(At 17 years old, their birthday)
(3rd person PoV)
They were all gathered in the Hostess of Fertility, where they rented the entire place for the night.
They wanted to make this a special celebration by holding it here; Nephelont and Eucleia were drinking for the first time tonight.
"Cheers!" Everyone shouted, starting to eat and drink to their hearts' contents. The Hostess' waitresses have taken special care to deliver today's dishes, putting in the effort in cooking and making the tables.
After the cheers died down a bit, Freya brought them their drinks. Upon Mama Mia's recommendation, they prepared a special dwarven mix since they had a high {Abnormal Resistance} grade. In all honesty, though, that was just an excuse to extort more money out of them. Typical of her.
Eucleia was carefully eyeing her drink, hands shaking as she lifted it off the table. Hephaestus put a hand behind the mug to stabilize the drink for her daughter. Taking her first ever sip, Eucleia felt her throat burn. She coughed violently, receiving pats on the back with a very amused look from her mother. After her coughing stopped, she took another small sip to savor the taste. She took another sip, then another, then forgot to control herself and took an entire gulp of the drink.
On the other hand, Nephelont took one simple look over the mug before something swelled within him. He did not know why, but he felt as if he would not be enough of a man if he did not drink it all in one go. Gareth's influence. Ais will have a talk with the dwarf at a later time.
Nephelont chugged it all down in one go.
"WHOOAA!!" Lionheart and Henryk were the ones cheering him the most in his successful attempt to down it all at once, followed by Gareth, who was smiling proudly, and Carillon.
"Be prepared for what comes next!" Henryk reminded all present, still cheerful.
"Hic!" When Nephelont was done, he slammed the mug down on the counter. "Hic!" The drink already started taking effect, beginning with a fit of hiccups.
"That was to be expected of Bell's son!" Carillon laughed, receiving a justified punch to the gut from Bell. "Cruel... Bell..." Carillon said his last couple of words for the next few hours. He was knocked out, tears of unrepentance pooling under his head.
"Shouldn't we give the kid an antidote?" Bete asked with worry.
"Leave him be. We want to see his drunken antics" Lionheart said. After Carillon and Bell had their first drinks, he wanted to see how different Nephelont's personality will be from his sober self.
By that time, Eucleia also finished her drink. Nobody noticed that immediately since she put her mug down calmly.
'She's definitely drunk' Hephaestus remarked as she observed her daughter's flushed face and dilated eye.
"Should you say something?" Hephaestus, in all her godly wisdom, decided to say something so vague. She failed to acknowledge the fact that a drunk mind is much more honest and less restrained. Eucleia turned to Nephelont, who was acting like his old self. His emotions were unrestrained now, if only briefly.
"Do you think he loves me?" Eucleia asked Hephaestus. The next moment, the entire pub went silent. The two drunk adolescents did not notice that silence suddenly settling in, and Nephelont did not hear her first question. "What do you think Bunbun's response would be if someone confessed his feelings to me?"
In a heartbeat, Nephelont was in her face.
"Who was it? I just wanna have a talk" He said. His face betrayed his emotions, inquisitory thoughts and more in store for whoever it was. He was going to wring the guy to make sure he would make Eucleia happy.
Eucleia turned her face the other way shyly and leaned back a bit.
"I asked if you loved me first" She said in what barely qualified as a murmur. "Answer that one first"
Nephelont went slack jawed. He turned to Ais, asking for assistance. All he received was a thumbs-up. He tried to get some help from Bell, Carillon, Lionheart, Meteria, Aria, Aeolus or even the triplets, but to no avail. All of them gave him a thumbs-up with smiles.
He turned back to see a pouting Eucleia, whose cheeks threatened to burst. His disbelief was unwarranted, she thought.
"You mean... " Nephelont was afraid to ask. For some reason, part of him wanted to remain siblings, but another part wanted more. He only noticed that part of him now that he was drunk. "Since when?" He blurted out without much thought. He clamped his mouth with both hands, gravely regretting letting his tongue loose.
"For a little over a year now, dummy" Eucleia said, feeling light-headed and dizzy. At this point, her {Abnormal Resistance} could not hold the alcohol back anymore and it permeated her system. Eucleia was on the brink of blacking out, should she drink more.
Nephelont slowly turned to face Ais. "Am I that dense?" Ais only nodded in response. Her son deserved to know how dense he was when he asked about it directly. Eucleia was letting out less than subtle hints in the last six months. She took Ais up on her words and started flirting with Nephelont in what she thought was subtle ways. She was unlucky, however, as no matter how perceptive he was to other people's relationships, Nephelont could not notice some of the stares girls gave him, especially Eucleia's.
Nephelont went as red as Bell's best impression of a ripe tomato. He dematerialized.
"Fuck!" Henryk swore loudly and nobody berated him. "Of all the times to forget that he could do that!" He said as he started running around the city in search of the boy. A large manhunt was arranged to search for Nephelont... as well as Eucleia. She disappeared before anyone could notice it, with everyone assuming that she teleported to wherever Nephelont was at the moment.
'Just in case' Henryk sent a message for all twenty Horrors to start teleporting all around the continent in search of Nephelont while the rest would search for him within the city and the dungeon.
Throughout the night, and with the help of the Freya, Loki, Hestia and Artemis familias, there was a total of zero traces of Nephelont found. It was only when they all convened in the Hearth Manor that they discovered the two of them sleeping in their room, blissfully unaware of the trouble they put everyone else through for the night.
"Well, we might need to limit their drinking for a while yet" Bell and Welf agreed.
"Yeah, I'm not sure I want my Rhea to drink at that age now" Tiona said defeatedly. If Nephelont's behavior was like this, as harmless as it was, Rhea would be unpredictable as well, making it worse since she was an amazoness. She could go into a rampage, challenging any person she meets in her drunken haze. Ais nodded in agreement. All men of the family knew better than to try anything once the two children were at Nephelont and Eucleia's age.
(The Next Morning)
(Nephelont's PoV)
I woke up late today. I failed to challenge the sun before it rose above the horizon.
'Just you wait, sun. You won't be able to escape my challenge tomorrow' I silently promised the sun, my only remaining mortal enemy.
"Ugh!" I bent over when a sudden headache made itself known. My grunt of pain woke up Lia, who by turn started vomiting at the edge of the bed.
"I'm never drinking again..." She said, wilting and lacking energy.
"Good morning" I said, now ignoring what I could of the headache. As if the headache was not enough, memories of what we did yesterday came rushing back to me.
(Flashback)
(3rd person PoV)
Here we see two drunk teens who are about to take a significant step forward into an unknown future.
"Lia, why did you not talk to me about it?" Nephelont said nonchalantly. He did not know how to react to her feelings, but he knew that he would have liked to know about them.
"I was scared" Eucleia said as she kept her head leaning against his shoulder. "I didn't want you to reject me"
"You know I couldn't" Nephelont said.
"I was also scared of that" Eucleia said. "I didn't want to be in a relationship with you just because you couldn't refuse me. I would have died inside if that was all there is between us"
"I don't have anyone I like yet, I don't think I would have found anyone, really. Not when I didn't realize my own feelings toward you" Nephelont's foggy mind thought back to the Hostess. "I have Uncle Henryk to thank for this realization. Me getting drunk might have had one benefit at least"
"Should we go home?" Eucleia said, her body feeling sluggish as she was holding back from falling asleep.
"I think we should" Nephelont said. "Let's talk about it tomorrow, when we are all sobered up"
(Flashback End)
(Nephelont's PoV)
"Um... Lia?" I started. "Could we go deal with this hangover before talking about what we confessed to each other yesterday?"
"Not the time..." She said, clearly nauseated and expecting another round of vomiting, evident by her retching.
I also started feeling nausea and emptied my stomach in the bathroom sink.
It was an awful morning all around.
Yep, definitely not drinking again, not unless we have S-rank {Abnormal Resistance}.
(Noon)
(3rd person PoV)
After an embarrassing, yet secret morning, Nephelont and Eucleia took their lunch to their room and talked it out over the meal.
"Lia, when you asked if I loved you, I just then realized that I did in fact love you" Nephelont confessed the feelings he realized yesterday. "If you are okay with this, I want to start going out with you for now" He said with a dusting of pink on his cheeks.
"And after that?" Eucleia asked seriously. She wanted to know. No, she needed to.
"If you are okay with it later, I might want to marry you?" Nephelont spent all of his energy and focus fighting a stutter, making him fail to contain his squirming. "I mean, I don't want to be an irresponsible adult who plays with women's hearts and abandons them when he got his fill of them!" He flailed his hands around in panic.
Eucleia blushed a little as she chuckled. She knew that he was making up things to say, trying to take his chances. She shyly kissed him on the cheek, making him boil like a kittle full of water. Her face followed, getting as red as her hair. Both of them returned to eating their share of the meal, now doing so awkwardly.
Later that night, they each told their respective parents about their new relationship. Hephaestus's dreams were rekindled, giving her more energy and motivation than she knew what to do with. She decided to hole herself in her forge to spend all that energy. Welf was naturally dragged there by the hand, surrendering to his fate. He waved his daughter goodbye with a defeated expression, earning him her pity. Both knew that Hephaestus was not getting out of her forge that soon this time around. The craze in her left eye confirmed it.
As for Ais and Bell, they welcomed this development in their own way. Ais sat down and gave Nephelont a lap pillow. She started pampering him in every which way she knew to express her happiness. Bell, on the other hand, gifted his son with a set of armor, Pyon Kichi Jr. MKIX. From its first edition, the set had a slightly more golden sheen when compared to the normal Pyon Kichi series that Bell uses. Bell knew that Nephelont would love the potato snacks that were also given alongside the armor more than the armor itself, though.
Ais forgave Bell for not giving her a share of the potato snacks. Today was a special day, after all.
At the end of the day, Henryk used his magic to reverse the effect of the special dwarven mix on their brains. Drinking at this age, while practically safe for many reasons in their case, still carried the risk of affecting their brain development.
(AN: For those wondering, Loki tried to trick Nephelont into wearing skimpy "armor" and shouting his techniques' names like she did with Ais, seeing as he was the flattest version of Ais possible on both fronts but was still Ais appearance-wise. It's just that Nephelont had more attentive people with prior Loki experience guarding him)