#demigods

It was one cookie.

One. Single. Cookie.

You feel it's important to establish this fact before anything else, because the way Percy Jackson is currently sitting at the edge of the couch with his arms crossed, jaw set, resolutely facing the wall like he's been personally wronged by the universe…you'd think you had committed some kind of federal offense. Treason, maybe. Crimes against the state. At minimum a misdemeanor.

"Perce."

Silence.

"Percy."

More silence. Pointed silence. The kind that has a whole personality attached to it.

You press your lips together to suppress a smile, because gods, he is so ridiculous. He is so spectacularly, almost artistically ridiculous, and somehow that just makes you want to kiss him more, which feels like a design flaw in your brain you should probably bring up with a professional.

Here's what happened: Annabeth came over. Annabeth was hungry. Percy had set his blue cookie (one of Sally's, obviously, wrapped in parchment and everything like it was a religious artifact) on the coffee table while he went to grab something from the kitchen. Annabeth had reached for it, looked at you, raised an eyebrow in question.

And you had done a small, casual shrug. A diplomatic shrug. A shrug that said I am not the cookie's keeper, which felt completely reasonable and civilized at the time.

The cookie was gone in four bites.

Percy came back into the room, looked at the empty parchment paper, looked at Annabeth, looked at you, and the expression that moved across his face was something you would describe only as a man watching his entire legacy dissolve before his eyes. A Renaissance painting of grief. Perseus Jackson, 2000s, oil on canvas.

Annabeth had apologized, laughed, and left twenty minutes later.

That was an hour ago.

"Okay," you say, shifting on the couch toward him. "I want to say, in my defense—"

"Nope." His voice is clipped, the vocal equivalent of a door closing in your face.

"I didn't give it to her, she just—"

"You shrugged." He says it like the word itself is a wound. He still won't look at you, jaw working like he's chewing on further grievances he hasn't yet chosen to deploy. "I saw you. I came back and I watched the security footage of your face and you shrugged!"

"There's no security footage—"

"In my mind there is." He huffs and slides a deliberate inch down the couch, away from you, because apparently physical proximity is now something you have to earn. "I had been thinking about that cookie since noon. Since noon! I told it I'd be back."

You stare at him.

You stare at the sharp, indignant line of his jaw and his magnificently crossed arms and the way his sea-green eyes are fixed on the middle distance with focused conviction.

You almost lose it. You almost completely, catastrophically lose it right there on the couch and you have to physically bite down on the inside of your cheek so hard it's going to leave a mark, because if you laugh right now Percy will simply evaporate from the indignity of it and you will never forgive yourself. This is a solemn moment. You will treat it as such. You are a good partner.

You are barely a good partner.

"Baby," you say carefully.

"Don't."

"I'm sorry."

"You're not."

"I am," you insist, and okay, you're like forty percent sorry. Maybe thirty-eight. The remaining sixty-two percent of you is absolutely, helplessly charmed by the fact that this boy—this boy who has fought actual monsters with actual weapons and navigated actual labyrinths and held the weight of the actual sky on his actual shoulders—is currently pouting about a cookie. 

You scoot closer to him. He scoots away a solid two inches this time.

You scoot closer again. He moves again. Another inch. He's running out of couch and you are genuinely curious whether he has considered that or whether the floor becomes an option when the armrest runs out.

"Percy Jackson."

"I'm not talking to you."

"You keep talking to me."

"I'm talking at you." He turns just enough to level you with a look so profoundly martyred it belongs in a cathedral somewhere, before snapping his face away again. "There's a difference."

"Right," you say. "Very evolved."

"Thank you."

"That wasn't a compliment."

"I know. I took it as one anyway." He turns his face away again.

You look at the way he keeps almost glancing at you and then catching himself and redirecting, like eye contact is a resource he's rationing because he knows that the moment he actually looks at you it's over. 

"Perce?"

"No."

You lean slightly toward him. "Perce."

He turns his cheek away, a smooth, practiced motion.

"Baby."

"I'm busy."

You mutter a prayer at the ceiling. You look at it for a while. You ask it, silently, what you have done to deserve this, and the ceiling offers no answers, which is fair.

You lean in and press your lips to the side of his face—soft, deliberate, right at his cheekbone, just below the temple where the skin is warm.

Percy goes completely still.

His jaw unclenches by a fraction. His shoulders drop approximately one millimeter. He doesn't pull away, but he doesn't turn toward you either. He's in the negotiation phase now, you can feel the internal arbitration between pride and the fact that your mouth was just on his face.

He still won't look at you. But the pout has lost some structural integrity. It's a load-bearing pout, and you've just taken out a wall. His mouth keeps twitching at the corner like it's mounting a quiet insurrection, one side pulling toward a smile that his brain is desperately trying to veto.

He clears his throat. Adjusts his crossed arms. Very professional.

"Perce," you say softly.

"Mm."

"Look at me."

"In a minute."

"It's been an hour."

"I'm on my own timeline."

"Percy—"

He turns his cheek away again. Not away away, just at an angle. You note that he has stopped scooting, at least.

You think about being a reasonable adult who communicates through words and then you look at the deliberate angle of his jaw and the way he is absolutely, one hundred percent fighting a smile and you think: nope.

You reach out and take his face in both hands. Your palms against his jaw, fingers light on his cheeks, and you turn him toward you with the unambiguous energy of someone who has simply decided that the dramatic portion of the evening is over now, thank you, we're moving on.

He comes. He was always going to come (you both know that, it was never really in question) but he does it with his eyes still tracking sideways.

You kiss him.

And Percy, for all his sulking, for all his forensic cookie analysis and strategic couch migration and carefully rationed eye contact, kisses you back immediately. Like a reflex. Like his mouth just knows, has always known, and the rest of him was simply killing time. You feel the last of the pout dissolve into something warm and unguarded within about half a second, feel him exhale through his nose like he's been holding something he didn't realize he was holding, and he kisses you like he means it, like he's been waiting, because—obviously—he has.

When you pull back, his eyes stay closed for a beat too long. His lashes are dark against his cheekbones. There's a faint flush along his jaw.

He opens his eyes. And says, with immense solemnity, slightly breathless:

"Fine. You're forgiven."

The grin takes over your face before you can do a single thing about it. It just happens and Percy tries not to grin back. It lasts three seconds. Maybe four, which honestly is a personal best. Then it breaks through anyway, slow and crooked and completely against his will, and his eyes are so soft when they settle on yours that it gets you every time. Every single time, like the first time, an ambush. Unfair. 

"It was a really good cookie," he says.

"I know, baby."

"She didn't appreciate it. You could just tell. She ate it like it was—" he waves a hand, "—a cracker or something."

"Annabeth is a monster," you nod with full sincerity.

"Thank you." He points at you. "That's all I needed. That's literally all I needed to hear."

His hands find your waist. And then you feel the slight shift in his grip, a half-second warning before Percy flips you over with a grin that has absolutely nothing apologetic in it and his mouth is everywhere—your cheek, your nose, the corner of your eye, your jaw, your temple. He’s laughing and you are shrieking, actually shrieking, laughing so hard your ribs ache.

"Percy!”

"Payback," he announces cheerfully into your neck. He is completely unbothered by your protests, laughing that low, warm laugh that you feel more than hear. "Direct consequences.”

And then there's nothing but his laughter and yours twisted together, and the warm impossible weight of him, and the way he says your name between kisses like it's a word he invented specifically to like the sound of.

It was one cookie.

One. Single. Cookie.