A/N: Hey guys back with another one in canon-verse!

Loving Percy is simultaneously the easiest and hardest thing she's ever done. It doesn't make sense. At this point she doesn't know what it's like not to love him. It's been so long since he's made a place in her heart that it's become as natural as breathing.

And yet loving Percy is not something she can control. He looks to her for the plans in battle and she can hand them out, put together a strategy, but this—love, it's not something that can be planned.

Piper had told her as much, that fear and love can't be rationalized, they need to be faced.

Well facing off against the mother of all spiders counts as facing her fear. But love…

She wraps her arms around her knees, drawing them close to her chest. It's a rare quiet moment on the Argo II and she slipped away to her cabin for a second to…well she doesn't know what.

There are maps to check and routes to plan but she can't bring herself to look at them. And that's never happened before. Her very nature offset by… what? The small smile Percy cracked her way this morning? The way he put his arm around her protectively at breakfast? The way she turned and saw him already looking at her, drinking her in as if he'd die of thirst otherwise?

She's not much of a poet but Percy can bring that out in her apparently.

It shouldn't be a surprise, if anyone has the power to disarm her, it's him. It's scary how much she cares about him. Scary what she'd do to protect him.

The image of him choking the goddess with her own poison in Tartarus flashes through her mind for a second. Along with the fear and anger she can't help but feel when it comes up.

How could he do that?

How could he scare her like that?

A knock startles her so badly she almost falls over. She doesn't answer but the door opens anyway.

It is scary how she knew it would be him?

He doesn't say anything, just looks at her huddled position on the floor and walks in, shutting the door behind him.

A second later he's sitting on the floor next to her.

Immediately she wants to touch him, hold him, or have him hold her, to be closer than they are now even though their sides are pressing together.

Who has she become?

Then she notices the way he keeps flexing and unflexing his fingers, as if he's trying to hold himself back from something.

She puts her hand on top of his and he freezes.

"Do it," she whispers, breaking the silence. She's not entirely sure what she's telling him to do, but as soon as he gets her permission, the dam breaks and all of a sudden she's in his arms inhaling his scent and she's never felt more at home than this moment.

Percy's head drops to her shoulder, and she knows he's doing the same. After feeling like and being a corpse for so long in Tartarus, the solidity of his touch feels so reassuring, so human.

Her heart feels like it will burst any second and it's so intense it shakes through her whole body and this, this is the love that she can't control because she's powerless in its pull.

"Annabeth," Percy's voice comes out shaky, as if he also felt the tremor in his body. "What's…"

He doesn't finish, but she doesn't have answers anyway.

"You tell me," she says, surprising both herself and him.

It's flipping the script. Even though she relies on his instincts in a fight and he's more than capable of calling the shots and making decisions, it's rare for her to lean on him like this.

But the thing is, Percy's smart. And, she suspects, better at love than she is. He's the one with the plans for them to go to college and get married. He's the one who's by her even when she's slipping into her own world of architecture and probably being a bad girlfriend. He's the one who would drown a goddess if it meant saving her.

"Well," Percy starts, breaking her out of her thoughts. The sea-green of his eyes burning into her soul, as he looks at her and once again she's frozen in their grasp. "I love you."

She knows but before she can tell him that, he continues. "And you love me."

She does, and gods she could cry at hearing those words come from his mouth because she really, really does. And it scares her.

Scares her that she's not doing it right or expressing it properly. And the truth of the matter is that though she'd been horrified by what he'd done in Tartarus, if the places had been reversed, she would have done something similar. Not poison but a cruel Athenian trap.

"And we're together," he adds.

The words he'd said when he'd found her again, when they fell together. Her lifeline at this point.

"So I think," Percy continues, pulling her even closer. "I think, for now that's enough."

She collapses into his chest and his head buries into her neck. Because he's right. And she'll pry away her pride to admit that. Because for now, this is all they have.

Piper had told her once that Annabeth reigns Percy in, keeps him from getting too mouthy, too out of control. She realizes now it's that nature of his that allows him to love like this. To cast aside fears or plans or anything else that might get in the way of simply loving.

Because love can be out of control.

And as much as she hates that, it doesn't feel bad at all when she's wrapped up in Percy's arms with her heart thudding loudly in her chest because despite everything else about love…

there is no place she'd rather be.

A/N: I recently re-read the Heroes of Olympus series and was inspired to write a vignette of a scene from the Argo II with the canon characters.

I'd love to hear your thoughts, so please leave a review!

And as always, thanks for reading!