Chapter Text
Thanatos is swiping idly on the latest dating app when he spots him.
He can’t believe he let Charon convince him to make a profile - yes, he knows that’s that how his brother met Hermes, and he’s aware of how great they are together, and of course somewhere at the back of his mind he’d like to spend his nights doing something after work other than doom-scrolling until his too-exhausted eyes fall shut, but he’d been resistant.
But Charon had picked through Thanatos’ social media for some less moody pictures of him, gotten Hermes to take some more with a wink, and typed furiously away before shoving his phone back into his hands.
Thanatos, 25, consulting, looking for something (or someone) to do after work, read the description under a photo of him from university at some party or other, back in the days when he didn’t have to go on apps to meet people. He’d removed the “or someone” with a groan and a blush as Hermes’ eyebrows waggled in his direction.
It’d been fun, of course, to swipe through the app’s dubiously appealing offerings, silently judging some, reluctantly admiring others. There were the guys holding up some kind of fish in their pictures, the sunburnt ones “in Greece for 2 weeks, looking for fun”, the baristas, the artists, the lawyers.
It’d been fun, until he’d swiped right on a tanned, muscly guy who claimed to be manning a sailboat in Santorini for the summer, just to reveal Zagreus’ toothy grin and mismatched eyes, staring right at him.
Zag, 23, here for a good time not a long time (jk, here for grad school so who knows how long that’ll take XD). Hmu with hike suggestions?
Thanatos scoffs softly, the corners of his lips twitching into a smile. A closer look at the photo, where Zag seems to be wearing some kind of toga, the red fabric slung over only one shoulder – a costume, maybe? – tells him Zagreus has filled out quite a bit, grown into that jawline, no longer the lanky teenager Thanatos used to know.
Something clenches in his chest.
He taps through the rest of Zagreus’ photos: there he is, sporting the same cheeky grin with a mountain vista in the background. The next one’s a candid, Zagreus gesticulating in front of an academic poster that’s too out of focus to read. The last one seems to have been taken by someone else – Zagreus on some restaurant patio, lounging easily in his chair, blue sky and aquamarine sea behind him, crisp white dress shirt half unbuttoned as the orange glow of sunset glows softly on his face.
He wonders… he wonders what he’s studying.
He tells himself that that’s why, instead of doing what he always does whenever he runs into someone he knows in real life on the app, which is swipe left and consider throwing his phone down the toilet, he hesitates, thumb hovering over the screen.
Just a friendly message, he thinks, and off Zagreus’ photo goes, replaced by yet another amateur fisherman. He probably won’t even swipe right.
In spite of this, Thanatos inexplicably still feels like throwing his phone down the toilet, but settles for throwing it to the corner of the couch instead. He’s oddly grateful when the characteristic ping of an email coming in sounds on his laptop, and he sighs. The client never sleeps, and neither does he.
The task he’s been assigned takes twice as long as it usually does, because instead of focusing on finding the files the lawyers have asked for, he’s thinking about that summer before he left for university. It’d been… a perfect piece of liminal space, at once instantaneous and endless, and at the centre of it all had been Zagreus.
It’s blurry, now, but his mouth is dry at the moments he does remember: lighting Zagreus’ joint in the wisteria-filled gardens of the city park, leaning in so close to protect the little flame that their noses almost bump, and Zag grinning; letting their bikes fall into the powdery white sand of the little cove by Zagreus’ house, peeling off his sweat-sticky shirt, running after Zag to dive into the turquoise water.
And then – going to see a movie the night before Nyx was slated to drive him five hours to his college, after Zagreus had helped him pack for the next chapter of his life. A warm hand slipping into Thanatos’ perpetually cold one, letting go only once the passenger car door had opened. A last, meaningful look through the car window.
Thanatos had watched the front door of the Hades house for too long after it had clicked shut.
And then he’d returned, fall reading week, to learn that Zagreus had run away. For good, this time, it seemed.
Whatever anger he’d felt then had long since given way to dull hurt, a gallstone still somewhere in the pit of his stomach. Thanatos has moved on. He probably won’t even swipe right.
The documents are found, and with the lawyer’s “all good, thanks, Thanatos”, he’s free to do as he pleases once more, at least until morning comes around and with it, more emails.
He dares to glance at his phone, wedged between two cushions of his couch. Maybe his boss has texted him. Surely he should check it in case something has gone wrong with the documents, in a way that couldn’t be communicated over email.
Maybe his mother is worried about him. Wouldn’t that be something?
He stalks over to the phone, and though there’s a number indicating a few new notifications on the little flame that’s the dating app’s logo, he ignores it and the little spike in his heartrate that comes with it. The app is always messaging him about getting on it at around 11pm, which is apparently prime swiping o’clock. He does have a missed call from Nyx, which is surprising. He’ll call her back in the morning – she might be burning the midnight oil, but he has to be up again in a few hours. He’s been tagged in a work thing on social media – congrats to the audit team on another great tax season, it says, below the photo full of people who need to get more sleep.
Finally, he sighs, and taps on the dating app’s icon.
“New match,” the banner says, and then, “2 new messages”.
Than! goes the first one, and Thanatos’ heart jumps into his throat until he subsequently reads, lmao you’re on this app??