The obvious disorientation and hurt in his best friends eyes hurt him too. It fucking plunged the knife in him, you better believe. However, the powers of Heaven were a lot more subtle than those of the sea. They didn't shudder the Earth. Zeus was too at ease with who he was.
It was good to be King.
"No more." Zeus demanded of his friend... his... brother? Zeus demanded it of Poseidon, as if he were the one causing the ground to shake, the girl to hide, the staff to scuttle around like mice trying to find their mouse hole in a maze of lions. His brother. Paul was his brother. That was something they'd always wanted and what either of them had ever felt without it being an official, mortal collaboration of blood. Didn't he remember the sacred oaths of junior high and beyond at the bottom of beer bottles and the edge of the world? The promises and the panic of the death of their fathers on their funerals? It was all there, past, present, future. All in how he looked down at him, a faint raise of his chin -- he was proud of who he was, who they both were -- and he couldn't fathom why Poseidon wasn't, or what could possibly ail him into the weaknesses of the trappings of fear. It was no coincidence that the ground shook. Poseidon had such a thing in his portfolio of power. And he needed to get a fucking grip before he broke the place, the thought that inspired the hand that went to his friends shoulder. A sound, fastening anchor on a wild, ravaged sea.
"You'll scare the kittens at the pet store down the street." (Vince couldn't help it. Zeus was no where around yet, after all.)