InsaneJournal

“Why does Aphrodite want your baby?” Tragos asked, dabbing the edge of Melpomene’s hairline with a corner of a wet towel. Melpomene, leaning heavily against the sink, watched the water turning pink as he squeezed the towel under the tap. He’d started with her hands, washing the blood off those, and Melpomene had watched every movement then too, feeling weak as he ran his strong thumb over her palm, as he parted her fingers under the stream of warm water. Not weak in her spirit, though, just in her knees.

“To take what I have from me,” Melpomene said, resting her clean, bruised, aching hand on her stomach. “Because she can.”

Well, Tragos understood that reasoning. It was every time his older brothers gave him shit: because they could. A repetitive song of people in power: because they could. He’d been naïve to ask, really, and pressed his lips together, berating himself. “I won’t let her,” he promised, again.

He didn’t just say it to see the look on her face, which was a look of such devotion it staggered him, but if anyone was interrogating him he would have admitted that yeah, that look was a reason to do a lot of the things he did for her.

Melpomene could feel his eyes on her as he cleaned up her face, and she let him look. Her body was so tired, she was feeling a little bit desperate to lie down and rest – quite a lot desperate, actually, though she made no move toward her bed. Her bones ached, but Tragos wasn’t done washing the blood from her yet, and she was finding it fascinating to watch him.

“Would she really curse a baby?” Tragos asked, after a short argument with the part of him that didn’t want him to ask more questions, the part that didn’t want to come off as naïve, as ignorant.

It was naïve and ignorant, though. He knew full fucking well that being Ares’ child didn’t protect you from curses.

From mortal men throwing their weight around dick first, sure. But a curse had got Marcie even after Barak failed, and the care he was taking with Melpomene now, he’d learned from nursing Marcie.

“No, not with Ares’ protection, she won’t,” Melpomene said, and Tragos kept the surprise off his face at her naivety, because surprise felt like a betrayal. “Did you hear it, in his voice? He likes the idea of his son at his side. You could teach him, Tragos,” she said, lifting her hand to his bicep, her thumb gently squeezing the muscle there. “Teach him everything you know about fighting. About surviving in this world.”

Tragos looked back at her, her words not so easy to concentrate on when she was so close to him, and her bruised hand was against the bare skin of his arm, and her words were speaking such conceptual, future things, things so far into the future when she was right there in front of him.

She watched the way he was watching her, so immediate. Everything about Tragos pulled her starkly into the present; it was a mortal thing, perhaps, but she felt it more keenly with him that she did other mortals. Something about his life; he’d never had a set and certain future, he hacked out a path for himself one day at a time.

Alan – thoughts of him were ever-intrusive, even now – Alan was nothing like this.

She thought of Alan teaching her son through songs and stories and her whole heart just staggered, her hand tightened around Tragos’ arm like the ground itself had given way. It still felt like losing Alan anew, every time she had a thought like this (a thought? A wish, a hope - whichever pointless, long-lost thing it was.)

Tragos stepped closer, his arms going around her to stop her from falling. He was not Alan, and there was no way to change the void in her life that Alan had left, but, she thought… the silence of the void could sometimes be ignored if she screamed loud enough. She pushed herself closer.

“I’m your muse,” she whispered, forehead pressed against his and breath on his mouth, fast and furious. “Say it, claim it, Tragos, I’m your muse.”

“You’re my muse,” he whispered, the closeness of her body, the heat, the heaving of her breath against him, she filled him with want. He loved Marcie but – she filled him with want. Fuck, fuck – they were kissing before he knew it, rough and needy, and his breath was speeding up too; when the kiss broke, which was not quickly, both of them were panting.

He didn’t know if he’d initiated the first kiss… but it was definitely him who leaned in and captured her mouth for the second, and he was the one who stepped toward her and pushed her back against the bathroom wall, his hands completely buried in the tangle of her hair as his tongue explored deep into her mouth. Claim it she ordered, and oh by all the gods he wanted to.

He wanted her, his mouth wanted hers and his hands wanted her skin, his dick wanted her achingly - a craving, unsatisfied, unsatisfiable want that nevertheless demanded SOMETHING be done to sate it. Something about her that demanded creation, and Tragos, never practiced in the art of creation, didn't know where to make this energy go - except for here -

He and Marcie had never really talked about this thing between him and Melpomene – aside from the first couple of comments she’d made, asking if he was sleeping with anyone else – and Tragos didn’t know if Marcie assumed something was still happening between him and his goddess or if she assumed there wasn’t – which was to say, the lack of conversation could be a foundation of an excuse he could make against how hurt she was going to be…

But she was going to be hurt, if he took it further. The want couldn’t deny that, though it was doing its best to quiet it. He was going to hurt Marcie, and that thought was like a knife. It didn’t sever the want completely… but it did wound it. He pulled back and looked at Melpomene, those dark eyes were on his, hungry with a look that could so easily bring his own lust back to full strength and fuck the consequences… She was gorgeous and wild and she wanted him, how was a man supposed to resist that?

Because nothing was simple anymore.

“Aphrodite wants Kaden too,” he didn’t move away from her as he said it, and he could clearly see the words hit, as her eyes changed, growing sharper.

“What,” she hissed, and he felt her hands tighten into fists around the fabric at his waist.

Fuck - he just wanted those fists to drag up his shirt, so he could press his naked chest against her. Tragos swallowed, hard. “They met while Marcie was sick – he’s been going over to her apartment, she’s been giving him gifts.”

“No,” Melpomene breathed, holding on tightly as Tragos spun her world a little faster, throwing the threat of Aphrodite right back into her face. She wanted Tragos’ brother, on top of everything else? “No, no, she’s not having him.” She’s not having any of them. Melpomene had little claim on Kaden but Tragos did and Tragos was hers and Aphrodite wasn’t taking what was Tragos’. She would allow Aphrodite no more.

“What will she do to him?”

“What won’t she do, to get what she wants?” Melpomene hissed, and shook her head, as the whole weight of the day collapsed on her at once and she needed, more than anything else in the world right now, to sit down. She made it to the couch and just dropped, chest heaving with breath and every bruised part of her aching, every exhausted bone like a lead weight. She buried her face in her hands, unable, for a few long moments, to do anything but continue to breathe, because every other reaction (and her mind demanded so many panicked mad furious reactions) required too much energy, and she was done, her body was done.

She felt the couch dip as Tragos sat next to her, and she leaned into him. “Don’t leave,” she whispered, as he put his arm around her. “Stay – just stay.”

Don’t be too long about it Ares had said.

What was too long? Tragos felt the tightrope stretched between Ares and Melpomene wobble under his feet.

One day it was going to snap entirely.

All Tragos could do, though, was keep on walking the line between them, and pray today was not that day.