Chapter Text
Getting a six foot tree into a fifth story apartment was no easy task, they both bitched the whole way and dumped it on the floor the second they entered the apartment. It took a little while to move after that, but they did. Percy switched the radio in the kitchen onto a channel that had been playing Christmas songs for two weeks already and Annabeth made them both coffee to keep them going.
“Where should we start?” she asked, handing him a steaming mug.
He kissed her cheek. “Tree?”
“We have to rearrange the whole apartment.”
“Yay! Fun!”
“You’re incorrigible.”
Percy blinked at her. “I’m assuming that’s not a nice word.”
She smiled sweetly. “You’re also adorable.”
“I am, aren’t I? Come on let’s decorate.”
She groaned at his enthusiasm and he put his coffee down to jostle her around. “Come on, come on, come on.”
“Alright, jesus.”
So they started with the tree, cutting the mesh off and letting it stand obnoxiously in the middle of the room while they dragged their furniture around it and decided on a reasonable arrangement. They bickered back and forth while Judy Garland wished them a merry little Christmas and the rain began to pour in sheets outside the windows.
The lights were a tangled horror show which Annabeth nearly threw down the trash chute before Percy persuaded her out of it and got them working after a minute - or five - of frustrated grunting. Wrapping them around the tree was a joint effort which mostly involved Annabeth directing Percy while she sipped her coffee.
“Happy yet?” he asked her.
“Hm. A little to the left.”
“Fuck off,” he laughed, standing up and lunging at her.
“Wait! My coffee!”
Next came the tinsel and then the baubles - a mixture of cheap Costco ones with family heirlooms and tacky things they’d both bought separately through their college years. It was a strangely wholesome feeling, to see them all collected together, a strange mash of memories - shared and separate - all displayed as one. When they were both happy with it, translate: Annabeth was getting bored and Percy distracted, he lifted her up to place the crappy star on top of the tree.
“It’s wonky.”
“It’s fine, you’re heavy.”
“I am not!”
“You’re not, but I’m tired.”
He dropped her to her feet and she playfully slapped his arm. “Next time I’ll lift you.”
He grinned and held her hips as he nudged his nose gently against hers. “Next year,” he promised, and she felt tingles all over her body.
She grinned, helpless not to. “Next year.”
He kissed her, too long and deep for two people in the middle of a half done job, but she didn’t push him away. She leaned into him and kissed him back and thought about pulling him to the couch and abandoning the decorations, but apparently Percy had some determination left because he broke their kiss and dodged her lips when she tried to resume it.
He laughed at the annoyed noise she made and squeezed her sides.
“We’re not finished yet.”
“No,” she agreed. “We’re not.” She pushing up on her toes.
He grinned. “You’re so cute. Let’s finish up then you can maul me all you like.”
“Ugh.” She shoved him away and picked up some tinsel.
“Thattagirl.”
“I’m gonna strangle you with this tinsel in a minute.”
“Kinky.”
She rolled her eyes, but the smile fought through. Percy grinned at her as he picked up some lights.
They moved around each other easily, finding places for the remaining decorations around the small apartment they had both called home since graduating earlier that year. They’d only been living together officially for six months. But unofficially, they’d called each other’s shared apartments home since they shared that kiss on New Year’s Eve. Annabeth loved living with her friends, but by the time May rolled around, she couldn’t wait to move in with Percy. It felt like they had been building up to it for years, not months. Like everything about their relationship, the next step always felt too far away.
She wasn’t the only one ready for her and Percy to get a place of their own. Their friends had interrupted a few too many private moments for their living arrangement to remain as it was for any longer. Piper, despite her insistence that they get together in the first place, was their biggest complainant. She was mostly teasing, but still, Annabeth was relieved when they could finally have their own place without hearing a chorus of whines when she so much as pecked Percy on the lips.
“Did you book our flights yet?” Annabeth asked as she attempted to make some beads hang artfully from the tv stand.
“Mm.”
“Perce?”
“I thought you were gonna do it?”
“No.”
“Okay, I forgot. I’ll do it now.”
He pulled out his phone and dropped to the couch. She rolled her eyes and joined him, leaning against his side so she could see the screen. She remembered sitting like this, a whole year ago, as she drunkenly persuaded him to join her in San Francisco for Christmas.
Percy looked up the same flights now, but this time they would fly back on Christmas Eve to spend Christmas with Percy’s mom and step-dad. She didn’t feel nearly as anxious about flying out to stay with her family this year, but she was still glad Percy was joining her. Matthew was insistent on the phone when he had called her back in August asking her to spend the holidays with them again and to make sure she brought her boyfriend with her.
This time, that word wasn’t a lie.
“It’ll be weird,” she said, voicing her thoughts. “Going as an actual couple.”
Percy laughed. “Rather than a fake one? Shit they think we’ve been together for like, years, still.”
“My dad and Eve do, yeah.”
“But your brothers?”
She liked that, brothers. Not half, just brothers.
“I mean, I’ve never said anything explicitly, but Bobby seems like he figured something out. I don’t know, we’ve not really talked about it.”
“So we’re going in as a couple of...three years?”
“Mhm. Think we can pull it off?”
He laughed and put an arm around her. “I think so,” he said, kissing the side of her head.
Annabeth tugged his arm around her more and helped him navigate the flight booking on his phone with her other hand. It was unnecessarily complicated but they persisted rather than letting each other go.
“Booked.”
She locked his phone and tossed it behind her as he kissed her and she was pulling him over her and picking up from where they’d left off earlier.
A year ago, Annabeth could never have imagined this. He was nothing more than her friend back then. Her goofy, loyal, best friend. And in the span of a week, he became someone irresistible to her, someone she wanted to be with in so many more ways than before. And now she had him. But the truth was, he was still her goofy best friend among all of the other stuff. Among the sex and the kisses and the domestic fights and the mundane grocery shops. He was still somebody who made her laugh so much her belly hurt and the person she texted about her annoying colleague and the person who she could always, always rely on to be there.
She just really enjoyed that she could kiss him now.
Somewhere, from within the couch it seemed, an alarm was going off.
“Mm, fuck,” Percy muttered as he felt around for it, still on top of her and forgetting to hold his weight.
“Is that your phone? Why do you have an alarm for now?”
He found it and hit the snooze button with his thumb. Then he kissed her again, quickly.
“I have to meet my mom.”
Then he was up and off her and Annabeth was left alone on the couch - which was not where she wanted to be thank you.
“What?”
“I’m sorry, I totally forgot.”
She narrowed her eyes. He was a terrible liar.
He was pulling on his jacket so she stood up and waited as he pulled his shoes on.
“Have fun,” she told him, because she trusted him even if he was being weird. He was probably going to buy her Christmas present or something. “Say hi to your mom for me.”
“I will.”
He held her cheeks and kissed her again, unnecessarily lingering for somebody who was apparently in a hurry. Annabeth leaned up into it, cradling his wrists for a moment before she drew away. He had a dopey look on his face that made her want to kiss him again but she pushed him instead.
“Go meet your mom. I’ll finish up.”
“I love you.”
“Love you too.”
“Bye!”
Then he was out the door and Annabeth turned around to see what a state the apartment was in. Fucker.
She ended up abandoning it half way through and making a big pot of pasta to eat half of it while she watched Jeopardy and answered the questions to herself.
Percy got home a few hours later to find her asleep on the couch and was careful to place something in the back of a kitchen cupboard before waking her up to coax her to bed. She curled around his back, happy and sleepy and none the wiser.