She doesn’t have time to think. The moment she had seen the glint of metal being pulled out of a waistband, her body had just moved. It was instinct, honed through years of always looking too closely, being too paranoid, acting too carefully. The man— Percy, her mind supplies helpfully— grunts slightly in surprise as she drags him further back into the shadows of the alleyway he had been skulking in, professional camera almost dropping out from long, nimble fingers. He starts to open his mouth to speak, wide eyes taking in her white-knuckle grip on his arm and travelling up to her face, but Annabeth cuts him off with a hissed whisper.
“Shut up. For God’s sake, Rachel said you had no self-preservation instincts, but this is just fucking ridiculous.”
His eyebrows crease together, a bit endearingly if she’s being honest, but she doesn’t add anything else, simply pushing him behind a large dumpster bin and shoving down at his shoulder until he finally acquiesces and folds his long legs underneath him, unceremoniously sitting on the ground. Her own body follows until she’s kneeling before him, bodies close as they hide behind the bin, and she listens intently for footsteps approaching. She has to force herself not to focus on the pink slash of his mouth, half-open as he watches her with sharper eyes than she’d anticipated, carefully observing. Finally, Annabeth hears it: the soft tread of someone who’s been trained to be stealthy getting closer. Percy, to his credit, seems to hear it too and he tenses but otherwise doesn’t react. He doesn’t look away from her face. It’s a bit unnerving— it feels as if the longer he stares, the more he knows— no, that’s not quite it— the more he understands her.
She points sternly at him, a silent message to not move, and slowly, gracefully gets to her feet, being careful to not reveal herself behind the huge garbage bin. The footsteps get just close enough, and she lets muscle memory take over, quickly incapacitating the assailant, who had clearly only been expecting a simple investigative journalist, not a trained bodyguard with over ten years experience working with multiple different intelligence agencies. The body slumps in her hold, and Annabeth quietly lowers the man to the ground before making short work of finding his gun and unloading it, tucking the ammunition into her own pockets. Straightening back up and turning around, she finds Percy standing as well, looking through his camera at her. She looks into the lens for a moment, feeling rather surprised, almost vulnerable, at being caught off guard.
“Delete any pictures you just took.” It’s a clear threat, and he lowers his camera sheepishly, putting on the lens hood and letting it hang loosely from his neck.
“I, uh, I didn’t actually take any just then.” She stares at him, not understanding. “I just wanted to see— it doesn’t matter. Look, you can check if you’d like?” He offers up the camera to her, and, strangely enough, she actually believes him, though she checks anyway. No photos of her, just the CEO he had been tasked with investigating from moments before this whole sequence of events had happened. Percy makes no move to take the camera back from her, so she awkwardly rests it back against his chest, letting the strap around his neck take the weight off her hands.
“Fine.” It’s terse, and he’s still looking at her, contemplatively, but not unkindly, as if she hadn’t just knocked out an armed man in front of him after ambushing him in an alley. Or, maybe as if she had, but he’s curious anyways. “Come on, then. Let’s get you someplace where you’re not going to be attacked by Woodfield’s bodyguards.”
It’s as they’re almost to one of Annabeth’s apartments that he starts asking questions.
“So you’re… Rachel’s bodyguard, then?”
Annabeth grunts slightly in affirmation, slightly annoyed at how easily his legs have been able to keep up with the brisk pace she had set since the beginning.
“And, she told you to, what, keep an eye on me while I investigated for her?”
She nods her head, getting the feeling that he already knows the answers, has put most of the pieces together himself, but that he prefers having a clear confirmation of the facts. There’s a very long pause as he considers what he should ask next, and Annabeth keeps her eyes firmly on their surroundings, leading him from one crowded sidewalk to the next, both of them slipping between the throngs of strangers easily. It isn’t until they’ve arrived at her place, and are inside with the door locked securely behind them, that he asks another one.
“Why didn’t she just tell me?”
Annabeth shrugs, gives him a once over. “Apparently you’re as stubborn as she is, and you don’t like anything that might… interfere with your work.”
The tension in the room dissipates as he laughs at this, eyes crinkling in the natural way of someone who laughter comes easily to. It’s nice, she thinks.
“Well, she’s not wrong about that, though I can hardly complain now since you’ve saved my life. Guess that might have been her thought process, too, knowing Rachel.” Annabeth can’t help but silently agree, knowing Rachel just as well as he does, maybe even better. Percy looks around, giving the room a quick once-over, and Annabeth knows he sees more than he lets on, even as he flashes a bright, innocent smile at her afterwards. “Can I know my mysterious rescuer’s name at least?”
A million aliases, fake names, safe names flash through her mind, but it’s still the honest one that slips out, almost unbidden. “Annabeth.”
“Nice to meet you, Annabeth.” He’s reached out and firmly shook her hand before she has the chance to think of pulling away, stuck on how warm her name sounds in his mouth. She gathers herself together, and pulls her hand out of his, resisting the urge to clench her hand into a fist in an effort to keep some of his soft touch with her.
“Likewise.” He’s still watching her, waiting, so she sighs and adds, “Percy.”
