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In Percy Jackson’s wildest dreams, he thought he’d be lucky to dance with Annabeth Chase three times: twice when they were fourteen, before and after the disaster of Mount Tam, still circling each other like awkward buzzards over equally awkward roadkill; and one other time, years down the road—him in a tux, her in white—with their friends and family there.
That last one is a secret reserved for 3AM and the glow-in-the-dark stars on his bedroom ceiling.
So when Annabeth asks him to go to her school’s prom while they wait for the 6 Train, he wastes no time saying, “Yes!”, followed by a cooler, “if you want.”
She raises an eyebrow—a gesture he finds extremely attractive, which must say something about him and their relationship—and continues. “It’s March 27th, okay? Wear blue.”
“Hmm. Powder blue?”
“No, no, like a navy, or wear—”
“Like a full-on Easter day suit.” He grins at her, puts an arm around her waist to pull her close when someone with a stroller tries to get by. “Weird, but if you say so.”
Annabeth rolls her eyes. “If you want to look like a reverend from my dad’s church, go for it.” She wraps an arm around him too, sneaks a few fingers beneath his shirt with no idea that it sets his bare skin on fire. “You’ll be there?”
He nods. Percy was never the best at tests, but this is the easiest question in the world. “I’ll be there.”
So they go to prom.
The day before the dance, Percy goes to the florist down by the bodega where Annabeth tried—and fell in love with—her first chopped cheese, and gets a boutonniere for himself and a corsage for Annabeth. The woman behind the counter gives him two carnations and mentions what they symbolize when Percy tells her what they’re for. He knows their love like the tide, but the comment still makes his cheeks warm.
Even though the dance is hours away, his stomach is in knots when Annabeth knocks on the door the next afternoon. She’s wearing sweats and his Earth Day hoodie that he grew out of months ago, or so he tells her. She’s really pretty, so he tells her.
They play Super Smash Bros. until Annabeth gets a little too mad for it to be fun, then switch to watching tennis–or, more accurately, Annabeth watching tennis and Percy playing with her hair.
Annabeth started playing tennis around middle school and is now a complete zealot, from watching games before sunrise to having strong opinions on clay versus hard courts. It’s awesome.
Playing with Annabeth’s hair is also awesome. A few months prior, Annabeth grabbed his shoulders on this very same couch and bestowed the “great honor of being able to touch (her) hair,” her words, not his. She delivered her pronouncement with giggles and a slightly playful set to her shoulders, but also with the hard line of her brows, like she was the tiniest bit very serious. You will break my heart if you get this wrong, it said.
Percy had scoffed internally. Easy solve. “Consider me honored,” he said, and hooked an arm around those shoulders, bringing her head to his chest, then his lips to the top of her head. That’s what he means by awesome.
The sun sets, and a few minutes later, Annabeth looks down at her watch, a Casio digital with Spider-man on it that makes Percy’s stomach swoop every time he sees it. Whatever it reads, she decides it’s about time to start getting ready and waves him off to do the same.
Percy ends up with a navy suit after all, along with a pair of Paul’s wingtips. Annabeth steps out of his mom’s en suite bathroom looking as beautiful as is expected for Annabeth Chase. She’s wearing a glittery indigo blue halter dress, and her braids hang around her shoulder blades, brushing her open back.
Percy can only gape at her as she putters around, putting in her earrings. He finally spits out an unintelligible compliment and hopes he doesn’t come across as love-struck as he truly is.
Mom and Paul take what he would estimate to be one million pictures while they shout suggestions from behind the camera. Mom coos something about the pictures being so good to look back on in the future, but in a way that also says, you know, in the future when you’re married and in love forever like Percy clearly really wants, but Stella starts crying in the baby-Bjorn strapped to Paul’s chest, and thankfully, everyone gets distracted.
Percy drives them downtown to Annabeth’s school, and they bump into a few of her friends on the sidewalk right outside. They jump around to Top 40s, eat terrible brownies but incredible pigs in a blanket, and take down a monster in the alley of a pottery studio. His suit jacket’s a little dirty from the brawl, but all in all, a great night.
After, when Annabeth’s feet hurt and Percy’s stomach growls get a little humiliating, they find a dim sum place a few blocks up from SODNYC called Hsu’s and duck inside. The place is packed, and they get placed in a two-top so tight their knees brush. They set stretch goals for how many dumplings they’ll eat (Annabeth: 15, Percy: 30) and hold their sated stomachs after (Annabeth: 15, Percy: 16).
Annabeth’s wearing his tie now–partly because he’d wanted it off and she’s capable of keeping track of things, and partly because she’d been touching it all night. To the untrained eye, her little flicks and tugs would seem flirty or possessive, but Percy knows Annabeth, knew she just wanted to wear it for herself.
Percy surreptitiously undoes his belt and stretches his legs out until his feet sit beside Annabeth’s chair until his shin knocks into hers. “I’m just saying, if there was a monster pretending to be me, how would you tell us apart? We need a code word.”
She knocks his leg right back. “Percy, I literally agree, the word can’t be “schematic" though. I feel like I use that too often.”
That startles a laugh out of Percy so loud that the table next to them turns to look.
Annabeth, used to his him-ness, just ignores it. “Besides, I wouldn’t even need a code word to tell you apart from the imposter.”
“We’d be completely identical, Wise Girl. Same voice, same incredible looks.”
“But I would know! I would ask you to tie my shoes, or carry my bag. All the stuff you do that literally no one else would.”
Percy’s heart melts, but not like chocolate, more like sharp cheddar in a dumpster. “Not unnecessary. Also very easy to do.” He reaches across the table and flicks his/her tie.
She bats his hand away with a small smile and shakes her head. “I’m not saying it right… you just know me. And I know you. The imposter would call me babe, and I’d know.”
“Why, ‘cause I usually call you bookie bear?”
She laughs and gestures at him like, see? “I could tell if your heart was behind it.”
“But the hypothetical imposter would know I love you. That’s like knowing I’m right-handed or that my name’s Percy: it’s picking that up with context clues, easy.”
Her eyes flit down and away from his face, a telltale sign that she’s blushing, even if her skin doesn’t show it.
“You love me?” She asks, joking, but beneath it, there’s an ounce of surprise, like he hasn’t said it dozens of times now, like he’s catching her off-guard. He hates the world for making her doubt this.
“Hypothetically,” he nods, faux-serious. “Like, hypothetically, before you asked me to prom, the next time I thought we’d dance together all dressed up would be our wedding.”
And as the words slip out, his stomach falls through the floor of this lovely Chinatown dim sum place, so far down they’ll have to get contractors, good ones, to fix the mess.
Annabeth sort of laughs and gasps at once. “Really?”
Percy can only shrug. It’s better that his shoulders do the talking.
“Oh… Oh!” She blinks a few times. “I didn’t know you were… hypothesizing too.”
Too. Percy’s heart leaps to his sleeve. Everyone within five blocks must feel a twinge of something lovely for how strongly it beats, how high it soars.
Annabeth continues, oblivious to his internal calamity. “Hypothetically, I think our wedding will be small, like your parents and Grover. Thals, if we can get her there.”
All Percy can do is grin. Beneath the table, he pinches his thigh. “It sounds like you’ve hypothetically thought about that a lot.”
"Shut up, Mr. Dancing-At-Our-Wedding. You started it.” But she’s smiling so wide, he can see a bit of green onion tucked between her molars. It’s very cute. He points to his own teeth to tell her it’s there anyway because he knows—ha, maybe she’s right—she’d be upset if he didn’t.
When they step out into the cool evening, Annabeth grabs his hand—which she doesn’t usually do because it’s not ideal for combat—and squeezes.
“Now I want to know all of your hypotheses. I want to know everything.”
“I’m sure you do, Wise Girl, but why don’t you let me prove a few first?”
She frowns. “You can’t prove a hypothesis. You can only support or disprove it.”
He sticks out his hand, as if for her to shake it. “Hi, nice to meet you, I’m Percy Jackson? Not Bill Nye.”
“Whatever. You have your SATs soon, I’m just helping you study.”
“Trust me, I’m taking notes.”
A cab flies by them on the street, creating a breeze that softly lifts the hem of Annabeth’s dress. Percy hasn’t stopped smiling in hours.
“We’ll dance in our kitchen. In all our rooms.”
“Hypothetically?” Annabeth asks, leading like she wants him to be really, really sure of his answer.
Percy answers in the same beat. “Nope. I know it for a fact.” He gets it right.