❛❛ Are you really setting traps for Santa — ? ❜❜
Dakota is tinkering with a box on the counter of the bar in Honeypot, a plate of cookies and milk set out under the box that has a string tied to the top. A sign that is taped crudely by star-shaped stickers reads in Dakota’s shitty handwriting ‘Trap Money for Santa’. When he hears someone address him mid-working he is about to tell them to buzz off as the place isn’t even open for another few minutes and he really wants to get this done.
But that voice. That way of talking like they can just waltz in.
His hands freeze and his chest flutters. No way. There’s no freaking way. He must be tired, overworked by the way he had been avoiding his problems by staying at work as long as legally possible every day he could. No one that leaves come back, ever. The demigod doesn’t turn around, hands starting to shake on the box until it’s thin wire box rattles a bit and he puts it down. “Ha..Had..”
He lifts his head and looks into the mirror that makes up the back of the bar, beyond the bottles and bottles that he knows by heart now. Looks there and into the reflected face of someone he hasn’t seen in so long.
“Oh...Hades,” he says and turns around finally.
He’s older now, less of the boy that the other had known before leaving, taller by a little and eyes more determined than they used to be. Life had, in a short time, changed him and it shows not in the way of lines of worry that could have etched into his forehead or the smile lines he could have had- but in the absence of something that once painting the demigod so alive and beautiful. When Dakota brings his eyes to meet the other’s, a certain light isn’t in them anymore. But it sparks like a match for a just a second as the youth laughs, covers his mouth, laughs again even as his eyes are streaming hot tears down his leaner cheeks.
“Where...wh..” he can’t make the words come out, heart and head too confused as he extends a hand out toward the other and touches his shoulder. “Oh god. You’re real. You’re really here.”
