Chapter 18
"you fought my flaws, my teeth, my claws, with love"- with love, christina grimmie
TW: ptsd mentions
Percy is a little like a kitten.
Annabeth learns this very quickly.
They haven't been in Percy's room five minutes before Percy throws himself on his bed and wriggles up next to her. She's is so used to Piper doing the exact same that her hand goes to gently card through his hair simply on instinct; however, when her hand ends on the bare skin of his neck and she realises that he hasn't got long hair and in fact isn't Piper she freezes.
Like. They're dating, so it should just be whatever.
But this is the first time they've ever done something this– couply. And it's weird.
"Don't stop," Percy mumbles into his blanket. "Feels nice."
Annabeth lets out a breathy little laugh and keeps going.
Oh yeah. Another thing.
She and Percy are, like. Together.
She still doesn't really think she's come to terms with it yet. Sure, it doesn't come as a shock whenever Leo makes a joke about it or Percy shyly reaches for her hand across the table, per say, but it still feels weird, like it's all a dream. She just can't believe it, really. She, Annabeth Chase – or Lois Watermann, whatever – has a boyfriend. An actual, real-life, walking, talking boyfriend.
And it's Percy. Percy.
Percy.
She's still freaking out a little, if you couldn't already tell.
"Percy," she hums. "Get off me, we need to do revision."
"No, leave me alone."
"We've got our Chemistry exam in like. A week."
"Exactly, plenty of time." Percy turns around so the back of his head is resting on Annabeth thighs and beams up at her. The look on his face is so childlike and beautiful she can't even scowl at him. She thinks the smile that makes its way out is more than fond. "So."
"So."
"Lois. My girlfriend."
Annabeth tries not to let the blush show on her face. "Percy."
"I was thinking."
"Don't hurt yourself."
"Oh, shut up." He makes himself comfortable, wriggling around until he's staring thoughtfully at the ceiling. "What are your thoughts on the possibility of a fifth date?"
"They're all positive."
"Excellent, it's what I like to hear."
"What do you want to do? There's a coffee shop like a ten-minute walk away from Marino that I go to sometimes. We could go there."
"I've also got aquarium coupons," Percy says. "Twenty percent off."
"Oh, so have I! How many do you have?"
"Three."
"I've got eight."
Percy sits up. "You have eight twenty percent off aquarium coupons?"
"Tess needed to make like three billion cookies a while back so we had to buy about twenty-six cartons of milk. Eight of them had aquarium coupons on the sides."
"I'm incredibly impressed."
Annabeth smiles at him. "Well, good news. With our coupons together we've got two free aquarium tickets."
Percy winks at her. "I knew there I was a reason I liked you, Watermann. What time am I picking you up at?"
"Excuse you, I'll pick you up."
"But I always pick you up!"
"Exactly. My turn now."
"Fine. What time?"
"Are you free next Saturday?"
"Should be."
"Great. Three pm?"
Percy nods. "It's a date."
"Well. There we go. We've got a date next weekend."
"Perfect." He lays back down on Annabeth, pillowing his head on her thighs again. She thumbs a strand of hair off his forehead and stares down into his green eyes. They're extremely pretty. He sleepily smiles at her through hooded eyes.
"Hey," he mumbles.
"You aren't falling asleep on me, are you?" Annabeth jokes.
Percy shakes his head adamantly. "Never."
Two minutes later, he's dead to the world. Annabeth only laughs a little.
Percy is not a necessarily very flattering sleeper. His mouth is open and he's drooling and sometimes he'll mumble out something nonsensical (Annabeth's favourites so far include "shhhush I'm allooooweeed tooo" and "we need'ta stopp themmm, Grovyyyyyy"), but he's got his hand fisted in her T-shirt and if that doesn't make her heart swell every time he moves around and tightens his grip then she's not sure what will.
She runs her fingers gently down the curve of his cheek. They settle at the base of his neck, barely a whisper against his skin, hovering above a silver scar the size of a walnut on the underside of his jaw.
Annabeth has taken Injury And Aid classes since she could walk. It's not very hard to tell from its curved shape and size that it was made from a belt buckle.
Gabe.
Annabeth knows Percy is okay. Perfect? No, definitely not. No one recovers from parental abuse that quickly. But he's okay, and that's all that matters; still, as her fingers gently touch the scar, the puckered pink skin, the tiny dots around it where she reckons it was stitched up, she feels rage boil in her stomach. If she ever sees Gabe, she is going to rip him limb from limb.
Which she can do, by the way. It's not even very hard.
Percy shifts in his sleep, and Annabeth fondly traces the line of his cheekbone.
He's beautiful. When he wakes up, she'll tell him so.
She shuffles down so her head is on Percy's pillow and closes her eyes. It's not a very smart idea, because it's around four in the afternoon on a school day, and she won't be able to get any sleep tonight, and also because day-sleeping for Annabeth always isn't great for her mental state. At night, she's trained herself to do have a dreamless sleep – it took a bloody long time, because sometimes she'd get so frustrated that she didn't end up sleeping at all. But, after several years of Chiron's steady, patient training and Lou-Ellen's hippy meditation methods involving lots of smelling salts and finger-painting, she could finally do it – but she never mastered getting the dreams away during the daytime.
It's a subconscious thing. Whenever it's dark, she won't dream, because that's how she's trained herself.
This time? Not so much. Percy's blinds are closed but they're thin and light is trickling through like water. It's midday and his door is slightly ajar, the hallway lights and the faint noise of the television coming in.
So when she drifts off to sleep with the boy she loves tucked in her arms, it's anything but peaceful.
Which, you know. Huzzah and all that.
At first, she dares hope that it'll be okay. The dream starts murky and dark, something Annabeth can't make out, like looking at the depths of a muddy pond. But when the scene changes, when something flashes and she hears a scream, she knows that now she's not so lucky.
It's back at the bakery. There's a mom and her toddler sitting at one of the tables, a man with a buzzcut and a newspaper at another, and a group of teenage girls in crop tops and expensive white trainers at another. Through the glass of the counter, Annabeth can see rows of iced meringue buns, cakes covered in fondue, gingerbread men in plastic wrappers and cherry pies laid out on their stands. She chooses a seat next to the window. It's safer here. She can watch everyone from afar.
Besides, she never liked being in the hub of everything, anyway.
But then suddenly she smells gasoline and everything goes in autopilot as seconds too late she realises what's going to happen, and before she can stand up and scream the counter explodes and then so do the tables and the chairs and the floorboards are being ripped from the ground and Annabeth can only wait and watch as the flames and force of the bomb hit her and she's thrown off her feet through one of the windows, and she pain flares in her back as her spine hits double-glazed glass and then she's on the ground, on the pavement, and she can't breathe, and it takes too long for her to look down and realise there's a table leg sticking out of her stomach, a table leg in her lung, and she can't scream so instead she gasps and–
"Lois!"
Annabeth's eyes fly open. Percy hovering over her, his green eyes wide and anxious, and he's holding her wrists and she can feel herself trembling beneath him. She rips herself free from his grasp, instead opting to sit up and wrap her arms around herself. She feels her pulse throughout her whole body like an electric heartbeat and it terrifies her, so she just stares helplessly at Percy like he'll know what to do.
"Are you okay?" he asks worriedly.
"I–..."
"You were screaming," Percy tells her. He looks terrified. "I didn't know what to do, I thought if I wake you up it would stop–"
She braces herself on her arms. "Yeah, sorry," she says. She sounds a bit breathless but neither of them say anything about it. "Um. Just had a nightmare."
"Are you sure?" he asks, concerned. "That sounded pretty– intense."
"It's okay, honest." She tries for a laugh. It comes out slightly strangled-sounding. "Just your generic, uh, monster-alien shebang. You know how those are."
"You said something about a bomb."
She suctions her lower lip between her teeth. "Yeah, um. I don't know, Perce, I– it was just a nightmare."
Percy watches her for a few seconds – and then he nods. "Okay," he says softly. "As long as you're okay."
"I'm okay."
Percy shifts around, throwing his arm around Annabeth's shoulder and pulling her into him. Annabeth is a little confused, because this is the first time they've ever done something like this, but she goes willingly; she's still petrified and her pulse is still jackrabbiting in her veins. She closes her eyes and presses her forehead against his shoulder, and lets out a shaky breath.
"I'm sorry," she whispers.
"It's okay."
But it's not, not really.
Because it's happened once. And Luke's still out there.
And now with Brandon...
Annabeth just isn't sure who she can trust anymore.
Thalia is cooking tonight.
Normally, Thalia is quite a good cook, and by good cook Annabeth means she's able to butter three slices of bread and cut a carrot into semi-equal thirds without blowing up anything. However, when Piper had gone grocery shopping the week before, a cake covered in pink icing and marzipan people had distracted her and while that had tasted great while it lasted they had about five dollars left to survive them the next three weeks food-wise.
Meaning that Annabeth won't be surprised if for dinner they're each eating two baked beans.
"A nightmare?" Piper asks, astonished. "Really?"
Annabeth nods. She feels a little shaky. "Yeah."
"That's not good at all," says Piper worriedly. Her forehead creases. "You haven't had one since you arrived here, though? Is this your first one?"
"In New York, yeah. I used to get them a lot back of the Society."
"I thought Chiron had helped sort that out."
"He did. But it only works for sleeping at night. I dunno, it's something to do with brain patterns or whatever and how all the times I practiced it was in a dark room late at night, so subconsciously that must be at night when I'm okay."
"And you just fell asleep at Percy's and it just came?" Piper asks.
Annabeth manages a laugh. "You sound like my therapist."
"Oh, shut up. I'm looking after you, silly." She sobers, tilting her head. "Has anything remotely traumatic happened this week that you think might have brought it on?"
Brandon.
Annabeth closes her eyes at the thought. She still hasn't told Thalia and Piper about him. There's something in the pit of her stomach that hopes, prays, that he's another one of Chiron's hired help kids, to look after her. It would be like a blow to the head, sure, but it would be infinitely better than him being anything else.
But she can't forget the way his eyes flashed at that football game all those months ago, the way Annabeth felt like she was twelve years old again staring into the eyes of her first psychopath.
She doesn't want to think what it means. But she knows that she has to be on her guard.
Slowly, she shakes her head. "I don't know," she says. "I don't think so."
Lies, lies, lies.
Piper purses her lips. "Okay," she says. "I'll do some research. But for now, are you okay?"
Annabeth nods. "Yeah."
At least that's the truth.
The conversation sits with her uncomfortably for the rest of the night. Piper pats her shoulder and then snuggles right up next to her, flicking on the TV and watching whatever pointless sitcom is on. Annabeth puts her arm around her shoulders and plays with her hair, but her mind is whirring.
What if Piper is right and Brandon subconsciously created enough fear in her mind for it to take place as nightmare? It's not a far-fetched theory. Annabeth is a survivor of PTSD. When she was seven she watched one of her friends get shot in front of her eyes and it took her months, years, to recover. She remembers being eight and on the brink of recovery, but every now and then relapsing whenever she saw a gun, and a few months later being perfectly okay but having an impromptu panic attack when she heard the sound of gunfire from the shooting range.
But why would Brandon bring that up?
Thalia and Piper didn't spike any nightmares, and she found out that they were spies. Then again, that may be because Piper is currently tucked under her arm in her T-shirt snorting at some of the lines on TV and Thalia is in the kitchen swearing at the oven, and Brandon had locked her in a cupboard with the intent of keeping there for around nine hours.
The only other possibility–
No.
She shakes her head. It's impossible. She can't even believe she would think that.
She's brought of her reverie when Thalia comes out of the kitchen balancing three plates in her hands. "Dinner!" she calls.
Piper looks away from the screen. "What is it?" she asks suspiciously.
"A sandwich," Thalia says, much to Annabeth's pleasant surprise. "Now hurry up, I'm starving."
Annabeth's joy doesn't last long. She and Piper ungracefully climb over the back of the sofa and stumble to the table, and Annabeth wrinkles her nose in distaste as Thalia puts her plate in front of her.
Correction: it's half a sandwich, and when she opens it she finds that the filling is simply a thin layer of crushed chickpeas with the tiniest corner off a block of cheese.
Piper doesn't look anymore thrilled than she feels. "Oh," she says.
Thalia sighs. "Look, I know this isn't a five-star meal, but could you at least be a little more enthusiastic?"
"This wouldn't even get half a star," Piper says.
"At least it's food, you ungrateful swine. Besides, if you hadn't forked out a fortune over that silly cake we'd be eating something much nicer."
"You mean something that isn't expired?" Annabeth asks dryly.
Thalia flushes. "It's only a few days."
"The chickpeas went off a week ago, Thalia."
Piper wrinkles her nose and pushes her plate away. "Oh, gross."
"This is your fault, McLean."
"The cake was nice!"
"Yes, but it also cost, like, forty dollars."
Piper ducks her head, embarrassed. "Fifty."
Annabeth laughs. "Our prom dresses combined were cheaper than that."
"Yes, but that's because our prom dresses were second-hand."
"The next time you bring home a cake even a quarter of that price I'm booting your nose in," Thalia threatens. "I don't even care if you're my friend. The next three weeks our dinners are going to be no more exciting than this."
Annabeth pushes it to the side experimentally. "I don't even know if this is safe to eat."
Thalia sighs. "Probably not."
Both of their plates meet Piper's in the middle of the table. None of them have been touched.
"Well," Piper says. "Our tactic from now on is to just leech food from everyone during lunch."
Thalia scowls. "Right, because that's going to work so well for me."
"Just flirt with the guy at the counter at the corner shop," Piper says. "It's not a very honest way of obtaining food but if you wink at him enough and maybe wear a tight shirt with a low neckline you'll get a loaf of bread and probably a few packets of sweets out it."
"I'm not so desperate that I'll pimp myself out for food, Piper."
"Well, it's either that or you cover your face in mud and go begging. I realise I've made a small mistake, but we now all have to live with the consequences."
"That doesn't seem fair," Annabeth says.
"Well, that's because it's not, really. But we're in this together."
Annabeth rolls her eyes.
"I swear you have some rich friends," she says. "Just ask them for money."
"I can't do that. They all think that I'm rich too."
Thalia snorts. "How on earth did you manage to pull that off?"
"Well, it's a private school. Everyone who is anyone goes there."
"You're not anyone, though," Annabeth says.
"The Society has got a dozen spies all across the country. A politician who lives in Oregon is part of the National Society Trade, and he's got a daughter called Contessa. He hasn't actually, but it's just a cover. He's had about fifteen girls in his life play Contessa. It's how Chiron gets them into private schools. So long as they have dark hair the media doesn't really give them any immediate coverage, but it's enough publicity to secure a place at schools for the rich and famous."
"So you're the Contessa for this year."
"Quite right. Or however long I'll be Contessa for. If Chiron needs me to stop so someone else can get into a posh boarding school in London so they can bring down the British Government or whatever I'll just drop out of school and dye my hair blonde. And don't look at me like that. Blondes with tans are actually very in at the moment."
"Yeah, except. Um. You're a little more than 'tan'."
"Oh, shush. But back to your question. No, I can't just ask people for money."
"Why?" Thalia asks. "I'm sure all the girls will be more than pleased to show off their wealth."
"That's simply not how it works, Thalia. If you had any experience with socialising you'd realise."
Thalia scowls at her.
"Well." Annabeth looks mournfully at her plate. "It looks like we're all going to be on a diet for a while. Excuse me as for the next three weeks I practically go to Percy's house every single day."
"Bring back some stuff for us," Piper tells her, unbothered. "When Sally's back is turned ransack their cupboards."
"Right, because that what I want to do to my boyfriend's mom."
Piper and Thalia share a look at the word 'boyfriend'. It's that moment when Annabeth realises that she hasn't yet told them about her and Percy and suddenly goes scarlet.
"Um," she squeaks.
"Boyfriend?" Piper demands.
"Maybe?"
"Maybe? When did this happen?"
"Like. Last week?"
Piper splutters with indignation. "Last week! Why didn't you tell me? I thought we were friends!"
"Slipped my mind?"
It never slipped her mind. Percy has been the only thing on her mind since they sealed the deal.
Well. Also Brandon. But mainly Percy.
"Rubbish," Piper spits. "I am outraged."
"Shut up, Piper," Thalia says. "No one cares."
"I care! Do you even hear what's happening, Thalia? Percy is Annabeth's boyfriend and has been for a week and not once – not once – did she even think to tell me?"
"It's not your business."
"Not my business my bottom! This is important information!"
"Relax," Annabeth says. "What's done is done."
Piper falls back in her seat, silently seething. "We aren't done here, Chase," she hisses.
Thalia rolls her eyes and turns to Annabeth. "What she meant to say," she corrects, "is congratulations. I'm happy for you guys."
"Thank you."
"I'm not," Piper says crossly. "I've been betrayed."
"Oh, do get over yourself, Piper."
Annabeth holds out her arms. "Can I have a hug?"
"No," Piper says sullenly.
"Come on."
"No."
"You know you want to."
Piper huffs and stands up, and wraps her arms around Annabeth's shoulders. Annabeth knows she's pleased for her, too, and she smiles against her shoulder.
"Percy's a good guy," Piper says, muffled. "I'm happy for you, Beth. You deserve this."
"Thank you."
Annabeth is too caught up to realise the storm brewing overhead.
A/N foreshadowing wooooo
Hey guys!
First off let me just start off by saying that you are all absolutely incredible. I love you all so so much and thank you all x100000 for leaving such wonderful, amazing reviews. I appreciate you all so much and you are absolutely incredible.
Just a few people I missed last chapter:
Jessica'BlueBell'Potter-JPBBX – girl i love you so much you are amazing and beautiful and fantastic thank you so much for your lovely lovely reviews I love you so much
milo ashby - thank you so so much you lovely human being :DDD
RockRoy – thank you so much! you always leave such wonderful reviews thank you so much xxxxxxx
Also shoutout to MusicalBookworm for being awesome and my pals Rachel and Helena for being amazing and wonderful and incredible love you guys xx
That's all for this chapter! Have a wonderful week and also wish me luck I've got my exam week next week so crossed fingers that goes well. I hope you all enjoyed that and I'll see you next Saturday! Byee xx