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She blinked at him, trying to figure out how the Iris Message was so realistic. Maybe her fever was tricking her brain, because Percy was supposed to be at a swim meet prep session right now, inexplicably in Queens of all places, not climbing through her dorm room window clutching a shopping bag that was full to the brim to his front.
“When I said—” she covered her mouth to sneeze, wincing slightly. “When I said I couldn’t come to your swim meet tomorrow because I don’t want to get everyone else sick, I didn’t mean for you to have to miss it too, Percy.”
“I’m not missing anything right now,” he said.
“Your coach won’t like it,” she tossed the tissue into the wastepaper basket — dangerously close to overflowing — and winced. The skin on her nose was rubbed raw. She was worried if she pushed it any further it would actually just start bleeding and she could walk around like she had frostbite and not just a little cold.
“My coach can suck it,” he said, eyeing up her bed and her desk, both of which were covered in papers. “Which are you less attached to?”
“Don’t touch anything,” she said. “Can’t believe I’m sick anyway. I thought demigods were supposed to—” another sneeze, only just covered up. This was so stupid. “Be above that.” She rolled up onto her feet, balancing her arm against the wall to keep her upright before Percy rushed over and held her up instead.
“Don’t let Rachel hear you say that,” he said, his voice half joking. “I’m not sure you’re in any state to be moving the papers, Beth. What if I just pile them up, right to left? Then I can set up and you can actually lie down on a real bed. You didn’t sleep on the beanbag all night, did you?”
She did not answer this.
Percy grimaced at her, his hair falling in his eyes. She wanted to push it back so she could see his eyes. She wanted to kiss that look off his face. But getting him sick wouldn’t help either of them. She would just have to kiss him later. “You can sort them back out later. I’ll help, if you don’t murder me for trying to.”
“You can bring me hot drinks while I do it?” she offered.
“Deal.”
“What’s in the bag?”
“You have a common room, right? With a microwave?”
“Down the hall,” she said. She knew that Percy wasn’t allowed in here. Right now, she was pretty sure he knew too. It was annoying, the way she knew things were supposed to be connecting up in her brain, but they just weren’t. “Fine,” she said, synapses finally firing correctly. “My hat’s in the closet. Top shelf.”
“I got two types of soup,” he said. “My mom said dairy was bad with colds so no broccoli and stilton, sorry. She did give me,” he checked the handwritten labels on the clear tupperware. “Chicken noodle, classic, and clear beef.”
Her mouth twitched upwards, “Tell her I said thanks. And thanks also, Percy.”
He kissed her on the forehead. She hadn’t noticed it happening, but her bed was clear again, and there were boxes and jars and lemons on her desk, next to a slightly teetering pile of papers. She stumbled over to it, burying herself under the blankets, pulling them all the way up to her neck.
Percy peered at a note taped to the bottle of tylenol, printed in Paul’s neat handwriting. “Two of these, every four to six hours.” He looked back down at it again. “With water.”
“It’s a pill,” she smiled at him. “You should always take them with water. Pass my bottle?”
She wasn’t sure when she drifted off but a few hours later she became vaguely aware again in a half-lit room. Percy was lying on the beanbag, staring at the ground but when she cleared her throat he looked up. “How are you feeling?” His voice was soft but not as soft as his hair looked. She wanted to run her hands through it.
“Have your soup first,” he said as she realised she’d said it out loud. “Give me five minutes, and it’ll be warm. Can you sit up?”
She wanted to say you don’t need to do this. She should have probably said I can take care of myself. Percy had places to be and she could heat up soup in the microwave. This was a cold.
But she didn’t say any of that. Because no one was here with her except him. And she didn’t want anyone here except him.
“Thanks,” she said, peeling her dampened hair off her forehead. She probably looked disgusting. But Percy had seen her after battle, during battle, in Tartarus. He’d seen her when she’d been stabbed by a poisoned dagger and nearly died. It wasn’t a big deal. “No one’s really done this for me before.”
He frowned, his eyes going wide. It was cute the way she could see his mind going in all sorts of directions. Questions about her dad, her time on the road, her time with Luke and Thalia, at Camp.
People had taken care of her before. She’d been sick before. Siblings had force-fed her soup while Chiron had read to her. Her dad had probably mopped her brow if she’d been ill as a toddler.
But none of them had broken into her boarding school dorm with home-made soup and medicine and hot honey and lemon just for her. None of them had sat for… she wasn’t sure but over an hour in a dark room while she was napping just to be with her. That was what Percy had done.
“You’re all good,” she said. “You don’t need to respond to that.”
His face flickered. She loved the way his freckles got trapped when he wrinkled up his face, half-smiling, half completely nonplussed.
“I love you,” she said, taking his hand. Her eyes were beginning to shut again. The best thing to do was to sleep it off. “G’night.”
“Love you too, Beth,” he said, kissing her forehead. “Sleep well.”