3

Grover calls Annabeth early in the morning, before she's even finished her breakfast. "We need to talk," he says.

"Do we?" she asks. She knows instantly that she's being more difficult and combative than Grover, who's never been anything other than a rock to support her, deserves, but she's still hurting from Luke's betrayal and the cold light of day has made last night's events seem even more farcically awful. She'd turned the TV on to spend the last half hour watching grumpy anchors speculating about her mental stability, and from what she can see on her phone, last night's wedding is front page news even for serious news organisations that usually focus on the economy and other disasters.

"Annabeth, I know it's not a great time, but if we handle this badly it could end your entire career," he tells her gently, and she makes a face that she's glad Grover can't see in recognition that he's probably right. Annabeth always, always has total control of herself, of the things she does and the music she makes and even of many of the things that are printed and said about her, and now… now she's another star who flew too high too soon, and without some genius damage limitation, it may well stay that way as far as the public are concerned.

"Everyone knows that Luke is the one who cheated, so you've got a lot of sympathy from the public, even if they're… a little confused about what happened last night, so we just have to play it off as a moment of madness, we thank Percy for going along with it, get him to sign an NDA, and everyone can go on with their lives like it never happened, OK?"

"I doubt that," Annabeth says bitterly. For it to be like it had never happened, she'd need to still be with Luke, and her heart aches at the loss of the life she'd planned with him. Until last night, he's been the one she calls when she needs help working out something as difficult and crazy as this – although, to be fair, until now she's never been in a situation quite as difficult and crazy as this one. He'd pushed her relentlessly not only to be better, but to be the best. Every decision was challenged with a whys and hows and whens and whos that forced them into perfection.

Grover's silent, and she can tell he's struggling to work out what to say to her, but the silence makes it easier to admit the painful truth. "Luke was the best part of me," she chokes out, and she hears a sympathetic sigh on the other end of the line.

"I'm coming over," says her manager finally, "and I'm bringing Silena with me."

So, an hour later, the three of them are sitting in Annabeth's kitchen while Silena plies her with hugs and food and Grover tries to work out a plan of action.

"Obviously we can pay him for his help if we need to," says Grover.

"That feels tacky," says Annabeth. "Is it prostitution to pay someone to marry you even if you don't have sex?"

"It might be necessary," says Silena, topping up Annabeth's coffee and sliding a plate of biscuits onto the table as she sits down, "and it's the person selling who's prostituting; what you would be doing is solicitation."

"If you haven't actually…" begins Grover, waving his arms vaguely to try to convey what he means.

"Oh, what's the word for it, now?" asks Annabeth sarcastically, and Silena cackles.

"I think it might begin with an S and rhyme with brewed," says the other girl.

Annabeth shakes her head. "No, I'm pretty sure the word I was thinking of starts with an F and rhymes with eruct."

To his credit, Grover blushes less than she'd expected him to. "I don't know what eruct means or why we're even talking about this, but legally speaking, if you haven't done it, it's not solicitation or prostitution from either of you. The point is that everything will run much more smoothly with Percy's co-operation."

"How do you know his name, anyway?" asks Annabeth, at the same time as Silena says "Percy's a nice name." Annabeth shoots her a Look, and continues, "I didn't even find out he was called Percy until we dropped him off at the end of last night."

"I'm your manager, so it's my job to know these things," says Grover. "Also, I'm ninety percent sure you married Percy Jackson who I went to school with for a year in middle school, until he got expelled. Beckendorf's busy tracking down his history since then."

"He got expelled?" asks Annabeth her voice rising until it was a squeak in her own ears. "Wasn't your school really rough? Have I just married a gangster or something?"

"It wasn't really his fault, and I'd be surprised if Percy grew up to be in the mafia or something," says Grover. "He was a nice kid."

"But you don't want me married to him, so what is it about him you don't trust?"

Grover blinks. "No, really, Percy was lovely – he was my best friend for that year," he says, but then he hesitates, and she knows that his next words are going to be on a subject that Grover hates: feelings. "The two of you…" he begins, "are basically strangers. And I feel like maybe the reason why you married Percy wasn't because you really wanted to marry Percy. It might have been more to do with Luke and how you were feeling at that moment. And that's okay. That's fine. But it's probably not a great basis for a relationship, and now we have to figure out what comes next."

"Stop being so… perceptive and empathetic and stuff," Annabeth snaps tiredly, sinking her head to meet her coffee cup, but there's little bite in her words. "So everyone realises I did it because I was mad, not because I was making some radical statement about feminism and womanhood and marriage and romance and society and… more stuff?"

"Afraid so," says Silena. "Hey, these bookies are offering odds on how many hours it'll take until you get divorced."

"Silena!"

"I'm just saying-"

"That's not what we need from you right now!" Grover tells her.

"Hours?" asks Annabeth, raising her head.

"You don't need to listen to her-" starts Grover, but Annabeth cuts him off.

"What if I didn't get divorced?" she asks.

Her friends exchange a look. "Sorry?" says Silena.

"What if I stay married to him – to Percy?"

"What if the sea was red and Shell Oil never did anything wrong?" says Grover. "I don't really understand what you're getting at."

Annabeth looks at him. "You know, in Homer's poetry, he describes the sea as being the colour of wine. Sometimes it can look kinda purple, in the right light at dusk."

"Would hot chocolate and brioche help you make more sense?" asks Silena.

"Hot chocolate and brioche would be fantastic," says Annabeth, "but my point is that sometimes you just have to look at the world a little differently to make sense of it. I married him to get back at Luke, it's true. But is that a reason to get divorced?"

Grover looks at her like she's speaking gibberish. "I'm not sure it's a reason to stay married," he says.

She sighs and rests her head back on the table, giving up. "You're probably right," she admits, and pulls out her phone to break the news.

"You know you married the one guy in the crowd last night with zero social media?" asks Beckendorf, his voice tinny down the line as they turn into the street Annabeth recognises from last night as being Percy's.

"So we know nothing about him?"

"Oh ye of little faith," retorts Beckendorf, "that's not what I said at all. He was a troublemaker at school, it looks like – kicked out of more than I can count, and no grades worth writing home about. He was married once, but that ended three years ago. Those are the only skeletons in the closet, as far as I can tell."

"I guess it's good he's not currently married," she says weakly. "That could have been awkward.

"Since then, it looks like he's come good. He's a world-leading marine biologist with Columbia University, doing research into giant squids."

"The plural is just giant squid," Annabeth corrects automatically, "like fish. You'd only say squids if you were talking about multiple species of squid or something."

"I can tell you're a good match already," Silena tells her drily, as Argus pulls up. "Thanks Charlie, love you lots."

"Love you more," responds Beckendorf, and Annabeth does her best to shut her ears to her friends' outrageous romance as she clambers out of the car.

Percy's waiting at the door for her with another man and a little girl, who Annabeth guesses must be his sister Estelle and Nico, the friend who'd looked after her last night. She feels a surge of guilt that she'd dragged him away from them to get involved in her petty romantic drama, but musters up a smile and a wave as she approaches. Percy sticks out a hand to shake hers just as she moves in for a hug, but after a moment of fumbling she wins out and they share an awkward embrace.

"I brought some friends, hope that's okay" she tells him, gesturing to Grover and Silena. "And you must be Estelle," she says, shaking the little girl's hand, "nice to meet you, I'm Annabeth."

"Hi," says the child, looking up at her in that sweet, slightly awestruck way that kids often do.

"Nico," says Nico, when she reaches him. He's dressed entirely in black apart from the trim of his sneakers, and is skeletally thin and pale, meaning that the only thing ruining the image of him as the Grim Reaper is the fact that he's slightly shorter than Percy and has a small child clinging to his arm like she'll never let go. Estelle shuffles around behind him, suddenly intimidated by Annabeth despite what Annabeth herself thought had been a good first encounter.

"Sorry if I robbed you of the chance to be Percy's best man," she apologises to Nico.

"There's a price to be paid for that," he tells her, deadly serious. "And it must be paid in autographed merch."

"Let's head in," interrupts Percy, moving between them before she can try to come up with a response that would be suitable whether or not Nico was joking.

Indoors, Percy takes hot drinks orders and disappears round a corner to make them Estelle tries to pull out Grover's beard and Nico and Silena start bonding over a shared admiration for Annabeth's many wardrobe changes last night. Annabeth takes the opportunity to quietly follow Percy, who starts when he realises he's not alone in the kitchenette. As well as surprise, there's a touch of wariness in his look, like he's not totally sure that she's not about to stab him.

Is that a fair reaction, she wonders? It's not like she can judge from past experience exactly how comfortable they're supposed to be around one another. They're complete strangers, but, then again, they're not. They're married, in theory 'til death does them part, so it's not an insane thing to do for her to seek him out for a little privacy to talk, right?

"So, my team all think we should get divorced as quickly as possible," she says by way of an ice-breaker.

"Okay," says Percy. "And you think so, too?"

That gives her pause. She'd meant that her team speak for her, that they're all in agreement, but that little voice from earlier pops up in her ear again: what if I stay married to him? "It seems like it would be the wise option," she says, keeping her voice as neutral as possible. "But… do you want to stay married to me?"

He twitches his eyebrows like he hadn't expected to be asked his opinion on the matter. "I hadn't really thought about it."

She looks at him, really looks at him, sizing him up in a way she hasn't before. His eyes are green and honest, he's an inch or two taller than her, and she knows for a fact that Gordon Ramsay would kill for a knife as sharp as that jawline. Besides being incomprehensibly calm about the situation he's found himself in, Percy looks… alright. He looks alright, she decides, not wanting to travel any further down that path. "So, we got married last night, and… you didn't even think a little bit about what would come next?"

"Did you?" he asks, which is a fair point. "Honestly, I kind of assumed that you'd wake up today and want to end things as quietly as possible and that would be that."

"It was probably kind of a dick move of me to assume that because you were holding a 'marry me' sign you wanted to actually marry me," she says by way of agreement. "Considering it's the name of the song and all."

"It was actually Nico's sign, as well," he tells her. "He did mean it as a proposal, but it was aimed at Luke." He winces visibly the moment he says Luke's name. "Sorry."

"It's fine," she says. "The whole world's obsessing over my aborted marriage at the moment; I can handle people saying his name. So… do you want me to get Grover to send you the divorce papers as soon as possible?"

He hesitates. "That's not exactly what I'm saying. I just kind of expected it. And I'm heading on an expedition to the Mariana Trench in a few months, so I'm not like… around for the long term anyway."

She's letting that sink in when Nico interrupts. "I don't know what you're trying to pressure Percy into," he says, rounding the corner and reaching past her to snatch a mug of something that absolutely stinks as he lifts it past her nose, "but you can just make a fat donation to saving the ocean and he'll do literally anything you ask him to."

Annabeth considers this for a moment. She considers other things, too: Luke; the gaggle of reporters who are probably already loitering on Percy's doorstep; her mother's disapproval (no doubt already in full swing); the fact that in a rare moment of grace the fates had helped her pick out a stranger in the crowd who seems like a basically decent kind of guy. She thinks about what she'd said last night: words that were more honest, in retrospect, than she'd have liked them to be. About the foolishness of expecting anything to last. "Grover," she calls into the other room, "would it be so bad for PR if I took my husband along to some awards ceremonies and things?"

Grover and Silena's heads pop around the door moments later, Estelle following shortly after so as not to miss out on the excitement. "I'm sorry, what have you been talking about in here?" asks Grover.

"Saving the ocean, huh?" Annabeth turns back to Percy. "You're a big fan of giant squid, right?"

Percy smiles. She can tell he's trying hard not to, but he fails and the bashful expression runs across his face like a burst egg yolk. "Yeah" he says, and then, like he can't help himself, "but not as big as the squid themselves."

Grover snorts, Nico groans, Silena sighs, Estelle says "Yuck!" – though Annabeth isn't totally certain that this is related to squid – and Annabeth herself realises that she's smiling more than the joke strictly deserves.

"You don't owe me anything," she tells Percy. "You can walk out any time you like. We can have divorce papers sorted out faster than anyone else in the world, if you want. But I like proving people wrong, and you like giant squid."

"I like most things that live in the sea," he says. "It sounds a lot weirder when you only mention the squid."

"Okay, let me rephrase: I like proving people wrong, and you like marine wildlife."

"And you say it like there's an obvious overlap," he says.

"Like I said, you can stop any time you want to. But if you'd be happy to do some media rounds with me, to go to some events, and just to be seen to stay married to me – say till you head on your next expedition, or earlier if you feel it's not working out – we could make some donations to conservation projects and your research or any other cause of your choice. And it would be all expenses paid, of course. We wouldn't interfere with your life at all apart from public appearances, and when you go, you go. You'd have saved the planet and my career. How does that sound to you?"

"That sounds… okay," Percy says slowly.

"I'm not sure that does sound okay," interjects Grover from the doorway.

Percy narrows his eyes at him, and for a moment Annabeth thinks her new husband is about to start a fight with her manager. There's a long pause, and she can practically see beads of sweat forming on Grover's forehead.

"Grover… Underwood?" asks Percy slowly. "Did you go to Yancy Academy?"

Grover smiles nervously. "Hi Percy," he says, "long time no see."

"G-man!" exclaims Percy, squeezing past Annabeth and Nico to wrap Grover in a warm embrace, a grin of genuine pleasure taking over his whole face.

Joy, Annabeth considers carefully, is a good look on him.

She considers this fact a little longer, a little more carefully, and decides she wouldn't mind seeing it again.

She wouldn't mind that at all.

writing reviews is scary and difficult so i provide for you here a template that you can use to warm an author's heart:

[Wow, Jeff, what an incredibly good story this is! It's romantic and emotional and shall surely go down in history as a literary masterpiece! Have I ever told you how good I thought you were in King Kong (1976)? I, [insert username here], shall surely treasure this reading experience forever.]

this chapter is, i acknowledge, a touch filler-y, but i think it's necessary to establish a little what our heroes are getting into in order that they can shenaniganise further on down the line. hope you enjoyed. see you next week.