#anyway i write silly little fanfictions i do not need to put this crazy pressure on myself

[percivaljacksons]

preview

hi ive decided to stop taking myself so seriously -- when i finish this it'll go on ao3 as a oneshot, but this is what ive got so far of angsty divers au (no it still does not have a title). rated somewhere between t and m. can i get a hell yeah in the chat? um have fun lol.

..

NYT: A lot of headlines have already declared this as the discovery of the century—one even as the discovery of the millenia. Did you envision such a momentous breakthrough in your career?

PJ: Uh, no. I didn’t think I was gonna graduate high school. You can laugh, dude, but I’m not joking. This has all been one crazy ride. My life changed forever the moment I met Annabeth Chase. 

//

What Annabeth remembers, during the nights she tries not to:

The cold. The blackness so thick they might as well have been diving in ink. Percy’s mouthpiece, warm when he pressed it to her lips every twelve seconds. She’d breathe in, then tap his wrist twice, and it would disappear once more.

They’ve always been good at nonverbal communication. A twitch of an eyebrow here, a sideways glance there. She knows when he’s rolling his eyes without having to look. He always manages to pass her a tissue right before she sneezes.

Annabeth wonders if they’ll ever get out from beneath what they said to each other, down in the Pit, where neither of them could utter a single word.

//

The phone rings five times, tinny and faint in Annabeth’s ear as she waits. She’s breathing hard, her hair still dripping and her suit peeled down to her waist, a pair of sunglasses her only real protection against the late afternoon Mediterranean sun. 

The ringing cuts off, and a groggy voice says, “yeah?”

Annabeth glances down at her watch. “Percy?” She asks. 

There’s a beat. When the voice speaks again, it’s perfectly awake. “Annabeth?”

“Yeah. Sorry, I…I thought you’d be awake by now.”

“I’m in San Diego.”

“Oh.”

“Are you okay?”

“Yeah, I’m—I’m fine. Good, I’m good. Are you?”

“Yeah.” His voice is quiet, almost wistful. “Why the new phone number?”

“It’s temporary. I’m in Greece.” She listens to him breathe, feels her own heart settle. 

“Greece,” he repeats.

Her thumb smooths over the shard of pottery in her hand. “Yeah. How soon can you get here?”

“To Greece? Shit, Annabeth, I don’t—”

“I found it,” she says. A glance over her shoulder tells her that her two grad students are laughing as they organize her gear and not paying attention to her at all, but she lowers her voice anyway. “I saw it, Percy. It’s real.” She breathes in, then out. The boat rocks under her. “I found it,” she repeats.

Static crackles in her ear. “I’ll be there in 24 hours,” Percy says.

//

They’d gone down together, which was stupid. So much of it was stupid with even a few hours of hindsight. No one coming down after them, thinking they knew the cave too well to get lost, believing that doing everything right meant that they were safe.

Stupid. 

The light clipped onto her suit only illuminated about a twelve inches past her flippers. She could see the walls on either side, the familiar steadily making way for the unfamiliar as they descended to the section only Percy had explored. 

Percy’s flipper tapped her head. He was reminding her to stop and equalize her ear pressure, so she did. He was more experienced diving in salt water. It saved her life, in the end—she had her nose pinched and her mouth firmly closed when she got slammed into the wall regulator yoke first. 

The straps on her chest jerked from the release of pressure, but it was the feeling of the bubbles rapidly flowing up her that let her know she was really, truly fucked.

//

It’s been six months since the Pit, and three since they last saw each other in person. Annabeth thought he was in New York, Percy probably thought she was—well, Annabeth doesn’t actually know. Probably not where she’s been. 

She’s been in Sicily and Ostia and around sixteen different Greek and Turkish islands. She hasn’t stayed in one place long enough for her mind to settle, has managed to outrun every shadow that clung to her pumping heels, only now her throat burns and her muscles ache and Percy meets her at the arrivals gate in Athens with a fresh tan and an unsure smile and Annabeth is all too aware that her months of avoidance have come to an end. 

Percy comes to a stop a foot or so away from her, tantalizingly close. Within arm’s reach. “Hey,” he says. 

His hair is long enough that he needs a band to keep his bangs out of his eyes. She recognizes it—it’s the same one she’d used to keep her own hair from falling in her face when it started to grow back after she’d chopped it five and a half months ago. The duffel bag thrown over his shoulder is also hers, and so is the necklace peeking out from beneath his collar. 

Annabeth hugs him because she wants to kiss him. “Hi,” she responds. 

The duffel bag hits the floor. His arms wrap around her, fierce and firm, and she buries her face in the warm skin of his neck. Stubble scratches against her cheek; Annabeth breathes easy for the first time in something like twelve weeks. 

“I thought you might send one of your grad students,” he says. His arms stay locked around her. 

“You got on the first flight you could,” Annabeth responds, her voice muffled. “Least I could do was meet you halfway.”

His fingertips press the tiniest bit harder into her spine. “Thanks,” he whispers into her hair. 

Annabeth’s own necklace digs into her jaw. I’ve missed you, she says with the nudge of her nose against his pulse. 

He rocks them back and forth, just barely. I’ve missed you, too, he responds with the graze of his palms over her back. 

Annabeth takes a breath, takes in the unchanged feeling coursing through her blood, and finally manages to take a step back. “You ready?” She asks. 

Percy’s smile is dazzling. “You bet your bippy I am.”

Annabeth leads him to her rental with loosely linked fingers, her steps so light she’s half convinced she could walk right over the Mediterranean itself. 

//

The last time they saw each other—the last time she saw him—it had been in the artificial brightness of their living room. Annabeth hadn’t slept in days, Percy hardly ever looked her in the eye, and neither of them could muster the strength to turn off even their tiniest, most ineffective lamp. 

No matter how many times Annabeth took deep breaths, she was still gasping for air. 

Percy would turn on the shower and stare at the water hitting the other side of the curtain, the bathroom door firmly shut, and then turn the faucet off again without ever stepping in. 

They curled up together every night, their bedroom lit up like a department store, her fingertips leaving bruises in his hips and shoulders, and if they were lucky sometimes one of them could fall asleep. 

Annabeth left New York. Percy didn’t follow her. 

//

One of her grad students picks them up from the dock. They were the only passengers on the boat from the mainland, so she’s the only person waiting, leaning against a rusty pickup truck filled with scuba equipment. She’s also lazily smoking a cigarette, her bright blue hair lit up a striking cobalt by the sun. 

She drops the cigarette and twists her foot over it the moment she sees them approach. “Doctor,” she greets with a grin that’s a little too innocent. 

Annabeth glares at her. “Pick that up. We’re not here to litter.”

The grad student sticks a hand out to shake Percy’s. “Hey, I’m Lucy. You the pottery guy?”

“I leave for one day and your hair is blue,” Annabeth mutters, taking the duffel bag from Percy’s shoulder and tossing it into the back. “If you’ve been smoking in the truck…”

Lucy rolls her eyes. “No, Mom, I haven’t been smoking in the truck. My hair’s blue because Mitchell won our bet, don’t worry about it. I didn’t even stain the towels.”

“I like it,” Percy says. 

“See?” Lucy says. She bends down and picks up her cigarette butt when Annabeth keeps glaring. “The pottery guy gets it.”

“Um—” Percy tries to say. 

“This is Percy,” Annabeth explains. “He’s not a pottery guy.”

“When’s the pottery guy getting here, then?”

Annabeth goes around to the driver’s side and gets in the truck instead of answering. Lucy shrugs and moves the passenger seat up to slide into the rear bench, waving Percy away when he tries to get in. He sits in the front with a shrug once Lucy’s knees are out of the way, and the moment his seatbelt is buckled Annabeth tears out of the marina parking lot. 

“So.” Lucy’s fingers tap along the backs of their chairs. “If you’re not a pottery guy, who are you? ‘Cuz Annabeth found a piece of pottery on her dive two days ago and took off outta here like Icarus on his way to freedom.”

It’s a weird simile, but Annabeth doesn’t respond. When Percy turns to look at her, her eyes don’t even stray from the road. 

“You didn’t tell them?” He asks. 

Annabeth grunts. Percy keeps staring at her, wondering which question he should answer, and eventually says to Lucy, “Annabeth and I…” He sighs. “Well, we go way back. How long have you been her student?” 

“A few months,” Lucy says. 

Percy smiles and turns to look out the window. They’re along the coast now, and the ocean is blue like a jolly rancher. “She doesn’t need a pottery guy,” he says.

Lucy raises her eyebrows. She looks at Percy, then at Annabeth, then back to Percy again. “Totally explains everything,” she says, and the rest of the drive passes in silence. 

//

For weeks after the Pit, Annabeth was on the edge of a panic attack whenever she couldn’t feel Percy beside her. She knew why, logically. The therapist explained it, and everyone was so goddamn understanding. Grover, and Sally, and Piper, and Nico, and Clarisse.

Even her mother, under the thick layer of I-told-you-so that she didn’t bother to try and hide.

What can you say, when your head finally has broken free of the water? When all light is blinding, when you can’t get rid of the taste of salt on your lips?

What can you say to the person who pulled you back to life, when you’re the only reason his soul grazed the razor edge of death in the first place?

//

“Why are the vibes, like, literally rancid?” Mitchell mutters, loading the extra gear his advisor always insists on bringing onto the boat.

“Girl, if I knew,” Lucy responds, shaking her head. 

“You could help, you know.”

“I picked them up from the dock! No, don’t put the yoke by the O2—”

“You do it, then!”

“Fine.”

She joins him, loading in silence. After a minute:

“$5 they’ve boned.”

“You’re so on.”

//

They put their gear on together, her reaching out to zip him up without prompting and him holding her tank steady so she can slide her arms through the straps. They don’t have to look at each other to do it, so they don’t. 

Annabeth only glances over once they’re finished. His eyes are hidden behind his diving mask, and Annabeth’s heart migrates to her throat.

The last time she’d seen him like that had been—

“Ready?” She asks.

Percy nods. She goes in first, and he follows.

He’s still following, even now. But that’s Percy. 

From above the surface, it looks like a rock. A big rock, sure, but not dissimilar from the jutting stones that surround a lot of the Mediterranean, the jagged edges that contrast the white sand beaches. That’s been her main research tactic, recently—where do the tourists avoid? What stone has been left unturned, what looks so innocuous from above that no one would ever suspect it was an X, marking a very secret spot?

Under the surface, it’s a different story. Not an obvious story, but at this point Annabeth could navigate each curve and edge in her sleep. She does, on the nights she doesn’t dream of a blackness like tar. 

It’s a bright enough day that sunlight streaks through the water a good twenty feet down, exposing the imposing face of stone. There isn’t an entrance, really, but there’s nooks and crannies and crevices, and Annabeth is the particular kind of crazy to have wiggled her way through every single one she could. 

On instinct, she reaches down and clicks on one of her flashlights. With a confident flick of her feet, she propels herself towards the opening that started it all. 

There are three flashlights clipped to the straps around her shoulders. When she had zipped up Percy’s suit, she had noticed the four he had clipped to his.

She finds the optical illusion, the uneven meeting that looks like a solid wall. If you stare at it long enough, the ripples of light coming through the water reveal it for what it is. She presses forward, and just like six months ago Percy goes where she leads.

From there, it’s memory. Through the cave system, careful and slow, even as her heart pounds. Under the archway, chipped away from the rock, a little too even to be natural. She pauses under it and taps it with one hand. Percy nods in response. He sees it. He knows.

After the archway, it’s left until the opening below, leading down to darker and colder waters. Annabeth checks her backup flashlights, braces herself, and heads down. 

She doesn’t look to see if Percy follows. He either will or he won’t. 

The space gets smaller, then larger, jagged edges of rock cutting into the path. This wasn’t an entrance, as far as Annabeth can tell, but it’s the only way in she’s found so far. Everything else has been long since blocked off by time. Earthquakes, rockslides, storms, erosion, all of the above. It’s proper cave diving because of it, something that Percy has infinitely more experience in.

She reaches the air pocket and pops her head out. She takes a breath of stale, cave air and waits. A faint light grows steadily brighter.

Percy’s head pops above the water. He lets his rebreather drop from his mouth.

“Holy shit,” he says. “Annabeth, this is—”

Annabeth reaches through the water and grabs onto his rebreather with her left hand. Her right hand is busy clutching her own. They’re both attached to their diving tanks, obviously, but…

His hand covers her own. “I’ve got it,” he says softly. “I’m sorry.”

Annabeth yanks her hand back. “Right,” she says. “Did you see the arch? I’m thinking 4,500, maybe earlier.”

Water drips from the low ceiling above them onto Percy’s diving mask. He doesn’t even blink.

“Plato said 9,600,” he teases.

“I know what Plato said.” Annabeth rolls her eyes. “What did he know?”

“4,000,” Percy says, shaking his head, “is neolithic settlers in Thera, precursors to the Minoans. Annabeth, that’s…that’s—”

“—the Older Peron,” she finishes. “The timing makes perfect sense, but I think there was something else. I mean, look at where we are. There were the rising sea levels during Holocene Epoch, sure, but—”

“—it was never at sea level,” Percy realizes. He gestures around them, splashing her with water. “It was already below sea level. Which is why—”

“—the rise was so devastating,” Annabeth continues, building on his enthusiasm. “They had fortifications of natural rock but—”

“—they were effectively trapped when the levels rose unexpectedly!” His voice echoes off the walls around them. “We’ve been going deeper and deeper this whole dive.”

“Probably a storm,” Annabeth says. “It was gradual, and then a big storm caught them off guard. They…they probably starved, if they didn’t drown. Those who didn’t made their way to Crete and kicked off the Bronze Age.”

The slow drip of water is the only sound between them for a long moment. 

“Where’d you find the pottery?” Percy finally asks.

“Up ahead. Ten minutes, maybe.”

“Is it all submerged?”

“I don’t know,” Annabeth admits. “Maybe, maybe not. I called you as soon as I had anything concrete.”

He takes his mouthpiece out of the water and slots it between his lips. Annabeth does the same, then heads back under to show him the way. She’s so excited to show him that she can barely even feel how the water has gotten gradually colder during their dive. It had freaked her out, her first few times trying to navigate the crags of the cave. 

Caves are always cold. It’s why they have wetsuits. Annabeth only wishes it wouldn’t take so goddamn long for her to warm up again once she was above the surface.

//

NYT: Your preliminary article talks a lot about the Holocene epoch. What does that have to you with your discovery?

PJ: Right, yeah, so that’s—we’re in that right now. That’s our current geological epoch. It’s an interglacial period equivalent to MIS 1, and started around 11,700 years ago. Basically, ‘Holocene’ is two Ancient Greek words smushed together meaning an ‘entirely new’ age. In terms of, like, humanity, it’s when all of our written history and technological revolutions have happened. It’s all happened since the last ice age ended those 12,000 years ago. In terms of my research—which is our research, really—it’s thinking about the impact of the vast warming of the planet after the last ice age and what that might be able to tell us about pre-Minoan civilizations in the Mediterranean.

NYT: Are you talking about global warming? I think of that being a lot more recent than 12,000 years ago.

PJ: Eh. It’s kinda relative. Pretty much anything is global warming after an ice age, you know? We do split the Holocene into three main eras of slight cooling and warming, but our sweet spot is around 7,500 years ago, when the Mediterranean especially was having to deal with rapid sea level rise and colder waters. Can I be honest with you, dude?

NYT: Of course. 

PJ: Everyone thought we were f****** crazy.

//

Later, back on the boat, Mitchell throws together some PB&Js for them to devour. The two of them eat quickly, tired from the dive, and don’t speak. Mitchell always uses a little too much peanut butter, and it sticks to the roof of Annabeth’s mouth, but that isn’t why she stays quiet.

There’s a lot between them besides the silence.

“This is everything I’ve ever wanted,” she eventually says, staring at the unassuming point of rock above the water. Just a rock that was really the cave that held the answer she’d spent her life searching for. Will they call it Chase Cave? Probably not, at this point. She’s glad. Something about that smarts—her greatest achievement marked by her father’s name.

“Is it?” Percy asks. His hair is wet, mussed up from when he yanked off his hood. There’s still a faint red oval around his eyes and nose.

She turns to face him more fully. They’ve never worn jewelry when they went in the water, and earlier she’d caught the faint tan line around the fourth finger of his left hand. He still wears it, or wore it recently enough to still have its mark.

Annabeth looks back to the rock. It’s much easier to stare at. “Almost,” she says.

//

NYT: Where do you go from here? Back to Berkley? Columbia? Are you staying in Greece?

PJ: Honestly… [Laughs] anywhere that offers us a tenure track. We’re open to suggestions! Our RateMyProfessor scores are through the roof, man. At this point, I’d even say yes to NYU.

//

“Berkley’s funding you?” Percy asks.

Annabeth nods, swallowing the mouthful of wine she’d been letting sit in her mouth. It’s easy to get lost in it—early signs of the sunset, Percy backlit by it all, wearing a loose blue shirt with the collar open so she can see his collarbones, her necklace nestled right in the middle. Missing him has been as frequent as breathing. She doesn’t quite know how to handle having him right across the table from her.

“Damn.” His mouth twists in that charming, trying-not-to-smile way. “What a coup.”

Annabeth snorts. “Right? I don’t know that she’ll ever talk to me again.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.” Percy grabs an olive from their shared plate and pops it in his mouth. “She’s going to milk your relationship for every grant she applies for until the day she retires. Or dies.”

“Fuck.” Annabeth takes a larger sip of wine and closes her eyes. “You’re right. Goddamn it.”

“Hey, it’s been known to happen.” She opens her eyes again just in time to see the smile slip properly onto his face. “Good thing she made sure that you didn’t share any kind of name.”

Annabeth raises her wine. Percy grabs his water and follows suit, his tan-lined finger wrapping around the glass. “To Dr. Sofia Athena,” Annabeth says. “A name that has had no lasting impact on the study of archeology and the world’s shittiest mother.”

“Hear hear!” 

They clink their glasses and drink. 

The sun sinks below the ocean, pink orange red streaked across the sky, and below the table Percy rests the length of his leg against her own. 

//

Percy kept waking up with bruises on his wrist, his forearm, along the edge of his ribs. She never remembered grabbing him that tightly, hadn’t roused from sleep for a moment, didn’t even know that she was capable of gripping him like that.

She kept thinking about his life before she came into it, kept thinking about his childhood and his aversion to alcohol, and kept spending her mornings throwing up bile.

He held her hair back. He kissed the space behind her ear. He took it all, right up until the day she left.

//

They leave the restaurant as dusk slips into evening. Everything drips blue, and they could go back to the ramshackle house Annabeth’s been renting for three weeks and go to sleep. They should, really. Tomorrow all of the difficult stuff starts, the phone calls and the grant applications and fierce defense of their life’s work. 

But Percy takes a deep, sucking breath in, and his hands in his pockets. He lets it out again, a satisfied sigh, and jerks his head towards the horizon invitingly, and Annabeth already knows she’s going to agree to whatever he’s going to ask. 

“What?” She asks. 

“Want to go for a walk?” He asks. “It’s a beautiful night.” 

He’s right. She wants to. Still, she hesitates. 

“On the beach?”

“Why not? There’s a sandy bit down there.”

Annabeth can think of at least seven reasons that they really should not. Up against Percy’s relaxed posture and open expression, none of them put up a fight. 

“Alright,” she agrees. 

He doesn’t offer his hand, so she doesn’t take it, but when they start to walk towards the shore, their elbows brush with every other step. 

//

“Don’t be ridiculous, Annabeth.”

Annabeth’s head snaps back. “I’m not being ridiculous,” she says.

Her mother shoots her a look, her face half obscured by her office’s desktop monitor. “You’re turning one of Plato’s metaphors into a pipe dream of a discovery. It’s not like you.”

Annabeth takes a deep, controlled breath in. “I’m not basing the entirety of my research on Plato.”

“You’ve found another source that references Atlantis?”

“Not exactly,” Annabeth admits begrudgingly. “But—”

“Annabeth.”

“Just because they don’t call it the same thing that Plato did—”

“Lower your voice, please,” her mother says, turning her focus back to her computer. She starts to type, her face impassive.

Annabeth seethes. Quietly. “The study of Stone Age civilizations always requires careful historiographical reading into the Bronze and Iron ages. Their interpretation of history is a valid course of investigation for today’s scholarship.”

Her mother sighs and closes her eyes for a brief, devastating moment. “You’re a promising archeologist, Annabeth, but…”

Always a but. 

“...these caves, and the diving, well…” Her mother finally gives her undivided attention. “It’s not difficult to see where you got the idea.”

Annabeth digs the fingernails of her left hand into her palm and tries her best to keep the tears at bay. “I’m not plagiarizing research ideas.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

“What did you mean?”

“This research project just happened to pop up right as you started seeing a scuba diver? That’s a sheer coincidence?”

“He’s not a—”

“Oh, he wears an anklet.”

“He’s a marine archeologist! That’s literally part of your department.”

“They’ve tacked on an adjective before the word ‘archeologist.’ Is that supposed to—”

Annabeth slams her binder down on her mother’s desk, a savage satisfaction building in her chest at finally being the one who gets to interrupt. “I’m not debating this with you,” she says, her voice filled with finality. “My research has to do with Pre-Minoan Thera and early Bronze Age art and documentation. Read it or don’t. If you don’t fund me, someone else will.”

Her mother rises from her seat in one graceful movement, her eyes dark and swirling storm clouds. Annabeth realizes that they’re the same height; she’d never noticed that before.

“Who approached you?” Her mother asks. “USC? BU?”

Annabeth lets the smile that stretches across her face be as bitter as it wants to be. “I’m a Chase,” she says. She knows it’s a twist of the knife. “Who wouldn’t fund me?”

//

The sand is cold between her toes. The wind off the water is warm and makes Percy’s shirt flap around and hug the contours of his torso for brief, devastating moments. Annabeth focuses on putting one foot in front of the other and not on the way this whole night has felt like a date.

“I kind of want to get in,” Percy says. 

“What?”

“The water,” he clarifies. “I want to get in. Don’t you?” 

Annabeth gapes at him. It’s only been three months. He went in with her earlier, even followed her into a cave, but this is different. This is a walk along the beach with their shoes in their hands and stupid small talk that hasn’t been getting at any of the things they should probably be working through.

Percy drops his flip-flops. He only has to undo one more button to be able to pull his shirt off over his head. Annabeth keeps looking—obviously—as he shucks off his pants and adds them to the pile, too. 

There are little slices of pizza decorating his boxers. 

There’s a tiny, innocuous breath of hesitation. Is he thinking about stripping all the way down? Is he balking now that he’s facing the might of the ocean? 

In the end, he goes towards the water confidently, his boxers still on, and calls back once his ankles are submerged. “You coming?”

Annabeth slips the straps of her dress over her shoulders and lets it fall to the sand, kicking it over to join Percy’s pile of clothes. After her own moment of hesitation, she slips the chain around her neck off and wraps it around her hand, clutching the bulk of it tight in her palm. She won’t leave it on the beach, but she won’t lose it to the ocean, either. 

By the time she’s up to her calves, Percy’s already dunked himself under and come back up again, hair slicked back and water dripping down his chest. He’s got a slight t-shirt tan she hadn’t noticed before.

“How far do you want to go out?” She asks him.

“We’ll freeze if we stay like this,” he says, goosebumps all along his arms with his wet torso exposed to the breeze. A tiny wave crashes right behind him and sends him staggering a foot or so. “Past the break?”

The wave hits her next, soaking through her bra and splashing salt up onto her cheeks. “Sure.”

They wade out together and dive through the next wave in perfect unison. When she comes back up, brushing the water out of her eyes, all that’s left of it are bubbles bursting against her skin. The water settles around her shoulders; when she looks over, Percy’s eyes are lined up perfectly with hers. Bending his knees, probably. Staying under the water to stay warm, or stay on her level, or some mixture of the two. 

“Warmer than I thought,” Annabeth admits.

Percy smiles. She wishes the moon would rise, so she could see the emerald cut of his eyes better. “That’s almost like saying I was right.”

“Almost,” she agrees, smiling right back. 

“We probably could’ve stripped all the way down. When in Rome, and all that.”

“We’re not on Naxos.” She shudders. “Never again.”

That makes him laugh, finally. “Come on, it was a cultural exchange!”

“A-bah-bah,” Annabeth tuts, raising a finger. “It’s one of the sacred three.”

Percy rolls his eyes. “Yeah, yeah. Ice water, air conditioning, and we don’t have to look at wrinkly old dudes naked. U-S-A, U-S-A.”

“And don’t forget it.”

“How could I?” He replies softly. 

Annabeth resists the urge to curse. There goes their lighthearted small talk. 

She dreams of Naxos. Not of the famous nude beaches or Percy laughing at her horrified expressions, but of the crisp white sheets of their hotel room and the faint red imprints of her teeth against the perfect bronze of his tan. She dreams of the purest conversations they’ve ever had, the ones they had crammed together on their Juliet balcony and the ones that passed with skin pressed close and no words spoken at all. 

The dreams are always exact mirrors of memory, flawless from start to finish, loving and being loved. She never wakes up before an orgasm or before the sun had finally risen that first morning and lit up the muscles of Percy’s back like a goddamn Yuriy Petrenko painting. It’s complete contentment, morning breath and a sort of pulled hamstring halfway through, no detail lost.

But she always wakes up, and Percy’s not there, and reality feels like a nightmare.

“You’re not wearing your ring,” Percy breathes out.

“Neither are you.”

“I took it off to dive.” His head tilts, just slightly, and Annabeth’s eyes slide down his neck to her necklace. She catches the smallest glint of metal through the water and clenches her fist around her own ring, so tightly that the chain digs into the meat of her hand. 

“So did I,” she says.

His mouth quirks up. “Okay.”. 

“San Diego,” she starts, weirdly confident from the wine or the quiet or Percy being right in front of her again. “Did you get an—”

“I’m still on sabbatical. Staying with Tyson.” A wave laps up and covers his chin for a second. “He says hi, by the way.”

“He’s good?”

“Mhm. Trying to teach me pottery.”

Annabeth grins. “Are you any good?”

“Obviously not. It’s better than, like, baby goat yoga with Grover.”

“So that’s why you’re not in Portland.”

“Uh, that and the human baby they’re very enthusiastically trying to create. Barf.”

She splashes him in the face. “Shut up. What? Since when?”

He spits the water that got into his mouth out in a beautiful arch. “I can’t believe he told me before you! Like, a few months now. I think they maybe kept it hush-hush because…”

The waves crash against the sand. Annabeth knows what he was going to say. She can hear it in the squint of his eyelids, the exact angle tilt of his eyebrows. It’s kind of comforting—she still knows how. 

“That’s amazing,” she says, her voice quiet. “He’s going to be such a good dad.”

A swell of water builds towards them, and their toes leave the sand in the same moment, the tiniest push to keep their chins above the surface. 

“He accidentally synced our Google calendars,” Percy admits after a second. There’s a dangerous kind of glint in his eye, the one that Annabeth has always been a little bit in love with. “They, like, scheduled it.”

Annabeth gasps. “No.”

He nods, dunking half of his face in the process. “I know so much about Juni’s ovulation cycle that I can’t unlearn—”

“Percy!” Annabeth objects, as though she’s not laughing through it. “That’s such a violation of their privacy—”

“It’s not like I wanted to know it!” He laughs right back. “Grover apologized, like, six times. Juni called to ask if we ever did any fertility rituals. I did not need that boundary broken.”

Annabeth covers her face with one hand and ducks herself under the water. The muted sounds, the sting of the salt, the knowledge that she could reach out and touch him—she breaks the surface again. “Why would we have done a fertility ritual? We don’t have kids!”

“I think maybe she thought we’d done one to prevent it. Anti-fa, right?”

“I know you know that’s not what that is.”

His straight face breaks. “You thought it was funny, though.”

“No comment.” 

“Hey, don’t be mad. I told her our sexytime is exclusively based on passion. No scheduling involved.”

Annabeth wrinkles her nose. “A good excel spreadsheet is kind of hot, though.”

“Oh my god.”

“Like, a color-coded one.” She rolls back her eyes and moans. “With tabs.” 

It’s so easy to tease him, so natural to fall back into their rhythm, to turn off the filter in her brain and let the conversation go wherever it’s going to. It’s so easy to forget why they were half a world away from each other. 

He splashes her this time, only she’s already laughing, eyes closed and ready for it. She hears his laughter join hers before she sees it, low and infectious. 

Annabeth could stay here forever, high on her life’s mission accomplished and Percy right in front of her, both of their heads above the water, both of them laughing. She would make this second of air stretch on forever, only then she wouldn’t get what comes next.

She opens her eyes against the sting of the salt and sees him, the jut of his collarbone above the foam, his hair curling a little bit around his ears where it’s beginning to dry. She could look at him forever, watch as the crinkles around his eyes go soft and fade, as his mouth settles from a grin into something smoother, more familiar.

“Wanna kiss you,” he mumbles. The waves push him closer, or he moves closer, or Annabeth does.

“I thought we based our sexytime exclusively on passion,” Annabeth responds.

The heat of Percy’s torso presses up against hers. “Don’t be a dick,” he whispers.

Percy’s mouth slides hot against hers, rough-soft in the very particular way he always is, and waves lap at their shoulders and Annabeth thinks something about baptism and then thinks about nothing at all for as long as she’s able.

//

“Sometimes I think we never got out,” she whispers to him one night. 

They’re wrapped around each other in the blaring light from both of their nightstands. It’s some time past three in the morning.

“Like, this is all a dream?” He asks.

“No.” She presses her nose against his chest, breathes him in. “I just still feel it. I started down there and it never stopped.”

She feels the breath shudder out of him. “Yeah,” he agrees.

..