#*ruru

Cntd from ⚠️ with @mpxruyi

 How amusing. The surgeon looks at the other man over the rim of his wine glass as he sips slowly of the red liquid within and gives something odd and real to him. A little thing he hardly shares with others, a prize of sorts that only he can pass along.

  He smiles.

 “And do you find that your witchery does you much good? When we have medicine and science, does it help you to find a closer meaning to the enlightenment that so many seek?” A generous sip. That fiendish drink in him makes him warm and not just in temperature under his starched white collar shirt. There’s less an edge to his replies and a certain reciprocal way he seems engaged if the way that he dares to lean just a little closer is anything to go by. There’s a little color just at the tops of his cheeks, a creep of intoxication and it’s wickedly perfect because he seems unaware of it.

*~*~*~*~*

There’s something off-putting about the man sitting across from Dionysus, something the god can’t quite put his finger on. Here and there Dio meets a demigod who is a little more like him, the spawn of something far more ancient and dark than Dionysus himself. Because, whether he likes it or not, whether he likes to admit it or not, whether it makes him weaker or just makes him feel weaker, Dionysus himself is still only a demigod. The entirety of his divinity was a fluke; he should have been just another demigod.

This demigod before him reminds him of all that, and it takes everything in him to not let his anxieties show. In fact, Dionysus lets his own power bubble up under his skin, creating a barrier of mild insanity to keep out the other’s chaos. The effect doesn’t go unnoticed on the people around them. They begin acting more erratically, dancing closer together, spilling their drinks more often, saying ‘yes’ when they previously might have said no. Yet with each sip, Dionysus can feel his conversational companion coming under his own power.