"So, I'm assuming you don't actually care about the physics of Star wars." "Right. Well, I do care about it in general, but I'm not interested in discussing it right now. But they don't have to know about this" She turned her middle finger, the one with the ring on it, towards me. "Or rather the lack thereof." I understood that. We had an unspoken agreement that Annabeth would remain officially ace for a while longer. "You know" She said "Allos are weird." "As a fellow allo, I take offense to that." " I thought we had already established that you were weird, seaweed brain. Anyways, the other allos are also strange. Like you just look at someone whom you might not even know and think 'I'd like to screw them'. Is that what happens? Do you just feel such things?"
"Well, sometimes. Mostly for you. Is that weird to think about?" "Not anymore. Before that "magical" moment around the time we met the arai, it would have been, but since then, I find you attractive myself. So, you were saying that you find mostly me attractive?" "Yes, you both sexually and romantically. But attraction, at least the sexual kind, isn't that rare for me. Especially when I was near cabin 10 before the battle of Manhattan. I'm not gonna say any names, but some of the girls, and maybe some boys too, were kind of hot, probably on purpose.
Hey, stop looking at me like I cheated. All I did was failing to completely resist a piece of godly power which would have conflicted with a relationship that didn't even exist at that point in time." "I guess I can forgive you that. I can't say I was never thinking about Luke while our relationship was building up. Not that he was ever an actual concurrent" Now I was the one giving out judging looks. "Hey, it's not my fault. I was a helpless little girl and he was a big strong man, and Disney told me that that is the ideal relationship. Can we just not talk about Luke please? It's not only embarrassing but also somewhat traumatic." "You started it, not me, but sure. If it makes you feel better." When you're (dating) a demigod, you eventually get used to people being unable to talk about certain things, though Annabeth is definitely above average in terms of trauma. And having a memory like hers probably didn't help it. Whatever the exact reasons were, Annabeth didn't want to talk about Luke, so we didn't. "Remember what I said about my fatal flaw not being being clingy? That might have been a lie" "Well, I'm not complaining" We continued talking about the few good things that had happened in our lives. Suddenly, Annabeth called my name and grabbed my hand. Knowing that this usually meant a monster attack, I had riptide drawn in seconds. I looked at Annabeth for an explanation. "Everything okay?" "Yes, just a few seconds of a flashback bleeding through from someone else." "From where?" "I don't know. I didn't get a clear image, just a short, strong wave of panic. Hey, what the Hades are you guys doing in there?" She apparently got no response to that. Lightning struck again and thunder followed almost immediately. A branch broke off from a tree and fell down next to our window. "Bang!" Annabeth declared. "Sorry, some little just came to front for like a split second to say that." "It's okay. Weren't we talking about that anyways? Banging, I mean. And attraction in general." "Interesting transition, but yes. We were talking about that until I mentioned Luke. So, you just go around wanting to screw people?" "Well, not everyone. Only some people. Mostly you" She looked at me expectantly. "Not Rachel if that's what you meant" "That's good. The thing is that I cannot imagine being attracted to so many people. And I don't even know whether me discovering my demisexuality made it worse or better. On one hand, I now know what sexual attraction is, and you'd think that would make everything less confusing, but the thought of someone feeling actual sexual attraction towards strangers is even weirder than someone experiencing whatever I had previously thought sexual attraction was towards strangers. Do you understand what I mean?" "Thing is, I grew up experiencing those things, so they're just as normal to me as blue food. Except that only a tiny fraction of people would understand blue food while allosexuality was the norm and widely understood. But it's good to see you for once being the one who's completely stumped by something everyone else understands speaking of understanding, I believe you also don't really understand the saying 'there's plenty of fish in the sea' am I right?" "all I can say is that there might be plenty of them, but I like this one. I once heard it being said in a discussion about demisexuality and thought that it was especially fitting for me because you are…" She decided to end the sentence there. Good choice. "Also, regarding things most understand but I don't, you mean like, I don't know, written English? Just because I'm the smartest being in the 599 lowest floors of Manhattan doesn't mean I can read. You keep forgetting that." "Fair point, but I'm also dyslexic so your dyslexia doesn't match the silent amendment of 'even me' that I put within the 'everyone else understands' so it doesn't interfere with the rarity of the described situation. I have no idea whether that sentence made any sense. You're infesting my brain with grammar and language at a level my brain itself is not capable of.
So, you talked about the point in time when you discovered you were demi. When exactly was that? Do you want to tell me?" "I can do that. Can you hold me like you did a few minutes ago?" "Of course, may I ask why?" "This story involves you know where and I want to be feeling as safe as possible when I talk about it. By the way, are you even comfortable hearing about it?" "I am comfortable. As long as we emotionally support each other it should go fine." I put one arm around her, and then pulled her into a sort of hug. Annabeth put her hand on my back, covering my former Achilles heel. Of course it wasn't a physical weak point anymore, but it still made me feel safer. Both of those things were perhaps not the mental stabilization method a therapist would recommend but hey, if it works, it works. Annabeth began explaining. "It began about one month ago. I was totally loving you, but didn't find you hot or whatever people call it. What exactly does that even mean?" "Uh, like, when you meet someone who you think is hot it literally feels like heat. Like, your body heats up. Actually, I don't know if there is physically an increase in temperature or if it just feels like it. The same way eating chili feels hot but doesn't physically create heat." "So, looking at me feels like eating chili?!" "No, but… I thought you were attracted to me too. Shouldn't you know what it feels like?" "Well, that's what I was just explaining. So, I didn't think anyone was hot. Well, technically Leo was hot, but not a sexual sense. Just because of his fire powers. Anyway, this was the case up to you know where. Again, is it okay to hear about it?" I nodded. "So, my memories of this are quite blurred, but I know it was in the forest of curses. I think you'll agree that our emotional bond grew much stronger down there. Well, there was this one curse that made me think that I had lost you. That you had abandoned me." Her voice began to break. "Remember, I didn't leave you. Never will." "So, when Bob healed the curse and I noticed you had not left me alone, our bond became a bit stronger and hit some sort of threshold. Like I said, there was no sexual attraction before that, but after that I was suddenly like 'Yeah, Percy's hot. I could see myself doing stuff with him'. That feeling was really weird for me. And the demi in demisexual might mean half, but that doesn't necessarily mean only half the attraction once a connection is established."
"So basically, Calypso being angry that I wanted to be in a romantic relationship with you caused you to want a sexual relationship with me." "You could say that. Though you'd probably need to do a lot of explaining if you did. So, that was the story of how I developed attraction to you. Any more private stuff you want to know?" "You say that like that is an unreasonable request. I'm literally your boyfriend." "Fair enough. So, what else could we do?" I opened our memory album at a random page. It showed us on a date (or maybe just a casual walk, it's really hard to tell if you already live together independently of your relationship) in the fields. The sun reflected off of our gre- "Got something. We could get our grey streaks back. Preferably with mortal methods and without having to hold the sky. That wasn't a very pleasant experience to say the least." "I can imagine that" "Annabeth, you were literally there" "I was, or rather this body was there, but I don't remember anything, as usual with my trauma. But I'd still prefer some other method" "MOM" I called. "Can we go dye our hair?" She came in. "I see you're done discussing Star wars logic and possibly doing other things. I'd say getting an appointment at a hairdresser for today will be difficult. Of course, you could make the storm worse to prevent people from going there, making you the only customers, but that would kind of be a dick move, so I'd suggest you don't do that." "Then we'll just do it ourselves." "How are you gonna dye your hair at home? Don't you need something for removing the hair's original color?" "I'm sure we will find some substance here that does just that. And by we I mean Annabeth." "Show me where you keep your cleaning supplies and I shall make a hair bleach for us." Annabeth proudly declared. Sally reluctantly showed her the cleaning supply closet which, in the eyes of a chemist, is synonymous with bomb building set. About 30 minutes, a bunch of tossed around bottles and an entire page and a half scribbled full with chemical structures, she was done.
"So, this might maybe potentially work, which is very good odds if you're a demigod. Now the question is: how do we apply it properly?" " I'd suggest by stretching the 'some things must not be controlled' rule. Though I don't think the rule even applies here. If I tried to kill someone- hey wise girl, can this stuff kill people?" "What do you think? This substance has the power to suck the black out of your hair, of course it can kill people" "So, if I tried to kill people with it, the rule would probably apply." "If that stuff kills people, isn't that a bit dangerous?" "Paul, Percy and I are demigods. Our lives are always in danger. So, I'll just mix the ingredients together and Percy does some bleach bending." I tried my best to keep the bleaching liquid in one place and it ended up almost not terrible. Okay, it was actually quite good and we ended up with well-formed grey streaks in our hair. A few minutes later, the storm clouds disappeared and we noticed that it was almost sunset. Annabeth and I went up to the roof, but we still weren't above most buildings, so I summoned some water from the river and made a column for those few extra meters. We finished our birthday with a beautiful sunset complete with a rare green flash effect which I assumed to be our birthday gift from Apollo.
Once the sun had fully set, we went back inside. We had decided that if Annabeth stayed here the night before the birthday so we could spend the entire day together, the same would apply to the night after. When we had told my parents this, mom's response had been something like "Nothing happened last night, no monsters attacks and the bed is still in one piece, so why not" Paul might have had a different opinion, but if you disagree with Sally Jackson, well just don't.
After dinner (cake, who would have guessed), we decided to watch a movie. But the question was which one. I wanted to watch finding Nemo for probably the twentieth time, Annabeth wanted to watch a documentary about ancient architecture, Sally and Paul wanted to not interfere in a discussion between two demigods. The discussion ended when Annabeth happened to see the PPP lying on the table and suddenly decided that watching a kid's movie didn't sound so bad after all. Probably some child alter making their opinion known.
Around twenty minutes before the end of the movie, our speaker broke. Paul was eventually able to fix it, but for the rest of the movie, Sally and Paul got to enjoy me and Annabeth reciting all the lines from memory. I'd say it was a performance worthy of Dionysus, though he'd probably disagree. After the movie ended we got ready to bed. After we both lay down in my bed (Of course we had a sofa, but who needs that if you have an ace ring). I asked "Our first shared birthday. Was it good?" "The best" Within minutes, we were both asleep.
So, here's some backstory to why Annabeth became attracted to Percy. Sorry for posting this two days behind schedule, but I first had to find someone to check the parts about allosexuality since I am just as clueless (if not more) as Annabeth regarding that topic.