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“Are you sure we should be doing this?” Percy said, holding the bag of weed in front of him with two fingers as if it would jump out and bite him.
“What?” A pair of arms wrapped themselves around his neck from behind. Piper. “The Great Percy Jackson a scardy cat?”
Percy scowled, though he wasn’t sure if it was more at the “Great Percy Jackson” or the “scardy cat” parts. “My mom always told me not to make trouble for myself when trouble will find me on its own.”
“And your mom is a wise woman for that,” Annabeth said, arms crossed and chin jutted out like she always did when she had a lecture brewing. “But this isn’t making trouble for ourselves. It’s perfectly legal, and it has a number of benefits including anti-anxiety.”
“By that, she means you need to chill the fuck out,” Piper breathed into his ear. Before Annabeth could do more than frown at her she continued. “We all do.”
At Percy’s continued hesitation, Piper withdrew from Percy’s back and came around to look at him, placing a hand on his arm. “If you really don’t want to there’s nothing wrong with that. You know we won’t make you do something you don’t want to.”
Annabeth nodded her agreement from behind Piper. “If it helps, I already spoke with Sally about our plans and she was cool with it.”
“Really? You asked my mom?” Percy asked dryly, though despite himself the information did calm him.
“I told your mom,” Annabeth corrected. “Because she knows we are responsible adults.”
“You know, if only my dad thought the same,” Piper muttered, looking bitter. “You’d think after everything his first thought wouldn’t be to jump to me being some irresponsible college student. That’s why I’m not going here in the first place.”
Brow creased with concern, Annabeth grabbed Piper's shoulder and squeezed. Piper signed and squeezed Annabeth’s hand gratefully.
“Well, regardless, I’m here to visit for the week, and I want us to have some fun!” Piper seemed to visibly shake off her worries and then snatched the weed out of Percy’s grasp. “I’ll roll a joint and you can decide if you want to join Percy. Otherwise, you just get to babysit me and your high girlfriend.”
“I’ll join,” Percy said, making up his mind.
“Great!” Piper beamed at him.
Besides, how bad could it be? Percy mused as he took the rolled-up joint from Piper and took a drag.
“Wow, your hair is like the sun,” Percy exclaimed and ran his fingers through the liquid sunlight that swung in front of his face.
Annabeth didn’t seem to hear him, too preoccupied with examining every detail of the building they were leaning against in some alley in San Francisco. Piper was, however.
“Oooo, ooo, what about me?” Piper asked, shooting her hand in the air and waving it like an overeager school kid.
“Your hair,” Percy said imperiously, pointing a finger (or seven, who could really tell at this point?) at Piper. “Is like the night sky! But the night sky above the city. The kind that’s kinda brown.”
Piper wrinkled her nose. “Booo, gross that’s no fun.”
“But!” Percy exclaimed, shooting his hands out to either side and almost hitting Annabeth if not for her crouching down to examine the ground at the same time. “But it’s because there’s sooooo much light coming from beneath you!”
“Beneath me?” Piper asked and looked down at the ground puzzled, lifting up both her feet one at a time to further inspect the dirty concrete.
“Within you!” Percy corrected, staring at Piper’s chest. He swore he could see some light coming from within in the shape of her veins.
“Annabeth!” Piper yelled and crossed her arms in front of her. “You boyfriend is staring at my boobs!”
“No!” Percy denied though in retrospect he kinda had been. “I was staring at the light coming from you!”
“I’m glowing!” Piper gasped at the same time that Annabeth said. “Well, you do have nice boobs.”
“Annabeth!” Percy said, gasping.
“What?” She looked up from where she was still crouched down on the ground. Her hair was mused and had a stick in it from somewhere. “You have nice boobs too.”
Percy ignored that, now preoccupied with trying to swat at the stick in Annabeth’s hair, but it keep moving out of the way. Or maybe Percy was swaying too much. He couldn’t tell. The world was floaty like he was wading through the murkiest part of the ocean, but at the same time, he felt like he did in the moments right before Blackjack took a sudden dive without warning.
“Percyyyyyyy,” Piper said, clutching at Percy’s arm and leaning her body into his. “Your girlfriend said I have nice boobs.”
“I know, she just said that.” Percy was annoyed that he only had one arm now to try and get the stick out of Annabeth’s hair.
“Do you think I have nice boobs?” Piper asked.
“Oh, gross,” Percy yelled suddenly.
“What?” Piper screeched into Percy’s ear and swatted at his arm. “That’s not the answer I was looking for.”
“Percy, that’s rude,” Annabeth chided, finally standing up from the ground.
“No, there's some blobby thing over there.” Percy pointed and almost fell over backward from the force.
“A blob!” Piper exclaimed. “Is it shiny? I hate those!”
“No, it’s a—a…” Annabeth squinted at the blob. “A hellhound.”
“A hellhound?” Percy perked up. “Mrs. O’Leary?”
“Mrs. O’Leary!” Piper yelled excitedly and waved her hand at the blob-like dog. Maybe it was Pomeranian hellhound.
“That’s not Mrs. O’Leary!” Annabeth shouted and pulled out her dagger as the giant dog started running towards them.
“Bad doggie!” Piper wagged her finger at the dog before bringing out her own dagger.
“I always hate killing hellhounds,” Percy whined, but reluctantly withdrew Riptide.
“Watch where you uncap that thing!” Piper yelled at him from where she had ducked an outstretched sword.
“Sorry, sorry!” Percy apologized but then turned his attention to the now multiple blobs circling them. He thought they were all monsters until he tried to stab one and his sword just went through air. “How many are there?”
“Thirteen!” “Seventeen!”
So they couldn’t tell either. Great. But even though they were all assuredly outnumbered and incapacitated, Percy felt an unusual amount of calm. He would have to give that son of Bacchus a good review on Oracle.
They had spread out a bit so that they didn’t hit each other and seemed to be making a dent in the monsters when a few more blobs started appearing from around the corner.
“Fuck!” Annabeth cursed. “We need to be un-high right now!”
“I don’t think un-high is a word,” Piper mused aloud from where she just stabbed a cyclops-shaped blob in the head. She had somehow tied her Celestial Bronze dagger to a long pole she had found and was using it like a spear.
“Not the time, Piper!” Annabeth seemed to be the most with it and was consequently the most anxious. “We should pray!”
Percy snorted and decapitated a wolf-looking creature he couldn't remember the name of. “To who? Your mom?”
“No!” Percy could practically feel Annabeth’s glare from behind him. “To Demeter to get rid of the weed in our system.”
“Why would we pray to Demeter?” Percy asked, swiping at a flying thing that whooshed in front of him. “Shouldn’t we pray to, ugh, Dionysus or something? He’s the god of trippy parties right?”
“But Demeter is the god of plants and weed is a plant!”
“But this is, like, the greekest definition of a trippy party that we can get!”
“But would Mr. D, of all people, really help us?”
Percy was skeptical of this himself. If Annabeth hadn’t sounded so sure that he was wrong, Percy would’ve just agreed to pray to Demeter, but now he had a point to prove.
“Let’s ask him!” Percy decided and slashed at a pipe next to him to release a flow of water. He used part of it to make a defensive wall and then used the rest to create a rainbow with his phone light. Realizing he still needed a drachma, he put his sword handle in his mouth and fished into his pants.
“Here!” Piper’s voice cried out and Percy felt something small and hard bounce off his head. Thankfully it bounced right into the rainbow and Percy frantically took the sword out of his mouth.
“O Fleecy, do me a solid. Show me Mr. D at Camp Halfblood.”
The rainbow wavered for a second like it was saying “are you sure?” then the rainbow split to show the grungy guise of Mr. D sitting across from Chiron playing Pinochle.
“Percy?” Chiron asked with concern, sitting up straight where he sat in his wheelchair disguise. “Are you alright?
“Sorry, Chiron this isn’t for you,” Percy apologized.
“For me then?” Mr. D snorted into his Diet Coke. “I’m so honored. I do hope you’re not facing imminent death. That would be tragic.”
To emphasize the tragedy, Mr. D went back to playing his hand. “A-ha! I win!”
Percy giggled. “Even I can see that’s not a winning hand.”
“Now look here you—” Mr. D cut himself off and squinted, moving closer to the IM to get a better look at Percy. “Are you on something, Peter?”
“Now, I’m sure that’s not the case—” Chiron started, before being cut off by more of Percy’s giggles.
“Sure am!” Percy grinned, forgetting his usual level of ire with the god in favor the floaty happiness inside him.
“Percy…”
“What?” Percy said, frowning at Chiron, and crossed his arms, almost stabbing himself with Riptide. “It’s perfectly legal and it was Annabeth’s idea.”
“Traitor!” Annabeth yelled out. The sound of Annabeth’s out-of-breath voice and the clanging drew Chiron’s attention next.
“Are you in a fight?” Chiron asked, panic starting to edge into his voice.
“Not now Chiron, I have to ask Mr. D an important question.” Percy turned his serious gaze on Mr. D who looked more alert than he had in the entire time that Percy knew him.
“About weed - should we pray to you as the god of trippy parties?” Percy saw Chiron mouth “trippy parties” with silent incredulity. “Or should we pray to Demeter with her…her plantiness?”
“You want to know which of us has weed fall under their domain?” Mr. D asked, a manic sort of humor lighting up his features.
“Ye-up!” Percy nodded.
“Why?” Mr. D asked with a purple light glowing from his eyes.
“Why?” Percy repeated puzzled for a second but was then reminded when he saw Annabeth suplex a human-shaped monster. “Oh right! We got attacked by a bunch of monsters while we were out. And it’s kind of hard to kill them when they look all wibbly and wobbly.”
“Percy!” Chiron shouted. “You’re in grave danger right now—”
“Shush,” Percy said, putting a finger over his mouth. He would probably regret that later but for now he had more concerning things to worry about. “So am I right? Or should I have called Demeter?”
“Well,” Mr. D drawled and leaned back in his chair, a smirk drawing across his face. “That depends on what you want to ask.”
“Annabeth wants someone to get rid of the weed from our bodies,” Percy said, but then whined and threw his head back. “But this is the best I’ve felt in forever! I don’t want it to go away.”
Mr. D laughed, laughed, at Percy, sounding genuinely amused. For some reason, the sound jogged a memory in his head.
“Hey! Didn’t your culty people—” “My worshippers.” “Right them. Didn’t they, like, rip up people into little pieces when they were interrupted?”
“Why yes!” Dionysus grinned, seemingly delighted at the reminder. “They did indeed tear intruders apart limb by limb. Why do you ask?” At the last question, Dionysus leaned forward onto his knees. His voice was leading as if he was trying to get Percy to ask for something specific.
“Well, would we lose the good feeling if we did that instead?” Percy asked.
“Percy!” Chiron again. That centaur was always yelling Percy’s name like that.
“Join my cult? You?” Dionysus asked, his grin spreading wild across his face.
“No!” Percy denied shaking his head furiously. “My mom would kill me if I joined a cult while high! Just like a temporary thing?”
“I guess I could do that,” Mr. D drawled, buffing his nails with a nail file that came from somewhere. “But what would you give me in return?”
“Uhmmm,” Percy raked his brain. “I can sacrifice the rest of the weed to you?”
“Percy, his restrictions—”
Dionysus held up a hand to stop Chiron from speaking anymore. “My restrictions don’t prohibit offerings that were unprompted by myself.”
Dionysus looked at Percy intently, a manic grin slashed across his face and eyes burning with a violet glow. “If you just so happen to want to sacrifice your marijuana to me in exchange for my help, then yes, I will grant you all my blessing temporarily.”
“Ooh yes!” Percy bounced back and forth on his feet. He reached into his pockets again, searching for something besides a drachma this time. After a few seconds, he found his quarry — their half-used joint.
“Ok, so how’s this go?” Percy asked, holding out the joint at the image of Dionysus and Chiron in the mist. In the back of his mind he knew the time should have expired by now, but either Mr. D was extending it or Fleecy was incredibly interested in the conversation.
“Just give me your best prayer, boy.” Mr. D said, smirking and leaning back into his chair, the very picture of smugness.
Percy thought hard for a second before the clashing of someone with a monster right behind him prompted him to say the first thing that came to mind.
“O Dionysus, please bless this joint!”
Dionysus threw back his head and chortled. “I suppose that will do.”
He snapped his fingers. “It is done.”
“Great!” Percy said, then remembered what had happened the last time Mr. D had helped him. “Thanks, Mr. D!”
Dionysus’ lips curled. “We’ll see if you’re thanking me in the morning.”
“Percy I really don’t think—” This time it was the ending of the IM that cut off Chiron. Oh well.
Percy looked consideringly down at the joint in his hand, then yelled to the others. “Hey, guys! Mr. D said we need to smoke this joint!”
He put it in his mouth and inhaled deeply. The already intoxicating weed seemed to have taken on an extra flavor, almost like ambrosia had been swirled in the mixture. The rush of strength that flooded him was the last thing he remembered before it all went black.
Percy groaned and rolled away from the bright beam of sunlight that hit his eyes. “No, it’s too early.”
He had just smothered himself in his pillow when he suddenly jolted back awake with the memory of last night.
“Ugh, go back to sleep Percy,” Annabeth said, voice muffled from where she was pressing her face into his chest. He idly noted that she had drooled on him this time.
“But what happened?”
“You happened,” Piper moaned from his other side. “You and Mr. D. with your blessed joint.”
Percy realized three things at that moment: 1) Piper was in the bed too on his other side with her arms wrapped around his torso, 2) they were all naked, and 3) his ass was really, really sore.
“Did I? Did we? Did you?” Percy stammered, still reeling from all the new information.
“After you took a drag from the joint, it seemed to work so well that me and Piper did too,” Annabeth explained sleepily. “Then Piper demanded you make up for calling her boobs gross.”
“I didn’t—” Then stopped when he felt a hand grope his chest from behind.
“Annabeth is right that you have nice boobs,” Piper purred into his ear as she felt him up.
“I thought you didn’t date guys anymore?” Percy asked bewildered at the turn of events and also very sad that he didn’t remember last night after that drag.
“Who said anything about dating?” Piper asked rhetorically, “And besides, you’ve always been my if I had to pick a guy.”
“Now go back to sleep Percy, it’s too early.” Annabeth tugged him in closer to her and cradled his head on her breasts.
“Yeah, we’ll give you a refresher course later,” Piper said, pulled herself against him tighter.
Percy gave up and just laid there, letting the relaxed sounds of Annabeth and Piper’s breathing lull him back to sleep. Through the drowsiness, he remembered then what he hadn’t last night — Dionysus’ trippy parties all had something else in common besides ripping enemies apart.
Mr. D will never let me live this down, Percy thought. Or Chiron.
As if on cue, an IM appeared in front of him, and Chiron’s angry and concerned face peered at him, where he was tangled up naked with Annabeth and Piper.
“Perseus Jackson!”
Percy just threw a hand over his eyes and groaned. Great. Well, at least he could tell his mom that he didn’t join a cult.