Chapter Text
Mr. Brunner sits behind his desk with his arms folded over his chest, staring at Percy with an expression he can’t read. Percy shifts in his seat, rubbing his thumb over a scab on his knuckle.
“How’s the planning going?” Mr. Brunner says after what feels like an eternity of silence. Percy lets out a breath of relief; when he got the call to the office again, he’d racked his mind for things he possibly could have done these past few weeks. He thought he’d been good, for the most part. He was late to class a couple of times, but most kids were. And there was that time he knocked a freshman to the ground, but that was a complete accident—the kid just came around the corner too fast, and Percy didn’t notice him in time.
“It’s going alright,” Percy says, shrugging. He stops rubbing the scab before he gets the urge to scratch it.
Mr. Brunner hums, folded arms still creasing his perfectly pressed tweed vest. His face betrays nothing—whether he’s going to scold Percy, tell him he should be doing more, or actually expel him because an eye-witness saw him “shove” a kid to the ground, Percy isn’t sure. He braces for impact again.
But, again, Brunner doesn’t go there. Instead, he says, “I hear Miss Chase is helping you.”
Percy doesn’t unclench. “Uh. Yeah. She is.”
If Percy is going to be completely honest, helping is kind of an understatement. Sure, he’s putting in some of the work. Yesterday, he got to check out some of the pieces they had in the local Ancient Greek archive—which he found out was in the basement of their gigantic-ass school. As dark and musty as the rest of the basement was, the archive room was in spectacular condition, which made Percy wonder if this is where most of their money went instead of the art department with decades-old oil paints. There were rows and rows of old, leather-bound books on sturdy, wooden bookshelves; huge glass cases with full bronze chest plates, polished iron swords, and engraved shields lined the far walls; the room was temperature controlled, which was a huge surprise given the east wing of the school hadn’t had central heating since November. There were even models of ancient temples on a big round table in the center, painstakingly detailed down to the tunic of a person sweeping stone steps. The archivist who let him down there watched Percy like a hawk as he took inventory of the things he wanted to exhibit. There was so much it was overwhelming, but it was also…fascinating that there was so much history he would never know.
It was Annabeth who helped him come up with the floor plan for the exhibition space (the gymnasium). She’d brought a ruler and a protractor and one of those fancy mechanical pencils that don't have an eraser at the end to draw up plans for what they would show and where, as well as the beginnings of the staging for their swordfight (on the stage that retracted into the wall for assemblies). She even drew concepts for the flier advertisement (which Percy was totally going to use Canva for).
So, to an extent, it almost felt like he was helping her rather than she was helping him. And he wasn’t exactly sure how to feel about that.
“That’s good,” Brunner says, nodding his head once. “And how’s that partnership going?”
Percy shrugs again, looking down at the folders strewn on Brunner’s desk. “Fine.” He can feel Brunner staring at him again. “I mean, it’s…it’s fine. Good.”
Percy spares a glance at Brunner to find that, for the first time since Percy stepped in his office, he was smiling. It’s only a slight smile, but it feels—warm, almost. Or maybe that’s just the blood rushing to Percy’s cheeks.
“That’s nice to hear, Mr. Jackson.” Brunner rests his arms on the arms of his wheelchair, and Percy finally releases the tension in his muscles. “I hope you continue to get along.”
Percy nods, rubbing his thumb over one of the many calluses he’s gotten since he’s been using the wooden swords. “Yeah. Me too.”
“You idiot.”
Annabeth stands over Percy with her hand on her hip, watching him struggle to catch the wind knocked out of him from hitting the ground so hard. Percy uses the last of his energy to roll his eyes before he succumbs and falls flat against the floor.
Two days after Percy’s talk in Brunner's office, Percy found himself developing some sort of…complex. Already, after he returned to his class, he’d been ruminating about how this whole thing went from the Percy Project to the PercyandAnnabeth Project without him even realizing it. Maybe that was on him for accepting her help so readily, but—for some odd reason, he was starting to feel a bit prideful over the whole thing. Especially after taking inventory like a real professional and not just looking at a kitchen refrigerator and noting that the cheese he liked was still there. He was actually doing something. And no, he wouldn't have gotten this far without Annabeth, but the fact that Brunner only called him out of class to confirm that Annabeth had now taken part in the exhibition—so now it had a chance to succeed—kind of stung a bit.
After school that same day, as he walked toward his car, he heard a few girls by the entrance talking about the exhibition at the end of the semester.
“I can't believe they're still doing that thing,” one of them said, looking between her two friends sitting at the bottom of the wide steps leading up to the school's entrance. “Does anyone even go anymore?”
“Just, like, old people,” said a friend on the steps, looking down at her nails. “And freshmen. And rich alumni.”
“The school's architecture isn't even Grecian,” the third friend said, the group now behind Percy as he slowly made his way toward the parking lot. “The columns by the north entrance are Roman.”
Part of him wondered if they’d heard that Percy was organizing the exhibition and that was part of the reason they started talking about it at that moment, but he didn’t know how word would even get out. He never said anything about it to anyone; Annabeth might have mentioned that she was working on it, but she sure as hell wouldn’t have mentioned their partnership. If that was a coincidence, then…
Maybe this whole thing really was lame. Maybe those girls were just echoing what the whole student body felt and talked about when he wasn’t around.
Which, for the first time, only made him want to work even harder.
It was like boxing, in that way. Punching harder to prove something to himself; making something good that was all his to claim.
So, as that complex festered, he, on his off day, took the initiative to ask Annabeth when their next practice should be.
Baby steps.
A few hours later, he met Annabeth in their same studio. She wore her dobok, a black and double-yellow striped belt tied around her waist, her hair in two braids down her back. She took a swig from her water bottle and wiped the sweat from her hairline as he put his stuff down.
Her two-hour taekwondo practice did not give her a disadvantage. In fact, she seemed primed and ready to go—which, at this point, shouldn’t have come as a surprise.
What did come as a surprise was him tripping and falling over his own feet as he tried to avoid a slash from her false sword.
Which definitely affected his newfound complex.
After several seconds of watching Percy try to breathe, Annabeth crouches down next to him, peering at him with a gaze not quite veiling her judgment. “Are you okay?”
Percy sighs and throws his arms over his eyes, blocking out the fluorescent lights burning his retinas. He can feel his face warm. “I’m fine.”
After another few seconds, Annabeth grabs his arms, tugs it away from his face, and continues to pull until Percy lets her pull him all the way to sitting. “Oh, please,” she says, letting go once she’s sure he’s not going to fall backward again. “I tripped over myself twice today instructing a room full of eleven-year-olds. Call me when the echoing laughter of sixth-graders haunts your dreams.”
“I think I'll call a psychiatrist when that happens, actually.”
Annabeth snorts and backs up as Percy moves to his feet and grabs the practice sword that skittered to his side. “Fair enough.”
Until now, all of his and Annabeth's practices have been getting used to the act of sword fighting. The footwork, the weight balance, how to strike and avoid being stricken; now, it's about choreographing a performance. Fighting like they have been would be dangerous on a big stage and in front of a big audience—well, probably no more dangerous than his boxing matches, but bad if either of them accidentally whacked the other with more force than necessary and broke some sort of law. Percy doesn't know what that law might be, but it's probably some kind of illegal to harm another individual on school grounds in a way that may be technically accidental but looks completely on purpose.
Which begs the question: who would win the fight?
“Percy,” Annabeth says after another twenty minutes of swinging wooden sticks at each other, ending it when Thalia called Annabeth to tell her to close when they are done. She picks up their discarded items; Percy glances at Annabeth from above the lip of his water bottle, raising an eyebrow. “Is everything alright?”
She says it like it physically pains her to ask the question, face scrunched up with an expression anyone else would read as disgusted and what Percy learned was something more like concern. She made the same face when he told her about the archivist snapping at him for almost touching one of the displays.
Percy slots his bottle back into his backpack. “I'm fine,” he says, slinging it onto his shoulder. “Why?”
Annabeth shuts the door to the sword cabinet then clicks the padlock closed. She turns back toward Percy, wringing her hands. “I don't know. You just seemed a little…distracted?”
Percy blinks. He supposes that nearly busting his ass would give him away. “I’m fine.”
“You keep saying that.”
“Because I am. Fine.”
Annabeth frowns, and it takes him back to the other night, when she broke down crying in front of him. He never found out what she and her dad fought about, but after a certain point, it wasn't his business and there was no reason to bring it up again. He's sure they're both used to moving on. It doesn't stop him from thinking about it, though. Her usually perfect face, red and streaked with tears. He wonders what someone could have said or done to break down the wall she always had up with Percy. He wonders what he himself would do if he ever found out.
“Percy,” Annabeth says, and he tenses slightly at the tone of her voice. “You know we have to communicate if we want this to work, right? And being distracted is only going to get one of us hurt.” She looks Percy up and down, gesturing her hand at him. “Or, at least, more hurt.”
Internally, Percy knows that he should tell her the truth, that he’s feeling a way about the project being half taken on by someone he was 100% sure he would never see again after graduation up until a few weeks ago. This problem is more his own than something Annabeth did, but it doesn’t stop him from feeling like the control is being taken away from him, regardless of whether or not it’s for the best. He didn’t really want someone else to take credit for something that was given to him, and that might be totally selfish, but he thinks he’s allowed to feel his feelings, sometimes. Especially when he doesn’t have time to confront them alone with a punching bag.
Another part of him doesn’t exactly feel like having that conversation right now. He’ll just…have to do better, do more, prove that he’s capable of doing things without Annabeth holding his hand. Because he doesn’t want her to hold his hand. That’s completely off the table.
Percy sighs, pushing the hair falling into his eyes away from his face. “I just…had a tough week. Got a shitty grade back on a pop quiz in English. Worked a late shift last night.”
And he isn’t lying. His English class has been reading Othello for the past couple of weeks, and his English teacher surprised them all with a quiz on it at the end of class today, to make sure everyone was on track. And Percy had tried to stay on the pace they were supposed to, but long passages of Shakespearean English was a nightmare for his ADHD and dyslexia—that on top of the influx of customers at his job during dinner rushes after a local food critic raved about their halibut was more than enough for him to draw complete blanks as he stared at the paper his teacher put in front him asking about the overarching plot of Act II, scene III.
“Oh,” Annabeth says, following Percy as he turns toward the door, her spare studio keys jingling in her hand. “Where do you work?”
“Poseidon’s,” he says, leaning against the wall in the hallway as she turns off the room lights. She closes the door and slots the key in the lock. “On 32nd.”
“The seafood place?” Percy nods as she twirls the keyring around her finger. “They were just in the paper, right?”
“Mhm. Manhattan’s version of Antoine Ego can’t get enough of the freshness of the fish combined with the robust tang of the lemon vinaigrette. Had to hear that phrase all week.”
The dish had been ordered so much, H assigned Percy to lemon squeezing duty for an hour last night—some of the juice got under his glove and stung the hell out of some of the less-than-healed wounds on his knuckles.
“Do you recommend?” Annabeth asks once they make it outside, the night air still biting through his jacket even as they slowly inch their way to spring. He tucks his hands under his armpits, and once Annabeth locks the entrance door, she tosses the keys into her bag and pulls her sleeves down to cover her hands.
“Unfortunately, I do. I split it with one of my coworkers after our shift, and it’s good even after being reheated in the microwave.”
The two walk in the same direction down the street, Percy on the side closer to the street. His mom needed the car for the night, so he would have to take the subway home. He likes taking the subway enough, and he appreciates it even more after getting his license and wanting to avoid gas costs for a day or two. He kind of hopes he might see the lady with the black cat in her backpack he met earlier today on the same line going back.
It’s quiet for a bit, at least between the two of them, as New York streets are never truly quiet. But after a moment filled with Annabeth further zipping up her coat and Percy rubbing his dry hands together, Annabeth asks, “What was your English quiz on?”
He steps over a large crack caused by a tree root and fails to not notice Annabeth staring at her feet as she seemingly counts the steps she takes in each square on the sidewalk. One, two, three—one more than Percy’s longer gait taking only two.
“We’re, uh, reading Othello,” Percy says, looking down at his own feet before looking ahead of him, at the person walking their tiny, white, crusty dog in a sweater. “And I haven’t been…keeping up, I guess.”
“Keeping up like you haven’t been reading? Or haven’t been understanding?”
The question doesn’t feel as judgy as it might have a few weeks ago—just curious. He glances down at the top of her head, curls peeking out from under the hood she put over her head.
“Both. But mostly the understanding part.”
She turns to look up at him, eyes watery from the steady wind blowing over them, which he realizes is the cause a split second after a wave of fear runs through him at the thought of her crying again. That fear dissipates when she squints against the breeze and with the knowledge that his words nowhere near warranted tears. And, as far as Percy's concerned, they never will. He never wants to see Annabeth like that again.
“I have a translated copy of Othello you could borrow,” she says, ending Percy’s rambling thoughts. “We went over Othello last semester, and I ordered the modern English version for when I physically couldn’t bring myself to parse old English to understand a sexual innuendo.” She rolls her eyes, and Percy smiles slightly. “I also bought a version printed in a font specifically for people with dyslexia for when I did want to try to figure it out, but I don’t know if that’s help—”
“Are you dyslexic?” Percy blurts before he can stop himself. When Annabeth looks up at him again, her eyes widen and her mouth snaps shut, obviously taken aback—Percy mentally kicks himself and rushes to continue. “Because…well, first, that would be really helpful, actually. Both copies. Because I am really, notoriously, bad at focusing and…I have dyslexia. So…”
He really thinks he should just give up on trying to communicate coherent sentences sometimes. He holds back a wince as Annabeth’s mouth wavers, like she’s trying not to laugh at him. Percy tears his eyes away, and he tries to instead focus back on the little dog, its blue sweater compressing its fluff and highlighting how small its body actually is.
But instead of laughing, or even chuckling, Annabeth says, “I mean, dyslexia-friendly fonts are easier to read for everyone, I think.” Percy sees her shrug her shoulders from the corner of his gaze. “But I have dyslexia too. So it definitely helped me.”
When their eyes meet again, Percy realizes that she’s smiling at him, her lips spread across her face until they turn up at the corners. Because that’s what a smile is. And she’s directing one at him. And it feels warm. Suddenly, he isn’t so cold anymore.
“I didn’t know that,” Percy says, dumbly, pushing his hair away from his face again.
“I don’t exactly wear my This Girl Has Dyslexia shirt every day.” She tucks her hands into her pockets and looks back down at her feet. “But I’ve learned some strategies to deal with it over the years. If you need tips sometime—or, like, want to make sure you’re getting what you’re reading—let me know.”
A group of four people are walking side-by-side toward them, and instead of moving to make room for him and Annabeth, they turn and talk to each other like New York doesn’t have the most foot traffic of any city in the US. Before Percy can move himself, Annabeth grabs his arm and pulls him toward her, glaring and muttering, “Some people are so rude,” under her breath.
It feels like a lot all at once—Annabeth’s hand tucked in the crook of his elbow, her offer to help with his classwork, them walking unabashedly through the streets when at any moment, one of their classmates can spot them together like this. The past week they spent preliminarily organizing the exhibition. All at once, Percy realizes that he and Annabeth’s proximity to one another have them teetering dangerously close to something like…
“More oblivious than anything,” Percy says as his revelation strikes him. “Were you serious about the tutoring thing?”
They’re so close together, their footsteps have synced, Percy having to slow down to match her pace. He can smell the lavender hand sanitizer she put on after their session ended. “I’d hardly call it tutoring, but, like, sure. You have my number.”
He doesn’t know why her saying that makes his ears feel so hot. “Yeah. Okay. Thanks.”
“Yeah. No problem.”
Percy doesn’t realize Annabeth has let go of him until his side feels cold again, and he has to stop his face from reacting. “Well, this is me,” she says as they approach the next subway station, still bustling with people at this time of night. She moves to stand in front of him, thumb tucked under the strap of her bag. “I’ll see you later?”
She says it like a question she wants him to answer, and Percy doesn’t know why he notices that so quickly. Of course, she’ll see him later. Friends or not friends or the weird limbo in between, they’re still partners. He’ll see her later if he wants to or not.
Whether he does want to or not…well, she doesn’t need to know all of that.
“Later. Get home safe.”
Annabeth nods, responds with a, “You too,” and when she smiles this time, he notices the little dimple in the cheek that’d previously been turned away from him. Before he can process that completely, she turns and scurries down the stairs, disappearing from his line of sight.
Something like a friendship.
And for some reason, he doesn’t care so much about winning anymore.
When Thalia bursts out laughing after she sees Percy boxing a punching bag with a bright orange scrunchie holding back the front of his hair, he decides that it’s time for a haircut.
Luckily, his friend Grover Underwood is flying back home this weekend after spending the last three months of his gap year in Hawaii conducting research with one of his future professors about the effects of tourism on both climate change and the standard of living for the indigenous populations of the islands. He and Percy had only talked twice since he left, and both times had been incredibly brief due to both of their busy schedules. So, Percy is more than excited to see his best friend again—and to get his barber back.
“Percy!” Grover says when Percy answers the door on Saturday, immediately going in for a tight hug. Percy hugs him back, squeezing even harder. “How have you been, man?”
Percy pulls back, settling both hands on either of Grover’s shoulders. After three months abroad, his facial hair is thicker than the last time Percy saw him. He’s filled out a little more too; on their last phone call, Grover told Percy that his host family insisted he was too thin and fed him as often as they could, which Grover couldn’t exactly refuse with his people pleasing tendencies. The weight and the beard look good on him—and then it reminds Percy that they’re both getting older, and it makes him a little sad all over again.
“Been alright,” Percy says, clapping Grover once on the shoulder then letting him into their apartment. He hears the sink running in the bathroom and knows that his mother’s arrival is imminent. “How was the flight?”
“I’ve had better—” Grover says, and then Sally comes around the corner, and his face splits into a giant grin. “Ms. Jackson!”
“Grover!” Sally says, quickly crossing the living room to give him a hug probably twice as hard as Percy’s. Grover wheezes a little when she releases him. “Oh, you know Sally is fine.”
Sally insists Grover tells them all about his adventures as she pops a bag of popcorn and pulls out the bag of pistachios she keeps in the pantry for whenever Grover comes over. Percy tries to remind her that Grover is here for a reason, but she waves Percy off—Paul and Estelle are at the park for the afternoon, so she has at least the next hour. Percy rolls his eyes, but he complies anyway—he’s been wondering what Grover wouldn’t tell him over the phone.
“I mean, it was so heartbreaking to hear the perspectives that US media refuses to tell you,” Grover says, breaking open a pistachio shell. “Especially from the mouths of the people directly affected by the toxic tourism industry. Hearing how people are pushed out of their homes in favor of attractions, the impact of people actively polluting the beaches while they’re there. The lack of care and protections for native folks’ land. Participating in beach and ocean cleanups and spreading the word out to the people I know can only do so much when the government’s fundamental goal with everything in the country is to make a profit no matter who gets harmed.”
He tells them about the research team of other matriculating gap year undergrad and graduate students and sings his praises about his professor, Dr. Pan. “I’m so glad I get to actually take one of his classes and learn everything there is to know about environmental justice.” He looks at Percy, and his eyes are so earnest when he says, “this is what I want to do, you know? This is my path.”
Percy could listen to Grover go on about his passions for hours. That’s one thing Percy has always admired about Grover—how much and how deeply he cares for things, for people. Percy wonders what that really feels like, knowing what you want to do with your life. Being so passionate about something you’ll do anything to get it. Part of him thinks he’s found that in boxing, but he knows that’s not a sustainable career, especially not in the long run. He'll enroll in a community college in the fall to get his gen eds out of the way, and from there…
He doesn't know where life will take him.
And that's the most terrifying position to be in.
It's not until Sally leaves and Percy and Grover set up shop in the bathroom to cut Percy's hair does Grover tell Percy the information he's truly been waiting for.
“Her name is Juniper,” Grover says, draping a towel around Percy’s chest. He looks at Percy through the mirror, and he can’t hide his smile. Percy raises an eyebrow. “She’s an incoming first-year Environmental Sciences major on the research team. She also took a gap year. And we, uh,” he continues, plugging in the clippers to the outlet, “we hit it off.”
“Oh?” Percy says, smirking at Grover’s ripening blush. “I never thought I’d see the day.”
Grover rolls his eyes as he slides on a clipper guard. “Says Mr. Permanently-Single.”
“I could date someone if I wanted to.”
“Sure, if you didn’t reject everyone that expressed interest in you.” He looks at Percy’s head, considering for a moment before setting down the clippers to pick up a pair of scissors. “Or if you lost that whole nonchalant thing you’ve got going on.”
Grover moves to stand behind Percy before taking the scissors to the back of his head, cutting away some of the length. Percy watches as the strands fall to the floor in the mirror.
“Nobody’s expressed interest in me since, like, ninth grade,” Percy murmurs, recalling the time he found a note in his locker, written in purple with the most pristine handwriting he’d ever seen, asking him to meet them at a local pizza shop after school. He only went after Grover spent all of seventh period convincing him, but when he arrived, nobody was there; the only thing he got out of it was the pizza shop he frequents more often than his paycheck deems appropriate. “And I’m not nonchalant, I’m just…cool?”
“Calling yourself cool and then questioning it makes you definitively not cool, my friend.”
As the haircut progresses, Grover tells him all about Juniper. The late-night conversations they had writing up interview summaries, the lunches they brought each other for long days, the way her hair smelled and the perfume she wore, the day she asked him whether her feelings were completely one-sided or if he felt what she’d been feeling since the first introduction. The entire time, Percy can only describe Grover’s face as lovesick—and as averse to romance Percy tends to be, he can admit to himself that it looks good on him.
By the time they’re done, Percy’s hair litters the bathroom floor, and his head fills at least twice as light. At some point towards the middle of the haircut, Grover had turned Percy away from the mirror so he could do a grand reveal. Percy pouted but let him. Grover has been cutting his hair for years at this point, so he trusts him to not fuck it up.
When Grover spins him around, Percy has to blink a few times before he recognizes that it’s him in the mirror. It’d been a bit longer than usual since his last haircut, but he didn’t realize how used to his longer hair he’d gotten. He turns his head to the side, running his fingers over the short, fuzzy hair above his ears. Then he runs his hand through the hair falling onto his forehead, short enough to reveal his eyebrows now.
“Like it?” Grover asks, putting the clippers back on the counter. “If not, I fear your only other option is bald.”
Percy takes the towel off his shoulders, shaking more hair to the floor. “I do like it. It’s a bit more… mullet-y than I was expecting.”
“Dude, I’ve been thinking about you with a shaggy cut for the past year and a half. I had to build the confidence first, though.”
Percy snorts and turns his head to the side again, assessing his hair from all angles. He does like it. He, for some reason, really likes it. “You think about me, G?”
Grover slings an arm around Percy’s shoulder and leans in to plant a big, wet kiss on his cheek. Percy groans and squirms away as Grover snickers. “Always, Perce.”
Later that night, after Percy’s family takes Grover out to dinner—an occasion, Sally claims, they save for when their favorite son comes home—Percy sits at his desk in an attempt to get some homework done.
He opens his backpack to find the two books Annabeth gave him: two copies of Othello she told him she’d left at the library’s front desk for him (she also told him she was a library aide during last period, so the librarian was cool with her storing things there for the day). When he picked them up, they were in a purple tote bag, with a note on the front written in careful letters that read: For Percy—enjoy!
He severely doubts he will enjoy; he rarely enjoys reading. But as he takes the books out of the bag and puts them onto his desk, he recalls how hard his heart skipped when he saw the bag sitting there, waiting for him.
They smell vaguely like the scent of her hand sanitizer. Lavender.