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Each blink up at the shadowed ceiling of the cabin came easier. Percy was not unused to a bad case of sleep deprivation, or two, or even three. Most of his teen life had been spent in a perpetual state of vigilance that often seeped into his dreams, too.
But this wasn’t the work of Grandpa nor for any fear of what he might be instructing Luke to do—who to kill next.
Charles’s face still colored his mind each time he tried to meet sleep. The bright flash of the explosion always followed and Percy’s chest twinged with the pain of guilt and loss and anger like a routine.
He scrunched his face tightly and tried to cover his face with his palms as if it could help block out the face of another person who’d been sacrificed for his survival. It was wrenching to feel the wisp of doubt and despair that trailed through him. Unwelcome whispers followed and taunted his audacity to have survived, too. That, maybe, a life not spent chasing after crumbs of peace just to continue down an inevitably long and doomed path to the feet of Kronos himself.
Then, he thought of Grover. His first friend.
And Annabeth. His second friend. But another kind of first.
A kind that he warred with in his head to reach some form of understanding for his own feelings. It was easy to think about Grover and the rest of camp.
But something became difficult when Annabeth popped up in his dreams, night and day, or when he tried to hang out with Rachel.
Even worse were the moments where they both appeared to him, arguing and at odds with one another despite how he tried to build bridges.
But always, his mind lingered on the memory of Annabeth’s hands in his as they ran from monsters, the frown that marred her forehead as she slept while he snuck glances at her on lookout, the fear and hope swirling in her eyes lit the most beautiful sunset orange by the fire in the labyrinth right before she kissed him.
That last memory was particularly persistent and vivid and, yet, painful altogether.
Percy groaned aloud and sat up in his bed. He glared at the stars dotting the night sky beyond his window then glanced to the pool at the center of his cabin. He began contemplating the possibility of sneaking to the lakeside to clear his head for one blessed, brief second when a soft knock came at the double-doors.
His heart sped up and his hand reached for Riptide just as a whisper of his name stirred a storm beneath his ribs.
“Percy?” Annabeth called out again, a little louder.
His feet carried him to the door before she’d even pronounced all of his name. With one pull, he revealed her.
She stood before him in a long-sleeved sleep shirt and cotton shorts that grazed her knees. Her hands wrapped around her middle and in one concealed palm, she clutched her Yankees cap. Her braids framed her round face in that pretty way he liked so much.
“Annabeth,” he breathed, something in his chest squeezing and releasing.
Her large eyes reflected the dim moonlight and shone a thousand stars back at him. He thought his life would be so much easier if the constellations in her eyes drew a picture of his success. It mattered to him that she believed in him, that she could see a future… in him.
But prophecies were funny in a sad kind of way.
“I’ve been tossing for hours,” Annabeth said.
Percy’s heart lurched. Tension always seemed to follow their close shadows now. But now, with his birthday looming so close, he found no fight in her tonight nor did he feel anything but the need to have her closer. He opened the door wider and stepped back to let her inside.
“You don’t look like you’ve been sleeping,” she added once he closed the door.
He faced her and lifted his shoulders. “Probably for the same reason you can’t, either. Between monsters and the prophecy…”
Annabeth nodded, looking to the floor and tapping her heels against it.
He knew much more went unsaid in their silence. Luke’s face still spread across his eyelids when he gritted his teeth about the prophecy and Kronos’s machinations. Annabeth tried to insist on Luke’s salvation, no matter how slight or how her eyes always cast down to her shoes whenever she said his name, and it was another lump that had wedged between them. Yet, in spite of it all, they couldn’t stay away from one another.
Percy raised a hand to his head and tugged. He tried not to stare at the shape of her mouth and the dips of her lips. But it was difficult. When she turned to meet his eye, he found it even harder to keep the contact.
He remembered the press of her lips on his.
“We can…” Percy gestured to his bed. “Do you want to sit? Maybe talk about what kept you up?”
She accepted the offer with a polite smile and spoke while taking a seat, “Demigod dreams are always bad. But these last few nights, I’ve been too scared of what I’ll see. It all feels… closer, more real. Like sometime soon, I’ll think the bad stuff I’m seeing is just another dream but find I can’t wake up because it’s reality. I think each morning, it gets harder to believe I’m actually awake. And then with Charles…”
He flinched at the mention. His heart felt like it was beating against the floorboards.
Percy sat next to her on his rumpled sheets. His weight depressed the surface and dipped low enough that Annabeth’s knee knocked onto his briefly. He suppressed a shudder. Her skin was slightly cool and soft in that freshly moisturized way.
“This is real,” he said softly. Annabeth looked up at him and he continued, “No dream here. Not now.”
Her shoulders hunched in that way he’d seen on her so often before; whenever she had to face a big declaration that forced her to reconsider letting her walls down, forced the anxiety to the forefront of her mind.
And Percy hated that he couldn’t help rid her of that worry. He hated most that it happened so often with him, when he told her the truth and she couldn’t respond properly.
So he took one of her hands folded in her lap. It weighed almost nothing in his larger palm but that was something Percy had come to find great comfort in.
“See?” He whispered. “Real.”
Annabeth blinked at him and her lips twitched like she had something locked in her throat. He wanted to know what it was. Whether it was something about his fickleness for not acknowledging the bigger picture: the Gods, Kronos, Luke, and the prophecy. Or if it was another “Be careful, Seaweed Brain.”
If another kiss for him was hidden just there on her tongue.
Percy was beginning to startle less with each new replay of the memory in his head. But clarity escaped him still. Nothing seemed clear.
Except for the shape of Annabeth’s hand in his as her fingers squeezed his hand.
“Thank you,” she said, eyes flitting between his own. Cordially. Respectfully.
“Stay.”
The words had slipped from his lips before his brain processed they had been there, lying in wait. But he didn’t regret it. Not even when Annabeth’s eyes widened and she swallowed hard.
“Stay,” she repeated.
“I won’t sleep anytime soon, I don’t think,” Percy muttered. He turned her hand over and rested their hands on his thigh. “We could just stay here. Talk about something or just not talk at all if you want.”
Annabeth asked, “What if someone finds us here?”
“No one caught you, right?” Percy reasoned with a boyish grin.
At the glint of amusement in her eyes, hope flared within him. She shook her head as her smile grew bigger and dipped her head to hide it. He followed her motion anyways and caught sight of her teeth.
“Alright,” Annabeth acquiesced.
He tampered down a rogue surge of happiness inside him. He distracted himself from it by helping Annabeth sit on his bed after slipping her shoes off. Her cap lay between them. She curled into a corner against the cabin wall, near the window, and Percy found himself staring at the way the moonlight colored her smooth skin.
“Your streak’s brighter like this,” Annabeth said.
Percy touched the grey clump of curls at the side of his forehead in self-consciousness. He willed the blood in his cheeks away.
“It’s not bad,” Annabeth reassured him, probably sensing his insecurity. “I think it suits you.” A pause and a flushed breath from her. “Wait. Not that the experience suited you—not holding up the sky, not that being suitable… for you. Just… the color.” She coughed. “The color is nice. But not how it happened. That was… not nice. At all.”
Percy tried not to dwell on it for long because his recollection of taking Atlas’s burden often involved the fact that Annabeth had been tricked into holding up the sky by Luke, someone who was supposed to care about her and never let her get caught in any crossfire.
In the present, large front sections of Annabeth’s braids were streaked the same grey as his own hair. The moonlight illuminated them silver. She’d carried the sky for much longer than he had and the reminder of her pain blared at him like a siren. His hands twitched and curled into fists then loosened.
“I think I’ll dye my hair,” he said, just to say something. “Maybe I could rock a full head of senior-citizen?”
Annabeth giggled. “I don’t know about that. You need to be careful it doesn’t wash you out.”
“I’m the son of the Sea God,” he retorted. “A wash is always productive for me.”
“You’re really pale,” Annabeth deadpanned with her hands now closed around her raised knees. “That’s a lot of risky ground for strong colors.”
“Grey’s pretty weak,” Percy shrugged.
Annabeth rolled her eyes and tucked a few braids behind her ears. Percy’s heart warmed at the unobstructed view of her face.
“I was thinking about the kind of things I could do for camp,” Annabeth said. “Reinvent a few things and consult the Hephaestus cabin for some collaboration. I could improve the training circles and help construct a better set of posts and target practice boards. It could help everyone prepare better.”
Percy listened and watched her face slowly morph into focus as she dipped into that pool of hers for architecture. Her hands moved in demonstration for a long while. Then, as the moonlight shifted just so, her hands reached up to cover her yawn.
Percy playfully admonished her when he yawned back, a little truthfully due to his own growing exhaustion. But it had nothing to do with losing interest in what Annabeth said. It was just so easy to fall into a deep pillow of rest and relaxation when Annabeth was around.
“Someone’s sleepy,” Percy teased.
Annabeth made an attempt to drag herself off his bed but he stopped her with a hand to one of her exposed knees.
“It’s okay,” he said. “You should sleep here. It’ll be better. I’ll grab another blanket.”
Annabeth made a noise of protest but he left it behind him as he searched for a spare blanket to lay on the ground. If Annabeth took his bed, he’d need something thick enough so that his back would be safe after some sleep spent on a long, flat, and irritatingly unrelenting floor. If he’d just remembered where he’d shoved them—
“We can share,” came Annabeth’s quiet voice.
Percy stilled in his pursuit and looked back at his wise girl. She laid on her side in a fetal position as she watched his movements with drooped eyes. He inhaled deeply at the thought but remembered they’d spent many nights sleeping in close proximity on quests.
Not this close. Not until now.
But it would be about the same.
And besides, the space behind Annabeth was more than enough for him. And her scent would only help him fall asleep easier. It made sense. They could avoid their night terrors like this.
It was a repeating mantra in his head as he made his way back to the bed and ambled over Annabeth’s small body. He flopped down behind her as gently as possible and adjusted the sheets until it was spread over their bodies.
He only required one pillow for himself and on that singular one, he could already smell the lemony citrus and cocoa butter of Annabeth’s hair products. He turned his nose deep into the softness and inched closer to her hair. It tickled his nose as she shifted in response to his little movement.
Percy told himself that his deep inhale was not a sniff. It was an inhale. That happened to be deep. He also continued telling himself this when he did it twice more.
But Annabeth had started to shiver and he worried his sheets were too thin. He ran quite hot but Annabeth possessed a tinier body. Strong but a couple of heads below him.
“Are you cold?” He whispered.
Annabeth didn’t respond for a moment. Her body had gone entirely still save for the minute rise and fall of her shoulder. Percy had been considering the chances she’d fallen asleep when she nodded her head.
Percy shifted closer and lifted a hand to hover at her waist. He remembered their first dance at Westover Hall when he’d laid his hands there for the first time. She’d been soft. Grounding, too.
“Is this okay?” He let the pads of his fingertips brush her side. Her shiver came again and his worry heightened.
“Yes,” she whispered.
Percy flattened his hand on her waist. He relished the immediate warmth that seeped from beneath her shirt. In case she felt cold again, he moved his hand downward and up again in hopes that it could warm her up more.
Annabeth let out a low sigh and burrowed backwards into his front. His hand slipped down until his fingers were pressing into her tummy. She didn’t say anything or undo her move. In fact, her breathing started to slow.
Percy inhaled deeply once more, that scent of hers traveling up to his brain on a one-way train, and absentmindedly ran his palm down then up in a practiced motion. Her breathing gradually reached a steady point and he found that his chest had started to push against her back to the same rhythm.
He couldn’t help but prefer this. He didn’t realize he was making the comparison until it happened; seeing the brilliant gold of the beaches he and Rachel frequented and smelling sun-screen but finding that he liked it better when things were soft in the dark and smelled like lemons. In fact, he couldn’t find any appeal in any other path than this one with Annabeth.
Funny that.
His fingers loosened and his hand stopped its sloping as his arm lost its strength. He could feel the peaceful sensation of rest crawl from his fingertips and toes to his middle and welcomed it. His nose nuzzled closer to the back of Annabeth’s head as he succumbed to sleep.
He thought he felt the brush of cool fingers on the back of his hand around her waist just before unconsciousness swept over him fully.
-
Annabeth didn’t speak of it the next day. He didn’t ask or prod around the topic either. They’d gone about their days at camp attending to matters of their own, and together, with something that resembled professionalism.
If arranging preparations to defeat a Greek Titan could be stamped on their resumes to really sell the point.
But the next night, when Percy had opened his eyes for the umpteenth time to a still-dark ceiling and crickets croaking outside, the knock came again and he let Annabeth in.
She assumed the same side of the bed and laid down with the most adorable mix of nervousness and awkwardness written all over her features. Percy knew she was attempting nonchalance. So he let her.
He slipped in behind her and adjusted the sheets once more. She shifted and he rested his hand on her again. When he’d thought her breathing would slow, it didn’t. Instead, she shifted again and rotated so her face pressed into the skin between his neck and collarbone.
He let out a startled breath and regretted it as soon as Annabeth recoiled, like she’d lost herself.
“I’m sorry, I—“
Percy placed his hand on her back and drew her into him once more. Her words muffled into his shirt as he stroked her back. Up and down until the tension from her shoulders evened out. Until her head rested against the pillow more easily. Until one of her hands curled and splayed against the small of his back.
He shivered at the sensation. A myriad of sensations concentrated on that single spot where her cool palm tethered him to a place that had become sacred because of her.
“I’m scared, Percy,” she murmured into his shirt.
Percy frowned and halted his stroking. “I know. I am, too.”
“It’s not fair,” she said. “To anyone but most especially to you. I wish… I wish I could think of something—“
“Six steps ahead, always,” he teased. He breathed deep, holding onto that comforting scent of hers, and brushed his lips against the crown of her head. “Just be here with me. That’s all I need.”
Her breath hitched and her hand tightened into his shirt at his back. Where her eyes pressed into his front, his shirt began to wet.
Percy swallowed down the lump in his throat. It hurt to know she had no other choice but to cry. It punctured his soul that Annabeth, who always tried to keep herself removed from shows of emotion, could not help but cry.
And she cried for him.
Percy gripped her tighter to him. When she whimpered, he curled himself around her like he could cloak her from the sorrow and whatever impending pain would present their greatest test.
When Annabeth pulled back to wipe at her eyes, she looked up at him with those pretty eyebrows of hers stressed upward. He couldn’t stop himself even if he’d thought his urge through. All of a sudden, he pressed his lips to her forehead in hopes of smoothing the furrow gathered there. He pressed another kiss between her eyebrows and lingered there until they relaxed.
He dragged his lips down onto her cheek and trailed a sure path to her mouth. But Annabeth put a hand on his chest and leaned away just as his lips brushed the edges of hers.
Suspended, they shared air and mirrored twitches and trembles.
Then, she spoke.
“Come back alive, Seaweed Brain. Then, we’ll see.”
He smiled at her. She tried to return it but ended up dipping her face back down into his chest. His hands tightened around her small frame as he felt the telltale signs of sleep.
For Percy, something clicked.
He didn’t think clarity was going to be important. The life of a demigod was never guaranteed or promised clarity nor closure. He used to fuss about it. But where Annabeth was concerned, Percy found it difficult to care about those things.
Because Percy understood something in this moment. If there was any place he belonged, it was here. With Annabeth.
That was unconditional. All it required was this: them together.
Because with Annabeth, everything felt right. If anything ever got foggy, it was never the sure fact that he’d find Annabeth in it anyways. Between them, it felt warm and like something he’d never tire from. He believed that was all the motivation he could ever need to live his life, whether it be a demigod one or a mortal one.
So he would come back alive. He would get his kiss. And whatever else Annabeth wanted to bestow upon him afterward.
He thought if it were underwater, it could be really cool.