A/N: Alas, such begins the less frequent updates due to school and grown up commitments. I hope you enjoy this chapter - warning for underage drinking and references to drug usage.

ANNABETH

"Good morning," she hears, through her sleepy brain, some quietly pleasant voice say.

"Still sleeping," she responds. "Not waking up.

The pleasant voice gets less pleasant when it says, "Annabeth, my arm has gone numb."

She slowly blinks awake and turns over to look at Percy, who is lying at an awkward angle, his arm pinned under Annabeth's head.

"Oh!" she says, moving immediately. "Sorry!"

He pulls his arm back and makes a strange face as he shakes it out. "Pins and needles," he mutters, "pins and – Christ, this hurts."

Annabeth can't help but giggle. "Sorry again. Whiner."

"I'm not whining!" Percy exclaims. "It just – ow."

Annabeth grabs Percy's arm and looks at the time. "It's past noon," she says, jaw dropping. "How did we sleep that late?!"

"Because we woke each other up twice in the middle of the night with the intention of bathroom or more blankets or some other excuse and then each time it ended up with us banging."

"Good point," says Annabeth. "Very good point."

"Very good night." Percy pulls her close. "So does that mean we're doing that again or…?

Annabeth snorts and slams him in the face with a pillow. "I've got to shower, so unless you have superpowers that can keep us both upright in the shower I – what are you thinking, Percy?"

She finds out ten minutes later when Percy's on his knees in front of her, and she's too busy holding back a moan to even mention to him how gross the floors are as he works his mouth against her.

"You can be loud," he murmurs, "no one's gonna hear you."

"Pretty sure you're – oh! – pretty sure you're wrong," she gasps. "These walls are thin, and it's not exactly – oh! – a private bathroom."

"Well then," he says, "I just might have to work a little harder."

"Goddamn it, Percy, I –" Percy makes good on his promise and Annabeth finally can't hold in a long, drawn out moan as waves of pleasure crash over her, causing her knees to give out. Percy catches her, and they giggle until they hear someone very pointedly clearing their throat.

Annabeth's eyes widen as she turns to Percy. "I told you!" she hisses. "I told you there were other people in here!"

"You didn't seem to mind a minute ago," and he kisses her deeply, pressing her up against him.

"Oh, shut up and get clean before I get cited for being in the men's bathroom."

"You sure?" Percy asks. "Because I can make the guy leave and then we can –"

"Hold your horses, you overzealous goon, let's just get out before someone actually catches us."

"That's kind of a turn on."

"PERCY!"

"Sorry."

So they do finish showering, and practically undo the entire point of showering when they get back to Percy's room and Annabeth pins him down on the bed and gives him a blow job that he claims, "Busted a few blood vessels and may just have killed me," and they fool around for another twenty minutes until they're too tuckered out to do much of anything else.

"I should probably go back to my dorm room before you can get it up again and I jump you for the fifth time in twenty-four hours."

"I really wouldn't mind that," says Percy, rolling over to her, but she stops him with a hand to his chest.

"I should probably check on Piper, too," says Annabeth. "She was a little…"

"Yeah," says Percy. "She's with Reyna, so she was fine, right?"

Annabeth nods. "Her physical safety was at one hundred percent, I can give you that, but her head's probably a bit fucked up."

"Because she called Reyna 'my Reyna' about eight thousand times?"

Annabeth nods. "Miss Anti-Commitment apparently thinks differently when uninhibited."

She presses one more long, lingering kiss that she has to basically tear herself away from to Percy's lips, and dresses.

"Oh," she says, right before she's about to leave, "We're being Danny and Sandy for Halloween and Leo's Kenickie and Piper's Rizzo."

"I got that from Leo's outfit last – wait, I'm DANNY?!"

Annabeth shrugs. "It was not my idea," she defends. "You have a better plan?"

Percy furrows his eyebrows for a moment, then sighs in defeat. "Nothing. I'll figure out the outfit soon. Are we still going to the school thing tonight?"

"If you want to."

Percy nods. "Sure. Can I use you wanting to go to that as a reason we're going to be late for the frat's party?"

Annabeth deflates a little. "Do we have to go?"

"You don't. I do."

Annabeth sighs. "I will be your doting Sandy and will hop on down to the soda pop shop with you. Or whatever. To the frat party, which will be less soda and more drunken shenanigans."

"Accurate statement," Percy replies. "And you're the best."

Annabeth shrugs and pulls her hair back into a ponytail. "I know." She blows Percy a kiss as she leaves, hopping the few flights of stairs to her room, and opens the door to see Piper curled up on her bed, frowning at nothing in particular as she stares at the wall.

"Did my Florence and the Machine poster insult you?" Annabeth says with a smile. "You're giving it a death glare."

"What?" says Piper, and she jolts up, looking at Annabeth. "Wow, sorry, I didn't hear the door open."

Annabeth thinks for a moment, trying to decide whether asking what was going on with Piper was worth it or if she could wait. "So, what's going on?" Annabeth asks cautiously. She'll let Piper choose whether or not she wants to talk.

"Nada," Piper replies, and Annabeth questions why she ever assumed Piper would respond with anything other than that.

"Well, if you're still up for it, Percy and I are both in for the Student Center Halloween party, and then going to Percy's frat to back him up for the party he has to go to. What do you think?"

"Do we have to go?" Piper asks Annabeth, who walked over to Piper's side of the room and is now sitting at the foot of her bed. "I mean, I need to study tonight."

"You do not," Annabeth replies, waving her hand. "Besides, you can invite Reyna! We can all dress up!"

Piper frowns and begins to shake her head so quickly and so violently that Annabeth's pretty sure she must have said the wrong thing, or that Piper is having a seizure.

Annabeth puts her hand on her phone, just in case something is medically wrong. "Why not?" Annabeth asks. "Did something happen?"

"No!" Piper replies. "I just – I don't need her around all the time, okay? I can be okay on my own and stuff. I want to go out without her tonight." At least it's not a seizure.

Annabeth shrugs. "If you say so, Piper. Now where's Leo?"

"Bathroom," Piper replies. "Probably. I only just got back twenty minutes ago.

"Not in that giant pile of blankets on the floor?" Annabeth asks, and she gently pokes at the pile with her toe.

"I'm up!" the pile shouts, and Leo's mussed head pops up. "I'm up!"

"You slept on the floor even though Piper was gone?" Annabeth asks. "Damn, you're a good friend."

"Not really," says Leo, "I got to second base in her bed last night. I figured I wouldn't sleep in it, too."

"You WHAT?!" exclaims Piper, and she leaps out of her bed. "Why didn't I hear about this?!"

"We told you that over the phone," says Annabeth.

"You screamed at me so loudly over the phone that it actually hurt," adds Leo.

Piper frowns, and the realization dawns on her. "Oh my fucking god," she says.

"Yeah," says Leo with an eye roll, "for the love of god, next time don't scream your lungs out at me. It hurts."

"No, no, no," says Piper, beginning to pace. "Oh, fuck me with a chainsaw and call me Jigsaw. Oh, fucker McFuckerstine."

"Wanna explain why you're losing your shit right now?" Leo asks. He turns to Annabeth. "Have you seen this before without an explanation?"

"Only when the dining hall doesn't have m&m bars," Annabeth says. "Piper, what's going on?"

"I really did call her 'my Reyna' all last night," she mutters, and Annabeth fights back what she knows would be a slightly mean laugh for the situation as Piper falls on her bed, looking like someone just died. "Fuck, why didn't you guys stop me?!"

"You weren't exactly doing anything wrong," says Leo. "It's not like you were demanding that Reyna murder you in your sleep or anything."

Piper continues like she hasn't heard Leo, "and I drooled on her pillow and – oh, fuck, she's going to think we're dating."

"I doubt it," says Annabeth. "You've been adamantly against dating from the start. I doubt she thinks anything of what you said when you were mind blowingly drunk."

"You're right!" says Piper. "And I did tell her I blacked out last night –"

"Which you did."

"Shut up, Leo. But I told her I did so she thinks I don't remember it, so if she thinks that I don't remember it, I didn't remember it!"

"That makes no sense, Piper," says Annabeth.

"It does to me!" Piper yells, and it's almost a shriek.

"Yelling again," mumbles Leo, but he shuts up and ducks when Piper absentmindedly swings at him, missing by a mile.

"It never happened," says Piper firmly, looking from Leo to Annabeth. "None of it. Not a single moment. I never said 'my Reyna' or any of that, because that'll give Reyna the wrong idea and make her think I like her."

"You do like her, though," says Annabeth with an eye roll, "or you would have just been like 'Hah, that's funny, what's for lunch' instead of flipping out for a good," she checks her watch, "fifteen minutes."

"I freak out about everything!" Piper exclaims.

"She has a point on that one," says Leo. "But not like this."

Piper throws herself face down on her bed. "Shut up, you two. Go get me a sandwich."

"Is that insinuating that I'm your 50's housewife?" Annabeth asks.

"No," says Piper, "it's insinuating that Leo is my 50's housewife. Now go get me food while I sleep off this angst."

Annabeth turns to Leo and shrugs. "I have about twelve guest meals left over. Want to get lunch?"

Leo nods.

"See you later, Whining Beauty," calls Annabeth, and she offers her arm to Leo. "Shall we?"

PIPER

She's the biggest idiot in the world for agreeing to go to this party. But she isn't texting Reyna, and she refuses to talk to her. Ever again. Probably. She isn't going to talk to Annabeth or Leo ever again, which left her talking to Percy and her friends from her Calc class for the rest of her life.

"I hope those Calc kids are fun," says Leo, taking a sip from his Mountain Dew, "because they're going to have to keep up with a lot."

"How did you hear that?" Piper asks.

"Because you were speaking out loud again," says Annabeth. "Seriously, you ate, like, half a loaf of bread and half a package of cheese worth of grilled cheeses tonight. Are you really this drunk?"

Piper considers it for a second. It's either drunk or annoyed at the world and unfocused, and since the two situations go hand in hand, she assumes the answer is, "Both."

"Both what?" Percy asks.

"I thought I said that out loud!" Piper says, exasperated.

"No, you did," says Annabeth. "It's just really loud in here."

"We should go for a walk or something. Out of the…" Wordlessly, Piper gestures all around them. Drunk students, from freshman to seniors, dance around room, and you can tell the people who haven't had anything and assumed it was going to be a casual, school-sanctioned, booze free extravaganza. Two of whom, of course, are Annabeth and Percy, who, despite Leo's Cuervo, still chose not to drink.

Boring, they are. And responsible adults. "You guys are too responsible for college students," Piper says.

"We know," says Annabeth. "But in these heels I'm not risking any alcohol. Ever."

Leo grabs Piper's hand. "You have a good head on those shoulders," says Piper. "A walk might be a good idea. Especially since I think the people behind you have just started blazing up and I don't want to be here when they get slammed for it."

"And out we go!" exclaims Percy. The group of four take to the streets of the college campus, and it's a few seconds before Annabeth asks, "Exactly where are we going?"

"I figured we could go to the frat party," says Percy. "Just to show up for a few moments. To make an appearance, you know?"

Piper shrugs. "Works for me. Let's get our dance on away from chaperones and idiots."

"I'm not sure we could avoid the idiots anywhere on this planet," chuckles Percy. "Especially not in that frat house."

"You have a point."

They make it to the frat house, and the door is opened for Percy by the same boy with the long, dark hair that opened the door for the three girls on the night Annabeth met Percy.

"Nico!" exclaims Percy as he pulls the other guy in a bear hug. "I thought you went home for the weekend!"

Nico frowns and shakes his head. "Unfortunately, Dad told me I had to be here, just in case I could get any points with the frat during this party. He's pissed that I messed up the 99 Apples part of the deal a few weeks ago."

"Sorry, man," says Percy with a frown. "That shit was vile."

"I like 99," says Piper, but just quietly.

"What happened to Jason?" Percy asks. "Did he get another ride home?"

Nico nods. "His dad came and picked him up. He was nearly asleep after one of his all nighter cram sessions, so the older brothers told him to go home."

"Lucky him," grumbles Percy. "Maybe I should fake the flu next time."

Piper sees Annabeth roll her eyes and push past Percy. "Hello, Nico!" Annabeth says. "I'm Annabeth, and Percy is missing some manners."

"Wow!" says Percy. "I'm being rude. Piper, Annabeth, Leo, this is my buddy Nico. Our dads are both leaders or founders or something of this frat. We've known each other all my life."

"Technically, all my life," says Nico. When he notices all the confused faces, he amends, "I'm a year younger than Percy is."

"He's super smart," adds Percy. "Skipped a grade."

Nico rolls his eyes. "I skipped first grade – not that big of an accomplishment when your dad drilled Spanish Muzzy and Henry and Mudge books into your brain from the age of four."

"I have a question," says Piper. Everyone turns to look at her. "Why is it so quiet in here?" Everyone looks around and notices what Piper has – that the house has only about a third of the people they had seen the first night they had visited, and it's concerningly quiet.

Nico simply shrugs. "I think it's still early. And this party is the least Halloween-themed Halloween party I've ever seen in my life."

"Yeah," says Percy, "I'm Danny from Grease and you're…What, a shadow?"

"I'm a teenage witch," Nico deadpans, and he pulls a witch hat from behind him. "Call me Sabrina."

The group and Nico's hat make their way into the kitchen, which is a dance floor with only about thirty people awkwardly dancing, and Piper takes it on herself to start blasting her favorite track from the new Sky Ferreira album.

"Dance, you jerks, so I don't have to do this alone," says Piper, grabbing Annabeth and Leo by their sleeves. "This is a good one. When the chorus comes on we can start headbanging and get all angsty."

"Not sure you have to reach too far to be angsty, Pipes," says Leo, but Piper is pleased to see he's dancing along with her.

When Piper hits the line of, "And now it hurts that I want you to stay/I don't understand why I feel this way," knowing she's singing it a little too loudly but not caring, she looks up.

Reyna's standing in front of her with a half smile on her face.

"Oh dear."

REYNA

"Really?" Reyna asks, walking down the road. "This one? This frat? Really?"

"Yeah, come on, frosh," says one of the captains, senior named Clarisse who is tall and strong and incredibly, surprisingly agile on the field (and on the dance floor.) "All new teammates have a goal: find the hottest person at this party and get their phone number. Everyone has to pick different people. Are you ready?"

"No," mumbles Gwen. "I've already got a boyfriend."

"Nobody asked you, Princess," snaps Clarisse. "Reyna, you take lead."

Reyna pushes open the door and is immediately hit in the face with a perky, peppy song that sounds like it would belong best in the 80's opening for Blondie.

"It's not very loud in here," says Gwen.

"Or busy," adds another freshman, Lacy. "There's like, fifty people here. Max."

"Then your job is tougher," says Clarisse. "Now get out there and get your flirt on, girls!"

Clarisse shoves Reyna by the shoulder and she stumbles into the few people lingering outside the dance floor until she looks up, seeing some very familiar faces on the dance floor.

Piper screams a song lyric that sounds vaguely meaningful (but Reyna's not reading into anything with her ever again) and they lock eyes. Piper, ever the best in awkward situations, just says, "Oh dear."

"Hi to you too," says Reyna. "What are you guys up to?"

"Dancing at the most pathetic party in history," says Annabeth. She turns to Percy and Nico. "Sorry, guys."

"None taken," says Nico. "This party is more boring than the time my dad took me to a four hour mass and wouldn't let me get up to stretch my legs."

"Stretch your legs?"

"I was nine," says Nico, "I was a fidgety kid," and Reyna winces.

"His dad's crazy religious," says Percy. "Sometimes it feels like this kid was brought up in the forties, am I right?"

Everyone laughs, but Nico just rolls his eyes.

"You think it's a joke," he says, "you think so, but you're wrong."

"Can we dance?" Piper blurts out, and Reyna can't help but notice that Piper's gaze never left Reyna's eyes. "I mean," she says, "I really like this song."

"This is Lil' Wayne," says Annabeth. "You hate –"

"Everything but this song," says Piper, and, again, Reyna notices the blatant glare. "Now shut up and come dance with me, Reyna."

She's expecting at least some sort of discussion before Piper's hands are on her ass, but Piper's got her bedroom eyes going and one hand's already moved up to pull out Reyna's braid and, fuck, Reyna's gone.

"You know," says Reyna as the two of them begin to sway, a little offbeat but she can't be fucked to care, "we're going to have to talk about things one of these days, Miss Drunk Talk."

"Shut up and grab my ass or something," grumbles Piper, "before I change my mind and go make out with that kid over there."

"He's about to start hitting on Lacy in a few seconds," says Reyna, "I wouldn't risk it."

"Then I'll go make out with Lacy," says Piper with an eye roll. "Whatever. Are you going to kiss me now or what?"

Reyna fights back the desire to bash her head into a wall and pulls Piper closer, kissing her slowly and deeply until she feels Piper smile against her.

"There," says Reyna, "better?"

"More kissing, less talking," says Piper and, really, in a situation like this when Reyna's been drinking tequila and Piper smells like cinnamon and vanilla and her hands are dancing against Reyna's lower back, words might not be the best choice.

"Fine," says Reyna, "as long as you keep up that end of the bargain when we go back to your room later tonight."

"Not my room," says Piper, "Leo's there. Your room again."

"Only if you're okay with sharing a pillow," says Reyna, "your drool is all over the other one."

"Oh, shut up," says Piper, but an hour and a half later, when they're both naked and gasping and spent on Reyna's bed, and Piper sleepily curls up against Reyna, she's pretty sure they're both in too deep to get out.