Hey, it's a pretty nice beginning of the year here where I live. It's freezing, but there's no snow. I've not gone anywhere for the entire two weeks I've had off from school. And I stupidly tried cleaning my bedroom. Somehow, through all of that, I managed to think up this fluffy little Pipalia fic, so here you go.

Percy Jackson belongs to Rick Riordan. I'm not Rick Riordan. Who would have guessed that? It's a real big surprise to everyone that I'm not Rick Riordan, isn't it?

Piper had everything, they always said. The perfect boyfriend, the perfect body. She was Homecoming Queen with her boyfriend as King. And of course, Piper McLean was unhappy because that's how all stories like these go. Wasn't it obvious from the opening that this was the case?

It was true. She had everything right in life. She was perfection incarnate. The perfect boyfriend, a handsome guy named Jason Grace. People loved her. It was practically impossible to hate her, which was it had bothered her so much when the new girl moved to town.

This new girl looked like she was a convicted felon or something like that. It was three weeks before she learned that the new girl was Jason's sister. But how was she supposed to know that before kind of stalking the girl that intrigued her so?

Piper never swore. It was revolting to her. However, everything she had originally thought to be revolting was soon becoming less and less revolting. For example, Thalia Grace. Thalia with her various piercings and seemingly permanent scowl. Thalia with her shirts that had bands Piper had heard of but never had the nerve to listen to.

"He's not here, McLean. Get lost."

"Actually Thalia, I'm here to work on our Anatomy project." Piper was kind of scared by the girl that stood in front of her, rather surprised that Thalia wasn't failing high school. "You know, the one on the skeletal system?"

"Oh. That one. Forgot about it. Oh well. You keep up your part, I'll keep up mine. Later." She slammed the door in Piper's face. Three days later, there was a perfectly made small scale skeleton sitting on the teacher's desk with a nicely typed report. Small scale in this particular instance simply meant life sized and made of clay. lt amazed Piper that Thalia had taken the time to actually make such a large model.

But she kept up her side of the project, just as she had promised she would. Piper learned that the Graces just had a really large clay model of the skeleton in their house and that Thalia had used that.

"He's not here. Do you have to keep showing up here? It's getting pretty fucking annoying. Just go away."

"I- I came to talk to you." It was this that seemed to have caught Thalia's interest. And why wouldn't it? After all, she hadn't exactly been the nicest person to Piper, and she never actually used Piper's first name. "If it's inconvenient, I can leave and come back another time."

"Damn right, it's inconvenient. I'm actually busy. Bet you didn't expect that." It wasn't really the words that bothered Piper. It was more of the tone, kind of like Thalia was looking down on her. Who was she kidding? Thalia was looking down on her, figuratively and literally. Honestly, Piper didn't care if she was an inconvenience or not. She just wanted to talk for a reason even she wasn't entirely sure of. Perhaps the fact that Thalia didn't really seem to care about her. The older girl didn't seem to even like or dislike her.

And then Piper realized that she was simply an inconvenience. That's all she was.

She and Jason broke up. It was simple, a little too simple, but neither of them really cared. Maybe it just seemed a bit forced. Or maybe Piper just stopped really paying attention to anything but her thoughts.

The thoughts that for some reason kept revolving around her ex-boyfriend's sister. Thalia Grace was just... intriguing. There was something about her that just wouldn't leave Piper's head. And it irritated Piper to end that she couldn't figure out what was so entrancing about the damn girl. There was just a constant jumble of thoughts that would never untangle themselves to make competent strands of anything Piper could comprehend. All she knew was that for some reason, Thalia Grace had caught her interest.

"Sorry," she muttered, realizing that she had accidentally knocked someone's books out of their hands. She automatically went to pick them up to be sort of helpful in some way. "I wasn't paying attention."

"Yeah, I noticed." Thalia grabbed her books before Piper could pick them up. But Piper was pretty sure was trying to hide a notebook that looked mysteriously like a journal of sorts. Did Thalia keep a journal? Why did Piper care? What was written in the notebook? Was it really a journal? Again, why did Piper even care? It wasn't like she and Thalia were really friends.

"I really am sorry."

"I know."

Time progression is a difficult thing to describe...

It was useless. She couldn't write the stupid paper, not while being so distracted. What even was time progression? What had been her stupid psychology homework? Why was she even taking psychology?

And why was she eating pizza at one in the morning?

By now, it was a sort of game, hiding out around the Graces' house. She had done it before, when she had been dating Jason. After all, why wouldn't she be curious as to why she was never allowed to enter the house? It was simply a sort of game though, like an altered version of hide-and-seek. Jason would always go out to find here. Now, it was adding to her sort of stalking of Thalia.

Sure, this was going too far. It was way too far. Piper's grades had slipped from A's to D's in a matter of weeks. She wasn't sleeping well. It wasn't anxiety really. It was more of a borderline obsession with the girl that was completely uninterested in anything that could even be considered remotely related to Piper.

It was bad now. She was being interrogated by her friends about her strange behavior that had been plaguing her. Annabeth began watching out for her more than before. Leo stopped her from almost accidentally buying some weird mystery meat thing at the lunch line. Thank god, or else she wouldn't have eaten. Or she could have gone up and bought a new lunch. They were all worried for her, which worried her.

It was obvious that things were getting out of hand when Piper's father asked what was wrong. Of course, she smiled and convinced him that there was absolutely nothing wrong with anything. Really, there wasn't. Piper was just losing her mind over a disconnected girl that just happened to be the sister of the boy Piper had been dating. Nothing was wrong at all.

Nope, nothing.

"Hey, McLean." Piper was suddenly jerked from her sleep. "You gonna just nap there all day? I don't care how comfy the ground is under this tree, it's been like three hours. When you gonna leave?"

"I-I didn't mean to fall asleep."

"Well I'll be darn, I never would have guessed that." The sarcastic tone of Thalia's voice was not missed even with Piper barely awake.

"What are you doing here?"

"I was walkin' home, but then I noticed a scrawny girl sleeping under the tree she had been reading a book under about three hours ago." So, is Algebra II that interesting to you?" A blush crept onto Piper's face, as she realized what book she had brought with her. What normal person brought an Algebra II textbook to the park across the street from the Graces' house for a good read? Absolutely no one.

"Sorry."

"For what?" Thalia turned around and started to cross the street. "You might wanna go home before it gets dark."

She finally worked up the courage to ring the doorbell, fully aware that it would not be Jason answering the door. He had some weird pizza thing to do. Something to do with making blue pizza, he had tried explaining to her. And something to do with Percy.

"I'm gonna guess you're not here for Jason."

"I thought that it was fairly obvious."

"Well, what the fuck are you doing here if-" Piper cut her off with a short kiss, a daring act if she did think so herself. And yes, she did think so. A smile crossed Thalia's face for a split second, only to be replaced with the scowl she had been wearing.

"Is it obvious enough now?"

"Yeah." Thalia stepped outside and shut the front door and began walking. Then she looked over her shoulder. "You coming?"

"Where?"

"Well it's starting to get dark. Figured I'd walk you home."

"What is with you and me getting home before it gets too dark?"

Evidently, Piper didn't know how to get home with it being sort of dark outside, so it took ten times longer than it should have taken to get home. And by then, it was very dark. Stupid sun sets too fast.

"I guess I'll see you around." Thalia was looking at the sky, probably not even listening to what Piper was saying. So Piper looked up at the sky, wondering what was so interesting about the dim-looking stars. "And-"

This time it was Thalia that cut her off with a quick kiss.

"Yeah, so see you later, Piper."

Piper was so in shock that she hadn't even realized Thalia had called her by her first name.