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Annabeth always has a plan, and tonight the plan is very very simple: she sits in hair and makeup for a little while, then she goes and puts on the best concert she possibly can, and then she marries the love of her life. For a plan that's so simple, it's currently feeling nigh on impossible to pull off.

"Annabeth, honey, you need to look at me," says Silena, waving her hands in front of her friend's face. "I know you're excited and in love and all that jazz, but stage lights do favours for no woman and you'll have more people watching you today than – well, ever, probably."

"I think it was a good interview, though, right?" asks Annabeth, unwilling to totally tear her eyes away from the small screen above her dressing table that's replaying yesterday's chat show appearance promoting tonight's concert.

"Yup, you really survived the tough questioning from hard-nosed investigative journalist Jimmy Fallon there," says Silena, waving her brush in exasperation. "On the other hand, you will not survive my wrath if you go out there with your lashes only half done because you wouldn't sit still and let me finish them."

"But, I was convincing, wasn't I?"

"Convincing?" Silena's tone is incredulous. "You love him, right?"

"Well… yeah," says Annabeth slowly.

"You sure?"

"I love him," she says, more confidently this time.

"So who cares if you were – I don't even know what to say to that question – I mean it looked like you were in love to me. You looked beautiful and happy and very much in love. Were you wanting to achieve anything more than that with the interview?"

"I mean the wedding, Silena! Is the wedding a good idea? It was Luke's idea to do a joint concert and wedding, and he's planned most of it, too. And that's so sweet, but is asking millions of people to watch us get married, like, is that a good idea? And was I convincing that I thought it was? I don't want him watching it and thinking I'm getting cold feet, cause I'm not, I'm just… a little nervous."

There's a slight pause, when Annabeth is sure Silena is about to tell her that if she's having second thoughts, an hour before she gets married is a little late to be having them, but instead her friend sighs sympathetically. "When Charlie and I got married, you know it was just us, his mom, and my dad as our witnesses, right?"

"Right."

"Because we wanted to get married and we didn't want to wait. And that was what was important to us. So we just did."

"Right," says Annabeth again.

"So do you want to marry this boy?"

"I do," she confirms.

"So you put on a banging concert and then you marry him, and the number of people watching isn't important."

Annabeth takes a moment to digest this. "Does your contract give you a bonus for when you're particularly wise?" she asks.

"I'd much prefer a regular pay rise and for you to sit still, because your lashes are still not going to finish themselves," says Silena, and Annabeth figures she definitely owes her that much, so she sits as motionlessly as she can and fights her ADHD to let the other girl get her ready for her big night.

Performing always ends up as a kind of blur for Annabeth, and the bigger the event the blurrier the blur. And tonight is – oh boy – tonight is blurry.

She knows the setlist by heart because she and Luke have gone over it a thousand times and then she's gone over it another thousand times by herself to make absolutely certain that it's flawless. They're alternating fifteen-minute segments, playing three or four songs each at a time, in a marathon two-hour show before an encore unlike any other, when they'll play their new duet – Marry Me – and then actually get married.

Luke's half is a generous mix of his biggest singles, fan favourite album tracks, and then a couple of unreleased studio outtakes to please the die-hard fans, while Annabeth's section, reflecting a career that's been going for about five years less than his, includes more than half of the songs that she's ever released, along with covers of some of her favourite love songs. Even before she gets married, she feels like she's baring her soul in front of the whole world by essentially trying to sum up her whole life's work so far.

And yet, as terrifying as the experience is, and as hard as it is to gauge the crowd's reaction through the dazzling lights from her position onstage, she makes her way through each mini-set without catastrophe, eventually even – to her immense surprise – beginning to enjoy herself.

Finally, she finishes her last song, (a cover of Can't Help Falling In Love, because it is, after all, her wedding day and she's feeling a little sappy) and heads backstage to watch Luke and his band close out his half of the show before the big finale.

Onstage, her fiancé is otherworldly. His stylist has dressed him smartly in a light blue suit for the big occasion, and he holds the crowd in the palm of his hand as he pulls music from the strings of his guitar. They're deafening when he plays the singalong hits, and silent enough that Annabeth swears she could have heard a pin drop when he's on the quiet and emotional numbers. Finally, he reaches his most famous song, Stolen Your Heart, and she has to head to the trapdoor from which she's shortly to rise to the stage while thousands of people just out of her sight chant Luke's words like their lives depend on it.

Didn't think it was a talent, didn't think it was an art, she hears coming from the stadium floor, and mouths the words quietly along with them as Silena puts the finishing touches to her final costume change: a huge white wedding dress with a train the length of the Trans-Siberian Railway.

Her manager, Grover, hurries in through the door looking thoroughly frazzled, his phone in his hand, as Luke sings that he Didn't think that I'd done anything wrong. That was no surprise, she figured, since this was pretty much the biggest night of Grover's career too, even if he wasn't one of the ones actually getting married.

But now you tell me that I've stolen your heart, finishes Luke. They'd decided on a big instrumental finish in this version to give her some extra time to get ready before the encore, but she still shivers in anticipation of the fact that in a few minutes time she'll be marrying him. Stolen her heart he has indeed.

"Does she know?" she hears Grover whispering to Silena.

"Know what?" she demands, spinning around as much as the dress will allow her in order to look at them with their heads together.

"Nothing!" he says instantly. Unfortunately for Grover, this would have been unconvincing even coming from an excellent liar, and Grover is just about the most inherently truthful person Annabeth has ever met.

"What is it?" she asks again, even more insistently this time.

Silena, frowning at something on Grover's phone, gives Annabeth a worried look. "I don't know if it's a good moment…" she starts.

"Let me see that," says Annabeth, holding out her hand for the phone, conscious that there's – what, a minute left before she's to rise up onto the stage? She's lost track of the time. It could be less than that.

"We don't know for sure that it's real," says Grover hurriedly, as Silena hands the phone over much more slowly than Annabeth would like. "It could just be someone who looks like him."

Annabeth looks at the phone screen, and takes a moment to discern the headline: STOLEN HER HEART, TOO? LUCKY LUKE'S BIT ON THE SIDE! Her fingers shaky, she only gets the video underneath it to play on the second attempt, and there, sure enough, a little blurry but still recognisable, is the love of her life going into a restaurant with another woman, his eyes going where they shouldn't and his hands following shortly after. Any possibly doubt that it could be Luke is dispelled when Annabeth realises that she recognises the woman with him, too – it's Kelli, one of his backing singers. Annabeth knows that Kelli has feelings for Luke – she's just never realised that they're reciprocated.

The other two are looking at her with concern, but then the lift starts moving, and in a few seconds, Annabeth and her extravagant wedding dress will be the centre of the world's attention. She tosses the phone back to Grover, who just about catches it, and turns to face the music as they're cut off from her sight and she arrives at the top of the stage.

The lights seem more dazzling than normal. Is the roaring in her ears the noise of the crowd, or is it the sound of her own fury, or of her future whistling past as it rushes out of her reach? It takes her agonising moments to recognise the opening bars of Marry Me, the big song of the moment. Annabeth sings the opening, so Luke's in the wings, waiting for his cue, which means that for the moment, Annabeth commands the stage. There are no back-up dancers yet, and the musicians are all way off to the sides – this song is, after all, not really about them.

"Sorry, can you stop the music for a moment?" she finds herself saying. The excited screams and shouts of the crowd die down along with the music. Do some of them know about the news already? Are they confused, or worried, or are they just waiting to hear what they think will be some big emotional speech?

Oh, Annabeth'll give them a big emotional speech alright. She looks over to her left, where Luke is waiting to come on stage with her. He's smiling, a little confused, but largely supportive. His teeth are a dazzling white even from this distance.

"Can you turn the house lights up too, please?" she addresses the venue staff. She knows the lighting guy here, Beckendorf, who's married to Silena and is just about the best in the business. He worked to plan the show with her and Luke, but he's got the skills to improvise too, and a moment later she's able to see the fans as well as they can see her.

Are there more of her fans or Luke's here, she wonders? She knows that the arena holds about 20,000 people, and it looks like it's packed to the roof.

"I hope you've all enjoyed the show so far," she tells them, and is answered with a deafening roar of affirmation that must go on for a full minute. "And now we've reached the most special part of it. I'm sure you'll be aware that this is the biggest night of my life, and I've really been looking forward to sharing it with you all, so thank you so much for coming and showing your support." There's another roar at that, as long as the first, and out of the corner of her eye she can see Luke getting a little antsy as he waits. He doesn't know what she's doing – though neither, to be entirely fair, does she. "I'll admit, I've been a little nervous," she says, like she's confiding it to a friend rather than thousands of strangers in here and millions more watching the livestream. "But maybe the nerves die down a little when it's your second time around – I'll have to ask Luke about that." That gets a small laugh from the audience, who all remember the disintegration of Luke's marriage to Thalia Grace, which was well-documented in the tabloids. Many of them, though, must be wondering why she's talking about his previous marriage just before their own wedding.

"The practice should be good for him, though, because after tonight, he can start planning for his third wedding," she says, and the room goes deathly silent. There are tears pricking at her eyes, but she has no intention of letting them fall. She risks a glance to her left, where Luke's eyes have gone wide and his smile has vanished.

She looks out over the crowd, and catches sight of a black-haired man about her own age holding a sign that says MARRY ME resting loosely on his shoulder. A very bad idea takes root in her head, and she knows that it's a bad idea, but she wants to make some kind of a statement and so she decides she's going to do it anyway. She doesn't really know what the statement means except that her wedding is ending in one huge dumpster fire, but if that's the headline of the gossip columns for the next month, then that seems appropriate. Why shouldn't the world come and gawp at her unhappiness, unhappiness of the kind that breaks records and shakes nations?

"I guess I'm used to people leaving me," she admits softly, holding the microphone close like it's the last thing she has left. "And it hurts every time. It's heartbreaking to trust someone, to put your life in their hands, and for them to drop it when they see something shinier… or a nice ass to grope." She shoots another look over at Luke at this point, who's trying to get out onto stage, but Grover and Argus, her security guard, are holding him back, and no-one looks particularly interested in intervening in his favour.

"Maybe it's time for me to stop being surprised when things don't work out," she says. "Maybe it's time for me to stop expecting to be able to make anything that lasts. Maybe it's time for me to try living in the moment a little more." She pauses, waiting for a response from the crowd that doesn't seem forthcoming, so she ploughs on. "In this moment, I've got a wedding set up, and millions of people around the world waiting to watch me get married, so don't you think it would be a shame to waste it?" The crowd whoops again, maybe thinking that she's going to marry Luke after all, that it's all been a false alarm.

They're all wrong, though. Annabeth has someone in mind who she figures, at the very least, can't be any worse than Luke.

She points at the guy with the placard. "You, with the sign," she says. Even from up on the stage, with him surrounded by a hundred people within a handful of square feet, she can see his eyebrows shoot up cutely. He points silently to himself, and mouths, me?

"Yeah, you," she says, "with the sign that says 'marry me.' My answer's yes."

so i got home to my mum's after an extra-long shift a week or two ago and she said 'i'm watching that film we saw the trailer for with owen wilson in it this evening' and i said 'apart from work i have time to do literally one thing with my life today and i'd like it to be more fulfilling or important than watching marry me with owen wilson and j-lo.'

so long story short i watched the film and it was very dumb and very great and now i'm using it as the premise for some very fluffy fanfiction.

title was gonna be from a carly rae jepsen song but then i remembered this line from bruce springsteen's 'sherry darling' and it was no longer a crj-titled fic. the next line is 'let my broken heart love again,' which is what made it seem suitable to me for this story, though with that included it's too long for ffnet to accept as a title. in context, it's quite a firmly tongue-in-cheek line, but i've always believed that the ability to take things out of context is what separates us from the animals.

cross-posted on ao3.