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There's a boy, a young god, with a smile all modesty and mismatched eyes and a heart so alive that Eros wants to do very many things that would make Mama intensely disappointed in him. Eros wants many things, but he doesn't do any of them because he can, in fact, control himself. He sits, instead, at his beautiful mother's side as she answers boons scattered across the Underworld and he listens to a heart struggle to grow so far beyond its confines. Hopes it does, hopes it grows and grows, thick and tangled as the bougainvilleas in his mother's labyrinth, as unchecked as all the wildflowers where no one ever quite reaches to tend. He hopes it cracks the stone along the way.
***
Later flowers bloom in the ash of the boy's—young god's—steps, wild; ivy bends, reaches long tendrils out for him, coils delight at his warmth, a gift only Death could give.
Boy. If Eros was still a boy playing at bows and arrows long into his first century, then Zagreus surely is.
Eros only sometimes feels guilty about laurels. That is, of course, the problem.
***
Zagreus is on Olympus with his mismatched eyes; he has arrived at the afternoon picnic with an apple in hand that Eros does not think he should have, with so many vines coiling pretty and sharp in his ribs, strangling his heart. They'll choke him, if he lets them, but it will be fine, because Zagreus thrives on how things die and come back and die and come back and if Eros could—
Just one arrow, gold and true. To see what might happen.
But his dearest mother likes Zagreus, but his far too kind father smiles in earnest for Zagreus, but all of Olympus likes Zagreus, and so Eros does not. He smiles, instead, and calls the prince—but not Eros'—over to sit by him in a seat rather conveniently empty.
Zagreus is young and so is Eros. Mostly. They can relate.
"Lord Eros," Zagreus greets with his modest smile and mismatched eyes and Eros forgives him not knowing the correct title. Zagreus doesn't have to worry about legitimacy.
Eros doesn't forgive, actually. Eros has never forgiven anyone anything, and that might be a little of the problem, too, but he's not about to start, not even for this pretty prince with his wild heart.
"Zagreus," Eros croons sweet, and promptly twines an arm in his as Zagreus sits, uncurls a wing to offer them both a little more shade under the already perfect shade of Olympus' most desirable picnic location. The sky is sharply blue today, the clouds just so with their shorn edges as if they have been brushed on with the edge of a knife, and somewhere Uncle Dionysus is laughing, loud and full.
Eros relaxes a little, hearing that. Smiles a little more nicely.
"Where did you get that?" Eros asks, tapping the apple in Zagreus' hand.
"Ah, your father. Lord Ares." Zagreus laughs, pushes his hair back from his face a gesture so young, so sincere it makes Eros' teeth ache.
"Prince, actually," Eros says, then he laughs like Mama does when she's amused. "That was very nice of him, I hope you said thank you."
"Prince?" Zagreus asks, surprised.
"Are you going to plant it?" Eros asks as if Zagreus hasn't spoken, plucking the apple from too loose fingers to tilt in the light. Papa's apples are so gold, gold as Eros' wings, and so sweet. They bruise so easily, and then they taste too sweet.
Like rot.
Eros hates rot.
"...should I, do you think?" Zagreus asks. He's been learning a little tact, lately, which is charming. Everyone adores it, Prince Zagreus' toppling steps into proper manners. It is the topic of every party, if Zagreus is not present. Or his mother.
"I'm sure Papa hopes you will. He loves little lessons, Papa does. My Prince Father Ares, I mean." Eros drops the apple back into Zagreus' hands gently so as not to bruise it, leans in close with his sweetest of smiles, rests his cheek upon Zagreus' shoulder to look up at Zagreus through his lashes. Trails his fingertips light over Zagreus' breastbone and listens to the way his chest rustles, his breath.
"All these formalities," Eros sighs. "Why don't we drop them? Just between us. Everyone else is so old, but that doesn't mean we have to be, does it? I like to think we're friends, aren't we?"
"I would hope so," Zagreus says, and he almost, almost asks Eros his age. It is right there, in the intake of air, the curiosity blooming yellow in his throat.
But he doesn't, that time, and it is not, in fact, so bad a picnic at all.
***
Eros waits until Lord Hypnos leaves and then he waits a little longer, in his father's halls that are perhaps the origin of the word spartan. Except Spartinates are foolish, reckless mortals who don't understand his father at all and give him an awful name; he still doesn't know why Papa tolerates them. It would be better if Papa weren't associated with them at all—Papa has never thrown a child aside for a mistake—and so Eros roams sparse halls and tries to think of a new word for the particular humble austerity that his father prizes for his halls all and only his.
"Eros," Papa says, surprised, when he does eventually meander out of his garden. "What are you doing out here?"
"You had company," Eros says.
Eros does feel guilty about a scratch.
"Hardly an excuse," Papa says. "Come in, or are you in a mood for going out?"
"I only wanted an apple," Eros says, risking a glance aside at his father's face.
But this isn't the time he says no; Papa only smiles, the skin of his eyes crinkling with all the other smiles he's ever given Eros so freely, hand settling on the back of Eros' neck warm.
"Of course," he says, as if it's always so easy.
***
"The oddest thing happened the other day," Papa says.
"Oh?" Eros asks, swinging his foot off the ledge of the window exactly the way that worries Papa most.
"Zagreus addressed me as Prince. I wonder where he heard that."
"Perhaps Uncle Dionysus told him," Eros says.
Maybe he might forgive Zagreus. A little.
***
"Did you decide what to do with the apple?" Eros asks.
"I asked my mother to help me," Zagreus says with his modest smile. "She says I'll need to do much of the work, but so far none of the seeds have even sprouted." He shrugs.
They are laying on the grass; another picnic. One of Uncle Dionysus', the only picnics Eros ever bothers to attend. Those and his mother's, but his mother's go without saying.
And Yaya’s.
"Any advice?" Zagreus asks, adding another wildflower they picked from his footsteps to the long chain in his hands.
"Talk to Lord Thanatos," Eros says absent, watching the clouds. They are thick, soft; the sky was not so searing a blue today, and he has perhaps had far too much wine as they watch the sun set. Uncle Dionysus' sun setting picnics always have the headiest wine—he says it makes the colors pop that much more.
Eros thinks he's right.
Zagreus is charming; he has so many flowers in his chest, in his footsteps, and Eros wants to kiss him—that, at least, won't upset his mother. He's never seen anyone grow so much. So freely. None of them do here.
Maybe it's the earth down there. All that blood.
"Did his wing ever come back in?" Eros asks in the silence, turns his head. Zagreus is looking at him with his odd eyes, his brow knit tight; Eros reaches out, smoothes it with his fingertips.
"..I was talking about the apple, mate," Zagreus says careful, and unfolding across all those plants twining in his chest curious yellows bloom bright. Eros can almost see their light in the hollow of his throat where the skin is thinnest.
"Yes," Eros says. "So was I."
***
He likes Zagreus. It's wretched and he's not quite sure when it happened, when he stopped hating his modest smile and his mismatched eyes and how humble he always pretends he is. Maybe it was when Eros realized he's not pretending, he really is just that sheltered. He really doesn't know anything.
It's wretched.
He is very careful to only meet Zagreus at Uncle Dionysus' picnics.
"You need anything there, Eros, you all good?" Uncle Dionysus asks.
"More wine," Eros says.
On anyone else, that smile might have pity silvering its glow and Eros would have to ruin their life, but Uncle Dionysus only smiles warm and hands him a kylix full to brim of wine that tastes too sweet, too heady. The best of his wine.
Zagreus is laughing loud and joyful when Eros finds him under the stars.
"Eros!" he calls, so warm. "Here, I thought you said you weren't coming, take a seat."
And just like that, there is a seat for Eros, and Eros thinks—
The stars are lovely, the night, and Eros buries his face against a shoulder hot as the earth so he doesn't have to look at her, wings tucked neat. Tight.
***
Eros knows when Zagreus does talk to Thanatos. It goes poorly; Zagreus isn't—
It was very nice of Papa to try and teach him a thing that does not live in his bones, but Papa is old.
"I thought you said," Zagreus starts.
"I never said it would fix things," Eros interrupts, swinging his leg off the tree branch, unsure what to think of Zagreus seeking him out. "I said it would help the apple grow."
He is not drunk enough to be anything but himself, but here is Zagreus anyway, angry enough a whole garden is springing in his steps. Mama is going to be furious.
"What sort of nonsense is that?" Zagreus asks, throwing himself beneath the tree to glare at all the flowers in his wake, only to stand again, pacing, each step making even more of a mess and Eros loves it. Loves watching the paving stones crack with heat, loves the flowers pushing through, loves—
"I don't know what I'm even supposed to say to him!" Zagreus says. "He doesn't listen to what I say, and what he says doesn't make sense."
"What did you tell him?" Eros asks, swinging his foot.
"That I understood he had done this on my behalf, and I appreciated it but—"
"Two mistakes already. Do you always rush into them headlong like that?"
"What?" Zagreus spins on his heel to look up at Eros. Eros looks down at him, swinging his foot, and it is only because Zagreus is everything Eros loves best about love that he does not laugh outright at all that confusion blooming blue in his joints.
"You should never say but after you say you appreciate something," Eros says. "And if I know Lord Thanatos at all, this wasn't for you. Not really."
Zagreus' brow furrows. Eros' fingers itch to smooth it.
"You're not very old," Eros says as nicely as he can. "It's a little presumptuous to think he did all this for only you."
It will be a shame to have to hate Zagreus again after this. He's liked the picnics, even the ones at night.
There's yellow at Zagreus' throat. Eros wonders idly which question it is Zagreus is going to pick.
"...how long have you known him?" is the one the prince chooses.
"We only met once," Eros says, then sighs. "This is tiresome. We should go drink and I will listen to you and tell you what to say next time and then we'll never speak again because you'll resent me like everyone else does and I can go back to hating you properly again."
"...you hated me?" Zagreus asks, the wrong thing in all of that to focus on.
"Passionately," Eros tells him, then slips down from the tree and takes his arm.
***
It goes better, the next time Zagreus speaks with Thanatos, but not the better Zagreus no doubt hoped it would.
Not everyone grows well together.
***
The stars are very thick overhead, milky in their way, and Eros is drinking pressed against the curve of a tree, wings tucked very tight. Uncle Dionysus' voice is low and carries; he is telling a story at the bonfire, wild and mostly true. Laughter breaks like waves, which Eros lingers over before he drinks more wine. He'd rather be inside, anywhere, than under all these stars, but his mother won't let him drink this way at home.
He wishes Zagreus had simply kept calling Papa Lord like everyone else always does.
***
Eros was eight when the sky cracked.
He'd been learning how to make things grow, hearts bloom.
They left Olympus, after that. He and his mother, just for a little while. His father didn't come, not for months, but then one night he did. Eros had run to greet him, only for his mother to grab him, yank him close, one hand over his eyes, other gripped tight in his clothes.
He remembers the smell of rot, thick and cloying and too sweet. The dying of it.
Eros wasn't meant to see. Eros wasn't meant to do many things, though that had never mattered at home and they were in a home, one of them. But he wasn’t meant to— He couldn't sleep after the sky had cracked; no one could. When he did, he woke crying often as not, reaching for his left wing to make sure it was still there, nose still full of a smell too sweet. He couldn't sleep and there was that smell, all rot, and—
"Would you like to see?" Apollo had asked.
Eros is sorry, often, for Daphne. He didn't know any better. He was so young.
He didn't understand what his uncle was trying to do.
***
"Eros?'
Eros stirs; there is dew all over his wings, his brow.
"You all right, mate?"
"Zagreus?" he asks. His mouth feels awful, his head, and he cracks an eye open, not entirely sure he's properly awake. The light is all odd, too blue to be true. There is, much quieter now, conversation he can't make out. Uncle Dionysus' picnics always last through dawn.
"Didn't know you were here," Zagreus says, crouching down. "Didn't see you. You could have said hi."
"Why?"
"...because we're friends?" Zagreus says, so puzzled.
"Are we?" Eros asks.
Zagreus frowns, pulls up grass to twist in his fingers. Is quiet; Eros closes his eyes instead of watch ash flare, flowers bloom, vines spring up reaching. Repeat, repeat, repeat—
"One of the seeds sprouted. The other day," Zagreus finally says.
"That's nice."
A bird is singing.
"It's the oddest thing, really." The sound of grass being torn into long strips, more plucked from the earth. The hiss of weight shifting, smoke. "I'd swear it was after..." Zagreus trails off.
It's a very pretty song.
"It's fine if you do hate me for it," Eros says. "Everyone always does when I don't fix things."
"...I think we should get you to bed," Zagreus says, reaches out, and slips the kylix held too loose from Eros' grasp.
***
The sky is very blue. Outside, flowers shift endlessly rippling waves, reds shot through with purple hues, with blues. Somewhere Eros is not looking, Papa is wandering a maze, heart singing gentle, listening to a misty river burble delight.
Mama does have the best maze in all Olympus.
There are events every day on Olympus; if Hypnos is here, then so is Zagreus, but Eros doesn't stir from his room, from the wide, wide window and its curtains sheer that twist in the breeze. He likes to sit here. He likes to watch the flowers. He likes—
There's a knock at the door; he blinks, twists.
"Mama?"
The door opens; a prince with a very modest smile and mismatched eyes sticks his head in.
"...ah, no? Hope it's not too much a disa—I likely shouldn't say that, actually, to her son and all. Could I...?"
"...sure," Eros says. "If you want."
The flowers don't survive very long here—marble is not a very good soil—but they try all the same. Wilt, lay dry scattered in his wake.
Don't rot.
"I thought, well, last time I saw you, you didn't seem your best, and I didn't catch you before I had to leave." Zagreus walks slow, a hand running along the edge of the dresser. "But I didn't want that to be it, if you... don't want to see me again, I suppose. And I feel I—I wanted to say thank you."
Eros' eyebrows raise; he blinks.
"It helped, what you said," Zagreus says careful, then holds out a box, small, that Eros somehow missed. "It's not much, mind, but I'm trying this new thing a friend of mine told me, of being a little more... situationally aware."
Eros can't help it; he tries, desperately, but it bubbles up his throat like the fizz of too new nectar freshly poured—he laughs.
"They sound wise," Eros says, reaching out.
"They've been around a little longer than me," Zagreus says, that modest grin of his tilting higher on one side of his face than the other.
"Don't make me sound old," Eros says, then opens the box, curious what on earth Zagreus could have possibly brought.
He's expecting nectar, not...
"I hope you don't... Maybe I misjudged. But you seem like—"
"Hush," Eros says, and picks the little pot up with it's tiny sapling. There's a note; he takes it up, too. Care instructions.
"I hadn't seen a single pomegranate tree up here," Zagreus says. "I hope it does okay."
"It should," Eros says.
"It doesn't need a good emotional environment or whatever your father's weird apple needs," Zagreus adds.
Eros laughs again, touches one little leaf.
"I suppose I'll manage somehow," Eros says.
"...so would you want to go... maybe not a drink, but Dionysus has a play this afternoon, he said."
"I would," Eros says. "Let me put this down first."
It is a very good play.
It is a better afternoon.