#akarastarter

Needless to say, Atlas had been worried. There hadn't been any word from Akara since Midsommar. He knew how this city worked, knew how people could just disappear, and Atlas had been resolved to try and find him only to learn that Akara had been sucking face with a fey the whole time. “You’ve been gone a month.” Atlas said pointedly before he poured the other another drink. “A month,” Akara was going on about this sky palace again, with some asshole that had spent the last thirty days gone for most of the day and the last thirty nights making out with the other. At some point Atlas had started to believe Akara, he had an active imagination but he wasn’t a liar. “Well, you missed the plague. Somehow nobody died but it was bad, really bad.”

Middle of the afternoon and the last meeting of the day was done, he had some financials on his desk waiting for him back at the office, but what Virgil had needed more than anything was some daylight. Fresh air, a walk through the streets that he hadn’t been down in a few years at least. Italy was always hot and in the middle of July it was scorching. Virgil could hear people laughing inside one of the bars and idly the witch remembered when he might have been in there, pressure made diamonds - but usually it produced useless coal. He was lucky his parents had been there to pull him out of it, not everyone had people like that in their life. Really, it was the only time that Virgil could remember the two of them being in the same room together. 

Some twink stumbled out of the bar, tripping head over heels and would’ve cracked his head square on the stones had Virgil not grabbed him instead. “Woah, easy there big guy.” He looked like the kind of guy Eoin might have gone for, there wasn’t much but it looked like there was still too much melanin in this one though. Virgil tried to see if anyone was trailing after him but the man looked more or less alone, very sad. “Bit early in the day, yeah?”

Brunch was popping, the mimosas were already on the table and naturally Atlas had been the first to arrive followed shortly by Akara. “All I’m saying is, you’re twenty-nine, you’re single, you’ve never been in love, you’ve never even had a serious relationship. Don’t get me wrong Akara, I love your life, I love your freedom, I love your independence: I see you, and I’m holding space for you. But maybe you just aren’t the right person to write a love story, you know?” Brutal honesty was the basis of most of his friendships, that and picking up the bill, which Atlas really didn’t mind all that much considering how poor his friends were. 

As much as he liked to poke fun at Akara and the Nigerian Prince-esque scams he often fell for, when it came to love, Atlas wasn’t much brighter. His last attempt at a boyfriend had lasted three dates, all of which Atlas paid for, the druid later found out that the man had no job, no car, and asked for a small loan that he swore he was good for. Atlas gave it to him, naturally, because when it came to men who paid him attention he was unfortunately gullible and easily taken advantage of. The druid knew better, he did, but that didn’t stop him. All those hours on apps and pointless dates and opening his throat to randoms in parks - he thought he’d been going somewhere but it almost childish now. There were much bigger things going on in Rome. “Where’d you go during the festival anyways? I lost you after the Embassy.”