WHO: Melpomene, open to Ares if he wants a night on the town (or in the back seat OoOoo) WHEN: Friday night WHERE: On the set of Last Song and a house in Queens WHAT: Melpomene goes to a party and has a good time (spoiler, she's the only one) WARNINGS: Drug taking; drug overdoses; implied threats of sexual assault and rape, and sex later because wtf Melp.
When Soren arrived on set late on Friday afternoon, he beckons Melpomene away from the conversation she's having with one of the main actors about his lines. As a Story Editor she’s not technically required for any of the shooting today, but she prefers it.
Melpomene leaves her conversation and joins Soren. He's a co-producer, one step above her in the hierarchy of the writers room, his long dark hair tied up in a bun. She likes him, he’s an easy man to work with. She doesn’t technically get to make any of the calls on casting, but they went out for drinks several times last season and he’s taken her advice (her persuasion, her inspiration, whatever) over their latest hire, who is turning out to be the godsend Melpomene knew she would be. Melpomene didn’t want the extra responsibilities of becoming a co-producer herself, as that would take her out of the writers room too often, but she did want as much control over the story as possible, and having Soren’s ear gives her a shot.
“Hey Romeo, listen,” Soren says, drawing her aside behind a rack of costumes. “I wanted to give you a heads up, Elijah isn’t thrilled with the last pages we sent through, he has changes to make.”
For a moment Melpomene just stares at him. “The last pages we sent through?” Melpomene phrased it as a question because she couldn’t believe it would be true. “Our finale?”
They’d knocked that out over two very long, intense days of writing, her and four of the writers sharing lines and energy drinks, every now and then someone gasping as their fingers slammed across the keyboard. They’d all been on fire, Melpomene had loved every second of it. By the end of the 48 hours (her night with Ares sandwiched in the middle) she’d been exhausted, but so goddamned fulfilled.
“He and Rat don’t like the direction we’re taking Evangeline in. She's losing a lot of sympathy, we’re taking it too dark, we’re going to lose viewers.” He hands her the pages, held together with a bulldog clip, the latter pages covered in black and red scribbles. Melpomene flicks over them quickly, her expression growing darker as she skims the criticism on each page.
“Too dark?” Melpomene states. She was being accused of being too dark? Her voice was too dark?
“Killing her own children crossed a line, yeah.”
With a thump Melpomene slams the copy of the script down so hard on the table everyone stops to look at them. “We have been laying. The groundwork. For this. For months.” She bites off the end of each sentence with her teeth. “You can’t unwrite the things we’ve written - the things we've already filmed. The audience. Knows. She is our take. On Medea. Everyone. Is expecting. Those children. To die.”
In the dry tone of one used to dealing with stubborn artists, Soren says, “I don’t think Elijah is.”
“He’s a fucking coward of a showrunner then, and an idiot.”
“And he’s in charge.”
“Fuck him, then!”
Soren draws her further away from the watching eyes, round into a small office. “Out,” he says, at the two Writer’s PAs who are in there sharing a Monster energy drink and looking stressed. They scarper, and Soren shuts the door behind them.
“Is something going on with you, Romeo? I’ve never seen you like this before.”
She holds back another outburst, breathing through it. He’s right; Romeo Morning doesn’t move things by force. She leans on them, coaxes them her way, careful and controlled.
Melpomene Areia, though? She wants a knife through the throat of anyone who stands in her way. This show is hers.
She breathes in, regaining a little of her composure. “Nothing is ‘going on with me’,” she says “We have written a finale that is going to be the best hour of television this year and Elijah wants it sanitised, wants it neutered. It’s perfect.”
“He thinks-”
“It’s perfect,” Melpomene repeats. “What do you think. Tell me you think we should dial Eva down? Tell me you think she’s not feminine enough. Tell me you think she’s too unsympathetic.” She spits the last word, appalled at this failure of nerve.
“I don’t - Elijah thinks it’s too close to what they did with Daenerys Targaryen and you saw how people reacted to that.”
“Daenerys-” Melpomene covers her face with her hand. “Those women have nothing in common! They kill, yes but our setup is completely different. That show needed to play reminders of her family madness in the ‘previously on’ segment just to justify her behaviour. That show pulled her sudden snap out of their arse when what they should have done is exactly what we have done. My gods, Soren, we have been building to this climax for two seasons, don’t you dare compare my storytelling with that nihilistic, sexist bullshit.” She’d really rather enjoyed Game of Thrones, till the narrative fizzled out and died. That, to Melpomene, had been unforgivable.
“You’re not listening to me,” Soren says, making the kind of noise that a co-producer stuck between the ego of a showrunner and a story editor, running on four hours sleep, with a dozen other things on his back, might make. “I agree with you, it’s Elijah that needs convincing.”
“Then I’ll convince him,” Melpomene smiles harshly at Soren. “Get me a meeting with him. Make him tell me to my face that I’m wrong.”
“Jesus Christ,” Soren sends the words skyward, as a genuine prayer. Please don’t let my staff implode. “He’s flying back to LA tomorrow, you’ll have to skype him.”
Melpomene makes the kind of noise that a Muse whose powers don’t work well over video might make, and storms darkly out of the office.
What is going on with her, she asks herself later, at home. She is not normally such a volatile creature. Tragedy was patient, certain of its own inevitability. In front of the full length mirror in her room, Melpomene inspects the fading colours of bruises around her hips, over her thighs. Was this because of the taste of power Ares had given her, with Tragos? Certainly being reminded of how vital she used to be has dredged up something in her, certainly she now wants more, all the time, this appetite growing insatiable.
She thinks about calling Ares, now. Summon him, fuck him, whisper to him afterwards how much she wanted to knife the throat of her showrunner? Maybe he’d go kill Elijah for her. Maybe he’d want to see her with the knife in her own hand, blood slick down her arm as he watched. Either way, she could feel the ache of his hands on her hips, she could feel the ache in her centre.
Melpomene smooths her dress back over her hips. This both is, and isn’t, her. She’s never killed a person before (throwing someone a knife, she is decisive about this, doesn't count. She is the muse that provides a vehicle for people to show their true nature, but she herself isn’t a killer.)
Maybe she needs to do something chill for an evening, something not so intense it made her quiver. That was probably a good idea. Call her sisters, listen to their stories, open that bottle of –
As if summoned by the fates, her phone sings. rager at cillians!! from Nicci, another of her writers.
The dress she chooses is as monochromatic as most of her wardrobe, long and black and backless, the ties falling down her bare back tickle, but it’s worth it. She knows she looks hot and for a moment, wants Ares to know it, considers lowering herself to the tricks of mortal girls sending photos of themselves to their lovers.
She doesn't, though. Cillian's house rises before her like a false God, his husband Thomas is outside, smoking, raising his cigarette to greet her. His collar's undone, eyeliner brings out the red in his eyes. "Getting wild in there already, Romeo. Fuck, look at you."
She kisses his cheek and steals a drag of his cigarette, leaving a shadow of dark lipstick before heading into the party. He's not wrong, there's a hot tub out the front and Nicci's already naked, and there’s people up on the roof, feet hanging over the edge, smoke rising like they’re human chimneys. The wide open double doors around the side of the house spill more people – some she knows from the crew and the cast, plenty more she doesn’t – and spill deep, loud music, onto the patio.
Soren meets her just inside and kisses her too - everyone's lippy, tonight - and pours her a glass of champagne, arm slung around her bare shoulders. “I’ve got candy tonight,” he says in her ear. “Take your mind off earlier.” Melpomene accepts the drink, but turns the ecstasy down. The artificial highs don’t compare to the real highs, the vivid raw emotions she’s been feeling more recently, and besides, her Suicide Tuesdays are brutal.
His hand moves over her bare back, he’s indulged, and Melpomene who might once have flirted into it now raises her eyebrow to warn him off. Don't let just any dirt-ordinary mortal between those gorgeous thighs.
Not that she’s letting Ares tell her what to do, but because he was right. She doesn’t want mortal and ordinary anymore. Soren, to his credit, removes the hand, and tops up her glass even though she’d barely touched it yet.
It’s a good party. The champagne flows, along with any number of spirits, and a punch bowl that only those who really don’t give a shit what happens to them tonight are partaking of, and Melpomene thinks how much some of the gods would enjoy themselves at a party like this. It’s no symposium of Peitho’s, the music’s so loud in some rooms that no-one has a chance at speaking, but bodies move together to create their own language. Everything is younger, rawer, harsher, and more than one fight breaks out as the night goes on.
From the dance floor, Melpomene spots Elijah, and suddenly her attention is split. Her body’s still moving, her arms still around the waist of the actress she’s dancing with, but her eyes are on him. He’s with a couple of other guys, making short work of the lines of coke cut neatly on the table in front of them.
Melpomene turns back to the dance, but for the rest of the night, she keeps her eye on him. A moment will come, she’s sure.
Later, over the pulse of the music and through the singing-laughing-shouting mess of voices, one in particular cuts through. Melpomene follows it around to the front door, and sets her drink down on the sideboard. It’s less crowded in the foyer, the light a little brighter, and Soren has his arm around Nicci’s bare waist. She can barely keep her head from slipping off his shoulder, and if he hadn’t been holding her, she would have slipped right to the floor. “Taking her to hospital,” Soren says, and Nicci makes a barking noise that might have been a laugh. Her eyes aren't focusing, and she's sweating hard enough she might have stepped right out of the hot tub.
“Are you?” Melpomene looks at Soren with a considering eye. He’s always had a thing for Nicci - Melpomene doesn’t know where it falls between a soft spot and a hard on – and he wouldn’t be the first guy to take an incapacitated prize home. He’s digging into the pockets of her tiny shorts and pulling out a small bag.
“I don’t know what the fuck this is, can you get rid of it?” It’s white, could be coke, could be cut with anything. There’s a makers mark on the bag though, it’s from someone proud enough or powerful enough they want the city to know about them. Melpomene takes it and slips it into her bra. Soren flashes her a look of exhausted gratitude – his high seems like it’s worn off – and leads Nicci down the path toward his car.
Melpomene sips her drink and watches. It’s been a little while since she last helped someone plot a rape revenge, and if that’s how Nicci’s night is going to end Melpomene wants to be there after. Few things these days were quite as cathartic as a woman taking vengeance on a man who had wronged her like that. She’ll have to keep on eye on Nicci after tonight, assess the damage there. Melpomene likes Soren but if he’s going to turn out to be a rapist she will see Nicci cut his throat. (Or... something like that, but her mind goes directly for a knife in the throat.) And maybe Nicci ends up in jail, too, or maybe she gets off – she’s white, she might have a chance – but that’ll be another chapter to the story, and someone from inside the party is calling her name, now, so it’s not a story Melpomene has time to think about.
(You know who’d beautifully take the law into their own hands? she thinks to herself, a little later: Antigone. Maybe Melpomene needs to encourage her along to a party or two.)
The moment comes after Soren and Nicci have left. Elijah burst into the bathroom as she’s fixing her hair (it’s up, tonight, the bitemarks around her neck faded into memory) and goes straight for the sink, drinking from the tap. She steps back, but they’re still close when he straightens up. His eyes are red, and it’s not just because of the coloured bulb in the ceiling above them. “Soren said you were pissed about my notes,” he said, slurring his words.
“I’m not pissed,” Melpomene replies. Pissed implied a kind of cattiness Melpomene (sometimes) thought beneath her.
“Yeah, well,” Elijah says, and there’s a look in his eye that said it’s my show or take your opinion and shove it, but there’s also a look in his eye that says something else, and it’s this second path he chooses to take. “Got anything on you? We can make this a real party.”
His eyes look like they want to follow her fingers as she slips them into her bar, pulling out Nicci’s I don’t know what the fuck this is. “I have this?”
She has the drugs, and he has grabby hands. They end up alone in a room upstairs, Elijah cuts a line and take it, and doesn’t notice when she doesn’t. He’s waxing lyrical about his artistic visions, something Melpomene’s not putting a shred of effort into influencing, they’re just not worth it.
He’s not even using her as a sounding board, he’s just talking for the sake of hearing his own voice. It’s a situation Melpomene’s been in time and time again, artists and writers and musicians so focused on their own magnum opus that they can’t hear anything else, but usually they’re at least talking up at her, on her pedestal. Usually they’re drawing something from her, and she’s drawing something from then in return.
Not tonight, though. Tonight she’s just watching.
She’s watching as the sweat starts to slick down his face, and she’s watching as his breathing starts to hitch and stutter and fall. She steps back, a little, when he starts seizing, rescuing her drink from the table before he lunges for something to hold onto and brings the whole table down to the floor with him.
As he starts to still, eyes rolled back in his head and body, occasionally, wracked with a sick shudder, she crosses her legs and sits near his head, thinking of all the choices he’s made in his life that have led to it ending, here, on Cillian’s bedroom carpet. He’d asked for the drugs, he’d cut the lines himself, at no point, ever, did she force his hand. There’s an acrid smell in the room of bile and sweat in the air.
It takes eighteen minutes for him to stop breathing. Melpomene rises, and opens the bedroom door. “Someone!” she called down the corridor. “I need help!”
She has to shake out her foot as she does; she’s been sitting so long it’s gone numb.
That’s pretty much the end of the party, after that. Melpomene keeps out of the way as Cillian and Thomas have a furious argument about what to do. She’s still in earshot, listening, as she leans up against a pillar just outside the house. Thomas wants to call an ambulance immediately and Cillian is freaking out about it so badly that Melpomene suspects she knows who gave Nicci the drugs in the first place.
She steps away in the garden a little, as Thomas wins the argument, pulling out her own phone. She’s not ready for the night to be over.
This mortal party I’m at is in its death throes, she messages Ares, a crude kind of poetry, but one she knows speaks to him. But every part of me is very much awake. Wanna fuck?