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There was no question in anyone’s mind, let alone his own or Annabeth’s, that he tended to be very childish from time to time. Or lots of the time, whenever he wasn’t at Camp helping Chiron and the younger campers, or out on a quest from the Gods.
However, when Percy was at home with Annabeth, he had nothing holding back his very childish self, which was balanced out perfectly by Annabeth’s, not that he’d ever admit as much out loud, ever, seriousness and perfectionism.
Annabeth worried about appearing confident, mature, and ingenious. Percy only worried about keeping his family safe and enjoying all the free time he could get. Most couples that were so opposite usually wouldn’t work well together, but not them, they worked perfectly together. Yin and yang. Or something like that. It was Annabeth’s job to be the brains of their operation, not Percy’s.
Anyway, none of that was too important with the matter at hand.
What was important at this very moment in time was that, while Annabeth was the brains of the couple, which definitely made Percy the brawn, that didn’t mean that Percy was by any means dumb. Despite what certain people wanted to think about him. And, if there was one thing, or in this case one person, that Percy knew better than anyone else, it would be Annabeth Chase.
Not too many people were ever able to convince Annabeth to do something she wouldn’t typically do. Percy just happened to be one of the very few people that could.
From the very first day since she’d been given the title and position of Olympus’s Architect after they defeated Kronos and Luke all those years ago, Annabeth had taken the role incredibly seriously. She always pushed herself to make her self-assigned deadlines, never canceled or rescheduled a meeting with any of the Gods, and she had only taken three days off in the just over four years of having the responsibilities. And that was only because she’d gotten a brutal cold, maybe from him, that seriously kept her bedridden for those three days.
All of that led to Percy’s absolute genius making its appearance in late December, just a week or so out from Christmas.
They were both on their winter break, which was three weeks long from New Rome University, and they were back on the East Coast in their house in New York, just over an hour away from Mom, Paul, and Estelle. While she hadn’t told him as much, Percy knew from the calendar she had on the wall above the desk in their office, that Annabeth didn’t have any deadlines due or any meetings that day. Perfect.
Between knowing that Annabeth’s schedule was open and that there were a few feet of freshly fallen, untouched snow just outside their front door. How could he not use it to his full advantage?
Annabeth almost always woke up and started working on whatever she figured she needed to for the day about two hours or so before Percy rolled out of bed. And today was no different. By the time Percy finally woke up and pulled himself out of their bed, Annabeth’s side was already cold once again, he had already formulated the perfect plan. But, before he could execute his perfect plan, he had to make sure that Annabeth wasn’t going to pick up on his mischief before he was ready for her to.
Percy shuffled into the kitchen, pouring himself a mug of coffee from the still hot pot Annabeth had made before he wandered to the office where Annabeth was working away at something. “Morning,” Percy called from the doorframe after a few moments of silently watching Annabeth work, mostly muttering to herself, as he sipped his coffee.
When Annabeth jumped slightly at his voice, obviously wrapped up in her work enough that she hadn’t heard him rustling around. And Gods was Percy glad he could hide his grin behind as Annabeth shot him a short glare before she replied, “Good morning, I wasn’t expecting you to be up so early.”
“Oh, yeah?” Percy returned, only now realizing he didn’t actually know what time it was, just that the sun had already risen for the day, “Well, I would think you’d know that I’m full of surprises, Wise Girl.” All he got in return was an eye roll before Annabeth turned back to whatever she was working on. He could’ve just walked out then and gone into phase two of his plan, but instead, Percy stuck around just another second, taking another sip of coffee before asking, “I thought you didn’t need to be working on anything today?”
“I don’t,” Annabeth answered him, scribbling something out on the paper spread across the desk, “but if I can just get a bit ahead on this one thing for Chiron then I might be able to get a jumpstart on a new project that the, for the Hunters.”
It was odd that Annabeth still avoided saying the names of the Gods after all this time. But, then again, Percy had never had any qualms with invoking any of the Gods’ names for any reason. So who was he to judge her in the first place?
Rather than voice any of those thoughts, however, Percy instead simply replied, “Alright, well, then have fun with that. And I will be around if you want to do anything fun once you’re done.” and turned on his heel before he could say anything else that would either give away his plans or land him in some hot water with Annabeth.
Before anything could go wrong, or before he could be scared out of actually doing it, Percy set his coffee mug down on the kitchen table, hoping that it would be well enough out of the way for what he was about to do. Once he set aside the mug, Percy decided to grab another plastic cup from their cupboards, taking a short pause between each action to make sure Annabeth hadn’t randomly decided to take a break from whatever project she was doing for Chiron. When he didn’t hear anything coming from the office indicating that Annabeth would be walking out and about anytime soon, Percy took the plastic cup he’d gotten and, as quietly as he could, pulled open their front door and he didn’t even need to take a step outside to scoop up a cup full of snow before shutting the door again as quickly as he could. Mostly so Annabeth wouldn’t notice the cold draft blowing through their house and come to investigate because he left the door open for too long.
With his cup full of snow and Annabeth still, hopefully, oblivious to his plan, Percy used the urgency that had been instilled from doing all kinds of quests and favors for the Gods and fighting all kinds of monsters and deities for about a decade of his life, he moved back from the front door to just outside the door frame of the office. Percy, with bated breath, carefully sucked the snow out of the cup with a bit of help from his ‘son of Poseidon’ powers and into the palm of his hand, keeping nearly all of the snow snow and not melting into a puddle in his hand too quickly.
Between Percy’s ability to move in near silence when he focused enough, paired with Annabeth’s hyperfocus on her work, his plan went off without a hitch.
Annabeth hadn’t even seemed to notice that he’d returned to the office, and it wasn’t until he dropped the handful of snow down the back of her shirt. There wasn’t even a second between Percy dropping the snow and snatching his hand back before Annabeth blindly swiped right where his hand had been; and Percy couldn’t help the laughs that escaped him as Annabeth jumped out of her skin. However, as soon as Annabeth whipped around to face him, Percy had maybe half a second to bolt out of the office before she was yelling after him.
“You are dead, Percy Jackson!” Annabeth’s voice somehow managed to carry throughout the house even if she had yet to leave the office, probably still shaking snow out of her shirt, “Dead!”