okay who's ready for my ares/hypnos thread lul

important characterization notes for this

hypnos builds on some ingame dialogue and pulls a lot on the idea that his family neglects him in attempt to make him less dependant, that he's lonely and bottles up a lot of his feelings, masking them with his cheery demeanor

ares also uses ingame dialogue, as his family does still often make jabs at him, but a big part builds off his conflict with the aloadae giants in myth, and his thirteen month imprisonment within a bronze jar (in which he could have perished had he been trapped longer)

so setting the tone here, we have two gods who aren't given the best treatment by their families for differing reasons, hypnos bc his mother and brother think they are helping him to grow, and ares bc he is just generally disliked by his family

generally they wouldn't encounter one another, but as hades doesn't mention the oneiroi, i don't really feel obligated to involve them (myth inspired things don't have to be accurate to myth, after all), and hypnos in turn oversees more aspects of dreams and nightmares directly

so this builds up to hypnos in one instance feeling the pull of a god experiencing a nightmare, which. in itself is odd. and who has a nightmare about a jar anyway? he's nosy, he wants to take a peek.

he never expected to encounter ares

he panics because, oh gods oh fuck, that was ares. ares was having a nightmare. the god of war. nightmare. ARES.

he withdraws, dispells the nightmare in a haste and books it.

ares is probably going to smite him.

ares meanwhile is.. uncomfortable. unsettled. someone just witnessed him in a vulnerable position and it makes his skin crawl. he caught golden eyes. he knows thanatos has gold eyes. he knows thanatos has a brother. he knows that brother oversees sleep and all that comes with it

hypnos pretends nothing happend. the lingering dread feels suffocating.

ares avoids sleeping. immortals don't need much sleep as it is, but exhaustion gnaws at him. he doesn't want to think about the jar, or gold eyes that peered down at him in naked shock

inevitably ares has to rest. inevitably the jar torments him again. the feeling of helplessness, loneliness. realizing your family cares so little about you that they would leave you to die

and maybe the world would be better for that, better without War

inevitably hypnos feels drawn to the nightmare. he's cautious, wary. he can't simply leave it be

so again he dispells the nightmare, ensures the war god Actually Rests, and leaves as quickly as he came

ares awakens and knows he needs to seek out Sleep

ANYWAY that's as in depth as I'll go bc twt sucks for this, the gist is ares does find hypnos, They Talk Awkwardly, ares assures he will Not smite hypnos for trespassing into his dreams, they realize they have shitty family dynamics in common and slowly start to bond

misc thoughts worth mentioning that i forgot:

• ares doesn't understand the domain hypnos manages. in fact most gods don't, because immortals don't need sleep like mortals do

• upon being reassured that he's not going to be smited by an angry war god, hypnos actively keeps watch for the nightmare that plagues ares and ensures he rests properly

ares can't fathom why and assumes hypnos wants something, no one is nice to him just to *be* nice

• as hypnos does not stay on the surface any longer than he needs to, he and ares mostly get acquainted in the beginning through dreams

• encountering hypnos on the surface is a catalyst to deepening their relation from vague acquaintances to more distinctly friends. as for what made hypnos linger at the surface: family tension, stress, rapidly losing his grip on the emotions he keeps bottled away

• ares respects thanatos deeply, and is thus quite disappointed to hear hypnos's account of how his brother treats him. it all reminds him of how his own family treats him, which doesn't sit well to him, to associate thanatos with any of that

• delirious hypnos moment as he realizes haha oh fuck we have something in common and it's *this* of all things. also ares please, no, don't talk to thanatos

s'all i got rn that contributes to how their relation starts and builds up but anyway war and sleep long slowburn hours