AN: Again, my infinite gratitude to eponymous-rose for the beta!
This time when the Styx churns, Thanatos barely looks up. The ice in his chest is a familiar thing now, a cold knot that tears at the insides of his ribs for a dozen heartbeats until Zagreus at last steps out of the river into his rebirth. He only feels it this close to the House, the death of a god; when he tends to the mortals on the surface it is farther away, easier to bear. Worth the pain to see him here, even so.
Already it has begun to ease, Demeter's winter thawing into spring. Thanatos straightens again, his hand falling back to his side, and turns his attention once more to Hypnos and his endless lists.
Except—
"Oh," Hypnos breathes, almost a sigh, staring at his ledger. His eyes are so wide the hall's jeweled columns reflect in the shimmer. "Well, that's a new one, I guess."
Thanatos grips the edge of his brother's clipboard, wrenching it towards himself until he can see the golden characters glittering into existence. Name: Hades, god of the dead, from beyond the River Styx.
Cause of death: patricide by Zagreus, son of the god of the dead.
"Zagreus," Thanatos sputters, hardly knowing what he says, "he—his father—"
The Styx breaks open in a froth of crimson foam. The dark shape rises, and rises, and rises, the shadows from the hall's flickering torches thrown sharp and weird over the planes of his enormous shoulders. Thanatos has never thought of Zagreus as particularly small, but his father is a giant of a god, and the river must make way for him as it never did for his son. The last of the Styx drips from his fingertips as he emerges, spattering on the stone, scarlet as the fiery burn of Hades's eyes—
Thanatos drops his gaze to the floor, stepping back in deference beside his brother as their lord passes. Hypnos himself is uncharacteristically silent, dwarfed by the rage that boils off their master like blood. Hades does not speak, does not acknowledge their presence as he stalks towards his chambers; the shades queued before his desk whisk out of existence like zephyrs only to reform again, cowed and quivering, in his wake.
The door to Hades's chambers does not slam, but the snap of the latch echoes off the rafters as if he had crashed the thing to the ground.
Escaped.
Zagreus has escaped at last. The thought bewilders, and when he can move again he steps forward until he can see Achilles at his post in the west wing, ever-watchful, ever-patient, just straightening up from his low bow. No sound but the torches sputtering in their sconces; no movement but his short, sharp nod at Thanatos's questioning look, his eyes shining with pride.
Proud, Thanatos thinks wildly, as if it's a thing to be proud of, as if Zagreus can possibly know—
"What does this mean?" Hypnos asks, his voice soft and querulous. "Is that, you know…it?"
"I don't know," Thanatos bites out. It's all wrong, all destroyed; he is a ruin, a hundred thoughts crashing into each other like the wreckage of Charybdis. What should he have expected? Not this, surely, not this pain, strung like glass beads between his certainty Zagreus would succeed and his grief at the same idea, caught up in the twinned pulls of worry and an unwelcome pride of his own, because of course, of course he's made it, how could he have ever doubted, how else could this have ever ended?
"Thanatos?"
"What?" he says through gritted teeth, only to realize he's gripped his own chest again, chiton tangled between his fingers. But it's not just—his heart hurts—
It hurts. It burns like ice, a knot in his chest scraping like stone across his ribs. Who—
"What's happening?"
"I think Zagreus is dying," Thanatos says, every part of him gone numb with cold, and before Hypnos can speak, he grips his scythe out of the aether, pulls the green around him, and is gone.
—
The surface is warm.
Sunny, too, so bright his eyes ache, so bright he must blink through tears before he can recognize the riot of color around him as a garden. Some plants he recognizes, cucumber and aubergine and amaranth; others he does not, trees heavy with small ripe fruits and hedgerows lined edge to edge with something green and springy. So much green tucked here among Demeter's wintry cloth. How has he never seen this place, so close as it is to the House? He wipes his eyes again, his heart glass-cracked with cold.
There. A slash of scarlet among the verdant field.
A woman holds Zagreus's body beneath the shade of an olive tree, his head unmoving in her lap. Her hair is the color of wheat and just as briery; she does not look up as Thanatos approaches, her fingers combing through Zagreus's hair, her thumbs smoothing down his lax cheeks. He lies sprawled on his back beside her, his hands half-curled at his sides; the ever-present flames at his feet have wicked out, leaving only calluses and cracked pale skin. Sunlight falls through the olive branches above them, dappling them both in soft, shifting shadow. He has never seen Zagreus so still.
"God of the Gentle Death," the woman says as he draws near, her voice warm and kind. "It's been a while."
Thanatos jerks to a stop, his feet planting gracelessly into the warm earth. He knows this voice. He knows her. By the gods, how—after all this time— "Lady—Lady Persephone."
She looks up, smiling. Green eyes. Warm, fond, just as prone to mischief as he faintly remembers; Zagreus's eye in his mother's face. I have to find— "Hello, Thanatos."
"My Queen," he says, too late, and falters into an inelegant bow. Grass-blades peep between his toes, vibrant and thriving. "Forgive me. I thought…"
"There's nothing to forgive," she says, and as he straightens she looks back to Zagreus's face. He might be sleeping save the dead flame. "My son is alive, as you see. I find that makes me willing to forgive anything after all this time."
"I felt him die."
"Yes. Alive, so to speak, I suppose." She licks her thumb and rubs a bit of blood from his forehead. Golden blood, ichor: his father's blood. It shines in the summer sun until Persephone smears it into the folds of her chiton, wiping it away. "He was born of the Underworld, and he is tied to that place. He can only live so long here."
Even now her voice thrums with power. Not the same terrible divinity as the Olympians, nor their awe; still, he should have known. Only a goddess could have wrenched this fertile corner of the earth from the ice. "My lady, I don't understand. He's been looking for you for so long."
"He will find me again." Persephone's smile is as warm as the earth, assured of this truth as she might be of a sunlit morning or the growth of a fig on a branch. "Oh, look at you, Thanatos. You've grown up. When I left you were just a little slip of a thing, trailing after Nyx like a shadow in the night. Have you been well?"
"Yes," he says helplessly. "Until—"
"Yes, of course," she says, as if it is obvious. "I imagine his father…well. I suppose I'll leave that to the Fates. And all of you, of course. Poor Nyx."
Zagreus has her jaw. And her hair, just as unruly as his for all it is so fair, and the turn of her nose. He'd forgotten over the ages. "He looks like you."
"That's very kind. I haven't made his life easy. Not that I knew he—" she swallows, hard, and smiles again, so like Zagreus his heart clenches. "This is one of the happiest days of my life."
"Have you been here?" he blurts, unable to stop himself. "All this time?"
"Yes." Said evenly, and with warning.
"He's been looking for you." Careful, Thanatos, careful—your master's wife and Queen of the Underworld, the prince's mother, not Hypnos for you to bully into better behavior— "All this time, he's been searching for you. I think even before he knew who you were. He didn't understand. Doesn't understand." Not that Thanatos does either, really, but at least the Queen looks wry at his outburst instead of angry. Zagreus's expression there, too.
"It's a long story, and not entirely mine to tell." She shakes her head, brushes a shadow of a leaf from Zagreus's unmoving shoulder. "Tell me, Thanatos, has he been happy?"
"I'm…not sure, my Queen. I think there were times he was happy. His relationship with his father is…difficult."
"Most are, with him," Persephone says, then bends over and presses a kiss, painfully gentle, to her dead son's brow. "Charon will be coming soon, I think. Will you take him yourself, or shall we wait together?"
The ice in his chest might be Boreas, tearing him apart. The river yearns to reclaim its dead god, to restore him to wholeness beneath the earth where he belongs. Or—is that only Thanatos? "I will take him. This time, at least."
"Then I will yield him to you."
She leans back, giving Thanatos access to Zagreus's body. It would be simpler to take the scythe to his heart, to mark him for the Styx to swallow whole; he finds he prefers to lift him himself, the weight easy in his arms now with no red blood to drive him. Zagreus's head lolls against his chest, mouth slack; the embers drip from the laurels still to land harmlessly on his pale shoulder. His hands, always gesturing with his words, lie motionless in his lap.
The wind brushes gently through the olive trees above them; the sun catches in Persephone's green eyes. "Thanatos…"
"My Queen?"
"You will take care of him for me, won't you?"
Green as her gardens; green as the grass beneath his feet. Precious little in the Underworld has such a vibrant luster, save perhaps the eye of her son. "I will, Queen Persephone. At least, as he allows it."
She smiles. He pulls the green from the earth and her eyes, Zagreus a still, cold weight against his chest, until it swallows them both down, down, down.
—
The House of Hades is changing.
Thanatos can feel it in the almost-air, a charge as tense as Zeus's thunderbolts before they strike. Hades himself simmers with anger, his brow darkening like a storm every time he sees his son, every time he himself emerges from the River Styx cloaked in blood. Thanatos hesitates to give his reports now, unsure if his master hears him at all; even Nyx has refrained more than once from bringing some matter or another to his attention, lest it tip the god of the dead into outright rage. Days pass, and nights, and Hades's mood grows blacker and blacker.
Zagreus, on the other hand, has blossomed. Opened all at once like one of his mother's flowers, changed into something enormous and brilliant and strong. He lives like nothing else in the marble halls, laughing when he himself emerges from the Styx, bouncing on his fiery toes when he finds Thanatos at the balustrade after one of their embattled meetings.
It looks like I'll be staying here.
Thanatos can hardly help his own gladness in response. It's tugged out of him like one of the butterflies from Persephone's garden, drawn irresistibly to the nectar Zagreus brings him over and over; he can no more deny him than stop the tumult the prince drags in his wake.
Not that he wishes to. Death is ever-patient; Death is also exceedingly, perhaps excessively, tolerant of the disruption the prince of the house wreaks in search of his mother. Nyx disapproves, in her own mild way; Hades is more vocal in his annoyance. Neither is enough to make Thanatos cease his aid.
He finds Zagreus when he can, when the mortals stop their dying for a little while, when he can catch his breath and feel the pull of Zagreus's mind across the leagues. Sometimes it is the gloom of Tartarus, sometimes Asphodel's impossible heat; but his favorite is when Zagreus has reached Elysium by the time Thanatos finds him. Zagreus's eyes always light at his appearance in the endless twilight; his exhausted smile spreads in relief as well as welcome. Thanatos feels the most useful, then.
A selfish thing, perhaps. He sees the marks the gods leave on him with every attempt: the sweet ambrosial scent of Dionysus, the stark bronze glint to his skin from Athena, Artemis's green-tipped arrows piercing through his gaze, the sharp grace of a hunting cat in his every step. They touch him in a way Thanatos can never hope to, a real and measurable help in his escapes.
Thanatos wishes—
But no. To dream for more than what he has is the province of mortals; he knows the limits of the aid he can give Zagreus, and that he will give freely.
Besides. The bright joy in Zagreus's face when he arrives, the call of "Than!" rebounding across the battlefield—that is enough. No Olympian has ever shared that pleasure.
This, then, makes the absence of the call even more jarring when Thanatos arrives this day-or-night. He's heard Zagreus's call, felt their pinpoint connection burn with exertion; he'd come as soon as he could, but as the starry blue-green fields of Elysium settle around him at last, the only thing he hears is startling, empty silence.
No, not quite silence. Lethe murmurs against its banks, spray glittering through the air here and there; a handful of bright shades' swords hang forgotten in the glade, chiming faintly as they knock together. A laurel tree sways in an unseen wind, and its branches sigh over a grassy field scarred with frost and deep, fresh gouges. No sounds of battle. No shades with bronze shields, ghostly faces distorted with the memory of war.
Another sigh. Not branches this time.
"Than?"
"Zag?" Where—
There, slumped against one of Charon's wine-colored wells, the brilliant spear Varatha abandoned at his side. His chiton has been slashed to pieces, crimson blood seeping from every gash; his right shoulder hangs at an odd angle, his hand cupped gingerly in his lap. "Hi," he says, and smiles. His teeth are red with his own blood.
"Zagreus…"
"Look at you. So late."
"Don't laugh. You're hurt."
"Fatally so, I'm afraid." Zagreus shuffles a little against the well, stifles a gasp at some abrupt pain, and lets his head drop farther towards his own shoulder. "You missed all the excitement. I hope whatever you were doing was really worth it."
Thanatos kneels beside him, setting his scythe to rest in the grass by Zagreus's spear. Only a shadow of the real thing, this Elysian greenery, pale and thin compared to Persephone's garden above. "I'm sorry. I got held up."
"So did I. Mostly by brightswords, as it turns out." He tries and fails to nonchalantly cross his legs at the ankles, and must settle for a limping realignment of clearly broken limbs. The flames on one foot sputter and spark, weak as he's ever seen them; the other has gone out completely. "Ouch."
"Zag…" He begins to reach for the centaur's heart tucked into his robes, but Zagreus shakes his head.
"Don't. I haven't earned it. I'm not yet so pathetic as to start taking your hearts out of pity."
"You can't even stand."
"Hardly the first time I've had to wait a while for death to kick in." He shifts against the well again, his brow pinched with agony. "First time the company's been so pleasant, though. I'm glad you made it, Than."
"Don't thank me for this." His hands hover uselessly over Zagreus's bleeding chest, his dislocated shoulder. "It is always this bad?"
"Only on the slow days." His good hand catches one of Thanatos's, curling hot fingers around his palm. "Really, you don't need to fret. I promise. Just give it a few minutes and the Styx will find me. It's very good at that."
"I could…" His free hand moves to the scythe beside them, power already leaping to his fingertips.
"No. I appreciate the offer, but just…just let me rest a moment. It's nice being out of the House. Even like this."
Thanatos presses his lips together but says nothing. Instead he settles back on his heels and folds Zagreus's hand into both of his own, his thumb smoothing over the split, bleeding knuckles. Zagreus shuts his eyes, his chest hitching with every breath. Poseidon's sea-spray glitters in his hair again, many-colored Iris gleaming amidst the black; his hands wield the opalescent shimmer of Aphrodite.
Thanatos rubs one of his dark-nailed fingers against the shimmer, willing it to yield under his touch. Let Zagreus be wholly himself when he dies, untouched by the distant gods. They certainly never sat with him and watched the life eke from his mismatched eyes.
"You're fussing."
"I am not," Thanatos says automatically, though he knows the look he flicks up is thick with guilt. "Doesn't it hurt to talk?"
"It's stopped hurting, actually. Mostly." Zagreus rolls his head on his shoulders, lets it fall too heavily to the other side. "Did I tell you my mother thought I'd died at birth?"
"No. Is that why she left?"
"Mm. The grief of it all, you know. I think…I think her relationship with my father was more complicated than I realized, though I'm certain she still loves him. Gods know why. He didn't stop her, even though—hahh—he could have, if he wanted. He let her go."
"Catch your breath, Zag."
"Nyx brought me back. I don't know why—ah—she did that either, given how stern she is about everything to do with the Fates. Ouch, ouch."
"Stop moving. Be still." Thanatos cups the back of Zagreus's head, easing him down from his crooked slump against the well's frame to lie flat on his back against the cool earth. The laurel tree sighs again, branches whispering together in the Elysian breeze.
"She grows all sorts of things at her cottage. Figs, pomegranates. Cucumber."
His eyes have shut against the pain. Thanatos slips his hand from behind Zagreus's head, but somehow doesn't make it any farther than the curve of his cheek. His skin has grown cold, colder than Thanatos's own; so much of his red blood has seeped out to stain his chiton even darker, leaving nothing behind to flush the pale skin.
"How long does this usually take?"
Zagreus laughs, thin and thready. "Are you in such a rush to get back to work? Is my broken back keeping you?"
"No," Thanatos says sharply. "But that doesn't mean I have to enjoy this."
Zagreus laughs again. "You needn't worry, Than. It's nearly over. I mean, I can prolong the inevitable a bit—" and he clenches his teeth and throws his head back against the earth. His body tenses like a bowstring, muscles creaking, his hand clenching around Thanatos's in his lap. Even as Thanatos watches, his blood begins to trickle back into the open wounds across his chest and stomach, wicking from the chiton like ink drawn in a line. The wounds do not close, but they do narrow.
He lets out a short, shaking breath, his cheeks ruddy with color once more. His eyes open, red and green, and fix on Thanatos with more clarity than he's had yet. The iridescent light of Elysium dances over his face.
The god of blood, of life…
"There. See?"
"Is that…permanent?"
"No. Not this time, at least. I'm a little far gone." He turns his head into Thanatos's hand with another soft sigh. "Probably shouldn't have done that. Now it hurts again."
Thanatos strokes his thumb over Zagreus's cheekbone. He's not made for comforting the dying, but the smile Zagreus gives him in answer, bloody as it is, makes it almost worth it. "Tell me about the cucumber."
Zagreus threads their fingers together, catches his breath, and does so in a quiet, low voice, until his eyes fall shut at last and the river beside them swells, silent and clear as glass, to carry him away.
—
"Zagreus? You in here?"
No answer, but the door to the prince's bedchambers swings open at his knock. He follows it in, curious, and finds Zagreus cross-legged on his own bed, his back facing the entryway. His shoulders are hunched, his head bowed as he works intently on something in his lap; the covers are a disaster, tangled around his hips and spilling over the bed's edge. Thanatos honestly doesn't know how his burning heels haven't set the whole mess aflame.
"Zag?"
Zagreus jumps high as a horse, fumbles something in his hands, and twists awkwardly to look at him over his shoulder. "Than! I didn't hear you come in!"
He looks cheerful enough, at least, the smile spreading across his face broad and genuine. Something tight in his chest loosens at the sight. "I heard you got back a while ago."
"Indeed I did." Zagreus pushes off the bed with lanky grace, flipping over a corner of the bedcovers before coming to meet Thanatos in the middle of his room. "But you usually don't come to hunt me down afterwards. Oh, no, have I neglected you? Don't tell me you were worried."
Thanatos had been worried. He'd heard the Styx release him from its waters; he'd heard his cheerful greeting to Hypnos, then Orpheus and Nyx. He'd expected the delay after catching the whiff of Asphodel's river denizens, but time had passed, and passed again, and Zagreus had not come to see him.
With Achilles off-duty, no one had been there to talk him back to Death's patience. He'd waited long enough to turn over several increasingly desperate hypothetical situations in his head, then gone to the lounge. Megaera had been there with Dusa, a fresh bottle of ambrosia split between them; at Thanatos's look she'd rolled her eyes and jerked her thumb over her shoulder. She hadn't been concerned, a comfort in itself; she had not been angry.
Still, to see Zagreus here, as apparently cheery as ever, soothes a part of him Thanatos isn't quite ready to acknowledge. "I thought perhaps I'd been forgotten."
"Forget you, Than? Impossible." Zagreus rocks back on his heels, then forward again. The stone spits a little at the heat. "Though, I don't have any ambrosia for you this time around. I gave it to Meg. Sorry."
"I don't value our friendship only for the lavish gifts," Thanatos says, then jerks his head over towards the bed. "What are you hiding over there?"
The speed at which Zagreus flushes is truly remarkable. Thanatos watches, fascinated, as the red spreads from his cheeks down his throat to the tops of his shoulders, and his eyes skitter away like a hunted animal before returning, almost defiantly, to Thanatos's face. "I most definitely have no idea what you mean."
"I can feel Mort in there, Zag."
"Mort is perfectly fine, I'll have you know! I take very good care of him, always."
"I don't doubt it."
Zagreus huffs. Thanatos can't stop the smile creeping across his face; the prince is rarely off-balance like this and a terrible liar, and the House has been tense enough lately that even this small levity comes as welcome respite. "You'll think it's utterly ridiculous."
"I don't doubt it," Thanatos says again, amused. "Will you show me?"
Zagreus hesitates for a long second, searching his face; then he throws his hands in the air and goes back to rifle through his bedclothes. A few moments later, he returns, his hands cupped in front of him. "Don't laugh."
"I'll make no promise of the kind."
He rolls his eyes, but Thanatos doesn't miss the real nervousness in his face as he holds up his prize for Thanatos's scrutiny.
Mort.
Mort, as he'd expected. What he'd not expected was the tiny weaving of laurels fitted around his stitchwork head, just above his mousy ears. Scarlet fading into gold, exactly like Zagreus's save the trickling embers, made in perfect miniature.
It is adorable.
"What," Thanatos manages, lifting Mort from Zagreus's hands so he can see it more clearly. Tiny leaves of dyed felt sewn together, he sees now, by a hand much more practiced than Zagreus's own; he's heard the earnest plucking of lyre-strings from this room before, but this is certainly beyond the prince's skill. He lifts up the little crown as delicately as he can, finds Mort unharmed beneath, and replaces it with careful precision. He has never seen the little worn mouse look so kingly.
"Mother helped," Zagreus blurts, clearly reaching his limits of tolerance for the silence, then turns away, raking his hands through his own hair. "You've given me so much, you know, between your keepsakes, your Chthonic Companion… I was trying to find a way to give you something in return besides ambrosia, which of course doesn't last. But I don't have—don't laugh! I was showing Mort to my mother, and she suggested—she worked on it while I was fighting through, last time. I was going to make a bigger one for you, but I wanted them to be real, not felt, and it turns out they don't—blood and darkness. Agh, Than, say something, will you? I didn't want you to—"
"It suits him."
"—see it until it was ready, but then I thought—what?"
"I like it," Thanatos says more clearly, and when Zagreus only gapes he reaches down, pulls his hand up from his side, and carefully folds Mort back into his palm. His chest is oddly hot, even more than Zagreus's warmth can account for, and he can't bring himself to let go. "The Queen made this for me?"
"Yes," Zagreus says after a moment, his eyes dropping to Thanatos's mouth before dragging up again. He can see the pulse jumping in Zagreus's throat. "I mean, I helped."
"How?"
"She showed me how to dye it. I crushed the pomegranate seeds and the saffron."
"Thank you," Thanatos says, the sentiment growing so familiar when it comes to Zagreus. Mort, adorned in felt flame, gazes up at him from the cheerful cage of Zagreus's fingers. But— "What was that about one for me?"
"…Aha. Heard that, did you?"
The flush, which had faded to blotchy patches across Zagreus's chest and cheeks, resurges with a vengeance. Thanatos wants nothing more than to press his hands to it and see if it runs as warm as it looks. He presses his fingertips together instead. "Zagreus…"
"Well," he starts, eyes skating away again to the broad mirror behind Thanatos. "We were working on Mort, and I realized even if I meant it to be for you, he stays with me most of the time anyway, so could that really count?" As if to demonstrate, he tucks Mort away into his chiton; the loss strikes Thanatos like a douse of cold water, and he doesn't know if it's from the disappearance of his Companion or Zagreus's touch. "So I thought—I'd better do one for you, too. Something you could really keep. But I wanted them to be real, not felt."
His cheeks are red, but his smile is painfully fond as he leads Thanatos over to the bed. He flips back the corner of the covers—
Flowers.
Mostly white and the size of his palm, some gold and shining, a handful of black blossoms the color of Thanatos's chlamys; they're all the same shape, though, a full five-pointed bloom surrounding a central crown of nectaries. A three-quarter wreath, well-formed and mostly finished, lies in the midst of them, a dozen or so blooms threaded diffidently through the frame. White on the very ends, fading to black where it would sit at the back of his head; a few tiny gold flowers peek through here and there among the rest, like Nyx's stars.
"They're called hellebore," Zagreus says beside him, sounding only slightly strangled. "Mother says they bloom best in the cold."
The hot thing in his chest has become a blaze, impossible to bear. "You…made this for me?"
"Yes, but I didn't realize—" Zagreus hesitates, then plunges on. "They're living, so once they're plucked from the root, they'll only last so long. Even from my mother's garden, even though she told me she'd coaxed them to last as long as possible. So it still won't be something you can keep, probably."
Thanatos reaches out a careful finger and touches one of the unused flowers. He's not sure what he expects—the touch of Death to wither it instantly, perhaps—but instead the petals only fold away, gently unresisting, with a pleasant waxy texture. "I'm…not sure what to say." Not that he's sure he can say anything, charmed as he is, his throat closing so tight it might be his chains pulling taut again. "You brought me flowers from the surface."
"You—here." Zagreus swallows hard enough he can hear it, then in swift, short motions, as if at each step he still tries to talk himself out of it, he plucks the thing from the bed and reaches up to push Thanatos's hood back to his shoulders. The air is cool on the back of his neck despite the warmth of Zagreus's room, but that fades rapidly as Zagreus's heated hands return to settle the wreath, a little lopsided, on Thanatos's head. He adjusts its position, pauses, adjusts it again with a more critical eye, then gives a crooked smile. "Well, I like it."
"I hear that's what's most important when giving someone a gift." He doesn't even sound like himself, as deep as his voice has gone.
Zagreus laughs, full-throated. His hands still hover at Thanatos's temples. "I'm serious. It's better than felt, anyway."
"I liked the felt, too."
Zagreus smiles so broadly his eyes crinkle at the corners, and he fiddles with a few petals that have caught in Thanatos's hair, brushes a few loose strands from his eyes. Thanatos can't bear to move away; Zagreus grows bolder in the silence, his fingertips slipping like candleflame across his forehead, down the side of his cheek, coming to rest at last on either side of Thanatos's jaw. Such a light touch, as if even now he fears Thanatos might vanish in a flash of green. As if he were the one so recently on the verge of leaving everything behind without a word.
His face is so open it hurts. Thanatos doesn't know how he does it, wearing his heart so brazenly in every gesture, every word; if nothing else, years of his father's wounds ought to have taught him when to bring the shield to bear. But here he stands, son of the god of the dead, his fingers so warm on the sides of his throat, his eyes fixed on Thanatos's like he could ever somehow be worthy of the affection burning there.
"Zagreus," he says, rough and tight—
Zagreus kisses him.
His mouth is hot. And gentle, coaxing without demanding, his eyes fallen shut and his brow creased in concentration. Thanatos has no idea what he's doing, but there is nothing else in the world or underworld he needs more than this moment, right here, this, right now, Zagreus's hands on his neck, his nose against his nose, his taste—
His soft inhale as he withdraws, too sudden, to leave Thanatos blinking dazedly at him. A few inches between them at best. Too many.
"Sorry," Zagreus says, voice quiet, though he hasn't moved his hands. "That might have been too quick. Should I apologize for that? Sorry, maybe."
Ah. This hesitancy Thanatos knows infinitely better, and before he can succumb to the rolling uncertainty he cups the back of Zagreus's head in one palm, leans down, and stops the apologies with his mouth.
"Oh," Zagreus says against his lips, all doubt disappeared behind open delight.
Even here, Zagreus is relentlessly generous. He throws his arms around Thanatos's neck, pulling them closer chest to thigh; he tips his head to better fit them both, sealing their mouths together with the surety of experience. Long kisses, deep and hot and very slow, sharp breaths through his nose and a half-moment apart, a caught gaze and back again, pulse pounding like one of Daedalus's hammers. Zagreus cups his jaw, shows him how to press just so, shows him tongue and teeth and lets him revel in them both.
In this Thanatos is more than happy to let him lead; Death learns quickly, regardless, and by the next time they pause to catch their breath Zagreus's grin has gone a little hectic. "Than…"
"Hm," says Thanatos, kissing him again, and because he can, he brings his other hand up to firmly grip Zagreus's waist. His fingers tingle at the heat radiating through cloth and leather as he pulls him even closer.
Zagreus laughs. "Well, that works too," he murmurs, then lets Thanatos take what he wills from his warmth. The fire at Zagreus's feet sparks and leaps, crawling up his calves and receding again like playful young hounds, overwhelmed by joy.
The prince's hands have begun to rove as well, wandering down Thanatos's neck, the backs of his shoulders; he drags his palms down Thanatos's spine and he shudders. Deadly, he thinks again in nonsense memory, because if nothing else he has abruptly learned he needs this to survive. Zagreus sighs again, lets out a low chuckle as Thanatos chases after his mouth; Thanatos doesn't even try to stop his answering smile. Fine. Let the prince know he's pleased him; let Zagreus leap forward with unshaken courage, here if nowhere else.
He should have known. Not even the cold stillness of Death could resist the warmth of Zagreus's inexorable thaw.
Zagreus has just begun fiddling with the chains across Thanatos's chest when a throat clears behind them. Thanatos jerks back, reaching automatically for his hood; Zagreus moves more slowly, unashamed of the color at his cheeks and mouth.
Meg. In Zagreus's doorway, her fist still raised from the knock. She's not smiling, but Thanatos has known her too long to think he'll escape from this unscathed.
"Hey," she says, and that is definitely promise in her voice, gods damn. "Shut the door next time."
"Sure thing," Zagreus tells her easily, and reaches with unabashed affection to straighten a flower behind Thanatos's ear.
Meg withdraws, closing the door after her; Thanatos withers with embarrassment. "Unfortunate," he says finally, as if anything in the world could be so with Zagreus looking up at him with such open happiness.
"Oh, don't worry," Zagreus says, letting his touch linger on Thanatos's jaw. "She's only teasing."
"I know," Thanatos groans, but he does allow himself to kiss Zagreus one more time before he at last must yield to the distant, dying mortals clamoring for his attention. The green swallows him up again, and the last thing he hears beyond the tolling bell is the ring of Zagreus's pleased laughter.
(It's only much, much later that he realizes he's still wearing the hellebore.)
