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Really, they weren’t supposed to be out this late.
Annabeth had class tomorrow, but Piper just got a new job, so they went out to celebrate. At first, it was just dinner, with a couple of other people (Leo, Jason, Percy), but then they all dropped off when Piper suggested going to get drinks.
“We don’t have to, if you wanna go with Percy,” she told Annabeth, when they were the only two left and she was more nervous than she probably should’ve been.
“Nah, I wanna celebrate with you. Besides, we haven’t hung out in a while as the two of us,” Annabeth replied, grinning, which made Piper agree immediately.
Which is exactly how the two of them ended up doing four shots each, plus two mixed drinks, leaving them drunk off their asses trying to walk to Piper’s, only about three blocks away from the bar, at two in the morning.
They’re not even really holding a conversation, just telling jokes back and forth, being way too loud for this late at night. Neither care about that, especially Piper, if she gets Annabeth’s attention all to herself, so she tells some joke about a cookie going to the doctor, and Annabeth loses it.
She’s laughing, she’s stumbling back to her apartment, tripping over cracks in the sidewalk and over nothing, but she’s laughing and Piper doesn’t think she’s ever seen someone look so beautiful. There’s a golden ring of light shining behind her head and all Piper wants to do is bask in its warmth forever. She wants to hear Annabeth’s laugh forever and ever, ringing in her ears, and wants to look at Annabeth for even longer, lingering in this moment of awe and wonder and beauty.
“God, I haven’t been this drunk in a while,” Annabeth says through her laugh.
They finally make it to Piper’s apartment, nearly falling up the stairs on the way, and Piper wonders how the plan ever was for Annabeth to go back to her own place.
Piper hiccups and fumbles with her key, jamming it into her lock and nearly forgetting which way to turn it. “Just spend the night here.”
“Really?” Annabeth asks, following Piper through the door after she finally gets it unlocked. “That would actually probably be smart—”
“Cause you could barely walk here?” Piper interrupts. She turns around, facing Annabeth in the middle of her entryway. “Trust me, Beth, a two-legged cat could walk better than you right now.”
At that, Annabeth giggles, and Piper just stares in awe at the sound. At her smile, and the way she’s just radiating beauty and warmth and power and love. Piper thinks she could live in that smile, she wonders how to make it her life mission to see Annabeth’s smile at every moment, how to make her laugh like that again. She stares and stares, doesn’t notice Annabeth looking back at her, because she’s too busy tracing the outlines of her face. Her hair, her cheekbones, her nose, her eyes, their foggy gray with bits of silver shining through, and she returns, as she always does, to that smile and those lips. She barely realizes she’s kissing them until she feels it.
The warmth or electricity is what she thinks she’s feeling, as she catches Annabeth’s chapped lips between her own. And oh god, she’s kissing Annabeth. It’s everything she’s wanted, she realizes, all the suppressed thoughts and the wandering eyes and the dreams she can never recall in the morning. She’s kissing Annabeth, and she thinks she might actually know something about herself: she’s in love with her. She’s kissing Annabeth, and she thinks she might actually die happy now.
She’s kissing Annabeth, but Annabeth’s hands are on her shoulders, applying gentle pressure until Piper is separated from her.
This time, Piper looks at her, not at her smile or her eyes, but looks at her fully, and suddenly she’s a lot more sober.
“Piper…”
She realizes then that Annabeth wasn’t kissing her back. She finally understands the look of concern, confusion, anything but the love she was hoping for, and it all comes crashing down on her.
Annabeth doesn’t finish her sentence. Piper tries to say something, anything to salvage the situation, but she just opens and closes her mouth, with nothing coming out. (Ha, she thinks. The irony.)
When she realizes Piper isn’t going to say anything, Annabeth takes a step back. “I think… I’m actually gonna call Percy to come pick me up.” She steps off to the side, toward the couch, as she searches through her bag for her phone.
That’s the reality Piper lives in. Annabeth is dating Percy, and has been for many years, before Piper even knew her, and they’re very happy together, and Annabeth was talking about her future with Percy earlier tonight and—
“I’m gonna get some water,” she mumbles, not even sure if Annabeth hears her.
She goes through the motions mindlessly, this is her apartment after all. She gulps the whole glass down, standing and breathing heavily over her kitchen sink. Closing her eyes, she forces herself to acknowledge what she just did, and come up with anything to say that might fix what she just fucked up.
She doesn’t know how long she stays like that, hands gripping the counter and chest heaving, but at some point she hears Annabeth get up from the couch. Quickly, she turns at the sound.
“I’m sorry,” she starts with, as Annabeth looks at her. Neither of them moved from where they stopped. “I didn’t—” mean to, but Piper knows that’s a lie. “I don’t why I did that,” she settles on instead.
She starts moving toward Annabeth, who stays still, but Piper can see her bite the inside of her lip. She continues. “I wasn’t thinking straight.” Clearly. “I just—That was stupid and I shouldn’t have done that, and… can we just forget about it?” she asks, then practically begs, “Pretend like it never happened?”
The crease between her eyebrows appears as Annabeth takes in what she just said. She looks at Piper for a moment, then breathes in, but is cut off by a notification on her phone before she can speak.
She glances at it briefly, then back at Piper. “Look, I should go. I’ll see you later, though, Piper.” She offers a small, placating smile and Piper hates it.
Annabeth opens the door, leaving Piper and her apartment behind.
——
She must have gotten ready for bed after Annabeth left, because Piper wakes up in her own bed, in her pajamas and a glass of water on her nightstand. The glass isn’t full, by any means, but she thanks her past self as she drinks the rest of it to try and settle her pounding headache.
She reaches to grab her phone, realizing she hasn’t looked at it since last night, and scrolls through the notifications.
From: jason <3
Have a good time! Good night!
From: hazel the lovely
Can I borrow your purple ruffle top tomorrow? Completely fine if not!
From: percy jack-ass
Hey, did something happen tonight? Annabeth was acting weird and I thought you might know why
From: jason <3
Good morning!
From: somebody call 911 (leo)
dude there’s a new season of ncis please please please can we watch it
From: somebody call 911 (leo)
i will finally fix your stove for you if i can force you to watch ONE season of ncis
From: somebody call 911 (leo)
PLEASE I NEED SOMEONE ELSE TO LIKE THIS SHOW AS MUCH AS I DO
From: jason <3
Let me know when you wake up, I was thinking we could finally try that coffee shop across from the gym
From: somebody call 911 (leo)
piperrrrrr pleaseeeeee
She deletes the notification from Percy and ignores Jason’s texts. She texts Hazel back that yes, she can borrow the top, and is about to text Leo back when a call comes through.
“Hello?” she grunts out.
“Someone’s grumpy today.”
“I have a hangover, Leo. What do you want?”
“You saw my texts. Can I come over please, Piper?”
“You know what? Fine. Let’s watch NCIS while my head is trying to explode.”
“Great! I’m outside your door.”
Piper groans as Leo hangs up on her, burying her face into her pillow. After a moment, she sighs, getting up from her bed.
When she opens her front door, Leo is standing there with two takeout boxes. “I brought food from your favorite Greek place as a bargaining chip.”
They sit on her couch eating from the takeout boxes, as Leo interjects every five minutes with, “Oh, I love this part,” or, “This is important,” or, “Piper, you have to pay attention to this part,” until at some point, he quiets down. She doesn’t know how long it’s been or how many episodes they’ve watched, but she does know Jessica Steen is hot and her fries have gone cold.
“I think I’m a lesbian.”
Leo looks over at her and raises an eyebrow. She keeps her eyes focused on the screen. “Is this you coming out?”
She shrugs. “I guess.”
“Great! Glad you can join the pride parade! We can like, work together now to get girls. Like, I’ll ask them out, and if they say they’re gay, then I’ll send them to you!” She snorts. “And I’ll give you all my great tips for picking up girls. ‘Cause Jason never—” He pauses, then scrunches his eyebrows in thought.
Suddenly, a pit drops in Piper’s stomach.
“Wait,” Leo says, “does Jason know?”
Piper picks at her fries, soggy and cold for at least an hour now. “No.”
“Okay,” is all Leo says.
Neither of them speak for a moment, the stupid TV show still playing in the background keeping the room from being quiet.
“You know, I think this—”
“Also, I kissed Annabeth last night.”
“—you what?!”
Piper gets up from the couch to grab the remote. “You know, I think that’s enough TV for me today. I’ve got to go drop off a shirt for Hazel, anyway—”
“No, no, hold on, Piper.” Leo follows her as she throws out the boxes in the kitchen, cleaning up along the way. “What do you mean you kissed Annabeth?”
“I kissed Annabeth last night.” She turns on the sink faucet to start washing some of the dishes that have been sitting on the counter for a week.
“Annabeth Chase?” He asks, as she picks up a particularly stained plate from what she thinks was spaghetti.
She scrubs a spot of tomato sauce. “Yes.”
“Who’s dating Percy Jackson?” She scrubs harder.
“Yes, I know. I just—” She huffs, slamming the plate back into the sink. “I was drunk last night. Like, really drunk. And I forgot about Percy fucking Jackson and Jason and all I could think about was the fact I was hanging out with Annabeth. And I realized that all the feelings I had when I looked at her were not just friendly, platonic feelings, and she was smiling and laughing, and I thought, ‘Hey! Maybe she feels the same!’ And so I kissed her, and now I’ve fucked up everything, which is exactly what I was afraid of when I started realizing I might like her!”
There are tears springing in her eyes, and gods, she does not want to be crying over this now.
“Okay,” Leo starts carefully, “first of all, let me get this—” He reaches over to turn off the sink faucet, which had been slowly overflowing throughout her speech. “Now, you didn’t fuck everything up.”
She levels a look at him. “I kissed my best friend who’s dating someone else, and now both of them probably hate me, I cheated on my boyfriend, and I haven’t told him I’m a lesbian so now I’m just leading him on.”
“Woah, I thought I was your best friend,” he pouts at her. She rolls her eyes. “Also, Annabeth cares about you too much to hate you. Especially over something like this.”
She looks away from Leo, feeling pathetic as she tries to bite back, “You don’t know that.”
“Well, you would if you talked to her, and like, explained what’s going on in your head.”
God, she hated when he actually had good advice. It went too much against his character. Shouldn’t he be enabling her to move to Canada and change her identity?
“What if I’m not ready to come out to her?” She hopes she sounds miserable, so maybe he’ll take pity on her and she won’t have to talk to Annabeth ever again.
Instead, he grabs her hands. “Pipes, babes.” Once she looks at him, he continues, “I’m all for coming out when you’re ready, but given the fact that you kissed her, I think she already knows you like girls.”
She huffs. “What do I even tell her?”
He shrugs. “What you told me. But maybe a few sorry’s are in there. And a, ‘it won’t happen again cause I respect you as a friend,’ or something. Honestly, I don’t know. I’ve never kissed my not-so-single best friend while drunk.”
“You’re so helpful.”
“You’re the one who’s letting me keep talking.”
“Then shut up.”
He does, so she starts putting the dirty dishes into the dishwasher, which she just realized she could’ve done from the beginning without messing up her kitchen or overflowing the sink.
She’s packing away the plates, the silverware, the cups, when she sees a mug in there. One that’s got a stupid little picture of a cartoon sushi and the phrase “Just roll with it!” above it. One she would never buy for herself, because it’s too inspirational and nice and a god-awful pun, but one Jason laughed at so much she bought for him.
One that stayed at her apartment for Jason to use when he came over, but was recently rarely used unless they hung out in the mornings.
“What about Jason?” she blurts out, staring at the mug.
After a moment where Leo doesn’t answer, she looks up at him. He raises his eyebrows.
“Oh, so I can talk again?” She smacks him on the arm. “Ow!”
“What am I supposed to do about Jason?” she asks, more firmly this time.
“I don’t know. He’s not my boyfriend.”
She smacks him again.
“Stop doing that!”
“Answer my question!”
Leo rolls his eyes. “You’re not gonna like it.”
Crossing her arms, she says, “Whatever. Just tell me.”
“Talk to him. Probably break up with him, given the fact you can’t love him romantically.”
She hates when Leo’s right. She doesn’t like his answer.
“Am I supposed to… tell him I kissed Annabeth?”
“Well, I mean, I think you should, but, like, I guess you don’t have to. If you don’t want to come out to him. But, I don’t know, it’d suck if someone else told him you kissed her while you two were dating.”
She looks back down at the mug, with its stupid sushi face. She doesn’t want to hurt Jason. She doesn’t want to put him through a breakup when he loves her and cares about her so much. She doesn’t want to stop hanging out with him, doesn’t want things to change between the two of them, doesn’t want him to also hate her forever because she cheated on him and actually never loved him the way he thought she did.
She thinks he’d hurt worse if she puts it off any longer. She knows it’d be worse if she didn’t tell him.
Squeezing her eyes shut, she takes a breath. When she opens them, they’re blurry with tears as she looks at Leo.
“I’m gonna miss him.”
His face melts in sympathy. “I know, babe.” Then, he opens his arms and she falls into them.
“I haven’t even broken up with him and I’m already a mess. And I’m the one that fucked up!”
“Pre-break-up break down! We all have one eventually.”
She laughs into his shirt, staying in the hug for a moment longer before pulling away.
Wiping her eyes, she tells him, “Thanks. I’ll, uh, talk to him. And Annabeth.”
He nods. “Good. And we can watch as much NCIS as we want in between.”
She smiles, and starts heading back to the living room. Leo follows her, and they settle back onto the couch the way they were. This time, though, Piper has dried tear tracks on her cheeks and Leo looks at her with concern.
“You gonna be okay?”
She breathes in, then breathes out, in a practiced, meditational manner. “I think so.”
“Good. I’m supposed to be the messy queer one.”
And Piper realizes, that in this moment, she’s happy. Happier than she’s been recently. And she’s grateful, for Leo. Even when she’s hungover and miserable and hating herself, he somehow knows how to make her feel better.
She may not be over Annabeth yet, she may still want to be with Jason even though she knows she can’t, but she knows herself a little better. And someone else knows her a little better, too.
She picks up the remote.
“By the way, we’re not watching NCIS. That show fucking sucked.”