Percabeth Dirty One Shots and Drabbles

WIRKYIWK 4

Greenconverses on ao3

The summer Annabeth fell in love was the beginning of the end of the world.

She'd been two months away from 17, colossally arrogant and determined to prove her worth with the unstoppable fierceness that came with being a teenager. Finding love was not a priority. It was a distant milepost on the map of her grand life plan, and she - a child of clean logic and academia and sparking grey matter - had little interest in the messy matters of the heart.

Naturally, that was when Luke Castellan had wandered back into her life.

At the time, Luke hadn't been much more than a longing afterthought, a secret what if? she didn't dare give serious attention to. She'd always admired and adored Luke, but he'd forever been out of her reach, even before he left camp and became popular in the moral world. Now, he was unattainable, and certainly wouldn't look twice at his kid sidekick with the silly crush he'd left behind.

Luke was the silly daydream of a little girl, not a serious and determined teenager with a spine of steel.

Until one day, he wasn't.

A failed quest. A new scar. Waning popularity and mortal friends showing their true colors. A return to the safe haven of his youth, to those who would always care.

A return to the girl who still admired him after failure, who still wanted to impress him and earn his favor; the girl who foolishly held a small flicker of hope in her neglected heart.

The girl who wasn't so little any more.

One day, he looked twice.

And the end of the world crept closer.

+

"Need a refill?"

"What?" Annabeth glanced up as her friend entered the room, startled. Piper Mclean-Grace nodded toward the pile of cardboard and styrofoam on the dark wood of the coffee table - all that remained of Annabeth's latte from Et Tu Brewte. She shook her head, pushing the ruined cup away from her. "No, that's okay. I'm fine. Probably had too much caffeine already, honestly. I'm just... just..."

She threw up her hands, at a loss to describe the maelstrom of emotions and memories building inside her. The fact that her anxiety had only led her to shred the cup was pretty good, all things considered. She was struggling to build up her walls, to shove those emotions into their familiar compartments until the crisis had passed, which only added to her frustration. But she supposed even daughters of Athena couldn't be completely level headed when their world was minutes away from imploding.

"Don't I know it," Piper said, flopping onto the leather couch across from Annabeth. "This is a real mess."

Annabeth grimaced and started to apologize, but a dark look from the other woman shut her up. She'd done nothing but apologize since she'd arrived at the embassy, despite Piper telling her there was nothing to apologize for. She was clearly sick of hearing it now, so Annabeth tried for a different track.

"I can't believe they won't let you in there," she said, indicating the closed door to Jason's study. "You're the embassy communications director. You should be the one hammering this deal out, not Jason."

"Again, tell me something I don't know," Piper grumbled. "Jason already got an earful from me about it before you got here, but I guess they only agreed to negotiate if I stayed away. Apparently, there were concerns about sabotage and that I'd Charmspeak them into forgetting about the story entirely."

Annabeth arched an eyebrow. "You'd do that?"

"If it lasted more than a few hours? Most definitely," she said. "Wouldn't be the first time I've used Charmspeak to squash a story before it starts gaining momentum. It's much more effective to tell them to destroy whatever notes or footage they have instead. Then you tell them to forget about it when they call to scream at you for being a conniving witch."