Here's the formal apology slash penance for posting the same chapter twice like a rookie. I'm in the maritimes (Nova Scotia is the prettiest place on earth fyi) so I've been giving Sally and Percy and Poseidon and Amphitrite a lot of thought, as a matter of fact- so this is great timing!

Disclaimer: I own nothing and nobody.

9. Accidents Happen: "accidentally crashed this wedding, but hey you're pretty cute"

They weren't going to cause trouble.

(In retrospect, this shouldn't have meant anything to Sally. When they'd started talking they'd never meant to cause trouble, and three months later she was knocked up with The World's Most Illegal Baby- but at the time she didn't know that was going to happen. Ignorance was bliss et cetera, et cetera).

No, tonight they weren't going to be trouble. They weren't going to laugh noisily at the campfire early in the morning and piss off the retired neighbours living next to the rental collage, or Sally's roommates. They weren't going to attract random sea monsters to the shore (maybe). They weren't going to splash around and recruit other Chicken players and try to tip each other off of paddleboards and disrupt tanning tourists and fishermen and whoever else wanted the beach to be nice and quiet. No. The plan was that they were going to be nice and quiet and they were just going to walk down the beach and look at the stars and maybe Poseidon would push her into the water (apparently this is what thousands of years of experience could culminate into as far as Sea God humour went). But it would be okay because he'd let Sally pull him in and then he'd end up answering questions about seaweed life cycles or mermaid migration or Atlantis or something.

But then they had to sidestep an ultra rocky part of the beach and got closer to a big, wooden pavilion that was strung up with lanterns and tiki torches.

"Hey, a party," Poseidon said. "Want to check it out? Maybe there's booze."

Sally had been all for the quiet evening thing, but just because she'd had to dropout didn't mean that she wasn't a broke college kid. Free alcohol was kind of a best seller for her. She was morally obligated to accept it, if not hunt it down like a bloodhound.

Sally swore under her breath. "I'm not wearing shoes. I left them at the cottage."

"I told you to wear shoes."

"Your Hawaiian shirt is more obnoxious than usual, don't sermon me about clothes, Sea Monkey," Sally said.

"Touché," he said. He took her hand again and Sally felt like a breeze hit her. She was wearing worn flip-flops now and a pretty summer dress that had spent the summer buried at the bottom of her suit case. Poseidon himself was now wearing jeans (gasp) and a sensible t-shirt (louder gasp).

"Thanks," Sally said. "You're useful. I need a miniature of you on a keychain."

"That I refuse to poof into existence," Poseidon said.

They reached the pavilion and stepped inside, tugging at each other to weave through the crowd. Colourful lights were bouncing around the pavilion and the music was nice and loud.

Then they ran into a fantastic looking bride in a nice white dress and realised that oh shit this isn't just a party, this is a wedding.

The bride didn't seem to mind. She beamed at them while Sally was trying to figure out an identity as a cousin twice-removed of the groom, but she cut Sally off.

"Were you guys invited?"

"No," Sally admitted, forgetting her lie in a panic. Poseidon shot her a look. If they weren't surrounded, she'd tell him to give it up because she was 99% sure that he had a 24-7 access to liquor if he wanted it. "We thought it was just a random college party."

"That's too funny," the bride laughed. "You guys are cute, stick around if you'd like."

"Thanks," Sally beamed. "You look beautiful."

"Aww, thanks honey," the bride smiled before she disappeared in the crowd.

"See?" Sally asked. "This is great. Good thing you listened to me."

"As if I had a choice," Poseidon muttered.

"Don't sass me, I'm still sober," Sally said.

She didn't drink in the city; it made her think too much of her uncle and of nights spent locking the doors of her room. However at Montauk? Anything could happen at Montauk, especially when she was with someone as safe as Poseidon. They'd been invited to a wedding while it was in progress, for crying out loud.

Anyways, they pretended they'd been there all along and were introduced to cousins they weren't related to. They danced, they had cake (Sally smeared her icing on his face), they drank, they pretended to be a pair of long-lost nieces when a slightly amnesic older woman came and called them Tory and Dave... It was great, really.

Then the matron of honour took the mic and said that they'd run out of vodka, so while the bartenders scrambled to stock up they were going to play games. A bunch of them Sally had heard of before, but when a bridesmaid came and asked Sally for her left shoe she wasn't sure what was going on. She obeyed, though. It didn't come up until much later- and Sally had forgotten by then. The games were cute, the array of old uncles and aunts were drunk and hilarious, and there was the added cuteness factor that whenever someone won, they had to kiss their date on the tiny stage where the DJ was set up.

"Okay, so the next game is called Shopping Spree," the matron of honour said. "Basically every bridesmaids from order of youngest to oldest gets to pick her favourite pairs of shoes from those we collected from the audience. Out of all those, the bride gets to pick the one she'd most like to own right now instead of those killer heels we all saw."

The fun of the game was mostly tipsy bridesmaids calling out to guests like where did you get these? And if I take them now will you notice? Sally was chatting up a storm with the groom's grandmother when the game ended and Poseidon poked her shoulder. She'd won. Oh shit.

"Can the owner of this shoe come to the stage with their significant other?" the matron of honour asked.

Sally looked at Poseidon with big, bugged out eyes.

See, they really had never meant to cause trouble. They'd drawn a firm line: holding hands was nice. Lying down on the beach next to each other in the sun was nice. But there was no kissing involved. Because they weren't a couple, right? They didn't (pff) actually (pff) LIKE each other (pffffffffff). Okay, there had been significant -very, very significant- missteps as they tried to hide it from each other. Sally's roommates were ruthless in their teasing about how they'd always look at each other when someone said something funny, how Sally stole his clothes at camp fires, how he'd hang out a lot considering he was a hot foreign fisherman with other options (Sally had had to make up something, no?). Anyways, one night Poseidon and Sally had been lying under the stars and Sally had unwittingly asked him the origin story of an ultra-romantic constellation. Sally's head had been resting on his chest and she could feel his heartbeat, and he could probably feel hers considering its crazy drumming... Sally had sat up and looked at him and declared she would never, ever kiss him. He'd agreed that no, why would they do that? That was the line, and now it was being shattered at a wedding they weren't supposed to be attending.

This is why drinking is a sin, Sally thought miserably. The bride recognised her and started laughing and edged her onto the stage. She even picked out Poseidon from the crowd personally and got a few of the lesser-drunk cousins to round them up onstage.

"I hate weddings," Poseidon said quietly. "They're never good. First the Trojan War, and it's only been downhill since."

Sally smiled at his joke and she knew that's why he'd said it, because he knew she'd calm down. She really could have kissed him then.

"It's a cute game," Sally said.

"Yeah," Poseidon said. "Just a game."

"For sure," Sally said. Still, somehow she knew she had to shift and stand on her tip-toes to kiss him and somehow he knew exactly where to put his hands so they'd land on her waist and keep her safe and steady.

Apparently it was a long kiss because the crowd got excited and the matron of honour laughed and poked Sally's shoulder. She was probably red to the roots of her hair but she was also… thrilled?

"Okay," Poseidon said as they walked back to the dance floor. "Maybe weddings aren't so bad."

They stayed until the bar closed and the crowd thinned out at 2:00 AM and he walked her home, like he would have if this had been a normal night. Sally was holding her shoes in between two fingers, the other clasping Poseidon's hand. What the hell at this point, right? Right. (Hopefully). (Sally had no idea what to do). (She was panicking but pretending not to).

He walked her to the front door even though it may wake up her roommates- who were usually big enough creeps to stay up until Sally got home, but that usually wasn't until ass-o'clock in the morning, so technically they were alone.

"Crashing that wedding was actually a good idea," Poseidon said. "It was fun."

"The idea wasn't to crash the wedding," Sally blushed.

"Yes, but that's what happened," Poseidon said. "That's the important part."

"Metaphors and shit," Sally muttered under her breath. She looked at Poseidon and smiled. He smiled back and scratched the back of his head.

"You're a… a really good kisser, Jackson," he said.

"Thanks," Sally said. "I'd return the compliment but I was a bit too stunned to really register anything. Wait-"

She kissed him again, easing herself on her toes as if she'd done it a thousand times and wrapping her arms around his neck as if that's where they were meant to go. They'd done it once. What was the harm now? Nothing, really. This was really nice. So nice...

"Okay," Sally said when she pulled away. "Yeah, you too."

Poseidon grinned back at her and bit his lip. "That ship sailed then, I guess."

"I think it did," Sally said. "I mean, we could maybe just never do that again but-"

Poseidon kissed her again and she was suddenly conscious of how close to the door she was, about how sandwiched she was between it and him.

"Or not," Poseidon said. Sally didn't unwrap her arms from him.

"I like not," Sally said. She kissed him again. It felt feverish, really. As if a floodgate had just lifted over the last two weeks. She leaned in again.

"Yeah, not it is," Poseidon said breathlessly.