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It wouldn’t have been so bad if Piper hadn’t been there. Or even if it had been just Piper there. Or just Hazel. But the combination of Piper and Hazel noticing her bruises is perhaps the most mortifying experience Annabeth thinks she’s had.
She really shouldn’t have worn these shorts.
Hazel’s gasp is so loud that it makes Annabeth look up from her notepad. She follows Hazel’s abashed stare down to her own thighs, left mostly bare underneath the hem of her jean shorts.
“Annabeth, what happened?”
What happened is that Annabeth forgot to look in the mirror before she snuck out of Percy's cabin this morning. The strict camp rules continue to be enforced when they visit even though they’ve been in college for a year and more often than not sleep over at each other’s dorms. What happened is that she has a purpling bruise on the inside of her left thigh and she's going to absolutely murder her boyfriend.
“Oh well that's…” She looks up at Hazel’s innocent concern and feels her ears get hot. “I walked into a table,” she lies, not quite so smoothly as she'd like.
Piper’s expression over Hazel’s shoulder lets her know how very not smooth it was. Her cheeks are on fire.
“Oh,” Hazel says, “that must have hurt.”
Annabeth thinks of bed sheets under her back, soft against her skin. She thinks of Percy’s weight between her knees and his hands on her hips and his teeth on the sensitive flesh of her thigh.
“Barely felt it,” she lies.
It would have been fine if it had just been Hazel, because she would have swallowed the lie without probing and all would have been well. But Piper wasn't born in the forties and doesn't blush and fan herself when people talk about kissing . Piper raises her eyebrows and smirks until Annabeth kicks her in the shin. Which is fine when they're alone, but they're really not.
She's raising her eyebrows now, so much that they disappear behind her bangs.
“Really?” she asks. “Because that looks very sensitive. That must have been a pretty insistent table to leave a mark like that.”
She's going to kill her. Annabeth is actually going to kill her.
“Just a normal table, Pipes.”
“Mhm. Well, I’m sure if you tell Percy he’ll kiss it better for you.”
Hazel chokes on thin air as Annabeth considers throwing her clipboard at Piper’s head. Piper grins at her but keeps her mouth shut - a wise move - as they finish their inventory of the weapons store. Annabeth tries to keep her mind on the task at hand but her thoughts keep travelling to how she’s going to pay her boyfriend back for such an offence.
Annabeth has her fingers tucked into the collar of Percy’s shirt before he even realises she's in his space.
“Come with me,” she says as she drags him out of the combat arena. “Sorry, Connor!”
Percy waves an apologetic good bye to Connor, with whom he'd been practicing, and lets himself be dragged away. Riptide is capped and back in his jeans pocket before Annabeth releases his shirt and takes his hand instead.
“What did I do?” he asks her, trailing behind her like a puppy.
“You wore that damn shirt is what you did.”
He catches up to her and looks down plucking the plain white t-shirt away from his sweaty chest. He pulls a face.
“This shirt?”
“Yep.”
Percy hadn’t thought too hard about how he looked this morning when woke up - alone, as Annabeth had abandoned him to sneak out hours earlier - and pulled the plain t-shirt from a clean-looking pile of clothes on the floor. The heat of the day wasn’t humid but the sun was insistent enough for his shirt to be clinging to his shoulders and back. He could feel his hair curling at his temples and the nape of his neck and longed for a shower, for the sea. Maybe Annabeth would let him detour them to the lake…
Before he can suggest such an idea, Annabeth is dragging him into the weapons shed and shutting the door behind them.
He looks at her expectantly. “Well this is fun. Are you going to tell me why my shirt offended you now?”
Annabeth rolls her eyes luxuriously. Her hair is pulled back into two french braids today. She looks unfairly pretty, all tanned and beautiful and rolling her eyes at him. He reaches for her but she pushes his hand away, crossing her arms over her chest. It’s only then that Percy realises he really is in trouble.
“Okay, this isn’t about my shirt is it?”
Annabeth raises an eyebrow at him. No shit , that eyebrow says. She points at her left thigh, turning her foot outwards so he can see the long stretch of skin from the her knee to the hem of her shorts.
Ah .
Percy is grinning before he can stop himself. Annabeth punches his arm.
“Don’t laugh, you asshole! I had to try and explain this to Hazel! I told her I walked into a table .”
This only makes him laugh more. He lifts his arms to defend himself as Annabeth swats at him, and then he wraps his arms around her, pinning them to her sides as he pulls her against his chest. He knows she’s not really mad because she wouldn’t be letting him do this if she was. He may have gotten a lot stronger since they were twelve, but so has she.
Annabeth still squirms in his arms, readjusting so she can glare up at him. “You’re the worst.”
He dips his head to brush his lips against her ear. “You weren’t saying that last night.”
Annabeth shivers, but then she shoves him away, shaking her head at him. But she’s trying hard not to smile, he can tell.
“I’m gonna get you back for this.”
“Oh?”
She stalks towards him, like a cheetah closing in on its prey. And gods, she’s a glorious creature. With her hair pulled back, exposing her heart face, sharp eyes, high cheek bones, small mouth. He watches her closely as she steps into his space, eyes tripping down to her lips, her throat, chest, legs. He remembers lying between those legs and sucking marks into her thigh. He remembers her hands in his hair, her voice breathing his name, her body arching off the bed. He aches with want.
As Annabeth presses up on her toes, head tilted to the side, he’s undone with need. Percy reaches for her and she’s kissing him, mouth open, tongue pressing into his waiting mouth, fingers pulling at his hair, breath scattered with his. Percy’s hands roam over her body, desperate to touch and hold and pull. He kisses down her jaw and wraps his arms around her to lift her up. Annabeth lets out a breathless laugh as she uses his shoulders as leverage to steady herself against him.
“I’m supposed to be the one leaving marks, this time,” she says indignantly.
Percy bites as her neck. “Well, you’re not doing a very good job.”
Annabeth’s fingers delve into his hair and she uses the grip to pull his face away from her neck. Percy hoists her up in his arms and she gives in, wrapping her legs around him to make things easier.
“You’ve so got it coming,” she says, tugging on his hair again.
Percy laughs. “What do you want me to say? Oh no, please don’t kiss my neck, that would be the worst! ”
She laughs. “Shut up. Gods, you’re such a smartass.”
He grins at her and lifts his chin up, asking, waiting for her to kiss him. Annabeth pushes his hair back and tips her head down to kiss him. His mouth is already open for her to press her tongue inside, touching the roof of his mouth. Percy’s knees threaten to give out. The combination of Annabeth’s fingers in his hair and her legs wrapped around him and her chest pressed against his and her tongue in his mouth. His senses are on fire, flames lick his skin and a wave starts to build in his belly like a crescendo bursting to break at the shore.
He needs to find a wall to press Annabeth against or he’ll be pulling her to the floor soon enough.
That’s when the door to the weapons shed opens violently and Katie Gardner’s voice breaches their self-contained bubble.
“...unclaimed weapons at camp- oh!”
Percy and Annabeth push away from each other, causing him to drop her and stagger back against a row of spears. He narrowly avoids impalement and regains his balance as he stares, horrified at their small audience gathered outside the door. Katie is conducting a tour of the camp for a group of newcomers, their ages ranging between eight and fourteen. Percy is mortified.
Katie takes a moment to snap back to herself. “Sorry, guys!” she says to Percy and Annabeth, snapping the door shut. He hears her voice before it moves swiftly away from the weapons shed. “Alright, let’s continue the tour… we can come back here later...”
Percy looks at Annabeth. She has her hands over her mouth as she stares back at him.
“For gods sake,” she groans, dropping her hands. “First Hazel now this. We must look like such horny, desperate weirdos.”
Percy laughs and walks over to her. “I mean, maybe we are a little bit.”
She gives him a look.
Percy carries on smiling at her, cradling one side of her face in his hand. He leans down to kiss her forehead.
“We’re just in love. We’re allowed to be horny weirdos.”
Annabeth rolls her eyes. “Don’t forget the desperate part.”
“Right, sorry. Horny, desperate weirdos. We should get matching t-shirts done.”
“You’re ridiculous.”
“Mhm.” He leans down to kiss her mouth and she pushes him away.
“Uh uh. No way, we’re not starting that again. Don’t you think the entire camp is on their way here already?”
He frowns. “They don’t care that much.”
“You remember our first kiss?”
“Second,” he corrects.
“Second, fine. Still. We need to go, unless you want another trip to the lake.”
He reluctantly lets her go and straightens his shirt as she opens the door. Sure enough, there are a few lingering groups of people in the pavilion who throw highly conspicuous looks their way. Percy walks right next to Annabeth anyway, grabbing her hand and swinging it between them. They’ve shared too many milestones of their relationship at Camp for him to feel too embarrassed; this isn’t the first time they’ve been caught in the act, just perhaps the first time they’d been discovered by so many people in the middle of such an intense embrace.
Annabeth pulls him to a stop. “I have to go and find Chiron. I’ll see you later.”
He nods and kisses her one more time, soft and quick. She rolls her eyes at him as he pulls away, and aims a kick at his shin which he dances away from.
It’s past midnight when Annabeth manages to sneak into Cabin Three; narrowly avoiding a roaming Harpy after convincing one of her younger siblings that she was dreaming that Annabeth was tip-toeing past her bed. Percy is still up, sitting up against his bedhead wearing drawstring pyjama pants and a black t-shirt with a book in his hands. He looks up and smiles at her, setting his book on the bedside table as she kicks off her sneakers by the door.
“Studying?”
“Mm. Rachel told me I’m gonna have a test on Monday.”
“How fun.”
“Yep. The perks of having an oracle for a friend.”
Annabeth pulls her sweater off and climbs onto the small bed, forced into his space by the size of the bed. Percy lifts his arm and she lies along his side, hooking a leg over his and curving an arm over his chest. Percy kisses her forehead and she feels warm and fuzzy inside her chest.
“I’m looking forward to going back,” she says.
Percy’s chin grazes her head as he looks down at her, she looks up to see his quizzical stare.
“I mean, don’t get me wrong, I love coming back to camp - I wouldn’t come back if I didn’t. But I just...I’m really enjoying the normality of college you know?”
“Mhm. It’s nice to feel like an actual person for a little while.”
“Mhm.”
Annabeth shifts against him, pulling the collar of his shirt down to kiss his collarbone. Percy makes a pleased noise in the back of his throat. Annabeth lifts herself over him and throws a smirk his way before returning her attention to his neck.
“Oh are you finally getting your revenge?” His throat vibrates under her lips as he mumbles the words into the quiet of the cabin.
Annabeth laughs, shifts her hips against his, and starts to suck a mark into the skin underneath Percy’s ear. The soft noises coming from the back of his throat echo in the large room. She hears the water fountain in the far corner and the rustle of the forest outside and she feels settled. Then Percy’s hands slide up from her hips to her ribs, pushing her shirt up, and heat begins to curl in her lower belly.
Annabeth is nothing if not meticulous though, and makes sure she doesn't move her mouth away from Percy’s neck until he's left with a mark as bad as the one she'd failed to conceal this morning.
“Annabeth.”
Her name is a breath stuttered past Percy’s lips, quiet and needy.
Annabeth relents and kisses the mark on his neck gently before moving up to his mouth and sucking his bottom lip between his teeth. Percy's hands shift and grip at her skin, he holds her more tightly and rolls them over. Annabeth gasps with the movement and grips her thighs around his hips as he settles his weight against her.
She feels heady with the feeling of his body against hers, of his mouth on hers. She feels full and light all at once. Like a sink spilling over and a balloon freed into the wide sky.
Annabeth holds onto this boy and kisses him again and again. She knows Percy will leave more marks on her skin before they collapse against his pillows; more marks she will endeavour to hide, but she can't find the energy to care at this moment in time.