Percy backed away from Jason's office, pretending as hard as possible that he hadn't heard what he thought he'd just heard as Piper rushed down the hall past him. He looked down at the armful of paperwork he was carrying, all of which mostly added up to a summary review of Clarisse LaRue's performance as HUD in the month and change that she'd been on the job (she was very good, if a bit abrasive. And sometimes, being abrasive was good, too). It had been the top highlighted item on his to-do list that morning, but…
Screw it.
He handed it off to Gwen with an apology and bolted down the hall.
Percy generally tried not to judge himself by his old Olympic training standards, but still. The fact that he was out of breath and felt the need to loosen his tie by the time he reached Annabeth's office made it clear that he had run much faster than office decorum allowed, or he was really out of shape.
He was about to knock on her closed office door when he paused.
What was he doing? Going in there to comfort her? A surge of frustration— anger? He wasn't sure— rushed through his veins. She'd made her own bed with Luke, maybe it was about time she laid in it. But no, that wasn't quite right, because while she'd been with Luke once, or maybe twice now, the information coming out was hardly her fault. But still… it wasn't a total lie. She'd been with Luke when the two of them had met. She'd gone to work on the Brunner campaign because of him. Had a job in the White House before she was even five years out of law school, which was ridiculous because she'd done that. But she hadn't signed up for this, and Percy knew it. A tiny part of his chest twinged with the knowledge that as pissed as he wanted to be at her for hurting the White House, for putting her own reputation in danger, for putting the reputation of the whole administration in danger, she was hurting. And he couldn't bring himself to barge into her office and make her hurt more.
Almost without realizing what he was doing, he leaned against the closed office door.
Annabeth was saying, voice thick, "You're telling me that all this time… you and Jason?"
From Piper, punctuated by a repeated thunking noise. "I didn't say I was smart. The opposite. Stupid, stupid, stupid,"
Annabeth hushed her. "Not stupid. Well, yeah, stupid. We both are. Clearly…"
Percy leapt back from the door. This whole situation was a violation of both their privacies. Who was he to violate it further by eavesdropping?
He grabbed the nearest stack of paper in the "communications- internal" mailbox by the coffee machine and headed down to the mess. He needed a Coke if he was going to get through the rest of the workday with any degree of productivity.
A few hours and two half-open Cokes later, he'd barely gotten through half the self-assigned file. Gwen, carrying a clipboard and gently tapped him on the shoulder.
"You've got a meeting with the beat reporters from Politico in twenty minutes in the Mural Room. You might want to straighten your tie and drink some water," she said, not unkindly.
The meeting was as much a blur as the earlier part of the day. He was sure he'd said something somewhat intelligible about domestic policy and education reform, and they passed him a business card asking if he'd make an appearance on their podcast. He showed them out the door of the Mural Room and walked back to his desk. He sat there, eyeing a Tupperware of chocolate-chip cookies studded with blue M&Ms his mother had sent, and took a bite of one. It tasted like heaven, obviously, but felt too heavy in his mouth. He grabbed the whole Tupperware and started walking.
Before he realized exactly what he was doing, his fist was raised to knock on Annabeth's office door again. Piper was back at her desk, hair tucked into a neat bun, face scrubbed clean of makeup and probably tearstains, if her voice in Jason's office had been anything to judge by.
This time, Percy didn't hesitate. He knocked twice, then poked his head in. Annabeth, too, was sitting at her desk, hair clipped out of her face, a glass of water in front of her. The only sign that anything was out of the ordinary was the pair of rocks glasses sitting on the floor by her filing cabinet and the pile of bobby pins sitting on her desk that had held up an intricate braided bun earlier that day.
Percy flung the Tupperware of cookies down on Annabeth's desk. "Here."
"Those are… very blue," she responded dryly.
"My mom made them," Percy said, crossing his arms. "And they make even the absolute shittiest of days about a million times better. Eat one."
"But they're yours, your mother sent them. If my mom sent me homemade cookies…" Annabeth shook her head with a small laugh. "My mother would never send me cookies. Anyway, I can't."
"Eat one," Percy insisted.
She looked at him through narrowed eyes, reached out, and took a cookie. Upon taking a bite, the stress in her shoulders visibly lessened. "Oh my God, this is good. What does she put in this, crack? Am I going to fail my drug test?"
"Blue M&Ms. I'm telling you, these cookies got me through Olympic training and law school. And LSATs. Do you remember that study process? I don't know how people who didn't have baked goods on hand all the time did it." Percy was pretty sure he was babbling.
Annabeth grimaced. "Mac and cheese. Specifically, Piper's gourmet mac and cheese, the kind with the fancy truffle oil and leftover lobster from one of the restaurants her dad likes. Also, espresso martinis."
Percy raised his eyebrows. "That sounds… fancy."
"My roommate was Tristan McLean's daughter, of course it was fancy." Annabeth crossed her arms.
Percy thought about it for a moment. "I'm not sure if I'm surprised that Piper knows how to cook… she's good at it?"
"I'm freaking amazing at it, Percy. You try having a movie star dad who doesn't want you to ever have to lift a finger. You'd start rebelling by learning how to do manual labor, too!" Piper called from the other side of the cracked-open doorway.
Annabeth took another, somewhat suspicious, bite of cookie. "You know, don't you."
"I know… that Piper likes to cook? I guess I do now." Percy shifted, the collar of his suit feeling itchy and wrong.
"Don't. If people are going to know, I'd rather they just tell me. None of this B.S.-y talking around it crap." Annabeth set the cookie down and genteelly wiped her fingers on a paper napkin. "You know about the whole Bob Smalls thing."
"That's the reporter's name?" Percy deflated. "Yeah. It's... it sucks. For both of you. You and Piper, I mean, not you and…"
"I mean, it's probably no picnic for Luke, either," Annabeth noted. "But not to the degree that his career's in any danger."
"Yeah." Percy ran a hand through his hair. "God. I don't even… Are you okay?"
"I'm fine." Annabeth flexed her manicured fingers, a ragged edge on her left index finger failing to catch the light the way the other nails did. She'd practically bitten it raw. "I'm more worried about the fact that we've had two leaked stories in one day. Something's not right."
"Annabeth…" Percy shook his head. "What can I do?"
"Anyway," she kept going, "I really shouldn't be talking to you. Not because anything about you is suspect, but… I shouldn't say much of anything to anyone until I talk to a lawyer."
"Speaking of which." Piper appeared in the doorway. "Thalia just called. She wants to see both of us. And then all three of us are going to go talk to Reyna. Should be a fun evening, huh."
"Thalia's good," Percy found himself saying. "If you need a lawyer, you could do worse."
Annabeth threw him a look that clearly said no shit.
"She's coming in twenty minutes," Piper added, giving Annabeth a look over Percy's head.
Percy didn't need to look at either of them to know that he should probably get going. He mumbled something about meetings and checking with Jason about going on the Politico beat podcast, stuffed his hands in his pockets, and turned to leave.
"Wait," Annabeth called after him. "Your cookies."
She took another one out of the container with a slightly sheepish look, and then passed the Tupperware back to him.
"Tell your mom these are literal magic and that the Deputy Communications Director of the White House thinks so, please," Annabeth said. "And you should do the Politico podcast. They're surprisingly nice guys over there."
"I will." Percy offered a sort of half-smile back. "And thanks."
He didn't head straight back to his office. His phone buzzed in his pocket as he was leaving Annabeth's with the Calendar notification: Celebration time! Come on!
He rolled his eyes. He wasn't sure why Rachel felt the need to label all of their meetups— hangs, she called them— after song lyrics, but if nothing else, it was fun most of the time.
And she was fun. She'd picked the location for their 'hang' today— an hour of indoor mini-golf, ostensibly to celebrate the education package that Congress had just passed, and the end of Percy's second month as a full-time member of the senior staff.
Personally, Percy was pretty sure that she just liked mini golf. Which was fine, because so did he. He did his best to tamp down the disappointments of the day and to leave the world behind for a bit during the hour-long break he'd squeezed in between his official workday and the extra time he and the rest of the staff tended to put in each night. Fortunately, the false smile he forced onto his face quickly gave way to a real one.
Time with Rachel was just like that, he'd found. It didn't take long before she was attempting insane trick shots, putting her clubs behind her back or flipping them around. She wasn't half bad that way, either— the first half of the indoor course, she had a four-stroke lead on him. By the time Percy had almost caught up, she hopped up on a table and started dancing, making the moves over-the-top, very literally interpreting each song lyric and making dramatic faces with each one. Percy ended up laughing hard enough that he missed his shot.
"This is fun," he admitted to her over the tenth hole.
"It'd be more fun if the strokes and holes we were dealing with were a little more euphemistic," she pointed out, green eyes sparkling in the dim light.
Percy raised his beer bottle in a toast. "Fair. But there's still eight holes of very non-euphemistic actual competition to go. And I intend to win. Or at least not lose that badly."
He didn't win. Rachel's victory dance— completely dorky, unsubtle, and entirely ridiculous, with at least three variations of a move he was pretty sure was meant to imitate a chicken— brought a smile to his face, though, and he ended up staying nearly a half hour longer than he'd intended.
His phone buzzed in his pocket and he glanced down, checking the time. "Oh, shit. Rachel, I should really get back to the office…"
She tilted her head. "I can't convince you to stay, can I? Or to go home with me instead? Work will still be there in the morning."
Percy sighed, an ache in the lower half of his body building. "You have no idea how much I wish I could. But if I leave it until the morning, I won't leave the office til midnight tomorrow, and then I'll be stuck in an eighteen-hour workday cycle for a week."
"That's the issue with your job, isn't it," she laughed, a little flatly. "You've always got to go save the world."
"Guess so." Percy drained the rest of his beer. "But seriously, this was fun. Maybe I can convince you to come to my place tonight? I can text when I'm leaving the office for real."
Rachel winked. "Strokes and holes?"
Percy rolled his eyes. "Maybe something about stiff shafts in there, too."
On his Uber back to the office, though, his thoughts started swirling all over again. Golf just reminded him of Jason, who he was pretty sure was meeting with a half dozen lawyers. Lawyers that Annabeth and Piper were meeting with, too. And Annabeth… somehow, Percy just couldn't get her face out of his head. He'd seen that look of too-tightly-held-together professionalism before. Back in law school, when they'd almost been something. After Luke had graduated, right before she'd almost failed a whole set of exams from not sleeping. Annabeth, who was crisp and elegant and whose hair curled into perfect ringlets when she let it down, who was one step away from crashing and burning.
That night, Percy left the office at ten, texting Rachel on his way out.
But he was back at the office by seven the next morning, digging through Luke's old files, with the stupid color-coding system that Percy had never fully gotten used to. Maybe he couldn't fix the press leak, or the paperwork, or the meetings with lawyers. He couldn't bring Michael Yew back, or do anything to make sure the midterm elections went in their favor, or fix the Party Man Dionysus situation. But figuring out what Luke had been up to in his last days in the White House, and figuring out what games he was playing now?
That, Percy could do.
