"Send me! Send an army! Send a thousand ships! I don't care, just bring her home. I hate being without her."
[ PERCY JACKSON x FEMALE OC ]
[ PERCY JACKSON SERIES ]
cover by @humaneity !
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
0013. | FRIENDS WHO KILL TOGETHER STAY FOREVER
Octavia was letting Percy teach her how to sail.
He didn't really know what he was doing half the time, he moved on instinct which made him a pretty bad teacher, but she figured that if she copied what he was doing, then she was moving down the right line. He acted as naturally as if he had been raised a sailor, hauling the ropes, tying the knots, angling the sails, it was admirable and he was doing a way better job as captain than Clarisse had done. For starters, he didn't shout at her every time she tied a knot too loose or didn't follow an instruction. She also had way less of a desire for mutiny against Percy than she had for Clarisse.
She was kind of shocked to see a son of the Sea God sailing. It wasn't a surprise that he was so good at it, but it was surprising to watch. It came so easily to him, like scheming did to Annabeth or flirting did to Silena. It was strangely nice to see Percy in his natural habitat.
She turned to him, curious. They were hauling a rope that was as thick as her wrist. "What's my habitat?"
He looked at her strangely. His chest was heaving, he was out of breath from the weight of the ropes and pulling more than his weight around the ship. "What?"
She blinked, realising she had done that thing where she just said her thoughts instead of explaining them. "Like, where I'm most at home." She said. "You are at sea. I guess Annabeth is in a library, Clarisse's is probably a colosseum... What's mine?"
He took up a rope on the ground that attached to the sails and hauled it. It was as thick as his arm and he snapped it. It became unfurled and the main sail unravelled. The ship jerked under the new surge of strength from the wind.
He sat down on a crate and rubbed his sore palms. "I don't know." He shrugged. "Maybe everywhere. Apollo has loads of domains."
She looked at his hands that he was stretching. His palms were red raw from the rope fibres. "You shouldn't be doing so much so soon after being a rodent." She reminded him.
His face flushed as red as his hands. "Can we please not talk about that?"
She snorted, fighting a giggle. He had been adamant to ignore his little problem since they boarded the ship. It was a strict shut-up-and-work mantra with Captain Jackson. That meant Octavia wasn't allowed to laugh. That only made her want to laugh more.
At the sound of her snort, he sent her a withering stare.
She swallowed her giggle and came over to him. "Here." She rolled her eyes. "Let me see."
He stared up at her from beneath his thick eyelashes. The tops of his cheeks were still pink. "I'm fine—,"
She took up his hands to inspect. He sighed and let her do what she needed to do. His hands weren't as bad on closer inspection as they had been from afar. The inflammation was just from the friction of the rough, three-century-aged ropes. He had a blister coming up on the pad of his thumb and some cuts by his fingertips, but other than that, he was okay. Her hands tingled with warmth and she focused on spreading the warmth to Percy. A golden dust seemed to trail from her fingers to his and a faint glow radiated from her skin.
