Percabeth (It was worth the wait)

Age 6

Percy doesn't realise he's in trouble until the girl he's sitting by has gotten up to her feet, her face as red as the curls on her head.

"You're too close to me!" She cries at him.

Percy frowns at the space between them, which in his opinion is quite enough but he mutters a sorry and backs away a bit more, bringing the tools he's playing with closer to him. Sand flies towards him as the girl throws a fistful in his direction.

He sputters and scratches at his eyes trying to stop the stinging, but all it does is irritate it more.

"Hey that was mean," he says, careful not to raise his voice too much. His Mom always taught him that raising your voice is only meant for emergencies and final warnings.

She keeps glaring in his direction until the force of it is so strong that Percy is compelled to get up and leave the sandpit, even though he's been working on his sandcastle since the beginning of the break.

He mutters another sorry and goes to the monkey bars, where his friend Grover has been hanging by his legs.

Percy is trying not to cry as Grover prods him in the shoulder asking him if he's okay.

"The girl in the sandpit was a bit mean," he finally answers and shrugs his shoulders as if it's not a big deal. But it feels like one.

"You should tell on her," Grover says with a frown. Instantly Percy shakes his head.

"No way. I'm not a snitch. You know what happens to people who snitch."

Grover sighs and drops from the monkey bars, watching as Percy climbs precariously over the tops of the metal rods. But Percy isn't worried, he's a pro at the monkey bars.

"Mean people should get in trouble," Grover points out, but Percy shrugs again.

"Maybe she's having a bad day, my step-dad Gabe has bad days and sometimes he's a bit mean, but it's not all the time. She's might not be mean all the time."

~

Percy's words come back to bite him in the ass later in the year because it seems as though Nancy Bobofit is always having a bad day when it comes to Percy because she's always in the corner of his eye glaring at him.

Sticking her leg out when he goes past her to get to the coloured pencils, causing him to trip, and pointing and laughing at him with her friends while he tries to stand up. Grover is by his side, pulling him up and urging him to tell on her but Percy shoots him down each time with a firm shake of his head.

It's when Percy is reading something out loud in class that he finally reaches his limit.

"An o-owl is a brid...bird," he feels his face heat up as he hears hushed giggles from the back of the class. He refuses to look up but he knows that it's Nancy's group. He straightens and focuses on the words on the page, even as they swim and squiggle.

He continues through the passage, gripping the paper tightly. He hates reading in front of the class more than anything. More than anything in the world and he wants this to end now.

"They sleep at night, make-making them," he squints at the sheet, and his hands shake as he struggles to read the word.

"Take your time Percy it's okay," his teacher said from the front of the room, a smile on her face.

He looked up at her and nodded before looking back at the page, but tears had started pooling in his eyes, making it even harder to read.

"Noc..Nocter..Noc..." He sighed deeply and scrunched the paper in his hands a bit.