Denial

Disclaimer: I do not own PJO, nor do I pretend to. In the words of the Party Ponies, with slight editing from myself: "Rick Riordan owns your faces!"

He's 18 when he dies; a vengeful monster that'd been on Kronos' side sneaks up on him, and before he can react there's a knife buried five inches into his mortal spot. It happens so fast that it doesn't even hurt.

He's given a free pass to Elysium, and though he'd once been certain that he wanted to go to the isles of the blest, he's just so tired, and really, with his luck even his reincarnations would have great prophesies revolving around them. So he sucks it up, reminding himself that there are a lot worse places he could be for eternity. And he's not disappointed in himself for not even trying, he's not. Honestly.

He's been dead for a month when he finally sees her. She looks the same as she always has, 12 years old and glowing and sad, but beautiful in a tragic, lonely way, and he tells himself that his feelings for her are platonic.

It doesn't take more than a week for him to give up on that particular delusion.

Percy has never been good with words, but he doesn't need to be, because Bianca is more than an expert at understanding body language.

She makes the first move, and it's not because he's scared to have his heart broken again, because it wasn't, and he's not.

He doesn't feel like he's cheating on Annabeth, not at all, because she dumped him a few months before he died for a mortal boy, David. He's 21, a scholarship student at Columbia, an architecture major, and looks so much like Luke that Percy nearly uncapped riptide the first time he saw him. And it doesn't bother him that she dropped him so quickly. Really, it doesn't.

They talk, tell each other everything, leave no barriers unbroken. They kiss, and they hold hands, and go on dates, and make love (but not in that particular order), because she's a daughter of Hades, they're both in the Underworld, and by the gods if she wants to look the same age as her boyfriend she damned well will. They don't pretend to be normal, because they're not, and it would defile everything that they've ever accomplished to say that they are.

Hades doesn't take the news well.

After Percy comes out of hiding, because that's really the best solution when you're dead and you reveal to the Lord of the Underworld that you're dating his favorite daughter, he releases a giant breath because well, that's one obstacle down.

They're not going to think about the second obstacle just yet.

No one mentions that they're first cousins, because really, incest is not only acceptable, but common practice when dealing with gods and demigods. Hell, technically his relationship with Annabeth was incest too, but nobody batted an eyelash at that. Well, maybe except for Athena.

When Nico finds out, Percy isn't scared, he's not, and he really just kind of wants Bianca to stop laughing, because it's really not helping the situation, and just when he's sure that the son of Hades is going to send his soul to Tartarus for daring to defile his sister, Nico gives him a grin and says, "My big sister is going out with my big brother figure. Why'd you think this would upset me?"

This affects Percy more than he'll admit, but he does not cry. He does not.

Bianca rubs his back silently, offers a small smile of gratitude to her younger-because now that she can change her physical age at will, his aging makes no difference-brother, and leads Percy back to their apartment.

The fact that none of their half blood friends who die are surprised to see them dating honestly shocks Percy, but Bianca only smiles wryly.

Bianca has not been planning this the whole time, and she will deny it if anyone says otherwise.