#the little singlet tucked in... reminds me of me as a baby and my mum always putting a singlet under everything lol

[changbinseource]

Cheeky... © doldolchangbin

[gins-potter]

fighting the good fight

Based on this fanart by Allarica

Also here on AO3

Annabeth hated her job.  She really did.

Ok, she knew she shouldn’t complain so much.  Being a lawyer after all, was nowhere near the worst thing she could be doing for money.  Especially in California.  But there was something draining about dragging herself into work everyday, doing a job she wasn’t passionate about.

She’d gone to law school because her father and her step-mother had insisted and had regretted it from the first day.  It wasn’t that she wasn’t good at it, she actually surprisingly good and was slowly making a name for herself, but there were days when she just couldn’t deal with the stupid kids who thought breaking into SeaWorld to swim with the dolphins was a good idea.

Annabeth strode down the hallway of the precinct, her heels clicking loudly against the linoleum floor, nodding to hello to the familiar faces around the place.  Despite being a defence attorney, Annabeth was respected amongst local officers, having built a reputation of a high moral standard.  Everyone around here knew she only took clients that she truly believed were innocent or that no one wanted to see put into jail; kids stealing from service stations to pay for their sick mum’s medical bills, teenagers dragged into the wrong side of the law, people who had never been taught a better way.

So when the officer stationed outside interrogation room 2 gave her a dubious once over, she wasn’t surprised.  “Don’t know why you’re here, Miss Chase.  This one’s guilty as,” he said as he stepped away to unlock the door and let her in.

“We all have to do what we have to do, Officer,” she said carelessly, not betraying how she had fought tooth and nail with her boss against taking this case.

“Ain’t that the truth,” he rumbled back as she stepped inside.

Perseus Jackson was not what she was expecting.  Although she hadn’t known what to expect from a guy named Perseus, from the crime she had been expecting a rich boy in designer clothes who thought he could do whatever he wanted because of Daddy’s money.  But Perseus was the exact opposite of anything she could have ever expected.

His black hair with an aqua undercurrent running through it was styled into a undercut and made his green eyes that much more startling.  His loose singlet - adorned with the proclamation “Save the Dolphins” with an illustration of a dolphin skeleton - exposed muscular biceps and ribs that were marked with ink.  Metal glinted at both his lip, eyebrow and ear lobe and deft fingers played with a silver band on his finger and a leather cord with beads that hung around his neck.  Annabeth was not surprised to find a skateboard sitting by the guy’s feet.

Those bright green eyes, alight with surprising intelligence, burned into her the second she stepped into the room.

“Let me guess,” he said lowly.  “My lawyer?”  His chuckle was a low as his voice and twice as husky.  His smile was that of a child who had been caught doing something wrong and knew it; a troublemaker’s smile that Annabeth had seen a million times in the halls of her high school.

“Yes.  You’re Perseus Jackson, I assume,” Annabeth replied briskly, her tone clearly leaving no room for jokes or games.

“Percy, if you would,” he replied.  “Still haven’t quite forgiven my mother for naming me that.”

“Greek mythology fan, is she?”

Percy quirked an amused eyebrow.  “Wise girl,” he said.  “My last lawyer wouldn’t know Greek from Roman.”

Annabeth jolted at the reminder.  She had allowed herself to relax around her client, let him lull her into a comfortable conversation about Greek and Roman mythology as though he knew somehow that was the perfect way into her heart.  And she had forgotten, if only for a moment, why she was here.

Annabeth smiled tightly.  “Get locked up a lot do you.”

“Yes,” said Percy honestly.  He spread his hands and glanced pointedly at the file in her hands.  “But you already knew that didn’t you?”

Annabeth gave up the pretense, took a seat at the interrogation table and flipped open the worryingly thick file she held.  “For being only 25 years old, your record is quite…” she trailed off when failing to find a word to aptly describe Percy’s record.

“Impressive,” he suggested with a grin.

“Not the word I would use,” she returned easily.

“Quite judgemental aren’t you,” Percy said.  He rocked back on his chair and gave her an appraising look up and down.

“Look,” Annabeth said abandoning the file and leaning forward.  “I didn’t want to take this case but it was either that or get fired.  So here we are and because it’s who I am, I’ll fight my best for you but that doesn’t mean I’m going to like you.  Are we clear?”

Percy swung forward again and the chair slammed back on all fours.  His sudden move put their faces mere inches away from each other.  “Crystal,” he grinned, all teeth.

Annabeth jerked back, ignoring the way his smile sent shivers down her spine and focussed on the job she was here to do.

“Ok so, usually breaking and entering is bumped up to a felony but because they can’t prove intent to do anything more than wander around rather than-”

“Steal a dolphin like I was planning?”

Annabeth stopped short.  “I- what?”

Percy looked up from the ring he had gone back to playing with.  “You’ve read my record.  You should know I was doing more than looking at all the pretty animals.”  By the end of his sentence, Percy’s tone had dissolved into something cynical and mocking.

Annabeth actually hadn’t read Percy’s file, or at least not in the depth she normally would have.  She had given it a cursory look over, enough to see that her client had done a surprisingly limited amount of jail time for the number of crimes he’d committed and make some assumptions, assumptions that apparently couldn’t be further from the truth.  

She glanced unwittingly down at the file, eyes tracing over the list of arrests.  The more she read, the more she understood; nights spent in holding cells for protests against marine animal captivity, weeks here and there for intervening with hunting permits, cases of vandalism, a year in jail when he was 21 for being involved with a group that stole a dolphin from a marine park and setting it free in the ocean, countless occurrences of suspicion for setting other animals free.

“Quite the activist aren’t you?”

Percy spread his hands again but this time didn’t say anything, just let his small smile speak for itself.

Despite herself, Annabeth felt a smile of her own spreading across her face and she pulled the arrest report closer.  “Then let’s see what we can do about getting you out of here.  Can’t have you locked up for fighting the good fight.”

Because she was as good as she was, fifteen minutes after they were called up by the judge they were walking out again, Percy grinning and squinting in the sun while Annabeth shook her head in fond exasperation.  She’d gotten him off on a fine and Percy was practically skipping.

“Man,” he crowed, bouncing down the steps.  “I’ve never gotten off that quick before.  I might just have to call you next time I get arrested.”

Annabeth scoffed.  Percy had pulled out the works inside, including baby seal eyes and an innocent ‘who me?’ voice as he promised the judge it would never happen again that even had Annabeth fooled for a second.  But only a second.

“Hey Annabeth,” Percy said as they neared the bottom of the steps and Annabeth didn’t bother correcting him ‘it’s Miss Chase’ again.  Distantly she noticed the tap, tap, tap of his fingers on his skateboard, the same compulsive beat he’d been tapping against his knee the whole time they’d been in court.  “Can I ask you something?  Why do you hate being a lawyer so much?”

Annabeth jerked, startled.  “How did you-”

Percy shrugged and gave her a lazy grin.  “A big win like that and not so much as a smile?  Besides there’s gotta be something you want to be doing more than helping punks like me stay out of jail.”

Annabeth shook her head, laughing a little.  “I’ve always wanted to be an architect.”  She didn’t know why she was telling him that but she was.

Percy cocked his head.  “So why aren’t you off being an architect then?”

“ That , is a very long story,” she said even though it really wasn’t and abruptly she turned on her heel and headed for her car.  Percy kept pace with her easily and Annabeth cursed his long legs.

“We could discuss it over dinner sometime?” he said hopefully, a stupidly adorable gleam in his eyes.

“I don’t date my clients,” she replied briskly.  And damn, because now that gleam was growing brighter and he was smiling at her again.

“Does that mean what I think it means?”

Annabeth sighed and came to a halt, digging around in her blazer pocket for a business card which she held out of his reach for a second.  “Call me next time you’re going to do something stupid so I have some time to prepare.”

Percy snagged the card from her and tucked it away carefully in his jeans pocket.

“I think we should have dinner.”

Annabeth rolled her eyes and chuckled, already turning to her car again.  “I don’t date clients, Mr Jackson,” she called over her shoulder.  “And you won’t be an exception.”

She could hear the grin in his voice as he called after her, “Oh, don’t you worry Miss Annabeth Chase, I live to be the exception,” and damn her, but she was smiling all over again.