High School AUs have probably been done to death, but here's mine, anyway.

High school sucked. Rule of teenage life #3.

For Annabeth, it probably sucked less than for most. Well, the actual school part at least. That was easy. She'd managed to reach tenth grade without much trouble. She was the kind of girl who always had her homework, never got a worse grade than B+ and usually was the best in everything they did.

You know; the beloved, popular kind of girl. Not.

Annabeth really wouldn't classify herself as a nerd, per say, but that was how everyone treated her: like that awkward kid who always needed to get everything right and, beyond that, didn't have much to offer. Never mind that she broke a guy's arm back in middle school when he tried to snatch her book. That incident either went ignored or served only to let people keep even more of a distance from her. As a result, she was pretty much alone; no friends to speak of. Aside from the handful she made before moving here, and those were now all on the other side of the country.

So, yeah; high school sucked.

Always one with a plan for any situation, Annabeth had developed a routine where she went to classes, answered everything flawlessly, then withdrew to the library to read some more. Everything in between mostly consisted of ignoring the comments that were made behind her back, or, sometimes, directly to her face. Sadly, arm-breaking wasn't a perpetual solution for high school conflicts; otherwise it would have really come in handy on those occasions.

Her hands had twitched more than once today, already.

"And what does DNA stand for again? Anyone?"

Annabeth waited the obligatory second before shooting "Deoxyribonucleic acid." back at the teacher.

"Very good."

Her classmates either shook their heads, looked puzzled, or stared at her with resentment.

That was the classroom routine. Question, pause, Annabeth answers; cue the others looking at her spitefully.

She was so used to that at this point that it took her a long time before she noticed the one other student who didn't.

Until then, she had barely taken notice of him – but somehow, his name popped into her head immediately. She must have picked it up somewhere at some point. There just wasn't anything remarkable connected to it.

The only reason she noticed him now was that while all the other faces looking at her were frowning, his was smiling.

Odd.

Annabeth would probably have ignored it. If it hadn't happened again in History. And then in Latin. And then in Math.

The next day, Annabeth found herself furtively observing Percy Jackson – just every now and then. Which was quite easy, since, now that she paid attention to him, it turned out that they actually shared most classes together. What she observed was that he was pretty much the average high schooler: usually annoyed with high school, always a joke on hand, and not particularly noticeable. Percy Jackson was mediocre in pretty much everything he did – except for swimming and Latin, for some odd reason. There, he excelled. Everything else: normal.

Except that he smiled at her every now and then.

Physically, he wasn't much to look at either. His hair always looked like he'd just fallen out of bed; his clothes were always a size too small; and his eyes were of a muddled blue-green – sea-green, a thought popped into her mind while she peeked at him over the top of her Math book. Taken all together, it was a rather cute look, she supposed.

Not that she spent much time thinking about his looks.

This process of observing/not-observing went on for what must have been a few weeks. The more Annabeth saw, the more confused she got. Percy was an amalgamation of contradictions.

Like that time in Latin when they were discussing Julius Caesar.

"And what did the man famously say before crossing the Rubicon? Yes; Percy?"

"The die is cast." the other replied, correctly.

"Correct. And why do you imagine he said that?"

Percy shrugged. "Because he liked to play Hazard?" he replied. Very incorrectly.

Annabeth snorted behind her book.

Mr Brunner laughed, too, but not unkindly. He was the kind of teacher to take anything with a dose of humour. "Not quite, I'm afraid. Other ideas? Yes, Annabeth."

"He- " she had to interrupt herself to stifle a chuckle. Her eyes found Percy's sea-green ones, and held them while she answered. "He meant that he had now decided future of Rome; though some say he instead expressed that its fate was now up to chance."

"Indeed. I personally think the latter. Very good, Annabeth."

Frown. Frown. Frown.

Smile.

During lunchbreak after that lesson, Annabeth finally resolved to confront her weird surveillance target directly. She needed to get some clear answers, or this – whatever this was – was going to kill her.

But, unbeknownst to her, she and Percy had to operating on the same logic; the same wavelength; whatever. Something along those lines. Because just as she had made up her mind and stood up from her table, her surveillance target came to her, instead.

"Hey." a voice said from behind her. "How're you doing?"

She turned around and was met with Percy standing there, just beside the lunch table. Like everything about him, the sudden appearance threw Annabeth off way more than it should have. It stole the words right out from underneath her. That, and the fact that he just casually greeted her, even though they'd never before spoken to each other.

"Fine." she said, managing a straight face.

"Cool."

This wasn't quite how Annabeth had imagined this conversation going. "I'm Annabeth." she said, for lack of something wittier.

"I'm aware." Percy replied, grinning. "It's hard to miss you, you know. I'm Percy."

"I'm aware." she echoed, and could have hit herself the next second.

"You are?" He looked surprised. Of course he looked surprised. "I didn't think I was that noticeable. Certainly not like you."

The unspoken question hung in the air between them: Why exactly have you noticed me?

Immediately, a handful of casual explanations shot through Annabeth's head: the swim team; his hilariously wrong answers in pretty much any subject; the row he'd had with the local bullies a couple of weeks back. All sufficient to explain why she knew who he was.

"You look at me strangely." she said instead.

It clearly wasn't what he'd expected, judging by his flabbergasted look. His eyebrows rose almost to his hairline. "I look at you strangely?"

"Yeah."

"Strangely how?"

"The others frown when I say something clever. You smile."

He scratched his head. "I do?"

"Yeah." Surely he had to notice that? Was he pretending not to know? Her grey eyes pierce him inquisitively. "Why?"

A careless shrug. "You must be seeing things. That can't be right."

It was her turn to ask "Why?"

"Because if I smiled every time you said something clever, I'd look like the Joker by now."

For once in her life, Annabeth was lost for words.

So, logically, she hit him instead.

"Ouch!" He rubbed his bruised shoulder. "What was that for?"

"For being ridiculous." Annabeth got out. An absurd thought crossed her mind and she narrowed her eyes suspiciously. "Wait. Was that your way of flirting with me?"

"I thought it wasn't a bad start – OW!"

Annabeth shook out her tingling hand. Her logically wired brain couldn't quite keep up with everything this guy was saying. "You are so – agh! You must have nothing but kelp in your head!"

Why would he be flirting with her?

"And you've got anger issues, Wise Girl!" Percy replied through clenched teeth.

Wise Girl?

He touched his arm tentatively and winced. "And a mean right hook. Jesus; do you do boxing or something?!"

"Karate." Annabeth replied on reflex.

"My poor shoulder assumes that you're probably the best in that, too. Right?"

Annabeth blushed against her will. Her reflexively drawn up defences pulled back down. "I'm not the best in everything." she mumbled, embarrassed. "Sorry. I didn't mean to hit you."

"You didn't mean to hit me – twice in a row?!" Every inch of his face seemed to say 'I call bullshit on that'.

Annabeth felt a grin tug at her mouth. She should probably be a bit more apologetic, but somehow she just couldn't stay serious with this guy. It was impossible. "Okay." she admitted. "But the second one was deserved."

"Was it?"

"It was. Definitely."

Percy gave a sheepish smile. "Yeah, okay; probably." he conceded. "Won't try the flirting thing again; I promise. I thought I'd be better at it."

He looked honestly embarrassed. And he looked as though he was about to walk away.

Annabeth quickly grabbed his wrist. "Wait; I'm just kidding. Did you really mean what you said?"

"What part? The anger issues or the good flirting?"

She rolled her eyes. "The me being clever part, you Seaweed Brain."

"Oh, that. You promise not to hit me when I say yes?"

"I promise." Annabeth felt herself smile. This had to rank as one of the most nonsensical conversations she'd ever had, but for some reason she wanted it to keep going. "In that case: Thank you. I'm flattered. Can we start this over, now?"

"Gladly." Percy looked appropriately relieved.

In that moment, the school bell chimed. The cantina started to empty out slowly. Annabeth instinctively started to walk towards the lockers; not used to having a conversation going when this happened. Percy fell in step beside her, though. "Math is next, right?" he asked while side-stepping a flood of hurried sixth-graders.

"Yep." She eyed him from the side. "Percy?"

"Yeah?"

"You seem pretty alright. I noticed we're having most classes together."

"Believe it or not; I noticed that, too."

Another hit to his shoulder followed, but this time it was only a playful one. "Quit teasing. Just because I actually know what we're talking about in class. It's not like I want to be the only hand up."

"Yeah; that. It's a little scary, how you always have the answer to everything."

She blushed again. "Not true. You often give an answer, too…"

"Just usually the wrong one."

Annabeth laughed. "Well. Looks like we're complementary, then."

"Smug."

"Provoked."

"True."

"Do you always talk this much nonsense, Percy?"

"Most of the time yes, Annabeth."

She felt like she was in a ping-pong match; every comment she gave out was being shot right back. Percy was nothing like any other person she'd ever talked to. Their quick-fire attitudes seemed to complement each other perfectly.

She couldn't deny that she liked it.

"But honestly: as scary as you are; you're kind of awesome. The look on Mrs Price face this morning was priceless."

Annabeth shrugged. "Not my fault when she puts up an equation the size of the entire board, and then makes it solvable in two simple steps."

"Simple steps, she says."

They stopped in their tracks, realizing belatedly that they'd already walked past their lockers.

For once, Annabeth was in no hurry to get to hers. "I liked your presentation on Hercules last week, by the way."

"Thanks."

"How you described his adventures as one big learning process."

"I did my best."

"Though I didn't quite get how you got from that to Italian peperoni pizza, if I'm honest."

Percy frowned, mock-offended. "What good learning process doesn't involve pizza? Even Hercules needed something to fuel all that monster fighting. I thought it was perfectly logical." His frown started to slip and morphed into a sly little grin. "Also; I happen to know that Professor Brunner loves peperoni pizza and Hercules, so I thought I'd just combine the two."

Annabeth laughed out loud. She couldn't help it. "He gave you a B-."

"I admit; the strategy wasn't flawless, okay?"

She looked up, and had to remind herself to breathe when she saw the sarcastic sparkle in his sea-green eyes. Her heart did a strange little tip-tap-tap dance. All this was – new. She swallowed. "How on earth did we never talk to each other before?!" she breathed.

He stared back. "I have no idea, Wise Girl." His expression was just as surprised (with a smidge of giddiness) as she felt.

Annabeth quickly turned away and typed in her combination. She took out her Math books for next period, closed the locker, and then faced Percy again. That gave her the time to properly collect herself. To bring everything going on inside her into the proper order and formulate a battle plan accordingly.

Annabeth could be accused of many things, but being indecisive wasn't one of them.

"I really like talking with you, Seaweed Brain." she told Percy.

He rubbed his neck again. It seemed to be a nervous tick of his. "Yeah; same."

"There's also a really good pizza place down the street."

"I know. Love it."

"So…"

"So?"

Jesus Christ; boys were clueless. Annabeth sighed. She slowly started to walk to their classroom. "So, since you are not as god at flirting as you think; I'll invite you there. Do you accept?"

Percy's mouth opened and closed like a fish on dry land. He sputtered for a moment, before finding his words again. "Sure. Yes. Awesome." He started to jog to catch up with her. "What do you like? Peperoni? Salami? So long as it's not pineapple…"

"Percy?" Annabeth interrupted, trying to hold back her grin.

"Uh, yes?"

"You forgot your books."

He faltered in his step, then looked back to his still untouched locker. "Dammit." He reluctantly left her side and jogged back. "I'll see you around?" he called over his shoulder.

Annabeth turned around, smiling. "I imagine you will." she said quietly to herself.

"Seaweed Brain."