Yeah so I’m doing like a million and one things today and didn’t need one more, but I absolutely could not resist the @percyjacksonweek2k17 prompt for today and anyway I wrote half of it in the middle of the night when I couldn’t sleep last night. This is my offering for day 1 of @percyjacksonweek2k17, for the prompt ‘blue’. Enjoy!
Sally smelt Gabe before he shuffled in, that overpowering sour stench of body odour, like a week's worth of unwashed laundry, which always preceded his entrance into any room.
My husband, she reminded herself wearily. But she'd made her choice consciously, knowing before she sealed the deal what she was in for. To the uninformed onlooker, she might seem like a silly, duped victim, lured into nuptial drudgery, but her marriage to Gabe Ugliano was actually a premeditated decision.
Percy looked up and, a defiant look in his eyes, finished recounting the colours he'd learnt in school that day in an almost deafening volume, 'And the Cookie Monster is BLUE!'
She could have sworn he'd raised his voice just to torment Gabe. Percy might be only five, but her boy was smart as a whip.
Gabe's fists came up. 'You gonna shut him up, Sally, or do I gotta?'
Sally hurriedly turned Percy's face away so that he was no longer glaring at Gabe.
'Good job, sweetie!' she praised. 'But let's not forget to use our indoor voices, okay?'
Gabe grunted and dragged himself over to his La-Z-Boy, where he plopped down and picked up the TV remote. 'How about getting me some grub, then, eh? I been working hard all day to keep you in style, least you could do is have dinner waiting when I get home.'
Sally bit back the retort she would have dearly loved to throw at Gabe. She couldn't turn him off. They needed him.
Percy needed him.
'Right away, dear,' she murmured. To Percy, she said, 'Come on, sweetie, you want to help Mommy cook, don't you?'
Gabe didn't even bother responding. He'd already cracked open a beer and settled in to watch The View.
'He's mean!' Percy complained as she steered him into the kitchen. 'He's mean and he's a stupidhead and he's smelly—'
'Percy,' Sally admonished. 'What have I said about calling people names?' Even if they deserve it, she thought to herself. It wouldn't do for Percy to go saying it to Gabe's face.
Sally fought the urge to laugh at the apt nickname. Instead, she pulled a few tomatoes from the vegetable crisper. 'How about you tell me more about the colours Miss Popples taught you? What colour are these?'
'RED!'
'Very good!' She waggled a carrot at him next. Percy struggled a bit with this one.
'Ummm, ORANGE!'
Having successfully diverted Percy's attention from the subject of Gabe (Percy, thank heavens, was nothing if not easily distractible), Sally returned to her task of making dinner. Percy sat happily at her side, naming the colour of every ingredient that she chopped up and threw into her stew.
'Very good, Percy!' she said.
'Sally!' Gabe bellowed, interrupting them. 'Where's dinner?'
'I'm coming, Gabe!' She ladled out a single bowl—she and Percy could come back and eat in the kitchen.
Percy trotted beside her as she carried the bowl of stew back out to the living room and laid it on the tray table in front of Gabe. He had the television talk show blasting so loud, she barely heard Percy asking her a question.
'What is it, honey?'
Percy raised his voice over Barbara Walter's. 'Why aren't they blue, Mommy?'
'Why aren't what blue?'
'The food! Tommy-toes are red and carrots are orange and corns are yellow and coo-coo-bers are green but there's no blue!'
Gabe tore his eyes away from Barbara and her co-host. 'Don't be ridiculous,' he sneered. 'Food can't be blue.'
'Why not?' Percy demanded. 'There's blue crayons and blue fishies and blue birdies so why not blue food?'
Sally racked her brains for an answer for Percy.
'Blueberries,' she said. 'Blueberries are blue.'
Percy grinned. 'Can we have blueberries for dinner?'
'You'll damn well eat what you're told to, runt.' Gabe snorted. 'And blueberries are a stupid name. The little shits are purple, not blue. I oughta know. Some idiot got the stains all over one of my appliances last week.'
Sally mmhmm-ed in what she hoped Gabe would consider an appropriately sympathetic manner, although she really couldn't bring herself to care that much. What sort of appliance got permanently stained by berries, anyway?
'They are so blue!' Percy retorted. 'Mommy said so!'
'Blue foods don't exist!' Gabe thundered. 'And you can shut up about it, piss-face, before I punch you black and blue. Can't a man watch his show in peace around here?'
Sally ushered Percy back to the kitchen before Gabe could antagonise him any further. Percy stabbed his spoon into the bowl of stew she lay before him, disappointment written all over his face.
'It's not fair.' He poked at his vegetables like they were silly putty. 'All the other colours get to have foods. Why not blue?'
The spark of rebellion grew somewhere between Gabe's close-minded insistence that blue food didn't exist, and Percy's crestfallen wish that they did.
So what if nature hadn't made food blue? It didn't mean it was impossible.
'Tell you what,' she said, pulling open the kitchen cupboards. She had to rummage for a bit among the baking ingredients before she found it: a small bottle of food colouring. She set it on the table, along with some flour, vanilla essence, and a little bag of chocolate chips. 'How about we make our very own blue food?'
Percy's eyes grew wide and eager. 'We can make it?'
'Percy,' she said solemnly, 'as long as we believe it, we can make anything happen.'
Can you all tell I have a thing for Sally’s blue food tradition? It’s one of those things from the series that warm my heart so, so much.
This kinda crossed over into tomorrow’s prompt actually, and there was a bit before this scene that I couldn’t quite get to work just yet, so I may expand it for tomorrow’s prompt.
So... it’s really bad, but I really wanted to be part of this sooo, @percyjacksonweek2k17 , here’s my contribution!
Percy wasn't sure why he was the one walking around New York with that sealed envelope. It was torture. Maybe it was Annabeth's revenge. She had been complaining about the morning sickness, and how it was all his fault, really.
She was an evil genius, so she could totally have planned all this. The thing was, she wanted to do a big reveal thingy and as soon as the doctor told her what it would be, she wrote it down and sealed it. Now, she could at least have told him. But of course, she didn't. After all, he was just the father.
Anyway, Nico was supposed to take that damn envelope to this fancy bakery who did cakes or something. But Nico was currently working for his father, and it would take two or three days to finish whatever he was doing. So Annabeth gave it to him instead. And promised pain if he looked inside.
He was walking around looking for a place he didn't know the name of (he kind of forgot, and he didn't want to call Annabeth, she was already stressed as it was). All he knew was that it had sounded fancy. Pretentious, but fancy. That was when he found The Golden Lion Pastries. One fancy place or another, wouldn't really make a difference right?
Wrong.
The smiling woman who asked if she could help turned out to be a Dracaena. And the "Golden Lion" was the Nemean Lion. That was now chasing Percy around New York. And he didn't see any astronaut food around.
He eventually managed to kill it near Central park using a lot of leaves and a suitcase. Don't even ask.
When he was about to take a deep breath and relax, he made a mental check list.
Two arms. Here.
Two legs. Here.
A very cool sword. Here.
The envelope. He...
Apparently, he had lost the envelope. And the last time he saw it was in the Bakery. So now he had two choices. A nest full of Dracaenas OR a furious Annabeth?
It wasn't really that hard, he thought and made his way to The Golden Lion Pastries.
Everything turned out surprisingly okay. He killed some dracaenas, got his envelope back and found the perfect bakery, owned by a daughter of Demeter. All is well when it ends well and yadda yadda yadda.
Piper and Jason did the decoration. Their little apartment was now full of bright interrogation marks in pink and blue. Leo made the food. tortillas, the best dip ever and tacos.
Nico was finally back in town and picked the cake on his way to their home.
All in all, surrounded by his friends, by his family, he felt happy. But he would do anything for this night to be finally over to know!
"Hey, guys! Time to slice the cake!” Annabeth finally called. “Percy, would you do the honors?" The cake was covered in plain white frosting. So he cut and got the first slice.
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Percy Jackson and the Olympians - Rick Riordan
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Relationships: Annabeth Chase/Percy Jackson
Characters: Percy Jackson, Annabeth Chase, Grover Underwood, Thalia Grace, Chiron (Percy Jackson), Tyson (Percy Jackson)
Additional Tags: Fluff, Tooth-Rotting Fluff, Percy Jackson week, Established Relationship, this is so sweet
Series: Part 2 of Discord Prompts AU
Summary:
It's Annabeth's birthday, so Percy plans an amazing day for her.
This is for day 4 of @percyjacksonweek2k17, prompt: ‘loyalty/friendship’, but it’s such a loose interpretation of the prompt and is mostly percabeth fluff/angst (is flangst a thing?) and fits this collection of drabbles (here, here, and here for the previous ones).
737 words. Percy’s better at making friends than Annabeth.
Running away at age seven because you believe yourself unwanted doesn't build a great foundation for trusting others. Meeting two great friends who promise to be your family only to see one of them killed (well, sort of) a mere fortnight later doesn't help much with that either.
It's no real wonder that Annabeth has a reputation for being aloof and scary. For years before Percy came along, Luke and Grover were her only real friends (and she always suspected the latter was as apprehensive about her as most of the other campers, only Grover has a yard of guts that no one ever seems to credit). Even Luke's approachable nature never seemed to extend to her. Annabeth quickly gained a reputation as 'that small but lethal Athena kid', with a side dish of 'you don't want to get on the wrong side of her!'
Until Percy crashed on the porch of the Big House when she is twelve and draws her unwillingly but helplessly into his orbit. Before she knows it, she is trekking across the country with him—only because she wants a quest, she tells herself—and responding helplessly to his stoic loyalty and big heart.
You're my friend, Seaweed Brain, she find herself telling him reflexively, realising that it was true only after the words escaped her mouth.
At the time she can't figure out how it happens so quickly, without her knowledge, that she's become such fast friends with an annoying kid who should have been her rival, but as she hangs around Percy more, she sees how he draws people easily into his circle. He's funny (well, his jokes are really stupid sometimes, but they always put people at ease), he trusts people (too much, if you ask her), and he doesn't judge them (clearly, when he manages to pick a Cyclops as his best friend in seventh grade).
In five weeks he collects a larger circle of friends than she's had in five years. It makes her a bit jealous. She tells herself her jealousy about how he got so popular so fast. It has absolutely nothing to do with the many other friends he's made who aren't her. And especially not with the redheaded mortal he's managed to befriend as well when he was supposed to be on a quest to rescue Annabeth.
All these people Percy’s wins over with his open heart and forgiving nature, and it’s not really surprising, is it, considering she was the first one to fall for his charm, the way he wove himself into her heart so intricately that she can no longer pinpoint the moment his life became inseparable from hers. Annabeth, watches Silena go to pieces at the news of Beckendorf’s death and finally admits that it’s not Percy’s ability to capture people’s hearts that piques her, but his loyalty to all those people.
She’s terrified that that loyalty is what will kill him in the end.
Her mom told her before—for a friend, Percy would sacrifice the world.
Annabeth knows that isn’t quite right. For his friends, Percy would sacrifice himself.
But then, somewhere between taking a knife in the shoulder on the Williamsburg Bridge (better her than him) and learning of his crazy bath in the Styx (You were my lifeline, he whispers in the quiet dawn at the Plaza Hotel when he thinks she’s sleeping), Annabeth comes round to the even more frightening truth: she is the friend Percy would sacrifice everything for.
And when Olympus is in shambles around them, and there is Luke dying, Annabeth will deal with all that guilt later because right now, she can’t tear her eyes off Percy. He’s alive. And let’s be absolutely honest—it was never his charm with people she envied, because it’s him she wants, him she’d sacrifice herself to keep alive. Percy, who’s won her heart so thoroughly that she concedes defeat on all fronts.
Her heart sings because he’s staring right back at her like she’s all he cares about, too, and she doesn’t need to be jealous of Percy’s other friends because he loves her. Her: annoying, overbearing Annabeth I’ll-kick-your-ass-any-day Chase.
In the end, Annabeth doesn’t begrudge Percy’s great talent at making friends. After all, if he hadn’t been better than her at it, she might never have become his friend. And Annabeth doesn’t even want to imagine a world where that’s a possibility.
Ack, so my first attempt at the day 5 prompt (romance/shipping) for @percyjacksonweek2k17 went awry (basically tried to write a double-date ficlet based on a Caleo prompt and, surprise, surprise, it went more Caleo than Percabeth instead of 50-50). So I started over. And decided to go with @achtervulgan315‘s request for a Percabeth proposal. I think the whole reason I struggled with the original prompt is cos I look at it and go huh, right, shipfic--wait, so what’s the prompt then?
This was mainly written in between sessions at a conference (which is totally kicking my butt, I am sooo tired at the end of the day) so I am so sorry if it turned out to be utter and complete crap.
Okay why am I still blathering on? Story!
Summary: Percy’s a man with a plan. If he can just get Annabeth alone--which is proving harder than he anticipated. Fortunately, Clarisse comes to the rescue. Set in the CoL universe, post-fic, so SPOILERS FOR CURSE OF LETHE | Percabeth, obviously | 1321 words
If you’d told Percy that he’d ever ask Clarisse for help with his love life, he’d have said you’d been spending too much time shrooming in the Hypnos cabin.
To be fair, he wasn’t asking her for romantic advice (he’d definitely have to be stoned to consider that), it was more of … logistics.
Because getting Annabeth on her own for any extended period of time that summer was proving to be a greater challenge than Percy had anticipated—and that was definitely going to throw a wrench in his plans if he didn’t figure out how to get around it. Between their roles as senior camp counsellors (and their training classes were wildly popular with the kids) and Annabeth’s ongoing work on the ever-increasing minor god cabins (it was more like a mini-village there these days), there was hardly a private moment to be had. Even their spare time was often peppered with interruptions of the usual camp variety—Ellis Wakefield 'accidentally' frying the Demeter cabin; Julia Feingold and Alice Miyazawa stealing all the dinner plates for a skeet shooting competition so that no food could be served; Meg McCaffrey covering all the main cabins in creeper vines in retaliation. Little emergencies, that nevertheless needed the 'grown ups' to sort out.
(Gods, grown-ups. Sometimes Percy just wanted to go, 'Adult? Who, me? Nah …' Then again, considering what he was planning to ask Annabeth, he supposed he was grown up enough. If you counted age in experience instead of years, he might even pass for middle-aged by this point.)
Added to that was the increased propensity for younger campers to spy on the private moments they did get. Percy wasn’t sure how exactly their adventures in Tartarus had morphed into what the Aphrodite kids proclaimed 'the greatest love story ever' (gods, he wished Piper was back to put a stop to it; then again, maybe she’d only fan the flames, incorrigible matchmaker that she was). He just wished they wouldn’t be so persistent about trying to catch the 'shippy moments' for themselves. Seriously, when had teenagers become such voyeurs?
Anyway, the giggling coming from the bushes (or worse, rapturous sighs of 'it’s so romantic!') tended to put a bit of a damper on any attempted make-out session.
Percy had been starting to think he’d have to ask Chiron for permission to take Annabeth out to Manhattan for her birthday when the idea came to him. And unbelievable as it was, he went to Clarisse.
He caught Annabeth between his morning swordfighting class and her afternoon cabin inspections. he joined him on the green outside the Big House readily enough.
'Wanna bet on who catches us this time?' she teased when he kissed her cheek.
'My money’s on the Ares crowd,' he said. From behind his back, he produced a slightly squashed cupcake, covered with (of course) blue frosting. 'Happy birthday.'
'You remembered.'
'I did.' Percy tapped his head. 'Thalia’s magic’s still working. Everything staying put in there.'
Annabeth dipped her finger in the frosting and smeared it across his cheek. 'Your memory for dates was bad even before they washed out to Chaos,' she teased.
'I remembered the important ones,' Percy objected. 'Today, for instance.'
He felt in his pocket to make sure the pouch he’d prepared was still there, then moved in to kiss Annabeth properly. Sure enough, the oohing and aahing started up not long after their lips met.
'Well, look at that,' Clarisse pushed her way to the front of the group that had gathered at the edge of the Big House porch to whisper and point.
Right on cue.
'Clarisse?' Annabeth said incredulously. 'I know the kids have been stalking us, but it’s a bit beneath you, isn’t it?'
Clarisse ignored her. 'I think our lovebirds need to cool off, don’t you?' She looked around at the younger camps, whose faces broadened with glee.
A whole throng of kids appeared from all directions to hoist them onto their shoulders. Percy had to hand it to her; Clarisse had certain mobilised her people well.
'Isn’t this getting old for you?' Annabeth scolded.
'To the Canoe Lake!' Clarisse commanded, ignoring Annabeth.
Percy feigned annoyance, but he was grinning on the inside as they were carried down to the lake. It was all going perfectly to plan. Just before the campers chucked them into the water, he mouthed a quick thank you to Clarisse. She winked back.
He grabbed Annabeth’s hand as they sank beneath the surface and willed the water to push back from them, forming a flexible layer of air around their skin. He remembered quite clearly the first time he’d done this—a lot of his most emotionally charged memories had in fact become a lot more distinct since retrieving them at the edge of Chaos—and from the smile that tugged at the corner of Annabeth’s mouth and the way she wound her fingers through his and squeezed, she was recalling their first proper kiss, too.
'You planned this,' she accused him. Her other hand reached up to wipe the frosting from his cheek.
'Guilty.' He should have known she’d catch on quickly.
They hit the sandy bottom of the lake and Percy dropped to one knee.
'Oh,' Annabeth said. 'Oh.'
He hurried to get to the all-important question, although it seemed Annabeth already knew what he was up to.
'Annabeth, I—uh—you’re the—you’re my, I mean—' Oh, Cocytus, Styx, and Lethe, did he have to get all tongue-tied now? He took a deep breath, which was a mistake since he hadn’t exactly left unlimited quantities of air in their bubble. It made him splutter and choke over his next words.
Annabeth’s hand rose to cover her mouth. Her eyes twinkled.
'You’re laughing at me.'
'Of course I am.' She tugged him to his feet. 'You don’t have to do this, Percy.'
His heart did a slow swoop into the pit of his stomach. 'You mean—'
'I mean I was willing to fall into Chaos to stay with you—do you really need my answer?'
His heart, which must have stopped while waiting for her clarification, started beating again, very cautiously. 'You could’ve just let me get the question out.'
She pulled him closer by the front of his shirt. 'I seem to remember promising that I’d never make things easy for you.'
Percy shook his head, smiling. 'I think it’s been the other way round, lately.'
He pulled the pouch from his pocket. In it was the simple, thin band he’d been carrying around for months, ever since he’d gotten Tyson to craft it for him.
For her.
He shook it out into her palm. The ring lay in her hand, catching the sunbursts that streamed down through the lake water, reflecting different colours depending on which angle you looked from. It was simple at first glance, but with innumerable complex layers to it.
Just like Annabeth.
Annabeth’s jaw dropped. ’Is this … Adamantine?’
Percy nodded. 'The most durable stone in the world.'
'Something permanent,' Annabeth whispered.
'Exactly.'
Annabeth traced the carvings Tyson had etched along the surface of the ring in intricate Greek script: As long as we’re together. When she looked back at him, the corners of her eyes were glistening softly.
'Well, I guess you should ask after all.' She slipped her finger through the ring. 'Even if you already know the answer.'
This time, the words came out just right. ’I want you with me forever, even if you never make it easy for me. Will you keep on not making things easy for the rest of my life?’ he murmured.
'For the rest of our lives and beyond, Seaweed Brain.' Annabeth leaned forward so that their foreheads were touching. 'You’re not getting away from me.'
And as he closed the gap between them, Percy thought he’d definitely nailed the best underwater proposal of all time.
Here’s my offering for @percyjacksonweek2k17‘s Day 2 prompt: ‘Family/Sally Jackson/Blofis’!
It kinda precedes yesterday’s ficlet and can probably be combined into one long fic. I wouldn’t have written it as one except it wasn’t co-operating yesterday, and today ... well, let’s just say long flights with overnight transits in airports are brutal but effective for fic-writing! :)
'How was school, honey?'
In response to Sally's question, her son held up the piece of scrap paper he'd been scribbling on assiduously with his crayons. Her heart did a nervous skip when she saw what Percy had drawn—roughly, in the exuberant and none-too-precise scrawl of a five-year-old, but unmistakably a horned beast with claws and what looked like scales (if that was what Percy meant by the repeated curvy lines down its thick tree trunk legs).
'Did you—see that at school?'
Percy nodded happily as he crawled into her lap. She smoothed his hair back from his forehead and planted a kiss there. Percy wriggled in her arms.
'It's a wild thing,' Percy said. 'Miss Popples showed us. But they were stuck in the book so I drew one here so he can get out!' The earnest, proud expression on his tiny face was so cute, Sally couldn't help laughing. She vaguely remembered her own battered copy of Where the Wild Things Are that she'd pored over incessantly as a child.
It was a book. Only a book.
Sally hugged Percy closer to her, relief and amusement bubbling up to dissipate the tight pinch of fear.
'Mommy you're squishing me!' Percy protested and wriggled free.
'Sorry, honey.' She released him. 'What else did you do in school, then?'
'We sang the colour song!'
Sally let Percy's sweet, childish voice wash over her as he repeated the song and proceeded to name all the crayons in the box by colour.
Fifty-one days and counting, she thought. Fifty-one days since the last monster had showed its ugly face around her son.
Fifty-one days since her wedding—a hurried, perfunctory affair at city hall, followed by a celebratory drink after (not that marrying that boorish, uncouth jerk who was now her husband should have been any ground for celebration).
But when she'd picked Percy up from the babysitter's that night, sleeping innocently with, for once, not the slightest sign of the supernatural hanging around, it had reinforced every reason she'd had for marrying Gabe Ugliano.
She'd never have given him the time of day if it hadn't been for Percy. That first time he'd turned up at their door, all false flattery (and even faker flowers), she'd been prepared to slam it shut in his face when she'd heard <i>them.</i> The pair of dog-headed creatures who'd just moved into the apartment down the hall and had been prowling around from day one, inordinately interested in her home.
Sally had grown accustomed to the weird (and sometimes terrifying) things she saw from time to time—people with wings and fangs, trees that turned into dancing girls, humans who were part-animal or something—though she'd learnt early on in life that it was better not to admit you saw stuff others didn't. It was only after she'd met Poseidon that fateful summer at Montauk that it had finally made sense. But the rate at which the mythical monsters appeared had been steadily increasing ever since her baby had been born. The older Percy got, the more of them he seemed to attract, until she'd been monster-spotting on almost a daily basis.
And that was when she was with him. Who knew what would come after him when she was at work? Sally thought her heart might never recover from the shock she'd gotten that time Percy's nursery school teacher had called in hysterics, babbling about her son and two dead snakes at nap-time.
Her dog-headed neighbours had been sniffing around again, the day Gabe showed up to ask for a date, and Sally had heard one of them say, very distinctively, 'I don't get it. I smelt it, and then it was gone!'
Sally had stared from Gabe to the retreating dog-headed pair, a crazy idea forming in her head. And with that, a plan.
Much as she wanted to, she couldn't always be with Percy. And even if she was, how much use was she against the monsters who were out for his blood?
But if there was another way to keep Percy safe, to throw the monsters off his scent (quite literally!), well, then …
And so she'd accepted Gabe's overtures and flirted right back, all with the systematicity of a scientist testing a hypothesis. The more Gabe came around, the fewer her monster-sightings. The dog-headed neighbours moved away after a mere fortnight of her dating Gabe. Her observations of anything odd around Percy coincided with the times he hadn't visited for a while.
The pattern was impossible to ignore.
By the time he finally proposed—a mere two months after they'd met, as though he didn't want to give her enough time to wise up and cut loose—Sally had enough proof.
It had still been a difficult decision. As certain as she was that Gabe repelled the mythological danger to her son, Sally also knew he posed a different potential danger.
But she could protect Percy from Gabe.
She couldn't protect him from the monsters.
That stunt with the snakes had been way too close. And if Gabe and his sickening smell, which now permeated every inch of her apartment, disguised Percy as a regular mortal … well, Sally would put up with it. Along with his leers and volatile temper and misogynistic attitude.
As long as Percy was safe.
And it had worked, hadn't it? Here he was, her beautiful boy, the dearest thing to her in the world, blissfully unaware of Sally's sacrifice (oh Poseidon, keep him from every knowing), chirping out in his sing-song voice, '… and bees are YELLOW, and grass is GREEN, and the—'
'God, he's a right noisy brat, isn't he?'
Sally sighed and reminded herself that no price was too high to pay for Percy's life.
