Best Underwater Kiss of All Time

I saw him sitting alone at the Poseidon table. The soft winded picked up a piece of his hair and blew it across his forehead, but he didn't seem to notice. It was funny that I did. And I guess there's no use denying it; my massive crush on him wasn't helping the 'I can't stop staring at him' problem. I looked around at the dining pavilion. It was dark as the sun set over the beach, reflecting orange and pink in the water, and the firelight's red and orange glow flickered, also reflecting on the marble tile that made up the pavilion.

I walked along the crack that Nico had made all that time ago and tried not to think of all the dead campers we were going to have to burn. This day will be happy, not a day to mourn. The dead can wait. They do have forever, don't they?

Holding out the chocolate cupcake in front of me and taking a deep breath, I pushed any doubts out of my mind and sat next to him on the bench.

"Hey," I shifted towards him. "Happy Birthday."

He stared at me for a moment before asking, "What?"

"August 18. Your birthday, right?" He looked a little surprised, then his eyes widened with realization. He hadn't even remembered his own birthday.

Seaweed Brain. "Make a wish," I told him, putting it on the table and nudging it towards him.

He smiled before asking, "Did you bake this yourself?"

"Tyson helped," I shrugged a little. We had spent an hour earlier that day making a single cupcake from scratch. It had been much harder than I had anticipated, especially after the first cupcake caught on fire in the oven.

"That explains why it looks like a chocolate brick with extra blue cement." I just laughed as he looked down at the cupcake and blew out the blue and white striped candle.

He broke it apart and gave me half, "accidentally" getting some on my face. He laughed and said he was sorry but I didn't believe him. After we had both finished, an awkward silence ensued.

"You saved the world," I told him.

I smiled when he replied, "We saved the world."

"And Rachel is the new Oracle which means she won't be dating anybody." I tried not to let my giddiness show.

Of course Percy had to point out, "You don't sound disappointed."

I just shrugged it off with an overly casual, "Oh, I don't care."

"Uh-huh." He grinned at me with sarcasm in his voice.

I raised an eyebrow as I said, "You got something to say to me, Seaweed Brain?"

"You'd probably kick my butt."

"You know I'd kick your butt," I told him with a laugh.

He picked at a piece of wood in the table for a minute before he started talking. "When I was at the River Styx, turning invulnerable...Nico said I had to concentrate on one thing that kept me anchored to the world, that made me want to stay mortal." I almost turned to look at him, but the urge to laugh at him would be too strong if I was looking at that nervous, almost confused look on his face. It was pretty adorable.

"Yeah?"

"Then, up on Olympus, when they wanted to make me a god and stuff, I kept thinking—"

"Oh you so wanted to."

"Well, maybe a little. But I didn't because I thought—"

I smiled a little and kept my eyes on the water. In all honesty, I had expected something like this to go down, or at least desperately hoped it would.

"I didn't want things to stay the same for eternity, because things could always get better and I was thinking..." he trailed off and looked over at me, kind of reminding me of a lost seal. I had to work pretty hard to contain my laughter.

"Anyone in particular?" I finally fully looked over at him and he gave me a look.

"You're laughing at me!"

"I am not!"

"You are so not making this easy."

I finally allowed myself to laugh at his pouty face and put my arms around his neck, leaning in a little further. "I am never, ever going to make things easy for you, Seaweed Brain. Get used to it." And then I did the thing that I had wanted to do for, oh, three years now and had only gotten up the courage to do once before. I kissed him, and for the first time in a while, I wasn't even thinking.

"Well it's about time!" came a familiar voice from the edge of the pavilion.

Behind Clarisse, there was a mob of campers, most of them smiling or laughing.

"Oh come on!" Percy shouted to them. "Is there no privacy?"

Clarisse's smiled only widened before replying, "The lovebirds need to cool off!"

As the crowd surges forward to life us onto their shoulders, Connor yelled, "The canoe lake!"

The procession carried us to the water, but we managed to hold each other's hands and I laughed at Percy's beet red face. He laughed too, probably at my beet red face.

Once they reached the lake, they threw us in, with our hands still intertwined. I screamed when I hit the water, but Percy grabbed around my waist and pulled me to the bottom, laughing and making an air bubble for us. I suppose the eavesdroppers wondered where we were, but when your boyfriend is the son of Poseidon, you don't have to hurry.

And it was pretty much the best underwater kiss of all time.