What with luciustheeternalsgstring drawing lots of hot human!Erebus art and erebusthesaladtosser and hard-sophoclean-light talking about Vulkan Lives and that college AU we were talking about awhile ago, I wrote things about Erebus being Argel Tal’s father in New York.
Your name is Erebus and things were going just the way you wanted them to. The election campaign was going great, with Horus Lupercal sweeping the polls with his charisma and war hero stick and calling out his old man in Washington. Your nominal boss, Lorgar Aurelian was getting the Bible Belt vote in and most of the time his father/your partner-in-crime Kor Phaeron was able to slip him enough carbamazepine to keep him from being too much of an embarrassment. You have to cover for everyone else, from the latest FDA scandal at Death Guard Pharma or whatever drug charges Fulgrim’s in court for this week. Still, your way to the Secretary of State position seemed in the bag.
Then this kid turned up on your doorstep.
Argel Tal. Fifteen years old. From Sidney, Iowa. Belongs to you according to court order after the death of his mother last month. You make one mistake sixteen years ago while very drunk and now this.
You can’t even be proud of the kid. He’s dumb. He’s a good-two-shoes who attracts bad company like ants to sugar. He should be staring in an after-school special every week. He’s earnest and honest and naïve. He keeps going on about how nice a person his mother was, and hell if you’d know. You barely met her. He’s moody and constantly giving into peer pressure and terrible at problem solving and a teenager. And he calls you about once a week from Brooklyn because he managed to get lost on the subway and can’t figure out how to get back to your apartment.
Your life has turned into the sort of feel-good chick-flick you consider hopelessly tedious. You don’t want to grow as a person and realize there are important things in life beyond your job. You just want to control national opinion, then lie on your couch and drink with Game of Thrones on. If you’re lucky, being a single dad will somehow help you get laid with someone who thinks that makes you responsible.
other characters:
Khârn: Argel Tal’s new best friend. He’s the captain of the football team and a pretty great guy. This is despite the fact his father, Angron, has pretty serious brain damage from his football player days and doesn’t have the slightest idea how to raise his kids after his own abusive foster care upbringing. He goes to this rather upscale prep school on a sports scholarship.
Cyrene: A nice blind girl Argel Tal has a crush on. She likes him back. She’s going to ruin his life someday. Obviously. Erebus is sure. Another scholarship student.
Lotara Sarrin: Captain of the girl’s basketball team. She’s gotten thrown out of a couple of schools before, but her family keeps throwing money at new ones. She and Khârn are dating.
Guilliman: ruling San Francisco as a separatist nation-state, I mean, governor of California
Perturabo: A military contractor. Probably a John Bircher back in the day.
Curze: A judge by day, a vigilante serial killer by night. So he’s Lunatic from Tiger & Bunny. I’m not even trying.
Sevatar: That weird kid at school. He’s always laughing at his own jokes, but no one else gets them or the bits they do get make them very uncomfortable. His grades are great because he knows all the answers even though he never studies or goes to class. Curze’s son.
Sigismund: Khârn’s friend and quarterback of the football team. Probably the most popular guy in school, particularly in the jock crowd, but not because he’s trying to be. He’s kind of a jerk and only really interested in sports.
Sanguinius: An artist. Horus’s fiancé. Even though I’m pretty sure Horus is the Republican candidate. This seems to be an AU where everyone’s inexplicably much less concerned with homosexuality. Or maybe it’s the future or something. Sometimes they argue because Sanguinius is much more liberal than Horus is. Erebus keeps trying to manage their relationship for maximum media benefit.
The bar wasn’t closing for another hour, but Erebus’s phone needed charged. The commentators and social media sites were abuzz with the usual chatter about how everything that had happened today would change the face of the election completely, as they had been every day for months and would be for many months more until the election. The more respectable nonpartisan polls showed maybe a 0.5% change in some non-contested states, well within the margin of error.
On the upside, he had half a dozen gifs to pass around until at least one went viral. He particularly liked the one comparing Rogal Dorn to a walrus. He considered taking a snapshot of Malcador staring into his whiskey and adding a caption about this being the face of someone who had to babysit a giant infant, but then he’d have to find a new bar and that wasn’t worth it. Maybe after Malcador had gone back to D.C. the bartender wouldn’t take his side.
Or not. He’d rather his line of empty martini glasses be off-limits too. Politics would drive a man to drink. Maybe it was time for two or three hours sleep on his couch, then some tea before grabbing his laptop off the floor again.
Erebus stretched, adjusted his glasses, and ran a hand over twenty hours’ growth of stubble on his head and jaw line. At least his hairline was naturally receding, so his scalp was only colored by his tattoos, as anyone would expect a man of religious background to have.
Movement also reminded him he was sore all over even with the alcohol dulling everything, but what did it matter if walking would be uncomfortable, he was going to take a cab anyway. They only fucked when Horus was angry or Erebus wanted something, and this had definitely been the former, but whatever. He wasn’t his boyfriend, Horus had a boyfriend; he was the man who had made him what he was today and what he was going to be in the future. Indispensable. He had a lot of backup plans if Horus ever got into his head to dispose of him, but he was all talk when it came to acting like everything was his own idea and he didn’t really need Erebus. Easier to stroke his ego, among other things, and keep to himself when he wanted to roll his eyes.
He stumbled home alright, even if the lights inside his building were way too bright for this time of night, morning. He was practically to his door before he noticed there was some kid sitting on a duffel bag across the door of his apartment.
He looked like he’d been there for a while and had fallen asleep. Really, what use were the door guards these days if they let anyone into the building. He looked too clean to be homeless long-term, though. Which one of the neighbors’ kids had invited someone over then not been there to let him in? Why was he sitting in Erebus’s doorway with such intent? Had his contacts in the commissioner’s office sent over one of Fulgrim’s underage prostitutes so he could get the story out of him before the litigations went public?
The teenager woke from his light drowse and looked up at Erebus. Those bushy eyebrows were somehow very familiar. ‘I’m sorry! I’m waiting for one of your neighbors. I think I have the right apartment number.’ He looked down at a google maps print-out he had clutched in one hand.
It was his number. ‘You’re blocking my door.’
‘I didn’t mean to get here so late, but I couldn’t afford a non-stop bus from Des Moines. I said in my letter–’
‘What letter?’
‘Did it not get here yet?’
Hell if he knew. Who in the world still sent snail-mail and to this address?
‘I’m Argel Tal. Your son. I’m supposed to live with you since Mom… died.’
There was not enough alcohol in the world for this.
because by fate even the gods are cast down 