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“You like her, don’t you? Like a lot.”
Annabeth tenses in a way that makes Percy feel like he’s shot her through with an electric shock. “What… do you mean,” She starts, then speeds up like she does when she’s nervous or thinking too hard: “Of course I like her, she’s like my best friend. What are you talking about.”
“No like…” Percy struggles so, so hard to keep the smirk off of his face. “No like, you like-like her.”
“Piper?!” She squeaks.
He laughs a little. Pulls her closer to him. “How long have we known each other? You think I can’t tell when you like someone?”
Her face burns bright red; she buries it in his forearm. “You don’t know! I’ve never liked anyone but you, and you were totally obtuse about that!”
“Hey!” He leans back, offended. “First of all, not even true– what about–” He starts to rattle off names he can remember her absolutely 100% crushing on during the time they’ve known each other, but he thinks better of it. “Okay, well, either way, the way you’re reacting is definitely confirming it.”
She groans, miserably, muffled against his arm– it vibrates and tickles on his skin. He resists the urge to giggle; he doesn’t necessarily want to laugh at her, it’s just that he’s suspected this for a while now. But it’s never been the right time to bring it up. They've been settling back into life together, processing all the trauma and heartache from Tartarus and Gaea. Hell, still processing all the trauma and heartache from Kronos and the war. And then, for Piper, moving back to the reservation, and Jason– and, well. It’s just never been the right time to bring it up.
They know they’re both polyamorous– who isn’t? They’re demigods. Entangling themselves in weird, homoerotic, interlocking situationships is literally their birthright. They’d already talked through all their pubescent jealousy and Percy’s stuff with Rachel what feels like years and years ago. And Annabeth’s thing about Luke (bullet dodged). And Percy’s thing about Luke (no comment). And now, more recently, Nico’s whole deal (Jesus Christ).
But Annabeth’s feelings for Piper, obvious though Percy thinks they are (Percy, of all the oblivious idiots, thinks they are, how sad is that?), have kind of taken a backseat, it feels like. And he hopes she knows it’s okay.
“She…” Annabeth starts. Her voice sounds small, suddenly. “She was just really good to me… when you were gone.”
And, oh, that stings Percy’s heart a bit. He knows. He knows. He was gone and she was crazy and all alone and somebody had to be there, somebody . Annabeth’s life is a line of dominoes– a series of losses that push her into someone else's arms until she eventually loses them, too. Falling over and over and over, never anything solid to land on. He holds her tighter.
“Like you’re a military wife.” He jokes, faux-despair dripping in his voice. “I’m being cucked.” She laughs, reluctantly, shaky shoulders bumping against Percy’s chest. “I knew being cucked by an Aphrodite kid had to be in my future somewhere, I just didn’t expect it to be a shredded lesbian. Fuck my fucking life.” She keeps laughing, harder and harder until he’s pulled her out of that place. He laughs with her. “Tall-dark-and-handsome fucking Piper. Jesus.”
She interrupts, like she’s caught herself saying something she shouldn’t. “That’s not the only reason, of course.”
“Huh?”
“That she was good to me– that’s not the only reason. I’m not, like, throwing myself at anyone who’s nice to me.”
Of course it isn't. He thinks about the ways they hold each other, when they exchange looks, the casual intimacy of their friendship; he remembers the way they collapsed together and cried at the doors of death, like Piper had never grieved anyone before Annabeth.
Percy scoffs. “Girl. I know.” He stims with her hair a little, twirling it through his fingers super-fast like string. “You usually throw yourself at people who are bad to you.”
“Shut the hell up. I’m just saying, like, I’m not in love with her just because she's a good friend to me.”
“You’re in love with her?”
“Shut up! Shut up! God, you’re so annoying!”
He jostles her and laughs against her temple. She beats her fists on his arms in frustration. “What do you want me to do about it anyway!”
He pretends to think. “I dunno, ask her out?”
She blanches. “I can't do that.”
“Okay then, just like. Kiss her or something. I don't know how girls get together. Your social structures are too complex.” He falls into a reverie. “Like coral reefs.”
“Right.”
“The pH balance of your friendship. Is fragile. The ecosystem.”
“This isn't encouraging me, Percy.”
“Look, I'm just saying I can't tell you what to do!”
“Then why even bring it up!”
He squirms out from underneath her weight, maneuvers so they can face each other, knees-to-knees. He holds her hand. “Because.” He swallows. He's not sure why he feels shy saying this part. “You deserve to be loved.”
She blinks.
“And you never let yourself, like… I dunno–” He has to regroup a little. “You don't let yourself feel things. Unless it's, like, dire.” You deserve to be loved and not feel guilty about it. You deserve to feel something and not second-guess it. You deserve to process something before it destroys you, for once. “You think too much.”
She doesn't make eye contact. She looks kind of like she's been punched in the face.
“Okay.” She says. And, haltingly, like she is, in fact, thinking too much, she adds, “You… make me feel. Loved.”
Percy tries not to grin. “I don't worry about that,” He reassures her. “But I'm really glad.” He kisses her crinkled-up forehead. “Come back, okay?”
She huffs. She smiles at him. “Yeah, I'm here, I'm here.”
So they make it a game. The next time Annabeth hangs out with Piper, she'll bring it up– kiss her, ask her, do something – or Annabeth owes Percy an extra-large pizza and PDA rights all over camp for a week.
-
Annabeth has kissed Piper before.
It happened sometime shortly after Percy went missing. It isn't necessarily something she's proud of. She doesn't even really remember it, fully. She was grieving. So was Piper. Neither of them knew the extent. Annabeth collapsed all of her weight into her like a life vest in the ocean. The smell of sea salt, somewhere, and Piper’s honeysuckle-and-strawberry filled her lungs both at once and she cried, and cried, and cried. Piper pulled away and wrapped her in a hug just as quick as it had happened.
Annabeth doesn't think she'll ever live that down, but Piper never seemed to mind or hold it against her. They never talked about it, but it didn't feel like they were dancing around it either. That's one of the things, Annabeth thinks, that she enjoys so much; that things just are because they are. Or, no, that doesn't make sense– that things are easy , she supposes. Simple , maybe. Or, rather, things are– no, it's that–
Annabeth rubs her temple. Nothing and everything makes sense. And she doesn't even have the excuse of never having felt this way before. It's so fucking annoying. She curses Piper's mother, for maybe the millionth time just this month.
Piper is waiting for her in the rec room of the Big House with a batch of this summer’s (illegal) strawberry wine, courtesy of the dryads, and a dozen shitty, greasy donuts smuggled in from gods know where. Annabeth has carefully chosen a time to hang out when they are least likely to be interrupted, but privacy at Camp Half-Blood is a rare thing. She finds herself longing for her and Percy's little dorm back in New Rome. She never thought she'd be homesick for New Rome. She supposes that's progress, of some kind, surely.
Actually, what she wishes is that Piper would just move to New Rome already. Or that the Camp Half-Blood housing initiative’s construction progress was farther along (Seriously, who is running that? Oh, fuck, it's Annabeth. Well, she's been busy getting a degree, okay?) so that the older Greeks (that's exciting, right? More and more half-bloods surviving to adulthood) could have their own spaces and lives. For now, they're stuck where every fumbling, love-struck teenage demigod has forged their destiny: the big, too-soft, suspiciously-stained couch in the Big House lounge.
Annabeth grins wide, completely involuntarily, and throws her arms around Piper. The bottles of wine clink together as Piper wraps her arms around her in return.
“My girl!” Piper squeals. It's been ages, it feels like. The transition from spending 24/7 in close quarters on an airship for months to trying to live relatively normal lives proved difficult– for all eight of them, honestly. Annabeth blushes.
They sit. They drink. They snuggle up close. By the end of the night, Annabeth owes Percy a pizza.
-
“She has a girlfriend , Percy!”
“You mentioned that, yeah.”
He's rubbing soothing circles on her back. She's finishing off one of those bottles of wine.
“She was literally like,” Annabeth pitches her voice down and makes it all loose and low and breathy in an attempt to impersonate Piper, “‘Yeah, I really think having someone in Oklahoma is good for me!’ I mean– what am I supposed to say to that?”
Percy nods. “What can you say?”
“Y'know?! Like, no, fuck this perfectly lovely girl who knows your family and shares your culture and keeps you connected to home or whatever, come back to peril-town and have a toxic two-girl friendship with me.”
“Peril-town?”
Annabeth takes a deep swig. “Like, what am I supposed to do?”
Percy shrugs. “What can you do?”
“You're not taking this seriously!”
“I am!” Percy yelps. “It's just– I'm just listening.”
“Well don't just listen, this was your idea, lover boy! Help!”
Percy raises his hands, bewildered. “Help with what?!”
“I need– to do something. Something to do. I need to figure this out.”
“Annabeth, it's not a test.” Percy says, sadly. “It just… sucks. I don't think this is something that can be puzzled out.” He remembers something Aphrodite said to him once. “Love is… chaotic. It’s powerful and scary and… in– uncon– unable to be contained, or controlled.”
Annabeth has absolute fury in her eyes. Percy can tell it isn't directed at him. But she still frightens him sometimes. “Chaos exists to be put into order. Anything can be puzzled out.”
It's hard not to believe her when she gets like this; he thinks, if anyone could, it'd be Annabeth. But he worries for what that means.
“What do you want, Annabeth?” He asks, bluntly. “What do you hope to gain, if you can ‘figure it out’?”
She says, like it should be obvious, “Either my feelings for her go away, or we get together.”
“Okay. What if neither of those things happen?”
“That's not an option.”
Percy pinches the bridge of his nose. “Right. But what if?”
Her lip trembles. Percy feels almost guilty. She throws her head back in frustration and drags her hands across her face. “I don't know! I don't know. I don't know.”
The sea is an exercise in release. When Percy breathes, he feels the tide come in, then out. There is peace in the futility of fighting against a current, wholeness in the aftermath of relinquishing control. The sea is a series of pushes and pulls. Annabeth’s life is a series of toppled dominoes. If it were as easy as telling her to let go, he would. Instead, he wraps his hands around her wrists and tugs her up into his arms. He nuzzles his face in her hair. He breathes in, then out with her. She breathes in, in– always in, never out.
-
They're sitting in the living room of Annabeth and Percy's dorm one night. Percy is, as expected, cramming for an assignment he should have finished by now; he's exiled himself to the university library. Piper and Annabeth are scrolling mindlessly through Piper's phone, Annabeth tucked back-to-chest under Piper’s chin.
“She's hot.” Piper monotones, double-tapping her screen.
Annabeth studies the girl in the photo. Some instagram model– granted, a little less conventionally attractive. Athletic, still, though. Blonde. It surprises her. “Really?”
Piper’s neck heats up. “Yeah, I mean. Yeah. Look at her.”
“Woooow, didn't know you had such… basic taste, McLean.”
“What the hell are you talking about? She literally looks like you, smartass.”
Annabeth's throat constricts. “I– She does not!”
“Whatever.” Piper bonks her phone against Annabeth's forehead. “You don't even like girls, so your opinion doesn't count.”
Annabeth squints. She sits up abruptly, making Piper groan and clutch her abdomen. “Jesus –”
She stares at her. “Do you think– Are you under the impression that I don't like girls?”
Piper barks out a laugh, still doubled over. Her head hangs over the edge of the couch as she wheezes, “I'm sorry?”
Annabeth hits her thigh. “Get up, be serious! Did you fucking think I was straight? Oh my God!”
“I'm gonna throw up–” She's laughing so hard, Annabeth is almost embarrassed.
“Piper! I almost joined the Hunters of Artemis! We literally have been to a gay bar together! I… I kissed you!”
Piper holds out a finger. “All of these do not a gay girl make--” She coughs. “Necessarily!”
“You’re a fucking imbecile?!” Annabeth honestly doesn't know whether to be insulted or self-conscious.
Piper finally calms down, laughter subsiding with a last heaved breath. “Maybe!" She chuckles. "Damn, that would’ve changed things.”
Annabeth pauses. “What do you mean?”
She giggles. “If I'd known you were gay! I would have been all over you!”
Annabeth chokes. “Piper! ”
“Whaaat? It's true! What can I say? I like blondes.” Her smile is easy. If her eyes get a little sad, that's her own business. “I mean, that's assuming you and Percy would have been open. I'd get it if not, not everyone can be, you know–”
Annabeth's jaw is permanently ajar, she thinks. Her head is spinning. She hasn't felt "information overload" ever before in her life, but she's pretty sure this is it. She cuts Piper off, “I cannot believe you. You're a pig.”
“Nah. I just love you.”
“...Huh?”
“I love you?” She laughs again, light and breezy like springtime. It's not like they haven't said it to each other before. It's just… a little different, in this context. “I mean, you're hands down my best friend. Friendship and love are kind of… two sides of each other, right?” Piper seems to be thinking about something. “Like, there’s this theory, when people talk about studying love–” Piper slips into soft-science-major mode, and Annabeth practically feels her own pupils morphing into hearts=-shapes. She smiles softly as Piper explains, “–that the three major components of ‘love’ are, like, passion, intimacy, and commitment. And we've totally already got intimacy and commitment down.”
She blinks. She thinks, perhaps, she might be short-circuiting. “I love you, too,” She says, and means it, like always. And the world doesn't end. It's easy– no, it's simple– no, it just is.
Piper smiles. Some kind of dam inside Annabeth breaks.
-
Percy comes home at, like, three o’clock in the morning to Annabeth and Piper, more tangled up together than usual, sleeping soundly on the couch. He makes his way over to kiss Annabeth's head goodnight. She snores. Her snores are awfully cute.
Piper shifts; her eyes blink open hazily. She mumbles, “Hello, sister-wife…”
Percy nearly chokes on his laughter. His eyes sting as he tries to keep quiet. “Yeah?”
Piper sticks out her tongue like the frat-guy-that-got-the-cream and gives him a peace sign.
Percy can't help but smile. Annabeth breathes in, then out. His hand rests on her back and savors the movement. In, out, release.
“Help me get her to bed?”
Piper makes a happy little noise. “M’kay.”
Percy’s never been happier to sleep on the couch.