Something I Think About A Lot Is How Rick Riordan Very Rarely Uses "girlfriend/boyfriend" To Refer To

Something I think about a lot is how Rick Riordan very rarely uses "girlfriend/boyfriend" to refer to Percy and Annabeth within their perspectives. They're so intertwined, even Annabeth says in hoh that the word boyfriend isn't strong enough, because Percy was a part of her. They are a singular soul, too wrapped around each others' fates that regular labels are far too weak for them. But, Rick Riordan uses "boyfriend" a lot in Nico and Wills perspectives, not because they love each other less than percabeth, but to show how much the word means to them. Nico uses it any chance he gets- "his boyfriend," "he actually had a boyfriend," because Nico has never been able to say that before. Their struggle with their queer identities mixed with Nico's catholic guilt and chronic everyone-hates-me disease makes the fact that he has someone to call his actual boyfriend so much more important to his character development.