trigger warning (Percy Jackson au)

chapter 16: You Just Spent a Hundred and Fifty Bucks on Pillows

XVI

You Just Spent a Hundred and Fifty Bucks on Pillows

Warning: strong language.

"Why don't you just buy an actual door?"

Percy glanced up from the two colors of curtains in his hands to fix the blond with a shrug. "I don't really want to go through all the trouble."

Jason pulled one of the curtains out of Percy's hands and skimmed the description. "So you're just going to put up a curtain for your bathroom?"

"I live alone, anyway." Percy shrugged again. He'd recently noticed that he shrugged a lot, but it was just so accurate in terms of describing his emotions at a particular time. "And look. Where am I going to find a blue door? After someone puts it in, I'm going to have to paint it myself."

"So that's what this is really about," He 'ah'ed in understanding.

"Listen, are you going to badger me about my decorating choices or are you actually going to help?"

"How am I supposed to help?"

Percy held the pack in his hand beside the one in Jason's. "Which one is better?"

Jason studied them. "They're exactly the same."

"The color,"

He studied them a little harder. "Percy, they are literally exactly the same."

Percy whacked him on the head with his curtains. "The tones are different, you uncultured philistine," Jason, as a stage actor on Broadway, had never had aforementioned insult aimed at him before, and so didn't know how to react accordingly. Percy took this as a sign of defeat.

"Well then. Since I clearly can't trust your judgment, it looks like we'll be getting mine." He tossed the curtains in Jason's hand back onto the shelf and his own into their cart, pushing ahead.

Once Jason returned to Earth, "Okay, so, what else are we getting?"

"Blankets and a shit ton of pillows." They turned into the Bed section of the store, stopping in front of an enormous array of comforters. "Alright, Jason. You pick two, I'll pick two."

"Why am I picking?"

"I thought you wanted to help." He pulled a blue memory blanket from a basket and Jason realized that this, Percy's blue obsession, was probably the reason Annabeth had sent him shopping with Percy in the first place. Someone had to make sure there was artistic taste in Percy's clash-y apartment.

"Alright," And he proceeded to step through the selections to find colors that wouldn't murder the eyes of Percy's future visitors. "Does it matter what kind they are?"

"Just make sure they're huge." Percy gave him a thumbs up before taking hop steps towards the pillows.

Jason smiled at his strange tendencies. After a few days of living together (and sleeping on the couch. Literally every single night.), he'd started to notice things Percy did without even realizing, without noticing that they were 'thing's.

Like how he used a fork for everything. Everything. ("How in the world are you going to eat soup with a fork?" "You pick out all the goodies and then drink it out of the bowl.") He didn't even own any spoons until Jason bought him a dining set, wondering how the boy had even survived for this long.

Or how, even in the quietest setting, the volume of his headphones would be set to eardrum-shattering. They'd sit across the room from each other and the blond could pick out every syllable of every word, every beat and sound.