Percy's Math Doodles: The Discovery

Four years later…

"Perseus Jackson!" a young woman's voice echoed through my newly-bought apartment. "Why is there absolutely no organisation in this apartment at all?!"

I laughed to myself and walked from the kitchen to the living room, I came up behind the woman and wrapped my muscular (if I do say so myself) arms around her waist and rested my chin on her shoulder. "Easy answer, Annabeth Chase: I, Percy Jackson, live here!" I let out a corny evil laugh and spun her around.

I looked at her expression; a raised left eyebrow, her nose scrunched up slightly in distaste and her tongue poking at her right cheek. Oh, and she was kinda giving me a Death Glare.

I decided to cheer her up by giving her a kiss, but my lips were tragically left only to kiss Annabeth's briefcase. "Put that away and get ready to do some actual work and start unpacking, Seaweed Brain" she sighed, neither of us had ever really gotten into pet names or anything-unless you count Wise girl and Seaweed Brain. "I mean: Please… Sweetie?" she smiled, probably because my mouth was gaping open from Annabeth calling me…Sweetie. I grinned at her and agreed to do so. Hey, I figured, with Annabeth helping me, I could be done by the end of the day, so what was the harm?

When I came back, I was able to get a better look at Annabeth. Her hair was now tied back, but some stubborn curls decided that they didn't want to be restrained and now framed her face. She must have changed from her business clothes before coming here (she was working as a medium wage intern at Architecture Company, slowly working her way up), and I assumed that they were now packed away in that briefcase of hers, and into a summer dress with gladiator sandals and her Camp Half-Blood bead necklace. She was already unpacking boxes at a freakishly fast speed.

I walked up to her. "How can I be of assistance?" Annabeth barely looked up.

"Well, right now we will just unpack things. Anything pointless we get rid of; anything you-" I was sure she mumbled 'and I' afterwards but I wasn't too sure. "-agree to keep, we find somewhere to put it until everything is sorted and then we put it wherever you feel and anything you feel like your mother would like to keep as memorabilia, we give to her, as she asked me to. Does that sound good to you, Percy?" I could only nod and start unpacking one of the boxes labelled: Goode High School. Whilst Annabeth decided to venture into the box labelled…

"NO!" I jumped up and ripped the box from her hands, she pouted at me. "No looking at my… At my baby pictures Annabeth!" she sighed.

"But I want to see if you were a cute baby Percy! You've seen my…" she cleared her throat. "Toddler photos, just let me have a look!" she protested.

"Not happening Wise Girl. And anyways, what kind of bargain is that? As a toddler you begin to control how you look in pictures and-or-if you want to be in them at all! As a baby you are embarrassingly vulnerable! But, I'll tell you what, when I find my toddler pictures, you can see them, deal?" Annabeth laughed at my outburst but nodded in agreement at my deal. With that we swapped boxes, she got the 'Goode High School' box and I was left with, what I managed to decipher after a minute-or-so since my dyslexia decided to let me off for the day, 'Childhood photos of Percy'. Yay.

About half an hour later I heard Annabeth snickering, I looked up immediately, scared that she had swiped one of my photos, but instead saw her reading through a few of my old school books. I raised my eyebrow at this and asked, "What's so funny?"

She stifled another snicker and turned to me. "Oh, nothing, just some of the things you have drawn in these books are quite amusing, actually." Somewhere, deep inside my brain, warning sirens went off, but I wasn't sure as to why, exactly. "You really did improve in your drawing over the years, I must say" she looked at me and said it with both a sincere tone of voice and look in her eyes. I looked over and saw she was working backwards; the book she was just about to finish was probably from when I was sixteen.

The sirens in my head got fifty-times louder.

"With the state of your sixteen year-old books suggest that you began when you were fifteen-or possibly fourteen; let's see how you began shall we?" She smiled and went for the selection of my fifteen year-old books. Out of all of them she chose my Maths book.

Make that one-hundred-and-fifty times louder. Why, though?

Annabeth giggled slightly. "Percy, you have to see these! They're hilarious and adorably scruffy… Come on! Don't you want to see the roots of your artistic career?" We both laughed and I decided to ignore the sirens as nothing but me overreacting. I crawled over to her and looked at the book. There were drawings of satyrs doing the moonwalk, Nymphs and Naiads having battles from opposite sides of the pages, there drawings of the Party Ponies and Chiron as well. We kept working backwards in the book, laughing continuously at some of the messiest and most random drawings. My favourite was a drawing I had done of the Aphrodite Cabin torturing the Stolls after the 'Golden Mango' prank. I was laughing so hard, even after Annabeth turned the page and looked at the other drawings that I didn't notice her stop.

I calmed myself down and looked at her. Her expression was shock. Her jaw had gone slack and her eyes had widened. She closed her eyes and swallowed. "Perce… Percy, what is this?"

Late-on correction; make that an infinity times louder.

I looked over and gulped at what I saw. It all came rushing back to me…

'...I looked at the clock, only five minutes of class left. There was no hope left for me where the sums and mathematics were concerned, so I just draw in my book&#133'

"What is this?!" Annabeth demanded as I tried to suppress my blush and think of a way to explain it…

'… Just about to zip my bag up after putting my maths book away in it, I remembered my drawing. It's probably all messy, anyway, nothing special to look at… I think. In the end (about four seconds, really… My will-power is as weak as a twig…) I quickly pulled it out and opened it, curiosity getting the best of me, and scoured it for the page with me drawing on…

What I saw made my eyes bulge and made me take a very sharp intake of breath, which resulted in me coughing loudly and catching the attention of my friend, Carter Kenas, who began walking towards me…

All of this because, on that page, taking up most of the space of the bottom left-hand corner, written in perfect Greek, and surrounded by an annoying amount of… love-hearts was one word…

Ανναμπεθ.'

"Annabeth." I said, but all she did was give me the darkest, most terrifying Death Glare known to man, demigod, gods, and Titan. "What's with the shock? Y-yes I… doodled your name… Bu-but… Most girls would be happy or… Or flat-flattered that a guy did that for them…" I tried to wrap my arm around her and lean in for a comforting kiss.

I was met with Annabeth shoving me away and punching my right arm. The hardest she had ever punched.

"Hey!" I exclaimed, shocked.

"SHUT UP!" Annabeth shouted at me. "CAN YOU EVEN BEGIN TO THINK OF WHY I AM THIS MAD?!" She stood up, her face red with anger, and began heading towards my bedroom, where I had put her briefcase earlier.

I was up within seconds, chasing after Annabeth, beginning to get angry myself. I caught up to her as she making her way to the door; I grabbed her shoulder and made her turn around. When she turned around fully, I was sure I saw tears threatening to escape her eyes, but I was too angry by now to take too much notice or care.

"Now wait a minute, Annabeth Diana Chase! I refuse to let you leave here without a good reason!" I exclaim, Annabeth looked like she both about say something and closer to tears than before. "You always do this! You will make me out to be the worst man in existence for the most… the most… stupid and… and… mediocre reasons!" I'm too angry now to take full notice of the three tears escaping Annabeths' eyes. "You can be just that at times, too! Overreacting and stup-"

That was when Annabeth slap my cheek; with force. She also slapped me out of my rant and back to reality.

And that also made me notice the tears falling freely and in small streams from her-now- foggy grey eyes. I felt a pang of guilt, but also felt the need to stand my ground.

"You really don't get it do you, you idiot?!" Annabeth hissed at me, I was about to argue but it was her time to cut me off. "You created that drawing when you were fifteen! Do you know what that means?!" I thought about it. What had happened before that drawing? What had happe-

Holy Mother-of-the-Olympians!

"The… Mount Saint Helens… Kiss…" I said slowly, in realisation.

"Yes Percy! The Mount Saint Helens kiss! Now do you see why I am like this?!" Annabeth screeched as she stormed back into the living room. I could only gulp and shake my head, anticipating another violent outburst from Annabeth as I followed her. She sighed and began to calm herself down a bit, and began to speak, although was now quite hoarse from crying and screaming at me. "Percy… I kissed you! I had kissed you because I wanted to show that I had gods-damned feelings for you, but you just acted like nothing ever happened! Do you have any idea how that made me feel? Like… Like I wasn't worth anything…" the last part trailed off into mumble as I stared her in disbelief. She laughed; an actual laugh. "Perseus Jackson… I am still a girl, Seaweed Brain! And I was just like any other teenage girl with a crush… And then I was like any other average teenage girl who had been-or at least felt like-their crush had turned them down." She sighed and looked at me with a weak smile.

My mouth was gaping open like a trout's.

"But… To see that you actually wrote my name in your book, which shows that you began to develop feelings for me much earlier than you cared to admit… But still did nothing about it… It's hard to process, y'know?" She shrugged and laughed lightly.

I dragged a hand through my hair and groaned. "I… I… I have never more s-" I was heading to say 'sorry', but Annabeth was enjoying cutting me off.

"-Seaweed Brain-ish? I couldn't agree more" I chuckled lightly and nodded. "But… I have always loved you for being a Seaweed Brain… And always will." She wrapped her arms around my waist for a hug, I hugged back. I felt a few more tears seep through my shirt, but the feeling of her smiling helped me not worry about it.

I tried to lighten the mood. "Must you call me Seaweed Brain?" I jokingly asked, remembering that I had said the same thing quite a number of years ago.

Annabeth looked up and laughed, catching on. "You know you love it" she smiled at me and a gleam in her eye as she began to

"Like you wouldn't believe, Wise Girl" I smirked and pulled her closer to me, "like you are never going believe".

… Is it just me, or are above-water kisses much less distracting than underwater kisses, because you don't keep a part of your brain focussing on sustaining the air bubble allowing your girlfriend to breath and continue kissing you?

No? Is it just me?

Ah, like I give a damn! Right now I was making out with Annabeth Diana Chase!