Chapter Text
Until one unfortunate day in English class, Annabeth Chase hadn’t had the misfortune of having Perseus ‘Percy’ Jackson in any of her classes, having daily outbursts during lessons just because he was bored. She’d heard rumors about him, and all kinds of tales about the many, many, many ways he’d landed himself into detention, but until a cruel early April morning that changed her, now former, luck.
“I see that you all have managed to survive your weekends and have returned to grace me with your presence.” Mrs. Dodds was by far one of the hardest teachers that Annabeth had had to date in her schooling, and not only with her harsh grading. “Being that you all have managed to make it into your, hopefully, final year in high school, I would hope that you would have the ability to notice that another one of you has been switched into our class.” The boy who was, uncomfortably, standing next to Mrs. Dodds, looking as if he’d rather be anywhere else at the moment; his eyes surveying the room and every person in it. “Perseus Jackson has been moved into our class due to certain behavioral issues.” The eye roll that Perseus gave Mrs. Dodds following her comment about his previous behavior in the other English class was all Annabeth needed to know that he, as expected, would be nothing but trouble. “In light of such development, being the matter that someone else thought that having him in my class would change such, Perseus Jackson, you will be sitting next to Annabeth Chase.”
And just like that, it went from bad to worse.
As Mrs. Dodds’ bony finger pointed to the vacant desk to Annabeth’s right, Perseus strolled across the room, dropping his backpack onto the floor beside the desk, not bothering to pull anything out of it as he sat in the chair. While there were still a few minutes before their class would begin, as Mrs. Dodds was getting things in order at the front of the room, Annabeth tried to not look over at the boy occupying the desk next to her, but the feeling of his eyes on her was too much to ignore. The mere second that her gray eyes found his green, the grin dancing on his lips gave Annabeth the sense she’d made a proverbial deal with the Devil, well a devil. “The Annabeth Chase.”
“Listen, Perseus Jackson,” Annabeth started, “I will not have you-”
“Woah, woah, woah. Calm down, Wise Girl.” Perseus cooed, sounding far too condescending for Annabeth’s liking, “Let’s start with the basics, shall we? Everyone calls me Percy, unless they hate me of course, then it’s Perseus.” Why anyone would prefer to go by a nickname rather than the Greek hero they were named after, was beyond Annabeth.
While she’d expected for Perseus, Percy, to continue telling her all the little things she apparently needed to know about him, he didn’t. Instead, she was under an uncomfortable, scrutinous gaze from him, causing her to want to shift under it, but instead, she asked, “What?”
“Aren’t ya gonna ask what I did?” Percy asked her, “That’s the first question I usually get.”
Usually. As in, being changed classes was normal for him. “Does this happen a lot?”
The look he gave after that was completely different. He seemed surprised. Like no one had asked him about anything except what he had done. “Uh, yeah.” Percy answered, “At least three times a year, five if I’m extra lucky.”
Despite the millions of questions running through Annabeth’s head, that sum growing evermore with each piece of information she learned from Percy, she didn’t have the time to ask him any of them as Mrs. Dodds began her lecture for the day, with the new topic of Shakespearean sonnets being the subject of the week. She would just have to ask him later. Obviously, not because she liked him. She was just curious. As anyone would be. Just curious.
No matter what Annabeth did for the rest of the day, trying to distract herself with her homework, or her brothers, or quite literally anything she could to take her mind off of Percy Jackson. Well, not necessarily Percy himself, more so she couldn’t stop thinking of how the very same schools that she had found ways to not only succeed, but excel in had systematically failed Percy, likely for years. It would’ve been easy to pin everything on Percy, considering his infamous history of acting out in classes at any opportunity he could find; however, if Annabeth were to do so, she’d be just as bad as every teacher and administrator that had crossed paths with Percy. After thinking about the precarious situation that Percy had been handed in regards to academics, with he did have a decent part in to be completely fair, Annabeth had reached, what she had thought to be an obvious, conclusion, which was to spend the ensuing weeks setting an excellent example in Mrs. Dodds’ class for Percy.
And, as anyone except Annabeth would’ve expected, it did not work as she had hoped it would. Not even close.
The very next day, as soon as she walked into Mrs. Dodds’ class, before Percy and most of her other classmates hadn’t arrived yet, Annabeth placed her backpack beside her seat, opposite where Percy sat, and pulled her notebook, pencil, and blue highlighter from her backpack, placing them on her desk in their perfect particular places. As Annabeth flipped through her detailed notebook, finding her place for that day’s English notes as well as quickly reviewing the notes she had made the previous day about their lesson, it was difficult to ignore the darkened presence that dropped into the desk beside her. Without looking away from her notes, determined to have her first plan to succeed in helping Percy to, at the very least, not fail their English class or get transferred to yet another teacher that won’t care enough about him, back to the point at hand, without glancing away from her near perfect print, paired with particular highlighting, on the page before her, Annabeth greeted, “Hello Percy.”
“Chase.” Was all he replied with, as, once again, he made no move to pull any kind of pencil or paper out of his own bag for class.
While it hadn’t been part of her initial plan for this whole ‘Percy situation’ that she now had to deal with, but Annabeth couldn’t quite help herself from asking him, “How on Earth do you hope to do well in class if you can’t be bothered to take any kind of notes Seaweed Brain?”
“Seaweed Brain?” Percy repeated, sounding far too unlike himself for Annabeth’s liking. And honestly, she didn’t know where that nickname had come from, but it didn’t seem like he liked it too much by the tone of his voice alone. “How did you come up with that one Wise Girl?”
Rather than react thoughtlessly to his typical jests, Annabeth instead simply repeated her question from before, just more civilly than she had before, “How do you expect to do well in any class, let alone Mrs. Dodds’ if you don’t take notes, Percy?” Not waiting for him to give her some kind of response, which based upon the way he was stammering out some nonsensical syllables she wasn’t going to be getting one anyway, Annabeth reached back into her bag, and fished out another pencil, a green highlighter, and a spare single subject notebook she had gotten to use for some additional review the upcoming weekend, seeing as they were getting ever closer to the SATs and ACTs. “Here,” she dropped the notebook, pencil, and highlighter onto the desk in front of him, “use these, and maybe you won’t have to go to summer school, again.”
“Jee thanks Chase, just what any normal kid wants. Homework.” Percy replied, flipping the notebook open to the first page despite his words. From the corner of her eye, not wanting to be openly staring at him, Annabeth watched as he picked up the green highlighter she’d given him, but rather than actually using it, he leaned over to her desk and told her, “You know Wise Girl, I like blue more than green.” and before she realized what he was talking about or doing, Percy plucked the blue highlighter from her fingers and dropped the green back onto her desk, splattering little green dots across her page of notes from the previous day. Not that anyone else would’ve noticed. But, as Percy indirectly said, she wasn’t normal. So Annabeth noticed.
By the time that Mrs. Dodds had actually started their lesson for the day, continuing on with largely meaningless lectures about the ‘significance’ that sonnets held in the literary world, Annabeth greatly welcomed the distraction from the boy sitting at the desk next to her. And though she did pay a great deal of attention to Mrs. Dodds’ teachings, while nearly every other student looked to be falling asleep as the older woman droned on and on, Annabeth did note at some point how Percy kept his eyes glued to the notebook on his desk, feverishly scribbling something out on it, looking over at her or Mrs. Dodds every once in a while, but for the most part, he was very focused on his paper.
Which, maybe, meant that in some way, Annabeth’s plan had worked. So, in the last few minutes, at the end of class, she asked him, “So, what were you so focused on for the past fifty minutes? I didn’t know you had it in you.”
“Well, I hate to disappoint you Wise Girl, but I was not taking notes I will have you know.” Percy replied, flipping the cover of his notebook open, showing off a drawing in all blue marker and graphite of a girl with very curly hair at what looked to be a table of some kind. As Annabeth looked at his drawing, trying her best to both figure out what it was meant to be, hopefully, and find a way to give him some kind of meaningful praise for his artistic skills when she was honestly quite limited in her understanding of most things relating to the arts, before she was able to accomplish the tasks she had given herself, Percy filled in the first of her tasks, “It’s supposed to be you, but I guess it’ll need some more work.”
“No, it’s, it’s amazing Percy!” Annabeth assured him, trying to sound as genuine as she felt. She wasn’t too sure how well she did. “I’m just not that attuned to more artistic things is all.”
Before Annabeth could hear whatever kind of response Percy was going to give her, an admittedly grating voice loudly called from the front of the room, causing all other small conversations to cease as she spoke, Mrs. Dodds requested, “Chase and Jackson, I’d like to see you after class.” Her ‘request’ was punctuated by the school bell ringing, allowing the rest of the students in Mrs. Dodds’ class to leave for their next classes while Annabeth and Percy stayed back, remaining at their desks.
While having talks after class was nothing new to Percy, having spent nearly as much time being in trouble and in detention as he had in an actual class, Annabeth on the other hand was having a horrible internal freakout. It had been years since she had gotten into any kind of trouble at school, let alone one for, what she could only assume was, her behavior in class.
The few minutes between the rest of their classmates quickly leaving the classroom to Mrs. Dodds saying anything about why they stayed back after class had felt like the longest hour of Annabeth’s life, even if it was only a mere minute. “Are we in trouble, Mrs. Dodds?” Annabeth asked.
At her question, Mrs. Dodds’ gaze shifted from glaring at Percy to still glaring, a bit less so, at Annabeth, “Ms. Chase, you are not in trouble, no. Perseus however,” Her glare returned back to meet Percy’s, “Mr. Jackson, I do not tolerate any of these frivolous doodles of yours in my class. If my lessons bore you so much, then you are more than welcome to leave my class. I’ll be seeing you in summer school regardless.”
“Yeah, yeah. I’m a horrible student. You’re right as always. Annabeth is your star pupil.” Percy mocked, seeming to have heard this same conversation in a hundred different forms over the years, “I would’ve hoped that an English teacher could’ve shaken it up a bit, but if the same old speech isn’t broke don’t fix it, am I right?”
Annabeth was sure that the look on her face at this point was anything but pleasant, but the perturbed look on Mrs. Dodds’ as she, somehow, glared evermore harshly at Percy as she remarked, “Right you are I suppose Mr. Jackson, however, your attitude is not appreciated, nor acceptable. However, for once it is not your attitude, not entirely, that has elicited my request for you two to stay back.” Mrs. Dodds’ eyes shifted back to Annabeth, and she felt as if every fear she’d had in the past five minutes that it was somehow something she had done that had gotten not only herself, but Percy as well, into trouble. “Relax Ms. Chase, you haven’t done anything wrong. I do, however, have a special request to ask of you.”
So, she wasn’t in trouble. And, Mrs. Dodds request, a special request, to ask of her.
“What is it, Mrs. Dodds?” Annabeth asked, still feeling a bit nervous about this whole thing, even though her teacher had made it clear that she was not in trouble.
“Well,” Mrs. Dodds started, her deathly glare softening into a harsh gaze, “as Perseus so graciously pointed out, you are my star pupil, and one of the top students here at Yancy Academy. And as you seem to be one of the few intellectual students here that can tolerate Perseus’s presence, and granted that Perseus is willing to even try not being in summer school for the eighth year, that with your help Ms. Chase, that Mr. Jackson might, at the very least, pass my class this year.”
Wait what.
Now, Annabeth wasn’t sure if she misheard, or somehow misinterpreted Mrs. Dodds but, “Are you saying that you want me to tutor Percy Mrs. Dodds?”
“Precisely Ms. Chase.” Mrs. Dodds answered, “If you’re up for the difficult challenge that is Perseus Jackson.”
She knew that if she looked over at Percy, no matter what look was on his face, she would’ve said no. So, Annabeth didn’t look over at Percy. And she simply told Mrs. Dodds that, “It’s worth a shot.”