#blood of zeus one shot

[anonymousbardd]

Over The Sunset - FT. Hermes x FemReader

⸝⸝ ౨ৎ :: "Your slow loving makes me feel so obsessed with you."

𑄽𑄺 Content Contains: xFemreader, fluff, swearing. This story is based off of the series, Blood Of Zeus - ¡Please do not repost without crediting!

⸝⸝ ౨ৎ :: "All my life I and the world had been moving at a fast pace, but everyone always seems to slow down whenever I'm near you."

[F/n] is a young maiden who lives in a small poli, she used to live in a much larger economy, but her previous home was destroyed by a big group of bandits and hoarders. Now, she lives in a small village that the survivors built.

During the hard times, [F/n}'s family were the ones who helped everyone, they were the ones who gathered resources, and food, and they helped with the injured.

The village had a voting session to decide who would lead their newly rebuilt home, and it was no brainer why all of them chose your family. At the time, [F/n] was still an unborn fetus, and by the time she was born, the whole village had dedicated that day to celebrating their new life and home.

The young girl grew up to be polite, humble and kind, just like her parents. The villagers adored her, calling [F/n] the village's white rose. The young girl had a heart of gold, was sensitive, and felt empathetic towards the poor souls who had passed away. [F/n] would pray to Hermes, she would pray for the safety of the undead.

[F/n] would visit Hermes' nearby temple and would make offerings to him.

One morning, the village's white rose now grew into a beautiful maiden, it was a lovely morning, [F/n] was making her way to the nearby river to collect some water, when all of a sudden, she heard screams of terror from her beloved villagers.

[F/n] ran towards the sounds of agony, her heart raced inside of her chest as her mind showed different horrific scenarios. Once she finally arrived, she noticed that the cries and screams were coming from inside.

She rushed in only to find a dimly lit cave, on the ground where some of the villagers bleeding out, a little girl was crying, [F/n] ran towards the young girl and held her in her arms. Then, in the dark, a figure rose and began to swiftly attack the young girl and [F/n].

The young maiden then took a rock from the ground and began throwing it at the Kere, all whilst she hid the young child behind her, she managed to land a decent hit on its head, causing it to fall back into the shadows.

[F/n] then turned to the young child and made sure that she was okay, [F/n]'s legs were already bruised and wounded, so she wasn't able to run away, "Leave this cave... Hurry and run back to the village!" [F/n] said, "B-but.., I can't leave you here!"

[F/n] smiled and placed a hand on the girl's cheek, "Worry not about me, save yourself," she said, and with that, the young girl ran out of the cave and back to the village. [F/n] knew that if she stayed any longer she would end up being feasted upon.

A tear rolled down her cheek, and the young maiden then decided to pray for the two dead bodies on the ground, as she did, she felt a gush of wind brush against her face.

Then right before her, a tall man with fair skin appeared, his eyes were a beautiful shade of blue and his hair was in a braid, he took off his helmet and looked down on the ground to see the dead and [F/n].

The young maiden knew that the man was too big to be an ordinary mortal, "Wh-who.., who are you..?" [F/n] asked quite frightened, the tall man chuckled and kneeled down.

"Well that's quite disappointing... As my devoted follower I would thought that you would have at least a bit of a clue who I am."

He than hovered his hand on top of the dead villagers and began to harvest their souls, he looked at [F/n] and smiled, only then did the young maiden realise who it was.

The man in front of her was no other than Hermes, the god she's been praying to all her life.

Just as the tall man stood up, [F/n] lifted her body and warned him, "Wait! Careful, there's a Keres lurking in the dar—..,"

*shing!*

In a blink of an eye, the Keres from before was cut in half, Hermes' reaction was quick and beyond mortal abilities.

[F/n] sat there in shock, the god then reached out his hand for the young maiden to hold, "Come, let me help you out of here," he said with a smile.

The young woman then held his hand, and without struggle, he carries her in a bridal way.

[F/n] felt her heart pounding inside of her chest, her facd felt hot as she looked at the god who's carrying her. Not a second later they were outside Hermes' temple, the god gently placed her down and looked at her wounds.

"Wait here, I'll be back," he said looking up at the young woman, not even 10 minutes later, Hermes returned with clean cloth and a bucket of water.

[F/n] watched as the god dipped the cloth in water and began to gently dab it on her wounds, causing her to wince in pain. "Bare with me for a bit.., I know it hurts..." Hermes muttered.

The young maiden moaned, her legs were aching, she then looked at Hermes who was currently focused on her injury, "Do you usually do this for those who worship you?" [F/n] asked.

Hermes smiled warmly and looked up at the young maiden, "I do not, consider yourself special," he said, [F/n] felt her face heat up, she then looked away, the sun was already setting.

[F/n] looked back at Hermes and hummed, he was already wrapping up the wound with more clean cloth, "Why..?" [F/n] mumbled, Hermes looked up and hummed, "Why did you save me..?" She asked, "What do you mean?"

[F/n] looked down and sighed, "Compared to you, I am but a young woman... I haven't done anything to be blessed enough to get saved by a god..."

Hermes looked at her for a second and laughed, he sat down on the ground and rested his arms on his knees, "You, my dear, are truly one funny girl," he chucked.

Hermes then stood up, offering his hand to [F/n], to which she accepted.

He then brought her to the top of a mountain that perfectly viewed [F/n]'s village. Hermes held her close to him, making the young maiden feel secure, "You see this village? It's a small poli that your parents helped to grow... And you, a daughter of those with noble hearts, did the same."

[F/n] looked at him, slightly curious. She knew what Hermes meant, but she wanted to know what he'd say. Hermes turned to face [F/n], "You cared for the weak, praid for those who had fallen, and you helped with the village's troubles.., you, darling, are a lovely person."

Hermes smiled and looked out to the horizon, watching the sun slowly fall, "Ever since you started to visit my temple... I can't help but admire you for your kindness, you're very thoughtful... Everday you give me generous offerings, I can't help but feel flattered."

The god then turned to look at [F/n], "Sweetie, you're such a humble person, and on top of that, you're kindness makes me admire you more and more, I find myself looking forward to your presence for whenever you visit my temple again."

Hermes kisses the back of [F/n]'s hand, "I can't help myself but fall for such a charming woman..," he then looked up to see [F/n]'s red face, the way she looked told him everything.

Hermes then slowly pulled himself away, "Though I may know more about you... You don't know much about me... Worry not about that.., I'll gladly take my time and take things slow with you," he smiled, tucking a hair behind [F/n]'s ear.

𑄽𑄺 Blood of Zeus needs more appreciation honestly... Sorry for being inactive, I've been busy hanging out with my family hehe.

༝༚༝༚𝚊𝚗𝚘𝚗𝚢𝚖𝚘𝚞𝚜𝚋𝚊𝚛𝚍𝚍

[blood-of-zeus-fan]

y'know who wouldn't've missed

HIM

[hiddenlife-manager]

hello :) Ive seen you are taking requests. So if you are okay with it and you are willing to give it a shot I would like zo request Luffy x fem reader smut where they are in established relationship and while they are making love someone walk on them. But no pressure. Have a nice day/night :)

Luffy x Fem Reader

cw... overstimulation, walking in, voyeurism, sloppy sex, not on his bed, nipple sucking, tit play, clit play, desperate Luffy, etc….

notepad... I AM ON A ROLL I have this one done and I have another Blood of Zeus one coming up. I literally just came out of my wisdom teeth removal yall. SO THIS IS NOT EDITED

You felt him pushing you down. His hands are groping your chest, and his mouth is leaving nibble marks around your neck. You giggled at the way it felt like he truly was one with his teeth. Luffy was constantly biting you, just so you knew he loved you. Not in an ‘I want to eat you’ way; he just wanted to get as close as he could to you, which meant kissing you deeply.

He had you pinned as you felt his cock enter your sopping hole. You felt him push you down deeper into the bunk, his mouth going all over your body. Your head was thrown back, and you felt yourself getting overwhelmed by the feeling of him going in and out of you. It was clear that Luffy was fucking you like a dog in heat. His lips were suddenly lowering down to your nipple, and he sucked at it.

“Y/n- shiii so good.” He moaned out as his hips bucked into you. Your breasts were bouncing while you had his hands gently hold your hips. Luffy was off the bunk as your hips were at the edge, meaning that Luffy was on his legs, fucking you. He could hear the sound of your pussy echoing in the room. He loved it; he loved the sound your body made, from the moans you cry out to the slick of your pussy.

Your moans were not loud, and all you could do was try to make your moans less loud by placing a hand over your lips. Luffy fucked you with barely any rhythm, being sloppy, and yet no matter how sloppy he was, he knew how to get you worked up. You felt your left nipple being pinched while his mouth flicked at your right nipple. He needed you; he needed to release, and it was clear. 

Luffy could feel his legs getting weaker, and he did not care about anything but you and him. You tasted so good, and your skin was perfect. As he thrust deep into you, his cock being able to reach the deepest parts of your pussy, you suddenly heard the door open, and you looked behind Luffy to see Zoro with eyes wide.

"Zoro, get out!” You cried as you tried to cover yourself. Luffy truly did not care, as he was still thrusting deep inside you. Truly, you were trying to cover your breast. As you did that, Luffy whined because you pulled him away from your nipple, and he began to play with your breast. Zoro's eyes were wide in shock. He cleared his voice and shut the door immediately, as you could hear the heavy footsteps walk away. You were moaning loudly as you tried to push him away, embarrassed. But all it did to Luffy was continue to fuck you hard. 

“Close… so close, Y/n- shii.” You were moaning so loudly at the way he did not stop thrusting his hands and playing with your breast instead of sucking. You were feeling so overwhelmed that your head was pressed against the mattress when Luffy's mind exploded with pleasure, which caused him to fall onto his knees and pull out of you. His streaks of cum shoot inside you and then onto your cunt. Your legs spasm as you kick him away with a cry of pure pleasure. 

“Luffy! You bastard!” You said as you continued to kick at him to his chest, but his arms stretched to your clit and he began to rub circles in your oversensitive clit. “Ah! Fuck… Luffy!”

[pumpkinbxtch]

hello, a request please, from apollo x readerposeidon, how does apollo react if hermes tries to flirt with his girlfriend reader (hermes just wants to bother his older brother)

• this is a message for THAT nereid!

— apollo x daughter of poseidon!reader

warnings: none

a/n: Hi baby. here's your apollo crew being jealous there's nothing more like him than that.

✷

Apollo started biting his nails as soon as he heard your laughter echoing in his dining room, which he found stupid because it was HIS dining room and you were laughing with another guy right in his face. Well, it was not just another guy, it was his brother, which made it a million times worse.

His visits used to be enjoyable, now not so much.

— So, ¿what do you say? — Hermes asked, winking at you, and Apollo wondered about the sudden need to make his life miserable by looking you in that way.

Your lips painted another smile as you playfully shook your head, glancing sideways at your boyfriend, who was struggling not to throw the vase at his brother's face. Honestly, it amused you. “This is for all the times you let that Nereid flirt with you in front of me,” you thought, it was your perfect revenge, and with his brother willing to play along, they were hitting the nail on the head.

— Hmm. What do you say, darling? We can stay in that house for the summer. It's close to the water, and I think it would help me train while waiting for the swimming tryouts.

Apollo forced a smile and nodded silently, if he spoke, he'd surely yell. Hermes played with the crystal glass and leaned slightly towards you.

— Even if my brother can't be with you all the time, you can go on your own — he said, looking at his brother, pretending to be kind, and Apollo felt his blood boil. — I'll keep an eye on her for you, brother.

Apollo scoffed — I don't want you keeping any eye on my girlfriend, thanks.

The double entendre floated between you, and you pressed your lips together, trying not to smile.

Hermes ran his hand through his black curls while making loops with his hand, trying to find words to elaborate. That was exasperating, Apollo thought he was just trying to look dashing. For his misfortune, his brother kept talking.

— I think it'll be fine, she needs it for her training, after all, right? — He turned to you with the blue eyes that every son of Zeus seemed to possess. — Although, they should fear you from now on, doll.

Apollo choked at that word and drew both of your attention.

— Is everything alright, Apollo? — Hermes smiled maliciously, and the sun god remembered the stupid rule that whoever gets angry first loses.

— Nothing — Apollo replied, snapping his fingers to start the music. maybe breaking that stupid tension.

When “The Girl Is Mine” by Michael Jackson and Paul McCartney started, you were close to crack up. You couldn’t believe him.

— I love this song, little bro — Hermes hummed while drumming his fingers on the glass table, passing over the message on purpose.

“'Little bro'? I'm the older one,” Apollo thought, annoyed. He couldn't wait to kick that idiot out of his mansion.

The part with the ex-beatle began, and the messenger of the gods leaned closer and starting to sing to you.

— I love you more than he… — Hermes winked at you.

— Okay, enough — Apollo exclaimed, standing up and covering his brother's mouth with his hand. He kept singing even as his voice died in your boyfriend's palms.

 Apollo growled and shot you a furious look before disappearing with him in a golden dust.

As you were left alone in the dining room, you burst into laughter and took a sip of water, impressed by your brother-in-law's performance.

Footsteps echoed in the hallway, and you masked your smile with a serious expression.

 Apollo dusted off his hands and sat back down, his eyes fixed in the center of the table. You cleared your throat and casually propped one leg up on the chair, playing with your hair as you listened to him rant.

— And tell me, my love —your voice echoed through the palace vaults, — how does it feel? — In the midst of those emotions that had him on the edge of a psychotic episode, that question caught him off guard. You raised your eyebrows sanctimoniously and smiled smugly.

Oh.

— You! — He pointed at you accusingly, and you ran off giggling.

As he tried to catch up with you, he heard the echoes of the palace bringing the reason you played along with his brother's stupid game: “Tell that damn Nereid to screw off, you're mine!” And the brake on his heels, now fearing you'd walk back to him.

Okay, you won. Definitely, Apollo wouldn't even talk to a rock if it kept you from flirting with his brother again.

✷⁠

[lovelivelaygh1324]

He strides with confidence as he walks down the dim and dark hallway. A rich red carpet that he walks on still and showing with the stain curtains that look embroidered with gold. So luxurious. So darkly beautiful yet to him so dull. He sits upon his golden diamond crested throne his sapphire eyes scanning the room for anyone who dare disobey his command.

“Rise.” His order sends jolt down the spines of the demonic and monstrous creatures. As they all rise looking at him. A scared feeling hidden in their eyes as they watch him his face filled with annoyance.

“S-sire…t-there… i-is their s-something you need or want.” A scrawny creature with one eye looks at him his voice trembling and words butchered as she speaks.

“Tell me... who is (Y/N).” He looks at him his eyebrow going up in curiosity.

“S-sire we—” the demon stutters as he explains himself but is cut of by his demanding voice. “Who am I.” his sapphire eyes burn holes into his eyes as the demon yelps in pain blood dripping down his cheeks. “S-sylus…Sylus! God of the underworld who knows and hear everything!” the scrawny demon blurts out his heart pounding. Sylus laughs his eyes filled with annoyance and amusement.

“So do you think I dint know. What everyone’s been talking about. Now tell me who is this (Y/N) ...?” he asks his tone demanding and stern as his present’s weights on everyone in the room the air thick as one demon says. The one who was released to send a letter to Zeus a few days ago.

“Sire. Your allowance to speak...” the two twin demons ask.

“Proceed.” He looks intently listening to the to twins. Luke and keirin.

“As we were flying back, we came across a beautiful water land. We were confused and then we saw a goddess. A new goddess who had been debuted from her mother Hera and father Zeus and Aphrodite! She was beautiful it was a beautiful water land with green and crystal-like water! She sat there singing and humming so lovely she looked like a water goddess, and I later found out her name was (Y/N) goddess of water and holder of the beauty exmire!” the twins went on and on as the explain what they saw.

“Is that so...?” sylus smirks an amusement evident in his eyes.

“Show me. Show me with the mirror this. divine goddess.” He laughs shocking everyone as he orders for the mirror.

(SNEAK PEAK ON THE FIC OF HADES!Sylus and PERSEPHONE!READER)

Srry guys i switched the script up abit making reader a new goddess of water just to match in the later story. And yes i will be amking tgis a long shot so please wait guysysysyys i will realease the masterlist soon!

(Just heads up i am a new weitter and i am abit busy so i will update 3 times a week!!)

@straightsworld @omgsuperstarg @thvhoe @woooooya @3rachachoo

(Srry if yr not on there!!)

[diamondsunbursts-and-marblehalls]

"Annabeth is terrified of spiders."

Luke and Annabeth's existence is so interwoven that the best analogy he can come up with for the reasoning and justification behind his betrayal of everything he's ever known and loved is one connected to her.

Say what you want, but I think Luke thought about Annabeth and Thalia during every part of his betrayal. He knew that even Annabeth's complete adoration and devotion to Athena couldn't make her care. He knew that the king of the gods, Zeus could have saved Thalia but instead, he turned her into a tree "as a last resort" to keep her out of the way for good.

Of course, his reasoning for siding with Kronos reminds him of Annabeth. Small and scary things will be crushed immediately, if he has a bigger power behind him he at least has a shot at making a change.

He's been mistreated by Hermes, but he's also spent years watching his little sister worship Athena, do everything she ever asked all for a hat that turns you invisible, and the occasional nod her way. He's her big brother, you don't think HE KNOWS that she thinks love has to be earned? You don't think he's done everything he could to prove to her that's not true.

Ultimately his betrayal had everything to do with Annabeth. It was for Thalia, it was for the rest of the Hermes kids, for all of the unclaimed in his cabin who had to spend their whole lives knowing that their godly parent didn't care about them enough to even acknowledge their existence, it was for Clarisse who has clearly been abused by Ares and yet would still do anything for his favour, it was for every half-blood who had ever been mistreated by the gods.

The first analogy he thinks of in trying to describe the relationship between demigods and gods is one associated with Annabeth because she's the reason he can justify his betrayal.

[inthedayswhenlandswerefew]

1968 [Chapter 1: Ares, God Of War]

Series Summary: Aemond is embroiled in a fierce battle to secure the Democratic Party nomination and defeat his archnemesis, Richard Nixon, in the presidential election. You are his wife of two years and wholeheartedly indoctrinated into the Targaryen political dynasty. But you have an archnemesis of your own: Aemond’s chronically delinquent brother Aegon.

Series Warnings: Language, sexual content (18+ readers only), violence, bodily injury, character deaths, New Jersey, age-gap relationships, drinking, smoking, drugs, pregnancy and childbirth, kids with weird Greek names, historical topics including war and discrimination, math.

Word Count: 5.7k

Let me know if you'd like to be added to the taglist! 🥰💜

💜 All of my writing can be found HERE! 💜

Let’s begin with a definition.

Disaster is a noun derived from Ancient Greek: dus, a prefix meaning “bad,” and aster, or “star.” In the time when humans worshipped Zeus and Hera, Hephaestus and Aphrodite, it was believed that tragedies resulted from the inauspicious positioning of celestial bodies: a volcano erupts because of Jupiter, a returning comet brings with it a flood. There is a certain helplessness inherent in this mythology. There is predestined suffering that lies in wait until all the jewels of the sky have malignantly aligned.

Have you ever met someone who made you ache to change the stars?

~~~~~~~~~~

Gunshots explode through the lobby of the Breakers Hotel in Palm Beach, Florida; you feel the wind of the bullets as they clip by, fragmented metallic rage. Aemond is on the marble floor, blood pouring down his face, blood all over the white shirt beneath his navy blue suit jacket when you rip it open, tearing a button loose. He’s reaching for you through the jostling and the screams, leaving crimson handprints on your mint green dress. And you think: He just won the Florida primary. He’s not supposed to die. He’s supposed to be the president.

“What happened?” Aemond murmurs, his right eye dazed and only half-open; the left has vanished beneath a cloudburst of gore. Perhaps ten yards away, people have caught the assailant and pinned him against one of the vast Venetian windows until the police arrive. They’re roaring at him in red-faced fury, their closed fists strike his ribs and his cheekbones, their knuckles paint him scarlet and indigo.

“You’re alright, you’re alright.” You brace both palms over the maroon stain spreading rapidly across Aemond’s chest and press down as hard as you can. Your fingers are drenched in seconds, warm fading life. He’s bleeding to death. You shriek through the turmoil: “Criston?!”

“Is he okay?” Aemond asks faintly. He means the baby; you’re six months pregnant with his first child, his greatest treasure, his Atlantis, his Holy Grail. Aemond has already decided that it’s a boy. Sometimes you fear what will happen if he’s wrong.

“Yes, honey, the baby’s fine, don’t worry. Criston!”

Aegon is here instead, sweating out rum and ruin like he always is, hair too long, veins full of pills, colliding with you and pawing at his dying brother with untrustworthy hands. “Aemond?!”

You shove Aegon away, splattering him with blood. “Get back, he needs air!”

“Where’s he shot?! Let me see—”

“I told you to get back!”

“Goddammit, you don’t own him! He’s mine too!”

Criston has battled his way to you and is yanking Aegon back by the collar of his frayed olive green army jacket, stolen from Daeron when he visited home after basic training, a uniform of embittered revolution worn by a man who’s never fought for anything. “Aegon, make sure someone’s called for an ambulance, then meet the paramedics at the door and help them find us.”

“But—”

“Go!” Criston yells, and Aegon scrambles to his feet and is lost within the crowd. You can hear Otto bellowing at journalists and hotel employees to make space for the fallen senator; there are flashes of cameras and prayers shouted aloud. Above your head are crystal chandeliers and a vaulted ceiling hand-painted by 75 Italian artists in the 1920s; swimming in your skull are visions of Jackie Kennedy in the pink suit filthy with her husband’s brains. It’s just before midnight on Tuesday, May 28th. Upstairs in their oceanfront Imperial Suites, nannies will be shaking awake the absent adults of the Targaryen dynasty, who retired with the children before Aemond made his victory speech in the hotel ballroom: Alicent, Helaena, Fosco, Mimi.

Criston’s hands—larger, stronger—replace yours over the gushing wound in Aemond’s chest. What did the bullet hit? His lung, his heart? He’s not speaking anymore, his right eye is closed. His bloodied hands rest open and empty on the floor. “Criston, he’s dying,” you sob.

“No he’s not. We’re not going to let him.”

“What’s the closest hospital?”

“Good Samaritan is just across the bridge on the mainland.” It’s Criston’s job to know these things, though he had been thinking of you when he plotted his meticulous notes in his day planner: in case you eat a bad cheeseburger, or trip on the stairs, or catch the flu and start burning up with fever. Aemond worries about the baby. Aegon has five children, Helaena has three, and Aemond will feel that he has been robbed of something if he does not swiftly procure a family of his own. He needs you on the campaign trail, but still, he worries.

Across the lobby, the police have arrived to arrest the aspiring assassin. He puts up a fight when they try to handcuff him and earns a nightstick to the gut, an elbow to the nose. He is choking on his own blood. Perhaps he is drowning in it. Good, you think.

“Don’t kill him!” Otto booms at the officers. “I want him alive for trial! I want him to ride the lighting up in Raiford, you keep that son of a bitch alive!”

“Aemond?” You thread your fingers through his blood-soaked hair. What happened to his left eye? Is it somewhere underneath all that carnage, or is it gone? “Please wake up. Please stay with me. We need you. The baby and I need you.”

“He’s going to live,” Criston promises, both hands still clamped over the bullet wound to slow the hemorrhaging.

“Aemond, please…” How can he be the president with only one eye?

An old woman in a yellow striped skirt suit is lumbering close with a homemade prayer rope clenched in her fist. “A komboskini for the senator!” For his last rites. For his soul.

“He doesn’t need it!” Criston says. “He’s not dying! No one is dying tonight!”

Still, you take the komboskini from the lady, each of the 100 knots a prayer unspoken. She is a devotee of Aemond, and you must show her gratitude. “Efcharistó, aderfí. O Theós na se evlogeí.” They are some of the few Greek words you’ve mastered; you’ve used them often since Aemond announced that he was running for president. Thank you, sister. God bless you.

The paramedics arrive, splitting the crowd like a laceration, white uniforms and a stretcher to ferry Aemond away. People are wailing, cursing, swearing vengeance. Aegon has returned and is peering down at Aemond with those large, glassy, muddled eyes, afraid to ask. “Is he…is he still…?”

“He has a pulse,” Criston replies. He helps the paramedics drag Aemond onto the stretcher and strap him to it. Your husband’s shirt is now drenched in red like garnet, like cinnabar, like the poppies that commemorate the boys butchered in World War I, like the wasted blood being spilled in Vietnam, men reduced to memory. “Good Samaritan?” Criston confirms with the paramedics.

“Yes sir,” the most senior one agrees. And then to you, with great deference, with compassion that transcends what somebody can harbor for strangers: “Ma’am, there’s a place for you if you want it.”

“I do,” you say, tear-streaked face, hands bathed in blood. “Thank you. Thank you so much.”

The ambulance is idling outside the main entranceway of the hotel. Criston grasps your hand to steady you as you step up into the back, and you take a seat on the red leather bench beside the stretcher. The paramedics are placing IVs, holding an oxygen mask to Aemond’s face, muttering urgently into their radio, abbreviations and code words you can’t understand, a secret language of organic calamities. High above the stars are crystalline and radiant in a clear sky. In your own chest—unshredded by metal, unpierced by rage—your intact heart is pounding.

The lead paramedic turns to you again and says: “We can fit one more person.”

It’s your decision. You are the senator’s wife; you were supposed to be the next first lady of the United States. You look through the ambulance’s open doors. Aegon stares back expectantly, his hair falling in his face, his arms thrown wide, petulant, combative, useless, drunk. “Criston.”

“Bitch!” Aegon hisses at you as Criston climbs into the vehicle. The doors slam shut, the engine rumbles, the siren squeals as the ambulance races westbound on Breakers Row towards County Road, which connects with Flagler Memorial Bridge and the mainland.

Through the rear window you watch Aegon as he stands in the white-gold hotel luminescence, becoming smaller and smaller until he vanishes, and all you can see are streetlights, and all you can smell is blood.

~~~~~~~~~~

Every story needs its cast of characters. Here are the major players in the summer of 1968.

President Lyndon Baines Johnson is in the White House watching the clocks tick towards November 5th, when his successor will be ordained. He has chosen not to seek reelection. Since his ascension upon Kennedy’s assassination in 1963, Johnson’s domestic focus has been unprecedented civil rights legislation and his War On Poverty, yet what has infected the media like blood poisoning is the war in Vietnam. On the television are napalm bombs incinerating Vietnamese peasants, caskets draped with American flags, riots being beaten down by police, college students torching draft cards and chanting “Hey, hey, LBJ, how many kids did you kill today?” Now the president is sick in body, in spirit, in heart, and this is not a metaphor: he suffered a near-fatal cardiac arrest in 1955 and another shortly after John F. Kennedy was murdered in Dallas, Texas. He will die almost exactly four years after leaving office. Had he sought another term, he would have been unlikely to survive it. The public eye is something like a snake bite; it sinks its fangs in and you hope the venom burns clean before it can curse you with clots or hemorrhages or paralysis, before it can drown you in the dark waters of infamy.

In the void left by President Johnson’s surrender, four factions have emerged within the Democratic Party. The old guard—the same labor unions, congressmen, and local political machines who have steered the platform since the days of Franklin D. Roosvelt’s New Deal—has flocked to current Vice President Hubert Humphrey. Humphrey is competent yet uninspiring, a mid-fifties Midwesterner who flinches at the unpolished fury of antiwar protests and sedately lectures Black Power activists on the dangers of “reverse racism.” He is not a threat. He is a sheep in sheep’s clothing, and this is the time for wolves.

Senator Eugene McCarthy of Minnesota is unapologetically opposed to the Vietnam War, a moral crusader, a reluctant warrior, a man who wears his lack of taste for the presidency like a badge of honor. He feels compelled to run, but he does not crave it. He thinks this makes him a saint; but Joan of Arc was burned at the stake and Saint Lawrence was roasted alive. Like Halloween candy plunked into a child’s neon orange plastic pumpkin, McCarthy has collected his own coalition, college students and posh urbanites who believe themselves to be the future of the Democratic Party. In 2016, people will conjure McCarthy’s ghost when drawing comparisons to a controversial left-wing senator from Vermont named Bernie Sanders.

If McCarthy is the future and Humphrey is the past, then former governor of Alabama George Wallace is downright archaic. He is the candidate of choice for Southern white supremacists, averse to Republicans since Lincoln and still reverent of Depression-era New Deal programs that kept them from starving to death. Wallace is best known for his promise of “segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever,” and pledges to end the chaos that has besieged America through strict law and order. Provided he loses the Democratic primary, Wallace plans to run in the general election as an Independent, hoping to peel away enough support from the major party candidates to force the House of Representatives to declare the winner and then leverage his votes to negotiate an end to federal desegregation efforts in the South. His devoted wife Lurleen just died of uterine cancer, a diagnosis which Wallace kept hidden from her for years; doctors are in the habit of informing husbands of their wives’ ailments and giving them carte blanche control over the treatment plan, which unfortunately in Lurleen’s case was nothing. She was 41 years old.

In his short-lived castle of red corridors like the marrow rivers of bones, President Johnson hides from the hippies who jeer and spit; Humphrey frowns at them, McCarthy tries to appease them, Wallace says the only four-letter words they don’t know are “w-o-r-k” and “s-o-a-p.” But Aemond climbs down from podiums to meet them like old friends. He is young, only 36. He has a brother serving in the swamps of Vietnam. He is focused, determined, insatiable; he devours every scrap of news that is printed about him and writes his speeches by hand. As the self-admitted runt of the Targaryen family, Aemond knows what it is like to be underestimated. He wants a better America, and he wants to be the president, and he wants these things in equal, relentless measure, each fueling the other until these ambitions become inseparable. He has grown up hearing slurs against Greeks and consequently has no tolerance for discrimination, which he contends is antithetical to the American Dream. He attends civil rights marches in labyrinthian cities, antiwar protests on college campuses, union meetings in coal mining towns of West Virginia and Kentucky and Wyoming, music festivals crowded with long unwashed hair and braless women, fundraisers flush with the deep pockets of the Northeastern elite. Aemond’s coalition grows each day, bleeding away strength from his rivals like a Medieval surgeon. Their flesh turns cold and anemic, while Aemond’s heart pumps scalding torrents of blood.

If Aemond wins the Democratic primary at the convention in August, his opponent will almost certainly be the Republican frontrunner Richard Nixon of California. Nixon wants the White House just as badly, and he’s much smarter than he looks. He was Eisenhower’s vice president for eight years in the 1950s and lost to the ill-fated John F. Kennedy in 1960 by a whisker; some say he did not lose at all, but instead was cheated out of 100,000 votes by Kennedy’s mafia connections in Chicago. But with the Democrats divided and their incumbent president floundering, Nixon’s timing has never been better. He was once a poor boy with two dead brothers who earned a scholarship to Duke Law. Now he will become whoever he needs to be to win the presidency of the United States.

1968 is the year of wolves. The fangs are sharp, and the bellies ache with hunger.

~~~~~~~~~~

A local deli has opened early and sent sandwiches to Good Samaritan Medical Center for the family and friends of the senator from New Jersey: ham and Swiss, cucumber and cream cheese, tuna salad, egg salad, pimento cheese, BLTs, Cubans. The lobby is filling up with bouquets of flowers and handwritten notes. You pace and count the knots of the komboskini over and over again as you wait; Aemond has been in surgery for hours. The nurses periodically bring you Styrofoam cups of hot chocolate, scalding watered-down sweetness to distract you from the fact that some surgeon is currently rooting around inside your husband’s ribcage.

Alicent—a convert to the Greek Orthodox faith just as you are, though far more zealous, far more sincere if you dared to admit it—is pleading for God to save her son as she clasps her own prayer rope. Helaena is seated beside her, eerily calm. Helaena’s husband Fosco is wandering around boredly and inflicting small talk upon the nurses, ogling out the third-story windows, playing with his red Duncan yo-yo. Otto is making a series of calls using one of the phones at the nurses’ station. Criston is there too, leaning over the countertop and speaking with Otto in low conspiratorial whispers.

Aegon is sitting alone and glaring at you. He takes a rattling bottle of pills—prescriptions that doctors are too afraid not to write for him when he asks—out of a pocket on the front of his green army jacket, spotted like a leopard with your bloody handprints. He opens the amber-colored, cylindrical container and pours two, no, three tiny white tablets into his palm. He tosses them into his mouth and washes them down with a swallow of his own mediocre hot chocolate, still glaring. You ignore him.

“How could this have happened?” Mimi says again from where she’s slumped in her chair. Aegon’s wife has a Snow White sort of beauty, but with a perpetual ruddiness in her nose and cheeks from the gin she sips constantly. You suppose it would make anyone a drunk, being married to a man like that. Her maiden name was Marina Marceline Leroux, but everyone has always called her Mimi, even the press on the rare occasions when she makes an appearance. Her children—Orion, Spiro, Violeta, Thaddeus, and little Cosmo, only five years old—are all back at the Breakers Hotel with the nannies, the same as Helaena’s. Mimi blubbers to nobody in particular: “How…? Who…? Who would want to hurt Aemond…?”

Someone needs to sober her up. You fetch a BLT off the platter of sandwiches and offer it to her. “Here. Eat.”

“I’m not hungry. Who on earth could be hungry at a time like this? I’m absolutely nauseated, I’ll never want food again—”

“Mimi, eat the sandwich.”

“Fine, fine,” she slurs morosely, then takes an unenthusiastic bite. She listens to you, all the women do. They listen to you, and you listen to Aemond, and the circle is closed and complete.

Criston is walking over now. You turn to him, needing good news, bad news, any news. “It was a Wallace supporter,” Criston says. From his seat, Aegon is watching Criston with his slow drugged gaze, listening intently. “Some bell pepper farmer from up by Jacksonville.”

“He’s been taken to the local jail for holding?” you ask, and then add: “Alive?”

“Yeah, and he already has a record. Assault and battery. His brother-in-law is apparently a Grand Dragon in the Klan.”

“What the hell is a Grand Dragon?”

“Well, it’s higher than a Goblin, but not as illustrious as an Imperial Wizard, does that answer your question?”

“Perfectly.” You smile at Criston, a pained, wry smile. He returns it and places a palm over your belly. You are still wearing the mint green dress Aemond picked out for you this morning, before he won the Florida primary, before he was shot twice by the disciple of a political adversary and laid at death’s doorstep. You are still covered in your husband’s blood.

“You’re feeling alright?” Then Criston smirks, knowing how ridiculous he must sound. “You know. All things considered.”

“We’re both fine. The baby’s moving around, I can feel it.”

“You can feel him, you mean,” Criston teases, knowing Aemond’s preoccupation with his unborn son; but you can’t bring yourself to appreciate the joke.

Aegon says to you suddenly: “How the fuck did you let this happen?”

“What?” you answer, stunned.

Aegon stands and approaches, lurching, raging. “You always have to be right beside him, in the photographs, in the headlines, in the soundbites, but you let some psychopath run up and shoot him? Twice?!”

“I thought he just wanted to shake Aemond’s hand, or maybe get a quote for an article—”

“You didn’t notice the gun?!”

“Aegon, sit down,” Criston orders.

“It happened in seconds,” you say. “You think you would have done better? You and your Valium, and your Librium, and your Percodan? You think your reaction time would have been so superior to mine?”

“Please,” Alicent moans, mopping tears from her pink cheeks with a handkerchief. “Please, don’t fight, not now…”

“We are all friends here,” Fosco adds in his thick Italian accent, yo-yoing by a window.

“You want to be the first lady so bad but you can’t handle it!” Aegon shouts, his voice echoing through the lobby. “You’re not some prodigy, you don’t have all the answers, you’re just a girl who stitched yourself to Aemond and then you let him get shot, he’s being operated on right now, maybe he’s even dying, and you still act like you’re so fucking perfect—”

“You’re mad because you know that everybody here is thinking the same thing,” you tell Aegon, cold and cruel. “That if someone had to get killed tonight it should have been you.”

Aegon’s mouth drops open; he stares at you with that slippery, opaque, stoned woundedness, pathetic, infuriating, illogically childish. Everyone else pretends they haven’t heard you. Alicent sniffles into her handkerchief. Fosco begins humming I Want To Hold Your Hand. Mimi chews sluggishly on her BLT. From the nurses’ station, Otto says, holding the phone to his chest: “It’s George Wallace. He’s calling for Aemond’s wife.” Then he waits to see if you’ll agree to take it.

Of course you will. You have to. You are acting in your husband’s stead. You go to the nurses’ station and grab the handset when Otto passes it to you. “This is Mrs. Targaryen.”

“Ma’am, I just wanted to offer you my sincerest condolences.” He has a pronounced drawl, born and raised in what he has praised as the Great Anglo-Saxon Southland. You animal, you think. You braindead bigot. “I do hope the senator makes a hasty recovery. I sure would like to beat him at the ballot box, but I have no stomach for anarchy. An act like this is repugnant to me, as it should be to any red-blooded American.”

“It was one of yours, do you know that?” you say, dripping venom. “One of your hateful ghouls.”

“I have no such knowledge. But if the shooter does turn out to be a supporter of my campaign, I disavow him utterly. He deserves a nice long sit in Old Sparky and then to meet his maker.”

“You inspire men to commit violence, and then you renounce them when they spill blood. I’m still wearing my husband’s. It’s on my hands, it’s on my dress, and I will not absolve you of blame. You are a gardener of discord. You grow it like roses or wheat. You tend to it until it blooms.” Otto is studying you, bushy eyebrows raised. “If you’d truly like to repent, perhaps dropping out of the Democratic primary would be a good start. And then you could find something useful to do, like drowning yourself.”

From whatever office he’s currently lounging comfortably in, his shoes kicked up on the desk, Wallace chuckles. “Aemond is very fortunate to have as ardent a defender as you, my dear.”

“Yes, a devoted wife is such a treasure. It’s a shame you killed yours.”

“Ma’am, once again, I just wanted to express how terribly sorry I am for your family’s hardship. I would never wish for an incident like this—”

“Maybe you shouldn’t be emboldening white supremacists then!” You slam the phone as you hang up.

Otto looks at you. He says: “Did it go well?”

The heavy double doors leading to the operating theater swing open, and a surgeon steps through them, still drying his hands with a dark blue towel. He has changed his scrubs and washed his skin, but you notice a spot he missed: a fleck of half-dried blood up by his temple. That’s Aemond, you think. That’s a piece of him.

Everyone rushes to gather around the doctor, even Mimi; she lists like a ship taking on water as she walks, gnawing at all that remains of her BLT, just a sliver of white toast crust.

“The senator is alive,” the doctor says, and Alicent cries out in relief. Criston rests a palm on her shoulder. “But we could not save the eye.”

“He’s half-blind?” you ask. There’s never been a half-blind president. There’s never been a Greek one either. And the only reason this is stuck in your mind is because you know it will consume Aemond’s.

The doctor nods. “We had to remove it. The bullet that struck Senator Targaryen in the head, fortunately, was more of a graze. It ricocheted off his skull and didn’t cause any trauma to the brain, but his eye was…” He hesitates, trying to find a more polite word than shredded, macerated, pulverized. “Destroyed.”

“You stopped the bleeding?” Aegon says, astonished. “He’s okay? He’s really okay?”

“The second bullet pierced the thoracic cavity and was lodged less than an inch from his heart. He was very lucky. We repaired the damage to the best of our ability, and I am optimistic that the senator will make a full recovery. He’s resting comfortably now, but he should be awake soon.”

“Oh, thank God,” Alicent says, glistening dark eyes raised to heaven. The salient points gathered, Fosco wanders off again, his yo-yo dangling from its string.

Otto asks: “When can he resume campaigning?”

The doctor is caught off-guard; it takes him a moment to answer. “That will depend on the senator’s stamina as he regains his strength. If he chooses to stay in the race at all.”

Otto scoffs. “Of course he’ll stay in. This is what he lives for. You really can’t give me a ballpark figure?”

The doctor is determinately impassive. “I would estimate a month or two before he can withstand the rigors of the campaign trail again.”

“California is June 4th,” Otto recalls, counting off dates on his fingers. “Illinois is the 11th, New York is the 18th…”

“Look, there are people outside!” Fosco announces excitedly as he peers through one of the windows. “Hello! Hello everybody!”

“Fosco, you idiot, stop waving,” Otto snaps. “Go sit down.”

“But they are cheering.”

“Not for you.”

Fosco, somewhat deflated, grabs an egg salad sandwich off the platter and plops into a chair to eat it. He’s dressed in a green plaid sport coat and tight white trousers, very chic, very European. You’ve never been able to imagine Fosco and Helaena being passionately romantic with each other. They’re both a bit too doll-like for that, closer to Barbie and Ken than flesh and blood, blank stares and vague ambitions.

“Someone should talk to them,” Alicent says softly. She means the crowd that is forming in front of the hospital: journalists, cops, local politicians, mutilated veterans, college kids, farmers, fishermen, women and children, the future and the past. Everyone turns to look at you.

“I’ll do it,” you volunteer. You will, you must. Aemond could have chosen a hundred similarly suited women to be his wife, but he chose you, and when he did your vows became a blood oath.

Criston accompanies you downstairs to where the crowd has gathered just outside the front entrance of Good Samaritan Medical Center. The night air is warm and humid, the stars bright. You had thought of so many things to tell these people as you’d stood in the elevator as it descended, but now your mind is empty, fearful. There are photographers with blinding camera flashes and apostles waiting with famished eyes. From the depths of injustice and poverty and war, they have come to pay their respects to the man they believe is destined to save not just themselves but their world. What should I say? What would Aemond want me to say?

“I am very pleased to share with you all that Senator Targaryen is out of surgery and regaining his strength.”

There are cheers and applause and prayers; you are still clutching the komboskini that the old woman gave you in the lobby of the Breakers Hotel. You see more prayer ropes in this flock, and rosaries too, Bibles and dog tags, copies of The Autobiography of Malcolm X and Joanne Didion’s Slouching Towards Bethlehem.

“We would like to thank you for your heartfelt support. Aemond and I are so very grateful, and he is looking forward to being back on the campaign trail soon.”

More clapping and whistling, and then the crowd waits. You aren’t sure what they want to hear as you stand in the glow of the hospital luminance; your hands are trembling wildly, so you clasp them together as you hold the komboskini. Criston glances over at you, concerned. You settle on the truth.

“The man who tried to kill my husband tonight is a supporter of former Alabama governor George Wallace and an avowed white supremacist. Any ideology that advocates for violence and prejudice is a threat to our bodies, our nation, and our souls. We will not surrender to it, not even when our lives are in jeopardy. We will not concede that hope for a better world is lost. We will press ever onward with the knowledge that God is on our side, and that the future of this country is worth fighting for.”

You are bathed in flashbulb lightning; your ears ring with the thunder of the applause. You are shaking hands now, nodding, beaming, Criston following you like a shadow as you move through the congregation. You stop to listen to a middle-aged woman in a floral dress who wants to give you marriage advice: never get bossy, don’t become selfish, remember that you are his safe harbor in the storms of life. It is your job to gift her your momentary veneration. You have beauty, but she has wisdom; or at least, that is the bargain that has been struck, that is the presumption everyone agrees upon. She must have some advantage over you, otherwise the decades she has spent in service of her parents and husband and children have been wasted, she has carved away pieces of herself to feed hungry mouths until she vanished like the doomed nymph Echo. In return, she tries not to envy you too much, not to dismiss you as foolish or frivolous or lustful. Sometimes you think that women are filled with such vicious, relentless self-loathing that it feels good to direct it at someone else for a while, to pick apart another body, to tally up the deficits of her spirit.

“Aemond is so lucky to have you,” the woman says. You can barely hear her over the roar of the crowd.

And you smile as you dutifully reply: “I think it’s the other way around.”

~~~~~~~~~~

There is a television mounted on the wall in Aemond’s room. The news coverage, the volume turned way down low, oscillates between his own near-assassination and the stalled peace talks in Paris. Representatives of the United States and North Vietnam cannot agree, and so each day more body bags are flown home to return the bones of the nation’s sons and fathers to Missouri, Alabama, Idaho, Maine, Wisconsin, Maryland, Arizona, California, New Jersey, everywhere else. Someone has to end it. Aemond will end it.

“I dreamed I won Florida,” your husband mumbles, and that’s how you know he’s awake, here in a hospital bed and wearing IVs like strings of Christmas lights around a pine tree.

“You did,” you tell him, gently smoothing back his hair from his forehead. His left eye—where his left eye used to be—is bandaged; his words are soft and labored. “Humphrey was second. Wallace got third. But you won. And you’re going to be okay.”

“McCarthy?”

“It seems you’re devouring his coalition.”

Aemond’s lips slowly curl into a grin, triumphant. “It is God’s will.” And this is what he always says. It is God’s will that he survives, it is God’s will that he wins the presidency, it is God’s will that you give him sons.

“Yes,” you agree, lifting his right hand to kiss his knuckles. Then you press the komboskini you’re still carrying into his weak grasp. It means more to Aemond than it does to you. “Yes it is.”

Aemond sinks into unconsciousness again, morphine and dreams that blur with reality. There will be pain soon, and plenty of it, but he is free from that impending truth for now. You rise from your chair to tell the rest of the family that Aemond is beginning to wake up. Alicent and Criston will want to speak with him.

When you open the door, Aegon is standing there: an eavesdropper, a trespasser. He glares at you with his large wet ocean-blue eyes, hazy with pills, glinting with resentment. Reluctantly, you step aside to let him in. Aegon wobbles as he passes you and has to grab onto the doorframe to steady himself, scrabbling like a trapped animal.

“You’re a disaster,” you say, caustic like acid, biting, repulsed.

Aegon whirls and jabs his index finger against your chest, bloodstained mint green wool bouclé by Chanel. “You’re a vessel. You’re a cow. And one day he’ll be done with you.”

You feel something hitting you like a bullet, cracking ribs, piercing lungs, tearing muscles and ligaments. Your lips have parted, but you can’t fathom words. Aegon has said many things to you—bitter things, belittling things, things in mixed company, things when you’re alone—but never this. For the first time since you met him two years ago, he has won one of your sparring matches. He has the upper hand. He has wounded you.

Aegon can see this, certainly. But he doesn’t seem pleased with himself. He looks a little shellshocked, like he can’t quite believe he said the words, like maybe if given the chance again he wouldn’t take it. But the moment is over now, and you can’t get time back, it is a thread that unspools until every inch is gone, spent, tangled in a thousand webs.

Aegon staggers into the hospital room. You flee from it. Out in the lobby the phone at the nurses’ station is ringing again. They’ll all be calling now to give their requisite sympathies. Humphrey counsels prudence, McCarthy prays for peace, LBJ offers the empathy of someone who has felt the cold gaze of Death in his own doorway, Nixon praises Aemond’s resilience and quotes the ancient philosopher Seneca: “There is no easy way from the earth to the stars.”

[desi2go]

Artemis

Pairing: werewolf!Felix x huntress!reader

Warnings: slight angst, fluff, mention of blood and weapons

Summary: You were a huntress, trained by the Artemis' nymphs to hunt werewolves. However, you weren't prepared to find ,our mate this way.

Author's note: Here it is! I enjoyed writing it and I hope you'll like it too. There is definitely another greek mythology fic with Hyunjin I'll start writing now.

Wild, untameble and strict. These were the words how you would describe the goddess of hunting, the forest, birth and the moon. As well as the guardian of women and children. Artemis. It was your destiny to follow her. You and all the other huntresses who were led by her.

In the past, for over thousands of years, her adherents were nymphs, female, semi-devine nature spirits. After Artemis had climbed Mount Olympus and no longer walked in the mortal world, the nymphs trained some young women who were willing to live up to her ideals. Staying virgins and to hunt creatures that don't belong in this world.

Werewolves. Offsprings from Lykaon who was turned into a wolf as a punishment by Zeus. The trained girls hunted them until they were old. Then, the nymphs will take new girls, never older than six years old, and the training starts again. This procedure went on for over thousands of years.

And one thing they imprint in the brain is staying a virgin. Artemis rejected men and was an eternal virgin. Once, a nymph was raped by Zeus. When the goddess found out, she was furious. She transformed her into a bear and hunted her down.

You were once a young girl that was taken by a nymph to a temple and was trained. Due to the young age, most girls took over the mindset of the nymphs, adopting the goal to hunt werewolves down and to kill them. They taught the children to fight at the age of eight. At first only with the bare hands, then with weapons, especially with bow and arrow since that were the prefered weapons of Artemis.

With the age of 20, the training stops and you become officially a hunter. You travel around the world, killing as much werewolves as you can over the years. And that almost completely unnoticed from the whole society. You were trained like that.

Tracing the steps of packs, following them and then, when the time is right, you kill them.

You were now 24 years old. For four years, you were now travelling, mostly in South Korea. Currently, you traced the steps of a pack near Seoul. As far as you knew, they were only male werewolves, eight in number.

The pack alpha was just two years older than you, while the youngest was one years younger.

Right now, you followed one of the werewolves through the forest. Werewolves had an incredible sense of smell, however, the nymphs provided the hunters some sort of potion that suppressed their scent. That way, you could easily hide and shoot the male without being noticed.

Taking a deep breath and one final step, you concentrated on your target. Unfortunately, you stepped on a twig that broke. The werewolf turned around, growling at you. You let the arrow fly through the air, the moment his glowy eyes targeted.

You jumped back, back so that you could bring some distance between you and the creature. The man yelped and whimpered painfully.

Another pair of footsteps was behind you.

"Shit" of course he wasn't alone. That would be too good. You ran. When the other werewolf found you that wouldn't end well. An angry and pissed wolf is no fun. His claws ripped through your jeans, leaving bloody marks and tackling you to the ground.

You rolled around and threw a dagger at the beast, jumping up as soon as he was distracted and leaved the forest, climbing into your old car.

In the small apartment that you rented for the time here, you disinfected the painful marks and took a shower. You knew that the other pack members will now search for you. They want to get revenge. Revenge for their pack member you shot. Well, he isn't dead yet since the arrows didn't hit the heart or the head.

But the arrows are laced with a poison with silver and wolfsbane. It was extremely painful and the person will die when they aren't treated properly.

☆☾☆

You were on high alert all the time after the that. Due to the potion, they seemed to have problems in locating you. But still, a dagger was always in one of your pockets when you needed errands and stopped by a grocery shop.

With a big bag in hand, you got out of the shop, the other hand fiddling with the car keys. You managed to get the passenger door open and were just placing the bag on the seat when a hand shut it with force. Luckily, you managed to get your hand out just before the door fell shut.

"Seriously?" You exclaimed.

Immediately, you grabbed the dagger in your pocket but the person pushed you against the car while you turned around.

Even at night, you recognized the face.

"Hello there, Bang Chan. How can I help you?"

He pushed you against the car once more. "Save it, hunter. You hit one of my members."

"Jup. That was me. So he's still alive?"

He growled low. A slight threat.

"Yes, he is. And he will stay alive. Because you are going to help him"

A amused chuckle comes out of you. "Why do you assume that I will help? I'm a hunter. Not a vet"

"You don't get to decide" Claws digged into your back as he pushed you forward into the forest.

The walk was rather short and Bang's claws nicked you from time to time, reminding you that he was in force. And the big cottage came closer. That must be their pack house. A bulky alpha stood outside, eying you sharply. You were led upstairs into one room. There was another wolf, you assumed it was Yang Jeongin, the youngest due to his appearance.

In the middle of the room stood a huge bed and you immediately recognised the wolf that layed on it. It was the male that you had shot this morning.

Well, you can't deny that he wasn't pretty. Actually your type, wouldn't he be a beast. The black hair was a huge contrast to his pale, nearly white skin. His breath was uneven and from time to time, a small whimper leaves his lips.

"Help him, hunter. When you want to live a little longer" Bang exclaimed and took place next to Jeongin.

Well, there wasn't really a chance when you wanted to experience your next birthday. You took off your small jacket and leaned over the fragile body. Wolfsbane was deadly to werewolves but even humans could die. That's why the nymphs teach you how to heal such diseases.

You touched his forehead. He felt really cold, even though he was sweating.

"Okay, he needs to get warm" The younger wolf immediately left the room, apparently to search some blankets. You lifted his thin blanket and shirt to see the wound. The arrow was already pulled out and his chest bandaged, already blood stained.

Jeongin came back with blankets and threw them over the wolf's legs. When you removed the bandage, you could see some of his veins being light purple due to the silver. As long as the silver was in his system, he wouldn't heal. You couldn't do much because it was already in his blood system.

He needed to get through it to heal. You cleaned the wound and bandaged it new. Then, you threw all the blankets over him.

"That's all I can do right now."

"If he dies, you will die as well" Bang threaded and walked out of the room. You sat on the chair next to the bed. Apparently his temperature rised to the normal which was perfect. Well, that will be a long night.

☆☾☆

Something moving shot you out of your sleep. Apparently, you must have fallen asleep, watching the wolf over the night. You blinked a few times before you saw into the brown, more golden, eyes of the wolf. He was awake.

That's good. That means, he is definitely healing. Jeongin was soon beside you, relieved that his fellow pack member was awake now.

"Felix, how are you?" He asked. Felix, that was his name. When you collected information about the pack, you stumbled over his name a few times. He was an alpha.

"Fine, I guess. But what is she doing here?" Yeah, he was definitely pissed that you had shot him. Well, you would be too.

"I'm actually helping you. You're welcome" you grumbled and yawned. Hopefully, you could get going soon. You were starving. Hunting the wolves can wait.

"Yeah, helping me by shooting an arrow at me. How nice"

"well, that's how I am" you answered, giving him an amused smile. "Let me check a last time on you before I want to go"

You pulled the blankets down without waiting for an answer. Pushing the shirt upwards, you revealed his toned body. What a shame that he was a wolf. When your cold fingers touched his warm skin, he sucked breath in, flexing his muscles.

"Looks good. Can I go now?"

Jeongin sighed and you followed him through the house to the front.

☆☾☆

Little did you know that soon as Felix saw you that morning, his whole life changed. It changed because of you. And not because you had shot him but because the world became just a bit brighter, more colourful. All his life he had searched for you. His soulmate, his other half.

Seeing you there, he couldn't take his eyes on you. He didn't even noticed the arrow until it hit him. The pain took over and you quickly ran away, just when Hyunjin shot through the bush.

He had felt the silver travelling through his veins, making him slowly unconscious. The last thing he saw was Hyunjin who came up to him. A cut under his eye from the dagger you had thrown.

In the middle of the night, he woke up again. The pain was still there but bearable. He looked to the side and he saw you laying with your head on his bed, sleeping tightly. When you moved you shot up. And oh, you were beautiful but he was a little bit pissed that you had shot him. That wasn't how he wanted to meet his soulmate.

After you checked on him, you quickly exited the house. Hyunjin was already beside him.

"How are you, Lix?"

"Good I think." He mumbled

"Really Felix? You seem sad" his friend stated. Well, he wasn't wrong.

"She is my soulmate, hyune." Felix exclaimed.

"Shit. I'm sorry man" Hyunjin rubbed over his back.

One week later, Felix walked through the city. He and Changbin wanted to drink something at their favourite bar. And he definitely didn't expect to find you there. Next to you a man with a nasty smile. Was that your boyfriend? Jealousy washed over him but it deflated when he observed your body language.

Without you noticing, the man mixed something into your drink. Soon, you grew tired and before the man could lay his dirty hands on you, Felix pulled you to him. You were so befuddled that you didn't even notice Felix.

When you slipped, he lifted you with a wince. His wound wasn't healed completely. The rest of the silver stopped it from healing faster. But that was irrelevant. You were safe now, in his arms.

Changbin shielded you both from the man who protested. Then, the wolves brought you back into their cottage, earning a warning glare from Chan. You were still a huntress. Deadly and if you looked closer armed to the teeth. He pulled out the a dagger and a pistol that were secured in your waistband. And in your jacket there was another dagger.

Felix layed you on his bed. The same bed he layed just a week ago with an injury. Softly he took your hand. If you just could feel the tingles he felt when he touched you. Maybe then you wouldn't want to kill his pack.

For hours, he sat next to you, admiring your face. When you relaxed, you looked so kind and young. He wondered how old you were. Around 25? But definitely not older. Gently, he brushed a hair strand out of your face.

When you woke up, you didn't even realise that he sat beside you. You let out a yawn, that Felix found incredibly sweet, and tried to hide your face from the sun. Why did you leave the curtains open?

You turned and borrowed your nose in the cushion, smelling the scent. Wait, you couldn't remember that you went home. You shot up and saw Felix watching you.

"What are you doing here?" You exclaimed, searching for your weapons. You realised you weren't even in your apartment. No, you remember that room. You watched over Felix here.

"I correct, what am I doing here? I can't remember anything"

He chuckled. "Well, you were at a bar and a creep put something into your drink. You were almost immediately out like a light. I brought you here"

"uhm. Thank you, I guess."

"It's okay. I owed you" he exclaimed and his face was decorated with a pretty smile.

"Of course, you didn't owe me anything. I just shot you" you exclaimed ironically.

"I know. But you will think I'm a liar when I tell you that I saved you because you are in fact my soulmate" he told you and got serious.

You laughed. Funny, very funny. The nymphs told you about the whole soulmate thing.

"Funny. But I'm a hunter and definitely not bound with a wolf. Humans don't get bounded with wolves"

"Your wrong. It happens but really rarely" he tried to change your mind. You sighed. That's not good if he said the truth. All your life, the nymphs told you over and over again that falling in love is something that Artemis hated. She for it it, especially with a wolf. That's suicide.

"You know I should kill ya? I'm a hunter. Keeping your pack alive is against my principles."

"And still, I'm sitting here next to you. Clearly alive" he said with a sweet and amused smile.

You rolled your eyes. You hated how amusing it was for him.

☆☾☆

Just minutes later, you walked back home. Your head hammered and you were confused. Why would Selene, the goddess of the moon that was the cause of the wolves having mates, pair him with you? That was crazy.

Even if you two would start developing feelings for each other, the nymphs would find out. They would send another huntress to see why your presence has changed so much. There is barely a chance that they wouldn't find out.

Days passed and you tried to get your mind straight. In the meantime, you had hunted another, smaller pack some kilometres away from here. Now, you were finally back in your apartment and cleaned your weapons from the dried blood. You stilled, when you heard a knock. Who would visit you? Maybe the old, forgetful lady from above? She asks for your help sometimes.

The small dagger was placed behind your back for the possibility that it was someone else. You opened the door and Felix gave you a kind smile. In his hands, there were grocery bags.

"What are you doing here?" you asked rather fierce than friendly. Without asking he slipped into the apartment and took off his shoes.

"Courting my mate. Where's the kitchen?" He told you like it was something normal to be strolling in here. In the home of a hunter who was armed to the teeth.

"Are you crazy?" you questioned and crossed your armes as you followed him through the apartment. "Sometimes yeah. Now please tell me where your kitchen is, sunshine."

You sighed. It seems like Felix wouldn't go away any time soon. You directed him into the kitchen. "And don't call me sunshine!"

He chuckled and placed his bags down, rummaging through them. "Okay, I won't, sunshine"

"You're unbelievable" you just muttered. He placed meat and some other ingredients on the countertop.

"I didn't know what you like so I figured i would buy something simple that I can cook for you. And for the dessert, I baked brownies earlier."

While he cooked bibimbap, you observed him nervously. He pretends like he was really close to you. Like a real pair, not a huntress and a wolf. It was crazy how much he seemed to trust you when he stirred the pan, his back facing you. Theoretically, you just need to throw the dagger and he would be dead.

But you can't figure out why but something within you stopped you from doing that. That what you were trained for. Maybe it was the bond between you that made you change your mind just a slight bit.

He turned around, drying his hands on a kitchen towel, giving you a kind smile. "Can you please set up the table? The meal is nearly ready." You just nodded and grabbed plates and cutlery, placing it on the table.

During the meal, there was a silence that was really uncomfortable. It was like he wanted to say something and eventually, he initiated a full conversation with you after some time.

Two weeks passed and during that time, Felix often visited you. Soon, it was kind of normal to have him around for dinner and the cold wall that you had built up during all those years of training crumpled down and Felix got to know the real you. Someone who isn't just defined by being a huntress. You grew comfortable and even if you wouldn't admit it you loved to spend the time with him. You knew that you must move away rather quickly so that the nymphs wouldn't suspect something.

Currently, you were getting ready for meeting Felix at their cottage. You assumed that after he cooked for you more than seven times in two weeks it was just kind to return the favour and cook for him. He assured you that most of his pack members weren't there because they all had something against you. Not that this was unjustified.

A sudden knock let you slip out of your thoughts. Definitely that wouldn't be Felix since you would go to him this time. You opened the door and were shocked when you saw who was on the other side. Lila, a huntress that you grew up with in the temple. She was one of your friends and actually shouldn't be here now.

"Lila! Nice to see you again. What brings you here?" You welcomed her. A laugh erupted from her and she braced you into a warm hug. "Hello, y/n. I wanted to see you again after months of being separated."

"That's so sweet. Do you wanna come in?"

"Thanks. So how is the hunt going?" She was always like that, getting to the point of her stay instantly.

"Good. I took down a pack two weeks ago" she gave you an approving nod. "Good that. What pack do you hunt now?" What should you say? Since you got to know Felix, you weren't sure if all wolves are bad. You started to see that not everything the nymphs told you is true.

"I took some time off from hunting. I enjoy it here" you avoided the question. "Then we can take the next pack down together. I heard that here is a pack of eight" Great, that's just great. You can't defend Felix when she was here. You needed to warn him.

"Yeah, that sounds good" you mumbled. Without her noticing, you wrote Felix a quick message on your phone that you couldn't make it.

You could tell that he was disappointed but his life depended on it.

The next morning, you tried to get your mind free from all the heavy thoughts and decided to go on a quick walk. Jogging along the empty streets, you listened to your music and enjoyed the nature along the streets. Due to your earphones, you were distracted and wasn't prepared to be pulled into the woods. You yelped and held the dagger against the person's throat.

"Easy, sunshine. It's me" Quickly, you withdrew the knife and gave him a smile. "You're lucky, I didn't stab you. What are you doing here?"

"I wanted to see you. Why did you cancelled last night?"

"Another huntress showed up. She wants to hunt your pack. I-" you stopped when you heard the bushes rustle. It could be the wind but therefore it wasn't windy at all. With his heightened senses, Felix tried to detect what the noise was.

There was another rustle and you quickly pushed yourself over Felix, tackling him to the ground and your body above his. Just where Felix head once was, there was now a silver arrow, undoubtedly from a hunter. You got down from Felix and scrambled up to face Lila who walked out the bush with her bow aiming at Felix.

"Go away from the wolf, y/n!" She shouted.

"Lila, please. Drop the bow" you pleaded, your own dagger in your hand. You didn't want to hurt her. She was a former friend after all.

"Seriously? He is a werewolf! You used to hunt them!" She exclaimed angrily. You couldn't hurt her but you couldn't let her hurt Felix.

"I know it sounds crazy but he is my soulmate! Selene herself selected him as my other half"

"That's pathetic. Go to the side and let me take care of him. Now" her voice was cold and filled with determination. You shook your head and felt Felix trying to push you aside, giving Lila the chance to aim at his chest.

The arrow glided through the air and before it could reach it's designated target, you shielded him and the arrow pierced straight into your skin, just centimetres above your chest. The first blood drained your shirt in a deep red, a sharp pain shot trough your whole body, making it impossible to stand. Felix catched you, taking you into his arms. There where tears in his eyes when you looked into those brown spheres, they were the last thing you saw before the black void swallowed you.

☆☾☆

Fear took over Felix's whole body when he saw the arrow piercing through your skin. He held you, shielding you from the other hunter who still aimed her bow at him. It angered him how low it affected her that she just shot someone from her group. Or she isn't showing it. He let out a low growl as a warning.

Before she could harm you in any way again, Chan and Minho came out of the bushes. He had mind linked them earlier when you had talked to her and he knew that this wasn't taking a good turn. Chan knocked her over, slapped the bow out of her hand and before she could do anything that could hurt someone, he knocked her out.

Minho came towards him and you. Felix wanted to snarl at him for coming so close when his mate was hurt but he knew that he just wanted to help you. And you definitely needed that. Without moving you too much, your mate held you protectively in his arms as he ran through the woods to the cottage. Jeongin and Minho needed to get a closer look at the wound to treat you properly.

During the whole process, he sat beside you, holding your hand even though you wouldn't even feel it. But the warm skin against his soothed him even if you weren't awake. However, the skin contact reminded him that he hadn't lost you, that you weren't dead.

They got the arrow out and stopped the bleeding. With a bandage, they were finally finished and let Felix and you alone. You laid on his bed. Just weeks ago, he laid there too, with an arrow that you shot. But he wouldn't wanted it any other way. That way he got you and it was worth the pain.

When you woke up it was late at night, the moon shining through the window into the room. You felt something warm on your leg. It was Felix who slept tightly with your thigh as a pillow. Your whole body hurt but you were fine. But where was Lila? Felix seemed fine. What happened?

But that were questions for later. You were tired and didn't want to wake Lix. Tenderly, you brushed his fluffy hair out of his face, gliding through the strands and playing with them. With your hand in his hair, the dark swallowed you once more and you fell asleep.

In the morning, you woke up again. Felix still asleep and it seemed that he didn't even move. You teased his hair once again, especially the strands at his neck. It was so long, already touching his shoulders. But he seems to be ticklish and squirmed away from your hand, nuzzling further in your skin. His eyes fluttered open and he yawned.

"You're awake." He stated, his voice still deep from the sleep. "How are you? Does it hurt?" He questioned and pushed himself up, sitting straight on the stool.

"I'm fine" you said with a smile and took his hand in yours. "But where's Lila?" His face darkened and he sighed.

"Chan knocked her out and brought her here. We figured out that she is dangerous for us"

"I know. Can I see her? I need to speak to her"

"Are you sure? You just woke up." He pouted, showing clearly that he wasn't agreeing to that.

"I need to" you answered and pushed yourself up. It hurt and only with the help of Felix you reached the room where Lila was. You opened the door and walked into the room, Felix fussing over you. He was like a mom, watching carefully over his baby.

Lila sat on a stool, on the table next to her was a plate with food that she didn't even touched. She looked up when she saw you. "Hey" you said. She looked exhausted and like she didn't even slept a bit.

"Y/n, you're okay?" she asked hesitant. "Yeah. Even though you need to work on your aiming"

She let out a laugh, clearly relieved that you weren't angry. "Why did you protect him?" She asked. You walked across the room, sitting down on the other stool and pleaded Felix to let you two speak alone. He wasn't a fan of that but agreed.

"He is my mate. And I know that this felt so wrong at first but he showed me that there are other things in life than just hunting. I liked the life of a hunter but I love the life here, with Felix. And this pack is caring." You explained.

"So, you are giving the life of a hunter up?"

"Yeah. And I hope you can understand me. I'm not saying that you should agree to me but at least accept it."

She gave you a heart warming smile and nodded. "I won't say anything to the nymphs. I want you to live a happy life" you returned the smile and took her hand. "Thank you, Lila"

You escorted her out of the cottage, saying goodbye because she will return to the temple. You hugged and watched her disappear into the woods. Felix came towards you, having watched from the house, and wrapped his arms around your waist, pushing his nose into your hair.

"I can smell your scent!" He exclaimed happily. You giggled. "Yeah, because I didn't take the potion to suppress it"

He wiggled further into your hair, smelling you. "You smell so good."

"You're silly" lightly, you pushed him away to shut up his pouting with a kiss. He was shocked at first, his eyes growing double so big.

"Was that a kiss? Do it again" he demanded and pursed his lips. You laughed and grabbed the collar of his shirt, pressing his lips onto yours.

[heartmii]

TOA 00

✮⋆˙apollo x male!reader

!warnings!: male reader but can be seen as gn, angst, mentions of blood.

✮⋆˙ this was honestly a fic idea i had for a while but since toa isn't really that popular, i figured it wouldn't do too well so instead here's a one-shot! Has been continued !

✮⋆˙ next

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"nonono.. beloved..." the god whispered as he dropped onto his knees beside your bloodied body. his hands trembling when he reached out to touch you.

your eyes were shut when he arrived at your spot. an opening deep in the forest behind his temple. after he'd set the sun and, his sister took her shift, he would then meet you here. here, where he learned of your body, and you learned his. here, where the whispers of intimacy stayed between two souls. here, where, apollo, the all-powerful god, submitted to a mortal and allowed his body to be used for love.

now, in the shadow of his love, was only grief. for as long as you love, grief will one day be in its place. a game of chance. it is said love is a fool's emotion as only a fool would jump into a game knowing the outcome would be a loss.

and perhaps, the god was the biggest fool of them all. loving a mortal promised nothing but loss, yet, when your eyes flickered open and connected with his, a fool was what he became once again.

his heart thumped against his chest. grief soon turned into hope. although your eyes were weak, and your skin was paling. you were alive. breathing. death had not claimed you, there was a chance you could live — a chance he could save you.

"apollo." even on your deathbed, his name would roll off your tongue like honey. he was worshipped, and his name was said many times a day by mortals wishing for his blessings or his wisdom.

but, your call for him was different. when you called for him it wasn't for him as a god, there was no expectation behind your words, no secret goal. if you did expect anything, if there was a goal, it was nothing more than simply just the presence of apollo. you would say his name gently as if you didn't want to scare him off, a reminder he could let his guard down around you.

there's a difference in being valued for what you could give versus being valued for who you were. something apollo could not comprehend until he met you. "what is it, beloved?" he murmured, his attempt to be gentle with you in your fragile state as his cheek leaned into the hand you had outstretched towards him.

your thumb rubbed circles against his skin. "I've been waiting for you." apollo swallowed down a sob. he could hear it in your voice, how hard it was for you to speak full sentences. broken breaths in between each of your words.

quickly, he answered before you could speak again. "i know, love, i know. it was my father's doing. he dispatched hermes to distract me... he knew i was coming to see you..." he let out a shaky breath, "my father punished you to punish me."

zeus's cruelty was nothing new to apollo. his father had been cruel to him his whole life. it was the whole reason he began the revolt against him alongside hera and poseidon in the first place. to be liberated from his father's tyranny.

they'd been found out, of course. hera had already received her punishment. she was to be suspended into the sky wrapped in chains. all of olympus winced as she cried through the night but no one dared to help her out of fear of their "mighty" king.

he wasn't supposed to hurt you. never in a thousand years would apollo have done any of this with the knowledge that you could be caught in the crossfire between him and his father. this wasn't how their game went. zeus had never gone after his lovers before. but dammit, he should've known better. he should've known his father would make sure to break him down. come for his every weakness. now, because of his carelessness, you are a pinch close to death. practically drowning in your own blood and only being able to use the tree stump behind you for support to stay upright.

the longer apollo's eyes stayed on your struggling figure, the foggier they became. "oh, im so, so, sorry." he choked out, the sob he swallowed down earlier forcing its way back up his throat. "this is all my fault."

he felt your thumb swipe at tears he wasn't aware he'd been shedding. how could you still be so gentle with him after he had put you in this situation? so attentive even though you were the one who needed the most attention?

And your eyes, they bore into his with the same amount of warmth as always. "hey.. its okay...we'll be okay." you mustered up a smile and, for a second, apollo believed your words, that everything would be okay. because your superpower was making him - everyone - feel like everything would be okay.

reality hit him with a strangled cough coming from you. he jumped, immediately, blinking away the rest of his tears as his hands helped to support you, your blood coating him. his breath quickened. every second you were falling further into the embrace of death. he was wasting time moping instead of helping.

apollo trembled as he went to press a hand over your wound. "let me heal you."

"no," you denied. it was all you could say with the little bit of strength you had left.

a helpless cry left apollo's lips, his tears flowing once again. your answer did not surprise him. in fact, he expected it. in all of your meetings with apollo, you never failed to mention that you cherished the value of a mortal life. to value which is rare, and what is more rare than a mortal life with the only promise that it would one day end.

apollo was a god. he was never born to die but born to continue living and changing as time allowed. life meant little to him, he'd taken many lives without much thought just as much as he created lives.

that was normal in the life of a god but, you were not a god. only a man. a fact that was being painfully made apparent more so now than ever.

power coursed through apollo's body and, yet, he could not get himself to use it. you were just a man. a man who got a god to submit to your will. you taught him the value in life, the value in you. in turn, he could not disregard your wishes as he could anyone else. he hated it. apollo hated how he loved you so much, he couldn't be selfish. how even when you were slipping through his fingers, he stopped himself from healing you because he knew you would be unhappy if he did, and he would be dammed if he was the reason for your unhappiness.

it was childish to believe that at the doors of death would you change your mind, abandon your humanity, and beg him to save you. "is this really what you want..." he asked. a plead, his last attempt to bargain with you.

you didn't answer his question. he preferred that. it left room to wonder, pretend there was a chance at something else. instead, you reached behind his head, pushing it forward until it gently bumped against your own. you didn't speak at first, opting to admire the face of your lover one last time.

“you're so beautiful..." you breathed out through your staggered breath.

apollo scowled at your words. Not finding the humor in your inappropriate timing for a compliment. “really? that's what you have to say right now." he frowned, his lips jutting into a familiar pout.

“it's true," you hummed, bumping noses with him.

he allowed you to indulge in your affections, scrunching his nose in response. a pointless attempt at gaining some type of normalcy within the situation. yet, the reality loomed over him. he could not shake it off as easily as you. “you’re dying and your last words to me are going to be something I hear from everyone.”

your laugh was music to his ears. soft, like your voice, but full of joy. the type of laugh that could light up a room and have even the gloomiest laugh along with you. he needed to savor it. to imprint the sound in his mind for the days he needs the encouragement to keep going. you found laughter even in a moment like this.

"it's only a matter of truth," you said, eyes flickering to his lips followed by a tilt of your head. when your lips brush, you murmur against his lips. "besides, wouldn't you miss hearing it from me the most?"

his stomach flutters at your words. of course he'd miss hearing your praise. not just for his beauty, but for anything. he held you in the highest regard, like you were a god yourself. but, it was easier to pretend he didn't care, and instead leave those words unspoken.

he settled for angling his lips to meet yours and disregarding your previous question. "you're being ridiculous." apollo mumbles, ignoring his aching heart.

then there is only silence as the two of you lean in to close the gap between you. like a magnet pulling you forward. when your lips touch, there's an immediate desire. your teeth smacking against each other, your hand pulling apollo's head in closer, deepening the heated kiss as much as you could. he didn't expect to feel droplets on his cheeks. you had cried. the realization made him want to weep.

you had nothing to lose, so you gave it your all. one last time.

the pull away was hesitant, and even then, your lips still ghosted one another's. forehead's touching, your eyes met. "i love you," you declared as if it was the first time you had confessed.

"i love you too." a silent goodbye hidden behind the desperation of his words.

you sighed contently as your expression softened and your eyes shut with a smile. apollo wanted to speak, to yell at you to keep your eyes open. keeping them on him until you couldnt anymore instead, he chose not to speak. the look on your face didn't let him.

you were happy. happy to accept your fate. you showed no signs of regret, no anger, no guilt, nothing that would keep you on this earth any moment longer. dying happily. who was apollo to take that from you?

his cries and begs would only put stress on you. you didn't deserve that. your death had to be just as beautiful as your birth.

so, apollo continued to sit there, watching your breath. how after a few seconds, it would begin to slow down, and the little tufts of warm air he felt against his cheek gently came to a stop. the cool air of nature taking its place.

your body was heavy against his. cold too. he didn't care, he would hold you until you were warm again. soon, as the hours went by, he would have to bring upon another day. a day that you would not get to be apart of.

until then, he would hold you under the moonlight one last time

they were caught. after making it onto the ship and successfully snagging caligua’s stupid sandals, they were taken by surprise by a horse. It was ridiculous. as piper laid out cold on the steed’s back, apollo made conversation about his demise. It was a nerve racking walk to the emperor’s throne room. caligua wasn’t merciful and apollo wasn’t sure of the whereabouts of meg and jason.

as a god, he thought he saw everything. but as lester, the surprises were never ending.

they made it to caligua’s throne, apollo’s eyes immediately scanning how many enemies were in the room. he wasn’t shocked to see the loyal attendants of caligua, nor was he shocked to see meg and jason trapped beside him.

but when his eyes settled onto the person beside caligua’s throne, apollo wanted to throw up. his heart thumping against his chest making him lose his breath. It was you. how was this possible? you died in his arms. In Ancient Greece.

reading the shock on his face, you dared to give him the smile he loved most as you stood behind the enemy. with a tilt of your head and a wave, you greeted him, “hello apollo, long time no see.”

[thelargefrye]

February Filth Fest : DAY EIGHTEEN : SIZE KINK … mature one - shot

pairing : norse god!seonghwa x greek goddess!f!reader

genre : smut, viking au, god of war inspired – so a mix of norse and greek mythology in this

word count : 2k

warnings : language, mentions of blood / fighting / weapons (swords, axe, bow and arrows, etc.), hunting for food, feeling grief over a loved ones death, long haired seonghwa in a half-up ponytail, seonghwa is mentioned to be bigger than yn

smut warnings : unprotected sex, size kink, seonghwa's got a breeding kink

honorary tag : @sanjoongie

after having traveled all over midgard with seonghwa and fighting for your lives, the two of you can finally settle down and have a moment together.

DAY SEVENTEEN ↤ SPREAD THE ASHES ↦ DAY NINETEEN

a grunt left your mouth as you were flung into a large tree. you stumbled to your feet, seonghwa swung his axe at the trolls that were around him. blood flown through the sky, some landing on his face as he kicked one troll away before rushing over to you.

his hand wrapping around your forearm and hoisting you to steady feet before swinging at another troll. a smirk decorating his lips as he gave you a side glance.

"come on now, y/n, surely someone who killed all of olympus isn't getting beat by some trolls," he says, the cockiness thick in his voice and you roll your eyes before slashing and stabbing at the nearest troll – the one who sent you flying.

"shut your mouth and focus on fighting before i kill you next," you said and seonghwa lets out a loud laugh before he jumping and hacking at two trolls and effortlessly cutting them down.

when the trolls were all dead, you and seonghwa stood in the middle of the clearly covered in blood before sheathing your weapons.

"well that was a little more excitement than what i was anticipating," he says, turning to you with a smile on his face. but seonghwa always had a smile on his face. "i remember seeing a river along the north trail, lets go wash up before setting up camp."

you nod your head and allow seonghwa to lead the way, following closely behind him as you walked down one of the many dirt paths in the forest. you notice that every once in a while, seonghwa will look over his shoulder to make sure you are still following behind. silently noting your quietness as normally the two of you are going back and forth with each other in a playful bicker.

"what's the matter?" seonghwa finally asks once you are at the river. the both of you stripped down from your bloody armor and carefully washing the blood out. there was nothing you truly hated more than bloody armor, such a disgrace.

you turn towards him, clenching your clothes tightly, "i was thinking about my family," you say trailing off and at your words seonghwa also stops his scrubbing.

his now doe eyes looking at you softly and you hate how he makes your heart flutter and stomach do flips. seonghwa only knows a little bit about your family from greece and olympus, how went on this journey of revenge for your family after zeus took everything from you. you guess his comment from earlier was making you think.

but think about what exactly you aren't sure.

perhaps settling down with seonghwa after this and finally living a peaceful life. but was that something you even deserved?

"y/n," seonghwa is close to you, his bare skin touching your own and it brings you out of your thoughts. you look at him with wide eyes, surprised by how he moved this close to you without you noticing and he easily towers over you. perhaps that's a benefit from him being a frost giant? "what are you thinking? tell me," he sounds like he's pleading almost.

"i want to live a peaceful life, but i don't think i deserve it," you tell him, a chill running over you as you feel seonghwa's hand travel around your waist and pulling you closer to him.

"why don't you deserve it?"

"i've done a lot of bad things seonghwa, killed a lot of people, gods, monsters."

"but you've paid your debt, stop living in the past and focus on now. you aren't in olympus anymore, darling. you're here with me now. i don't think hongjoong would want you to live like this, feeling guilty."

your eyebrows furrow at the mention of your dead lover. husband. you felt angry that seonghwa would mention him as if he knew him. without thinking you shove seonghwa away and the water around you two splashes up against you both. seonghwa looks at you in shock.

"don't you dare talk about hongjoong like you know him!" you feel the tears beginning to build up in your waterline, but not from sadness but anger.

"i lost him and our daughter because i was stupid! their deaths haunt me and i see their bodies every time i close my eyes. no matter how hard i try to move on i will always be haunted by their deaths and my mistakes, so don't tell me to not live in the past when that's all i can see!"

seonghwa said nothing as the two of you looked at each other. he was calm and collected while you were the definition of rage. heavy breathing, clenched fists, and tear-stricken face. his silence only made you more upset.

"i'm not asking for you to forget hongjoong and your daughter," he says after what felt like an eternity of silence. "but..." he trails off taking a cautious step towards you, "i want you to realize that you don't have to let their death weigh on you forever."

"seonghwa..."

"you said you wanted a peaceful life, well we can have one. we'll settle down at the small cabin and have our own children. you paid your debt, but you have to give yourself this second chance," he says as he stops back in front of you. his cold hand feels safe when he touches your own.

"i... i don't know," you pull away from him once more, turning away and walking out of the river, clothes and armor in hand as you walk back to the camp you two had set up at the clearing, leaving seonghwa by himself.

the two of you spent the rest of the evening and early night in silence. the two of you having traveled and been doing this long enough that you could do things around camp without actually talking to one another. seonghwa had went and brought back deer he hunted for the two of you two eat.

and so you sat at the campfire in silence, the smell of meat feeling your nose and cracking of the fire filling your ears. your mind still reeling from what was said earlier. seonghwa was right because he was always right. you didn't need to forget hongjoong and your daughter, but you needed to let their deaths not haunt you anymore.

your eyes flicker to seonghwa from across the fire, his own eyes already looking at you. he had finished eating a while ago while you were still picking at yours. he rolled his shoulders before standing up, walking over to you and pressing a kiss to the crown of your head. silently bidding you goodnight before he enters your shared tent.

you don't know how much longer you sit by the fire, long enough for it to die out on its own. you stomp out the remaining glowing embers before crawling into the tent and laying down next to seonghwa.

you think you made up your mind.

"seonghwa," you know he's awake, he always waits for you to join him as you do for him. "can we talk?"

he turns over on his back while you lay on your side to face him. your hand reaches out to take his, linking your fingers together.

"i want to live a peaceful life with you. i want that small cabin, i want our children – your children, i want to take in the wolves, i want to love you everyday that i am able to wake up next to you and after that. i want to try and let go of my guilt enough for this to happen, please help me seonghwa."

seonghwa gives your hand a firm squeeze before he's rolling you onto your back and hovering over you. you let him pin your hands above your head and you can't help the arousal that runs through you when he does it with only one hand. his black locks framing his beautiful face that his clean of blood and war and his eyes are filled with something. lust? love? something else perhaps?

his large frame bends down to kiss you, his hands groping your body as he removes your undergarments so you are now bare and fully naked before his eyes. you watch as he lowers his head and trails his lips down your body; licking, biting, and sucking different marks over your tattered and worn body.

"s-seonghwa," you moan out when he finds home between your legs and licks your pussy slowly and lazily. his eyes never once looking away from yours. he makes out with your pussy, kissing it and letting his tongue drag in and out of your pussy and licking up any juices that you leak. like he's a man dying from thirst and your pussy is his oasis.

seonghwa effortlessly brings you to your first orgasm before he's finally pulling away, but not before pressing one last kiss to your pussy. he once again towers over you, a layer of sweat covering your entire body but you happily wrap your arms around seonghwa to bring into another kiss. your taste yourself on his lips, but you honestly don't mind.

the both of you are breathless when you finally break away, "seonghwa, i love you."

"my y/n, darling, i love you more than you can imagine," he says spreading your legs easily and you can't help but clench at knowing is coming.

"seonghwa, seonghwa, please!" you beg, hands combing through his long locks and brushing them out of his face.

"you know... if we start now, i could have you full and breed by the time we get back to the cabin," he says as you feel the tip of his cockhead running between your folds. "i can just imagine it," he says, slowly pushing himself inside of you, "fuck– you would look so beautiful with my child."

you clench around him the more he pushes inside of you, back arching as his lips latch onto your breast and begin licking and sucking on your nipple.

this isn't the first time you and seonghwa have fucked, but for some reason this felt different. as he thrusted into you, your name leaving his lips and his name leaving yours, you felt full. you felt a warmth spread through you as his taller stature curled into yours and you wrap yourself around him to bring even closer – if it was even possible.

"fuck– seonghwa, i-i'm close!" you could feel your second orgasm coming and it only seemed to drive seonghwa to move his hips faster.

he gave you his smirk, his eyes glazed over with lust, "i'm going to fill you with full of my cum over and over again, darling, until your stuffed and pregnant with my child," he says and you clench at his words. seonghwa does only a few more harsh thrust before you are both cumming. you fill his cum slowly filling you up and and some of it even leaking out around his cock from how much it is.

seonghwa is breathless as he pulls out and quickly folds your legs up and stuffing any cum back into you. you can't help but feel a little flustered at how he that, eyes staring hard at your cum-filled pussy. you then begin to feel a wave of exhaustion rush over you and you are lazily pulling at seonghwa to have him lay next to you.

he lays down next to you with a small 'ugh' sound leaving his lips as he does. you cuddle up next to seonghwa, and you realize that before meeting him, you never would have done this. you rest your head on chest as seonghwa draws his fur cape over the two of you. you can't help but let out a laugh at how it doesn't even fully cover the two of you.

"i want a daughter first," seonghwa says quietly and more to himself than you. "i want to name him dal-nim. it was my mother's name."

"its beautiful."

"what would you name her?"

"idonia," you whisper back, reaching up to kiss his collarbone.

"loving one," is the last thing you hear before you close your eyes and let sleep consume you.

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[anonymousbardd]

𑄽𑄺 T E A S E R :

⸝⸝ ౨ৎ :: New BoZ — Hermes x FemReader fic teaser:

A/n: I have recently watched Blood Of Zeus, and it really needs more appreciation lol, it's a pretty nice series :3

[reythenerdypisces]

things that I overlooked in PJO the first time / small, funny things I noticed during my reread

Part 2: Sea of Monsters

there is a lot this time.

this book is so short and it makes up for the length by being hilarious: 

I had nightmares about what Poseidon might turn me into if I were ever on the verge of death - plankton, maybe. Or a floating patch of kelp.

Tyson froze. "Pony!" he cried in total rapture. Chiron turned looking offended. "I beg your pardon?" 

"Um..." I said. "Would this be the super-dangerous prophecy that has me in it, but the gods have forbidden you to tell me about it? Nobody answered. "Right," I muttered. "Just checking." 

"Uh, I like Hercules." "Why?" "Well, because he had rotten luck. Even worse than mine. It makes me feel better."

Annabeth looked at me. "We have to get out of here." "You think I want to be in the girls' restroom?" "I mean the ship, Percy! We have to get off the ship."

Tyson was terrified of them. All throughout the tour, he insisted Annabeth hold his hand, which she didn't look too thrilled about.

"Then why do the gods even let me live? It would be safer to kill me." "You're right." "Thanks a lot." 

A minute later, Annabeth hit a slippery patch of moss and her foot slipped. Fortunately, she found something else to put it against. Unfortunately, that something was my face. 

As Luke was raising his sword to rally his troops, a centaur shot a custom-made arrow with a leather boxing glove on the end. It smacked Luke in the face and sent him crashing into the swimming pool. and a few moments later: He [Luke] raised his sword, but got smacked in the face with another boxing glove arrow, and sat down hard in a deck chair. Luke can't catch a break from those boxing arrows, it's the funniest thing

2. also so much baby percabeth!! they’re so cute

She'd [Annabeth] emailed me the picture after spring break, and every once in a while I'd look at it just to remind myself she was real and Camp Half-Blood hadn't just been in my imagination. the fact that he printed out Annabeth's photo? 

Annabeth punched him in the nose and knocked him flat, "And you," she told him, "lay off my friend." her standing up for Percy is adorable

I mean she [Annabeth] looked good. Really good. I probably would've been tongue-tied if I could say anything except reet, reet, reet.

She [Annabeth] started to sob - I mean horrible, heartbroken sobbing. She put her head on my shoulder and I held her. Fish gathered to look at us - a school of barracudas, some curious marlins. Scram! I told them. They swam off, but I could tell they went reluctantly. I swear I understood their intentions. They were about to start rumours flying around the sea about the son of Poseidon and some girl at the bottom of Siren Bay. number 1. the way percy is always there for her, number 2. the gossiping fish?? I love it

The look in his [Grover] eyes told me something was terribly wrong. Annabeth had been on guard duty that night, protecting the Fleece. If something had happened -he’s admirably protective, of not just annabeth, but all his friends and I love to see it… exhibit b:

"But if I [Grover] get in trouble again, you'll be in danger, Percy! You could die!" "If you get in trouble again, I want to know about it. And I'll come help you again G-man. I wouldn't have it any other way." I adore their friendship.

3. other mentions: 

"I'm Thalia," the girl said. "Daughter of Zeus." what. an. ending. I still remember how floored I was when I first read this wow

the mention of Hylla got me so excited

am I the only one who forgot Percy could control the sailboat? like the flying ropes and whatnot

I also completely forgot about his watch shield! 

I'll be back for part 3 shortly! :)

[i-still-got-love-for-you]

hi!

could you please do a reader x jason grace fic were reader was severely injured and barely survives?

(feeling a bit angsty hehe)

Soon You'll Get Better

Jason Grace x gn!reader

910 words

cw: god i hope im doing the angst thing right, there IS fluff bc i would cry if there wasn't, i really hope its gender neutral tell me if it isnt, once again verb tense grammar that might only bother me

a/n: thank you for this request!!! i had so much fun writing it <333 hope you like this!

Rocks were raining down like deadly raindrops from the sky. It was getting harder and harder to dodge them, and your lungs were burning from the running. The Laestrygonians weren't letting up. Percy's story of the "Dodge Ball Game of Hell" came to you at that moment. You were sure this was worse.

You were cursing your godly parent, wishing you had Hermes' gift of speed at that moment. At the risk of slowing down, you looked back t see how close the giants were. They were slowly gaining on you, and a random burst of adrenaline made all your pain fade away.

Blood was pounding in your ears, feet hitting the ground in tune. Just beyond some trees, you could see Half Blood Hill. The force field around it wad your haven, the only way the endless storm of rocks would stop.

You were climbing the hill now, falling and scraping your knees in the rush. Your hands were shaking and covered in scratches and the rocks were getting closer and closer-

You felt a pounding on the back of your head just as you saw Peleus. You stopped in your tracks as you made eye contact with the dragon and promptly fell over. The last thing you remembered were a pair of black glasses.

─ ୨୧ ─

Jason was panicked. It was a feeling he was unfamiliar with, numb and lightheaded and unable to think about anything other than you. He had found you at the border, surrounded by boulders and bleeding from your head.

His brain immediately went into autopilot. Checking for a pulse, carrying you to the infirmary. He was promptly kicked out by Will Solace, who stated he was “hovering worse than a moth near a lamp.”

He could hear the shuffle of feet through the door, sometimes broken by the sound of voices too muffled to be of use. Then, he heard someone yell, “We’re losing her!”

His heart dropped. His whole body might have gone with it, had he not quickly moved to a chair. Losing you? How?

Thousands of thoughts flooded his brain, words he wanted to say, things he regretted, his future with out you. The latter were the scariest of them all, each one more depressing than the last.

Him slowly falling into madness, him isolating himself from the rest of the world. Dying alone, him doing something stupid in his grief that gets him killed.

His nose prickled, warning him of the tears pooling in his eyes. Oh god, what if these are your final moments?

The door opening snapped him out of his downward spiral. He shot up out of his chair and wiped away the tears about to fall. Will looked tired. The bags under his eyes were more pronounced, his hair rumpled, and he was swaying slightly.

“She’s stable, but we put her into a deep sleep so she could heal with minimal pain. We wrapped her head to stop the bleeding, but only the nectar we gave her is going to heal her,” he informed the son of Zeus.

Jason sighed with relief, “Thank you, Will. So much.” He went around the boy to enter the room, pausing as he saw you.

You laid lifeless, the bandages on your head almost obscured your face. Hundreds of tiny scratches littered your arms, sure to scar. Jason didn’t care, all that mattered to him was that you were alive and you wete going to wake up.

He took your hand as he sat beside you, and the scabs he felt made him sick. The nectar might have healed up the smaller things, but the marks you still had were remnants of worse cuts. You almost died. You had almost left him. Permanently.

─ ୨୧ ─

Right next to you was where Jason was for the next three days. Holding your hand and praying to any god he could think of were the only things he did. It took a lot of convincing (and a threat to kick him out) by Will (and Nico) to get him to eat something.

It was on the third day that you woke up. It was a particularly sunny day, but with it came midday heat. Not that Jason noticed. Because what point was looking at anything other than you? What was there to feel other than the black hole in his heart?

When your fingers squeezed his hand, he shot up in his chair and called Will over. The son of Apollo rushed over just as your eyes opened, immediately asking you how you felt and if there was any pain.

Over and over, you assured him you felt nothing. He leaned over and removed the now bloodstained wrap around your head. “I’ll leave you two alone,” he announced with a small smile on his face.

You turned to Jason and damn near fell out of the bed trying to hug him. He caught you and positioned you back on the mattress, half his body going over you. He chuckled, thankful you couldn’t see his teary eyes.

"Gods above, I missed you," he exhaled. Maybe his arms were a bit too tight, but you weren't complaining.

You laughed, "How long was I out?"

"Um..." He hesitated, not sure how to proceed. "Three days?"

Your brain stopped working for a second, processing the number. "Well then, superman, we have a lot to catch up on," you whispered as he caught your lips in kiss.

[manygeese]

wrote something valgrace again. you can’t stop me I’m a supervillain

~*~

It was a cool summer morning at Camp Half-Blood. The birds were singing, Apollo was riding his chariot across the blue sky, and- wait, was that screaming?

If it was, Jason didn’t hear it. He had just woken up in the Zeus cabin, groggy and grumpy. Usually, he would have been up hours ago, but he had stayed up late with Leo last night. The other boy had been planning something, but Jason didn’t quite catch what it was, as he may or may not have been staring at Leo’s lips.

Oh, who was he kidding. Jason had definitely been staring at Leo’s lips and he had a big, devastating crush on him. Honestly, he should’ve known sooner; with all that time spent laughing at stupid jokes, listening to passionate rants about screwdrivers, and helping assemble mechanic animals, you’d think he would’ve clued in weeks ago.

There was the screaming again. The Stolls must have hidden a speaker somewhere in the cabin. Jason dismissed it, pulled the covers back up, and turned on his side to face the wall.

What he couldn’t dismiss was the voice whispering in his ear. “Jason.”

Jason sat up like he was waking up from a nightmare, only relaxing once he saw who was talking. “Oh my Gods, Leo, why are you here?”

Leo shushed him. “We talked about this last night! I need to hide. Did you clear out enough room under your bed like we planned?” His eyes darted around frantically, but he still had a bright grin on.

Shit. This was what he got for having a stupid crush. “Sorry, I forgot.”

“Damn,” Leo mumbled. “Well. Get out of the bed.”

“Huh?”

“I need to hide somewhere, and since I can’t be under your bed, I’ll have to be on it.”

Jason obeyed, getting up and standing around awkwardly after Leo shimmied under the covers.

“Well? What are you waiting for?” Leo peeked up over the blanket and gestured to the spot next to him.

Jason blushed. This was, once again, what he got for having a stupid crush. He accepted his fate with a sigh and got back in the bed. Trying to look casual, he picked up a book from under his bed and started to read.

He felt Leo cuddle closer to his side. “Hide me better, Superman.”

This was what he got for having a stupid freaking crush.

Jason was snapped out of his reverie by Piper bursting into the room. “Jason Norman Grace.”

“Piper Ethel McLean.”

“Where’d you find that name- the 1940 census?”

“I feel like we’re ignoring the fact that you just called me Norman.”

“Do I look like an eighty year old, Norman?”

“Not particularly.”

“Then do not call me Ethel.” She had murder in her eyes, so he was compelled to listen.

“Alright,” he relented, closing his book with one hand. “What’s the matter, Pipes?”

She groaned and tapped her foot impatiently. “Do you have any idea where Leo is?”

Jason made a deliberate attempt not to look to his left, where the boy in question was lying still. Luckily, from where Piper was standing, she couldn’t see the lump next to him in bed. “No. Why?”

“Did you not hear the screaming coming from the Aphrodite cabin?” She gestured outside exasperatedly. “The little shit activated a glitter bomb in there and it got Drew. It’s gonna take a blessing from Aphrodite to get all the sparkles out of her hair.” She crossed her arms and breathed out a laugh. “I mean, I’m proud of him, but I’m also contractually obligated to find him and bring him in for execution.”

Jason hummed thoughtfully. “Try Bunker Nine.”

She shot some finger guns at him. “Thanks, Norman!” She darted out of the door, presumably to find Leo and kick his ass.

“No problem,” he called after her. After he was sure she was out of hearing distance, he elbowed Leo in where he estimated his ribs would be. “They’re gonna kill you, you know that, right?” He hissed.

Leo giggled and popped his head out from under the comforter. “I’m prepared to sacrifice myself to defend the honor of my cabin,” he said as he saluted.

“What’d they ever do to you?”

Leo rolled his eyes and sat up. “Do you ever listen to Piper and I when we gossip? Seriously. This has been going on for weeks.”

“Sorry,” he said truthfully. “I’ll listen next time.”

“It’s okay, man.” Leo patted him on the shoulder. “Basically, at the start of Summer, the Aphrodite cabin stole Jake’s screwdriver. I know it doesn’t sound like a big deal, but Jake really loves that fucking screwdriver, so we weren’t gonna let it slide.”

He went on and on- about how he and his siblings had retaliated by stealing Mitchell’s hairbrush, how the Aphrodite cabin teamed up with the Hermes cabin to paint the forge pink, and how the Hephaestus cabin melted down their rival’s jewelry to make an evil barbie that dyed people’s hair barf green and spat acid. After they released it into the other cabin, Lacy had walked around looking like a deep sea creature all week.

But the biggest prank so far was the one the Aphrodite cabin pulled last week. They had snuck into the forge when everybody was sleeping and rearranged every single tool they had. When the children of Hephaestus got there early in the morning, they couldn’t find any of the right tools and spent five hours putting them back in the way they were used to.

“There’s gonna be multiple stages- this is why we had to stay up so late last night- and the glitter bombs were only the first. Notice how I said glitter bombs, plural.” Leo grinned mischievously. Jason couldn’t help but return it.

“But where are you gonna hide out all day?” Jason asked. “I think they’re getting out the guillotine right now.”

Leo laughed. “Nyssa and the others have been battening down the hatches ever since Aphrodite’s last stunt. There’s a code on the door now, Celestial Bronze covers on the windows, and bear traps in front of every possible entrance. It’s practically a bomb shelter now! Once the final stage of the plan is in motion, I’ll be able to take cover in there with little to no resistance.”

Jason furrowed his brow. “But where will you be until then?”

Leo snuggled back into the sheets. “I think you already know the answer to that, Jace.”

~*~

The second stage of the plan involved more screaming.

“There it is,” Leo noted, waking up from his nap. “The paint sprinklers.”

Jason looked at him incredulously. “The paint sprinklers?”

“We replaced the water in the pipes with thinned paint early this morning. The plan was for Harley to sneak in while the enemy’s at the lake, light an itty bitty fire to activate the fire prevention systems, and the endgame is a cabin covered in acrylic.”

Leo’s hair was smushed adorably into his face, pillow lines on his cheek. The late morning light filtered through the sunroof and lit up the frizzy edges of his curls. It made him look like a bronze statue or an angel.

Whoops. That was lovesick Jason talking, not… actually, he was fairly certain every part of Jason was lovesick Jason now.

“Uh. Um. When will the third stage be… commencing?” Jason stammered eloquently.

“You’ll know,” Leo answered ominously, nodding with certainty. “Trust me. You’ll know.”

~*~

It was 7:30 in the evening and Leo had been in the Zeus cabin all day.

Piper had been in and out every so often, asking after Leo, getting increasingly frustrated yet amused.

“Norman. I am begging you. Please tell me where Leo is,” She implored while they ate dinner. Leo had skipped to avoid being caught by the camp-wide manhunt.

“I’m telling you Ethel, I have no idea,” he lied straight through his teeth.

When he got back, Leo greeted him with a big smile. “Hey, Superman! How was dinner? Any warrants out for my arrest?”

“It was good. Most of the Aphrodite cabin wasn’t there. They were standing watch instead,” he said, tossing a protein bar and a bag of potato chips at the other boy. “Got these for you.”

Leo caught the bag, but the bar hit him lightly in the forehead. “Aw, thanks, man. You didn’t have to do that.”

Jason was about to respond when another round of screaming erupted from outside. When he peeked out of the window, it was utter chaos.

For once, it wasn’t the Aphrodite cabin doing the screaming. It was everybody else. Lacy was serenading a Demeter kid, who was awkwardly enjoying it. Mitchell was gazing lovingly at some other boy from the bushes. Drew tackled Clarisse to the ground and declared her undying love to her. The rest of them chased random campers around like they were piranhas. Oddly enough, their eyes were all pink.

“Aerosolized love potion. Temporary, but potent,” Leo explained when he saw Jason’s confused and horrified look. He shuffled out of bed and pulled two gas masks out of his belt, handing one to Jason. “Take this if you want to live.”

Jason handled it awkwardly. “Why do I need this? I’m staying here.”

Leo laughed as he put on his mask. “You’re coming with me, man. Unless you wanna be executed as a traitor?”

Jason shook his head.

“Then you need it. It serves two purposes- one, keeps you from breathing too much of the love potion in, and two, keeps your face hidden so they don’t fall for you.” He took the mask Jason was holding out of his hands, then putting it on for him.

Leo laced his hand in Jason’s, leading him to the doorway with his free hand on the handle. “We’re gonna need to book it as soon as we’re out there, got it? On three.” Jason nodded.

“One.” Drew yelled in the background.

“Two.” Something crashed. Maybe a window?

“Three!” The door flew open, and the two boys ran straight towards the Hephaestus cabin through the chaos. Leo hopped over a lamenting son of Aphrodite, while Jason nearly tripped on the poor guy. He muttered an apology as he was pulled along to the cabin porch.

Leo punched in a code next to the bank safe door, which both unlocked it and disabled the giant bear trap in front of it. All the same, Jason stepped over it apprehensively.

The door clanged shut behind them as they entered the cabin, shutting them in with Nyssa and Jake, who were there to greet them. He watched as Leo took off his mask, shaking out his hair like a wet dog. It still looked amazing.

Leo turned his eyes to Jason, a small smirk gracing his face. He wordlessly helped him take off his mask. Honestly, Jason had forgotten he had it on.

A scoff made him painfully aware that Leo’s siblings were in the room. “Leo,” Nyssa sighed, “why’d you bring boy wonder?”

“He’s an accomplice. Once Piper finds out he hid me all day, there’s gonna be a manhunt for him, too.”

“Fine, but he’s staying in your room,” Jake said with a wink. Leo blushed a pretty shade of sunset orange, but nodded.

Nyssa got up and pulled on a string, which made all the lights turn off. “Alright, everybody,” she announced, “it’s tinker time. Retire to your bedrooms. Come up with some prank ideas in case Aphrodite doesn’t accept defeat. Have fun.”

Leo pushed some buttons on the wall, which brought up a human-sized capsule. He gestured towards it as it popped open, revealing a bed, a fridge, and even a TV. “After you, my lady.”

Jason blushed, although it was probably more rosey pink than the warm red Leo had on. Gods, why was he still thinking about that?

He clambered into the bed, which began to lower into a bigger room underground. There was a cork board taking up a whole wall, with sticky notes and Polaroids tacked onto it. A desk was in the corner, with scattered blueprints all over it, plus several notebooks labeled “LEO VALDEZ’S AWESOME IDEAS”.

As soon as he got out of the bed, it rose back up and returned with Leo. He scooted off the mattress nonchalantly. “Um, so, this is my room. Make yourself at home.”

~*~

It was the middle of the night and Jason was trying, unsuccessfully, to sleep.

Leo had been tinkering and scribbling in his notebook all night, with a small lamp on in the corner of the desk. Meanwhile, Jason took up nearly the whole bed, even when he laid on his side.

“Hey, Leo,” Jason whispered, getting up to lean on his elbows, facing the other boy. “Go to bed.”

Leo eyed him warily. “No, no! Um, you can have the bed, man,” he laughed nervously. Jason could see the bags under his eyes.

Jason sighed and got up, approaching Leo silently. He scooped Leo up and carried him to the bed.

“Jason? What are you doing?” Leo whined, wrapping his arms around Jason’s neck anyways.

“We’re going to bed,” Jason stated, lying back down on his side and hugging Leo close, even as he squirmed. Jason just shut his eyes, trying to fall asleep, but he got the feeling of being watched.

Sure enough, when he opened one of his eyes back up to check on the other boy, he was met with big, brown eyes with a foreign feeling behind them. “Hey, Leo.”

“Hey, Jason.” A tired smile grew on Leo’s face. “Can I tell you something?”

Jason nodded.

“I think I love you.”

Jason’s eyes widened.

“I know it’s weird, and kinda coming out of left field, but you’re. You’re just… so nice and kind and thoughtful and amazing. Y’know?”

Jason’s breath quickened.

“I couldn’t’ve had this much fun today without you. Or planned it, either. Whenever I’m with you, you make me want to be better. To do better and to make better stuff and all that.”

Jason could feel his heart racing. Could Leo feel it? He hoped he could.

“Sorry. Um, I’m really sorry, I shouldn’t have brought it up. It’s okay if you don’t feel the same way. Probably breathed in some of that love potion, huh?”

Jason was hit by the undeniable urge to wax poetic about Leo’s eyes, his hair, his crooked grin, the way he lit up when he got an idea, or how his voice sounded when he rambled. So he did.

“Does… does this mean-”

“That I love you too? Yeah, Leo, it does.”

Jason had a feeling that he wouldn’t wake up groggy or grumpy the next morning, as long as he had Leo in his arms.

[theoihalioistuff]

Nurses and Caretakers of the Gods. Part II: Ares and Hephaistos.

(As always, if you know any more sourced versions, I'd love it if you let me know!!!) Part I here.

Ares:

A quick overview of versions of his birth: he is almost universally the son of Zeus and Hera both (e.g. Hom. Il. 5.893, Hes. Th. 922–923; Apollod. 1.3.1), though he is also attested as solely born of Hera (in response to the birth of Athena after touching a prodigious flower from Olenos: Ovid. Fast. 5. 255), solely born of Zeus (after drinking the "male begetting" waters of the Nile: Schol. Aesch. Suppliant Women 855–856) or born of Enyo (Schol. Il. 5.156, Cornutus. Greek Theology. 21, see bellow, Enyo is curiously also attested as an epithet of Hera in Tzetzes ad Lycophron 493 and 519, perhaps in an attempt to reconcile both accounts). He is frequently said to have been born and/or raised in Thrace (e.g. Statius Thebaid 4.786). A fragment from a lost play by Aeschylus perhaps intends to paint a picture of his younger days:

DIKE: (...) Hera has reared a violent son whom she has borne to Zeus, a god irascible, hard to govern, an one whose mind knows no respect for others. He shot wayfarers with deadly arrows, and ruthlessly hacked ... with hooked spears ... he rejoiced and laughed ... evil ... scent of blood ... [Two lines unintelligible] ... is therefore justly called ..." (Aeschylus, Fragment 282. The passage likely seeks to etymologises the name Ares from ἀρή [bane, ruin, curse]) the vicious little psycho

1. Nursed by Thero (Beastly): "Of all the objects along this road the oldest is a sanctuary of Ares. This is on the left of the road, and the image is said to have been brought from Colchis by the Dioscuri. They surname him Theritas after Thero, who is said to have been the nurse of Ares. Perhaps it was from the Colchians that they heard the name Theritas, since the Greeks know of no Thero, nurse of Ares." (Paus. 3.19.7-8)

2. Nursed—among other things—by Enyo: "Accounts of Enyo differ; for some she is the mother of Ares, some his daughter, some his nurse" (Cornutus Compendium of Greek Theology, 21). Elsewhere she is also his sister (Quintus. Fall of Troy 424) or his lover, begetting Enyalios (Eustathius on Homer p.944) she is his everything, literally.

3. Raised and taught the arts of dance and war by Priapos (incredibly enough), a deity originally worshipped in the city of Lampsakos (in the northern Troad), who after spreading throughout the classical world was primarily known as a rustic god with massive genitals:

"According to a Bithynian legend, which agrees well with this Italian institution, Priapos, a war-like divinity (probably one of the Titans, or of the Idaean Dactyls, whose profession it was to teach the use of arms), was entrusted by Hera with the care of her son Ares, who even in childhood was remarkable for his courage and ferocity. Priapos would not put weapons into his hands till he had turned him out a perfect dancer; and he was rewarded by Hera with a tenth part of all Ares’s spoils." (Lucian. On Dance 21)

Hephaistos:

Versions of his birth are more or less split evenly between him being the son of both Zeus and Hera (e.g. Hom. Il. 1.578, 14.338, 18.396. Od. 8.312.) or solely of Hera (Hes. Theog. 929, Apollod. 1.3.5, Hygin. Fab. Praef.), likely in response to the birth of Athena, or else preceeding it due of an unexplained quarrel (Hes. Fragment 343 MW). Regarding detalis of his parthenogenic conception: "Hera, without any man, being lifted up by the wind gave birth to Hephaistos" (Lucian. De sacrificiis 6), and regarding details on the the birth, it's sometimes said to have been from her thigh (Serv. Aen. 8.454). A quaint tale that tries to reconcile both traditions (Schol.bT. Il. 14.296) claims that Zeus and Hera secretly slept together on the island of Samos before they were married. After being oficially given in marriage to Zeus by Okeanos and Tethys, Hera bore Hephaistos, and to conceal their premarital dalliance she pretended that she'd birthed him without need of a father. To finish off, odd genealogies abound which I'm not really going to include, for example Paus. 8.53.5 or Cicero. De Nat. Deor. 3.22.

1. In most accounts he's raised for nine years by Thetis and Eurynome, after being thrown off Olympos at birth by Hera for being lame (main source is Hom. Il. 18.394-405):

"She [Thetis] saved me when I suffered much at the time of my great fall through the will of my own brazen-faced mother, who wanted to hide me for being lame. Then my soul would have taken much suffering had not Eurynome and Thetis caught me and held me, Eurynome, daughter of Okeanos, whose stream bends back in a circle. With them I worked nine years as a smith, and wrought many intricate things; pins that bend back, curved clasps, cups, necklaces, working there in the hollow of the cave, and the stream of Okeanos around us went on forever with its foam and its murmur. No other among the gods or among mortal men knew about us except Eurynome and Thetis. They knew since they saved me." (Trans. Lattimore)

I ship them. Many later accounts confuse both versions of his fall (see below), and so sometimes Thetis and Eurynome recieve him after he's hurled off Olympus by Zeus, presumably as an adult (e.g. Apollod. 1.3.5). Also a variation is found where Hephaestus is raised by Thetis and the rest of the Nereids:

"But my son Hephaestus whom I bare was weakly among all the blessed gods and shrivelled of foot, a shame and disgrace to me in heaven, whom I myself took in my hands and cast out so that he fell in the great sea. But silver-shod Thetis the daughter of Nereus took and cared for him with her sisters: would that she had done other service to the blessed gods!" (Homeric Hymn 3. 311-330)

2. According to the other main variant of his fall, Hephaistos is hurled off Olympos by Zeus after he tries to intervene on his mother's behalf during one of their quarrels (Homer, Iliad 1. 568), presumably to save her from a beating (Plato, Republic 378d), or specifically to free her after she'd been chained and hung from heaven (eg. Apollod. 1.3.5). In this version he falls on the island of Lemnos, and is nursed back to health by the tribe of Sintians (V. Fl. Argonautica. 2.8.5, Hom. Il. 1.590 is quoted below):

"There was a time once before now I was minded to help you [Hera], and he [Zeus] caught me by the foot and threw me from the magic threshold, and all day long I dropped helpless, and about sunset I landed in Lemnos, and there was not much life left in me. After that fall it was the Sintian men who took care of me." (Trans. Lattimore)

As mentioned before both versions were frequently mixed up, being basically doubles of eachother (either Hephaistos is cast out because he's lame or lame because he's cast out), so sometimes he is raised as a child by the Sintians (e.g. Serv. ad. Eclog. 4.62, where he is cast out by Jupiter because Juno rejects him at birth, and so comes to fall on Lemnos).

3. Finally, there is a version where he is entrusted by Hera to the obscure Kedalion, a daimon who had his workshop on the island of Naxos. Hephaistos apprenticed and learnt to work bronze under his tutelage (Eustathius ad Homer, Il. 14.296a). Elsewhere Kedalion is an assistant in Hephaistos' workshop, who is given as a guide to the blind giant Orion so that, standing on his shoulders, he may lead him to the Sun and be healed (Serv. Aen. 10.763, Ps. Eratosthenes. Catast. fr. 32, Orion = Hes. Ast. fr 4, Hyg. Ast. 2.34.3, Sophocles also told this tale in a lost satyr play that bore Kedalion's name).

4. (Edit) Not necessarily raising, but I thought the detail of the Kyklopes teaching him and Athena "all crafts, as many as the skies contain" is really cute (Orphic Fragment 179 Kern)

[hestiaswifey]

Buckle Up People

I'm gonna make fanfics and one shots for Blood of Zeus