Heyyy, so actually, I never wrote anything that revolved solely around "romance," so I wanted to see if I could do it. I don't particularly have a burning passion for it, but neither do I hate it. I do enjoy it. But I just never wrote anything of it other than something like, "He glanced at her and blushed" like bruh, so in a way, it's experimentation as well as I suppose practice for future reference?

Oh and I was planning to do this kind of thing for a while, but I never got to it, but I did, and the reason, or rather inspiration that finally pushed me to do this was Multi fandom geekerello ('s stories) who you should totally check out their fics cause they're absolute fire.

Hope you enjoy :)

Disclaimer - I'm not Rick Riordan; I'm like, not married, don't got no kids, y'all I don't write as well as the guy, so yeah, not me :))))

"I Promise"

Annabeth sat on the park bench, before sniffling from the harsh winter wind that whipped through her jacket. The jacket, if she remembered right, was pretty expensive, but against the cold, the price didn't seem to affect its effectiveness.

She shifted as flakes of snow drifted, fluttering like little fairies before either merging with other snowflakes, or melting as it touched her warmer skin. Puffs of wispy air came out of her mouth as she looked at her hands. She watched as the snow turned to water the instant it landed on them. It meant her temperature was warmer than the snow, but she certainly didn't feel warm.

"Uh, hey," a voice said. Annabeth looked up from her hands with a questioning quirk of her eyebrow, gray eyes that her dad's always called discerning and curious like her mother's, finding itself staring into the sea.

She blinked. The sea? But it wasn't a hallucination. The pair of eyes that gazed back at her, looked, no felt, like the sea, the ocean, the beach, and the whole coral reef glittering underneath the surface of the waves that crashed along the shore. It was an experience she felt as she looked at those eyes.

"Er...Do I have ketchup on my face?" Annabeth blinked again, coming out of her nine year old stupor. The rest of the person in front of her, a boy she noted, came into view, or rather, attention. He was probably around her age, with windswept raven black hair, slightly flaked with snow. She scanned his face and found red on his cheek.

She nodded, thankful that she had an excuse to have been staring. "On your cheek, there's some ketchup." The boy nodded as if it made sense and didn't bother to wipe it off. That slightly irked her.

"Why aren't you wiping it off?" she asked, crossing her arms haughtily.

The boy grinned before putting a finger to his lips. "Shhh, it's part of my plan." Annabeth scrunched up her nose at that.

"What pl-"

"Are you lost?" the boy asked, causing Annabeth's mind to come to a complete halt. Her eyes widened before narrowing them.

"No," she replied. "I don't get lost." After a moment, she added, "I ran away, but I know exactly where I am. I memorized the whole way." The boy's mouth gaped a bit at her before closing with a clacking sound of his teeth.

"W-why did you run from home?" he asked, face looking horrified.

She shrugged. Why should she tell him? Tell him that her step-mom hated her? That her dad barely has time to care for her everyday because of work? That the two baby brothers she had took priority over her in the household?

Not happening, she thought as he pouted a bit, bottom lip sticking out. He looked like...a puppy. She huffed internally. No, she thought. He's a stupid boy, with cooties, but that was entirely an excuse because she was old enough not to know that cooties wasn't a thing. An from the strange flutter in her chest and the heat she felt in her cheeks.

"Percy! There you are! Don't run off like that again," a woman called out as she walked up to the boy who was now identified as Percy. Annabeth looked at the woman; she looked like...a mom. A really beautiful, but kind mother who would sit you down after school, and give you hot chocolate while baking cookies. Loving. Caring. A mom.

Annabeth felt her own sort of pout form, but she quickly forced it back as the chocolate haired woman fussed over her son.

"Goodness, one moment you were right next to me and the next you- and look at you, getting ketchup on your face." The woman smiled endearingly as she took her hand and rubbed it on her son's cheek, to which the boy grabbed at his mom's hand, keeping it in place. He grinned victoriously as he snuggled his face a bit into his mom's hand. The woman simply laughed, and Annabeth realized that that had been the plan: to snuggle into his mom's hand.

Annabeth's eyes suddenly stung and she didn't know why (she did; her mom died and she was stuck with a woman that might as well have been a stranger to her, or at least until she ran away. Now...she didn't even have her dad). The tears threatened to spill, but miraculously, they didn't.

Percy turned to Annabeth, staring at her with a curious face. The woman noticed her.

"Oh, hello, dear," she said, crouching down to meet Annabeth's eye level. She glanced over Annabeth before a look a slight concern took over. "Are you lost dear?" Was it that obvious that she wasn't where she was supposed to be? Annabeth wondered, but realized that her clothes were dirty and so was her tangled hair, unbrushed for the past day.

Before Annabeth could answer, Percy did. "She's not lost. She knows exactly where she is." He beamed at her as if him answering for her was an accomplishment, but she nodded along.

The woman looked doubtful, but Annabeth urged, "I was playing with my brothers, so I got all dirty."

"Are you here alone?"

Annabeth hesitated before saying, "Yeah, but my house is over there; my parents can see me from their window." She pointed in the general direction of apartment buildings. The woman bought it and smiled a bit. She seemed to want to say something but she was cut off with a pinging of a phone. She fished her phone out as Percy let go of the woman's hand, and his mom muttered a quick "I'll be on the phone" before she answered, standing up straight.

Annabeth watched warily as Percy made his way next to her spot on the bench. He promptly plopped down and Annabeth immediately scooched a bit away, but he didn't seem too bothered by it. He grinned at her.

"What?" she asked suspiciously.

He leaned in as if to tell a secret, and whispered, "I kept your secret."

"What secret?"

"That you ran away," Percy replied brightly. Annabeth looked at him, slightly confused.

"Why though?" she asked, prompting him to hum a bit as if in deep thought, but from the way his eyes shined and glanced at everything that moved, she doubted he was actually thinking about the particular question she gave him.

Finally he said, "I promise I'll tell you if you promise to tell me why you ran away!" She reeled back a bit at that, eyebrows knitting together.

"Why would-"

"Percy," his mom said. She gestured to her phone. "Come on, dear, it looks like your new step-dad wants to introduce us to some of his friends." Percy smiled at his mom brightly before nodding.

"Yay," he said, jumping happily off the bench. "I bet they're nice like him too," he said grinning before turning to Annabeth. He looked at her with slight seriousness before saying, "I'll see you later, probably, since you're not lost and you know this place; I'll tell you why I kept your secret if you tell me why you ran later." Annabeth was about to retort but he grinned and stuck his pinky out. "I promise," he proclaimed as if saying an official statement.

Annabeth was about to say no, because they probably wouldn't ever meet again, but something made her agree, and she huffed before wrapping her pinky around Percy's own. She noticed that the cold didn't seem so harsh as it had moments ago. She smiled a bit.

"I promise too."