February 5th, 2016
Parliament was a popular retreat for local toughs in the city’s West End, a rendezvous Mesteno had picked because he knew they wouldn’t be bothered by the demi monde clientele. Tucked away in the basement of a vacant office building (turned safe haven for squatters and a base of operations for small scale crime rings) the bar itself remained free of strife, under permanent ceasefire no matter the gang symbols inked onto skins or embellished on jackets.
The galère already claiming prime occupancy were too busy making discreet exchanges to pay attention to other people's business. The only one to notice the necromancer and his Elf was the bartender, a slender, tall man with hair the shade of platinum usually reserved for Scandinavian children, eyebrows and eyelashes just as ghostly and eyes wholly amber, with not a scrap of white to be seen and no pupil apparent. He smelled like shifter to those with the right noses, and despite the fragile bone-work of his face, coupled with an almost elven grace, he seemed to have the respect of the patrons.
The lighting was deliberately low, the better to help obscure those who didn't want to be observed, and what illumination there was came through scarlet filters, making every bottle and glass appear full of suspect fluids. Chrome accents and black leather seating seemed starkly modern, though the walls were far from bare. Elegantly sculpted, bleached bone assembled into abstract shapes, yet more of it twisted into patterns along the ceiling. Even the coasters on the tables seemed to have been cut from thin, osseous slivers, chiselled with designs as intricate and individual as snowflakes. Mesteno had long ago come to the conclusion that it wasn’t mere abattoir waste.
Mesteno had taken Lexius there early by design, determined to arrive before Aiden for once. Still, he searched the sleek, urban establishment suspiciously, until he was satisfied that they’d beaten him there. He'd dressed darkly but casually, opting for black denim and scuffed boots, a steel grey Henley he'd yet to stain and his favoured, battered aviator jacket.
"I don't see him," Mesteno murmured, eyes narrowed almost imperceptibly. "You want to find us a table while I grab a drink? You're not gonna want one, right?" He flashed the Elf a lop-sided grin, knowing full well he’d more likely he'd abstain than ask for something just for show.
Lexius shook his head minutely in confirmation. "No." He’d seen no reason to dress in anything but his lizard-skin norm, despite their location and the obviousness of his pointed ears. The beads dangled and swayed by his thigh (albeit silently) as he moved away to claim an unoccupied table with a good view of the door. One chair kicked out for Mesteno, he settled into another and left the third for Aiden to sit in with his back to most of the room.
Before long, Mesteno dropped into his seat, absent any grace, with a glass of Dalwhinnie that he only avoided spilling in his carelessness via minor miracle. This night, he had no intention of starting an expensive tab. Where the Greeks were involved, he couldn’t afford to miss details due to ill-considered inebriation.
Thankfully, Aiden didn't make them long enough for Mesteno’s binge-drinking tendencies to overrule his good intentions.
"Wow," he greeted them glibly, "Look at them ears."
Whilst he hadn’t arrived with trumpeting fanfare, his very presence had seemed to electrify the room when he’d come strolling down the stairs into the Parliament’s carnally red gleam. The demi-god was dressed simply enough in faded and tattered jeans and a long sleeved, checked (red and black) shirt that would have looked right at home on a lumberjack. He had the height, if not the girth of one, and the beginning of a beard darkening his jaw that attested to the fact he only maintained a passing relationship with a razor.
His gaze, as he approached, was focused on the Elf, the unveiled points of ears usually hidden by hair distinctly less close-cropped to his scalp.
"At least he's never tardy," Mesteno commiserated with Lexius, before cracking a half-smile for Aiden that had to serve for greeting. "Thanks for coming. Figure you're probably busier than ever given current events, so I appreciate it." Not we. He would never presume to speak for Lexius.
Lexius levelled a steady, unblinking look Aiden's way and didn't say a word. Serenity incarnate.
Aiden only grinned more deeply. "Eyes, too." He remarked as he snagged the chair and turned it around to straddle backwards. He didn't seem to have an issue putting his back to the crowd. He folded his arms along the back of the chair and tipped it forward, towards them. The air around their table crackled a little with the vibrancy of his presence. "I don't think I've been nearly as busy as you two." He said it knowingly, flashing his teeth in an even broader grin, but didn't comment further on whatever he'd come to suspect just by looking at them. His attention diverted to the bar and the crowd.
"Mister Dark and Dreary" and there was no need to specify whom he meant, "has had his nuts in the twist the past couple weeks. I think he lost track of a toy he was saving for later. Know anything about that?" He shot his gaze right back to Mesteno, amused approval in his expression.
Mesteno did not intend to invite questions, or answer them it seemed. He occupied his mouth with another swallow of his whisky, and wished he’d thought to ask for a double. "Not like one of them to be so careless. Guess he should’a made the most of it while he actually possessed it." Those terrible moments when he'd been dragged from the temple and forced into grudging submission (even if only physically) were still fresh in his mind, and a distinct frown had begun to deepen across his brow. Resentment. Hubris. He went on before Aiden could pass comment. "I'd have thought he'd have bigger things to concern him at present, anyway. Rest of the family leaving doors wide open and making all these big plans for spring. There been much talk about that lately? I figure it must be throwing quite the shadow over the party your friends have been enjoying since your Boss came home."
"He tends to break his toys pretty quickly." Aiden assured Mesteno first. Not a threat, just a fact. "It's probably good this one got lost, but it does beg the question how that happened without someone else in the family stepping in to hide it from him."
Mesteno was missing something. The Titan's taint had been as obvious to Aiden as it had been to his Godly relatives. If there was any of it lingering, it was far subtler. Aiden knew what it took to remove that kind of tarnish, and it was probably fortunate he was ascribing the lack more to the Elf rather than wondering to which other God of the pantheon Mesteno might have gone to get it erased.
"If I were that toy, I'd make sure I stayed good and hidden, especially on holy ground, where all his other toys tend to wander about." It was a friendly warning, as evidenced by Aiden's continued grin, but his blue eyes were still questioning. He flicked another look to the silent Elf, as if expecting him to speak up.
For a wonder, Lexius actually did.
"There has been no direct contact with any of them." The Elf assured quietly. His words seemed to calm some of the crackle factor in the air and had Aiden relaxing just a fraction. Why he trusted Lexius' word on the matter was a mystery, but it seemed he did.
"Good to know." Aiden looked away again, searching for a server. "What's a guy got to do to get a drink around here? Answering your questions is gonna be thirsty work and you look almost empty, Whippet."
Mesteno’s mouth flattened, lips pressed tight in disapproval, but it was better than the sneering, foul-mouthed diatribe he'd been about to spill about Hades. "I suspect I'll need another, just to keep the house happy we're actually paying to sit here." Safer to comment on the drink until he had his temper in check. "He shouldn't break toys when he's made promises to behave himself. Other members of the family are after all, oath bound to make sure the toys are well looked after. It wouldn't look good if they didn't stick to their promises, right?"
There was another member of the bar staff collecting empties from a nearby table, a woman as pale haired and willow lean as the man and as similar of features as to make it a safe bet they were siblings. She seemed to spy Aiden searching, and moved across with an avian tilt to her head, and nails long enough (and dense enough) to seem talon-like curling over the edge of the tray. Unlike the male, she had perfectly obvious pupils, very wide and round. "What'll it be?" she asked absently. On closer inspection, there were feathers in her hair, as securely rooted as the strands themselves, with faint brown barring and spots so pale as to elude the eye.
Mesteno ordered himself another couple of fingers of Dalwhinnie before Aiden even opened his mouth. Unsurprisingly, the Greek flashed a charming smile at the disinterested server as he ordered his own whiskey with a wink. "Appreciate it, angel."
The waitress’ feathers lifted subtly amidst gossamer hair. She might not have been susceptible to his energy, but like most birds, a preening vanity was in evidence at his attempts to charm as she slipped away to fetch their drinks. Aiden’s gaze lingered, as if he wasn't aware of Mesteno silently seething just a few feet away. He was. It seemed to amuse him. His grin was back, wide and deep, when he finally looked back to the Sadist.
"My brother has a soft spot for humanity as a whole. My uncle never did, especially the ones that dabble in his domain and look like they might have turned against his interests" Aiden held up a hand. "I'm just saying how it looks, not how it is. I'll do my best to assure them it's not the case and I'm pretty sure the former will understand given your..." he glanced to the Elf again, "...associations. But the latter, well, he's kinds possessive, ya know?" Aiden decided it was time to move on from that topic, because he switched it up right quick! "Anyway, you're right about the Spring Fling keeping everyone busy. My side has been pretty intent on getting Miss Wisdom to come to our party rather than theirs since we can't really touch the Door Man. He's not really part of the family, ya know? But now their side if offering him a real place and there's no way he's going to be turned from that."
"I didn't dabble in his domain, he dragged me down there," Mesteno muttered, unwilling to let the matter drop as easily as Aiden might have liked, "but if you mean simply having associated talents, well fuck him. He doesn't have a monopoly on that kind of thing." He polished off what was left of his first drink and nudged it away across the table before slouching back again and shooting a look across at Lexius, more than a little jealous of his talent for serenity.
"Miss Wisdom has been a loose cannon for months now. She's still sitting on the fence? And at least tell me you had some luck getting what you needed from the tech district. You guys are prepared for this party, right?"
Mesteno’s temper seemed to delight the demi-god all the more. "I won’t tell him you said that." He assured. The ‘fuck him’ part, he meant! "He may not have a monopoly on it, and believe me, that really pisses him off, but that's one of the things he's looking to change." Speaking of change, Aiden thumped his chair fully back to the floor so he could shift and dig into the pocket of his jeans for coins. Real drachma. He offered them as payment for the drinks when they were delivered, the charm dialled up again for the pretty bird woman. "You are an angel after all."
Aiden swirled his drink distractedly, watching the waitress leave before he got around to answering Mesteno. "That's the thing about them wise ones. They think they got all the time in the word to contemplate a thing before making a decision." Aiden shot another grin to the Elf. "But then, when you live as long as that lot and others, I guess your world view is a little different." He made it sound like he hadn't been living just as long as the rest of them. A pause to sip his drink, to appreciate it. "That's pretty good for a dirt-side drink." And then back on topic. "The goal is to make it so the party can't happen at all. At least for them. We got some things to help out with that. The problem is placing them effectively. There's lot of security at their house right now."
"He won't.” Change things, Mesteno meant. A monopoly on death was a horrifying notion. “He's got all the attitude and temper of a spoiled brat. That's not a winning combination when you're looking to gain ground. T'be honest, if he wasn't the motivated type I'd wonder why he was even welcome on your side. Or is it just a case of tolerating him because if he wasn't under watchful eyes he'd be making trouble or trying to gain standing with the others?"
Aiden rocked his chair onto its back legs again with a low chuckle. "He doesn't need to gain ground in the conventional way, you know that. His power is built into the mortal condition and it's pretty much inescapable. Everybody believes in what he represents and the vast majority of those believers fear it, and thus him, even if he does have handmaidens who carry out the actual deed. But that works against him, too, which is why my brother has a say in things even though my uncle is older." He wasn't defending Hades so much as trying to caution Mesteno not to take him too lightly! "Try not to forget he was one of the ones who locked the Big Guys away before any of the rest of us were ever born. And while we don't want it to come to war, if it does, the results will only strengthen him all the more." Believers dying by the hundreds would only enhance Hades' power.
Resigned, Mesteno let his thoughts turn back to Athena and her frankly irritating indecision. If she were so wise, he couldn't understand why she hadn't picked a winning side yet. "She should know when there are mortals involved, the pace of things isn't so sedate. She'll get left behind at this rate, and might find she doesn't like a future she hasn't had a say in."
For now he kept both hands folded neatly around his tumbler, resisting the urge to feed his temper with alcohol, and perhaps more so than usual, since Lexius was sat right there with him. He watched the Elf, even when he resumed speaking.
"Well plainly we can't be involved in helping you organise things. You just told us we need to stay out of the temple district." And that was going to be a pain, for work commitments. "If it proves too difficult to pull off the plan in time, what can we expect? Is the shit gonna hit the fan hard enough that we'd be better off leaving the city for a while, or will it stay contained to Greek and Roman soil? I have people here I need to know will be safe." A pause. "You know, by RhyDin standards, anyway."