Chapter Text
Green comes first.
It’s nothing spectacular. No freeze frame or camera pan or dramatic music, and Annabeth has Piper and a loose diner flier to thank for it even happening at all.
They push the door open. A bell chimes out from above their heads, and she’s immediately hit with the smell of fresh-baked cookies and pies and homemade bread. Annabeth closes her eyes and takes a deep breath in through her nose; she has to stop herself from making an embarrassing noise, because it’s easily the best thing she’s smelled in her entire life.
The diner is tacky, but in a charming sort of way, with the black-and-white checkered tile floor and the light blue 60s-style stools by the counter. It makes Annabeth nostalgic for something she’s never even experienced—and that’s probably the point, anyway. A place that feels frozen in time. There’s an old radio on the counter, a little red retro thing, and a Steely Dan song she doesn’t know the words to drifts through the dinner. The booths and table chairs match the stools at the counter, and it’s not at all what Annabeth expected the little diner to look like, but it draws her in just the same.
Despite the fact there aren’t any major streets around, the small building is packed. There are only two tables open and a few stools at the counter, and none of the people here look like tourists. One look around, though, and she didn’t expect there to be. With the entrance tucked away around the corner of an Alley surrounded by old apartment buildings, it doesn’t take much more for Annabeth to realize this must be a local favorite.
There’s a woman smiling and laughing with some customers, an older couple, grayed and smiling.
Piper nudges Annabeth’s shoulder. “Not what I expected. But it’s nice.”
“I like it,” Annabeth says.
She glances around a little more as they walk over to the counter. There are a few movie posters on the walls, from Audry Hepburn in Breakfast at Tiffany’s to West Side Story , and quite a few more she only vaguely recognizes.
The woman she saw comes over to them wearing a sweet smile that warms Annabeth to the bone.
“Just the two of you?” she asks, her voice like honey.
“Yes, please,” Piper says.
“Of course, dear. My name’s Sally, feel free to sit anywhere you’d like. I’ll be over after you’ve settled.”
“Thank you, Sally,” Annabeth says.
She and Piper make their way over to the counter, sliding onto two of the empty stools. Sally is there a few moments later with a pair of menus and glasses, setting them down and grabbing a pitcher of water off of the counter.
“Here you go, dears” she says, pouring the water. “Take as long as you need, and feel free to call me over if you need anything.”
“Thank you,” Annabeth says again, and Sally answers with another warm smile.
They take their time looking over the menus, and just as they’re about to call Sally back over, a guy pokes his head through the kitchen door.
“Ma? Can I make those pies I was telling you about?”
Sally doesn’t look over at him, but her voice perks up a bit from behind the counter.
“Go for it, honey. I can’t wait to try them.”
The boy looks about their age, with black hair that’s slightly unkempt and hangs a bit down over his eyes—eyes that flicker across the room and, maybe—probably—definitely by chance, catch her own. They’re green, she thinks. But not that hazel sort of green, and not the kind of green that’s probably actually a light blue. They’re deep and clear—and she’s almost certainly looking too intensely if she can tell that from across the counter, but their eyes stay locked for a few moments longer—and he gives her a small smile, and Annabeth feels heat creep up her neck towards her cheeks.
She feels Piper’s eyes on her. She’s not sure if you can drink water in a judging sort of way, but that’s what Piper does.
“He’s cute,” she says when the boy finally retreats back into the kitchen.
Annabeth doesn’t think that warrants a response, so she hums instead, trying to remember what she wanted to order.
(She has half a mind to wait for the pie to be done, then decides that that would almost definitely be too weird.)
She doesn’t even know his name, but from that moment forward, he is simply known as the pretty green-eyed boy from the diner.
☀☀☀
Blue quickly follows green.
It happens only a few weeks later, on the first day of the semester. He walks into her English lecture hall, those same green eyes flashing as they scan the room for a place to sit. Just like at the diner, his eyes catch hers, and she sees a slight hint of familiarity cross his face.
The pretty green-eyed boy from the diner is wearing a blue tee shirt that says something about swimming on it, and he has a black and blue snapback on.
He walks up to the empty seat beside her, motioning towards it.
Annabeth nods, sliding her water bottle out of his space.
The pretty green-eyed boy from the diner drops his backpack down beside her—a navy blue JanSport with a blue water bottle in the cup holder. He’s got blue thread bracelets tied onto his wrists, and a few of those silicone gummy bracelets in a couple of other shades of blue. There’s a smiley-faced inked onto the back of his hand with a blue pen, and on his other wrist, there’s a watch with a blue wristband.
Annabeth still doesn’t know the pretty green-eyed boy from the diner’s name, but she can say with confidence that his favorite color is blue.
The amount of blue is slightly off-putting, though, and if anyone else had sat beside her wearing that much of one color she would have packed up and moved because they absolutely are not sane, but then she meets his green eyes again, and the corner of his mouth quirks up, and she can feel herself start to blush despite trying her hardest not to, and—okay. Maybe she’ll tolerate it.
(Just this once.)
Now that he’s this close to her, though, she can see that his eyes are even more stunning than she’d thought at the diner. They’re green, sure, but they’re swirled with blues and they’re piercing and intense and have a depth to them that reminds her of the ocean.
He gives her a proper smile, now, and, god she feels like such a fucking fifteen year old, but she’s smiling back and trying not to stare at him because his smile is somehow more captivating than his eyes.
“I remember you,” he says. His voice washes over her, slightly deep and a little gravelly. “You were at the diner a couple of weeks ago.”
“I was,” she nods.
“What did you think?”
“Of the diner or the food?”
He grins wider. “Both?”
There’s a slight pause where their eyes meet again, and it’s stupid, she thinks, how much she like his eyes.
“The food was amazing, and the diner felt like a little slice of life was preserved from forever ago.”
He pulls a serious face, nodding at her assessment.
“Good,” he determines eventually. “That’s exactly what we go for. I’ll tell my Ma it’s working.”
He props his arm up on the table, resting his chin on his fist and clearing his throat a little. “So, uh, what’s your name?”
She mimics his pose—definitely not just because she wants him to smile at her again, but she doesn’t complain when he does exactly that.
“Annabeth.”
“Annabeth,” he grins. “It’s cute, I like it. I’m Percy.”
She thinks his smile has to be contagious because her cheeks hurt. And they’re definitely red. And as much as she likes the color of his eyes and the way his smile looks, she’s thankful when the professor clears her throat and begins speaking so she has a real reason to peel her eyes away from Percy.
Percy, the pretty green-eyed boy from the diner, whose favorite color is blue.
Percy, whose green eyes keep stealing glances at her, making her cheeks heat up.
Percy, who nudges her with his foot underneath their desks halfway through the Professor’s explanation of the syllabus.
He leans a little closer to her and whispers, “Do you think this class is going to be this boring all semester?”
She looks at him out of the corner of her eye. “God, I hope not. I hate English enough as it is.”
His eyes widen a little. “No, you’re not allowed to hate English,” he says. “ I hate English.”
“Can’t we both hate it?”
Percy shakes his head. “No, of course we can’t both hate it. I was counting on you to like it so you’d keep me awake.”
“Well, you’d better find someone else to sit beside, then.”
He sits back in his chair, looking around the room for a few seconds before leaning back into her.
“I think I like it here,” he says.
“Is that so?”
“Nobody else looks interesting.”
“Really? You don’t want to sit beside one of the nine guys wearing Thrasher hoodies?”
Percy scoffs a little too loudly and a guy a few rows in front of them looks back. He mouths a sorry , and when the guy turns back around, Percy looks at Annabeth again.
“Definitely not.”
“What about him?” Annabeth motions toward the guy that just turned around. “He seems way too into whatever she’s talking about. He’ll probably keep you awake.”
“No thanks,” he says. “I’ll take the F.”
“Well, then, Thrasher guys it is.”
He shakes his head again. “I’ll stick with you. Besides, I’ve never met a Thrasher guy that can actually skate. What’s the point in wearing skate merch if you can’t even do it?”
Annabeth raises an eyebrow. “And you can?”
Percy tilts his head, feigning weighing options. “Eh, a little.”
“How much is a little?”
“Enough that I don’t fall on my ass a lot now.”
“That’s better than I could do.”
“Somehow I doubt that,” he says.
Their conversation trails off after that, and they both try to put their attention back on the professor, but every few minutes one of them will lean in with a comment and it’s like their professor doesn’t even exist.
When the class is finally over and Annabeth is shoving her syllabus into her bag, Percy speaks again.
“I could teach you. Ya know, if you’d like.”
She gives him a weird look for a few seconds until she remembers their earlier conversation.
“I don’t know,” she says. “I’m not a fan of falling on my ass.”
“Well, we’d start with just learning how to ride one, so you’ll fall way less than doing tricks.”
She nods. “See, here’s the thing…I don’t want to fall at all.”
“You probably won’t.”
“Probably?”
Percy grins. “Probably.”
“I don’t know…”
“I mean, it’s your choice,” he says. “But the offer stands.”
Annabeth takes a breath, zipping up her bag. When she looks back up at him, his green eyes are still looking at her.
“I’ll think about it.”
“I’ll be here.”
(She hopes he is.)
;
Two weeks later, she caves.
It probably would’ve been sooner with how much she finds Percy creeping into her mind, but they haven’t talked at all outside of the days they have class, so she was exempt from his gentle nudges all but three hours a week. There’s something about the way his green eyes light up when he sees her, and how his lips quirk up when she teases him for the unholy amount of blue he seems to own that makes her stomach feel funny, and she’s probably not thinking completely straight around him.
(Almost definitely not thinking completely straight around him.)
Annabeth catches a glimpse of him from across the street on her way to class and does a double-take, only to see him expertly maneuvering a skateboard through a sidewalk full of people. It’s something she typically finds annoying, but Percy clearly does his best to avoid people as much as possible.
He’s wearing ripped jeans and vans, and a black tee-shirt with a blue flannel tied around his waist. There’s a different snapback fastened backward on his head today, but it’s blue all the same.
When he comes to a clearing where there’s a slightly raised lip, he does a kicking sort of thing with the board and jumps onto the ledge before jumping back off. Then, he does a different kicking thing and spins the board around, continuing to skate in the same direction, but he’s facing the opposite way.
From what Annabeth could see, it didn’t look like he stumbled at all, even while doing the jumping and kicking things.
Percy skates across the street to where she is, although he doesn’t seem to notice that she’s even there.
He’s close enough to her now that she has a clear look at his face, and she watches as his eyebrows scrunch together and his tongue pokes out of the side of his mouth as he jumps and shoves the board with his feet again.
“A fashion icon, truly,” she says, and Percy’s head shoots up.
His eyes scan around until they land on her, and a smile instantly makes its way to his face.
“Shut up. At least it’s better than the Thrasher guys.”
“Marginally.”
“Whatever.”
She smiles, nodding towards the board. “What was that thing you just did?”
“A pop shove it.”
Very original, she thinks.
“Because you pop up and shove the board?”
He steps off of the board, kicking it up and catching it with his hand. “Yeah, pretty much.”
Annabeth hums. “You seem like you’re pretty good at it”
Percy brings a hand up to rub at the back of his neck. “ Yeah, well, I’m not awful, I guess.”
“I dunno. I would’ve fallen on my ass for sure.”
“Trust me, I’ve fallen on my ass more times than I can count.”
“You’re not making it sound very appealing.”
“Look,” he says, dropping the board and stepping onto it. He doesn’t move anywhere, just stands on top of it and leans forward a little bit with his ankles before doing the same thing backward. “Balancing is like, half the battle, and I’m almost positive you could balance on it.”
Annabeth looks up from where her eyes were glued to the board and raises an eyebrow.
“ Almost positive?”
Percy shrugs a bit, stepping back down to the sidewalk.
“Well, if you do fall, I don’t want to be accused of misinforming you.”
“How thoughtful.”
“I try,” he grins.
She doesn’t say anything, just looks at him for a moment until his eyes seem to soften.
“Annabeth, you don’t really believe I’d let you fall, do you?”
(She doesn’t.)
There’s something about the look in his eyes and the way he says it that makes her heart feel funny and her stomach flutter, but she tries to convince herself that it’s not him, it’s just the nerves.
“I don’t know, Percy…”
“I won’t let you hit the ground. I swear.”
His green eyes are filled with a genuineness she’s not used to seeing in people, and it’s enough to fully convince her to try.
“Alright,” she says, and a smile instantly lights up his face.
“Here,” he reaches a hand out. “I’ll hold your backpack.”
Annabeth shrugs it off her shoulders and hands it over to Percy, who throws it over one of his own shoulders.
“Okay, now. I’m going to steady the board with my foot, and—here, take my hand.”
She obliges, reaching her hand out and grabbing his, and Percy’s fingers curl around hers. He helps her step onto the board, her hand clutching his, and she tries to ignore the way the fluttering in her stomach has seemed to amplify tenfold.
“See? It’s not that bad.”
Percy’s still an inch or two taller than her, even with the extra height that the skateboard gives her, so she has to tilt her head up a little bit to look at him.
“I guess…but I’m not even moving yet. That’s kind of the part I’m worried about.”
He glances down at the board. “Well, before we can even think about moving, we need to make sure you set your feet right.”
Annabeth looks down to see that her feet are practically touching each other. She scoots them a little further apart and looks back up at Percy.
“Like this?”
He shakes his head. “No, a little further—”
She adjusts her feet again.
“—Yeah, like that, but angle your left foot a little—no, not like that.” Percy looks up from the board for a moment before continuing. “Here, I’m going to help.”
Annabeth feels a twinge of embarrassment at the fact that she can’t even get her feet right, and almost debates quitting right there, but then Percy nudges her shoulder and she looks back at him.
“Hey, don’t feel bad. I said I wanted to teach you; how are you supposed to know something you’ve never learned?”
She’s a little taken aback by his words, wondering how he could have known what she was thinking, but then he’s squeezing the hand that’s still holding hers, and it distracts her from thinking about it.
“I…yeah, you’re right.”
Percy’s lips quirk up, and he nudges her shoulder again.
“Relax a little, Beth. I’m not expecting you to be Tony Hawk or anything.”
Annabeth feels herself smile. She’s not usually one for nicknames, but something about the way it sounds when Percy says it makes it hard to hate.
Still holding her hand, he kneels down, pushing her left foot a little further back on the board.
“Perfect,” he says. “Keep them just like that.”
He stands back up, offering her his free hand as well. She wordlessly takes it, ducking her head when their eyes meet for a little too long.
Percy clears his throat. “Okay, so do you remember what I was doing earlier? Leaning back and forth with my ankles?”
“Yeah.”
“Good. So, when you do start moving, that’s how you have to steer. You have to use your hips down. If you try using your upper body too much you’ll lose your balance.”
“Okay,” she nods, looking back down at the board. “So…like this?”
She keeps her feet flat but shifts her weight to her toes, and the board tips slightly beneath her. It’s not far enough for her to fall off, but it’s enough that she understands how it would steer the board.
“That’s perfect. Now try backward.”
Annabeth shifts her weight onto her heels this time, and the board tips backward. It’s not a lot, but the movement scares her, and she jumps a little, losing her balance.
“Hey, you’re good. You’re not going to fall,” he says, squeezing her hands gently and tugging her back upright.
Another wave of embarrassment falls over her, and she looks away.
“Sorry,” she mumbles.
“Don’t be. You’ve never done it before.” He looks down at his watch. “We should probably get going, class starts in ten.”
“Yeah,” she nods, going to step off of the board.
Before she can, though, Percy squeezes her hand once more. “Do you…do you want to try to move?”
She gives him a sort of incredulous look.
“I almost fell just standing on it, Percy.”
“But I didn’t let you fall, did I?”
Annabeth takes a deep breath, looking around the common area they’re in. The building their English class is in is just on the other side.
“Okay.”
“Okay?”
She motions towards the building. “Let’s go.”
Another smile takes over his face, and Annabeth thinks that even if she does fall on her ass it might not be so bad, as long as it keeps him smiling at her like that.
“I’m going to move my foot, and you’re going to start to roll a little, okay?”
“If I fall, I’m suing.”
“I won’t let you, promise.”
(She believes him.)
Percy moves his foot out from where it was holding the board, and just like he said, it starts to roll. Annabeth tenses up, clenching her hands around his, but his thumb brushes over the back of her hand, and she relaxes a little.
“Try steering,” he says. “Lean back a little.”
She shifts her weight back onto her heels, and the board starts to turn. She almost makes it the whole way to the English building, but then the skateboard hits a small rock on the sidewalk and jolts forward, tossing her off the front.
She barely has time to fall before one of Percy’s hands lets go of her own and wraps around her waist, pulling her back up and placing her feet on the ground.
Annabeth opens her mouth, an apology already forming on her lips, but Percy cuts her off.
“That wasn’t your fault,” he says, correcting her before she’d even said anything. “Rocks fucking suck. They’ll throw you around more than anything. I should have seen it.”
“Thank you for not letting me fall,” she says.
“Of course.”
She looks around a bit, deciding that being on a skateboard wasn’t so bad, as long as she knew she wouldn’t be face-first on the concrete.
“I think…next time we do this, I want a helmet.”
She meets his eyes again, his already bright green irises impossibly brighter.
“Next time?”
“Next time.”
;
Skateboarding across the common quickly becomes a routine of sorts. Annabeth makes a habit of showing up far earlier than needed for English, just to wait for Percy. She thought it might have been subtle, but after a few classes Percy starts showing up earlier, too, and maybe it wasn’t as subtle as she thought it was.
He brings her a helmet every time, too. An old scuffed-up blue thing that has definitely seen its better days.
“My mom made me wear it when I was learning,” he explains. “I haven’t worn it since I was like thirteen, though, so it’s just sort of sat around.”
Annabeth smiles and takes the helmet from him, putting it on and snapping the clip under her chin. Despite the helmet being from his childhood, it’s still big enough to bounce around on her head, but it’s better than nothing.
“Thank you, Percy.”
“Don’t mention it,” he says. “I feel better with you wearing it, anyway.”
His eyes lock on hers for a few moments, just long enough to make her cheeks heat up a little. He carefully, hesitantly reaches his hands up towards her face. She’s about to move away on instinct, but then his fingers grab the clasp and pull it a little tighter, just so it rests loosely against her chin.
Her mouth is dry, and he’s still looking at her, and god those stupid fucking butterflies are back in her stomach. She opens her mouth to say something— anything —but is saved when he clears his throat and looks down towards the board, telling her something about positioning her feet.
It only takes a few more classes for Annabeth to be comfortable balancing herself on the board, which means that Percy no longer has to hold her hands to steady her, a fact that she finds mildly disappointing. Instead, he hovers his hands a few inches from her waist in case he needs to catch her.
Percy usually places a hand on her back, gently pushing her to get her moving. She’s yet to try to push herself, though, confident in her ability to fall the second she tried, even with Percy there to catch her.
Currently, she’s halfway across the common area, steering the board in a wavy back-and-forth pattern.
“So, do you want to try to push off?”
Her eyes widen and she loses her balance a little bit, but Percy’s hands are there in an instant to steady her.
“I think you can do it,” he says. “You’ve already gotten good at balancing and steering, so it shouldn’t be too hard.”
Annabeth contemplates it for a moment, more heavily leaning towards the no side of things, but then he grabs her hand and lightly squeezes, and she decides that maybe pushing off won’t be so bad after all.
(Just this once.)
“If you think so…”
“I do,” he insists.
Percy helps her position her feet so that she can push off. It’s a lot more challenging to balance on one foot, she finds, because the second she steps onto the board, it kicks out from under her.
Luckily, Percy’s there to catch her before she can fall face-first onto the ground.
“Okay, that one was my fault. I should have been holding onto you.”
“It’s alright,” she inhales, steadying herself. “I want to try again, though.”
“Yeah?”
“Just don’t let me hit the ground.”
He tosses her a smile.
“You know I won’t.” Then, he moves to stand behind her. “So, I’m going to hold onto your waist to balance you until you push off, is that okay?”
Annabeth simply nods her head, not completely trusting her voice. His hand touches her waist, and it’s stupid, she thinks, the way that warmth instantly spreads through her. She does her best to ignore it and focus on her footwork, but then his fingers twist a little in the material of her shirt, and her skin tingles beneath his touch, and thank god she can’t see herself right now because she knows she’s bright red.
She manages to ignore him just long enough to push off, successfully getting the board to move. When she does, Percy lets go of her, walking behind her as she rides around the common area, and for a brief second, she wishes she would have messed up so that he’d have a reason to keep holding onto her. But then she steers the board so she’s facing him, and he’s cheering loud enough that the majority of the common is staring at him, and she thinks that the way he’s looking at her is more than enough of a compensation.
;
The next Friday, Annabeth finds herself walking out of her English lecture with Percy.
Their arms swing between them as they walk, their hands occasionally brushing, and it makes Annabeth’s heart flutter a little more than she cares to admit.
They continue in a comfortable silence until they reach the little common area, and then Percy turns toward her, reaching a hand up to rub at the back of his neck.
“So, uh—” he clears his throat a little, and Annabeth sees the tips of his ears turn pink. “I was wondering if you maybe want to go somewhere sometime? Only if you want to, obviously. But that was implied, I think. Yeah.”
She finds herself smiling at the way he’s rambling. She’s only ever seen him do it when he’s nervous or caught off guard, like when their English Professor calls on him out of the blue.
He’s looking at the ground, so Annabeth bumps his shoulder gently, and his green eyes snap up to hers.
“I’d love to.”
(She really, really would.)
Percy’s features immediately relax, his eyes lighting up, and his seemingly ever-present smile back on his lips.
“Awesome. I’ll uh, I’ll text you?”
He must not be trying too hard to contain any joy, because it unabashedly seeps into his voice, and it makes Annabeth’s stomach knot in the best way.
“I’m looking forward to it.”
Percy drops his skateboard onto the ground, stepping onto it with ease.
He grins at her. “Good. Talk to you later, Beth.”
She smiles back, growing more and more fond of the way her nickname rolls off his tongue.
“You, too, Perce.”
True to his word, he texts her almost immediately after she walks through the door of her and Piper’s apartment. She tries to hide her smile, but Piper notices it anyway.
Piper tosses an M&M at her from the couch as she walks into the living room.
“That wouldn’t happen to be a certain green-eyed boy, now, would it?”
The M&M bounces off of her arm and onto the ground, and Annabeth bends down to pick it up. The throws it back at Piper, hitting her on her leg.
“Maybe,” she says, trying to be nonchalant.
“Well, that’s a yes if I’ve ever heard one.”
Annabeth doesn’t say anything, just plops down beside Piper on the couch.
“So, when are you going out?”
Annabeth hums, looking over at her.
“I’m not sure yet,” she says. “That’s kind of what we were talking about.”
“Oh, thank god. I don’t think I could listen to you talk about him teaching you to skate anymore.”
Annabeth feels a little heat rise to her cheeks. “Whatever. At least he’s a better teacher than you.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“He doesn’t sit on the curb and yell at me the second I even try to step on the board.”
“Well you were doing it wrong!”
“Because you didn’t show me!”
Piper laughs. “I guess my teaching strategies weren’t the most effective.”
“That’s an understatement.”
Piper just shrugs, handing over the remote.
“I mean, I guess this way was better, anyway. If I was a better teacher, you wouldn’t have gotten a boyfriend out of it.”
Annabeth blushes again, flipping through their Netflix account.
“He’s not my boyfriend.”
(Yet, she hopes.)
“Not yet.”
“Whatever.”
“Hey, I’m just stating the obvious here. You haven’t been this smiley since you and Connor started dating freshman year.”
Annabeth groans, picking one of the cooking shows that she and Piper have yet to finish.
“You know, just when I almost forget about it, you bring it back up.”
Piper laughs again, throwing another M&M at Annabeth’s cheek.
“Someone has to remind you.”
Annabeth sticks her tongue out, grabs a handful of M&Ms, and settles back onto the couch.
Her phone pings and lights up with a message from Percy right as she pops a blue one into her mouth.
Does tomorrow night work for you? I could pick you up at 7?
She smiles down at her phone, and Piper gives her a nudge with her leg, wiggling her eyebrows.
Sounds perfect .
They text back and forth that night, and most of Saturday, too. Nothing too important, nothing too deep, but enough that it gave them some more things to talk about and bridged any awkward small talk that would surely come with a first date.
Percy texts her a few hours before their date:
We’re gonna be outside for a bit btw
How much is a bit?
Just dress for the weather
Where are we going?
Nope. It’s a secret.
Annabeth groans when she reads his last message. She’s never been a fan of secrets or surprises, but she doesn’t want to make him feel bad, so she decides that she’ll let the secret slide.
(Just this once.)
Okay
She pulls up the weather app on her phone and walks over to her closet. It’s early autumn, but it’s still warm enough at night to wear some summery clothes. Her eyes scan the hangers, immediately drawn to one of them.
Her phone pings again just as she reaches for the only blue dress she owns.
;
Percy shows up at her apartment at exactly seven that night, twirling a single blue flower between his fingers.
The first thing she notices, though, is that he’s dressed up a bit. He’s got chinos on, a serious upgrade from the worn jeans he usually sports. He’s still wearing Vans, though, but they’re not the scuffed-up ones she typically sees him in.
And then, in true Percy fashion, he’s wearing a blue shirt. It’s nothing fancy, just a nice, plain tee, but it almost exactly matches the blue of her dress.
He’s nervous, she can tell. He keeps glancing down at the flower spinning between his fingers.
Annabeth thinks it’s cute, honestly.
“Hey, Percy.”
“Hey, Beth,” he smiles.
It’s magnetic, his smile. It pulls her lips up immediately.
“You, uh—you look…very pretty.”
She blushes a little, and before her brain can respond properly, her mouth does it for her.
“So do you.”
His eyes dance with amusement, all of his nervous energy suddenly expelled.
“Pretty?” he muses.
“Pretty.”
She doesn’t tell him that that was her first impression of him, that he was just the pretty green-eyed boy from the diner every time he crossed her mind before they had a class together.
Percy chuckles, a fun, lighthearted sound that wraps around her.
“I’ve never been called pretty before.”
“It’s a compliment.”
“I appreciate it,” he says, humor laced with a note of sincerity.
“You should. I don’t give them often.”
“Well, then I’m honored.”
A pink tint of his own makes its way to his ears when he looks back down at the flower he’s holding.
“I, uh, I saw this on the way over here,” he says, rubbing the back of his neck.
That’s something he does a lot, she notes. It’s endearing, really, and a small part of her loves the fact that she can make him as nervous as he makes her.
“ …and I was thinking about you, and I, uh, thought you might like it, so, uh. Yeah,” he finishes.
Her heart flutters at his words. I was thinking about you .
“I love it,” she says. “Thank you.”
Once again, she sees his body relax. His eyes come back to meet hers, and then he puts his hand out to give the flower to her.
He pauses at the last second, his eyes lingering on her hair.
“Here,” he says. “Can I…?”
Percy reaches up, taking the flower and threading it through one of the twists of hair she’d pinned back.
“There,” he smiles.
Annabeth grins back up at him. She’s not quite sure how to say that was adorable without sounding like a weirdo, so she settles for another quiet thank you.
Percy offers her hand out again. “You ready?”
She pulls the door shut behind her, timidly taking his hand in her own.
It’s not like it should be this nerve-wracking. It’s just a hand—one that she’s had in her own countless times over the past few weeks as he steadied her on his skateboard—but butterflies erupt in her stomach, anyway.
“Lead the way.”
;
Annabeth is used to the salty, sweet smell that seems to follow Percy around, but it’s amplified tenfold with the vast expanse of the ocean laid out before them.
The thirty-minute drive to Jacob Riis Park means that the sun was just now beginning to set as they pulled into the parking lot. It’s a Saturday evening, so there are a few groups of people scattered across the sand, but it’s not nearly as crowded as it would have been a few weeks ago.
He looks over at her, his green eyes still startlingly bright even with the daylight slipping away.
“Don’t get out yet,” he says, pushing his door open.
Annabeth watches as he rushes around the front of the car and over to her door, pulling it open and extending his hand.
“My mama taught me that I should always open the door for my dates, so,” he grins down at her, a slightly humorous glint in his eyes. “M’lady.”
She doesn’t think she could stop the laugh that bubbles up and out of her throat even if she wanted to when he puts one arm behind his back, bending over at the waist as she takes his hand and steps out of the car.
Her laugh dies in her throat, turned into a small, sharp intake of breath when he lifts her hand to his lips, his lips brushing a kiss across her knuckles.
His eyes are still glinting with that humor and his green is still present as he looks back up at her, slowly bringing her hand down.
It was a simple action, a joking one, and yet it set Annabeth’s senses on fire. She’s all too aware of the way his hand is in her makes her skin burn, and the way his smile makes her head fuzzy, and she feels like she can hear everything—the chirping of the birds, the grasshoppers singing, pebbles being blown around by the ocean breeze.
And she loves it.
“Too much?”
Annabeth shakes her head slowly, trying to stop the fuzzy feeling that’s building up.
She smiles up at him.
“No. Just right.”
(Perfect, even.)
“Yeah?”
She nods her confirmation.
“Good, because I’ve always thought it would be fun to do that.”
“Of course you would.”
“Well, I was right,” he says, opening the rear door and reaching for something inside.
“You really thought that was fun?”
He pulls a woven basket and a blue blanket out of the backseat, a troublemaker smirk pulling his lips back up.
“Seeing you blush like that? Yeah, I’d say it was pretty fun.”
“Oh my god,” she mumbles, looking down at the ground. She brings a hand up to play with her hair in a not-so-subtle attempt to hide her face from him, which warrants a chuckle as he shuts the car door.
“Hey,” he says, softly nudging her chin with his free hand. “I thought it was adorable, Beth.”
Percy lets his hand drop down between them, his fingers brushing against her. He intertwines them, tugging on her hand gently as he starts to walk towards the beach.
“So,” she says after a few seconds, right before they reach the sand.
“So?”
“Yeah.”
She’s not exactly sure what she’s trying to say—there’s so much she wants to say, so many things that she’s feeling, and it’s terrifying. It’s terrifying because she barely knows him, and it’s terrifying because she doesn’t care that she barely knows him. She knows him enough to know that he’s kind and gentle and funny, and she feels like she’s known him for forever.
It doesn’t seem to matter that she can’t find the words, though, because he looks at her, that same small smile still on his face, and he nods at her.
“Yeah,” he says back, and he says it like he knows exactly what she means
And looking up into his eyes, she thinks he just might.
She’s not sure how long they stand there at the edge of the sand, because it feels like seconds and an eternity all at once.
(She wouldn’t mind looking at him for an eternity.)
And she swears she tried not to—really, she did—but her eyes flicker down to his lips for just a moment, before snapping back up to his eyes just as quickly. When they meet again, his eyes widen, his jaw tenses a little, and he inhales quietly but sharply.
His own eyes flicker down to her lips, too, before coming back up much slower than her own.
They stand there for a little longer, unmoving, before he clears his throat weakly and turns away.
“We, uh, we should take our shoes off before we go further,” he says. “Ya know, that way they don’t get sand all through them.”
It’s a pretty bad change of topic, but she’s not sure hers would’ve been much better if she had tried. Either way, she manages to keep her blush reeled in—at least she thinks she does—as she nods and says her agreement.
They’re silent as they walk to a more secluded spot on the beach, but his hand doesn’t fail to find its way back to hers. It’s interesting, she thinks, how that simple action seems to say the words that neither of them are.
They sit close enough to the water that she can feel drops of sea spray against her skin, but far enough that the blanket won’t get wet with the tide. He spreads the blue beach blanket down on the sand, putting the basket down in one of the corners and his shoes in another. Annabeth follows his example, dropping her shoes on one of the corners.
Percy takes her hand again, pulling her down to sit with him. Then, he looks over at her like he’s going to say something before going silent, looking down at their hands as he traces her knuckles with his thumb.
He looks back at her after a moment, slowly letting go of her hand before speaking.
“I hope this is alright,” he says, once again rubbing the back of his neck. “I probably should have told you where we were going, but I kind of wanted it to be a surprise.”
She looks around. It’s not at all what she expected, but she likes it.
“Honestly, you could have taken me anywhere and I’m sure I would’ve enjoyed it.”
(Because I’m with you, she thinks.)
Those words go unsaid, but not unnoticed, because his eyes light up a little.
“I sort of struggled with coming up with something, actually. I didn’t want to do a movie or anything, because, ya know,” he motions toward her. “I wanted to actually talk to you. And then I felt like a restaurant was too boring, and, well, the beach has always been one of my favorite places—well, not this beach, but I thought that maybe you’d enjoy it, and—”
“Percy?” Annabeth cuts him off mid-ramble.
“Uh, yeah?”
“I love it.”
(She really, really does.)
;
It’s well past sundown now, nearing eleven already, but Annabeth has no intention of leaving anytime soon.
Percy had packed a picnic for them, and when Annabeth had asked where he’d gotten all of it, he blushed and rubbed his neck, admitting that he’d made all of it before he’d picked her up.
“Except the cookies, though,” he said. “They’re my mom’s recipe, and even when I follow it exactly they never seem to turn out like hers.”
“They’re blue,” she notes.
“They are. It’s sort of an inside joke,” he says. “I asked my mom for blue pancakes once when I was like, five, and ever since then she’s made everything she can blue.”
It’s sweet, she thinks, that he has something like that with his family. She can’t remember the last time she held a conversation with her father, let alone trying to think of any traditions or quirks they might have had.
They end up sprawled across the blue blanket, looking up at the stars. There’s enough light pollution from the city that they can’t see all of the stars, but they can make out some of the brighter ones.
She can feel his eyes on her as she reaches her arm up to point at another constellation.
“That one’s Delphinus, I think.”
“Pretty,” he says.
Annabeth can’t help the smile on her face as she turns her head to the side to look at him, only to find that his eyes are still on her.
“You know, you have to look at the sky to see it,” she teases.
“Who said I was talking about the stars?”
She rolls onto her side now, propping her head up on her arm.
“You can’t just say stuff like that.”
Percy reaches a hand out, fiddling with the blue flower he’d put in her hair. His fingers let go, trailing down to play with one of her curls.
“And why’s that?”
Annabeth had intended to give him a verbal answer, but that was before he placed her curl back down, pushing the hair off her shoulder, his fingers ghosting over her neck before his thumb settles on her cheekbone, rubbing gently across her skin.
“I…” she trails off dumbly.
And she feels drunk. Drunk off the intoxicating green of his eyes, drunk off the feeling of his hand touching her, drunk off the butterflies in her stomach.
“Annabeth?” he asks. “Is it okay if I…can I—”
Her body reacts before her brain has the chance to, and she’s leaning over, her lips brushing against his. It’s not even a proper kiss—it’s a tease of one, really—but it sends a shiver down her spine.
Percy’s hand does the rest of the work, softly pulling her lips the rest of the way to his, and all that Annabeth can feel is blue. It’s all around her—it’s the sky and it’s the ocean. It’s the blanket beneath her, and the flower in her hair, and the color of the shirt her fingers clutch onto gently.
This blue is different, she thinks. Percy’s blue is different. It’s not sadness or loneliness like she once believed blue to be, but it’s the steady embrace his arms provide. It’s stability, his hands reaching out to catch her before she hits the ground. It’s the serenity of this moment, the calmness that envelopes the two of them.
Their lips part, and Annabeth thinks that this blue, Percy’s blue, is something she might not be able to live without.
“Hey, Annabeth?” he mumbles when their lips part.
She hums in response, her lips brushing his cheek.
“We should do this again sometime.”
She can’t help but laugh against him, kissing his neck when she buries her head into it.
“I’d love to.”
(She really, really would.)
☀☀☀
Orange starts with another surprise.
Annabeth’s phone pings with a text message.
Are you busy rn?
No, what’s up?
As soon as she hits send, there’s a rapping of knuckles against her door. She’s barely even opened the door before he starts talking.
“You’re in pajamas.”
Annabeth looks down at herself, clad in flannel pajama pants and a swim team hoodie, both of which she stole from Percy.
“It’s ten in the morning,” she looks up at him.
He smiles, bending down and placing a quick kiss on her lips. She lets her arm drop from the doorframe, and he steps into her apartment.
She takes a moment to look at him. He’s not wearing his usual blue today. Instead, he’s wearing a pair of tan pants with an orange, yellow, and black flannel. His black vans are the only typical pieces of his outfit.
She reaches up, pulling his hat—his orange hat—off his head.
“You look like a pumpkin.”
“You can blame Estelle for that one.”
Annabeth raises an eyebrow and Percy smiles at her. She's yet to meet his little sister—or anyone else except his mother, briefly, on her visit to the diner—but he talks about all of them enough that she can’t help but feel like she knows them.
He pulls his beanie out of her hands and smoothes some of her hair down before putting it on her.
“Why orange?” she asks.
His hands drop down to rest on her waist.
“I dunno. Something about giving you a hint.”
Annabeth groans, dropping her head onto his chest. She’d let him get away with that one surprise, and he’d taken it and ran.
“A hint?” she mumbles.
“Percy’s hands run up and down her back, and he gives her a small squeeze.
“Mhmm.”
“About what?”
“Where we’re going.”
She lifts her head, tilting it back so she can meet his eyes.
“And where would that be, exactly?”
“I can’t tell you that.”
Annabeth groans again and Percy chuckles.
“Have I ever told you that I hate surprises?”
“Only every time I plan one.”
“And yet you keep planning them.”
“C’mon now,” he reaches over and rests his hand on her cheek, a smile forming on his lips. “Name one surprise you haven’t liked.”
(She can’t.)
His eyes tell her that he knows it just as well as she does.
“That doesn’t mean you should keep planning them,” she argues.
“But this one’s already planned, Beth, so we have to do it now.”
He gives her a child-like grin, eyes filled with enthusiasm, and Annabeth can’t say no to him.
She sighs, an unspoken agreement, and Percy places a kiss on her cheek in victory.
“You should probably change out of your pajamas,” he teases.
“I don’t know what I should wear.”
“Something like this,” he motions to himself.
“I’m not dressing like a lumberjack.”
“I don’t look like a lumberjack,” he defends.
Annabeth gives him a skeptical once-over before meeting his eyes again.
“No, you definitely do.”
“Blame Estelle.”
“She’s eight.”
“Blame Estelle.”
Annabeth rolls her eyes fondly, making her way back to her room.
When she comes back out, she sees Percy digging through his backpack.
“Whatcha looking for?”
He looks up at her, smiling as he pulls out a polaroid camera.
“I wanted to make sure I had it with me before we left,” he says, holding it out towards her.
She takes it from him, bringing it up to her eye and looking around the room. When she settles the lens back on him, he smiles, and Annabeth snaps a picture. She hasn’t even seen it yet, but she knows that the photo is going to go in the empty picture frame she has in the box in her room.
The photo falls from the bottom of the camera, and she grabs it.
“Was it a good shot?” he asks.
She puts the polaroid on the counter, handing him the camera.
“That’s your surprise for later.” She grabs his hand, pulling him off the stool. “For now…I wanna see mine.”
;
The whole way there, Percy refuses to give her any real hints about where they’re going.
“Percy, please ,” she begs. “Just one hint.”
He grins, reaching a hand over and grabbing one of hers.
“Here, I’ll give you one right now,” he points out the windshield at a road sign that reads North Salem .
“That really doesn’t help me.”
“Sure it does. That’s where I’m taking you.”
“You’re impossible, you know that?”
He hums, squeezing her hand. “We’ve only got like fifteen more minutes, Beth. Be strong.”
“Did you memorize the route before you picked me up?” she grumbles. “I can’t even use the GPS to see where we’re going.”
Percy chuckles, moving his hand back to the steering wheel.
“I’ve gone here every year since I was born,” he says. “I know where I’m going.”
His words are lighthearted, but it makes Annabeth’s chest tighten.
A month. They’ve barely been dating for a month, and he’s already taking her to a family spot.
“Every year?” she asks. It’s not a necessary question, but she rushes it out to cut through the silence.
If he notices her change in behavior, he doesn’t comment on it.
“Yeah. My parents came here the year they got together and, well, it kind of became a family tradition.”
“Are they going to be here?” she says, trying not to panic. She’s never been good at the whole family thing, and meeting his was something she was absolutely not prepared for.
“God, no. Don’t worry,” he spares a glance her way. “I wouldn’t just spring that on you.”
Just as quickly as it came, her panic dissipates.
“I just…I dunno. My dad brought up our yearly trip a couple of days ago, and then my mom said that I should take you here, too.”
“They know about me?”
Too late she realizes that that was probably a dumb question. From what she’s gathered, Percy’s family is the exact opposite of hers. Loving and familiar and happy, and the news of a girlfriend is something that’s probably met with smiles. It’s not something that maybe gets shared months later over an obligatory holiday phone call.
“Yeah,” he laughs. “I’m not sure I could have hidden it even if I wanted to. My mom can read me like a book.”
She remembers his mom from the diner, her honey-sweet voice and warm, inviting smile. The way her eyes were gentle, open, waiting, but also smart, like she knew exactly what you were thinking.
It’s easy to see how Percy is her son.
“She was nice,” Annabeth says.
“She’s the best.”
A silence fills the space between them, and Percy is quick to try and break it.
“I didn’t mean to, ya know…” he trails off, turning down a side road. “I know you said things with your family aren’t the best.”
She shakes her head, looking out the window.
“It doesn’t bother me. I made the choice to leave.”
“Okay,” he nods.
He pulls off to the side of the dirt road where a patch of gravel serves as a parking lot. There are several other cars there, but it’s not completely full, and he puts the car in park.
He looks over at her, smiling again. “Ready?”
“We’re here and I still don’t even know where here is?”
“If you get out of the car, you’ll know in like, a minute.”
“Alright, you’ve convinced me.”
Percy jumps out of the car, coming to open her door the same way he always does. She steps out onto a blanket of leaves that paint the ground red and orange and yellow.
She looks up at him.
“My surprise is leaves? We drove an hour for leaves?”
“Funny girl,” he grins, stepping behind her. “Can I cover your eyes?”
She turns her head to see him, glaring accusingly.
“You’re lucky I like you.”
( She’s lucky.)
He kisses her temple just as she turns her head back around. “I know.”
One of his hands comes up to cover her eyes and he guides her down the dirt path. She opens her eyes a little, peering between his slightly spread fingers. She can’t catch much, but as they get closer to wherever they’re going, she hears the sounds of people laughing.
“Alright, we’re here.”
He moves his hand from her eyes to her waist, and in slightly faded orange letters, the sign above her reads Harvest Moon Farm & Orchard .
“You brought me to a pumpkin patch?” she smiles, turning in his arms.
He smiles back, holding her a little tighter.
“I remembered you talking about how you’d never been to one, and then my mom mentioned bringing you here, and, yeah. It all sort of fell together.”
She rests her head against his chest, looking in at the people bustling about. Children running, pulling on their parents’ hands, groups of friends taking pictures, a girl scout troop, and all of them are smiling.
“So I can add it to the list, then?”
She looks back at him. “What list?”
“The list of surprises you’ve liked, obviously.”
“I hate you.”
(She likes him. A lot.)
Percy laces his fingers with hers. “Whatever you say.”
Annabeth’s eyes drift away from him and back to the farm in front of her.
He tugs on her hand gently, taking a step forward.
“Well, c’mon,” he says. “You’re in charge.”
;
“Are you sure?”
Annabeth pauses in the middle of the crossroad, spinning around. There are six ways to go, not including the way they’d just come, and if it wasn’t for Percy having the mind to stop before coming into the crossroad she might not have known which direction they even came from.
“Of course I’m sure.”
(She absolutely is not. )
She has no clue where they’re going, and she’s pretty sure they were in this exact same spot five minutes ago.
He gives her a sort of skeptical look, pulling his pumpkin-shaped punch card out of his pocket.
“We’ve only found six of them,” he says. “We still have four more.”
“Okay,” she nods, turning back around.
She looks around at the different corridors formed by stalks of corn. They’re all identical going forward, and she doesn’t remember which one they took last time.
“This way,” she says, pointing to one of the ones on her right.
Percy comes up beside her, draping an arm over her shoulder and following her down the path. They get to another crossroads, this time with only a left or right path to choose.
“Left.”
She heads down the path and they come to another crossroad, and Percy chuckles behind her as they enter the same circular area they were in before.
“How the fuck ,” she says. “We only turned left. How did we get back here?”
“Don’t ask me. I’m following you.”
Annabeth groans, looking around. “How many more did you say we have left?”
“Four.”
“We’re never getting out of here.”
Percy laughs again. “We have to. You still haven’t had the pie.”
“There’s pie?”
“There’s pie.”
“We have to get out of here.”
“We could go back the way we just came,” he suggests. “And take that right instead.”
“Alright.”
They do, and Annabeth comes into the clearing at the end of the path before Percy, immediately stopping when she sees the hole punch.
She puts her arms out to stop Percy from walking past her.
“No,” she says. “You’re not allowed to go out there.”
“Why not?” And then realization crosses his face. “Oh, I see.”
“Shut up.”
He smiles, teasing. “ Of course I’m sure .”
“This is bullying.”
“No it’s not.’
“It feels like bullying.”
Percy wraps his arms around her waist, nudging her to walk forward. “Think about the pie.”
Annabeth hums, letting him push her toward the hole punch. She doesn’t really care about the pie that much, or the fact that he found the hole punch, and she especially doesn’t care when his arms are around her.
She bends down and hole punches her card. She stands up, and just before she turns around again, she hears the click of his camera.
Turning around completely, she sees Percy take the photo and put it inside of a little bag that contains several other photos from the day.
He shrugs when she looks at him questioningly.
“You looked cute.”
He tells her that often enough that heat shouldn’t still rise to her face, yet she blushes regardless, and he smiles and walks over to her, pressing a kiss to the apple of one of her cheeks.
“Come on,” she mumbles, leaning into him. “We still have three more to punch.”
Eventually—after far longer than it should have taken—they find the other three hole punches, and, miraculously, find their way out of the corn maze. He grabs them both styrofoam cups full of warm apple cider, and plates of the best homemade pumpkin pie Annabeth has ever had.
Now, he’s smiling at her as she laughs at a stupid comment he made. He snaps another picture of her, and she briefly wonders what he’s going to do with all of the pictures he’s taken, but then he tells her how pretty she looks, and she can’t think of anything else but him and how happy she is right now.
The daylight is starting to fade, and Annabeth can’t help but notice how the orange light of the setting sun makes everything look picturesque.
Her heart swells a bit when she looks at him. It’s crazy, she knows. Crazy to look at him and feel what she does after less than two months, but she doesn’t think she could stop it even if she wanted to. Sitting here, looking at Percy smile at her like she hung the stars in the sky, she thinks that he might just be the best thing that’s ever been hers.
She holds her hand out to him and he wordlessly passes her his camera. A gust of wind blows through, knocking some leaves off the trees and sending them flying behind him. An orange leaf lands on the top of his head, and he grins right as Annabeth takes a picture of him.
“Come here.”
She obliges, moving closer to him and slotting herself against his side. His arm comes up to wrap around her shoulders.
He presses his lips against her temple. “Thank you for coming with me today.”
Annabeth leans a little further into him. “Thank you for bringing me.”
“So it was a good surprise, then?”
She lifts her head up to look at him. “Definitely.”
“Good.” He pauses briefly like he’s thinking about what to say next, and then he squeezes her tight against him. “I’m glad I was here to share it with you.”
(She’s glad, too.)
;
Orange lingers a while longer.
Annabeth finds herself grinning at Percy as he swings his door open, immediately reaching toward her and pulling her into his arms, but she barely makes it into the living room before her breath catches in her throat.
Sitting on his coffee table, illuminated by the glow of a lamp, is a framed photo of her from last weekend at the pumpkin patch. She doesn’t remember him taking the picture—but then again, he’d snapped plenty of her throughout the day. She’s smiling in it, probably laughing at something he had said.
“That one was my favorite,” he says from behind her. “I mean, I liked all of them, but that one…”
She wonders if now would be a good time to mention that she’d framed the picture she took of him before they’d left her apartment, but then his lips brush her cheek, and he’s grabbing her hand and tugging her toward the couch.
“So,” he says. “I was thinking of things to watch, and then I remembered you saying something about liking Roman Holiday , and I figured we could watch that.”
That feeling’s there again, the one that makes her heart beat faster and makes her want to pull him close and never let him go. It’s so simple, simple enough that he probably doesn’t realize how much it means to her.
Having someone do something because it’s her favorite is a new concept to her, but Percy does it like it’s second nature.
He turns the movie on and grabs the blue blanket thrown over the back of the couch, and Annabeth curls up against his side. The blanket smells like oranges, the light citrusy scent wrapping around her just as comforting as Percy’s arms. It’s a fabric softener, she realizes after a moment. It reminds her of joy and sunshine and the camp she used to go to during her summers as a kid.
She tilts her head at some point, looking up at him. Her eyes scan his face, the freckles that are spattered across his nose. They’re more orange than brown in the soft light of his living room lamp.
He looks over at her after a moment, their eyes locking, and something about him makes her want to never look away. She wants to see where this goes, to follow him headfirst into whatever comes next.
Annabeth is familiar enough with art to know that orange is supposed to complement blue. And it does, she thinks. Orange complements Percy’s blue, and his green, and slowly she can see a world of color being painted in front of her.
☀☀☀
Purple has always been Annabeth’s favorite color.
It was the color of her sheets and the color of her favorite dress. It was the color of the clip-in bows she wore in her hair every day in second grade. It was the color of her pencil case and her doodle book, and the color of the stone in the ring her mother had left her.
Annabeth’s room was the only room in her childhood house— house , not home—where anything was purple, and she thinks maybe that’s why she likes it so much—it was something for her and her alone, carefully kept away so it didn’t bleed together with other colors.
She quickly discovers that that is not the case with the Jacksons.
Annabeth had all but puked on the subway ride over and, had it not been for the arm around her waist, she may have jumped off the train altogether.
It’s not as though she didn’t want to meet his family, it was just that she didn’t have the best track record with the whole family thing. She had learned too young that what families appear to be on the outside doesn’t always hold true once you work your way through the nitty-gritty details. After all, to someone looking in, her family had been the definition of picture-perfect—as long as she was out of it.
But here she was, standing behind Percy as he jiggled the key, opening the door to his parent’s apartment.
Purple is the first thing she notices.
It’s right there in the entryway, welcoming everyone into the home and stopping Annabeth in her tracks before she even crosses the threshold. It’s nothing special, just a watercolor painting of some lilacs—but then she notices the piece of printer paper taped to the wall beside it, a crayon-drawn replica of the painting, a messily scrawled signature on the bottom right-hand corner. Looking at it, Annabeth doesn’t remember any of her own art being hung around her house, let alone in the entryway where people would see it.
Percy nudges her shoulder, hanging his jacket on a hook and reaching to help her out of hers.
“You okay?”
She nods, shaking herself out of her head and pulling her eyes away from the drawing. “Yeah, I’m good.”
He eyes her for a second as though he doesn’t believe her, but he doesn’t press. She sees him kick his shoes off, and she does the same.
And then Sally comes out from the living room, wearing the same sweet smile she wore at the dinner when Annabeth had first seen her.
“Hey, Baby,” she says, pulling Percy down into a hug.
He smiles, pressing a kiss to her cheek. “Hey, Ma.”
Looking at the two of them side by side, it’s not hard to see how they’re related. They’ve got the same smile, the same dimples, the same inviting aura around them. They may not look exactly alike—Percy’s hair is a few shades darker and his eyes a few shades more green than Sally’s blue—but they’re undeniably mother and son.
Percy had warned Annabeth on the ride over that his mom was a hugger, but that didn’t stop Annabeth from being slightly taken aback when Sally let go of Percy and turned to her, arms open and a honey-sweet “Hello, Dear,” falling from her lips.
Annabeth takes a tense, hesitant step towards Sally, stepping into her arms. But any tension she’d had evaporated the moment Sally’s arms went around her. Annabeth doesn’t think she’s ever had a hug like this—one that pulls anything negative out of your body and makes everything else melt away—from anyone other than Percy. It’s easy, then, to see where he gets it from.
Sally’s arms stay tight around Annabeth, a hand lightly rubbing up and down her back. She quickly realizes that Sally isn’t going to be the one to end the hug and, despite thinking that she’d be more than willing to stay in the woman’s embrace, she pulls away and takes a step back.
“It’s lovely to officially meet you, Sweetheart. Percy’s talked about you quite a lot.”
Annabeth smiles, looking over to Percy. “You’ve talked about me, have you?”
A slight blush creeps up his cheeks and he brings a hand to rub the back of his neck. “Of course I’ve talked about you.”
“Oh, yeah,” a voice cuts into their conversation, and Annabeth looks down to find a little girl. “He doesn’t stop talking about you.”
The girl grins up at Annabeth. “I’m Estelle.”
Annabeth crouches down to her level. “I’m Annabeth.”
Estelle nods, looking over towards Percy. “She’s pretty.”
“I told you.”
Estelle ignores him, instead turning back to Annabeth and wrapping her arms around Annabeth’s shoulders. Hugging, she realizes, must be a Jackson family trait, because Estelle’s hugs are just like her mother and brother’s.
Looking at Estelle, there’s an even stronger resemblance to Sally. They’ve got the same mess of dark brown curls, and the same freckles dotting their noses. And when Estelle pulls away and smiles at her again, she notices that the three of them have all got the same smile, but her eyes match Percy’s almost exactly; just a few shades greener than Sally’s blue.
“Alright, Star,” Percy says. “Why don’t we move this out of the hallway.”
Estelle nods, grabbing Annabeth’s hand and tugging her along behind Percy and Sally. “Do you like pasta? Because we’re making pasta for dinner.”
Annabeth nods and Estelle grins up at her. “Good. Daddy should be back from the store soon.”
As if on cue, the door opens and a man walks in holding a brown paper grocery bag.
Annabeth has to do a double take because she’d thought that Percy had looked a lot like Sally, but he is nearly identical to his father—and there is no mistaking that the man in his father. They have the same green eyes and black hair, but there is a sharpness to his father in the same places where Percy has some of Sally’s softness.
Estelle rushes over to him, grabbing his leg while the man tries to take off his coat without dropping the bag.
“Did you remember to grab the food coloring?”
The man chuckles, picking her up with his free arm and kicking off his shoes. “What kind of dad would I be if I forgot the food coloring?”
“A bad one.”
He shakes his head at his daughter, walking toward the kitchen. He places the grocery bag on the counter, and then, as though he’d just now noticed her, his eyes settle on Annabeth, and a brief look of confusion crosses his face before he looks over at Percy and smiles.
“Ah, you must be Annabeth,” he says, turning back toward her. She nods at him, her shoulders tensing once more, but she gives a small smile. He offers his free hand out for her to shake “I’m Poseidon, but I’d much prefer if you called me something that didn’t sound so…”
“Old,” Estelle supplies.
Percy laughs from somewhere in the background, and Annabeth chokes back a chuckle of her own. Poseidon looks at his daughter, and then toward his wife who is only barely concealing a smile.
“She gets that from you, you know.”
Sally hums, pulling a carton of eggs out of the grocery bag. “I have no clue what you’re talking about, Dear.”
“Well, it is,” Estelle defends. “It’s in those old books, so it’s an old name.”
“You can call him whatever you’d like, honey,” Sally says, looking at Annabeth. “Just not old, apparently.”
Poseidon laughs again, looking back over to where Percy has wrapped an arm around Annabeth’s shoulders.
“It’s nice to finally meet you, Annabeth. Percy mentions you a lot."
Annabeth looks up at Percy, and he rolls his eyes, but there’s a slight blush painting his cheeks.
“Yeah, we get it. I talk about her all of the time.”
“You do,” Estelle chirps.
“Shush.
“Well…”
“Alright, kids,” Sally says, giving a pointed but non-threatening look to Percy and Estelle. “Come wash your hands.”
Estelle runs to the kitchen sink, grabbing a small purple step stool on her way, and Percy pulls Annabeth with him. There’s a bag of flour on the small kitchen island, along with eggs and a handful of forks. Poseidon walks past them, grabbing a few bowls from the cabinet and placing them on the island with the rest of the stuff.
Annabeth looks up at Percy as they wash their hands. “So when Estelle said making pasta for dinner ...”
Percy nods. “Yeah, we actually make the pasta. And the sauce. And the garlic bread, too.”
“And you all do it together?”
“Yeah, it’s our family time, you know? We’ve made all of our meals together for as long as I can remember. I’m pretty sure there’s a picture of me in a diaper and a little apron around here somewhere,” he chuckles. “I’m sure my mom would love to show you.”
Annabeth takes a moment to digest his words. Percy’s family dynamic is completely different from anything she’s ever experienced. She wasn’t allowed to step foot in the kitchen when her step-mom was cooking dinners, let alone allowed to help with the meals.
She feels herself tense up again and leaves her thoughts unspoken, but somehow in just the few short months since she’s met him, Percy has managed to get to know Annabeth better than she knows herself. So when those green eyes of his lock on hers, they pull the words out of her throat.
“I’ve never made pasta before.” Her voice is smaller than she’d like, and although her words don’t provide any context, an understanding fills Percy’s eyes.
He wraps an arm around her shoulder, pressing his lips to the top of her head. “Well, then I’m glad I get to share this with you.”
(She is, too.)
They walk over to the island where the rest of Percy’s family is standing around, and take up the side opposite his parents, with Estelle manning one of the smaller sides.
“Alright,” Estelle says, lifting a fork. “As head of the island, I declare that the pasta making can begin!”
She waves her fork like a conductor, and Percy nods seriously, grabbing a carton of eggs. From across the island, Poseidon salutes Estelle with an Aye, Captain, and Sally shakes her head at her daughter with a smile.
Percy hands Estelle and Annabeth an egg, and Sally and Poseidon get to work on their own carton.
Estelle and Percy crack their eggs, separating the yolk from the whites, and Annabeth watches, copying what they’re doing.
Soon, there are a few bowls full of egg yolks and one full of the whites, and Poseidon puts plastic wrap over the whites, sticking it in the fridge.
Estelle smiles, pointing her fork at Annabeth. “This is the best part.”
Annabeth smiles back, looking at Percy, but quickly looks back at Estelle as she lunges towards the bag of flour with a measuring cup, pulling out an overflowing mound of flour and plopping it down on the counter. A cloud of it fills the space in front of her, and she giggles as Percy fans some of it away from his face. When the flour settles, there's some on the front of her shirt and a little bit in her hair, but everyone is smiling.
Again, Annabeth is struck by how different this is from how she grew up. Both her dad and her stepmom were quick to anger if she made a mess anywhere, regardless of whether or not she had the intention of cleaning it up. If Annabeth had even thought of something that could make a mess, she was sure to hear about it.
But not the Jacksons. There’s no scolding or demands that Estelle cleans up her mess immediately or who-knows-what-will-happen s. Instead, Sally takes another measuring cup and grabs her own overflowing scoop before dropping it onto the counter in front of her. She was a little less careless than Estelle, so there’s not quite as big of a cloud of flour, but this time it’s Poseidon fanning the flour dust away from his face.
Poseidon raises his eyebrow at Sally, nodding slightly toward Estelle. “See? All you.”
Sally looks from Poseidon to Estelle with a smile, and some sort of silent message must pass from mother to daughter because in the next second they both have a handful of flour and are looking back at him with identical smiles.
Poseidon grins at them, reaching and attempting to grab some flour out of Sally’s pile, but Estelle strikes first, covering his arm and most of his shirt with her handful, and Sally’s gets his hair and some of his face.
Sometime during this, Percy managed to get his own handful of flour from the bag, and his first target is Estelle.
“Traitor!” She squeals as it hits her in the chest. “You’re supposed to be on our side!”
“There are no sides!” he insists, throwing his hands up to shield his face from Estelle’s retaliation. “Every man for himself.”
He leans towards the side just as Estelle throws another handful, and it hits Annabeth’s arm. Estelle gasps a little, and Percy turns to look at Annabeth. There’s flour on his cheek and in his hair, and he has a shit-eating grin on his face, and she finds herself smiling back at him. She brings a hand up to dust some of the flour off of his cheek, while simultaneously reaching for the flour with her other hand. and tossing some of it at him.
Then, war breaks out in the Jacksons’ kitchen.
A few minutes later, after the white cloud had settled and they’re all slightly coughing from the dust, Annabeth is positive that there’s more flour on the floor than there is left in the bag, but nobody seems to care. Poseidon brushes some of it off of Sally’s face and places a small kiss on her forehead, and Estelle rushes over to squeeze in between them right as they go for a hug.
“I want a hug, too,” she says, and they both wrap their arms around her.
Percy’s own arm finds its way across her shoulder, and she leans into him.
“Having fun yet?”
She nods. “Are all of your family dinners like this?”
He hums a little. “Not all of them. Just most of ‘em.”
She looks up at him and realizes that for the first time since she woke up that morning, she’s completely at ease. Any fears she’d had about meeting his family had melted away and been replaced by something Annabeth had never felt, even with her own family. It’s a warm feeling, a sense of belonging and connection, and Annabeth finds that she would love nothing more than to be a part of something like what the Jacksons have.
Eventually, they begin making the pasta, and Poseidon takes the food coloring out of the bag on the counter.
“Purple!” Estelle shouts at the same time Percy says “Blue.”
“No way, we made it purple last time,” Percy looks at Estelle, but the eight-year-old doesn’t back down.
“That’s because purple is better!”
“It is not .”
“Is so!”
Then, Estelle looks over at Annabeth, who is smiling at the two of them, and grins like she’d just had the best idea on the planet.
“Annabeth,” she asks sweetly. “What’s your favorite color?”
Annabeth looks up at Percy who sighs, knowing where this is going, and Annabeth says, “Purple.”
“See, Percy,” Estelle says. “We have to make it purple. It’s for our guest!”
Percy shakes his head at her. “You’re a menace. How did you know that Annabeth liked purple?”
Estelle shrugs, plucking the purple food coloring from the box and adding a few drops to her pasta dough. “Cause she’s cool.” And then, looking up at him and passing him the bottle of food coloring, “Unlike you .”
“You see what you did,” Percy turns toward Annabeth. “I’m getting bullied by an eight-year-old because of you.”
Annabeth smiles. “You deserve it; purple is better.”
“HA!” Estelle shouts, beginning to knead the food coloring together with her dough.
Percy looks over at his dad for a few seconds, and then his mom, neither of whom do anything to defend him.
He sighs at them. “Seriously? Nothing?”
Poseidon laughs, a deep laugh that has smile lines forming around his eyes, and he pulls Sally into his side. “You win some, you lose some, son.” And then, with a kiss to Sally’s temple, “As long as they’re happy, right?”
Percy nods with a smile, looking back at Annabeth. “Are you happy?”
In all honestly, this is the happiest she’s been around a family ever . This is the first time she’s truly felt at home anywhere.
So she nods and smiles up at him. “I am.”
(She really, really is.)
He knocks their shoulders together. “Okay. Good,” he says, putting drops of purple food coloring into his own pasta dough.
Later, when dinner is done and the kitchen has been tidied up, they’re all sitting in the living room as Estelle picks something to watch. Their hands are all stained purple from the food coloring they’d used, and she can’t help but notice that there’s more purple in the living room—the fresh lilacs in the vase, the fuzzy blanket tossed on the arm chair, the paint on the wooden coffee table coasters.
It’s refreshing to see purple everywhere, she thinks. Purple was something that was hers for so long, it had become almost a symbol of her being alone. Now, seeing it everywhere she looks, surrounded by people who love each other, who she loves despite just meeting and is almost positive they share the same sentiment, she realizes that purple isn’t a lonely color. Purple is something that is meant to be shared, to be bonded over with the people you care about. There’s a certain grandeur to it, one that makes the world feel lighter and makes everything just a little bit sweeter.
It makes Annabeth love purple even more.
☀☀☀