Percy Jackson TK: Testing the Tough Girl

Percy Jackson TK: Annabeth and Percy

O-O-O

Not for the first time, Percy Jackson found himself staring at his girlfriend, Annabeth Chase. You would think that after being together for so long, the awe would have worn off, but he had learned that in every relationship, no matter how long it had endured (or dragged on for, in some cases), there were moments that took you straight back to those budding first moments of attraction.

This was one of them. She was lying on his bed, focusing on a thick leather-bound book. Resting on her stomach, her tanned legs would slowly sway up and down. There was something about her studious cuteness with the way her mouth moved silently as she read, the way her bed-head blonde curls crested across her forehead, and the way she would turn those pages so eagerly,. Even clad only in an orange t-shirt and short grey shorts, she was still stunning. The book in Percy’s lap was no contest for his attentions. He abandoned it and sidled up to her.

“Reading anything good?” he asked, resting a hand on her back.

“Yes, actually,” she said in a quick voice. To anyone else, that might have been interpreted as a polite way of saying ‘go away’ because of how engrossed she was with her book, but Percy knew her better than that.

“Tell me more,” he said.

“I’m having a hard time believing this one,” she said, stroking her chin with one slender hand while she turned the page with the other. “It feels like it has to be apocryphal or fictitious.”

“What’s the story about?”

“Well, it goes something like this. There was once this talented mortal—a great inventor, a keen astronomer, a savvy huntsman, and, uh, bit of a ladies man. Can you see where this is going?”

“Not really, no.”

“You see, he was a bit of a polymath—dabbling in a bit of this, and a bit of that. But the problem was, he had the potential to be a real pioneer in whichever direction he wanted to go. So a few The goddesses Artemis, Aphrodite, and Athena got involved.”

“I imagine wacky hijinks occurred.”

“Sort of. They all wanted to have him, uh, devote himself to their chosen… I suppose you could say, ‘subject’, for lack of better term.”

“So they had a catfight over this guy?”

Annabeth frowned and her face scrunched up. “My mother would never get involved in something as childish as that.”

“But it was basically a catfight, wasn’t it?”

She punched him in the shoulder. “They squabbled over him, fine. But I resent you using that term!”

“Noted,” Percy said, chuckling as he rubbed his shoulder. “Then what happened?”

“Well…” She scratched the back of her head. “This is where it gets weird and frankly, a little unbelievable. I mean, I can’t imagine Athena ever agreeing to something like this…”

“Come on, the suspense is killing me.”

“Well, they decided to settle things with a tickling contest, of all things!” She broke into a wide, incredulous smile and spluttered with laughter. “I mean, how absurd is that? I’m wondering if it’s some mistranslation, or some garbled account, but it’s all right here, in illustrious detail.” She prodded repeatedly at the page.

“Tickling, huh?” Percy examined the page. They read the next page together in silence, while Percy pictured it all taking place in his mind.   

He imagined Athena, who was an older, taller, more striking version of Annabeth, only with shoulder-length ink-black hair and piercing silvery eyes. She donned flowing white robes under ornate silver battle armour, with her heavy boots discarded by the wooden stockade her pale, long bare feet were bound in. She hissed and cringed as vines sprouted from the ground, courtesy of the mistress of the wild hunt, Artemis, to attack her trapped feet.

Silky smooth tendrils stroked across the soles of her feet, causing her legs to jerk with each touch. Athena tried a variety of defences, but all proved ineffective as the predatory vines were one step ahead each time. At first,  she tried to catch the marauding vines between her toes, but the vines was too slender and far too quick, easily dodging her clumsy grabs and tickling all over the base of her toes and in between them with impunity. Athena then tried to keep her toes firmly closed to protect those sensitive spots between them guarded--a sensible strategy, but one that proved ineffective when thin, worm-like vines snaked through the toes, wrapped around each one, and yanked and spread their prey, allowing the vines to quest all over the taut long feet with ease. Laughter was soon leaking from the corners of her pursed lips.

He visualised Artemis, who was all scowls and fierce determination. Her mahogany-brown and hair was slung in a ponytail and she wore a green tunic, looking like the picture of the deadly huntress. Only today it was her thin bronzed feet which were the preyed upon, as Aphrodite’s servants attacked them with relish.

There were two of them, handsome bearded youths in crimson-red robes who planted sloppy, ticklish kisses on her pale toes. Tough brown leather boots lay discarded next to the wooden stockade as her tanned feet flapped and scrunched and kicked and flailed and splayed. They licked and nibbled those long digits as if they were in a trance, while their nimble fingers caressed and stroked her arches and heels. Their bristly beards would brush along the feet too, especially when the Goddess kicked in an attempt to escape. Her low laughter was disjointed, with more gasps and grunts than giggles but more and more guffaws slipped out with every passing second from the sensuous attack. Soon, however, those guffaws turned into a great ticklish roar cry as Aphrodite’s amorous attendants began paying special attention to her balls of her feet with teeth and tongue and fingers.

He pictured Aphrodite, who was all curves and raw beauty. Her auburn hair was a cascade of immaculate ringlets, her bold eyes as blue as the sultry summer sky, and in a red satin dress which showed off all her assets magnificently. Her flawless feet had high arches and perfectly applied pink nail polish. Her

Artemis had sent a flock of quills to pester those pretty petite feet. They blemished those gorgeous feet with spidery Greek writing. One foot was written on by the floating literacy implements, while the other was cleaned by a diligent scrub brush. It was mockery, wise Athena's mockery of Aphrodite's pursuit of physical perfection. And it was effective, for although Athena's smile was radiant and her laughter was lusty, but from the way she shook her head, she was not enjoying this one bit.   

“Who won this little contest?” Percy asked.

Annebeth shrugged. “Doesn’t say. But probably Athena. I can’t imagine my mother falling to pieces because of something like that.”

“Oh? Why?”

“It’s just tickling.” She shook her head dismissively.

“So you’re not ticklish?” His hand on her back stroked lightly down her spine.

“Course not!” She shivered and wiggled at his touch.

“What’s wrong? Surely that doesn’t tickle?” He stuck out his tongue so she knew he was teasing.

“N-not at all!” she insisted, but her squirming suggested otherwise.

“Well, since you clearly aren’t ticklish at all, I suggest we do a little challenge of our own. For educational purposes, of course.”

She turned her stormy-grey eyes on him. “Oh?”

---

And that was how they ended up in this situation that they were. Yet for all of Annabeth’s vaunted intelligence, she couldn’t quite work out how she had allowed to be talked into this. Percy had wanted to tie her up, too, though she had retained the sense to overrule him on that. She felt plenty vulnerable as it was—every single nerve was quivering to attention while she laid there on her back with her much bigger boyfriend straddling her hips. Her hands were gripping each other and tucked behind her head, though keeping them there was sure to be a challenge, and they already wanted to fly down to protect her exposed armpits, which were only defended by a light short-sleeved Camp Blood t-shirt.

“You know, I always thought you were fearless, Annabeth,” Percy said, looking down at her and grinning. “I mean, I’m sure a tough girl like you has no trouble if my fingers go here….” She tried to keep contact with his piercing green eyes to show she wasn’t afraid, but her eyes kept darting to his fingers, which were starting to perilously close to spots that might be a little… ticklish.

He lowered his hands, which had their fingers outstretched like talons, to wiggle them an inch away from her armpits. Annabeth flinched, a little half-chuckle catching up in her throat. She could feel her heart thumping hard in her chest. She looked at his smug smile as he lowered his fingers again. Here the attack came! 

She tensed up as soon as the fingers drew close, but it was just another feint to make her fidget. He placed his palms flat on the mattress beneath her and smirked. She glared at him, and suddenly let loose a little squeak as he poked her in the sides. It wasn’t a giggle, more a yelp, but that tiny touch filled her with trepidation.

No, no, she was being silly, she told herself. She hadn’t been tickled in forever, so it simply might not have any effect on her. Unfortunately, empirical evidence to disprove this hypothesis soon made itself hysterically apparent.

Right when Annabeth was about to snap at Percy to “just get on with it, Seaweed Brain”, he struck. One finger from each hand wormed under the sleeve of her t-shirt to scratch lightly. And it tickled more than she would have believed possible. It was just one finger, slowly scritching and scritching at the very centre of her pits, but it made her buck like a minotaur beneath him. She kept her lips pursed tightly together, but that much meant she ended up snorting laughter through her nose! After about thirty seconds of this, she was huffing and gasping. Her hands desperately wanted to reach down and save her armpits, but they had agreed if she couldn’t sit and take it, she’d need to be tied down…

“Are you sure you’re not ticklish?’ Percy said, removing his fingers. “Because you sure could’ve fooled me.” He chuckled and began to roll up her t-shirt to reveal her tanned stomach.

“Just… just caught me off guard.” Annabeth could feel sweat trickling down her brow. She was grateful for the ventilation by him rolling up her top, but was less pleased about the fact her toned tummy was now exposed to the ticklish elements in play.

He began rubbing her stomach. It felt nice, a bit like a massage, but Annabeth found herself dreading the moment those fingers did smoething a bit less pleasant.

“You ready?” Percy said, raising his hands and making spidering motions with his fingers.

“Bring it on,” she forced herself to say. This would tickle. A lot. If one finger in each armpit had been this bad, how could she handle ten fingers on her belly…

“Grraaaahahaha!” Annabeth spluttered, cringing as Percy raised his fingers and wiggled them right above her helpless torso, which pinned in place by his entire body weight pressing down.

“I didn’t even touch you!” Percy said, slapping his knee at how she was already laughing before he even tickled her. Annabeth blew a stray strand of blonde hair out of her face and grit her teeth. She could feel herself flushing with embarrassment. She forced herself not to react like that again, but as soon as his hands drew dangerously close, she found herself gasping and trying to shy away as best she could. Her hands rubbed against her neck, eager to defend her body from marauding fingers, but she couldn’t move.

She was almost relieved when Percy stopped his teasing and just got on with it. Almost. 

Her back arched as far as it would go as his fingers hit. They felt like a pair of mischievous spiders scampering around. They danced and circled around her tummy and dawdled on her abs before skittering to the ribs, then, they hopped down to her sides before finally going full circle by scrabbling into her armpits, where she promptly confirmed ten was infinitely more awful than two. Every now and then, those wild fingers would even trickle along her neck and ears. It was rare that Annabeth was ungrateful for new information gathered in her mind, but this was one of those times.

Annabeth threw her head from side to side, which combined with her forward lunges whenever Percy’s fingers squeezed a particularly tender spot, must have made her look like she was doing some innovative sit-up workout. Her abs were certainly starting to feel sore from the laughter bursting from the corners of her mouth despite her best efforts to keep her jaw clamped shut.

The worst of it, Annabeth realized, while Percy began to count her ribs in a loud, obnoxious voice, purposefully losing count so he would have to start again, was how badly she wanted to pull her arms down and wrench him away from her. But no. She couldn’t. She just had to sit and take it.

And with the new information rampaging through her sensory receptors, she was beginning to change her opinion of the efficacy of tickling as a torture method.

“How you doing, girl?” Percy asked, pulling his fingers away from her.

Annabeth coughed and blew a lock of blonde hair that fallen across her mouth. “It’s, uh, not quite what I expected.”

“You sure you want a bit more? I understand if you’re too ticklish to take it…” He gave her a wolfish grin that made it plain that she would never hear the end of it if she gave up.

So all she could do was grit her teeth and say, “bring it on.”

As soon as the final word escaped her lips, he brought his hands to dangerous territories. His hands blurred with the same powerful alacrity she had seen so many times on the battlefield as they dove at her bare hips.

She hadn’t been able to steel herself in readiness for the attack, so she found herself gasping and giggling in anticipation before the fingers even struck. She tensed, not even daring to breath as she stared at those fingers wiggling so perilously close by to her sensitive torso. And they stayed there, , the fingertips waving half an inch away. It was then she took her eyes away from those fingers to look at the smug, knowing grin on Percy’s face and she realized he had been messing with her again. And by squeaking and wailing before the fingers had even struck…

“You’re too cute for words sometimes, Annabeth, seriously.”

She was about to say something rather rude when the fingers lightly scratched against the sides of her belly. She had taken her attention away for just a moment, yet somehow that was enough to unleash maximum ticklishness. She positively spun in place as Percy’s fingers pillaged into her sides, her ribs, her stomach—somehow, the act of being wrong-footed and faked out had increased her sensitivity. It was the kind of physiological response she would have liked to investigate, though she really didn’t have the mental capacity at the moment on account of Percy’s fingers squeezing her armpits now.

The underarms were too much to bear, and Annabeth was too much of a fighter to just sit and meekly endure. She grabbed Percy’s wrists and steered his hands away.

He looked at her and grinned. “You know what this means, don’t you?”

Annabeth groaned as he sat across her shins with his back to her. He was crouched across her feet, and she gasped as she felt something soft fiddling with her toes. This set-up had its fair share of pros and cons. With his large frame blocking her view, she couldn’t see quite what he was doing, though she extrapolated her feet were to be the next target. The soft thin object that was going around her toes was a cord of some kind, she felt, and she quickly realized it might be the one that went around Percy’s shorts. That being said, he couldn’t tell if she kept her arms upright in this position, but she had the feeling of intense trepidation that he didn’t mind because he thought she wouldn’t be able to free herself from this situation regardless.

“Your toes are cute,” he observed after he finished tying her big toes together. A few days ago, Annabeth had painted an imitation of the zodiacal constellations on her toes with midnight blue nail polish for the ether of the galaxy and sparkling gold and silver for the stars. It was a bit of a vanity, but she found it therapeutic to unwind with such behavior. She felt Percy wiggling and playing with round, bubble-like toes, and she tried not to giggle, so as to not giving him the satisfaction. Though her rationality was starting to formulate rather concerning hypothesis based on the new data that even such light movements, which could be scarcely considered earnest tickling, was having on her hyperstimulated immune system.

“Th-thanks,” she said through gritted teeth. The reason for typing her toes together with the cord was starting to make more sense. Her bronzed feet couldn’t really wiggle very far away from each other. She became acutely, horrendously aware of this limitation as he felt Percy’s fingers begin to dig into the soles of her feet.

“Gahahaha!” She grabbed a fistful of her hair as she felt ten fingers fly across her squirming feet. She wanted grab at his shoulders and pound on his back, but if she did, she had a feeling Percy would happy use that an excuse to increase the intensity of this even more… though there was a part of her that thought maybe that wouldn’t be quite so bad. It was a very small part though.

“Aww, is this too much for you already? Poor girl… I’ll be nice, then. Just one finger. Surely you can take one finger without going crazy!” Feeling herself flush, Annabeth shouted back an “of course!” and curled her small toes down, leaving her sole awash with wrinkles.

She could feel Percy working her way through those pale wrinkles in question right now, chortling as he worked on studiously outlining each and every one of them. He went from the slightly calloused heel, through the crevices in her high arch, and ended up at the rosy ball of the foot. Annabeth never made it through one trip without spluttering with laughter and her haywire toes opening and closing in rapid succession.

Percy was muttering something about how adorable her foot was when it was all wrinkled up and how fun they were to trace, but Annabeth refused to let his taunts get to her. She knew he had discovered that the soft ridge just under her toes, near their bases, drove her absolutely insane, and he was trying to get her to keep her toes open so he could exploit that area.

It soon became a new game. Still just using one finger (he had only been using one the whole time, making her shudder to think what would happen when he used all of them), he would trace all her wrinkles, always spending an inordinate amount of time stroking along the ones near or on her arch. Whenever the tickling got too much there, her toes would spring open and splay, which was his cue to strike at those toes, his finger slipping in to tickle that ridge beneath them or their sensitive undersides.

Percy didn’t tire of this game for a long time, though Annabeth had decided she’d had about enough after around ten seconds. He found a good spot on her arch, right near the very middle of the sole, so he tugged on the string and her lassoed toes were stretched back till they were taut. In this position, the arch was extended to emphasize the Achilles tendon, and it was here that Percy began scratching with the tip of his index finger, so constantly that she found herself screeching.

Her toes fought like wild horses to escape, but the string was too tight, and she could do nothing but strain against it was he worked on the exact same maddening spot on one foot, then the other.

“Who’s a ticklish girl, huh? Who? Is it you? Is it you?” Percy was using that infuriating tone of voice reserved for pets or babies, but Annabeth didn’t have the energy to give him the verbal chastising she wanted. She kept trying to cover her mouth with hand as if that would silence her embarrassing hysterics, but giggles kept sleeping out, proving indeed that she was a rather ticklish girl, though she wasn’t about to admit that reluctant fact.

Annabeth had never imagined tickling this be this intense—nor exhaustive. She found herself sweaty and gasping from all the forced laughter, with her blonde hair in a great messy tangle. Her tummy was sore and even her feet felt tired from all the wiggling. Percy must have noticed the lack of resistance from her toes, as notice how they were barely twitching against the rope, he released the rope to unleash a two-handed, ten-fingered onslaught on her bare feet. His fingers scrabbled up and down the sole, from toe to heel, and even when Annabeth found fresh reserves of energy to squirm and shriek. Her feet were still trapped helpless beneath him, and all her struggling seem to do was change the spot on her unilaterally-sensitive feet that was tickled. Instead of her arches it was the balls of her feet, instead of the pads of her toes it was the tips, instead of the sides of the foot it was the tops.

And suddenly while she was flopping back on the band, slapping her thigh with laughter, Percy sat up. He straddled her torso again. His green eyes were aflame with mischief. They shared a long kiss that was as refreshing as a gulp of ice-cool water on a sultry summer’s day. The kiss was broken when Percy’s hands scampered down to her sides and made her squeal with laughter.

“That wasn’t that bad, was it?”

“Maybe,” she said. She wasn’t going to let him know he was right, or she would never hear the end of it.

“You know, you never answered my question.”

“What?”

Percy’s grin grew. “Who’s a ticklish girl? Come on, admit your weakness”

Annabeth’s eyes went wide and she sprang to escape, but Percy caught her in a hug that brought her back down to the soft bed with a thump. His strong hands wormed into her armpits and began teasing her there again as she began laughing anew.

He tickled her there for another mini-eternity, and as she lay there, half-comatose from the laughter, she found Percy binding her wrists together and ankles to the bed post with belts, tape, rope, and other improvised bondage items lying around the cabin.

“Stop, stop, it’s meeheehee! I’m a ticklish gihihihirl!” Annabeth found the words slipping out of her mouth as she realized her predicament. She found herself turning crimson immediately afterwards, praying no one had heard.

“Hmmm,” Percy said, smirking. He scratched his chin. “You’re a clever girl—cleverest I know—so can you solve this riddle?” He hopped off the bed and sat by her bare feet, which curled up in ticklish dread. He began giving her a worryingly-soothing massage. “What do we do to ticklish girls?”

She squeaked with laughter as Percy’s thumbs pressed into her spot under her toes.

“You tickle them!”