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Percy peered up at Annabeth Chase through his eyelashes, letting his well-practiced, signature smirk slide easily onto his face as he did. For a moment, looking into her eyes, he could almost pretend they were in a less hostile, more erotic scenario. One where she didn’t have a dagger to his throat.
Although, he figured, this is kind of erotic in it’s own right. He immediately banished that thought from his brain. She was the enemy. Her existence alone was against everything he stood for, never mind her perfect curls, or long legs, or sharp eyes, or dammit he can’t do this again.
“Don’t move, Jackson” she growled, blessedly interrupting his thoughts. If only her quick rasp didn’t turn him on more.
“Wouldn’t dream of it, Chase,” his smirk slid easily into another infamous face of his, an easy-going smile. “In fact, I’m rather comfortable right here. You’re so close, and you smell like lemons, it’s kind of soothing.” A beat of silence. A tilt of his head, slightly. Until he remembered the position of Annabeth’s dagger, and swiftly righted his head again. “Well, actually, no. I’m kind of starting to wonder why you haven’t killed me yet.” He had no weapons, and even if he could somehow remove her knife from the equation to even the playing field, they both knew he didn’t stand a chance against her in hand to hand combat. He sent a silent apology to his mom for making the decisions in his life that had led him to this moment. He couldn’t imagine a scenario in which he would make it through the night alive.
Annabeth only raised her eyes to the ceiling of the musty cave at his response, as if asking for help from a higher power he knew she didn’t believe in. “I’m waiting for the signal.” She emphasized her point by turning her head to peer into one of the tunnels leading deeper into the mountain, forcing the knife closer to his neck in her annoyance, and consequently, his head further into the rough stone behind it. He tried not to show his discomfort at his new, more rocky position.
They waited in silence. Annabeth with her head still turned, Percy staring at her bright red lips. He’d never seen her wear lipstick before. You hate her, his brain reminded him. You hate her, you hate her, you hate her.
He tried to make idle conversation anyway; Crazy storm the other night, huh?, Did you see that video of the baby goat walking for the first time?, Do you have Twitter? ‘Cause I do, and Tom Holland actually liked one of my tweets the other day. Pretty cool. Do you like marvel? He’s great in the Spiderman movies. The most response she graced him with was blowing a piece of stray hair that had fallen from her ponytail out of her eyes. Her breath ruffled her bangs, ghosted across the skin of his forehead. His Tom Holland/Marvel induced rambling faded out as he got distracted by her lips again.
She finally looked down at his silence. Caught him staring. Shit.
Her breath caught. Her lips quirked up ever so slightly on the right side. Her eyes darted down to his own lips, to her dagger mere centimetres away from his pulse point. Back up to his eyes.
Percy had been trying to ignore it before, but he’s become painfully aware of how low-cut her jumpsuit is. He works to keep his eyes on hers, willing them not to drift anywhere else. Not to let her know how much he wants her. How he’s secretly and shamefully pined over her all these years. His worst enemy. The most formidable opponent he’s ever faced. He thinks even if he dies right then, even if she kills him, it’s not the worst way to go.
The silence feels palpable, just their eyes meeting in the dim candlelight of the cavern, their breaths mingling in the painfully small space between them.
“Just do it,” Percy says, breaking the silence.
“Do what?”
Kiss me. “Kill me. I’m tired of waiting.” I’ve waited so long.
“Sorry. I haven’t gotten the signal yet.” Her voice is impossibly soft.
“Chase?” So is his.
“Yes?” Her breath hitches. Their noses are almost touching.
“Please just––” And all of a sudden she’s kissing him roughly, silencing his plea for her to do just that.
She pulls back (too soon, he thinks, and chastises himself internally for thinking so, for even letting her kiss him at all). Her breathing is uneven, despite the brevity of their kiss. “I hate you.” Her knife is still at his neck. He briefly notes a light dusting of freckles across the bridge of her nose, ones he’s never been close enough to see before, and then she’s kissing him again, for longer this time. He wonders if he has died, and reached the afterlife. He doesn’t know if this is the good place or the bad one.
He’s probably still alive, he realizes, after feeling Annabeth’s knife nick the skin on his neck. She pulls back at that, her lipstick smudged at the edge of her mouth and across her cheek. She leans in close, right next to his ear, a single loose curl grazing the tip of his nose.
“Why shouldn’t I kill you right now?” Her voice is almost too quiet to hear. A quick rasp disturbing the near suffocating silence of the darkness surrounding them.
He almost thinks his brain won’t work quickly enough to respond, especially as he realizes that something has pulled the rest of Annabeth’s hair out of its ponytail, and then when he realizes that that something was him. Luckily, a response does come to him, and before he can debate whether it’s a wise thing to say in his position, he responds; “Because you still need to wait for the signal?”
He barely even flinches as she stabs her knife into the wall in response, merely a breath away from his ear, and crashes her lips back into his.