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Annabeth’s least favourite way to spend an evening was at the infirmary.
For starters, it meant that she got hurt. It also meant that she got hurt badly enough to be out of commission, and it meant that everyone in camp knew she’d been dumb enough to earn herself a trip to the camp medics.
The place hadn’t changed a bit in eleven years. There were still books of stickers stashed around the place for the younger campers, plus some magazines for the older ones. There were still a row of beds separated by curtains, there was still the smell of antiseptic and aloe vera, and it still had the corkboard full of leaflets about safe sex, finishing antibiotics, and symptoms of chicken pox.
The view was different, though. At the very start, it’d been Luke. Then Grover. Then Percy.
The latter hadn’t left her since she fell off a boulder and cracked her head open. Percy seemed determined to spend the whole night on a sleeping bag on the floor, and she didn’t have it in her to argue.
It definitely wasn’t the worst injury she’d ever had- not even close- but it still sucked.
She’d gotten a row of stitches across her hairline, and she had to resist the urge to pick at them. Every time she tried to give in to it, though, Percy would hold her hand and repeat Will’s lecture about infections and how after the emergency amputation he had to do last year, he was not in the mood to try surgery again.
Getting carried out of the woods on a stretcher like a wounded soldier was bad enough- she wasn’t in the mood for surgery, either.
When they arrived at the infirmary, Will looked up from his magazine and sighed;
‘Again?’
‘Yep.’ Percy said cheerfully.
‘I hate thisss.’ Annabeth mumbled through the nice fuzzy painkillers.
‘We know.’ Her boyfriend gave her a reassuring smile. ‘You told me that about fifty times on the way here.’
It’d been a couple hours since then, and she still wasn’t allowed out.
Percy insisted. ‘You’re not allowed to get a concussion.’
‘What if I die of sheer boredom? I’m not even allowed to read or write!’
‘You could stare at the ceiling with me. I’m pretty sure it’s a genuine plaster ceiling or whatever the fuck ceilings are made out of.’
‘Probably plaster.’
‘I bow to your knowledge, oh Annabeth, Queen Of Architecture.’
She grinned. ‘That’s ‘your majesty’ to you, peasant.’
‘I’ll ask Will if there’s a cure for being a smartass.’
‘Nah, there can’t be. If there was, you would’ve overdosed on it a long time ago.’
He nodded in agreement, then plopped himself down on the bed beside her. She complained about having to move over, but, well, she didn’t actually mind. With the familiar smell of ocean in her nose, it was that much easier to shut her brain up.
‘You should go to the campfire or something.’ Annabeth mumbled sleepily into his shoulder.
‘And leave my awesome girlfriend alone and bored? No thanks.’
‘You’re such a dork.’
‘And you’re meant to be asleep.’
She huffed in frustration, even as her eyes closed. ‘Please tell Will to let me out tomorrow. I’ll actually go insane.’
‘If it’s medical advice…’
‘Do I really need to remind you of the time you hopped on a pegasus while actively bleeding and injured from a major battle about five seconds after those same medics told you to stay put?’
‘Yeah, but at least I didn’t have a concussion.’
The last thing she said before she fell asleep was, ‘Well, at least I have you.’
The last thing she heard was, ‘Of course you have me. And a concussion.’