Archive of Our Own

The night was not supposed to have her crying on a balcony.

It had begun too beautifully for that.

The premiere had transformed an entire Manhattan block into gold and light. Cameras flashed endlessly outside the theater; names glittered across giant posters; people in gowns and black tuxedos drifted through the lobby beneath chandeliers like something out of one of Sally’s own romance novels. There had been laughter everywhere that night — loud, genuine laughter that only existed when people who had survived difficult years finally found themselves somewhere safe.

And Sally deserved this.

Annabeth had thought that the moment she had even known about the movie.

That night, Sally Jackson stood near the center of the reception room glowing beneath soft amber lights, one hand wrapped around Paul’s arm while producers and actors and journalists congratulated her on the adaptation. Her smile looked almost disbelieving still, as though some part of her remained the eighteen-year-old girl who used to write at a tiny kitchen table after midnight while the rest of the world slept.

Percy looked impossibly proud of her. That had been Annabeth’s second thought.

He had spent most of the evening orbiting Sally with the kind of affection only Percy could make look effortless — fixing her dress train when it snagged, stealing appetizers off her plate, making her laugh so hard she nearly cried twice already. Blond hair falling into his eyes and his blue suit slightly crooked because he never wore formal clothes correctly, along with smiling with his entire face.

Beautiful. He looked so, so beautiful, and Annabeth hated herself a little for noticing.

Well, maybe not for noticing — because she had noticed since she was twelve years old and dripping wet and furious at him in a canoe at summer camp — but for still reacting to him this way after all these years.

Because she was twenty-four now, and that was too old, probably, to still feel her pulse stumble every time Percy touched the small of her back to guide her through a crowd or touched her arm and her shoulder just because he knew he could. She was too old to still love him with the same terrible completeness she had at sixteen.

She was probably too old into that feeling to still hope.

And yet.

“Annabeth.”

She turned at the sound of Athena’s voice earlier that evening and nearly startled. Her mother stood beside her in deep emerald silk, elegant and composed as always, though age had softened some of the sharpness from her face.

“You look beautiful tonight,” Athena had said. Those were simple words, normal words, and still they had shaken Annabeth more than they should have.

Because there had been a time in her life when she would have traded entire years just to hear them. But things were easier now. Not perfect — Annabeth doubted perfection existed between mothers and daughters who had once failed each other so catastrophically — but easier. They spoke on the phone sometimes. Athena asked about her projects in Rome. Annabeth visited her on holidays. They were building something carefully from wreckage.

And tonight Athena had even smiled when Percy kissed her cheek hello out of the overjoyment of his heart because of his mother’s success. She had even told him he did a good job with the picking of the venue.

It would have been unimaginable once, but it seemed that everything had changed at some point that Annabeth wasn’t sure she knew she had crossed.

Maybe that was part of the problem that made her chest ache, she thought. Maybe that was somehow the reason why she felt her eyes a little too sensitive to feelings and her heart a little too bruised for the loads of nothing that had happened other than happy stuff.

Sally’s book was a success and the movie was an even bigger one even before it was released. Percy’s side hustle as a suft instructor had somehow landed him in an international surf championship — and he was, somehow, one of the favorites to win —, and no one was happier than the man himself. Annabeth’s own career was thriving, and she had been invited to build a whole entire museum in the heart of New York.

There were only joys all around her, and still she felt stuck. Stuck, somehow, and still life was moving. Moving forward, at that, and she suddenly did not know where she stood inside it.

Music drifted through the ballroom now — something slow and orchestral played by the live quartet near the dance floor — while guests swayed beneath hanging lights.

Matt had dragged Bobby into dancing horribly with some producer’s daughters, and Grover was laughing too loudly beside Juniper near the bar. Thalia had stolen champagne from someone important, she figured, when she found Jason more than mortified and trying to explain something to someone expensive-looking, and Percy—

Percy was dancing with Rachel on the dance floor.

Annabeth felt the sight before she understood it, for it came with a sharp thing beneath her ribs.

Rachel’s red dress moved like liquid beneath the lights as Percy spun her gently across the floor, both of them laughing at something she had said. Rachel’s hand rested on his shoulder as she bent over to laugh over some silly thing he surely said, and Percy leaned down slightly to hear her over the music.

It seemed easy, the sight, and even intimate in the accidental way that hurt the most.

And Annabeth hated that she noticed the details.

They had been friends for years — their friend group had the tendency to enlarge instead of shrink like most did — and Rachel was one of their best friends. She was nice and smart and so very funny, and Annabeth truly loved that she was their friend; but something had changed within the last year, and it made something ugly crawl inside her veins.

Annabeth hated that lately she had started noticing the way Rachel looked at Percy.

It wasn’t friendly anymore, and she could see it. It wasn’t obvious, she gathered, since no one said anything yet; but something softer lived there now. Something hopeful that made Annabeth’s stomach twist in knots.

And Percy… God, Annabeth didn’t know what Percy felt because Percy loved people so openly that it was impossible to tell where friendship ended and something else began. She, at least, couldn’t tell — she had never seen Percy in love, and she didn’t know how that would look on his face.

That was the cruelty of loving him, she figured. Everyone received warmth from Percy Jackson, and everyone received tenderness. He held the world gently in both hands without realizing what that did to people.

Without realizing what it had done to her. For years.

Her throat tightened suddenly at the sight of the pair just a few meters away. Her lungs ached and her heart seemed to have been struck by a crowbar; she looked away immediately, horrified by the sudden sting behind her eyes.

This was ridiculous.

Pathetic, honestly.

Twenty-four years old and on the verge of tears because the man she loved was dancing with another girl at a party.

Except Percy was not just some man she had met a few times and loved just for a while. No, no, no; he was so much more than that and there was so little she could use to describe it.

He was not just some love, some flicker of feeling that she could leave behind to meet something greater. He was summer camp at twelve years old and scraped knees and stolen blue candy and sitting beside her through nightmares she never spoke aloud. He was phone calls from California at three in the morning because he missed New York, and answering her calls from Rome because she missed it just as much — because she missed him.

He was every airport goodbye and hello and picking up a random meal  before dropping her home — her apartment that was just two blocks away from hers. He was every almost-confession and moment she had looked at him and thought not now. Not yet. Later, maybe.

Except later had somehow become years, and years, and years. And different routines and continents and hours and now life kept happening around them. People were changing and wanting things and moving forward.

Rachel looked at Percy like a woman preparing to leap, and Annabeth suddenly feared she might lose him simply because she had stayed silent too long.

The thought hit hard enough that she could barely breathe. Her dress seemed tight, all of a sudden, and the bodice she chose seemed to be squashing her ribs and the air and her heart that shouldn’t be so dramatic over something that didn’t even make sense.

He was her best friend, and only that. There was nothing to be hurt over or about.

Before anyone could notice the expression cracking apart on her face, Annbabeth tried to take a breath. A deep inhale that should’ve, maybe, helped somehow; but it was useless.

So she turned on her heels, lowering her head so she wouldn’t have to hide so much in case someone greeted her, and slipped quietly through the crowd and out onto one open balcony on the edge of the place.

Cold air struck her immediately. Manhattan glittered below like scattered stars, the city a beautiful thing to make up for the lack of natural light from the sky. The chaos from inside still reached her ears, but a little more limited now that she was a tad far from it all, and she swallowed a knot.

For a moment, Annabeth only stood there, gripping the railing, breathing hard through the ache lodged inside her chest.

Inside the ballroom, muffled music continued behind glass doors. Someone laughed and cameras still flashed somewhere, and the music was still loud and fast and bubbly. 

Annabeth breathed in, trying to center herself to reality, and pressed one hand over her mouth as she tried not to spiral further into that terrible feeling inside his chest. It wasn’t fair, she knew; no one was doing nothing wrong. They were all adults with their own feelings and choices, but the first were taking the best of hers and the latter were being thoroughly regretted.

She did not remember what it felt like not to love him. When she thought about it, in retrospect, maybe she never had.

Annabeth had once tried to calculate it. Not like a serious matter — it was a serious feeling but she often tried to disregard it as such so she wouldn’t freak out and have a meltdown —, but something to do in her loneliness and in the feeling of missing home.

It was just one sleepless night in Rome when rain struck against her apartment windows and solitude pressed heavy enough against her ribs that she found herself staring at the ceiling thinking about Percy again.

As always, it was always Percy.

She had been twenty then, exhausted from architecture reviews and impossible professors and a city that was beautiful enough to ache and with which she had dreamed for so, so long. She remembered counting backward through the years trying to determine when exactly the feeling had become irreversible, and when it was that he became just another part of her heart.

She had been fifteen, maybe. She remembered going a little insane over the fact he had gifted her a beautiful surfboard for decoration — one he had painted himself with her mind, and she had decided that it was the most precious gift she had ever gotten.

It had been earlier, then. She was thirteen, perhaps, and it happened when he had bloodied his knuckles defending her during one of the ugliest years of her life and then shrugged it off like getting hurt for her was obvious.

She was very much certain, though, that she had been twelve when it happened.

Twelve, yes, and furious at summer camp because he was loud and reckless and impossible and somehow kind in ways that made her suspicious. Twelve, and she was sitting beside him on the dock after curfew while the lake reflected moonlight around them. Twelve, and she was hearing him say, very seriously, that you think too much, before handing her half his melted chocolate bar like that solved everything.

Maybe she had loved him even then.

Maybe some part of her soul and all the lives it lived before had simply recognized him instantly, and it hadn’t been hard at all to have that feeling back in her chest.

The terrifying thing about it, Annabeth thought, was not how long she had loved Percy Jackson. But out of everything that the feeling brought, the scariest detail was that it had survived everything. Distance, when they were a world apart, and time for it still lived as fresh as when it bubbled. It survived fear and grief and silence, and people and scars and all else that came with the world.

It survived changes and so many problems, and the ugly years with Gabe Ugliano screaming through Sally’s apartment while Percy stood between everyone and the damage as best he could despite being just a kid himself. It survived the years Annabeth stopped speaking to Athena entirely, and then California and Rome and airports and phone calls and missed birthdays and attempted almost-relationships that never lasted because nobody else ever felt entirely right.

Percy had remained, like gravity and breath. And maybe that was why seeing him with Rachel tonight had hurt so badly. Rachel looked like someone standing at the edge of a possibility. And Annabeth suddenly realized with horrifying clarity that if Percy ever fell in love with someone else, she would smile through it. She would support him. She would never burden him with this.

And afterward she would probably go home and break quietly where no one could see.

The thought nearly unraveled her in public anyway. 

Cold wind swept across the balcony, lifting strands of her dark curls as she stared blindly at the city below. Somewhere behind her the orchestra shifted songs again — softer now, slower — muffled through glass and entirely unmatched to her mood and current emotional distress.

She pressed her hands harder against the railing, willing her nose and lungs and body to breathe, breathe, breathe. Maybe if she stayed out here long enough she could force the feeling back down where it belonged.

Maybe—

The balcony door opened behind her, suddenly, and Annabeth closed her eyes immediately. She didn’t even have to think or breathe another second or turn around to know who it was that joined her in the balcony, because, of course.

Percy had always noticed everything about her.  Even at twelve years old he had somehow known whenever she was upset before she spoke a single word.

The door slid shut softly behind him, cutting off most of the noise from inside. She heard the quiet click as he closed it carefully — privacy, instinctively given, so he could be worried in peace and she could feel whatever she felt in peace, too.

It was always like that, between the two of them.

Annabeth didn’t turn around immediately, trying to gather herself and facial expressions enough so she wouldn’t fall apart as soon as she looked at him and those worried, worried eyes that were certainly squinted in concern. 

She heard his footsteps instead, hesitant at first against the stone floor, hesitant.

“Hey,” Percy said gently.

God. Only that voice alone nearly destroyed her at all times; she was not strong enough to face him without crumbling down to heart-shapped pieces. 

Annabeth swallowed hard and kept her eyes fixed on the skyline. 

“Hi,” she greeted back, and there was a small pause. Just a moment, only enough for him to study her and know what it was that he could take from her body language alone.

Percy had always looked at her too directly, like he believed every expression she made was worth remembering and burning to his brain.

“What are you doing here?” he asked, his voice soft and warm and gentle. 

Annabeth tried her best to make it sound like she was only tired of noise and people and the heels she wore.

“Nothing,” she shook her head, trying to smile when he found himself beside her, eyes trained and glued to her profile.

Percy arched an eyebrow.

“Nothing?” he repeated, tilting his head.

It was cute when he did that. Percy surely didn’t even realize just how adorable his confusion could often be — his eyes would glisten and widen and it would resemble a puppy, most of the time. A seal, if she was being honest (and while he would love the comparison, it’s not something Annabeth would tell him).

She shrugged.

“Yeah. I—” she shrugged again. “I just needed to breathe,” Annabeth told him.

The lie sounded thin even to her own ears. And she knew that Percy knew her too well to fall for it.

“Yeah?” he inquired, and she nodded her head again.

Percy hummed softly, and he sounded unconvinced in the gentlest way possible, like he was trying to decide how much to push without upsetting her further. He had always done that with her — approached her emotions like they were something fragile and worthy of patience even when Annabeth herself treated them like enemies to conquer.

He leaned his forearms against the balcony railing beside her, close enough that warmth radiated from him.

The city stretched beneath them in ribbons of gold and white. Traffic moved slowly through Manhattan below while music and muffled laughter drifted faintly through the closed balcony doors behind them.

Annabeth focused on that instead of him. It was much safer than looking directly at Percy while her heart was busy destroying itself. She could feel his gaze anyway, studying her profile.

“Hey,” he said after a moment, quiet enough that the nickname felt intimate. “You know I can tell when you’re lying, right?”

Annabeth let out a weak breath that almost resembled a laugh. His expression softened the second it appeared, like he’d won something precious just by pulling a smile from her.

That was the problem with Percy, really; he made being loved feel dangerously easy.

“You’re avoiding the question,” he murmured.

Annabeth stared harder at the skyline.

“I said I just needed air.”

He hummed.

“And I said I don’t believe you.”

The sincerity of it lodged painfully beneath her ribs. Percy shifted slightly beside her then, turning enough that she could feel his attention fully on her now.

“Did somebody say something to you?” he asked. “Are you upset? Did something happen inside?”

The genuine worry in his voice nearly broke her composure immediately. 

He cared so openly that it twisted her organs inside. Even when they were teenagers and life had been ugly and exhausting and cruel, Percy somehow still found room to care about everyone around him. Annabeth remembered nights at sixteen where he would sit beside Sally after Gabe’s latest disaster while simultaneously texting her reminders to eat and helping Grover study for chemistry.

Percy loved like breathing, and Annabeth had been drowning in it for years.

“No,” she answered softly. “Nobody said anything.”

“Okay.” Percy nodded slowly. “Then what is it?”

Annabeth closed her eyes briefly, and tried to breathe more steadily.

She opened her eyes again and tried for another smile.

“You should go back inside.”

Percy frowned immediately.

“Why?”

“Because it’s your mom’s premiere.”

He tilted his head.

“Yeah. And it’s your family as much as it’s mine,” he told her, a truth so simple on his lips.

Annabeth looked away before her expression betrayed too much, but Percy noticed anyway.

His brows furrowed deeper.

“Hey.” Softer now. “Look at me.”

She didn’t want to. Looking at him felt catastrophic, lately, and she was coming to terms with the fact that she wasn’t as strong as her stubborn younger self wanted to believe she was.

Annabeth pressed her lips together, and looked down so she wouldn’t look at him. It made alarms blare inside his head more and more, and he swallowed the concern in order to speak.

“Annabeth.”

She looked away toward the city lights again.

“I’m fine.”

“Wise Girl.”

“I said I’m fine,” she tried, a little anger seeping through her words even if she didn’t intend it to.

Percy shook his head.

“You sound like you’re about to cry,” he said, and she gor angrier at the fact that yes, she did sound like that. Yes, she did feel like that. Yes, she was very much very obvious to him, and it made her a little more upset than she had been the second before.

Percy straightened from the railing slightly.

“I’m not going anywhere,” he said quietly, like he somehow understood that was what frightened her. “Talk to me.”

She shook her head.

“There’s nothing to talk about,” Annnabeth lied.

“Wise Girl,” Percy asked, his voice worried and even gentler and his beautiful face frowned because he couldn’t understand. “What’s going on?”

And because she was not stronger, she declared defeat to her own brain and pride and finally looked at him.

She immediately regretted it.

It was obvious that Percy was a handsome, handsome man. A gorgeous person, with all in the right proportions and right places and angles and shapes — he was beautiful with his golden hair and sea-colored eyes and pug-nose and rosy lips and cheeks. He was gorgeous with his broad shoulders and tall frame and gentle, deep voice and careful movements that would often be stumbly.

He was so very beautiful, and Annabeth had seen every phase and possible situation he could possibly go through, but, gods above and below and around, he looked unfairly good tonight.

The blue suit — he lived for blue things and it seemed fitting for his mother’s success — fit his shoulders perfectly despite the tie already loosened slightly from his time doing rounds of talking and dancing. His blond hair curling at the edges, miraculously not disheveled thanks to the works of Juniper, ornamentaded his blue eyes, now bright with concern beneath the balcony lights.

Percy looked at her like she was catastrophically worth every single ounce of worry from him. He always had, and he never understood what that did to her.

“I don’t— I don’t want to talk about it, Percy,” she said.

The words sounded wrong the moment they left her mouth. Percy blinked, and confusion crossed his face first before concern deepened into something softer and more alarmed.

“Since when you don’t want to talk about something with me?”

He sounded genuinely bewildered. His voice had an edge of hurt as though the idea of Annabeth hiding pain from him made no sense at all — and, frankly, maybe it didn’t. Once upon a time, Percy had known every ugly thing inside her, every dream and anger and dreams and all the nonsensical, hurricane-like feelings she held and never spoke of. He knew how to calm her down after nightmares, and how she took her coffee, and how she got quiet instead of loud when she was truly hurt.

He knew her.

And still, somehow, he didn’t know this.

Something inside her snapped painfully at the question he asked, for reasons she wasn’t quite sure she understood. She was hurting and very irritable and she was on the verge of tears for so, so long now.

“Since it’s your fault!” she snapped, her voice more defeated than loud.

Percy physically recoiled slightly. Not far from her, exactly, but enough that guilt crashed through her immediately. Hurt flashed across his face before he could hide it, quick and sharp and vulnerable.

Annabeth shook her head at once. 

“Not— not your fault. It’s not on you, I—”

“Annabeth,” he called again, softly this time, like he was trying to steady something breaking apart between them.

And suddenly she was exhausted. It wasn’t heavy, the feeling, but it was crushing, the secrecy it caused her to keep, and she was so very tired of carrying it alone. She was exhausted from pretending she was fine watching life move forward while she remained trapped inside a feeling she had never escaped.

She was exhausted now that she remembered just how much she didn’t need to be.

Warmth burned painfully behind her eyes, and she hated it. Annabeth hated herself for it.

“I’m jealous,” she confessed under a breath, and there was warmth behind her eyes that she was angry that existed. “I’m jealous, and it’s eating me alive, and I had to step outside and alone so I wouldn’t—” her voice broke, and the knot on her throat was a little more hurtful than the second before. “—cry.”

Her last word echoed in the silence. The total silence that came from her confession, and even the city below suddenly felt far away.

Percy stared at her, confused at first, and then startled. Startled, followed by something else she could not immediately name.

Annabeth looked away before she could decipher it, and humiliation flooded her too quickly now that the words existed between them.

Wonderful.

She laughed once under her breath — miserable and embarrassed.

Percy seemed even more confused.

“Jealous?” he asked. “Jealous of what, Wise Girl? I haven’t— I didn’t— I didn’t even do anything, the night isn’t even about—”

His hands lifted helplessly as he spoke, brows furrowed so deeply they nearly touched. Percy looked genuinely alarmed now, like he was desperately trying to solve a problem while missing half the pieces.

And somehow that almost made it worse that he didn’t understand. Annabeth laughed once under her breath, but there was no humor in the sound. Only exhaustion.

“I’m not jealous of something you achieved, Seaweed Brain, what? I would never— your happiness is my happiness. Your success is my joy, that hasn’t— that will never change,” she told him.

She knew he was taking wild guesses because he couldn’t understand a thing about what was going on and he grew more frantic by the second. It was a wild wild one, though, because there had never once been resentment in loving Percy. There had never once been envy over the life he built.

If anything, Annabeth loved him too much for resentment to survive inside her. Every good thing that happened to him genuinely made her happy in ways she could not explain. When he got accepted into the University of California, she had cried in the airport bathroom afterward because she was proud of him. When he called her after his first major internship, voice breathless with excitement, she had stayed awake smiling at her ceiling for hours after hanging up.

Percy’s joy had somehow always become her own.

It was part of the problem of how her heart was behaving.

“Then what on Earth are you talking about, Wise Girl?” he asked, a little more desperate now. “Because it doesn’t make sense! You’re jealous of what?! Of— of your mother saying I did good earlier? Did she say something bad to you—”

Annabeth stared at him in disbelief, frowning deeply at the absurdity of the suggestions that nearly knocked the breath out of her.

She shook her head a tad too strong, and it made her a little dizzy when she stared at Percy again.

“Of you dancing with Rachel,” she told him, his voice a little louder because the possibilities he listed were just so ridiculous. Her voice was also sounding ridiculous. “I want to kill her and then kill myself and I think this feeling just might do the trick.”

The words exploded out of her before she could stop them, and the same silence as before followed instantly.

Percy blinked at her once, twice, three times, stunned beyond words. His bewilderment seemed to have come back with more force than before, though, and she could almost see the gears turning around his head and nearly smell the smoke she could swear was coming out of his ears.

It clearly didn’t lead to a logical line of thought, considering what he said next.

“You’re mad because I danced with Rachel?” Percy mumbled, defensively, frowning deeper than before and a bit more offended than she would like. “I— I can have other friends, Annabeth.”

He clearly misinterpreted everything, sure, and she noticed that; still, the response hit her like a brick. His expression had gone wounded now, confusion tangling with something sharper. 

“Oh my God,” she breathed, horrified. “That’s not—” Annabeth shook her head. “I know! I know, Percy, for fuck’s sake, I—” she tried. “I would never— I don’t mean that I don’t think you should have other friends—”

“Then what is it, Wise Girl?”

His voice cracked slightly on the nickname, desperate like he genuinely could not bear not understanding her.

And suddenly the pressure inside her chest became unbearable.

Years. God, years of this. Years of swallowing every almost-confession whole and watching him smile at her like she hung the stars while never daring to ask whether he meant it the way she did. Years of convincing herself silence was safer.

But it was killing her, now.

Percy took one small step closer. 

“Annabeth—” he tried.

And it was all it took more for her to snap.

“I love you!” she breathed, eyes wide and a little too loud when he went completely silent and completely still. “And it’s killing me to watch other people getting to fall in love with you!”

The confession rang through the balcony air, brutal in its honesty and irreversible in its despair. It felt almost like the world had rehearsed the moment she would let it out, let it loose and let it be heard, and followed the script to a fault; it laughed at her like she was the punchline, and it tried to make the moment be as small as she felt.

And Percy blinked, stunned again. His blue, wide eyes shocked and mouth agape while his breathing lost its pace completely.

For one impossible moment he looked almost unreal beneath the city lights. Wind moved through his blond hair. His lips parted slightly as though words tried to form and failed.

“What?” his voice was weak.

Annabeth felt humiliation arrive instantly, hot and violent and especifically what she had avoided all those years spent in misery and lonesomeness. She had done it now.

Wonderful.

Perfect.

She looked away immediately because she could not survive seeing rejection appear on Percy’s face. The word that escaped his lips barely sounded like him. Her best friend — loud, warm, always moving Percy Jackson — suddenly looked as though the world had shifted beneath his feet and cracked open all the way to its middle.

Annabeth hated herself instantly for it; for causing what was exactly what she had tried to avoid for years. That look on his face and the lack of air in her lungs and that awful, stunned silence that never once hung between them in all the lifetime they had known each other.

God, she had ruined everything.

Colder air swept across the balcony again, lifting the fabric of her dress slightly around her legs while the city glittered indifferently behind them. Inside the ballroom, another swell of music drifted faintly through the glass doors, distant enough now to feel like another universe entirely.

Percy was still staring at her. It was odd to watch him like that, completely frozen in place and wordless like she had never seen him before — and she had seen every side and face of his —, very much like stone and not blinking enough or breathing enough.

Annabeth’s chest tightened painfully.

She scrambled for a solution. A damp towel, at least, to make it a little less catastrophic and a bit more bearable.

“I know— look, I know you love me and I know you know I love you, too, because you have always been my favorite person in the world and that hasn’t— that won’t change. But I’m—” she swallowed, and now the tears she was holding back so much were too much on the edge of her eyes right then “I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry, Seaweed Brain, I—” she shook her head.

Annabeth’s words tangled over themselves desperately now, as though she could somehow fix this if she spoke quickly enough or apologized enough. She could feel every fiber of her being and pore on her skin that, too, seemed out of breath and out of air and out of mind — Annabeth shivered, and there wasn’t warmth anywhere.

Percy still had not moved, and he looked almost stricken. A lot like someone had reached directly into his chest and disrupted the rhythm of his heart.

A tear broke from Annabeth’s grip, and she closed his eyes as if it had burned all the way down her cheek.

Humiliating. Oh, how she hated crying in front of anyone. Especially then, because and in front of him.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I— I’m trying to have it under control and I was never— I just— I love you,” she decided to say, again, because the truth was an easy one when she looked at him. “And I—”

Her voice failed completely, and her mouth moved to produce soundless nothings. Percy was looking at her like he had never seen her before. It wasn’t rejection — at least, it still didn’t look like that — or discomfort, but something else she wasn’t sure she wanted to figure out.

Annabeth’s breathing turned shallow.

“Seaweed Brain?” she whispered uncertainly, reaching for him with her words so she was sure that he wasn’t lost inside his head or inside her own admissions. There was fear in her voice like she had forgotten how to interpret, and she had never felt more raw in her entire life.

A moment too long later, Percy inhaled suddenly. Deep and loud, like he had reached the end of holding himself back.

He stepped closer, and all of a sudden there was warmth surrounding her face. Annabeth’s eyes widened further when his hands found both sides of her head, his thumbs on her cheeks and trying to dry some of the tears that still fell in her desperation.

The contact of warm skin nearly shattered her. Even an inch from breaking her heart, Percy touched her like she was something precious.

It wasn’t a new thing, really. He touched her with reverence even at fifteen with scraped knees and bruised tempers. Percy handled her carefully as if he instinctively understood where all her fractures lived. It never changed, and oh —- Annabeth wasn’t even sure it ever could.

His hands now were warm from the ballroom, slightly rough at the fingertips, grounding and terrifying all at once against her skin.

Percy’s grip was gentle, but it still kept her head and eyes facing his own — he seemed a little sad, a little devastated, and yet there was brightness on his face that she was not sure what it stood for. His breathing tried to be calm, to anchor her in reality, but it worked the opposite when she could feel him so close.

She could smell his cologne faintly beneath winter air and champagne and Percy himself — ocean salt and cedar and something achingly familiar that had always meant home to her.

His thumbs brushed beneath her eyes again, trying to erase the salt like he hated every tear that crossed her skin.

“Why didn’t you say anything?” he asked. “Why didn’t you tell me before?”

The question sounded genuinely wounded. Heartbroken, even, if she dared to hope too much — and she had, because she was a fool. A fool, and very much in love, and very much in pain.

Annabeth let out a sound that was halfway between a laugh and a miserable breath. She snorted something ungraceful and a little self-depricating.

“Why would I just— why would I just come up to my best friend and tell him that I am in love with him?”

Percy stared at her for exactly one second before answering immediately.

“So your best friend could tell you that he loves you,” he told her, a smile on his face that edged insanity just a tad. “I fell in love with you at twelve, Annabeth.”

The world stopped. If she was a little less bright — a little less her —, she would’ve believed that it had actually stopped; that the Earth was about to collapse and for some reason it wasn’t spinning around anymore. She would’ve believed that the city noise below vanished and all the music inside disappeared and all the hearts but hears and his had stopped beating so those words could be heard better.

Everything in her surroundings narrowed to his face and those impossible blue eyes and the words he had just said.

“You— what?” her voice cracked, and his oceanic eyes seemed even deeper with tears over it. She wasn’t sure they stood for grief or happiness. She wasn’t even sure when those tears got there in the first place. “No, you—”

“Have been in love with you from the moment you declared we were friends,” he said. “It killed me a little,” he half-joked.

Annabeth stared at him in open disbelief.

Twelve years old. She remembered being furious because he kept splashing lake water at her from the canoe, and Percy grinning despite the fact she had yelled at him for twenty straight minutes. Then later, sitting side by side on the dock after lights out while she informed him very seriously that they were friends now, whether he liked it or not, and she would not make him go through detention if a little lie could save him.

Percy had gone strangely quiet afterward. She understood that silence now.

She understood suddenly why twelve-year-old Percy had stared at her that night on the dock like she had personally altered the structure of the universe just by saying the word friend.

The realization hit Annabeth so hard she almost laughed from sheer disbelief.

They had lost years to this. All because both of them had apparently decided the other could not possibly love them back.

“But you never— why would you never—”

“Annabeth,” he called. “You know everything. You’re the smartest person alive. You know me more than I know myself,” he told her. “And— well. Loving you is very much the biggest fact about me. I figured, if you never— if you never said anything, then it was you just— letting me down gently,” he shrugged.

The words physically hurt to hear. He sounded and looked so, so sincere and so open and so simple, like this had genuinely been the explanation he carried for years.

Annabeth’s hands flew to grasp his wrists, his hands still on her face and him so much closer now.

“I didn’t— I don’t— I never—” she shook her head, her words escaping her as quickly as the babbling left her mouth. Annabeth felt insane, out of orbit and so entirely out of body; there was no way on Earth she was a real person and that was happening to her. “You’re in love with me?”

Percy looked almost offended by the question. He scoffed, almost emotionally devastated by the idea that she still doubted it.

“You’re the only love I’ve ever known,” he confessed.

The world went silent again. Annabeth held her breath in conscious motion, and Percy looked terrified after saying it. Even after everything they had confessed, he still looked vulnerable standing there with his hands cradling her face.

Annabeth’s throat tightened painfully.

“But you’ve never— you didn’t—”

“You think I hate Connor just because?” he asked. “He said he would ask you to be his date for prom and I broke the glass I was holding out of jealousy. He still asked you and I made his life hell with the fencing team.”

Annabeth blinked.

“Connor from fencing?”

Percy nodded, not at all embarrassed by his confession.

“Yes, Connor from fencing.”

She snorted.

“The one you convinced Coach Hedge to bench for three tournaments?”

Percy looked entirely unapologetic. 

“He deserved it.”

Annabeth actually laughed then, with a startled, breathless sound. Suddenly, a thousand memories rearranged themselves inside her head about that particular facr.

She remembered Connor mysteriously losing practice slots and complaining that Percy tackled him too hard during training. She remembered Connor once asking her, completely bewildered, why does Jackson look at me like I murdered his family?

Oh, God. She had been so stupid.

“You were jealous,” she whispered in disbelief.

He nodded.

“I was seventeen and deeply unwell about you.”

The honesty of the sentence made her laugh harder through lingering tears. She had refused Connor and his invitation to prom, thank God. Percy might’ve had a stroke if he heard that she had accepted.

He smiled helplessly watching her realization unfold.

“Wise Girl, I went out with Grover once and someone asked me if I was single and I forgot that I am and said I was married,” he said.

Annabeth stared at him in utter silence.

Christ Redeemer.

And instead of being perhaps a normal person about it — asking him “what?” or laughing out loud or even widening her eyes because it was an absurd thing to hear —, Annabeth could only swallow a new knot on her throat and look a little more insane, a little more insecure, then.

“You’re not,” her grip on his wrists was stronger now. Percy frowned. “Single. Right? You’re— this is— this is heading somewhere. Right?”

The question escaped her too quickly, too vulnerable. Annabeth hated immediately how frightened she sounded, because it let out just how some part of her still expected this to vanish.

Percy’s entire expression softened instantly.

“Wise Girl,” he said quietly.

His forehead dipped closer to hers again. Close enough that she could feel his breath against her skin.

She would die if he stepped back even a centimeter.

“You just found out I’ve been in love with you for twelve years,” he murmured. “Where exactly do you think I want this heading?”

Annabeth could not breathe correctly. She couldn’t breathe, and Percy Jackson was looking at her like she was something miraculous.

His words still moved through her body in waves, impossible to fully grasp. Every second seemed to uncover another memory she had misunderstood entirely — each and every lingering glance and silence and almost, all this time.

All this time.

Percy smiled then, and it was so unbearably soft that it nearly hurt to look at him. It wasn’t the usual reckless grin, the charming and teasing and boyish one he used after a prank or a joke or a plan to bring hell to some unlucky creature of their social circle.

This smile belonged only to her. Blinding and wide and so, so happy. 

One of his hands left her face so he could lower his arm and have it wrapped loosely around her waist. The movement was careful, tentative even now, like some part of him still could not believe he was allowed.

Annabeth felt the warmth of his palm through the fabric of her dress instantly, strong fingers settling at her waist and drawing her in just slightly closer until barely any space remained between them.

The proximity wrecked her. And that was odd and new, too.

Percy had hugged her a thousand times before. He had thrown his arm around her shoulders, pulled her into his side during movies, carried her laughing after twisted ankles and late-night swims and drunken New Year celebrations.

This was different. Intentional, and so very welcome, and suddenly Annabeth understood every girl who had ever fallen in love with Percy Jackson against her better judgment.

She understood her twelve-year-old self better than she ever had.

He looked at people like he meant them, and he touched people like they were an extension of his heart. When Percy loved, apparently he loved catastrophically.

And what an event for storybooks.

His thumb brushed absentmindedly against the curve of her waist once, and Annabeth nearly forgot her own name.

“Please,” he told her, and his eyes flickered down to her lips. “I might die if I don’t kiss you.”

The honesty in his voice undid something inside her completely. He sounded half-awed by the possibility, but entirely desperate and so, so certain that he had wanted that for so long that the wanting itself had become part of him.

Annabeth’s pulse stumbled violently.

“I might die if you do,” she said, and inched her head closer to his anyway, one of her hands finding his shoulder.

Percy let out the smallest breathless laugh at that, and hot air ghosted across her mouth.

“Worth the risk?” he questioned, and Annabeth was ready to turn into light and soar through space, honestly.

Their foreheads still touched lightly, noses almost brushing now, and Annabeth became acutely aware of every tiny detail between them — the trembling exhale leaving Percy’s lips, the way his fingers flexed slightly against her waist, the scent of champagne and winter air and him.

For the record, she had imagined kissing Percy before. Hundreds of times over the years in moments she never admitted aloud, because she was only human — she was just someone in love, and it came with the territory.

She had imagined it at fourteen when she saw him again after months they spent apart when she went to San Francisco with her father. She had imagined it at sixteen in the rain outside camp cabins, and seventeen when Connor asked her to the dance and she chose to go with Grover and Percy, each holding one arm. She had imagined at eighteen when they graduated, and at nineteen saying goodbye in airports.

She had imagined, dreamed of it, at twenty-one while drunk on Roman wine and with loneliness while listening to his voice through a phone speaker across an ocean. At twenty three, when she came back to New York and he had open arms to greet her at the same airport where they had parted years before.

But none, not one of those fantasies had prepared her for Percy looking at her like this. His eyes glimmered as if she was the answer to something, and the blue irises searched hers one last time, searching and checking and making sure.

Annabeth realized dimly that Percy would have stopped instantly if she asked him to. 

So she closed the remaining distance herself.

Percy made a soft startled sound against her mouth the moment she kissed him, like even then he hadn’t fully believed this would happen. Then, suddenly, his hand tightened at her waist and he kissed her back.

And Annabeth understood immediately why she had spent twelve years wanting this.

Percy kissed like he loved, and that meant completely. There was no hesitation that survived after the first second. One of his hands slid into her curls carefully, tilting her face deeper into the kiss while the other kept her anchored against him like he was terrified she might disappear.

Warmth exploded through her chest so fast it almost hurt, and the world — was it even real, still? — vanished around them. There wasn’t a party or a city or so many years wasted.

There was just Percy.

His mouth soft against hers at first before emotion overtook restraint entirely. The kiss deepened with a kind of stunned relief that made Annabeth’s knees feel weak. Like both of them were discovering something they had already belonged to all along.

A quiet sound escaped Percy against her lips. Annabeth’s fingers curled tighter into the fabric at his shoulder instinctively, holding onto him as though she had finally found solid ground after years drifting.

Percy pulled back only enough to breathe — barely away at all, because he was certain he would die if he so stepped back. His forehead remained against hers, both of them breathing unevenly now.

“Oh,” he whispered.

Annabeth let out a shaky laugh.

“Oh?”

He grinned.

“That was worse than I imagined.”

She blinked in confusion, and Annabeth opened her eyes. His eyes opened slowly to meet hers, bright and ruined and so entirely in love with her.

“Forever won’t be enough to make up for the lost time,” Percy confessed softly.

Emotion hit her so suddenly she almost kissed him again immediately just to avoid crying. Instead, she smiled helplessly against his mouth.

“You’re very dramatic.”

He laughed.

“You made me wait twelve years.”

Annabeth gasped, her grip on his shirt making her knuckles turn white.

“I waited too!”

“Yeah, because I thought you were rejecting me with advanced brain-gymnastics,” he said, and there was a mute hmph suddenly when she grabbed him behind the neck again and brought his lips to hers.

She kissed him again, and it would never be enough to kiss him forever.

Both his arms circled her waist, and Annabeth was brought flush against Percy’s body — he found the curls in his head and his hands serpentined up her back to rest between her shoulderblades; Annabeth could only shiver, because she had craved his touch as something more for so, so long.

Percy melted into the kiss instantly.

Like he had been waiting for an excuse to lose himself in her.

Annabeth kissed him again, and, yes; he was right. It would never be enough to kiss him forever.

Oh, what a horrifying realization. Now, after finally having this, she understood she could spend the rest of her life kissing Percy Jackson and still ache for one more.

His breath caught softly against her mouth as he pulled her closer.

Both his arms circled her waist, now, and Annabeth was brought flush against Percy’s body — he was warm and his shoulders were broad and she had never felt safer in her life. Her fingers found the curls in his head and his hands serpentined up her back to rest between her shoulderblades; Annabeth could only shiver, because she had craved his touch as something more for so, so long.

Percy felt it immediately, the shiver, as if her body was just an extension of his own.

His hands tightened instinctively against her back.

“Cold?” he murmured softly against her lips.

Annabeth laughed breathlessly.

“No.”

His mouth curved into a smile against hers.

“Good.”

And then he kissed her again slower this time, like he was learning her carefully.

The city lights blurred behind her closed eyes. Somewhere below them Manhattan continued moving — taxis, conversations, music, entire lives unfolding — and none of it mattered because Percy’s hands were on her and his heartbeat was steady beneath her palms and after twelve years of loving him, this finally existed.

Reality still felt fragile around the edges, like she might wake up. Percy’s fingers spread gently between her shoulder blades, holding her closer until there was barely space left between their bodies.

Annabeth felt dizzy with it; from the unbearable tenderness of finally being wanted back by the person she had built entire emotional universes around.

She pulled back just enough to breathe, forehead falling against his again. When she opened her eyes, Percy looked equally wrecked.

His once-tamed hair was messy beneath her fingers now, his lipsslightly swollen from kissing her (and what an insanity to think). The pair of blue eyes was heavy-lidded and fixed entirely on her face like he still couldn’t look away, and there was wonder there still.

That endless wonder.

It was almost amusing, were it not reciprocated, that Percy genuinely could not process the fact she was real and here and kissing him back.

Annabeth thought she might spend the rest of her life ruined by that look alone.

The cold night air curled around them softly, though Percy’s body was warm against hers everywhere they touched. Music drifted faintly from inside the ballroom — piano now, something slow and romantic enough that it almost felt absurdly timed.

Percy’s thumb brushed absentmindedly along the curve of her waist.

His gaze dropped briefly to her mouth again before returning to her eyes with almost painful softness.

“Can you say it again?” he asked, and his cheeks somehow flushed deeper.

Annabeth blinked once before a smile pulled helplessly at her mouth. She softened instantly.

But teasing him was far too easy.

“I’ve told you I love you thousands of times, Seaweed Brain,” she told him, only for the sake of teasing.

Percy groaned softly.

“Yeah, but not—” he said. “But I didn’t know that it means what it means,” he explained.

The vulnerability in the sentence made her chest ache. She understood exactly what he meant.

All those years saying love you at the end of phone calls and airports and outside dormitories, through exhaustion and grief and ordinary days, and none of them had realized the other meant it literally every single time.

Annabeth’s hand slid upward slowly until she was cradling his cheek, thumb brushing lightly over his lips.

Percy visibly lost his train of thought immediately. His breath caught at her touch, and his eyes darkened.

“And what does it mean?” she teased again.

Percy perhaps tried to say something before that, but any logical thought or reasoning made him only babble.

“Uh—”

Annabeth smiled helplessly.

God, she loved him. She loved how easily she could unravel him now that neither of them were hiding anymore.

“That I’m in love with you?” she asked, smiling around each word, her tone whispered and sincere and so very much filled with heated honesty. “That I’ve been yours for years?” she asked again, and Percy’s breath hitched, his pupils a little wider than the second before, and she didn’t even know that it was possible. “That you’re the love of my life?”

Something in Percy’s expression broke apart entirely, and restraint finally gave out. At those words, he kissed her again, a little hungrier this time, and Annabeth felt her feet leave the ground in his strong grip, suddenly.

A startled laugh dissolved against his mouth instantly.

Percy held her effortlessly against him, one arm firm around her waist while the other slid up her back, fingers threading into her curls like he physically needed to touch her everywhere at once.

Annabeth’s hands clutched instinctively at his shoulders as the world tilted delightfully around her.

“Oh, my God,” she breathed against his lips between kisses, laughing softly.

Percy kissed her again immediately like he couldn’t help himself and was making up for years. The force of emotion behind it stole the air from her lungs, overwhelming in its sincerity. Percy kissed like someone who had loved in silence for too long and finally, finally had permission not to.

And he had always been a loud person.

When he eventually lowered her back to the balcony floor, neither of them had recovered properly.

Percy rested his forehead against hers again, breathing unevenly.

“You can’t just say things like that,” he muttered weakly.

Annabeth smiled. 

“Like what?”

He snorted a laughter.

“You know exactly like what.”

Her eyes glimmered, and her expression was playful.

“The love of my life thing?”

Percy closed his eyes briefly like the words physically affected him.

“Yes,” he said miserably. “The love of your life thing.”

Her laughter escaped again, softer now, fond. Percy opened his eyes immediately at the sound, looking at her with such open affection that it almost felt intimate enough to be dangerous.

“You’re evil,” he informed her quietly.

Her smiled softened.

“And you love me.”

He melted.

“Yes,” he told her. “That I do.”

Annabeth leaned forward and kissed the corner of his mouth gently. It was nice, to have that freedom — most of her thoughts revolved around actions like that whenever she was talking to him, and now she could act on them. And she knew she would be more than welcome whenever she did it.

Percy sighed against her skin like a man surrendering.

When the world came to mean something again, she could hear the sounds of the city and the life in their surroundings. They remained alone and undisturbed there in the balcony, everyone inside completely immersed in their own lives and enjoyments and conversations.

Inside the ballroom, the orchestra shifted songs again. And it was a waltz, this time.

The melody drifted through the glass doors in soft elegant swells, muted by distance and night air.

Percy stilled slightly listening to it, still holding on to Annabeth. A second later, his gaze flickered back toward her, something shy suddenly surfacing beneath all the wonder and disbelief.

It transformed him entirely, because Percy was rarely shy. Now, though, he looked almost nervous beneath the balcony lights, arm still secure around her waist like he wasn’t quite ready to let go.

“Okay,” he said quietly. “This might be a stupid question.”

Annabeth smiled immediately.

“That’s never stopped you before.”

He chuckled.

“Cruel.”

She nodded.

“Go on.”

Percy exhaled once through a crooked grin before extending one hand toward her this time. An invitation. With the grace he put in it, it was almost something ceremonial.

“Dance with me?” he asked softly.

Annabeth’s heart folded in on itself. Suddenly, she was twelve again at summer camp watching Percy grin at her from the dock. She was sixteen dancing barefoot with him after curfew.

She was twenty-four and finally understanding why every moment beside him had always felt a little like fate.

The city glowed around them, and music floated through the cold.

And Percy Jackson looked at Annabeth Chase like she had hung every star above Manhattan and every light below the sky with her own hands.

She slid her fingers into his without hesitation, the wamrth of her melting softly when meeting the warmth of him. His fingers curled around hers carefully before he guided her closer, one hand settling once more against her waist while the other kept hold of her own.

And then they began to move, slowly and softly, barely more than swaying at first beneath the Manhattan skyline.

The music drifting from inside the ballroom reached them in softened waves through the glass doors behind them — piano and strings and something achingly romantic that would have embarrassed Annabeth two hours ago and now felt almost painfully perfect.

Percy drew her closer instinctively, like he had always known exactly where she belonged and wanted her to believe it, too. Annabeth’s free hand rose automatically to his shoulder, fingertips brushing the fabric of his suit jacket before settling there. She could feel the heat of him beneath it, the slight tension still trapped in his muscles like he had not entirely recovered from the emotional earthquake of the last half hour.

Honestly, neither had she.

“You’re shaking a little,” Percy murmured.

She let out a short breath from her nose.

“I’m overwhelmed,” she admitted.

Percy’s expression softened immediately into something unbearably tender.

“Me too.”

The honesty of it wrapped warmly around her ribs.

They continued swaying together in the quiet cold, Percy guiding them with easy confidence despite the small space. Annabeth realized suddenly that he had always been good at this — not formal dancing necessarily, but moving with her specifically. They had spent years unconsciously orbiting one another. Adjusting instinctively. Fitting.

Even now their bodies seemed to understand each other before thought did. Percy’s thumb brushed slowly across the back of her hand, and he breathed in her perfume just to have one more thing of hers to stick to memory.

“You know,” he said softly after a moment, “I used to think about this all the time.”

Annabeth’s heart stumbled.

“This?”

“Holding you,” his mouth curved slightly. “Well. Holding you while you actually knew I was in love with you.”

Heat climbed instantly into her face. Percy looked delighted by it.

“Oh, wow,” he breathed softly. “You still blush.”

“Shut up. You can’t see anything.”

He laughed.

“I don’t have to! Wise Girl, you’re blushing.”

Annabeth tried to glare at him, but Percy was smiling too brightly for it to succeed.

She loved him so much.

Percy looked down at her like he was thinking the exact same thing, the city lights reflected faintly in his eyes.

“What?” she whispered.

His smile softened.

“Every time I imagined this, I thought I’d feel different.”

Annabeth frowned slightly. 

“Different how?”

“I don’t know.” Percy’s hand tightened just slightly at her waist. “More nervous, maybe? More like something huge changed.”

The hand on his shoulder found the nape of his neck, and she scratched her nails softly over his skin.

“And instead?”

His gaze held hers steadily.

“It feels like I finally stopped missing you.”

She wasn’t proud at how she forgot how to breathe at that. Her fingers curled a little tighter against the curls they could reach, and Percy smiled a little brighter.

“You say things that should be illegal sometimes,” she muttered.

Percy grinned faintly. 

“Oh, do lock me up,” he teased.

She laughed softly, and Percy’s entire expression lit at the sound again. It amazed her a little, how openly happy he looked every time he made her laugh. As though her joy genuinely mattered that much to him.

Maybe it always had.

Percy swayed them slowly in another small circle before speaking again, quieter this time.

“You know what I kept thinking when you were in Rome?”

Annabeth tilted her head slightly. 

“What?”

“That eventually you’d meet somebody better.”

The confession startled her.

“What?”

He shrugged one shoulder lightly, though the movement carried old hurt beneath it.

“Some genius architect with an accent and expensive coats and an apartment overlooking the city.” Percy smiled weakly. “And you’d realize your best friend from New York was kind of an idiot.”

Annabeth stared at him in disbelief. She even stopped moving, and he tripped over his foot before steading himself in not-motion for a second.

“You genuinely thought I would prefer some italian someone over you?”

“Well, when you say it like that—”

She laughed.

“You crossed an ocean because my kitchen flooded.”

He shrugged.

“I don’t really need a reason to cross an ocean—”

She shook her head.

“You remembered the exact day of my thesis presentation when my own mother forgot.”

Percy’s face softened instantly at that.

“You cried after that call.”

Annabeth nodded, and ignored the fact.

“You bought a plane ticket because I sounded sad.”

He frowned.

“You were sad.”

And, honestly, at that point she could only laugh. The music had a sudden louder moment, and she used it to start swaying — barely — them again. Percy followed suit, because she suspected he always would, and she kept on her list of absurdities.

“You learned enough Italian to argue with a taxi driver for me.”

Percy looked slightly smug suddenly. 

“Yeah, okay. That was kind of impressive.”

She narrowed her eyes.

“It was incredibly hot.”

His entire train of thought visibly derailed.

“…What?”

Annabeth smiled innocently.

“What?” she repeated.

Percy nearly missed a step despite the fact they were barely moving.

“Oh, my God,” he muttered weakly, staring at her.

The look on his face made warmth bloom through her chest again, and it was inevitable that Annabeth rose slightly onto her toes and kissed him softly. Well, just because she could.

Percy sighed against her lips immediately, and the sound carried so much affection that she smiled into the kiss without meaning to.

When she pulled back, he was already looking at her again with that same endless wonder.

“You keep doing that,” he murmured.

“Kissing you?”

Percy’s smile turned soft in a way that almost hurt to look at.

“Yeah,” he whispered.

Then he kissed her again before she could say anything else.

There was something terrifyingly easy about kissing Percy, something that made her feel as though her body had known the shape of him long before this night. His hand remained secure at her waist while the other slid upward slowly until his fingers disappeared gently into the curls near the nape of her neck.

The movement drew her closer.

Then closer still.

The dance slowed with it again naturally, their swaying becoming softer and softer until it resembled little more than Percy holding her against him beneath the skyline while music drifted around them.

Annabeth could feel the warmth of his chest through his shirt, the steady rhythm of his heartbeat and how he exhaled softly every time she kissed him back like he still couldn’t quite believe she would. Percy pulled away only enough to brush another kiss against the corner of her mouth.

Then her cheek.

Then near her temple.

Annabeth laughed softly under it, breathless and helpless and entirely too happy. Another kiss landed near her jaw, then beneath it, affectionate in the overwhelming, impossible Percy way that made Annabeth feel warm all the way down to her bones.

“You’re clingy,” she informed him quietly.

Percy hummed thoughtfully against her cheek.

“Twelve years,” he reminded her. “I’m catching up.”

As if she would ever mind.

The balcony lights painted soft gold across his face when he finally leaned back enough to look at her properly again. His curls were messier now beneath her fingers, and his lips pink from kissing and his expression was still carrying that same wonder that seemed permanently etched into him tonight.

Percy’s thumb brushed lazily along her waist as they continued swaying.

“So,” he murmured, “what exactly were you thinking about when you dramatically escaped to the balcony earlier?”

Annabeth’s fingers drifted absentmindedly into the curls near the nape of his neck again, enjoying the way Percy visibly relaxed beneath the touch. His eyes fluttered slightly for a second before settling back on her face with complete attention.

“You,” she said.

“What about me?” he asked, and she knew what he wanted her to say.

And she would never mind admitting that thought, really.

“I love you,” she said.

And, ridicyulously, Percy inhaled sharply. No amount of hearing it would ever prepare him for the reality of it.

Annabeth watched the emotion move openly across his face — surprise first, still somehow, then warmth, then something almost helpless beneath the sheer intensity of feeling.

His hand tightened slightly against her waist.

“Again,” he whispered before he could stop himself.

Annabeth laughed softly.

Percy groaned immediately, embarrassed. 

“I know. I know how that sounded.”

“No,” she said gently, fingertips brushing through his curls again. “It sounded like someone who waited a lot.”

The honesty in her voice seemed to undo him all over again. His forehead dropped briefly to hers as he smiled, small and overwhelmed and impossibly happy.

Annabeth thought distantly that she would spend the rest of her life addicted to making Percy Jackson look loved.

“I love you,” she repeated softly.

Percy kissed the top of her head gently. She would go in peace, should she die right then.

“I love you,” he told her, too, because it was so good to say it. “You know I’m going to spend the rest of my life being unbearable about this, right?”

Annabeth smiled against him. The rest of their lives sounded amazing, she could only think.

“I know.”

He lowered his voice.

“And you still love me?”

She lifted her head just enough to look at him properly.

At Percy, who had crossed oceans for her without hesitation. Percy, who had loved her silently since childhood. Percy, who was looking at her now with enough tenderness to last lifetimes.

Annabeth reached up and kissed him softly once more.

“I really, really do,” she whispered against his lips.