it's a classic story: immortal meets boy, falls in love with boy, loves boy wholly and deeply. things are normal. zeeke teaches fitness classes at the gym. they take care of the community garden. it's the most important relationship silas has had in his long life. they're together some ten years before it all goes wrong.
when it does go wrong, it goes really fucking wrong. silas has been away on a long research trip, and when he returns - on their anniversary, with plans to propose - he finds a gruesome scene. it looks like a robbery gone wrong, but that's not the worst of it: the animals have found their way in, carnivores scavenging for their own survival. they've made a meal of him. presented with all this, silas, usually so calm and rational... he loses his fucking shit.
he can't accept what has happened. he bundles zeeke's body into the basement freezer, preserves him as best he can. and looks for any possible way to bring him back.
this means sorting through a great deal of dark, forbidden magic, necromantic practices, and dead ends. it takes time. silas searches far and wide for a spell that will restore zeeke, experiments with taboo magics and dangerous artefacts. injures himself. makes slow, painful progress. in time he finds something that seems as though it'll work - a strange bastardization of a lycanthropy curse. there's only one small snag: the knowledge and power needed to enact it isn't within his reach as a relatively weak godling. nowhere near. but there's no way he's going to let that stop him, so he makes a deal. he makes a deal with a devil. he sells not just his invulnerability but his soul for the power he needed to bring zeeke back.
zeeke isn't the same. he's unstable, violent, animalistic. he looks different, looks dead, remains incomplete where parts of him were eaten away. his wolf form is much the same: terrifying in its true state, deadly, vicious. he needs to eat bones to live, he's incredibly bloodthirsty, and he has seemingly lost most of his former self to death. silas is horrified, guilty, and still deeply, deeply in love.
it takes even more time for them to reach a vaguely stable equilibrium. silas is the only one who can keep zeeke calm, but he still needs to eat. silas has gained a lot of information and skills in his time searching for a way to bring zeeke back, so he puts it to use. builds something of a business. takes assassination contracts for zeeke to complete. falls into a world of crime and dangerous magic that has become all too familiar for him. they never go back to how they were before, but they have a new kind of normal. they're still utterly dedicated to one another. and they're together. that's what counts, right?
