Improbable Cause (An S4J Bonus Story)

Chapter II

The meeting with Hades had left Conny in a bad mood. When he crossed the bridge between the Palace's administrative and residential sections, pausing to scowl down at the view of the bustling square (Which one of you fuckers decided to rob the creepy shadow entity and for what fuck ass reason?) he was in an even worse mood. Finally, he stepped into his penthouse and found Hermes there, as always, stretched long and glorious on the couch like a pampered house cat.

His mood lightened. Slightly.

"Hello, Con," Hermes said, dropping his phone onto his chest and craning his neck to look at him. "You look positively pissed. I hope it's not at me."

"It's always at you," Conny said. He violently removed his shoes and tossed them away, depositing himself within dangerous reach of Hermes's sock feet.

As Conny knew he would, Hermes took advantage of this danger zone and prodded the side of Conny's thigh with his toe. "So? What did Hades want?"

"He wants me to play detective," Conny answered, resting his head back against the sofa, his hands interlaced atop his stomach. "Apparently someone robbed Charon and Hades wants me to figure out how to get all his coins back."

Hermes whistled. "That sounds like a big job."

"Yeah. And probably a job for someone who knows the Underworld a lot better than I do," Conny grumbled. "I've only been here for two months, and I spent the first quarter of that hiding in Hades and Persephone's spare bedroom and crying myself to sleep. What the fuck is Hades thinking?"

Hermes snorted. "You cried yourself to sleep? Loser."

Conny said nothing, just grabbed his toe and gave it a sharp wrench at the most unnatural angle he could manage. Hermes screamed.

"I was joking, you absolute asshole," Hermes wheezed. He kicked him in the thigh again. "Conny, come here."

"I am here."

"I mean come closer. Please?"

It was at times like these that Conny realized what a precarious house of cards they had built. The foundation had been set when Hermes lied about how long the reconstruction on Mount Olympus was taking, and spent three weeks longer than necessary crashing on Conny's couch. Conny stacked on top of it when he realized his initial anger at this discovery wasn't really anger at all, but an overwhelming fear, both of what it would look like if Hermes left him and returned to Olympus, and what it would look like if he didn't. If he never left at all.

Conny still remembered that day, Hermes stepping out of his shower with his hair wet and dripping onto the towel around his shoulders, the wide-eyed, deer in the headlights look he'd given Conny when he'd finally worked up the guts to demand an explanation.

Mostly, he remembered Hermes's answer.

It's always been you, he'd said. It's just...I don't want to live there without you.

Conny had stood there holding this yawning, quivering space of friendship between them, even as both of them knew it was a volatile substance that was already in the process of catching flame. There was nothing left to discuss, nothing left to figure out, like the last piece of a headache-inducing, overly convoluted jigsaw puzzle finally snapping into place.

That was almost a month ago, and Conny had spent that month warding off any evidence of his and Hermes's upgraded status like the plague. It wasn't out of shame or embarrassment—it was a safety net for both their sakes. Hades, Persephone, and Artemis would all make a big deal out of it. Angie would make a big deal out of it. Alex would make the biggest deal out of it. The only person Conny considered trusting with this information was Clio, but she was adjacent to Angie, and therefore too risky.