#but 15yo me latched onto this ship from a greek gods rpg and now i Must write about it

[encrucijada]

oc kiss week, prompt: tender clio/kratos (she's history,)

“What do you think?” Clio asks, touching her fingers to the necklace in front of the mirror and then turning so Kratos doesn’t have to look at it through the reflection. In rose gold light, lining the frame in coin-sized bulbs.

“You’re beautiful,” Kratos says, standing and maintaining the place next to the door. He’s been unmoving all through the last two hours of prep, watching her twirl around and choosing. Coming in and out of the bathroom that still smells of hyacinths and vanilla. Padding bare feet and then feet in black stockings, bathrobe then dress, loose hair then pinned with the space left for the wreath of purple gemstone flowers. Nude lips, red lips, the red-purple of undiluted wine.

Her lips stretch and part for her smile. “I know you think that,” Clio says, “but I mean this necklace in specific. Do you think it’ll upstage Calliope?”

Clio, second of the Muses. Her older sister and best friend wears the golden tiara and stands at the centre of the stage. Hearing Calliope is like hearing a word said to perfection every time, she’s the size of great poems. Hearing Clio is like screaming someone glory, someone praises.

“If a necklace managed to upstage someone like your sister,” Kratos says, “I’d be worried something might have happened to her and we were in the presence of an impostor.”

“And that would be your fault,” Clio says, and keeps the necklace on.

For getting distracted with you I could join Prometheus. What organ would Zeus remove everyday from me? What animal would he use to do it?

“I’m ready.” Clio grabs her bag, that shimmery shawl too. Like draping the night sky over her shoulders.

Her high heels give her the extra inches to reach him with ease. He tastes the wine colouring her mouth, smells the hyacinths of her perfume. He wants to bite but that would ruin her work of the past forty minutes and they’re on a schedule. She has people to sing in front of before dinner. (Why should Zeus hire entertainment when his daughters make a choir?)

“Did your lipstick rub on me?”

“A bit.” Clio rubs a fingernail on the corner of his mouth. “Right here.”

Wiping the corner of her mouth where it smudged out of line, not his, Kratos says: “Leave it, let’s go.”