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She watches Percy’s form retreat inside the house, swallowed by the crowded bodies. Annabeth never minded the ash, but right now it stirs a sickness inside her gut. She runs her thumb along the coral above her heart, rough and steadying.
“That’s pretty.”
She turns back to Jess and smiles tightly. “Thanks.” She adds, “Percy got it for me a few years ago.”
“Oh, you didn’t meet here?”
“Gods no, we met when we were twelve.”
“Aw, so you’ve always known?”
Annabeth considers, needlessly. The smoke burns her lungs and she blows it out in a thin stream. “Yes.”
Her eyes crinkle. “But, like, how though?”
She’s gotten this before. This look of high school sweethearts? Not gonna last. She usually doesn’t bother to explain. But these last few weeks have been filled with distance and strain, and so maybe she’s really speaking for her own benefit when she says, “Percy’s the best person I’ve ever met.”
“Just wait,” Kimia says with a knowing smile that makes Annabeth falter. “Annabeth’s got a leash on him.”
Jess nods approvingly. “How all straight couples should be.”
Annabeth takes another drag. The conversation shifts to the typical party small talk topic of shitty music selection (“Where are the 2000s white girl hits?”). It’s just bass. How is anyone supposed to dance to this?
New York’s going through its last hot spell before the leaves fall off their branches for good and the wool scarves come out, so standing outside doesn’t freeze her nose off. Inside is sweltering in slick bodies; Annabeth was happy to follow her friends, new and old, outside.
The half moon is shockingly clear tonight, so different from the previous cloudy haze, aglow and mystical.
A drunk guy yells at them from the balcony above, asking to bum a cig, and Annabeth finds herself missing Percy’s fire escape. Their tiny house has an even tinier porch, but all that stares back at them is a dilapidated fence and tree branches. No more existing at the same height as birds in flight and peering down at the city dwellers, like ants going to and from their kingdoms of sand.
How many drunk college kids does it take to toss a guy a cigarette? Height’s a factor and the light breeze contributes as well, and Annabeth isn’t about to hand her half-full pack to a guy she’s never seen before in her life. So, she removes all but one cig, holding the bunch tight in her fist and tosses the pack directly above her. Her friends laugh the whole way through, alcohol guiding humor. The empty pack drops to her free hand and she slides the eleven remaining cigs in.
One day her mother will take away her cap for all the petty theft she commits. Annabeth thought she’d care about the gift being used this way. It’s more evidence that Athena isn’t watching.
The great thing about college is all the people you meet. It’s vastly different from the population of about a hundred that camp typically held. All these classes and clubs and events with people from such different backgrounds is fascinating. Annabeth sometimes wonders if she’s more interested in learning of all these new minds as opposed to genuinely wanting to hear what they have to say. Parties are one of the best sources for these social experiments.
She once asked Percy if this is a bad thing, if this particular interest means she’s insensitive. He just stared at her with this stupidly soft and wondrous look on his face, chin resting over his palm on the counter.
“It’s bad, isn’t it?”
He began to smile. “Please never change.”
It was then that Annabeth realized she’s been doing that for all her life, always the first step, alongside introductions. She’d examined an unclaimed Percy as a specimen under a microscope, herself properly equipped with gloves and a smock. What makes you tick? A prod here, a poke there. She sealed that petri dish and kept him in the pocket of her coat.
Percy kisses her temple and spins her with an arm around her shoulder. She’ll never admit it, but she can’t get enough of the height advantage he has over her. It makes her feel caged in the best way possible. Overwhelming, overpowering, all because he has to tilt his head down to look at her.
“Stop, stop,” she giggles, dizzy. “I’m too drunk.”
“Ready then?” His voice is warm. She tries to breath him in but the late night has frozen her senses and the surrounding sweat and booze override any drop of hope.
He leans down to her hand to take a drag and she lets out a noise of surprise. Rare, but it does send a little thrill through her when she isn’t alone in her exploration of such substances.
“You guys pull off the matching hair.” They look at Jess. She vaguely gestures above her forehead.
“Right,” Annabeth says. She often forgets that other people can see the gray, and they think it was an intentional choice. “Thanks.”
Annabeth takes a final drag and extinguishes it on the brick, flicks the butt into the trash a few paces ahead. She likes how the smoke lingers on her fingertips for hours after, evidence and reminders. The inverse: strawberries in the summer, the juice sticky between her fingers as the bees buzz around her.
She knows Percy doesn’t care much for parties. He really just comes for her sake, partly due to his instinct to protect her, and partly because she’s at her best with Percy at her side. It’s uncomfortable for her to be someone’s priority, that her happiness might be the reason someone forgoes their own.
Thalia died for Annabeth’s safety. Luke stayed somewhere he hated for her benefit. Percy’s sacrificed himself a million times for her life. Going to shitty house parties isn’t exactly comparable to these, but the guilt is familiar.
Sure, he likes to spend time with her and that’s rare to come by these days, but Annabeth thinks the actual reason he follows at her heels to the parties is because he’s lonely.
Annabeth told herself in junior and senior year that she didn’t need friends because who could she possibly want to talk to and spend more time with than Percy? That sentiment remained in a similar realm her first year of college. Friends would come when they came. She didn’t need to force herself into a disingenuous friend group so everyone could put on the facade that they were adjusting well and didn’t miss home.
But Annabeth has friends, has met some really great people in her classes, happily shared supplies with them at midnight in the studios. Percy doesn’t have friends and she can’t breach the topic in any way that doesn’t sound rude or like she’s his mom.
She checks her watch, forcing herself to focus so the little hands stop blurring out of place. A little past one in the morning. Goodbyes are said, a few not said but those people will live, and Percy’s arm is steady around her waist as they creak down the porch steps and step away from the heat of dozens of bodies.
“Can you walk?” he asks, holding her against his side.
“I’m not that drunk.” Her voice sounds fine in her ears. Maybe a little whiny.
“You said you were too drunk five minutes ago.”
“I’d pass a field sobriety test.”
“I know you would.”
It’s a quiet street and even quieter for this time of night. Annabeth knows for a fact she’ll be getting her step-mother’s car when her brothers get their licenses in a few months, so then she and Percy won’t have to walk to and from parties anymore. Adding two people to limited carpool options can get a little crowded, unless it’s only her. He usually has a drink or two, just enough for a buzz that settles by the time they leave. Annabeth floats further away. Percy would rarely show up to the parties at camp, but growing up comes with change.
Annabeth could never picture herself at college until after the war was over. Sure, graduated campers often chose to enroll in higher education, but the daughter of Athena was never one for school. She never once yearned for germ-infested desks, several increments of staying still and paying attention for an hour straight, and relearning how much neurodivergent children were hated. Annabeth skipped first to sixth grade, after all. She was an even bigger outsider, requiring extra time on tests and so she could walk down empty halls to the office so an administrator could read out assessments for her. Percy recounted the horrors of spelling tests and how those days filled him with so much anxiety he’d often cry. As if Annabeth didn’t have enough reason to be grateful she ran away when she did.
Streetlamps guide their way along the sidewalk, painted with wet leaves. The soles of her feet ache. Percy would carry her if she asked. She’s partially surprised he hasn’t already. It’s like with little children, a stage Estelle is at right now. They cry to be picked up, but no, you have to act your age and start walking on your own.
“I got offered coke,” Percy says.
“No fucking way.”
“Yes fucking way. Dude looked like he was on way more than that.”
She takes his face in hand and swipes under his nose with her thumb, gasps. “Perseus Jackson.”
He pushes her hand away, grinning.
“I’d do it,” Annabeth says. “Just to see what it’s like.”
“Not at a sketchy house party.”
“Yeah, I guess I value my safety.”
“Heath’s another question.”
She licks her lips and tastes smoke on her tongue. Irritation is like picking a scab that refuses to peel.
Annabeth knows Percy resents her consuming work, her packed schedule, her fixes, just like she resents his silence and the hours he disappears to swim while she sits in their apartment hunched over a drawing pad with nothing but the finicky air conditioner to keep her company. He doesn’t need to train for the swim team, but it’s all he has.
The workload beats Annabeth down, holds her to the ground by the neck. Something she hadn’t dealt with thus far in her life was a demand for intangible output. With Olympus she was actually making things, building from the ground up and having her work stare back at her, pristine and guaranteed to stick for a millenia. College, at this point, is barely past foundations. Her life’s work, packaged in an ancient city that she can’t tell anyone about. She can’t shove it in the faces of the peers who look at her like she doesn’t even know what a quoin is.
Annabeth attempted to test out of several classes within her major, only succeeding past the first couple levels. More variety, they wanted. An intimate understanding of this style and this problem and that solution and she finally hit the point of fuck it, she’ll take Structures: General Structure class. She’d regret not taking more APs if she hadn’t been one bad day away from a mental breakdown throughout high school. She did well enough in the end, all thanks to Percy. He was her beacon of light through the thick fog, then and now. He was always there to talk, to decompress, to rant to. Now, it’s quieter. There when she needs him, and she’s trying so hard not to need him.
Percy’s still chugging away at gen eds, still uncertain as to where he wants his life to go where his girlfriend isn’t concerned. His drive in life is her. It’s sweet and insane. Annabeth is of the belief that he’ll take a gap year after this semester, perhaps choosing to not continue with college at all. Percy has to come to that conclusion on his own. They both know Annabeth’s input only aggravates him further.
( “You won’t know unless you try something.”
“That’s a lot of fucking money wasted on I don’t know.”
“You have a scholarship! Why are you even here?”
That was one of those fights Annabeth tries to block out of her mind the second as recalls it. Where logic was the basis but pointed insults were thrown out by the handful. She just felt awful and learned to never force Percy to examine his life choices. Gods. )
He’s started bullshitting majors and dream occupations when people ask him. Underwater welding is a crowd favorite.
Annabeth knows Percy has her back. This, she has been given ample time to accept, and accept she has. She just wishes her happiness wasn’t reliant on his own, and vice versa. He’s miserable when he tries to hide it, and even worse when he can’t.
Her stomach splits in two. If she was impaired enough, she would be able to feel the alcohol slosh around inside.
“Baby, can we eat?”
“Yeah, I think there’s still some leftovers.”
She gives him a hopeful little grimace. “I’ll use my dad’s pity money?”
“I mean I guess if you wanna keep shoving nasty shit into your body.”
“Calm down.”
“We literally have food at home.”
“It’ll be like ten dollars.”
“That’s not insane to you?”
“Fine, we don’t have to.”
“I never said no, I don’t control your money.”
“Yeah, so save the judgement.”
“It’s just unnecessary.”
“Not everything has to be a necessity for you to buy it. You’re not a kid anymore.”
She can feel him suppressing a bitchy comment.
The fluorescent lights of the Wendy’s sign strike an ache behind her eyes. The lights inside are off but a line of cars sits in the drivethrough.
“Well congrats,” Annabeth says. She’d eat straight trash at this point. Fast food isn’t far off anyway.
Percy begins to walk to the lane.
She shakes her head. “You’re ridiculous.”
And so they order fries and a vanilla milkshake, standing in the drivethrough with cars on either side of them, headlights blinding her vision. Annabeth giggles, calling it—or them—so fucking stupid.
“Do what you gotta do,” Percy says. “I don’t care. Seriously.”
She looks at him. The headlights produce a halo of white around his head. “It’s just that you act like this is all I do.”
“I know you don’t. I just notice it.”
He notices everything about her a bit too much. A trait of his that was already intense, but only multiplied when they moved in together. Living with someone is just holding up a big sign that says “notice every little thing about me that I can’t hide!”
Annabeth hasn’t eaten fast food since she was seven. Her Percy-resented purchases are typically coffee and sandwich related. She’s just always in a rush to get to her morning classes and is too fatigued to make her own before she’s off for the day.
The wind sends a chill through her top and black tights. She closes the leather jacket around her middle. Percy’s wearing a simple crewneck and jeans. Yes, he is one of those insane guys who wears shorts in the winter. He can claim he doesn’t need anything warmer, but she grabs his hands to warm up her own and they’re cold too, fingers pink.
Percy holds the ice cream and Annabeth holds the fries. The salt waters her mouth. She already feels more put together, like the string of a long stitch has been tightened ever so slightly. Annabeth doesn’t realize she’s tracking his hand as he reaches for a fry until he—get this—dunks it in the ice cream. Eats it like this is a normal thing.
“What are you doing?”
He looks at her, thick brows scrunched together. “You’ve never dipped your fries in ice cream?”
“No.”
“What the shit?”
“What do you mean ‘what the shit?’ It’s perfectly normal to not have done that.”
“Seven years. Seven years I’ve known you, how did I not know that?”
“You learn something new every day, Percy.”
“You’re unbelievable. Take a fucking fry and dip it.”
“I didn’t know this was so personal for you.”
She takes a fry and dips it.
“It’s alright,” she lies. It’s great.
“You fucking liar.”
Annabeth shrugs. Then she realizes she’s set herself up for never combining the two again while he’s watching.
“Now we have another address to avoid,” she says. They’re away from the main road again, closer to their home.
“No, tonight was better than last time.” She tilts her head at that and Percy adds, “DJ knew his shit.”
She stares at him, tired eyes squinted.
“That’s actually why I went back inside, had to ask him when he’s coming back.”
“Oh no, you’re trying to make me mad, but I won’t let you.”
“What, I like riling you up.” He bumps into her shoulder. “You get there so quick, it’s easy. And hot.”
“You don’t like it when I rile you up.” She dips a fry.
“Because it’s easy.”
“Okay, Percy.”
“I’m not even gonna comment on how you just dipped a fry, by the way. Two, actually, you heathen.”
“You just did.”
He snorts, and Annabeth smiles at the sound.
Percy’s the best person she could hope for. She knows this. She’s lucky she has anyone at all. But sometimes only having one person who understands you grows exhausting. Annabeth finds herself wishing for a mother, of all things. The worst part may be that Athena does love her. She knows that, too, but she can’t talk to her, would never think to share anything personal or emotional. Her mother would be so disappointed.
If she’s watching now, she’s surely disappointed. It’s all Annabeth knows. She didn’t think she was missing out until she heard of one Sally Jackson. Her understanding, her want to know what’s plaguing one’s mind, her comfort. Annabeth and Percy grew up in completely different worlds, and their mothers are the starting points.
Annabeth didn’t catch a single word exchanged between Athena and Percy up on Olympus, but she saw the looks on their faces. The mutual disdain, her best friend’s devastation. No, she wasn’t giving him a hard time. Percy’s a terrible liar. One thing he did tell her was that he nearly mistook mother for daughter.
He hates her parents and she hates that. Frederick and Athena are still her parents and it upsets Annabeth so greatly that he didn’t have better luck with her second set of parents, either. There’s something isolating in being loved so fiercely by Percy Jackson. It was just the cards dealt to Annabeth that the people who were supposed to care for her treated her in such ways, but Percy’s loyalty makes her feel bad about it.
It’s wrong to forgive her father, to accept her mother’s crumbs of attention, to mourn Luke. She can’t even dish it back to him because the only person who can think of measuring up to how wonderful Percy is is the woman who shaped him that way. Sally’s the closest thing Annabeth has to a real mom, and yet that chasm will never seal itself shut.
Thalia, on the other hand, is more like a memory. A stand-in for what a mother should be, taking care of Annabeth’s hair and opening up her jacket to let Annabeth burrow inside when the shivers were especially violent. Then she was a ghost, then alive again. Two months as a mother, six months as a sister, and that is where their story ends.
“I hate how being here just makes me think about being a kid so much,” Percy says. They can’t read each other’s minds, but sometimes Annabeth thinks they share the same thoughts.
“College is like a holding center between childhood and adulthood.”
“Kinda fucked.”
Her and Percy’s childhoods were different, but the melancholy in thinking about what they left behind with age is the same. Annabeth crumbles the greasy paper and takes Percy’s left hand in her right one, putting them in her jacket pocket to warm up.
She’s in her fifth or sixth home, moving along, doing what is supposed to come next. The demigod world is an inherent contradiction to the mortal world. Demigods die young. Annabeth grew up knowing this. She had a first hand account of this, the morning light rising after the storm, being told that tree was her Thalia. She could make out her form in the bark: the outstretched spear as a thick branch, the shifts in the body, molded to her fighting stance.
The real world is where the monsters are. Camp doesn’t prepare its occupants for anything. What is a life made up of hiding inside magical barriers, praying for a chance to leave, the world swallowing you whole when you finally do. It isn’t just the monsters who exist outside, it’s everyone. Mortals and gods alike. Annabeth could share a cabin with her siblings, strategize war games and tutor newcomers on their Ancient Greek, but she’s never further from her mother than when she’s at camp.
Athena helped Percy when he was trying to rescue her. In person. She actually showed up for her daughter, unlike the Sirens’ song. What does it mean for the goddess to only aid her daughter when Annabeth isn’t present to see it?
Graduated campers are a rarity, even more so since the war. The gods promising Percy to claim their children does not guarantee them their lives. All it is is a cabin to call their own. When Annabeth dreams of building things that aren’t commissioned by minor gods or worth a sizable percentage of her grade, she dreams of a haven for older demigods. Those ready for the real world but still deserving of a safe place to rest.
At the age she is in the place she is, she finds herself often confronted with what it means to grow up. She’s been on her own for a long time, that is nothing new. It’s the rest of the world colliding with what was her norm. Camp was no stepping stone or temporary paradise for her, like it is for the seasonal campers. Not once has she seen a graduated camper return, and she can understand, even if she can’t relate. It’s home and she never grew out of it, even on her last night two summers ago.
She’s the same age now that Luke was when he left. They’re a candle lit at both ends. Luke, trapped at camp and Annabeth, wishing she could stay forever.
Percy understands the comfort and safety camp provided. He understands—the same as every demigod—that nowhere is more accepting than camp. But to him it was a few magical months of every year.
Any person who can relate to Annabeth is dead or long gone. Maybe she’ll call Clarisse, who’s been in Arizona the last few years. She can count on one hand the amount of times they’ve been emotionally vulnerable with each other, but she thinks she’ll be able to put another finger down after this call.
Even when she started going to school, the promise of camp in the summer kept her going. There isn’t much to keep her going anymore.
Their walk is quiet, just shoes shuffling along pavement and occasional rushes of cars from a nearby road.
( “I’ve run out of everything to say to her!” Kimia bemoaned, falling onto her bed in a huff. “What do you and Percy talk about?”
“I’ve known him for six years. We don’t always need to talk.”
Kimia huffed.
“Random shit,” Annabeth offered, closing her laptop. “Literally anything that comes to mind.”
“We’re not there yet.”
“Oh. I was immediately there with him.”
Kimia threw her cow plushie across the room, hitting Annabeth’s shoulder. “Fuck you, and fuck your soulmate.”
“I don’t think you’ll find your soulmate at a boiler party.”
“You weren’t even looking for him.”
She frowned. “I think I was.” )
Percy fishes in his pocket for their key. Theirs, theirs, theirs.
Annabeth groans, pressing her forehead into his chest. “We smell.”
“Have to shower.” The bronze key fits through the lock.
“Together?” she asks slowly, hopefully, probably smiling up at him a little dumbly. He smiles too, close mouthed and soft. That smile she’s never seen him put on for anyone but her.
Through the door. Their house with its blue walls and golden drapes and how happy they were when their desire to move in together was finally verbalized. Annabeth was previously under the assumption that houses are only bought when people get married, but it was in a better location, halfway between their respective schools, and it’s theirs until the summer. The floorboards creak and every time the lights are switched on and off, she’s scared a circuit will break. She’s definitely scared whenever she has to plug in her hair diffuser.
Annabeth doesn’t know a life without routine. She slips off her jacket and hangs it on the coat rack, unlaces her boots and kicks them off by the door. Her blurred vision has fallen into place. She hears the groan of the pipes with the shower turning on, but Percy’s in the kitchen, making her pre-hangover cure. The continuation of routine. The school year’s barely started and she already wishes it was over, yearns to get back to summer.
Her arms feel extra heavy, so he puts her hair up for her.
His scars soften under the hot water. His skin is unbreakable, but they still have to be careful. They wash each other with gentle hands and lemony bubbles in the cramped shower. There may or may not be a problem with the pipes but Percy keeps it in check.
“Feel okay?” he asks, dropping a light kiss to her neck. She nods.
They just get stuck in their heads. Annabeth loves Percy and he loves her, and if she thinks about that for too long, she’ll start crying. He’s here, actually here and not a companion she conjured up in her bunkbed, more alone than ever as Luke drifted further away and the nasty scar reminded her why. Percy’s a true friend, someone she can talk to, laugh with, cry to, sit in silence with. She needs to remind herself of that—remind them both—when that casual yet earth shattering intimacy seems to be forgotten. It isn’t a memory, it’s who they are when they help each other carry the burden. What a burden it is.
Annabeth would do anything for him in a heartbeat. He’d do the same for her all while telling her their love is not transactional. Another lie. Percy is the most suffocating, fulfilling love she’s ever known.
The water energizes him like expected, and Annabeth wants to keep this night going as long as possible. She applies moisturizer and hands Percy his burn scar remedy with a pointed look. He unscrews the lid. She brushes her teeth but can still taste the smoke, sticking even after all the salt and vanilla and mint.
Stepping out of the steamy bathroom sends a shock through her, lighting her body up in goosebumps. Annabeth slips on a baggy tee and basketball shorts, free from the confines of a tight top and tight skirt.
The tea is the right temperature by now and that considerate routine is another bullet point in the miles-long list of Percy’s kindnesses towards her. She tries to think of the kindnesses she offers him. Her ankles are crossed right above his knees, half sitting up against the couch cushions. A single lamp bathes the living room in warmth, and the quilt over her body helps too. Annabeth wishes she didn’t need the first half of the night in order to enjoy the second half.
One of her favorite recent memories is when she and Percy traveled from thrift store to garage sale to scouring the internet, on a mission to furnish their empty house. It really is a small house, just one bedroom and a kitchen where two is a crowd. But it’s theirs. The hope of summer had not yet faded with the late August heat. A stained couch, mismatched pillows, a few lamps, an unstable dining table. Everything being secondhand makes the place feel lived in, and not inhibited by two ghosts who are barely present enough to live in it.
He picks at the acoustic guitar they found at a yard sale. For about the first month of owning it, Annabeth tended to leave the house while he played. Now, he can strum pretty tunes that lull her to sleep. He knows a few songs but prefers to pick away at random, making up themes that neither will remember the chords for later. (“Just write the goddamn notes down, Percy.” “Just live in the goddamn moment, Annabeth.”) There are few things more beautiful than watching someone create.
Watching him swim is something different. It’s like she can feel him, knows his BPM and the exact moment he’s going to resurface to take a breath, though he doesn’t need to. These tricks sorted themselves out in high school quite well, granting him a hefty, extremely well deserved scholarship.
She watches his fingers pick at the strings, the metal vibrating after each pluck.
“Can you play Wonderwall?”
He laughs under his breath, shaking his head. “Shut the fuck up.”
He’s good at it. It isn’t just the strings or melodies that captivate her, but his fingers. Lithe, scarred, nimble. Annabeth’s fascinated with many features of Percy: his eyes, his nose, his jaw, to name a few. Especially his height. But his hands captivate her the most. Freckled, scarred, and discolored with splatters of pink and white. Hands that clench into fists with anger and open in an offering to her. That offer his heart and hold her own beating, bleeding. Recognizing that she knows who he is, he knows who she is, and if they can give each other grace, all will be well.
Annabeth begins to hum, no tune in mind but fitting for the soft strumming all the same.
These free weekends are growing further and further apart. They’re going to the farmer’s market tomorrow morning, even if she’ll be hungover and he’ll want to sleep the day away. It’s the last one of the season. They might walk around town after, judge people’s houses and make up stories for each brick and awning the porch swings and chipped paint. On Sunday they might stay in bed, stay with each other, if the connection is true and free of resentment.
“We should travel,” Annabeth thinks aloud, wistfully. “Get out of New York.”
He quirks an eyebrow. “What’s better than New York?”
“European getaway. Recreate some 90s French films.”
Going to an expensive school means a majority of the students are rich, which means you’re a loser if you’ve never been to Europe. That entails people saying, “Oh, you have to go!” as if she can just hop on a plane at whim and spend a week in Spain. A girl in Annabeth’s English class literally detailed her and her mother doing that not too long ago. Actually, Annabeth can’t talk. She’s just regurgitating many of Percy’s lived experiences.
They don’t get much time together outside of waking up and going to sleep. She likes these limbos of choosing to stay awake long into the night, for the sole purpose of existing in each other’s space with their eyes open. Or sometimes Percy will wake with her before her morning classes, and they’ll get one blissful hour together in that hazy stage between bleary eyes and fully awake.
I do it for you, you do it for me is her mantra. Unsaid transactions of caring for each other. Doing their laundry, washing their hair, helping them write out flash cards. Little things to make the burden lighter. To remind each other—and themselves—that they care.
When they first began dating, Annabeth had admittedly been a little nervous as to how their change in situation would change them. They never knew each other outside quests and downtime at camp. Would Percy still be interested in the Annabeth who was no longer able to challenge him in a sparring match? It was so strange how her confidence regarding her place in his life came and went. As if she wasn’t the person in his mind, tethering his life force. As if he didn’t share such a disastrous secret with her so readily. It’s so grand she can hardly conceptualize it. The little things shouldn’t matter. But that’s why they do.
They did break up a few times last year, what with discovering one’s self and all, but rough patches, right? They knew they would get back together every time.
Traditions carry over and die, from high school to dorm life to a shared house. They still have movie nights every Saturday, they no longer hang out at skateparks, and they now eat breakfast together on Tuesdays.
Something that was revealed with this change in circumstance was that Percy doesn’t do well with school either. Annabeth had known about that for a long time, of course, but seeing it in action was different. A shock, since Percy was the most intelligent person she knew, second to herself. High school could have been alright if not for their demigod lives clashing with this. Sleepless nights and they thought the Curse meant Percy was free from pain. Not true. The burn scars that tear open, stretch him tight, go up in flames. Nightmares that plagued him in sleep and flashbacks that tortured him in daylight.
College was different, but quickly proved to be hellish in its own right. Seven classes reduced to four, but the class times increased and so did the value of assignments. The nightmares and flashbacks let up with time, but not the pain they brought. Annabeth is of the opinion that that’s worse. Those breaks mean to lower their guards until one night they wake screaming, tremors possessing their bodies head to toe, skin to nervous system.
She sets her mug down and places her hand over his own, reaching for the neck of the guitar and laying it over the coffee table.
“You don’t always have to go out with me,” she tells him.
“I know.”
“But you do anyway.”
“I like spending time with you. It’s kinda hard to come by.”
She breathes deeply. “Sorry.”
“I didn’t mean it like that.”
“Just saying if you’re gonna come with me then actually be there.”
“What’s wrong?”
“What I said.” Her throat closes up. “I don’t know. I want…”
I want to go home is the rest, but that place doesn’t exist and she doesn’t know what she’s looking for. She has Percy. It seems like everything she’s done was a long, winding road in search of a home and finding solace in Percy. The structure is unwavering. And yet the road hasn’t ended.
If Athena is watching, it isn’t out of the question for her to be proud, in fact. Dedicated to her craft, not letting human pleasure distract from her classes, whatever the hell is going on with Percy. Who cares about the shit Annabeth puts in her body if it means she’ll wake up more ready than ever for her next drawing assignment.
Sometimes Annabeth gets scared that her passions only stemmed from a need to please her mother. Construct a monument in the goddess’s name, fill your head with knowledge because Athena always has a plan, weave and strategize not because you can, but because that is what you were created to do. Percy isn’t the only one a product of his mother’s making.
“Sometimes,” Annabeth whispers, “I miss you so much I feel like I’ll go crazy.”
He looks at her, in that way that overwhelms her. Like he needs to catalogue every microexpression she makes, like he’s trying to anticipate every move she makes. He takes her left hand, thumbs on either side of her ring finger. “You have a freckle here.”
“I know.”
“You know what I really like about you? How much you feel. How you hold so much love.” He pauses. “Even for people that don’t deserve it.”
She thinks of the man who once shared the gray hair with them, the one who had the same scar that tears down Annabeth’s cheek. She looks at the man in front of her.
“Are you emotionally available enough right now to unpack how you include yourself in that group?”
“You sound like Grover. And no, not right now.” He turns to her, arm resting over the back of the couch. “I wanna talk about you. It’s, like, my favorite thing to talk about. Literally anything happens, and I’m reminded of you. There’s some required reading. ‘Oh, my girlfriend’s read that.’ ‘Do you take this class?’ ‘No, but my girlfriend did.’”
Her heart warms. “I like talking about you, too.”
“What do you say?”
“How you’re ridiculous but in a good way ‘cause you’re really funny and sweet and how your music taste is kind of trash—”
“Hello?”
“—but it’s really the only music I listen to. And we’re a lot more similar than you may initially think and we can’t sing for shit, but that doesn’t matter.”
He leans forwards to kiss her sweetly. “I love you.”
She can’t help but think of how they only utter those three words when in need of reassurance. She says them back.
Circumstances change and people change, but one thing that never will is their devotion to each other. What could sever that? A young Annabeth was a faithful demigod. Trusting the gods, loving them, choosing their side without question. Faith is having confidence in something there is no proof of. Annabeth has proof of the successes and failures of the gods. The blind faith has been torn at the seams. Annabeth’s eyelids were pinned wide open, forcing her to not only look but see. Faith extends to outdated proof. She may not have faith in the gods anymore, but she has faith in Percy. From outdated proof to what she can still see to be true.
She moves closer and swings her right knee over his left hip. His hands find her thighs like a magnet, fingertips skimming along the edge of her shorts.
“Still smell?”
He tilts his head, gives a mischievous squint of an eye and a quirk of his mouth. She kisses that smirk, and his hands slide to her hips, resting there, not bringing her closer. Annabeth’s hand closes along the nape of his neck, the soft curls spilling like silk between her fingers.
He strokes the back of her head, along the grooves of the thin braids, fingertips sliding between the tendrils. Gentle and as sweet as rain dancing along window panes. She opens her mouth, tries to let him in.
The kiss ends in a damp noise. She clutches his shirt in her fists.
“Hey,” he whispers, and she’s about to be disappointed, “Let’s get to bed.” He sees the look on her face. “It’s late.”
You’re tired, you don’t want what you really want right now.
“I’ll still want it at six. Ten. Three PM.”
He kisses her palms. They’ve done this many times before. It’s true. Annabeth wants him any time of any day, drunk out of her mind or regretfully sober. This time, he doesn’t lift her off his lap and undress her for bed. He undresses for her, himself, to see her, to touch her. She nearly thanks him, the relief.
“Is this enough?” he asks.
“What?”
“This. Everything. It’s enough?”
“You’re here, right?”
He nods.
“Then I am too.”
She can see that Percy’s trying to believe her.