Okay. No. Actually, probably Eric is just wrong, or kinda nuts. Or something.

...actually, the only weird part of that entire thing was the "we met when we were all little" part. If he... ignores that... then, okay, no, the Grim Reaper being a blond hunk is still weird in itself but it's, you know, the kind of weirdness he should be getting used to. It's a weirdness that makes sense. And Alexei and Zach getting married despite being related is... really weird, also, actually, like, how did that even happen, did Alexei help Lucas raise the twins and then Zach fell in love, how did Alexei fall in love back, how do you fall in love with someone you helped raise, that's creepy as all hell?

Actually, hold on, why is it creepy?

Like... sure, there's a huge power imbalance and stuff, potential for abuse yadda yadda, but it feels like there should be a different reason.

And this is, like, not one of those cases where his intuitions and his specific knowledge clash. It feels like it's creepy and weird, and he also knows for a fact that everyone else would agree that having a relationship with a family member would be creepy and weird, but he's not sure... why. Like it just kinda happens that people who grow up together don't usually feel attracted to each other, and also adults have quite a lot of power over children and, yeah, fucking children can really fuck them up forever, okay never mind that's probably why.

Except that it also feels like it'd be weird and creepy for, say, Zach and Eric to have a relationship, because they're siblings, even though they're kind of as equal as they could possibly be. There's zero power imbalance, there, they're identical twins, there's not any more potential for abuse than anywhere else, there, and yet he has strong intuitions that this is weird and wrong (...even if it's kind of hot in theory to bang identical twins) and he knows that most people agree with him in reality, so part of the feeling isn't that, and he's really confused actually.

It's annoying that he didn't come with answers to these questions preinstalled because he never knows if there's a good reason for things or not.

Suppose Eric and Zach fucked. That'd be bad. That'd be bad because... like, because they're siblings, but also... what? What else? Why is that bad?

Wait did Alexei groom Zach?

No, he takes it back, literally everything about this entire situation is weird and fucked up and he doesn't understand it and he especially doesn't understand why everyone else doesn't seem to find it fucking crazy moon logic levels of bizarre!

Here's Zach appearing out of thin air.

"Jesus fuck Zachary you're going to give me a heart attack," Peter shrieks.

"Who's Jesus?"

"I don't know!!!!!!!!!!!"

"...man, Eric was right, you really do seem to be going through it, buddy."

Peter rests his face in his hands and doesn't say anything to that.

Zach takes a seat next to Peter. "Did you really lose a friend?"

"No, Zachary, that's just something Tae-hwan got fixated on as an explanation because his brain is literally too small to comprehend why I'm upset."

"...okay that was really mean, actually, but I'm going to keep it to myself because you really seem out of it and I'm sure you didn't mean it."

"Fuck. Sorry. I just."

"It's fine. He wasn't here to hear it. Do you wanna try telling me what's wrong?"

"It's really quite a large number of things."

"Try me."

"Shouldn't you be out there with the guests and most importantly your husband?" Who may or may not have groomed you.

"It's fine, Alexei needed some alone time to decompress."

"...fine. Okay. So the first thing is that life is too short. I don't mean this in a philosophical or poetic way, I mean literally that the literal actual number of days people stay alive for is too small. Eighteen weeks is a very short time. Objectively speaking."

"...I mean, I agree that there's far too much to do in one's life and just one lifetime isn't really enough—"

"See, you don't get it either!"