This was it. Percy's senior year. His final year of high school. Thank the gods! Percy thought to himself. While being a senior was great, Annabeth had finally returned from her family emergency in Boston, and was in school with him. She was staying their house too, to Percy, everything was finally going right.

There were no monsters to fight, no gods meddling in their lives, and no horrifying wars that would leave them scarred. Annabeth got back to New York the day before school resumed, she would have died before she missed a day of school. Percy always gave her a hard time for how much she enjoyed high school, and school in general. It was foreign to him. He hated school, the only things that kept him going were the swim team, and Annabeth. If he didn't have those, he probably would have dropped out, like Grover. Of course, Grover didn't really need to go to school anyway. He only enrolled to protect Percy.

School of Percy began at 8:15 am, his first class was AP chemistry, Annabeth FORCED him to take it, he knew he would fail. Then, he had History of the World, and Pre-Calculus. He finished his day with a PE swimming class, he always looked forward to that. It was the only class Percy knew he could get an A+ in. Since the school was on an alternating day schedule, on the other days (the school used their colors to identify each day), Percy had 3 free periods and only an English class. He had it fairly easy this year.

Annabeth, on the other hand, had so many classes, Percy was sure she'd explode. She had AP chemistry, AP biology, AP English, AP U.S. Government and AP Calculus. Those were just the AP courses, she was also taking English (with Percy), Latin 4, and ceramics. Gods, my girlfriend is going to work herself to death, Percy always thought, but she always managed to get straight A's.

His day was going great, except for AP chemistry, he was enjoying walking the halls with Annabeth, seeing his friends, and eating. He REALLY enjoyed lunch. Percy was happy.

After school, he and Annabeth walked back to his mother's house in Manhattan. Annabeth was staying in the guest room, Percy's mom was cool, but she wasn't THAT cool. Annabeth would often hangout in Percy's room though, she liked it in there.

"Hey Mom, we're home!" Percy yelled as he entered their house. There was no response. It wasn't that weird, Sally wasn't home that often when Percy got back from school. She was probably out with the baby. "Paul! We're home!" Percy yelled afterword. It would have been really odd if he responded, he was probably at work, but Percy thought he'd try anyway. "Well, I guess we're alone." Percy said as he smiled at Annabeth.

"Percy, I know exactly what you're thinking, and the answer is no." Annabeth looked at Percy with her, this isn't a good time for that face, and Percy knew exactly what that meant. He frowned with a face of disappointment, but that faded quickly.

"Fine." Percy sighed to himself, rather annoyed that he wasn't going to be able to spend any… personal time with Annabeth for a few days. "Well then, what should we do?" Percy seemed to not be able to think about anything else. That made Annabeth sigh, boys.

"Why don't we do our homework Percy? That sounds like a clever idea to me!" Annabeth cocked her head as she said it, almost to say that was the most obvious thing to do. Percy didn't look happy about her suggestion. He actually looked sad that she had even suggested it, what teacher assigns homework on the first day of classes? Percy thought to himself, but he didn't say it aloud.

Percy sighed in defeat. Annabeth was right. Homework was important, especially senior year.

Just as the two of them got ready to work, Percy's phone rang. The sudden vibration of his phone startled Percy, if he had Riptide out, it would probably have impaled his phone. It was Will calling him. "Oh crap!" Percy yelled.

"What is it?" Annabeth spoke with confusion.

"I told Will that I would check on Nico after school, dammit I completely blanked." Percy admitted. "This isn't going to be a fun call." With that, Percy clicked the accept call icon on his phone, and Will greeted him.

"Hey man! What's up?" Will opened with.

"Not much, all is good." Percy was trying his best to hide his nervousness, it seemed to work, because Will didn't mention anything about how his voice sounded. To Percy, he thought his voice was 3 octaves higher than normal, but maybe he was just imagining it. "How was your day?"

"Ummmm it was… fine… don't like being back at school." Will answered. Percy knew he was hiding something, but didn't press it. "Have you uh, checked on Nico yet?" Will wondered.

"Oh, poop man, no I forgot. I can take the LIRR to camp now if you want, but…" Percy tried to make it sound like he just remembered, but he failed. It sounded rehearsed.

"No, it's fine Percy, I was actually calling to tell you not to check up on him. Turns out, it's not necessary." Will finished the sentence as quick as he could.

That made Percy curious. "Oh, why, I told you I'd check up on him every Thursday. Today is Thursday." Percy wanted an answer.

"He—uh—visited me last night, so it's all good." Will spat out.

"He what? How? I thought you didn't want him shadow-traveling?" Percy was trying to wrap his brain around how else Nico could have gotten from NY to New Mexico. He couldn't think of any other method of travel that fast.

"I don't, but have you met Nico, dude, if he wants to do something, he does it." Will was trying to hide his concerns, but Percy could hear his fear about shadow-travel. "It was sorta my fault that he visited last night anyway… I told him I was in the closet here, and that hurt him a lot. I tried to talk it out, but he hung up on me. I spent the rest of the night freaking out and trying to come out. Eventually Reyna called me, after talking to Nico, and helped me. So, long story short I came out to my friends last night."

Percy didn't really know what to say, he thought at first, he should say how he understood how it felt to come out, but that would be a lie. He didn't. "That still doesn't really explain why he shadow-traveled to you?" Percy answered.

"Well, my friend Lily called him, and kinda told him that I may be assaulted if I came out here, that made Nico extremely guilty and concerned. So, we made up, and he was waiting in my room when I got back to my house." Will stopped himself from continuing. He was always getting in trouble with Nico for constantly talking about the details of their love lives.

"He was waiting in your room? Ohhhh I see." Percy answered quickly. He almost said, you're lucky, Annabeth can't do that for a few days.

"Yeah… Nico has asked me to keep the personal details of our lives to myself. Sorry." That was against Will's nature. As a child of Apollo, love was something he liked to talk about. "So… anyway I just wanted to tell you that visiting Nico wasn't necessary. Thanks for offering though. I'll talk to you guys later, I have to go to practice. Bye Percy, say hi to Annabeth for me." With that, Will ended the call.

Percy put the phone down, and he looked at Annabeth, "Will says Hi."