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Thanatos was mildly surprised to see the numbers on his tablet jumping up and down out of nowhere.
He checked the total to find a handful of souls having been reaped without his knowledge, half of which was coded orange or yellow. The timing was close too, which indicated the work of one person.
There were only two other people capable of this, and Thanatos knew well enough it wasn't Hermes. His co-worker had been too immersed in his delivery industry to spare overtime in this job. Which meant this could only be the other person's doing.
Thanatos hadn't expected him to resurface this time around. Nonetheless, a small joy bubbled up in Thanatos' chest at the thought of seeing him again. It hadn't been so long since the last time they met - not as long as the days he had spent mindlessly reaping the dead - and yet Thanatos found himself looking forward to their rare encounters as if he had been waiting for thousands of years.
With the tablet tucked neatly into the infinite space of his suit, Thanatos spread his wings. It took him less than a second to locate his beloved soul - in a park in Washington, and then at his command, the shadows rippled, quickly forming a tunnel to his destination. Thanatos fixed his hair and smoothed out his suit. Gods didn't do that, but Thanatos found the idea of appearing ruffled from work in front of his favorite soul revolting.
When he was sure that his ponytail wasn't coming undone anytime soon, Thanatos stepped into the shadow tunnel.
The Washington Square Park looked less bright and more barren tonight.
Thanatos didn't mind. He had been friends with darkness since the day he came to this world, and the only light he ever looked for wasn't the mortals' flimsy artificial light. No, it belonged to a beautiful soul, unseen to all others' but Thanatos' eyes, one he had come to adore among many other spirits that passed through his fingers like sand.
With half-lidded eyes, Nico di Angelo smiled up at him from where he was swinging his legs on the top of the Square Arch, the rare fluorescent light from below casting shadows on his lovely face, all pale skin and paler lips. The winds ruffled his hair, even his braid was slightly askew, and all the son of Hades did was hold it out of his eyes to see Thanatos better. Beneath his ribs, nestled deep in his heart, a spark gleamed ethereally.
"There you are, Than." He said in a whisper that was drawn out by the howling currents. His voice had never been the same from the last time the Twins were allowed outside of Purgatory. Regardless, Thanatos was far more attuned to his soul to rely on mere sound vibrations.
"The night is brighter with you here, starlight," He greeted, to which Nico laughed airily as though they were sharing an inside joke.
Nico always thought it was a joke, unaware of how many times Thanatos had wished he could convey how much of a star the other's soul was to a millennia-year-old death god.
It was alright. They still had all the time in the world to get the words across to each other.
"Keep it going, and you wonder why people always mistake you for Cupid," Nico teased, a twinkle in his eyes that almost alleviated the frown on Thanatos' face.
After that debacle, Thanatos' somewhat mild relationship with his twin had soured into a vindictive aversion. He could take it when people mistook them - after all, Eros didn't do anything wrong, but the line had been crossed when the love god decided that forcing Thanatos' favorite soul onto his knees mentally and physically was a good game to play. And obviously, reaping those who had crossed the line was what Thanatos did best.
"It's too much of a beautiful night to mention him now," He said flatly, flapping a wing as if the name of the love god could be erased easily like swatting an annoying fly. When he reached the other's side, Thanatos curled it around the son of Hades, creating a wall of feathers to shield him from the strong winds. "What brought you here, little one?"
Nico merely giggled at his blatant attempt of changing the subjects before shrugging nonchalantly. "I'm helping you out," he chirped. "Thanks," he added.
Thanatos already knew that. The numbers didn't lie and the smell of burnt spirits still lingered under the frosty scent of Nico's hair, so strong that the snappy winds of December couldn't dissipate. It seeped into the demigod's natural Underworld aroma of cinnamon and ice, mixing into a warm, slightly tingling taste on the tip of the tongue. Thanatos could see, from the corner of his eyes, thin shadows tugging at the demigod's oversized jacket, a remnant of the shades' restlessness.
"My work is without any hindrance," he hummed, "There was no need to concern yourself."
"But, I want to help you," Nico just shrugged again, relaxing and without a care for the world.
Hades would surely flip. "The Lord wouldn't be very pleased to find out the princeling had disappeared from the safety of his palace."
"He could live with it," Nico replied without missing a beat. Thanatos couldn't prevent his lips from curving up in an amused smile.
Reaching down, Thanatos wound an arm around the son of Hades. His hand came to rest on Nico's chest, pressed gently on where his heart resided. "But is your vessel stable enough to resurface today?" he asked, the concern just half honest.
"Just peachy."
Under Thanatos' palm, the demigod's heart beat rhythmically through a layer of cable-knitted yarn, softly against the calluses on his hand. His soul was pulsating, too, the eigengrau color unadulterated. Nothing out of the ordinary.
"Your essence is indeed secured," Thanatos concluded, before sliding a hand under the demigod's chin to till his face up until they were eye to eye. "However, I would prefer my favorite soul to remain in his sanctuary rather than risk the harm of the Overworld."
Nico smirked, the playfulness matching Thanatos' admonishing tone, "You wouldn't let anything happen to me."
He wasn't wrong.
If one were to ask, Nico would say it was per his and Hades' agreement, and Thanatos let him believe such.
That day, the demigod met his eyes over the Lord's shoulders with a surprising calmness for someone who just had his body stolen by the Night. He didn't protest, only nodded, when Thanatos told him he could never leave - "Your father's grief is more immense than the endless Fields of Asphodel and deeper than Tartarus could ever reach" - so the god kept silent and remained by the demigod's side, tending to the princeling's teetering existence as he played the enabler to the Lord's unlawful wish. His soul was the firefly to Thanatos' nonexistent childhood, one he would put in a jar and keep through the summer to admire its beauty every night.
Hades was kind enough to not expose his possessive intention, so Nico never found out about what Thanatos might have done to keep his soul on this side of the Lethe, had it not been for Hades' demand and his desire to align; nor was he aware of how many souls had ended up shattered into oblivion in their hands just to preserve his light.
"Your importance exceeds that of everything I have come to know," Thanatos confessed easily, to which the demigod smiled a waning smile.
"I know."
There were many things Nico di Angelo didn't know, and Thanatos preferred it that way.
The son of Hades turned his gaze to the large square seventy feet below them. The mortal police had arrived, it seemed. Thanatos could see the mortal souls moving across the isolated space, surrounding the corpses with a mishmash of eye-stinging yellow and neon green. Their voices were lost to the winds before they reached his ears.
"Were them at least a well-behaving bunch?" Thanatos asked.
"You tell me. You are the one with the color-coded tables."
"And you are the only one allowed to touch Hel's Record of the Dead other than herself."
Nico cracked a smile at that. There was nothing that indicated the reluctance of being caught interfering with two pantheons in his grin. Thanatos wouldn't rat him out, of course, nonetheless, the demigod's confidence was a shiny thing in and of itself. "I just thought I'd help you skip some protocols, you know." He tilted his head innocently, sending his earring of amber and moonstone chiming quietly from where it dangled on his right ear. "The ghosts in this Square had been around for so long that they might just be a code-red hazard at this point. And there were so many too! It'd be such a hassle for you to take care of them by yourself."
With a bone-white hand, the son of Hades smoothed down a ruffled feather on Thanatos' wing, sending soft tingles down his spine. The sensation was unfamiliar to him, mostly because Thanatos had never come close to anyone for them to have a chance to graze his wings, but Nico managed to do it so sweetly. "I'd like to take some burden off your shoulder if I can. You have enough on your plate already."
Nico's soul was flickering, and from it, Thanatos could feel the warmth flow into his essence. His kindness always tasted sweet, Thanatos had found out since the first day he saw Nico act in person. He cared so deeply and almost foolishly unconditionally. It was a type of innocence - for the light within his soul to burn so stubbornly, even past the threshold of mortality - if innocent was a flame that was plucked out from the Phlegethong's fire and forged in Hestia's hearth, as sweet as it was fierce when it fueled the spark inside the demigod's soul, and in turn, filled up Thanatos' vacant one.
"Nobody ever cared that much," He remarked idly.
"I do," the son of Hades declared firmly, "You've helped me a lot, I want to do something for you, too."
It was almost frightening how easily it was for those words to fill Thanatos with fondness.
As the god of Death, Thanatos had reaped too many souls to be tired from his daily job, but it felt nice to be cared for after thousands of years of wallowing away in loneliness. Thanatos couldn't help but relish the feeling. Nico di Angelo had just walked into his never-ending days of boring souls collecting and suddenly the job felt less like scooping up sand with a bony hand.
Carefully, Thanatos brought a hand to the demigod's silky hair. It had grown much longer, years since the day Nico's body had to move on from regular food to persevere, now reaching past his shoulder and bubbling like cotton candy whenever he moved his head. A braid hid neatly behind layers of curly hair, a reminder of the grief that would never be fully gone. Thanatos held it between his fingers.
Nico di Angelo kept death like a child holding onto their beloved teddy bear in the middle of a nightmarish night. Grief bled into his soul but the light was still there. And it just made Thanatos more smitten.
"No words could fully express my gratefulness for your compassion. Your kindness shines brighter than Sirius could ever wish. Apollo wishes he could light up the world the way you do to my existence," he said, causing a blush to bloom on the other's cheeks. The affection tasted strange on his tongue, but Thanatos didn't want to put it away, "Know that you are the most beautiful soul I've ever had the blessing to meet, Nico di Angelo."
By now, the son of Hades looked pretty much burning up from his neck, no less bashful. Regardless, Thanatos had observed the living long enough to recognize the joyful embarrassment in the way his smile curved higher and his inky eyes glimmered with delight. Nico looked more alive than ever.
"You flatter me, Than. I didn't know you had it in you," the demigod laughed gaily, ducking his head further into the shelter of Thanatos' wing. The braid slipped out of the god's hand and he immediately missed the softness on his fingertip.
"I merely speak the truth."
"Cupid would be proud."
The overflowing affection inside Thanatos was just enough to spare him the displeasure of hearing his twin's name.
Nico must have realized he'd misspoken it, as the demigod quickly smiled up at him and prompted, "Say, the banishing worn me down a little. Did you meet any good souls today? I want to hear goodness." He curled his pale, pale fingers around two of Thanatos' much larger ones, looking into his eyes with childish excitement. "Tell me about them, would you?"
If Thanatos ever came across a siren, their voice would perhaps sound like whatever came out of Nico di Angelo's mouth.
He was supposed to be the demigod's supervisor, and now here he was, indulging the other's demands without repentance. Thanatos could only lament as he searched in the pocket of his suit "I did meet one you'd perhaps like to see."
Under Nico's curious gaze, he pulled out the soul he had reserved for this exact moment, which came in the form of a small glowing ball floating around in his hand. As expected, the son of Hades took a liking to it immediately. His own soul shimmered and the spark inside gleamed, delighted. He reached out eagerly but didn't touch.
Nico didn't want this soul to be sucked into one with his.
"It's purple, and red, and green," He marveled, "And it's so small---"
They had done this numerous times already, and every time seemed to be a new experience to the son of Hades. Be it due to his inability to leave the palace as much as he'd have wanted to, which cut him off from the flow of the Overworld and everything that grew with it, or perhaps just the pureness in his heart that no mortal eye could see, that Nico di Angelo never stopped being fascinated by the stories that Thanatos brought, collected from the many souls he came across every day. The demigod used to rely on it to maintain his sanity and now he was just too deep in to get out. It made Thanatos proud to see him so invested. People rarely cared about his employment, Hades was the only one who did yet only asked about KPIs and population growth.
Nico's joy was contagious and their essences were far more attuned to miss even just a little fluctuation. Thanatos wouldn't have it any other way.
"What's their story?" the demigod asked eagerly, his eyes still glued to the shiny soul-sphere. "They are glowing so colorfully. They must have been a joyous one in their lifetime."
Thanatos watched the demigod. He had looked into his mother's eyes the first day he was born; had watched her weave nebulas after galaxies. Yet, Nyx could gather all the quasars' light across the universe, and still, she wouldn't be able to compete with the glimmer that nestled deep inside Nico di Angelo's eigengrau soul.
"Tell me, Than." The demigod called. Thanatos smiled at him.
Someday, he would tell the little prince that a god was in love with his soul. Someday, Thanatos would show him how dazzling he was on the inside and make him believe that Nico di Angelo was indeed the most beautiful soul in this world, at every moment in the flow of time. And should it be kingdom come, Thanatos would let him know how much he was willing to burn to keep the demigod’s light shining just the way it had always been.
But for now, Thanatos remained silent as he unraveled the records of a stranger's life and told, "This is a child who died of..."