Wednesday brings the one spirit week theme that Annabeth struggles with: couples costumes. She tries to hit up Piper to do a pair costume, since they had done one the year before and Thalia would never, but her texts go unanswered.

So, for the first time since spirit week began, she doesn't dress up.

"Annabeth!" Piper bounds over to her as she's taking stuff out of her locker. She turns to see her friend wearing a purple dress with a green scarf around her neck.

"I'm sorry I missed your texts, I just—"

"Are you dressed up as Daphne?" She cuts Piper off, part curious and part betrayed.

Piper actually flushes, which is rare, and ducks her head down. "Yeah, about that, I kinda promised someone else…."

Annabeth shoots her a look. "Who's Fred?"

Piper cringes. "Um…so…"

Thalia suddenly appears beside the two of them, looking very unamused.

"Care to explain why my brother is dressed up as Fred?"

Annabeth gasps. "Jason!"

She's about to say how surprising it is, but even now the pieces are clicking in her head. Piper's probably had the opportunity to talk to Jason a fair amount, and he's not a bad guy. It also helps that he's generally attractive.

Well, if you're into the whole blonde-hair-blue-eyes thing, which she personally is not…

Percy's face flashes into her head for no apparent reason, and she shakes the thought out to listen to Piper, who's helplessly trying to explain herself.

"I know, I know. I'm sorry! I just, we've been talking a lot lately and…I—"

"Listen," Thalia cuts her off. "I really don't care. Just don't…" she waves her hand vaguely in the air. But Piper seems to understand because she nods. "I won't."

Thalia nods gruffly, clearly still taken aback by the news. "I have to see Ms. Clark about math," she mumbles, before leaving as quickly as she came.

Piper looks dejectedly at her retreating back. "Do you think she hates me?"

Annabeth sighs, turning back to her locker. "No, I don't think she hates you, she just needs some time to process."

Piper turns her attention to her. "Do you hate me?"

Annabeth shakes her head. "Are you happy?"

Piper lets a small smile slip past her lips. "Yeah."

It's cute how sheepish she is about the whole thing, so different from how she normally—

"Wait, were you with him yesterday after school?"

Piper looks a little surprised. "Yeah…but how did you know?"

Jason's sheepish face from the park comes back to her. He'd definitely been surprised to see her (which is fair, because she didn't expect to skateboard either) but there had been the same look on his face too.

"He was late to hanging out with Percy and Leo…"

"And how do you know that?" Piper is back, quick on the uptake and ready to interrogate.

Annabeth raises an eyebrow. "How about later you tell me about Jason and I'll tell you how I knew."

Piper scrunches her nose. "Alright, fine, but only because I was hoping to…catch up with—"

Annabeth waves her off. "Go find him."

Piper shoots her a smile. "Thanks," she says, hurrying down the hall.

She has to admit the whole thing is sweet. That said though, she should find Thalia and see how she's coping—

"Hey, Princess!"

"Jackson," she responds, trying to sound as bored as possible, even though her heart rate has definitely picked up now that Percy's walking up to her.

He pouts. "Ouch, why the harsh reception?" It's clear he's teasing, so she shuts her locker to buy her some time to think of what to say, but he's already moved on.

"Where's your costume?" he asks, taking in her leggings and t-shirt. "I thought you were Miss Spirit Week."

She rolls her eyes, trying to ignore the pang that she doesn't have anyone to do the couples costume with, and starts walking down the hall. Percy falls into pace beside her.

"Well?" he pushes.

Her face burns a little because there's no way he doesn't know the theme. He's clearly trying to either humiliate or get a rise out of her and she refuses to give him that. It doesn't feel like the light back-and-forth of the past few days anymore and her anger rises.

"Shut up, Percy," she tries to be calm about it.

"What?"

The confusion in his voice seems genuine, enough to make her turn around and look at his face. The confusion is replaced with a smile when she does and she's pissed now.

"Why do you have to be an asshole," she mutters, ducking into the auditorium hallway in an effort to lose him. It has the opposite effect—there's fewer people and he catches up to her quickly.

Actually, he fully stops her by grabbing her arm, which shocks her for just long enough for him to pull her back. His grip is loose enough for her to pull her hand out, something she does immediately after spinning around to face him.

"What are you even talking about? I didn't do anything!" he replies, clearly getting mad himself.

"You won't drop the couples costume theme even though you know I don't have a date to homecoming!" She whisper-yells at him, ready to tear him a new one.

But the way he just stares at her, stops her from continuing.

"You don't have a date?"

He's not yelling, or even mad now, just looking at her curiously. Did he actually not know this?

"I spend all my time preparing homecoming with you, how could I have a date?" she replies, exasperated and a little uncomfortable under his gaze.

He looks as if he's finally understanding something he'd known all along. "Right," he replies quietly. "I guess I did know that…"

"And yet you press me on it anyway," she says, rolling her eyes, trying to be normal when he's so quickly changed the mood of this whole conversation. Why is her heart beating faster again?

"Now that you have your answer, can I go?" It's not really a question, so she turns to leave before he says anything else, but the next words out of his mouth stop her in her tracks.

"Go with me."

She spins back around, needing to see his face, because he sounded serious, but if he's got that cocky smile—

He's calm, not a hint of mockery on his face.

"Go to homecoming with me," he repeats quietly, taking a step closer to her. "I need a date, and so do you so…let's go together."

She tries to stop her mouth from opening but probably fails because now he's right there in front of her.

"You don't have a date?" is the response she finally comes up with.

Percy looks amused at the question. "I spend all my time preparing homecoming with you, how could I have a date?" he repeats.

She feels her face flush, because touché.

He grins, clearly amused at the way she's been thrown off her guard. But instead of malice, there's something softer behind the grin.

"So what do you say?" he prompts her again.

She looks down, hoping her face isn't as warm as it feels. "I…uh…yeah, sure."

Percy smiles. "Cool, catch ya later Princess."

And just like that, he's walking away from her just as the first bell rings.

Not for the first time, she has to take it all back as the anger is replaced by those warm feelings filling up her chest.

-.-

He stops by her locker after school, even though they didn't really plan on meeting. For some reason, though, when she hears the usual "Hey Princess," it feels right.

"Seaweed Brain," she replies, sliding books into her backpack.

His nose scrunches. "Really, I thought we were past this?"

She grins. At some point throughout the day, the shock of him asking her to homecoming had been replaced by a sense of giddiness that she's been unable to hold back from. "Never."

"Maybe I should revoke my free skateboarding classes then," he shoots back as she shuts her locker and looks at him.

"I didn't want them anyway."

It's their normal banter, but it feels wrong to say, and she thinks she catches a flash of something behind Percy's eyes for a second when she turns to him.

Since when did insults become weird?

Well, not that it was an insult, just something he cares about and—god, she is overthinking this.

"But," she continues, trying to save the conversation from the weirdness. "I'm sure you could convince me if you ran through the script again."

Percy frowns at her, but there's still mirth behind his eyes and there's a sense of relief that they're still good.

"Why do I feel like this is just a win-win for you?"

She grins widely, leaning in just enough for him to hear her whisper. "Because it is."

His eyes narrow a little as he mimics her action leaning even closer than she had been before. "But what do I get out of it?" he asks lowly, his cologne invading her senses again.

She really just needs to get used to this.

"Me." The word leaves her before she really thinks about its implications. "I mean," she hurries to add, "spending time with me."

But judging by the smirk on his face, he didn't miss her slip-up. His hand comes to brace the locker right next to her, caging her in with his body. They're only an inch apart and her breath stutters at his closeness.

This time it's her eyes that flick down to his lips for a second and she immediately berates herself for it.

Percy lets out a low chuckle. "I guess that'll suffice," he replies. "For now…"

And then he's pushing away with that smirk still planted on his face, and her heart is racing a bit too fast. She's well aware that he once again has the upper hand in this game of chicken, but she doesn't really know what she can do to even it out right now.

All the thoughts running through her head are stuck on the "for now" part of his sentence and what it seems to promise.

"You're quite needy," she finds herself saying. "What more do you want?"

She's setting herself up for failure and she knows it even before his smirk widens. "More than you can handle, princess."

Something flares in her at the words, the insinuation that she can't handle something, even if it is Percy Jackson. The spur of fire causes her to push away from the locker and step right up to him.

Her fingers curl around his band t-shirt as she pulls him down to her level.

"As I told you before, don't be so sure about that, Jackson," she whispers, just lightly brushing her lips against his.

Maybe she's just that self-destructive, because it affects her a whole lot more than she anticipated and she hopes he didn't feel the tingle that just ran through her entire body.

He's pretty frozen in place. She lets go of his shirt and begins to walk away, trying to catch her breath and collect herself.

God, why did she do that? Maybe she had just crossed a line? But why did she seem to…like it so much?

Her hands automatically start moving to her back pocket to grab her phone, just to have something to do, but Percy's caught up with her and he grabs her hand before she can do anything.

This time, she lets him spin her around. But he doesn't say anything, just reaches his other hand around her to pull the phone out of her back pocket.

Her sound of indignation is cut short by the fact that he somehow managed to not touch her body as he did this and that he's holding it out to her now.

"Need your number, princess," he says in that cocky tone.

"Why?" she asks, though she begins to unlock her phone anyway.

"We're going to need to coordinate for the dance and I don't feel like writing that in an email."

It's probably a jab at the fact that the last and only time they video called was through their school Google accounts.

"Sureee," she exaggerates the word. "Is that how you ask for every girl's number?" she teases, but hands him her phone, open to the contacts screen.

He types something in and locks the phone. "No, just yours."

"Plus," he adds in a lower voice, leaning closer to her as his arms come around her to drop the phone back into her back pocket. "I want to find out if you really can handle me, princess."

His hand, now free of the phone, presses into her lower back. "And I don't think that's safe for a school email now, do you?"

She smiles back, locking eyes with him.

"Absolutely not."

A/N: I'm making a whole k-drama and lowkey I'm here for it, and I hope you guys are too! This was just a fun, indulgent, flirty chapter so I hope you guys liked it!

Stay tuned for next week (or the week after that) to see how everything shakes out, there's the pep rally and of course Homecoming coming up!

A fair amount of people have been asking when this updates, it updates every two weeks but it might be sooner than that since I've been struggling with writing new things lately and this is more manageable for me.

Please Review! I'd love to hear your thoughts!

Thanks for reading!