Percy/Annabeth, long distance relationship or study abroad AU
(this fic is a part of the greater highschool reunion verse, but you don’t need to read those to get this!)
“So. What are you wearing?”
Annabeth snorted, reaching forward to angle the laptop camera at her torso. It was ten o’clock at night in the middle of winter. She was wearing snuggly flannel pyjamas. With penguins on them.
For some reason, the penguins had sunglasses.
Percy’s face grinned back at her on the screen. “Oh yeah, that’s the stuff.”
“I can see you dressed up for this, too.”
His pyjamas had giraffes on them. His hair was also adorably rumpled, and Annabeth could feel her fingers twitch with the urge to run through them. Difficult, when he was hours and hours away.
“Hey, I just woke up. I have an excuse.”
Napping, Annabeth was learning, was an effective way of off-setting the sleep deprivation that most firefighters struggled with. She wasn’t convinced it require giraffe jammies, though.
“Yeah, well my excuse is that they’re comfortable, and it doesn’t matter if I get tomato sauce on them. Are we going to do this, or did you want to crack some more phone sex jokes?”
There were a lot of men Annabeth had known who, she felt, would have taken that opportunity to crack another sex joke. Or dropped the joking part entirely. Percy Jackson, however, coughed a little, running a hand through his dark hair and rumpling it even further.
Annabeth’s fingers twitched again, but she smirked. He could whisper filthy things into her ear in person, in the heat of the moment, but neither one of them had quite gotten their heads around sex, and Skype, and mixing the two of them.
She was becoming a pretty good cook, though. If she did say so herself.
“Did you get the meat? Don’t look at me like that, it’s your fault you flustered me.”
“You’re a crappy flirt, Jackson. How did you get a girlfriend?”
“I dunno, you’d have to ask her. She’s a genius, though, she knows what she’s doing.”
That earned him a pleased smile, because Annabeth wasn’t going to pretend to be immune to flattery. “Oh, she definitely does. Except when it comes to making spaghetti, come on, let’s get started.”
It had been a month and a half since the highschool reunion in their hometown, five weeks since they had decided to make a go of the long distance thing. His shift cycle had coincided with a weekend once during that time, but she hadn’t been able to wrangle the time away, stuck in the middle of a project.
The fierceness with which she missed him took her breath away sometimes, an almost physical ache that accosted her most strongly at moments like this, when she had dragged herself home from the office and through traffic and he was still recovering from saving lives (or at least kittens) the day before. The fact that there was someone in the world who she even wanted to talk to once she’d washed her make up off and crawled into her pyjamas, much less take a cooking lesson from, was just as shocking.
Maybe it was just the honeymoon phase. Could you have a honeymoon phase when you’d already spent a decade growing up with someone, nearly half of that dating? Did eight years apart mean hitting the reset button, or did it mean skipping over the awkward getting-to-know-you-surprise-I-am-a-human-being-who-farts-sometimes bit?
Annabeth swore, whisking the saucepan up off the stove. It was a better reaction than the first few times they’d tried this - she’d turned the temperature down, which, as it turned out, did not have an immediate effect on the saucepan itself. There was a clapping sound from her laptop, and she twisted her head over her shoulder to stick her tongue out at her boyfriend. Who, it had to be admitted, really did look genuinely pleased.
He was smart enough to stop clapping though, leaning forward and resting his chin on his forearms. “Not bad, Wise Girl. Turn the element off and put the lid on it, I’d say it’s just about done. How’re the noodles?”
Obediently, Annabeth forked out a pasta noodle from a happily bubbling pot. “Fine? I think. Should I throw it at the wall?”
She narrowed her eyes at him, eating the rest of her noodle. There was a spark in those green eyes that she absolutely did not trust. She levelled the fork at him. “You just want to see me throw food around.”
“I mean, it would be hilarious.”
“You’re lucky you aren’t here. We could find out how hilarious it would be to throw pasta at you.”
“Pretty funny. I’m willing to bet.”
She laughed, taking the pot off the heat and turning it off. It was the work of a few minutes to put the meal together in a bowl, and she carefully grated some cheese over the top. Presenting it to the laptop, she couldn’t help the wide grin that broke across her face, pure pleasure at having achieved.
Her grin faded in increments. Not because of disappointment, or awkwardness, or anything even a little bit negative. No, it faded because Percy was looking at her like she’d hung the moon, and she wanted to reach through the laptop screen and lay one on him right then and there.
He cleared his throat, ducking his head again. “It looks great, Annabeth. You gonna taste it?”
“I don’t know.” She tried to lighten the mood. “I was thinking about just looking at it for a while.”
“I didn’t say it was a good idea.”
Annabeth dropped her gaze to the bowl of spaghetti, nodding her head. It wasn’t just I miss you there in his words. It was something else. Something stronger.
And she felt it too. A part of her had always felt it.
“Yeah,” she said softly. “I miss you too, Percy.”
The silence between them hurt, but only because it existed alongside so much distance. Annabeth sighed, touching two fingers to her lips, and reaching out to press them to the camera. It was a silly gesture, maybe even a little juvenile, but it cracked a grin on Percy’s face, and that was all she cared about.
“Stay?” she asked after a moment. “Until I have to go to bed?”
“And miss you getting spaghetti sauce all over your face? Are you kidding me?”
She laughed with him, carting the bowl and the laptop over to her small table. Maybe it wasn’t enough. Maybe she wanted him at her side with the same fervour that had driven her to become an architect, that had taken her away from him in the first place. But for right now, she’d take what she could get.
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