Chapter Text
The first time Nyx notices a new face along his morning running route, he can't tell which causes the necessary lapse in attention that has him colliding with the septuagenarian coming from the opposite direction. Logically, it could be that he’s memorized this quiet space of suburbia so well that the sudden change is a shock to the system, but he finds himself leaning more toward fact that the visitor’s smile is much too cheerful for 5AM. A smile that quickly evolves into a fit of laughter at Nyx’s expense when the old man proceeds to hit Nyx over the head with his umbrella.
“Two eyes on the front of your—” WHACK “—n head and you still can’t f—” WHACK “—n see straight! You—” WHACK “—with your smartphones and your—”
He goes on to rage about The Calamity, earning weirded-out looks from the guys unloading a delivery truck nearby and silence on Nyx’s part. Nyx knows a thing or eleven—thirteen depending on who you ask—about calamities. Finds himself reflecting on them during his coffee catch up with Libertus an hour later.
“What a crock of shit,” Libertus declares after Nyx regales him about this morning.
Their usual booth in the corner is occupied, so they're seated along the counter that runs parallel to the shop front. For once, Nyx is glad Libertus doesn’t insist on another table. People-watching is an integral part of what the job entails, inasmuch as it’s a part of the job as it is a bad habit and so much fucking easier to do in astral form, true, but coffee isn’t transferable between planes.
Lucky for them the shopfront is tinted, so they can observe all they want without fear of things turning awkward: it occurs way too often for it to be considered embarrassing, actually. Thing is; humans aren’t meant to meet their reapers prematurely--not that they’re aware, of course, just that there have been instances of pre-mature reaping as a panicked reflex in the past (think brain aneurysms). The old man Nyx met during his run came up in conversation the moment an elderly couple passed the coffee house.
“The End of Days isn’t due for another eon…unless you’ve heard differently,” says Libertus.
“I haven’t.”
“You sure? You’re His favourite.”
And a leash was still a leash, last time Nyx checked, but when you spent an eternity together with someone as stubbornly egalitarian as Libertus you quickly learn that pointing out this will only ever lead to fistfights, never compromise.
“I’m sure.” Nyx says tersely.
A woman arrives and sets their coffees in front of them along with a plate of sandwiches Nyx didn’t order, and a napkin with a phone number scribbled onto it.
"On the house."
It's either hers or the barista's--Nyx watches her leave long enough to see her colleague wink at him from across the cafe.
"You could just say 'no'," Libertus says. “Some folks would consider that a bribe.”
“You know what they say; when in Eos,” Nyx shrugs, taking a bite. Libertus makes a sound of disgust, glancing back out the window. He takes a long sip of his coffee and when he speaks again, his tone is a lot less reproachful.
"No one says that. Where do you think he got it from, though?”
"Got what," says Nyx, making a start on the second sandwich. Libertus’ eye twitches a little.
"You know; his info. Something’s gotta be going on, right?”
“That's impossible.”
“Illegal,” Libertus corrects. “Maybe something happened. Maybe something’s happening, and we’re the two dum-dums enjoying a cuppa and none the wiser…Every so often one of Them makes a bid, and we’re left to pick up the pieces while humanity suffers." Nyx gives a grunt as the guy pokes him. "You listening? I’m baring my soul here.”
“This is all a bit...heavy for a Monday morning, don’t you think?”
As for souls, well…slippery slope, that. Theirs is an existence that’s neither here nor there, strangers in their own home, if Nyx ever got to describe the feeling to a compassionate ear. The tension is momentarily diverted by a couple swinging an excitable toddler back and forth in the air between them as they pass.
"Cute kid." says Nyx, smiling a little. A little over a millenia's practice and he's mastered not letting his eyes wander to the glowing script counting backwards above all their heads. Call it common courtesy.
“Yeah, sure." Libertus says, before leaning in. "Look I’m not saying we should do something if it’s the case; I’m just saying if there’s gonna be another…disagreement, I’d rather us not get involved.”
“So don’t get involved.”
Nyx's words are somehow magic, because Libertus finally relaxes for the first time since arrival, sitting back in his stool. It’s disconcerting to say the least, so Nyx has to ask:
“What.”
“The rest of glaive thought—you know; you being you and all.” Nyx opens his mouth to press further, but Libertus waves it off. “Water under the bridge. Just — if anything happens you have to tell me.”
"Uh...yeah. Of course."
It feels like he’s just agreed to a promise he knows he won’t be able to keep.
He leaves the cafe long after Libertus excuses himself to tend to a trampling over in Duscae (“You’d think they’d learn to let sleeping behemoths lie.”). He’s so consumed with trying to decipher exactly what Libertus was trying to say without saying, that he forgets all about the napkin with the phone number on it.
Later, many months later he'll catch himself reflecting on said napkin, and laughing quietly to himself. Eleven—or thirteen—calamities and who’d have thought a simple innocuous thing as forgetting a napkin could indirectly lead him to jump-starting the twelfth (or fourteenth).
(Technically, it starts with him answering a summons by the Lord of Death Himself, though of course Regis will deny this as vehemently as he denies how the Six saw fit to consign him stewardship of the Underworld. )
Nyx might not have considered himself an expert in the price mechanisms driving the floral market, but Illyrius, a tiny florist in the bustling Ceres district, has the distinct air of anomaly among the big-name department stores and multinationals lining Ludi Street. There aren't any flowers to be seen through the glass and dim lighting, just a counter sitting dead center with a lone computer terminal and cash register set up on top of it. It'd take a certain stretch of the imagination to conclude that this place is indeed a flower shop, even with the sandblasted lettering on the front door.
Yet for all its ordinariness, it manages to catch the ire of a god.
Nyx's curiosity too, when he suddenly finds himself hurtling backward through the astral plane, and landing on his ass in Hades the moment he touches the door handle.
“What...the fuck.”
It doesn’t take long for him to get back up and dust himself off, but the uproarious, knowing laughter that erupted as soon as the spell activated continues to echo in his head and, well.
That laugh sounds unsettlingly familiar and under less embarrassing circumstances, he’d consider it pleasant to the ear.
There’s no reason for him to be smiling. There’s no reason for him to actually be amused by any of this.
But he is.
“Let the games begin.”
He's been bored for too long.
Pelna wrenches the door open, an apology ready on his lips. This is the first time the wards have actually activated, and he feels the teeniest bit guilty for laughing because astrals, that sounded like it hurt.
Except, it was also really fucking funny, because the person on the other end sounded just so completely caught off guard, and the sound they'd made--astrals. He's not in the business of dropping cats off the sides of high-rise buildings, but. He's a hundred per cent certain that's the sound they'd make if he did, and that's the sound he just heard.
There's no one on the other end to accept his apologies and offers of tea as compensation, but he still finds himself grinning for the first time in ages.
Whoever they were, he hopes they come back.
He hopes they come back soon.