Disclaimer: I only own the plot and my OCs. Anything you recognize as not mine belongs to Rick Riordan, Greco-Roman mythology, and/or their otherwise respective owners.

Author's Notes: Sorry for the later in the day update! Been busy today and dealing with more health issues.

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

~TGWSI/Selene Borealis

~The Finding Home Saga~

~Finding Home~

~Chapter 75: Like An Empire Of The Sun Song Pt. 1~

Okay, before I get any farther, since you're probably wondering based off of this chapter title and the ones that'll follow it: the song that I am referring to is specifically notWalking On a Dream. I know, I know, that is the song that everybody knows them for, and that song is actually probably not too far off base for being applicable here. It wasn't released until the August of 2008, so it is a little anachronistic in that sense, but it's not like many movies don't make anachronistic soundtracks anyways. Besides, it's not like the song that I am referring to is any less anachronistic, since it's off of the special edition of the same album.

The song, to be precise, is Without You (New Version). No offense to the original version, I'm just not the biggest fan of it.

As to why I chose to refer to this song in a three-part of chapter titles, well...

Although Luke had to take me back not long after where I left off at, we did quickly come up with the beginnings of a plan for finding a way to do more at the penthouse. The date was set for the weekend after next, so the 5th and 6th of January. Mm, the afternoon of the 4th too.

Because while I went back to school on the 3rd, because the administration of Goode High School had decided to be assholes like that for this school year, I wouldn't be going back home from school that Friday. I wouldn't be going back home at all until Monday, actually.

Like I already told you I had been thinking about doing before my quest to save Artemis and Silena and to prevent the sacrifice of Bessie, I got Alabaster to help me out with this. He wasn't exactly happy with me, just like Silena's father wasn't. "I can't believe you, Percy," he scoffed at me. "First you don't tell me that my girlfriend was kidnapped and held hostage by the Titans, now you want me to help you have sex with their demigod leader?"

"It wasn't that long ago that you were on their side!"

"That's different!"

"Besides, what would you have been able to do if I'd told you that Silena had been captured? Try to rescue her? Presumably get yourself captured in the process, if not outright killed?" I reasoned with the same logic that I had told her, ignoring his point about how "different" it was altogether. I wasn't even going to bother to ask him what he meant by that.

Alabaster went silent at this, yet he didn't automatically give in. I took this as the sign to use my "seal eyes" with him for a second time. "Please, Alabaster?" I begged. "How would you feel if you were being cockblocked from Silena like this?"

He spluttered, his green eyes going wide. "What makes you think that Silena and I have had sex?"

It's not like Artemis refrained from calling her a "maiden" or anything, I thought to myself. I didn't mention it out loud, though.

"Never mind that. Please, Al. If you do me this, I'll owe you one."

Alabaster finally gave in, his shoulders slumping. "You're damn right, you'll owe me one," he snarked. "Fine. I'll do it."

I grinned. "Thank you, Alabaster! You're the best!"

"Don't thank me yet," he grumbled.

The afternoon of the Friday of January 4th, I said goodbye to Callie instead of walking home with her like we usually did. I told her that I had a question I wanted to ask one of my teachers about an assignment, and that I didn't know how long it would take, so she was probably best off going on without me. She was fine with this, because even though we're half-siblings and we lived fairly close to one another, it wasn't like we walked to and from school together every day. Most days, sure, but not every.

"See you Monday, Percy, if I don't see you on the weekend for some other reason or another," she said to me. She smirked at me. "Probably 'cause you'll need my mortal dad's help with your homework."

"See you, loser!" I yelled back at her.

She flipped me off as she walked away. I waved back with all five fingers.

I met up with Alabaster in one of the bathrooms of the school. Not the most auspicious of places, but with nobody else around since the school day was over with, it wasn't like anybody would be coming in to see what we were doing. Except for maybe a janitor, but they usually waited around an hour or so after the last bell to begin working, so that if there were any kids left for extracurriculars, most of them would be gone by then.

Alabaster was leaning against one of the tile walls of the bathroom when I walked in which, when combined with his dark and ripped jeans and the three silver hoop earrings he was wearing on his left ear, the piercings done just a couple months ago, basically made him look like a bad boy. The thought almost made me snort.

It didn't help that he had the expression of the long-suffering on his face. "Are you ready for this?" he asked me.

"You bet I am," I said.

"You know that it'll only last for seventy-two hours, if you don't reunite with your doppelgänger before then," he reminded me. "After that, it'll just go poof – " he made the appropriate hand gesture to accommodate this " – in the air, regardless of how far away you are from it. Which, y'know, might be traumatic for the parties that are involved, even with the Mist, and definitely indicate to your mom that something's up."

"I know," I said cheerfully. Then I repeated, "Thank you for this, Al."

"Yeah, sure," he deflected. "Just remember: you said yourself that you're owing me for this."

Now, despite how I'm sure that you want me to, I'm not going to get into the ritual that we did. Not because I'm not allowed to, unlike the ritual that I did to become Demeter's champion. Rather, even though I'm pretty sure no mortals can replicate the ritual, I feel like there has to be some sort of responsibility on my part to ensure that. It'd be pretty disastrous, after all, if doppelgängers kept on disappearing into thin air all the time, wouldn't it?

I will say, though, when it was done, I could hardly believe my eyes. Standing there in front of me was a carbon-copy of myself, complete with the sea green eyes and the silver streak in his hair and all the scars I'd gained since finding out that I was a demigod. Nervously, I raised a hand to wave at him. He waved back.

"Hey," I said.

"Hello," he said.

The way he said it was a little too...formal. I glanced at Alabaster suspiciously. "Are you sure that this is going to work?"

He glared at me. "You dare question my work?" he demanded. I started to hold my hands up in surrender, but he was already turning me around roughly with his hands and shoving me out the door. "It's going to be fine. He's going to be great – give him a break, he just recently came into temporary being. Now, go on your fantastic weekend with Luke and please, for the love of gods, practice safe sex."

. . .

. . .

Later, it would occur to me that he had given me some pretty sound advice right there.

But, with everything that was about to come, I quickly forgot about it. It wasn't like gay demigods needed to practice safe sex anyways since we can't get STDs, right?

...Right?

This time, instead of going to the penthouse with Luke via one of Backbiter's portals, I walked there myself. He'd given me a key to the place. I earned some weird looks as I traversed the lobby of the building and took the elevator up to the correct floor, since I probably looked out of place as my fifteen-year-old self with some shabby-ish clothes, but nobody said anything to me or tried to tell me that I didn't belong. I tried not to think too much about the possible reasons for why.

Two words, if you don't know what I mean by that: rich people.

A smile spread across my face as I put the key into the door and unlocked it. As I opened it and stepped into the apartment, I singsonged, "Honey, I'm home."

Luke was waiting for me. He was sitting in the living room. The TV was on, playing some sports game or another – I've never been that athletically inclined when it comes to modern mortal sports. Though he didn't turn it off, he quickly muted it and stood up and came over to me, grabbing me by the wrists gently after I'd taken off my backpack and shucked off my shoes. He pressed a kiss to my forehead. "Welcome home," he said. No, practically purred.

That alone was practically enough to make me putty in his hands already.

"What's for dinner?" I teased him. It wasn't even five o'clock yet.

"I put in a delivery order from an Italian restaurant," he informed me. "I got us a salad, a fried mozzarella appetizer, a fettuccine dish with a cream sauce with truffles, a ribeye steak for two, and a dessert." He recited all of this off of the top of his head, his eyes briefly lifting towards the ceiling and everything. It was absolutely adorable. He looked back down at me. "It's supposed to come at six."

"Sounds perfect," I said.

He glanced over at the kitchen. "I also got us a bottle of wine. I know what you said before, that it's okay, but we don't have to open it if you don't want to."

I also looked towards the kitchen. "Just as long as we don't drink too much that we get tipsy or drunk, we should be fine."

He smiled. "Wasn't planning on it. I want to remember every second of this weekend that I can."

I shivered.

Luke led us back to the couch. He handed me the remote. I took it as I sat down on the couch next to him, burrowed into his side. He put his arm over my shoulders.

We'd never really gotten a chance to cuddle like this before, or at least not in a long time. Like even though we were pretending that there wasn't a whole war starting all around us, we could actually take the time to bask in each other's presence, with no care in the world for what was immediately going to happen next.

I liked it. Very, very much.

There was a movie playing that didn't look too bad on one of the other channels, so I turned it on. We watched it until our food arrived, on six to the dot like Luke had said. I would've suspected that it was because the person who had delivered our food was a demigod or somebody else involved in the world of the gods, but one look at the guy told me that he was a mortal. Luke made sure to give him not just a good tip, but a great tip. I saw the delivery guy's eyes widen at the realization of how much money he had been given just as Luke closed the door in his face. It made me laugh.

"What?" Luke asked me.

I shook my head. "Nothing."

Dinner was absolutely amazing – not that I would have expected anything less with my boyfriend's tastes. We ate on the couch instead of using the dining table, and didn't bother to get out any plates or utensils besides a plate for the steak, two forks and steak knives, and the wine glasses. The movie kept on playing in the background. It was a long one, especially with all of the ad breaks.

Luke insisted on feeding me once. He cut off a piece of steak – medium-rare – and wrapped some pasta around it before holding that end of the fork out to me. "Come on," he said. "Please?"

Opening my mouth, I let him put the food inside. The combination of perfectly seasoned and cooked steak and truffle pasta was absolutely to die for.

But turn about was fair play. After I'd chewed and swallowed down the bite he'd given me, I did the same with him. "My turn," I said cheekily.

The desserts that he'd gotten were two individual Panna Cottas, one vanilla bean with a raspberry sauce topping and the other chocolate with some sort of brittle. We each took half of them.

After our dinner, we went back to watching the TV, which had finally switched over to another movie that wasn't that bad either. We waited a couple of hours like that. Luke ghosted his fingers along my arm, as I'd long-since taken off my coat, my shoulder, the nape of my neck. It made me shiver all over again, though neither of us commented on that.

Finally, it was ten o'clock. My stomach was fluttering, just like my heart. I decided that it was time...ish.

I sat up and told Luke, "I'm going to go take a shower."

He winked at me. "Make sure to run the bath, too."

My heart wasn't just fluttering anymore. It felt like it was ricocheting within my chest, bouncing off of my ribs and all.

I was sure that I was blushing to the roots of my hair. "Uh, o – okay," I stammered out.

Collecting my bag from where I'd left it, I brought it with me into the bedroom. I put it on the bed after I'd shut the door to the bedroom behind me, but only briefly. Just long enough to pull out a small bag I'd shoved into my backpack alongside my school stuff and the clothes I'd brought for this weekend...just in case.

I took the small bag with me into the bathroom. It sat on the counter as I stared at myself in the mirror. My hair was messy, as it always was. The bags under my eyes were a little more noticeable than I wanted them to be. But I looked – fine.

Yeah, I looked fine.

I used the toilet, then washed my hands. Opened up the bag and took out my floss, which I used once, and my toothbrush and toothpaste, which I used twice. I also rinsed my mouth out with the mouthwash that was sitting on the counter right next to the sink when I was done.

Then I took off my clothes. I had to take in and release several deep breaths as I did. There was a laundry hamper in the bathroom, and a peek inside showed me that some of Luke's clothes were already there. I added mine to them.

Of course, when someone was as rich as this, they had a walk-in shower along with that huge bathtub. I started the shower and didn't bother ducking out of the way as I waited for it to warm up, just let it rain down on me.

The water was instantly comforting. It washed away my worries, from the unmentionable to Bob. My saber-toothed kitten had come to live with me and my mom. The reason why I didn't mention her last chapter is because, after all of the hassle of the quest, it seemed that she was in need of her own personal space. She still liked me, don't get me wrong, but she'd latched onto my mom more than me over the past almost two weeks, had taken to sleeping with her instead. I wasn't all that offended: I knew my mom needed the companionship more than I did, even though she was...close with Silena's dad.

My mom would be fine with taking care of Bob for the weekend, making sure she was fed and all. And if not, my doppelgänger was there in my stead.

I made sure that I was thoroughly clean, washing my hair and digging my fingers deep into my scalp as well as scrubbing every inch of my body that I could reach with a loofah that had been right next to the shampoo and body wash that I was using. The two bottles were his, I could tell: they smelled exactly like him.

I dug palms of my hands into my eyes before I turned off the shower, because I wanted myself to be a little calmer than I had already come to be. The action wasn't entirely successful, but I figured it would be good enough.

Even though I was just going to get wet all over again, I wrapped a towel around my waist before I plugged the tub and turned on its faucet. I made sure that the water wasn't as hot as my shower, which had turned my skin a bright pink, but warm enough to be pleasant. On the small end table next to the tub was a remote for it, which I used to turn on the jets and make sure that the temperature of the water would be maintained. There was also a small box next to it: picking it up and working my way through my dyslexia, I saw that it was one of...those kinds of bath bombs.

The prospect of it relieved me. When the bathtub was about halfway to the point that I wanted it to be, I threw the bath bomb in, having already opened up the package and discarded it. It fizzled as it began to disintegrate, bubbles forming and a rich scent permeating the room.

After the bath bomb was pretty much dissolved, I turned off the faucet for the tub and undid the towel wrapped around my waist, letting it fall to the floor. I stepped into the tub, sighing lightly at the wonderful feeling of warmth all over again, before I got myself comfortable.

It wasn't a moment too soon. As soon as I'd settled, there was a knock at the door. "Percy?" I heard Luke say. "Can I come in?"

That wasn't the question he was really meaning to ask. Still, I was grateful.

"Yeah," I called out.

He opened the door. A large part of me was expecting him to be already – but he wasn't. He was still wearing his boxers, a blue-and-green plaid pattern that reminded me of the sea, almost.

I had seen Luke shirtless before. I guess you could say that he had a swimmer's body. Toned, but not with the bulky muscles that Ares and his children, even the girls like Clarisse, like to have. His abs were defined but not too prominent tonight like you would see in the movies, because he wasn't dehydrated. His broad shoulders caught my attention. My eyes flicked to them, then back up to his face as he walked over.

"Hey," he said.

"Hey," I said.

I kept my eyes on his face as he took off his boxers and got into the water. Not because I – you know what, I'm gonna stop right there.

I'd maybe filled the tub up a bit too much. The water didn't slosh, but depending on how enthusiastic we were...it just might actually. Oops.

"So," Luke said, his eyes twinkling with mischief. "This is nice."

I couldn't help myself: I laughed as I moved around, the water lapping at my skin. I leaned over him, feeling something brush up against my right thigh as I did. He was obviously as excited about this as I was. "I love you," I told him.

Not giving him a chance to reply, I pressed our lips together. The kiss was quickly deepened. In order to keep myself above him, I had to place my hands on the bathtub wall on either side of him, but he had no such difficulties. Luke's hands roved, first brushing over the nape of my neck as they had earlier, then trailing downwards to my shoulders, to my back. His touch was positively magnetic. He settled his hands on my hips, just where the waistband of my own underwear would be, if I'd been wearing any.

When I broke off the kiss, we were both gasping and panting. Our eyes locked, briefly. Then I saw how Luke's tongue darted out of his mouth. "I was thinking..." he breathed. "I want to try something, before..."

There were no thoughts in my mind about the things I probably would've been thinking about if I had been in any other situation, doing this with any other person. Then again, if I had been doing this with any other person, I wouldn't have been doing it with them at all.

Luke was the only one for me. I trusted him deeply and passionately, with every fiber of my being.

"Okay," I agreed.

He jerked his head to indicate behind me. "Sit back again, please."

I did as I was told. He hovered over me like I had hovered over him, a vast expanse of perfection. He pulled me back into a kiss. And I was like a flower was to the sun, eager to follow him wherever he went.

Unlike me, he only kept one hand on the bathtub wall. The other he slowly, what I'm sure would've even been teasingly for a lot of other people but wasn't for me, trailed along my skin that was underwater. He traced the dip where my thigh met my pelvis, pinching the skin there just a little, which earned a moan that was captured by his lips. And I think you know where his hand went next, as it wrapped around me and squeezed. He chose at this opportune moment to stop kissing me.

"Luke," I gasped. The entire lower half of my body felt just as liquid as the water we were in.

"I love you too," he said. He placed a kiss on my temple, but it was hard for me to think about that with the way that his hand was moving. It was hard for me to even think at all, but in an entirely good way. "And I've got you. I'm going to take care of you. But, I need to ask you a favor. I need you to take care of me, too, while I do this."

My eyebrows furrowed, just a little. He had some sort of double-meaning there that I couldn't figure out. "Luke, what – ?"

"Trust me," he breathed.

"Al – always," I was able to get out.

He smirked almost devilishly. But he was also moving away, or – no, not away, just into a different position. Even with how the bathtub had built-in seats, which meant the actual floor of the bathtub was lower than what I was sitting on, it was an impressive work of art watching him fold up his ridiculously large body how he wanted to be. "Put your hands in my hair," he instructed me.

All at once, I knew what he was asking me to do. "Luke," I started to protest.

"You can do it," he encouraged me. "I have complete and utter faith in you."

That makes one of us, I thought.

And yet, I still reached out my hands and placed them in his hair. It was impossible to resist him.

Luke's head disappeared under the water. His hand on me went down, but it didn't completely go away. Then –

– I jerked as his mouth encompassed me. My left leg gave a small kick. He splayed his left hand out on that leg and used a small amount of pressure. Just enough to keep my leg down, but not pinned.

He took me down almost to the base, like it wasn't a problem at all. I was sure that I saw stars as he started to bob his head up and down, swirling his tongue and rhythmically squeezing his hand at the same time. But maybe that was just the ceiling lights burning into my eyes, because I had tilted my head back.

There were no sounds besides the splashing of the water as it indeed spilled over the sides, my harsh pants and light, breathy moans. This actually made it easier to concentrate than I was expecting. Don't get me wrong, it was still difficult, but it was easier to remind myself that I had to make sure my powers were allowing Luke to breathe underwater.

Nobody had ever done this to me before. No one.

Because of this, it was all over embarrassingly quickly. "Oh my – oh my gods. Luke, I'm going to – " I tried to tell him.

But whether he couldn't hear me because his head was underwater or he was just ignoring what I said, I don't know. What I do know is that he was still on me as I came, and I could feel him swallowing it down.

The lower half of my body didn't just feel like liquid anymore. It almost felt like I was actually becoming the water.

Luke resurfaced from the water with another smirk on his face. "Well?" he asked. "How was I?"

There was only one word I could think of: "Amazing."

"Good. I'm glad," he said. Then he, much to my surprise, gathered me up in his arms and began to stand up. I squawked as I wrapped my arms around his neck, instinctively burrowing my head into his chest. "I think we'll go into the bedroom now, if you don't mind."

There was more fun we could've had in the tub, but the bedroom sounded just about heavenly right now. "I don't," I confirmed.

Word Count: 4,319

Next Chapter Title: Like An Empire Of The Sun Song Pt. 2