Chapter Text
“The truth will set you free. But not until it is finished with you.”
― Infinite Jest
DAYS UNTIL OLYMPICS: 135
There had once been a time when Annabeth believed that a mouthful of sand was the worst part of the sport. After all, falling on your face was hardly enjoyable and it was made all the worse by the grit that would linger between your teeth, sometimes for days after. The next worst thing was probably the almost-constant rash that she seemed to have on her knees, elbows, and occasionally a hip or shoulder.
Beach courts were, in many ways, more forgiving than the indoor hardcourts. But that was sometimes difficult to remember when you had sand in virtually every crevice.
“Again!” Coach’s voice echoed around the arena. “Shake it off, Chase— let’s go!”
Annabeth sighed, brushing off her elbows before she accepted the hand that was outstretched toward her. “Thanks,” she muttered. Piper shot her a grin as she hustled back into position.
Piper had always been the more cheerful of their duo. She looked at these hours-long practice sessions like they were a treat, and maybe they were for her. Piper had been training like this her entire life, she didn’t know anything different. She’d had the best of the best by way of coaching and training since she was old enough to hold a volleyball, one of the many luxuries afforded her by her father’s fortune.
“Come on, Chase,” Piper encouraged. “Two more rallies and we can call it.”
“I say when you’re done,” Coach Hedge called, grabbing another ball out of the cart. “Two more rallies.”
Annabeth couldn’t help but laugh as she and Piper readied themselves for the serve. Hedge hit the ball over the net with a steady hand and Annabeth met it easily, dropping to one knee to scoop the ball up for Piper to set. It all happened in an instant: Piper pressing delicate, deliberate fingertips to the ball as Annabeth rose from her knee. She took a single step back to make more space before taking three large strides forward, jumping easily to meet the ball in midair and spiking it down into the sand on the opposite side of the net.
“Great job,” Hedge nodded, stopping the ball with his foot. He picked it up, tossing it back toward the ball cart. “Reset. McLean, this one’s yours. Watch your shoulder control this time.”
Piper groaned, rolling her shoulders and shaking out her neck as she muttered something under her breath. They got back into position for the next hit as Hedge pulled a new ball from the cart and sent it over the net. Piper’s hits were slower but more precise. Annabeth had the strength and speed to slam the ball down before any opponent could react, but Piper had always been better at targeting a predestined point. Hedge jumped to the side, stepping out of the way of the ball at the last moment.
“Funny, McLean,” he chided. “Give me four laps before you leave. Chase, you’re done.”
Piper rolled her eyes, jogging back a few steps as she mouthed to Annabeth, Worth it.
Annabeth laughed, brushing the last of the sand off of her arms as she started toward the locker room. She took a quick shower, stretching her arms under the scalding hot stream of water. It was going to be an impossibly long night, she knew, and she was dreading it.
She cut the water and wrapped a towel around herself, exiting the showers just as Piper walked into the locker room. “Your elevation looked good today,” Annabeth said, turning to open her locker. “Your shoulder still giving you trouble?”
“Not in a while,” Piper said, opening her locker and immediately pulling her sports bra over her head and tossing it inside. Annabeth caught a sliver of reflection in the mirror on the back wall of her locker — a flash of perfectly toned, deep chestnut skin — and pulled her eyes away quickly.
She had long since decided that it was wise to keep Piper McLean at a safe distance. It was the professional thing to do, after all. They were teammates and relied on trust and communication on the court in order to be successful, and mixing any sort of already-confusing emotions into that was probably not a very good idea.
That acknowledgement didn’t really do much to keep the hot blush from rising to her cheeks as she stepped into her underwear and fastened her own bra around her back. When she straightened, Piper’s reflection in the mirror had locked onto her gaze.
“How about you?” she asked, wrapping her towel around herself and reaching for her shower bag. “How’s your ankle?”
“Oh,” Annabeth shook her head, turning back to her duffel bag that was resting on the bench that ran between the two rows of lockers. It was nice of Piper to ask, probably, but the injury she was asking about was several weeks past being healed by now. “Please— it was just a little sprain.”
She dug through the bag, feeling around for denim and finally pulling out black pants. As she tugged them on, her phone lit up with a new message from Connor. It also gave her the chance to realize that it was already past 4:30 — which meant that practice had run longer than she’d realized, and she had less than thirty minutes to make it across town for her shift. Annabeth cursed under her breath as she fastened the button on her jeans and went back to fishing through the bag for her uniform shirt.
“Everything okay?” Piper asked as she slipped into her shower shoes.
“Yeah, I just don’t want to be late,” she muttered, pulling the wrinkled, blue Medea’s Diner t-shirt out and slipping it over her head quickly. She was really, really hoping that her name tag was still in her car.
“You have to work tonight?” Piper frowned, closing her locker. “I thought you got off at ten.”
“I did,” Annabeth explained, pulling her damp hair to one side of her head and letting nimble, practiced fingers weave a tight braid over her shoulder, “from the coffee shop. But my shift at the diner starts at five.”
“Damn,” she shook her head. “What time do you get off? You’re gonna be beat tomorrow.”
“Eleven, and no, I’m not,” Annabeth shook her head adamantly. “We’re going to do fine.”
“We better,” Piper laughed, walking toward the showers. “I’ll kick your ass if we don’t. See you bright and early, Chase.”
Annabeth waved as Piper disappeared around the corner. She hurried to pull on her shoes and threw her sweaty, sandy practice uniform into the bag before she slammed her locker and hustled out of the gym.
Faded, two-toned paint made her Corolla stand out like a sore thumb among the sporty cars and SUVs that filled the lot of the Aegis Center. When she’d first started training at the facility nearly two years prior, the obvious disparity between herself and the rest of the members had made her feel more than a little insecure.
Often, she cursed herself for choosing to commit to a sport that was so financially demanding. The membership fee alone cost almost as much as her rent — and that was after her FIVB discount — but since the Aegis was the only facility within forty miles that had indoor sand courts (other than the gym she’d trained at in high school, which absolutely wasn’t an option), it was necessary. Then, of course, there were coaching fees, uniforms, travel expenses for competitions, tournament entry fees, and a thousand other costs that chipped away at Annabeth’s meager checking account every single week.
Five days a week, she was up at four in the morning and was slinging coffee by five. On Tuesdays and Thursdays, she worked until noon since she only had one class in the afternoon, and after class it was off to practice for three hours, before heading off to a late-night shift at the diner. If she was lucky, she’d get a solid four hours of sleep before the next day, though it was usually far less than that. On Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, she had late morning classes that cut her coffee shop shifts a bit shorter. Those days consisted of even more training in the afternoons, followed by her standard night shift at Medea’s.
The one consolation she allowed herself was that she rarely worked on the weekends unless there was a shift to pick-up at one of her jobs. Saturdays usually included morning Pilates with one of her roommates and an abbreviated afternoon session with Piper at the Aegis, but those days still felt like a vacation compared to the rest of the week.
It had been like that for the past two years, ever since she’d come back to volleyball on a competitive scale. It was hard to admit, in the beginning, that she’d gotten so out of shape in such a short amount of time, but in the year between walking out on Worlds and finally finding a new teammate, life had really worn on her. Connecting with Piper McLean had been the luckiest moment of her life.
Piper, who had been making her own comeback after a brutal shoulder injury, was exactly the push that Annabeth needed to be able to jump headfirst back into the rigorous training and disciplined schedule. For the last two years, they’d been growing together as a team and were still surprising crowds and opponents at nearly every tournament they entered.
Still, Piper had been fortunate enough to have her parents’ guilt-driven financial support, which meant that she only had to focus on school and training. Her mother (a well-known fashion designer) and her father (a B-list actor with a more-than-respectable number of awards attached to his name) were more than happy to extend a seemingly endless line of credit to their only child in exchange for being able to neglect all of their parental duties.
Annabeth, on the other hand, had not been so lucky. With her family being more or less estranged, she’d found herself in a similar parentless position, only without any of the benefits that had been bestowed upon Piper. She consistently worked as many hours as she could, knowing that at the end of the week, it would still only just be enough.
And she wasn’t oblivious to the strain it put on her. Maybe it was spreading herself a bit thin to work as much as she did, but there really wasn’t another way. She and Piper only had three months to break into the top fifteen and secure their spot at the Athens games that summer and that meant that they had to train every minute that they could.
And, unfortunately, that kind of constant training didn’t come cheap.
Annabeth all but sprinted to the ugly grey and silver car, jiggling her key in the door in the way that had been committed to muscle memory before collapsing into the driver’s seat. She tossed her duffel bag into the passenger floorboard and turned the key in the ignition, sending a prayer up to the heavens that the engine rolled over— and breathing a sigh of relief when it did.
The drive from the Aegis to Medea’s took about twenty-five minutes on a normal day but she made it in twenty, peeling into the back lot with only a few minutes to spare. Her name tag was thankfully still in the cupholder and she wrapped her hand around it before she jumped out, pinning the tag on as she hurried across the parking lot.
Medea was waiting behind the counter as Annabeth burst in through the back entrance and hurried through the kitchen. She had probably been very beautiful once, but time hadn’t been very kind to her and her choice in makeup these days wasn’t really doing her any favors. Her too-dark-to-be-natural black hair that she always stacked on top of her head was tied with a bright orange headscarf today— a look that would be out of place almost anywhere else, but fit right in with the classic diner aesthetic. Medea gave her a hard time, but she was usually nice and had always been more than understanding of Annabeth’s tumultuous, ever-changing, demanding schedule. That alone made her a winner in Annabeth’s book.
“You’re late,” she called in Annabeth’s direction the moment she appeared behind the counter.
“I’m two minutes early, actually,” she said, dropping her keys into the drawer beneath the register. “Somehow.”
Medea gave her a strange look before gesturing toward her shirt. “Wrong name tag.”
Annabeth looked down. A white and blue piece of plastic was pinned to her chest with a tiny logo for the coffee shop in the corner. “Shit.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Medea shook her head. “Just take it off; you can be whoever you wanna be tonight. Just don’t go pissing people off.”
“You know that’s my favorite thing to do, Dee,” Annabeth laughed, unpinning the nametag and dropping it into the drawer alongside her keys.
“You look tired, hon,” she said, leaning against the counter. “Practice kicking your ass?”
“Like you wouldn’t believe,” Annabeth muttered, grabbing an order book and a pen. “Where do you need me?”
“Been pretty slow, ‘specially for a Friday— I sent Sinclaire home an hour early. Table six just needs their check,” she answered before pointing toward the booth in the corner, “and nine just sat down.”
“On it.”
Annabeth dropped the check off with the couple at table six before she continued toward a booth a few feet away and pulled out her order book. She looked up to see two guys that seemed to be about her age, both with damp hair. For one fleeting moment, she thought it was sort of strange— then she realized how hypocritical that would be seeing as the long blonde braid hanging over her shoulder was definitely not dry yet. For all she knew, they might have just come from the gym themselves.
“Sorry for your wait,” she apologized as she approached. They looked up as she spoke and she got a look at their faces for the first time. The one that was facing the back wall had dark, narrow eyes beneath a strong brow and wore a smile that made her feel like she’d just interrupted a funny story. The other guy had a similar smirk on his face, a dimple nestled into one cheek. He looked vaguely familiar, but she couldn’t believe that she wouldn’t remember eyes that startlingly green.
“No problem,” the first guy responded. “We haven’t been waiting very long.”
“Good,” Annabeth smiled. “Can I get you something to drink?”
“Water,” he answered before he looked at the other guy. “Percy wants water, too.”
“Shut up,” the guy who must be named Percy laughed. “He’s kidding— I’ll have a Coke.”
The first guy shook his head. “That stuff’s gonna rot your teeth.”
“When you’re paying my dental bills, you can have an opinion.”
Annabeth laughed and hurried back to the counter to retrieve the drinks. She stole more than a couple of glances as she readied the glasses, admiring the pair from her spot behind the drink dispenser. They were both attractive with handsome faces and kind eyes and she’d be lying if she said that she didn’t feel a little warmed by their smiles.
The one that she’d learned was named Percy had deep olive skin, a tan that couldn’t come from the sun, that really set his bright eyes apart beneath that mop of wet, dark hair. The odd thing was how he seemed even more familiar now from this distance, and she wondered if maybe he’d been in the diner before. Regardless, she was fairly certain that she’d seen him somewhere.
As she walked back across the diner, Percy was talking emphatically with his hands, drawing a booming laugh from the other guy as she set the glasses on the table. She smiled as she straightened. “Did I miss the punchline?”
Percy grinned at her and that dimple popped out again. “Just reminding my buddy Frank here why I’m not allowed inside Crate & Barrel anymore.”
His smirk was infectious and Annabeth couldn’t help but laugh. “Sounds like a fun story.”
“Only the way he tells it,” the other guy, Frank, scoffed. “I was there and I assure you that it was not funny at the time.”
“Yeah, well,” Percy grinned as he pulled his glass closer and plopped a straw into his soda, “you’re boring.”
Laughing as she pulled out her orderbook, Annabeth listened as the guys continued to bicker. When they seemed to reach an impasse, she looked up again. “Do you need a few minutes or are you ready to order?”
“See? Even Diner Girl thinks you’re boring,” Percy said, jerking a thumb in her direction.
“Ignore him— we don’t let him out in public very often,” Frank sighed, glancing back at the menu for a couple of seconds before he looked at Annabeth. “I’ll have the Denver omelet— extra peppers, no cheese. And a side of bacon.”
“You got it,” she nodded, taking the menu from him and circling the symbol she always used to denote an ingredient change on her orders. Annabeth looked up at Percy. “And you?”
“Blueberry pancakes, extra blueberries,” he said, holding the menu out for her to take. He had an interesting sort of lilt to his words that she couldn’t quite place— like maybe he’d outgrown a thicker accent at some point in his life, but she couldn’t quite place it. “Thank you.”
“Alright,” she nodded. Annabeth took the menus, tucking them under her arm before she ripped the ticket from the book and took a step back. “Separate checks?”
“I’m buying,” Percy answered, holding up a hand to quiet Frank who had already begun to interject. “One check, please.”
Annabeth laughed at the sour look on Frank’s face. “I’ll have that ready in a few.”
“You don’t have to be a jerk to her; she’s just doing her job,” she heard Percy say quietly as she turned around.
“I’m being a jerk?” Frank scoffed. Whatever he said next was lost beneath the general blur of diner noise.
“Grover, make sure there’s no cheese on this omelet,” she called through the kitchen window as she tucked the ticket into the rack. His back was to her, his attention on the griddle he was currently cleaning, but he raised a thumbs-up in the air as confirmation and she turned back toward the dining room.
“You know ’em?” Medea asked, setting the tray of clean silverware on the counter and nodded toward the booth where Frank and Percy were sitting.
“No,” Annabeth shook her head. “Why do you ask?”
She shrugged as they both set to matching forks to knives and rolling them into napkins. “Looked like you were talking kinda friendly. Just figured you might’ve gone to school together.”
“Maybe,” Annabeth admitted, “but I’m not sure. I don’t think I’ve ever met either of them before.
“The one with those big, green eyes— he used to come here a lot with his mom,” Medea said, her fingers moving twice as fast as Annabeth’s as they exhibited their time-hewn skill. “She owns that little bakery on 7th Street, the one I order our pastries from. Real nice lady.”
“Ms. Jackson?” Annabeth asked, surprised. Mostly because she’d known Sally Jackson as an acquaintance through Medea for years and had never realized that she had any children. Besides, Sally barely looked old enough to have kids at all, much less an adult son. “Huh.”
“Don’t you go gettin’ any ideas,” Medea warned, shaking a handful of wrapped silverware in her direction. “Can’t have you messing up things with my suppliers.”
“Oh, stop it,” Annabeth sighed. They continued to roll the silverware and Annabeth was grateful that it was so slow that night. With any luck, she might even be able to sneak out a little early and actually get some decent sleep before the tournament tomorrow.
After a while, Grover set two plates in the window. “Denver omelet, and a shortstack with extra blueberries.”
“Thanks, Grov,” she smiled, taking the plates carefully and giving the order a quick once-over. The omelet appeared to be sufficiently cheese-free and the pancakes had so many berries in them that they themselves were practically blue.
Balancing both plates on one arm and a pitcher of water in her free hand, Annabeth made her way back to table nine. She set the pitcher on the empty table behind Frank before she deposited their food on the table. “Everything look good?”
“Damn,” Percy said, tilting his head. “Grover really went all in on the blueberries this time.”
“You know Grov?” Annabeth asked.
“Oh yeah, we’ve been friends since high school,” Percy nodded. His tone was light and warm, obvious fondness dripping into the words. He was already unwrapping his silverware and reaching for the blueberry syrup dispenser. “He knows exactly how I like my pancakes.”
“So when’s the wedding?”
Frank sputtered, clearly caught off guard by the boldness of Annabeth’s joke. It made her self-conscious for only a second, hoping she hadn’t just overstepped.
“Oh, Diner Girl has jokes,” Percy smirked, bringing a forkful of dangerously blue pancakes to his mouth.
Annabeth laughed, relieved that he seemed to have taken her joke for what it was: harmless. She retrieved the pitcher and refilled Frank’s glass before she glanced at Percy’s half-full glass of Coke. “You want me to top you off?”
“I’m fine, thanks,” he shook his head. “I think I read somewhere that this junk will rot your teeth if you’re not careful.” He shot her a quick wink while Frank groaned through his bite of bacon.
“Let me know if you need anything else,” she nodded before she turned to walk back to the counter.
As Annabeth continued helping Medea with the silverware, they chatted about practice and the tournament that was taking place in Los Angeles the following day. As strange as it was, Medea had become one of the few adults in her life that seemed to have any sort of interest in her sport, and that had always meant a lot to Annabeth — especially since her actual family had not been nearly as supportive.
When she’d made her decision to rejoin the FIVB and try to make her way back into national rankings, her father and step-mother had all but cut her off. They saw (had always seen) her interest in volleyball as a waste of time and money. He, albeit begrudgingly, still paid for both her car and health insurance, but that was the extent of his fatherly generosity. Beyond those small mercies, she was on her own.
Her mother had long since vanished. When she was barely three, she and her father had returned home from a dentist appointment to find her mother’s car missing from the driveway and a note on the counter, and Annabeth hadn’t seen her since. The only evidence that her mother was even still alive was the birthday card containing $50 and a hastily scribbled ‘xo Mom’ that miraculously found its way to Annabeth every July 12th, no matter where she happened to be living at the time. She figured that meant that her mother and father still kept some kind of contact, though she’d never really cared enough to ask. If her mom was content with not knowing her daughter, that was fine by Annabeth— she’d done just fine without her.
Medea, on the other hand, seemed to have noticed the gap in her life almost instantly— and while ‘motherly’ and ‘maternal’ weren’t exactly words that Annabeth would use to describe the woman, she loved her and appreciated every ounce of effort that Medea put into making her feel valued and supported.
“What’s Connor doing tonight?” Grover asked, resting his arms on the pass-through window. “He’s usually up here bugging you when he knows we’re slow.”
“He’s home with Travis and Chris,” she answered. “Tech finished midterms today, so they’re having some kind of a Smash Bros. tournament tonight in celebration.”
“Smash tourney?” Grover asked, raising his eyebrows. He put on a dramatically fake worried face as he glanced at their boss. “Medea, I need to leave early; something’s come up.”
“Sure,” she shrugged, picking up the tray of freshly wrapped silverware and turning away. “Just don’t expect your job to be waiting when you get back.”
“You’re no fun,” Grover called through the window as Medea disappeared behind the waitress station. He pulled the amused grin back onto his face as he looked at Annabeth. “Ready for tomorrow?”
“Nope,” she smiled, leaning back against the counter. “But we’re gonna kill anyway.”
“Good attitude,” he nodded. “I like that.”
“Diner Girl!”
Annabeth turned toward the sound, kind of hating the way she was answering to the moniker. Percy held a hand in the air. Judging by their plates, they seemed to be finished eating. She took the check from the register and made her way back to the booth.
“Everything taste okay?” she asked as she set the bill in front of Percy.
“Perfect,” he nodded, reaching into his pocket for his wallet and pulling out a card. He held it out to her. “Even if the company could’ve been better.”
Annabeth took the card from Percy before she looked back at Frank. “I think you should consider getting yourself a new friend. You shouldn’t have to tolerate this sort of abuse.”
“I agree,” Frank nodded, “but, unfortunately, we live together so it wouldn’t really make much of a difference.”
“Ouch,” Percy said, clutching his chest dramatically as he eyed Annabeth. Even as he tried to feign his offense, a smirk pulled at his lips and that dimple betrayed him again. “You don’t even know me.”
Annabeth laughed. “Don’t need to,” she shrugged before she took their plates and turned back toward the register. She set the plates in the window and cashed out their bill. When she turned away from the register, someone was sitting at the counter.
“So, am I gonna have to keep calling you Diner Girl?”
Annabeth’s brow furrowed as she set the receipt and the card on the countertop in front of Percy. “What?”
“You got our names, right?” he asked. “And you’re not even wearing a name tag.”
“What makes you think I’m going to remember your names once you’re on the other side of that door?” she asked, crossing her arms. “It might be slow tonight, but we usually get a lot of people in here. I can’t possibly be expected to remember everyone.”
“You could try,” Percy shrugged, “starting with us.”
There was a tiny, persistent part of her that actually did want to give this man her name, maybe even her number if he wanted it. But, realistically, that was stupid for a lot of reasons— mainly that she was too busy to even think about dating right now. Nevermind the fact that she wasn’t totally sure about the ethics of picking up guys at work, anyway.
“I think I’m good,” she said.
“Man,” he shook his head after a few seconds of watching her face. He slid off of the barstool as he took the credit card and returned it to his wallet.
She hadn’t noticed it before but with him standing in front of her now, she couldn’t help but notice how broad his shoulders seemed to be. He was taller than she’d expected, too— she was just shy of 5’10 herself, so it wasn’t often that she found herself looking up at people. Percy had a good four or five inches on her, though.
“You wound me, Diner Girl,” Percy sighed and he slid his wallet into his back pocket.
“Sorry, Percy,” she smirked, hoping that her ogling hadn’t been too obvious. His eyes seemed to light up when she said his name.
“That’s cold,” Percy said, still shaking his head as he turned around to where Frank was waiting for him just outside the front door. He glanced at the little slip of paper in his hand before he turned back excitedly. That time, she knew his eyes lit up. “Annabeth.”
Her mouth opened slightly in surprise before she remembered that her name would’ve been printed on his check, listed right there to the right of the word ‘SERVER’ in tight, block letters. She closed her mouth, rolling her eyes with a smile. “Goodbye, Percy,” Annabeth said with feigned exasperation.
He grinned. “Later, Annabeth.”