Hi! This idea just came to me earlier today. I hope you like it.

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“I’ve never painted my nails.”

All eyes snap in her direction, making her cheeks flush a deep red. Annabeth agreed to attend a sleepover with a few friends she made at Goode High School, and they suggested painting nails. Only, Annabeth has never done that before, and quite honestly, doesn’t know if she even can. Her boyfriend painted her toenails one day out of boredom, but then again, she didn’t do it. 

“You’re kidding?” one of the girls she doesn’t recognize asks. Apparently it’s a thing for friends to invite other friends outside of the actual “friend group” to things, leaving Annabeth feeling quite awkward. 

She hasn’t known these girls for long, only a few months. But after a ton of convincing from Percy to go and hang out with girls other than Piper. Don’t get her wrong, she loves Piper. She’s her best friend after all, but she’s the only person Annabeth hangs out with other than Percy, and with her being in Oklahoma with no form of communication, she needs some friends. Mortal friends.

Annabeth purses her lips and shakes her head, “No.” 

“Didn’t your mom ever paint your nails when you were little?” Ava, one of her friends, asks

The words hit her like a freight train. Didn’t your mom ever paint your nails when you were little? It should have been a simple question for Annabeth to answer, not something that stumped her into the ground without an answer. But she never realized how much she’d missed because of her mom being a goddess, until now. And also the fact that she ran away from home at seven and never really gave her stepmom a chance. 

She averts her eyes from the group, face hot, and picks at the skin of her palm- a nervous tic she’d picked up from Percy over the years. “Um.” She swallows hard. It’s never been hard for her to talk about, so why now? “I didn’t know my mom until I was twelve, and I’ve only met her a few times since, so no.” She doesn’t appreciate their pitying gazes. “But it’s fine.”

“Oh, I’m sorry,” Ava says softly, looking down at her freshly painted toenails as if they did something to offend her, before smiling at Annabeth. “Here, I’ll paint your nails.” 

Annabeth grins. “Okay.” 

“Which color would you like?” she asks, digging through the bin of different colored nail polish. There’s many to choose from, but nothing really catches Annabeth’s eye. “We have… orange, pink, yellow, sea green, white-”

“Sea green,” she blurts out, immediately cursing herself for responding so quickly. Her cheeks flare up for the third time that night as Ava looks at her, startled by her outburst. According to her friends, Annabeth’s the “quiet” one, which had Percy laughing for an hour straight when she’d told him, because according to him, she doesn’t stop talking. So her sudden outburst was probably shocking. 

Ava raises an eyebrow. “All right. Sea green it is.” 

While Ava puts all her focus into painting Annabeth’s nails and making sure no paint gets on her skin, the other girls find this a perfect opportunity to ask her lots of questions. Lots and lots of questions. Most of them have known each other since freshman year, and some even before high school, which makes Annabeth the newcomer, therefore, there’s a lot of things to get to know about her. She tries to answer each question as best as she can, but some are just… tricky. 

“Where are you from again?” Hailey, another friend of Annabeth’s, asks. 

“I was born in Virginia,” Annabeth starts, looking at her freshly painted nails. Ava is still working on her other hand, but good gods, she’s really good at this. “Then I moved to New York for a few years, then moved to California. And now I’m back in New York.”

“California is really pretty,” Ava states. “Why did you move out there? Better yet, why’d you come back?” 

“My dad got a job opportunity he couldn’t pass up. I liked it down there,” Annabeth shrugs, “but all my friends were in New York, and I lived here for so long that California never really felt like home.” 

“Hm. Fair enough.” Ava puts the quick dry liquid on her nails then announces, “done!” 

Annabeth holds them up closer to the light. It’s a gorgeous shade of sea green, though not as pretty as her boyfriend’s eyes. “Wow, thanks,” she says with a grin. 

“No problem. Glad to be the first to paint your nails,” Ava laughs. 

“Wait, Annabeth, you have a boyfriend, right?” Sara, another friend of hers from the architecture class she’s taking, asks curiously. 

She feels her lips twitch into a small smile. “Yeah.”

“What’s his name?” Ava questions, putting away the nail polish. 

“Percy.”

“Jackson?” Ava’s cheeks turn a dark red. 

“Yeah,” Annabeth says slowly and tries to stop her smile from turning into one of amusement. She doesn’t want to make her friend feel uncomfortable. She’s well past the jealous stage, okay, she’s passed the unhealthy-amount-of-jealousy stage, and she finds Ava’s tiny crush on Percy kind of amusing. 

“Oh he’s cute,” Ava says, looking at the other girls who nod in agreement. “Didn’t he have a thing with that Rachel girl?” 

Annabeth swallows thickly. “I don’t think so?”

Hailey looks at Annabeth, surprise written on her face. “You know Rachel?”

“Yeah. We’re pretty good friends,” she tells them.

The topic changes rather quickly after that. Hailey starts talking about a new show she started watching a couple weeks ago and how cute one of the actors is. Annabeth doesn’t watch much tv, or care enough about the actor to contribute to the conversation. 

Annabeth grows tired around ten-thirty and starts dozing off and on, until the sound of popcorn popping in a microwave jolts her awake. She’s breathing heavily, ignoring the look she gets from the girl she doesn’t recognize sitting across the room. She doesn’t really know why she’s feeling panicky, until another kernel pops loudly and she jumps, startled. It reminds her of something, and she doesn’t like what it is. 

“Hey, you okay?” Sara asks, stepping back into the room. 

“Yeah.” Annabeth forces a smile, unwrapping her arms from around her knees and standing. She grabs her backpack off the chair she’d been leaning against and shoulders it. “Do you know where the bathroom is? I want to change out of these jeans.”

“It’s right around the corner.” she points down the hallway. 

“Thanks.” 

Annabeth closes the bathroom door behind her and takes in a deep, shuddering breath. She drops her bag to the floor and slides down against the wall, holding her head in her hands. She can feel her hands shaking so she grips her hair and tries to block out the blood pounding in her ears. Gods, if she would have just stayed awake long enough to talk with Percy before going to bed, she could have avoided this all together.

But now she’s on the verge of a panic attack, and she’s not sure she can calm herself down. She’s been getting better, along with Percy, ever since Chiron made them counseling appointments with a therapist, a daughter of Apollo, in the upper West Side. She’d learned tactics to calm herself down during and before a panic attack, but sometimes she needs Percy’s comfort. Good thing she also learned when she talked to her therapist about feeling a little bit too dependent on Percy, that it’s okay to need someone, as long as you want them just as much. 

And right now, she needs him. She just needs to hear him tell her it’s okay. Just like he’d done a few hours earlier when she told him she was worried about this exact thing happening. It was one of the reasons she didn’t want to come in the first place. But he convinced her it would be fine and that she’d end up having fun, so she agreed. He’d given her a kiss and told her he was proud of her before dropping her off. 

She grabs her phone out of her backpack and dials Percy’s number, which is a whole lot harder when your fingers are shaking. She clutches the collar of her sweatshirt with her empty hand and waits for him to pick up. 

“Annabeth?” he answers. 

“Percy,” she whispers, voice thick, “I-I think I’m- I can’t stop thinking about-”

“Hey, hey, just take deep breaths, okay? I promise, you’re safe. I’m safe,” he comforts her. 

“I- I was sleeping and then-”

“Sh, it’s okay. It’s not real. We aren’t there anymore,” Percy tells her softly. She hears his mom talking in the background and him explaining something to her. “Sorry. Close your eyes and take some deep breaths. Can you do that for me?” 

“I can’t,” she murmurs, her whole body now shaking with tremors. “I can’t stop seeing him.” 

“I know, sh, I know, just take deep breaths,” Percy says. “Do you want me to come pick you up?”

Annabeth breathes in shakily, and she’s about to answer a yes when there’s a loud knock on the door. She stifles a shout and drops her phone to the floor. She can faintly hear Percy calling her name, worry in his voice, and she can imagine him perking up like a cat, ready to come get her at any given moment. 

“Annabeth? Are you okay in there?” she hears Ava ask.

“Yeah,” she says weakly. 

“Okay, well, we’re starting the movie and the popcorn’s done,” she says before leaving. 

Annabeth picks up the phone and inhales deeply. “I think I’m okay. I just need to hear your voice.” 

As if that was his cue, Percy launches into an explanation of what he did throughout the day, even retelling everything they did together that morning before she got dropped off. Annabeth really appreciated the gesture, and by the time he was running out of things to say, she felt much better. 

“You sure you don’t want me to come get you?” Percy double checks. 

“I’m sure,” Annabeth says. 

“Okay.” there’s more muffled talking in the background. “Hey, I’ve got to go. You’re positive you’re okay?” 

“I’m positive,” she says honestly. “I love you.”

“I love you too,” he says, voice soft. “Okay, my mom needs help with something. Call me tomorrow when you want me to pick you up.” 

“Will do. Probably early morning. Maybe we can go get breakfast?”

“Sure, I’m down for that. See you tomorrow.”

“Bye.” She tucks her phone away and quickly changes into sweatpants before splashing her face with cold water and returning to the living room. She brushes off any questions about why she took so long. She really doesn’t want her mortal friends knowing about her ptsd. She wouldn’t even be able to explain it, and she also just doesn’t want any more pity than she already gets. 

She settles on the couch next to Ava, wrapping a blanket she’d brought from home around herself, and turns to the movie playing on the tv. She falls asleep halfway through though, and fortunately doesn’t have a single nightmare. 

She’s the last one to wake up that morning. Everyone is already sitting at the kitchen table and enjoying a well prepared breakfast, and laughing about something she didn’t hear. Annabeth pulls the blanket away, setting it next to her bag so she doesn’t forget it since she took it from Percy. And speaking of Percy, she checks her phone to find texts asking what time she wants to get breakfast. It’s already ten-thirty so she tells him to head over now if he can. 

“Look who’s finally awake!” Ava exclaims when Annabeth enters the kitchen. “Do you want some breakfast?”

“No thanks,” she responds, waving away the plate Ava held out to her. “Percy’s taking me out for breakfast.” 

“Is he on his way?” Hailey asks.

“Yeah, so I hope you guys didn’t have anything fun planned,” she jokes. 

Ava grins. “Nope. Just laying around and they can leave whenever.” 

“How far does Percy live?” Sara asks, taking a bite of bacon. 

“About ten minutes away,” Annabeth says and slides into the chair next to Sara. She listens to a conversation about a boy that goes to their school, but again, she doesn’t care enough to say anything, so she opts to just listen. 

The doorbell rings exactly ten minutes later. Annabeth rises out of her seat to go grab her bag from the living room while Ava answers the door. Percy stands there, hands shoved into the pockets of his sweatpants, and his lips pursed, but they stretch into a smile when Ava welcomes him inside. 

“She’s just getting her things,” she tells him.

He nods. “You’re Ava right?” 

“That’s me!”

Annabeth tucks the now folded blanket under her arm and walks over to Percy and Ava. Percy smiles at her from above Ava’s head. “Hi,” she says and tugs on her shoes. 

“Hey, wise girl,” he says and ruffles her hair when she stands up. He takes the backpack from her and swings it over his shoulder. “Ready to go?”

“Ready as I’ll ever be,” she tells him then turns to Ava, “Thanks for inviting me.”

“Thanks for coming.” Ava smiles. “We’ll have to do it again sometime. See you at school.”

Annabeth smiles in response and follows Percy outside. Once they’re in his car, she leans over the console and wraps her arms around his neck, pressing a kiss to his temple, “I missed you.”

He chuckles against her neck. “It was one night.” 

“So?” she plays with the hair at the nape of his neck. “Thanks for last night, by the way.” 

“Did you have any nightmares?” he asks once they pull away and he starts pulling out of the driveway. 

“Thankfully, no,” she says. “I think your blanket I brought helped. It smells like you.”

Percy glances at her. “I can’t tell if that’s cute or creepy.”

“Take it as a compliment.”

“Whatever you say.”

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the ending itsn't my favorite but oh well. Hope you liked it!