Wednesday nights have always been Piper nights for Annabeth, ever since they became best friends; a time so long ago that neither of them can remember. It didn't really matter what they did—watching bad movies and doing their homework (read as: Annabeth dragging Piper through it), usually—it just mattered that they did it together.
"So, let me get this straight," Piper laughs, giving up on pretending to care about her math homework for the night. "You and Jackson have to read your short story to the class?"
Annabeth groans, falling backwards onto the couch; she's giving up on her work, tonight too. Special occasion. "Yep."
"That's what you get for actually trying, Annie."
A benefit to Piper's house was the abundance of pillows left lying around. They were great as ammo. "One day, Pipes, when your house doesn't collapse because I tried when I designing it, you'll be thanking me."
"While that is a valid point, and I'm flattered that you're so eager to design my future home," She giggles, chucking the pillow right back into her friend's face, "I don't think getting a B on a short story in a class about Greek Mythology is going to do much damage to your architectural career."
"At least I put effort towards my future career." It's a stupid blow, and it's not even that true. For all of her distraction and apathy in school, she still worked with passion towards her goal of being a filmmaker.
"Hey! Why do you think we're watching this movie?" Piper demands, gesturing wildly to the awful horror movie playing on the TV. "By watching terrible movies such as this one, Psycho Boyfriend Killing Spree VII, I'm educating myself on what kinds of films to never make."
Piper might not care about school enough to be on the debate team, but she's an arguing force to be reckoned with. The girl's as convincing as the devil and at least three times as pretty.
Annabeth can't help but groan even louder. "In my defense, it was a pretty clever story! It was about-"
"You can save it for later, Blondie. I'll hear it in class tomorrow, anyways."
They both stop talking for a minute, instead opting to blankly watch the movie. The pretty blonde virgin screams as she realizes that her boyfriend is, in fact, the psycho killer. The pair laughs as she manages to trip over every object in existence as she runs away.
"I'm gonna die, dude," Annabeth says suddenly.
"What?" Piper turns over, still laughing bit. "You aren't in this movie, are you?"
"Ha, ha," She rolls her eyes. "I mean the whole reading my story with Idiot Jackson thing."
Even though Piper McLean isn't the most observant person on earth, she does finally notice something wrong with her friend's fixation. "What's your damage with it? I mean, it's Idiot Jackson, yeah, but you survived writing the story with him. How bad can it be to read it with him?"
Annabeth thinks. She sighs. As the on-screen blonde stabs her boyfriend and a cheesy special-effect makes it look like an evil spirit leaving his body, the off-screen blonde makes up her mind to tell Piper about everything that's been going on with Percy. If anybody can muck through such an awkward situation, it's her.
"So remember when I got detention, like a month ago, for throwing a book at Per…Idiot Jackson's head?
"How could I forget such a beautiful moment? Why?"
"Well…"
Just then, there's a knock at Piper's front door.
"Nose-goes!" Both girls exclaim, but Annabeth's finger reaches the tip of her nose a second too late.
"I'm too old for this, you know," She sighs dramatically as she struggles to stand up. Her place on the couch will have lost all of its warmth by the time she gets back.
"Whatever, granny." It hardly bothers Piper that she's a year younger than Annabeth, but it's still a good teasing point every now and then.
Her hair's a bit messy, and her sweatpants are kind of old, but she doesn't care.
That is, she doesn't care until she opens the door to see Luke.
"Hey, Annabeth." He grins.
"Luke!" She feels her face reddening, and she tries to hide herself behind the partially-opened door. "What're you doing here?"
"What, don't want to see me?" He grins wider, pushing the door open and walking into the living room.
"It's girls' night," Annabeth says, wondering if he's forgotten. After all, he has been away for three years.
Luke chuckles. "That little meet-up with you and Piper every week, yeah. It's okay, I don't mind."
Gee, how considerate of you, Annabeth almost wants to comment, but she manages to shake the thought out of her head in time. Why would she say that kind of thing to him?
"Oh, hey, Luke," Piper says, shooting Annabeth a look with her brows furrowed. "What're you doing here?"
"I figured we could use the time to catch up," He says, sitting down on the couch. "Ugh, is this one of those boyfriend killer movies, or whatever? They're so shitty."
"That's the point, dude!"
.
Piper doesn't let up when Annabeth sits down in fourth period. "Did you invite him over last night?"
"Hi to you, too, Pipes."
"Seriously, did you?" She presses.
"Of course not!" Annabeth insists, folding her arms. "That night is off-limits to boyfriends!"
"I know!"
"I know, too!"
They lock eyes defiantly for a moment before they start laughing.
"God, I'm sorry." Piper shakes her head. "Of course you didn't invite him. That's stupid."
"I know." Annabeth giggles. "I am sorry that he showed up unannounced like that."
"It's cool, I guess. No biggie."
The bell rings. Annabeth's had a sense of dread walking into this class every day for a while now, but today's is the worst by far, and she remembers why as Miss Aella walks to the front of the classroom.
"W-well class, today, we are…we are going to h-have two of your classmates read their…their short story to us. Th-they really got it, a lot—a lot better than most of you." She turns her skittish gaze first to Percy, and then to Annabeth. "Are…are you to ready to read your story?"
"Sure are, Miss A!" Percy says, all smiles and good cheer.
Reluctantly, Annabeth gets up from her desk, but she manages to look confident enough by the time she's in front of the class with Percy.
"So, how do you wanna do this?" He asks with a low voice, turning to face her.
"What?" She responds, taken aback and a bit uncomfortable with how close he is.
"Who's gonna read what?"
"Oh." Annabeth shrugs. "I'll read the girls and you read the boys."
"Can I narrate?" Percy raises his eyebrows.
"I mean, if you want to, go ahead."
"Sweet."
The class isn't been thrilled about the reading at first, but as the story progresses, they all get into it. Annabeth's glad; it makes it a lot less awkward to be up there, droning on in a voice that was half-valley girl, half-snake.
The voices were definitely not her idea, by the way. Percy had the first line, and he read all of his parts funny—the best being the grim British accent he used for the narrator, with Poseidon's surfer voice not far behind. It would've been flat-out lame if she'd read monotone.
"Well, since of ugliness we cannot your insides free, matchingly hideous will your outsides forever be." Annabeth says in her slightly-less-ridiculous Athena voice.
"Like, what does that even mean?" Percy laughs.
"It means, I'm going to destroy your girlfriend on YouTube, Instagram, and Twitter."
The class roars as they finish up the story with a dramatic flourish—as well as a lot of anguished hissing on her part—and when the pair goes back to their seats, Annabeth isn't even blushing too badly.
"V…very well done, you two. I hope that—that hearing their s-story has finally…finally shown some of you how interesting Greek Mythology is." The class begins to talk the instant she finishes.
"As much as I want to mess with you about that," Piper sighs, "It was actually really good."
"What happened to 'that's what you get for trying too hard'?"
She rolls her eyes with a begrudging smile. "Are you just incapable of taking a compliment without being a total ass-kicker about it?"
Annabeth's flattered, but also suspicious; her friend's getting a look on her face that's a bit too familiar, a bit too scheme-y.
"I have an idea." Piper starts innocently enough. "What's Idiot Jackson's phone number? Just out of curiosity."
There's only a moment where she panics. Then, for the first time, Annabeth finds herself endlessly grateful that Percy doesn't have a phone. "Doesn't have one."
She rises from her desk with a shrug. Far from being disappointed, Piper manages to somehow look eviler.
Why do these things always have to happen to her?
.
Annabeth's sitting on Piper's couch again. It's not a Wednesday. She's not watching a shitty horror movie.
"It's not that big of a deal, dude." Piper points out again. "You dealt with him when you were writing it. You dealt with him when you were reading it in front of class. How bad could it possibly be to work with Idiot Jackson on this?"
It would've been easier if Piper had brought it up to her first. With enough denial and a few death glares, Annabeth could've shut the whole thing down. But no, her friend is much too smart for that; she asked Percy right away.
She still had the option to say no, of course. Piper couldn't actually make her do something she didn't want to do. But Annabeth's name must've come up in the proposal, and when Percy had glanced at her excitedly—not that she'd been staring—she knew she couldn't say no.
Things are cool between them now, anyways. It would be…uncool for her to try and ignore him. No matter how much she wants to.
Which means that all Annabeth can do now is sit in her spot on the couch and wait for him to show up. Piper would tease her more, but she's too deep into her brainstorming mode for that.
"It would be cool for you guys to wear kind of Greek-style clothes…or is that too much? Shit, who's gonna play Medusa? I could call over Rachel…yeah, she's got the curly hair, that would work…"
The typical manic quality to her voice isn't helping with Annabeth's anxiety, but the white noise is nice nonetheless.
"Annabeth? Are you even listening?"
It's always jarring when your white noise expects a response. "Sorry, what?"
"I asked if Rachel still has green hair." Piper rolls her eyes.
"She had green hair when we saw her last week," Annabeth answers.
"Yeah, but she dyes her hair, like, every other week. I don't know if this is the other week."
"Sorry, let me get out my Rachel calendar…" She teases. Then she remembers why she's here again, and her smile falters. "Why exactly are we doing this, again?"
"Because you're my best friend, and you love me?" Piper widens her eyes and bats her eyelashes. Annabeth shoves her face away.
"Ugh, I don't know why I keep you around."
"I'm pretty good to look at, you gotta admit."
"I meant, why are we doing the video in the first place. Not why my most recent lapse in sanity has led me to star in it."
She grins. "C'mon, man. That story was a movie waiting to happen. You probably could've sold it to some Hollywood big-shots, honestly."
"Really?" Annabeth raises an eyebrow. "I think I'm starting to reconsider letting you have my idea."
Starting to. Right.
"Nah, I'm the only one who's going to protect your artistic integrity."
She's actually laughing when there's a knock on the door. Piper waggles her eyebrows and bolts towards it. There's no time wasted on noes-goes tonight.
Annabeth takes a deep breath. She needs to calm down. Maybe if she lists all of the reasons that this isn't a big deal, she'll calm down.
She loves Luke.
Percy agreed to act like nothing happened.
They only even kissed the one time.
It was late.
She can barely even remember how soft—
"Idiot Jackson has arrived!" Piper announces, walking back into the living room with Percy trailing behind. His hair is kind of wet. Maybe he had swim practice today?
"Is that what you guys call me? Idiot Jackson?" He grins.
Piper turns back to look at him. She almost looks ashamed for a split second, but Annabeth doesn't think Piper's ever felt shame. Like, ever. "Shit, yeah, sorry dude. Force of habit."
"Nah, it fits. I like it." He shrugs.
"You might actually be cool, Jackson." She gives him an appreciative look before letting herself fall back onto the couch. "Let's get down to business."
Percy hesitates for a moment, clearly a bit uncomfortable with sitting down. It's too familiar.
"You can sit down," Annabeth manages.
He does. The couch only has two cushions—Piper takes the right side, Annabeth takes the left—but Percy doesn't seem to have a problem with sitting on the downward-sloping spot where the cushions meet.
"I was thinking today would probably be better for planning, y'know, like location and voices and costumes. The whole shebang." Piper grins a little harder, drumming on her thighs.
"Might as well get started," Annabeth tries her best to smile. She wishes it was easier when they both smile back.
Less than a month to update this time! There's for sure plot forming now-conflicts and arcs and all of that. I'm pretty excited to keep writing it. The response to this story has been way better than I ever expected, and I can't say all of the input from you guys hasn't motivated me to keep writing at times, so thanks! I appreciate every single review.