#admittedly inspired by that one video where Amber calls Patrick Daddy and NO ONE reacts to it

[acequeenking]

2. Outdoor Girl

Written for @sephweek prompt #1: Outdoor Girl.

Pairing: Hades/Persephone, Hermes & Persephone friendship in the background here

Summary: Persephone’s there but not quite all there, and Hades tries to pick up the pieces.

Here she is, his girl; he stares at her as Hermes holds her up, an apologetic smile on his face.

“Hermes,” he growls, not bothering with niceties. His niceties for the day have been reserved for his wife, who is currently resting her head on Hermes’ shoulder, barely awake. “Why…?”

“A bit too much fun at the party tonight,” Hermes says, tone even more apologetic than his look. The rabbit knows that he’s a dog looking for something to chase, and he’d really rather Hades chase his near-comatose wife than follow the sprinting messenger. “I’m sorry, I didn’t know who else to call—”

Hades ignores his apologies; he presses closer to his wife, who turns a little eye toward him. She giggles again into Hermes’ shoulder. Hermes has made the right move; Demeter would not approve of her daughter’s ways. Persephone stares at him, a pair of fox-brown eyes peeking up at him in curiosity. “’s that time already?”

“Yes,” he says, firmly. Technically, he is early by a couple weeks. Technically, this should have merely been a visit.

But how could he leave her here, like this?

“Mmm, okay,” she says, strangely pliant. Hermes sort of shrugs his wife toward him and he steps forward as she snuggles up into his arms instead. He holds her close, wraps her up in her big coat. Some things are instinctual: Holding his wife and keeping her safe is one of them.

“I missed you, lover,” she murmurs into his coat, and he suspects such is true, but he cannot dwell upon the pleasantness of it because she is rubbing her leg against his own, and he knows such is not an action borne of his irrepressible manliness but of some drug coursing through her system: a needle, a pill, a drink. A cheap trick.

It has nothing to do with him or her feelings for him.

Her hand fiddles with his belt and he gently grabs her hand, stops her from putting on a public display.

He wonders, uncharitably, if perhaps she would touch another like this, though he knows it is unfair to her. She has never been untrue. But the truth is, also, that he does not much recognize the woman who is kissing his neck at the moment and shivering as if he is rendering her to the god’s almighty chorus.

He has only his hand at the small of her back, and though he thinks his skill as a lover is decent, he knows it is not enough to provoke this kind of reaction. That the reaction is from the drug that she has chosen, gods above alone knowing what it is.

“C’mon, daddy,” she says, normally a whisper that would excite and titillate his senses but feels all wrong here with Hermes staring at them at a train station. “C’mon, let’s have some fun.” The hand reappears at his belt, manages to slip it half off before he gently corrects her and holds her hand.

Hermes looks at him with a very pained expression. “I’ll take her,” he says. Hermes does not move, watching Persephone as she shivers against him, the touch of a hand at her back and a hand covering her own evidently enough to make her near convulse.

“Ooh,” she shivers against him. “Oooh, it’s cold. It’s so cold, daddy.”

He really wishes she would stop calling him that in public. Still, she is shivering mightily. He does believe she is cold.

He shrugs off his jacket, puts it over her shoulders instead. He should ask where her fur coat’s gotten, but his outdoor girl appears to have lost it along the way.

Hermes is still staring at them. Persephone’s doing a bit better with the coat on; still shivering under his arm, but she’s tracing small circles into his back now. She moans like he’s got a hand on her cunt while she’s doing it and Hermes looks like he’d really rather not be here and honestly the feeling is mutual.

“Go,” he says to Hermes. Hermes opens his mouth like he wants to argue, but Hades rolls his eyes and pushes the boy away. “Go.”

And for once, he does.

“Baby,” she murmurs; now that they are alone on the platform, she is more affectionate. She reaches up on the tips of her tippy-toes and pecks his lips, moaning like crazy. “Baby let’s go in the trees, put me up against one, let’s become the roots, the forest…” She is babbling, shivering in his arms, and he worries she is in the grips of a god outside his control, or perhaps something even more profound.

She cups his groin as if she owns him, her fingers moving in a familiar pattern he would enjoy more in any other circumstance. “Daddy, please…Please, daddy, show your outdoor girl a good time. Please?” She gets up on unsteady and shaky legs to kiss him again and he does lean into it a bit more than he should; she is an attractive creature, regardless of her current troubles.

But then he remembers that this is not her fully awake, and he pulls back, tucks her back into his arms to keep her safe.

If only from herself.

“I want you,” she mewls, and it takes everything within his power to take a deep breath and try to focus. She is not herself. She is not here, not really. This is but a mirage.

“Later,” he says. “Let’s get you home. Sober you up.”

And she whines as he pulls her away from her mother’s lands – from the fruit of the vine and the roots of the cellar, both bursting forth from her. He hears the inching of the vines, the explosion of leaves as he pushes her toward the train. He does not doubt that a frost will come tomorrow. Hopefully, this last burst of fecund fertility is enough to get the mortals through their winter. “Let’s get you home. Keep you safe,” he says, and he tells himself he is doing such as his husbandly duties.

But still, he catches her as she looks longingly towards the forests just past his little station, and he wonders, just for one moment, if maybe she regrets the path they’ve traveled.