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It had been a few days since what Percy decided to call, "The Water Incident". Slightly weird, he knew, but he didn't know what to think about Annabeth's behaviour. Grover and he had discussed what possible reasons there could be for her acting human all of a sudden, and could only come up with one reason. She had been replaced with a robot. As far as they knew, there was no other explanation for why she would do something, out of the goodness of her heart, for someone she just tolerated, unfortunately, that theory needed proving, which is why Percy decided to just keep acting as though nothing had happened.
Life continues as it always had, then, about a week after Annabeth's momentary change in behaviour, came a situation which would forever be cringe worthy to Percy. It was break-time, and Grover and Percy were playing badminton, a sport at which Percy epically failed, but he was determined to do better. So, he practiced for around 3 hours a day. While they were playing, Grover hit a long shot, which, to return, Percy had to run backwards. While running, that great clumsy oaf managed to fall and slammed right into….yep, you got it….Annabeth. He fell on top of her and since he was around 7 inches taller and 20 kgs heavier than her, knocked her to the ground. He immediately scrambled to his feet, pulled her up and apologized profusely. Somewhere in the middle of his rambling, he realized that she wasn't angry or hurt. She was laughing. He stopped mid-sentence and blinked. Was Annabeth Chase, anger extraordinaire, really laughing?
He asked her what was so funny, between her chuckles, she managed to get out that his face looked like a tomato, and she had found it sweet and funny that he would be so worried about her. Before he could get a chance to respond to those preposterous accusations, she patted him on his arm, winked at him and walked away. Grover came up to him at that point, having been giving the two of them some space, he saw Percy standing there, shell-shocked, just staring at the wall. He yelled in his ear, shook his arm and Percy seemed to come to his senses. He asked him what had happened, once Percy told him everything, he started laughing as well, and collapsed to the ground in laughter. Percy was annoyed and told him to shove off. Controlling his mirth, Grover got up, and asked Percy why his face was still red. He replied that he was angry at Grover's reaction. Accepting that, they walked silently back upstairs.
While walking upstairs, Percy thought about what Annabeth had said. Was he really starting to care about her? Was he worried that she might have been hurt because of him? Shaking his head, he quickly dismissed such thoughts, rationalizing that anyone in his position would have felt the same. However, a little voice in his head was telling him that not everyone would have felt a swooping sensation in their stomach when Annabeth patted their arm. Not everyone would have been so terrified on thinking that she might have had an injury. Not everyone would have felt such joy at seeing her laugh without reserve. Percy again pushed those thoughts out of his mind, (he was getting rather good at it, in all honesty), and struck up a conversation with Grover. In the back of his head, however, the memory of her laughing kept playing and he realized that that had been the first time he had seen her laugh.
Smiling slightly, he reached their classroom, where he flung himself down and, being distracted by the sight of Mrs. Dodds entering, he finally stopped thinking about Annabeth.
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