Have Faith | a percabeth fanfic

0.4

Percy

The last bell rang.

Percy stretched and wiped the sleep from his eyes. 

Thud.

 A backpack landed on his desk. Thalia grabbed the chair in front of him, swung it around, and sat down. She drummed her hand on his desk. Beside them, Grover opened a bag of chips with a loud pop.

"It's time, punk."

He couldn't help it. Percy laughed. "Is this your idea of acting intimidating?"

"...maybe," Thalia mumbled sullenly.

"I've gotta to be honest with you. That was pitiful. I think I lost the last bit of repect I had for you."

"Wait, wait, hang on-"

"Nope, too late, it's gone. Nothing you can do about it now." He grinned.

"Jerk. Anyway, I—we—wanted to remind you that tonight is movie night at Grover's." She leaned over his desk. Percy shifted uncomfortably. "Mandatory. No getting out of this one, idiot."

"Do I have to?"

"Are you seriously asking that?"

"But my head hurts..." Percy whined.

"Oh, please, like I'd believe that." Thalia rolled her eyes.

"Okay, knock it off. You know I'd never skip a movie night." He paused, then added, "Now could you lay off the chips, Grover? My head is actually killing me."

"Oh. Sure." The bag screeched as he shoved it in his bag. "Sorry."

"You're good. Now when's the movie again?"

They decided on a time and went their separate ways. Percy stopped by Dollar General to snag some snacks for later that night. His arms piled high with soda, chips, and oreos, he checked out and headed to Grover's house.

-

If you glanced at Grover's place at the wrong angle, you might be fooled into thinking it's an overgrown pile of kudzu. You wouldn't be too far off, either—but he might kill you if he heard you compare his precious native plant babies to that particular plant. Percy could practically sense his rage even as he walked up to the front door.

He shuffled the various bags of snacks in his arms so he could ring the doorbell. It flung open, nearly hitting him in the face. Grover charged out of the house and dragged him inside, where Thalia was waiting.

"Can we maybe not do that–" a clump of whipped cream landed on his cheek– "this time. Never mind." He swiped it off his face and ate it. "This is one of your better ones. If you insist on penalizing the last person here, at least make it something that's not disgusting."

"Yeah, I'm gonna have to pass. It's so much more fun to pick something gross."

Percy shook his head in mock pity. "Don't you remember the spray cheese incident? Are you absolutely sure that's a good idea?"

Thalia winced. "Fine, but I'm not going out of my way to make it easy, either. It has to be a penalty, remember?" 

He looked over at Grover, silently begging for backup. He paused mid handful of oreos. "Don't ask me, man. You know I don't like to jump in on your squabbles. I just try to get your dumbest ideas on video."

"I get it," Percy said, flopping on the couch and snagging the remote. "Now, let's see, what to watch..." Thalia grabbed it back with a laugh.

"You punk! You know we already decided on The Princess Bride."

"Grover, where's Juniper? This seems like the sort of movie she'd like."

He blushed at the mention of his soulmate. "She had a paper she needed to finish. And you do know that this isn't some super girly movie, right?"

"...no?"

"Oh, come on. The Princess Bride is universally amazing. Yes there's romance—which is awesome in and of itself because they don't have soulmates—but there's also fighting, mystery, adventure, overly polite villains... you'll love it, I promise."

Percy relented and the three of them settled in to watch the movie. By the end, Grover had emotionally eaten over half of the snacks, a roll of paper towels was being used for tissues, and Percy was on the floor after falling off the couch from laughing too hard.

After cleaning up and straightening up the living room, Thalia left. Percy hung back. "Hey, can I talk to you for a second?"

"Yeah, sure. What's up?" Grover asked, stifling a yawn.

Percy shifted from foot to foot. He stared at the wall behind Grover, trying to find words. "I just wanted to, well, thank you I guess. You know, or I think you've guessed, some of the crap my mom and I have been dealing with. I know we can't host much or anything and I'm not always super present, but I do really appreciate you. It helps, it really does. And so I just wanted to say–"

Grover hugged him.

"...thanks."

"Anytime."

-

A/N: Hey y'all!!

I'm so sorry this update took so long... and it's shorter than I was hoping. But it is a decently fluffy scene (mostly because I don't want this book to be overwhelmingly filled with angst and, well, we haven't gotten to the happier moments yet). 

By the way, the chapters with significantly more views are leftover from the earlier version of the book. Hopefully, they'll even out at some point.

I am considering one more thing: I may start to add in snippets of Percy and Annabeth's soulmate conversations. I haven't decided yet. But if a bunch of new chapters start popping up in between what you've read, that's probably what it is. 

...I did notice that there's an entire chapter in first person. For those of you who noticed, sorry about that. I'm going to fix it as soon as I can stop being irrationally angry about it.

Fingers crossed that the next chapter won't take this long, but I think I should probably hold off on making promises at this point.

You're incredibly brave for reading this, considering how often I edit lol.

Thanks for reading, y'all! :)