"Annabeth, what on God's green earth is this?" Reyna stomped down the short hallway between her office and Annabeth's, waving a folded newspaper. A strand of dark hair had worked its way loose from the Chief of Staff's no-nonsense low bun and curled limply over the collar of her lavender dress shirt.

On a less fraught day, Piper might have made a crack about the color and its potential suggestions about political neutrality or lack thereof in appealing to swing states. Instead, she just filed away the knowledge that the dress shirt was Burberry and looked custom-tailored, and meekly knocked on Annabeth's door.

"Annabeth, Reyna's here."

Reyna gave her a look that was somewhere between imperious and bemused, but didn't say a word.

Annabeth opened the door. "Reyna. How can I help you?"

"You can start by explaining this article." Reyna flung the paper down on Annabeth's desk and jabbed a perfectly manicured index finger at a line. "I thought we had him handled. I thought you had him handled. So why is he throwing lavish parties in Ibiza and throwing around the president's name?"

Annabeth, brow furrowed, took in each word of the article one by one. "Jay Bacchus Brunner… Usually better known as Party Man Dionysus… two point three million? He's supposed to be in Long Island. With the drinks and the in-house counsel and the PR firm we set him up with."

"Well, he's not. And I found out about it in an article in the paper. Above the damn fold." Reyna crossed her arms. "How did they find out before us? Equally good question, how do you ditch your security and get to Ibiza quietly?"

Annabeth grimaced. "He wasn't quiet while he was there. How do you even spend that much on a party?"

"How does he even have that much to spend?" Piper wondered quietly.

Reyna turned her head, eyes pivoting to meet Piper's. "That's what the article is wondering, too. And what a good chunk of America will be, soon."

"There are… implications. About stocks," Annabeth said, voice low. "Jason's seen this, right?"

"He has," Reyna said. "I showed it to him first and asked who had handled it last time. He said you. So here I am. You shut them up before, right?"

"No, I shut him up before he went and did something on this scale. Showed up with my fancy law degree and a couple of Secret Service agents and asked him to kindly shut the hell up and keep things quiet before he ruined the President's reputation." Annabeth shook her head. "Gonna be harder this time."

"Wait," Piper hesitated. "Why… why Secret Service? Why the President's reputation? I think I'm missing something here."

"Piper, you're not stupid. Think." Reyna's blunt words stung, but a moment later it clicked.

"Oh. He campaigned on family values, respectability, and he's currently in the middle of a push for a harder crackdown on insider trading. That reputation." Piper sighed. Not stupid, just sleep deprived. She was pretty sure there was a tiny battering ram shoving up against her left temple, doing its best to break through bone and skin alike. She ignored that and the burning behind her eyes from having stayed up too late the night before. And the night before that. And the night before that.

"Also, the president's brother being a hedonist in every way possible with too much money and no apologies isn't a good look for anyone. Where's Silena?" Reyna tucked the errant strand of hair away, smoothing it back into her polished bun.

"Right here," came the smooth reply from the doorway. Piper jumped a little; she hadn't heard the Press Secretary approach. "I saw it already. I think we've got til noon before the President's got a problem."

"It's eleven," Annabeth grimaced with a glance at her watch.

"Then you'd best get on it." Reyna looked at the two of them, then down at the paper, then back up at the two of them. "What are you waiting for? Now!"

"Right, of course."

"You got it."

They jumped into motion, Silena calling a few reporters she deemed trustworthy and Annabeth dialing up the President's brother.

Piper didn't stick around for the melee that she was sure was about to ensue. She wandered out to the West Wing coffee machine, rummaging around the back for some creamer and cursing under her breath when she couldn't find the oat milk.

"Can I help you find something?" Jason's voice in her ear was low, his chest brushing her shoulder as he reached over her to grab a K-cup. The smell of his cologne, some expensive thing that she was pretty sure was supposed to smell like leather and tobacco but just kind of didn't, rose in her nostrils.

"Jesus, Jason. Sneak up on a girl a little quieter, why don't you? You should wear a bell."

"If that's what you're into," he said with a wink.

Piper frowned. "Please don't do that again."

"Do what? This?" He winked again, slower and more exaggerated this time.

"Ugh," Piper said, shaking her head. "I was looking for the oat milk."

"I've got oat milk back at my place. If you wanted some. In the morning." Jason ran a hand over his buzzed hair, a fresh ink stain blooming around his thumb.

Piper sighed. "Was that your attempt at asking me if I want to come over tonight?"

"If you want to."

"You know the only reason you have oat milk there is because I brought it." Piper sighed. "When are you planning on leaving the office tonight?"

"Does it matter? Annabeth stays as late as me, and you almost never leave until she's done, too." Jason glanced at Annabeth's closed office door. "But if the J.B. situation is the only nightmare in store today, I can probably leave by nine."

"Cool. And if there's another nightmare?"

"We all collectively left here at ten three days in a row last week, didn't we?"

"And Saturday," Piper agreed with a sigh. "I have two degrees, you know. I'd be a fantastic executive assistant or English teacher literally anywhere else."

"Ah, but then you wouldn't get to serve your country for a whopping fifty thousand a year."

"Plus benefits," Piper added. "And besides, don't make fun of my salary. I know what you make. Plus Army pension. And family money. You're one of those guys who says they're 'comfortable' instead of 'rich,' but we all know."

Jason gave her a long look, like he wasn't sure what was going through her head.

"You're buying dinner, and sure, I'll come over." Piper rolled her eyes.

"Great." Jason reached for the sugar she knew he didn't take in his coffee, brushing his hand over hers. She tried not to relax into his touch, tried to make sure there was no visible trace of the tingle that ran up her chest and the heat that rose to her cheeks. It was a friendly touch, really. Casual. A knock of knuckles against the strip of exposed skin where her shirt cuff had ridden up on her wrist.

There was nothing casual or friendly about the way he whispered in her ear all of the delicious, terrible things he planned to do to her that night.

Or her wicked smile, as she turned away and sauntered back to her desk. "Can't wait."

A few hours later, the news about the President's brother had indeed hit the papers. Annabeth's phone wouldn't stop ringing, which wasn't helping the battering ram inside Piper's skull.

"Annabeth Chase's office. No, she would not like to comment. No, the White House has no comment." She slammed the phone back down, only for it to start ringing yet again. "Annabeth Chase's office. No, no comment."

"Maybe you can tell the next one that Dionysus is a stupid-as-shit party name, and no one in the White House understands why you'd need a separate name to party in the first place, so at least he made one responsible choice in going by a real name for once," Annabeth called from her office.

"I would if the issue wasn't that he was using his real name," Piper responded. She picked up the phone again. "Annabeth Chase's office…"

"I liked the stupid party name better, you're right," Annabeth said. "And I liked it much better when he was staying put in Long Island getting drunk on a drink that doesn't resemble iced tea nearly as much as the name would have you think…."

Piper didn't answer Annabeth. She fell silent and thunked the phone back down onto the desk, face pale.

Annabeth poked her head out of her office. "Woah, Piper. What just happened?"

"That call. Asking for a comment. Not about stupid Dionysus, but about… asking for…" Piper took a deep breath. "That was a reporter from the Post. Asking if you had a comment about an undisclosed relationship between a senior staffer and an employee whom he outranks."

"What?" Annabeth asked, voice low. Deadly.

"I… you heard me." Piper was already writing the reporter's name down. "Here. It's… he's not in their regular roster. Name's Bob Smalls."

Annabeth was already dialing Silena. "We've got a problem. Yeah. Yes. Smalls. No, I didn't give an answer. Yes. No, I don't want to call Reyna. Or him. Not yet. Okay. Yeah. Okay."

Piper's hand suddenly felt cold where Jason's touch had been just moments ago. "I have to go."

"What?" Annabeth glanced at her. "No, Silena, I'm still with you. No. Okay."

Piper grabbed her phone and the stupid, stupid sparkly ring on her desk that she'd just been about to put on her hand, and bolted. She found herself in Jason's office, breath already ragged. "Jason. Can you talk?"

"I've got a meeting in…" he looked up from his computer and saw her ashen face. "I can talk. Close the door?"

She did. "We have a problem."

"What? What's going on?" He was at her side in an instant, brushing his hands over her hair, her face, her fingers. "Are you okay?"

"I think we both might not be okay. A reporter just called…" the words tumbled out of her mouth like gravel. "Someone knows. I knew someone took a photo that night. I think… I don't know what we have to do but I think that article's about us."

"But we're not technically doing anything wrong. It's consensual. And adult." Jason shook his head. "Is there paperwork? We can get ahead of it and sign paperwork. I can call my sister."

"Do not." Piper snapped. "Or your sister-in-law. Not yet. Please."

"But…"

"No, there's something else. Jason, you cannot tell anyone what I'm about to tell you. It doesn't leave this room."

"Okay." He looked at her again, crossed his arms, and leaned back against his desk. "Okay, what is it?"

"It's Annabeth. She and Luke Castellan. Before he left."

"Ah." Jason scrubbed at his face with both hands. "Okay. So this article…"

"It could be about you and me, in which case your career is fine and mine's probably screwed, and do not argue with me about that because you know the woman always comes out worse in a scenario like this."

Jason didn't argue.

"Nothing about this is okay," Piper said. Why had she worn these clothes? The neckline and cuffs of her shirt felt too tight, strangling her. "There was paperwork and we could have done it and if we had, we wouldn't be wondering who to protect. We'd know. Why did we keep it a secret, if we didn't have to?"

"Because… it was fun?" Jason offered her an anxious smile. "It was… I don't know. Shit, I'll fill out the paperwork now if it's that important. If it protects us. Protects you."

He moved to take her hands in his, to press a kiss to her temple, but she shoved him away. "Don't. If I'd be screwed, Annabeth would be wrecked. I don't care what happens to me, I am not letting this happen to her."

With that, Piper flung the sparkly ring down on Jason's desk, wrenched his office door open, and fled down the hallway. She almost hit poor Percy Jackson in the face with it; clearly he'd been on his way to talk to Jason. Piper didn't stop to wonder how much he'd heard, didn't stop to see if he'd heard anything at all. She couldn't breathe and the battering ram in her head was about to break something, and she felt a wave of dizziness like the time she and Annabeth had gone hiking at Harper's Ferry and Annabeth had dared her to look over the edge of the bridge.

She made it to Annabeth's office door before the dam burst.

Then she was sobbing on the floor.

She wasn't sure when Annabeth joined her or when she remembered how to breathe.

Finally, they sat there, leaning against Annabeth's desk, Annabeth next to her on the carpet, gripping Piper's hand with white knuckles and tears welling in her own eyes.

"You're telling me that all this time… you and Jason?" Annabeth managed. "With all the crap about me and Luke, you two…"

"I didn't say I was smart. The opposite. Stupid, stupid, stupid," Piper croaked between sobs, thunking her head into the side of Annabeth's desk to punctuate the last three words.

"Not stupid. Well, yeah, stupid. We both are. Clearly." Annabeth shook her head. "I just can't believe… God, we're such a sitcom trope."

"Do you still have the good bourbon in that bottom drawer of your desk?" Piper felt cold and dizzy all at once.

"It's four o'clock… " Annabeth looked at her friend. "And if a situation ever called for it, it's this. I'll get it."

They didn't sit in chairs or at the desk for some reason, they just returned to the floor. Annabeth slipped off her heels and tucked her feet up under her.

"We have another problem, you know," she said conversationally.

"Other than that your career and mine might both be fucked and we don't have a good way to check and find out which without us both getting found out, thus defeating the purpose? What other problem could you possibly be seeing?"

"Jay. Dionysus. Whatever. The reporter knew before we did. And this. This is the kind of thing that Reyna and Silena have been helping me work overtime to keep under wraps. Not like, suppression, but the equivalent of multiple P.I.s and a thousand Google Alerts. Even if it's about you, my thing means there shouldn't be any Title Nine stories about the White House coming out that we don't know about."

"You think we've got a leak," Piper realized.

The words hung heavy in the stale air of the room.

"So… we need to talk to Silena." Piper ran her hands through her hair, long since pulled loose in uneven strands from the braid she'd worn to work that morning.

Annabeth looked at Piper. "I think… I think we have to go straight to Reyna. And we might each need to call a lawyer. Just in case."

As always, a million thanks and a hundred virtual cookies/coffees/teas. Thanks for reading, everyone. ~GT