn't going to say that," Piper says, which would be more convincing did she not sound like she was, in fact, going to say that. "It's... fine."
"That doesn't sound like it's fine."
"I think it's a little slanted," Grover offers after a small pause, mouth full.
With some effort, Percy glares over his shoulder to where he's sat at the island, snacking at the tortilla chips. "I don't see you helping."
"I'm the official chip taster," Grover protests. "It's very serious."
"Stop squirreling away at the guac, we only have a few avocados," Piper says, and Grover is sensible enough to look a little sheepish. "Oh, Percy, just leave it, it's the best we're gonna get."
Percy clambers down from the chair he was stood on and comes to stand next to her, staring at the banner. It's a tacky, purple foil thing Piper ordered from a website Percy is only half-sure is legal a while ago, emblazoned with and proudly proclaiming HAPPY SEASON 2! in a colour that is only a hair lighter than the background. Admittedly, not one of Piper's finer purchases, which Percy said as much to her when she first unwrapped it, and it was telling of how much she agreed that she didn't argue with him, only frowned at it and had said, "I did think three dollars for a customisable banner was too good to be true."
"Oh, yeah," Percy says, now. "That's pretty slanted."
"This is going to annoy me," Piper says, and strides forward to fix it herself.
Percy collapses next to Grover on one of the spinning stools at the island, content to sit back and watch as Piper determinedly climbs onto the chair armed with enough Blu-Tack to keep a house together. Grover, mouth full of chips, offers him the bowl, which is suspiciously less full than it was half an hour ago when Percy loaded them. "Snacks?"
Percy takes a handful.
At that moment, Hazel pops her head around the doorway. The silver party streamers she had tied in her hair dangle around her face. "Piper, where are your speakers?"
"I'll get them," Piper says, muffled against the wall. "I need a girl's opinion – is this straight?"
Somehow, she's only made it even more slanted. For a few long moments, Hazel squints at it, before she says nicely, "It's a lovely colour."
Plaintively, Piper thumps her head against the wall. Grover offers Hazel the bowl. "Chip?"
"Thank you very much but I'm okay," Hazel says. "Do you know where Piper's speakers are?"
"In the bedroom," Piper grunts. "It's just down the hall on the right, second door."
Hazel flicks her a cheerful thumbs-up before she wisely disappears. Percy sort of mournfully watches her go, wishing he could do the same.
By now, Piper finally seems to have become fed up with wrestling with the banner, because she kicks the wall and climbs down the chair, coming over to where they're sat at the island. Despite her chastisement of Grover earlier, she takes a fistful of chips from the bowl and crams them in her mouth. "Next season, someone else can throw the party," she says. "This is too much stress for me."
"I mean, you've managed to pull it together pretty well," Percy says. Pull it together is definitely an understatement: he'd arrived early to help her set up, Hazel already there (Grover arrived twenty minutes later, though Percy's not sure why, because so far he hasn't done anything productive except dirty three forks trying to extricate a hair from the guac), but even by then most of the work had been done, streamers already hung from every doorway and food already laden across every spare inch of countertop space in the kitchen. Percy's done no more than heat up the vegetarian cocktail sausages and arrange them on plates, and even then on one of her cursory whizz-rounds Piper had come and rearranged them in an entirely different way.
"What's wrong with the way I did it?" Percy had insisted, a little indignantly.
"If you think I can't tell those are meant to be dicks you're an idiot," Piper said, patting him on the cheek. "Can you get the beers out of the fridge?"
Percy had frowned down at the plate as she disappeared to scrub the bathroom for the eighth time. He thought the dicks were tasteful.
Now, Piper presses her head against the marble counter top and makes an unintelligible grumble. Percy strokes her hair.
"I don't think anyone will really notice," Grover says. "They'll think it's abstract art. You can get away with anything when it's abstract art."
Piper rolls her head to eye them both. "You think so?" she says, after a long pause.
"Definitely," Percy agrees. "They'll be too busy admiring their reflections in the floor." (Piper's mopped twice. He had to put the mop on a high shelf so she couldn't get to it a third time.) "You've done a good job."
"If I didn't know you were only saying that so I don't have a meltdown I'd be flattered," Piper says, a little mournfully, but thankfully she does look a little less close to said meltdown. She sits up, smoothing down her hair on one side. "Did Annabeth say where she was?"
It takes Percy a moment to realise that this is directed at him, and when he does something warms a little in his chest. He's still not quite over the novelty of he and Annabeth being a known unit together, and being able to speak for her, even in this tiny, inconsequential way, makes him feel sort of ridiculously pleased. "She said she was running late with Thalia," he says. "Something about an eyeliner emergency."
He and Piper share a knowing, pitying nod. Percy's never met Thalia but he has heard too many things about her eyeliner emergencies and how late they can set her back. Apparently the longest one clocked in at just over two hours.
"Well, there's no knowing when they'll get here, then," Piper says. She seems comforted by this. "Do you think that means I have enough time to do another vacuum?"
"No," Grover and Percy say together, empathically.
"But it's your first party as an official couple," Piper says, because she knows where Percy is weak, and seems intent on not descending into madness alone. "Don't you want it to be perfect?"
And okay, she kind of has him there. He feels his resolve begin to treacherously waver. "I mean—"
"Get out of his head!" Grover says. "Percy, don't listen to her. Annabeth will not dump you because she can't ice skate on the floorboards."
"Are we talking about Annabeth?" And, like an angel sent from Heaven above, that's Hazel, re-appearing around the kitchen door with Piper's pink speakers clutched in one hand. Somehow she has obtained even more party streamers to put in her hair. Percy is betting on the doorways being cleared by midnight at this rate. She comes up the island next to them, eyes wide and earnest. "Oh, I'm so excited to finally meet her!"
It would probably be so much more suspicious if Hazel wasn't the very epitome of well-intentioned who also just so happened to have convenient timing. Whatever it is, Piper is immediately distracted. "I can't wait to introduce her to you guys! You'll love her, I promise. I mean, look how enthusiastically Percy responded."
Hazel and Grover both give him looks, adoring and knowing respectively. "You make her sound like a painkiller," Percy says, to hide his blush.
"Yeah, but that's what all the songs say that love is like," Grover says, as he helps himself to another chip heavily laden with guacamole. "So there."
"They say love is like a painkiller?"
"Yeah, you know. You take my pain away. Like a good ibuprofen."
"Pretty sure that's actually Shakespeare," Piper says.
"Well, I'm excited to meet her, anyway. It's a long time coming – too long, actually, considering the amount of work I put in to it. I helped you rewrite her notes! The least I could do was get a heads-up with her."
Percy's properly blushing now, he's sure. "You don't have to say that bit so loudly," he says, but it's too late, because Hazel's face has become almost disgustingly soppy, like it does whenever she watches a video of lambs wearing bows, or baby animals touching noses.
"Aw, that's so cute!" she says. "I didn't know you met like that."
Piper links arms with her. "Trust me, their love story is a much-convoluted thing. We'll get them to do a retelling later tonight."
"No way in hell," Percy says.
Piper rolls her eyes. "Fine, we'll get you drunk enough to do a retelling later."
Grover is still stuck on the notes. "I mean, how did she do it? What was her secret? When I try and get you to come with me to that exhibit about quarks and particle decay it's all no, Grover, that sounds boring, but all she does is share a locker with you for a few months and suddenly you're calling me up ready to start transcribing her notes on the very same thing!"
"True love is a disease, clearly," Percy says.
"Clearly," Grover says, though he could afford to look less pleased about it. "I need to give her a prize or something. You know since he started dating her I managed to get him to watch Interstellar with me?"
Piper gawks at him. "Oh, Percy, that's so embarrassing."
"Like you don't text me during your dates with Jason to ask about baseball terminology," Percy shoots back.
Piper opens her mouth to respond, but she must realise that there's no rebuttal because then she snaps it shut a few moments later. "Touché," she relinquishes, finally, tapping a finger to her nose. Before she can say anything further (and Percy knows that she can – she's got that glint in her eye that only promises further humiliation) the doorbell goes, and she perks up. "Oh, that must be Frank!"
The morning after they talk things over, Percy wakes up in Annabeth's bed, still in his jeans and sweater from the night before, to find her already awake, reading a book in bed next to him. There is a minute where she doesn't realise and so she keeps reading, the skin beneath her eyes flushed violet, teeth caught on a ridge of skin on her bottom lip, and Percy just lies there, watching her.
Then, as though she can sense his eyes, she glances down at him, because his head is on her pillow, something he must have poached from her during the night, blanket tucked up to his chin, feet peeking out the bottom because he is taller than she is and he thinks this bed is too small for even for, and she smiles at him, and says, "Hi."
"Hi," Percy says.
And the truth is, is this:
Percy is kind because he tries hard to be.
He likes to think it is something that comes natural to all humans, to be kind, but he has grown up around anger, where conflict was red-hot and dealt with promptly, short and sharp and ugly. So nothing festers, Gabe would say, because it didn't, not in him, but it would in Percy, like something poisonous, spread, until he would get so angry himself that he would do stupid shit like break windows and pick fights with kids he knew he couldn't beat. If you're not gonna hit me yourself, he would think, savagely, and then one day Gabe did hit him, hard enough that his cheek split between his teeth. He remembers standing there in the middle of the living room, mouth filling with blood, staring at him, thinking, did that just happen?, and then, from the doorway of the kitchen, his mom said quietly, the most angry he'd ever heard her, "Pack your bags."
Percy is kind because his mom is and he is brave because his mom was, and he knows that's important because sometimes they're the same thing, and he knows the day she kicked Gabe out for good she was the bravest she'd ever had to be, because she did it for herself but also for him, too. Though maybe that's not true, because she was a peaceful protester in a home that became a no-man's land, putting dye in foods to turn them blue to make Percy smile even when Gabe snapped at her to stop, telling him goodnight even when he came home suspended from school, continuing to write her novel even when Gabe told her that writing was a fruitless occupation, as though sitting at home in his socks gambling with his friends wasn't.
He thinks, ultimately, the bravest thing she ever did was remain gentle throughout.
And it's something he's trying to get better at, being gentle, and as he watches Annabeth smile at him softly, lifting her hand almost tentatively to brush his hair out of his face, he thinks that in certain lighting, she reminds him a lot of his mom.
"Did I wake you?" she says. She doesn't lift her hand from his hair, instead softly cards her hands through it.
"Nah," Percy says. "Light sleeper. What are you reading?"
She shows him. Death By Black Hole, the title reads.
"What's it about?"
"Would you believe black holes?"
"No way."
"It's by Neil DeGrasse Tyson."
"The science guy?"
"Not Bill Nye."
"Bill, Bill, Bill, Bill."
"The section I'm reading is all about the pitfalls of scientific generalisations."
"Interesting."
"It is," and she sounds like she means it, too, though a little shyly, like she's afraid he's going to laugh at her for it. And Percy wants to knock on her skull, be allowed in her head, ask her, who made you afraid of judgment and empty space? and did you sleep well last night? and I think my mom would like you, but he also knows that bravery looks like different things on different people, and on his mom it was leaving a man who hit her and on Annabeth it looks like allowing him into her room and telling him about a Neil DeGrasse Tyson book she's reading, and so he says, "Read me a bit?"
"You're gonna fall asleep again," she says.
"Maybe that's my angle here," he says, and she laughs. "Maybe I'm interested in scientific generalisations."
"Maybe you're a bad liar."
"Okay, you got me. I'm just interested in you."
Her ears go a little pink. "Well," she says. "It's a long chapter, so. Buckle in."
He settles back into the pillow and closes his eyes, close enough that he can feel the breath in her stomach, and she begins to softly read aloud, something about old men and elephants, and how looking too closely at abstract parts means you don't learn much about the elephant as a whole, just that it is an amalgam of seemingly unrelated pieces. Percy thinks of himself, and Annabeth, and how, last night, in the same clothes, she had confessed to him, you are one of the kindest people I've ever known, and he thinks of how she only knows him as a microcosm of who he really is, a few months and five dozen sheets of notepaper's worth of the seventeen years he is. But then he thinks that they're still young enough that it doesn't really matter the angry parts of him that she's never known, only known about, because he's aiming to be kind, now, thinks how being kind sometimes requires more bravery than throwing a punch, and that for his mom, the bravest thing she ever did was leave, and for Annabeth, the bravest thing she ever did was stay.
So:
He stays. And he listens.
"Oh," says the blue-haired girl disdainfully when Percy opens the door. "So you're the beard."
"Thalia," Percy guesses, mostly because the wings of her eyeliner look sharp enough to kill a man. The emergency was probably so she could sharpen them for the occasion. Regardless, he seems to have guessed right, because the girl – or Thalia – sniffs a little contemptuously, in a way that says he's right but she'd prepared a cutting remark for him being wrong and she's annoyed she can't use it.
"She means it's nice to meet you," Annabeth says, next to her, and Percy glances at her, feeling a smile form on his face at the sight of her, bundled up in her coat and unwrapping her scarf from around her neck. She beams at him, cheeks flushed pink from the cold. "Also hi."
"Hi," Percy says. Thalia rolls her eyes. "And, beard?"
"Piper's straight boyfriend," Thalia says.
It takes a moment for Percy to realise she's talking about Argo and not real life. "That's me. Her real straight boyfriend I don't think is coming."
"No, he's helping out at the rec centre with Book Clubs For Troubled Teens," Annabeth says, and they all share an affectionate eye-roll. Jason Grace truly is a king amongst men; last week Percy's pretty sure he spent his weekend volunteering at a soup kitchen. (Okay, so Percy's a little in love with him, too. Sue him. Like Piper's not also in love with his girlfriend.)
"You do wonder how Piper could ever be good enough for him," Thalia says. "Also hi too. I brought alcohol."
She hands him a bottle of vodka. Attached with sticky tape at the bottom is a folded piece of notepaper, and when Percy unfolds it, it reads if you mess with Annabeth I will CUT YOU. THAT'S A PROMISE.
"Oh, you really shouldn't have," Percy says.
Annabeth sighs. "I explicitly told her not."
"Threaten me or bring alcohol to a party that is mostly underage?"
"You said not to verbally threaten him," Thalia corrects. "I am fuelled by technicalities. And aren't notes your method of communication? If anything, this is an olive branch. You should take it for what it is," which is said to Percy, who just sort of blinks at her and says, "Thank you?"
"Sorry about her," Annabeth says to him. "You can see why we don't take her anywhere."
Thalia bares her teeth at him in the way that Percy imagines a wolf does before it leaps on its prey. He sensibly shifts the vodka bottle closer to his chest. "Well, it's good to see you both," he says. "Come in."
He steps back, allowing them to come inside, shedding their jackets and hanging them on the banister like they've been here a hundred times – which they probably have, considering it is Piper's house. Somewhere in between the proper hello hugs, one of which Percy even gets from Thalia, who appears in the two-minute conversation they just had to have deemed him as passing whatever weird test that was and now thusly suitable for Annabeth, Piper appears, Reyna at her heels, holding a box in her arms. They seem to be on their way up the stairs, but when they spot the new guests Piper's face brightens.
"Guys!" she squeals, and lunges forward to pull them both into an unwieldy hug. "I wasn't expecting you for at least another half an hour."
"Okay, one, I resent that accusation," Thalia says, "and two, Annabeth was getting separation anxiety," at which Annabeth kicks her.
"Shut up, I wasn't. I wasn't," she says again to Percy, who just grins.
"Okay."
"Don't say okay like you don't believe me," she snits, but when Percy holds out his arms she dutifully comes over to him and gives him another hug, a proper one this time, that has her arms looping around under his and his slung over her shoulders. Her hair smells of lemon drops; her cheek is cold against his. "Hi," she says again, but softer this time, breathed against his cheek in a way that's just for him. It makes him shiver a little.
"Hi," he says. He pulls back far enough to see her face, her arms dropping to around his waist. "I just want you know that separation anxiety is meant to be totally normal—"
"Shut up, I don't have—"
"—and honestly I take it as more of a compliment than anything."
"Yeah, I'm sure you do," Annabeth says, but her hands come up to fix his collar anyway, smoothing down a crease at his chest. "You look nice."
"Well, it's our first party, isn't it?" Percy says, and even though Annabeth's still playing at annoyed he sees something soften in her eyes. "And I know you like me in this shirt."
"Hm," Annabeth says, which means he's right. She catches him grinning and says, "oh, don't look so smug," but when Percy throws an arm around her shoulder, reeling her for a sideways hug, she goes willingly, her arm slinging around his waist. She links a finger in one of his beltloops, toying with the end of his shirt; her fingers whisper over the skin of his back, and he suppresses a shiver.
"I'm correct in assuming this is the party?" a voice says from behind them, and they all turn to see Chiron in his wheelchair waiting outside right by the threshold, an amused expression on his face.
"Chiron!" they cheer.
"You're right, it is the party!" Piper says, and leans forward to give him a hug. "I'm so glad you could make it."
Chiron returns it warmly. "Well, of course. I'm glad you're letting an old man like me come and crash."
"You are the epitome of youth and beauty," Percy assures him.
Chiron snorts. "Well, that's just untrue, but I appreciate the sentiment. Miss McLean, would you mind helping me in? The chair has a small problem with tumultuous terrain."
"Oh yeah, of course," Piper says, and hurries over behind his chair to heave him over the door frame. This leaves Reyna standing by herself next to Thalia, who for the first time seems to process that she's there. Her eyes go very, very wide.
"Hey, I don't think we've met," Reyna says, oblivious, and shifts the box in her arms to hold out her hand. "I'm Reyna."
Thalia makes a sound like a broken car and shakes her hand. "Hi," she croaks out.
"That's Thalia," Annabeth supplies, when Thalia does not, just continues shaking Reyna's hand even after it's probably socially appropriate to stop and doesn't break frenzied eye contact. "I'm Annabeth."
"Thalia, you say?" A glint forms in Reyna's eye, and she raises an eyebrow. "I've heard lots about you."
Thalia looks a little faint. "You have?"
"All good things," Piper reassures her from behind Chiron, as she wheels him in. Then she pauses, thinks for a moment, and amends, "Okay, mostly good things."
"She mentioned that you were a big fan of the show," Reyna says. "Especially my character."
Thalia's eyes rove to Piper in a way that promises death. Piper grins at her. "Um. It's not… true."
Reyna frowns. "That it meant a lot to you to see meaningful LGBTQ+ representation?"
Piper silently loses it behind Chiron's chair. Percy feels Annabeth shake a little with laughter against his side, too, turning her head briefly into his shoulder to muffle her smile. Thalia's smile gets even more panicked. "No, that's—that's true."
"What did you think I was going to say?"
"Oh, stop torturing each other, you two," Chiron says, and Piper grins sweetly at everyone over his head. Reyna turns to glance at him, and Thalia takes the diverted attention to lean back against the stair banister, looking winded. "Annabeth, hello, it's lovely to see you."
Annabeth goes a little still with surprise against Percy's side. "Oh, uh, hi," she says. She sounds both surprised and flattered that he remembered her. "Um, it's good to see you too."
"How is the universe today?"
A shy, lovely smile stretches over her face. "Good," she says. "Expanding. Full of stars and holes."
Chiron smiles at that, too, and beckons for her to follow as he begins to wheel towards the kitchen where everyone else is. "Come, walk with me. You too, Piper, you tyrant, don't plague your party guests. I saw a very interesting article about new developments on dark matter in the news yesterday and it reminded me of you and what we were talking about on set a while ago…"
"Wow," Reyna comments, when they're out of earshot, Piper belligerently trailing behind. "Who can't she enchant?"
And Percy likes that word, enchant, because there really is something like magic about Annabeth, as though reality has taken on a new and exciting texture with her around. And he knows mostly that's the honeymoon period in him talking, but it's just something about Annabeth, too: her clever brain, her bright eyes, and the way she sometimes touches him, disbelieving, almost, like she can't quite believe he's there.
Sometimes he wonders if she sees him the same way she views the universe: in multiples, made up of numbers and shapes and structures.
"She just has a connection with old people," Thalia says. "Probably something about her fashion or interests. She's practically one of them."
"Can't believe I just got my girlfriend stolen by Chiron," Percy says, with a frown. "I didn't even get to say hello properly."
"Oh, you'll live," Reyna says with an affectionate eye-roll as she hoists the box higher on her hip. For the first time Percy notices it's filled, bizarrely, with lightbulbs. To Thalia, she says, "You've been here before, right? Can you show me around? I somehow mentioned that I know how to change a lightbulb and Piper then conveniently started giving me a tour."
Thalia's eyes go a little wide again, like she's just realised that Chiron's departure has left just the three of the remaining, which is looking very soon to be just the two of them, but just as Percy's beginning to become afraid she's malfunctioned again she clears her throat and sets her shoulders back. "Sure," she says. "Follow me. I'll… show you around."
They start up the stairs together, Thalia in the rear, her eyes glazed over in panic. Even though Percy has only known for five minutes he still shoots her a thumbs-up, and even though Thalia has only known him for five minutes she flicks him a middle finger in response. Percy grins at her retreating back. He thinks they're going to be good friends.
For now, though, he simply glances down at the bottle of vodka still clasped in his hand, exhales a small laugh, and returns to the kitchen.
They catch the train home together.
There are no two spare seats next to each other, so instead they stand at the same pole and look out of different windows. Percy tries not to read too hard into the way Annabeth's hand stays a resolute five inches away from his on the pole, her steely gaze unfocused in thought, grey eyes reflecting the greening trees that whizz by in the window reflections; tells himself that they don't have to be touching at all times to know that she cares about him.
He tries not to read into the different windows too hard either.
The apartment is empty by the time they get back, so Percy takes the opportunity as an excuse to bring Annabeth into the kitchen and make them both hot chocolate, the old-fashioned way with melting chocolate over the burner in the way his mom used to do on Christmases before Gabe. Annabeth boosts herself up on the counter next to him as he makes it and chatters away about the latest episode of Masterchef that they'd watched (they've taken to studying reality shows other than Big Brother to see if they can crack the format and predict all the evictions).
"It's gonna be Aran that goes home," Annabeth says. "He's never had so much talking head time before."
"Or maybe he just does really well," Percy says. "Katrina's also had a lot of talking head time."
"Yeah, but it's all about how she feels like she's out of her league with a dessert round. Whenever they do that the contestant always does surprisingly well. And Aran's flown under the radar so far, if he was that good at cooking he would have cracked a Top 3 by now."
"I love the way you say good at cooking like you didn't burn toaster strudels yesterday."
Annabeth swats at him with the whisk she's licking clean and he protests at the smudge at chocolate on his hoodie. "Okay, firstly, that was a one-off mistake, and even I know better than to plate my steak when it's raw. He only survived last round by the skin of his teeth."
Percy carefully pours the hot chocolate into two mugs, and then slides one across the counter to her. She cups it between her palms, blowing on it. Her eyes are warm.
"Come on, let's go to my room," Percy says. "I bet you ten bucks it's Katrina."
Annabeth's eyes come alight, dancing with mirth. "Done," she says, and slides off the counter. "If Aran gets kicked out then we can at least add him to our wallflower list, though he's survived longer than wallflowers typically do. Katrina on the other hand has been antagonistic since the start, and they usually always keep the antagonist until at least the top five…"
They pile onto Percy's bed, carefully balancing their hot chocolates in their hands so they don't spill any on his sheets, and press play on their latest episode of Masterchef already queued up on his laptop, loaded ten minutes in from where they paused it over the phone last night. Pressed together like this, Percy's reminded of the first time Annabeth came over, how she lay next to him and stayed until he fell asleep, and then after that, too.
It's times like these where it becomes difficult to remember why he ever felt worried in the first place, because once they've both sipped their hot chocolates down to tepid and deep enough there's no danger of spillage, Annabeth curls up against him, head not quite against his shoulder, but her own shoulder against his chest, their arms brushing. How, when she touches him like, could he ever doubt that she cares about him? Still, something dark in the back of his mind still whispers at him: that she doesn't touch him in public, sometimes looks at him like she's waiting for one of them to walk away, watches Jason and Piper with an almost wistful look on her face. Does she want that? Why doesn't she do that with Percy?
Stop, he tells himself.
He knows that that Annabeth cares about him and he cares about Annabeth. That's enough for him. Everything else in between doesn't matter.
"Why is she trying to make a souffle?" Annabeth is muttering to herself when Percy tunes back in. "I thought she was being humble when she said she was out of her league in a dessert round. It's like she's trying to get kicked off on purpose."
Percy glances at the screen. Predictably, Katrina. He grins.
"Looks like she's going home, then," he says.
"Hmph," Annabeth says disdainfully, which means he's right and she's annoyed about it. He smiles to himself and settles behind her, nudging his nose into her hair. As though she can sense him doing so, she nestles even closer, this time properly laying her head on his shoulder, though she doesn't stop darkly bitching about Katrina and her poor technique the entire time, which probably shouldn't make him as fond as it does.
It's ten minutes into Katrina's souffle (which Gordon Ramsey comments from the front is a risky move, so at this point really it could go either way for them) that Percy says, "I have a question."
"Yes, I see Aran's cheesecake," Annabeth grumps. "I know it's perfect, you don't have to rub it in."
"That's not it." (Though he does check, and it is a pretty perfect-looking cheesecake, which he feels a little inordinately smug about it.)
Annabeth glances up at him this time. "Is this you finally asking me to Piper's party on Saturday, then?"
"No, not—wait, what?" Percy blinks down incredulously at her. "How do you know about that already?"
Annabeth smiles sheepishly at him. It's a few moments before it clicks.
"Okay, how," he says. He's a little annoyed, but mostly kind of impressed. "We finalised the details last night!"
"Piper got to me at the gates first thing. I couldn't get away from her."
"She's making it hard to be a good boyfriend when she keeps stealing all my moves."
"It's cute you think she hasn't already," which she says like it's a joke, but Piper is also the type to buy her friends flower arrangements. Percy wouldn't even be sure where to begin. "She's always been like this, though, she just takes her role as best friend very seriously. Pretty sure she and I have gone on more dates in the past month than she and Jason."
"Trust me, I know," Percy says, glowering a little. Piper has made a habit of approaching him at the beginning of every week during rehearsals with all the days she has booked for friendship time that are officially off-limits for Percy to try and steal from her. (And usually it's most of them, except Thursdays. "Thursdays are the least romantic days ever!" Percy protests. "Well, yes," Piper says, like it's obvious, "that's why I didn't take them myself.") "Have I said how much I appreciate Piper?"
She snorts. "Her neurosis is a special thing."
"Didn't she take you and Thalia out last week for a picnic under the stars?"
"Oh, yeah." Annabeth makes a dreamy noise. "Those chocolate-covered strawberries were insane."
"No, that's your cue to say it sucked, Percy, it would have been so much better if you were there, Percy."
"You just need to beat her to the chase. Make your timetable Sunday evening."
"She has hers done three weeks in advance."
"Yeah, that's awkward." She grins at him, teasing. "But look at you now, troublemaker. A note in my locker? You're upstaging her with these sorts of moves."
Percy shrugs. "Well, I thought it was nice to return to our roots for a change. And in a way I sort of miss the routine of putting notes in your locker. Is that weird?"
"No, no, not at all. I, um." Her ears go pink. "I sort of miss it too. It was nice."
"Yeah?" Percy grins at her. "Should I keep doing it, then?"
Annabeth shrugs, but she's not meeting his eyes.
"Okay," he decides. He sort of can't fight the smile on his face. Maybe it's kind of embarrassing, maybe it's a little much, but it's theirs, something for just the two of them, and he was being serious when he said that he missed writing it. Life became a lot lovelier to look at when he was searching for the nice things to put in his notes to her: like how the drizzle made his sweaters uncomfortably damp but during the night when they'd put the stage lights on the sky would be full of tiny rainbows; a joke that Leo made during their dinner break that had them all in stitches for ten minutes; a smattering of daisies in the damp grass that hadn't been there the day before.
"Will your first note be formally asking me to the wrap party, then?" Annabeth teases.
Percy pretends to think. "Oh, yeah, that thing – see, the kind of awkward thing is that I already promised Grover that he could be my plus-one—"
He probably deserves the elbow to the side for that one. "Well, in that case," she says, and makes a move to sit up, but Percy takes her hand before she can, and if he were different, a little bolder, he'd put bring them to his mouth, drag kisses across the high peaks of her knuckles like he's seen people do in movies. But he's not, so instead he does so with his thumb, traces the ridgeline and looks at her in the eyes.
"Annabeth Chase," he says seriously, and Annabeth snorts, "would you do me the honour of escorting me to Piper's season two wrap party?"
She heaves a sigh that Percy suspects is all for show. "Well, I suppose," she says. "If it means that much to you."
But she's smiling, and Percy finds so is he.
"Was that what you wanted to ask me?" she says.
And oh yeah, the other thing. "Well, yes, sort of, but I actually wanted to ask you if we were still on for dinner with my mom next week."
Annabeth goes still with surprise against him, and cranes his neck to look at him properly. "Dinner?"
Percy frowns. "Yeah? We mentioned it a while ago, didn't we? When you bumped into my mom in the kitchen. She's been asking when we're gonna do it for a while now."
"Oh." Annabeth looks a little flustered. "I… thought she was just being polite."
"Why would she be polite?"
"I don't know." Annabeth seems to get even more flustered. She looks down at her hot chocolate like she doesn't know where else to fix her eyes, and touches her finger to the rim. After a small pause, she asks, softly, "She really wants to meet me?"
"Yeah, definitely. I, um." Percy coughs, a little embarrassed. "I sort of don't really stop talking about you."
There is another pause, but Annabeth's pink ears seem borne more of flattery than discomfort, and her lips twitch upwards like she's trying to tamper down on a smile. "Okay," she says, finally. "Yeah. That sounds nice."
"Cool," Percy says, and he knows he's probably grinning like a loon, but he can't help it. "Next Thursday?"
"Yeah," and it comes out in a disbelieving breath, like she can't quite believe that it's happening, and Percy is just so full of love. He thinks of all of the TED talks Annabeth's made him watch about stars, and how when two stars collide there's a supernova that can light up the universe, and imagines how his universe, though it's small, will look when two of the brightest, loveliest stars he knows coincide too.
"Okay," he says, insanely, "cool," and Annabeth says, "Cool," back, and he parrots it back, "Cool," and she sticks her tongue out as she settles against his chest, both of them turning their attention back to Masterchef, which has been playing the entire time, taking them until the end of the cooking time and to the judging. On the proverbial chopping block now is Aran's perfect cheesecake, which as it turns out isn't all that perfect, because he accidentally swapped the sugar for salt. Ramsey spits it out and Bastianich throws the plate in the trash.
Katrina's risky souffle ends up paying off. Aran gets sent home.
Annabeth is the bigger person and only gloats a little.
Afterwards, it's a little like this.
Piper's garden is bathed in dark blue shadows when Percy slips out of the party, the lawn dark and silhouetted with shadows from the living room, their outlines hazed through the sliding glass doors. It's cooler out here, a few degrees below comfortable, and Percy sits at the very end of the wooden deck, tipping his head and basking in it. The party was just beginning to err on the side of too stuffy, especially since the Bohemian Rhapsody came up on Piper's shuffle and everyone went insane, moshing as much as one can mosh in an overcrowded living room. The last thing he remembers is Thalia drunkenly yelling something to Chiron about how for an old man he had great taste in music before he decided to get some air.
He exhales happily, leaning back on his hands. His life is pretty good.
"Hey, Jackson," says a voice from behind him. "You know the party's inside, right?"
Percy turns from where he's sat at the very edge of the deck; sees Piper grinning at him, hair backlit purple from the neon lights inside, hanging out from the sliding glass doors. She has a cup of something in one hand, and somehow over the course of the night has procured a tiara which is hanging lopsidedly off her head. Percy can't help but grin back. "Yeah, well, it's a bit of a shit party."
"I worked hard on this, don't be rude," Piper says, but she comes and sits down next to him at the end of the deck anyway, swaying a little. "Hey, you wouldn't happen to have a breathalyser on hand, would you?"
"Left it at home." The sarcasm must completely miss her, because Piper nods in understanding, like it's an easy thing to forget. "Why do you need one?"
"To prove a point. Don't worry, though, it's not necessary." She nudges him. "Why are you sat out here all by yourself? You're missing Grover krumping to Hey Ya."
"Just needed some air. Your friend Thalia has a lot of opinions about the Star Wars prequels."
Piper snorts. "Do you want to know a secret? She hasn't watched any of them. I'm pretty sure she researches every way to be as contrarian as possible. It's like a party trick. Wait until she starts talking about how she thinks that the natural progression of the Joker movies is for the next one to be played by a woman."
"Yeah, but that would actually be pretty cool, unlike the sequel trilogy which everyone knows were terrible—"
"Okay, feminist, we get it." She bumps their knees together. "But you're having a good time, yeah?"
Percy has to smile. Despite everything, like the fact she's most definitely drunk off her face, Piper's always looking out for people. "Of course. Nice that Thalia and Annabeth are here, too."
"Right?" Piper perks up. "I had to lure Thalia with the promise of Reyna's number but I think she's having a good time."
Considering the last thing Percy had seen of Thalia before he went outside was her catching olives in her mouth in front of Reyna to impress her and Reyna, unbelievably, looking like it was working, Percy can't say it was all for nil. "Big fan?"
"Like you wouldn't believe." She bumps their knees together again. "How's Annabeth? I haven't really had the chance to say hello properly yet tonight."
It still doesn't fail to give Percy a bit of a thrill, to be able to speak for Annabeth, even in this tiny inconsequential way. Yeah, she's good. She likes her coffee black. She hates the radio ad jingle for equity release. She doesn't even know what equity release is. Percy would have thought it would have worn off by now, or at least the novelty of having someone to speak for, from the first time he came back home after they'd made up and his mom had simply given him a knowing look and said, how is she? and Percy had responded she's good, we're good. If anything, it's only seemed to increase as he learns more and more about her, like the fact she likes pistachios but hates peanuts, and when she smiles genuinely she always does so with her lips pressed together, like happiness is a new, shy thing for her.
Now, Percy says simply, "She's good,", ignores Piper's eye-roll when she obviously catches his train of thought. To be honest, he hasn't had a moment alone with Annabeth so far tonight either – she's been hot commodity, due to the fact that neither Piper nor Percy ever really shut up about her on set, and everyone has wanted to say hello. The last time he'd seen her, she was a little drunkenly bragging to Frank about her speed stacking skills and attempting to purloin his filled cup from his grip to demonstrate.
"You too, right?" Piper says, and when Percy glances at her, she clarifies, "The two of you – you guys are doing good, yeah?"
Percy nods. "Yeah. Really good."
"I'm glad. No, really, I am. I mean, I'm not gonna accredit myself with setting you guys up, but—"
"You're not taking that prize."
"I'm the reason you met!"
"We were talking for weeks before that."
"Yeah, but who brought those love notes to life? Hm?"
Percy supposes she has a point, but acknowledging that would probably inflate her ego to a level that could be considered dangerous. "Eh."
"Oh, yeah, right, your love would have happened no matter what." She rests her head against his shoulder, a little drunkenly. Her temple is damp with perspiration, and the hair tucked behind her ears is dark with sweat. There's a small pause, before she finally says, voice more lucid than it has been the entire time she's been sat down, "You know I'm happy for you guys, right?"
Percy glances down at her. She's squinting up at him with wide dark eyes. "Is this the if you hurt her speech?"
He probably deserves the elbow to the side for that one. "Dick. No. Why must there always be an ulterior motive when I'm being nice?"
"Because I know you?"
"Okay, valid, but no. Besides, if it was, I'd have to give one to Annabeth too, because you're also one of my closest friends, and neither of you are getting hurt on my watch." Percy finds himself smiling at that. "But seriously, I really am happy for you. Both of you. You're good for each other."
The person who possibly knows Annabeth best, saying that she thinks Percy is good for her. He feels something in his chest warm, a little. "Thanks."
"You make her really happy."
"You think so?"
"I know so. Can I tell you a secret?"
"Shoot."
"I was a little nervous, when you guys first got together."
That catches his attention. "Really? Why?"
"Well, a few reasons."
"There was more than one?"
Piper rolls her eyes. "Not anymore, obviously. But… at the beginning, I guess I was sort of used to being Annabeth's best friend. Just me, her and Thalia, that was it. And then you, who she just adored, and I… in a terrible selfish way, I had to try get used to that. Sharing her with people other than Thalia who meant just as much. Still do, sometimes. I just get in there first because I know that right now, you sort of take precedence."
Percy frowns. "But Annabeth wouldn't ditch you guys for me."
"No, of course not. We're best friends for life, which is not something I say lightly. But what you guys have is… well, it's what we all want, isn't it? To find someone who makes us happy? And…" Piper's mouth twists. "Well, you know Annabeth's sort of had a rough time, with that kind of thing, with her parents, and stuff. I was there when her mom left for the first time, and even though they never really got on before that I know it really hit her hard. She stopped sleeping properly, for a while, and I'd always ask her, every morning, how'd you sleep? Did you manage a few hours? And eventually she started saying yeah, I slept, but it wasn't because she'd started sleeping again, it was because she started lying. And I'm not saying any of this to guilt you or anything, just that… well, that I wanted to tell you to be careful, with her. Which is kinda dumb because she's a human being with her own autonomy. But you… you work together, really well, the two of you. And you make her really, really happy." She glances at him, gaze imploring, like it's imperative he understands this. "You know that, don't you?"
And it shouldn't be as much as much of a revelation as it is, but for the first time, Percy realises that he does.
Maybe he's known all along, somewhere deep inside of him, but he thinks he's been so worried about how love looks on other people that he hadn't realised how it looked on Annabeth herself: that on Jason and Piper it's making out in public, and on Annabeth it's touching her finger to the ridge of his knuckles like she's a cartographer, mapping the mountain range of them, committing them to memory. They've never been the couple to kiss in public, and maybe it's because they're still tentative, but maybe it's also because they don't express love by kissing in public, but by watching trash reality television together and exchanging notes in lockers.
They're cute, Annabeth had said, simply, about Jason and Piper. An observation: not a hint.
"Yeah," Percy says, and for the first time, means it. "I know."
Piper smiles at him, but before she can say anything else there's the gentle squeak of the sliding doors from behind them and then: "Oh, there you are!"
They both turn to see none other than Annabeth, hanging out the door, a cup in one hand. Her golden curls are mussed around her face, cheeks pink with exertion, but her eyes are shining – probably mostly with tipsiness, but also a little with joy, too. Clearly Hazel has gotten to her at some point across the duration of the night because in between the last time Percy saw her and now she's obtained party streamers which have been tied into her hair. Percy wants to cup her pink cheeks in his hands and kiss her.
"I've been looking for you guys!" she says, and leans towards them. "Thalia's trying to give Chiron a lapdance in his wheelchair inside, you don't want to miss it."
"Oh, now this I have to see," Piper says, and pinches Percy's cheek before she stands in what he interprets to be some sort of affectionate farewell. She stumbles towards Annabeth and presses a loud kiss, mwah, to her cheek, and then with some concentration takes off her tiara and crams it onto Annabeth's head instead. "There, Princess Annabeth."
Annabeth beams, pink cheeks going even pinker, and she reaches a hand up to adjust it. "My liege."
"Now, if you don't mind," Piper says, "I need to go and watch this before it starts getting inappropriate." And with that, she disappears back through the doors into the din of the living room. Percy watches her go fondly, and then glances at Annabeth, who's already looking at him, eyes soft. For the first time all night, it's just them.
"It's cute she thinks that it isn't already," Annabeth says, and it takes Percy a moment to realise she's still talking about Piper, but then she comes up to him and sits in her abandoned spot at the end of the deck next to him, lifting the crown off her head and placing it on his instead, and he finds it hard to remember much else. "There. The prettiest princess."
He wants to make a joke of it, but his head is still caught two minutes behind: you know that, don't you? "You're not joining her?" is what he says, instead.
Annabeth shrugs. "Nah, I'm good. Besides, you're out here."
Their thighs press against each other, and she leans into him as she talks, like it's an instinct more than an active move. Percy can't believe he ever doubted that he meant something to her: the evidence was staring him right in the face all along.
"Oh," is all he can say in response.
Annabeth smiles at him, gentler, like maybe she knows, and then shuffles in a little closer, tucking her arm under his. The night air has a crisp chill to it, and Percy imagines all the ways that he could use that as an excuse to get closer, and thinks how glad he is that he doesn't have to.
"You and Piper looked like you were having a good conversation," Annabeth says.
He glances at her. Her face is unaccusatory, void of ulterior motives. He shrugs. "Just Thalia and her bad Star Wars takes."
Annabeth snorts, and leans her head against his shoulder. "I genuinely think she researches bad takes just to wreak havoc at social events. She's like a chaos demon. Did you let her see that she'd gotten to you?"
"She said that she thought the sequels were better than Lucas's entire contribution!" Percy protests, and Annabeth starts to laugh, her body shaking against his. "George Lucas literally invented the Star Wars cinematic universe, and sure, the prequels weren't great, but—"
"Okay, I get it," she says. "But I hope you realise that she's going to use that to try and crack you psychologically. Like a walnut."
"I'll survive," Percy says, and Annabeth laughs in the way one might humour a small child, which doesn't install any confidence in him. "But we didn't just talk about that, though."
"No?"
"We also talked about you."
Annabeth glances up at him. In the darkness of the night, her eyes are lit only by moonlight and the strobes from indoors, turning them luminous and heather-grey. "Good things?"
"Good things," Percy assures her. His hand reaches out for hers, tucked in the crook of his arm, and he links their fingers together; drags his thumb along the back of her hand, along the fragile mountain range of her own knuckles, counts the thirty-day months in the dips. Her grip tightens on his, infinitesimally, like she knows what he's thinking. "I just… I just love you. Is all."
It's the first time he's said it, though he thinks he's been feeling it for a long time, maybe even from that first time in Piper's bedroom: seeing her slip through the window, clever and sad and lovely, and thinking, oh, there you are.
It was no more than six months ago, and somehow he feels simultaneously so far removed and yet identical to that boy. He's still an actor; he's still bad at Math; and he still knows virtually nothing about the universe. But he does know a little more than he did, and what he does know is that billions of years ago when the universe first came into being with a fiery bang, particles were scattered across millions of kilometres within seconds from where they had been previously close together, and sometimes looking at Annabeth makes him feel like they are those particles from the beginning of time, thrown apart by gravity and energy, that have managed to find their way back to each other again.
He looks at Annabeth, and Annabeth looks back at him, and she's smiling in that way of hers, lips pressed together, which means this is a genuine smile, and her eyes are wide and a little awed but there is something so very, very gentle in them too, and he thinks of what she said to him all those months ago in her bedroom, it's taken a while for me to even think I could be good enough for you, and thinks, if only you knew.
"Well," she says. "That sort of beats my news."
And Percy laughs now, because this ridiculous, the two of them at the end of Piper's garden during a party, in love and stargazing. "Oh, I'm sorry my confession of love upstaged you—"
"Yeah, you should be—"
"I'll just take it back, then."
"Oh, no," she says, and cups her other hand on top of his, like in the space between their palms his confession of love has solidified into something like a firefly that she doesn't want to let go of just yet. "No, I'll keep it."
Percy looks down at their joined hands. He doesn't know how to respond to that in a way that isn't just I love you I love you I love you. "What's your news?"
There is a pause. Percy glances at her, a little surprised to see the look in her eyes that appears whenever she's steeling herself to be brave. He squeezes her hand. It seems enough for her to sit up, say, bizarrely, "You… have your therapy session with Dr Apollo next week, right?"
Well, of all the things she was about to confess, Percy certainly wasn't expecting that. A little confused as to where this is going, he accepts the segue anyway. "Yeah, on Thursday. You still coming after? We can get coffee again."
"Yeah, I'm coming," Annabeth says. "But, um. You might need to wait a bit, because my session finishes ten minutes after yours."
Percy glances at her. There is a long moment before she looks up to meet his eyes.
"Okay," he says.
"But we're not going to the café next door," she adds. "Last time I think there was dish soap in my coffee."
"Do you wanna talk about it?"
"Well, it didn't taste like clean dish soap—"
"Not about the coffee."
"About the therapy."
"Yes," Percy says. "About the therapy."
Annabeth stretches her legs out in the grass. They are shrouded in their own shadows, backlit by the party, and in the darkness the ends of Annabeth's legs disappear into the night. Only visible is a white flash of ankle bone from the dark murk of her black socks and grey jeans, glowing in the night. "I guess I've been thinking a lot, recently," she says, finally, "about myself, and the—stuff, going on with me. I was talking to Dad," which Percy knows in itself is a big enough deal, "and I found myself just telling him, that I thought I might need to see someone, about—you know. Everything going on."
"Brave," Percy notes.
Annabeth smiles at him; small, but in a way that reaches her eyes. "Well, I've been sort of working on that, recently."
"Was he okay about it? Your dad?"
"Yeah, he was. I think—" She hesitates. "I think maybe he suspected, a little, too. You know—Malcolm, he's also seeing someone now? A therapist, I mean. We've always taken after Dad more than we have Mom, the twins are more like her, so—well. I don't know. I don't think it was surprising. But he was really nice about it."
Percy thinks of her image, of the two of them on opposite sides of the same lonely planet, and thinks that in the grand scheme of the universe, in its infinite, ever-expanding vastness, they weren't really ever that far apart at all.
"I had my first session last week, actually," she continues.
Percy glances at her. "Hey, really? How did it go?"
"Good, actually," and she herself sounds a little begrudgingly surprised by this, which makes him smile. "The woman was nice and sensible. I liked her." She pauses for a moment. "I don't know. I didn't want it to go well, in a strange way. I think I've been pretending that everything's okay for so long that I wanted another reason to keep pretending, because if it went well then I'd have to keep going, and something would be officially wrong. But she was… annoyingly, really good."
"Bitch," Percy decides.
"I know, right? But it wasn't even just that, either."
"No?"
Annabeth sighs, but not sadly, and her hand tightens around his, like she's anchoring herself. "She said something interesting," she says, finally, "about me. About how it sounded like I maybe was afraid of change, and that was one of the things holding me back, and how sometimes I imagine these alternate universes where I'm different, or braver, or where my mom doesn't suck and my dad can communicate properly to sort of deal with that, you know? Because it avoids me having to actually change in real life if I imagine that somewhere out there in the uncountable infinity of the universe there's an Annabeth who is better. And I think she's right. I mean, everything, from the divorce, to—I mean, my books not being where I put them in my locker, it all just adds up. Change is just… really, really scary for me."
Percy watches her.
"And then you," she says. "You made me want to be a better person, and that—terrified me, Percy. Because I didn't want to be the person who changed herself for a boy, but I was also still pretending that I was sleeping at night and didn't have any days where I just wanted to curl up on my bed and die, and I didn't want to admit that there was anything wrong, let alone anything that needed changing."
There is a long pause. Percy's own breath feels loud in his ears.
"But," she says, finally, "I think I'm starting to learn that there's, like—a good kind of change. Because it's all good for the Annabeths out there with the nice mom and the nice dad and the nice hair, except that I'm not her, and I won't ever be, because she's out there millions of light years away. So… maybe in order to reach her, I have to become her. Because I'm not fully okay, and it wasn't until I met you that I realised that it's okay to admit that." She glances at him. "Does that… sort of make sense?"
"Not really," Percy admits, after a small pause.
Annabeth shakes her head with a self-deprecating huff of laughter. "That's okay, I don't think I really understand either, yet. I just guess what I'm trying to say, is that you make me want to be a better person, a more honest person, and I… I love you too."
Percy reaches for her hand. She meets him halfway.
"In those alternate universes," he says. "Do we ever meet?"
She smiles. "In every way."
"I like that."
"It scares me, sometimes. All the possibilities."
"But we found each other anyway," Percy says. "I don't know about you, but I think the universe did us a favour there."
Her eyes are a little misty. "Before you I never used to think the universe was kind."
"Well, we got lucky, with her," Percy says. "Of all the Percy and Annabeths out there, I think we're my favourite."
Annabeth kisses him, for that. And there'll be time later, for them to talk more, about love, about space, about fears and reality TV and Piper's taste in music, but for now, backlit by a party, ankles damp with grass, hands intertwined—
For now, they kiss.
ty for reading! Let me know what u thought x