Chapter Text
1.
raison d'être
raison d'être — a reason for existing
The two shadows moved together in a breathtaking dance, love and death embracing each other as soft, inaudible whispers filled the meadow. The dark sky above them smiled down onto their forms, dimming the atmosphere and making the constellations stretching across it shine brighter, as to honor the intertwining of their slender forms. The taller shadow pulled his lover down to the ground, rolling around until he was able to brace himself on top of him, supporting himself on his elbows as to not crush his precious gift. Gazing down softly at the mesmerizing, deep obsidian-colored eyes he felt his throat close up painfully. They were blanketed in the powerful feeling of their love for one another, in a safe cocoon hidden away from everyone and everything else. Had they not been gods, Eros thought he’d gladly die right in that moment.
“You’re so beautiful tonight,” he murmured as a lazy finger stroked down the lean body, leaving a trail of earth-shattering sparkles in its wake. His partner chuckled dryly and shook his head in disbelief.
“So are you, my love,” he answered, his sharp canines sinking into the softness of his bottom lip. “And I didn’t even need an arrow in my chest to say that,” he added as an afterthought, enjoying the way his lover groaned and pressed his face into his shoulder. Suddenly, he felt the man’s lips leave scorching kisses as he went lower and lower, reaching his navel. Only then did Eros raise his head again, a mischievous glint in his glimmering gold eyes.
“I can put an arrow somewhere else, if you’d like me to,” he offered graciously, his fingers digging into the soft flesh of his lover’s hips. Soon, he replaced his hands with this mouth and teeth, nipping at the slightly red, but still glowing skin gently, not wanting to hurt the god beneath him.
“You’re so dirty,” the other teased, yelping slightly when his beloved bit him harder. “Alright, I surrender, stop being naughty,” he said. His nose scrunched up adorably and Eros found himself lost in the midnight black irises yet again. It had become a customary action of his ever since they had started this deathly dance, destined to end in doom. He had sworn to himself early on, that he would indulge in his completely misplaced desires once, and walk out of the underworld without as much as a glance back, however, it only took one swim in those magnificent eyes and he kept coming back for more.
“My love for you is as big and majestic as this universe,” he confessed, an enamored smile gracing his lips. Upon hearing the sharp intake of breath of his lover, a pleased expression stretched across his face. “I will prove it to you, my adored one. I will give you the stars, the moon, every constellation that exists—”
“I am not quite sure Asteria would appreciate you doing that,” the smaller man interjected with a teasing smile, shaking his head at his lover’s silliness. They weren’t meant to be together; he found his promises hilarious, if not heart-wrenching.
“And a son.”
☽
The eerie quiet of the house unnerved Justin. He could hear the clock on his wall ticking away, making his skin crawl with fear of the approach of yet another day. His heart was beating fast and he saw stars behind his clenched eyes. His fingers gripped onto his sheets harder, so hard he was sure his knuckles had turned white, if only judging from the tingle of pain making its way up to his wrists. Taking a few gulps of much needed air, he finally untangled his fists from the crumpled sheets as he opened his eyes.
His room was pitch black, save for the enormous windows. The Moon was not particularly bright that night, and wasn't angled right in order to shine through his honey-colored drapes. Justin wasn't a little kid anymore — for fuck's sake, he had turned sixteen just the previous year, but he was still so, so scared. His age didn't mean anything when he lay on his bed every night, facing the weird, pale figures in the corner of his room.
If he was being honest, he had already gotten fairly used to the strange creatures residing within the four walls of his bedroom. More often than not they were just simple people, granted, looking a bit grayer than someone living would, but Justin refused to refer to them as ghosts. He had never believed in the ridiculous horror stories his peers had joked around with every summer around the campfire when they went on their annual camping week. He didn’t think anything supernatural existed, be it vampires, spirits, or even God; the whole concept was just foreign for him. That, of course, didn’t leave many other options as to exactly what was going on in Justin’s head other than just simply being clinically crazy.
He tried not to dwell on it much, though, not that he succeeded. Justin was an over-thinker thorough and thorough, not a single doubt about it. He analyzed and observed everything around him with an embarrassing depth, sometimes not even realizing he was doing it. Mostly the little things, such as people’s tones when they spoke, or their body language; for example every time Chris Hobbs was about to swing his fist at him in hopes of coating his body with new bruises, his shoulders got really tense, his hands shaking as if he had Parkinson’s syndrome. It was those two tell-tale signs that had managed to keep Justin fairly well out of trouble for the past couple of weeks, so he supposed he should be grateful to an extent for his abilities in reading people.
Times like these, though, he wished the pain stayed exclusively roaming around the areas with the actual bruises. He was getting tired of the constant lump in his throat, or the way he could feel his airways practically closing up every time he saw the dark worry in his mother’s eyes, even the way Daphne’s lips curled into an elegant, but heart-wrenching smile after particularly bad meltdowns, or his father’s eyes shooting daggers of pure hatred towards him every time they had to spend more than five minutes in each other’s presence.
Truthfully, Justin couldn’t really pinpoint when everything had gone so… So off-track, for lack of better wording. He couldn’t remember the last time he slept through an entire night without nightmares of wings and blood tormenting him, or when the last time he hadn't seen people others around him couldn't see was. He could feel his mind crumbling down, crashing hardly into a dark space, a hole so deep he wasn't sure he could ever crawl out of it.
Justin flipped onto his back with a sigh, his heart momentarily skipping a beat at the sound of his crumpling sheets before it registered that it wasn't the pale young man in the corner of his room emitting the sounds. He forcefully dragged his blanket over himself, getting frustrated as one of his legs got caught in the motion and bent painfully before finally settling into somewhat of a comfortable position. He glanced at the clock on his bedside table, noting dully that it was almost four in the morning, and he closed his eyes as he tried desperately to fall asleep. Sleep hadn't come though, and Justin ended up with things being the same as the morning came.
The guy in the corner was still there, the deep purple bags under his eyes showed his lack of sleep clearly. Nothing out of the ordinary.
Justin only wondered why he was getting up from his bed every morning if things never changed.
School was a hassle, at best. It hadn't always been, but Justin found that high school was vastly different from how middle school had been, especially seeing as he went to the most stuck-up and conservative private school that existed in Pittsburgh. St. James Academy was an old, majestic brick building that housed only five hundred students, the richest of the rich. Justin loathed everything the institution represented. He thought that no amount of golden prizes, Ivy League admissions or outstanding performances could cover up the ugly truth that lay within the brick walls. His mind immediately flashed to the countless of times he had ended up at the nurse with bruises, cuts and even an occasional concussion or two. Granted, it hadn’t always been like that.
He remembered coming to the establishment with fixed plans of minding his own business, getting good grades, studying diligently so that he would pass his SATs with flying colors. He had been such an innocent, naive boy. Filled with sugary dreams of flowers and art, something that warmed his heart; with hope swirling along his blood in his veins. All that was gone, though.
Gone was the innocence, the sweet smiles and words coated in an unearthly kindness.
He looked around the corridor before ripping off the batch of post-it notes stuck onto his locker and cautiously opening it. He sneaked a glance or two yet again and finally deciding that he was fairly protected from anyone who wanted to see him actually dead, he carefully slipped two painkillers onto his palm, swallowing them dry. He scowled at the bitter taste, smacking his lips together in an attempt to make the aftertaste go away. He hated taking his prescribed medication, but the migraine that day was just too much to handle. It was as if his head was being hammered open with an axe. He felt every vein pulsing painfully, only adding to the annoyance he was already experiencing thanks to the lack of sleep.
Hands slithered around his torso and soft, rose-scented hair tickled his neck. Justin let out a soft smile before turning around and gently pushing his best friend away.
"Daph, you seriously have to stop trying to feel me up when I'm not paying attention," he said. Cocking his eyebrow, he stared down at the slightly shorter girl wearing her signature wide smile as her fingers traced elegant patterns on his necktie. Gently prying the girl's hands away, he watched as she pouted.
"I can't help it, Jus," she sighed. "Your twink-ish body just calls to me like no other male. Your testosterones are simply rolling off those deliciously visible ribs," she said, fanning herself dramatically for good measure. Justin let out at unamused snort as he hooked his arm around her neck and started dragging her towards their first class of yet another hellish day.
"Those circles under your eyes are atrocious, by the way," she added after a while, making Justin roll his eyes so far he could practically see his brain.
His friendship with Daphne was weird. He had no solid memory of when the girl had shown up in his life unannounced, taking it upon herself to declare them ‘best friends at first sight’, which was, as she would say, the platonic version of love at first sight. Justin learned not to try and find logic in the stuff she said, soon growing accustomed to the rather unorthodox things that would leave the petite teenager’s mouth. His favorite so far had been the way Daphne saw murder as the only solution to any minor inconvenience. Your husband wants to divorce you? Kill him. Your bed isn’t comfortable enough? Kill all employees of the company that were responsible for making it. Don’t like your country’s authoritative figures? Easy peasy lemon squeezy, a simple case of exsanguination will do! Maybe murder was also the answer to his hallucinations. It would eliminate the problem for sure.
“So, your birthday is coming up this Friday,” Daphne said with feigned innocence, and Justin knew solely from the look in her eyes that they would either end up dead in a ditch, or in the ER, like last year. Maybe that was the reason why his mother was always so uptight around Daphne. His father couldn’t care less about what trouble the girl got his son into, though, happy that he was even interacting with girls. Craig Taylor was one extremely delusional man.
“Yeah. The big seventeen. It’s like a filler chapter in those fanfictions you read when you think no one’s looking in class,” he said, a mocking smile resting upon his lips. Daphne rolled her eyes with an exasperated sigh before answering.
“Shut up, Justin,” she bumped his shoulder before taking a seat in the front row. “Be ready at eleven on Friday. I’m taking you out. Trust me, you won’t regret this one,” she winked at him as the bell rang, and Justin squirmed uncomfortably. His chest tightened at the hopeful look Daphne was shooting him, and he knew the girl had noticed how out of it he had been for the past few weeks.
Truth was, Justin didn’t want to go out on Friday, or any other day for that matter. He was perfectly fine with being in his room and staying there the whole day like the hermit he was. Well, as fine as one with hallucinations could be, anyway. He had told Daphne about the people he kept seeing, and much to his surprise his best friend had not only believed him, but had also spent weeks researching whatever she could. Strangely enough, she had never once brought up the idea of Justin being mentally ill, which Justin found completely outrageous, seeing as being a nutcase was his only explanation so far. Daphne hadn’t wanted to hear any of that nonsense, as she called it, and kept on babbling about dead souls and spirits.
Now, that was an idea Justin didn’t want to entertain.
Sensing that Daphne was still staring at him, waiting for an affirmative answer, he sighed and turned his head towards her.
“Okay,” he gave in with a scowl. “But make it midnight and we’re going to have to sneak out,” he added just as their World History teacher, Mr. Anderson entered the classroom with a deep frown etched across his face, much like any other normal day.
Justin caught the glance Daphne shot him just before he turned around to face the board and he had to will his anxiety to go down. Judging by the absolutely crazy gaze of his best friend, it was safe to say that Justin would be lucky if he ended up surviving his birthday.
☽
Eris stared into the spiraling water as it displayed the image of the alabaster skin of the young, pale boy with amusement swirling in her light greenish eyes. She could feel the knowledge of this boy’s fate almost caressing her fingers gently, much like a pleasant spring breeze, except there was nothing pleasant about awaiting someone’s inevitable death. Especially a frail boy like young Justin, whose mind was just so incredibly and deliciously sensitive, Eris wished she could reach into it to do whatever she pleased with the boy. Although, she realized it would not have been a good idea, her fear of Hades running deeper than the need to manipulate the boy to her heart’s content. She had caused enough turmoil already — despite knowing that there was no such thing as ‘enough turmoil’ —, and so she supposed she could wait a few more days, watching his destiny unfold in front of her eyes.
Upon hearing the light steps from behind the white pillars, she whipped her head around and smiled cunningly at Aphrodite.
“Are you sure this is going to work, Eris?” she asked, uncertainty clear in her velvety voice, no matter how hard she tried to conceal it. The goddess stared deep into the hazel eyes of her sister, a cryptic smile stretching across her cherry-colored lips.
“Shouldn’t you have asked me a few centuries ago?” she chimed. “And besides, don’t you trust me?”
“Of course I do, you know I do,” her sister replied immediately. “But… A half-human child? Why didn’t you ask Them thread him together with Ligeia?”
“She’s the daughter of that poor excuse of a woman, and she got what she wanted anyway, didn't she?” Eris waved a dismissing hand. “The curse has been going on for more than six hundred years, and while it already caused many disputes that I absolutely adored, it was never meant to last forever,” she chuckled icily.
“May I ask why you’re helping him, still?” asked Aphrodite after a few moments of thoughtful silence, with a cautious look on her face, confusion clear in the greenish-gold eyes.
“He was but a mere baby,” Eris shrugged, dipping her hand into the water, thus dissipating the image of the young boy in the dark of his room. “This child is the only one who will be able to break the curse, the reason for him to continue existing” she added softly, brushing her hair behind her ear.
“What you are doing is a good deed, sister,” Aphrodite offered gently, a smirk taking over the pleased smile previously stretched across her face. “Lord knows we all need a break from Bahram’s wreath.”