Prompt 12: I've always loved the quick mentions of the girl talks Hazel, Piper, and Annabeth would have, especially when it mentioned that Annabeth would try to calm Hazel by telling her of Percy's finest Seaweed Brain moments
*This was fun to do. There's also a chapter in my missing moments story The In-Between Times on Fanfiction and Ao3 called Girl Talk that dives a little more into Piper, Hazel, and Annabeth hanging out on the Argo II.*
After Percy, Frank, and Hedge left for downtown Atlanta, Annabeth helped Leo with some repairs, then, after hesitating for a moment, knocked on Hazel's closed door. "Can I come in?" She was almost worried Hazel would say no, for several reasons, but after a moment, Hazel's voice said, "Yes."
When Annabeth opened the door, Hazel was sitting on her bed. Annabeth sat down beside her, but before she could say anything, Hazel said, "I'm sorry I ran out of the crew mess like that."
Annabeth shook her head. "You had every right to be upset. This is about your brother." She kept to herself that she could understand the boys' point—it was logical, even if it was cold. That was something she had to watch out for herself. One of the reasons she was drawn to Percy was the way he led with his heart and almost always did the right thing, even if it wasn't always the wise thing.
Which reminded her…
"By the way, I'm sorry about this morning," Annabeth said. "We weren't trying to embarrass anyone or anything—"
Hazel cut her off with a wave of her hand. "I know that things in this time period are different. It just surprised me."
"For the record, we just kissed a couple of times," Annabeth said, echoing Percy's words to Frank.
To her relief, Hazel gave a small laugh. "It's all right. Percy talked about you a lot on our quest to Alaska. I know he missed you."
"Really?" Annabeth knew Percy had said he remembered her name, but she didn't know much more than that. "How much did he remember? Did he say?"
"Not much at first," Hazel said. "But apparently it started getting better after he drank the gorgon's blood in Portland."
"He did what?"
Hazel told her the story about their encounter with Phineas the seer in Portland and Percy's gamble with the gorgon's blood.
Annabeth groaned. "Gods, of course he did. That's exactly the kind of crazy move that somehow works out for him."
"So that happens a lot?" Hazel asked. "Because there was also a thing with a Hyperborean giant and some frozen gryphons."
After Hazel explained what that was about, Annabeth told her about some of Percy's other impulsive ideas that had somehow been successful, including entangling Antaeus in chains, flying on a pig during the battle of Manhattan, leaping from the St. Louis Arch to get away from Echidna and her chimera—
"So that's why he said he'd fallen farther from the Arch!" Hazel said.
"Wait, where else did he fall off?" Annabeth asked with a frown.
"From a glacier," Hazel said matter-of-factly. "He drowned an army of ghosts."
Annabeth closed her eyes. "That would only happen to Percy."
"So does it ever not work out for him?" Hazel asked.
Annabeth smirked. "Well, there was the time he got himself turned into a guinea pig."
"What?"
So Annabeth got to tell the story of Circe's island, including how they had actually met Reyna there, though long before she'd been praetor. And how she herself had nearly been persuaded to stay, until she realized that Circe had turned Percy into a fluffy rodent. "He did make a pretty cute guinea pig. But it was also terrifying, when I realized what had happened," she admitted. "Luckily, Hermes had given us some multivitamins, so I took one, which protected me from Circe's magic, and dumped the rest in the guinea pig cage. Percy turned back into himself, and so did a bunch of pirates who'd also been in the cage."
Hazel gaped at her for a moment, then slowly shook her head. "Wow. No wonder he seemed so calm about some of the weird things that happened on our quest."
Annabeth laughed. She was enjoying hanging out with Hazel. And it was kind of fun talking about Percy, especially when she knew (hoped) he would be coming back to the boat soon. It had been hard to talk about him while he'd been gone; it hurt too much. The fact that he'd talked about her to his new friends sent butterflies ricocheting around her stomach. She shouldn't have been surprised, but it was still nice. For months, she hadn't known if he'd even remember her at all. So it made her really happy to hear that he had.
She was a little less happy to hear about the risky things he'd done, but that was just Percy. She'd known what she was getting into. And she probably wasn't much less crazy anyway.
She asked Hazel some more about her own experiences and they had a good time going back and forth sharing stories—right up until Frank burst into the room, shouting about starting the engines and someone named Porky. Which pretty well ended their conversation for the moment as they rushed on deck to figure out what the heck was going on. But, hopefully, they would get a chance to hang out again. After all, there was still plenty of quest left to go before they reached the Ancient Lands.