Summary: Percy and Annabeth have their Valentine's Day interrupted by the worst possible monster.
A/N: Wow, this turned out to be long. Not entirely sure where this would take place in the current timeline (pre/post-SoN?) so I just pretty much disregarded that, heh. Anyway, here's some fluffy Valentine's Percabeth!
Disclaimer: I don't own Percy/Annabeth/Sally/Paul/Valentine's Day/New York/etc etc.
Sally Jackson-Blofis opened the apartment door to find Annabeth Chase, dressed in her usual jeans-and-t-shirt combo with a coat thrown on and smelling rather more flowery than usual. In her gloved hands was a small purse and a larger paper bag, the contents of which couldn't be made out. She gave the girl a warm smile, which Annabeth returned, looking slightly more embarrassed than she might have on another day.
"Happy Valentine's Day, Annabeth," Sally said slyly as the blonde stepped into the foyer, "Percy's in the living room."
"Okay – thanks," Annabeth replied. There was a tiny hint of pink tinging her cheeks now, and Sally knew from experience that it wasn't from the cold.
Paul then materialized in the doorway, holding Sally's coat out for her. Annabeth shuffled into the main part of the apartment, her eyes falling immediately on the head of black hair sticking up over the back of the couch. Percy appeared to be focused on some video game – that, or he was only pretending to ignore her to get her goat. The latter seemed probable, considering that the images on the screen were moving mechanically and did not appear to match up to what her boyfriend was doing at all.
Grinning, she set her bags down and quietly approached the back of the couch. In what seemed like an important point In the demo, she pounced.
"Hey!" Percy exclaimed, dropping the prop controller immediately. With his now-free hands, he pulled her over the back of the couch and into a partial-sitting position next to him. Had anyone else tried this, they probably would have had the offending hands chopped off with a celestial bronze dagger, but she merely laughed at Percy. He, of course, was the obvious exception.
"How did you know I wasn't at some crucial point in my game?" he continued, feigning offense to her interruption.
"Um, maybe because you were playing the demo, kelp-for-brains," she replied smugly, "Come on, I know you can't really play that well."
"Ouch," he said, laughing.
Annabeth leaned over and gave him a kiss on the cheek. Then, looking at him with a faux-concerned look, she asked, "All better?"
"Almost," he replied, leaning in to kiss her back. Quick as a flash, she grabbed one of the decorative pillows from behind her and blocked his face with it. He ended up kissing a whole bunch of embroidery and stuffing.
"That's what you get for having me come over while your parents were still here," she said playfully. She had only now heard the apartment door shut and the older couple's voices fading down the hallway.
"They were supposed to be gone by five," Percy insisted, "It's not my fault they were running late. Besides, they're cool. They don't care that you're here tonight."
"Yeah, but what if your mom thinks I brought a bag of – like – " she cut herself off.
"Well, did you bring a bag of – wait, what?"
Annabeth couldn't help but laugh at his face, "Here, let me show you."
"Are you sure I want to know?" he asked teasingly.
"I'm sure you've seen worse," she joked with a stern look before getting up again. Percy could hear her rustling around behind the couch before she popped back into view, holding a Ziploc bag full of what looked like flour in one hand and a bag of blue colored chocolate chips in the other.
The idea had come to her out of the blue a few days ago, shortly after they had agreed to have a more informal Valentine's Day together (their last formal dinner date hadn't gone terribly smoothly, and besides, the people who went out on February fourteenth were usually insufferable anyway). Pizza, Mario Kart, and movies sounded great, but the romantic side of her (it did exist) also thought it might be nice to throw something a little more meaningful into the mix. A throwback to their anniversary (the word still sounded foreign to her) seemed appropriate.
Granted, she didn't really know anything about cooking or baking, and it wasn't as if she could really practice making cookies in a dorm room. Because of her circumstances, her greatest culinary triumph was managing to not burn a bag of microwave popcorn, or to successfully toast a marshmallow over the magical fire at camp – a surprisingly difficult feat when a song started up in the middle and changed the size of the flames.
Still, she thought, how hard could it be? Chemically, baking a cake was more complicated than baking cookies, and she had done that before – and with a cyclops "helping", too. All you had to do with cookies was measure, mix, and bake. She had read over the recipe a million times by; it wasn't so different from a blueprint. Just a means to an end. If she could rebuild Olympus, she could bake blue cookies with no problem.
Percy raised an eyebrow at her questioningly, "The chocolate I can understand, but I think you got the wrong kind of flower."
Annabeth scowled at him, "Don't be stupid," she replied, hoisting the bag over the back of the sofa next to him, "Look," she instructed, leaning on the back of the couch.
Percy peered into the bag to find what he recognized as all the makings of cookies, neatly bagged up and apparently all measured out separately.
His girlfriend looked on somewhat anxiously, knowing that this idea had been a complete shot in the dark.
"You want to bake cookies?" he asked with a grin.
"Don't laugh at me, Seaweed Brain!" she huffed.
"I'm not laughing. I just never saw you as the type of person who would voluntarily go into the kitchen."
"Well, you're coming with me," she shot back good-naturedly.
They headed to the apartment's tiny kitchen. Percy insisted upon turning on Valentine's Day, because he thought Taylor Swift looked a bit like Annabeth. This was not exactly flattering considering the type of character Swift was playing, but Percy was having a good time poking fun at the cheesy script, and Annabeth was rather enjoying herself as she laughed at the characters and their romantic plights. Of course, she had romantic issues herself, but most of them were caused by monsters chasing her, friends being possessed by evil Titans and starting wars with other friends, and the fact that her now-boyfriend had been just a tad slow on the uptake.
And, okay, maybe she wasn't always the easiest to get along with, but she could mostly blame that on her mom.
The dough mixed up no problem (she proudly proclaimed that she knew it would all along, even though neither of them had any extensive experience making cookies). It wasn't until they were measuring out the dough onto the cookie sheet that things started to go downhill.
In hindsight, they should have known that staying in wouldn't really protect them from monsters, wayward gods, or just plain old bad luck. In fact, it was rather laughable that either of them should even think of having a (relatively) normal Valentine's Day.
Percy was trying to put three balls of dough together ("to make a snow man") when there was an almighty crash in the alley.
"Sounds like someone's bowling with the trash cans," Percy joked. Then his face fell, and the two of them looked at each other with wide eyes. After all, in their world it was entirely possible that someone was bowling with trash cans. And Zeus only knew what they might be using for the ball.
"I'm sure it'll work itself out," Annabeth offered feebly, although she knew it was no use in the end. They couldn't exactly leave poor innocent mortals out there to fend for themselves... even if they were New Yorkers.
They ran to the window that faced the alley, and Annabeth's heart sank. At one end stood three giants, brandishing clubs that looked as if they might have been made out of the tops of telephone poles. At the other, where the crash had come from, was... no.
"Is that... Mrs. O'Leary?" Annabeth asked, squinting through the fading light.
"No," Percy replied grimly, "but it is a hellhound."
"This isn't good."
"No."
Without saying anything more, they broke away from the window in unison and walked back into the living room, where Annabeth's things were laying. Percy touched the pen inside of his pocket, although he knew it was always there. Meanwhile, Annabeth dug her knife and Yankee's cap out from her bag, feeling, much as she hated to admit it, in her element.
Some things you just couldn't do anything about.
Think we should call in some backup? Percy asked. He could practically see the wheels in his girlfriend's head turning, cookies and corny movies forgotten. He wasn't exactly pleased with the turn their night had taken, but sometimes when she got this way, he couldn't help but be impressed by how brilliant she was. He also, sometimes, just couldn't help but wonder how he had managed to get a girl like Annabeth to go out with him – not that he would ever say either of those things aloud to her.
After a moment of calculating, she looked back at over at him, "No. If you distract them, I can sneak up on them while I'm invisible. Then you can jump in. They'll be dust before they even know what's happening, between you and the hellhound."
"And what about it?"
"What, you don't think we can take it?"
Annabeth looked so confident that he didn't argue. She didn't like her plans being interrupted, and he had a feeling her new plan was to get ride of the nuisance as quickly as possible with as little commotion as possible. But even an expert strategist like Annabeth couldn't always outsmart their rotten luck.
With a final grin, Annabeth slipped on her Yankee's cap with great flourish and disappeared into thin air. A couple of seconds later he saw the door open, seemingly on its own.
Knowing he didn't have much time before Annabeth reached the alleyway below, Percy headed to the kitchen. He needed something to distract the giants before he joined Annabeth from a different angle.
The kitchen was stocked with heavy objects, but he had a feeling that neither his mother nor the neighbors would appreciate it if he started throwing pots and pans off of the fire escape. What he needed was something with a long range that couldn't hurt Annabeth if it drifted down to where she was standing.
The first answer came from underneath the kitchen sink. The second and third came form the door to the fridge.
Not wanting to risk wasting anymore time searching, Percy gathered up his new found weapons and ran back to the window that lead to the fire escape. He looked on with some apprehension as the giants moved in on the hellhound, then backed away again when it snapped at their legs. They were grunting barbarically, brandishing their telephone-pole clubs, and sort of shuffling around – almost as if they were herding it, or something.
Percy wondered why it didn't just jump through the shadows and escape. He supposed it was too proud, but he still didn't like to watch it cornered like this. He had never thought he would develop a soft spot for hellhounds, but then again, a lot of things happened to him that he had never anticipated, and that was probably one of the lesser ones.
At any rate, they had to get rid of the giants before it was remotely possible to deal with the hellhound, so he didn't need to worry about it right now.
Thinking that any mortals who happened to be looking down the alley would be very confused right about now, he burst onto the fire escape with as much enthusiasm as he could muster, finding himself just slightly higher than the eye level of the giants.
Wonderful.
The first item Percy pulled from his arsenal was a nearly-full carton of orange juice. Unscrewing the cap, he took aim and chucked it as far as he could into the face of the giant farthest from him. This whole situation was beginning to remind him of the time he got blamed for blowing up the school gym during a game of dodge ball. Ah, the good old days.
The orange-juice-giant roared and covered its face, careening into the one next to it, which reflexively punched back. Meanwhile, the third one forgot about the hellhound it was hunting and backed away from its friends; the hellhound, seeing its opportunity, pounced on the distracted giant and knocked it to the ground.
Unfortunately, Percy had seen the same opportunity at the same time. Abandoning his other two distractions – a can of whipped cream and a bottle of Windex, chosen for their long range shooting ability and vision-obscuring properties – he drew Riptide and jumped from the fire escape at the exact same moment as the hellhound did. He landed on the third giant's head as it was falling backwards and ended up hanging on to its forehead for dear life. He had to trust Annabeth to get the Hades out of the way and not get crushed, because there was nothing he could do while grappling with the giant and the hellhound.
Luckily, the fall appeared to give Annabeth the angle that she needed, because the giant vaporized as soon as it hit the ground. Not a second later, his girlfriend materialized beside him, clutching a knife in one hand and her cap in the other. She stuffed the latter hastily in her pocket before grabbing him and dragging him out of the hellhound's path.
The beast, momentarily dazed, now lunged past them and toward the greater thread – the two grappling giants. The result was a tangle of fur and flesh roaring and stumbling around the alley.
"We can't deliver a fatal blow from here – not without getting crushed, at least," Annabeth observed, looking frustrated, "What I wouldn't give for a good bow right now."
"We'll have to climb the fire escapes again," Percy proposed, "You take the far side, I'll take the other one."
Annabeth nodded her approval, "Good. Then once the giants are out of the way, we can drop down on the hellhound."
Percy nodded once, but said nothing to this. Giants first – then he would worry about his internal dilemma over the hellhound.
They split up wordlessly, scaling their respective fire escapes with agility developed after many sessions on the climbing wall at camp. In no time at all, they were at the proper level, and once again nodded to each other before attacking.
They had dispatched the giants in less than a minute, a testament to their many years of excellent training at camp – and the fact that they'd already won a war against the Titans themselves, once. They dropped behind a Dumpster without a scratch, ready to take out the very dazed hellhound the same way.
But then Percy took a closer look at the creature. No, it was not Mrs. O'Leary, but it looked enough like her to make him hesitate. And, he realized with a pang, it had apparently been injured in the fight with the giants.
"Annabeth..." Percy whispered, giving his girlfriend a pleading look.
Annabeth glared at him, "Oh no. I know what you're thinking – no."
A whimper drifted to them behind the Dumpster. Annabeth sighed, looking incredibly frustrated – but defeated.
"Is this going to become a thing with you every time we face a hellhound?"
Percy didn't answer, because he was already scrambling back up to his room, through the living room, into the kitchen. Tearing the fridge open, he grabbed the pack of ground beef his mother had defrosted for the following night's dinner. Then, as fast as he could manage, he filled a bucket with hot water, threw a towel in it, and tucked another, larger dry towel under his arm. Balancing everything as best he could, he hurried back to the alley, where Annabeth was still hiding.
"If you get eaten," she began, crossing her arms, "I'm just going to walk away."
"Don't I get a kiss for luck?" he joked. She punched him lightly on the arm.
Feeling, as usual, like he was about to do something incredibly stupid but was also unable to stop it, Percy crept into the darkening alleyway and approached the giant hound, holding the meat out as a peace offering.
I'm your friend, I helped get rid of those giants for you, please eat this delicious raw meat instead of me.
The hellhound growled menacingly at him, and he stopped immediately, holding the meat perfectly still in front of him. After what seemed like hours, the hellhound began to creep toward him. Slowly, he set the packet of beef down on the ground and took a few steps back. Several more seconds passed before it began to chow down on the food. Percy sighed in relief that it had accepted the offering.
When it was done eating, it raised its enormous head and stared at him. Slowly, agonizingly, it moved back toward him, sniffing the air dubiously. It wasn't growling, not even quietly, which was promising, but the look in its eyes was still distrusting. At one point it whimpered as it put too much weight on its injured leg. It was this, more than anything, that made Percy stand his ground – what would happen to it if no one helped? He couldn't bear to kill it to put it out of its misery, but at the same time he couldn't just leave it stranded in this alley until the next round of giants showed up.
He didn't realize that it had started to open its mouth until the wave of foul smelling air hit him – the thing must have been eating out of a lot of garbage cans lately, because it had dog breath times a thousand.
"Percy!" Annabeth called. He glanced back at her with the slightest turn of his head to see that she was standing at the ready with her knife drawn.
He braced himself for what was about to happen, whether it was getting his head bitten off or Annabeth leaping in to kill the thing.
It took him a second to grasp what was going on. There was no piercing of skin or crushing of bones – just a warm, wet, slightly rough and very heavy sensation on one side of his body.
The hellhound wasn't biting him – it was licking him.
The force of its giant tongue actually knocked him off of his feet, and although the alley floor was cold and grimy, he couldn't help but laugh in surprise and relief. He turned his head from the ground to face Annabeth. The anguished look had disappeared off of her face to be replaced by a sort of exasperated relief. Her knife was back at her side, but her free hand was holding her head – whether this was a result of some lingering worry or was just being used to demonstrate how frustrating his stupidity was to her was unclear.
"It's okay, Annabeth!" he called, attempting to roll away from the dog. Once he successfully stood up, he beckoned her over.
The hellhound seemed wary at first, but once it had ascertained that this blonde girl smelled the same as her companion (Cookies and demigod, she thought dryly) and that the weapon she had since re-sheathed wasn't going to be used to vaporize it, it warmed up to her rather quickly.
They worked fast to clean its wound and wrap it in the dry towel Percy had brought down. They weren't as good as the Apollo kids at healing, but it would do for the time being.
"What now, Seaweed Brain?" Annabeth asked when they were finished, "You're the hellhound expert."
Since Annabeth rarely referred to anyone but herself as the expert of anything, he had to deduce that she was being sarcastic.
"We have to get him back to the Underworld," Percy said certainly, "The entrance in Central Park," he added.
"How on earth are we supposed to get an injured hellhound across the city if it won't shadow travel."
And they were back in the kitchen, which was a complete disaster at this point, using the spray of the sink to make a small rainbow in the harsh lighting. The sullen face of Nico di Angelo was staring back at them.
"Sorry to bother you," Annabeth said.
The son of Hades dismissed her with a wave of his hand, "I wasn't doing anything important. What's going on?"
"Well," Percy began, glancing over at his girlfriend, who was looking rather amused at his uncertainty, "We were wondering if you could help us with something."
If they both hadn't looked exactly like a couple of poor saps who had gotten into the middle of a monster fight, he thought Nico would have died of embarrassment at the poorly worded question. They were spending Valentine's Day all alone in an apartment, after all.
"Go on..."
Well, as a son of Hades, would you happen to have any idea about how to get a scared, injured hellhound to shadow travel?"
There was a pause.
"That depends," Nico replied, blinking, "Do you have a scared, injured hellhound you need to get to shadow travel?"
"We may have gotten into a situation with a stray one in the alley by my building, yeah," Percy replied finally.
"I'll be right there."
As promised, Nico materialized out of the shadows of the alleyway just a few minutes later, dressed about the way you would expect a teenage son of Hades who was spending Valentine's Day alone to be dressed.
Cupid, as Percy had begun to call the hellhound lovingly, barked from his place in between Percy and Annabeth, but it wasn't a threatening bark – more like a greeting. Nico did have a certain look about him; a look that seemed to say, "I spend a lot more time underground with dead people than your average high school student."
The son of Hades approached the hellhound fearlessly and patted it fondly on the nose. Cupid's tongue fell out of his mouth, he was so happy. The whole scene – a giant but dopey dog, flanked by two tired and dirty demigods and being patted on the nose by a broody kid who had just melted out of the shadows – was pretty ridiculous. In Annabeth's opinion, the fact that Percy had decided to start calling the thing Cupid did not help with this image.
She sometimes wondered if the gods sat up on Olympus and laughed at the things their children got up to. This was one of those times.
Nico patted Cupid's nose a few more times before muttering something neither Percy nor Annabeth could make out. Cupid whimpered, but Nico said something else under his breath, and the hound knelt down, albeit with some difficulty.
"Okay," said Nico, resting one hand on the hellhound's neck, "Get on."
Percy and Annabeth exchanged a glance. He had hoped that this would all sort itself out quickly and they could just go back inside, but at the same time he knew that they couldn't just expect Nico to take care of a situation they had gotten themselves into.
Okay – a situation he had gotten them into.
Percy hopped on first, and then helped a wary looking Annabeth on behind him. He glanced down at Nico.
"Coming?"
Nico shook his head, "He'll make it to the entrance in the park, though not much farther. I'll meet you there."
Percy nodded once, Nico patted Cupid on the back – and they were off.
It wasn't shadow travel as Percy remembered it. Cupid was uncertain – almost sluggish – and seemed to stumble rather than fly through the shadows. Annabeth had wrapped her arms rightly around Percy's waist and shielded her face in his shoulder; Percy, meanwhile, clung to Cupid's neck for dear life.
A few seconds later, they emerged right in the shadow of the entrance to Hades in Central Park. Cupid, sensing they were close to the Underworld, began sniffing excitedly.
"Don't waste your energy," Nico chided weakly as he appeared out of the shadows. The hellhound barked in response, sounding better already purely for being near his home.
"Now," the son of Hades continued, smirking slightly, "Which one of you wants to sing?"
"Not necessary," Annabeth replied, pulling her cell phone from her jeans pocket. Percy thought the other boy looked slightly disappointed.
Annabeth pressed a few buttons, and the phone blared a jaunty tune from its tiny speakers. For a moment Percy thought that it wasn't going to be loud enough, but then the rock yielded – the entrance appeared right before their eyes. Annabeth put the phone away, looking satisfied.
Cupid started toward the entrance, then paused with a sad look back at the ragtag trio. Percy stepped forward and patted the dog's nose apologetically.
"It's okay, Cupid," he comforted, "Once you get better, you can come visit – you can meet my hellhound, Mrs. O'Leary."
He didn't know if the hound could understand him, but he did look a little perkier after that.
Nico bid them goodnight and went down the tunnel ahead of Cupid, beckoning the dog to follow him. With one last farewell look at his new friends, Cupid followed him down. A moment later, the entrance closed, and all that remained was an inconspicuous rock.
It struck Percy how tired he was, and judging by the way Annabeth looked, she wasn't feeling too great either. He was beginning to wish they could pull a Grover and take a nap in a tree for awhile, but of course his parents would be incredibly worried, given the scene they were coming home to in the apartment. He wouldn't do that to them. Again.
"Let's get out of here," Percy said, taking her hand.
"You read my mind," Annabeth replied, moving closer to him as they began to walk.
It was completely dark by the time they got back to Percy's apartment. Their walk through the bustling, brightly lit streets might have been romantic but for the fact that they were dirty, tired, and freezing.
As soon as they entered the apartment, they collapsed on the couch.
"I should get going," Annabeth said after a moment, but it was quite clear that she wasn't very enthusiastic about the idea of getting up and going back out into the cold.
She knew Percy was awake and could hear her, but he didn't say anything; his only response was to hold her a little closer. After a few minutes she ceased caring about going back to her dorm; a few minutes after that, they had both drifted off.
Sally and Paul returned home less than an hour later and were greeted by one of the stranger sights they'd witnessed in the apartment – the strangest being, of course, the time Percy appeared in the living room with Mrs. O'Leary. The kitchen, for one, looked as if it had been hit by a hurricane. Around the sink was a spreading puddle of water, the cupboards had been left open with their contents strewn about, and there was a tray of blue tinted chocolate chip cookies melting on the counter.
Paul, who had wandered into the bedrooms, emerged with a can of whipped cream and a bottle of Windex. This seemed like incriminating evidence, especially to a mortal, but Sally just smiled and shook her head. She knew from experience that things were rarely as they seemed with her son.
The couple quickly cleaned up the worse parts of the kitchen – putting the cookie dough in the refrigerator, wiping the water from the sink, loading the dishwasher – before heading to bed themselves. As they passed Percy and Annabeth, still fast asleep and curled against each other on the couch, Paul gave his wife another questioning look. Again, she shook her head.
"Let them sleep," she whispered, "It'll give us plenty of time to come up with questions for when we interrogate them tomorrow."
The two adults grinned at each other as they shut off the lights and television and went into their bedroom. Sally, for one, was looking forward to finding out what they'd gotten up to on their relaxing night in – but not before her own Valentine's Day was done.