There were only a handful of things Percy enjoyed less than calculus with Ms. Dodds.

Those few things included running sprints until he threw up, that time he fell off a trampoline when he was a kid and snapped his ankle, and the idea of going vegan. And even then it was so close it was almost a tie.

He could barely focus on the lessons she taught because he was so caught up on how gross her gnarled fingers and her stringy hair looked. Instead of focusing on derivatives or integrals or whatever she kept lecturing about, he often found himself staring out the window or up at the clock above the door and daydreaming.

He thought about football, his weekend plans, and anything else that popped into his head. The only thing that ever really brought him out of his daze was the bell ringing, the sound of his classmates' books shutting, or whenever Dodds ran over and stood beside his desk with her thin arms folded over her chest, which happened rather often.

"Mr. Jackson," he vaguely heard, before he finally raised his eyes from the window to meet Ms. Dodd's angry, beady ones.

What a perfect example.

He jumped a bit at seeing her so close, and he faintly heard everyone snickering under their breath. He made a disgruntled noise and gave her as much of a sincere smile as he could manage. "Uh, yeah?"

She got this smirk on her face that she got only when she knew a student was screwed over. "If you could explain your answer to number ten for us," she said with a grin. He hesitated and flipped through his notebook, searching for the answer.

Truthfully, he hadn't done last night's homework, and he didn't plan to. He got decent grades and felt no need to study things he already knew pretty well. Dodds didn't collect the homework for points anyway.

As said teacher hovered over him like a vulture waiting to devour some helpless roadkill, someone from the other side of the room piped up. "Ma'am, he probably just doesn't have his work because we worked on the assignment together."

He peered behind Dodds to see none other than Annabeth Chase herself giving their calculus teacher a sheepish smile while she held up her notebook and the homework, all done in her neat handwriting. "We did the work together on my paper. It's all right here."

When Dodds gave Percy a suspicious glare, he simply nodded in agreement, offering a sheepish smile. "Yeah, we did. I just thought it was unnecessary for us both to have a copy of the work."

She scowled but it didn't remain on her face for long. She loved Annabeth. Everyone did.

She gave a begrudging nod and continued onto the next problem, looking around to find some other poor soul to try and catch off guard. As she walked away, Percy let out a breath and glanced over to Annabeth, trying to catch her eye.

He wanted to thank her for saving his ass, but she just never ended up looking over. The rest of the class period for Percy was spent between ignoring Dodds and stealing glances at the his own personal savior.

When the bell rang, he hurriedly stuffed his books into his faded blue backpack before he walked to meet her before she left. She was hunched over her desk gathering up all the things scattered across it when he got her attention by gently touching his fingertips to her shoulder.

She raised her head and gave him a small smile, her grey eyes dark and gorgeous as always. "Hey, uh, not that I'm complaining, but why'd you do that?" he asked curiously as he looked into her eyes, giving her a sheepish smile.

She shrugged and laughed as she finished gathering up her things, slinging her backpack across her shoulders. "Unlike Dodds, I don't take pleasure in watching people fail."

The two of them began to walk out together, falling into pace side by side. "If you were one of those kids who talked through every lecture and didn't know how to spell calculus, I don't think I would've helped," she admitted with a shrug. "But I know you know what you're doing. It's not fair of her to do that to you."

He simply listened to her reasoning, feeling more thankful with each passing sentence. They walked in a comfortable silence for a few seconds before he cracked a smile and glanced over at her.

"Thanks, Annabeth. It means a lot," he laughed softly as he played with his fingers. "And, uh...maybe we could study together sometime. Y'know. Just so we aren't lying to her or anything."

He tried his hardest to seem playful and nonchalant, though he felt kind of panicked. There's no reason he should've felt that jittery. She took a few moments to respond, and Percy simply waited for her impending rejection.

"You know, I think that'd be great," she said with a smile. "Calculus is pretty difficult. It'd be nice to go over homework and study with someone else in the class that isn't an idiot." She broke into a laugh, and he grinned, thrilled at her response. "Yeah, of course. That sounds awesome," he chuckled, feeling as if a big weight had been hoisted off of his shoulders.

They reached a row of lockers, and Annabeth slowed at what he could only assume was hers. "Well, just text me and let me know," she said with a warm smile. "See you around, fish-face."

He snorted and rolled his eyes at her, walking away with a stupid smile on his face.

Daily three hour practices really exhausted Percy and his teammates. Conditioning, drills, weightlifting, sprints, and running plays for hours on end was hard on them. Though if anyone complained, even as a mutter under their breath, one of their assistant coaches responsible for their training would throw a football at their head.

Good old Coach Hedge.

They often went around as smaller groups to practice, one group doing lifting, one group running plays, one group doing speed drills, all that stuff. Percy's group - which consisted of himself, Jason, Frank, and a handful of other guys that made of their first string offensive group - was headed inside to lift after a hard session of speed and agility drills.

Now, running and sprinting for an hour in heavy padding and a helmet in the hot sun made lifting feel like a dream come true.

Everyone around him had stripped off their padding and helmets and was carrying it in their hands on their way inside, laughing and joking around about who had fallen during the drills and reliving highlights from the game they'd played last week against the Titans.

Percy laughed when appropriate but stayed quiet the rest of the time, already thinking about their game the next day against the Redwood Raiders. They were a scrappy team that he had played in football since elementary school, though his team had always won anyway.

The Raiders weren't actually very good, so he had an opportunity to go as hard as he could and see what he could do without much opposition.

He was dragged out of his train of thought by Jason laughing and slapping his back, pushing him inside the school through the double-doors that hooked onto the gym. "C'mon, Perce. Time to lift."

The dark-haired teen gave his friend a playfully grim smile as he nodded. "Yay us."

Jason cracked a bright, playful grin as he slapped Percy's side. "Hey, careful there with the enthusiasm. Hedge might have to come beat it out of you."

They all laughed as they made their way inside. One of the other runningbacks, a quick, lithe guy named Malcolm, cleared his throat before doing a near-perfect imitation of Coach Hedge. "You little girls stop your damn whining! If you don't shut your mouths I'm going to make you do burpees until you throw up!"

Everyone snorted with laughter as they began to head through the gym towards the weight room, all of them doing their best impressions of their assistant coach. They couldn't help but notice that the girls' volleyball team was still hard at work, running drills and scrimmaging one another.

Percy saw a sweaty and tired Annabeth approach the net with an angry, hungry look in her eyes as she hit the ball, sending it straight down into the court. The girls on the receiving end seemed too afraid to make a move for it, and her teammates on her side all cheered happily.

The glare was gone, and she was all smiles as she got back into position. "Hey, Piper!" Jason called with a wave, making the brunette girl blush and wave back sheepishly.

"Hey, no flirting at practice!" her coach called out to her setter, giving Jason a bit of a restrained glare as everyone around both sides of the couple began to laugh. Even their coach managed a bit of a smile.

Jason just shrugged with a grin as they all made their way to the doors on the other side of the gym, though Percy was still stealing glances at the blonde hitter.

They were waiting for their coach to give them some tips, and the pair made eye contact. After a quick second, he saw Annabeth smile and give a bit of a nonchalant wave before she turned back to the net, ready to play. Percy felt himself smile a bit as he headed out of the gym and down the hall towards the weight room.

Luke was one lucky guy. She was honestly kind of a badass.

Annabeth was eternally grateful to have Friday off school. It was for some kind of teacher work day, which - no matter how stupid of a reason - she was happy about. She had been planning to spend the day in her room watching Netflix, sleeping, and talking to Luke.

She texted him a few times, but he didn't really answer. He must have been busy. It was a bit hard sometimes when they couldn't talk, but they made it through those rough patches.

For the most part anyway.

She had been sitting there on her phone waiting and hoping for Luke to answer her texts when Piper asked her and Hazel to go to the mall for a bit, she agreed. She'd rather be out with her friends and focused on something else anyway.

So, she got dressed in some decent-looking clothes and waited downstairs for Piper to come pick her up. Her dad was at work, and her step-mother and brothers were doing something or other with their family that Annabeth wasn't related to, so the house was quiet and calm.

What a first.

She waited inside until she saw Piper's car pull into the driveway, and she ran out, though she was surprised to see Jason in the passenger seat and a couple more extra people seated in the back. Percy and Frank in the last row, and Hazel by herself in the middle.

Both of her friends had sheepish smiles on their faces, and Annabeth knew she had been making a face. She climbed into the backseat beside Hazel, glancing curiously back at the boys seated behind them before her eyes came to Piper, who was pulling out of the driveway so suddenly Annabeth was sure that it was so she couldn't jump back out.

"Sorry, Beth. I should've told you the boys were coming with us." The blonde shrugged to herself and gave Hazel a smile in greeting. "Don't worry about it. The more the merrier, right?" Piper gave her the biggest smile before she turned to take Jason's hand and continued driving.

It's not like she had a problem with the boys coming, but she wished she would've known beforehand so she could have dressed in something other than a t-shirt and a jacket with some blue jeans.

As she settled into her seat beside Hazel, she could vaguely hear Percy and Frank's hushed conversation going on behind them.

It was something about Frank growing a pair and just doing...something. She didn't want to listen in, though, so she turned to Hazel and struck up a conversation about a reality TV show they both watched.

Hazel went on a tangent about how stupid one guy's decision was, and Annabeth just listened and threw in her thoughts whenever it was necessary. Maybe today wouldn't be so bad.

At least she was out with some people she genuinely liked, right?

She was starting to realize a trend. Every time she asked herself "How bad could it be?" it turned out to be pretty bad.

Like the party with the closet incident, or that time she went canoeing with her little brothers and herself in one boat and her parents in the other. Basically, they flipped the entire canoe into the river and Annabeth had to swim the rest of the way in her jeans.

Well, maybe this situation was a bit better, but it still wasn't ideal.

The blonde understood and appreciated that Piper and Jason were hitting it off really well, but to drag her along on some kind of crazy group date and then leave to go off with her boyfriend was kind of a dick move.

She knew she couldn't stay mad at her friend, and that the second the brunette came back she'd invite Annabeth over to binge Grey's Anatomy and eat popcorn and she'd be forgiven in the blink of an eye, but still. It was rough.

Basically, the group had come into the mall and walked around together for a bit. Then Jason asked Piper to come with him to buy out a video game that had just come out. Percy tagged along, their dismay, and Annabeth was left with Frank and Hazel.

She loved Hazel to death, and Frank had always reminded her of a big teddy bear, so she was fine with it. Then Hazel suggested that they go check out a new coffee place that had just opened up.

Annabeth heard the tone in her voice, and decided to leave the pair to give them some alone time.

She was fine with it, honestly. She and Piper had always said that the two would make a cute couple.

So, she let them go off and was left on her own.

She wandered around the mall absentmindedly, fiddling with the zipper of her jacket, until she came across a sporting goods store. She smiled a little to herself as she headed in, already hearing Piper making fun of her for always thinking about volleyball.

Honestly, her brunette friend was right.

She looked through some overpriced spandex and sweatpants before she decided to go look for some new knee pads. Hers were from last season and they were about ripped to shreds.

When she came to the aisle, the shelves stocked with various kinds of sports equipment, she found Percy picking through the football gloves, a bored expression on his face.

When he recognized her walk down, he glanced over and grinned a bit. "Hey there. Got tired of the awkward group date?" he asked with a laugh as he replaced a pair of gloves to the shelf. She nodded with a grin and located the volleyball knee pads a couple feet to the runningback's left.

"Honestly, I did. Kind of. After you three left, Hazel and Frank wanted to go off and get coffee. I wanted to let them have a nice little date on their own, so I just wandered around by myself," Annabeth explained with a slight shrug as she examined the various packages to try and find the right brand and color.

She heard him laugh a little bit as he rustled through some more gloves. "Yeah, it took me a good few minutes to realize that Piper and Jason wanted some alone time. After we checked out the game store, I just said I had to go look at some football stuff." He picked through a couple packs with a smile. "God, even after getting dragged out on a group date, you have to love them," he joked with a grin.

She didn't even have to look to be able to know he had a big, pearly white smile on his face. She could hear it in his voice. She nodded in agreement and smiled as she shuffled around some packages. "Really though."

She momentarily stopped her search to glance over at him, seeing him looking between a pair of crisp white gloves with a black logo, or a pair of bright blue gloves with a white logo. She debated for a moment before she took a step towards him and tapped the package with the blue gloves.

"Those would look great with your uniform," she said with a smile. "That's, like, the perfect shade of Shark blue."

They both laughed as she stepped back to try and locate the correct kneepads. She'd found the right color and brand, but not the size. "They really are," he said with a bit of a grin before he hesitantly sighed and put both pairs back. "Wish I had that money lying around," he joked with a grin.

Despite his smile, she could hear the regret in his voice as he set them back. Before she could say anything, he looked down at her and smiled. "I should probably get a job, but the last place I worked was at that ice cream place in town."

Her eyes lightened up as she turned to him, laughing. "God, I remember that! I came in there one time with Thalia and Piper last summer. You broke, like, three cones." He gave her a sheepish shrug and a smile, stifling laughter.

"I never said I was good at what I did," he assured her before they both broke into big grins.

She turned back to the shelf, that smile still on her face, and shook her head to herself. He must have seen her looking around through all the kneepads the entire time she'd been in the aisle, and he leaned over to reach up and grab a pack off the top shelf.

"Are you a medium?" he asked as he handed it to her, before his face went slack. "Shit, I probably wasn't supposed to say that, right?"

All she could do was laugh as she patted his back. "Don't worry, you're right. I'm a medium. I just couldn't see the pack from up there." He nodded and shrugged a little to himself, biting his lip to stifle a smile.

"Just be glad I'm tall, Chase, or else you would've been here for an hour."

They both heard a ringing noise sound from Percy's phone, and he sighed as he grabbed it. He checked it momentarily before chuckling. "The lovebirds are ready to head out," he said as he slipped his phone back into his pocket. "I'll run and tell 'em to wait for you while you pay. Hurry up though, alright?" he joked and gave her a grin before he stepped around her and headed out of the store.

She stood there for another moment before her eyes came to rest on the blue gloves he'd been looking at, and she just smiled to herself.