A/N: Rating does seem to apply in this chapter, so be fore warned. It's nothing too terrible though, so I don't believe anyone has to turn back. Do as you wish.

July 14, 2020

Camp Half-Blood:
Poseidon Cabin

It must have been past midnight, I realized, by the crawl of my skin, the burning in my throat. Her hands were soft running through my hair yet again, only different this time. Gentle and collected and excited and lustful and loose, her fingers were twining together, freeing themselves collectively. Her thumbs were stroking along the nape of my neck, right under my ear where I hadn't realized was still sensitive to her touch due to my bearing the curse. My skin was rippling with goose bumps but I let it push to the deepest corner of my mind.

I wasn't sure why—though, it may have crossed my mind with a pure kind of logic—but I wanted this… this chaos in my life. This I'll-gut-you-for-leaving-me one minute, I-can't-keep-my-hands-off-of-you the next, look-before-you-leap-Seaweed-Brain kind of a relationship in which I never honestly paid heed to the last part, but always moved out of my own way to follow her to hell and back. I wanted this love-me, I'm-gonna-strangle-you, stay-away-he's-mine attitude to come from only her. I needed the way she could kiss the smallest corner of my mouth with the sweetest smile and still find room to bat her lashes across my cheekbones. I thrived off of her playing her fingers along the low patch of skin on my back lovingly—

Which brought me to the current game she was playing. I may have somehow ended up pressed flush on top of her, in the chastest way this could be possible, our lips still dancing across the other's skin. Yeah, four years was too long. And her fingers crawled along my spine slow and sweet to where it never really crossed my mind as anything too special. Not until she decided she knew just how to test her power over me. Her skin brushed across mine, the same slow and sweet way as before, but seemingly less innocent than it had been.

A tightening in my gut, my throat closing up, the lungs in my chest being squeezed to two lifeless, deflated, essential-to-living blobs. I couldn't really process much more than the feeling of her fingers pressed to the one place where everything about me had been centered, and I could feel her everywhere, a warmth spreading through me. My muscles tightened under her touch.

She went for another stroke across the skin under my T-shirt.

I shuddered into her neck, trying desperately to get some strength back in my limbs rather than steady myself against her. She pressed her lips to my neck, I could feel her grin, and she let her hand rest there, her thumb rubbing soft circles along my sensitive patch of skin.

"I really," she hesitated, like she wasn't sure it would be okay to give some hint that my Annabeth was still buried inside and waiting to resurface, and I figured that she knew I would only be leaving her again. But I forced myself into a nod, skin still chickened and heart still flapping wildly.

"I missed you, too," I promised.

Then it hit.

The nausea.

The cramp in my stomach, in a painful rather than enjoyable manner, had held a grip on me.

The feeling of my blood running cold, and then ceasing to exist altogether.

"Annabeth," I whispered, and it seemed to come out soft and endearing despite my futile efforts to place a foretelling undertone. I tried again, managing a slight edge to my words. "Annabeth…" I shuddered and pushed myself up to where I was simply straddling her, my hands fisted in the pillow under her head. She let herself up onto her elbows, brow furrowed, lips parted in the most demanding, quizzical style that fit her naturally.

"What's wrong?"

I bite my lip, feeling the growl crawling up my throat. "You need to go." I rolled off the edge of the mattress, slipped to the floor, landed with a thud, felt myself collapsing into limited control. My vision was hazy now, speckled and blurred like an old camera was taking slow snapshots.

I blinked once. She was suddenly in front of me.

Blinked again. The world had turned to its side, my vision distorted with the image of her legs moving towards the door.

Blink. Sudden dark.

Dang it all.

I was running now, not sure of my destination, but I was getting there at an incredible rate. My skin was burning and tingling, boiling and blistering then cooling remarkably. Hands traced in a dark blanket, chest encased by the shadows, soul-torn breathing. Dark. Night, maybe.

Somewhere logged in the banks of my mind was the fact that I was unwillingly chasing down the girl I had just been totally suckered by.

A/N: Very short. Really sorry but it felt best I leave it there seeing as my mind was shutting down and my stopping place seemed the most appropriate. Sorry again.