Percabeth One-Shots

Mattress

Annabeth is exhausted and emotionally worn and just wants to sleep. She pulls her car up to the curb and opens the door, takes her first steps onto the muggy New York City sidewalk in so many months. Her bones are tired, and she stretches up to the night sky, pulls at every part of her body from toe to fingertip and flinches when her spine cracks, groans as her muscles pull and ache after the hours-long drive. It's 1 o'clock in the morning. She just wants to sleep.

But her mattress is stuffed into the back of her Volvo, her sheets packed into boxes, her pillows who knows where, and her apartment looms two flights of stairs away. It's so, so late. She thinks, briefly, about sleeping in her car. It wouldn't be so bad, right?

But it would be in a city that's still busy at this time. So she pulls her phone from her back pocket and calls the only person she knows in the city who might be awake at one in the morning on a Wednesday night.

"Hello?"

"Percy?" Annabeth says, gripping her phone tight. "It's Annabeth."

He pauses. Breathes. She can hear him shift on his old bedsprings, and then cough, and then inhale. His voice is uncertain. "Annabeth?"

"Yeah."

"It's... hi. Is everything okay? Are you alright?"

"Yeah," she says on a laugh, because of course, of course his first thought would be to ask about her welfare, even in the dark of the night and several years too late. There's an ache in her heart that she doesn't want to address and something like fate that tugs at her, because why else would she still have his phone number programmed into her phone, after everything they'd been through? And what did it mean that he still answered, so late into the night, so long too late?

"Annabeth?"

"I'm back in town. I mean- I have an apartment now. On 25th and Brown. And I just wanted to call-"

"Yeah?"

"Yeah."

Three seconds of silence. Five. Ten. Twenty. Annabeth thumbs at the key to her apartment in her free hand, wonders if she might be talking to the wrong person, if she should just try to haul her bare mattress up the two flights of stairs by herself, strip her clothes and just sleep with the window open in the hot New York summer. It wouldn't be too hard. She could do it. She's just exhausted enough that she-

"Annabeth?"

"Yeah?"

"I'll be there. Give me, like, half an hour."

Forty-five minutes later, Percy Jackson pulls up behind Annabeth's old Volvo. He's a sight for sore eyes, certainly, with his smile and his worn, unbuttoned Henley and ripped jeans. He's holding a brown paper bag as he approaches her, and he brushes his hand though his hair and tugs at his shirt like he's nervous. Annabeth's nervous. She hasn't seen him in years, hasn't talked to him in years, and- and he's here. He's right there. It's god-knows-when in the morning, and the city is sleeping and silent. He's here now, with food and an uncertain, pretending smile, and he's so damn attractive that she wants to reach out and touch him.

She doesn't. Her fingers twitch when he steps toward her on the sidewalk, food in hand, but she doesn't reach toward him, and that seems like some kind of victory.

"Percy," she says.

"Annabeth," he says.

She smiles, and he reaches out to grasp her in an awkward, one-armed hug. They pull away slowly, lazily, reluctantly, and his mouth is right there. She glances up to see him looking at her, at her lips, and for a moment she thinks he might kiss her- on the lips or maybe on her cheek, or the space in between-and then he's pulling away-

"Thanks," she says, a quick, knee-jerk reaction. "I'd be screwed without you."

He runs his hand though his hair, lingering at the back of his neck. "Yeah," he says. "Just here to help."

And together, in the middle of the night, they pull her mattress from her car and pull it up to her second-floor apartment, take a few trips to drag her boxes of sheets and clothes and essentials to the living room floor. By the time they're finished bringing the most important boxes into the apartment, they're both lounging on her mattress, sweating and tired, close enough to touch.

"Percy," she says.

"Yeah?"

"Can we just-?"

"Go to sleep," he says, turning towards her, running his hand up her thigh and hitching her knee up and around his leg. "Just for now."

"Just for now," she agrees, pressing a quick kiss to his neck and shifting against him, making sure they're pushed flush together, smothering her laughter at the heat in his face. "Good night, Percy."

--~•|•~--
So here's a quick one. For those who were wondering, no I won't be writing Tutor part 4. I'm not sure how I'm gonna continue it so... I hope that's okay for you guys :)

Anyways, have an awesome day! Please comment and vote!!