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

A/N 1: This is a work of fiction, so please ignore my cheesy assumption about Zeus' mundane occupation xD

A/N 2: Huge shout out to all of my reviewers and those who have followed/fav'ed this story and/or myself so far! Keep those reviews and compliments comin'! :D

Thalia rummaged through her bags for the key to her father's apartment. Finding it at the bottom of her purse, she let herself inside and called out for her father. Eliciting no response, she wound her way through the small apartment to the spare bedroom, her bedroom. She cast her luggage onto the bed and immediately went to turn on the coffee pot in the kitchen, followed by the TV. All the while, her father never emerged, so she assumed that he was at work.

Zeus de Chiel was a popular lawyer in New York, primarily dealing with personal injuries. He would tell anyone that he was particularly interested in cases involving natural disasters, although nobody knew why. They just understood he was the best. He was often "out in the field" to better comprehend how to improve things, and his dedication to research was perhaps the reason why he was so good at what he did. Thalia had also assumed that this was why he had divorced her mother, although nobody ever talked about it. At least he had still stayed around to care for her and had been more than happy to give Thalia's mother, Beryl, financial support while she raised their daughter.

Thalia poured herself some coffee in the mug she and her father had bought together once in Staten Island. It was a black mug with white block letters that read 'Don't speak unless this cup is empty of all contents'. It was Thalia's favorite mug when she came to visit. She sat down in front of the TV. Her mind wandered back to her trip from that morning, and she had no idea how, but her brain reminded her of the flight attendant, Luke. Looking for a distraction, she reached for the remote and found a sticky note beneath it. It read:

Hey hon. Hope flight was okay. Had some work to do today. Got a reservation for dinner at 8. See you then. -Dad

Thalia smiled. She plugged the address into her phone for later, and checked the time. It was three in the afternoon. She had some time to unpack, and maybe hit the apartment pool. Unlike most apartment complexes, the pool here was indoor, and it was heated in the winter. Just the thought of relaxing in a warm pool in the middle of winter made Thalia eager to settle in.

-x-

"Good evening, darling. How was your flight?" Zeus asked with a smile, speaking up after Thalia was escorted to their table. She was dressed in a dark blue, loose, long sleeved shirt with black leggings, and had a black leather jacket draped over her arm.

"Uncomfortable as always, but I got to relax in the pool before changing to meet you here," Thalia said, returning the smile. She picked up her menu. "How was work?"

Their small talk continued throughout their meal, as each of them caught up with what they had been doing over the last few months and vented over their workloads. Toward the end of their meal they were interrupted by the waiter returning to them not with the check, but with two thin flutes of champaign. "From the man behind me," he said with a polite smile, turning to leave again.

Eyebrows close in confusion, Thalia looked around for a familiar face. She knew several of her father's coworkers well, and yet nobody looked familiar. Except...there. It was the same ruffled blonde hair. Blue eyes looked back into hers and the flight attendant, now out of uniform, lifted his fingers in a deft, hardly perceptible wave of acknowledgement. Thalia turned away so that the color in her cheeks might be hidden.

"Well? Any luck?" her father asked. He had already taken ownership of one of the flutes and had drained half of its contents. Thalia took a sip first before she answered him.

"Actually, someone I met on my flight. He's a flight attendant working with Olympic Airlines," Thalia explained to her father softly. She raised her glass to her lips again, but it was too late. Her father, as usual, had seen right through her, and was grinning around the edge of his glass with an eyebrow raised.

"To flights," he said, raising his glass above the table, and to the center. Thalia laughed softly and did the same. "Whatever, Dad," she said with a smile, taking another sip.

"Aren't you going to go talk to him?" Zeus implored, obviously enjoying her reaction.

"Why would I do that?"

"Well he did buy you champaign. I don't think flight attendants do that to every passenger they come across off of the landing strip."

"That doesn't mean anything," Thalia denied. "He was just being kind. He sat next to me, for goodness sake."

Zeus laughed, a deep rumbling, delighted laugh. Thalia smiled, having missed the sound. While she loved her mother, she always figured she would have enjoyed growing up under her father's care. A few years after Zeus had left, her mother had succumbed to alcoholism. While she did her best to overcome it and give Thalia a good future, and to this day still supported her as best as she could, the former actress had never gotten over the divorce. She had loved Zeus deeply, but fate had other plans for them. Beryl was unable to go back into the acting world after Thalia was born, for it was simply too much to handle being a single mom and no longer wielding a model-like body to secure an acting role.

By the end of the evening, they had discussed pretty much everything there was to discuss. They took her father's Volkswagen back to the apartment, where Thalia's fatigue quickly caught up with her. In the last few moments before she fell asleep, her mind wandered back to Luke and the strange happenstance that they had crossed paths once again.

-x-

Thalia was awoken early the next morning by a repetitive chiming that she soon recognized as her cell phone ringing. She grumbled as she lifted the device from her nightstand, sat up in the bed, and pressed the answer button without even looking at her Caller ID. "Hello?"

"Is that any way to greet your little brother?" the masculine voice on the other end of the line chirped. Thalia snorted a laugh.

"Morning, Jason. It is when you wake me up. You knew I was flying in yesterday."

"Well seeing as you didn't bother to let me know you'd landed safely, I'd say you deserved the wake up call. Literally."

"Ha-ha," Thalia said, her tone laced with sarcasm. "I am sorry about that. You know me. Always forgetful and busy. Somehow I still have a job."

Jason laughed. It was a light, happy sound. He was always happy. It was annoying. "Yeah we all know how you are. Anyway, I was calling to see if you wanted to meet me and Pipes for brunch. There's an awesome cafe that just opened right off Times Square. It opened just after you went on vacation."

"I'd love to. How does one sound? I've got some work to catch up on in the studios-there's an intern coming in this week-but I should be done by one," Thalia said, stretching in bed. Now that she was awake, there was no going back to sleep. Time for coffee.

"Sounds great. See you there, sis!" Jason chirped. The connection clicked off and Thalia put her phone down as she padded into the kitchen to start the coffee while she got dressed.

[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. I'm thinking about uploading weekly, but when classes start that might be bumped back to bi-weekly or (hopefully not, as a last resort) monthly. I'm aiming for ten chapters...

A/N 3: The surname I picked for Zeus, "de Chiel" is of French origin literally meaning "of Heaven" or "of the sky". Fitting, don't you think? And, as Thalia expressed earlier, her father wasn't around much-they divorced soon after she was born, to more closely align this to the books-so she kept her mother's last name, Grace. And surprise! Jason and Piper requested (read: held a dagger to my throat) to have an appearance in the story, so I kindly obliged. After all, they're siblings! I wasn't sure if I would add them in, but I was also influenced by a review or two ;)