"Hey, Annabeth Chase."

Annabeth dropped into her seat, taking off her jacket and smoothing her long, untidy braid over her sweater. Her hair never stayed put in anything for long; her curls were already twisting free. She wound a strand absently around her finger as she looked over at Callum, who was smiling at her.

"Hey." She smiled back, then waved her textbook back and forth. "Look who came prepared to take on the world today, despite the fact my ovaries nearly clouded all my judgement, as usual."

He grinned and leaned back, stretching his legs out under the cramped table. "Nicely done for a Lady Architect. Good thing you have an Old-style Architect to cover your bases, though."

They were using direct quotes from the previous lecture. Lady Architect. The only thing that had kept Annabeth from storming out was the way Callum had muttered "jesus" under his breath and cut his eyes to her; it had almost turned it humorous.

"Hey so," He leaned forward again, closer to her. "We have the first exam coming up, and I'm thinking it's gonna be a real left-fielder with this one." He tipped his head toward the front of the room. "It'd be nice to have a study mate."

Annabeth paused. "Isn't the test not for a week or so?"

"Well, yeah. But you're supposed to study like that – in chunks." He looked at her for a moment, tapping a pencil against his lips. "Hold up; you're an all nighter girl, aren't you? Coffee, 3am, straight A's, all of that."

Annabeth shrugged, busying herself with her pencil case. "Well…ideally, no. I'm a planner, and an organizer. But lately…yeah. I mean, I'm a good crammer. And I like a challenge."

In truth, she was still working on that whole "redesigning Mt. Olympus in New York City for the Greek Gods who were huge fussy children and narcissists about every minor detail" thing. It was a massive, crucial honor, but also a massive, crucial headache. Her school work had somewhat taken a backseat, but she was still maintaining her GPA. And it was so ironic, really; here she was, at UC Berkeley, amidst all of these inexperienced architecture students and smug faculty members, and she was already undertaking a project more enormous than any of the staff had done. And nobody would ever, ever know.

She'd known she was sacrificing that, when she'd chosen Berkeley over New Rome University. New Rome had seen her real portfolio; they would have given her a free ride. But she had to follow her gut, in the end. New Rome had been too small, not enough diversity or opportunity, and she would have had to involve the mist for the rest of her life when referencing it for job opportunities.

It hadn't been without…discussion between Percy and her. But the schools were close. They made it work.

"I mean, it'll be great to have someone keep me on task. We should definitely meet up." She liked Callum's unobtrusive, yet confident approach to the material. He didn't try to upstage her in any way, or seem threatened that she was a girl, and she knew more than him.

There was his grin again, flashing chipped tooth and all. He leaned in close to her, an inky black pen in hand. "Okay, good. Cause I have never met anyone who understands this stuff more than you." Before she knew what was happening, he had taken her wrist and was gently tracing the pen over the skin of her forearm. She was too surprised to pull back. "This is my number." He paused, then retraced a blurry 7. "Please don't lose it. It's on your arm, so I figured you might not."

She stared down at the messy number. Callum, he'd written underneath, with a dumb little smiley face. For some reason, her ears felt a little warm.

"You should give me your number too – I mean, if you don't mind," he amended quickly, but he'd already extended the pen to her. She raised an eyebrow. "Thorough, aren't we?"

"I'd like to think so, yes," Callum agreed quite seriously.

She took the pen, then paused, glancing over his not-unmuscled forearm on the desk, before clearing her throat and reaching for a piece of paper.

"I never apologized for running off like I did, the other day," she said as she printed her number. "I didn't mean to take off so suddenly. I had lost track of time and realized I was late to meet my boyfriend."

She slid the slip of paper over to him, laying the pen neatly on top. She felt some imperceptible shift between them as he straightened his posture and began fingering the paper like all the sudden he wasn't sure what to do with it. "Uh no – that was chill," he said, just as the teacher walked in.

Annabeth flipped open her textbook and began thumbing through the pages. She didn't feel bad for establishing a clear boundary; if he was going to treat her differently now that he knew this wasn't any kind of flirtation or chance for something more, then she might as well know now. She thought it was ridiculous, frankly, when guys couldn't be content with just being your friend. Just because she and her best friend had fallen for each other, it didn't mean guys and girls couldn't have uncomplicated platonic friendships. She already had plenty of normal guy friends to prove it.

When the class ended, she delayed slightly in packing up her stuff, waiting to see, maybe. They'd been quiet during the lecture, keeping themselves to themselves. Just as she was lifting her last notebook –

"All right, so, how amazingly outdated was that second example in the fourth slide? It's like he's never heard of modern research!"

Callum had turned his full body back to her, open and bright and waiting to hear her take.

She smiled, putting her notebook back down on the table.

...

"I knew Steve Harrington wasn't a tool."

Annabeth looked up from her computer screen. "You have such a weird radar for people. Even fictional characters. It's kind of creepy."

"It's my spidey-senses."

"More like Aquaman senses."

"Have you ever actually seen Aquaman?"

"Nope."

"Didn't think so."

It was evening of that same day. They were lounging on the couch watching Stranger Things and, in Annabeth's case, getting work done. Olympus just didn't redesign itself – which was basically becoming her catchphrase lately. She was tucked sideways on one end; he was sprawled across the rest, face resting against her legs.

"Hey." Percy lifted his head and reached out a hand to finger her braid. "I like your hair like this."

"Thanks."

"How were classes today?"

She frowned at the screen. The program she used was so glitchy lately. It was driving her crazy. "Uh…" She clicked into a new tab and googled the problem. Hmmm. "They were…okay. I mean..." There it was. That should work. "They were fine."

A moment passed. "What do you want to eat for dinner?"

No. It hadn't worked. She was never, ever going to get this done. She was a failure to her mother and all of the gods. They were going to realize what an idiotic mistake it had been to trust her with this. She bit her thumbnail and pushed up her sweater sleeves, hunkering lower over the computer screen, determined to figure something out. "Yeah…one second."

"So…a third world war just broke out outside our window and our survival chances aren't looking good."

"Okay, just give me a second and I'll…"

There! She'd done it. Finally, she'd gotten through the glitch. Yes.

Her phone buzzed sharply on the couch somewhere underneath one of them. She snatched it up and looked; a text from an unknown number.

Hey, Annabeth Chase. It's Callum, your favorite seatmate in your least favorite class :)

It buzzed again.

This made me think of you.

There was an attachment about a young woman who'd successfully designed an entire castle faster than her male colleagues had designed a few townhouses. Annabeth found herself laughing.

"Who is…Col…umn…and…is that who you're talking to now?"

Annabeth looked up from her phone, blinking as though coming out of daze. Percy was holding her forearm, angling his head to read the blurry writing on her skin. She glanced down at the faded ink, and for some ridiculous reason, felt herself flush. "Oh – Callum. It's, uh, Callum."

Percy just looked at her.

"He's, uh–" Her phone buzzed again.

Can you meet to study tomorrow? Trust me, I need it.

She turned the screen off and tossed it lightly onto the coffee table. "He's that classmate I mentioned, from that one architecture class."

"I don't remember."

"You know, when I…when my phone died the other day, and—"

"Oh, yeah. The one you were talking to forever after class."

There was something in Percy's voice that made Annabeth quiet. She studied his face, but it was hard to read. It slowly dawned on her that he'd been trying to get her attention for a while before now, while she tuned him out and focused on work.

"Hey." She moved her laptop onto the floor and slid further down the couch, nearer to him, lacing her fingers through his large ones. "I missed you, today."

He rested his chin on her knee, hooking a hand around her ankle and rubbing his thumb in slow circles there. "I miss you…all the time." His voice was soft. He was still holding too much tension in his body.

Her heart missed a beat, and she frowned. She didn't want to apologize for her ambition, but – gods, she wasn't always great at being in a relationship, was she?

And mother of hera, he was kind of irresistible right now. She scooted closer to him, and closer, and closer, until there was no space at all. Sometimes all you could do was show how you felt. She kissed him softly, once, twice, three times…and then too many to count, as they tangled up slowly in warmth and limbs and beating hearts. She wound up on top of him on the couch, his hands sliding up under her sweater, kissing him again and again, soft and hard and sweet and teasing. His mouth was firm and warm and steady, and she felt wild electric happiness down to the tips of her toes. Percy was so skilled, sweet and confident at making out; it was easily one of her favorite activities in the entire world. It was almost like a separate thing from sex, or could be. Just…kissing. And closeness. It was an intimacy she valued beyond words, and they were very, very good at it.

His teeth grazed her ear, and he softly kissed below it. "I've been wanting to do this with you all day," he whispered in a low voice. "You're so sexy when you ignore me."

She breathed out a surprised laugh. "I was not ignoring you!"

He gave her his skeptical baby seal eyes. "You love your computer more than me." He was just angling now, openly trying to get compliments. She grinned over him, running her hands through his tousled black hair, and bent to kiss his jaw. "I do not love my computer more than I love my boyfriend."

"Well, you love doing your homework more than me," he persisted, sliding his hands down her hips, over her thighs.

She snorted lightly, kissing lower and whispering, "nope, I don't love doing my homework more than doing you, actually."

He made a low noise in his throat as she moved her mouth down his neck, his breathing becoming shallower. "You love…architecture…more than…me."

Here she paused, and grinned against his neck. She pressed a long, searing kiss into his warm skin. "It's a tie."

...

A couple of weeks passed. Annabeth met with Callum to study a handful of times, usually just after class when she'd be staying to work anyway. It was a friendship she was coming to value…quite a bit. They were just so in tune when it came to their work; they had the most interesting discussions Annabeth had ever had about the subject. She wished, badly, that she could tell him about Daedalus and his lost computer; about Olympus and her work there, about…who she really was. They mostly stuck to school and work topics, but a few times he'd mentioned his older sister, or his love for poker, or his coffee addiction, and then she'd share something too, and…it was more than being study buddies. They were friends, just like that.

They also texted fairly frequently, for Annabeth. She mostly called people, or sent long emails, or iris messaged, or saw them in person. Texts were too quick and impersonal, she'd thought. But Callum was frequently finding some interesting new fact and sending it her way; she reveled in confirming when she already knew it, and knew more. They wrote other things too; quips about their terrible professor, inside jokes about ridiculous questions other classmates had asked, and endless ideas for future projects, bouncing them off each other.

Percy had seemed to notice that she was on her phone a fair bit more. He mostly didn't comment, aside from a couple times, but found small ways to hint that he'd really like her attention. Or bigger, more obvious ways. But other times – most of the time, maybe – he remained quiet and did nothing at all.

...

2:53am. What had woken her? Annabeth pushed herself up in bed, reaching for a drink of water. Percy slept peacefully beside her in the dark.

They didn't technically live together. But through some cosmic arrangement, they…kind of did. Annabeth was rooming in the Berkeley dorms again this year, as it came with the financial aid deal she'd received. Her roommate, however, was awful this time. Loud music, smoking, and constantly, constantly bringing crowds of people back to their shared single room. The worst, though, was the amount of times Annabeth would return late at night, exhausted, to find a sparkly bathrobe tie around the doorknob – or worse, no warning at all that she was walking in on a hook up situation.

Their relationship was…frayed. Percy, on the other hand, had found this apartment with a classmate who'd then dipped on the arrangement and dropped out of school. So from the amount of times Annabeth stayed over, and all her stuff that was there…they kind of, almost lived together. Which was a big concept for Annabeth to deal with, truthfully. There was a reason they'd made separate arrangements at the beginning of sophomore year. Neither of them were ready to mess this up yet. And they both seemed to know, in a deep place, that once they made the official plunge, there would likely never be a time when they didn't live together, not for the rest of their lives. They were still in a place where it was healthy for them to both have separate routines, and then come together whenever they could. And some mornings she had early classes, anyway.

Her phone lit up in the dark, vibrating on the nightstand. Annabeth grabbed it. She had multiple text messages; it was obviously what had woken her. They were from Callum.

Instantly, she felt more awake. Why was he texting her in the middle of the night? Sure, they were both night owls, and more than once they'd messaged back and forth around midnight, back at her dorm room. And once before he'd texted around 1am, sending her a design link and asking her opinion, but she hadn't noticed till morning. This just seemed…later.

Or maybe it was because she was in her boyfriend's bed, this time, that it felt different.

She opened to his texts, and blinked in surprise. They weren't about architecture. The first asked if she was awake, by any chance. The next mentioned that he was kind of going through something, and wondered if he could unload a little, that he valued her advice and friendship. Then he explained he was going through a tough family situation; that his sister wasn't speaking to their parents, that both sides were pressuring him to pick between them, that he'd had an absolutely fucktastic night at dinner with all of them, and things were just…bad.

This, she could relate to. She rolled over onto her stomach, making a blanket cocoon in the dark, not wanting the light from the screen to disturb Percy's sleep. She read through all his messages, and then let him know that she was awake, and would listen. At first, she just thought his emotions from the dinner encounter were making him…looser than usual, the reason he was texting her at 3am. Slowly, through a couple of unusual typos, it occurred to her that he might have had a drink or two, as well. It had, after all, been hours since dinner, when he'd first been upset.

"What are you doing?"

Percy's deep, sleep-filled voice, even soft as it was, made her jump; the still-lit up phone dropped from her tired hand under her pillow. "Oh – nothing," she murmured, as he reached over to her. "I didn't mean to wake you."

He slid to her side, closing the space between them and pushing up on one elbow, a little. "Why are you on your phone right now? You were sleeping before." Both their voices were slow, muzzy, just for them in the dark. He lifted the pillow and picked up her phone.

"Callum?" Suddenly, he sounded awake.

She grabbed the phone back automatically, shoving it back on the nightstand. "Percy, he was just having a hard time, he needed to talk to someone–"

"Why is he texting you at 3 in the morning?"

Annabeth sat up in bed, running a hand through her hair. The moon through the window provided just enough light to dimly see by.

"Look," she whispered. "I don't know. I'd just gotten the messages. He was upset, he had family stuff, he might've been drinking a little bit – I was just telling him–"

"He was up, drunk, and texting you in the middle of the night?" Percy's voice had a distinct edge now. Annabeth hesitated – this was starting to feel out of control. She blinked, trying to take a deep breath. "No, I mean–"

"What were you guys saying to each other?"

"Nothing! He was just going through something and I was looking at the messages." She reached out and put her hand on his arm. "Percy. It was nothing."

He looked at her for a long moment. She wondered, suddenly, how long he'd been awake before he'd spoken. Percy was not a highly jealous, suspicious, or controlling person; if anything, that was more Annabeth's own territory. But they trusted each other. They would both stay up late to counsel a friend. She knew that, maybe, a line had been crossed, and that they both felt it, but tonight, for now, he was going to have to trust what he knew about her; that she hadn't planned for it to happen, that she hadn't meant a single thing by it.

She crawled toward him in the dark, and he slowly relaxed down into the pillows again, letting her fold herself on top of him, into his arms. "How often do you text other boys in the middle of the night while your boyfriend sleeps beside you?" He whispered against her lips, but his voice had a slightly amused quality now, as though he were teasing her, because – that was Percy. He trusted her, he never stayed mad. In reply, she pinched his elbow rather hard, and nestled her head into his shoulder.

And it wasn't, she reflected, as sleepiness came back in an oceanic wave, as though she would ever truly give him a real reason to distrust her.

.

.

.

Author's Note: This is NOT the end! I would really appreciate hearing what you think and if you'd like more!