Wow! Look at that! I can write fluffy and cute and light things! PROOF! Enjoy today's story!

Disclaimer: I own nothing! Not even the prompts I'm using.

Day 4

Situation: Eating out at McDonald's

Fluff: Handholding

Angst: Attack

I'm Lovin It

The door bell rang, and Sally said something about getting the door before Percy even got up from the couch, where he sat sandwiched between Grover and Piper, Annabeth's legs stretched out over his knees, his arms wrapped around a bowl of chips. They were all wearing birthday hats and blue clothes for the occassion. Rachel had ruined an obnoxiously stylish silk blouse that her mother had bought her with fourteen different shades of blue paint.

The delegation of Roman friends that Sally had just let in were also dressed in blue- Frank, Hazel, Jason and even Reyna. Rachel had never seen her in anything other than those pretentious tunics, but she wandered into the Jackson apartment in blue jeans and a cheap tourist tank top with 'San Francisco : Gateway to the Pacific' written on it. There were sunglasses propped up on her head. Rachel wasn't sure where the weapons could be concealed, but she knew they were there, somewhere. Annabeth had told Rachel a bit about Reyna, so she knew there had to be something somewhere. But when Reyna wasn't dressed in her cloaks and robes, and gold and bronze… She was a whole new person. All the normal made Reyna seem more out of place than the armour, actually. That was all that Rachel knew her as, really. Birthday parties were never part of Rachel's portrait of her- and the oracle hadn't said anything different.

"Hey!" Percy smiled. "You all got the time off to come!"

"Please," Jason said. "Between Frank and Reyna and whatever residual sway I have with the senate, anything goes."

Paul, bless his little mortal heart that Rachel could endlessly sympathise with, came in with popcorn.

"Whoa, too many new people, I don't know all of you," Paul said shaking his head. He turned to Sally. "They're all people, right?"

"Umm, Mom, Paul- this is Hazel Levesque, daughter of Pluto, my baby cousin. Frank Zhang, Centurion of the Fifth Cohort, son of Mars and legacy of Neptune so kind of my cousin…"

"Brother!" Tyson said.

"Right, and Reyna… Reyna's the praetor of Camp Jupiter, she's kind of a badass," Percy said. "Like, she could have killed me when I got there but I didn't so I owe her a lot. Other than that, does everybody know everyone?"

"I'm Rachel," Rachel said standing up and holding her hand out to Reyna. "We've met before, but not… nicely. I'm sure we can do better than war, probably."

"Alright," she said. "I'm Reyna."

Rachel wasn't a very popular fixture at slumber parties when she was a kid, so it was still rare and giddy to be up at 3:00 AM on a sea of pillows and blankets with other people around her and the meaning of the universe starring her in the face. Rachel always found the world to be clearer when she was around half-bloods. She wasn't sure why, but even the stars outside the Jackson's window looked sharper and brighter. It was easier to connect the dots and make pictures in the sky.

Nico had shadow-traveled to a quiet place for the night, but Reyna had insisted that she had enough of shadow-traveling for a lifetime and was waiting for daybreak to make the journey on a Pegasus. Hazel said she didn't want to leave the party only because Sally was going to make waffles in the morning and apparently Eggos had only been commercialized in 1953 (thank you Annabeth), and not only was Frank a sucker for Hazel, but he knew that if he went back to New Rome as a sole praetor, he would be overrun. Other features in the tangle of limbs were Annabeth, Jason, Piper, Tyson, and Grover.

"I didn't really have slumber parties as a kid," Rachel said outloud. She wasn't meaning to. Of course, she'd thought of it…

"Same," Percy said. "I was too much of a handful, other parents didn't want to keep me around longer than necessary."

"I guess a cabin full of siblings doesn't count since the novelty wears off," Annabeth said.

"I worked nights at the spa sometimes," Reyna said. "The attendants would take turns sleeping in empty rooms and there was a lot of hair braiding and nail polishing and stuff. You know, because of the life of servitude to crazy Circe, but still."

Rachel sat up. She wasn't exactly sure if Reyna was kidding or not.

"That only counts in a sad way, Rey," Jason said. "Sad things do not count."

"How about your cuddle puddle with the wolves, Mowgli?" Reyna said.

"Okay, but I'm not even going to pretend that that counts," Jason said.

"Damn right you won't," Piper grumbled. "Well guys, here's to the first decent sleepover any of us get. Thanks for turning eighteen, Percy."

Percy was happily sleeping (for the first time all week) with his head on Annabeth's stomach and an arm around Tyson.

"Cheers," Grover said. "Any juiceboxes left to toast with?"

"I don't want to move to check," Annabeth grumbled.

"Hey," Rachel said. "I didn't know you'd be at camp!"

Reyna turned around and smiled politely.

"It was a last-minute trip," she acknowledged.

"That's great!" Rachel said. "There aren't many people around right now, but I've been around long enough to show you around. I mean, I was just looking for someone to spot me on the climbing wall- you could try it, I think you'd particularly like the lava…"

"Thank you," Reyna said, cutting through the spitfire. "But I'm here on official business, I'm just waiting for Chiron to free up."

"Oh," Rachel said. "After?"

"Senate meets tonight," Reyna said. "I have to be there, I'm afraid."

"Alright," Rachel said. "So when's your next available time slot for fun?"

Reyna smiled. "You can call my secretary and he'll see what I can do in ten years."

"You were wearing a toga ten seconds ago," Rachel stuttered.

"Togas are for official business only," Reyna said. "I'm supposed to be charming and beautiful right now."

"Why?" Rachel said. "Aren't the Greeks supposed to be the wily and slimy ones?"

"Oh, you are. You are disgustingly undisciplined and promiscuous. But thank you for not disputing that I'm beautiful in these things, they're not very comfortable."

Reyna smiled teasingly, and Rachel froze. What was she supposed to do? Lie? The Roman dress, the stola, was beautiful and elegant and the palla, the shawl worn over it somehow caught all of Reyna's curves and sat comfortably on the crook of her arm.

"You know what's comfortable?" Rachel said. "Camp T-shirts and jeans."

"And you look good in them too," Reyna said. "Oh, there's Ba- I mean, Dionysus. He looks absolutely depressed, and I need a blessing for a festival whose prayers he won't answer to. Wish me luck."

"Good luck," Rachel said.

Nico di Angelo was a pain in the ass of a friend, but his sneaky and gloomy ways were good for getting intel. And thanks to the world's most depressing and dangerous European tour and transatlantic quest, Nico could tell her an especially great amount of information about Reyna- Reyna Avila Ramirez-Arellano, to be exact. He also spilled the beans about how she loved dogs and horses, how she always craved Piragua from when she was a kid, about her sweet tooth, about how she knew twenty three ways to make paper planes because of all the time spent in the senate, about all the time she spent in offices…

"I'm telling you," Nico said. "This girl's life is crazy."

"Your life is crazy, you talk to zombies. My life is crazy, I channel ancient oracles and spit their wisdom out in limericks." Rachel said plainly.

"Reyna's life is crazy too, she's ruling the remnants of a dead empire," Nico said. "And she's always been in this kind of mess. I mean, you and me? We had time to be, like, normal. Bianca taught me my alphabet, I got to play nerdy card games with hand-painted figurines, and listen to the radio's Top 40. You got Dora the Explorer Band-Aids as a kid, the Tooth Fairy visited, you sorted your Smarties by colour before eating them… We got a chance, Reyna didn't."

"That's… deep, di Angelo," Rachel said.

"I can't be this shady all the time without saying something tastefully melancholic every now and then," Nico said.

Rachel pondered that for a second.

"Mythomagic figures need to be hand-painted?" Rachel said.

"Shut up," Nico said.

"Let me guess," Reyna said. "You want me to pick strawberries with you and maybe go to a camp fire so we can clap our hands and sing happy songs, possibly with gestures?"

"It's not fair how you always come here and then you can't even spare a second," Rachel said with a grin.

"Well, I have seniority over Zhang, and my mother is the goddess of foreign war- which is about as close to a god of diplomacy as the Romans have," Reyna said.

"One day I'll find you on your own," Rachel said.

"Yeah," Reyna laughed. "I'd like to take that free time to get some sleep."

"Boring," Rachel said. "You're boring."

"And what are you, fun?" Reyna asked.

"You can't spare a second to find out," Rachel grinned.

"I just want you to know that I am vegan," Rachel said. "To produce one pound of beef it takes 1,8 gallons of water, 6.6 pounds of grain and 15 pounds of CO2 and I am not down for this kind of ecological imprint. I believe that if animals feel pain like humans we should not cause it by eating their flesh, and if I was a cow- having my tits pulled endlessly would not be my lifestyle of choice."

"Okay," Reyna said.

"But I mostly want you to know that I am making a massive exception here, because I think that you deserve a chance to be happy and normal despite your horrible childhood, existence, and that little pre-plumbing bubble of joy that you call home," Rachel said. "Trust me. I'm the oracle. I know shit."

"Thank… you?" Reyna added, just as carefully.

"Right. Therefore I am doing the most routine and casual North-American thing I can think of and we are going to go to McDonald's because I have a feeling that you and the Big Mac will get along splendidly," Rachel said.

"What?" Reyna said. "You're taking me to..."

"Trust me," Rachel said. "I'm the oracle."

"You know... shit," Reyna finished. "Do I pop up in your dreams and prophecies a lot?"

"Shut up," Rachel said. "I'm picking you up at 6:00. Don't fight me on this, it's going to happen. Just put those jeans on. They're as nice as the stolla, but it's a special occasion in the mortal world- and in case you didn't know, we wear jeans."

"That's good. I look really good in jeans," Reyna said. She winked, which nearly gave Rachel a heart attack, and smiled- which melted Rachel's everything.

Rachel was right about the Big Mac being Reyna's new best friend, though she hadn't anticipated the chicken nuggets, the fries, the chicken snack wraps, the McChicken, a double cheeseburger, and the All-day breakfasts to also be welcomed so warmly. Rachel guessed that it was impossible to introduce a carnivore to McDonald's for the first time and expect her to keep it together. Nico had mentioned something about an awesome appetite typical to children of war, but damn. Despite the ecological imprint of beef, Rachel was actually impressed.

Never the less, Rachel enjoyed a salad, but the company was better. Reyna was a dream when she wasn't in her nightmare of a job, although every time she talked about it… she sounded happy. And she looked happy with her hair down and her jeans on and a box of fries spilled on a tray between the two of them.

"Hey," Reyna said. "Thanks for everything, but I once heard these legionnaires talking and they said that McDonald's was a crappy first date. So do better next time, and I'll forget this."

Rachel's jaw dropped.

"Oh, come on Dare," Reyna said. "You're the Oracle. You should've seen it coming."

"Oh I did," Rachel said. "I just didn't think you'd be so sassy about it. Anyways, tomorrow at 6:00? I'll pick you up again."

"Tomorrow at 6:00," Reyna said. "Are you seeing it in the future?"

"Hey, tonight's my night off," Rachel said. "And I'm lovin it."

"Legionnaires told me about that too... Was that a pun about fast-food?" Reyna asked. "Say no, or you aren't taking me anywhere ever again."

"Okay, that I do not see in the future," Rachel said, reaching across the table and taking Reyna's hand.