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Annabeth laces their fingers together, “You’re getting slow, Seaweed Brain.”
“Jason had me training for hours, I think I’m allowed to feel sore and fall behind-and that doesn’t even relate to the stupid repairs we did all day.” Percy complains, giving Annabeth a tug to slow her down, “You’re rushing, honestly.”
“I want us to get there before the sun sets, actually.” She jokes, and feels him give her hand a squeeze, “Ha ha. She’s funny, isn’t she?”
She stops, finally reaching a decent clearing in the trees, and turns to Percy, “Hilarious, actually.”
Despite the hike, he’s still not quite winded and has an easy smile on his lips as he lowers the picnic basket, “Is that so?”
She wraps her arms around his stomach, nodding once, “Yup. A whole comedian.”
“One good joke a week doesn’t constitute comedy, ‘Beth.” He wraps his arms around her waist, and Annabeth raises a brow, “He used a big vocabulary word today, look at him go!”
He rolls his eyes, leaning down to capture her lips in a slow kiss, and all comments that had been swimming in her head disappear. When they part, Annabeth moves her hands to rest on his chest, “Picnic time?”
“You packed it, didn’t you?” He responds, but pulls away and digs out the picnic blanket from the basket regardless. He lays it out as Annabeth begins pulling out the various containers of packed food. She didn’t know what bought on her sudden urge for a day with Percy, but as the two ate, she was grateful for it regardless.
When the war with Gaia ended, she knew work had to be done: Camp Half-Blood needed repairs, she had to continue her redesign of Mount Olympus, cabins needed to be restructured to prep for expectations of possible Roman campers looking to visit. On top of it, there was the prospect of senior year, of months ahead of both she and Percy needing to focus on their actual studies over slacking off together. Despite that, she knew they still had a month at camp, and for as much as they’d set a schedule that had to be followed, a part of her-the selfish, teenager-in-love, still-upset-at-losing-him-for-months part-wanted nothing more than to wake up and spend her time with Percy.
She feels Percy give her a small poke into her side, pulling her out of her thoughts, “You’re staring at those strawberries like they’ve hurt you.”
Despite everything, she lets a smile pull onto her lips, “Maybe they did.”
He picks up the container, dropping it into the basket alongside the various empty ones, “Well, it’s gone now.”
He lays back, propping his head up on one of his arms and leaving the other one free, “C’mon, lay with me for a minute.”
It doesn’t take any more convincing for her to oblige, laying down beside him and curling into him, her head resting on his chest. He’s silent, just as quiet as she is, but she also knows he’s waiting for her to speak-to voice whatever had her zoning out as they ate. Some people would call that a problem: having a significant other who knew you so well that they could tell when you had a strange thought or were thinking too deeply, but the two of them saw it as an advantage. Annabeth knew the tells that Percy was thinking too hard, the same way he knew the tells that she’d had an uncomfortable thought. Carefully, she pulls Percy’s arm from underneath his head and grabs onto his hand, pressing their palms together.
“I love you.” She says quietly, and she feels Percy press a kiss to her hair, “And I love you, but that’s not what you were thinking about.”
She falls quiet again, a weak attempt to gather the mess of thoughts swirling around her head. Finally, after a moment, she squeezes his hand, “Would you run away with me?”
She tilts her head up, looking at his face. He looks down, using the hand that’s wrapped around her to brush a strand of hair off her face, “Where would you want to go?”
Annabeth shrugs, “Anywhere. We’ll travel all of North America, just go on a quick tour, and then we’ll go to Canada for a bit, too. Maybe the world as well.”
“Mm, don’t want your high school degree anymore?”
“We can get our GED’s online, and use those to find quick jobs to keep us going and to pay for finances. I’ll mooch off my dad, too, if it ever gets too bad. We’ll just--we’ll travel till we figure out where we want to properly settle.”
“And New Rome for college?” He has a small smile on his face as he asks, and Annabeth feels her heart flutter in her chest, “Well, we can do that, but also keep travelling during breaks. Just-let’s just get away.”
Carefully, slowly, he lifts himself up, propping himself up on one arm. Annabeth falls to the ground properly, no longer propped up against Percy, and she watches Percy shift so he’s hovering above her. He presses a kiss to her jaw, “Annabeth Chase, I would love nothing more than to run away with you.”
He pauses, littering a few more kisses across her skin, and she responds by wrapping her arms around her neck, “Is that a yes?”
He pulls away to meet her eyes, and shakes his head, “It’s a no, because you have too many ambitions to run away and backpack the world with me.”
“You’re too smart to settle for a quick GED rather than live out senior year, too ambitious to just shrug through college, and,” He kisses the corner of her mouth, “too beautiful to miss the chance to get dolled up and go to prom with me.”
“You didn’t even prompose yet.” She whispers in a playful voice, and Percy grins, “I’m mentally planning it, I promise.”
He gives her one last kiss before pulling away to meet her eyes, “Point is: I don’t want you throwing away the future. Believe me, if I could throw it away and just have you, I would-but you deserve better than that. And, plus, you want to build something permanent, don’t you?”
She takes in a breath, the last sentence sticking out in her brain. She studies him-the small smile on his lips, the way the setting sun is making his bronze skin shine, the messy mop of curls covering his forehead, the way his thumb is rubbing circles against a small sliver of bare skin on her hip where her shirt rode up.
When she had first said those words to him, back when they were 12 years old and she barely knew anything outside of the bubble of Camp Half-Blood, she hadn’t quite known what she meant when she said them. In her mind, she had never expected something permanent to come in the shape of anything besides architecture. Then he came along, an absolute enigma and a light in her life she’d never expected, and he never left-her indication that maybe her something permanent wasn’t a building, but rather a person.
She leans up, pressing a kiss to his lips, “I already am.”