PJO Christmas Fics

1st December (2)

- Decorating the Christmas tree
- Percy & Frank & Hazel
- Platonic

////

"Percy?" Hazel asked, quiet voice shy. In her hands she held things: a clear box of coloured ornaments, and a long piece of thick ribbon, a pretty dark teal. "Where do these go?"

Percy looked over at his young friend, still laughing at something Frank had said two minutes previous - it wasn't even that funny, really.

As soon as his eyes caught onto what Hazel was talking about, they widened. He rushed over to her frantically, snatching the see-through box out of her hands as soon as he reached her.

"Not on this tree!"

At Hazel's doe-eyed expression and tense new body language, Percy tried to relax himself, make himself appear like less of a threat.

"Sorry! Just, these ones," he raised the box he held in his hands, "doesn't go on this tree. These are my special decorations. We're going to use the red and gold ones, Haze."

"Oh, okay."

With that, the two seperated again, Hazel wandering back over to the boxes of red and gold decorations, briefly wondering how serveal clear boxes of (frankly) tacky teal ornaments could get misplaced like that, mixed up with the starkly contrasting red and golds.

Frank, all the while, was still fixing the branches of the large green tree, though he was almost finished at this point. He only had a couple left to straighten out on the bottom row.

Once Frank had finished with the tree, Hazel and Percy carefully dragged the boxes of copious different decorations closer to it, in order to limit the back-and-forths they would have to do.

"Right, garlands first, guys!"

Together, the three set to work looping the miscellaneous garlands around the tree branches, over and under in a red-gold-red pattern until they were all happy with how it looked.

Next, they dotted the baubles - of various sizes - around the tree, ensuring no bauble (no matter what size) was placed next to one of the same colour.

Everything was going absolutely splendid - that was, until, Hazel tripped on a bauble that had either fell out of a box or been dropped by someone. Either way, she went fumbling forward, and since neither Frank nor Percy had seen, too busy focusing on the other sides of the tree, she stumbled straight into the tree. Of course, this resulted in both her and the tree falling to the floor, right on top of a disgruntled Frank.

"Frank! Oh, I'm sorry, I'd didn't see the bauble! I didn't mean to knock you over."

Looking every bit as disgruntled as Frank felt, Percy quickly dropped to his knees at Hazel's side, taking one of her arms in both of his hands, carefully guiding her up. He stood with her as he did.

"Why don't we start with getting tyat off of him, aye? Then we can see if he's okay."

"That'd be great." Frank groaned from beneath the tree, pulling a face after removing a bit of tinsel from his mouth.

Hazel was up and off the ground rather quickly, rubbing gently at her stomach with hand as Percy rolled the tree off of their friend. Her other hand itched to slide down to her knee and massage the pain away.

Percy waited until five minutes after he was sure they were both okay to begin lifting the tree back up, verbalising his gratefulness to Frank when the other boy decided to help him.

Fortunately, none of the garlands really came off - bar a couple of them that had lolled off, hanging uselessly against the sides of the tree - but they weren't as lucky with the baubles, most of which had slipped off either during the fall, or the process of bringing the tree upright once more.

All of that was easily corrected, however. They fixed the lopsided garlands back to their rightful places and re-oraganised all of the baubles the best they could.

After they were done with fixing their tree back to the way it was before, Frank helped Hazel to place the elegant little angel onto the very top of the tree, slotting onto the tip of the very highest branch.

Standing there, staring at the tree with their hands on their hips, the three felt proud of their hard work.

"And what do you call this, Johnson?"

Percy didn't even flinch at the sound of his camp directors booming voice, though both Frank and Hazel did. Poor Hazel literally jumped in fright.

"A tree, Mr. D. Or can't you see that?"

"I can see very well that it's a tree, Johnson. But why is it here, in my living room, huh Brat?"

"I don't know, sir. Maybe Santa put it there?" Percy suggested lightly, his voice full of well-concealed humour, replaced instead with a truly thoughtful tone.

"I'm sure you do know, Percy." Chiron said, appearing next to Mr. D, practically looming over the other, quite stout, man. He didn't both hiding his amusement in the situation like Percy did; instead he let the enjoyment in his voice ring out across the room.

"I assure you I don't, Chiron. I am truly baffled."

"Johnson, you brat-"

Before the grumpy god could day any more of his sentence, Percy was out of the room in a dash, laughing loudly to himself.

Still in the room, stood stock still in shock, were Hazel and Frank, blinking rapidly or not at all.

"Erm, Mr. D, s-sir, we, I," Hazel stammered, "I'm so sorry!" She blurted out, before quickly rushing from the room just as Percy had.

Frank followed along right behind her, without so much as a glance at either of the expectant authority figures stood before him.