pls read me: okay so I have now realized that this is legit just a role-reversal of a story that Fangirl Shrieks wrote. I honestly did not read her story before writing this one, I think we just used the same prompt. Now that I've read it though, it's really great which like, sucks for me, but everyone else should def check it out. She's dope. Go read her stories.

That said, lol, idk what to do with this story now. I think I'm just gonna rewrite some parts of it so it's not so similar, but in the meantime tho, it's just gonna sit here. Anyway, love yall. thx for bringing it to my attention.

It's a Tuesday when he first meets her, arguably his least favorite day of the week—none of the energy of Monday, but lacking all the excitement of Wednesday.

He's surrounded by flowers, his messy hair a dark anomaly among the vivid colors. The sweet aroma should soothe him, but after working at his mother's flower shop for nearly a year, its nothing but nauseatingly annoying.

He's not paying attention when the bell above the door jingles, half-heartedly swatting at a passing fly. It escapes his grasp, yet again. He's following it with his eyes when she interrupts his mission.

She slaps a twenty dollar bill down on the counter. It falls harshly next to his algebra textbook.

He blinks, surprised by the loud sound. His brows shooting up his forehead as he tilts his head to peer to her. Her hair is pulled into a loose ponytail. There are wisps of golden curls falling forward, framing her delicate features.

"What will this get me?" she questions, sounding annoyed. She leans forward, resting her forearms on the edge of the counter. Her eyes are darting around the room, tracing the bright flowers with a lazy gaze.

Excuse you, he wants to say, but he doesn't need another talk from his mother about the importance of customer service. So he opts for something a little less aggressive.

"Depends," he replies with a shrug, saturating his voice was an edge of I don't care. "What do you want?"

She sighs, the sound seeping into the late May air. She's still not looking at him, her gaze sliding over to a particularly abrasively colored chrysanthemum. She skates a manicured finger over the edges of the leaves.

"How do you say fuck you in flowers?" she asks finally, casually—as if it were an everyday request.

Percy chokes. His breath hitches and his pulse spikes every so slightly. His fingers curl around the hard counter, reminding him this is real life and not some kind of hot, fucked up dream.

He squints, reappraising her. She's pretty, he decides, in a scary, intimidating way. She could probably kill him, he thinks. Not with a knife, but with a well-placed insult.

She's wearing a uniform, probably just came from school—from a school with a uniform. So she has money. He should over-charge her, offer her the most expensive pot of orchids, and send her on her way, back to her pretty little brownstone and her perfect little family—but there's a glimmer of something combative and intriguing in her demeanor that makes him think twice.

"Carnations?" He offers, raising a brow.

She looks up, meeting his eyes for the first time. They're gray, he notes. A pleasant surprise among the plethora of bright colors.

Then she laughs—light and airy—before touching her fingers to her lips, like the sound slipped out against her will.

"Um," she hums and licks her lips. They're pulled into a half-smile, amusement tugging at the corners of her mouth. He thinks he'd love to see her smile for real. "Yeah," she replies. "That."

She glances back at him when she leaves, and he thinks maybe Tuesday's aren't so bad after all.

...

The next time he's sees her is a week later. It's a Friday, and not to be overly basic, but Friday is by far his favorite date of the week. It carries just the right amount of excitement for the upcoming weekend without being utterly distracting.

She on the other hand is very—distracting, that is.

"Oh good," she sighs when her eyes catch his. "You're here."

Her lips are pursed together in an expression Percy can't place—well, no technically he could place it, he's just fairly certain it wouldn't be worth it. She waltzes over to him, sidestepping a short burly man examining an entirely cliche bouquet of red roses.

She wouldn't like roses. No, Percy thinks she'd probably prefer daisies—or peonies perhaps?

"What do you want them to say this time?" he asks with a chuckle as she arrives at the counter.

"I'm sorry," she supplies with a thoughtless wave of her hand, her eyes shimmering with mirth. "But also—I hate you."

He stares at her for a moment too long, his lips quirking upwards into an easy grin.

She's in her uniform again; her white oxford peeking out from below her navy vest. She's probably hot. It's almost 80 degrees out today. Despite the heat, though, her hair is down, the blonde curls pulled daintily behind her ears. He wonders if she wore it that way for him. Then he remembers she has a boyfriend—the one she keeps buying flowers for—and reasons he must be a handful.

Whatever, Percy thinks her boyfriend probably doesn't deserve her anyway.

He averts his gaze, realizing how long he's been gawking. Dumb ass, he reprimands himself.

But then he sees her smile out of the corner of his eye and the curve of her lips is soft and shy and perfect—and he thinks she must be a handful because he's barely spoken more than five sentences to her and he's already under her spell.

He clears his throat. "Abatina" he suggests.

She smiles and he's wrecked.

...

It's a Thursday—his second favorite day of the week, but that's to be expected considering its proximity to Friday—when he finally musters the courage to bring up her handful of a boyfriend.

His fingers are wrapped around an arrangement of Bittersweet and Borage—something that says, sorry not sorry I called you a bitch because you were acting like one but also apparently it hurt your feelings.

"You know," he extends tentatively, imbuing his words with humor just in case the comment doesn't go over well. It's a habit of his, using gaiety to deflect. "Boyfriends normally buy their girlfriends flowers, not the other way around."

Her eyes flick up to his, and he fights the urge to shudder—mostly because he knows he'll look exceedingly stupid if he does. A barely-there crease appears between her brows before dissipating.

She frowns, then smiles. She looks amused but he's just confused.

"Putting aside the obvious gender norms and heteronormativity of that statement," she responds, "they're not for my boyfriend, they're for my stepmom."

Oh.

Now he's embarrassed.

He feels a heated flush creep up the back of his neck. He doesn't know what to say. He thinks he should have better prepared for this conversation, rehearsed it a few more times in his head before she showed up.

He'd run through a dozen scenarios in his head but they'd all ended in rejection. It's about the same time he realizes he should really work on his self-esteem that he realizes he's been silent for way too long.

"Well, uh—" he swallows thickly. "Is she?"

"Is she what?" the blonde asks, her expression caught between confusion and amusement.

"A bitch?"

"Oh," she chuckles, "fuck yeah." Then she laughs—really laughs—and the warm sound falls past his ears, tumbling down each of his vertebrae, dancing across his lungs, before wrapping around his heart and squeezing.

Oh fuck, he thinks because—

You just know, Jason had told him when he met Piper.

You just know, Rachel had lamented when she'd dumped him.

You just know, his mom had assured him when he'd cried to her.

—and for the first time in his life, he thinks he does know.

...

The next time she shows up, it's a Monday.

He's begun to look forward to her weekly visits an unnatural amount—even if it does mean she's still fighting with her stepmom.

And though he's never really understood the whole spirit animal thing, he feels an uncanny resemblance to one of Pavlov's dogs. She's made him one of Pavlov's dogs because every time he hears the bell above the door jingle, his heart jumps, his pulse races, and he's practically salivating.

It's horrible, it's exciting, it's—embarrassing, really. Especially considering he doesn't even know her name.

Still, he's become oddly familiar with her peculiar idiosyncrasies—so familiar in fact, that he caught himself daydreaming about her in class, recalling her sharp comments and exultant demeanor, before Grover shook him out of it. Disturbing, right? How positively 4th grade of him.

He's grown so accustomed to her smile in fact that when she strides through the door of the flower shop, a scowl darkening her expression, he's flabbergasted. He thinks he should probably be scared. He is scared. But he's also turned on. And it's a really really confusing conundrum for him right now.

"Where were you yesterday?" she demands, ignoring the tall man who was clearly about to approach the cash register.

"Uh—" he swallows, unreasonably anxious even though he knows he's done nothing wrong. "Home?"

"I—" she bit her tongue, pursing her lips together like she's not sure why she's here. "Right," she nods, a look Percy knows far too well flickering across her irises—a look of you're being dumb and get it together.

He fights a chuckle, knowing that's the last thing he'd want right now.

She's wearing her school uniform again, and it occurs to him then, as his gaze sweeps over her perfectly ironed shirt and knee-length pleated skirt, just how much he'd pay to see her out of it. Not in a sexual way—well, maybe—no, just in normal clothes. He finds he desperately wants to know what she's like outside the confines of his mother's flower shop, outside of their short interactions.

"Do you want flowers?" Percy asks her, glancing at the money in her hand.

"Oh." She blinks. Hazy shock wavers over her features. She follows his gaze. "Uh—yeah," she agrees faintly, looking back at him. "I guess I do."

"Well," he continues, a strum of enthusiasm ballooning in his chest as he stares into her impossibly colorless eyes. "What do you want?"

She's silent for a second, and he wonders if he did something wrong. He has a habit of that—doing things wrong. But then she turns to him, any hesitance has disappeared from her expression as she asks, "What do you think I want?"

It's a challenge. She's a challenge.

His eyes widen at her words and he feels his cock twitch before stifling the feeling because as much as he wants to take it that way, he's not willing to risk it. Besides, she's probably just talking about flowers—probably.

He opens his mouth, something simple and easy on the tip of his tongue but he bites it back, considering her for a second.

Her hair is back up in her customary ponytail. Her cheeks are flushed, most likely from rushing into the store earlier. Her eyes are shinning, glittering with half-hidden wonder as she watches him.

He doesn't know her. He should say something light and sweet. Something inoffensive and simple.

Her eyes narrow defiantly, like she read his mind.

No, he decides, she's anything but simple.

"Pink Camellia," Percy declares.

Confusion flutters across her irises but she hides it well.

"Is that all?" she questions delicately, arching a brow.

"No," he shakes his head, his eyes never leaving hers. "Clematis," he adds, reaching for the flowers behind him and placing them before her. "Hollyhock and Heliotrope."

Her eyes narrow imperceptibly, her piercing gaze boring into him like he's a puzzle she's dying to solve. He struggles to ignore his racing pulse.

Then his mom's voice reaches his ears, ruining any and all of the sexual tension he was so expertly procuring. "Percy," she calls, sliding in from somewhere behind him. His eyes shutter shut before he can tell them not to, a familiar heat spreading up his neck. "Have you seen—oh, hello."

She stops behind him. He can feel her behind him. He wants to look away. He doesn't want to watch his mom ruin his chance with this girl, but he finds he can't tear his eyes away.

"Hi," the blonde smiles, throwing his mom a positively dazzling smile and he realizes that this—faux niceties and rehearsed pleasantries—is easy for her. He gets the impression she does that a lot—rehearse. The thought makes him unreasonably sad.

"Are you finding everything okay?" his mom asks.

Percy swallows noisily, hearing the sound echo endlessly through his head. He prays for his mom to just leave. Is it really too much to ask? He was clearly doing just fine without her.

"Perfect," the blonde assures his mom. "Percy was just helping me."

The sound of his name on her lips really shouldn't affect him like it does—but it does—and it does again and again and again until he forces himself to concentrate on something else, finding an annoying group of gnats to the blonde's left to be a perfectly suitable distraction.

"Oh, yes," Sally remarks cheerfully—she's Sally now, she's lost her mom privileges for at least a week—grazing at the bouquet between them. "Lovely collection you have here. Did you know Camellias symbolize longing"

Nope. That's it. Mom privileges revoked for a month now.

Percy wants nothing more than to melt into the floor. He's pretty sure he's never been so embarrassed in his life. This is worse than that time he woke up on someone's lawn after a party—much worse. At least that had been on a Saturday. No. This is all happening on a Monday.

"No," the hot-blonde-who-definitely-thinks-he's-some-weird-flower-loser chuckles, her eyes flashing with amusement. "I didn't know."

He wants to blame his mom for outing him as a hopeless sap—but then again, he'd chosen the flowers with that precise purpose hadn't he?

God, he hates Mondays.

—and his mom.

—and Camellias.

His mom leaves and he musters the courage to catch a glimpse of her face. He expects her to laugh at him. He expects her to let him down easy. He expects her to write a horribly exposé about the weird boy at the flower shop via yelp. He isn't sure what he's expecting, but it isn't a smile.

She's smiling.

Oh god, he's fucked.

"Annabeth," she says then, holding her hand for him to shake it. He thinks it's a little odd but takes it, shaking as if they're part of some ridiculous business meeting. He's still confused, but she's grinning and he can't help but match the contagious expression. "I just thought—now that I know your name, it's only fair you know mine."

He doesn't say anything—can't say anything. He really needs to work on his confidence. She doesn't seem to mind though. She just laughs, drawing away from him. She takes the bouquet he's procured and exits.

He stares down at the fifty dollar bill on the counter once she's gone. He should run after her, tell her that the bouquet was worth a lot less, but he doesn't. His legs are jelly, his stomach is still fluttering.

Annabeth, he thinks, then "Annabeth," he says.

He could get used to that.

...

It's a Wednesday—the most inoffensive day of the week—when she comes back into his life.

It's been nearly two weeks.

But a lot has happened in 14 days. He's embarrassed to admit that he may have begrudgingly flipped through a self-help book at Jason's request. And maybe, after repeated prodding from his friends, he's finally realized that the reason she was so upset he wasn't working on Sunday was because she wanted to see him not because she wanted floral expertise.

She—Annabeth—is wearing her Saint Xavior's uniform—okay so maybe he used the crest embroidered onto the right breast of her vest to identify her high school realized it was a horribly pretentious elite private school on the upper west side. And maybe he cross-referenced her name and the school's graduating class to find out she's a senior too and that she's apparently like really into robots or something—honestly, though, it's not that weird to do some research. Just to make sure she's not like... a murderer, you know?

Annabeth's hair is down again. She doesn't usually wear it down if her school pictures are anything to go by—not weird.

Annabeth is wearing makeup, the lightest brush of dark mascara coating her lashes. That's normal though—still not weird.

Annabeth is smiling, wide and happy. Her gray eyes are shining with a confidence that seems to permeate throughout her academics—okay, maybe a little weird.

"Get into another fight with your stepmom?" Percy asks, wearing an easy grin that only half forced.

"Nope," she smirks.

Percy's expression falters. He feels his heart tremor uncomfortably.

"Flowers for your boyfriend then?" he questioned, trying to remain impassive.

"I never said I had a boyfriend," she laughs.

"Oh."

"Well," she beams. "Aren't you going to ask?"

"Uh—" he stutters. His mind is short wiring. He doesn't know what shes's talking about. She's like really pretty, and it's like really distracting. She hasn't stopped smiling since she walked in. It occurs to him that as much as he hates working for his mom, he would gladly sit through horribly boring four-hour shifts just to see her like this. "Ask what?" he manages eventually.

"Aren't you going to ask me what I need them to say?"

"Oh yeah," Percy shakes his head, removing any fantastical notions that he'd stupidly created as he comes to the realization that he's not the reason she's here, it's the flowers—again. "What do you need them to say?"

"How do you say..." her eyes trail up his torso, lingering on his mouth, but the moment is so short he worries he just imagined it. "I've been pretending to need flowers for weeks and it's thoroughly drained my wallet—worse even, my stepmom thinks I actually like her now."

He blinks, then he grins. He reaches behind him, plucking a Red Chrysanthemum from a display. It's still dripping he offers it to her. She takes it.

"What's this supposed to mean?" Annabeth asks, holding it to her chest. A dimple appears next to her cheek. She's biting back a wide grin. He thinks she probably already knows, she's just asking to hear him say it.

"It means I like you too," Percy laughs, something foreign and light and whimsical and wonderful blossoming in his chest.

"Hm," she hums, gazing down at it. Her voice is unusually tight, brimming with apparent excitement. The realization makes him stupid happy. "They have flowers for that?"

"No," he scoffs, hopping over the counter to stand in front of her. He wasn't working anyway, just awkwardly hanging out waiting for her to show up. "But they don't exactly have flowers for fuck you either."

Annabeth shoves him playfully, her hand coming in contact with his shoulder. His gaze skates down to it, feeling an entirely foreign warmth fill him at her touch. He glances up at her, meeting her eyes. They're caught halfway between a glare and simper.

He knows its a risk, and maybe it's the weird book Jason made him read, maybe it's the confidence that surges through his body when she looks at him, but he bends down, brushing his lips tentatively over hers. She sighs into his mouth, wrapping her arms around his neck as she curls into him. He feels the Chrysanthemum tickle his ear and smiles.

He thinks Wednesday might be his new favorite day.

a/n: hi guys, pls don't kill me. I swear im still working on my other stories. this is a cheesy little one-shot I wrote based on some tumblr prompt and thought I'd post it. lol also I feel bad for making you guys wait for so long, fb will be out tomorrow, promise.