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He’s late to the party because somewhere between debating whether or not to wear a hoodie, he debated if he should even go. He had never been to a party at camp before, but it was never on his bucket list anyway. The only reason he isn’t at the beach right now, or passed out in bed, is because Annabeth convinced him otherwise. It didn’t seem right saying no to her when it was the first time in weeks they carried on a civil conversation. You can leave anytime you want, she said, this just might be… might be our last chance for all of us to be together. She painted a lovely picture that way, made it seem like they would be making friendship bracelets, but Percy knows better. He saw the Stolls carrying poorly concealed bottles of alcohol into camp, and if he knows Katie Gardner, he knows there will be other substances as well.
Percy bites his lip and tugs on his old basketball team sweatshirt. “You know what, fuck it,” he mutters, and slams the cabin door behind him.
He tugs on the sleeves of his hoodie. It’s hot as hell in the Hermes cabin, but he’d rather faint from heat exhaustion than voluntarily display the burn scars that stretch and pull tight against the layer of skin underneath.
The pounding in his head is replaced by the harsh beat of blasting music. For a cabin that knows nothing but overcrowded kids with thin sleeping bags, parties are no exception to that standard. The room can barely hold twenty, let alone thirty drunk teenagers. The atmosphere is overwhelming, both in energy and smell. Percy looks around, trying to find someone he can hover next to before he bolts.
Thank the gods for Charles Beckendorf and his towering height. Percy exhales and makes his way over to his friend. Too late does he realize who is already with him: Clarisse, Silena, and… Annabeth. Or more accurately, Clarisse is talking to Beckendorf while Silena and Annabeth stand near, watching the crowd and whispering to each other.
“Hey, man,” Beckendorf greets him.
“Hey.” Percy tries to be quiet enough not to extract her attention, but it’s a fool’s errand. Her head snaps to him, curls flying, eyes wide. Her already flushed cheeks seem to grow darker in the vibrant lighting.
He wonders if something happened to her, like mentally, since he last saw her a week before tonight. She has a new piercing, a silver stud on the left side of her nose. The last time she got a piercing done at camp, she had been on a call with her dad about five minutes beforehand. Her thick hair is twisted into tight coils at the ends, half pinned up in a clip. With her doe eyes and glossy lips, she’s unfairly beautiful.
The light on her face shifts from deep blue to magenta to dark green. She leans into Silena, whispers to her, then leaves with both their plastic cups in hand.
Silena smiles over at Percy and winks. “She’ll be back, she’s just refilling our drinks.”
“Right.” Percy tries for a friendly smile, but he thinks it may come out more like a grimace. Great, so Annabeth is already drunk, or at least headed in that direction. He has only witnessed her in that state once, two months ago at his mother’s wedding, and it made him uncomfortable more than anything. Not that there was anything wrong with what she did or how she acted, he was just on edge the entire night. He doesn’t think he’ll be leveled out tonight, thirty against one. Maybe he’ll be able to answer the question of which is more unbearable: drunk kind-of relatives or drunk teenagers.
“You gonna get anything?” Beckendorf asks him.
“Oh, uh, no.”
“You sure?”
“Yeah, I will in a minute,” he lies.
Clarisse carries on her conversation with Beckendorf, Silena at her side and Percy included in their huddle. Percy looks around the room again, watching and observing. Clouds of smoke rise and dissipate in one corner of the room, and various drinking games carry on. Travis and Katie appear to be engaged in a drink off with some others cheering one or the other on. It’s funny, Percy thinks, how he might be the only person whose mind is still in the right place to remember this night for what it is. He’s not mad or anything, he chooses not to drink, but perhaps this is exactly what everyone desired in the first place: a chance to lose a piece of themselves willingly, before the world demands it from them.
“Hi, Percy.” In the blink of an eye Annabeth is in front of him, the carefully set distance between them painfully obvious. Her voice is loud above the music and eyes droopy, but energy high.
“Hi.” He shoves his hands in his pockets, one fiddling with his pen. He’s not feeling particularly confident, but he never planned to be. He thinks he can understand why people drown themselves with alcohol so they can cloud their thoughts. He still doesn’t like it, or what it brings out in people. He’s only known it to unleash the worst. He knows Annabeth could never succumb to that, but he can’t help himself from worrying.
Her lips are pressed together, and a newly filled cup is held close to her chest. “Having a good time?” she asks, a little awkwardly.
He tries for a smile. “Now that you’re here.”
She rolls her eyes. When she looks back at him, her gaze is piercing. He doesn’t know when she got so good at reading him, or why he finds solace in not having to explain himself to a person who knows exactly what he’s thinking. It’s both terrifying and comforting.
She’s quieter this time and steps a hairbreadth closer. “Are you okay?”
“Of course.”
She raises an eyebrow.
“I’m fine, Annabeth. Promise.”
She nods reluctantly and holds his gaze for a moment longer. Her eyes hold a tinge of red, and her tinted lips are pouted. He can’t remember the last time she gave him such a genuine look. It hurts that this time it’s only because she’s intoxicated. Despite the pounding in his ears, everything between them seems so quiet.
Kiss Me Thru The Phone starts to play, and Percy knows Annabeth loves that song for some inexplicable reason. She squeezes his arm briefly then widens the space between them, walking backwards. “Come find me later, okay?”
He assures he will, though they both know it’s a lie. She’ll drink more and gravitate towards people who return the same energy. Percy will watch, depleted, not having the strength to leave.
He doesn’t know whether the crater in his heart widens when she’s near or if it widens when they are apart. It doesn’t matter where he escapes to; she will always be a part of him, and that crater will always be present. He can’t do anything about it but let his heart sink in the ocean blue.
He sees her in the middle of the crowd, cupping her free hand around her mouth to shout six-seven-eight-triple nine-eight-two-one-two.
Maybe given the way they can’t bring themselves to be too close for too long, their differences are finally too grand to ignore. They built a precarious wall between them, one mutually agreed upon through harsh words spat like venom. He hates fighting with her, and it’s the bane of their now rare time spent together, but he sees no better options given the circumstances.
A choice will be made in just over a month, one that nobody is brave enough to tell Percy about. Annabeth has kept the details inside ever since she met him, and it’s eating away at them both.
It always felt like everything between them was leading to something bigger, like they were meant to be more. Signs of affection shifted from friendly kisses on the cheek to ‘you’re about to die so I’m going to kiss you’ kisses; Percy doesn’t know what to make of it. He will gladly misinterpret every lingering touch and squeeze of his arm if it will save her from an even bigger heartache. He thinks about her prophecy, the way he demanded an answer out of her, drawing her to tears. It’s a sickening feeling, evoking such a reaction from her, one he has had the displeasure of becoming more accustomed to in the last year.
A deep voice brings him back into focus. “You gonna tell her, or do I have to?”
The last thing Percy needs right now is someone else’s opinion on Annabeth. He’s grateful that Silena has moved on to somewhere else. “Tell her what?” he asks, knowing damn well what Beckendorf was implying.
“Dude, try to be serious for a second.”
Except Percy is very serious. What could he possibly tell her? Percy will leave her in just a few months. It’s not by choice, it would never be by choice, but it will happen regardless. To fill that ache he knows resides in her heart as well, just to tear it away when August approaches, would be nothing short of cruel. It’s a selfish fantasy to have her in his grasp for such a limited time. Once Percy’s gone, he won’t know the difference, but Annabeth will be living with a new kind of pain every day. He doesn’t know if he will ever understand what he means to her, but he’ll misinterpret every glance she casts his way if it saves them from ruin.
“It’s hard to explain,” he settles for.
“I don’t believe that.” Beckendorf shakes his head and crosses his arms. He’s wearing a muscle tank, and Percy hates himself just a bit more for coming to this party. He looks away and exhales slowly, trying to cool the burn he feels spreading across his cheeks.
“I’m not asking you to. Stop bugging me about her, alright?”
“Okay.” He raises his large hands in surrender and maybe surprise at Percy’s abrasiveness. Sherman jostles Beckendorf, and the two shove each other around and shout, too loud. Percy takes that as his cue to leave.
He finds Silena and Clarisse on the couch, her legs draped over Clarisse’s thighs. He plops down next to Silena, not caring if he’s third wheeling.
“No no no,” Silena is in the middle of saying. “Holographic basically has two sides, right? One with whatever metallic color, commonly silver, and the other a complete roy g biv rainbow shift. Iridescent is a shift of a few singular colors, typically pastel greens, purples, pinks, and blues.”
Clarisse shakes her head. “That makes no fucking sense.”
“Are you on something—I explained that perfectly.” She turns to Percy and gives him a quick glance insisting, “Didn’t I explain that perfectly?” Without an answer she turns back to her girlfriend. “How are you not getting it?”
“I just don’t give a shit.”
Percy tunes out right about there, despite how riveting the conversation is. His eyes find Annabeth’s, much to his regret, and she quickly turns around to pour herself another drink. His eyebrows raise as she half-stumbles into a table. Connor Stoll saves the day by steadying her. If anyone thinks Percy’s brooding, that’s no one’s business but his own.
“That right there?” Percy hears Clarisse say to Silena, bringing him back to the present, minutes or hours later. “That is unserious.”
Silena makes a disgusted noise. “You know how many times I told her?”
“Not enough.”
Percy follows their gazes, and his eyes land on her immediately; he could pick out Annabeth in a crowd anywhere. He sees her staggeredly dancing to Justin Timberlake, but what ices the blood in his veins is who she’s with. His hands on her, lower than Percy ever wants to see, and her arms around his shoulders. For a demigod, Percy’s reflexes are impeccable, but his feet are glued to the floor. He can’t help but watch in slow motioned horror as their bodies edge closer and closer together, until Percy thinks he may puke his empty stomach out. When he watches him whisper in her ear, and they not so casually leave the cabin hand in hand, does Percy regain agency of himself.
“You’ve gotta be fucking kidding me,” Percy mutters under his breath, rising out of his seat, the blood in his ears rushing.
Silena hooks her foot around his ankle, and he almost loses his footing completely.
“What the hell, Silena?”
Silena keeps her foot locked in place, eyes narrow. “You got a plan here, or are you just going to start a fist fight?”
The only thing on Percy’s mind was go to Annabeth, but yeah, that probably would have resulted in a punch. Or multiple. “You’ve seen her this whole night. She—she’s not in her right mind, she doesn’t know what she’s doing.”
“Annabeth can take care of herself.”
“I know that,” he argues, angry and frustrated. Silena’s voice is annoyingly soothing, and Clarisse is eyeing him in silence, anticipating his next move. They are too calm about this, too okay with it. They are too trusting that everything is alright, and that there isn’t a guy out there just begging for a black eye.
“Why are you guys…” why are you acting like this is normal, he means to say, but that’s when it hits him. This isn’t the first time something like this has happened. He doesn’t know to what extent, not sure if he can stomach the excruciating detail, but he’s certain they aren’t hiding shocked expressions. He senses other eyes on him as well, amped-up onlookers begging for a fight. Percy was last to the party, again.
He levels a glare at Silena. “Will you unhand me so I can get a drink?”
Silena’s eyes show a warning before she lets go. He stumbles over to a table with rapidly emptying bottles of who-knows-what, praying that there’s water. He finds a plastic bottle, sensing that it's a hundred percent water, before chugging half of it.
Maybe Connor knew her before Percy came to camp, a life Annabeth lived without Percy by her side. Annabeth was always more outgoing than him, but there’s always an undeniable pang of jealousy placed deep inside Percy when he thinks of all the things he missed out on with her. Friends who cheered Annabeth on when she became a counselor, or held her when she cried about a home in Virginia that was not hers. If Connor Stoll of all people was her solace when she was kicked down, Percy wishes he came to camp a lot sooner.
He thinks he can finally breathe when he steps out into the night, but she’s right there, stuttering his breath. Annabeth sits on the steps by herself, elbows on her knees and palms covering her face, fingertips digging into her eyes.
“You’re alone?” he blurts out.
She doesn’t turn around. Her voice is sad and slurred when she questions, “What does it look like, idiot?”
He edges as close to her as he dares and takes a seat next to her.
Her shaky hands drop to her lap. She has yet to look at him. “You really don’t have to sit here with me.”
“What if I want to?”
Annabeth shakes her head once. “You don’t want to. You hate being around drunk people. It’s a wonder you even stayed this long.”
He doesn’t say anything to that and instead hands her his half empty water bottle. She mutters her thanks and drains the rest.
Maybe it’s an inexplicable pull that keeps Percy by her side when space could fix everything. He remembers a rainy night three summers ago, on a porch similar to the one they’re sitting on now, moths swarming a yellow light. He could feel her braids hovering over his bloodied face and how she called him the one. The one who would save her from mundane camp life and take her on adventures. Percy wonders if she blames him for only bringing heartache and indecision into it. He thinks Annabeth has a hand in his pain as well, but it doesn’t feel right to blame a person who has only gotten the short end of the stick her entire life.
Annabeth clears her broken throat. “So, is this night living up to your expectations?”
His head turns to her. She still hasn’t looked him in the eye. “Considering my expectations were in hell,” Percy responds, “yeah pretty much.”
She hums but doesn’t say anything. The world goes quiet again as the bass inside the cabin is faint and the flashing lights are a shadow behind them. Annabeth’s eyes are wide and glassy as she gazes up at the stars above.
He can count the nearly invisible gathering of freckles dotted across her face like constellations. Their knees are barely touching, and she’s too close. He can’t help but imagine the purposeful distance she would set between them if she weren’t intoxicated. Percy selfishly grabs onto what her hazy mind offers.
He thinks loving her is his most selfish act yet. He wants to call her his, wants to hold her hand freely, wants to appreciate her beauty with more than stolen glances. He wants he wants he wants. Within all that wanting, reality rears its ugly head.
He hopes she won’t remember much of this night, but Annabeth is her mother’s daughter. The goddess who thinks quick as a whip and spews scripture that can inspire armies to do as she pleases. Wisdom herself, who was born from her father’s cracked skull. Athena, who gifts her children excellent memory.
Percy, who wishes he could dive headfirst into the Lethe.
She finally looks at him. Her expression wears a new kind of intensity, one that sets his heart running. “I’m gonna raise that bar, okay?”
“Go ahead,” he breathes.
She grabs his hand as she rises, pulling him to his feet. They eventually find a clearing that Annabeth seems satisfied enough with, not another soul in sight other than the two of them.
She looks at him expectantly. “Have you ever done this before?” Her voice is still slurred a bit, but she’s not stumbling anymore.
He tugs on the sleeves of his hoodie. “You haven’t shown me yet.”
“Oh. Right. Okay, just—watch.” She spreads her arms out wide until they’re in a level line, stares at him, and states, “You have to be looking at the stars the whole time.” She begins to spin and spin, eyes half open and head tilted towards the galaxy. She resembles a helicopter with a failing engine; her movement is anything but graceful. Percy wants to tell her to stop before she twists her ankle and gets a mouthful of dirt. A second later she loses her balance, still spinning, and collapses, unmoving.
“Annabeth!” He rushes to her limp body, not knowing what to do, until she rolls over and starts giggling. A lot.
Percy is not amused. “You are still so fucking drunk, Chase.”
She gives him a familiar smile and whispers, “Your turn.”
Her expression is so sweet he can imagine that they are in a different place under different circumstances, and she’s not seconds away from puking on the grass. Suddenly they’re fourteen years old again, and the world demands so much less of them than it does now. They’re supposed to be sleeping, but Annabeth is out on Percy’s fire escape. Percy was sentenced to the couch by his mother, and Annabeth got his room. Some time around God’s unholy hour he woke up to a scream followed by a curse. When he ran to his room, he found the window wide open and Annabeth’s shivering silhouette standing outside. What happened, he asked, climbing through the open window. Just a nightmare, she responded, barely loud enough over the wind. Go back to sleep, Percy. She tried for a sweet smile, but the faraway look in her eyes told him a different story. He shook his head, and she didn’t protest. They stayed outside, watching the city below them in familiar silence, as their fingers grew numb and the sky blurred into shades of purple and orange.
Percy shakes the memory from his thoughts. “I don’t think it’ll be as effective for me as it was for you.”
She props herself up on one elbow, still smiling that soft, inviting smile. “Simple physics, Perce. It’ll be fun.”
“Is that how physics works?”
She shrugs the best she can in her position. “Spin, loser.”
He rolls his eyes and dramatically spreads out his arms. He follows her example, watching as the stars blur into streaks of flaming white. His head feels too big for his body, and his center of gravity shifts. Woah. Next thing he knows he has a mouthful of dirt.
Annabeth cackles. “I thought you were gonna fly away for a second, you didn’t have to do it that long!”
Percy’s head is swarming. If he’s sober and won’t even attempt to stand, he doesn’t understand why Annabeth proposed to do this.
“C’mon, we’re doing it again.” She raises herself to her feet, body swaying.
“Seriously? How can you even stand?”
“Couldn't tell you.”
Annabeth tugs on his hand, trying with all her might to pull him up. He stumbles into her, and she steadies him with strong hands on his shoulders.
“Ha! I’ve got it. I’m not prone to motion sickness.” She grins wide and triumphant.
“I’m not either. And I’m not drunk.”
“I dunno, maybe they cancel each other out.”
Percy frowns. “Oh, obviously.”
Her hands slide down his shoulders, and she backs away from him, arms spreading. She and Percy rise and fall again and again, spinning around like little kids, the moon above a beacon of their stability.
Their legs give out onto the prickling grass for the about fourth time, almost knocking their heads together. Percy starts laughing until they’re both a giggling mess of limbs. Eventually the laughter calms into quiet shakes of their shoulders. He rolls on his side to find that Annabeth’s already looking at him. Her tired eyes are crinkled, her clothes stained, her hair loose. She’s so close. So close that, even under the cover of night, Percy can focus on the thin scar that runs under her eye.
She reaches forward to twirl the gray in his curls, thumb brushing against his forehead. He can feel her light breaths fan across his face; smelling vaguely like rubbing alcohol, the back of Percy’s throat burns. Above all, the scent of lemons is overwhelming. Her eyelids retract to meet his. She whispers, “Percy?”
“Yeah?” he answers, too quickly and too quietly. His heart is pounding. The music that’s far away, too far away to even hear the bass, can’t drown out the frantic beat.
Her lips part like she wants to say something, but the words die on her lips. She edges closer and closer until they’re almost nose to nose. Percy doesn’t dare move, not trusting himself to give in to her pull. Suddenly the air has a chill to it, and she’s backing away to lay flat on her back.
“So. You ever done that before?”
Percy shakes his head, confused at her shift in demeanor, and lays down next to her. His head never stopped swarming. “It was fun.”
Annabeth nods. She traces a scar on her abdomen, skin exposed from the cropped blouse she’s wearing.
“Are you okay?” he asks her, needing to know.
“Why wouldn’t I be?”
“Something about you tonight, I don’t know.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
Percy hates that dreaded question with a burning passion. His heart jolts when he hears it in any conversation. It’s a gateway for arguments, and Percy is burnt out for the night.
“Nothing,” he relents. “You just don’t seem like yourself.”
“I’m still me, aren’t I?”
Percy can’t help but exhale a laugh at that. It’s a sorrowful thing. “Yeah, you are.”
“And you’re you.”
“Unfortunately.”
She punches his arm. “Hey, no self deprecating bullshit tonight.”
“I’ll try not to.”
Her eyes shift focus to the world above, but all Percy sees in his mind is her.
The glittering night sky, free from light pollution, is a sight to behold, but a galaxy exists within Annabeth’s eyes. One wouldn’t know from afar, or even at a reasonable distance, but there are golden flecks streaked in the grays of her irises. The shades of steel and gray and brown and gold whirl together into a painting not far off from the swirling form of a planet.
What a wonder it must be, he thinks, to admire the world through Annabeth Chase’s eyes. She will always be a sort of enigma to him, a colorful array of questions yearning to be answered. Above all, he wishes he could understand her.
She nudges his arm. “Thanks for coming tonight, even if you didn’t enjoy yourself. I know I didn’t help.”
“You’re helping right now.”
“Percy, you hate being around drunk people,” she repeats from earlier. “I know I asked you to come, but if you stayed so long just because of me, I’m sorry you were uncomfortable.”
“You didn’t make me do anything. You were right. About the last chance and all that. It was… nice, seeing everyone just be normal for one night.”
“I wouldn’t call some behavior normal, but yeah.”
“Do you know who won the drink off?”
“Between Katie and Travis? Katie, obviously. That retching everyone in the vicinity heard was Travis puking his guts out.”
“Good.” As an afterthought, he adds, “Stoll deserves a humbling.”
She tenses next to him. “Got something to say to me?”
“It doesn’t matter,” Percy mutters. “You can make your own decisions.” Even if said decisions are stupid as hell.
“Wow, really? Thanks for letting me know.” She scoffs. “Do you think you have a right to be jealous—to judge me?”
“If I don’t then you don’t either.”
“Please, those are not the same thing.”
“Why him?” he finally asks, frustrated. “I mean of all people, Connor Stoll? Really?”
Maybe it wouldn’t matter as much if Percy didn’t have the knowledge of what it was like to feel Annabeth’s lips pressed against his, even if it was for just a moment, and she pulled away before he could return it. What it was like to feel her eyelashes brush against his skin when her hand twisted in the collar of his shirt, bringing them together. What has Connor Stoll ever given her that he deserves the same experience—even more so for that matter—than Percy has? An uncomfortable feeling twists in his gut, leaving his mouth sour.
“Stop being all judgmental when you don’t even know what you’re talking about—”
“So help me understand,” he demands.
Annabeth grits her teeth. “I don’t know, okay? Maybe it doesn’t make me a good person, but I can’t find it in myself to care.” She lets out a heavy sigh, a fraction of a broken scream in her voice. “It feels like everything is happening all at once and in slow motion at the same time. You’re never here, but… but he is, and maybe I take his kindness for granted, but I think I’ve earned the right to be selfish for a while.”
Percy can imagine that she’s not even speaking to him; she’s at confession, talking to a screen with an invisible listener on the other side. Or maybe Annabeth knows exactly who she’s talking to and why she is allowing herself to do so.
“It’s like my heart and my head are constantly having a screaming match,” she continues groggily. “No matter what I do, nothing can shut it up. I don’t think I’ll be able to stop the screaming until the war is over.” Her voice is a little wobbly when she speaks, “But who knows what everything will look like when one side eventually wins.”
“We’ll win,” Percy says immediately, for both their sakes.
The fireflies burrow in the grass underneath them. In the stillness of the night, with no onlookers, it feels inappropriate to keep secrets and speak only half-truths.
The girl next to him, only just turned sixteen years old, has been hurt and betrayed by every person she ever allowed herself to let in. Percy vowed to himself years ago in Siren Bay that he would only do right by her. Maybe it was a naive promise, but he hates himself for letting her get away. Her face is mere inches from his, but he can imagine she’s somewhere in the stars instead, connecting the constellations with electric blue yarn.
She bears a heart of glass and built strong hands so as not to drop it. Annabeth, who shed tears over having to say goodbye to a demon dog in the Underworld. Annabeth, who cries at every ASPCA commercial she can’t force herself to tear her eyes away from. Annabeth, who sobbed so hard in an underwater bubble that her tears flooded the air around them.
She cracks a smile, eyes brimming with tears. “You’re really optimistic, you know that? It’s one of the things I like most about you. I know you don’t think that way in your head, but you always do your best to make everyone around you feel better. I really admire that.”
Percy feels a prickling burn on his cheeks. He doesn’t know what to say other than, “Oh—uh, thanks. I try.”
“So I’m right?” Annabeth asks, shifting to lay on her side and placing a bent arm under her head. Her hazy eyes, smeared with mascara, do that piercing thing again. “You don’t think that way in your head?”
He laughs, a little embarrassed. “Most of the time, no. I’d say in a life or death situation, which is kind of every other week, the only thoughts running through my head are ahhhh shit fuck I’m gonna die fucking hell noooo where’s Annabeth.”
She giggles. “We’re gonna go deaf with all this screaming.”
He runs his fingers through blades of grass. “Yeah I guess so.” He shifts on his side, mirroring her position. They’re too close again, but neither pull away.
Percy thinks he can forgive her for tonight if she keeps looking at him like that. Her eyes are red and heavy with the need for sleep, but the calm that shrouds her settles something in his soul.
“I never told you that.” He pauses, wondering for a brief moment if it’s a mistake to continue. She lets him. “That I don’t like being around drunk people. Or just—you know, alcohol in general.”
Her face scrunches slightly, sympathy etched on her face. “I saw you at your mom’s wedding. And from the limited knowledge I have of your childhood, I get why you don’t drink.”
Said knowledge is incredibly limited, but Percy isn’t surprised she figured it out. It’s hard to hide anything from the daughter of Athena.
“Well… thanks.”
“For what? Being a decent person and not harassing you about it?”
“Understanding, I guess,” he shrugs. “Without me saying anything, you always just seem to get it.”
She gives him a wry smile. “You’re my best friend. I know you.”
If Annabeth truly knows him, he finds it hard to understand how she hasn’t run in the opposite direction yet. He doesn’t deserve her, and he doesn’t know how we could ever convince himself of the opposite without lying.
The way they care about each other so implicitly was always strong for two young teenagers. He thought it came with the demigod territory, and in a way it does. He would have been dead years ago if he didn’t have someone like Annabeth to blindingly trust. One says jump and the other asks how far. But when he looks at her, beautifully broken and hardened when she was too young, the need to look out for her hits so much deeper.
It snuck up on him in little waves, each sign an unnoticeable rivulet until the crash grew too big to ignore. He should’ve seen it sooner. He should have seen it when the goddess of love wore her smile. He should have seen it when she hugged him so so tightly, like she never wanted to be separated from him again. He remembers dancing on Olympus when something between them shifted. He couldn’t put a name to it, but at that moment he knew things were different. The song playing in the background was sad, but it also instilled a feeling of hope in his chest. He finds himself replaying that theme more and more when he’s with her.
Maybe stolen glances and rushed kisses are all they’ll ever be.
Percy watches as her eyelids grow heavy until they don’t open again, and he soon follows suit. He can’t find it in himself to raise his heavy body and carry her to her cabin. Using their arms as pillows, they fall asleep with stiff necks, their backs damp from the dewey grass.
When the sun hits just the right angle to finally wake him, he’s alone, grass pressed down where she once laid.
He imagines he’s floating down the Lethe, and not a sickly sea of green. The prickling he feels on his skin are dew drops extracting memories from his pores. It doesn’t matter; he’s leaving soon for the city anyway.