The sound of another man pulled Tragos out of his state, threw his walls back up, threw himself back up till he was standing guard in front of Melpomene again. The shock was followed by a twist of self-condemnation - anger at the weakness he'd let show.
Didn't matter that this guy didn't look like a threat, like at all. He was taller than Tragos but there was something very soft about him; he towered over people, but only, like, physically.
But Melpomene wrapped her hand around Tragos' arm then, both to make sure he did not attack this one and to help pull herself off the couch. "Alan," she breathed, and Tragos could hear exactly what this guy was to her in the tone of her voice. He didn't know how he felt about that, but when she moved toward Alan and her hand slipped off his arm, Tragos wanted to grab it back. He controlled himself, standing stiff and ready.
Melpomene closed her arms around Alan and held him as tightly as she'd wanted to hold Apollo, breathing through a few long moments in his arms. She felt shaken by emotion but pulled between roles - Muse to two very different men who brought out two very different sides of her, and still reeling from Apollo's return, his revelation. The steadiest place in all of this was Alan's arms, though. "You're not early," she told him, pressing her lips to his cheek. "The world is just spinning faster than usual, and we're struggling to keep up... This is Tragos."
It felt strange to speak his name to Alan, to introduce someone who meant so much to her to someone else who meant so much to her, when they both owned such separate parts of her heart.