The Highschool Experiment

Chapter Two

As soon as Annabeth opened her apartment door she called out. "I'm home!" To which she got no reply, and she visibly relaxed.

"Is everything okay?" Michael asked.

"Oh yeah. For sure. Come on let's get to work." Annabeth began to lead him to her room before realizing that a bunch of Percy's things would probably be littered all over the floor, so she took a sudden turn and led him to the living room.

Unsurprisingly, they worked well for quite a while, and their assignment was almost done, when Michael saw a picture of Annabeth, Percy, and Grover. Soon as Annabeth had saw that he was looking over to it, she cursed in her head and attracted his attention to something else.

"Hey Annabeth-"

"hmm." She replied not paying much attention. Soon as she looked up, she noticed his eyes on the picture. "Michael I have a-a question for you. Do you what something to drink? I do, come here help me out." And Michael seemed to have no choice but to go with her to the kitchen, leaving the picture behind. Ten minutes without much of an incident and something else had happened.

The sound of the apartment door unlocking could be heard. Someone was about to come in.

Annabeth glanced at the clock. "shit." She muttered under her breath. "Uh Michael do me a favour and just kind of stand over there for a second." Percy would be coming home any minute. Naturally, Annabeth bolted to the door, opened it before Percy could, and pushed him in the hall.

"Hey there seaweed brain." Annabeth said conversationally. Percy quirked an eyebrow.

"What's going on?" He asked, obviously amused.

"What? I can't have a conversation with my boyfriend in the hall?" Upon noticing Percy's expression she sighed. "Fine. Michael is here to work on a project. Is there any chance you could leave?"

"Seriously? I can't even go home now?" He gave her a quick kiss. "You know what, that's fine, some of the boys on the team went to get burgers. I'll just follow them. But I'm coming back in an hour, and I won't leave again."

"Thank you. I'll see you soon, ok?" Percy smiled gave her another kiss, and then walked down the hall he came from. Annabeth sighed in relief before heading back into the apartment.

"Does it suddenly smell like sea salt in here?" Michael shouted and Annabeth just silently laughed.

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Spoiler alert – Michael and Annabeth got an A on their project, and Percy came home ready to just cuddle with his girlfriend, completely exhausted from having to hang out with his swimming friends for so long.

But Annabeth made it up to him, by doing exactly what he wanted. Watching movies until they both fell asleep.

And then the nightmares started.

Both Percy and Annabeth suffered from them, both of the demi-gods had sever PTSD and would have trouble sleeping at night without the other, and both were riddled with anxiety attacks. But they were getting better. They were healing. Slowly. So, so slowly. Neither could sit and talk about it, but both were reminisced with those thoughts and it felt like they would never be able to get rid of them.

There was nothing in comparison to the nightmares. It was like they were back there, in Tartarus, but worse. It had gotten to a point where the two knew exactly what to do when the other was going through one of those dreams, which seem to happen slightly less then before.

And while slightly less might have meant not every night, it was almost every night. Yet, slightly less then before.

One could argue that Annabeth should have seen it coming, she had gone through the routine so many times before, but when Percy began thrashing and screaming on the couch beside her, she didn't react fast enough to dodge the swing that came crashing towards her jaw. She didn't let it stop her though. Immediately, the young demigod turned towards her boyfriend and held him in her arms, muttering in his ear.