WHO: Melpomene, Apollo, then Clio and Stoots WHEN: Tuesday WHERE: Alpha Pi Omicron, Clio's WHAT: No one is comfortable with any recent developments WARNINGS: Probably none
“When’s Artemis coming back?” Melpomene wasted no time with niceties as Apollo, drawing her away from the living room, led her up to his bedroom.
She’d been on her own all morning, all last night, most of the week. Just her and the baby and the urge for something - something. She’d thought about Diogenes again. She’d thought about mortal clubs. She’d thought about places she could find someone who would pull her into his arms and kiss her till she couldn’t think. She’d thought about Ares’ gym.
She thought about the night she couldn’t decide what she’d wanted, the night before her first scan, when she’d left the wounded Apollo behind in her bed and wandered the night, right into Alan’s arms.
She wanted to wander the angry night back into his arms again, but… Alan wouldn’t have her, so she hadn’t gone anywhere at all. The nights kept passing like this, empty and lonely and aching and angry.
But the sun was up now, somewhere in the slate grey sky. It was early afternoon when she’d arrived at Apollo’s frat and pulled him away from a study session with two of the boys.
“There’s no telling,” Apollo said, closing the door of his room as he stepped in behind her. “She’s taken the Sheriff and gone off into the wild.”
“For how long?” Melpomene sat down on the end of his bed, taking the weight off her feet, her legs, her hips. Apollo landed with a bit of a bounce on the bed behind her, and took her shoulders under his hands.
“You want to put a deadline on her vengeance?” Apollo squeezed firmly, and Melpomene closed her eyes, momentarily distracted by the care, her body, her heart, craving the touch of someone who cared. “Clio promised him tenfold what he dealt to Stutely, Artemis knows that, she’ll deliver on that, but I think that’s just the beginning. Then she will avenge everything he did to Marian.” He knew his twin, after all, an Artemis was pissed.
“He had Marian locked away with him for eleven weeks,” Melpomene growled. “I’m due in five.”
“Ah,” said Apollo.
Then, carefully: “Have you asked her to deliver this baby?”
Melpomene shot a look full of daggers across her shoulder. Apollo avoided this look by turning her head gently around and digging his thumb into a pressure point in her neck, making her groan and sink into him. “I was distracted,” she said, with her eyes shut. “Everything was about the search for Alan’s friends. The baby was months away when I saw Artemis last.” And she thought she’d have Alan. She never thought to imagine she’d be doing this without Alan.
I’ll keep singing until every doctor and nurse is sick of the sound of me.
“I want to have him at home,” Melpomene said, her voice as strained, as though her throat were suddenly packed with hot coals and she was forced to drag the words out over them. “I am not going to a hospital. The clinical sterility, surrounded by strangers, by mortals? He’s supposed to be born in the presence of gods.”
Trust Melpomene not to do things the easy way, he thought. Still, that was not a hill he was willing to die on. “He will be, I’ll be there. And your sisters, surely,” Apollo promised, thinking Calliope was a better person to convince her to have her baby in a hospital – they’d all heard her talking about dying in childbirth.
“Surely,” Melpomene said, with pure skepticism. She did not feel like her sisters’ favourite person, right now. She hadn’t for a long time, honestly - This is why no one likes you.
Fuck Urania, though. Dwarf planet hearted bitch.
Regardless - she wanted all eight of them there, as if they’d never left Mount Helicon. She wanted all eight of them to understand the gravity of what this child meant to her. When was the last time one of them gave birth to a child of the gods, of an Olympian?
Never, in the history of this country. Clio should be there, she thought. The Muse of History. Clio should be witness to the start of it. The things this child was going to do… But she’d gotten nothing but two words - I see - out of Clio since mentioning Apollo’s name, as if loving their lord was a taint upon her and Clio wouldn’t deign to touch the tainted.
She was as furious with Clio as she was with Urania, in a way, but that didn’t mean they weren’t family.
She was furious with all her sisters for not being enough, but it didn’t mean she didn’t want them to be.
Melpomene lifted her hands to her shoulders, and wrapped them around Apollo’s hands, drawing his arms forward around her. “Tell me you love me,” she implored, leaning back into him, aching, not sure if her heart or her physical body was aching more.
Apollo pressed a kiss to her shoulder, her neck, her cheek, encircling her in his arms. “I love you,” he said. “Through millennia past and future. You’re one of my Muses, always. I love you.” He gripped a little tighter, as Melpomene’s body was wracked with a deep and sudden sob, and one followed the first till she was a shaking wreck in his arms. Her fingers dug tight into the muscles of his arms, hard enough to leave crescent moons in his skin.
She fell into a bad sleep when she'd cried herself out, lost a couple of hours of the last of the afternoon sleeping against him while he submitted some classwork, one handed, on his phone. Woke up raggedly too, with her son kicking her straight down, the sharp pain jolting her awake.
While Apollo got ready for a dinner date he hadn't offered to cancel, Melpomene sat on his bed and messaged Tragos. Later he might be free, maybe - but he was working longer hours trying to make up for a couple of missed days last week, and couldn't be sure. Pressing his luck with Ares right now was not a good idea, he said, though, if she needed him...?
Later, she agreed too. However late, it didn't matter.
"I could drop you at home," Apollo offered, and she lifted her eyes from her phone and started. He looked so crisp, in a dark blue shirt that made his hair shine all the blonder.
"I don't want to go home. Who are you going out with?"
"A mortal girl," Apollo beamed. "You can meet her later, when you're less-"
The cheek in his face, the knowledge she'd let him get away with the teasing, the shit-eating grin - Apollo kissed the top of her head and she let him get away with it, though she jabbed him sharply in the side. Jealousy bubbled, but it didn't bubble hard, Apollo always had his mortal flings, they usually amounted to nothing.
He was glowing in the car, though, so obviously smitten, so obviously excited, but denial was a river in Melpomene and she ignored it, completely; it would amount to nothing.
"Tell her I love her, will you?" Apollo looked up at Clio's brownstone as he double parked on the street outside. Clio was mad at him again, but he wasn't pushing this time - she'd come back to him, just like before, and in the meantime, Cin was a glorious distraction.
Melpomene said "Hm," and pulled herself out of the car. Clio's apartment glowed from the inside, warm and homey light spilling out through the curtains, not quite closed. Inside, too, was Clio's Will Stutely, and there was the jealousy, because Clio's Merry Man hadn't left her.
Feeling spikey as anything al of a sudden (it took so little, these days) Melpomene knocked on Clio's door.