W H I S K E Y | Dionysus

The Bet

You could hear Apollo before he had even arrived. For the god of music, he could not hold a tune. Dionysus sighed as his glass of wine morphed into water yet again. Someone had said that repeating the same thing over and over again, expecting a different reaction was insanity. It was a good thing he was the god of madness as well as wine then. If he couldn't have wine, he may as well be insane.

"Sup D!" Apollo's scratching voice called out to him as he hopped off the conga line the god had started. Dionysus had been watching for ten minutes when the other god had finally noticed him.

"What in Tartarus are you doing here?" He questioned, passing his glass of water from hand to hand as Apollo sat down across from him.

"I go where the music flows. It's London, the music flows here." He wasn't sure if he would consider London one of the best places for music. "What are you doing here then, Mr. Grouch."

Dionysus scowled at him, "I'm waiting for someone."

"Ooh, business or pleasure?" The other shuffled closer to Dionysus, he was contemplating hitting Apollo over the head with his now pointless glass of water.

"If you must know, hopefully pleasure." He waved his glass around and watched as the clear liquid moved like a dance around the glass, "If she turns up."

That piqued Apollo's interest, "If she turns up? So there's a possibility she won't?"

"There's always a possibility." His scowl was getting deeper by the minute, "You always give options, I have no right to her time. If she doesn't want to spend it with me, that's her choice."

Apollo hummed his agreement, "You could always mix business with pleasure."

Dionysus looked at his friends and oftentimes rival, "Now that is a dangerous game." What was the sun god playing at?

"But a fun one if played right." He smirked as he took a sip of the exact wine Dionysus had been attempting to drink before he had shown up.

"What are you proposing?" He stole the glass away from the other god, the liquid immediately turning to water as it passed hands.

Apollo huffed his annoyance at the lack of drink, "A bet, obviously." Dionysus motioned for him to go on, "If this girl of yours shows up tonight, I bet that you can't get her to say those three precious words within hmm... lets say... one month."

Dionysus laughed, why would he go through with this? He had much better things to do with his life, "And what would I win?"

"Hmm... I'll talk to dad about relieving your punishment." Apollo knew he had hit gold. He could drink again, he would be free of that camp again. He could return to everything he had loved before. Well, not everything.

"That is a good reward, but what would you gain if I were to lose?" Apollo smirked again.

"You have to supply my parties with drinks for a decade." Apollo threw many parties, most having copious amounts of alcohol, he would be kept busy with supplying for all of them. Still, he was willing to go through with it, if it meant a chance at freedom.

"Deal." Dionysus nodded towards Apollo as the sun god stood up.

"Pleasure doing business with you, D." He saluted as he walked out of the club. Now Dionysus just had to wait for her to show up. If she showed up, that was.

***

Planning on doing something and actually doing the thing are two separate things entirely. Mila had been standing at the entrance to the Summerhaven Club for nearly five minutes now, attempting to gather the courage to actually go in.

"You good, Mila?" Bob was working tonight as well, he'd let her stand next to him while she tried to psyche herself up.

"Yep, perfect." She replied, "I can do this. I can do this. You've got this, Mila." She shook herself off and entered the club.

She wandered around for a few minutes, zeroing in on the bar which she scuttled towards to get a drink. She was going to need a drink to get through this, "He's probably not even going to show." She muttered to herself, hoping to the gods that he didn't show. Why had she allowed Elisa and Meg to talk her into this? It was a stupid decision.

"Who's not going to show?" The voice of Mr. D said from next to her. She jumped in her place, turning to face him. She paled as she saw his shirt, another satin, this one was in the exact shade of purple she was wearing though. It looked like they matched purposefully.

"My sanity apparently." Her voice came out as a whisper. The bartender placed her glass of whiskey on the bartop. It was the only drink she was going to allow herself to have tonight, she wanted to be relatively sober and she didn't want to pay for all the drinks that she was sure she would have had if she was with the girls.

"Well, we're all mad here." She looked up at him and the pained expression on his face, like he had just realised what he had said.

"Did you just quote Lewis Carrol?" She questioned, laughing as his face flushed red. He seemed a lot more at ease than her memories of him were. She had thought he was always relaxed at camp when she was growing up, but this seemed more natural.

"Maybe... Shut up." He mumbled as he motioned for her to follow him to a table away from the bar where she could see a wine glass filled with clear liquid that was obviously water. "I'm actually kind of surprised you showed. You didn't seem very interested yesterday."

"I needed an excuse to wear the dress." He was not finding out that she had bought the dress that day. Or that her mum had practically paid for it.

"Well I'm glad for it, you look gorgeous in it. Purple deepens your hair, pulls out the darker tones in it." His eyes were raking over her, taking in every detail of her outfit and her being. She blushed, it was like he was looking into her soul and finding every dark secret she had locked up there. What was she doing? This was very stupid.

"Thank you." She looked down and took a second to compose herself, "So, how's camp?" She asked and laughed as he groaned in response.

"Please, I'm away from camp, I don't want to think about it." He practically fell into the table, his head hitting his arms as he looked up at her through the mess of curls that had fallen in front of his face.

"Hey, I haven't been back in seven years, I'm curious." She probed at him further, she wouldn't even know any of the campers there anymore. They would have all aged out like her or... worse.

"Well, let's see. Head of the Aphrodite cabin is Silena Beauregard. Chiron is the same as always. I'm as bored as ever. I can't think of anything else." He trailed off as if there was truly nothing of any note that had happened in the last seven years. It was a camp full of demigods, interesting things were bound to happen, it was a given.

"That's it? Nothing interesting has happened? At all?" It was unusual, it was impossible. There was no way nothing had happened.

"The only interesting thing is Zeus' master bolt being stolen. But you probably already knew that." She did not know that. She had pretty much cut contact with the godly side of her parentage, she still visited her dad for holidays, but there was nothing holding her to her mum's side. Maybe she should have kept contact, this was interesting.

"What?" Zeus' master bolt was an immensely powerful weapon, that was definitely interesting.

"Oh, you didn't know." He looked at her like she had grown a second head for not knowing, "It was stolen like a week ago, he's currently blaming Poseidon."

She took a sip of her whiskey, definitely interesting.