Marcus Dominic, Son of Hermes

You slip your hands into your pockets, keeping your posture loose, casual, as you weave through the chaotic morning rush of the dining pavilion. The Ares kids unintentionally help divert attention from you; a couple are roaring at an arm-wrestling match, causing a commotion. Nobody pays attention to a son of Hermes wandering around.

You stop at the Poseidon table.

Annabeth and Percy are hovering around each other like binary stars in orbit. Percy sits with a dopey half-smile, idly stabbing a fork into a stack of blue pancakes. Annabeth sits across from him, her breakfast plate untouched as she enthusiastically chats with her boyfriend.

Not for the first time, you feel the sickening burn of jealousy—not just because they had found love while you had never had a girlfriend, but because Annabeth Chase is a beautiful bitch.

Lustrous golden-blonde locks styled in loose princess curls, a face that could launch a thousand Greek fleets, and a sinfully toned, athletic body forged from over a decade of brutal camp conditioning. She has everything you had ever wanted in a girl, all while belonging to someone else. It almost seemed like an intentional taunt the Fates had directed towards you.

A familiar spike of resentment twists inside you, but for the first time, anticipation makes it melts into a dark, perverse thrill instead of boiling within you. You are smiling when you slide, uninvited, into a seat next to Annabeth and across from Percy.

"Hey," you say. "I need to talk to you both. It's serious."

Annabeth's smile drops at your intrusion—and at your unwanted proximity—but she gives you the benefit of the doubt. Still, her grey eyes are sharp as she studies you. Percy, on the other hand, is guileless. He looks up at you with eyes like a baby seal. He is mid-chew, his fork frozen halfway to his mouth. "What's up, man?"

"The world is going to end unless Annabeth and I have sex," you say.

You think that if you had said this without the Old Rule written in the rulebook, Percy would have killed you: All statements made by Marcus Chen are unconditionally believed by any listener, provided Marcus Chen desires them to be believed.

Because of the rule, instead of drawing his weapon, Percy drops his fork. It clatters against his ceramic plate. Annabeth’s lips part slightly. Neither of them question you.

"What?" Percy’s voice cracks, but it isn’t disbelief. It’s pure, unadulterated shock. "How—when? What happens if you don't?"

"The world ends," you repeat. "Gaea wasn't happy you beat her. She cursed the Seven on her way down. It’s been nesting inside Annabeth, Piper, and Hazel. It just activated in Annabeth first. If we don’t do this, everything ends. Olympus. The mortal world. All of it."

Annabeth’s jaw tightens. Her brilliant mind is already whirring, trying to calculate variables, not doubting the premise but immediately pivoting to operational management. "The universe has a sick sense of humor," she says, her voice steady but a sharp flush creeping up her neck. "How soon?"

"We have twenty minutes at best."

"And how long have you known about this?" Annabeth asks, her grey eyes narrowing.

You can predict the follow-up questions. If you tell her you've known since Gaea fell—months now—she would ask why you didn't say anything sooner; if she had known, she would have taken the chance to research, to speak to her mother, the Goddess of Wisdom, or to appeal to other gods who owed them favors to find a way out of this. If you tell her you just found out, that invites an entirely different gauntlet of logistical landmines.

There is no good answer that doesn't invite scrutiny, so you lean on the fact that she has to believe you, and side-step the conversation entirely.

"That doesn't matter," you say.

She accepts the non-answer, and disregards the entire line of questioning.

You press on: "What matters is that I have already spoken to the Goddess of Magic, and she has assured me that this curse, laid by a primordial on the eve of her defeat, is unbreakable. As powerful and as unbreakable as the one Ouranos laid on Kronos on his deathbed. You remember how that turned out for him?"

Ouranos had cursed Kronos to have his children cut him up and toss him into Tartarus the very same way Kronos was doing to him. Kronos, in a desperate bid to evade his fate, devoured his children the second they were born. It became a self-fulfilling prophecy when those children escaped his stomach, deeply resentful, and fulfilled the curse to the letter.

The moral, repeated through the dark echoes of Greek mythology, was that curses of this magnitude could not be outsmarted. You give them a second for the weight of history to settle, then softly add, "The world will end if we don't have sex. You don't want that to happen and will do whatever it takes to make sure it doesn't, no matter the sacrifice."

You don't make it a rhetorical question. You aren't entirely sure if Annabeth would have chosen to let the world burn rather than cheat on Percy—though you suspect she wouldn't—but you refuse to leave room for chance. By phrasing it as a fact, the rule guarantees she believes it is true, and ensures you get the outcome you crave.

You know your plan is working when her shoulders drop a fraction of an inch, her resistance evaporating. "I want to know exactly what the parameters are. I'm not doing anything beyond what's strictly necessary."

"The curse gave me a supernatural sense for it," you reply, keeping your tone authoritatively clinical. "Think of it like a doomsday clock. Every day the two of us don't have sex, it ticks closer to midnight. Every time we have sex, it pushes the clock back. But it immediately starts ticking forward again afterward. It's never done; always ongoing."

Annabeth doesn't flinch, absorbing the graphic terms as if they were terrain markers for a forced march through hostile territory. Only the tight swallow in her throat betrays her. "So this is... indefinite," she states.

"Indefinite."

"Great," Percy mutters, running a hand through his messy dark hair and turning his back to you both, his spine rigid with tension.

"There's more," you continue, leaning in just enough to invade her space. "The rougher I am with her—the more degrading—the further the clock gets pushed back. Gentle sex barely moves the needle. Leaving marks, hickeys, handprints, using her hard... Gaea wants her punished. Wants everyone responsible for her defeat to pay. My sixth sense will tell me exactly which position and which hole will buy us the most time at any given moment."

A deep, violent crimson floods Annabeth's cheeks, contrasting sharply against her pale skin, but her chin remains defiantly lifted. "I understand," she says through tight lips.

"Because of how reliant this is on my intuition," you add, locking down the final boundaries to maximize your absolute control, "you both need to trust me unconditionally. Whatever I do or say to Annabeth—before, during, or after—it's purely objective. Calibrated for the clock. You need to accept it without question."

Percy wheels back around, his eyes bright with frustrated moisture. "You're saying she just has to take whatever you—"

"It's not about what I want, Percy. It's about moving the clock as much as possible so you're girlfriend has to have sex with me as few times as possible. Isn't that what you want?" You let the question hang. Softening your tone, you add, "I'm just reading an instrument; one that only I can read and interpret. You need to trust me to do my part in this. Would you second-guess Apollo reading a medical chart?"

Percy’s mouth opens, then snaps shut. He looks completely lost.

Annabeth reaches across the table, taking his hand in hers. "Hey. Look at me."

He meets her eyes, his expression wretched.

"I held up the sky, Percy. I've walked through Tartarus. I can handle this. It's just a job. A humiliating job I have to do because of vindictive, loser, Goddess, but that's all it is. This won't change anything between us unless we let it."

"I know," he says hoarsely, his voice cracking. "I know. I just..." He trails off, unable to finish the thought.

She gives his arm a final, grounding squeeze, drops her hand, and turns to you. The emotional mask is fully on now—cold, unemotional, focused.

"Outside of this, I want to be clear—there is no relationship between us. I am with Percy. This is strictly to push back the curse."

"Obviously," you agree. "Outside of the sex, we're nothing. Acquaintances at best."

"Fine." She crosses her arms over her chest, pushing her beautiful tits up. You can't wait to have them wrapped around your cock. "Where are we doing this?"