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“So, what are you supposed to be?” Megaera says, when Zagreus knocks on her door. Her nose is wrinkled, like Zagreus’s costume has personally offended her aesthetic tastes, and she has three champagne flutes with a substance that is definitely not champagne in her hand.
“Uhhhh,” Zagreus says, scratching his nose. Beyond Megaera’s broad shoulders and even broader costume, there are strobing lights and flashes of skin and fabric, all of them blurred and bright like a time-elapsed panorama of midnight traffic. Zagreus can feel the music and laughter shaking through the floor. “Two snowballs?”
“Riiiight.” Megaera yells something that gets immediately swallowed by the noise of the party into her apartment and turns back to Zagreus. “Look, Zag, I feel like I should tell you that I am legally not allowed to let anybody with such an uncreative costume into my Halloween party.”
“Your Halloween party isn’t even legal to begin with,” retorts Zagreus. It falls flat, mostly because his costume wasn’t supposed to be uncreative, and also because Zagreus is 10 degrees off-kilter tonight and the world is a sparkling kind of broken and he just wants to get wasted. And because he doesn’t know how else to tell Megaera that he was supposed to be H2O with Thanatos and it would have been cool and funny, except.
Except.
Megaera raises one perfectly arched eyebrow. “My party, my rules. You can run to the nearest Target and get a discount vampire costume, if you really want in so bad.”
“The nearest Target is 25 minutes away by car.”
“Exactly.”
“Meeeeeeg. Beautiful intelligent could-kill-a-fratboy-with-her-eyeliner Megaera.” Zagreus gives her his winningest smile. It dies pathetically on her spiked chainmail before it can have any effect. It’s never had any effect on Megaera, if Zagreus is being honest, but it doesn’t stop him from trying. “It’s Halloween! Midterms are over and it’s time to get so drunk that I can’t feel anything but a vague spectre of happiness. Give a boy some sympathy?”
“I am giving you sympathy,” says Megaera, entirely unsympathetic. She probably gets a vague spectre of happiness from verbally decomposing Zagreus like the worm he is.
“C’mon, Meg, give Zag a break, you know how those STEM students work so hard for so little!” Dusa slings her arms around Megaera’s shoulder and grins at Zagreus. She has on a dashing Headless Horseman-reminiscent costume. Zagreus is very quickly realizing even his original costume concept might have been a little... too simplistic for this party.
“It isn’t like I don’t also work hard for very little,” Megaera grumbles, but Zagreus can see her physically melting into Dusa’s touch. In the future, he’ll have to make a note to always make sure Dusa is around before asking Megaera for… anything, really. “Fine, fine, come in if you can even make it through the doorway with that costume of yours.”
The small victories are the sweetest. Zagreus’s night — and day, and past week, really — has been absolute shit, no thanks to Thanatos, but at least now he has the prospect of his bitterness and worry getting steadily chipped away by the pounding bass and the burn of Megaera’s special Ambrosia cocktail down his throat to look forward to.
Then. “I mean, I thought you were coming with Thanatos,” continues Megaera, not even batting an eye as Dusa pats her shoulder and wipes off a bit of smudged eyeliner. “Where’s he gone off to now?”
Zagreus winces. “Erm, he’s. Busy? Anyway. What are you supposed to be? How can you accuse me of having a boring costume when you look just like a generic knight?”
“Oho,” Megaera says, smugly. It seems like Zagreus is never allowed to have even the small victories after all. “Cower before me, mere mortal, for I am Sir Gawain of the order of the Knights of the Round Table!”
“And I’m the Green Knight!” Dusa squeaks, now holding Megaera’s hand. “It’s very romantic. At the end of the night when we have the costume contest, Meg’s gonna fake-behead me!”
“Spoilers, Dusa!” Megaera hisses.
“Who’s Gawain?” Zagreus says.
“Tch. Uncultured STEM swine,” starts Megaera, rather less barbed now that Dusa’s bubbly cuteness has started working its magic on her. She sweeps back into the strobing lights of her apartment majestically, Dusa skipping behind her.
Zagreus lets himself lean — or, well, do something like awkwardly rest his elbow on the frame because his stupid H2 costume doesn’t have that much maneuverability — on the doorway for a minute. Then he manages to squeeze himself through the door, and lets himself get swallowed by the writhing shadows of the party.
--
Megaera finds him 35 minutes later curled over the cold soapstone of her kitchen island, Ambrosia cocktail in hands. The nauseating thrum of the party is a distant and starry thing through the melting ice. There are little translucent bat-shaped stickers on each glass, and there are also a lot more than 4 glasses scattered around him. But the lights of the party are still dizzying, and the marble isn’t nearly enough to stave off his anxieties, and Zagreus might just be the littlest bit drunk right now.
“No, you’re definitely drunk,” says Megaera.
What? He didn’t say anything.
“You said that as well.”
“Aaahhhhh,” says Zagreus, having a Realization. “I’ve never done that before.”
“What, gotten drunk? I would believe you, since you certainly look like a newbie drunk.”
“Rude,” Zagreus slurs. “No, like. Talked my thoughts. Without meaning it. Said my thoughts? What are words. They are nothing more than constructs by which we express a base thought that in English can be interpreted regardless of grammatical errors. That’s my theory.”
Zagreus is quite wasted, if he’s being honest (which he is, painfully and unstoppably, when he’s drunk.) He doesn’t have the willpower to lift his head from the soapstone. It’s really some very good soapstone, he thinks. Cool and solid against the searing, shifting mass of human bodies in the living room. Either way, he swears he feels Megaera’s eye roll.
“Obviously you haven’t taken a linguistics class in your life. Professor Hermes would get a kick out of hearing your drunken thoughts.”
“Awww, is that Megaera-code for Zagreus is a secret linguistics genius? I didn’t know you thought so highly of me, Meg!!”
It’s silent for a long moment, if Zagreus can call the reprieve of the kitchen “silent,” which it isn’t, but it’s a bustling airport compared to the earth-shaking roar of the jets beneath your feet as you take off, and that’s enough.
“I think a lot of things about you,” says Megaera, finally, “But I’ve never thought lowly of you.”
“Oh,” says Zagreus. He knew that, logically. There’s no reason to feel slightly teary, especially because Zagreus also knows, logically, that he isn’t an emotional drunk. But. Well. It’s always nice to feel like somebody else in this world thinks you’re worth something. And Zagreus is so lonely right now, and the smile he’d given his mutual acquaintances earlier tonight felt like crumbling paint on a rotting wall, and.
“Than’s been ignoring me.” Zagreus mutters, turning his face further into the counter. The soapstone smells good, too. He briefly considers taking a materials class next semester just to reveal the mysteries of soapstone. “This whole week.”
“Oh?” The clink of ice, then glass meeting the counter with a sharp delicacy. Megaera must have drank his last cocktail. “I was wondering. That’s why you’ve been looking like Cerberus when your dad doesn’t give him enough pets.”
Zagreus doesn’t have it in him to get offended at being compared to a dog. If Than were here, he’d compare me to, like, at least a fierce wolf, or something, he thinks, and that makes him even more sad, so he says, “I didn’t — I don’t even know what I did wrong.”
“Really?” Megaera intones, voice swooping down the river valley then up a jagged mountain like she severely doubts Zagreus’s ability to retain this precious friendship he’s (re)established with his best childhood friend whom he reunited with only 6 months ago.
“Yyyyyyeah,” breathes Zagreus, trying and failing to raise his head from the counter. The world is wobbling on its 10-degree axis. Zagreus doesn’t know whether he wants it to right itself or tilt even more. He’d always considered himself a bit of a masochist (evidence: befriending Megaera, being a molecular bio major, spending his 4 years of high school in band,) but Thanatos. Ignoring him.
That… is a little too much, just like Zagreus is a little too drunk. And Zagreus is a lot too drunk. Apparently he tends towards shitty metaphors when he’s drunk and lonely. Maybe, Zagreus thinks, that’s the secret behind writing good poetry. Drunk and lonely and yearning.
“Well, what did you do wrong?” Says Megaera.
Zagreus blinks, thinking back to the Monday of this week, sitting on the floor of Thanatos’s apartment, inviting him to Megaera’s party. The hazy, indecisive late-October sunlight. The time-worn owl plushie Zagreus gave Thanatos for his eight birthday, perched on the top shelf of Thanatos’s bookshelf. His costume suggestions, the H2O drawn from his required o-chem class, his joke that it would look a little like a couples costume. Thanatos falling silent. More silent than he’d ever been with Zagreus.
“I don’t know,” Zagreus snaps. They’d been studying together! It was routine! He hadn’t said anything asshole-ish or more snarky than he normally was, he hadn’t done anything.
But. Maybe. Maybe for Thanatos, he had, because if he hadn’t, Zagreus wouldn’t be too drunk to do simple math right now, and he wouldn’t be ignoring all of Zagreus’s texts and, literally, speed-walking away from him on campus the one (one!!) time they ran into each other.
“Thanatos wouldn’t just ignore you like that,” Megaera observes, as if they both didn’t know Thanatos’s preferred mode of letting someone know he was pissed off had always been death glares and passive-aggressive bitchiness, and not the cold shoulder. “But you’re not nearly idiotic enough to do anything stupid around Thanatos, either.”
“I do plenty of stupid things around him,” Zagreus objects, because just being around Thanatos makes him impulsive and hot-wired. It feels like being lit up from the inside, all nitric oxide and magnesium bursting in his heart. “Maybe he got tired of my stupidity.”
“Thanatos? Get tired of you?”
Zagreus doesn’t respond, because it’s Halloween and he came here to drink until he could scrabble his way back to happiness, but it isn’t working and he doesn’t know what to do short of stumbling blind to Thanatos’s apartment.
“Wait, you’re being serious? Zag, you are not being serious.” Megaera groans. “Oh, gods, you are being serious. How are you serious? I am thinking lowly of you. Very lowly of you. That is the most stupid thing you have ever said, Styx have mercy on me. Have you even seen the way he — you know what? Never mind.”
“Meg?” Zagreus ventures. He knows Megaera’s scheming voice when he hears it. “I really would appreciate it if you could leave me to transmute my blood into alcohol and not do anything stupid like me, you should learn from my example — ”
“Oh, it’s nothing stupid,” says Megaera, sweetly, like the liar she is. “It’s nothing at all! Don’t concern yourself with it, Zag, just keep on drowning your woes in liquor, I won’t stop you.”
The next moment, she’s gone.
Zagreus’s brain takes a while to process it, sticky sweet and slogging through vodka-whiskey-lime-juice and whatever else was in that Ambrosia cocktail. In the end (sitting on the kitchen floor, because he pried himself off the counter only to be unbalanced by his costume and wobble gracefully to the marble tiles) he figures Megaera isn’t going to do anything drastic, and that she probably just gave up on reasoning with drunk him.
Hmm.
Well, it’s not like he could stop Megaera if she did do something drastic. And the kitchen floor is comfortable, and it’s dark, and the music has switched to something less bass-heavy. Zagreus thunks his head back on the cabinet and lets his eyes slip shut.
--
“Zag.”
“Mrrrrpggph?”
“Zag,” the voice says again. So insistent, Zagreus thinks, now slowed by sleep and alcohol. What a number Megaera’s party did on him.
“Hhhhhhhhmgh,” says Zagreus in response. He’s not warm, but the puff of his hydrogen atoms costume around him has kept him comfortable.
“Zag.”
“Shhhh,” Zagreus murmurs. “M sleeping. I am very unenergized atoms. Imagine. My electrons on the lowest orbital.”
A huff of laughter. Funny. It almost sounds like Thanatos’s laughter, his real laughter, so precious and bright and rare, better than any diamond birthed from the Earth’s core.
Maybe if Zagreus reached up, cracked his eyes open and stretched his fingers out for warm skin and silver hair, he could…
His fingertips make contact. Zagreus stirs, and sees —
Oh, Zagreus thinks. I must be dreaming.
Out loud, he says, “Than?”
Thanatos nods, unsure of himself even as he stands above Zagreus with the faint prismatic lights of the party haloed around his head, all sharp golden eyes and broad shoulders and smooth lines. He’s untouchable. Zagreus looks, and wants.
“You aren’t oxygen,” Zagreus blurts out. Evidently the combination of Thanatos and still being the slightest bit drunk completely destroys his brain-to-mouth filter.
Thanatos’s face shudders then, like a puzzle rearranging itself. Zagreus wants to smooth out the taut lines beneath his eyes. Zagreus wants to push his hands into that molten-platinum hair. Zagreus wants —
“No,” Thanatos says, almost gently. “Come on, Zag. You’re drunk. You can’t get home yourself.”
“Hm?” Says Zagreus, sing-song. He doesn’t know how late it is. Maybe it’s still early, somewhere around 11:13, and this is just a hitch in Thanatos’s routine. And maybe it’s witching hour and Thanatos is the crescent moon lighting the cobblestone path home. “Are you going to take me back to your place, Than?”
“To yours.”
Zagreus considers this. “No,” he says, finally.
“Zagreus.”
“Thanatos!” Zagreus tilts his head to the side and drinks in the sight of Thanatos. He’s never quite gotten the time he needs to admire Thanatos in whole. It was always between the gaps of hoodies and backpacks at lecture, or stolen glimpses through the library shelves. Thanatos is frowning. Zagreus missed him so much. “Ah, Than, take me home, why don’t you? I want you to.”
“You’re drunk,” says Thanatos again, sharply, with a sense of finality. He wraps one hand around Zagreus’s wrist and hauls him to his feet. “I will help you get home, since right now you are too irresponsible to be trusted with your own safety.”
Zagreus swallows and lets Thanatos tug him along. Fine. If Thanatos wants to act cold towards him, if Thanatos wants to show up like this after a week of ignoring him then not even have the decency to converse, that’s fine. Zagreus will let Thanatos speak on his own terms.
The touch of Thanatos’s fingers on the underside of his wrist, slipping into his palm, burn away the last vestiges of drunkenness. Now Zagreus is just stumbling through the dark and out Megaera’s door, letting Thanatos guide him under the starlight, feeling like a truck just ran over his neurons.
“Why are you in costume?” Zagreus says, halfway to his apartment. Thanatos didn’t even call him a Lyft. But then again, his apartment is only 13 minutes away from Megaera’s. Maybe Thanatos felt guilty that he ignored Zagreus and is now trying to spend more time with him. Heh.
“Megaera called me and said she wouldn’t let me in without one.”
Zagreus squints. Speckled-black jacket, white shirt, Thanatos’s favorite black jeans, round fluffy ears. “What are you even supposed to be?”
“...A snowy owl,” says Thanatos, reluctantly.
“Owls don’t have ears.”
“It was for the effect. Dusa thought it was cute. I believe that was the only reason Megaera let me in.”
“It is cute,” Zagreus says. “I think it suits you.”
Thanatos’s grip tightens, for a moment. Then he’s tugging Zagreus down the street harder, silver hair glowing ethereal under the neon-bright streetlight.
They don’t talk, for the rest of it. Thanatos wraps an arm around Zagreus’s waist to help him up the stairs to his apartment door, but he lets go as soon as they clear the last step. Zagreus’s chest aches at the loss of contact. Thanatos must think he’s still drunk, still unable to help himself, and it must be the only reason Thanatos is touching him, but Zagreus will accept any reason at this point.
When Zagreus unlocks his door and stumbles inside, he thinks, that must be it. After this, Thanatos will go back to ignoring me, and he thinks I’m drunk, and he won’t listen to anything I say. But he wants Thanatos to keep holding on to him. He wants Thanatos to stay.
He wants a lot of things, a lot of them related to Thanatos, and almost none of them are within the realm of possibility. Zagreus doesn’t reach out, when Thanatos drops his hand.
But Thanatos moves further into his apartment, a slight and quiet shadow slipping among the furniture and tables and kitchen counters. He gestures for Zagreus to sit down on the couch, clicks on the tea kettle, and roots around in Zagreus’s cabinets until he finds what he’s looking for.
Tea, Zagreus realizes. He’s brewing me tea. He’s — taking care of me.
Zagreus’s first, instinctual reaction to being taken care of is, I can do it myself. He never really counted on other people being there to help him. Self-sufficiency had been currency as he grew up. And here Thanatos is, beautiful under the sallow lights of Zagreus’s shitty kitchen, silently making him tea because he thinks Zagreus is drunk.
Zagreus wants him for the rest of their lives. In his kitchen, in his living room, reading his classic romance novels on the couch in his rimmed reading glasses. In his bathroom, in his bed, smelling like Zagreus’s soap, two pillows side by side.
Oh.
“Drink this.” Thanatos pushes a mug into Zagreus’s hands, wrapped in a kitchen towel so — so Zagreus’s hands don’t get burned, that’s the only explanation, and the tea smells like peppermint and honey, and Zagreus loves him, he loves Thanatos, so much, too much.
Zagreus drinks.
Then, because Thanatos makes him do stupid things, because that magnesium-firework feeling in his stomach is eating away at his ribcage and Zagreus is dangerously close to letting go of his terrible confessions, he says, weakly, “Ahaha, Than, you’re too good to me. You must really love me, huh?”
See. Here's the thing. Zagreus expects Thanatos to stiffen briefly at the barest hints of affection and brush him off as easily as a ladybug on his finger. That’s what all of Zagreus’s past data from his interactions with Thanatos have told him. That’s what should happen, because otherwise Zagreus will let himself want more than he can possibly bear.
But. Aha. No.
Thanatos does a visible recoil. When Zagreus looks up, it’s to the sight of Thanatos’s stricken face and shaking hands.
“Zagreus,” Thanatos says, deathly quiet. “Is that why Megaera called me, tonight? Did you tell her — did you two decide to, what, mock me like this? Is that it?”
“Wait — Than, what are you talking about — Meg called you?”
“Yes,” Thanatos scoffs. “She said you were drunk. Said you missed me, that I should come and take you home.” Thanatos draws further into himself, his shoulders stiff and cragged.
“Of course Meg called you.” Zagreus groans, runs a tea-warmed hand down his face. “Than, I — I don’t understand, what would I be mocking you about?”
“You don’t understand?” Says Thanatos, voice growing impossibly sharper, like a hedgehog prickling to protect itself. “You said it yourself, didn’t you, Zagreus? You must really love me.” A laugh like shattered crystals. “I suppose you figured it out when you teased me and I ran away, didn’t you. But did you have to be quite so cruel about it?”
“About what??” Zagreus’s hands are fisted in the stupid white fabric of his half-deflated costume. Does he dare — could he hope, for something more than he ever thought he’d get, could he want — could Thanatos want — the way he loves Thanatos, deeper and stronger than the primordial ocean, could Thanatos, too, feel —
Thanatos smiles. Zagreus would give anything to tear it off Thanatos’s face. “You want me to say it, then? You want to hear it, because you don’t think this was enough? Fine! I love you, Zagreus. I’m in love with you, I have been since we were eight years old, and I only figured it out last week. I love you. Are you happy? Is that enough?”
“It’s enough,” Zagreus says, setting his tea on the table and rising to cup Thanatos’s face. Thanatos shudders in his grip, tries to turn away, but he doesn’t tear himself from Zagreus’s grip. “And I am happy, Than. Ah, more than you can believe. I’m — “ Zagreus bites his tongue to stop himself from doing something stupid like bursting into tears. “I’m really glad.”
“Why?” Thanatos murmurs, ground glass-dust in his voice.
“Well. Erm. I love you too?” Zagreus has never said it to anyone before, but it feels right. It feels euphoric, to say it aloud. “I’m in love with you too, Than. Every way you can imagine.”
Thanatos does tear himself away, then. “Don’t. Don’t say it. You’re taking this too far, Zag.”
But it’s Zag, instead of Zagreus. He lets Thanatos back away and regard him with trembling, wary eyes, lets himself relax and hope that all his love and admiration and adoration for Thanatos shows. In the way he smiles at Thanatos, in the curve of his eyes, carved into the edges of his skin.
“Than. Would I lie to you?”
“You’re drunk,” Thanatos insists, which isn’t a yes but isn’t a no either, and is really more of a, I can’t believe you, I can’t believe that you would return my feelings, I can’t let myself believe.
Zagreus steps forward now, clasps Thanatos’s hand in his cautiously. Thanatos lets him. “Than,” Zagreus says, telling himself he can admire Thanatos’s eyes after they get this sorted out and, hopefully, cuddling in Zagreus’s bed. “I have been — well — mostly sober since you dragged me out of the party.”
“Mostly sober,” says Thanatos, with an appropriate amount of suspicion.
“Sober enough to know I mean it when I say I love you!” Thanatos shudders again at his words, a pretty flush creeping its way up the lobes of his ears. Hmm. “Sober enough to take my genetics final with all the meager confidence I normally have,” Zagreus amends.
That gets Thanatos to look at him, really look at him, and slowly lower the first of his barriers. “You… so you were not merely teasing me? When you said — “
“That I love you?” Zagreus interrupts loudly, and watches with no short amount of pleasure as Thanatos flushes deeper. “Than. Thanatos. Sweetheart. My favorite fashionable goth. Look at me. I, Zagreus, would never tease you about this. Okay?”
Thanatos melts, like ice in sweet Ambrosia. “Okay,” he says, still tentative, but trusting and loving nonetheless. “Okay, Zag.”
“Right!” Zagreus says cheerfully. “Now can I please tell you that I have been wanting to push you against the wall and kiss you for an indeterminate length of time and then guide you to a bedroom, hopefully my bedroom, like a true gentleman, since you found me at Meg’s party?”
Thanatos’s mouth drops open.
Zagreus wilts, though he tries to make it subtle. “Too much? It was probably too much, I mean, I really do want to kiss you, but if you just figured out you love me last week, perhaps this is, erm. Too fast for you? And you would prefer light kissing — or no kissing at all until you’re ready?”
“No,” Thanatos growls — actually growls, holy fuck, that’s really hot and Zagreus will have to revisit that at a later date. He pulls Zagreus close, by the waist. Hhhhhhhh, goes Zagreus’s overloaded brain. “Not too much. You may feel free to carry through on the promise of what you have so descriptively detailed. I would hate it if you think it is too much, after all that you’ve said.”
Oh, Zagreus thinks.
He loops his arms around Thanatos’s neck and draws him into a kiss. Thanatos kisses back with no short amount of enthusiasm, and Zagreus finally (finally!) gets the chance to run his hands through Thanatos’s moonlight-spun hair as Thanatos deepens the kiss.
Oh indeed. Zagreus can most definitely work with this.
And if Zagreus has a hundred other vivid fantasies to tell Thanatos in great detail later, curled around each other in bed — and if one of them involves becoming Thanatos’s boyfriend and moving in, a fanciful little domestic dream of his — well, that’s something for future Zagreus to look forward to.