Especially for Starrysnow, whose fault it was; the very first APORCY (Apollo/Percy) fanfiction! I shall never be the same. Sorry I didn't use the quote; it turned out too funny for what I feel is a rather somber quote.

Rated Older Teen, for safety. I have forgotten who wrote "Magic Carpet Ride", but it wasn't me. It's in one of the Star Trek movies, if that helps. Fire that baby up, Zefram Cochrane!

Apollo is bored.

You wouldn't expect someone like him to be bored, would you? A god, forever young and fabulous, in charge of literally lighting up all the lives on little old planet Earth? Men who are undeniably every kind of desirable (including smexi, sexeh and sometimes even sexxii), not to mention as awesome as the powers of awesomeness can stretch around one perfectly sculpted form are not supposed to be bored.

But Apollo is.

And he knows why.

He's run out of seducees.

The Hunters are offlimits. He's done most of the minor godlettes-- godettes? Godarinas? What in Hades does one call female godlings, anyway?-- on Olympus (in more ways than one, hur hur); most of the actual goddesses are taken, and ew, they're all like his aunts and crap. Nymphs? So passé.

Apollo needs a new challenge.

And as he cruises along minding his own one day he spots something that makes his eyebrows ascend and his head ring with the shock that he hadn't thought of it before, and he cracks his knuckles before he throws the Maserati into a dive that would've left the average mortal hairless, skinless and shitless and screams into, then across, the ground right in front of his quarry, because he's just found it.

A challenge.

"Per-cy Jack-son. Percy, Percy, Percy. Have I got a quest for you."

Percy's face registers confusion. It's a pretty face, Apollo decides, with just the right balance of masculine line and wide-eyed cluelessness. "Uh... hi, Lord Apollo. A quest? For me? What is it?"

"That would be telling!" Apollo says gleefully, dragging Percy to the Maserati. Sure, he could say "I need a mortal companion to break a geas I've been placed under: namely, the compulsion to tap that ass!", but would Percy go for it? He thinks not. The kid's never exactly struck him as a bi-curious type, or even a particularly interested-in-sex type.

Which makes him such a challenge.

"Hey, wait," Percy protests, digging his heels in. "Not that I don't want to help or anything, but Annabeth is kinda waiting for me..."

Annabeth! Damn, Apollo forgot all about her. She's not bad either, come to think of it... Whoa, boy. Stay on target. "Ah, she'll understand. Women are good at understanding stuff." True, but not true. Depends. "I'll send her a message, OK?"

Percy relaxes. "Yeah, okay."

Yes! Score! Well, not yet, but almost there. Apollo plops Percy down in the shotgun seat and swings himself in, gunning the engine. As they do so often, an appropriate song suggests itself, and he starts humming to himself.

Why don't you come with me, little boy,
on a magic carpet-- er-- Maserati ride...

"Strap in, Percy. We're headed to Delphi."

"Delphi? Where your Oracle used to be? What's there?"

"Ambience."

Percy looks alarmed. "Someone's hurt?"

Apollo squeezes the bridge of his nose. Cute, but a little embarrassing. "I said ambience, buddy. Not ambulance."

"Uh, sorry." Percy snuggles down in the seat. "Man. I've never been in one of these before, but I've loved them for like forever. The Spyder's an amazing car."

"Only the best," Apollo says cheerfully, pouring on the gas. They're almost to Delphi already. Nice secluded place, Delphi; not like Olympus. Himself, no. Olympus is so crowded it's a stroke of luck when you find an unoccupied patch of marble to spit. No, it's not the best place for a seduction; gossip travels faster than Hermes there, and sometimes with Hermes as well.

Poseidon wouldn't be pleased about this. That's why it has to be a secret.

He has to remember to tell Percy this.

He opens his mouth, but his chariot of thought gets overturned halfway to his larynx due to the fact that the sun is glittering over Percy's golden skin, glistening through his onyx hair, piercing those sea-green eyes with beams of the most brilliant...

"Have you ever danced on the shores of the Aegean by starlight?"

"Huh?"

"Here we are!" Apollo says hurriedly, touching down gently behind a monolith.

"I can't."

Apollo stares. He can't remember the last time someone refused him like that. Actually, yeah he can, it was that girl in Jersey, the one with the hair, but that's beside the point.

The point is that he led very carefully up to this, he put every bit of bedroom (backseat, closet, couch, what have you) expertise he possessed into concocting a routine that could not possibly fail...

...and it's failing.

Like bam. Instant failure.

"Aren't you even a little bit curious?" he says pathetically, well aware that he is being pathetic. It makes his stomach curl up like calamari legs.

Percy reddens. "It's not that. It's just, um... well, you know me and Annabeth, we, well..."

Apollo sighs, tries really, really hard not to roll his eyes. He manages to stop them halfway up.

"We've been having some problems lately. I was on my way to meet her and apologize, and I really don't think that this is the right time. I wouldn't feel right."

Well, it wasn't an outright "Never in the future of ever". Apollo decides to be sympathetic.

"You can tell me about it," he purrs, wrapping an arm around Percy's just-wide-enough shoulders and slinging a leg over the kid's lap.

Sympathetic with maybe just a little bit of hidden agenda going on there.

"Um... it's really weird." Percy remembers who he's talking to and amends. "Actually, you probably wouldn't think it was that weird, but it's awkward. For me."

"Look, kid, I've been from one side of this galaxy to the other. You won't shock me." Probably.

"Well, I've actually been seeing someone else." Percy fidgets.

"And?" A little surprising, considering who they were talking about, but whatever. Happens to the best of us.

"It's a guy."

OK. Also kind of surprising, but whatever. Happens to the best of us. "Wow. Do I get to hear who it is?"

"Well..."

Aha! Playing coy! Apollo is past master at the whole coy thing, giving and receiving! "Come on," he teases, flexing his fingers into claws. "Tell Uncle Apollo or suffer the Tickle of Doom!"

"Uncle? Aren't you more technically a cousin or something?"

Apollo pauses. "Geez, I forget. Let's see... Zeus is my father; Thalia's my half-sister; Poseidon is my uncle, so... cousins, yeah." He beams, proud of himself, then pauses again. "Hey! Quit stalling!"

"Sorry."

"Talk, or-- tickle!"

"Okay!" Percy avoids Apollo's grab. Never mind what he was aiming for. "It's-- oh. Uh oh. Oh, gods."

"What?" He's staring over Apollo's shoulder. Apollo takes the opportunity to "accidentally" lose his balance and rest his nose on the nape of Percy's neck. Percy smells good. Like Tide. And Ocean Breeze shampoo.

"Stop! Get off! I mean--" Percy remembers who he's talking to again. "Sorry. But the guy, the one I-- he's right there."

"Where?" Apollo turns.

"There. With the tour group."

Apollo's eyes follow Percy's shaking finger across the landscape of Delphi, past some ruins to a sunbaked gaggle of ooh-ahhing camera-laden tourists.

"Him?"

"Yeah."

Tall. Blond. Closely-cropped hair, white tee, camo pants...

"Oh, for My sake."

Scar down the side of his face.

"Oh, no."

The inhabitants of the Maserati sit in a brownish-gray silence for a few very long moments.

"You wanna go talk to him?"

"No. I mean, I'd like to, but I'd better n--"

"No, go ahead, I insist," Apollo says, maniacal grin beginning to fix itself. "I wouldn't want to stand in the way of young love!"

"That's not--"

Percy doesn't get to finish his sentence. Instead, he's dumped unceremoniously out of the Spyder and left coughing and blinded in the BOOM of light and dust that heralds Apollo's departure.

Damndamndamndamndamn! That wonderful plan, all for nothing! And now he is left with nothing (-one) to do for the rest of the day and all this unresolved sexual tension. Or whatever you call it.

Roaring over the Continental United States, Apollo glares down half-heartedly to see what he can see.

And suddenly, what he can see is a pretty blonde girl with a ponytail full of curls, her gray eyes stormy, sitting on a park bench and pulling up dandelions by the roots.

"Stupid Percy," she mutters, wiping away furtive tears.

Hm. There's Annabeth.

All alone.

With no one to comfort her.

Hmmmmmm.

Suddenly, Apollo decides with a non-maniacal grin as he pushes up his sunglasses and eases the nose of the Maserati downwards, the day is looking a little bit brighter.

a/n

...and it all comes back to our favorite pairing, because Luke JUST HAPPENS TO BE IN DELPHI RIGHT THAT VERY MOMENT. Huzzah, Puke-- I just couldn't resist.

Also couldn't resist the Star Wars quote. If you can find it, you get to request a fic!

I would love to turn this into a series. Would you love to read a series?