Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Had Sally Jackson really meant to end up having her son’s best friend stay over at their house for a week with no prior planning?

Not exactly, no.

Was she about to turn away the fourteen-year-old girl who was looking up at her with wringing hands and hesitancy in her big grey eyes?

Absolutely fucking not.

And so, she smiled softly at Annabeth, asked if she was okay to sleep on a spare mattress (yes) and if she minded them all stopping at the corner shop on the way home (no), and made a mental note the call Frederick Chase solely to curse him out over the phone and hang up again.

Granted, he probably hadn’t planned to leave Annabeth stranded at Camp, but then who in their right mind forgets they have to pick their daughter up and subsequently misses the only available flight to do so – and then just gives up?

Sally knew she would have gladly driven all the way from California to Long Island if it was Percy who was left alone there. She wasn’t going to say that out loud though, because she doubted it would make Annabeth feel any better about this whole situation.

She’d actually never met her properly before, other than when she drove everyone to their quest in the winter, and that had hardly counted, really. Still – even then, she’d felt protective over Annabeth, and Thalia and Percy too, obviously, because they were kids and they shouldn’t have had to go to some creepy old boarding school in the middle of winter to rescue two other kids just because their collective parents were too wrapped up in their own godly business to do it themselves.

Sally looked up at the rearview mirror. In the back of the car, Percy and Annabeth were bickering quietly about something, but Sally struggled to tear her eyes away from the matching grey streaks in their hair.

Percy still woke up screaming for someone named Bianca. For Annabeth, too.

She shook the thoughts out of her head and turned the music up. It was the Easter holidays, Percy was happy, and Annabeth didn’t look like she was about to start crying anymore.

Someone had to parent these kids. Sally figured that it might as well be her.

<><~><>

Annabeth stood back and watched Percy and Ms Jackson as they rooted through the frozen pizza section at the corner shop, debating the merits of different toppings and crusts and cooking times. Percy had already asked her if she wanted a specific type, but she’d replied that she didn’t mind.

She did mind. She really wanted an olive one. But she knew that Percy didn’t like olives and that he and his mother always got pepperoni with a tomato stuffed crust even if they’d spent ages being indecisive beforehand, and the thought of making things complicated just for the sake of a few olives made Annabeth want to throw up.

She didn’t know why she was making such a big deal of it. Logically, she should have been absolutely fine, because it was just frozen pizza, and she couldn’t even see any olive ones anyway, and Percy had asked.

Unfortunately, even her mind wasn’t always logical.

Logically, she knew she wasn’t imposing or being a bother, because Percy’s mother had offered for her to stay over, and Percy had been talking about sleepovers anyway for weeks. Illogically, she felt like she was most definitely imposing, because Ms Jackson was only buying frozen pizza because there was only enough of the stew she’d cooked for two people, which meant that she was going out of her way and spending money just for Annabeth, because her stupid father had missed the stupid plane, and she felt bad for her.

Annabeth hated it when people felt bad for her.

Eventually, Percy turned around and slid three pizzas – pepperoni with tomato stuffed crust, as predicted – into the basket in Annabeth’s hands. He was grinning, excitement radiating off him in waves, blond curls flopping over his forehead, and behind him, his mother watched fondly. Something in her expression made Annabeth’s chest ache a little, but she pushed it down to smile back at him, because she knew him and she knew he’d start worrying if she didn’t.

Percy’s apartment was warm and cozy and smelled like the ocean, just as it had the few other times that Annabeth had visited. Ms Jackson sighed contentedly and placed her hands on her hips.

“Home at last. Alright – I’m going to go and put these pizzas in the oven, you two take your coats and shoes off and put your camp stuff away.”

Percy nodded and started taking his shoes off, and Annabeth copied him. She felt a little out of place, off-kilter, not entirely sure what she was supposed to be doing. She’d been to Percy’s house before, stayed for dinner and played video games with him, but this was different. A whole week to take up space in their apartment, the unspoken knowledge that her father had forgotten about her again leaving every conversation tentative.

“We have a spare mattress that we can put next to the sofa for you, and there are about a million blankets lying around so you can just pick whichever ones you want.” Percy was saying good-naturedly, dumping his camp bag next to the sofa, “Oh – and I got a new x-box controller, so we can play Minecraft without having to hold the cable in the right place.”

He looked up and smiled at her, dazzling and warm as the sun. Despite everything, Annabeth couldn’t help but smile back.

“Sounds great, Seaweed Brain.”

<><~><>

Dinner wasn’t nearly as awkward as Annabeth had feared it would be, in part because Percy’s mother let them all sit on the sofa with a miscellaneous baking show on in the background, but mostly because everything was just so…nice.

There was already a mattress piled high with blankets and pillows in the corner of the room. Annabeth’s camp bag was tucked neatly next to it, her pyjamas laid out on top and being warmed by the heater. The pizzas were surprisingly good for having been in a corner store freezer an hour previously, the curtains were drawn, the lights were all warm and not too bright, and Percy was talking animatedly about camp gossip while his mother listened like it was the most interesting thing in the world.

“– so Katie never actually told me that she broke up with him, but I hope she did, because the alternative would have been that he dumped her which would make him dumb and rude which is even worse than just rude – anyway, so Blackjack saw her crying and then he obviously came to tell me about it because he knows we’re friends, so then I went to find Katie, but get this – Travis was already there!”

Annabeth paused mid-bite. “Hold on – what?”

Percy turned towards her now, his face painted in glee. “You didn’t hear?”

She shook her head. Percy shuffled around, his pizza forgotten on the side table, and grinned wider.

“Okay, okay – so, you know how Travis and Katie are always arguing but like, kind of flirting at the same time, and now everybody is just annoyed at them because they won’t actually get together and it’s all physically painful to watch?”

“Yeah.”

“Yeah – well, you also know how Katie was dating this mortal dude who was a major jerk to her, right?”

Annabeth nodded. “Right. So they broke up?”

“Yeah, and Katie was crying about it because, you know, emotions and stuff, and then I went to go and offer some tissues and-or baked goods because we’re friends, right? But then when I found her, Travis was already there, and she was hugging him.”

“No.”

“I know! So I made myself scarce to avoid impeding on the Moment that they were having, but I swear to… I dunno, but I swear that the next time I saw them both they were holding hands.”

Annabeth blinked a couple of times, stumped.

Travis and Katie. Who would have thought?

Well, not her, certainly. Silena was always gushing over how romantic it was when Katie came to their girl-talk lunches with news of whichever way Travis had decided to annoy her that day, but Annabeth had always been sure that it was just her Aphrodite-centric idealism talking. After all, she always said the exact same thing whenever Annabeth reported Percy’s latest feats of mental density, and Percy certainly didn’t do it as a sign that he was hopelessly in love with her as Silena claimed.

I mean – come on, Annabeth had been dropping hints for close to two years now. Percy was oblivious, but he wasn’t that oblivious.

…Was he?

He was talking again, this time about a clear blunder one of the baking show contestants had made, and Annabeth found her gaze drawn to the lamplight caught in his hair, the blue-green of his eyes, the way he always looked a little bit like a guinea pig whenever he got annoyed and scrunched his face up. It was cute. He was cute.

Annabeth shook the thoughts out of her head. Staying at his house for a week was complicated enough. She didn’t need any excess emotions making it worse for herself.

<><~><>

At the other end of the sofa, Sally watched her son and his best friend gossip and grin and laugh, and smiled to herself.

This, she decided, was going to be interesting.

Chapter Text

When Annabeth woke up the next morning, it was to daylight filtering through the still-closed curtains and the sound of sizzling bacon. A peek around the doorframe of the kitchen rewarded her with the sight of Percy poking at something in a frying pan with a spatula, still in his ocean-themed pyjamas, clearly going through great pains to be quiet so as to not wake her up.

Oh, Aphrodite help her.

Annabeth ducked back into the living room, grabbed some clean clothes from her bag, and retreated into the bathroom to get dressed. Her reflection in the mirror didn’t look as bad as she’d expected, considering she’d spent the night on a mattress in Percy’s living room, wide awake for the most part, thinking thoughts about missed flights and missing fathers and about how she most certainly wouldn’t be missed in the house in California that she’d never belonged in, not really, and she knew they used her room as spare storage when she wasn’t there and that Bobby and Matthew were her father’s real children, not her, and they hadn’t even recognised her when she first started going home after the summer –

Anyway. She hadn’t slept all that well, but she looked fine.

She washed her face, got dressed, brushed her teeth – repetitive, calming things that she did every day. It was just another day. Nothing to stress about.

Percy was sat at the kitchen table when she emerged from the bathroom, munching on what appeared to be a bacon sandwich. There was another plate of bacon next to him, a loaf of bread in the middle of the table, and he smiled at her when he saw her.

“Morning.” He said through a mouthful of sandwich.

Annabeth sat next to him. “Didn’t your mother teach you not to talk with your mouth full?”

Percy poked her on the arm. “Rude. But speaking of my mom, she’s gone to get some extra groceries and stuff, so it’ll be just us for a few hours.”

Just the two of them. Right. Annabeth wasn’t sure whether that was better or worse than having Ms Jackson there to remind her of what a good mother was supposed to be like. At least her presence had thus far given her a legitimate reason not to do anything stupid, like kissing her best friend over the bowl of popcorn they were sharing because of the way he laughed at a joke she made.

But now Percy was looking at her, so Annabeth just said something about how good it was that she was there to prevent him from setting the kitchen on fire and hit his arm in retaliation when he argued that she was much more likely to cause a natural disaster by trying to make toast than he was.

He was right. They both knew that, but it was fun to jibe regardless.

Annabeth fixed herself up a bacon sandwich before it got cold and munched on it slowly while Percy went to poke at his x-box. Soon enough, Minecraft flashed up on the screen, and Annabeth convinced him in record time to make up a creative world so she could build a model of the leaning tower of Pisa, if it wasn’t leaning. Slants were difficult to accomplish in Minecraft.

Ms Jackson returned a couple of hours later, carrying two grocery bags and whistling something that Annabeth probably could have recognised if she’d been paying attention. As it was, she was busy ordering Percy around to fill in the floor of the third storey of the tower, so she wasn’t paying attention.

“You two look like you’re having a nice time.” Ms Jackson said cheerily from somewhere behind them. Annabeth reluctantly put the controller down so she could turn to face her as Percy did the same.

“We’re building the leaning tower of Pisa, but if it wasn’t leaning.” Annabeth explained, just a little bit of pride glowing in her chest despite her ruffled mood. “I figured that Minecraft doesn’t have enough range of angles to make it actually leaning.”

Ms Jackson turned around, smiled at them, and then looked past them to the television screen and Annabeth’s half-built tower, and her eyes widened. “You built that?” she asked incredulously. Annabeth felt her face heat up, but nodded all the same.

“Percy helped.”

Percy himself waved a hand dismissively. “I’ve just been filling in floors when you told me to – you’re the one who actually figured out how to make a scale model of an infamous landmark on a video game.”

Oh, Annabeth was definitely blushing now. She wasn’t sure which make her more embarrassed; Percy’s praise, or his mother’s.

Ms Jackson smiled brightly a moment more, patted Annabeth on the shoulder, and carried on putting the groceries away. Percy kept beaming even as he and Annabeth turned back to the game, and Annabeth was fairly certain she wasn’t imagining the soft, warm glow that was humming in her chest.

Sure, the praise was a little embarrassing. But then, it was quite nice at the same time.

“Oh – what colours of terracotta did you want me to use for this floor, Annie?” Percy asked.

Annabeth thought for a moment. “Blue and grey.”

<><~><>

Annabeth, with Percy’s help, managed to finish the tower within only a few hours. Ms Jackson bustled around the apartment for a while, and then settled down in her armchair to work on the book she was apparently writing. Annabeth was sure she’d heard Percy talk about it before, but to her great shame, she couldn’t actually remember anything he’d said. Well, no matter – Annabeth still had five and a half days to be a helpful and attentive houseguest, because for reasons not entirely unbeknownst to her, she cared desperately about what Ms Jackson thought of her.

Time ticked steadily onwards, and they all had leftover pizza and salad-y bits for lunch, significantly elevated by Ms Jackson’s ingenious method of reheating the pizza in a frying pan, thus stopping it from going too dry or soggy. Annabeth made sure to compliment her thoroughly about it, and felt her heart beating out of her chest when she ruffled a hand over her hair in thanks.

This, she realised, was dangerous territory. Annabeth had never been good at emotions, especially her own – silly, gooey things that didn’t follow rules of logic or discernible patterns that she could predict. She had been slowly coming to terms with her mother’s lack of involvement in her life since the St Louis Arch, but that didn’t make it hurt any less when Ms Jackson inadvertently showed her just what she was missing.

Percy stopped talking about an extinct fish called Sacabambapsis and turned to her with a quizzical, and slightly concerned, expression. “You alright, Annabeth?”

Annabeth looked at him, an easy reassurance ready on her tongue, then paused. Ms Jackson had left the room, and this was Percy; kind, good-with-emotions Percy, who always knew just what to say to get her back from the edge of a downwards spiral. This wasn’t quite an edge, but she was getting steadily closer to one, so she allowed him to take her hand and focused her gaze on the floor.

“Your mother is wonderful.” She said mildly, trusting him to hear what she couldn’t make herself say.

And this was Percy, so much smarter than he gave himself credit for, who knew to simply squeeze her hand in response.

“Yeah. I know.”