Disclaimer: I only own the plot and my OCs. Anything you recognize as not mine belongs to Marvel Studios, Disney, and/or their otherwise respective owners.

Author's Notes: Ahhh, I can't believe it! We're at 50 chapters people! Which puts us at least a third of the way through this story! Mbgdfsgdsrf I'm so happy. Because of this, I dropped a little big reveal on y'all mwahahaha. Hope you like it 3

Also, I think we're gonna get one more chapter until TTC, because of...reasons. They will be explained when we get closer to then. Plus, doing too much more I think in the interim between SoM and TTC would make it bloated, and I don't want it to be that.

As always, I hope you enjoy. Until next week,

~TGWSI/Selene Borealis

Φώκη – Seal


~The Finding Home Saga~

~Finding Home~

~Chapter 50: Does Your Best Friend Know~


Over the course of the next month and a half, Luke and I went on another three dates.

I'm not kidding when I tell you these six weeks were some of the best ones of my entire life. Having three dates every two weeks might not sound like the most romantic relationship in the world to some, but considering everything that we were going up against just by being together, it was to me. Our second date, we went to the movie theater to watch Ratatouille, which...yeah, that was probably an interesting choice of movie to watch for a date. But it was a fun movie to watch; it made us both laugh. Our third date, we went to Coney Island, and although I refused to ride the ferris wheel or the rollercoasters because of the warning from Zeus, we had a blast. Luke was a pro at the fair games, winning me a seal plushie at the balloon darts one.

"Here you go, φώκη," he said as he handed it to me. Behind him, the guy running the stand, who looked to be from the Mediterranean himself, gave us a weird look. I guess it was kind of weird to hear somebody who didn't look Greek speaking the ancient version of the language with a pitch accent, if you didn't know they were literally the son of a Greek god.

My nose wrinkled, though I didn't hesitate to accept his offering. "Really? You're gonna call me that?"

"Have you seen your eyes?" he retorted with a smirk. "You have seal eyes."

"You mean they're sad and pathetic?"

"No. They're cute and hard to resist," he corrected me.

He won other games too, but the only other plushie I accepted was a manatee plush which had been the last one to be offered at its stand. The other three he won we gave away to some kids walking by, because I was concerned if I brought too many stuffed animals home, my mom would definitely suspect something. In my eyes, it was a miracle she hadn't already.

For our fourth date, we went to another restaurant, which was not a Michelin this time. No, it was much more casual, a cafe, which made sense for the easy and laidback lunch date we had.

My happiness during these six weeks increased so much that it was noticeable. My mom, blissfully unaware of the reason, was equally happy for me. "I didn't want to say anything," she said. "But when you came home the summer before last, up until you went to camp last summer, you just seemed so...sad. I'm glad you're happy again." She pressed a kiss to my right cheek, and then to my left, making me roll my eyes. I didn't try to stop her, however. "That's all I want for you, Percy: to be happy."

Callie also didn't know why I was so happy. I knew that she, at least, suspected that something was going on, but she didn't say anything about that part of it. In the mornings after my and Luke's dates, when I would meet up with her so we could walk together to school, she would simply squint her eyes at me and say, "You're in a good mood today. Any reason for it?"

"Mmm, no reason," I'd say, or something in variation to it. And the brilliant thing about Callie was that not only was she my half-sister, but she also respected that boundary.

The only problem I really had, as you've probably guessed by this chapter's title, was...Silena. And perhaps, even without the chapter title, this would've been obvious. She is a daughter of Aphrodite, after all, and one of her and her half-siblings' powers is to sense love. I've been told it's like a pheromone for them: it's not something they can actually smell, but how they sense it is through their nose/olfactory nerve. Hence why she'd known all the way back when she'd first introduced herself to me that I specifically had been in love with Luke already, because I'd literally been exuding it.

And for these six weeks, I was exuding it again, too. Like, all the time, as I was later told. She didn't comment on it when we were with other people, or actually when we were anywhere except for her room. But on two different occasions when we were, she looked me dead in the eyes and asked me, "Is there anything you want to tell me, Percy?"

Each time, I felt like I was going to die on the spot. I denied her questions, which made me sweat from how nervous I became, but I knew I had to do it. Silena could not find out that Luke and I were back together. Whereas before I would've thought her to be the most understanding out of my entire friend group were she to find out about our "relationship-behind-the-scenes" thing going on due to being the child of who she was, with Alabaster having come back over to the side of the gods, she'd become a little less willing to give Luke and the others who had joined Kronos the benefit of the doubt. While I knew she understood how I loved Luke, he was still a traitor – the leader of the traitors, at that. Getting back into a relationship with him when he refused to rejoin the gods? Stupid, stupid, stupid.

...Which, granted, that was not wrong.

Keeping my relationship with Luke a secret of course meant I couldn't tell anybody about it, but strangely enough, I felt like the person who would've been the most understanding out of my friend group was Clarisse...yeah, I wasn't really sure why, either. Well, there was a reason: when she'd told me she'd keep my stuff with him a secret, she'd said: "Whatever the fuck you and Castellan do is your own business." That was present tense, not past.

Understanding did not mean the same thing as accepting, just for the record. But it did comfort me to know I had at least one sympathetic person in my corner, if things should come to light.

There was a bit of a respite from her during the last two weeks of October. Alabaster's birthday was on the 31st – to this day, I wonder sometimes if Hecate had done that just for the laughs, given birth to him on Halloween – and Silena worked herself into a frenzy to give him a "good birthday." His dad, I guess, after he'd ran away on him to join Kronos, had become more lax with his archaeology digs and they'd been staying in the city for a while. I don't know, even at the time that I'm writing this, I've never met Cain Torrington. Not because he is a bad guy or anything, just something that hasn't managed to happen.

Anyways, with Silena so focused on Alabaster for Halloween and Callie having agreed to go trick-or-treating with some of her other friends (we're half-siblings, but that doesn't mean we do everything together), this gave me an opportunity to do something that I'd never even known I'd wanted to do: go trick-or-treating with my boyfriend.

The evening of Halloween, which fell on a Wednesday that year, I got dressed in my costume. Then, since it was one of my mom's nights off from her classes, I said my goodbyes to her before I walked out the door. "And you're meeting up with Callie at – ?" she asked me, rattling off the street names, which weren't far from where she lived.

"Yeah, Mom," I said, pretending that we hadn't already gone over this already during dinner.

"And you'll be back before ten?"

"Yes."

"Alright," she relented. "Be safe. Have fun. Don't get too much candy."

I flashed her a grin. "I only make promises to two of those statements."

To my credit, I did meet up with Luke at the street corner I'd told my mom. He was already there waiting for me, and I nearly choked on my own spit when I saw his costume. "Seriously?"

"What?" he said, and I couldn't tell if he was genuinely confused at my question or just playing with me.

The possibility of the first had me breaking down into hysterics. "I can't believe," I began to wheeze, placing my hands on my knees in a futile hope to catch my breath. People walked past us, eyeing us with confused but goodhearted smiles. If there was one thing I liked about Halloween in New York City, it was that in the neighborhoods I had experience with, people were usually a lot nicer on this holiday in particular than they were almost any other time of the year – sometimes including Christmas. Don't ask me why on that. "I can't fucking believe...you dressed up as Draco Malfoy?"

He gave a shrug. "I don't know what you expected me to do after you told me to watch the Harry Potter movies."

"What?" I was genuinely confused. "What do you mean?"

I watched his eyes nictate. "You don't get it?"

"Get what?"

"Well...you're kind of like Harry, aren't you?" he commented. "The Chosen One with messy black hair and green eyes, gets into trouble both because he finds it and it finds him..."

I started to snicker all over again. "Oh my God, you ship Drarry?"

"What?"

"Never mind, never mind," I said. I reached up to pat his cheek. "I'll explain it when you're older. Do you like my costume?"

"Pirates are attractive. You're even more attractive," he agreed. "You dressed up as a pirate is absolutely hot."

To prove his point, he wrapped an arm around my waist, pulling me in close. It made me shout with giddiness.

But, that wasn't the only reason why he did this. With his other hand, he summoned a familiar sword – Backbiter. How it had been forged and my thoughts about it aside, he swung it, creating basically a tear in the space-time continuum. On the other side was a different New York neighborhood, one richer and thus guaranteed to have a lot better candy – no offense to my and Callie's neighborhoods.

Halloween has always been my favorite holiday. I will unashamedly admit to being one of those people who has all of the Halloweentown movies on DVD and watches The Nightmare Before Christmas even when it isn't close to being either of those two holidays.

It gave Luke a kick as we went from house to house. "I don't think I've ever seen you this excited about something," he observed.

"I told you I fucking love Halloween, didn't I?" I returned. "Shit, they gave us the king-sized Reese's cups. Do you know when the last time I got one of those was?"

"Uh..."

"I was eight," I informed him. Then I grabbed his hand to pull him along to the next house. "Come on, my bag isn't even half full yet! In this town we call home, everyone hail to the pumpkin song..."

It was his turn to laugh. "What are you singing?"

Sometimes, it made me mad at the things Luke hadn't gotten to experience due to camp and what I knew of his life before it. It seemed like a crime that Chiron hadn't taught him more pop culture things than he had.

But, I wasn't going to let that bother me tonight. "That's going to be our next date," I informed him cheerfully. "It comes from The Nightmare Before Christmas, but I'm not letting you watch that without me. It's like, one of my favorite movies of all time."

"Okay," he answered easily.

"Okay?"

"Okay."

We lasted about five seconds before we broke out into shits and giggles from this exchange.

After about an hour and a half, we'd each collected an ungodly amount of candy, and I was a little interested in his answer to a question that was nudging at my brain. "Have you ever had a candy apple before?"

That confused look which took over his face when I said something that I obviously thought was simple but he didn't returned. "You mean caramel apples? The nymphs at camp make them for Halloween."

"No, no. Candy apples. They're two similar, but entirely different things," I said. I looped my free arm in his. "There's this place on," again with the street names, "around this time of year. Can you take us there?"

With another slash of Backbiter, we were gone.

I paid for the candy apples, since my mom had given me forty bucks in cash for tonight (she knew my habits) and Luke had already paid way too much for our dates. I watched him take his first bite, then his eyes went to the size of saucers. "Is it good?" I teased him.

"So much better than caramel apples," he told me.

I finished my apple first, so while he was still eating his, I went to another stand and got us two cups of apple cider. This Halloween treat, he was familiar with due to the nymphs at camp, so he didn't have as large of a reaction to it, although he did like how it was spiced with caramel and pumpkin spice. We ate our candy while we drank our cider, prolonging the minutes as long as we could. By this point, it was after nine. We had less than hour left.

When we kissed during our candy eating, we both tasted like the candy apples, cider, and chocolate. But I loved it. I wouldn't have had it any other way.

At a quarter till ten, he teleported us to an alley not far from my apartment. "Thank you for going trick-or-treating with me," I told him, kissing his cheek.

He kissed me back on the lips. "Thank you for letting me experience what trick-or-treating is actually like. Love you."

"I love you, too."

We were getting better about having to part from each other after our dates. It still felt like torture, but with the promise of us getting together again sometime soon, it was getting easier.

My mom was watching a movie when I got back to our apartment at a couple minutes until ten. Or, rather I should say, she had been watching a movie. It was still going on, too, but from one look at her face I could tell she'd fallen asleep.

My mom really worked her ass off for me. Sometimes, I didn't feel like I showed my appreciation for her enough.

She stirred a little as I draped a blanket over her. "...Percy?" she murmured, her eyes briefly opening. "You're home?"

"Yeah, Mom. Don't worry, it's just now ten."

"Did you...have fun?"

"Loads. But, we can talk about it tomorrow," I said. "Go back to sleep."

Without complaint, she did just that.

I went back into my room, turning on the light. For a second, I felt like I was being watched. I looked around my room, something tingling down the back of my neck – trepidation? Apprehension?

Whatever it was, I decided that, after a moment, it wasn't something I needed to worry about.

This was my fuck-up.

Because just when I was about to get started on changing my clothes –

"Perseus Styrmir Jackson, what the fuck?"


Silena and Alabaster were sitting on my bed. In my room. Which I know is kind of redundant to say, but.

The look on my best friend's face was freaking me out. She was pissed. Alabaster wasn't, he rather seemed more amused by the entire thing, but the daughter of Aphrodite had a visage of pure wrath.

"Uh..." I said. "Hey guys, wha – what are you doing here?"

"Don't give us that, Percy," she huffed. She crossed her arms and her legs. Ah, shit, I was in deep trouble. "Ally and I decided that we were going to surprise you tonight and show up to wherever you were trick-or-treating – because you know, we wanted to be nice. So I called up your mom, and she told me you were trick-or-treating with Callie. But guess who had no idea where you were when I IM'ed her?"

Shit.

Shit, shit, shit...

"Look, Silly, I can explain..."

"You better!" she exploded. "Because the only explanation I could think of where you could've been was with Luke, but..." She trailed off as my expression gave away it all. Her face reddened with anger. "Percy, you didn't!"

"It was just a date," I went, my voice small.

"It was not just a date, and you know it!" she seethed.

She was talking awfully loud. I was getting a headache from it, and I didn't even want to think about what my mom would do if she overheard us. "Silena, please, can you keep it down? My mom – "

"I put a muffling spell over this room," Alabaster supplied, cutting in. He was still in a better mood about this than he had any right to be. "Your mom's not going to hear anything."

"Oh. Well, thanks, I guess?" I took off my pirate hat, letting it fall to the floor as I went to go sit on my desk chair. "I know it wasn't just a date, Silena. But – "

She wasn't really letting me get a word in. "I know you love him, Percy. Believe me, I do. I sense it all the time I'm around you and you think about him – which ever since we got back from camp, has been a lot. But he's a traitor, Percy!"

"So is Alabaster," I retorted, gesturing over to him.

"Don't bring him into this," Silena hissed as a warning. "What do you think is going to happen when somebody other than me or maybe one of our other friends finds out about this? What happens when they reveal it to the gods?"

"They're not going to kill me," I said obstinately.

Her lips thinned. "And how do you know that? Did you tell Demeter about what you're doing?"

That...was a complicated answer. Technically, at face-value, I hadn't told Demeter about this. The last time I had talked to her had been the dream conversation we'd had during Thalia's resurrection. But I knew that the gods could theoretically see everything they wanted to, and that I was a particular person of interest to her due to being her champion. Just because she hadn't told me she knew, hadn't even given me a feeling of it, didn't mean that she didn't...if that makes sense. Double negatives are always complicated for me.

My lack of an immediate response only made things worse. Groaning, Silena buried her head into her hands, but not before I could see the tears burning in her eyes. "Percy, those three days you were gone during the Sea of Monsters was bad enough," she began to weep. "I wasn't kidding then. I can't lose you again. You're my – you're my best friend and – "

"Hey. Hey," I shushed her. I got out of my seat and sat down next to her on her other side. Alabaster, now morose, rubbed at her back as I pulled her one hand away from her face and held onto it with both of mine. "You're not going to lose me. My priorities about the Prophecy and the gods haven't changed."

"So you're trying to get Luke to come back to the gods?" she asked, sniffling.

I winced. "Not exactly."

"Percy!"

"Luke's his own person, Silly. I'm not going to be able to change his mind if he doesn't want it to be changed. But that doesn't mean we love each other any less. It's just...it's complicated," I sighed. How could I make her understand?

As it turned out, I wasn't the one who could.

"Silena," Alabaster spoke softly. "You remember what Bianca said about them back on Circe's Island, right?"

My best friend stilled. "...Yeah," she eventually replied, before she wiped at her eyes. "Yeah, I do."

"Do you really think they'd be able to stay away from each other for long, knowing that?"

"...No, I suppose not," she admitted. She played with the loose thread on her jacket, then she looked up at me with watery, kaleidoscopic eyes. "I'm sorry, Percy. I understand where you're coming from, why you're doing this. You're just...you're like one of my brothers, you know that? I can't lose another one of those."

I felt like my throat was closing up. "I know."

I changed the subject on her, because I wanted to hear about how their night had gone. They both gave me the play-by-play, describing how they'd gone to some fancy restaurant in Queens that had made a specialized menu for the holiday, which sounded like it had been a lot of fun. Neither of them had dressed up in costumes for the day – Alabaster didn't really care much for that, which I could get, since this occurred on his birthday every single year, even if I didn't really approve of it.

Once Silena was calmed down, it was time for them to go. They had curfews to adhere to as well, after all. They went out the same way they had come in: through my one window, like Luke had back in August. Apparently that was a better front door than our actual front door was.

But, after Silena had already climbed out the window, before Alabaster could do the same, I grabbed him by the arm. "Hey," I said. "What did you mean by that earlier? What does Bianca know? Does she – ?"

I was so worried about the daughter of Hades having figured that out, it made me forget to thank Alabaster for being pretty darn understanding – maybe even as understanding as I thought Clarisse would be. I'd have to remind myself to thank him for it.

"She doesn't know that you and Luke are together, or were together the summer before that, so don't worry about it," he answered me. But he wasn't looking at me as he spoke. "It's nothing."

I wasn't that easily deterred. "Al..."

Remembering what Luke had told me on our third date, instead of giving him a glare, I amped up the "seal-like" effect of my eyes.

Predictably, it got me the results that I wanted, as he groaned. "Fine," he went, wresting his arm from my grasp. "Bianca said...she suspects that this isn't your and Luke's first lives together, or even your second. But I don't know much more about it than that. If you do, you're going to have to ask her yourself."


Word Count: 3,797

Next Chapter Title: Dancing Queen