Chapter Text
may 2024.
Annabeth loves springtime in the city.
The whole place seems to erupt with color after a dreary several months. Sour moods that suffered through the late buzz of winter and the brutal rain of April turn upwards as the sun comes out and establishes its place back in the sky. This time of year is usually when Annabeth finds herself the most inspired.
Usually.
Today, she is feeling decidedly uninspired. There’s a resting unease in her chest that grows as the calendar creeps to June. The list of things on her to-do list keep growing, as she eyes the page in her moleskine notebook she wonders when she let it get so far away from her.
There’s promotional material to be filmed—it never seems to end. The manager is pushing her to do more social media stuff these days, but truthfully Annabeth has no interest in any of it.
Then there’s her sophom*ore album. Her debut, Annie (title not Annabeth’s idea) was lukewarm in critical response, much to the manager’s dismay. The lead single that had propelled her into notoriety was all Annabeth, but the rest of it, written by a smorgasbord of creatives from the studio, was criticized for being too safe. So, the manager has challenged her to write the next album entirely herself.
The most recent task that’s dropped on her plate is a song that will play over the credits of a summer blockbuster coming out in August— Galaxy, a young adult sci-fi romp.
The song is a little last minute for her taste, but the manager had already agreed to it before running it by Annabeth. The studio notes tell her almost nothing about the story, it’s one of those productions that’s frustratingly tight-lipped over the plot to draw hype.
Annabeth picks up her phone to text the one person she knows who works in production and is a little bit connected to everyone—she has to start somewhere.
It takes all of five minutes—Silena Beauregard promises her a meeting with someone very close to the production of the film and sends her the information. Annabeth is about to put her phone down when it buzzes again.
Silena: By the way, it’s nice to hear from you after so long.
Silena: Saw your performance a few months ago and was really moved
Silena: If you ever want to talk about it or something let me know
Annabeth lets the message bubbles appear on her screen. She says nothing in reply. She knows her read receipts are on.
A few minutes later, her phone lights up again.
Silena: Fine. But it will help if you let someone in, Annabeth.
Silena’s message directed her to a coffee shop tucked away in a quiet neighborhood, away from prying eyes and tourists.
Annabeth taps against her mug of honey-lemon tea impatiently, waiting for the mystery meeting to come in. She doesn’t exactly know who to expect, Silena primarily works in makeup design but knows everyone who knows everyone, which made her the first person Annabeth wanted to call.
Her head turns towards the door at the sound of it opening. Her stomach drops when she sees who walks in, lights up and starts making his way towards her.
Because, who else, other than Percy Jackson?
She pushes her reluctance to the side.
”Percy, hi,” she stands up. She holds her hand out for him to shake.
He takes it—awkwardly—and she winces, realizing belatedly how formal the action comes across.
She knows what’s happening here—she had seen his name as the top billed in the cast but didn’t think this would be Silena’s connection to the movie.
But she’s seen the coverage after the Oscars—not only the positive spin on her emotional performance (enough to get the manager to back off for a while), but the social media flurry of her and Percy’s presentation, the blurry photo of their talk backstage, and a brief spiral of rumors and speculation.
It meant nothing, and it died out within a week’s time, but she knows Silena is the type of person to get caught up in that kind of thing and play matchmaker when she can. Ugh.
“Whoa, you sure come prepared,” he comments as he joins her in the booth. The table is crowded already. She’s brought her moleskine notebook and a copy of the book Galaxy is based on, along with a few dozen pens and her laptop.
She also ordered him a blueberry muffin, which seemed like the polite thing to do given she’s asking him for help. She gestures to it and tells him to help himself.
He picks up the muffin and starts eating it top down, which feels chaotic to Annabeth but she ignores it.
”Being prepared is kind of my thing,” she says.
”I can tell,” Percy says wryly. “But it’s cool, we need people like you to make the world go ‘round.”
And she honestly doesn’t know what to say to that. She had forgotten his frustratingly nonchalant attitude. So instead, she asks him about the film.
His eyes light up when he describes the plot and his own character. She can tell it means a lot to him. The movie itself sounds interesting enough, like The Odyssey meets space opera meets teen drama. Percy’s own character is at the helm of the journey, a reluctant hero who rises to the occasion.
”We filmed in Australia last year, and made it look like an alien planet. It was the coolest thing,” he says. “That was where I tried surfing for the first time. Never looked back.”
”Surfing?” Annabeth echoes in surprise. She’s not sure why, it seems unlike the kind of thing he’d be into.
Percy nods, the tips of his ears going pink.
”It’s kind of become my thing. Surfing, sailing, I don’t know. Something about it helps me unwind. My best friend, Grover, got me into hiking around the same time. I think we just like getting away from the noise.”
”I get that,” she says. It sounds peaceful.
”So, what’s yours?”
Annabeth blinks, wondering if she missed a step.
“What’s my what?”
Percy gestures into the air.
“You know, your thing. What do you do for fun?”
She shrugs, playing with the rim of her teacup.
“Fun?” she asks sarcastically, gesturing to the mess of work around her.
“Oh come on, everyone has something.”
”I dunno,” she shrugs. “Music has always been my hobby I guess.”
”But now that’s your 9 to 5,” he points out. “What do you do to unwind from that?”
She purses her lips. Her brain searches for an acceptable human answer and she feels her frustration build when she comes up empty.
”I guess I don’t,” she admits. “It’s always been music—the writing, the whole process, there’s always something to do, especially right now.”
”Okay,” he tries again, bringing his fingers to his chin thoughtfully. “Let’s say there’s a day where you aren’t working—you can’t work at all, actually. Your whole day is free. What would you do on that day?”
”Why can’t I work?”
”Government mandate,” he waves a hand. “Stop stalling.”
”Everyone has this day off? Even service workers? Like, could I get a coffee?”
Percy lips twitch up as he smiles, but his shoulders are itching impatiently.
”They’ve set up a rotating schedule, and you don’t seem like the coffee type. Now stop being so—so Annabeth about this for a minute,” he says. “Really think about it.”
Annabeth laughs, surprising herself at how hearty it sounds out of her mouth. But she can tell how important this is to him so she tries to consider his new question with more care.
“Okay,” she says eventually. “I would do a tour of the historical buildings in the city.”
It sounds horribly nerdy and lame the minute she says it, but Percy lights up.
“That sounds awesome,” he says, so full of sincerity it almost hurts. “Why?”
She wants to brush him off again, saying she doesn’t know. But she thinks of Silena's message, about pushing people away.
She has to start somewhere.
“I’ve always been fascinated by old architecture,” she admits. “The stories they tell, the innovation, the human resilience. I guess that’s my thing.”
Percy’s smile widens as she talks, so much so she wonders if she’s missing out on a joke.
”I get it,” he says. “That sounds really cool.”
There’s no joke, she realizes. He means it.
Maybe Silena was on to something after all.
The coffee shop meetings become regular for them. The writing portion of the song is mostly done, in theory she doesn’t need his help anymore, but she isn’t quite ready to admit to herself what this is.
The weeks go by and the city starts to get more crowded. Annabeth feels like she can barely walk through the Village, which is completely inundated with NYU graduates in purple robes right now, when she gets a call.
“Hey, I was just on my way,” she answers into the receiver.
“Yeah, I just got here,” Percy says on the other line. “The place has a flooding issue, and they had to close early. Should we go somewhere else?”
Annabeth tugs on the ends of her braids as she considers their options. The idea brewing seems like a bad one right away, but once it manifests in her mind she can’t stop the words from slipping out.
”We can just hang out at my place.”
On paper it seemed like a good idea. The manager is out of town on business, so Annabeth has the whole loft to herself. The city is way too busy right now to find a quiet place to work, and Annabeth won’t pretend that she hasn’t noticed the lingering eyes and camera lenses around her and Percy lately. The privacy will do them some good.
But all of those reasons seem incredibly stupid now, as she watches Percy saunter around her home with his hands tucked in his pockets. He examines the photographs on the walls one by one, as if he’s in a museum reading the little descriptions next to the art.
“That one is—“ he points to a black and white photograph of a smiling woman in a studio, a pair of large headphones pressed against her ears.
”My mom,” Annabeth finishes. “From way back when. Before, you know…”
Percy’s eyebrows furrow as he turns back to her.
”Before what?”
Annabeth hesitates, she wonders for a moment if he’s messing around, but she realizes he honestly doesn’t know.
“The studio she was signed with was Olympus Records. There was a big falling out,” she thinks that would be enough for him to get it, but Percy still looks confused. “I thought you would have heard, you know, from your father…”
”Oh,” Percy’s expression shutters. “My father’s not really in my life like that. I had no idea.”
She wishes the floor would open up and send her on a first class ticket underground right now. Every story her mom told her about him, his family, rewires in her head.
“I shouldn’t have assumed,” she gestures around her. “It’s not like my mom’s around much either, until she wants to be.”
Percy nods knowingly.
“Parents can be complicated. Especially ones in our walk of life.”
She wonders how he does that—puts a neat bow on something that’s full of depth. But she suspects it's not a topic he wants to talk about further, so she drops it.
They order pizza and sit on the floor of her office. She gets Percy a diet co*ke and herself a glass of room temperature water.
“So how did the acting thing come along?” she asks, taking a sizeable bite out of her jalapeno-mushroom-double cheese monstrosity.
Percy chews thoughtfully.
”Probably like most kid actors,” he says. “Did the commercials thing, my mom realized I was serious about acting and had me read for small roles wherever we could find. I got on a Disney show when I was nine, but I only lasted there for a year before I got kicked out.
She vaguely remembers watching it on tv. She may or may not have been devastated when he was recast—his character, Archie, was her first crush.
“Kicked out?”
Percy smiles self-deprecatingly.
“I was a liability to the production,” he says, making quotation marks in the air. “I have this thing—dyslexia, focus issues, that kind of thing. It made it hard for me to memorize my lines and blocking and stuff on my own, and it drove them nuts. So they cut me loose.”
He shrugs, like it means nothing, like it would happen to anyone, but the story sits heavy on his shoulders. Annabeth thinks back to the day of their rehearsal, how Percy went over his lines without looking at the teleprompter.
Strangely, her chest aches for the kid who should have gotten support for learning, instead spit out by an industry who only cares for output.
“I waited it out a bit, learned how to figure out the memorizing thing on my own without pissing too many people off. I got lucky when I booked a movie a few years ago.”
Annabeth remembers this part. Overnight, the name Percy Jackson became one to watch in the world of rising stars. Looking at him today, you would have no idea of the accolades that followed his young career around.
But he doesn’t care for talking about himself any longer. He inhales the rest of his pizza and takes to exploring the rest of Annabeth’s work space.
He plays Chopsticks on her piano (“I had one lesson and my teacher lost his patience with me,” he says sheepishly, “This is all I remember”), and plops himself into her desk chair, looking at the mess of filled up notebooks and sheet music.
“Whoa,” he props his arms on her desk. “This is all for the one song?”
Annabeth should feel nervous, given his proximity to her work and an extension of her own mind. But she isn’t.
“It’s not just the song,” she waves a hand, “It’s the next album, trying to figure out what it’s trying to say to me has taken some time. Then I’ll need to figure out the lead single, and how to sell it to the manager so she can sell it to the studio, and I want it all done before next summer so I could do some shows, then—“
She forces her mouth shut. None of this can be interesting to Percy, it’s barely interesting to her, and in fact breaking down the list of to-do’s is making her heart rate rise when she wants to get away from all of that.
”It’s just a lot,” she concludes, “I have way too much to do and not enough time.”
It’s what the manager is always reminding her—her window is only so small, the public will grow tired of her, the older she gets, the less forgiving critics will be, so she’s trying to get it all done now.
Percy purses his lips thoughtfully. He looks at her and the mess of work again, like he finally sees it, the way the words on those pages connect to her like an extension of limbs.
“Well, I’m excited to see what you have next.”
“There’s no way you haven’t seen Wizard of Oz,” Percy says over the phone, a week or so after their hangout at her place.
Annabeth doesn’t know when exactly these long phone calls started. She thinks this time he called her to figure out their next dinner plans but it launched into an hour long discussion on classic movies, which Annabeth can’t contribute too since she’s barely seen any.
She doesn’t have a lot of time in her life for movies.
”Okay, what are you doing tonight?” Percy continues, still scandalized at her lack of film knowledge. “I need to fix this.”
”Well the manager is still in London for the weekend,” Annabeth looks around the empty loft. “I planned on just hanging out at home and ordering something for dinner.”
”Forget that, you’re coming over for movie night. I’ll call Grover.”
He hangs up abruptly, leaving no room for argument.
So that’s how she ends up in Percy’s apartment for the first time.
Aside from a sizable security presence in the lobby, you would have no idea this was the home of Hollywood’s next rising star. The interior of his place is warm and inviting, every corner is filled with worn out furniture, baby pictures, and knickknacks collected from a well-traveled life.
She has no problem sinking into the worn leather couch as Percy stumbles around the place, plopping his collection of movie night snacks on the coffee table.
She meets Grover, and it feels like reuniting with an old friend after many years. They talk about his studies in college (he’s majoring in Environmental Studies in a “misguided attempt to try and save our world”—Grover’s words, not hers), and exchange embarrassing stories about Percy.
”I heard that,” Percy interjects from the kitchen, just as Grover finishes a story of a mix up with Halloween costumes that left Percy wearing a guinea pig snout. “Am I going to regret introducing you two?”
Grover stifles a laugh.
“Definitely,” Annabeth says.
Percy is huffing when he comes back with a collection of sodas, which Annabeth politely declines.
His phone starts vibrating on the table. Before Annabeth can even glance at the Caller ID, he flips it over hastily. She looks at him questioningly, and he shakes his head.
”Nothing, probably just spam,” he says. A crooked smile paints his face, but it seems forced. “No one really calls me these days, aside from you.”
Annabeth furrows her eyebrows. Her eyes flicker to Grover, who is pursing his lips.
But Percy leaves no time for further questioning, he’s pressing play on his remote and the opening score of the film fills the room.
He settles himself in the spot next to her on the couch, their shoulders brushing together. Grover stretches his legs out on the floor, his back resting against their legs.
Annabeth knows she should focus on the film—it’s important to him that she watches this, and that she appreciates what it is…
… But honestly, she can’t stop sneaking glances at Percy, watching his reactions. His eyes light up when the screen changes from black and white to technicolor. He mouths along to most of Dorothy’s lines. It’s annoying how endearing the whole thing is.
She doesn’t quite realize when she falls asleep, somewhere when the Witch melts to her death—but the sound of whispering makes her eyes flutter open. Her pillow is warm and knitted, like a sweater—wait, it’s not a pillow, it’s Percy’s shoulder.
The credits of the movie rolling on the television are the only light in the room.
“Annabeth,” the whispering is Percy. It sounds like he’s been awake the whole time. Oh god.
She lifts her head quickly, mortified.
“Sorry,” she wipes the side of her cheek. “I should get going.”
“No way,” Percy says. “It’s already so late. Just stay here. Grove, you spending the night too?”
Grover groans beneath them, presumably also asleep. She thinks he’s sprawled out on the floor.
“It’s fine,” she insists, reaching for her phone. “I’ll get an Uber.”
“Sally Jackson will have my head,” Percy says. “She already told me not to let you go home alone earlier.”
Annabeth’s sleep-laden brain tries to compute several conclusions at once, including the one that says Percy’s mom had been by while she was out cold.
“Come on,” Percy nudges her towards the bedroom, “You can take my bed. Don’t be weird about it. I’ll sleep on the couch.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Annabeth says. “I’m not pushing you out of your bed. There’s more than enough space for both of us”
Her eyes widen as she realizes what she’s suggesting. Percy’s looking at her like he doesn’t quite believe it either.
“Don’t be weird about it,” she echoes.
In the dark, they climb into the bed together.
Annabeth wakes to the sun filtering through the blinds. The Spiderman clock on the wall tells her it’s barely 6 in the morning.
She turns over and stretches her legs out carefully. She had remained diligently glued to her side of the bed all night, terrified of doing something embarrassing like getting too close to Percy.
Turning over, she sneaks a glance at him. His face is half shoved into the pillow, mouth parted open as a quiet snore works its way up his chest.
She fights a smile, climbing out of the bed as carefully as possible.
Her plan is to creep out of the apartment before anyone wakes up, to get home and text Percy later about some emergency or the other—but all of that goes to hell when she catches the eye of who she can only assume is Sally Jackson in the kitchen.
“Annabeth, good morning,” Sally says with a bright smile. “Breakfast?”
“Oh, I really should get going—“ Annabeth tries, but Sally shakes her head in a startlingly familiar, stubborn action.
”I can’t let you leave here without feeding you,” she says, “Sorry. Coffee? Juice?”
Annabeth admits defeat. She sits at the small kitchen table, trying not to think about how her hair must look after a night of sleeping on a pillow uncovered, and how crusty her skin feels.
“Um, tea, if you have it.”
Sally hesitates over the stove, and nods.
They settle into comfortable silence as Sally ambles around the kitchen.
Annabeth wonders, briefly, about this woman who sees someone sneaking out of her teenage son’s room and doesn’t even flinch. Annabeth should probably feel some more shame, or nerves, or something. But she doesn’t.
She feels comfortable.
Percy’s mother doesn’t hover. Her eyes don’t watch Annabeth’s every move until her back stands straighter. She doesn’t demand.
”You know,” Sally sets a plate of pancakes down on the table. Annabeth thanks her quietly. “My roommate in college was a singer.”
”Oh,” Annabeth nods.
”Yeah, she was the coolest. She would do these shows in tiny, packed venues, stay up late, write a midterm with me the next day and do better. Drove me nuts.”
Sally pauses. She leans in slightly. Now Annabeth’s back does stand straighter. She feels the weight of the moment.
“Percy talks about you a lot,” Sally says quietly. “About how hard you work, how impressed he is. I just want to make sure you’re, you know— still living life, being young.”
Annabeth considers her words. She realizes that not many other seventeen year olds would be up at 6 in the morning, drinking tea, on a Saturday.
“I’m not going to pretend I get it, the life that you and Percy live,” Sally continues, “But I worry about you guys, and all the pressure you put yourselves under. Just remember to have fun once in a while. That’s all.”
She leans back. Her words hang in the air like the house plants that curl around the walls of the apartment. They settle into Annabeth’s skin like the dust catching the morning light.
Her throat feels tight. She wracks her brain, trying to remember if anyone has ever talked to her like this before. Like they cared, not just about her success, but about her wellbeing.
“I should get going,” she says hastily, pushing her chair away from the table. “My mana–my mom was out of town, she’s coming back today. Would you tell Percy?”
Sally’s face falls, like she realizes she’s said too much.
“Sure, hon.”
Annabeth pushes her way out of the apartment. She fights the urge to look back, to this place, filled to the brim with memories and love and joy.
It feels like home should, she realizes belatedly. It feels like home, but it’s not hers, and the longer she stays in this realization the more suffocated she feels.
So she runs.
