Archive of Our Own

Winter at New Rome University whipped through naked, splitting bark and dispersed snow from bright white clouds. The flakes often fell too quickly to catch a glimpse of their shapes, once made and never again. They landed on her knapsack in fat droplets which stained the mauve fabric burgundy. 

She flinched against another gust of December breeze. Her phone buzzed in her pocket, a faint and almost imperceptible sound beneath the whistle around her ear muffs, and she surmised Percy was asking where she was.

The route to the Applied Arts Department measured only two miles of winding gravel and grassy fields from the Architecture Center. In the winter, those two miles quickly morphed into two hundred. Add the length of her legs that proved no match against the rising, pillowy snow to the equation and Annabeth really should have stayed home.

Annabeth reasoned to herself that she’d miraculously remembered to check the weather and the meteorologists had happily relayed an afternoon of light snow up to an inch before plastering a holiday-exclusive smile on their face. 

“An inch. Yeah, right,” Annabeth scoffed.

She tucked her chin deeper into the wet threads of a thick blue plaid scarf embroidered with Sally’s initials. It had been hers before she bestowed it onto Percy. At the beginning of the semester, she’d been eating a late lunch with Percy when he decided to give the scarf to her. He had stopped himself mid-ramble about his tedious fishbowl perspective homework to place his warm, large hands over her own on the middle of their table. 

“You’re freezing,” he’d gasped.

“We’ve been inside for about ten minutes, Percy,” she’d responded.

She remembered tugging her twitching fingers back from his grip and folding them on top of each other to stave the desire to intertwine them with his. The next thing she knew, Percy had unzipped his book bag and retrieved the soft scarf rolled in a tight ball. He’d reached across the table and deposited it into her lap, careful to avoid the soup steaming in front of her. 

“We’re working with watercolors this week,” Percy’d said distractedly with his hands wrapped around his own bowl again. “The process isn’t too difficult, which doesn’t match anything that I saw online about it. D’you know what else I saw? I saw this video of this guy doing this trick in this huge pool that I need to try, like fifty feet deep under the water—“

Annabeth couldn’t recall much after that besides the contrast of the navy against her dark brown khakis, the warmth of the fabric seeping into her thighs.

The memory split into cold gusts pushing her body nearly sideways and one foot sliding forward. The bright, wide windows of the Applied Arts main building couldn’t be farther than a few hundred feet away. The shadowed branches of the looming trees peppered along the campus path were bent forward from the harsh winds. They blocked most of the windows from view and Annabeth gritted her teeth. Her phone buzzed twice this time and she increased her steps, careful to avoid patches of black ice.

It was embarrassing enough that she just barely managed to suppress her need to twine her fingers through Percy’s hair when he was near. Having to handle Percy’s close touches and leans and light rubs if he spotted a limp in her step or a bruise on her chin would dismantle her resolve. 

Determinedly, Annabeth broke the pillow-soft surface of the packed snow over and over until she stepped onto the salted compound. She managed to open her lips to sigh in relief but the breath knocked backward down her throat as Percy’s looming figure enveloped her. Her shocked cry sunk into the fabric of his sweater, muffled and squeaky.

“You’re covered in snow, Annabeth. Are you crazy? I could have picked you up, you know? Why do you feel the need to do everything yourself? And of course, your bag’s bigger than your whole body.”

“I’m not that small, Percy,” Annabeth huffed and pushed out from his hold.

His dark eyebrows were turned upward at her words and a series of snowflakes began to gather on his eyelashes, irritating his eyes. She ushered them forward to the building’s entrance. Once past the double doors, she shivered at the new onslaught of heat as it curled past her cheeks, crawled beneath her coat sleeves, and sunk into her boots. She registered the vague sensation of slightly wet socks and grimaced.

The straps of her knapsack lifted off her shoulders and she sagged at the loss of a ridiculously heavy bag that she would never admit she despised carrying around. She’d sooner lie than be proven that she’d made an inefficient choice.

“I’ll carry this. You should get those layers off,” Percy said.

She swallowed down her retort about not needing any directions and accepted his help untangling her arms from the bag straps. She grimaced as a cool droplet of melted snow ran down her scalp to her temple. 

“Wow, the snow’s gotten all over your hair,” Percy said.

Annabeth paused where she’d been unbuttoning her coat, flushed, then stammered through a response as she worked her way down the nylon faster and tugged her earmuffs off. “Yeah, now it’s going to take ages to get it right again.”

“I’ll help,” Percy offered.

She held her damp belongings to her middle as she stared at him. Warmth rushed to her cheeks and she pressed her lips together in veiled amusement. 

“What?” Percy asked, an indignant expression twisting his face between caution and embarrassment as he adjusted her knapsack on his own shoulders.

“Just,” she started. “Just that it’s funny to think about. Your fingers taking up too much product and trying to figure out how to use a detangling brush.”

“Woah, I’ll have you know I do a great job with Estelle’s knots,” Percy defended. Then, he blushed a pretty, soft rosy color. “But I’m also very willing to learn. I know it’s different.”

He eyed the crown of her snow-coated head, squinting and considering. Annbeth flushed under his scrutiny and cleared her throat. She marched forward to his class’s studio, a room that ran on for what felt like her dorm multiplied by four. Her head swung each time she entered in the evening hours when the lights dimmed automatically and most people had already filtered out. 

Percy’s regular seat was piled with stray sweaters he forgot to switch out, a few of his house mugs he stole as pencil and brush holders, and a stack of sheets varying in size and thickness. One particularly large poster had curled in on itself nearly entirely. She snickered at his chaotic organization. She knew better than to let her itching fingers rearrange things her way.

“D’you mind unrolling that one? It’s for my—”

“The watercolor assignment?” Annabeth finished for him.

She laid her belongings atop his and began spreading the sandy parchment flat. Percy rested her knapsack down in her peripheral and came to her side. 

She thought she felt his gaze on her as her hands ran gently over each element of the landscape painting. Her nails raked over patches of moss green near the bottom edge, then the soft orange spilling haphazardly into wet, hurried splatches of pink at the top. 

“It’s nothing impressive now,” Percy mumbled.

She jerked and turned to him. “What? This looks so good already. Unfinished, yes. But not unimpressive.”

He tilted his head at her and set a hand down on the parchment next to hers. A pinch of his body heat sunk into her white top. Annabeth inched backwards under his scrutiny, darkened blue eyes that resembled the bottomless parts of the ocean in the low light. She could faintly spy her reflection in the width of his enlarged pupils. She worried her lower lip between her teeth and turned back to his unfinished piece.

“It looks really good,” she managed.

“I think it could be better,” he responded. He lifted his hand and gestured to the wide expanse of dried watercolors. “I want this one to look a specific way. The colors still aren’t right, and it feels like there’s so little space.”

When his hand landed on the sheet again, the side of his thumb brushed against the tip of her middle finger. Annabeth stared at their overlapping shadows. The lilt and pattern of his voice reached her ears but she couldn’t force herself to pay attention. His fingers were splayed over the light pink streaks while hers sat smaller on orange. She could see raised veins trailing up the back of his hand and up along his forearm.

“Are you listening, Annabeth?” 

She lifted her head. Percy’s eyebrows were scrunched in concern.

“Yeah, sorry. You were saying?” 

“D’you want to start working on your own project or are you feeling more for food?” He asked.

“No, I can get started now,” she muttered hurriedly.

She scrambled around him for her knapsack and inhaled a big breath as she began sifting through her numerous folders. She hoped the warmth on her face hadn’t shown, and she pretended that she couldn’t hear her heartbeat coursing through her eardrums. 

Her busy hands fumbled around the thin files and she cursed when they slipped onto the ground. Sheets of lined paper filled with doodles of random shapes and copy paper covered with first drafts of architectural prints. 

“Fuck me,” she mumbled to herself as she stooped.

On her way down, her shoulder bumped into a wayward stack Percy had on the edge of his table. They rained down around her face as she struggled to find her sheets.

Percy’s larger hands were gathering the more wayward sheets before she’d had the chance to begin inserting them back into their respective folders. She ignored the brush of breath near her temple. Her throat constricted and she bit down on her lower lip. 

“Here you go,” Percy said as he handed her most of the sheets.

She thanked him and crouched down further beneath the table to grab the sheets littered there. She vaguely registered Percy’s concerned voice warning her about watching her head beneath the edge of the table. Then she turned over a sheet.

Her face stared back at her.

She jumped back and her head bumped into the table, jerking it. As she struggled for breath and clinched onto the sheet in a fisted hand, one large hand weaved between her hair and the table’s bottom while the other tugged her backward by the waist. Percy’s hands pulled her closer and traveled along her sides frantically.

“Shit, Annabeth, I told you to watch your head,” he stressed.

Annabeth winced as pain bloomed at the part in the middle of her head. She groaned, “Don’t remind me. I wasn’t trying to hurt myself.”

Percy narrowed his eyes at her and huffed. She watched from beneath her eyelashes as a muscle at his jaw trembled as he grinded his teeth. The rustle of crinkled paper in her palm reminded her of the fear racing through her blood and curling a tough ball at the base of her throat. Percy’s hands were still pressing firm, warm palm prints into her middle.

“Percy, what is this?” She forced around that ever-growing ball.

“What’s what?” Percy said as he raised a hand to her head, tentatively brushing his fingers over the middle of her head.

Her heart began pounding in her throat and she extracted herself from his arms. Percy reached for her head instinctively with parted lips, frown fixed on his face when Annabeth held the sheet out to him.

The pretty bit of color that had spread from his cheeks to his neck in his fervor promptly evaporated. She smothered the guilt building in her stomach and shook the sheet. 

“Annabeth—”

“Was this practice for something?” 

The words rushed out of her mouth before she could think. She swallowed down the urge to ask why he colored her eyes with a faint shimmer and he had been attentive enough to dot a beauty mark on her neck. Why he’d drawn the two moles on her face that she always made sure to cover with concealer. Why he’d drawn her with curled braids that she hadn’t worn for many months now. 

Her lips trembled and her chin wobbled in stubborn indignation. She wanted to be mad, to make him believe he had reason to watch her with trepidation and regret. He inhaled a great breath then his shoulders drooped. He watched her the way he did when he approached a stray cat and it scurried off, then he’d say something like: “I expected that.”

She didn’t want him to say he expected her reaction. She worried that the next words out of his mouth would be that gentle lilt or a soft whisper that he was sorry. 

“Annabeth, I—”

“Don’t apologize,” she interjected with a gasp. “Don’t say sorry. Just tell me why.”

“Your hands are trembling, Annabeth,” he said. 

“Yes, because a drawing of me from what seems like months ago fell from your desk, Percy,” she hissed.

Percy’s chest swelled with another breath and his eyes shut tightly. She studied the twitch of his thick eyebrows as he looked at something behind her. In his line of sight, she realized, were the few other sheets that had cascaded to the ground earlier. She refused to reach for them if his mouth only thinned further at them. 

“It wasn’t practice,” he started. “But Annabeth, I swear, I didn’t mean to overstep—”

“Don’t try to apologize,” she grunted loudly. She lifted off her knees and brushed down the front of her thighs as she stood. “This is a drawing of me. It’s not an assignment. And you didn’t tell me.”

He shook his head from where he knelt on the ground. She watched his curls sway and wiped at a gathered droplet on her waterline.

“Do you draw our friends?” She shakily asked.

Percy scoffed and she blinked in shock. He began rising and Annabeth’s stomach swooped in anticipation that he’d tower over her again and she’d lose the high ground. He’d tilted her world on its axis already with lines that contained a version of herself she didn’t know she could be on a single sheet of paper. He couldn’t do that. Not when she could fit herself better in the box she’d been offered when she was seven, then at twelve, and each time after that she’d been taught exactly how much she didn’t fit into the lives of others. It had been better to contort herself in a container scented with rejection damp like mildew and make it her own. 

The sunlight filtering through the bottom of the door meant change. The sea breeze wafting in meant Percy wouldn’t let her be alone. 

And she couldn’t resist it. She’d been helpless the first time she realized her initial disdain for him had been misplaced anger at herself for worrying for him, for investing her time into him, for sliding bits of herself out under the door into his waiting hands.

And she ignored the looks he sometimes gave her. They felt like knocking at the door she wanted to keep closed because she didn’t know what it looked like open.

Annabeth had spent the long years of their friendship dispersing a mist of omission and ignorance at the transformations her feelings had endured. She sometimes detested that her own knees, dependable enough to carry her away from a home of negligence and past the betrayal of those once in her closest corners, could go weak in the wake of her heart’s desires. Percy’s effect on her pierced the scaffolding of her brain. 

But it hadn't been dismantled yet. Distance staved it off. Annabeth  was smart enough to anticipate the consequences and understand the next best option to running was remaining in careful orbit.

“Could I have told you?” Percy bit out at last.

Annabeth seethed. “You shouldn’t have done this in the first place, Percy!”

He gestured to the table behind her and retorted, “You wouldn’t have known I’d done it if they hadn’t slipped off.”

“That’s not the point, Percy,” Annabeth groaned. The sheet crumpled more in her palm.

Percy’s eyes darted to the sheet and his lips turned down. He looked at her with renewed vigor. 

“Hasn’t that always been the point, Annabeth?” He asked.

She crossed her arms beneath her chest. The sounds of the shifting, twisting, and folding paper mirrored the thudding ensconced within her ribs.

“What are you talking about?”

Percy’s nostrils flared. She told herself she hated when he did that.

“I don’t think you care about whether something exists, Annabeth. It’s only a problem when you have to face it, isn’t it?” His voice grew softer. His eyes still carried a note of irritation and familiar frown lines were still gathered on his forehead, but his hands had stopped clenching and his mouth had stopped twisting. 

“I’m not making anything a problem,” she insisted. 

“Did I cross a line, Annabeth?” Percy asked.

“You’re drawing me! With every stupid detail in full view,” she cried. “How would you like it if I did the same to you? Memorized you and put you under a microscope?”

Percy shook his head. “Not under a microscope.”

“Then for what purpose?” Annabeth spoke through her teeth.

“There is no purpose, Annabeth. I don’t see you and think that I need to do anything at all to you,” Percy said.

Annabeth eyed his eyes that had scrunched tightly again and the way his hands reached into his curls and squeezed. His knuckles paled at the pressure and she croaked a little noise around that persistent shape hurting her throat that should’ve been a smart answer. 

Percy dragged his hands down his face and his eyes opened again, dark lashes making contact with some longer blond curls and his irises starting to resemble the turbulent surface of a bottomless ocean. The door locking her box to herself rattled for a moment. Sea foam trickled from beneath it. 

“And none of those details are stupid,” Percy grumbled.

He approached her and she backed into the table’s edge. His jaw ticked, Annabeth felt sorry for his teeth, and then he was prying the sheet from her fingers. Her fingers reflexively clutched it tighter. 

This close, Percy’s sea scent swirled around her head and she could spy a white speck along one of his dark lashes. 

“Let it go,” Percy whispered.

Annabeth jerked her head from side to side. Percy loosened his grip on the sheet before leaning closer, sending Annabeth in a backward bend and her heart on a marathon. 

“Annabeth, I’m trying to help,” he said.

“You’ve turned this whole thing upside down,” she found herself saying. Percy’s eyebrows did that beautiful dip again. The shock in her head was no match for the impatience of her mouth. “Was there anything wrong when you didn’t draw me? Wasn’t it easier? To not hold more weight?”

Percy blinked at her. His breath caressed her cheekbones and nose bridge. The apple of his throat jumped. She heard how each of his next breaths came heavier. 

“I don’t think I remember a moment where I wasn't mapping you out, Annabeth,” Percy said softly.

She nearly hiccuped in fear if it weren’t for his rambling.

“And you know what’s the funny part? I’ve been so blind to it,” he added with a huff of sarcastic laughter. Annabeth resisted the urge to press her front to his. 

Percy continued, “Each day, there’s something a bit new about you that I’ve only just noticed. I’ve never seen your hair react to the snow like this before.”

The fingers on one of his hands came up in her vision. He reached for a wayward cluster of baby hair, frizzed from the snow, and then thought better of it. 

“You can’t do things like this,” Annabeth ground out.

Percy looked at her in disbelief. He slid further into her space, aggravation souring his face. Annabeth briefly thought that it was better for him to cast that look her way. She’d been primed for it and she knew how to circumvent it. She knew the steps to redo the structures of her fortress to prepare for the next assault. Endings were shoved so deeply beneath her bones she started anticipating them, recognizing patterns and building her defenses higher before she could be surprised. 

“I never made any promise like that, Annabeth,” Percy said. His eyes darted between hers. “Once, a long time ago, I didn’t think we could get along at all. I thought you were busy believing your way was the only way and that you couldn’t control everything simply because you set your mind on it. I thought you were so focused on trying to maintain everything you were blind to just as much around you. But you started letting me in. And I started wanting nothing else so badly.”

Annabeth used her palms to push against his chest and rid herself of his warmth. Her heart tugged with regret but her mind settled in the cold. The space was good. It was what worked.

“Stop talking,” she said.

“When you caught me looking, did you tell yourself it meant nothing? Did you decide for me?” He pressed on. 

She could hear his approaching steps but her feet refused to move. Her toes obeyed the message in the blood sent from her heart to stay. Sweat had gathered at her hairline and she cupped her face in hopes the dark behinds of her eyelids could drown out Percy’s unwavering voice. 

“Do you know what it does to me that you’ll wear my scarf and refuse to look me in the eyes?”

“Things are good the way they are, aren’t they?” Annabeth spun around.

She hoped the desperation and exhaustion she felt along her limbs didn’t penetrate her words. 

“Why are you so set on this compromise?” Percy whispered, face crestfallen. “I know things have been difficult before and you’ve grown used to people leaving but—“

“There’s always a ‘but’ at the start, Percy,” Annabeth said. She gestured to him and continued, “You’re not different from anyone else that’s told me they won’t leave. All I can trust is that this—this negative space between us here, this is what’s dependable. It won’t leave me as badly hurt. Both of us can walk out unscathed when something cracks apart. It makes so much sense to me, Percy. This is what eases the anxiety. It’s the solution.”

Percy recoiled at her summation. He tugged on the neckline of his sweater and scratched his collarbones, coloring them a ruddy red. 

“I don’t think just because something feels like it’s helping, it’s always the right choice. I don’t think it’s fair that you won’t even give yourself another option,” Percy said softly.

He stepped backwards, turning his torso away from her before he halted. Her breath hitched. 

“And there’s nothing negative about the space between us, Annabeth,” he muttered.

He bent beneath the table and gathered the last of the fallen sheets. His eyes passed over their shadowed lines and colors. Annabeth squirmed a little as his fingers traced some of the details. 

When he unfolded from his spot on the floor, he trailed his free hand over the papers scattered across his table. After picking an alarming number out, he offered all the sheets to her. At the surely fearful expression on her face, his mouth set in a hard line. 

“I know something like this won’t change your mind. I don’t want you to do anything you don’t want to, no matter how much I’d rather you actually think about what you do want. But you like to make informed decisions. When you let me go, I want you to know at the very least that you’re… cherished. Even if you don’t want to take the risk.”

His eyes were fixed on the tremor racing across his fingers and shaking the sheets. She glanced between him and his proffered materials for a long minute. When his nostrils flared with a shaky breath, she took them from his hand. 

“The snow will ease up within the hour,” he said. “You should have something to eat in the meantime. I’ll see if the shuttles will start back up again anytime soon.”

His voice sounded farther the more he talked. She kept her eyes cast on a half-finished sketch of her forehead and turned-up eyebrows on the top sheet. Her own features grew blurred and warped the longer she stared. With a blink, her charcoal complexion darkened with fat droplets. 

Percy’s voice had started trembling and her heart seemed to do a silly dance in accompaniment. She marched to her knapsack, shoved the sheets within despite her brain telling her to leave them, and collected her belongings. Percy’s hands were fisted on the table when she glanced and she regretted it the second her watery eyes lifted and met his tired ones. 

She bit her tongue and wrenched herself from his side. 

“It’s dangerous out there, Annabeth.”

“I made it here in one piece,” she muttered angrily.

“Come on, don’t endanger yourself,” Percy said. 

Annabeth whirled around and hissed, “Would you stop talking?”

“I’m terribly impertinent and you know this,” he replied.

She studied the lines of his mouth and eyes before her chest stuttered with heaving breaths. She felt the telltale burn of hiccups about to start. Some wet streaks still tickled her cheeks and eyelashes. As she dabbed at them, Percy pulled a handkerchief from his pocket.

“Stop offering me things,” she said.

“Don’t be stubborn,” Percy sighed, his handkerchief hanging off his fingers. “This is something that we do, right? I take care of you, you take care of me?”

Annabeth shook her head. “It’s different now.”

“Still so fucking stubborn,” Percy groaned under his breath, low but she heard it.

She didn’t feel like she had much left in her reserves to throw his way. He was holding the handkerchief at his side now and he graced her with the sharp angles of his side profile as he looked at his table—the stage of the crack divvying them up.

“Annabeth, it’s cold outside and you don’t like being cold,” he said after a moment, soft and slow and steady. When he looked at her again, he was staring at her with the same concern he’d always shown her. “Just wait out the storm here, and then I’ll walk you to the shuttle when it’s safe. It’s warm here and we don’t have to talk to one another.”

Annabeth gripped onto her knapsack strap and her belongings, his scarf tickling her knuckles. 

“You don’t like the cold,” he whispered again when she didn’t respond.

Like he was trying to remind her that he wasn’t as bad as the worst things in the world. Annabeth wished she could confess to him that he wasn’t bad at all. That rearranging their distance like this was the only way she knew to prevent him from suffering when her fears took over. 

“I don’t like the cold,” she reiterated.

Even though she’d receded from his warmth and rejected his light beneath her door. 

Annabeth wanted to laugh at the incredulity of her brain.

“That station’s Ethan’s,” Percy said.

She watched him point to a table to her right. The table lamps were off but she knew how to turn them on. Annabeth discerned some thick markers strewn about and smaller, square-like sheets folded to form paper animals and buildings. 

“He won’t mind?”

“He won’t know,” Percy said.

Annabeth glanced back at him and saw him turn to his work, hands fidgeting above his unfinished watercolor project before he wrung them over each other. He braced them on the sheet and his head dropped between his shoulders. 

Something like an apology festered on the tip of her tongue. She very nearly croaked it out. Then he sat down and shifted one of the table lamps closer to him. He hunched over and Annabeth watched the tension of his back spread to his fingers as his hand struggled to hold a colored pencil still.

The next hour passed in silence at a glacial pace. Annabeth played with the beads on her necklace instead of focusing on her blueprints. She listened to the first uneasy, then steady breaths Percy expelled behind her. The snow began to fall slower and the wind no longer howled and crashed. 

“The shuttle’s coming in fifteen.”

Annabeth looked over her shoulder. Percy scrolled through their campus commute app. His piece didn’t look any different, but his hair was far more mussed and messy than she remembered. His curls had been scrunched and rubbed and patted down until they fuzzed and frizzed.

When she began packing her bag, Percy mirrored her movements. He held the door for her and she murmured her thanks. At the double doors, Percy turned to her seemingly intending to adjust something along her coat or scarf. His cheeks colored red as his hands snapped back to his side and he pushed open one door for her. 

The cold nipped at her skin gently instead of biting across the way it’d done earlier. She glanced a look at Percy and found his ears reddening rapidly. They walked along a wide, flat path the campus officials must have salted due to the influx of students that required the shuttle. Light poured down onto the straight line of his nose and shadowed his cheeks a little. 

“Four minutes,” he informed her at the station.

She curled into a corner that hid most of her arms from the chilly wind. Percy leaned on the opposite end of the box. 

When the shuttle creaked to a stop, she glanced over at Percy. His eyes were mapping a nonsensical pattern of the shuttle, the headlights, the slightly dirty snow, her shoes, and his own arms.

“I’ll see you,” she forced out.

Percy raised his eyebrows an inch at her. He pursed his lips and gave a tentative nod, shoulders drooping a little again.

Later, cloaked within the nearly oppressive heat from her dorm radiators and her quilted blanket, she pondered just how much it pained her to leave things unsaid between her and Percy.

-

Day after day of classes, events, some semi-productive meetings, and extracurriculars meant to distract her from the persistent throb in her chest dragged on. Eventually, Annabeth noted it’d been a week and a day since the last time she’d seen Percy.

Grover chose to step on the ice first when he noticed Percy opted to train in the pool instead of joining his best friends for their regular brunch on his free day. 

“Something happened,” he said simply.

Annabeth froze where her fingers had been twiddling with the cafeteria’s plastic cutlery.

“With?”

“You and Percy,” Grover said.

The sound of his name aloud echoed the calls she’d suppressed somewhere deep in her diaphragm. She chose to ignore the goosebumps along her arms. 

“Yes,” she admitted, never one to try lying to Grover of all people. “We had an argument.”

“About?”

She hesitated. Then, she said, “I… Grover, did you know about his drawings?”

Grover squinted at her then his eyes grew a little big. His ears twitched a little and his eyes suddenly found the ceiling interesting. He said, eyes still away,  “It’s Percy. He likes to draw.” 

Annabeth didn’t possess enough energy to build irritation about Grover’s evasive attitude, especially when he broached the conversation first. 

“He told me he… cherishes me,” she said in a small voice. “He’s really angry with me. And I don’t know how to be the person he won’t be mad at.”

Grover’s voice pitched in, “Percy’s never angry with you the way he’s angry with other people.”

Annabeth shook her head. Grover’s eyes were soft as she said, “No, Grover. He’s so hurt, too. He’s frustrated that I won’t reverse everything I know for him.”

Grover tilted his head. “I don’t think he wants you to reverse anything nor do I think he wants you to change for him. Just because it affects him doesn’t mean he’s thinking of himself, you know?”

Annabeth stayed mum.

“Annabeth, I don’t think Percy could think of himself beneath all he thinks of you.”

“See? That’s the problem!” Annabeth exclaimed. 

Grover attempted to speak and, no doubt, edit his answer to something more suited to her ease. She cut him off before he could make a sound.

“He’d neglect himself and any other thing he wants because of me,” Annabeth said. “I don’t want him to forget himself because he wants to constantly prove to me that it can work.”

Grover’s cheek dimpled as he tightened his mouth. He eyed her plate in contemplation before he sighed, mind set on something.

“Annabeth,” he began. She watched him warily. “Judging things based on logistics and statistics is a good trait to have. It’s dependable. But when it comes to people…”

Annabeth’s throat constricted.

“People are different,” Grover finished. “It can feel good to stay away from the unpredictability and sometimes fleeting characters that people can become. But I think it’s dangerous to let that guide your relationships. Patterns are always everywhere for us to see and for you to discern which I get completely. The patterns in your life have been unfair and cruel.”

He paused to take a breath. Annabeth’s chest swelled for more air, too. Listening to Grover’s speech progress was only making her head dizzy and her throat fuzzy.

“But I don’t think it’s right that his patterns are thrown into that category when all he’s done is right by you, Annabeth. You know that.”

She abandoned her food and cutlery to pick at frayed strings on her denim pants. 

“I do,” she admitted quietly. “I know he’s good to me. But I can’t stop feeling more scared the more he is that way.”

“You’re scared of starting something when there’s a possibility it’ll end,” Grover suggested. 

“Maybe,” Annabeth sighed. Her lower lip wobbled. “I want what’s safe and more convenient for him.”

“I don’t think that focusing on what’s best for Percy or what he should want is the best way to go here,” Grover tentatively said. “What if your idea of safe and convenient for him doesn’t align with his desires? Isn’t that also unfair for him?”

Annabeth pursed her lips. She had nothing more to contribute despite wanting nothing more than to cut the silence with a point that would render every word from Grover moot.

Except she was smart enough to admit when something had become improbable.

“It’s one thing if Percy needs to stay away because it’s what you want, from the top of your head down to the deepest parts of you where you keep all your secrets. But I don’t think that’s what’s happening here. I think Percy’s being forced from you because of your fears rather than your desires. I think there’s a distinction there. Maybe thinking more about that’s going to help you smooth things out with Percy.”

Annabeth glared at Grover half-heartedly. 

He lifted a shoulder. “Listen, I know the both of you to a very large degree. And I know that for all you can sit and pretend that moving forward without Percy is both doable and efficient, it would hurt you too much. Your heart’s soft with him. I think he can take care of it.”

She blinked at him. Her eyes found his brown curls to avoid confronting the honesty in his pair. 

“And Annabeth,” he added.

She glanced up at him.

Grover smiled a little. He said, “I think you can take care of him, too. Once you’ve cleared your head and sorted through your priorities. And maybe start being more honest with yourself.”

She fiddled with the handle of her plastic fork. Grover had stayed quiet for a minute, waiting for a response, before he resumed his meal. Annabeth found she no longer had much of an appetite for anything but blue eyes and sea salt.

-

Annabeth tried to convince herself it was a bad idea. The sun had set an hour ago and a couple of students at a time filtered through the hallway at scattered intervals. She had no qualms concerning being spotted here. Grover probably suspected she’d be doing this as he’d planted the seed in her head and to her knowledge, the rest of her and Percy’s mutual friends were housed in different buildings. 

She stared at the door of Percy’s dorm and raised an awkward arm. Her knuckles barely brushed the door before she began pacing a few feet to the right, a few feet to the left. Her knapsack bounced off her back with each turn.

“Just do it for fuck’s sake,” she whispered to herself. 

She inhaled and exhaled in a practiced rhythm until she realized her long-standing method had no chance against the new pattern her heart had learned when Percy was near. Annabeth contemplated, for a short second, if that meant she’d traded one part of herself for another.

“Okay,” she whispered.

She lifted her hand. Her contact with the wood wracked a fair bit of pain through her. Annabeth cringed at her negligence for delicacy in her focus on simply getting it over with.

“G, I’m a little busy—oh.”

Annabeth wrapped her well fingers over her throbbing knuckles and gave Percy a tight-lipped smile. It faltered when she noticed the soft shadows beneath his waterline and the stricken expression on his face. How his jaw tightened a little and his lips pressed in a hard, straight line. And yet her heart eased in its pain just a smidge at the familiar softness in his eyes. 

“I come in peace,” she blurted.

Percy blinked and raised his eyebrows. He drawled, “No, I didn’t think you would be the type for gunfire in the hallway. Or at seven-thirty.”

“I’m serious, Percy,” Annabeth said.

“I am, too.” he responded.

For a moment, the accompanying lilts of their voices convinced her that the situation could be resolved faster than she thought. Then his nostrils flared and he let out one of those sighs that her own stubbornness had pulled out of him.

“Can I, uh, come in?” She tried. “If you want me to. If it’s okay, that is. Either option is fine—yes or no.”

Percy sighed again and Annabeth was on her way to another rambling contest when he said, “It seems like it’s more up to you whether you’d want to come in or not. You’re a very sure person and you don’t look very sure about this, Annabeth. You don’t have to say anything anymore. It was wrong of me to push where you don’t want to be—”

“No, I was wrong,” Annabeth bit out.

The words left a salty taste on her tongue. But the surprise in Percy’s eyes washed it over with foamy guilt for having never learned to acquaint herself with apologies and a more patient ear. She swallowed down the combination and eyed him with what she hoped was conviction.

“I want to come in. I’m just nervous. I am sorry and I’d like to say it better, just not in a hallway.”

Percy reared his head back and stared at her for a long moment. Then he stepped back and pulled his door wider open.

Once Annabeth had taken stock of the room as she’d done multiple times before, she fell into the same pattern of spying what had changed in her absence. Less dirty bowls littered the desk and floor than she expected. His laundry basket was empty and a large duffel bag scented like clean sea salt and vanilla perched near it. His bed was unmade and a pair of jeans laid across the crumpled sheets haphazardly.

Annabeth couldn’t suppress the ridiculous wave of affection that coursed through her. Looking at his room countless times had always brought something new for her to examine. And it had all been because she’d searched for them; new reasons to stay and put something stray back in its place, more excuses to insist that organizing his work space proved better for studying, and a different way to sneak near his closet so she could breathe in the smell of his chest that always brushed against her as fast as it left. She was an expert at stretching the threads of fleeting encounters on the basis that she only wanted to impose a sense of control. It was safer to let others think she felt responsible for Percy to hide the fact that she wasn’t bound by anything besides the desires buried deep within her like the gentle pith of a tree. Her bark was her command and instruction.

And she guessed that Percy must’ve understood she needed to fiddle the way she did. 

“Sorry, it’s messy,” Percy said from her right.

He took the jeans off the bed and carried them off to the hamper. She perched on the mass of careless sheets and slipped her knapsack from her shoulders. When Percy took a seat at his desk chair, she suddenly felt like she was slid onto a petri dish. 

She scrambled for words before they could be swallowed up by her age-old instinct and said, “I’m here because I had a conversation with Grover that helped me see things a bit clearer. I think I understand certain things a bit better and I was very wrong to try and fit you inside a mold I created because I was scared.”

“Annabeth, it’s fine—”

“No, Percy,” she ground out. “I… I think I need to say this. I have it in my head. I just need to get it out of me. Why’s it so difficult to do this?”

Percy’s voice had turned soft and his scent was suddenly a bit nearer. “You don’t need to—”

“I do need to apologize and I think it’s better if you sit there,” she said as she pointed to the desk chair he’d lifted from.

Percy fisted his hands. He glanced between her face and her outstretched finger before he did as she asked. Her lungs expanded a bit and she closed her eyes. His pale face greeted her from the back of her eyelids. This way, she could pretend she was speaking to him in her head only. Then her mind could set the drawbridge down.

“The first time I saw you, I think I didn’t like you very much. I think I detested how you were able to make friends so easily and gain not just the respect, but the camaraderie of others without doing so much as lifting a finger. When I met Sally for the first time, I couldn’t stop my brain from projecting all these images in my head of how the differences between your life and my life was that yours measured so much larger and sweeter. I liked you then but I couldn’t step out of the mud I’d first stumbled into when I was a kid. Then I started to not mind so much that you were different from me in all those good ways. I learned that your life has been difficult, too. I understood that we were just both kids from different places, but we were together at the end of the day.

“Then, I started fixating on that togetherness. Grover had a duty to me as someone trusted to take care of me when Thalia had to leave and Luke was off to commit his own mistakes. They all took me on as responsibilities and I learned that even when someone chose you, you could still be let go of. You had no obligation to me when I started liking you. You owed me nothing when you decided that we were going to be friends and I was too selfish to say ‘no.’ I was hopeful in the beginning. But the more my feelings grew, the less I wanted to risk myself on hope. I didn’t think I had much left after so many rejections. One more would’ve done me in. I’m sure it still will.”

Annabeth squeezed her shut eyes until stars burst the picture of Percy’s face in the dark. The patterns blinked in and out of existence. She opened her eyes and found Percy watching her with a smoothed face marred only by the crinkle of his forehead through wispy, frizzed curls. 

“Percy, I’m fucked up,” she sighed. “I don’t know the first step to even trying to make a relationship work with the kind of brain I have, the kind of reflexes I still haven’t outgrown. Sometimes, I feel like I’m masquerading as someone normal and you’ll hate the real me. And I just feel so strongly for you that keeping things this way, distant and sort of cold at times, is what helps me stay afloat. Putting myself here means you can’t hurt me from there.”

Her lips wobbled.

“But I’ve hurt you. From all the way here.”

A gasp followed in lieu of her next word. Just as she raised a hand to her wet cheek, Percy’s broad body was folding over her as he kneeled on the floor. His arms cinched around her as her head lolled into the crook of her neck. Her body slid off the edge of the bed until she was seated atop Percy’s thighs. 

“You’re okay,” Percy whispered into her hair.

She sniffled and her chest stuttered with the sobs she tried to keep at bay. Even when her apology hadn’t been done, Percy had rushed over to blanket her fall. Even when she’d hurt him, he was still stroking up and down her back and sides. 

Her shame muffled into the skin at his neck wetted by her tears as she cried, “I’m so sorry. I’m sorry that it’s me that you’re doing this for. I’m sorry that I’m not easier. I’m sorry that even now, I’m thinking that it’s so fucking good to have you here when I don’t deserve any bit of it. Gods, Percy, I’m so fucking sorry.”

“Hey, stop—stop—stop,” Percy chanted softly. 

His hand cradled the nape of her neck. When he tried to bring her to face him, she shook her head vigorously and snaked her arms around his body. She hid her face from him when he put a finger to her temple. 

Her body moved with the swell of his chest as he inhaled deeply. For a minute, he let her sob a bit when they escaped the bite of her teeth. After a while, she splayed a hand over her face to stifle the conflicting emotions at war within her. She was sorry, guilty, sleepy, and softened by his grip and scent. She wanted to run from him as much as she wanted to stay tucked into his front.

“Annabeth?” He tested.

She sniffled and hummed a stuffy-sounding noise. 

“Would you like some water?” He whispered against her ear. 

She shivered and shook her head ‘no.’ He relented and squeezed her waist instead. The pressure mixed with the exhaustion settling into her bones made her eyes droop. But she was not finished with her apology.

Carefully, she pushed against Percy’s chest and felt his hands twitch around her body before letting her go. She eased off his lap and braced against the nearby wall. Percy produced his handkerchief for her, the same she’d refused before, and she stared at him with fresh tears. 

“Oh shit, I’m sorry. I have tissues, wait.”

When he deposited an almost full box of tissues into her lap, she made quick work of clearing her airways. 

“I would like very much to pretend that I’m not messing this up,” she said.

Percy shook his head. She spotted a couple of wet stains on his shirt and her cheeks warmed. 

“I’m sorry for not trusting you more—with more. I wish I could turn off this part of me and eject it, but it’s so difficult. And yet, you’re always there wiggling your way through the muck of my brain. I’m somehow more full of thoughts about you day after day even though my anxiety follows like a shadow. I don’t want to burden you with that. I know you care for me, and you do such a good job it almost hurts me, but it’s too much for anyone to have to constantly reassure someone of something they believe, isn’t it? And trying’s never a guaranteed success.”

Percy frowned. He looked down at his track pants and traced the logo printed there. She watched his brows furrow as he rubbed and picked at the fabric.

“But I think I’d like to still try,” she whispered.

Percy’s hand stilled. His eyes widened and his shoulders trembled with a steadying breath. Her heart thudded wildly in anticipation. She next saw his throat bob with a swallow and his tongue swiping over his lips.

“Slow then,” he said at last.

He looked up at her. Annabeth hesitated, then nodded. Slowly.

A few wrinkles appeared near his eyes, but nothing to cease the frown still tugging at his lips.

“Is it okay if I say some things?” He asked.

Annabeth’s heart lurched. She swallowed her own trepidation and fear. He’d already heard her spill her piece and confess her complicated desires. For this to work, she needed to be as receptive as he was. Once she nodded, he went on.

“I’ve not been right at every corner, either. There’s been days where I thought unfairly about your own reservations and had selfish thoughts. I should have handled our conversation in the studio better. I shouldn’t have said those things. I hurt you, too. I put more weight on your shoulders when I should’ve been making things easier for you. I guess what I’m trying to say is that you’re not the only one bearing faults here. I have to deal with my own feelings and how I approach many things. I want to give you enough space to make sure you don’t feel smothered.”

She tucked her knees further into herself, unused to blatant words like these. Percy’s eyes had turned dark and reflected the soft room lights like the cosmos hosted the stars. It was heady staring at him.

“But Annabeth, I have to be honest.”

She blinked at him. Her heart started up again.

“It’s really hard for me to stay away. It’s been hard to hole myself up here because I knew stepping outside and seeing you would mean hurting you more. I hated that it was the image of me that produced those horrible feelings in you. But I forced myself away because part of my self-control is consideration for you. And I know everybody can talk about how wanting someone can feel uncontrollable or like something greater is binding you to them.

“But I’m always sober when I want you. It’s me at the forefront of my mind telling myself that I should adhere to what you need and that there’s no point living a life without you there to steer me. I’d accept you in spirit if you never wanted anything to do with me ever again, but I’d want you anyway. And I think it’d be like that for a long time.”

Annabeth’s lips parted. She bit down, watched his eyes flick to the motion, and glanced down at the used tissues crumpled in her palms. She wrung her lip until it felt sore. 

“I hated that I had a crush on you at twelve,” Annabeth said. “I thought you were making a fool of yourself entirely too much. But I know now it’s just part of who you are.”

“Excuse me?” Percy huffed. 

His eyes traveled along her face to the inch of smile that she’d put on. He crossed his arms over his chest and stretched his legs out until his sock-clad feet touched the sides of her knees and thighs. 

“I’m going to regret saying this but…” he trailed off. “I may have hated how you strutted around like you owned the place but… I think I secretly liked it. I admired your confidence and your certainty. You had a lot of charisma.”

“I’m sure me at twelve would love to hear that,” Annabeth said with a sniffle.

Percy stared at her with soft fondness. Then he glanced off to the side and began rubbing lines up his biceps with his fingers.

“When we went to the movies and I showed you ‘Jaws’ for the first time, you were really stoic about the whole thing afterwards. You wouldn’t stop talking about how you could predict the plot but you loved the score and I just had the sense that I’d die if I didn’t kiss you then.”

Annabeth’s eyes widened. She opened her mouth and closed it again. Her lips tingled and she willed the sensation away as Percy dared to look at her lips on his last words. Her breath caught in her throat when his eyes darted up to hers.

“But you didn’t,” she found herself saying.

Percy shrugged his shoulders and confessed, “I thought it best if I didn’t. I thought about it all the way home with all this regret. But then I thought about the potential of losing you because I’d gotten carried away and done something reckless again.”

Annabeth tilted her head. She could feel something deep in her protesting but she spoke in spite of the doubt, “Percy Jackson, not reckless? A changed man.”

“When it comes to you, I’m very careful,” he responded instantly.

The force of his response knocked the breath from her chest. The sapphire of his eyes highlighted a pale color between orange and pastel blue bore into her.

She pivoted to avoid looking into them much longer. “I have something for you.”

He raised his eyebrows. His crooked smile showed for her when she gently patted the points of her edges to busy her fingers. 

“Yeah?”

She nodded. 

“It’s in my bag.”

He reached back and gently pried her bag open, pausing to poke at it. Once opened, he found a thick poster rolled into one long cylinder. A blush crept up his cheeks to his ears. Annabeth surmised he had an inkling of what she’d done.

“Is this a drawing of me?” He asked.

Annabeth shook her head. A wet giggle escaped her lips. “No. I don’t draw people. It’s… something else.”

Curiosity muted some of the rosy patches on his face. He peeled the sheet apart and lifted it in front of him. Annabeth could see the faint outline of her depiction, mirrored from her vantage point. Percy’s eyebrows scrunched and she leaned an inch forward with the urge to press her lips there.

He said, “It looks really good. I don’t know which project this is for but it’s beautiful—”

“It’s not a project,” she interjected. “I, uh. I’ve had this image in my head for a few months now. It scared me the first time I had it, actually. It appeared like a vision, like a gift from an oracle.”

The poster dropped infinitesimally in Percy’s faltering grip. He swallowed and glanced back at the sheet, fingers thumbing the lines at the border.

“It’s a house by the sea,” she explained. “I know how much the sea means to you and to your mom. And I guess my brain wanted to be ambitious and I started picturing myself there, too. And I know it’s intrusive and now that I say it out loud, I realize how bad of an idea it was to turn it into something tangible but—there’s no people. It’s just what I envisioned every time I wandered to that dark recess of my mind and I let myself feel for you, be seen by you.”

She bit her lip to cut her rambling off and studied the expression on Percy’s face. He was still curious, still contemplative, still quiet. 

And because Annabeth had loose lips around Percy, she added, “I want you to know that I do see you, as well. You’re not responsible for the fact that I’ve been lying to myself for a while.”

Percy responded, “You’re not the only one who’s lied, Annabeth.”

She groaned, “I know, but I was parroting every bad thing I’ve heard right back at you. That wasn’t fair.”

Percy set the parchment down on his lap. Annabeth watched in silence as his hands traced the square shapes and perpendicular angles of the cabin she’d drawn up. His fingers grazed the columns and the tympanum on the front. She’d colored the whole structure aquamarine. It appeared like a light brown beneath the soft orange light from Percy’s dorm lamps. 

“You’re not intruding, you know,” he murmured.

He looked up and met her eyes. Seated so close to one of his lamps, Annabeth couldn’t make out where the black of his pupils ended and where the shadows contouring his face began.

“You’re in my head all the time, too. You’re there when I think of all the years we’ve known each other and all the rest I want to continue knowing you for. I didn’t run from it because I didn’t understand it at first. But now…” he trailed off. “Now I want it too much to think of letting it go. Is that too much? That I can be that selfish?”

Goosebumps raised along her arms. She let the heat from his eyes bubble her blood and turn her inside out. Annabeth knew intimately the chill of an empty room she thought she needed to call hers and the blank faces, cold mouths that spelled out rejection after rejection. She wanted to tell Percy he wasn’t selfish in comparison to her neediness to be the sole star a drowsy, thirsty man pointed towards.

And since Annabeth was learning, she did confess.

“You’re not selfish. I’ve only ever wanted to be, well, wanted,” she whispered. “I don’t mind if it overwhelms me. I’ve known emptiness and space before. Too much of what I want won’t hurt me.”

Percy swallowed and looked at his hands resting on his lap. She plucked a thread from her pants. The ticking of his bedside clock was loud in the quiet. She’d never noticed it before. Usually, they talked enough to drown out noises as inconsequential as the passing of time. 

“I should probably go,” Annabeth whispered. There was only so much time left before the shuttles stopped operating and it became a hassle to travel back to her building on foot. 

Quick as bumblebee wings, an image of her sprawled beneath his rumpled covers flashed in her head. Her heart raced in a frenzied staccato. Her mind and heart couldn’t yet agree on staying in his bed. Slow was better. Sleeping in his bed was, decidedly, not slow.

“Of course,” Percy coughed a bit. He glanced at the clock on the wall. 

He rolled the parchment finely and before he could hand it over like it seemed he intended to, Annabeth told him she’d made it for him and it was his to keep. 

“Besides,” she said tentatively. “I kept your drawings. So. It’s only fair, I think.”

Percy swallowed heavily and nodded. She thought she heard a soft murmur along the lines of: “If you think so.”

At the door, Annabeth accepted her knapsack from him. She watched his eyes dart to where her fingers brushed his and the flex of his hand at his side when he pulled away. 

“You don’t have to restrain yourself like that,” she said.

Percy gave a rueful smile. “I think I do. I don’t want to mess this up.”

Annabeth bit her lower lip, pretending she couldn’t see him track it in her peripheral. She hesitated. But this new arrangement was not going to succeed if she wasn’t proactive about her desires.

“Communication’s key in these things,” she said. “At least, that’s what Grover’s always saying. So. Maybe you could just say what you’d do if you weren’t being cautious? It’s not like you’re forcing me to do anything. And… I can have a more informed opinion on where we stand—define more clearly how slow we might need to be.”

Percy lifted a hand to the nape of his neck. He inhaled deeply and Annabeth worried he’d simply plead silence. Instead, he stepped backward. She was now concerned he’d say this was too complicated a get-up. 

“I really want to kiss you,” he whispered. Like one of them would break if he’d said it any louder.

Warmth seeped into her cheeks. Her hands tangled behind her back to steady herself beneath the weight of her thudding heart. Her stomach swooped at the image of his lips on hers and her ears rang a little. But her vision wasn’t vignetted and her legs weren’t trembling like a deer in headlights.

“I think I’d like that.”

Percy’s wide, near crazed eyes on her alerted her to the fact that she’d said that out loud. She opened her mouth, an excuse on the tip of her tongue that would place her comfortably back in her shadowed box. Then she swallowed it down. 

Percy deserved better than that, she reasoned. Percy deserved her effort and investment because she also wanted this. She wanted it to work more than she wished it would fail. She wasn’t sure when she’d gained the courage to think that way but she believed it had something to do with the gentle way Percy held her, stroked her sides, and whispered soft things on her head. 

“I don’t want to pressure you into—”

“You’re not,” Annabeth cut in.

“Are you completely sure?”

“Not completely,” Annabeth said. “But I’m more curious than anything. And it’s something I’ve felt but always suppressed, this urge to be closer to you. Holding myself back now hurts me more than admitting I do want to try. We don’t have to… go crazy.”

Percy’s ears reddened. Annabeth stepped into his space and watched the blush creep onto his cheekbones. He gasped a shaky breath.

“Okay. Just kissing.”

“Just kissing,” Annabeth nodded.

“I’m a little nervous,” Percy confessed when she was close enough to see the fuzz on his cheek highlighted by the dim light.

“I am, too,” she said honestly. A practical approach was what she was best at. “We don’t need to… be good.”

“Being bad’s not very nice either,” Percy whispered into the scant space remaining between their bodies.

Annabeth smiled a bit. “No. But I doubt we’ll be horrible. It’s just… kissing. It can’t be too hard?”

Percy huffed. “I don’t know.”

She surveyed his face, the obvious nerves worrying his lips rosy between his teeth. She placed her hands on his neck and jaw. She shuddered in response to the swallow she felt beneath her fingertips.

“I think we just need to relax,” she murmured.

When he exhaled, she felt it brush faintly over her forehead. Pretending a little longer that she detested their height difference, she lifted onto her toes and pressed her lips lightly to his. She felt his mouth tremble beneath hers, mostly soft and only a bit dry. On her toes like this, she curved into his front for better leverage and felt the static movement of his chest against hers. She pulled her lips from his for a bit of air and opened her eyes. 

He had yet to open his eyes but his lips had parted, some shallow breaths making their way in and out. His eyebrows, scrunched and forming a few wrinkles, smoothened out when her fingers traced the spot there. 

Annabeth discovered she liked the dazed expression he wore. She wanted more.

When she kissed him again, she pressed insistently onto his lips. He made a noise that seemed unintentional judging by its sudden death in his throat. Then his lips were pushing against hers and he was leaning forward. Annabeth registered the fleeting brushes of his fingers on her shoulders and sides. It only continued to draw an uneasy rhythm along her body when he pulled back and she leaned in. Their lips opened more and she groaned into his mouth at the next set of not-quite-there brushes.

“Touch me,” she whispered before his lips caught hers again.

This time, his lower lip slotted between hers perfectly and Annabeth felt the kiss grow a little sticky. Percy must have, too, judging by his whimper. But then she groaned again and jerked back to remind him that she wanted his hands on her. He gained enough sense to use his palms to grip her waist and pull her in, swallowing her words. 

Percy tilted his head and then he was sucking her lower lip between his. Annabeth didn’t anticipate the shake of her legs and her mouth slipped against his. He banded his arms tighter around her and her feet were nearly dangling off the ground when he leaned back, slotting their lips together again. Annabeth thought she felt the strap of her knapsack slipping but she couldn’t quite find a care in the world to give to it. Instead, she tried to mimic Percy’s movements—pushing when he pulled, gasping in air when they had that inch of space they wouldn’t let enlarge, and testing a swipe of her tongue on his lip. 

“Okay, fuck.”

Annabeth chased his mouth when he pulled away unexpectedly. Her chest heaved a bit and she felt considerably warmer beneath her suitable clothes, but she very much wanted to continue. She’d discovered that kissing was a very smart investment. 

“Why? What?” She asked, hands having found themselves tangled in the curls above his neck while they kissed.

Percy stepped back, her toes dragging along the ground, and braced his back against the door. His heart beat rapidly where she could feel it pressed to her chest. She was sure he could feel the erratic pulse of hers, too.

“Slow. We said slow.”

If doing what they’d done counted as fast, Annabeth was willing to amend her previous decision.

“I think this counts as slow,” she murmured against his mouth. He squeezed his eyes shut and let her kiss him once then twice more. 

When they broke apart, he said, “We’re walking a tight rope here. I want to make sure this is all safe and okay for you.”

Annabeth extracted her hands from his hair and let herself slide down his body out of his loosening grip. She adjusted the strap of her knapsack. She nodded, “You’re right. That was… not fast, but it was a lot.”

“Yeah,” Percy said.

“But it was good,” she said softly. “I liked it. A lot.”

Percy rubbed his hands over his face and groaned. “Annabeth, you can’t say that. I’m trying to give you the space you need.”

“I know,” Annabeth giggled. “I should go. But… before I do…”

Percy squinted at her from the gaps between his fingers. She stepped up and kissed his fingers away one by one. Torment was evident on his face but amusement and that pretty blush, too.

“One more,” she whispered, elongating the syllables.

“You’ll kill me,” Percy said back as his hands cradled her face.

He bent and connected their lips again, letting her take the lead and fist his shirt in her hands. When she couldn’t resist nipping his lips, he pulled away and left one soft kiss on her mouth in farewell. 

“Even if I wasn’t thinking about what you said earlier, it’s getting late,” Percy said. He motioned to the clock and Annabeth released a long, half-playful sigh.

He said he’d walk her to the shuttle and she accepted. When he told her that she couldn’t tempt him anymore, she blew a raspberry and relented softly. After hearing her agreement to think further about their conversation and everything exchanged between them, words and lips and tastes, only then did he let her board the shuttle. 

When Annabeth scanned her ID card into the building, she froze at the sight of Thalia seated in the lobby with her arms crossed over her chest. Annabeth felt her scrutiny from the surely swollen mouth on her face to the slight wrinkles on her shirt beneath her coat. Annabeth made to defend herself.

Thalia lifted a palm and winced. “Spare me the details. Are you two good?”

Annabeth nodded. Thalia sighed and stood. She wrapped an arm over Annabeth’s shoulders and led her to the elevators. 

“That’s all I care about. Let me know if I ever need to pray lightning strikes him down.”

“We’re going slow,” Annabeth said.

Thalia stared at her mouth as a ding came from the arriving elevator. “As long as you don’t continue to dance around each other in silent agony. When he’s happy, he doesn’t bother annoying anyone. Though it’s still annoying to watch the git all giddy and grinning. Eugh.”

“Thalia,” Annabeth warned as they stepped into the empty elevator.

She held her hands up in surrender. “Just because you like the twat sure as hell doesn’t mean I have to.”

Annabeth sighed. “He’s not that bad.”

Silence ensued as the elevator sped its way up to their floor. Annabeth bit her lip when it tingled.

“He’s a great kisser,” she giggled.

“No bloody details! Fucking hell.”