Work Text:
This is the first inn they’ve seen since they defeated Zuen. It’s a little rundown, not that Peter particularly cares since it’s honestly nicer than his old apartment. It’s a decently sized inn, packed to the brim with people still celebrating the sky’s return.
If Thanatos was still here, Peter thinks he’d be huddled close to him to avoid the crowd. It worked fairly well in the past - Thanatos’ menacing aura keeping most people at a distance. But now, he just has to wait by the entrance while Elena charms the innkeeper for a room. Try to ignore the empty space beside him.
Elena’s hair is a bit longer than it was before - resting neatly around their shoulders. And it’s silvery blonde now instead of that silvery white. It looks cute. It looked cute the way they had it as Rumi and it looks cute now. Elena could probably pull off any hairstyle they wanted. And when Peter told them that, they laughed and said thank you in that deeply sincere way of theirs, smiling bashfully.
In that moment especially, he would’ve done anything Elena asked.
He watches now as Elena spins around and walks towards him, coat billowing out behind them. Triumphantly, they hold up a room key for Peter to take. Which he does, brushing their fingers together just to watch Elena’s face soften.
“You go on ahead, Peter. I’m going to grab something from the bar.”
“Okay. See you soon.”
He kisses Elena’s cheek and then they’re heading off in different directions. Sunny trots after Elena, weaving between their legs.
The room is fairly small - mostly taken up by the bed and a large cabinet. As Peter shuts the door behind him, it dawns on him that this is the first time in roughly a year that he’s been actually alone. Because even when Thanatos and Rumi weren’t around there was always Exandroth. Always his overwhelming presence pushing at Peter’s mind, ready to take over at a moment’s notice.
It’s strange.
He’s not sure whether he should laugh or cry. Whether he should have any reaction at all.
All he really knows is that there’s an ache in his chest, and there’s a pressure building up behind his eyes, and his limbs feel heavy. And the bed looks inviting but it’s like there’s a disconnect between his brain and his body.
So instead he just stands there. Just in front of the door. Listening to the muffled sounds of the patrons nearby.
It’s how Elena finds him.
They gently take the keys from his grasp and he hears the sound of a door locking. Feels hands in his as Elena sits down on the bed in front of him.
They’re not in their human form anymore. Somewhere in the current haziness of his mind, Peter can recognise that extension of trust for what it is.
A slight tug kicks his body back into motion. He sits down on the bed. Leans against Elena, rests his head on their shoulder. Sinks into the feeling of their arm wrapping around his waist and their hand lightly running up and down his side.
“Everything okay, Peter?” Their voice is low, but it easily cuts through the muffled noises of the inn.
“Yeah. Just, you know, tired.” And then, quieter, “I don’t know.”
He died a couple days ago. He got to finally drive Exandroth out of his mind and kill him. He had to say goodbye to one of his closest friends - one of his only friends. He proposed to Elena and they said yes.
And as much as he knew those facts were true, there was still a certain sense of unreality to them while walking those forest paths. Like at any moment someone could shake him awake and the whole past year would have never happened. Or he’d blink his eyes open and still be in the meat room.
But it’s been a couple of days now. He made it to a town. And he’s still here, in this reality. Which means those facts are true and they’re going to stay true. And there’s so many conflicting emotions attached to each one of them that he doesn’t even know where to start unraveling it all.
He thinks maybe he’ll just focus on one of them for now. The easiest one to deal with. Elena said yes .
The ring is sitting innocently on their finger. Peter can feel it pressed against his own fingers as they intertwine, resting in Elena’s lap.
He needs to get a matching one. So people can see that it’s not just that Elena’s married, but they’re married to him specifically. Maybe they can have a little ceremony too, although he’s not sure who he would invite.
If Thanatos was still here-
-But he’s not. So Peter probably shouldn’t dwell on it.
“I got us some wine.” Elena murmurs into his hair. “It’s red, so we don’t have to have it right now.”
“No, it’s fine.” He sits up properly, taking his weight off of Elena so they can move. “Wine sounds good.”
The last - and really the only - time he got drunk was when Exandroth was still inside of him. And that was a horrible experience, from what little he can remember, so it’d be nice to replace the memory. He hasn’t really had a lot of alcohol before so he’s not even sure whether sharing a bottle of wine would even get him drunk. It’d at least be something, though.
“I got it as a celebration, of sorts.” Elena says, as they uncork the bottle and pours them both a glass. “For killing the gods, sure, but most importantly…” they sit gingerly down on the bed, offering a glass with a soft smile on their face, “our marriage.”
Peter takes the glass and feels himself smiling just at the mention of it. Their marriage. They’re actually, really married.
“I never actually thought I’d get married.” Peter says in a rush, almost like a confession. “I never even really thought about it like… in general, honestly. I was mostly just, you know, focused on sorting rocks and making enough money to feed Lizard.”
“I thought about it a bit.” Elena’s eyes are focused on their glass as they swirl the liquid around absently. “Not recently, though. Not as Rumi. Well,” and then their eyes seem to meet his, “not until you proposed.”
“It wasn’t- it wasn’t too soon, right?”
“Oh, it probably was.” They shrug. “But, I don’t honestly care. I’m… really happy with you, Peter.”
“Oh, phew! Okay, cool.” Peter feels his smile widen as Elena laughs a little. “I guess, though… I just wanted to say, like, I’m sorry if I mess up. Or do or say something dumb or- or something.”
“It’s okay, Peter.” Elena shifts, pressing their shoulders together. “I’ll probably mess up, too. I haven’t really, uh… had a good track record. With relationships.”
“Well then… I’ll tell you if you mess up and you tell me if I mess up?”
“That sounds like a plan.”
“Cool.”
“Cool.” Elena echoes.
In this moment Peter feels so much affection, so much joy and warmth bubbling up in his chest that it spills over into a laugh. Elena hums questioningly at him.
“We’re- we’re married! Like, actually married for realsies.”
“We are.” And Elena sounds so fond that if Peter had any doubts about the decision to propose - about Elena’s true feelings - they would’ve been promptly scrunched into a ball and set on fire.
“I dunno, I guess it’s just kinda hitting me now.” He leans forward - careful not to spill the wine - and kisses them. Because he can just do that now. And it’s kind of a clumsy kiss because neither of them can stop smiling but it’s perfect. “I mean, I don’t think I’ve ever been this happy in my life! Well, except for maybe when I got Lizard. But I- I really love you, Elena.”
“I love you, too.” Elena takes his hand. “I think I’ve loved you since the day I first met you - maybe even earlier, when I saw you in my visions - and then I got to know you and I fell in love all over again.”
“You- you- wow .” Peter feels like his whole face has burst into flames. And he’s very much already crying when he says, “you can’t just say stuff like that. You’ll- you’re gonna make me cry.”
“Well, I can’t help it darling, it’s how I feel.” Through the blurriness of tears in his eyes, Peter can see them smiling smugly as they take a sip of wine. And then they’re leaning in close. Letting go of his hand to instead cup his cheek, wiping at some of the tears. “And maybe I really like seeing you blush.”
Which does absolutely nothing to get rid of said blush.
Peter closes the distance between them. They taste a little bit like wine. And when they part, Elena lifts their glass towards him.
“A toast,” they explain. “To spending the rest of our lives together.” And then, quieter, “or for as long as you’d like.”
Peter clinks their glasses together.
“To spending the rest of our lives together,” he declares, delighting in the way Elena’s cheeks darken at the affirmation.
They spend the next couple of hours slowly making their way through the bottle of wine and talking about the future. Talking about houses, and gardens, and ideas for helping the world.
Slowly, everything becomes warm and soft, and Peter wants to curl up in Elena’s arms and never leave. But, if he did that, he wouldn’t be able to look at them and see how pretty they are.
So he’s really in a dilemma at the moment.
“I think I, uh… I want to go clothes shopping,” Elena declares. Then, they frown, picking at what they’re currently wearing. “Would we even have the money for that? I could always just change what I have now.”
“We can get the money,” Peter promises, with all the seriousness of someone who is promising the world. Anything to get them to smile again. “You buy whatever you want babygirl, it’ll be fine. We like… literally killed the gods, we can figure something out.”
“That’s true.”
There’s a soft smile on their face now so Peter counts that as a win.
“Do you have any ideas?” Peter asks. “I mean… I think you’ll look great in anything, honestly, but I wanna hear your ideas.”
“I’m not sure yet,” Elena sighs. “I’ve just spent so much time this past year so sure of things that it’s… it’s almost nice to be unsure. About something like this, at least.”
“That’s fair.” Peter bumps their shoulders together gently. “And hey, you have all the time in the world to figure it out. And I’ll be right there with you.”
“Thank you, Peter.”
Elena begins talking about reforming the economic system and Peter goes back to his previous dilemma of trying to decide between curling up in their arms or staring at them and taking in their beauty.
He decides on the latter, for now. Busies himself with studying every aspect of them so he can commit it all to memory. Every scar, every tiny little detail. Tries to figure out what colours he’d need to mix to paint their hair perfectly.
And speaking of their hair, Peter really wants to try and braid it. Not because he thinks he’d be particularly good at it, but it looks soft and he thinks it’d be fun.
“Can I braid your hair?”
“Hm? Oh, if you want.” Elena runs a hand through their hair absently, hand curling around the ends of it. “Is it even long enough?”
“Um, I’m not sure.” Peter shuffles around behind Elena as they drop their hand back to their lap. “I’ve never actually done this before.”
“Well, I’m sure you’ll do wonderfully, Peter.”
“Thanks!”
He splits their hair into three sections and realises that, yeah, he really does not have a lot of length to work with. Oh well, it was never going to be perfect anyway.
Elena is silent while he works. And he’s too focused on the task in front of him to bother starting up the conversation again.
It’s cosy like this.
Over the past six months, Peter’s really started getting used to the fact that silences with other people aren’t always awkward. At the start, he’d always feel tense whenever a silence came over their group. Like it was his fault somehow and he needed to fix it, although he wasn’t sure he had anything to say that was worth listening to.
Rumi was the one with the grand stories. The one always trying to coax him or Thanatos into talking about something. Which would either lead Thanatos into talking about some aspect of training or killing, or it would send him and Rumi into a moral debate. Peter rarely interjected or contributed to those conversations. They were much grander than him, but nice to listen to.
But back at the start, Thanatos was rarely interested in initiating conversations. So whenever Rumi would stop, the silence felt palpable. Heavy. And whenever Peter tried to fill in the silence it felt as though his words were falling clumsily from his mouth. Like the shape and tone of them was all wrong.
It filled the silence, though. That was all he really needed it to do.
It was like that until one night - just after dinner - when Rumi leant against him and murmured, “I’m not really up for much conversation tonight. I’m sorry, Peter.”
It wasn’t until then, when silences between them started to shift. Started to feel warm and soft, rather than heavy and uncomfortable.
Rumi was so warm pressed against his side, after all. And Peter’s face was definitely warm, Rumi’s casual affections still catching him thoroughly off guard.
It was a nice night. Thanatos eventually came over to sit next to him too, and didn’t complain when Peter dozed off against him.
Peter was woken up from that nap for his watch half-sitting, half-slumped with his back against Thanatos’ arm. Rumi was sprawled in his lap, their arms around his waist and their head leaning against his chest.
It wasn’t comfortable in the slightest, but it was nice.
He misses Thanatos.
He finishes up with Elena’s braid and rummages around in his bag until he can find a piece of string to tie it off. It’s short. And messy, despite the fact that Peter had tried to take his time.
He wraps his arms around Elena’s waist and presses forward to rest his head against their shoulder, closing his eyes as he does so. Elena hums slightly and leans back into his hold.
“I miss Thanatos.”
Peter says it softly. Giving Elena the opportunity to pretend they never heard it. Almost hoping they didn’t.
He’s not sure how long Elena is silent. Time feels malleable right now. Not quite real. But eventually, they sigh. And their voice is a little strained as they say,
“I miss him too, Peter.”
“I know it was like… really cool what he did and all, but I just keep thinking that he should, you know, be here. With us.” He reaches out to grab Elena’s hand. “Well, maybe not right here with us, like, not in the same room, exactly, but… you know.”
“I do.” Elena squeezes his hand. “I know we fought a lot but… he was my friend. And I love him. Admittedly, not in the same way I love you but that hardly matters, right?”
Tears start to well in his eyes. He doesn’t bother to blink them away.
“Yeah. I- I loved him too.”
“We can make sure everyone knows his story,” Elena promises, “and everything he did for the world.”
“I think I could probably make some really cool statues of him like… killing the gods, or something. Could make ‘em really brutal.”
“I think he’d like that.” Elena sounds like they’re smiling, although Peter can only imagine it as something bittersweet.
“I’m… glad you, um.” His voice wavers. It’s getting harder to push the words past the lump in his throat. “Glad you… agree.”
Elena twists in his arms and hugs him close. Just as the dam breaks and he starts sobbing properly.
“He gave me marriage advice, you know?” Their voice is shaky. “I don’t even know where he would’ve picked it up. But it seemed good. So we’ll probably, in part, owe the success of our relationship to him.”
Peter can’t bring himself to battle through the tears to reply but he does hug Elena a little tighter.
“He’s so caring.” Elena continues. “Even if he doesn’t believe it, he is. He cares about the world, about peace… and he cares about you a lot, Peter. Never forget that.”
“He…” Peter swallows thickly. “He cared about- about you, too.”
“I’m sure.” They press a kiss to the top of his head. “Just know he’s content. Comfort yourself with that, Peter.”
It helps a little. But it does nothing to soothe the overwhelming weight of the lack of his presence around them. The emptiness.
Maybe it’s selfish to care more about that. But despite holding the power of a god, Peter is only human.
“But it’s okay to grieve for him.” Elena murmurs. “Just know I’m right here with you. For as long as you want me to be.”
He’s not sure how long they stay there. How long he cries.
When he started, he didn’t think he’d ever run out of tears. And he still feels like that a little as he stops. But some of the tension in his chest seems to have eased.
His limbs feel heavy, and his face feels gross, and he’s got a headache the size of Aona. The exhaustion from earlier in the night that was chased away by the wine has come crawling back to make a home in his body.
“How are you feeling, Peter?”
Like someone’s carved him hollow and he was awake for every second of it. He’s not sure what to do with it. Whether he feels better or worse. Everything feels too raw to tell. He doesn’t want to say any of that.
“I don’t know.” He sits up. Wipes his face. “Can I braid your hair again?”
“Of course.”
Elena twists around. And Peter loses himself in methodically unbraiding their hair and then braiding it again. It’s a little like sorting rocks. He has to put each bit of hair in a specific section.
He feels a little calmer, doing this. Like he’s approaching normal again, whatever that means for him now.
And once he’s done he doesn’t tie it off. Just repeats the whole process again. He figures Elena would tell him to stop if they want him to.
He’s just starting the third braid when Elena speaks, their voice soft.
“You know, I’m a little surprised it took so long.”
It takes Peter a second to process the words. And then another second to realise the reason they’re confusing him is because he hasn’t been on the train of thought Elena has.
“What d’you mean?”
“Not the-“ Elena puts their hand with the ring up, wiggling their fingers, “-marriage, necessarily. Just… the getting together. I mean, I don’t think I was that subtle.”
“Oh, um,” Peter shrugs, forgetting that Elena won’t be able to see him do so. “I mean, I’d never really had a friend before, so I wasn’t really sure.”
“Right.” Elena laughs. “Earlier that night you called me ‘bestie’ - that really took me off guard, did you know?”
“Hey, I mean,” he feels himself smile - just a little, “at that point we were besties!”
“That’s true.”
Peter finishes up the braid and ties it off. Elena runs a hand down it, likely feeling every bump and flaw. He waits for them to mention it.
But all they do is turn and kiss his cheek and say, “Thank you, Peter.”
“I should be the one saying that to you, probably.”
Elena hums. “It helped us both, I’d say.”
“That’s good.” Peter flops down onto the bed and closes his eyes. It relieves the ache of them a little. “If you go to sleep with it in your hair will get all wavy. Well, that’s what used to happen to my mum’s hair, at least.”
“That will be interesting.”
He hears Elena moving. And when he opens his eyes, the light in the room has been extinguished and they’re lifting up the covers of the bed. He groans.
“I don’t wanna move.”
He doesn’t even know if he can. The amount of energy it’d take to get under the covers feels like the same amount of energy it’d take to climb a mountain.
“C’mon, Peter,” Elena kneels on the bed next to him, “surely you don’t want to sleep on top of the bedsheets?”
“Carry me?”
He lifts his arms up and they laugh.
“If you wish, darling,” Elena says, their voice fond.
Elena crawls over him to stand on his side of the bed. They put an arm under his knees and he lifts his back a little so they can hold on there, too. When he’s lifted, he wraps his arms around their neck and presses a kiss to their cheek.
“Thank you.”
They smile down at him.
“Of course, Peter.”
They carry him to the side of the bed with the covers mostly pulled back and set him down gently. Then they crawl over him again to get under the covers next to him. He puts his glasses on the bedside table and turns to face them.
They’re barely visible - without his glasses and in the darkness. Just a shadowy blob.
Elena shuffles in closer and throws an arm over his waist. Tangles their legs with his.
“Goodnight, my love.”
“Goodnight.” He fumbles around to find their free hand and grabs it. Squeezes it briefly. “Love you, too."
He’s asleep before he knows it.
Peter’s not actually sure what wakes him up. One second he’s drifting off with Elena against him and the next thing he knows he’s blinking his eyes open, Elena briefly nowhere to be found. At least until Peter looks next to him, where he sees their blurry form sitting up.
“Elena?” He reaches over to grab his glasses, yawning as he goes. “What’s up?”
“ Peter .” And there’s so much relief in their voice that Peter’s not sure what to do with it. “I’m sorry for waking you, Peter, go back to sleep.”
Peter knows there’s a lot about Elena he still doesn’t really know yet. But he’s fairly certain he can tell when their voice is strained with tears, which is exactly how it sounds right now.
It’s made all the more obvious by the way they’re hunched in on themselves. Their body trembling slightly, their face turned away. And either the braid fell out or they took it out, because their hair is falling over their face like a curtain.
“Hey,” he ducks a little, trying to meet their gaze, “what’s wrong?”
“Who said anything was wrong, Peter? I just…” They sigh shakily. “I’m fine now.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
“Can you, um… can you look at me?”
“No.” A shaky breath in. “I’m sorry, not right now.”
“Hey, it’s fine. Whatever you’re comfortable with.”
There’s silence for a second. Then Elena’s body stops trembling almost immediately and they’re turning to face him, straightening their posture as they move.
“I’m fine, Peter.”
And they do look fine. No tear tracks, no red puffy eyes, a soft smile on their face. Completely normal.
They can’t quite hide the tremor in their voice, though.
Peter decides not to look too much into it. He’s pretty sure he knows what he’ll find anyway, but Elena deserves their privacy. He doesn’t want to push too far, too fast.
“Okay. I love you, Elena.”
Elena’s expression flickers. But whatever emotion was shown was gone too fast for Peter to decipher it. And something in his gut twists at the idea that maybe he said the wrong thing. Maybe Elena’s about to tell him he messed up and they’ll go to sleep trying not to touch each other and he’ll wake up and they’ll be gone.
But all that happens is Elena smiles a little wider - a little more genuinely - and says, “I love you, too.”
“So, um… do you want to stay up or do you want to go back to sleep?”
“Let’s go back to sleep.” Elena shuffles closer to him and then pauses. “Unless you want to stay up?”
“No, it’s fine.”
Peter takes his glasses off again and lies back down. Opens his arms for Elena to crawl into.
They position their head right over his heart. Twist their hand into a section of his shirt and holds it tightly. When they get situated, they let out a large breath.
He thinks he can piece together what happened. So, he wraps his arms tightly around them. Tries to push all his love into the action. Tries to remind them that he’s alive.
“Peter?” Their voice is still wavering. “Can you tell me a story please?”
“Yeah, of course.”
He talks about something that happened during his adventuring party days. It’s probably a little boring. He wasn’t with them for very long, and when he was he mostly just held the bags. He also goes off on a tangent about the cool rock he found. But Elena doesn’t complain so it’s probably good enough.
He can tell when they fall asleep. The hand clutching his shirt like a lifeline slowly slackens. Their breathing evens out, their body relaxes.
He keeps going with the story for a little bit, just in case. Until it gets more and more difficult to force the words out of his mouth and he drifts off to sleep as well.
His dreams aren’t pleasant, but they haven’t been for roughly a year now. The only difference is that now he knows for sure it’s not Exandroth, when beforehand it was kind of a fifty-fifty.
The point is he’s used to it. The full body flinch as he wakes, the racing of his heart.
Elena stirs. But by the time they’re awake enough to do anything, Peter’s already calmed down. Grounded himself in the warmth of the sun shining through the curtain and the comforting weight of Elena practically on top of him.
There’s still a pit in his stomach. And he feels kind of distant from his body and also like he could start crying at any moment. But it’s manageable.
“Everything okay, Peter?” Elena asks, voice rough from sleep.
And he understands better than ever why Elena kept insisting they were fine last night. Because he’s not. Not really. But it’s manageable, and he will be soon enough, and he doesn’t really want to worry Elena in the meantime.
“I don’t know.” He decides to be honest. Lead by example, isn’t that what people say? “I will be soon.”
“Soon as in a couple of minutes, or…?”
“Yeah. I mean, I think so. I should be.”
“Okay.” Elena shifts, pressing in closer. “Let me know if you need anything, okay darling?”
“Okay.”
He doesn’t say anything else, despite the fact that he needs quite a lot. It’s nothing Elena can do for him anyway.
Because what he needs is Thanatos back. What he needs is to get rid of that ache in chest that feels like he’s being stabbed all over again. For his back to stop hurting where Exandroth’s wings would grow.
Maybe he just needs to forget Exandroth entirely, actually. Forget the nightmares, and the worm dimension, and the feeling of being shoved into the back of his own mind and made a prisoner to whatever nightmare scenario Exandroth would cook up for him.
He knows Elena has that memory altering spell. It’s tempting to ask them to carve those memories out of his mind. But they’re so thickly entwined with memories he desperately doesn’t want to forget ever and he’s terrified that trying to remove them will bring everything crashing down.
So he catches the question on the tip of his tongue and runs it against the back of his teeth as if he could rub away the thought permanently and keep it from returning to his mind.
Because the pit in his stomach is manageable, and the ache in his body is manageable, and the feeling of almost constantly being on the verge of crying is manageable. He’s used to the nightmares and maybe one day enough time will have passed that he’ll forget them.
Maybe one day he’ll get used to the grief of losing Thanatos, too.
“It’s still weird, feeling the sun,” Peter comments, in an attempt to drag himself out of whatever spiral he’s about to go down.
Elena hums in agreement and Peter feels it in his chest.
“It’s nice, isn’t it?” They say, stretching out.
“Yeah. And we did that, huh?”
“We did.” Peter can hear the self-satisfied smile in their voice.
Elena starts moving, propping themself up into a half-sitting position until they’re face-to-face. Peter uses the time to quickly grab his glasses and put them on.
“ Are you okay, Peter?”
“Yeah.” He’s as okay as he’ll get for now, he thinks. “Just… you know. Nightmares.”
Elena nods slowly.
“I see.”
“Are you okay?”
For a brief second, they stiffen.
“Yes.” It sounds a lot more like the truth than it did last night. “It’s as you said, Peter - nightmares.”
“They kinda suck, don’t they?”
Elena laughs. And with the faint light of the sun through the curtains they look beautiful. Well, they always look beautiful - but this moment specifically is one Peter wants to remember forever. Maybe he’ll try and paint it later, although he’s not sure he can do it justice.
Elena’s saying something that sounds like an agreement to what he said. But Peter’s too enraptured by the image in front of him to really process the words.
“You’re beautiful,” Peter breathes out, almost absently.
And Elena’s whole face is overtaken by a deep blush. Peter only catches a glimpse of it though, as almost immediately they bury their face in his shoulder.
“You’re too sweet, Peter.” Then Elena props themself up again and kisses him. He can feel their smile against his lips. “ You’re beautiful.”
Sometimes - well, a lot of the time - Elena says or does things and it feels like they’re holding him over the edge of a cliff. Not in a scary or bad way necessarily, just that it’s exhilarating and he feels breathless. This is one of those moments.
So he tries half-heartedly to calm his racing heart and the butterflies in his stomach. Searches for something he can say or do to keep that smile on their face.
“So, did you uh… did you wanna go clothes shopping today? Or we can maybe find, like… a different town. If you want.”
“Today sounds nice.” They stretch again, but this time they sit up. “I’ve sort of been wearing the same thing for a while now. It’ll be nice to properly change into something different for once.”
“Cool.” Peter sits up and stretches as well, yawning as he does. “I need to go and find something for Lizard to eat.”
The food they have for breakfast is nice. Well, compared to the usual meals they’d eat out in the forest. Elena and Thanatos could be good cooks when they wanted to be but a lot of the time they didn’t really have the resources needed for that.
And after making sure Lizard and Sunny also get fed, they make their way to a clothing store that Elena likes the look of. They pick up a lot of different styles of clothes and insist on Peter coming into the changing room with them.
It’s a bit of a tight squeeze. Peter finds himself acting as a clothing rack and pressed up against a corner to give Elena enough room to change.
They try on an outfit, flick between their human form and their normal form, ask Peter’s opinion, and then move to the next outfit. The worn clothes are sorted into three distinct piles, although Peter doesn’t know what each one means.
He’s also not very good at giving his opinion. He doesn’t necessarily have an eye for fashion and he thinks Elena looks good in everything they put on. But he can tell that their face gets a little brighter when they try on something they really like so he tries to be more enthusiastic than usual when asked about those outfits.
After a bit, Elena seems satisfied. The three piles get merged into two and Peter’s given one to put back while Elena buys the rest. They seem to have settled on mostly practical clothing that still has a bit of elegance and elaborateness - although, nothing quite to Rumi’s extent.
Once they’re done there, they head to a jeweller to commission a ring for Peter - one that matches Elena’s.
All-round it’s a great day.
Peter’s chest still aches, and he misses Thanatos terribly, but he’s excited for the future. Excited to be able to wear his wedding ring, for Elena to go out in their new clothes.
Excited to spend the rest of his life with Elena as they go around and try to help the world not as gods, but as people.