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The grass tingles Annabeth's back through her t-shirt. The sun shines over one half of her body—it has trailed a tiny bit across the sky since she laid under the shade of this tree. She's too comfortable to move, though. If it wasn't her friends screaming a few feet away, she might have already been asleep.
She won't shut her eyes, though, because she loves the view. Her boyfriend—that's right, her boyfriend—is sparring both Stolls, simultaneously. Something about how if they punch him in the face hard enough, they can knock him out even if he does have that stupid Achilles curse. Annabeth bet Clarisse twenty bucks that one or both of them will end up with a broken finger and sat back to enjoy the show.
What a show it is. Percy moves effortlessly, dodging their punches and swinging back in one swift move. His technique is admirable, even more so now that he doesn't have to focus through the pain, but that's not what Annabeth's paying attention to. Her eyes are drawn to the way his chest fills his shirt, the sweat dripping off his hair, the way his muscles tense with every hit. She's thinking about slipping her hands under his shirt later today, when she sneaks into—
"Annabeth!"
"What?"
Clarisse rolls her eyes. "Have you been listening to anything I said?"
"Um." Annabeth blinks.
"Jesus, you're fucking insufferable."
"Shut up. You're insufferable."
She looks back at Percy, who's just knocked down Travis Stoll. He shoots her a quick smile and a wink before he turns around to dodge a punch from Connor—which he fails to do, having spent way too long staring at Annabeth, so he gets hit right in the nose. There is a crunch, then Connor yelps and clutches his hand to his chest.
Percy frowns. "Oh, sorry."
"Told you!" Annabeth calls out.
Percy smiles at her again and she hides her face in her hands so he won't see she's giggling. He's so cute when he wins a fight, all cocky and confident. Moments later, she feels gentle fingers close around her wrists and pull her hands apart. Percy's standing over her, chest still heaving from exhaustion.
"Hi," he says before leaning down and smacking a loud kiss to her lips.
He's smiling so big it nearly squeezes his eyes shut. She grabs his face between her hands to still him, looking for the green. "Hi."
"You look pretty."
And she's giggling again, gods damn it, he looks so fucking pleased with himself and she can't stand it. "Shut up!"
"I love you," he says, nail in the coffin, and she's gone. Annabeth pulls him in by the collar and he stumbles, bracing himself on his arms to either side of her. He wastes no time in seeking her lips, settling comfortably between her legs when he regains his balance.
"Fuck all the way off," Clarisse complains. "I guess I'll go take those two idiots to the infirmary."
"Bye, Clarisse," Percy sings.
"Die in a fire," Clarisse sings back in the same tune.
Percy lays his head on Annabeth's shoulder and watches the three walk away, Travis still a little wobbly and leaning against Clarisse and Connor trying to look tough and pretend like his broken finger doesn't hurt.
Percy, shameless as he is, doesn't even wait until they've disappeared in the distance to lift up his head and start covering Annabeth's face in kisses.
"Did you see how easy I won?" he asks her when he relents and her stomach hurts from laughing.
"Should I be impressed?" Annabeth replies, still struggling to catch her breath.
He pouts. "It was two on one."
"Right, and you're invulnerable. And if you weren't, you'd have a broken nose."
"You're so mean." He lays his head back on her chest. "Do you ever get tired of bullying me?"
"No." She threads her hands through his hair, pulling at the knots at the ends. He hums. She's realizing he likes it when she does that—another little tidbit she's saving in the new-things-about-Percy folder of her brain. She'll need to sort it out when she gets a grip.
These days, Annabeth lives in a state of constant disbelief. The reality of this late August is so different from what she thought it would be, it almost seems like her life is happening to someone else.
First and foremost, Percy didn't die, like she was absolutely certain he would. She spent the last two years trying (and failing) to avoid him, crying herself to sleep, accepting that her life would be over on August 18th of this year. It wasn't. She is alive, and so he is he, and by some miracle or infinitesimal cosmic coincidence, he loves her, even after she gave every reason not to.
So now she finds herself in a situation like this: a late summer afternoon, with his heart beating inches away from hers. He kisses her and tells her he loves her. He holds her when she cries, even though she cries a lot, and he never seems to tire of it (she really thinks he will, one day). Annabeth can't think about it too much because having this life is nearly as terrifying as the idea of losing it. That, she knows will kill her faster than a poisoned knife.
"I'm hungry," Percy sighs.
"When aren't you?"
"No, but I'm craving something specific. I don't know what—what's that, like, that long red candy called?"
Annabeth furrows her eyebrows. "Twizzlers?"
"Yes!"
"Ew, Percy, that shit tastes like plastic."
He pokes the side of her stomach. "Okay? No one's offering it to you. I said I want it."
"Cabin 11 has it. You got anything to trade?"
Percy raises himself on his elbows. "You think they'd give me some because I saved the world?"
"That's so a week and a half ago. You need to find some new material."
Percy tsks. "I think I should get at least a month of free shit."
"I think you'd devour their entire stock."
"Do you have anything to trade?"
Annabeth shrugs. "Maybe. They don't have the thing I want, though."
"What do you want?"
"Resse's Pieces."
Percy furrows his eyebrows. "They's have Reese's."
"Not the pieces. Just the big ones."
"What's the difference?"
"There's a difference."
"What is it?"
"I'd explain it to you, but I can't think." Annabeth taps his back. "You're cutting off my circulation."
Percy's smile falters. "Do you actually want me to get off?"
"No," she answers, too quickly. She'd stay forever like this, starve and rot if he promised never to leave her side. "Shut up."
"Cool." He kisses her. "Gonna keep squeezing you, then."
Annabeth knows it's time to stop working on these temple designs when her bladder feels like it might explode. That usually means it's been a few hours too long of not taking a break, or eating, or moving around, or doing anything else, really. She stands up from her chair—her back is stiff and achey, cracks as she stretches—and checks the time. Still before dinner. Good.
She looks for Percy on her way to the bathrooms, but he is nowhere to be seen. Probably at the beach or up at the fields. She gets the tingle of joy she feels when she finishes working and knows she's about to see him. He was instructed not to interrupt her while she's designing, and he complies dutifully (albeit not without complaint), which means Annabeth gets to enjoy him extra clingy and cheesy in her return to the world of people.
However, Annabeth doesn't find him at the beach. Nor at the strawberry fields, or his cabin, or the dining hall, or anywhere else. He is, for all intents and purposes, gone.
When she realizes, the first thought that crosses Annabeth's mind: I knew it.
He realized he doesn't want to be with her after all, so he packed his bags and left. She should have been nicer. She hates herself for not being better, for seeing this coming and letting it happen anyway. It was never about whether it would happen, it was about when.
Her insides feel like they'll burst from within, and yet she has no idea what to do next. She can't even move from the spot where she's standing, even though the Earth seems to be spinning as usual (and she knows this because she is standing still, which means she is still moving in relation to the planet's core at the same speed as its crust); and the sun has not burnt out in a universe-ending explosion (and she knows this because it takes eight minutes for the sun's light to reach the Earth and Percy has been gone for longer than that, and maybe she has been standing here longer than that, and the sun is still shining).
"Annabeth."
The voice shakes her out of her stupor. It's Percy's. She turns around and he's there, walking over and smiling at her like nothing happened at all.
An old, familiar feeling bubbles up in her gut. Anger, jealousy, time and time again where he left her here to go spend time with people to whom he is not everything, not even half of everything.
She marches over to him, grabs a tight hold of his arm. "Where were you?"
Percy widens his eyes. "I—I swam to the CVS in Southampton. What's—"
"CVS? What are you talking about?"
"I just wanted to get you this." Percy wrenches his arm free to show Annabeth what was in the bag: a pack of Reese's Pieces.
Annabeth's voice is minuscule when she says, "Oh."
"Beth, are you okay? What's wrong?"
"You went to get it for me?" she asks, lower lip trembling.
"Yeah," Percy says, like it's self-evident that he jumped into the ocean and roamed around Long Island for gods know long just to get her the candy that she likes.
"I'm sorry," she sobs, burying her face into the crook of his neck and crying and crying and crying.
"You're sorry?" Percy sounds genuinely confused, but he wraps his arms around her shoulders and holds her like it's second nature. "What's going on? Did I do something wrong?"
"No," Annabeth manages, because of course he didn't. He's been nothing but perfect to her since they got together and she let her feelings get the best of her like she always does. She doesn't deserve him.
"So why are you crying?"
"I—I thought you left like this summer."
Her face still hidden in his shoulder, Annabeth feels Percy inhales sharply. She looks up at him, scared she's angered him with the accusation, but she finds nothing but sadness in his face.
Percy swallows. "I'm sorry, I—I wanted it to be a surprise."
Well, now there's absolutely no chance she'll stop crying anytime soon. Her anxiety runs circles around her without reprieve, telling her this is it, this is when he'll finally give up because she's not worth it. But minutes on minutes pass, and his arms around her only seem to tighten. He keeps his lips at her hairline, promising her he won't leave again, and he was such an idiot this summer and she doesn't have to worry anymore, he promises, he really does.
Annabeth's not sure she should believe him, but there must be something magical about his voice and the way he always knows the exact right things to say, because she does. She believes him. He is Percy, and Annabeth loves him, and the world fell apart and reconstituted itself a week and a half ago and they still stand together. Maybe this is the way it always should've been.