Death was having trouble chit-chatting with his guests. His mind was too preoccupied with curiosity. He wanted to check in on his experiment. He wondered if his fear tactics had caused his subject to free himself from the table yet. Because, once the boy managed that, then the creatures were programmed to inch closer as if to eat him, which they wouldn’t. But, if the subject used his magick again to try to save himself, then the creatures would be triggered to attack. Thanatos knew his subject couldn’t die, but he was eager to see how much damage would be done- how far the boy would get.

Death knew the basement was inescapable. He had taken the security blueprints of Tartarus to use as a template for his basement. Of course, Death had made improvements on the original blueprint’s circuitry, but he couldn’t help getting giddy at the thought of his new weapon being able to crack even that code.

He could hardly wait to go home and see, but in front of him was Alec VanGarrett, yammering on about his nightclubs, and the new Vampire race, and the start of his artifacts collection.

“I have a particular interest in these ancient portals,” Alec said, the moment Thanatos started paying attention again. “I believe the market for accessible portals is an untapped gold mine. It would create a multi-billion-demonic travel industry. The only issue is engineering portals stable enough to support mass travel.”

Thanatos smiled cordially, “There is a reason only gods have access to such magick, Mr. VanGarrett.”

“But, why should that be the case?” Alec raised his pointed chin.

Death’s cordial demeanor vaporized. “For the balance of things,” he growled. “Ah! There’s Loki. Tell him your idea. He loves wildly, asinine thought-experiments.”

Alec tried to keep a scowl from creeping across his face. “This is hardly a thought-experiment! It’s a practical-”

“Loki!” Thanatos waved Loki over from across the showroom floor, with Eros trailing after him.

Thanatos made introductions. “Loki, this is Alec VanGarrett. Alec, this is Loki.”

Loki nodded, “Alec, I’ve heard a lot about you.”

“Yes,” he made no attempt to hide his scowl now, “you’ve been aiding my father with his… little problem.”

Loki wasn’t sure how to respond. His mouth was agape, and his eyes darted around.

“Well, I’ll leave you two to it.” Thanatos made his leave.

Eros glared after him. Three. There were three of them, not two. Eros did not find it cute when Thanatos pretended he couldn’t count.

“Hello, Alec. I’m Eros,” he redirected his frustration to the vampire, “and it was our pleasure to help out your father with Josanna.”

Alec’s eyes turned to furnaces as they landed on Eros. His fist tightened around his cane. “Whatever he’s told you, he’s lying,” Alec said through fanged, gritted teeth.

“So, the girl isn’t yours then?” Loki asked in earnest.

“No!” Alec then lowered his tone, “She is, but I saved her from him. Not the other way ’round.”

“Then why is she at the Devereaux mansion?” Eros didn’t hide his disbelief.

“He took her. It-,” Alec tried to compose himself. “It is a complicated family matter. I don’t wish to bring personal affairs into business, but his slander is ruining my reputation.”

“Then let’s talk business,” Loki interjected suavely. “You and I and Eros here are all just starting off. Let’s say we help each other get off the ground?”

Alec closed his eyes for a moment, embarrassed over how his temper flared. “Right, well, I’ve made quite a decent nest egg from my start-ups, and I’m looking to invest into magickal-technology.”

Eros’s eyes narrowed, “Magickal-technology?”

“There is a chance to make a real fortune on the verge of where science meets the esoteric! For creatures like myself, who possess only a fraction of the power gods and demons have inherently, magickal-technology can literally open up gateways. Keep in mind - vampires, werewolves, witches, ghouls, creatures like us, make up eighty percent of the Netherworlds’ population. It is a grossly ignored market, which could do with some high-profit-margined conveniences in this world.”

“Oh! Like my telephone!” Loki offered. “I hate telepathic communication and divining in bowls of blood, so I rerouted my psychic calls to a rotary dial telephone. Honestly, it’s been a life saver. I love the satisfaction that comes from dramatically hanging up on people!”

“Exactly,” Alec said, though he didn’t sound very certain. “Only, I’m mainly focusing on the eighty-percent I mentioned who don’t have that precise problem... but you’re on the right track.”

Eros was skeptical, but couldn’t help but admit, “It sounds interesting enough.”

“Right now I’m on the hunt for artifacts believed to have once been portals between worlds.”

Loki and Eros exchanged startled glances, both thinking of the perfume bottle.

“Do you have anything like that in your collection?” If he noticed the startled look, Alec didn’t let on.

Eros racked his brain for anything in the collection other than the ruby red bottle that might fit that description, but before he could suggest The broken Looking-Glass of Wonderland, or anything else, Loki was speaking.

“No. Nothing like that yet. Our collection is still being assembled, but Shmeaglebobenzoar might have just what you’re looking for. Let me introduce you!”

Loki casually led Alec away, leaving Eros standing there gaping.

When Loki returned, he had rightly brought back a drink for Eros.

“What the bloody hell was that about?”

Loki smiled guiltily, “I still don’t trust him. Do you? Do you think he knew about the perfume bottle? Is that why Josanna mentioned it? Twice! See, I knew there was something to that clever girl!”

Eros cut him off, “No! I think he’s looking for portals. We have other portals in our collection!”

“We do?”

Eros’s eye twitched. “Loki, how in the hell are we going to stay in business if you don’t even know what we have to offer?”

Loki waved away the idea that businesses needed products in order to be viable. “I suppose we’ll just have to be life partners instead since we’re such bad businessmen.”

Eros’s face lit up and he teased, “I’m an excellent businessman. You’re the one who’s rubbish at it.”

Loki snorted an adorable giggle.

“So who do you believe? VanGarrett or Devereaux?” Eros began to make a turn about the room.

Loki shrugged, falling in step. “I find the truth always seems to lie somewhere in the middle, but Alec did seem rather sincere.”

“I find that liars are sincere, because they are often convinced they are telling the truth.”

Loki quipped, “Now, anytime you’re sincere about anything, I’m going to assume you’re lying to me.”

Loki grinned and Eros glared.

***

Thanatos stepped out onto the balcony to find some reprieve under the falling purple sky. Scotch in one hand, he materialized a cigarette in the other and leaned on the balcony railing.

He had a small moment to relax and smoke his cigarette before a dreary hum rose from the back of his mind, and it crescendoed over the orchestra playing for the gala.

With a sigh, he flicked his half-smoked cigarette over the balcony into the courtyard below. ”Good evening, ladies.” He turned to his right and saw three veiled forms obscured in shadow at the edge of the gala’s lights.

”The time has come,” said the middle specter.

”The fight we promised shall be won,” said the maiden.

”You have brought to light what was hidden from our sight."

”Ah! Yes, Loki and Eros are dating.” His voice heavy with disdain, ”I hardly see why that should matter.”

"It was not of our design.”

Death groaned, ”When is love ever planned? It’s always been the one thing you could not account for.”

The air around him tensed. He realized he was walking a tightrope, but he honestly could not comprehend why anyone, let alone the Fates, would let feelings guide their behavior. On top of this, the feelings in question were based on two other people’s feelings. Their fear was so ridiculously senseless, he laughed aloud at it.

The air around him began to quake, and he realized he had just fallen off the tightrope.

He cleared his throat. “Ladies,” he tried to approach them, and he felt the weight of the universe pressing down on every joint, compressing every organ. He tried to remain standing, but collapsed on one knee, as if he were bowing.

But it was no coincidence that he fell to one knee. It was fated.

Thanatos smiled a grim smile as he tried to reign back his charging anger.

"That is why it must be…”

“Star-crossed love is their new destiny.”

“A malign star whose name is Death,”

“will bring them to us at our behest,”

“or Death he shall no longer be.”

“What else will happen if I refuse? Aside from you putting some incompetent prick in my chair? You have already turned Eros into a useless and impotent god. What do you expect him to do?”

”The first to come from chaos was named Desire,”

“...then creation plumed out from the fire.”

“Chaos splintered across the realm,”

“...and Loki from the heavens fell.”

“Chaos and Desire uniting once again,”

“...will bring about our inevitable end.”

“Our end or yours?” Thanatos said pointedly, then hissed, ”You will be your own end.”

"But it will never be you.” Gray, cracked-lipped, sinister grins stretched across all three faces simultaneously.

“I don’t intend to lose my seat, so we shall see.”

Recognizing Death had conceded, the weight holding him down released. He was exhausted from bearing the pressure, but it was nothing compared to what he carried with him everyday, so he found the strength within to stand.

“I will bring them to you,” he said. knowing that if the Fates removed him from his position, they would win. Loki and Eros would still be ensnared in their web, and he’d be powerless to help. There would be no one left to fight.

He had to play their game long enough to win. “What will happen once I do?”

"In Tartarus there is a hole,"

"...big enough for each to call their home.”

Thanatos took in a breath. He smiled hopelessly. “Well, at least they’ll be together.”

He dipped back inside the gala, his mind already set on a solution.

He had a weapon. He only had to figure out a way to use it quickly. He wasn’t going to let Eros go to Tartarus because of him again.

Thanatos stopped dead when his scanning eyes fell on Loki and Eros. They were dancing, or trying to. Both of them kept trying to lead the other in their waltz, and Eros, blushing and laughing, kept stopping to regain both his composure and his footing. Each time they began to dance, they had a bit of trouble figuring out whose hand went where, and the laughter resumed.

It was sickeningly adorable.

He swallowed the guilt and any feelings he didn’t find useful that arose in him. This was going to kill him, but he was Death, and dying was his business.

***

Loki and Eros were off to the side of the room by the bar. Eros’s eyes moved to scan the crowd, but Loki’s eyes looked steady on at his boyfriend. A pleasant smile crept upon the giant’s face. He stomped his feet abruptly, put his left arm behind his back and offered his right hand to Eros, bowing slightly. Eros looked back at him, confused at first, then nervous.

“Dance with me?” Loki asked.

“Are you serious?”

“Why wouldn’t I be?” Loki’s charming and cocky smile spread across his face and into his eyes.

Eros gulped. “All these people-”

“Fuck them.” Loki shrugged.

“Honestly, I don’t know how to do this, especially if I’m not leading.” Eros took his hand.

“Do you want to lead? I’ll let you.”

“No... I’ll figure it out.”

Smiling and chuckling, they stumbled into a closed position, and struggled for a moment to figure out whose hand held whose.

Loki cleared his throat. “Okay… ready?”

Eros nodded.

Loki found the beat, and began to step, but Eros started with the wrong foot in the wrong direction and immediately stepped on Loki’s toes.

They both snorted and fell apart laughing until Eros composed himself. “Okay, okay. I got it,” he said, reframing his torso.

“Are you sure?” Loki repositioned his arms. “Because I can’t have you breaking all of my toes.”

Eros lightly kicked him in the shin. “I said I got it!”

“Fine.” The giant cleared his throat again. “You’re small enough, you could stand on my feet.”

“You just said I’d break all your toes. Small or toe-crushing, which is it?”

Loki stepped forward with his left, and Eros followed with his right.

They successfully started an easy waltz as Eros figured out his footing. What he did know of ballroom dance, he now had to do backwards from how he was taught.

They kept their eyes locked, giggling, embarrassed at every missed step.

“You’re off rhythm,” Eros pointed out.

“Well, you’re better at this than you made out.” Loki, off beat, spun Eros successfully, to which they both looked amazed. “Are you sure you didn’t do this with your ex-boyfriends?”

Eros looked up at him through his lashes. “I wasn’t that type of arm-candy.”

The waltz tailed to a coda, and Loki and Eros slowed to a stop. They still held onto each other, their breath in sync.

But then, Loki began to chew on the corner of his lower lip, which Eros had come to know that meant Loki was hard at work thinking about something. “What is it?”

Loki blinked, opened his mouth to talk, but in the silence between songs, came Thanatos, drawing uncomfortably close to them.

“Loki,” Thanatos hissed.

The two lovers jumped in unison, their movement coordinated for the first time.

“For fuck’s sake! Wear a bell!” Eros barked.

“You scared Eros here half to death.” Loki snickered, and Eros shot him a glare.

Thanatos looked back and forth between them and snarled at their levity. “Listen, I need you both,” he pointedly looked down at Eros, “to come with me. Now.”

Eros tilted his head suspiciously, surprised Thanatos had addressed him so directly. Thanatos usually pretended he was invisible.

Loki’s brow narrowed, but he followed Thanatos to the balcony without pause. Eros was much more hesitant, but kept up so he could hear what Thanatos was saying.

“I know how this is going to look,” Thanatos said in a hush over his shoulder to Loki, “but I have a plan. I just need you to stall for as long as you can.”

“Thanatos, I think I’m going to need more information.”

“There’s no time. Besides, stalling is what you’re good at.”

Eros needed to take twice as many steps to keep up with their monstrous strides.

As they stepped foot out of the glistening showroom into the boundless night, the glamor faded into a desolate cramped world. Once they completely stepped through the elegant arches of the balcony, the Netherworlds was gone. The gala vanished as if behind a slamming door. The ozone shone brightly on the horizon against the shades of gray, which dominated the landscape and sky.

There were three gray ladies standing like pillars before them.

“What the hell!” Eros snapped.

Thanatos stared directly ahead, avoiding the gazes of his friends.

“Ah! Hello.” Loki greeted the Fates, not missing a beat. “Would you mind telling Eros and myself what’s happening? Because my friend here won’t.” He sounded pleasant until that last word when he turned on Thanatos.

“Ladies,” Death stood with his hands folded neatly behind his back, “I have done as you have asked, and now I must be on my way. Have a pleasant evening.”

The three Fates stood unmoving.

Death turned and only glanced at Loki for a moment, and in that moment, Loki heard painfully clear in his mind… Stall.