She was swallowing her pride by showing up again at Zeus’s place for possibly the third time that week. How many times had it been since she had called things off with Orion? She probably seemed desperate, like she couldn’t find anyone else who would take her, but each time she swept into his place she made sure to seem effortless and unbothered. This wasn’t like her. This wasn’t what she typically felt like, what she acted like. She felt like something was off with her, and she knew what it was. She was slipping, again, towards a path that wasn’t the best. She knew it, Melina knew it, and she supposed Aphrodite could tell as well. But she had to cope somehow, and if that meant pretending that things were okay, that was what she was going to do. And Astrid? She was good at acting like she was doing fine. She was almost an expert at it. Hadn’t that been her entire life? She was as cool as a cucumber under pressure, unflappable. Her lipstick was painted and powdered, and she knew it wouldn’t budge.

Astrid has carved herself a space, and he had let her. She wasn’t sure why, even as she stood in his threshold, her hair flowing down her back. She had made herself a space, and she kept coming back. She was still waiting for him to tell her to go. Everyone else did, after all. She was pushed away more often than she could even remember. He hadn’t gotten rid of her yet; it was possible he didn’t have the energy, or she was just that easy of a lay. It almost didn’t matter. She could shoot him a grin, she could flirt, and she got what she wanted. What she was there for. It was easy, easier than anything else she had been dealing with. At least she could sift through her three or four emotions and move on. She wasn’t stuck worrying, fighting for attention that wasn’t going to come. He gave her what she was looking for, and that was enough for Astrid.

Did they even need that much conversation anymore? It was a year, or around that… He had rules about sleeping with people who were that young… She was an adult though, and had been when they met. And on top of that, she hadn’t felt young in years. She had grown up quick, and she was tired. And almost a year later… Well, they still saw each other semi-regularly, though it was sparse in times that she had been seeing other people, people like Roma and Leslie and Orion. Astrid offered Zeus a sleepy grin, stretching her arms out. She felt like she could just slip in, laugh at the peacock (a peacock, for Morgana’s sake!), and be comfortable. It was unnerving, really, especially after the week she had been having.

“You look serious,” she said, finally finding a set of words that worked. Astrid had planned on just walking in, finding her footing, and then finding his very nice body in a compromising position. She furrowed her brows, drawing a set of manicured nails to her lips and tapping nervously. No, she couldn’t show that she was anxious. Astrid adjusted herself, a coy smile on her lips instead. She was the poster child for cool as a cucumber. She wasn’t worried about yet another constant being torn from her fingertips.

# 579, @oneandonlyzeus

living just comes with a bit of heartache

❤fai

Zeus knew he was far from a respectable gentleman, his family told him often enough even if society did not. He hardly cared what people thought of the way he lived, what they thought of who he chose to take to bed; it wasn't anyone's business except himself and whoever he cared to share his bed with. In the past, before Astrid had swept into his life, he had never pursued the same person twice, let alone however many nights he'd spent with Astrid in this past year. It hadn't been only her, to be sure, because there had been breaks where they'd both seen other people--hers were exclusive relationships while his...weren't even relationships. Now she was back. Again.

In the beginning, Zeus had thought he'd get tired of her, of the things they did; every time she showed up on his doorstep with a wink and a smile, he'd been helpless not to feel at least a little bit relieved that she hadn't grown tired of him first. Zeus looked at her standing there, coy as ever, and attempted to school his features into something resembling his usual arrogance; he knew he failed when she called him serious. He sighed, for once unsure how to word what he wanted to say without giving her the wrong message, because for some reason he was terrified she'd leave for good if he overstepped the boundaries of whatever they had. This was, by far, the longest relationship he'd ever been in, and Zeus wasn't sure what to make of that.

He sighed and ran a hand through his hair. "I'm in a...serious mood," he replied as he stepped back to let her in. "There's something I'd like to speak to you about, before anything starts." As ominous as that sounded, he couldn't thing of a different way of phrasing it that wouldn't sound ominous. "Please, sit," he gestured to the sofa, where Hera sat perched on one of the arms like it was his throne. Arrogant bird. Zeus wasn't even sure why he'd kept the damn thing after he'd woken up after a drunken night with two other gods of thunder to the sight of a squawking peacock parading around his room.

If she had been anyone else, Astrid knew she would have flinched. Even with the few sentences she felt her throat close slightly, her smile frozen. What had he meant? All the thoughts in her head were overwhelming, tidal waves of emotion. This was something she hadn’t wanted to deal with. Emotions were difficult, hard to master. She wanted to just look at them and smile sweetly, wave as they passed her by. There were times where they made things difficult, and this was one of those moments. She had to look super crisp and clean, like she wasn’t nervous about anything, like two sentences hadn’t freaked her out more than any other she had heard in the past two weeks. Needing to talk? And he was in a serious mood? She toyed with the hem of her flannel, her lips plastered in that grin. She kept reassuring herself that she was fine. Nothing could bother her— and nothing would. She wasn’t going to be hurt by anything; there wasn’t anything that he could say that would really cause her that much pain.

Expect, of course, there was.

She arched a brow, trying to keep an air of nonchalance about her as she dropped onto the couch. She was sprawled, slightly, in the lazy way that she sat. Cat-like, almost. Astrid always felt like his couch was the third-best place at Zeus’s, losing to both the bedroom and his kitchen. As she stretched out, she smiled at the peacock resting on the other arm, searching in the pocket of her jean shorts for a peanut butter oat ball. The girls at the studio had bragged about how great they were, but she hadn’t ended up trying them. She knew Hera would appreciate them more, anyway. Stretching an arm out to the bird, she had to hold back a laugh. It was beautifully fitting that Zeus even had a peacock named Hera, and the bird was pompous enough that the name fit. Oddly enough, the peacock didn’t necessarily detest Astrid, but that may have been due to how hard she tried to keep the animal from hating her. Was that sad? If she had been thinking of this as a simple little thing, a simple arrangement, would she have done the same? She wanted to say that she would, but she knew she only was close to the others because they had been something more. When she was just messing around with boys she barely bothered to learn their names. She knew a lot about Zeus, and she tried to make his odd pet like her.

Maybe he thought she was getting attached. The first time she had thought she felt something, she had run. Well, not really. She ran in her own way; she strung along other boys, seeing him only in the background, trying her hardest to push away from any sort of attachment. She just liked the attention— that’s what she told herself. She liked attention, and that was why she kept coming back. And after the latest beau of hers, she felt like she was probably seeming clingy. But the thing was— Zeus looked at her better than any of the other boys she had met so far. Not just in a sleazy way, but in a… Well, he seemed to get what was going on in her head. And she appreciated that. He didn’t try to fix her or change her, and he paid attention. But he probably thought that she was getting too sappy, that she was there too often. She was taking up too much time. She had to be. Because she was there, there too many times in a week, and he probably had other people he wanted to see.

If he was kicking her out for good, she was going to take in the view as much as she could. Merlin and Morgana, if only she could have dragged him to see one of the ballets— that would have made Kira so jealous, and Constance as well. At least, it would have made her jealous before she had found her newest boyfriend. Because Zeus was hot, that’s what drew her to him in the first place in that damn coffee shop. He was hot, and she had just wanted a little look before she ran her errands for the day. She looked up at him from her comfortable seat on the couch, trying to ease that dramatic breath caught in her throat. She was Astrid Travers. She could survive anything, including being told that their friends with beneficial relationship-thing wouldn’t work. “Did I interrupt something?” Did that sound casual enough? She tried to seem more carefree, breezy, like normal.

# 794, @oneandonlyzeus

living just comes with a bit of heartache

❤fai

Zeus watched as Astrid fed his picky bird a peanut butter ball, which was another strange thing about their arrangement. Hera actually seemed to...maybe not like Astrid, but he certainly didn't hate her; the bird held some sort of grudging tolerance for her presence, and hadn't ever tried to run her off after their initial meeting. Sure, he strutted about with his train fanned out, which was either a threat or an attempt at getting her attention, and Zeus wasn't sure which was worse. Still, with her lounged across his admittedly comfortable sofa, Zeus had to take a breath to center his thoughts before he got sidetracked.

Her expression turned hard for a brief moment, before she corrected herself and settled back into that careful nonchalance. Well, at lease he knew she wasn't completely unattached to him. "It's not--I don't want to stop," he began, more unsure than he'd ever been about anything in his life. "But we've been doing...whatever we've been doing for over a year now, and it's...nice. Comfortable in a way most things in my life aren't. So I was thinking, maybe we could...only do this with...each other? Not like dating, or anything, but just...more of this? With only each other? And maybe a previously agreed upon third party, if the mood strikes," he finished with an attempt at humor.

"But if you'd rather keep as we've been doing, that's fine too," he rushed to add when she didn't appear ready to reply. Zeus turned towards the kitchen awkwardly, "So I'm just gonna--Coffee? Whiskey?"

She felt her jaw slacken at his words, a slight sense of unease creeping into the hunch of her shoulders. He didn't want to stop. She knew that relief should have dripped in folds, but the feeling of nervousness kept pressing to the front of her mind. Astrid was just waiting for someone to jump out at her and laugh, to insist that this was a joke. But it wasn't, it couldn't have been. The wry attempt at humor at the end of his statement was enough to verify that. He meant it. He was honestly meaning everything that he was saying. He wanted to keep doing whatever it was they were doing-- and with the thought that they didn't pick up any other relationships as well. She was still surprised to find that he wasn't saying anything negative, and her fingers toyed with her flannel as she struggled to keep her little mask of nonchalance up. She wanted to seem like she wasn't so bothered, so excited... Except she supposed that she was. At the very least, she was feeling something swelling up in her chest, and she assumed that it was something positive. The fact that he was saying this was enough; he wouldn't go back on something like that, would he?

She wanted to believe that he wouldn't. She wanted to believe that he wouldn't just say something like that and then rescind the offer, because otherwise that would just... It would hurt, a lot. So she had to assume that he wouldn't do that. She knew him enough to know that he was being sincere, and Astrid could tell how awkward he felt. He wasn't sure how she was going to react. And she knew she had to... React. Because she was just sitting there, staring at him, and she hadn't even said anything. She just wasn't sure how to voice what she was thinking. She could figure it out... She could... "More of this," she repeated, nodding gently. That wasn't really... Well, that wasn't just right, but she was trying. She was getting there. Astrid knew that it was going to take some time, especially with how she was so convinced this could turn into a bad version of a fever dream. "Yeah, I'm good with that." Great with that, even, but she didn't know if she could get herself to voice that out loud. 

"Both," she called when he turned away, her stomach turning slightly. He could still say no. He could still change his mind. But she didn't think that he would, not when he was the one who had come up with the words. Not when he had requested it. She ran a hand through her hair, slowly curling up a bit tighter on the couch. She looked at Hera, arching a brow as the bird chewed on the snack. "Did you know about this?" she asked the peacock, crinkling her nose. She wanted to know how long this was going on. She wanted to know when he had started thinking about any of this, because it was coming as a shock for her. Maybe it was because she hadn't been hung up on it for once. Maybe it was because she hadn't let herself think about it. 

# 547, @oneandonlyzeus

living just comes with a bit of heartache

❤fai

Stable, healthy relationships have never been Zeus's thing; his siblings all knew this, as did all his bed-partners, and he'd made sure not to give anyone any illusions about his future plans--namely, the lack of them. He lived his life in the moment, pursuing the next bit of fun and never stopping to consider what it might do to him in the long run. As far as Zeus was concerned, there was no long run; there was just now, possibly a tomorrow, but even that wasn't completely guaranteed. Truthfully, he still believed it, but somehow Astrid made him...hopeful for another day, made him want a future. Nothing so dull as a wife and kids, but certainly something more stable than what he'd been doing, something that would still be there the next morning.

Merlin she was so...not young, though he supposed she was physically young, but he was more surprised by how well she accepted the dark parts of the world. Zeus didn't hold to some cliche belief that she was a light in the darkness, but she certainly provided pleasant company to weather the darkness. She'd seemed so surprised by his suggestion, like she hadn't considered that he might actually want to keep her around, and some long buried protective instinct woke and demanded he bash in the skulls of whoever made her believe she was someone unworthy of being kept. It wasn't hard to shake it off, unsettled by instincts he'd ignored for decades and unwilling to face them at the moment. He was relieved when she agreed, because he had a sinking feeling that he wouldn't have been able to tolerate the idea of her with other men for much longer. Part of him hoped that whatever this was, whatever madness was making him feel like this, would pass and he'd be back to his old self; another part, a hopeful part, wanted this to stay. 

He busied himself with making two coffees with whiskey, adding plenty of the latter to both, then carried them back out to the sitting room. Hera was still sat on the arm of the sofa, but there was a decidedly fonder tilt to his head in the direction of Astrid, which was mildly unsettling, all things considered. Could birds sense the feelings of their masters? Zeus knew some of the more intelligent breeds could read faces, to some extent, but he was fairly certain peacocks weren't among them. He stared into his coffee for several long moments, unsure what to say next now that he'd said what he needed to. "Do you wanna...go somewhere? Together?" That sounded like he was asking for a date, didn't it? He wasn't sure how to word it so it didn't. Did he want a date? What would they even do? Oh hell, what if she expected more now that they were making things kind of serious? Did she want a date?

At any moment, Astrid was terrified that someone would jump out and shriek that this was all a prank. She didn't think that Zeus would do that-- or could, really, because he was far kinder than he thought. Roma would do it, but he wasn't here, and there was no way that they would do something like that together. Because she could beat the lights out of Roma if she really wanted to, even if he had more muscle. But that didn't stop the catch in her throat, the hope that this was something better... Something less frightening. 

It couldn't be a plan to prank her. That much she could be certain of. She had to look at the facts, decide it... Zeus wouldn't do that. 

In fact, he looked as shocked as she felt. Maybe he hadn't thought to say what he did. Maybe he was thinking of saying something else, and the words had slipped out. 

She was glad, either way. She liked the thought of consistency, especially when it came to him. It was... A different sort of constant than there had been with Roma. She wasn't fearing for an argument, or itching to start one. She was content and agreeable, or as agreeable as she could be. She didn't feel like she was about to be thrown out. And she wasn't attempting to keep it a secret from Dimitri. She was content, nestled on the couch, retrieving a cup of spiked coffee. 

"Today?" she asked, observing the smooth coffee and the rising steam. "Or in general?" 

She wasn't sure that she wished to go out today. But a date... Just the thought of one. She could take him out with her, to the club, to a gala... "Yeah, I'd like that." She still wasn't sure what she was doing. Hell, she was still scared this was a joke. And what was Affy going to say when she told her?

But this was good. Hadn't she wanted this, before? Hadn't she thrown herself at Affy's couch and complained? And then had busied herself with others, attempted to push herself away from any sort of complicated feelings. She saw what complication did to her friends. "How... How long have you been thinking about this?" 

# 394, short but here! , @oneandonlyzeus

living just comes with a bit of heartache

❤fai

What was he doing? At the rate he was going he'd be introducing her to his family at Christmas. Which...actually didn't sound too bad, now that he thought about it. Astrid was obviously turning into something resembling permanent in his life, a term usually reserved for family and clients--of which Astrid was neither. It terrified him, but he'd never shied away from danger before now, although he hadn't been risking anything more precious than his natural life. Now, he was risking the fate of...something. A more valuable part of himself, maybe. In any case, if any of his siblings knew what he was doing, they'd be screaming at him about family honor and how could he possibly think taking up with someone so young, not to mention a squib. Zeus obviously didn't care at all about her lack of magic, though he privately believed she was a magic all her own. Not that he'd ever tell her that, because then she'd think he was some kind of sap, and he didn't need to give her any false expectations. Though lately, he'd found himself having more sap-like thoughts about her, even when she wasn't around.

Oh. Well, that was kind of a relief that she didn't want to go out right then, but he was glad she was open to going out at some point in the nebulous future. It meant he could sort of surprise her, which was nice. He had time to gather his courage for going out as an official...something. Zeus wasn't sure he could call them a proper couple yet, but they were certainly on the road there if they kept it up as they were. "Doesn't have to be tonight," he confirmed, then added a little eyebrow waggle to lighten the mood. She was already at his place, and it was getting late. "I'll surprise you," he declared; some of his old confidence returning now that he'd gotten it all over with. 

How long had he been thinking about this? Honestly, Zeus wasn't sure when thoughts of...keeping her started, but it's been months since he could think of anything else when he thought of Astrid. As impulsive as he was in all other aspects, Zeus wasn't one to jump into something long-term until he'd though it through as thoroughly as he could. "I don't know exactly, but it's been months," he replied with a return of his earlier nerves. If only Erica could see him now, she'd he having a field day laughing at his fumbling attempts to romance a girl he'd been sleeping with for months.

Permanent... There was nothing really that solid in her life at this point, not even ballet. Ballet could be ripped away at any second; any injury could snake her career right past her fingertips. Her family had never been so strong. They were there, and then they were not. Nothing was permanent for Astrid, but Zeus had almost gotten there. He had, technically. He was the constant in her life, the one thing that hadn't changed. In the past year, she had been promoted to soloist, slept and dated countless guys, and had spoken to her brother and cousin. She had moved houses, had moved up, lightly, in her lifestyle. But Zeus had been the rock in between that, and she had continuously gone back to his bed at the end of every relationship.

It was a strange way of doing things, and she was reluctant to admit that anything would have changed if she hadn't gone to Zeus. This was all so different to Astrid. To have someone genuinely want to spend time with her... It was strange. Orion had shared interests with her, had seemed like he wanted to be interested, and then he would shun her, ignore her, and pretend like she didn't exist. It hurt. Zeus never... He didn't hurt her. He never seemed like he was about to, either. He wasn't harsh with her feelings on the rare occasions that she let them out, and she didn't ever feel ignored or unheard from.

And to make it an official, real thing... "Months," she repeated, her brows raising. Months. That was Roma and Orion, then. She took a sip of her drink, trying not to laugh. The irony of it all; she had thrown herself back towards Roma when she was feeling something towards Zeus, unwilling to break off whatever it was that they were. She lowered her cup, making room on the couch so that he could join her. "Wow."

# 375, yikes what a bad post but it's done! , @oneandonlyzeus

painkillers

❤fai

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[attr="class","redqueen"]painkillers

[attr="class","tweedles"]It was strange to realize that he, Zeus the ever changing and never permanent womanizer, had just netted himself a not-girlfriend. Even stranger was how not-strange it all felt. Awkward? Yes. Nerve-wracking? Certainly. But strange? Oddly not. They might not have been consistent, in the past, but they've always been constant. Which he suspects is as much a shock for Astrid as it was for Zeus to realize that. Zeus saw Astrid more than he saw his own siblings, for Merlin's sake, and one of them visited at least twice a month. Meddling buggers couldn't leave their judgmental noses out of his business, and he knew they sent word back to their parents. Zeus himself sent letters when he could, and while he had extended the offer of a spare room should they choose to visit, they had yet to take him up on it. Whether that was because they thought his lifestyle was contagious, or because they simply didn't want to travel all that way, he could never be sure. Likely a combination of both reasons.

When Astrid moved to make room for him on the couch, Zeus took the offered spot and allowed himself to relax into a more comfortable position. His admission was apparently a shock to her, as it had been for him, and he worried she might be put off after learning about it. He knew she'd dated at least two other men in that time, which was probably why it was so shocking to her. If she hadn't dated those men, however, he likely wouldn't have realized his...feelings. "Yeah," he agreed. What else was there to say about it? He wouldn't apologize for it, even if he was a bit regretful that he hadn't come to his senses sooner. "Is that...not good?"

[attr="class","rabbit"]### - Astrid - He finally cooperated enough to write a whole post

♕fai

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