A/N: I'd like to thank some of the people who helped me out: AlEmily360, SapphireTrafficker, tigerlilycorinne, AshenMoon42, Lesbian101, Shiuanc2, and LadyHW.

Abs.

Lots and lots of abs. That's what met Annabeth when she walked by the campus's pool building the next Monday. She felt kind of… stalker-y for essentially following Percy here, but she tried to convince herself that this was perfectly normal. Natural curiosity. For all she knew, he could be a perpetual bench warmer, although it seemed that he was always at swim practices, and his time there definitely paid off.

Peering through the window, she could see that Percy was definitely not a bench warmer. When she caught him pulling himself out of the pool, water dripping off of his broad shoulders (god, his shoulders) in tantalizing rivulets, making tracks down his firm abdomen (his abs!), Annabeth had to quickly turn away before her eyes could trace any further. She walked straight to the library, picking out a book on medieval medical procedures in order to calm her heart rate and collect her thoughts.

She reminded herself of what she was trying to accomplish (and that she had a boyfriend) before making up her mind to try again. I am a grown woman, Annabeth thought to herself, who can handle seeing a few half-naked boys. Men.

And now here she was, standing at the entrance of the indoor pool, like a total creep, ogling the guys on the swim team. When she had decided for the first time to come here, she hadn't thought about the fact that the swim team swam. Duh. Of course they wouldn't be swimming fully clothed. Now that Annabeth was being slapped in the face with that fact, she felt uncomfortable.

But she couldn't stop staring. The way they swam was entrancing from the beginning where they dove into the water, barely causing a splash, to the moment where they touched the wall and pulled themselves out of the water. Muscles rippling as they high fived each other. It was like watching art, like Ancient Greek statues had come alive and decided to start swimming.

But no one compared to Percy. He was a natural, cutting through the water faster than anyone else. He looked completely at home, like the water was his natural habitat. He reminded her of the ancient Greek god Poseidon, the king of the seas. She thought it was funny that he had never bragged about his swimming, because he definitely had the right.

Annabeth forced herself to tear her eyes away. She had lost her objective. This had been a bad idea from the start- what was she supposed to do? Wait for him to leave so she could spring out from behind the door like a murderer? And as mesmerizing as it was to watch him swim, it was wrong. She had a boyfriend and Luke was more than enough.

Luke was… indescribable. He was so much more than Percy and his sarcastic, cocksure attitude (and his wonderful pectorals). Admiring him as an art piece in a museum—surreal and untouchable—was okay, but any more than that was crossing the line. Annabeth had enough drama in her life; she didn't need to think of Percy in any way other than someone who could extend her life. He was like a lifesaving pill, a rough and hard to swallow pill, but there wasn't any other way.

Annabeth closed the door quietly and turned away from the dripping bodies and jubilant laughter.

:::

Annabeth checked the clock on the desk next to her bed. It must be late: Silena had gone to sleep hours ago, and the clock confirmed her suspicions—it was two in the morning.

Her eyes burned from staring at her laptop screen. She had been working for hours on the character design for her and Percy's story. He said he would do it, but she wanted to come up with a few ideas herself. And she was having trouble with the plot.

When she had offered to do it, Annabeth thought she could come up with something that could avoid her own problem altogether. Yet, now that she was trying to write around it, her timer issue was all that she could think of. The last time she had spent time with Percy, she had noticed her timer changed, but it had changed back only a few minutes after he had left. She didn't know what that meant for her future and she wanted to collect more data.

Finally, Annabeth decided to give up on designing the character for tonight. Staring at the blank screen made the task more daunting by the minute. So she exited out of her Google Doc and did some research on the timers. If they were going to write a story about them, they should know as much as they could. Annabeth had to admit—as much as the timers were such a huge part of her life, she barely knew anything about them.

Strangely enough, there was not a lot of information about the timers. Apparently, a company called Death Countdown Inc. had created them several decades ago. Soon after the timers were popularized, governments around the world began requiring their implementation. From what she could find, the timers worked by measuring the chemical balances within the subject, and could predict the exact time of death down to the minute.

Annabeth didn't really understand it. It seemed like someone had just put a long string of medical and scientific terms in long, running sentences in an attempt to scare people away from trying to understand it.

She opened up a new document and made a list of information.

Timers are put in as soon as a baby is born

Stillborns have 00.00 time

Chemical imbalances?

DCD inc

Mandatory in 173 countries

Once she had written everything she knew for certain down, she began looking up the conspiracies. Some people thought it was the timers that killed people, that they'd count down to a random moment in your life and would send some kind of electric shock or poison into the system. Others believed that it was the government's way of controlling you and invading your privacy. Annabeth didn't know what to believe.

It was late and she didn't want to think past the stories that had been fed to her since she was a little girl; that the timers existed so people could come to terms with their death, so they could plan ahead, and that the timers were there to give people closure.

She knew the kinds of dangerous avenues that thinking otherwise could lead down.

That may have worked for Annabeth. Sure she was going to die in a few months, but until she met Percy, she had been okay with it. It didn't work so well for other people, however.

Annabeth's father had tried his best, but she could tell he didn't know what to do. The tension that came from raising a kid who was born to die young led to his and her mom's divorce when she was three. He had remarried a year later. Her stepmother and stepbrothers never got close to her. Both of the boys had long lives, their timers each had about eighty years. Her stepmother had always kept Annabeth at an arm's length. She'd said she "couldn't bear to become close to Annabeth just to lose her so young". Annabeth knew it was a load of bullshit; her stepmother really just didn't care about her.

She had run away when she was seven. And then again when she was twelve. She couldn't stand being alone in that cold house, where she was treated like a walking corpse. Like a ghost—invisible to everyone around her. The second time, the police had found her halfway to San Jose and had taken her back when she finally told them where she lived. After that, her father finally relented and contacted her mom. Annabeth had been living with her mom ever since. It was a different type of cold. She had buried herself in her schoolwork in an attempt to forget that in everyone's eyes, she was already dead.

It was two-thirty in the morning and Annabeth was starting to wonder if the conspiracy theories were right; if the timers really were a bad thing. It was too late, and she shouldn't be thinking like that. It was too much like... Thalia. She was too tired and she knew that at this hour anything could seem true.

Annabeth closed her laptop and set it beside her bed. Pulling her comforter over her head, she let the darkness swallow her. Thinking about her past made her feel like a little kid again, scared of the monsters under her bed. She looked at the slight glow that her timer provided and counted along with the seconds. Annabeth fell asleep counting.

:::

It was Friday and Annabeth still hadn't come up with a lot about the plot. She had a rough outline, but that was about it. She didn't want to meet Percy without anything less than amazing, but nothing came to her. As much as she stared at the laptop screen, she just couldn't think of the words.

Percy had texted her the time and location of their meeting place on Thursday night. Following the directions that he had left, she arrived about ten minutes early at a small sweets shop on the outskirts of the college campus. The entire interior was painted blue except for a few of the cabinets, which were a light shade of lavender. It seemed like Percy had a thing for blue. She would have to ask him about it later.

She sat down at a seat inside, smiling politely at the woman behind the counter. She waited for Percy, reading on her phone until she noticed someone obstructing her light. She locked her phone and looked up.

"Hey," Percy said, smiling down at her. His dark hair was as messy as ever and it fell in front of his eyes when he looked at her. He pushed it back with his hand but it just flopped into his eyes again. It looked soft. Annabeth wondered vaguely about how it would feel to run her hand through it. Then she pushed that thought back to the very farthest part of her mind. She shouldn't be thinking things like that.

"Hi," Annabeth said, waiting for Percy to take a seat.

He remained standing. "Aren't you going to get anything?" he asked, motioning his head towards the counter.

"Oh," she said. She hadn't even considered it. "Sure." She got up and headed to the candy-colored counter.

Annabeth loved anything sour. Well, anything sour and not crap. She grabbed a small, plastic bag from the counter and looked at the assortment of sweets. Percy followed suit. There were long, twirled ropes of licorice. Cinnamon gummy bears, sour shoelaces, chocolate rocks, candy floss, marshmallows, Dutch mints, aero bars, and every colour of jelly beans and MnMs available.

The shop seemed to extend a lot farther than she had initially thought. Once she had filled her bag up halfway, she walked up to the counter. A middle aged woman with greying brown hair and kind blue eyes rang her up. Then she stepped aside to wait for Percy.

"Oh, go on ahead of me," he said. "Maybe we can go to Rospar to work?"

Annabeth nodded and let herself outside, although she was confused as to why he had decided to meet here if he just wanted to work at the science library. She nibbled on a lemon sour rope as she waited for him.

After five minutes Annabeth was starting to get suspicious. What could he possibly be doing in a candy store for that long? She glanced through the doorway and saw Percy talking to the woman behind the counter. She gave him a hug and reached up to ruffle his hair. He was looking at her like she was the best thing in the world, like she was his universe. Annabeth quickly turned around when Percy began to leave the shop. She didn't want to seem like she was snooping. The scene at the pool flashed through her mind briefly, but she mentally shoved it away.

Percy noticed her questioning expression. "That's my mom," he explained as they started walking back to campus. Now that Annabeth thought about it, they did kind of look similar.

"I thought you were from New York."

"We are, but when I came here my mom decided to follow." He shrugged, but Annabeth could see it meant a lot to him. She felt a stab of jealousy. He and his mom obviously cared for each other. A lot.

They walked through the campus, which was made up of a strange combination of pretty neo-gothic lecture halls and squat cement labs. Students sat in groups in the various grassy spaces, enjoying the last few days of warm sun. Soon autumn would roll in and the city's famous gloomy weather would stick around for months before they'd see the sun again. Annabeth considered suggesting they sit outside instead, but Percy broke her train of thought.

"So what were you doing?" he asked, digging around in his bag of candy and pulling out a blue jelly bean. Annabeth noticed that all of his candy was blue, even the chocolates.

"Hmmm?"

"When I walked up you were smiling at your phone. What were you looking at?" He was looking at her now, and his intense gaze made her blush.

"I was reading."

"You really like to read, don't you?"

Annabeth shrugged. "Yeah, I mean, doesn't everyone?"

Percy paused to munch on a blue sour shoelace. "I don't know, I don't really."

"You don't what?" she asked.

"I don't really read. Books." Percy pushed his hair back, looking bashful and embarrassed. Annabeth was trying to wrap her head around the fact that Percy didn't read.

"Like at all? Not even for school?"

"Not really. Textbooks are kind of...hard for me. And if I can, I usually just listen to audiobooks," he said.

"I think that counts. Audiobooks count," she said. Percy gave her an uncharacteristically timid smile, like he was relieved to hear her say that. Like he cared what she thought. "Plus," she added, "I don't read the textbooks either when I can help it." Annabeth hadn't bought a textbook since the first semester of freshman year, when she'd bought three hundred dollars worth of "completely necessary" books for her classes and then hadn't been able to struggle past the first chapter of the dense text.

"I still don't listen to audiobooks that much," Percy said.

Annabeth fake gasped. "Philistine," she teased. Percy laughed.

"Oh, sorry I wasn't reading um, what was it, Grapes of Wrath?"

Annabeth laughed. "How do you know I was reading Grapes of Wrath?"

"You were reading it last class," he said easily. He noticed? Percy must have seen her surprised expression. "Hey, I notice things!"

"Yeah, you're a real Sherlock Holmes," Annabeth said sarcastically.

Percy just grinned back. "Ouch, Watson."

Annabeth was suddenly struck with how well they were getting along. Sure, they were mostly just insulting each other, but their conversation flowed easily and she felt comfortable with him. She liked talking to him.

She took a Red Hot out of her bag, one of the few not sour things she bought, and put it into her mouth.

"Hey, can I have one of those?" Percy asked.

Annabeth tried to look annoyed. "You have a whole bag of candy in front of you."

"But I don't have any of those." He made a fake pouty face.

"Oh my god, stop." Annabeth said and dug some of the cinnamon candies out of her bag, depositing them in his waiting hand.

"Oh yuck, cinnamon. I thought it was cherry. How do you eat these?!"

Annabeth giggled as she shushed him. They had entered the sciences building and Percy's voice suddenly sounded booming among the quiet students. They found an empty desk and Annabeth set her candy bag to the side and set up her laptop. Opening her Google Doc, she winced when she saw her list of half-hearted plot ideas. She looked up at Percy, who was scooting closer to see what was on her screen. Annabeth fought the desire to scoot away. And the other desire that confused her—the desire to scoot closer.

"I um, didn't really get that far with the plot," she admitted. She guiltily reminded herself of the condescending way she had talked to him at their first meeting. "I ended up working a bit more on the character design." She expected a remark about 'the wonderful Miss Chase needing help' but he just pulled his own laptop out and asked her to share the document with him.

"That's fine." Percy rubbed the back of his neck. "I actually kind of had trouble with the character, so I, uh, did the plot instead."

Annabeth was silent for a second, so Percy brought out his own laptop, opening his own document.

"Can you share it with me?" Annabeth said. He did, and she pulled it up on her computer. She read through it. It was interesting. Annabeth was glad it didn't hit too close to home. The main character's timer counted down until an early stage in her life, but when it reached zero she didn't die. Annabeth thought it was a good idea, one she had never thought of. Then the main character meets someone and wonders about telling them that they don't know when they will die. It was still a little uncomfortable for Annabeth, but it didn't mirror her life, so that was a plus.

"This is good," she said. "I think we can really build off of this. I'll add my character notes to the bottom and we can work on incorporating them into the story." She turned her head to look at Percy.

She took in a quick breath. She hadn't realized they were so close. Percy turned his face towards hers as she jerked away from him. Her heart was racing. She was mostly just surprised, but his proximity made her feel embarrassed. She hoped she wasn't blushing. She checked her timer; maybe it had jumped to right now and that was why Annabeth felt like she was about to go into cardiac arrest. Her timer reassured her that she still had around sixty-four years to live. It changed every time she was around Percy.

Percy, seemingly oblivious to the fact that he almost gave Annabeth a heart attack, moved over to the other side of the table. He turned his green eyes to her and Annabeth forced herself not to look away.

"Should we come up with an outline now?" He was watching her, waiting for a response. Annabeth tried to get ahold of herself. Right, school project.

She pressed her lips together and nodded. Over the course of an hour, their outline slowly came together. Working with Percy was easier than she thought it would be. Although he was easily distracted (and easily distracted her), he had great ideas and wasn't afraid to challenge Annabeth over some of her own. Somehow she found herself not really minding.

Their comfortable back and forth was interrupted when Percy started packing up. "You can pick the place we meet next time," he told her. "Just text me the details. I've got to go." He gave her an apologetic grin.

"Swim practice?" Annabeth asked.

"Swim practice," he confirmed. He started walking away, but then stopped, turning around. He smirked evilly at her. "You're welcome to come… again." He waited for what he said to sink in. Again. Annabeth turned beet red. Percy laughed.

Annabeth didn't get the chance to protest before he was checking his phone and jogging away, laughing all the while. She spluttered. It's not what you think, she wanted to say. It's not like that at all.

Annabeth got her phone out and texted Luke.

Annabeth- Hey, do you want to go on a date tomorrow

He responded several minutes later, as she was walking back to her dorm room.

Luke- Aren't I the one whos supposed to ask that?

She rolled her eyes. Luke could be so old fashioned, but she was sure he was teasing.

Annabeth- Welcome to the 21st century.

She wanted to delete it instantly. That was something she would say to Percy, not to Luke. Luke didn't like it when she was sarcastic, especially when it was to him.

Luke- i was just joking

Annabeth could feel his annoyance through the screen.

Annabeth- Yea I know

Luke- Ok babe, I will pick you up at eight

Annabeth- kk

Talking with Luke could sometimes feel like walking through a minefield, one Annabeth had just barely navigated through. She locked her phone and turned it on silent.

:::

Annabeth cursed as she looked at herself in the mirror above Silena's desk. She was trying to put on mascara and was failing. Drastically. She groaned when she messed up again and put her mascara down, picking up another makeup remover wipe.

"Do you want any help with that?" Silena asked from her bed. Annabeth did need help, but not from her. Silena loved makeup; she said it was an art, and she liked to treat Annabeth's face like a canvas on which to create her next masterpiece whenever they did makeovers.

"No, it's okay," she told Silena. "I think I've… got it. Oh, thank god! It's all done." Annabeth admired her handy work in the mirror. It seemed decent enough.

"So who're you getting all dolled up for?" Silena asked. Annabeth started brushing her hair and turned to look at her. Silena sat leaning forward sketching a variety of figures into a pad of thick white paper. Her silky black hair tumbled over her shoulders and she pushed it back.

"Luke, of course," Annabeth started, but at Silena's eye roll continued, "he is my-"

Silena groaned. "You're still going out with the dictator?"

Annabeth scoffed at Silena's description of him.

"He's not a dictator!"

"He so is. Why are you putting on mascara then? You hate wearing it."

"I want to look nice."

"I could make you look nice."

"As much as I love your sharp-as-a-knife wings, Luke's not a huge fan of the intense eyeliner look."

"So?" Silena said, putting down her sketchbook and picking up her phone.

"So, I want to look nice for him," Annabeth said, frowning at her split ends.

"I don't know, sounds kind of autocratic," Silena replied. "You should want to look nice for you."

"Autocratic...did you just look up the definition of dictator?" Annabeth asked. Silena just grinned prettily, lowering her phone. "And I'm fine with how I normally look. I'm just doing a little extra."

"I don't understand why you still go out with him. You are so much better than that." Silena got up to look at her own mirror, running a perfectly polished nail around the edge of her lip.

"No, I'm not. Luke is perfectly fine. He takes great care of me and he's reliable. I know he will always be there for me. He has always been there for me."

"He's also offensive and undermines everything you say and do. You're always so different around him. It's like you wilt. Everything that makes you you, disappears."

Annabeth had heard this exact speech from Silena a hundred times before. She didn't care enough to be angry. She just turned around, putting her hands on her hips. "How do I look?"

"Great, as always. Some purple eyeshadow would totally go with your shirt though." Silena said. "And you seriously just need to dump him. Trust me."

Annabeth sighed. "No to the eyeshadow, and no to the dumping."

"I could make it look so natural though. He wouldn't even notice." Silena went to her own closet, pulling out a short green dress. "Maybe I should go on a date tonight too."

"Oh yes, a nice natural purple. If Luke doesn't even notice it, doesn't that kind of defeat the purpose?"

"Whatever. Fuck him. Date that hot guy in your writing class." Silena grinned, pulling off her pajamas to change into the green dress. She shimmied into it and turned around. "Zip me?"

Annabeth stepped forward to zip her up. She was glad for an excuse to tame her blush before Silena turned around. She wasn't even sure why she was blushing. "I don't even know who you're—how do you know he's hot?"

"So you admit he's hot," Silena pointed out, then turned to her mirror to put on some green eye liner. "And I saw you guys walking around campus a few days ago. You were looking pretty cozy." She said the last part looking at Annabeth, reaching back to clumsily nudge her.

"We weren't—he's not—I don't even know why I'm explaining this. I'm about to go on a date with my actual boyfriend."

Silena was holding the phone to her ear. "Whatever, have fun with Mussolini. Oh, hi Charlie."

"That is totally inappropriate," Annabeth said, even though she knew Silena wasn't listening anymore. Silena just waved her off, swiveling around in her desk chair.

Once she got outside she pulled out her phone and texted Luke.

Annabeth- I'm on my way down.

He responded almost immediately.

Luke- Hurry up, i got here early.

Annabeth checked the time. She still had ten minutes until eight.

She picked up her pace.