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She’s wearing your t-shirt.
That’s the first thing you notice as you step into the diving pavilion. It’s early, just after eight o’clock in the morning, and you were just rubbing the sleep from your eyes and thinking about how it was criminal that you have to wake up that early during the summer , when you look across the tables and see her sitting there wearing your shirt. It’s clearly yours, even though you all own the same obnoxiously orange one. This one she’s wearing is too big on her; a little too long, bunched around her waist. And on her arms, the sleeves go down almost all the way to her elbows. And you know how her camp shirts look on her; you’ve only been going to camp together for the better half of a decade at this point, and you’ve literally seen her grow into these shirts. And that one is yours.
Besides, you’ve done enough dumb shit in those shirts for them to be physically marked. That one in particular has a tear on one of the sleeves from one of Leo’s faulty automatons. There’s a hole along the hemline from when you had acid sprayed at you from a giant ant. And the whole shirt has faded a few shades from hours spent in the sun and in salt water.
And so you know, with 100% certainty, that she is wearing your shirt. What you don’t know, what your brain is trying to figure out, is why exactly she’s wearing it. She stayed over in Cabin Three with you the night before, sneaking out after dark and dodging the cleaning harpies. She’s not technically allowed to spend the night with you, breaking curfew along with a handful of other rules about being alone in someone else’s cabin, but it’s the type of thing you’ve been able to get away with after saving the world a few times over. But even though you can get away with it, Annabeth isn’t the type to be rubbing it in everyone’s faces. She normally slips back to Cabin Six some time before breakfast so she can eat with her siblings, and everyone just pretends she was there the whole night. Today, she had an early morning sword fighting class to lead, so she was dressed and out of your cabin before you’d even awoken. It seems she took the opportunity to raid your closet a little bit.
She looks up at you now, glancing over her shoulder at you, probably because you’ve been frozen in place for a good minute and people are starting to notice. She raises her chin and smiles, like she’s daring you to say something. You know she’s doing this on purpose; she’s making a claim. She’s saying, This is mine, you are mine, and I want everyone to know . She’s saying, What are you going to do about it?
And so you cross over to her, ignoring the buffet table with the breakfast spread, because she’s got a gravitational pull on you and you’ve never been able to ignore it. So you stumble across the pavilion and end up a few feet behind her. She shifts on the bench and rotates in place, spinning to face you. That stupid cocky expression rests easily on her face.
“What are you wearing?” It’s not the most eloquent thing you’ve ever said, admittedly.
She glances down at herself then back up to you, smiling that beautiful smile that says she knows exactly what you’re thinking and what she’s doing. “I’m wearing the camp uniform,” she says. “Like I’m supposed to be.”
Well, damn, she’s not wrong. “That’s my shirt,” you tell her, like the Seaweed-Brain you are.
She scrunches her eyebrows and tilts her head to the side. “Is it really?” she asks, pulling at the fabric with one hand. “You know, I hadn’t really noticed. It was dark when I got dressed; must have grabbed the wrong one.” Her look of performative confusion shifts into a confident smirk. “I can give it back if you’d like?”
You shake your head, probably too quickly. “No, no, that’s okay,” you say. “It looks good on you.”
Her performance falters for a moment, and for a second you see a hint of her true reaction; surprise, then genuine joy. Like she’s pleased you said that about her. Well, she should wear your clothes more often, if that’s the case; because she does look really good in it.
Malcolm, who is sitting across the table from her, looks at you with a bored expression. You two are close enough, seeing as he’s Annabeth’s second-in-command and closest in age, but he’s probably tired of your antics. He had to deal with your hot-and-cold relationship back two summers ago, anyways. He knows too much. He’s been patient enough, but he deserves better than to be forced to watch you make a fool of yourself in front of his sister.
“Do you want to walk with me to the buffet table?” you ask Annabeth. She nods, and stands, reaching over and threading her hand against yours. You tug her hand as you walk in the complete opposite direction of the buffet table, instead stepping a few feet out of the pavilion and turning a corner so that you’re out of sight from the rest of camp. She glances around, sensing your newfound privacy, and smiles brightly at you. She leans against the wooden wall of the Big House, looking casual and comfortable and absolutely stunning.
“You look really good in my shirt,” you say. You reach out, unable to help yourself, grabbing the bottom of the shirt and rolling the orange fabric between your fingers.
“You may have mentioned that,” she says, teasing.
She wraps her arms around your neck, pulling you in closer. She’s gotten more affectionate recently, and you can’t find anything to complain about. Maybe it was the six months where you were missing and she thought you might be dead, you’re not sure, or maybe she’s just learned that she can show her feelings without them returning to hurt her. Whatever it is, it makes her glow, and with the way she’s touching you, you’re glowing, too. She’s spent too many years trying to make herself small, when she deserves to be the biggest and loudest person in any room she steps in.
Then her eyes flutter shut, and your brain stutters to a halt once more. Gods, you’re so far gone for this girl. It would be embarrassing if you didn’t know with absolute certainty that she feels the exact same way.
Oh, you’re going to marry this girl one day. You don’t care what it takes; you’ll personally apologize to Hera for any slights you have made against her, if it means you can live in a world where Annabeth Chase is your wife.
Her hands slide up underneath your shirt, and you can feel her fingertips lightly tracing patterns against your spine. She presses her finger against the section where your Achilles’ point used to be. Now that your invulnerability is gone, the spot is no longer as sensitive or reactive, but you still feel there more intensely than the rest of your body. And Annabeth knows this. You suck in a breath. This tiniest touch from her sends explosions throughout your entire body.
She raises an eyebrow. “You alright there, Seaweed Brain?” she asks with a teasing lilt, pressing even more firmly against the spot. “Breathing a little funny there.”
And that’s it, you can’t stop yourself anymore. You lean forward, pulling her into a kiss. She lets out a small squeak of surprise before melting into you. She is so warm, and soft, and strong, and you run your hands along the length of her arms, feeling the swell of her biceps. Her hands move from your spine to the waistline of your jeans, fingers looping easily into your front pocket as she tugs you closer. There is something magical about her warmth pressed into you. Something divine.
Well, no, that’s not entirely right. It’s more than divine. It’s something the gods can’t even touch. This warmth about her, it’s her humanness. It’s her humanity; the proof that she has been through so much, undergone so many trials and tribulations, and she’s still here, smiling into your kiss. She parts her lips and you take in the taste of her. Even better than ambrosia.
You pull away, and she darts forward quickly, pressing one quick kiss against your cheek. She’s smiling, looking like the cat who caught the canary. This was probably her plan all along, distract you with her feminine wiles and trick you into kissing her. You feel perfectly fine falling prey to her tricks.
There are times, late at night, where you wonder if being a demigod will have you fucked up for life. Where you remember the way the darkness almost took over, back in Tartarus. Where you wonder if there’s a little too much capacity for evil within you. There are nights where you can’t sleep because of all the nightmares, from all the traumatic shit that’s been happening to you since you were twelve years old. You know Annabeth gets nightmares too. You know she gets taken back to when she was seven and truly alone, having to fight away demons with just a hammer. Or her first encounter with a Cyclops, when she was barely able to save Luke and Thalia and Grover from being eaten.
She told you once that those aren’t even the worst of the nightmares. The worst are the ones where you’ve been taken once again, but without any memory at all, without any desire to find your way back to her. After she told you that, all you could do was hold her as close to you as you could, hoping that your physical proximity and the heat of your body and the feel of your skin pressed to hers would be enough to settle her fears.
It’s easier to get through it all with her by your side. Not just the fighting monsters part, though of course she more than pulls her weight with that. But the aftermath, the dealing with consequences. She grounds you. She reminds you of all the goodness still left in the world. She holds you through your nightmares, too; knowing when to wake you and when to let you push through the memory.
So, yes, being a demigod truly sucks sometimes. But it means you got to meet her, got to fall in love with her, so you suppose it was all worth it in the end.
“That shirt looks really good on you,” you tell her, the words quiet. She shivers, arching her spine a bit as she presses into you.
“You may have mentioned that,” she says.
“It would look even better in my room. On the floor.”
This makes her stop. She freezes in place for a moment before letting out a loud bark of laughter. She pulls away from you, doubling over. She’s laughing so hard it’s not even making a sound. She looks up at you, eyes crinkled as she smiles. “Percy Jackson, are you trying to seduce me?” she asks.
You grin down at her. “That depends. Is it working?”
Her shoulders are still shaking as she holds in her laugh, and she tilts her head to the side, the most endearing look of contentment on her face as she smiles back at you. “It wasn’t your best line, but yes, it is working.”
You lean forward and press a kiss to the side of her mouth. “Come back to my cabin with me?” you ask her.
“You don’t want breakfast?”
You shrug. “I’m not really hungry.”
She snorts, like she doesn’t believe you. And of course she doesn’t; she knows you’re pretty much always hungry. “I can get a big lunch later,” you amend, and she nods her approval. Before she can ask any more questions, you turn around, bending your legs into a small squat. “I’ll even carry you,” you offer.
She laughs again, a beautiful sound, and jumps up onto your back, wrapping her legs around your torso and her arms around your neck. “Take me home, my love,” she says to you, and she presses a kiss into your curls. You loop your arms under her thighs, holding her securely in place against you, and you start moving away from the Big House and the diving pavilion and back towards your cabin.
You love being young with her. You love being a silly, ridiculous teenager, in love for the first time. You love these moments, where it doesn’t feel like the weight of the world is on your shoulders. Right now, it’s just you and her, and everything is good and right in the world.
You carry her back to your cabin, where you’re going to kiss her, and hold her, and tell her you love her.
You feel alive.