Arc-en-ciel

(Bonus) Chapter 22.5: "Oh, shut up."

But the thing about love is that sometimes, it's like freefall.

You feel like you're flying and you don't realize the effect of gravity until it's too late.

This is actually something I scrapped, and for reference, this was way before they dated, before the 'James-was-a-big-asshole-to-Annabeth-before-they-left' part. It's also mostly fluff :D

[TIMELINE: CHAPTER 22-ish]

J A M E S

Annabeth hadn't spoken much today.

Not that it bothered me, of course. I was seriously going to lose it if she told me about how her stupid plant died in the hands of her brother again, or if she talked about how much she loved kittens again.

If you want a stupid cat, fucking adopt one.

And if your brother killed a plant, get another one, and don't fucking name it Carl.

But, as relieved as I was that she wasn't talking my ear off, it was... weird.

When you get accustomed to hearing her pointless chatter, as endearing as an odd part of my brain thought it was (it's not) - it was weird not to hear her in the background.

Again, finding something weird is not a sign of concern.

It was weird that she looked more tired than usual. I had raised an eyebrow at her when she first walked into school, but she had simply offered me a tired smile in response.

"I didn't sleep very well last night," she had said, fumbling with the big pile of books in her arms.

Rolling my eyes, I had pulled them out of her grasp. "I didn't ask."

"You raised an eyebrow, I thought that was asking," she had replied, sparing the books that I was now holding a confused glance. "Hey, why'd you take my-"

"You can barely hold them, shut up."

Normally she would have rambled about how she totally could, but she simply narrowed her eyes at the books before shrugging, lifting a hand to rub her eyes.

"Okay," she had mumbled with a small yawn, "Thank you."

That was hours ago. She had been like that the whole day- with her short, tired responses, and right now, we were at the library- getting some of the program work done.

I hadn't glanced at her once since we got here, half an hour ago. That meant improvement- because clearly, my staring problem had gotten better.

As unreasonably hard as it was- it was getting easier to control my eyes- which is ridiculous. I should be able to control them fine, but whenever she was around they just had to be drawn to her. And for what? For a tiny, smiley little shit who talked way too much.