museboxofmuses | (no subject)

Prometheus found his new life out from under Mentor Metis's wing both terrifying and exciting. He now had the freedom to manage his life and schedule however he wished, without needing to first gain Metis's approval for his (reckless) experiments or antics. Yet, also, when Prometheus fucked up, or floundered into a social situation he was ill-equipped to deal with, he couldn't hide behind Mentor Metis's robes and let her solve the problem for him. He was now an Adult, and that meant he now had to take responsibility for his actions.

It was why he had turned his dorm corridor into a bird-infested fortress, stubbornly fending off the attempted invasions of the dorm-manager. Instead of dealing with the situation, he was ignoring it in hopes it'll go away on its own. For the moment, that was how he was dealing with everything: ignoring.

For now, it was working.

It did mean he was sometimes out of touch with what Hades and Hyth were up to, though, torn between his studies, his (illegal) experiments in his dorm room, and ousting the dorm-manager out into the Akadaemia's basement for the fifth time that morning. So, he sometimes missed it when Hades warned them off that he was "studying", said with a certain tone and certain expression that informed his agemates that he was definitely NOT studying.

Like today, he definitely missed that memo today.

After sneaking out of his fortress and doing a hop-skip teleport to Hades's corridor, Prometheus didn't bother knocking when he opened the door and marched right in, griping; "Hades, you won't believe what the dorm-manaaargh!"

Yup, he walked right in just in time to see Hades getting blown by his study buddy because of course. He clamped a hand over his eyes and reeled backwards, intending to stumble out of the room and instead ran right into the door frame.

"Ow! Son of a-!"

Several stupid things happened in the span of just a few seconds. The young woman startled at the entrance, biting, then choking on Hades' cock. She pulled off of him as quickly as she could, running past Prometheus and shoulder checking him in the meantime. Hades yelped in pain, too stunned to act besides clutching his poor, quickly softening cock in his hand.

Hades drew breath to attain adequate volume.

"PROMETHEUS!"

Prometheus yelped again when something slammed into his shoulder, sending him spinning around to bang against the door frame once more. He wobbled dangerously, grabbing the doorframe with one hand while keeping his hand planted over his eyes with the other, taking a moment to try and orientate himself. One soul had left - Hades's 'study buddy', which meant the person remaining and howling his name...

"I'M IN THE SAME ROOM! NO NEED TO SHOUT!" he yelled back, cautiously pivoting in Hades's general direction. His friend's soul was a bonfire of anger and embarrassment and it helped make Prometheus feel a little better about the situation - even though he could've gone without glimpsing someone deepthroating Hades's cock, ugh.

"But seriously, couldn't you have put a sock or something over the handle? You've scarred my virgin eyes," he whined pitifully.

"I'm SHOUTING because my COCK IS BLEEDING!" Hades growled, pinching his knees together.

No one liked being their neighbors.

"Oh, don't be so dramatic! Get in here and close the door. Get a bandage, she nicked me," he said, wincing through the pain. "It's bleeding and I expect you to help, since this is your fault. I told you I was having someone over, but you weren't listening!"

Prometheus peeked between his fingers, seeing that indeed Hades was in the hunched 'my dick is bleeding' position. He couldn't help it; he snorted.

"O-Ohh..." he coughed over his laugh, knowing Hades would probably have an apoplexy if he made fun of his predicament, and stepped into the room properly, closing the door with a lazy flick of his fingers. Honestly, he wasn't sympathetic to his friend's plight at all. It wasn't as if his dick had been bitten clean off (and even then, that would've been an easy fix).

"Oops!" he said cheerily, "I did wonder why your voice was so high pitched, eheh... but, since it's my fault, I'll fix it. In fact..." his eyes lit up as he stopped next to the bed, snapping his fingers, "This is the perfect opportunity to test my (prototype) healing Concept!"

Hades stared at him with wide eyes.

"Just go get some tissue paper, for Heaven's sake. If you cauterize my genitals clean off, I'll do the same to you in turn!" Hades did not trust this.

"Or at least tell me the aim and basis of your healing concept before you use it on me!" Can't you see that he's just a frightened animal right now? He doesn't want the pain of a dick injury, but neither does he want to suffer a worse fate.

"Caut- what do you take me for? A Jedumite?" Prometheus grouched, but he obligingly waved a hand and Created some soft wad of bandages for Hades to press against his wounds so he'd stop being so fussy. Honestly, it was like he'd never been grievously injured before!

(Because Hades hadn't. Prometheus tended to forget that most people hadn't literally blown a limb off before reaching adulthood and several other times after that (now that had been a traumatising experiencing for everyone, and one where Mentor Metis had furiously lectured him into unconsciousness about experimenting with dangerous Concepts without supervision while he had been drugged out of his mind at the hospital as his leg was re-attached))

"Here," Prometheus sighed, holding out the bandage, "And look, my healing Concept is a very accurate imitation of what the Healers use at the hospital. I've practised it on myself and it's perfectly safe."

A beat.

"Mostly safe," Prometheus amended, "Well, usually safe? Kind of."

Hades groaned as he pressed the wad of bandages to his crotch and not looking very convinced.

"Tell me the ways you've mess this spell up."

Hades frowned as he lifted the bandages slightly. Getting a gross cut while hard... Really wasn't ideal. "And quick, the bleeding won't stop and I'm not going to the infirmary for this."

"Let's not focus on the negatives," Prometheus said quickly, waving his hand as if to dismiss the topic entirely, "Expecting something to go wrong does affect the crafting process of any spell. So!"

He clapped his hands together and pressed his knee against the edge of the bed. There was a higher chance of success if he was touching the wound but, uh, yeah, he wasn't doing that. So, he awkwardly leaned over Hades's lap, trying not to wrinkle his nose at the bleeding dick. He had a feeling the expression would be... misunderstood.

"Okay, so a bit of this, that and..." Prometheus muttered under his breath, stirring his aether into the correct frequency and fluctuation. Healing something outside of your body always was a little tricky, since you had to adjust your aether to match the subject's, otherwise their aether would fight against you. But, stars, he knew Hades's aether just as well as his own, so it was easily enough to 'hook' his aether into Hades's, scramble a few vital things here and there, a dash of cheekily asking the Lifestream for a bit of juice, and viola!

"Hah!" Prometheus crowed, sitting up with a flourish of his hands, his eyes glittering with a faint glow of sea-green. The air smelled faintly of ozone, and Hades's dick had stopped bleeding, the wound scabbed over, "I'm a genius! It's healed! Er, ish."

"It would have worked better if you were touching it," he said with a frown. But at least it wasn't bleeding anymore, and he could always go to Hythlodaeus to finish it up. Wherever that bastard was right now. He was supposed to keep Prometheus out of his hair for a single hour.

"What are you, an amateur?" Hades wasn't going to act grateful, even if he was a little grateful. This was Prometheus' fault, after all.

"Ugh, scabs..." at least he could pull up his pants... Which he had bled on as well. At least he had a robe to go over all of that. Hades looked at his hands, covered in blood, and got up to just wash them. He could dissipate it, but he really... needed to feel a little cleaner.

"So... What was it that you saw fit to injure me to tell me about?"

"Amateur, hmph..."

Prometheus sulked at the lack of gratitude, crossing his arms and giving Hades the stink eye as his friend got off the bed to wash his hands.

"I wasn't the one who bit your dick, was I?" he said waspishly, "And I came here because the dorm-manager is threatening to kick me out of my room! Can you imagine! For 'disrespecting the institution and causing extensive damage to the dormatory's infrastructure!' Me! Damaging it? I improved it, more like!"

By turning a few rooms into aviaries for various bird species, and rendering them inhabitable for fellow Amaurotines, but still! An improvement! (No neighbours, for one)

Hades had to brace himself at the sink to laugh.

"No, but the poor girl ran off having choked on my blood. I'll have to apologize cleverly..." Hades said with a sigh. He somehow doubted that she would want to come back to his dorm room any time soon.

"I've heard they've doubled or tripled up in other dormitories to avoid you. Some of them swapped to phantomology since they still get to study flight," Hades laughed again as he went to the fridge to fetch a snack. "Think they'll just knock the wing down and reconceptualize it?"

Edited 2020-02-23 00:50 (UTC)

Prometheus wouldn't be surprised if the dorm-manager tried knocking the wing down while he was still in it. His soul was beginning to gain a murderous edge to it every time they clashed in recent days...

"They can try," he said grimly, "But that dorm is mine now. They can have it back when I graduate."

Or until they brought in the Big Guns, i.e Lahabrea himself, overseer of the Akadaemia or, more terrifyingly, Mentor Metis. Prometheus wasn't stupid, he knew his antics would be tolerated only to a certain point. He just had to toe the line of audacious and too annoying to deal with.

"Or until I get kicked out, bringing shame to our family for generations to come," he added brightly. Getting expelled from the Akadaemia was a black mark for any Amaurotine; for Prometheus, it didn't bother him in the slightest. His dream job didn't require a worthless acknowledgement of his skill from some equally worthless institution. He knew he was a genius and already outstripped majority of the students several centuries his senior. That wasn't even arrogance talking, just simple fact.

(And this was why his citizen file was ear-marked with the tag of "problematic". Despite his intelligence, skill and unique gift, his attitude and unwillingness to conform meant he was watched far more closely than his other agemates...)

Hades, now just irritable from the pain in his cock instead of fully enraged, changed his bed sheets out without too much trouble. He sat down with a pint of ice cream and a spoon. Hades would be so cross to hear Prometheus say such things about their beloved Akademia. As protective as Hades was about Prometheus and Hythlodaeus...

"You'd really bring shame to Mentor Metis like that?" Hades stabbed his ice cream with unnecessary force.

"If you want to live among the birds so badly, why don't you just move in with them? Just throw a tent up into the enclosures. Lahabrea won't be happy, but it might seem like a Godsend in comparison. I don't know if even he can stand twelve years of this."

"I can't disturb their habitation like that," Prometheus scolded, enviously eyeing Hades's pint of ice cream. He could just conjure his own, true, but he wanted his.

"Truth be told, I kinda wanna go to the Zypherion University," he said wistfully, "Professor Thea teaches there, you know! And their knowledge of anything to do with the skykin is unrivalled! I actually asked if they did a student exchange programme or something, but I was told I couldn't go."

He pouted at this, irritated. He couldn't go, because a) he was a first year and it was only in the twilight years of the Akadaemia education that people were chosen to visit other cities' education institutions to broaden their knowledge and b) Prometheus was one of the very (un)lucky few with an affinity for the Lifestream. Until he was skilled and experienced and educated enough to strike outside of Amaurot's protection without getting kidnapped by unsavoury ne'er-do-wells for his gift (there were surprisingly several factions in the world who would made a hobby of it, weirdly enough), Prometheus was stuck in Amaurot until he finished the Akadaemia.

Another reason for his sourness towards this place. It felt more like a prison than a school to him.

“And yet, you’ve disturbed the habitats of twenty-some young Amaurotine men and women in your pursuit for... what, exactly?” Hades asked, sticking a spoonful in his mouth. He eyed Prometheus eyeing his ice cream with dull incredulity. As children, Hythlodaeus would claim that the sweets Hades created were just better, but as he grew older he came to understand that his age mates just wanted to experience his doting or attention. And if they couldn’t have that, his ire was just as good.

Hades took a spoonful, holding it out for Prometheus as he spoke.

“Have you considered, perhaps, that patience and discipline are what you’re really supposed to be learning here? Zypherion University would not put up with your shit. No matter how much you idolize Professor Thea.”

Honestly, the idea of him wanting to go somewhere he wasn’t irritated him beyond compare. In his mind, it was because he thought Prometheus helpless without him. In truth, he didn’t want to imagine parting, even if briefly.

“Or if you could stay under the radar for one goddamned minute, maybe someone would write you a letter of recommendation. Not that they would ever let you go without a bodyguard.”

Because Prometheus was a little shit, he ducked a little to eat the spoonful of ice cream without taking the spoon, straightening up with a small frown at Hades's semi-scolding. He saw where he was coming from, yeah, but Prometheus could be well-behaved when he felt like it. He just didn't feel like doing it here, because he was resentful. But he couldn't admit he was resentful, because resentment was Bad and he'll be once again lectured by the 'Social Behaviour Counsellor' on How To Manage Your Feelings.

He's had that lecture about five times now. Prometheus didn't think he could endure a sixth without glassing the whole building in a fit of desperation.

(Needless to say, the How To Manage Your Feelings lecture was not sinking in)

"It's in pursuit of peace and quiet, obviously," Prometheus said snidely, "Do you know how loud these people are? I feel like I'm stuck in the middle of an angry swarm of bees, with how much they- they buzz. It's the same in those damned lectures too - how the hell am I meant to concentrate on learning 'patience and discipline', as you say, with all of that going on in the background?"

Really, if it wasn't the dorm-manager coming for his head, it was the Akadaemia's headmaster (one rank below Lahabrea) for skipping the mandatory, Akadaemia-wide debate lectures. Too many people were there, so he, er, just, didn't turn up...

Hades gave him such a withering look. “You know I love you, dearly. Patience and discipline refer to how you must act in less than ideal situations. Maybe try to make a few friends and they wouldn’t all seem like just noise to you.”

Rich, coming from Hades. He wasn’t a great lover of the people exactly. That would come later. He, too, only enjoyed engaging with others on his own terms.

“Maybe... just go with the flow for a while. You haven’t even mastered your attunement with the Underworld.” Of course the bastard would bring that up. He was a rather shining example in comparison to his agemates. All of them with an affinity to the Lifestream... but Hythlodaeus was shiftless and had no discipline for things that didn’t interest him. He only Created what he felt like Creating, which was hardly for the benefit of all.

And Prometheus was Prometheus.

Hades, on the other hand, had been chasing his skills as a sorcerer, trying to outdo himself at every turn. The Underworld had graced him with a form containing unyielding strength. It was good, all agreed, that Hades was fairly agreeable. Sassy, but harmless to his fellow man. Hades had it easy in comparison to Prometheus, he felt. His lot in life was straight forward, his gifts obvious in their benefits. His ability to see aether and discern structure did make him nap from time to time in class however. Like his agemates, he didn’t tolerate boredom well.

Not for the first time, Prometheus wondered why he came to Hades to complain. His friend always did this; poking holes in his rants and irritation and self-pity, forcing him to grudgingly concede that maybe Hades had a point about this or that. Hythlodaeus was far more agreeable and always humoured his complaints with a few sympathetic words and strategic nods. He never really offered any helpful advice, though, whereas Hades...

"I don't wanna go with the flow," he said petulantly, crossing his arms and pouting. He wasn't even bothering to hide his sulking, "And I don't wanna master my attunement with the Underworld. It's dumb and stupid and I hate it."

Yup, definitely sulking. It's like he regressed several decades into the melodramatic brat he sometimes decided to be.

Hades stared at him, then huffed and rolled his eyes. “Look, I know this is hard. Come here,” Hades begrudgingly lifted an arm to allow him to cuddle in. If he’s gonna act like a kid, maybe he wanted to be treated like one, too. Prometheus did just endure his scolding like he was Mentor Métis.

“But still... We should find some other solution to this that isn’t so... cruel to our classmates. This is their first time away from home, too.” He’d beat empathy into him one way or another. Love for fellow man and all that. “Besides, what are you going to do if they throw you out? Not that they’ve ever done it before...” But neither had anyone disregarded the common courtesy so thoroughly either.

Prometheus toyed with being contrary, just to wind Hades up a little, but really, he could do with a bit of physical closeness with his agemate. Sighing loudly, he made a show of grudgingly sitting down on the bed next to Hades and tucking himself against his side. It was warm and comforting, but Prometheus made sure not to let such emotions trickle through his soul's borders.

"I'm not being cruel," Prometheus grumbled, "And if they throw me out, I'll go and live in the woods or something. Become a wildman."

Hades was going to lose his eyes out of his head with how much he was rolling them. He wagged the spoon over his shoulder near his face, inviting him to take it. It’s not like he could eat in his position anyway.

“Don’t you think that you would get lonely?” His voice softened as he rubbed his arm.

Prometheus took the spoon and the tub of ice cream, grumpily stabbing it into the treat. It was chocolate and vanilla, which suited him fine.

"No," he said stubbornly, then, after a spoonful of ice cream, amended grudgingly, "Well, maybe a little. I'd miss you and Hyth and Mentor Metis, but not anyone else. Hrmph."

“You don’t have to miss everyone. That’s just unnatural. But you should be able to live in harmony with them. They tolerate you... so you should tolerate them, hmm? Leave the accepting to us,” Hades said, feeling like a very good sport. But if the alternative was losing Prometheus to the woods...

“Maybe... Maybe what you need is a small break. Let us go fill out an application for a week break... Get away for a bit.” With any luck, they would be able to restore the wing, let students move back in.... and find somewhere else for Prometheus to be.

Prometheus crammed another spoonful of ice cream in his mouth, giving Hades an unreadable look. He pulled the spoon from his mouth, licked his lips and asked with innocent idleness; "But whatever will your study partners do in your absence? With how often you study with them, one would think you'd keel over dead if you missed even a day, let alone a week."

He tried to ignore it, but he really was painfully aware of how Hades seemed to tumble from one bed/partner to the next. It didn't bother him as such (well, unless he walked in on him doing the deed), but he did feel... something about it. Hythlodaeus had been unhelpful when he grumbled about this too him, had merely said that Prometheus wasn't used to sharing his agemates with other people, but it wasn't that. For example, Prometheus didn't mind Hythlodaeus swanning into various social groups and charming everyone there like the social butterfly he had become - after getting over his crippling childhood shyness, of course. He didn't mind Hades getting a circle of admirers and friends either.

It was just...

Whatever. Hades was an adult and could sleep his way through the whole of the Akadaemia if he wanted (though Prometheus would judge him if he tumbled into Lahabrea's bed. Convocation member or not, he was like, a billion years old!). It probably was childish, petty jealousy or something. He'd grow out of it, no doubt.