PIPER

When she wakes up that morning, she feels weird.

She feels like leaving, but that might be difficult, as Reyna's kind of wrapped around her like snake and it's too comfortable to move in Reyna's bed.

So she tries to fall back asleep. And tries. And tries. And tries.

She's been up for three hours and it's nine in the morning before Reyna stirs.

"Good morning," Reyna mumbles, "I seem to have caged you with my legs."

"Not the first time," Piper snickers. "But yes. For three hours now, at least."

"You've been up since six and you just sat there?" asks Reyna. "You always have to pee, like, the second you get up."

Piper starts for a split second as she realizes that she'd never even noticed that about herself. "I…I guess you're right," says Piper.

Reyna snuggles into her again. "So," she says, "last night was a little weird."

"Weird is right," says Reyna, "we went out separately and then ended up in bed together anyway. A little like fate, right?"

"Do you think I should get my undercut redone or completely cut my hair to match the short bits?" Piper blurts out. She's fully aware that she's changing the topic, but she's not really sure how to control it. "Because it's grown out way too long and I've been really busy and haven't been able to maintain it and –" She loses the rest of her sentence as Reyna starts running her fingers through Piper's hair. Piper's eyes flutter shut.

"I like it long with the undercut," Reyna mutters, "it's what you looked like the first time we met."

Piper knows she shouldn't feel like getting the undercut back just because it reminds her, too, of the first time she met Reyna. She shouldn't want to keep the length, too, because Reyna likes it and because she loves the way it feels when Reyna's fingers run through it. She should probably cut her hair super short again, because that's what she always does.

When she gets back to her room, Leo tells her to go short all over again, Annabeth doesn't care, and Percy point blank asks her why the hell she'd take his opinion in the first place.

When Leo leaves, he kisses her on the cheek and says, "Piper, hold onto her. Don't be stupid."

"I'm not being stupid."

Then he just laughs and says, "Keep that up."

Within the next two days she gets the undercut back. On November 8th, she, Reyna and Annabeth go to Target, get hair dye, and dye different pieces of their hair different colors. They've all got matching purple streaks, but only Piper and Reyna put the teal in their hair, the streak of hair right under their ears.

Piper is determined never to think too far into it.

ANNABETH

Annabeth's completely lost track of the days, except for the fact that the Thanksgiving break and her one month anniversary with Percy are fast approaching.

So when she wakes up at 5 in the morning in Percy's bed one Wednesday with Philosophy on her mind, she only jostles Percy slightly as she digs out her study materials and reads, until Percy starts mumbling so much she's thinks he's awake.

Percy decides they're going bowling, apparently, at eight in the morning, and Annabeth can't tell for the life of her if he means it seriously.

"You said you wanted to go bowling today," Annabeth repeats. "You were very adamant about it."

"I was asleep."

"Yes, but you put the idea in my head, and I want something to look forward to this weekend."

Percy groans and rolls over. "It's eight in the morning. Why do you trust anything I say at eight in the morning?"

"Because bowling's a good idea, and normal people actually get up for their nine o'clock class an hour in advance."

"I don't."

"You should."

"Don't tell me what to do."

"You liked me telling you what to do last night," says Annabeth casually.

Percy blushes and smiles. "Damn right I did. But not right now. Right now I want to sleep."

"Really?" Annabeth asks. "Because while we're up, I mean, we could always –"

Percy interrupts her by pressing his lips to hers and rolling her on top of him.

"Yes, good, this is exactly what I was thinking."

They have to make it quick, as the two of them need to shower and get ready for class before eight forty-five, but neither of them are all that against doing it quick and dirty. Annabeth and Percy have practiced this just about enough to get it own as fast or as slow as they want, and within ten minutes they're both panting and on the edge.

"I bet you can't hold on any longer," says Annabeth, breathing into Percy's ear, tapping her fingertips down his spine, "I bet you're going to come and you're not going to be able to control it."

"For fuck's sake, Annabeth, of course not," whines Percy, "not when you're talking like that. I thought this was supposed to be a quickie."

"I felt like throwing in a little dirty talk to throw you off," she says, smirking, "I don't have class until ten, so I have all," she rolls her hips slowly and he makes a strange squeaking sound, "the time," she rolls back up again, "in the world.

Percy just lies there, dropping his head back on the pillow. "Fuck," he says, gripping Annabeth's hips. "Fuck you, fuck this, fuck."

"I mean, we can stop, if you want," Annabeth offers slowly sliding herself up his length, "if you want to get to class."

Percy's next words rush out of him. "No don't you dare stop you suck, you so suck."

So Annabeth doesn't stop, and with a few more choice words, Percy's gone and Annabeth's not too far behind.

In a flash Percy rolls them over and kisses down Annabeth's body, working at her with his tongue until her back arches off the bed and she screams his name.

"That's a much more fun idea than studying for my exam."

"Your WHAT?!" Annabeth exclaims, falling out of his bed. "You have an exam in," she checks her watch, "forty minutes?!"

"No," Percy replies, looking down at her. "It's for my noon class."

Annabeth rolls her eyes so dramatically she's surprised she can't see the inside of her skull. "Percy, you are an idiot."

"Idiot?" he asks. "Or a visionary who just had the best wakeup sex ever?"

"Mostly idiot," Annabeth replies, reaching around for her clothes, "but part of that last bit."

"So about that bowling thing. I'll call Nico and Jason about it, and you ask Piper and Reyna?" Percy asks. "Because I want Reyna and Jason to meet – I think they'll click really well."

"Oh, and he won't click with Piper?" Annabeth laughs, clasping her bra and pulling it on.

Percy laughs. "They're weirdly similar and I have a feeling Piper's going to hit on him a little bit, just to prove she doesn't have feelings for Reyna."

Annabeth rolls her eyes as she pulls on her dress. "Piper hits on everyone," Annabeth says. "Remember that time she had me kiss her to judge which one of you was a better kisser?"

"Thank you for not lying," Percy says sarcastically.

"She's got a weird, really good and impressive skill, okay! You're better at everything else, I'm sure."

"Please tell me you're not planning on testing everything else out, too." Percy pouts in a way that makes Annabeth fight back a laugh.

"No, you idiot. Of course not."

Annabeth finally finishes dressing and kisses him lightly before she leaves. "Go ace that test, you loser," she says with a smile. "I believe in you!"

"Yeah," he says, "or else I don't get to go bowling."

Annabeth blinks. "Alright," she replies, "if that's how you want to roll."

"How I want to bowl," he says, making a finger gun.

"You are an idiot."

REYNA

"We're going bowling?" Piper asks. "This morning?" She frowns.

Reyna frowns too. She remembers Annabeth saying something to her and Piper about it two days before, but they'd been reading for their history class and entirely missed the processing part of the deal. "Like today?"

"Yes," says Annabeth, "but Percy and I are…Well, we shall meet in thirty minutes, we'll say. Meet at the statue of the grizzly?"

"Which one?" asks Reyna. "By the Student Center?"

"In the front of the Student Center by the bus, yes."

Reyna looks over at Piper. "We doing this?"

Piper shrugs. "Apparently we are forsaking preliminary finals studying and going bowling. Who knew the brainy one would suggest it."

"Actually," Annabeth says from the other end of the phone line, "it was half asleep Percy's idea on Wednesday, but close enough."

Reyna laughs. "Works for me."

Piper hangs up the phone. "So," she says, "if they get thirty minutes to bang, do we get thirty minutes to bang?"

"Who said they were banging?"

Piper pouts and it's all Reyna can do not to burst into laughter. "Is it so bad that I want to get in a quicky before bowling?"

"We still need time to shower. And don't give me that smile, Piper McLean, you know what happened the last time we had shower sex."

Piper doesn't stop giving Reyna that smile.

"Ugh, fine, let's go bang in the shower."

Reyna's barely got the time to grab her shower caddy and a couple of towels before Piper's dragging her into the shower and pulling off her pajamas.

"Jesus, Pipes, you are going to shred my – you just shredded my Aladdin shirt."

"Quit whining, Jasmine's better anyway. Now get naked."

So they do. In seconds Reyna has Piper pressed against the wall, a hand pressed against the tile on either side of Piper's head. She presses her lips to Piper's, but it's slow.

"Oh, come on," Piper mumbles against Reyna's lips, "we only have, like, fifteen minutes for this. At the most. Why can't we – oh SHIT."

Reyna, consistently sick of Piper's whining and far more interested in the way Piper moans Reyna's name, has dropped to her knees and didn't warn Piper when her lips and tongue press against Piper's heat. There's a low clunk as Piper's head hits the tile, but Reyna keeps working her lips, quickly and efficiently, against Piper. Piper's fingertips twist gently in Reyna's hair, and pull as Piper whines, high pitched, as she arches off the wall.

"Oh, fuck, Reyna, this – you're –fuck."

Reyna makes the executive decision not to speak, and, despite the sudden and unexpected cramping in her jaw (this is new) she keeps going until a thread of curses falls from Piper's lips and she falls against the wall.

"Fuck!" Piper exclaims. "Holy – I've never – so fast – fuck!"

"Yeah, yeah, I know," says Reyna, helping Piper to her feet. "Stop falling over and quit your jelloid legs, McLean. We've only got a few minutes left."

"Then get against the wall and I'll do to you what you did to me."

Reyna grins at Piper, catches her first in a kiss, and then braces herself against the wall as Piper licks against her. It's pretty much seconds, or hours, or years (Reyna's not sure) before it's her turn to swear and arch off the wall.

"I get why the whole shower sex thing is generally a problem for other people," gasps Reyna as Piper slowly kisses her way up Reyna's body, "but damn, we fucking work it."

"That merits swearing?"

"I just came in what felt like thirty seconds," says Reyna. "So yeah, it does."

When the shower is done, Piper and Reyna dart back into Reyna's room to get dressed – Piper decides she's going to go for a "roller derby look" (Reyna's got no idea what she means by that) and flips up the newly-cut undercut and neon teal nails - and Reyna pulls on a shirt Piper throws at her on top of the jeans she was already wearing, and they walk outside.

"Are you wearing one of my sweatshirts?" Reyna asks, floored.

"No."

"That's my purple – LOOK! My initials are on the arm."

Piper looks down. "Oh. So they are." She looks up at Reyna, frowning a little. "Are you going to make me give it back?"

Something in Piper's eyes makes Reyna's heart flutter. "No," Reyna sighs, pretending it's a difficult decision. "You can keep it."

"Good," says Piper. "Because it's comfortable."

They continue walking and wait by Grizonkers, the Grizzly Bear mascot for their school (she kind of wants to hit the person who named it in the face) for the rest of their group to meet them. They play the "what's that person's deal?" game, where they invent complex and ridiculous backstories for people as they walk by while they wait.

"Oh! There they are!" says Piper. "I can't wait for you to meet Nico, he's a blast. He's not really a blast. But he's funny when he feels like it."

Reyna's too busy studying a short girl with dark purple hair and a tutu on to look.

"Holy shit!" says Piper. "Holy shit, I know him! That's Jason!"

Now that strikes Reyna as strange, because Jason's the name of the guy she dated in middle school and …

"Oh, FUCK," says Reyna, stopping dead in her tracks.

She can tell Piper's turned to stare at her. Reyna rarely swears, she knows this is a very particular trait about her, and yet she can't keep it in. Not right now. "Yeah, I know, he's hot. But he's gay," Piper offers, because she doesn't know, she can't know, she –

"Wait, what did you just say?"

Piper gives her a look, that really annoying one when she's trying to figure a person out. "The two of us hung out in high school, slept together, he realized he was gay, like eight seconds afterward. Awkward, right? We lost touch after I swapped schools, but he's a good guy. I had no idea he went here."

"Oh my god," says Reyna quietly. "I cannot go to this – I need to…Oh my god." And she flops down on a bench behind her and drops her head in her hands. The world is spinning around her and she's pretty sure she's either going to throw up or die in the next thirty seconds if she doesn't wake up and find out this is a dream. It's been years and seeing this guy has got her out of her freaking mind still.

God, did she have issues.

"What in hell's name is wrong with you, Reyna?" asks Piper. "Are you having some sort of gay crisis or something? Kind of a weird set off for it, but I get it. I've been there and, dude, labels suck. Just because he has a label and a title doesn't mean you have to."

"Not that," whimpers Reyna, her head in her hands. She realizes suddenly that she started lying down on the bench. She hadn't noticed that. She sits up and the world slows its spinning for a moment. "Not that at all. But thanks for bringing that up, really, that was something I needed to think about right now. I'm not freaking out or anything."

Piper's offering a small, apologetic smile, but it's not enough right now, it's so not enough and… Shit.

She shouldn't have looked up.

Jason Grace is walking over to the two of them, and Piper's walking over to him, and she's probably going to ask him what's going on.

Instead, Reyna grabs Piper by the arm and drags her away with a brisk, impolite "we need to go."

"What the hell's wrong with you, Reyna?" Piper hisses. "God, it's like you killed his dad in some blood war."

"Worse than that," Reyna mutters. "Look, I dated him for two years in middle school."

"You d- oh, fuck, we banged the same guy?!" Piper looks horrified, so horrified, in fact, that it's enough to make Reyna laugh a little. "That shouldn't be weird, but it's so weird."

"I said middle school, you moron, we didn't bang," interrupts Reyna. "But – he had to move, stepmother's job uprooted his family and they went somewhere else for high school."

Piper gives her a look. "He went to my high school, too."

Reyna's jaw drops. "Did you – were you at –"

"Well, for the first couple of years, I was all over the place but, yeah, I ended up at Great Brook High from sophomore year on."

Reyna's head is still spinning from all the new information, but it's spinning less than before and it's more hitting her heart. Jason Grace, the reason she went "fuck it" to relationships and made the decision to avoid dating altogether in high school. Jason Grace, her first "love" and her first "heartbreak" and the first time another person tore her down, instead of just her overachiever perfectionist status making her ruin her own life. And he had been with Piper.

This was terribly, miserably awkward.

"Well, he's friends with the guy that Annabeth's dating, so we can just tell them we can't go or that you're sick or something –"

"I actually don't think we can," says Reyna, "because Jason will totally know I'm freaking the fuck out because I saw him here."

"Two swears in five minutes without being naked," Piper comments, "this has got to be bad. He dump you over text or something equally stupid?"

Reyna shakes her head. "It was all dramatic – it even started raining as he was explaining it. Like the entire universe wanted me to associate that day with being horrible."

"Are you sure you don't live in an HBO drama?" Piper asks, and Reyna can't exactly figure out if she's being serious or if she's making fun of her.

"I have to talk to him, don't I?" asks Reyna.

"He probably won't be upset or anything. I never heard him mention you."

Reyna winces, and then Piper does too when she realizes what she said. "That sounded… dickish. Sorry."

"Don't worry about it," says Reyna. Mumbles it, really. "Well. I'm going to go be a big girl and say hi to my ex from when I had no boobs and acne and zero percent social skills."

"Two out of three of those have changed drastically," Piper says with a grin, looking blatantly at Reyna's chest.

This gets another laugh out of Reyna, and she stands and walks over to Jason. "Hey," she says quietly behind him.

Then the unexpected happens. He turns and gives her the biggest hug she's ever received.

"I thought you hated me!" are the first words she hears from him since she was a kid, and she finds herself hugging back.

"Nah, I don't hate you," she laughs, and she realizes quickly it's true. Something, some sort of wall, broke away from her as she hugs him. A laugh is easy and the smile is easy, and she feels so much better in a few seconds. "I just had a weird 'oh look it's the only ex I've ever had' moment, you know?" She giggles awkwardly and immediately feels like the biggest idiot there. Piper pats her on the shoulder, and Reyna's positive she's trying not to laugh at her.

Jason gives her an odd look. "Sure," he says carefully. "So, I hear you're sleeping with my sloppy seconds." He adds an absolutely hysterical, exaggerated wink to the end of his sentence, and it makes Piper double over laughing.

"Jesus, Jase, don't ever do that in front of anyone you're trying to sleep with. And sloppy seconds my ass – this is all still fresh," says Piper, gesturing to herself.

Reyna gives her one of the near-patented "I think you're insane" looks. "Pardon her," says Reyna, "she's too busy being an idiot to focus on reality."

This time, Piper gasps. "You know you're insulting yourself a little bit when you say that, right?"

"It's worth it."

Piper gently swats her on the arm, and gets a look at her watch. "Shouldn't we head out now?" she asks. "I mean, we've got reservations at the roller rink or something?" Annabeth, Percy, and Nico make their ways over to them, looking concerned (on Percy and Annabeth's parts) and curious (for Nico.)

"We do," says Annabeth, her hand in Percy's. "What…Just…What just happened here?"

"Jason and Reyna dated in middle school, Jason and I did the thing and broke up, Reyna nearly died seeing him, then she laughed hysterically for a few seconds." Piper shrugs. "The standard day in our neighborhood."

Annabeth and Percy exchange a look. "This human being is not my fault," says Percy to Nico, "blame Annabeth."

"Blame Reyna," says Annabeth. "For no reason other than I said so."

"Hey!"

"You people are like a dysfunctional family," chuckles Nico. "I love it."

"Well," says Reyna, trying to get the focus off of her own dysfunctionality, "we should probably get this show on the road, right?"

"I'll sit with Reyna on the bus," Jason offers and, just like it's no big deal, loops his arm through Reyna's. "That okay with you?"

Reyna catches Piper staring at her, but she realizes that, if they're not in a relationship, what's the problem. "Sure," says Reyna, "we've got a lot to catch up on, right?"

"And Piper can sit with me," says Annabeth, "sorry, Nico, you're stuck with Percy."

"Yeah, Nico, you're – wait, hey, why stuck with me?!"

Piper and Annabeth link arms just like Jason and Reyna are. Nico turns to Percy, whose arm is offered out along with a big grin, and Nico just says, "Not on your life, dude."