Chapter Text
Aphrodite has always been a very sought after goddess, and as the tales have thousands of times told before she has had countless relationships, sometimes more than one at the same time, since how they say in modern terms, she is polyamorous. The main thing she had always pitied, though, was how mortals could not think past what they already knew and accepted. Because while she had had lots of romances with men all over the globe, she had also had countless romantic relationships with non-men, women.
The fact that Aphrodite was not solely attracted to the one gender retelling the stories was something that Athena had always known, and it wasn't because the love goddess had told her, but it was more a matter of her own intuition, as it would be difficult to wrap her mind around the fact that Aphrodite, being the goddess of all kinds of love (but specifically romantic), would be uniquely attracted to males. For Athena, it was quite obvious that that was the correct way to view Aphrodite.
And so in the way that the mortals had misinterpreted Aphrodite's story, the same happened with hers. Athena had always been understood as one of the virgin goddesses, the one that had never married or had kids (technically), and as much as that was technically not wrong, it wasn't also the full truth. The time when the gods stories were first being told, weren't the same or as "open" as the actuality, in the sense that there could only be three types of women: the one that marries (Hera), the one that's a virgin (Artemis) and the one that is not respected (Demeter). There were no other ways, the only "different" goddess was Aphrodite, and she was regarded as (almost) a slut.
And so Athena had been known as one of the multiple virgin goddesses, but that was not exactly who she was. During ancient times, the safest option if you didn't want to marry was to take a vow of chastity (rape was very common and only if you had vowed to be a virgin (as a goddess) you could stay one), but as times changed that was no longer a problem. So, the question was... who was Athena? In modern age, Athena would be understood as a lesbian, which was not a term that she was against, as she was mainly attracted to women, but had also dated people that were non-conforming.
But at the same time it wasn't exactly a term that fit her, as she also maintained non-sexual but intellectual relationships with some men, even if it was rare. In summary, the only man Athena didn't want to have anything to do with were the ones that lived in Olympus or were in some way affiliated to it, a.k.a. male gods. So the kind of relationships Athena had were different from the ones that were described in "Greek Lore". She had romantic attraction to women and in some cases she was also sexually attracted to them, and so she had romantic relationships, with men though she was only capable of intellectual relationships that would end up creating a baby that Athena would give to those men, who even as they were confused about it all would accept them and raise them, in most cases, properly (like Annabeth Chase).
In relation to Athena's romantic life, there was also this big secret that she had never allowed herself to say to anyone, and that was that she had been romantically interested in Aphrodite for centuries. And the problem that Athena had always had is that she wasn't one to take the initiative to woo the one she liked, and Aphrodite being more understanding than she was portrayed had never actually tried to make a move on her fellow Olympus goddess (or so Athena thought). There was also the fact that for Athena it was difficult to tell when Aphrodite was taken or not, or in any case looking for a relationship. But lately, there was this one detail that the wise goddess had realized.
It had been centuries since the last time that Aphrodite had had a relationship with a fellow male god, and after said period of several love affairs with male gods she hasn't had one since, she has in a way, abstained more or less since the beginning of Aphrodite's stay in Olympus. She had not taken any new lover, and most surprising of all, Ares and Aphrodite were no longer together.
The doubt that arose was, since when was that? The truth being that Aphrodite had stopped dating any of the gods since more or less a century since Athena was "born". Obviously, after that Ares and Aphrodite still had gone on some dates, but before anyone had expected they had stopped being a thing (Ares wasn't really happy about it, but he could do nothing), their tryst finishing almost at the same time as the Roman Empire had fallen.