Percy couldn't stop her smile as she texted her boyfriend. Normally, demigods couldn't text, or own phones, or anything like that. But, Percy was pretty close friends with the Hephaestus cabin, and had bribed them with a month's supply of any sort of junk food their hearts desired. It had taken them almost a full day before she had been presented with two demigod-proof cell phones. It had cost her three paychecks. Who knew the Hephaestus cabin was full of such Twinkie addicts?

If u look down any longer, ur phone'll prob get confiscated, her boyfriend warned. Not even a second later, Mr. Hapsburg cleared his throat behind her.

"Ms. Jackson?"

"Climbing out the backdoor. But don't worry, she won't leave a mark," Percy muttered, quickly typing a response to Luke. Yes, Luke Castellan. The 'Traitor of Olympus'. Except, he wasn't. He had a heart of gold, and Percy knew that. She had been in love with Luke for years, even though she only talked to him on a few rare occasions, and most of the time he had been trying to kill her. But, a few times, she had IM-ed him, and she had realized just how… not evil he was.

It had started with her just getting tired of his plots to ruin camp. Out of pure frustration and fear and anxiety, she had acted of a whim and angrily IM-ed him. One drachma poorer, she had glared at him around midnight the day after her thirteenth birthday. She had started screaming at him, accusing him of being heartless and horrible, and demanding answers from him. He had only asked why she was still awake so late. That had taken her by surprise, and she was reminded of the Luke she had started to like a year ago, when she had thought her mother had died. The Luke who stole her toiletries and had stood up at the Hermes table so that she didn't have to sit with half of her butt hanging off the bench at the Hermes table. The Luke who… seemed to actually care about people.

Looking back on it, Percy wasn't sure why she answered him. Maybe it was because she was exhausted. Maybe it was because she was angry, and wanted Luke to know exactly what his actions were doing to her. Maybe it was because a small part of her still wanted to think that Luke cared. Whatever the reason was, she had admitted that the nights she actually slept were rare because the nightmares… bothered her. He had comforted her, and told her to go to sleep. He would make sure she didn't get any bad dreams. She had trusted him (Again, probably exhaustion or anxiety or desperation for a good night's sleep), and no bad dreams had come to her that night.

For the rest of that year, Percy had IM-ed Luke whenever the nightmares got to be too much, and he would somehow keep them away. After she turned fourteen, Percy wanted to see Luke. To personally see if he actually cared as much as he seemed to at night. Because when he had wanted her to die in some spectacular way in Antaeus's ring, for some reason, she wasn't getting the same protective vibe from him she got in their night time chats. So, she told him to meet her at Central Park. And surprisingly, he actually came. And he kept coming. For the next year. The week before he became Kronos's host body, he had kissed her and told her that no matter what, he would protect her. He had sworn on the River Styx. Then he had left before she could even ask what the kiss had meant. Jerk.

He had ended up killed himself to keep that promise, and Percy had been devastated. When Zeus had given her a gift, she had wanted nothing more than to ask for Luke to be given life again. But she knew that he wouldn't have wanted that. So instead, she had made her wish one to make sure that this sort of thing never happened again. She had even spent the next two months making sure that the gods kept their word. She had even invited Calypso to live with her until the titaness figured out what she wanted to do. Actually, it was thanks to Calypso that Luke was even with her now…

Percy was pulled back from her thoughts as she heard a few people snickering at her remark, and she shot them a quick smirk.

How do u do that? Don't respond, it'll prob b taken any sec. Math teacher's a real bastard.

She clicked a button, causing the screen to go black.

"Give me your phone,"

"Why?"

"Texting is not allowed. Now, hand it over. You will get it back at the end of the day,"

Percy huffed, but gave it to him just as the screen lit up with a text. Percy stood up and read it. She laughed.

I'm too irresistible. Any girl would stare at their phone fr hrs ntil I txted em back

"Hey, Mr. Hapsburg, can I have my phone for a second?"

Before Mr. Hapsburg could respond, Percy had already plucked her strange phone out of his hands. She quickly typed a response and placed it back in his hands. (Oh u think so? Don't get to cocky now, Mr. Castellan). Mr. Hapsburg blinked at her. Percy smiled innocently. He had probably seen the Greek characters she used. She couldn't help it if no amount of Annabeth's tutoring could help her read better English.

The rest of math went by slowly for Percy, and she just barely stopped herself from falling asleep on the desk. She had been in a lot of trouble last year, and it was amazing that they even wanted her back this year. She was not going to get expelled from Goode. It was pretty cool there, even if there were some… unsavory characters wandering around. Percy sighed and got ready for two hours of sheet boredom.

Percy grinned as she entered her next class. English. With Mr. Paul Blowfis. Ha! Mr. Hapsburg said she wouldn't get her phone back until the end of the day, but Percy begged to differ. She walked up to Paul's desk.

"Hey, Paul," she said. "I left my phone at my last class. I'm going to go get it. Don't mark me absent, because I'm here,"

"Mmhmm," Paul hummed, looking unamused. "I have an email right here than says Mr. Hapsburg confiscated it. Just how were you planning on getting it back?"

"My boyfriend may be a son of Hermes, but I'm not a thief, Paul," Percy rolled her eyes before strolling out the door.

"Be back in two minutes!" Paul called behind her. Percy smirked. That was teacher talk for 'don't be gone too long!' It was also a sign that you could leave for as long as you wanted to, because no one expected you to be back in two minutes.

Percy strutted comfortably through the halls until she reached her destination: room 411. Mr. Hapsburg's math hell. She pushed the door open, and before anyone could say a word, she swiped her hand through the air. Turns out, it wasn't the snapping that made the mist bend to your will: it was the state of your mind. As long as you had a movement which made it easy for you to imagine pushing the mist to do what you wanted, you could do whatever hand motion you wanted.

Percy found that swiping her hand through the air was like doing the same thing in water. She could create her own little ripples, in whatever design she wanted, and those ripples became what the humans were going to see and remember.

"You're going to give me back my phone, and remember giving it back to me at the end of the day. Everyone in this classroom is going to forget that Percy Jackson was ever in this classroom at 10: 15."

Percy received her phone and started walking back to Paul's room, slowing down to check if Luke had replied to her last text. Luke had never really been one to disappoint.

Cocky? Me? Never

Phone got taken, huh?

Do u think the teacher would get annoyed if I kept texting u?

Is he?

Tell me

S

Te

Th

Percy?

It continued on with nonsense texts like that for about fifteen minutes. Then Luke took a break, went on for another fifteen minutes, and stopped again. The latest texts were from about twenty minutes ago.

Did it work?

Hey, you wanna spend the night at my place?

Percy couldn't stop the smile on her face as she read through Luke's texts. She was sure that Mr. Hapsburg had regretted taking her phone. The entire class couldn't pay attention, because of the constant buzzing of Percy's phone. And when Mr. Hapsburg had read the messages, his face had gone purple. He had practically demanded that Percy respond, telling Luke to stop texting, but Percy had innocently said,

"But, I can't use my phone until the end of the day. I can't go around breaking rules, now, can I?" And the class had gone wild. It had taken ten minutes for Mr. Hapsburg to get the class back under control, but by that time, Luke had started texting again.

Yeah, it was great! U shud've been there! I'll tell u all about it later. And ya, I'm down to spend the night. Got pasta?

Percy walked into English, still waiting for a reply from Luke. When she walked in, Paul was explaining something about their upcoming essay. Percy mentally snorted. She would just get Paul or her mother to help her later.

"Paul, I'm staying at Luke's tonight." She declared before going and sitting in her assigned seat. Paul stuttered for a second with a conflicted look on his face before he sighed in resignation. "Alright, Percy. And, thank you for volunteering to read out of the book for us,"

Percy groaned as every other person who forgot their book sighed in relief.

Percy spent all of lunch with her friends, and the thirty minutes had seemed to disappear in seconds.

As the daughter of Poseidon sat in history, she had to fight to stay awake. Out of all the battles Percy had been in over the years, this was one of the toughest she had been in. To stay awake, she let her mind stray to Luke.

He should have been in his early twenties at that point, but when he had been brought back to life, he had been brought back younger than before. No one was really sure how that happened, but the best Hades could explain was that when he had been brough back to life, with all of his memories, and not being reborn, he had to give something away. He had already lost his invulnerability, and the only thing left he could give were a few years he had lived through.

Now, physically, Luke was about nineteen years old. But Percy hadn't minded. Nineteen year old guys were hot, and now they were closer in age than before. Besides, Percy knew he would grow up hot, so she had a few things to look forward to in the future. Trying to decipher his age was like trying to guess Thalia's. It was impossible to be exact, but everyone tried their best to make their guess accurate. 'They' being all of the gods, of course.

Calypso had alerted them of Percy's heartache. Of course, Aphrodite had gotten right on her case, interrogating Percy about who her man was. And since the war was done and over with, Percy saw no reason to hide the truth. If the gods killed her, then they killed her, and she could be with Luke once again.

So, she had told them the story. The whole story. And the gods had been floored. They had never known—never even suspected—that Percy had feelings other than loathing towards the son of Hermes. After Percy had finished telling them all her feelings towards her extremely handsome, extremely dead boyfriend, she had started crying. She had been forced to fake being strong for so long, and then she had to push aside her feelings to make sure everything started smoothing over after the war. So little time, and so much less for herself. She hadn't allowed herself any time to grieve. Luke hadn't been the only one to die. Percy had known everyone in camp. And so many of them had died.

She took her time in the gods' presence to cry for them, as well as for Luke. It wasn't full closure, but it was a start towards moving on. Since she had her head buried in her hands, she had missed the absolutely horrified, guilt-ridden look Hermes had sent her. One of the Muses had informed her of the look after the meeting.

Percy would have gladly kept thinking of that day: of the way Aphrodite had practically bullied the rest of the council to bring Luke back to life, on the excuse of the rarest emotion known to mortals and immortals alike: true, pure love. She would have loved to think of the way her father had looked at her with conflicted emotions as they stood next to each other, waiting tensely for Luke. She even would have gladly remembered running straight into Luke's arms as he stepped into the room, knocking him to the ground, and kissing him senselessly in front of everyone, and the embarrassment which followed.

Too bad she fell asleep. Oh well. It was only history.

Percy shoved her notebooks and binders from her locker into her backpack. The bell had woken her up almost five minutes, and Percy was desperate to get out of the building. She hefted the heavy bag over her shoulder and briefly wondered why she even bothered taking all the extra weight. She knew she wouldn't do any of the work. Then, an image of Luke's strong arms flexing as he held the bag for her flashed through her mind. Yeah, the weight was definitely worth that sight.

A few minutes later Percy stood outside her high school, waiting for Luke. He'd gotten a job a few months ago, and he'd recently saved enough money to buy a car. He'd explained the make and model and everything to Percy because he'd been so excited about it, but Percy had honestly forgotten almost everything he'd said.

Percy hadn't seen Luke in almost three days, and even though it didn't sound like a long time, Percy was seriously feeling the time apart. She missed him; probably more than she would have admitted to him.

"So, Babe, is there someone you're trying to impress or are you just naturally this hot?" Asher came up from behind Percy and smirked down at her. He was a good looking guy, and nice enough if you got to know him, but he was a terrible flirt. And Percy was taken.

"Go away, Asher," Percy rolled her eyes.

"Come on, Percy," he said. "Go out with me. Tonight. Seven. I'll pick you up,"

"I have a boyfriend, Asher," Percy said, bored. "Fuck off before you piss him off and get hurt."

"Oh, like I haven't hurt the 'I have a boyfriend' excuse before. Admit it, Percy. You like me more than you want to say, but you're embarrassed. It's alright, I can admire the whole 'hard to get' schtick, but this has been going on for a long time, Babe. Too long."

"Maybe that's a sign to leave her alone."

Percy looked up from her phone and grinned.

"Luke!" she walked over to him and hugged him tightly. "I missed you," she mumbled into his shoulder. When he didn't respond, Percy looked up and frowned. The look on Luke's face… she had never seen it before. It was almost like… anger. "Luke?" she questioned.

"Come on, Babe," Luke said before practically dragging Percy to his car. "I think I left the stove on at our house, so let's hurry up."

Now Percy was even more confused. Luke had told her so many times before to never call his house theirs. It had hurt, but Percy had understood that it would have been moving too fast. But now he was calling his apartment their house?

And that look on his face. As she sat down in the passenger seat in Luke's car, Percy took the time to observe him. Luke was usually so happy and carefree. Even during the war, when he was forced to hurt her and be mean to her, Percy had seen the underlying tenderness in his eyes. But now, his blue eyes were as cold as ice. His jaw was set and he was scowling. Percy had never seen that look on his face before. And she never wanted to see it again.

On the other side of the car, Luke's fists tightened on the steering wheel as the two waited for the red light to turn green. He could see his knuckles turning white. Luke grit his teeth. Honestly, that guy.

He had some nerve, to flirt with Percy. Sure, the guy was tall and good-looking enough, and maybe he looked like he was the slightest bit athletic, and he seemed like he was smart, but he had no right. Percy was… Luke huffed angrily. Percy was perfect. He put up with his shit time and time again, and even had enough heart left to like him. She was kind and selfless and she cared deeply. She was protective and funny and so, so easy to talk to. She was the one person who didn't give up on him, and Luke honestly loved her.

And apparently so did that guy. The scary part was, Luke was mad. Normally if someone hit on Percy, he would've laughed with her about how pathetic they sounded. But this time, Luke couldn't do that. The guy, whatever his name was, actually almost seemed sort of like Percy's type. He was blonde and had light eyes with a mischievous smirk.

The other guys who had hit on Percy had obviously not been Percy's type at all, so Luke almost felt bad for them. But… Luke could actually see Percy with this guy. Holding him, talking to him, kissing him. Luke growled beneath his breath and scowled even harder than before.

A part of Luke felt bad; his anger was probably suffocating Percy and making her feel a bit uncomfortable, but he couldn't help it. He was just so… Luke honestly hated admitting it to himself, but he was just so jealous.

Luke sighed. He could feel Percy's observant eyes boring into the sides of his head. Even if he was mad at himself for doubting Percy, and mad at the punk who decided to hit on her, she didn't deserve the silent treatment. Hades, she didn't deserve anymore bullshit in her life. Percy was a queen, and if he could have, Luke would have stolen all the treasures of Olympus for her.

"I'm… sorry," Percy said slowly, sounding unsure of herself. "If I made you mad before. That was just Asher. He's not a bad guy, he just doesn't know when to quit."

Luke just narrowed his eyes. Why was Percy apologizing? And what did she mean when she said that that dude—Asher—wasn't a bad guy? Were they friends? Were they going to be more than friends?

Luke shook the thoughts from his head. Of all the people he could've been untrusting of, why did he choose Percy? Her fatal flaw was loyalty for Zeus's sake! She was the one person on earth who was the least likely to cheat on anyone! And now she was apologizing to him!

"Why are you apologizing?" Luke tried to sound gentle, but he just sounded like he was trying to choke down a dozen of those War Heads after keeping them in his mouth for a minute.

"Well, you just seem mad at me. I'm not really sure what I did, but I don't want to lose you," Percy said sincerely. Luke took his eyes off the road and stared at her until the car behind them honked and Luke was forced to start driving again.

"I'm not mad at you," Luke's voice was soft and quiet. "I'm just mad at myself,"

"Why?" Percy seemed to have perked up, and she now sounded curious. Luke mentally groaned, but answered anyway. They had this whole 'honesty' and 'trust' thing between them now, and Luke didn't want to ruin it.

"I got… jealous. And before you say anything, I know it's stupid because of your personal loyalty and all that, but… still. I like you, and I didn't like the way that guy was looking at you…" Luke rubbed the back of his neck. He really didn't want to say this out loud, but he wasn't going to be the type of boyfriend to make his girlfriend say every 'feeling-like' thing. "And honestly, Perce, I'm not sure I even can be mad at you," Luke parked in his given parking spot at the apartment parking lot. "You made me believe in myself, made me think that I could still do good things, even when everyone was telling you I was a lost cause. And you didn't let me die, you fought for me. You—just seeing your face makes me happy, and I don't think they'll ever be a time when I see your face and feel nothing but that."

Luke didn't look up to see her face. He could already tell he was blushing. He just hoped Percy would accept what he had said and move on.

"Let's go inside. My bag's kind of heavy today, want to carry it for me?"

"Yeah, sure," Luke grinned.

Percy wasn't sure exactly how they had gotten to where they were now, but she wasn't questioning it. One second the two of them were calmly walking into Luke's apartment, and the next, they were sucking each other's faces off, ripping their clothes off like their lives depended on it.

And now, Percy was lying face-up on Luke's bed, head dizzy from how surrounded she was by his scent. She had always liked the way he smelled. Clean and masculine. She loved it. His shirt was off, and so was hers. She was beginning to fumble with Luke's belt when Luke pulled back, stopping her motions almost immediately.

"Not yet," he panted, and Percy felt disappointed. Luke was a good guy. Of course he would want to wait. "I need," Luke leaned forward and placed a kiss on her cheek. "To tell," another, lower, by her ear, "You something first." He placed a column of kisses down her neck before pulling away, leaving Percy gasping for air.

He hovered above her, looking Percy straight in the eyes. His eyes were clear, but dark. It made Percy lick her lips in anticipation.

"I love you, Persephone."

"I love you, too, Luke."

Percy grinned as Luke kissed her with a renewed passion. That night, they didn't stop. Neither of them got any sleep last night, and the next day, even though Percy's legs were sore and she was sure her face looked pretty awful from the lack of sleep, she was happy.

Not exactly my best work, but I had fun writing it :) especially since this pairing doesn't have nearly enough works :(