Fic: Man, I Feel Like A, Percy Jackson
Title: Man, I Feel Like A
Fandom: Percy Jackson and the Olympians
Characters/Pairings: Percy/Annabeth
Word Count: 4,500
Done for the pjo_kinkmeme. The prompt was, Percy/Annabeth, genderswap, only lastling is amazing and beat me to it.
Also available @ AO3.
The first thing Percy thought when he woke up with one more X chromosome than he had the day before was not, in fact, oh my gods, I've got girl parts.
It was, Oh my gods, I have fantastic hair.
"I have fantastic hair," he announces to Annabeth when he manages to get out of bed, haul on his pants (he has to cinch his belt to the very last loop, and even then, the starched lines sag in places and make his hips look horrible), get out the hatch, and down one deck to the womens' sleeping quarters. There's a trace of smugness in his voice -- he'd never been able to just walk into the womens' quarters before.
"Seriously," he says to the back of Annabeth's head. "Check it out."
And he does have fantastic hair -- it's dark, which before was just a stated fact on him, but now it's not just dark, it's dark and long and when he sweeps it over his shoulder to inspect it, it catches all kinds of colors in the overhead lights; chestnut and deep chocolate brown and shocks of pure black, glossy like the page of a magazine. It's got this wave to it that makes him look either salon-professional or professionally-ravished. He kind of wants to flip it, or comb his fingers through it, because hello, it's amazing.
Annabeth rolls over.
"Woah," goes Percy.
"Why is there a guy in Annabeth's bed at 0500?" asks the girl in the next bunk over, sounding sleepy and a little too interested. "And why is Annabeth not in there with him?"
"... can I start swearing in ancient Greek yet?" Annabeth wants to know, her voice deep like a gravel rock road.
"Yes," Percy nods, doe-eyed and staring. "Yes, you can."
"Oh, good."
+++
"Stop that," Percy hisses for the third time. They've managed to lock themselves in the third storeroom just off the kitchens -- it's a space roughly the size of a handicapped bathroom stall, and it's the only place on the entire ship you can go for reasonable privacy, if you don't mind sharing some personal space with the bins of potatoes and a couple limes.
Annabeth makes a face and stops shifting her legs uncomfortably. "I can't help it," she snaps. Her first thought upon waking up with one less X chromosome than she had the day before had, in fact, been, oh my gods, I've got guy parts. "It feels weird! I can feel it every time I take a step, and every time I sit down. I'm used to everything being all neatly tucked up on the inside. How can you guys stand just having it hanging all the time?" She puts a hand to the front of her pants -- which are actually Percy's pants; it took them a minute and a half to conclude that swapping clothes was a brilliant idea, since nothing was going to get them noticed faster than having an untidy uniform -- and adjusts herself. Percy fights down the ridiculous urge to flap his hands at her, or cover his eyes. It's not like it's anything he hasn't done himself, but still.
She pushes herself off one of the potato bins, and paces a very tight square. When she nears him, he finds that he has to tilt his chin back to look up at her face, which he hasn't had to do since he was thirteen and she hit her growth spurt before he did. It's weird.
"We didn't eat anything strange," she recaps the conversation they've had thusfar, once they both took a moment to privately freak out. "We didn't piss anyone off that we know of. We didn't even talk to anyone we didn't know. And unless Petty Officer Ichburg is secretly a gender-swapping voodoo priest, there's nobody who wants to teach us a lesson."
"Ichburg's a whiny bitch," is Percy's helpful input. He twists off a white root from one of the potatoes. "Who hates losing at blackjack and doesn't have enough brain cells firing at the same time to curse us, even if he did have magical gender-swapping voodoo powers. Which I doubt, but I also doubted that the meteorology assistant at boot camp wanted to eat us, so we can tie Ichburg to a chair today, if it'll make you feel better."
Annabeth puts her hands on her hips, except she doesn't actually have any hips, so her hands just kind of slip off her hip bones. She looks unsettled for a moment: an expression that's becoming rapidly familiar, every time they're physically reminded that they're occupying entirely different space than they're used to. They've already pinky-swore never to admit how many times they've banged heads, elbows, and toes into things, misjudging their size, in the past hour alone.
"You know," she goes, settling for rubbing the back of her hand across her jaw, which is shaded with just the lightest bit of stubble. "This still isn't the strangest thing that's happened to us."
"No," Percy agrees. That would have been the guinea pig episode on Circe's island.
"And we'll figure it out and fix it, no problem." She bobs her head confidently. Then her mouth twists a little bit, and she moves her hand to --
"Stop that!"
+++
Percy doesn't think it's a coincidence that now, after five months at sea, the USS Jeffersonian is finally coming into port, and the morning that shore leave for all crew members officially begins, he and Annabeth wake up with completely different internal plumbing.
There's absolutely no way to disguise what happened to them, or to pass off as each other; Percy is small, fey, and dark, while Annabeth has California-tanned skin and fair golden hair running all up and down her arms. They look like completely different people, so they don't even try. They kill time by going from one end of the ship to the other looking like they're going somewhere fast, and pack their duffels in their own quarters. People look at them, frowning sidelong as they pass, trying to place them, but they never give anyone the chance to stop them. Their duties are short and sweet, and everyone is just that shade of punch-drunk at the idea of solid land that if the Percy Jackson that always does coordinate work in the CDC happens to have boobs today, well, they don't notice.
By the time they're allowed to deboard for two-week shore leave, it's like frat boys on Spring Break.
"Hey, Marshall!" Annabeth says, cheery, to the guy who's checking them off as they leave the ship. "Chase, Annabeth and Jackson, Percy, please."
"Got it," goes Lieutenant Marshall, entering into his electronic reader. "Have yourselves a lovely --" he looks up, and cuts himself off.
Annabeth has her duffel bag slung over one shoulder and Percy slung over the other, like sacks of potatoes. This is what followed Annabeth discovering that for what she suddenly lacked in coordination, she made up for in brawn; a subtle, powerful, "can twist the lid off the spaghetti sauce jar in one try" kind of strength, and the immediate need to test its limits. Hence Percy now kind of despondently hanging over her shoulder, trying very hard not to watch the flex of her ass muscles when she walked. Not that there was anywhere else to look, really.
She sidles on by Marshall, who turns to keep staring at them, and goes on staring even after they've disappeared off down the plank, blinking once or twice.
The great thing about being in the Navy, though, is that those things they don't quite understand, they pretend they never saw. It's kind of like the Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy in the Army, except with sea legs and claustrophobia.
+++
He isn't sure where they are, exactly -- he can tell you their exact latitude and longitude, and can translate it to mean somewhere in Central America, where the sun is white-washed bright and the people speak easy, passable English. Panama, maybe.
Their first course of action -- after trying not to embarrass themselves by kissing the ground (it's a near thing) and changing currency -- is to find out if there's anything Olympian in the area. With the exception of the schools of hippocampi they've passed and the Greek kelpie that lives in the plumbing on C deck, they haven't had any contact with things beyond the Mist since they left port in the States. It's a good place to start if they're going to find out what happened to them.
"Dude," says Percy, twenty minutes later. "I don't believe this. Two weeks of shore leave in a tropical sea-side city, and the first place we go is the library?" He gives her a disgusted look, aimed initially at her bicep before he readjusts for her new height. "Why did I ever think higher education was sexy on you?"
"You're a whiny bitch," she replies, not offended.
"Why thank you," he tells her, voice bright, as she props an elbow up on his shoulder, which is at a convenient level for her to lean on him. "I haven't gotten that one before. I should tell Mom."
She laughs at that, and it's a nice laugh. Perhaps not as fantastic as his hair, but it's her best feature as a man: deep and rumbling rough, like a car engine turning over. The rest of her isn't all that hard on the eyes, either. Tall, tan, and muscular -- not freakishly so, but toned, like the corn-fed version of that kid that only gets picked for the high school football team because he's willing to risk brain damage and he looks good, talent at sports notwithstanding. Her eyes are the same, though; flinting grey and intelligent.
"Well, come on, then," he goes, shaking off her arm. "Let's find our Olympian."
He even holds the door open for her, which earns him an amused look. He just arches an eyebrow at her and dares her to say anything.
+++
Percy entertains the idea of actually going through old newspapers in search of anything that sounds familiar for all of about three and a half seconds, before he thinks, screw that noise, because a) not in English and b) duh, dyslexia, they'd be here all day.
Instead, he talks to the librarian, who's the widow of a Marine, her high school sweetheart from small town, Wisconsin. It'd been his dream to move here, so after he passed, she got herself a one-way ticket and didn't look back: she's been here for forty years and knows everything there is to know about everyone, like a localized Google search engine, only with cataracts. In return, Percy tells her the censored-for-mortals version of his own story (which isn't too off the uncensored version; girl tells her boyfriend that she's going to join the Army, because the education's good and she's looking for a way to go on defending America -- and Olympus -- even without Camp or prophecy. Boy tells girlfriend okay, but how about we go Navy instead. Girl says, we? Boy says, we,) and they swap dirty military jokes for awhile, because those never get old.
She tells him about the man who owns a cabana on the beach, where strange things always happen. Monsters, she says, although no one's every gotten a real close look at any of them.
Percy most definitely does not skip out of the library, in case anyone asks.
He stops when he sees Annabeth just down the block, paused outside a bus stop with cold drinks in hand. He can see the beads of condensation from here. She's talking to two girls, whose long bronze legs are stretched towards her and whose bellybuttons are pierced with something that glitters in the sun. They toss their hair in unison and giggle at something Annabeth says. She looks startled by the response, but grins, shy and pleased, her interest captured.
Anger erupts in Percy's chest, urgent and overwhelming, only it's not like any anger he's felt before. He knows anger, knows helplessness and frustration in all its forms, shapes, and flavors, has known them since he was four years old and first finding out that letters didn't work for him. But this is different; the anger he's used to is white-hot, like staring into the sun, but this feeling is cold, clenching at his gut and sending a shockwave of shivers over his skin, and his hands are white-knuckled fists without him even noticing.
It's jealousy, he realizes; jealousy how a girl must feel it, icy cold.
"How do you even live with it?" he demands, at her side with no clear idea how he got here, other than he's pretty sure there should be a sharp, graphite cartoon scribble of annoyance following him. "It's horrible."
Annabeth blinks at him. "Hi," she goes, and hands him the cold drink. When his eyes flick to the girls -- who are still trying to hit on his girlfriend even with him standing right there -- her mouth quirks, and she quickly steers him in the direction he came with a quick wave over her shoulder.
"Seriously! How do you stand it? No wonder it's called nuclear winter. Dear gods, that's an awful --"
"Did you find anything?" she interrupts, successfully deterring him from wondering if he could, in fact, turn somebody to ice with his powers. He's never tried before, but those girls are looking like good candidates. His girlfriend, for crying out loud, did they have no shame?
He tells her about the man in the cabana on the beach who attracts trouble and mysterious sightings, calming down the more he talks. She nods and says, let's go check it out. Might be a gender-swapping minor god or something.
"You know," she adds placatingly, after they've found the address to the place. "There are some benefits to being a girl."
"Like what?"
She grins at him sideways. "Multiple orgasms."
Percy walks into a pole.
+++
"I'm not letting you go in there by yourself," Annabeth frowns, glancing up the street. With the afternoon sun slanting in and people milling around on the boardwalk, the cabana doesn't look like much at all; a kitschy beach bungalow-looking place with curling neon letters unlit above the thatch and a flashing open sign.
Percy tugs mercilessly at the band in his hair -- it'd taken him the better part of half an hour this morning to figure out how to twist his hair up into a ponytail, and now it won't come out. He cuts a sharp look at her. "Hey!" he goes, once he recognizes the intent behind her worried lip. "Don't go all protective on me just because I'm smaller than you. I'll be fine."
"You'll be carded, you kelp head. I'm going to laugh when they toss you right out on your ass in fifteen minutes."
"I won't be. I've got these." He points at his breasts. He'd chickened out of putting on one of Annabeth's bras -- because, weird -- so he's not wearing one. "They're like Visa. They're accepted everywhere."
"I'm still going to laugh."
Fifteen minutes later, and he's back outside again, his hair catching seven different colors all loose around his flushed face, the top three buttons of his uniform undone and blood already crusting black on his knuckles. He feels positively ecstatic, and Annabeth's got her eye on him like she's expecting him to clomp his spurs and twirl pistols off his fingers or something. She's not laughing, but she doesn't even give him the benefit of looking surprised.
Instead, she just kind of knuckles her forehead and goes, "Is there anyone left conscious in there?"
"... No?" Percy offers cautiously.
"Did you at least talk to the guy?"
His face falls. "No. I forgot."
She looks at him, so flat and deadpan and perfectly Annabeth, even with the Adam's apple and sandy cheekbones, that he huffs defensively and drops onto the curb beside her. "No, really. I've never been treated like that before in my life. Well, not since Nancy Bofett in the fifth grade, but at least she called me names to my face and not to my boobs. Is it really like that for girls everywhere? It's disgusting. So I took out the whole bar."
"Of course you did," says Annabeth, the way one tries to pacify a child who confesses that he only dunked one rabbit in the paint can, he swears.
"The owner's a half-blood, though," Percy's offended, self-righteous tone switches to business so fast it gives him whiplash. "I could tell. He fights with that split-second twitch in his eye that all of us with ADHD do, and his punches are mortal. Son of Apollo, I'd hazard a guess, if his crappy pick-up lines are anything to go by. You'd think a bartender would have better material by now."
"So not our guy," she translates, bracing her arms on her knees and steepling her fingers together. Her hands, Percy notes with something funny fluttering low in his stomach, are bigger than his face.
"Yeah," he says absently. Her hands are like shovels, her fingers long-boned. "He didn't recognize me, so I really don't think he's the one casting gender-switch charms on the half-blood sailors that come into port."
"Back to square one." She nods. Pushes herself up and brushes loose soil and sand off her slacks. "Right. Okay. I'm going to go pee, and we'll start looking again."
"All right." She's almost half-way to the cabana before he remembers. "Don't forget to aim!"
"Oh, shut up!"
He chuckles, scooting back so he can rest his back up against a palm tree. The bones in his hands ache and there's a pull in his back and shoulders from throwing too many punches and forgetting that his center of gravity isn't what it usually is. He's going to be sore tomorrow, but it's kind of worth it. He'd gone in there to talk, for the sake of all that's holy, but the middle-aged patrons with the watery come-ons had took one look at him and decided he didn't have anything to say that they wanted to hear, and the assumption was enough to piss Percy the hell off. Yeah, the split knuckles are worth it, and Percy thinks he might even understand the "women are not sex objects" thing.
Almost.
But first, they still need to find out who turned them this way, how they did it, and why.
+++
The answers are: Eros, otherwise known as Cupid; with a magical, heart-shaped Arrow of Genderswap or whatever; and because he was bored and what the hell, gods have been fucking with demigods since the beginning of time, why break with tradition now.
They find this out when Eros himself shows up about twenty minutes later, loudly proclaiming that, "Oh, for the love of my sandals, you two have to be the most boring people I have ever met!"
They stare. And blink. And stare.
He flaps his wrists at them, furious and apparently not expecting a response. He plants his hands on his hips and glares them down. "I mean, really? You get these brand-new fabulous hot bodies, courtesy of moi, thank you very much, and the first thing you do with them is go to the library. This is worse than, like, Beauty and the Geek. I want a refund."
"Um," offers Percy after a moment, cutting his eyes sideways at his girlfriend, whose mouth is turned down at the corners, because hello, boring is kind of the last word they'd use to describe themselves. "You did this to us?" he goes, focus flicking front again, but he can feel Annabeth roll her eyes: it's a physical thing. And yeah, okay, true, dumb question, but whatever. Gods don't expect much from demigods, especially ones they didn't spawn.
Eros just sighs again. Like all gods, he's somewhere around eight feet tall. His skin is a rich, husky caramel shade and his hair rakish and (sorry, there's no other way to describe it) raven-colored: he looks like one of those Latino boys who would serenade you with a mariachi band underneath your window, or sweet-talk you in Spanish until your knees went weak -- not that it's ever happened to Percy. (At least not recently.) He's wearing a black silk shirt that's unbuttoned practically to his navel, exposing a set of pecs that would make Fabio weep for poetry. He's like a walking wet dream, and Percy is totally comfortable admitting that, because right now he's in a girl's body with a girl's pheromones going, attack maul want, and it's all a little messed up.
Which is all because of -- "Yeah," goes Eros, shifting his weight. He has a quiver slung over his shoulder. "Dude, you have no idea how boring it is to be me right now, okay?"
He has that nasal hitch to his voice that says he's building up to a good, long rant. Percy sends Annabeth a look through his eyelashes, a, Is out here on the sidewalk really the best place to do this?
Annabeth shrugs, a, As long as he doesn't try to kill us and feed us to something, I'm okay with it.
"No, really," Eros is complaining, somewhere above their heads. "I'm completely serious. What with pay-per-view porn and RedTube and all that jazz so readily available, nobody's stopping to look at each other anymore. Nobody looks to see what's attractive in other people, and if people aren't looking at each other, I can't do my thing." He mimes firing an arrow.
"And picking on us was the solution?" Annabeth folds her arms across her chest, making her biceps bunch up.
"Well, no," Eros shrugs, unapologetic. "I was bored and then my mom suggested I play around with you two. She still likes you a lot," he confides to Percy, who remembers being cornered by Aphrodite in the back of a limo when he was thirteen years old as a vague and extremely confusing rush of things, and something about her promising to make things difficult for him. "She finds you entertaining."
"I'm glad she thinks so," says Percy, who most definitely isn't.
The god of lust looks incredibly put upon. "But you two aren't doing anything. Did you know that people, in general, when they find themselves a different gender than they were the day before, like to start playing with the different equipment first thing? Especially with their partner? It's, like, instant-aphrodisiac. But no. You two deliberately don't have sex -- which, what, where's the fun in that -- and instead, try to hunt down everything Olympian in this city. You're military, too. I thought you'd be gagging for it, you're so repressed. You make me deeply ashamed, you really do."
And that's kind of the last straw for Percy.
"Dude," he says, cutting off Annabeth, who's automatically opened her mouth to protest as well. "No. You're full of shit."
Eros blinks. So does Annabeth, her mouth slightly ajar.
"I'm not kidding," Percy insists. "Annabeth is my girlfriend. I will always find her hot, okay, like, that's the point, isn't it? Whether she's got boobs or a dick or hasn't shaved her legs or drools in her sleep or is covered in monster guts, she'll always be attractive to me. And yet, I don't need to jump her bones every time I see her, because I like her more than for just how hot she is. So, no, we can get gender-swapped without immediately diving for each other's equipment, okay."
The silence that comes after that doesn't fall so much as land between them with a helpless splat and kind of quivers there uselessly. He doesn't really bother with it, since he's too busy looking at said girlfriend, who is six foot tall and looks like a wholesome small-town farm boy and has a bit of a lantern jaw and is still kind of the hottest thing he's ever seen. And she's smiling back at him kind of like she isn't seeing anyone else. He knows that look: it's usually followed by her cuffing him over the head and calling him Seaweed Brain.
"Like I said," says Eros after a beat or two. "Boring."
Moment broken, Percy throws his hands into the air and manfully resists the urge to kick him in the nuts, because they're probably Eros's most valuable possession. It's not like he's using any other available brain.
"Whatever," he goes, and finds that the word comes out of his mouth sounding so much prissier now that he's female. He kinda likes it. "Can you change us back?"
"Yeah, fine," the god grumps. He digs around in the back pocket of his skin-tight -- oh gods, are those leather pants -- and pulls out something that looks suspiciously like a beermat. He tosses it at Percy, who catches it one-handed -- which, awesome. "Read that," he goes. "And you'll be back to the way you were before. Right after transformation, don't drive or operate machinery. Some side effects may be included, like dizziness, dry throat, and still being boring."
And with that, he vanishes in a pink-tinged cloud of dust and a smell that Percy shouldn't be able to recognize as the cherry-flavored offbrand of KY, but does.
He looks down at the beermat he threw at them and sighs. Great. More words. He hates words.
"This sounds like something Apollo would write to woo a chick," he complains.
Annabeth snorts. "They probably swap pick-up lines."
They pause for a moment to look at each other, struck with horror that she even brought it up.
"We should read it," she says quickly. He nods, and then gets stuck again, this time looking at her, trying to read her like she's one of those 3D puzzle images in the newspaper, and she'll make sense if he just lets his eyes cross. He thinks maybe the Annabeth he's familiar with is in there: the shape and color of her eyes, the quick flash of a smug smile. But that doesn't matter, not really, does it, because it's Annabeth, no matter what gender she's wearing. And he's going to turn her back to the girl with the blonde ponytail and the curvy hips, and turn himself back to the guy whose hair is short and just black and not nearly as thick and fabulous.
Annabeth's looking right back at him, and it's like the moment they were having before, only then she opens her mouth and goes, "Just ... hang on a second. I'm sorry, I've been wanting to do this all day."
She reaches out, fastens one hand on his right boob, and squeezes.
Very deliberately, he rolls his eyes and allows it, before he says, "Dude, you are groping me."
She lets go instantly, the tips of her ears bright red. "I don't get it. It's like, hard-wired into my brain, and I still don't get it. Like, what is it about breasts that guys find so attractive?"
"They're amazing," is all Percy can say, because really, that's the extent of his thoughts on the subject.
"Yes, but. Argh!" She comes very, very close to stamping her foot, but stops herself. "It's just one of those things I wish I could answer. Whatever. Read the spell."
"Oh, screw that." They have two weeks of shore leave. There's plenty of time to read the spell.
He reaches out and pulls Annabeth down, wondering what stubble burn feels like.
-fin
Fandom: Percy Jackson and the Olympians
Characters/Pairings: Percy/Annabeth
Word Count: 4,500
Done for the pjo_kinkmeme. The prompt was, Percy/Annabeth, genderswap, only lastling is amazing and beat me to it.
Also available @ AO3.
The first thing Percy thought when he woke up with one more X chromosome than he had the day before was not, in fact, oh my gods, I've got girl parts.
It was, Oh my gods, I have fantastic hair.
"I have fantastic hair," he announces to Annabeth when he manages to get out of bed, haul on his pants (he has to cinch his belt to the very last loop, and even then, the starched lines sag in places and make his hips look horrible), get out the hatch, and down one deck to the womens' sleeping quarters. There's a trace of smugness in his voice -- he'd never been able to just walk into the womens' quarters before.
"Seriously," he says to the back of Annabeth's head. "Check it out."
And he does have fantastic hair -- it's dark, which before was just a stated fact on him, but now it's not just dark, it's dark and long and when he sweeps it over his shoulder to inspect it, it catches all kinds of colors in the overhead lights; chestnut and deep chocolate brown and shocks of pure black, glossy like the page of a magazine. It's got this wave to it that makes him look either salon-professional or professionally-ravished. He kind of wants to flip it, or comb his fingers through it, because hello, it's amazing.
Annabeth rolls over.
"Woah," goes Percy.
"Why is there a guy in Annabeth's bed at 0500?" asks the girl in the next bunk over, sounding sleepy and a little too interested. "And why is Annabeth not in there with him?"
"... can I start swearing in ancient Greek yet?" Annabeth wants to know, her voice deep like a gravel rock road.
"Yes," Percy nods, doe-eyed and staring. "Yes, you can."
"Oh, good."
+++
"Stop that," Percy hisses for the third time. They've managed to lock themselves in the third storeroom just off the kitchens -- it's a space roughly the size of a handicapped bathroom stall, and it's the only place on the entire ship you can go for reasonable privacy, if you don't mind sharing some personal space with the bins of potatoes and a couple limes.
Annabeth makes a face and stops shifting her legs uncomfortably. "I can't help it," she snaps. Her first thought upon waking up with one less X chromosome than she had the day before had, in fact, been, oh my gods, I've got guy parts. "It feels weird! I can feel it every time I take a step, and every time I sit down. I'm used to everything being all neatly tucked up on the inside. How can you guys stand just having it hanging all the time?" She puts a hand to the front of her pants -- which are actually Percy's pants; it took them a minute and a half to conclude that swapping clothes was a brilliant idea, since nothing was going to get them noticed faster than having an untidy uniform -- and adjusts herself. Percy fights down the ridiculous urge to flap his hands at her, or cover his eyes. It's not like it's anything he hasn't done himself, but still.
She pushes herself off one of the potato bins, and paces a very tight square. When she nears him, he finds that he has to tilt his chin back to look up at her face, which he hasn't had to do since he was thirteen and she hit her growth spurt before he did. It's weird.
"We didn't eat anything strange," she recaps the conversation they've had thusfar, once they both took a moment to privately freak out. "We didn't piss anyone off that we know of. We didn't even talk to anyone we didn't know. And unless Petty Officer Ichburg is secretly a gender-swapping voodoo priest, there's nobody who wants to teach us a lesson."
"Ichburg's a whiny bitch," is Percy's helpful input. He twists off a white root from one of the potatoes. "Who hates losing at blackjack and doesn't have enough brain cells firing at the same time to curse us, even if he did have magical gender-swapping voodoo powers. Which I doubt, but I also doubted that the meteorology assistant at boot camp wanted to eat us, so we can tie Ichburg to a chair today, if it'll make you feel better."
Annabeth puts her hands on her hips, except she doesn't actually have any hips, so her hands just kind of slip off her hip bones. She looks unsettled for a moment: an expression that's becoming rapidly familiar, every time they're physically reminded that they're occupying entirely different space than they're used to. They've already pinky-swore never to admit how many times they've banged heads, elbows, and toes into things, misjudging their size, in the past hour alone.
"You know," she goes, settling for rubbing the back of her hand across her jaw, which is shaded with just the lightest bit of stubble. "This still isn't the strangest thing that's happened to us."
"No," Percy agrees. That would have been the guinea pig episode on Circe's island.
"And we'll figure it out and fix it, no problem." She bobs her head confidently. Then her mouth twists a little bit, and she moves her hand to --
"Stop that!"
+++
Percy doesn't think it's a coincidence that now, after five months at sea, the USS Jeffersonian is finally coming into port, and the morning that shore leave for all crew members officially begins, he and Annabeth wake up with completely different internal plumbing.
There's absolutely no way to disguise what happened to them, or to pass off as each other; Percy is small, fey, and dark, while Annabeth has California-tanned skin and fair golden hair running all up and down her arms. They look like completely different people, so they don't even try. They kill time by going from one end of the ship to the other looking like they're going somewhere fast, and pack their duffels in their own quarters. People look at them, frowning sidelong as they pass, trying to place them, but they never give anyone the chance to stop them. Their duties are short and sweet, and everyone is just that shade of punch-drunk at the idea of solid land that if the Percy Jackson that always does coordinate work in the CDC happens to have boobs today, well, they don't notice.
By the time they're allowed to deboard for two-week shore leave, it's like frat boys on Spring Break.
"Hey, Marshall!" Annabeth says, cheery, to the guy who's checking them off as they leave the ship. "Chase, Annabeth and Jackson, Percy, please."
"Got it," goes Lieutenant Marshall, entering into his electronic reader. "Have yourselves a lovely --" he looks up, and cuts himself off.
Annabeth has her duffel bag slung over one shoulder and Percy slung over the other, like sacks of potatoes. This is what followed Annabeth discovering that for what she suddenly lacked in coordination, she made up for in brawn; a subtle, powerful, "can twist the lid off the spaghetti sauce jar in one try" kind of strength, and the immediate need to test its limits. Hence Percy now kind of despondently hanging over her shoulder, trying very hard not to watch the flex of her ass muscles when she walked. Not that there was anywhere else to look, really.
She sidles on by Marshall, who turns to keep staring at them, and goes on staring even after they've disappeared off down the plank, blinking once or twice.
The great thing about being in the Navy, though, is that those things they don't quite understand, they pretend they never saw. It's kind of like the Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy in the Army, except with sea legs and claustrophobia.
+++
He isn't sure where they are, exactly -- he can tell you their exact latitude and longitude, and can translate it to mean somewhere in Central America, where the sun is white-washed bright and the people speak easy, passable English. Panama, maybe.
Their first course of action -- after trying not to embarrass themselves by kissing the ground (it's a near thing) and changing currency -- is to find out if there's anything Olympian in the area. With the exception of the schools of hippocampi they've passed and the Greek kelpie that lives in the plumbing on C deck, they haven't had any contact with things beyond the Mist since they left port in the States. It's a good place to start if they're going to find out what happened to them.
"Dude," says Percy, twenty minutes later. "I don't believe this. Two weeks of shore leave in a tropical sea-side city, and the first place we go is the library?" He gives her a disgusted look, aimed initially at her bicep before he readjusts for her new height. "Why did I ever think higher education was sexy on you?"
"You're a whiny bitch," she replies, not offended.
"Why thank you," he tells her, voice bright, as she props an elbow up on his shoulder, which is at a convenient level for her to lean on him. "I haven't gotten that one before. I should tell Mom."
She laughs at that, and it's a nice laugh. Perhaps not as fantastic as his hair, but it's her best feature as a man: deep and rumbling rough, like a car engine turning over. The rest of her isn't all that hard on the eyes, either. Tall, tan, and muscular -- not freakishly so, but toned, like the corn-fed version of that kid that only gets picked for the high school football team because he's willing to risk brain damage and he looks good, talent at sports notwithstanding. Her eyes are the same, though; flinting grey and intelligent.
"Well, come on, then," he goes, shaking off her arm. "Let's find our Olympian."
He even holds the door open for her, which earns him an amused look. He just arches an eyebrow at her and dares her to say anything.
+++
Percy entertains the idea of actually going through old newspapers in search of anything that sounds familiar for all of about three and a half seconds, before he thinks, screw that noise, because a) not in English and b) duh, dyslexia, they'd be here all day.
Instead, he talks to the librarian, who's the widow of a Marine, her high school sweetheart from small town, Wisconsin. It'd been his dream to move here, so after he passed, she got herself a one-way ticket and didn't look back: she's been here for forty years and knows everything there is to know about everyone, like a localized Google search engine, only with cataracts. In return, Percy tells her the censored-for-mortals version of his own story (which isn't too off the uncensored version; girl tells her boyfriend that she's going to join the Army, because the education's good and she's looking for a way to go on defending America -- and Olympus -- even without Camp or prophecy. Boy tells girlfriend okay, but how about we go Navy instead. Girl says, we? Boy says, we,) and they swap dirty military jokes for awhile, because those never get old.
She tells him about the man who owns a cabana on the beach, where strange things always happen. Monsters, she says, although no one's every gotten a real close look at any of them.
Percy most definitely does not skip out of the library, in case anyone asks.
He stops when he sees Annabeth just down the block, paused outside a bus stop with cold drinks in hand. He can see the beads of condensation from here. She's talking to two girls, whose long bronze legs are stretched towards her and whose bellybuttons are pierced with something that glitters in the sun. They toss their hair in unison and giggle at something Annabeth says. She looks startled by the response, but grins, shy and pleased, her interest captured.
Anger erupts in Percy's chest, urgent and overwhelming, only it's not like any anger he's felt before. He knows anger, knows helplessness and frustration in all its forms, shapes, and flavors, has known them since he was four years old and first finding out that letters didn't work for him. But this is different; the anger he's used to is white-hot, like staring into the sun, but this feeling is cold, clenching at his gut and sending a shockwave of shivers over his skin, and his hands are white-knuckled fists without him even noticing.
It's jealousy, he realizes; jealousy how a girl must feel it, icy cold.
"How do you even live with it?" he demands, at her side with no clear idea how he got here, other than he's pretty sure there should be a sharp, graphite cartoon scribble of annoyance following him. "It's horrible."
Annabeth blinks at him. "Hi," she goes, and hands him the cold drink. When his eyes flick to the girls -- who are still trying to hit on his girlfriend even with him standing right there -- her mouth quirks, and she quickly steers him in the direction he came with a quick wave over her shoulder.
"Seriously! How do you stand it? No wonder it's called nuclear winter. Dear gods, that's an awful --"
"Did you find anything?" she interrupts, successfully deterring him from wondering if he could, in fact, turn somebody to ice with his powers. He's never tried before, but those girls are looking like good candidates. His girlfriend, for crying out loud, did they have no shame?
He tells her about the man in the cabana on the beach who attracts trouble and mysterious sightings, calming down the more he talks. She nods and says, let's go check it out. Might be a gender-swapping minor god or something.
"You know," she adds placatingly, after they've found the address to the place. "There are some benefits to being a girl."
"Like what?"
She grins at him sideways. "Multiple orgasms."
Percy walks into a pole.
+++
"I'm not letting you go in there by yourself," Annabeth frowns, glancing up the street. With the afternoon sun slanting in and people milling around on the boardwalk, the cabana doesn't look like much at all; a kitschy beach bungalow-looking place with curling neon letters unlit above the thatch and a flashing open sign.
Percy tugs mercilessly at the band in his hair -- it'd taken him the better part of half an hour this morning to figure out how to twist his hair up into a ponytail, and now it won't come out. He cuts a sharp look at her. "Hey!" he goes, once he recognizes the intent behind her worried lip. "Don't go all protective on me just because I'm smaller than you. I'll be fine."
"You'll be carded, you kelp head. I'm going to laugh when they toss you right out on your ass in fifteen minutes."
"I won't be. I've got these." He points at his breasts. He'd chickened out of putting on one of Annabeth's bras -- because, weird -- so he's not wearing one. "They're like Visa. They're accepted everywhere."
"I'm still going to laugh."
Fifteen minutes later, and he's back outside again, his hair catching seven different colors all loose around his flushed face, the top three buttons of his uniform undone and blood already crusting black on his knuckles. He feels positively ecstatic, and Annabeth's got her eye on him like she's expecting him to clomp his spurs and twirl pistols off his fingers or something. She's not laughing, but she doesn't even give him the benefit of looking surprised.
Instead, she just kind of knuckles her forehead and goes, "Is there anyone left conscious in there?"
"... No?" Percy offers cautiously.
"Did you at least talk to the guy?"
His face falls. "No. I forgot."
She looks at him, so flat and deadpan and perfectly Annabeth, even with the Adam's apple and sandy cheekbones, that he huffs defensively and drops onto the curb beside her. "No, really. I've never been treated like that before in my life. Well, not since Nancy Bofett in the fifth grade, but at least she called me names to my face and not to my boobs. Is it really like that for girls everywhere? It's disgusting. So I took out the whole bar."
"Of course you did," says Annabeth, the way one tries to pacify a child who confesses that he only dunked one rabbit in the paint can, he swears.
"The owner's a half-blood, though," Percy's offended, self-righteous tone switches to business so fast it gives him whiplash. "I could tell. He fights with that split-second twitch in his eye that all of us with ADHD do, and his punches are mortal. Son of Apollo, I'd hazard a guess, if his crappy pick-up lines are anything to go by. You'd think a bartender would have better material by now."
"So not our guy," she translates, bracing her arms on her knees and steepling her fingers together. Her hands, Percy notes with something funny fluttering low in his stomach, are bigger than his face.
"Yeah," he says absently. Her hands are like shovels, her fingers long-boned. "He didn't recognize me, so I really don't think he's the one casting gender-switch charms on the half-blood sailors that come into port."
"Back to square one." She nods. Pushes herself up and brushes loose soil and sand off her slacks. "Right. Okay. I'm going to go pee, and we'll start looking again."
"All right." She's almost half-way to the cabana before he remembers. "Don't forget to aim!"
"Oh, shut up!"
He chuckles, scooting back so he can rest his back up against a palm tree. The bones in his hands ache and there's a pull in his back and shoulders from throwing too many punches and forgetting that his center of gravity isn't what it usually is. He's going to be sore tomorrow, but it's kind of worth it. He'd gone in there to talk, for the sake of all that's holy, but the middle-aged patrons with the watery come-ons had took one look at him and decided he didn't have anything to say that they wanted to hear, and the assumption was enough to piss Percy the hell off. Yeah, the split knuckles are worth it, and Percy thinks he might even understand the "women are not sex objects" thing.
Almost.
But first, they still need to find out who turned them this way, how they did it, and why.
+++
The answers are: Eros, otherwise known as Cupid; with a magical, heart-shaped Arrow of Genderswap or whatever; and because he was bored and what the hell, gods have been fucking with demigods since the beginning of time, why break with tradition now.
They find this out when Eros himself shows up about twenty minutes later, loudly proclaiming that, "Oh, for the love of my sandals, you two have to be the most boring people I have ever met!"
They stare. And blink. And stare.
He flaps his wrists at them, furious and apparently not expecting a response. He plants his hands on his hips and glares them down. "I mean, really? You get these brand-new fabulous hot bodies, courtesy of moi, thank you very much, and the first thing you do with them is go to the library. This is worse than, like, Beauty and the Geek. I want a refund."
"Um," offers Percy after a moment, cutting his eyes sideways at his girlfriend, whose mouth is turned down at the corners, because hello, boring is kind of the last word they'd use to describe themselves. "You did this to us?" he goes, focus flicking front again, but he can feel Annabeth roll her eyes: it's a physical thing. And yeah, okay, true, dumb question, but whatever. Gods don't expect much from demigods, especially ones they didn't spawn.
Eros just sighs again. Like all gods, he's somewhere around eight feet tall. His skin is a rich, husky caramel shade and his hair rakish and (sorry, there's no other way to describe it) raven-colored: he looks like one of those Latino boys who would serenade you with a mariachi band underneath your window, or sweet-talk you in Spanish until your knees went weak -- not that it's ever happened to Percy. (At least not recently.) He's wearing a black silk shirt that's unbuttoned practically to his navel, exposing a set of pecs that would make Fabio weep for poetry. He's like a walking wet dream, and Percy is totally comfortable admitting that, because right now he's in a girl's body with a girl's pheromones going, attack maul want, and it's all a little messed up.
Which is all because of -- "Yeah," goes Eros, shifting his weight. He has a quiver slung over his shoulder. "Dude, you have no idea how boring it is to be me right now, okay?"
He has that nasal hitch to his voice that says he's building up to a good, long rant. Percy sends Annabeth a look through his eyelashes, a, Is out here on the sidewalk really the best place to do this?
Annabeth shrugs, a, As long as he doesn't try to kill us and feed us to something, I'm okay with it.
"No, really," Eros is complaining, somewhere above their heads. "I'm completely serious. What with pay-per-view porn and RedTube and all that jazz so readily available, nobody's stopping to look at each other anymore. Nobody looks to see what's attractive in other people, and if people aren't looking at each other, I can't do my thing." He mimes firing an arrow.
"And picking on us was the solution?" Annabeth folds her arms across her chest, making her biceps bunch up.
"Well, no," Eros shrugs, unapologetic. "I was bored and then my mom suggested I play around with you two. She still likes you a lot," he confides to Percy, who remembers being cornered by Aphrodite in the back of a limo when he was thirteen years old as a vague and extremely confusing rush of things, and something about her promising to make things difficult for him. "She finds you entertaining."
"I'm glad she thinks so," says Percy, who most definitely isn't.
The god of lust looks incredibly put upon. "But you two aren't doing anything. Did you know that people, in general, when they find themselves a different gender than they were the day before, like to start playing with the different equipment first thing? Especially with their partner? It's, like, instant-aphrodisiac. But no. You two deliberately don't have sex -- which, what, where's the fun in that -- and instead, try to hunt down everything Olympian in this city. You're military, too. I thought you'd be gagging for it, you're so repressed. You make me deeply ashamed, you really do."
And that's kind of the last straw for Percy.
"Dude," he says, cutting off Annabeth, who's automatically opened her mouth to protest as well. "No. You're full of shit."
Eros blinks. So does Annabeth, her mouth slightly ajar.
"I'm not kidding," Percy insists. "Annabeth is my girlfriend. I will always find her hot, okay, like, that's the point, isn't it? Whether she's got boobs or a dick or hasn't shaved her legs or drools in her sleep or is covered in monster guts, she'll always be attractive to me. And yet, I don't need to jump her bones every time I see her, because I like her more than for just how hot she is. So, no, we can get gender-swapped without immediately diving for each other's equipment, okay."
The silence that comes after that doesn't fall so much as land between them with a helpless splat and kind of quivers there uselessly. He doesn't really bother with it, since he's too busy looking at said girlfriend, who is six foot tall and looks like a wholesome small-town farm boy and has a bit of a lantern jaw and is still kind of the hottest thing he's ever seen. And she's smiling back at him kind of like she isn't seeing anyone else. He knows that look: it's usually followed by her cuffing him over the head and calling him Seaweed Brain.
"Like I said," says Eros after a beat or two. "Boring."
Moment broken, Percy throws his hands into the air and manfully resists the urge to kick him in the nuts, because they're probably Eros's most valuable possession. It's not like he's using any other available brain.
"Whatever," he goes, and finds that the word comes out of his mouth sounding so much prissier now that he's female. He kinda likes it. "Can you change us back?"
"Yeah, fine," the god grumps. He digs around in the back pocket of his skin-tight -- oh gods, are those leather pants -- and pulls out something that looks suspiciously like a beermat. He tosses it at Percy, who catches it one-handed -- which, awesome. "Read that," he goes. "And you'll be back to the way you were before. Right after transformation, don't drive or operate machinery. Some side effects may be included, like dizziness, dry throat, and still being boring."
And with that, he vanishes in a pink-tinged cloud of dust and a smell that Percy shouldn't be able to recognize as the cherry-flavored offbrand of KY, but does.
He looks down at the beermat he threw at them and sighs. Great. More words. He hates words.
"This sounds like something Apollo would write to woo a chick," he complains.
Annabeth snorts. "They probably swap pick-up lines."
They pause for a moment to look at each other, struck with horror that she even brought it up.
"We should read it," she says quickly. He nods, and then gets stuck again, this time looking at her, trying to read her like she's one of those 3D puzzle images in the newspaper, and she'll make sense if he just lets his eyes cross. He thinks maybe the Annabeth he's familiar with is in there: the shape and color of her eyes, the quick flash of a smug smile. But that doesn't matter, not really, does it, because it's Annabeth, no matter what gender she's wearing. And he's going to turn her back to the girl with the blonde ponytail and the curvy hips, and turn himself back to the guy whose hair is short and just black and not nearly as thick and fabulous.
Annabeth's looking right back at him, and it's like the moment they were having before, only then she opens her mouth and goes, "Just ... hang on a second. I'm sorry, I've been wanting to do this all day."
She reaches out, fastens one hand on his right boob, and squeezes.
Very deliberately, he rolls his eyes and allows it, before he says, "Dude, you are groping me."
She lets go instantly, the tips of her ears bright red. "I don't get it. It's like, hard-wired into my brain, and I still don't get it. Like, what is it about breasts that guys find so attractive?"
"They're amazing," is all Percy can say, because really, that's the extent of his thoughts on the subject.
"Yes, but. Argh!" She comes very, very close to stamping her foot, but stops herself. "It's just one of those things I wish I could answer. Whatever. Read the spell."
"Oh, screw that." They have two weeks of shore leave. There's plenty of time to read the spell.
He reaches out and pulls Annabeth down, wondering what stubble burn feels like.
-fin