Disclaimer: I am not Uncle Rick and I do not own the rights to these characters. I just ship them immensely.

A/N: Thanks for the lovely reviews-you know who you are ;) I'm taking it all into consideration.

Thalia's mind started reminding her of every bad movie where things went wrong on airplanes and unaccounted for passengers, disguised to be misleading, were the cause. Which was of course the opposite of what she wanted her mind to be telling her.

"Not technically, at least," Luke said, losing the grin and raising the volume of his speech to a normal conversational tone. Thalia ogled him, and then relaxed slightly. She reprimanded herself for making her alarm so obvious. There was no way he could be a "bad guy", security was so much tighter these days. ...Right? She could see that behind his blue eyes was a hint of discomfort at spooking her. Recovering quickly, he continued, "I'm using this flight to get to New York to work from there a few days before driving down to Connecticut to visit my mother."

There was a slight pause in their conversation as an announcement interrupted them to announce that the flight would be leaving the airport shortly and that people should put on their seat belts. Thalia did so and fell silent before she jolted to action, realizing she should respond to Luke to be courteous, and reassure him that she wasn't as alarmed as she probably looked. At least, that's what she told herself. "Oh. Oh, that's nice," she said. "I'm visiting my father in Manhattan, and I'm returning to work."

"Where's work for you?" Luke asked her. It seemed now as if the awkwardness of their earlier conversation had passed.

"I do lighting and set design all over Manhattan," Thalia told him with a soft smile. "Not Broadway," Thalia said quickly when his eyebrows raised as he was about to ask the question. "Yet." She smiled again.

Luke chuckled softly. "How'd you decide to do that?"

"I'm just really good with electric stuff," Thalia said with a shrug. "My father taught me some of it when I was a child, but he and my mom separated when I was very young so I didn't see him often. When I got to high school, he moved and I taught myself the rest." Thalia realized she'd gotten pretty personal with her story and quickly mumbled a sorry. "I'm rambling. You didn't want to know that." She fiddled with her headphones.

"No, that's alright. I was never close to my father, either," Luke told her reassuringly. There was another announcement that interrupted their conversation, and Thalia gripped the armrest of her seat as the plane began to move. She would have closed her eyes except that she had left the window panel open and her eyes gave her no choice but to look out as the runway slipped away from them like a tablecloth from a table in a magic trick. She heard Luke chuckle and barely held in her icy glare. "What?" she asked through grit teeth. She didn't have the greatest tolerance for being the cause of someone's amusement unless it was on purpose.

"Flying is uncomfortable for you. You just didn't seem like one of those people," Luke replied calmly. "Sometimes I forget there are people who aren't akin to flying since I do it so often." He smiled again, easing the tension behind Thalia's accusatory glance. He reached over to her surprise and squeezed her hand lightly, almost affectionately. "However, I do know from experience that these flights are perfectly safe."

"I know. It's just...a natural...thing," Thalia said with a grimace. "I'd rather drive, but my father pays for the flights so I don't want to be rude." When the turbulence was over with, she began to relax, and finally realized that she had been gripping Luke's hand. With an embarrassing not-so-silent gasp, she recoiled from his hand as if it burned her and closed the window blind. Without looking, Thalia could feel his unabashed smile. She fumbled for her headphones.

There was silence between them now, which Thalia could have used earlier to avoid being so damn embarrassing, as she had thought in reflection.

"What do you like listening to?" Luke asked curiously and amiably, leaning closer. Thalia was taken aback when she thought to herself unconsciously that his childlike expression was quite cute. In a childish way, she corrected herself stubbornly. And he was nice to her. Too nice. Nicer than most strangers, albeit. But if she really admitted it, which she never would, she almost didn't mind having someone to talk to. Her plane rides were usually dull.

"Uh...all kinds of things." Thalia turned on her iPod to check the song that was about to play. "'Bleeding Out' by Imagine Dragons," she said. At some point earlier she had changed from her "metal" playlist to her "alternative" playlist.

"May I?" Luke asked. "I'm not picky with music," he added when she hesitated, "I won't judge your style." There was that (stupid) smile again.

Thalia nodded her consent and Luke got up from his seat and moved one over, and Thalia handed over the left earbud. She pressed play and sat back in her seat, relaxing slowly the farther the plane reached away from the runway.

At some point, roughly an hour into the flight, Thalia's eyes closed in fatigue. She had been up late the night before resolving a work issue and had needed to awake early for her flight. Needless to say, she hadn't gotten much sleep and was feeling the effects now. When she first fell asleep, she had been leaning back on her own seat. However that soon changed as the time passed and she slept on. Her body began to lean unconsciously to her right and her head was soon resting on Luke's shoulder. Like a gentleman, Luke did nothing. He only smiled from the corners of his lips and continued to people watch and periodically look out of other windows at the occasional snow flurry and clouds.

Thalia stirred a few hours later and when it dawned on her where she was, and particularly who she was sleeping on, she muttered a quick apology and sat up, eliciting what she thought was a laugh quickly hidden by a cough from the man beside her. Thalia noticed that her music had stopped playing at some point. Flustered, she turned on her iPod and found her "country" playlist and put it on shuffle. Rascal Flatts' 'My Wish' was the first song to play. She didn't realize that Luke was still listening until he started to hum along with the lyrics and his fingers tapped along to the beat against his knee. Thalia let a smile slip past her dark-lipstick-clad lips as she opened the window.

-x-

The rest of the flight passed quickly. Thalia fell asleep a few more times, but thankfully she didn't wake up on Luke's shoulder again. She did, in objection with her dignity, grip his hand in hers when the plane touched down on the runway. They departed the plane together but Luke stopped at the entryway to the airport. "Until next time, Thalia Grace," he said with a handsome smile, stopping near an employee office, likely where he would check in for his next flight.

Thalia smiled lightly and nodded. "Until next time," she said.

[To be continued. I have several chapters in mind for this story, so we'll see where it goes!]

Please follow and review! This is my first published fic, so I'd love some feedback! Critiques are welcome, rudeness is not.