Hi guys! This is only the first chapter of a multi-chapter college mortal AU on Percabeth (Yeah, I know, real original right? Hopefully, this will be different, or enjoyable at least)

Percy is a music student with a big love for seventies rock and dumb old TV, but after Sally and Paul move away (details later) and Grover gets a job and has to move also, Percy starts to get bored and lonely.

Annabeth is a engineering major with a classical training in piano from her father- who lives in Californa-but when her new neighbor starts making an unacceptable amount of noise, things are about to get weird.

(Other PJO/HoO characters will be included throughout. If anyone has any ideas they want to be included also, I'm totally open to suggestions! I'm super bad about large writing pieces since I tend torwards short and sweet but I'm going to try my best to stay with this. Long Author's note, wow, I don't shut up, do I?)

OOO

Percy Jackson woke up on his own. No alarm, no mother shaking him, not even the smell of crisp bacon and pancakes, ready for him to stuff down the hatch. Just a cold, empty bed and the knowledge that his mother was gone.

The boy--no, young man, he was nineteen now--rolled out of bed, his bear feet padding softly to the small kitchen.

Percy opened the fridge first, taking out a jug of Sunny D, then when he found nothing he specifically wanted for breakfast, opened the freezer too.

Jesus Christ, was it always so cold in this apartment? Percy shivered lightly and scrunched up his toes on the cream colored tile floor. He momentarily wondered if he had jacked up the heating again or if this was the normal temperature of the building.

Then he decided, of course it was cold. His mom's soul wasn't there to warm the place.

Don't be so dramatic, Percy chided himself, You're acting like she's dead.

And yeah, the situation could have been worse, but seriously? She was so far away now . . .

Six-hundred-and-thirty-eight miles from New York City to Charlotte, North Carolina according to Google Maps. Yeah? So? Sue him, he looked it up, alright? He missed her. And Paul.

Percy took the frozen cinnamon waffles out of the freezer and quickly shut the door, setting the box on the counter and then popping two into the toaster.

Percy held his hands out as if the toaster was a fire, wishing it to warm his cold fingers and more importantly, cold heart.

That's right, Percy was dead inside without his mother and step dad, which he probably should have been the slightest bit embarrassed about but he wasn't, not at all.

Yeah, yeah, Percy, you need to get out more, Percy you need to enjoy life, Percy you need a girlfriend. Blah, blah, blah. Those lines didn't do jack on him anymore, his mom had worn them out over the past three or four years.

Of course she would want him enjoying his young adult life, his mother had been alive during the greatest decade in history, the seventies. So forgive Percy if he couldn't really enjoy his generation of Starbucks and tumblr shitposting, not that it was bad in the present, he just . . . He wondered what it was like when popular music was poetic and not about grinding girls-and-or-boys or tormented love.

Most of the time, Percy gave up with trying to find new, quality music and just reverted himself back to his childhood buddies like Pink Floyd or The Eagles.

The two waffles popped out of the toaster and Percy jumped back slightly, coming out of his train of thought.

The dark haired boy took a bite of one and then took his juice and plate to plop down on the plaid couch and cut on the TV.

There was more crap about Donald Trump on the morning news and Percy instantly changed channels. He didn't know all that much about politics, he knew his mom was a libertarian which was rare or something, but he mostly judged all politicians on his perception of character. Based on that and that alone, Percy didn't like "The Donald" all that much but as long as America didn't burn into a fiery hell, it could be worse he guessed.

Percy immediately stop flipping channels as he found Three's Company, which was high on the list of his favorite old shows.

God, you need friends. He told himself in, his fellow music student, Piper's voice. She was a college freshman too, a singer, and she was kind of his friend, maybe, he didn't know if her constantly teasing him counted as friendship. But she was cool and he was comfortable talking to her so he guessed it did.

Besides Piper, Percy had only one other friend, his best friend since grade school, Grover. The dude was basically his brother, he was the nicest and most caring person ever but also pretty scrawny despite the unhealthy amount of enchiladas the devoured. Percy knew they were teenage boys, but geez. Grover graduated with Percy a couple months ago and had since started working as an assistant manager for a large environmental activist group referred to as 'Tree Nymphs United' which had something to do with Greek mythology but honestly, Percy didn't give a frick frack about the name, his best bro was getting a good job, and getting paid! It was so cool!

That was, until Grover had to move to Iowa.

"It's gonna be so boring." Grover had complained before leaving for the train station.

"Nah," Percy assured him, setting a hand on his shoulder, "It'll be fine. You can just scare the daylights out of your workers."

Grover went red, glaring, "I'm not scary."

"Not to me. But obviously you didn't see you intern's face when I came to your office that one time. You were correcting him about wasting printer paper and the dude looked like he was about to wet his one-hundred-percent recycled pants."

Grover laughed and shook his head, "Sweet Jesus. How are you gonna survive without your mom and me?"

Percy laughed too and shrugged, because honestly, deep down, he had no idea.

After convincing himself, that *no, he didn't have time for not even one for episode, Percy took a quick shower and headed to his first and surprisingly only class of the day, reaching the campus in record time.

Percy sat in the back of the class room as much as possible, and would actually leave five minutes earlier to get the back seats. It was for everyone's own good in his opinion, because if Percy was rolling his eyes in the front, he knew teachers that would call him out. And Percy wouldn't want to disrupt the class, now would he?

Percy shuffled into a seat in the back of the room and opened his beat up laptop.

Calculus was stupid already, but Percy's current professor seemed to just adore story problems. What were they, seven years old? Not only did Percy struggle at math as a general concept but anything with words made his dyslexia go all bloopbeedeedoop and shut his brain off entirely.

Percy was struggling in the second hour not to butcher the notes he was supposed to be taking when he caught someone staring at him.

It was . . . Well he knew her name started with a C but he couldn't think if it. She had silky caramel hair, high cheekbones and soft dark eyes, he had seen her before around the campus and knew she was relatively popular, but he didn't mind what he knew of the girl, which wasn't much.

The C girl raised her hand from her keyboard, a little wave and a genuine but small smile. Not a flirty one, just, hey, oops, I was staring off into space and my gaze kinda settled on you, sorry stranger.

Percy was glad for her casual-ness and held his hand up too because Jesus, he was tired of the flirty smiles girls gave him and it was refreshing. (Yes Mom, girls flirted with him. No Mom, he didn't flirt back. Because, he didn't want the stress of a relationship. Geez, Mom, you and your nosiness) And because he was undeniably bored, he held a finger gun under his chin, rolling his eyes emphatically and then pretending to offer her his finger gun so she could shoot him.

The girl took it from across the room, making her own gun and then squinting before pretending to fire at him. Percy twitched a bit and then mouthed a thanks.

C girl shook her head, smiling, and then went back to her notes.

Percy tried to pay attention, he really did, but it wasn't his fault that Mrs. Lloyd was an ADHD kid's nightmare.

When the boring woman dismissed class, Percy shot up and kind of, sort of pushed his way out of the full room, muttering some apologies to the people he nudged on the way.

His beat up Prius, a graduation present from his parents, sat in the parking space outside the building, waiting for him, giving Percy yet another ugly reminder that he was all alone.

Percy played Jimi Hendrix to keep himself awake and aware while taking the fifteen minute drive home. Yeah, it was pretty far from most of his classes but it was the apartment that his mom and step dad had been renting for years now and the landlord guy liked Percy so he decided to stay instead of bother with moving closer.

As Percy got to his door, 6C, he momentarily noticed that there was a pile of boxes of neatly stacked in front of his neighbors door with 'fragile' written all over them in cursive.

Hum. Hope they don't mind The Beatles. The boy thought to himself, twisting his doorknob.

He set down his backpack with a,"Hey mom, I'm--" And cut himself off when he realized no one was there to respond. He knew he reeaallyy need friends. A dog, maybe? A fish?

Percy didn't know, he just felt really lonely.

For a split, teeny tiny second, he considered talking to the new neighbor, but then again, judging by the fancy handwriting and the way the boxes were stacked like a person with OCD had spent two hours of their life making them straight, Percy decided against it. It was probably a middle aged, career type woman that didn't want to deal with this annoying little rocker brat anyway.

It was a little past one when Grover called.

Percy swallowed the bit of his sandwich and answered it, "Hey man, how's it hanging?"

"It's the best!" His best friend replied, "We've got a tree planting project tomorrow and we have more than enough volunteers! The saplings for selling are perfectly grown and the weather is beyond ideal." Grover reeled himself in for his friend's sake, "Um, what about you?"

"Calculus sucks but band is good so it measures out." Percy said, "Piper McClain is in my band group now, did I tell you that?"

"Nope. She still boy crazy?"

Percy ran his hands in his hair, "No actually, still kind of thinks she's a hipster but she's cool now."

"That's good I guess . . . Remember when she had crush on you? Remember when every girl had a crush on you?"

"That was for barely twenty-four hours. And I don't have any clue why." He dismissed.

Grover laughed lightly, "Me neither, to be honest. You're such a dweeb."

"Wow. Thanks." Percy told him sarcastically.

"Is your mom all moved now?"

"Yeah . . . She and Paul left yesterday afternoon."

There was a moment before he responded, "I got to go, tell her I said hey . . . And take care of yourself."

"Okay Mom." Percy grinned but rolled his eyes, "See you G-Man, good luck with your trees."

"Thanks Percy, bye!"

Percy hung up and sighed. That was how the conversations were, short, in between school and his job. It was kind of lame, but it was better than not talking to him at all.

After finishing his lunch, Percy hopped in his Prius again to head to work.

He worked the afternoon shift at PetWorld, a privately owned pet store just outside of town, it was good pay and easy work since he usually had a girl named Rachel Elizabeth Dare working the same hours. She was an art major and fine with the workload as long as he reminded her what she was supposed to do.

But most of the time, they would watch something on the TV made for informational adoption videos in the corner, always turning it back when customers came in. Rachel swore up and down if she had to hear the man's voice talking about the importance of dog walking just one more time, she would lose her shit and set the whole old VCR on fire.

Rachel didn't greet him when he rang the bell walking through the door, she just seized him by the arm and dragged him to the aquariums, pointing at which ever one decided to be broken today, "Fix it." She commanded and then turned on her heel back to the front counter, curly red hair swishing. The ginger's hair definitely matched her personality.

Percy pulled the ladder to the tank and stepped up to see what the problem was. After cleaning off the filter, he gave the little mechanism a hit and it whirled to life.

Magic touch, Percy thought, smiling to himself.

He folded the ladder back into the corner of the fish room and dried of his hand with the paper towels from the closet, walking back to Rachel, "Problem solved."

The girl was concentrating on her bag of potato chips, shaking it, "Thank Jesus. Those fish hate my guts. I swear they mess everything up on purpose."

"Like Finding Nemo?"

"Prefect analogy." She replied dully then held out her chips and suddenly sounded cheery, "Want some?"

Percy was used to her mood changes by now and sat on the stool beside her, "Nah."

Rachel always brought snacks to work but Ms. Maya, the elderly owner, honestly didn't care. As long as they kept the store clean and were friendly to the customers, she couldn't care less what they did in their free time, even if she was paying them by the hour. Rich people, you love 'em, you hate 'em.

Rachel was watching some soap opera and Percy made a face, "For real? When a Rocky marathon is on?"

She gave him the same face in response, "I'm trying to make fun of this here and I'm missing all the ridiculous dialogue with your ridiculous questions."

"Seriously?"

"Shh." She reprimanded, "Take notes."

Anita, but I love you!Oh darling, I know, but we can't be together!

"Well what the crack are you doing now, you dipshits!" Rachel demanded to the TV, waving her hand and paint covered fingers.

Come with me!But what will my mother say?

"Fine, go away?" Percy suggested and Rachel shot him a smug smile like all of his sarcasm was from spending five afternoons a week with her. Some, but not all.

Who cares what anyone says? I love you, I need you!

"I'm horny." She filled in.

"Dang, saw right past that, huh?" He asked.

Rachel waved her hand in an everyone knows that gesture, "Boys think they're so smooth."

Oh Rodger!

The show characters started kissing and she rolled her eyes, "Don't you know how your tongue works?" Percy raised his eyebrows at her and she shot him a glare, "What? Just because I'm a sworn single, doesn't mean I've never kissed anyone properly."

"What do you call properly?"

Rachel continued to glare and then shot him a bird emphatically, "At least I'm single of my own accord. What's your excuse?"

He blushed but held his heart in mock offense, saying, "Ouch. Take it easy."

Rachel rolled her eyes and covered a smile, picking up the remote, "Okay, okay, I'm sorry. We can watch your dumb wrestling movies." She switched it to Rocky but didn't seem too mad.

"Boxing." Percy corrected.

Rachel shot him a look and dared him to say anything more.

After making sure the tanks were all clean and functioning(which they wouldn't be by tomorrow) and bugging Rachel until she restocked the dog food, Percy let her leave early and then locked up around five-thirty.

Percy got fast food on his way home and noticed that the boxes were no longer outside room 6D's door. He worked on his Biology homework for the next day and somewhat-not-really studied for a test during The Brady Bunch.

Then he tidied up his room then fell asleep around nine-thirty, because he had nothing better to do.

He sighed.

Another day in paradise.