Eventually, I did let go. "Yay, serotonin" Annabeth said. "Little nearby?" I asked. "Can't I just be happy on my own?" "Not with that voice" "Now that you say it, I am a bit blendy at the moment, but I don't know who it is that's close. I just hope I don't have to deal with any more switches today. You know, the headaches" "That sucks. I'd imagine" "It does. Also, like, why? My brain can come up with a system, literally, for handling traumatic events, but using that system leads to physical pain. Great job brain, great job" "Are you sure it's entirely because of the switches? Maybe you're just, idk, dehydrated. Seriously, did you drink, like, anyone today?" "Blaming my problems on a lack of water is the most Poseidon thing you said to me this entire week. And I have no idea how much we drank because of, you know, all the switches. I was barely out today" "You were out for the entirety of breakfast, which would have presented the best chance to drink something" "Right, I had like one small glass there" "Yeah, I don't think that's enough for half a day of monster fighting" I summoned some water and passed the floating sphere to Annabeth. "Thanks… That's saltwater" "Oh sorry" I willed all the salt to leave the water. Annabeth's attempt to drink from a floating orb of water was, though somewhat successful, pretty hilarious to look at and I'm pretty sure Piper was filming all of it.
"I think I'm better off just drinking water normally" Annabeth checked her watch. "It's lunch time at my school anyways and that somehow sounds more appealing than raw drakon meat" "Or I could take you out" I suggested. "Do you have money?" "Uh, probably" I searched my pockets. "Okay, we can't have anything fancy. Maybe some hotdogs, that's it. I'd say I'll invite Piper too. If your jealousy can handle that" "Are you seeking affirmation or making fun of me" "Depends. If I were making fun of you, would that harm you emotionally?" "I'm used to it" "That's not a valid reason" "I'm used to it because you do it all the time, which also means I know you're not meaning to insult me, that's why it's okay" "In that case, I'm both seeking affirmation and making fun of you" "Do you really think I'd get jealous over Piper joining us on our date?" "If Anything, Percy should be jealous" Piper added. "True. You two wouldn't end up together. Me and Piper on the other hand…" "Piper, please stop stealing my girlfriend" "I'll try my very best" "Hopefully you'll stay less drunk than James" "What James?" "You just said 'my very best'. That phrasing is so rare that anytime it is used is at least noteworthy and you just reminded me of a different person who said it like that; James, the drunk butler from Dinner for One. It's a short film about a ninety year old lady celebrating her birthday with her four closest friends. Unfortunately, they're all dead. Just like most of my friends. Because of this, her butler has to take their roles, which involves drinking all their alcohol, so he gets very drunk. And at one point he says 'I'll try my very best' so you reminded me of that." "Annabeth, why are you like this?" "Athena genes. Interestingly, the alcohol thing brings us back to you because it tends to make you very bad at not stealing Percy's girlfriend" "That was one time" "It was the one time you were drunk in my presence, so it's not that rare" "Can you really make statistical assumptions based on a single experiment?" "I can't, but neither can you" "Girls, stop arguing or I'll withdraw my offer" "You mean your offer to buy us the cheapest food around? I think I can offer something better" Piper suggested. "If you insist on paying for our date, I'll happily accept that" "That was not really what I had in mind, but fine. It's not like I need to save" "And that, Percy, is why you make friends with rich people" "Oh, so that's why we're friends. Good to know" "Oh my gods, that's not the reason we became friends. I'm way too traumatized to take advantage of people like that. They'd abandon me" "Percy, don't you dare say something cute to her now" "Fine, I won't. Unless she wants me to" "It's fine. Let's go find the most expensive place in town"
We didn't actually find the most expensive place. Given what we looked like – covered in dirt from the tunnels as well as at least a bit of various drakon substances- they wouldn't have let us in anyways. We ended up at some pizza place. Well, it wasn't just any pizza place, it was a new Yorker pizza place. Everyone knows that new York has the best pizza in the world, though Nico would probably kill me for saying that. The service was pretty good and our pizza arrived in not even 15 minutes. "Just in time" Annabeth said once the waiter was gone. "Just in time for what?" "Just in time before I'd get paranoid about missing an opportunity to eat something" We both denied her question "I feel like you're having a not so ideal relationship with food. Wait, is that triggering for one of you?" "No" "Nope. You mean like an eating disorder? I don't think that's the case here. I just have an irrational fear of handling any situation in a less than ideal way because when you're a homeless demigod, your ideal becomes 'not dead' and anything less than ideal would be pretty bad. That fear extends to everything I do, but it's especially prevalent when I do things that are necessary for my survival, such as getting food. So no, I don't have an eating disorder, I just have trauma. But you knew that already" "You might have mentioned it once or twice" "Maybe even three times. Or-" A waiter approached us. I could practically feel Annabeth shutting down. Not like shutting down all brain functions and going unconscious or something. I knew this reaction all too well. Before she had learned to trust me, this had been her standard reaction to almost all of my questions regarding her past. She just put up her walls and didn't let anything show. It'd make sense for her to do that when a complete stranger showed up. "Hi, I forgot to collect you guy's menus. Sorry, it's like my third day here. "It's fine, we all make mistakes" Annabeth said. "For example, he's been my crush for three years and didn't even notice" "I don't think being someone's crush is necessarily something you get better at over time, but telling you that is probably not my job" The waiter said as he collected our menus and left. Piper got up as well, mumbling something about a bathroom "Did you have to use that example?" I asked. "Um, yes. But do you mind?" "Not really" "Good. I was scared that… doesn't matter" "Doesn't matter" was a very unusual thing for Annabeth to say. Normally, she had this need to over explain everything. I tried to figure out what was going on inside her. She looked… guarded might be a good word for it. Scared of saying the wrong thing. Once again, I knew this all too well. I decided not to press any further. That had never worked out. Hiding her emotions was one of Annabeth's biggest skills and she seemed to be doing that right now. But why? Maybe the waiter had triggered a reaction that still needed to wear off. Not that he had triggered her in a traumatic sense (at least I assumed that), he had just lowered her what-am-I-willing-to-share-with-the-least-trusted-person-in-the-room-threshold to way below what was currently being discussed, making her pull the oversharing emergency brake if you know what I mean and the thing about emergency brakes was that once they were pulled, resetting them took a while. At least I assumed that, but I wasn't exactly an expert on trains. Some Athena kid probably was. They all had their own very specific interests, like architecture for Annabeth. Well, that was technically a coping mechanism, but it was also definitely a special interest. But this wasn't about an actual train's emergency brake, it was about Annabeth's oversharing emergency brake, which I should probably help her reset. "That was… unexpected, wasn't it?" I started. "Technically, it was completely expectable. He forgot our menus, so he was going to retrieve them" The complete lack of emotions in her voice only confirmed my suspicion. "But you probably weren't expecting him to come right in that moment" "I didn't" She admitted. "Now I've already said too much" "Because you don't trust the waiter" "Why are you asking so many questions seaweed brain" Okay, Annabeth had openly acknowledged that I was asking too much. That was probably a new stage of being secluded. I tried my best to say the right thing now. "I'll take that as a yes. Listen, I know you've told him too much, but he's gone now" "That is correct" "And you can trust me. Or do you think you can't trust me?" That sentence seemed to trigger something in Annabeth, snapping her out of her secluded state. "Of course, I just…" "It's okay. I reached for her hand under the table and she took it. I squeezed her hand a few times, knowing it would calm her down. "It's that… we were talking and then the waiter came and I… how do I say that?" "You pulled the oversharing emergency brake?" "That actually describes it perfectly. Thanks. So, I pulled the emergency brake and by the time he had left, the rational part of my brain was kind of gone because, to stay with your analogy, when I pulled the emergency brake, the train stopped so quickly that the driver hit her head on the windshield. You had to wake her up again" Piper emerged from the restaurant building and gave me a look that probably said something like 'Is Annabeth okay again?' I nodded. "You trust Piper too, right?" I asked, not wanting to risk a relapse of what had just happened. "Sure. Maybe not quite as much as I trust you, but definitely yes" Piper came back to our table and sat down. The girls exchanged a look. I didn't catch anything, but it was probably something like 'why did you leave us', as Piper proceeded to answer that exact question. "First, I saw that you were struggling with something that seemingly had to do with someone you didn't trust entering the scene and I know you don't trust me quite as much as Percy, so I figured my presence might disrupt your recovery or something, secondly the waiter was kinda cute and lastly I know how to take care of myself and am not completely dehydrated, so I actually had to go to the bathroom" "I'm not sure what I think about that first reason. I guess it is true that I trust Percy more, but I don't think you leaving would have been completely necessary. But it might have helped slightly. I hope that doesn't hurt your feelings" "You have been hurt in the past and that influences how you bond with people now, why would that hurt me? Well, it does, but only on an empathy level" "That's kind of cute. It also makes me trust you more because, along with that time you had me positively rant about Percy, this proves that my emotional state influences your emotional state, which means you'll have a strong interest in making sure I'm okay which is very unlikely to go away. I need such knowledge to feel safe." "Why didn't I pick someone more mentally stable" I jokingly said. Luckily, Annabeth understood it as such. Mostly. "That was a joke, right?" "Yeah, don't worry" "I wonder how I knew that" "Maybe because I told you several times that your mental state does not make me love you less" "Checks out. Maybe I also couldn't deal with the idea of you being serious about that" "Or you could just tell from how I said it" "Do you mean the thing where instead of assuming the person meant what they said, you try to determine a hidden meaning based on stuff like intonation and body language? Because I already told you that doesn't work for me" "When did you tell me that?" "In the strawberry fields, when you thought I was making fun of you for being scared of lightning" "That was four years ago Annabeth" "Right, sorry" "Also, if that thing was about me thinking you meant something you didn't, then you would have only stated that it is difficult to read from your nonverbal signals, not that it is difficult for you to do the same thing" "Dam, you're right. Both of these things are true, but I've never considered how different they actually are in terms of their reasons. I guess people can't read me because of my…" "Trust issues?" "Exactly. They make me hide everything from the outside world. All I'm letting out is heavily curated verbal information" "Well, you are communicating one thing" "What is that?" "That you have trust issues" "That's true I guess" "So, you were saying you were also struggling with the other thing" "Sometimes. When people say things, I just assume they mean what they said, but that tends to be wrong. Neurotypicals apparently have like this long, internalized list of what intonation and gesture changes the message in what way, but I don't have that. It's probably because growing up, I didn't have the chance to interact with others and learn that stuff" "Okay, but that doesn't match my observations at all. You seem to always know what I'm thinking and/or feeling from as little as a glance or me saying your name" Annabeth thought about that for a while. "You're right. It is different for you. When you talk to me, I almost always know how you mean it. Maybe it's because I know you and your specific mannerism so well" "Maybe. That should help you understand others as well though" "Sounds plausible. Maybe the culprit is our good old friend oxytocin then" "Maybe. I also don't struggle with reading you, which you also claimed was impossible. And I kind of have to. Every time you have a flashback or something equally overwhelming and go nonverbal, I have to read the other stuff" "That's different. 1) I trust you and don't shut down around you. Usually. 2) when I'm having a flashback I have better things to do than to curate my communication and 3) when I do go nonverbal, I'll actively try to use other forms of communication" "Makes sense. Wait, if oxytocin can cancel out your inability to read social cues, then that inability can't really come from a lack of knowledge about social cues. Rather, it'd be caused by your brain being generally bad at processing such things, unless stimulated by that hormone" "Percy, I already have a massive headache from all the switches today, I really don't need this on top of it" "Sorry"