How Do You Say Gods- Last Olympian

11: I TAKE THE WORST BATH EVER

Percy took the book from Alex with a significant look at Annabeth. "Hopefully I can get through this one without someone snatching it away from me."

"I was doing your head a favor seaweed brain, don't want it to overheat," she grinned.

"Oh, you think I can't finish a chapter without you," he crossed his arms, crushing his finger in the pages of the book without care. "I've probably read more than you have owl breath."

"Ha," Alex cheered softly under her breath Percy had remembered that one. Magnus tapped her on the shoulder and whispered softly, "are we supposed to let them keep going?" He only managed to remember the sign for supposed to off the top of his head.

"Eh, I don't see why not," she shrugged.

"You've probably been skipping whole paragraphs and summarizing from memory, it doesn't count!" Annabeth lobbed back.

"Ehhem," Thalia did clear her throat though with an amused smile and ruin their fun. "Percy, if you don't want to read, I'm sure Annabeth will for you."

"Hey, no, what," Percy stammered as he held the book. "I can read fine Thalia!"

"I question it too though," she smirked.

Percy strolled casually back to his seat between the two girls and read the chapter title, enunciating every syllable as if practicing for the first time. It did not help his situation all it caused was a chorus of snickers around the room, Alex even adding in a baby voice, "Forget your rubber duckie there?"

It was kind of nice, Percy shook his head, that no matter what shit he went through, at least someone got a kick out of his misery.

As he tried to properly get started, Annabeth covered his hand with hers. Just there, leaving her overlapping fingers on his while he held the book comfortably. She was so warm he wondered if she had a sunburn or had been carrying around lumps of coal. The truth was he didn't care why she was, he just smiled as he read.

...The skeletal guards shoved me through a wall, and it became solid behind me.

"Kinda cool?" Jason offered. "How many solid walls have you gone through without breaking them?"

"You're about to find out," Percy rolled his eyes. He hoped Jason was as resistant as the Kool-Aid jar guy, he'd be a little sorry if it actually hurt him.

...Hades's dungeon was meant for dead people, and they don't breathe.

"Why would Hades dungeon dead people?" Magnus looked at him strangely. "He's got the fields of punishment specifically for that."

"Hades special punishment for certain ones to keep them right under his feet," Thalia shivered. "I'm over here praying we don't hear who Percy's neighbors are."

...forget fifty or sixty years. I'd be dead in fifty or sixty minutes.

Nico winced at Percy once again thinking he was going to die any minute, and now it was all his fault. "I'm sorry," he said again, hoping Percy knew he really never meant it to come to this.

'I'm sorry for trusting you,' was still the first thought that crossed Percy's mind, but he sighed. Nico really hadn't done anything unforgivable, and to be fair, he'd been sitting through far worse torture to scrape together his past too with bubblegum and blonde hair. 'It's not the first thought that matters in the end, it's the one you act on,' his mother had once told him kindly as she dabbed at his bleeding lip one too many days after school. 'That's what matters Percy. I'm happy you told him to shut up first, that's who I want you to be next time.' He'd never quite managed to live up to that advice, but he kept trying. "I'm sorry too, I was pretty harsh."