A/N: Hey everyone, it's been a long time. Written for the prompt "Can you write please a Percabeth soulmate au, I feel like there isn't enough of them out there. (If you don't want to, it's cool. No pressure, you just do your thing dude.)". Title credits to Jamie Lawson. All mistakes are mine. Enjoy!
The first day of kindergarten doesn't really scare Annabeth. She's prepared, after all.
All her pencils are in their pencil case— freshly sharped with full, pink erasers. She has a sharpener just in case, some new colored pencils, and two folders so that she can keep her schoolwork and her homework separate.
Plus, she figures that she's ahead of all her classmates. She knows every single letter in the alphabet, can write her first and last name, and her handwriting is impeccable.
As she trudges up to the front door, carrying a backpack that's nearly as big as herself, her dad gives her a kiss on the cheek and calls her his 'little overachiever'. Annabeth isn't quite sure what an overachiever is, but she assumes it's a good thing because everyone seems to call her that.
And her first day is great—she gets a sticker for being able to recite the alphabet and her teacher is really nice. Her dad picks her up after school with her favorite snack, and she thinks nothing could be better.
It can.
Piper, Annabeth's best friend in school, first teaches Annabeth about soulmates. Annabeth isn't quite sure she believes Piper—after all, Piper didn't do so well on her last spelling test. But the thing that Annabeth likes about her is that she knows stuff. She's a different kind of smart. For instance, she knows how to get the boys in the class to give up their snacks or their turn on the slide, and she knows things that Annabeth's dad calls 'adult stuff'.
Annabeth is pushing Piper on the swings one day during recess and she notices that Piper has something written on the inside of her wrist.
"Hey—Piper?" Annabeth calls, watching the tiny black print disappear into a speck as she swings higher up, "What's that on your wrist?"
Piper slows down and jumps off the swing before it stops moving—something Annabeth has wanted to try for a while. She then turns toward Annabeth and shows off her wrist with two words written in big block letters.
"Jason Grace," Annabeth reads. "Is that someone's name?"
Piper smiles and widens her eyes, like she knows something that Annabeth doesn't. It bothers Annabeth the tiniest bit.
"You don't know about soulmates?" Piper whispers, tugging Annabeth by the hand until they're under the slide, like the information can only be exchanged in private.
"No. What's that mean?" Annabeth's voice is low, too. She wants Piper to trust her enough to tell her.
"A soulmate is someone who you kiss and marry and have kids with and stuff. Like your mom and dad." Piper gives her a significant look, her wide eyes searching Annabeth's face for understanding. Annabeth doesn't have a mom, but she gets the concept. She nods, to show she's following. "Most people have a soulmate, and if you do, their name is written on your wrist in their handwriting. It changes a little as your soulmate's handwriting changes, of course."
Piper shows Annabeth her wrist again and Annabeth feels a twinge of jealousy—the name is written in black print on the curve of her wrist. It looks pretty on Piper, the black ink against her tan skin.
Annabeth looks down at her own wrist. It's blank, white, empty. Annabeth's heart jumps into her throat.
"But there's nothing on my wrist," she frowns, like the gravity of spending a lifetime alone has just suddenly hit her in kindergarten. "Does that mean I don't have a soulmate?"
Annabeth feels her eyes prick and her cheeks get warm—a telltale sign that she's about to cry. But this seems cry-worthy, after all. Her dad doesn't have a tattoo because Annabeth's mom left them when she was a baby. Maybe that means that she won't have a soulmate as well.
But hey—maybe it isn't that bad. Her dad seems happy, most of the time. Maybe a little tired, but he loves Annabeth and he tells her that she's all he needs. Maybe she can do that too.
Her reasoning doesn't work. The tears spill over her eyes and she scrubs at them furiously. She doesn't want Piper to think she's a crybaby in the first week of school.
Piper grabs Annabeth's shoulders and grins, and the thing about Piper that makes her so great is that her smile alone makes people feel better.
"Don't cry, silly. You'll probably have a soulmate. It's just that yours hasn't learned how to write his name yet so you can't possibly have his handwriting on you."
Annabeth swipes at her nose. She hadn't thought of that.
Piper leads her by the hand back to the swings. She even lets Annabeth have a turn and gives her an encouraging nod once in a while.
And quickly Annabeth isn't worried. Her soulmate will arrive, she's almost sure of it now.
He doesn't.
It seems to Annabeth that nearly every day, someone in her class gets a name on their wrist. They'll be in the middle of story time or snack time or math lessons and someone will jump up and announce that their soulmate's name just showed up. Usually the tattoos are ugly and squiggly, with horrible handwriting. But they get better over time—as she and her classmates learn to write with more and more precision, the handwriting gets neater and neater.
Annabeth's own handwriting is pristine— nearly type it's so perfect. Her teachers call her an overachiever and she smiles now, because she knows what that means. She's frustrated because her soulmate, if he even exists, must have a beautiful tattoo on his wrist—better than Piper's (and Piper has the nicest tattoo in the class). It's not fair that she doesn't have one yet.
Halfway through the school year, every single person in Annabeth's class has a name on their wrist besides Annabeth and her classmate, Reyna. Her teachers reassure them; they say that maybe their soulmates are younger or maybe they're in a different country where they haven't started school yet.
But Annabeth can't help worrying. She doesn't like to be the odd one out, and even more than that, she's worried that maybe her soulmate doesn't exist. Her father asks every day afterschool if there's anything on her wrist and each time the answer is no. The conversation is usually casual and brief, but Annabeth can see the anxiety her father tries so hard to hide. It gets worse as the year goes on.
He doesn't want her to end up alone, like him. She doesn't really want to, either.
Each night she goes to bed pressing her wrist over her heart, hoping that one day she'll wake up and it'll be there, bright and clear as day.
It does.
The following year one week before Christmas, Annabeth wakes up and the first thing she checks, out of habit, is the curve of her wrist.
She nearly screams when—there it is—a tattoo on the inside of her arm.
Annabeth flies down the hall, barrels into her father's room, and flops on his bed.
"Ummph."
The comforter is in her way so she climbs over a small mountain of bed sheets and taps her father on the shoulder.
He yawns in her face.
"Yeah?"
She can feel the smile stretching across her face, uncontained. This is it.
"My soulmate! I have a soulmate!" Her voice is so excited, she hardly recognizes it.
With that, her dad's head pops up, his eyes clear from sleep.
"On your wrist?" He puts on his glasses and peers down, and Annabeth holds out her wrist proudly because it's finally there and it's all hers.
He takes her arm in between two of his hands and Annabeth can see nothing but admiration shining in his eyes. He reaches up and pats the top of her head lovingly and Annabeth almost wants to cry because he seems so happy and she's been waiting for this for so long and she actually has a soulmate.
Not that it even means that much to her. Really. She tries to rationalize it—that not everyone needs a soulmate to be happy—but she can't wipe the smile off her face nonetheless.
She finally looks down to examine the tiny two words that fit so snugly in the curve of her wrist, which is when she feels her first prickle of disappointment. The handwriting is atrocious. Not just atrocious, but completely illegible. And how could she possibly fall in love with someone whose handwriting is so completely bad, who isn't an overachiever like her. It's the worst she's seen in her life, the worst she's seen probably in her entire kindergarten and first grade class. It kind of feels like the apocalypse to her.
Her dad notices the disappointment in her face and tilts her chin up.
"Don't worry," he assures her. "It will get better. I'm sure we'll be able to read it in no time."
They can't.
Annabeth waits for years for some type of improvement, some tiny clarification of the symbols on her wrist that actually allow her to read the name. It's hard for her to believe that her soulmate's handwriting hasn't improved just one smidge from the first time he wrote it in kindergarten. Not only does it slightly irritate her that her tattoo looks like someone scribbled on the inside of her wrist, but it does pose a logistical problem: she doesn't actually know her soulmate's name. While all of the rest of her classmates know when they meet a Leo or a Will or a Clarisse or a Jason that the person just might be the one, Annabeth lives with the constant fear that her soulmate might introduce himself to her and she won't even know it.
Just because she has a soulmate doesn't necessarily mean that she'll meet him. Knowing that he's out there but not knowing who he is almost seems more unfair than not having a soulmate at all.
In fact, it's sort of hard for Annabeth to believe that she actually has a soulmate, especially since she already wants to kill him. And they haven't even met yet.
But if she does meet him, she's got just a few things she has to say before they fall in love and have their happily ever after, or whatever this soulmate thing entails. When she meets her soulmate, she'll make sure he knows exactly what's on her mind.
She doesn't.
Annabeth honks her bike horn furiously, already late for work. The little dings of the bike bell get lost in the thunder of the rain pouring down around her. She curses and swerves a little on her bike, using one arm to cover her head and using her other arm to hold the handlebars. No doubt her shirt is completely drenched through and is clinging to her chest in a really unattractive way and her makeup is streaming down her face. Her arms prickle with goosebumps and she grits her teeth. One block to go.
A cab pulls over to the side of the road in front of her and she sees the scene before her play itself out in slow motion right before it happens. The passenger, undoubtedly an ignorant moron, hurriedly opens the door to the cab, not taking the time to make sure there's no one in the bike lane. Annabeth slams down on the brakes in time to stop herself from colliding with the opening door, but the rain on the street makes her bike skid forward a few feet anyway.
She slams into the man getting out of the taxi, her head knocking into his arm and the force of the crash sending them both toppling to the ground. She lands on top of him, luckily, and his hand is under her head to prevent it from cracking against the pavement.
Annabeth pushes up off his chest, scowling. She probably looks deranged, but she hardly cares.
"You complete idiot," she swears, not offering him a hand as he clambers to his feet and rubs the back of his neck, clearly bewildered at being knocked to the ground and then having someone curse at him. It starts raining harder now, and the rain clings to a mop of messy black hair on top of his head. Water drips down his cheeks, and he pushes the hair out of his eyes to meet hers.
Instead of anger, she sees concern, and she's taken aback for a moment.
"I'm so sorry," he says, picking up her twisted bike and grimacing when he sees the damage. He holds it out to her weakly, frowning. "Are you okay? Are you hurt? I should have looked when I got out of the car, I'm so stupid sometimes."
He tilts his head and assesses her, his blinking wildly against the rain. He looks a little— shy?
She wants to agree with him about being stupid, but instead she finds herself flushing under his gaze. A little. She's also cold and still shaking from the adrenaline of crashing, clearly.
He clears his throat. "Is there anything I can do?" He reaches his arm out like he almost wants to touch her, but then lets it fall between them. She takes a step back, putting more space in between them.
"You ruined my bike. And I'm now late for work," she says, not bothering to tell him that she was running late anyway.
"I can pay for the bike if you want," he assures her, peeking through the fringe of his hair almost sheepishly. Which is when he notices that she's shaking. "You're cold. Can I buy you coffee or something too?"
Annabeth rolls her eyes, not in the mood to be asked out on a date and even more uncomfortable under the scrutiny of his gaze. His eyes sparkle through the rain and she looks at the ground to avoid staring at him.
"I'm in a rush to get to work," she repeats, turning away toward the sidewalk.
"—wait!" He reaches out and catches her arm with his hand, his thumb trailing over the curve of her wrist where her tattoo is located. The man looks down at his hand on hers, freezes, and releases her arm immediately.
Moments later, he takes a pad out of his pocket and scribbles something on it, using one hand to shield the paper from the rain. He looks at her, smiling softly like he has the whole world in front of him and he's just realizing it, and says, "I wrote my name and number down so you can call me about replacing your bike. Sorry for my handwriting, it's really bad. But please contact me about the bike, and I hope you reconsider about the coffee."
She does.