#rhythm: poseidon

[tsunagite]

Poseidon & WATER

Feels bad to be mourning a person who’s still alive.

[pumpkinbxtch]

-ˋˏ blame it (on the alcohol)

— percy jackson x daughter of ares!reader

☆ radiostar is playing: blame it by jamie foxx ↻ ◁ II ▷ ↺

warnings: alcohol consumption, intense makeout & language.

n/a: I was looking for someone who best suited this fic and Percy was my answer. this is a kind of mad makeout 'cause reader and percy don't get along. ready girls? go

Percy had been drinking too much, an argument with his father had him clutching the beer can with enough force to make his knuckles go white. Stupid oceanic rules, stupid gossiping gods, screw it all. He took another sip of the drink and tried to relax his jaw, which had been as tense as a bear trap. Barely enough light to maneuver through the crowd without bumping shoulders, not that he cared much at the moment anyway, so he made his way to the living room where everyone was dancing. He wondered if drowning himself in the music could make him forget his troubles, was almost willing to entertain the idea until he saw you. Shit, did he really have to run into you right now?

Almost simultaneously, you caught his eye from across the room and smirked, that way Percy couldn't stand. You raised your drink in the air in a greeting gesture, and he huffed, looking away. Your interactions as sweet as ever. Now his night was ruined, and he'd have to leave not even half as drunk as he wanted to be, but the sea of people he'd have to navigate through again kept him in place.

“Just finish this drink and I'm out,” he swore to himself, not very convincingly. That's how the son of Poseidon found himself postponing his departure for over an hour. Beer after beer and drink after drink, he found himself mixing various types of alcohol. The fact that he could still string coherent words together without slurring made him curse his semi-divine metabolism. His green eyes scanned the room, maybe he was looking for you, just out of curiosity, and that's when he spotted you not far from him, dancing. He deliberately sat on the arm of the sofa and leaned back against the wooden wall, watching you.

It angered him that you were there, he hated the children of Ares and their irreverent ways. The way you looked at him earlier told him you knew he'd had a shitty day, rumors spread fast. Now, even having left the camp to have a moment of peace, he couldn't shake it off. 

He gripped his disposable cup tighter. He hated you and hated the way you treated him, but he detested even more the way your legs glistened with sweat or the way your dress lifted, giving him a glimpse of your thighs. He must have been crazy to be so focused on that, but knew he had definitely lost his mind when realized he was walking towards you.

You smiled as if you had been waiting for him for a long time, as if you knew he would end up walking towards you, and he felt another pang of anger.

He looked terribly hot, standing there holding the cup with one hand while the other gripped the pocket of his jeans, with a grumpy face and messy hair. Made you bite your lip, and you took his forearm, inviting him to dance.

He would have refused, if it weren't for the soothing contact he felt when your warm skin touched his. He downed the drink in one go and tossed the cup somewhere only the gods knew, couldn't wait to put his hands on your waist and pull you close to him.

— Running away from your problems, Jackson?— You murmured, standing on tiptoes to reach his ear, and he snorted. He gripped your hips, moving them to the rhythm of the music or to his own whim, just to feel control over you, and for the first time, you gave him that pleasure.

—None of your business —he snapped, eyes darkening from the alcohol's effect. He leaned challengingly towards you, you caught his typical sea and cologne scent that only he could wear so well. Your stomach twisted, and you eagerly grabbed the fabric of that plaid shirt he wore over his t-shirt. He smirked.

He was winning, you were losing, and for the first time, you didn't care.

Still, you had to do something, so you turned around, adjusting his heavy hands on you. You started swaying your hips, rubbing your ass against his jeans. Instead of being startled, he pressed himself against you, and nestled his chin on your shoulder, his hot breath on your neck made you tilt your head back, hitting his shoulder.

You knew you’d end up like this eventually, you hated each other, runnin' away from each other, but the tension that was growing up between you only someday win over you. You were a daughter of Ares, you knew hate wasn't far from of passion, in the end, it was a very thin, almost invisible line.

You felt his lips on your neck and how the tension break in an instant; becoming voracious and totally carnal. It didn't take long before he had you pinned against the wall in some corner of someone's house while he devoured your neck. You controlled small moans, although truth be told, in that hustle and bustle no one would notice, nor care. Two more people making out at a party full of drunks?

Your hands eagerly slipped under Percy's shirt, groping blindly as he left kisses on your collarbone until you hugged him under the fabric, impatient to have him closer. He groaned in your ear and made you tilt your head back to give him more space. Your hips rose to clash against his, and he pushed you to be totally plastered against the wall again.

—Behave — he demanded against your ear, and you let out a small whimper. He smiled arrogantly and gave a wet kiss on your cheek. He stroked you with his nose, inhaling your sweet scent mixed with sweat, just teasing you.

Desperation grew in your stomach, and impulsively you buried your hands in his hair, forcing him to look at you, noses colliding and the smell of alcohol mingling with yours. The sober part of your mind wanted to stop and think if it was a good idea, but you were too lazy to reflect when you were so hot, so you kissed him hungrily.

Percy smiled against your lips and let out some huffs when he lacked air, kissing you annoyed, frustrated even he was frowning. He hugged you by the waist to keep you even closer, he felt his lips intertwining and bit your lower lip, making you hiss, he could barely control himself. He growled when he felt you now biting his lip. His head spun with each kiss, with each touch and caress. In no time he couldn't shake the feeling of your body against his, and he squeezed your body even tighter, you just reacted the same way.

Percy felt the anger of finding it pleasurable, of wanting more and having to accept that it was the best makeout session he'd had in a while, and all with you. He didn't want to accept it, so he blame it on the alcohol.

—ffuck, yesterday i drank too much — he said the next day in the dining hall, he looked tired, and a scar was noticeable near the corner of his mouth. From a few meters, you smiled and approached.

—Me too!— you chirped teasingly, obviously poking your nose into other people's conversation. You did know better, you covered your scar with make up.

Percy rolled his eyes and resisted the urge to look at you while nibbling his blueberry pancakes. His friends didn't suspect anything, of all your little daily fights, nothing was new anymore. You held the tray tighter and walked away from them with a smile. So scandalous, so funny, hope gods wanted it to happen again.

[inthedayswhenlandswerefew]

1968 [Chapter 10: Poseidon, God Of The Sea]

A/N: Only 2 chapters left!!! 🥰💜

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: 7.2k

Let me know if you’d like to be tagged! 🥰

💜 All of my writing can be found HERE! 💜

It’s Friday, November 1st, and it begins like every day does: with you sneaking a birth control pill and swallowing it with a handful of cool water from the sink. Aemond is usually gone before you wake up—writing speeches, reading newspapers, strategizing with Otto and Criston and Sargent Shriver—but you always lock the bathroom door just in case he reappears. You’ve popped the tiny pink pills out of their circular packages and hidden them in hollowed-out tampons, each opening sealed with cotton balls. You don’t like taking the pills; you don’t fully understand how they work, and you don’t like feeling out of tune with your body’s own rhythms, but they are infinitely better than the alternative. You can’t imagine having to carry Aemond’s child now, sacrificing your comfort, your health, your future, your life for a man who doesn’t know the real you and doesn’t want to. You return the modified tampon to the box you keep in the linen closet, then begin to pin up your hair.

When you venture downstairs, you’ve thrown on a long flowing floral skirt and chunky black sweater, black flats, small unceremonious gold hoops in your ears. You’ll have to change before the journalists arrive to fawn over the children as they bake homemade apple pies this afternoon. You’ll have to wear whatever Aemond tells you to. But presently, it’s Aegon you’re looking for; you begin with the basement.

He isn’t sprawled across his futon, he isn’t lazing on the floor. He isn’t there at all. As you stand on the steps, you see only Eudoxia, muttering irritably in Greek and crawling around on her hands and knees as she picks globs of red out of the shag carpet.

“What is wrong with him?” she says when she glances at you. “Can you believe this? Melted candle wax everywhere. He is a pig. A pig! Someone should make bacon out of him. Then he could finally be useful. He’s just about fat enough. He could feed the whole family, and all the dogs too.”

You don’t know how to reply; you can’t apologize for helping to make the mess, you can’t agree that Aegon is a plague and nothing more. “Do you want help cleaning up?”

“If Aemond saw me putting you to work, I would be deported back to Tyrnavos.”

“No, Doxie. Asteria would fall into the sea without you.”

She peers up at you through fallen strands of her hair, dyed a palpably artificial pitch black. Then she grins, large doughy cheeks, crinkles around her eyes. “Go help Aemond win his election.”

“Yes ma’am,” you say dutifully, and head back upstairs.

In the living room, Aemond and Otto are hissing like snakes as they leaf through the Wall Street Journal. The newspaper reports that Nixon’s poll numbers are climbing in this crucial eleventh hour. They can’t decide if that’s true or if the Wall Street Journal, a Nixon-friendly publication, is trying to give him a little extra momentum as Election Day approaches. Criston nods at you from where he sits on the couch, looking exhausted, dark shadows around his eyes and shoulders slumped low; Aemond and Otto don’t notice you at all. You keep moving.

There is chatter and giggling and the clanging of bowls and pans in the kitchen. You peek inside from the doorway. Fosco, Helaena, and the nannies are making pancakes with the children. Butter sizzles, spatulas scrape, bubbles appear in wells of batter. Helaena is lifting Evangelos so he can pour a cupful of smooth, milky batter into one of the pans on the stovetop. Cosmo, drizzling maple syrup over an ambitiously tall stack of pancakes, waves at you. You smile and wave back. In the corner of the room, Ludwika is smoking one of her Camels and shooing away Aegon’s second-youngest son Thaddeus, whose fingers are covered with flour.

“Please take your paws elsewhere,” Ludwika says, flicking ashes into the kitchen sink. “This dress is Prada.”

Fosco spots you. “Would you like some pancakes?” he asks as he approaches, wiping his palms on the apron tied around his slim waist. Flour dusts his eyeglasses. “We have enough batter to make about 500. Although I cannot promise they will not be burnt. Our chefs are rather inexperienced.”

“Thanks, but I’m not really hungry.” You take one last look around the kitchen, wondering where Aegon could be.

Fosco understands. His voice drops low and discrete. “I have not seen him this morning.”

“He isn’t usually up yet.”

“He’s not, this is true.” Fosco taps his chin, leaving white dabs of flour there. “Maybe he’s sailing?”

“Maybe. I’ll check.”

“And I have no idea where you’re going or why,” Fosco says with a wink before returning to the stove.

Outside it’s grey, misty, only 50 degrees. It would be a bad day for sailing. The wind rips at your clothes and your hair like a man’s lustful hands; the waves are choppy and treacherous. You think of Icarus plummeting into the ocean, of Andromeda being offered as a sacrifice to assuage Poseidon’s wrath, of sirens beckoning doomed sailors. From where you’re standing in the backyard of the main house, shivering with your arms crossed over your chest, you can’t see Aegon’s boat Sunfyre bobbing in the rough surf. You turn left to investigate Helaena’s withered garden.

As you walk, the hem of your skirt dragging dead autumn leaves, you skim your fingertips over the evergreen emerald hedges, cool and damp. At the center of the garden—like a diamond in a wedding ring, like the sun surrounded by its planets—you don’t find Aegon smoking a joint or napping under Zeus’s shadow, only a silent stone circle of gods who watch you with unmoving, all-knowing eyes. You spin slowly, studying each of them, deities who loved and cheated and offered mercy and cursed and killed. From his gurgling fountain in the middle of the clearing, Zeus glares at you most fiercely, wielding his lightning bolts, aching to loose them. The wind rattles the leaves of the hedges; crows caw from somewhere out in the mist.

“Oh! You’re here, darling?” Alicent says from the arched doorway cut into the greenery. She’s pushing Viserys in his wheelchair. Sparse white spiderweb-strands of hair hang limply from his head, mottled with liver spots. His fingers are bony and clawlike. “In this awful weather?”

You scramble for an explanation. “I just, um, needed some quiet.”

“Yes, the children are very rambunctious this morning, aren’t they?”

“Children?” Viserys echoes, as if he is only just learning of them.

“Your grandchildren,” Alicent reminds him. “Aegon and Helaena’s kids. Orion, Spiro, Violeta, Thaddeus, Cosmo, Daphne, Evangelos, and…” Panic crosses her face. She realizes she’s forgotten one, but she doesn’t know who.

“Neaera,” you say.

“Of course. Such a sweet girl, gentle like a lamb.”

You weren’t blessed with that sort of disposition. Sometimes you wish you were. Life seems easier for women who don’t feel bitterness or forbidden ambition, who pain moves cleanly through like clear water. They have no thorns for it to snag on and grow roots into the bones, the soul. They are never at risk of becoming poisonous like Jupiter’s moon Io. “What brings you to the garden on a day this dreary?”

“I feel close to them here,” Viserys rasps.

You stare down at him, baffled. “Close to who, sir?” You rarely interact with the ailing patriarch of the Targaryen family. He is often confined to his bedroom, attended by Alicent and Eudoxia and his nurses, and even when he is physically present his mind is sluggish, alien, impenetrable. Now Alicent’s eyes are downcast, and she drifts away to inspect the statue of Poseidon, a formidable bearded man holding a trident and with dolphins and sea turtles emerging from the waves of white marble at his bare feet.

“I left them back in Greece,” Viserys says, his gaunt face vacant, distant, vaguely sad. He is bundled up in a thick wool robe that hides how skeletal he has become. “I thought about having them brought over to be interred at the mausoleum, but it felt wrong to disturb their bones. Now I cannot visit their graves. I can only hear them here, among the gods our ancestors worshiped.”

“Who…?”

“Aemma and Rhaenyra,” Alicent tells you from where she now stands by Aphrodite, gazing longingly at the goddess of love. You notice that she is clutching a komboskini in one hand; she must believe that what her husband is saying is blasphemy, but she doesn’t condemn him. “Viserys had a wife and daughter before he met me.”

You feel a sudden and overwhelming stab of grief for the old man; you are thinking of Ari. “What happened?”

“The sea took them,” Viserys explains. “A riptide off the coast of Euboea. We found their bodies three days later.”

“Oh God. I’m…I’m so sorry for your loss.” You don’t know what else to say; it’s too disastrous, too unspeakable.

“Aemma was pregnant. It was a boy. She delivered him in the water, a coffin birth.” And you know from his face, his voice, that Alicent and her children never stood a chance, that Viserys has only one true family, only one set of names carved into the scarlet chambers of his failing heart. You think of Aemond’s heart, claimed by Alys and her son; you think of your own.

“They’re at peace, Viserys,” Alicent says. “They are in heaven with my mother and Ari and Mimi.”

He continues, as if he hasn’t heard her: “I thought that if I made something of myself in America, if I helped contribute something incredible to the world, then they would not have died for nothing.” Viserys reaches out with trembling, gnarled hands, and when you realize he wants to hold yours you let him. His grasp is weak and cold. “Aemond will be president. He will save countless lives, he will save this nation’s soul. And you have made that possible.”

Where’s Aegon? Is he okay? Why is no one else ever looking for him? “Thank you, sir.”

Viserys begins hacking, doubling over in his wheelchair, and Alicent hurries to soothe him and provide a handkerchief that Helaena embroidered green spiders onto. When he has recovered, you leave them with the gods: Viserys to grieve his old life, Alicent to mourn the one she never had.

You plod through sand dunes out to the Atlantic Ocean, peering into the fog as you search for Aegon’s sailboat. Still, there is no sign of him. You glance back towards the main house as sea spray peppers your cheeks and your knuckles. You’re beginning to get nervous. Where the hell is he? Is he passed out somewhere, is he sick, is he hurt?

And then, at last, you see him: sitting at the bottom of a small bluff so he is invisible to anyone not at the water’s edge, arms linked around his bent knees, not smoking, not drinking, not gulping pills, just gazing out into the waves that thrash and rumble beneath a grey sky, his too-long blonde hair whipping in the wind. He wears one of Daeron’s army jackets over a white turtleneck sweater, ripped jeans, no shoes, a collection of other men’s dog tags slung around his neck.

“Hey,” you say as you join him, dropping down onto the cool, crumbling sand.

Aegon smiles. “Hey.”

“It’s strange to see you awake before noon.”

“Yeah…I didn’t really sleep.” No, he didn’t, you can tell: his eyes are bloodshot and his voice tired, husky. He is watching you, so hopeful but so afraid. “What are we gonna do?”

About us. About Aemond. “If he loses on Tuesday, I can leave him.”

“What if he wins?”

You don’t have a good answer. You shrug, avoiding Aegon’s eyes. “It’s not forever, you know? It would be four years, and then…”

“Four years?” Aegon says. “No, I can’t wait another four years. I’ve been waiting my whole life for something like this. And what if he gets a second term? Eight years? I’ll be almost fifty. We’ve already lost so much time, I can’t surrender another decade.”

“Aegon, first ladies don’t quit. It’s never happened before, not once since 1789. It’s a part of the democratic process. People aren’t just voting for Aemond, they’re voting for me too. You know that. You told me we were a package deal, and you were right. If they trust me and I walk away, it’s…it’s…it’s treason, it’s abandonment, it’s wrong. And Aemond needs to have the political credibility to get what he wants done.”

“Look,” Aegon says, like it pains him. “I get that my life is already half over, and I haven’t done anything worthwhile with the last forty years, but I want to be different. I want to be better. And I can do that, but I need you to give me a chance.”

“You think Aemond would let me leave? If I publicly humiliated and undermined him?”

“We don’t need Aemond, we could figure it out—”

“What do you think he and Otto would do to you, Aegon? They would ruin you anywhere you go, they would have you declared mentally unfit and take your children away.”

“They don’t own us!”

“They do,” you insist. “And if you try to fight them it will destroy you. You’ve never cared about strategy, and I love that you’re truthful, and I love that you’re real, but I need you to understand what you’re asking for right now.”

“But he breaks the rules,” Aegon says, and his eyes are glistening. “He has Alys. He has a kid out of wedlock.”

“Yes,” you agree softly.

“And what, I’m supposed to hope Aemond loses?” Aegon swipes tears from his eyes with the heel of his hand. “Because that’s the only way I get to touch you? Nixon wins and more draftees get butchered in Vietnam, and Daeron doesn’t come home, and the white supremacists get to resegregate the beaches at Biloxi, Mississippi and wherever the hell else they want to, and civil rights protesters get attacked by police dogs, and teenagers get sentenced to decades in prison for marijuana possession?”

“I’m sorry.” You can’t tell him he’s mistaken about any of that. He isn’t.

“I’ve spent my whole fucking life in a cage, but I’ve never felt this powerless.”

“Aegon?”

“Yeah.”

“Am I…” It’s terrifying to ask. “Am I the same way Mimi was when she was younger? Is that why you like me?”

“No,” he says immediately. “No, you’re different than Mimi. Mimi was fun, and we could party together, and I cared about her, obviously, but…” He stares out at the ocean, shaking his head. “She wasn’t as strong as you. And she couldn’t really get to me. I feel like you could kill me if you wanted to, you could reach inside my chest any time it crossed your mind and crush me in your fist and I’d be gone.”

You stretch out your fingertips until they collide with his sweater, warm yielding flesh woven over his ribs. “Not so easy,” you say. And then Aegon smiles and he leans in to kiss you, the ocean roaring like an ancient beast, a titan, a maelstrom. The wind rakes through your hair and stings your eyes. You ask when he rests his forehead against yours, your hand on his face, your thumb stroking his cheek: “Do you wish you could go back to when you hated me?”

“Never. I’ve gotten used to not being alone.”

“The kids made pancakes. You should go have some.”

“Come with me.”

“You first. I’ll be five minutes behind you. We shouldn’t walk to the house together.”

“Why?” Aegon teases. “Because people might think we fucked in the basement last night?”

“I’ve already told them. Aemond is waiting for you in the kitchen with a bazooka.”

Aegon laughs and struggles to his bare feet, slipping on the sand. “Okay. See you soon.”

“See ya.” Once he’s gone, you recite the full length of Here’s To The State Of Mississippi in your head, then trek across the sand and through the backyard to rejoin the rest of the Targaryens.

When you open the sliding glass door, Otto is standing in the hallway. His icy blue eyes sweep from your simple black flats to your windswept hair, still pinned up but unacceptably tousled. “Why the hell aren’t you dressed for the reporters?”

“Because they won’t be here for another two hours. Surely you are well-acquainted with the itinerary that you yourself arranged.”

“Don’t get yourself in trouble, girl.”

“Remember when you used to defer to me about things? Were you stupid then, or are you stupid now?”

“Do you know what Joe Kennedy did when his daughter Rosemary threatened the family’s reputation?” Otto says, eyes glittering cruelly.

You really don’t know; you weren’t aware that JFK had a sister named Rosemary. “What?”

“He took her to a surgeon to be lobotomized. Now she’s hidden away in a little cottage in Wisconsin, can’t speak, can’t walk, with full-time nurses to wipe the drool off her face and change her diapers. How would you like that? Would your obscene little flirtation still be worth it? We could tell people that you were in a car accident or fell down the stairs. The doctors go in through the eye socket, you know. And you’re awake the whole time.”

“You can’t do that to me,” you say, shellshocked.

“Oh, if that’s what it takes, I’ll find the will somehow.”

There is shouting from the basement, and you and Otto both bolt for the staircase. At the bottom of the steps, Aegon and Eudoxia are embroiled in a ferocious confrontation, red faces, hands itching to slap and shove. Aegon roars, jabbing his index finger at her like a petulant teenager: “I told you to stay the fuck out of my room!”

“You are filthy, you leave crumbs everywhere! We will have mice!”

“Where’s the garbage?” Aegon demands. “Huh? Where’d you put it? Out by the curb?”

“It has already been picked up.”

“No, no way! That’s bullshit!”

“You’re too late!” Doxie says. “The truck went by 20 minutes ago. And why is this a problem? What precious heirloom did I steal from you? An empty rum bottle? A magazine full of naked women? Candy wrappers, cigarette ashes, melted candle wax? You live like a pig, you should not be so outraged when you are treated the same as one.”

“Aegon, what happened?” you ask. Otto is equally bewildered, surveying the markedly clean basement, his brow knitted into deep crevices.

Aegon doesn’t answer. He only glances at you—frustration, anger, but shame too—and then sighs in defeat and stomps up the stairs to the main floor of the house.

Eudoxia looks at Otto and shrugs nonchalantly. “At least there were not so many used condoms this time.”

Your gaze catches on the end table by the futon. The empty cups are gone, the ashtray is spotless…and there is no folded white corner of a receipt poking out from under it.

The math problem from Mount Sinai, you think, that relic, that talisman, that worthless scrap of paper that Aegon never wanted to talk about but kept so close to him, just like you cling to the card he gave you and Aemond cherishes his engraved Ouija board. It’s gone. It’s almost like it never happened.

~~~~~~~~~~

After the journalists arrive and the apple pies, so quintessentially all-American, are made—you help Cosmo with his job, layering strips of dough into lattice crusts that turn golden in the oven, glinting with sugar crystals like diamonds—Aemond’s retinue begins the last of their campaign stops by travelling via limousines to Philadelphia, just an hour and a half across the width of New Jersey and over the Delaware River. In your penthouse suite at the Ritz-Carlton, you soak in a bath opaque with bubbles, steam hot and dewy on your skin. Your hair is long and free. The Zenith radio out in the kitchenette is playing Tomorrow Never Knows by the Beatles.

Your hands have just slipped beneath the hot water—your skull full of Aegon, things he’s done, things he’s said—when you hear the bathroom door open behind you. You rest your arms on the spotless white rim of the tub, porcelain-enameled steel, and try not to look like you’ve been interrupted. Aemond’s footsteps cross the linoleum floor, then he kneels by the bathtub and wraps his arms around you, his long uncalloused fingers skating over your shoulder, collarbones, nipples, before linking like a long necklace. He likes you best like this, when your scar is hidden, something that might have been a nightmare or a sad story that happened to somebody else. He rests the mutilated left half of his face against the right side of yours; his eyepatch scratches against your temple. You shift uncomfortably, you can’t help it. You don’t want him touching you. His arms tighten around your ribs.

“You know, JFK’s mother went through a crisis of sorts as a young wife,” Aemond says calmly. “She realized her husband was a hopeless philanderer and tried to leave him and go back to her parents. But her father sat her down and explained that she had made a commitment. Marriage is for life, and you don’t abandon your vows when the circumstances prove difficult. So she went back to Joe. And if she hadn’t, there never would have been a John F. Kennedy, or a Bobby, or a Eunice or a Ted, or a million other things too.”

“I am so fucking sick of hearing about the Kennedys.”

“You used to love being compared to Jackie.”

“I’m not her. I’m never going to be her.”

“I’m giving up things too,” Aemond says. Now he’s combing his fingers through your hair, unraveling tiny knots, yanking at your scalp. “If I win, I won’t be able to see Alys and our son. It would be too risky, someone might catch me. For as long as I’m president, I’ll have to be apart from them. You don’t think that’s painful? But Alys understands. She knows it’s for the greater good.”

“Please stop touching me.”

“You’re mine to touch as much as I want to.”

You stare at the seafoam green wall and try to pretend you’re in another place, another year.

“I’ve been thinking,” Aemond says sympathetically, an appeasing sort of tone, like he’s trying to strike a bargain. “I’m a realist, I’m aware that I can’t keep you locked up in a basement or put you in a straightjacket for the next fifty years. That doesn’t serve either of us. If you are truly desperate to be rid of me, there’s nothing I can do to change your mind. And I require a partner who is fully committed to my cause, my legacy. Not a captive. I can’t fight Nixon and you too.”

You twist around in the tub to look at him, skeptical, amazed. Is there a way out? “So what are you offering?”

“I need you for as long as I’m president,” Aemond says. “If I win, I need you for at least four years, probably eight. And a short while after that to establish myself in retirement and fade from the headlines, another few years. But then…we could work out some arrangement that is mutually agreeable.”

The hope is so fragile, so fearful, splintering glass. “You would let me go?”

“We’d have to negotiate the details, particularly as far as our future children are concerned, but…yes. In some sense, at least.”

You can’t find any words. You don’t want to offend him, to shatter this moment. And yet the price is so steep. Four years, eight years, ten years. But then…but then…

Aemond smiles, his remaining blue eye bright and cunning. His fingertips trace the slope of your jaw. “I care so deeply for you. You are my Aphrodite, you have made my wildest ambitions possible. You will help me save this country. I am worshiped because of you, I am trusted, I am envied. No one has a wife as beloved as mine, and everybody knows it. So I feel…I’ve considered…” His hand moves down to your throat, drawing invisible chains of gold or silver. “If you’ve given me so much, I can extend some mercy in return.”

“You can’t harm Aegon,” you say. “Or take his children away, or do anything else to punish him.” And then you lie, a necessary fiction, an invention, a myth, Prometheus stealing fire to give it to humans, Zeus hiding Io from Hera. “He hasn’t betrayed you.” And he’s saved me over and over again.

“Of course I won’t harm Aegon. I need him too. This act he has now of the devoted, reformed, tragedy-besieged single father? People adore it. At this rate, I’ll be able to make him the attorney general for my second term if he uses the next four years to rack up some experience. And his children are gold mines for the photographers. They have filled the void left by our own son’s death.”

“Ari,” you say.

“What?”

“He had a name. He wasn’t just ‘a son’ or ‘our son.’ His name was Ari.”

“You’ll feel better once we’ve had others.” Aemond stands and holds out a hand to you. He’s wearing a black suit like he’s getting married, like he’s going to a funeral.

You gaze up at him, not wanting to leave the water. You belong to him, but when he touches you it feels like the earth dying when Persephone is stolen away by Hades each autumn, it feels like Eurydice’s spiderweb-fragile life evaporating when Orpheus dared to look back at her as he led her out of the Underworld. “What if I can’t get pregnant again?” you ask. “It took over a year the first time. And the surgery…what if there’s too much scar tissue, what if I’m just…just…broken?” There’s real pain in your voice that staves off any suspicion Aemond might have. You do want more children, you believe, you know; just not with him.

“Then it is God’s will. But we’ll keep trying.”

Aemond draws you out of the water like a fish from the sea, something to devour, skin and muscle, delicate bones sucked clean.

~~~~~~~~~~

The sunlight is cloudless and glaring. Leaves swirl in the brisk wind in jewel tones: gold, ruby, fire opal, honey calcite, tiger’s eye, red jasper. Aemond has just finished a speech at Franklin Delano Roosevelt Park, standing in a stone gazebo that you can’t help but think resembles a Greek temple, tall columns that house deities of love and death, oceans and fire. Alicent and Helaena have taken the children to attend the opening of a new public library on the other side of the city. The rest of Aemond’s entourage—you, Criston, Otto, Ludwika, Fosco, Aegon—are arranged in a semicircle around him on the stage. Only 50 yards away, there is a small parking lot full of police and press vehicles. Philadelphia residents have walked miles to hear Aemond speak, to glimpse him, to cheer for him, to take leaves he’s stepped on or loose threads from his navy blue suit as relics like the bones of a saint. You match him, as you always must: navy blue dress, high heels, hair neat, makeup mature and understated, gold jewelry gleaming on your ears, throat, wrist. Ravens flap their wings from the skeletal limbs of bare trees. A car radio is blaring Break On Through by The Doors.

“Senator Targaryen,” a reporter calls as flashbulbs strobe dizzyingly. “What do you think about Tommie Smith and John Carlos getting death threats for raising their fists in the Black Power salute at the Olympics in Mexico City?”

There is a split-second lull; it is a difficult question. Aemond must remain the savior of the hippies and college kids and civil rights activists, yet he must not let the old-money urban elite or suburban families mistake him for a discord-sowing radical. You and Aegon exchange a glance; Otto placed him on the opposite side of the gazebo, and this is not a coincidence. Then Aemond decides what to say. “Peaceful protests—even those that can make us confused, defensive, fearful—are not a threat to democracy,” he speaks into the microphone steadily, deliberately, commandingly. The crowd leans forward as they listen, enraptured. Journalists’ pens fly across the pages of their notebooks. “They are not the harbingers of some doomed descent into anarchy. They are a manifestation of the fact that we have already failed. Our nation has failed, our laws and our leaders have failed, and this is our chance to address those dire inadequacies. I urge every single American to listen to what Mr. Smith and Mr. Carlos have actually said about their concerns and their hopes, to be empathetic, to be honest when reflecting on what our country has achieved and yet so desperately still needs to improve upon. These men are not enemies of the United States. They are the United States. They are a part of us, and we are a part of them, and we must not allow prejudiced, ignorant voices”—he means Wallace, he means Nixon—“to draw divides between us. The harassment that Mr. Smith, Mr. Carlos, and their families have experienced is a travesty. It is something that we should expect from a fascist or communist regime, not from a democracy. And to do my small part to show my admiration for them and atone for the mistakes of this nation that I so fervently hope to make better, I would like to personally fund private security services for the households of Mr. Smith and Mr. Carlos for the foreseeable future.”

The crowd erupts into applause, cheers shouted, signs held aloft. Your eyes snag on one, clutched by a middle-aged woman bundled up against the cold; only her eyes—grey, tearful, shining like quarters—are visible above the red plaid of her thick wool scarf. On her sign is a large photograph of a young man in uniform, maybe nineteen, maybe twenty. Below the photo in red marker is written: Ryan Farrelly, my youngest son, burned to death in Phan Thiet on September 21st. Bring Daeron home! Bring them ALL home!

The woman waves at you. You raise your hand wave back. And then there is a sound that comes from everywhere, a boom of thunder, an explosion, bullets like the one that demolished Aemond’s left eye in Palm Beach back in May, a lifetime ago, a truth that has become mythology. There is something hot and sticky splattered across your face, and you can’t see; when you wipe it away with your sleeve and open your eyes, there is a hole in your palm that you can look through like a window.

Where else?

But when you check your chest, your belly, you are whole. It is only a hand would, and that won’t kill you. It doesn’t even hurt yet, though the blood runs in torrents down your arm. You peer frantically around to see if anyone else is hurt.

Aegon, Fosco, Ludwika, Criston??

People are rushing the stage to shield Aemond and his family from bullets. Police are tackling somebody in the audience and beating him bloody with their batons. Aegon is screaming and shoving through the chaos as he fights his way towards you. Otto slams him against one of the columns of the gazebo and holds him there, because Aegon is not the one who’s supposed to get to you first. Now Aemond’s arms are around you, and he is ushering you down the stone steps towards the parking lot, and Criston is running alongside him and telling Aemond that the closest hospital is Jefferson Methodist, but UPenn is better and only two miles farther.

“Who else?” you ask as you cradle your hand against your chest, blood turning your dress from navy to black. Now it hurts plenty, like waking up from your c-section, like a crimson wave that is scalding and crushing and dragging you under to be drowned. “Is anyone else—?”

“No, just you,” Criston says, a reassuring grip on your shoulder. “Don’t worry. Nobody else is hurt.”

“Senator Targaryen, this way!” a police officer is yelling, and he leads the three of you to his black and white car. Criston leaps into the passenger seat; Aemond pulls you into the back with him and slams the door. The sirens shriek and the police officer careens out of the parking lot, Criston giving directions, Aemond yanking off his suit jacket to wrap around your hemorrhaging hand.

“I’m not going to lose it, am I?” you ask dazedly. None of this seems real. You wish Aegon was here. “I need my hands.”

“No, honey. I don’t think they’ll have to amputate.” Then Aemond stares down at the blood on his palms, warm scarlet ruin, water and oxygen and iron that once pulsed in your arteries and veins and now stains him. He frowns, then wipes his hands on his white shirt until almost all the blood is gone from his skin. He is cleaning you off of him. He is readying himself for the cameras that will undoubtedly be waiting at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania.

Inside the glass doors of the building, dust motes circle in aisles of sunlight; you watch them as doctors and nurses push you towards the operating room on a stretcher.

“We’re going to take excellent care of you, Mrs. Targaryen,” a doctor says as he ties a sterile white mask over his nose and mouth.

Don’t let Ari die, you almost murmur in response; and then you remember that’s already happened.

There are needles gliding into your veins, bright lights, pain vanishing like the memory of a dream dissolving when you wake.

~~~~~~~~~~

Four hours later, you are propped up in bed on a mountain of pillows, your hand surgically repaired and bandaged, morphine in your IV drip. The doctors think you shouldn’t lose much function—the bullet was from a pistol, blessedly small in size and missing most of your major tendons and nerves—but you won’t know for sure until it’s healed. Ludwika is here with you, lounging in the chair beside your bed and flipping through a copy of Cosmopolitan with her Louis Vuitton stilettos propped up on the ottoman. She is content to be here, but this is technically a job; she has been tasked with supervising you while Aemond and Otto meet with the Philadelphia police who are investigating the attack. The rest of the family—everyone except Aegon, who you suspect has been forbidden to enter the premises—has already been here to fret over you and ask if you need anything. But you aren’t in the mood for visitors. You are stunned, and aching, and you hate hospitals. You keep thinking of tiny babies in incubators, priests in black robes.

Your room is already filling up with flower bouquets. Every few minutes, the phone rings and Ludwika has to answer it. Each time she announces who it is—“Oh, hello Lady Bird, so nice of you to offer your well-wishes!” and then looks to see if you nod, agreeing to take it. The current first lady says that you are already as beloved as Jackie Kennedy and Eleanor Roosevelt. Pat Nixon calls you a gladiator.

There is a mint green Zenith radio on your nightstand, the volume turned way down low, and a television mounted on the wall. NBC news is on, but you’ve muted it to attend to the barrage of phone calls. There is a knock on the doorframe. Aegon stands there in his khaki pants and ill-fitting viridian button-up shirt and tan moccasins, wide searching murky blue eyes, carrying a white Dairy Queen cup.

Ludwika observes him as she puffs on a Camel cigarette. “I am suddenly struck by the inspiration to spend Otto’s money at the gift shop. I hope they take American Express.” She rolls up her magazine, shoves it into her oversized Gucci purse, and clicks in her heels out of the room and down the hallway.

Aegon commandeers the chair and drags it closer to your bed so he can feel your cheeks and your forehead, so he can get a good look at you. “Hey, little Io. You hurt your hoof, huh?”

“It’s not that bad. The caliber of the bullet was really small. Who shot me? One of Wallace’s Klansmen?”

“No, just some insane guy who thinks Aemond is a Russian double agent trying to overthrow capitalism here and put us all in gulags. I heard you could see right through the wound.”

“Yeah, I had a hole in my palm.”

“Just like Jesus.”

“I guess they fixed it.”

“Messiah status revoked.” Aegon sets the Dairy Queen cup on your nightstand. “I brought you a lemon-lime Mr. Misty.”

“I need to get out of here.”

“They gotta make sure you’re okay, babe. You could spike a fever or something.”

“Aegon,” you say seriously. “I can’t be in a hospital. I need to leave.”

He understands; his voice is gentle. “I might be able to get you out tonight, okay? I’ll try. I’ll talk to the doctors.”

“Okay,” you whimper.

Aegon turns up the Zenith radio, Van Morrison’s Brown Eyed Girl. He sings along, snapping his fingers and shimmying his shoulders, his hair shagging over his eyes:

“Hey, where did we go?

Days when the rains came

Down in the hollow

Playin’ a new game…”

Reluctantly, you give him a smile. And you think very clearly, though you don’t say it: I love you.

Aegon leans across the bed to rest his head on your lap. He says softly as you run your fingers through his hair with your good hand: “Maybe Aemond will lose.”

“Yeah. Maybe.”

On the muted television, Nixon is giving a speech in Charlotte, North Carolina to a euphoric crowd. You can’t hear the people gathered there, but you know their applause are thunderous. Nixon is flashing peace signs with both hands and beaming radiantly, this man who was once so poor, tragic, ordinary, unwanted, unloved. He has learned what it feels like to be a god.

~~~~~~~~~~

It’s Sunday, November 3rd, and your hand hurts like hell. You swallow your pills, smiling a little. Now Aegon is getting clean and I’m the one swimming in a haze of narcotics. Who could have predicted that? Still in your robe and bare feet, you swish to the hotel bathroom to wash your face, brush your teeth, rebandage your hand and make sure it isn’t growing dark insidious vines of blood poisoning.

When you venture out to the kitchenette, Aemond is in a sapphire blue suit and seated at the table, reading the Wall Street Journal, his face hidden by columns of black ink and interspersed photographs. This is unusual; he should be scheming with Otto and Sargent Shriver by now.

“Everything okay?” you ask with only vague interest as you go to the refrigerator to get yourself a leftover slice of apple pie, meticulously wrapped and packed in a cooler by Eudoxia before your departure from Asteria. Aemond doesn’t answer. You plop a piece of apple pie onto a plate, return the rest to the refrigerator, and then turn to your husband. And only now do you register the newspaper’s front-page story.

The photographs, all three of them, are of you and Aegon. They are blurry, taken from a distance, but you recognize the moment immediately. You can feel it again: ocean wind in your hair, his lips on yours, your hand on his face as you willed him to be closer, healed, permanent. You are sitting at the edge of the Atlantic Ocean, turbulent and perilous. The journalists must have been north of you, shrouded in mist, their camera shutters clicking feverishly. The headline reads: A Family Affair?

And you remember what Aemond said on your 23rd birthday before he left for the Washington State Convention in Tacoma, how he scolded Aegon when he saw him lighting a joint in the backyard at Asteria: You know journalists will sneak around trying to get photos. You know we’re never truly alone out here.

You can’t speak, you can’t breathe. Aemond knows. The whole world knows.

Slowly, Aemond lowers the newspaper so you can see his face, scarred and hateful and horrifying, lethal like the volcanic hellscape of Jupiter’s most cursed moon.

~~~~~~~~~~

What are my earliest memories? Aegon getting drunk on his futon in the basement while I played with toy soldiers on the green shag carpet, Aemond with his poems and his myths, Helaena letting a praying mantis creep across her knuckles, Criston teaching me how to swim and sail, my mother cleaning sand from my face and hands and giving me water to wash the grit out of my teeth, my father wandering through the doorways of Asteria like a ghost, always on the periphery of my vision, and I had the sense that if I reached out to touch him my hands would pass resistlessly through his skin and sinew like a stone through water.

These are the things I think of here in the rain-dripping darkness, bruises down to my bones, eyes swollen almost completely shut, teeth broken and throbbing like blows from a hammer, fingernails ripped out. I know Tessarion is here because I can hear her, soft sympathetic squeaks, the padding of her tiny feet. I know John McCain is still alive because sometimes he taps back through the cracked concrete wall. I have run out of folklore, so now I tell him the truth. I tell him that I am afraid each beating will kill me as my body becomes a stranger, someone weak and brittle and helpless. I tell him that all my life I wanted to run as far as I could from home, but now I would crawl back to them through razor wire, I would fall into their arms in a shredded bloodstained heap and I’d be happy to do it. Isn’t that funny? I mean, I don’t laugh much these days. But maybe you can appreciate the irony.

Has the election happened yet? Has Aemond won? I’ve lost track of the days, but it has to be getting close to November 5th. What happens if he can’t get me out? What happens if Nixon wins?

I don’t want to be a hero anymore. I don’t want to have adventures like Heracles, Achilles, Jason, Odysseus, Perseus, Orpheus, Ajax. I just want to go home. Please let me go home.

I can hear keys jangling against the lock on my cell door. My heart jolts into a breakneck, pounding rhythm; I think that sound will terrify me all my life. Some things you just can’t forget, you know? Some things dig down deep and build a home in the marrow of your bones, a rust-red cave of immutable memory. I know exactly what the communists want from me. They’ve been asking since they dragged me out of the Loach four months ago.

Everyone has a breaking point. This is mine.

[nofingjustaninchident]

ᯓ★ strawberries & cigarettes 

summary percy and y/n went out on a date with strawberries 

warnings fluff, i can’t write anymore 

word count 0.3k 

now listening to strawberries & cigarettes by troye sivan 

                                  𓆝 𓆟 𓆞 𓆝 𓆟 

the sun dipped below the horizon, painting the sky with hues of pink and orange as percy jackson stood on the deck of the argo II. the gentle lapping of the waves against the ship created a soothing rhythm, a perfect backdrop for the evening he had planned. 

“hey, you!” percy called out, spotting his girlfriend, y/n, as she approached. the boy smiled widely at her; just the sight of his favorite person made him feel better. 

“are we really doing this?” she asked, her eyes sparkling with anticipation. 

“absolutely. just trust me,” he replied, a grin spreading across his face. he had set up a makeshift blanket fort on the deck, draping the fabric he’d found in the ship’s supply room. it wasn’t glamorous, but it was cozy, and the twinkling fairy lights strung around it gave it a magical touch. 

as they settled inside, the boy pulled out a basket filled with snacks: strawberries, chocolate, and her favorite cookies. they nestled close together, the warmth of their bodies mingling in the cool evening air. 

“this is perfect,” y/n said, biting into a strawberry. “you know, you’re not as serious as you pretend to be.” 

“only with you,” percy teased, nudging her playfully. “i have a reputation to uphold.” 

she laughed, her voice a melody he never tired of hearing. “a reputation as the most charming, powerful and handsome demigod?” 

the boy said nothing, only looking at his gorgeous girlfriend, the golden glow of the fairy lights highlighting her features. she was just insanely beautiful. it didn’t matter if she was bald, had long hair, short hair, if she was fat, skinny. she was perfect in every sense of the way. 

the son of poseidon leaned forward, tasting the sweet taste of the strawberry from her lips; she smiled in the kiss before deepening it. after a few seconds, they pulled away, breathless.  

“what was that for?” she asked. he just chuckled and shrugged. 

“just because.” 

[mmavverickk]

During the period of changing tides twice a month, Poseidon's children have a small [in fact, just huge, save yourself who can].... a shift resembling menstruation.

their skin turns pale and becomes covered with a thin layer of scales, they also experience symptoms such as increased appetite, emotional instability, bone aches, body pain, inability to move, apathy, irritability drowsiness and much more.

this condition usually lasts 4 days or a maximum of a week.

ok that's cool but it gives me a slightly different idea:

poseidon's children change with the tides.

a spring tide is called a King Tide. the waves spring forth, grow in power and size. high tides are larger, hit harder; low tides are smaller, more gentle. there is more variation between the highest highs and the lowest lows. the sun and moon work in tandem to push the sea.

during a spring tide, poseidon's children are louder, more boisterous, more confident. they are always natural leaders, but during spring tides, it's easy to imagine them born to lead, leaping from the womb to the battlefield in little less than a breath. they sleep deeper, more restfully, and their circadian rhythm syncs with the low tides. nothing can touch a child of poseidon during a spring tide. nothing can bring them down. they could be immortal, gods themselves, powerful and inspiring and strong.

a neap tide happens not long after. the sun and moon are at odds, pulling the waters in different directions. the highs and lows don't vary as much, stay closer to baseline. the ocean is more moderate in temperament.

neap tides result in the children of poseidon acting more docile. the oceans are calmer, and they reflect it. it's harder to rile them up, harder to upset them, harder to make them laugh uncontrollably. it's harder to see them as a leader, a general, rather than a cold, calculating strategist. could they really be both? they sleep differently, shorter amounts more often; train differently, more geared toward endurance than speed; plan differently, more reserved and reactive than offensive and explosive.

a tsunami sees poseidon's children at the height of their power. it's as if they've forgotten they were ever mortal. the ocean recedes, preparing to swell to colossal sizes, and poseidon's children grow quieter with it. anticipation buzzes in their veins, excitement keeps them unable to be still. the closer the tidal wave gets the more they seem to grow, their presence almost overwhelming, their laughter too much for their lungs, their words to loud for their mouths, their actions too sharp and jagged and powerful to be human. they look like gods; they look like monsters.

they could be either.

[2nd2ndalto]

I have a headcanon that all the demigod kids routinely end up in each others beds/cabins at night, because nightmares and trauma and whatnot. So I wrote this smol fic.

~~~~~

There Is Rest and There's You

The first time Nico sees Annabeth leaving the Poseidon cabin at an ungodly early hour (having been dragged from his warm bed by Leo and Jason for an ungodly early errand), he flushes, quickly looking away. Because it's obvious, even to him, that she’d spent the night. But Annabeth merely sleepily raises a hand in greeting and continues on her way back to her own cabin.

Jason, maybe noticing Nico’s discomfort, simply shrugs. “Musical cabins,” he explains. “Happens a lot.”

Leo nods in agreement. “Yep. I had some really wicked nightmares last week, three nights running. I ended up on Jason’s floor. Would have been in the bed, but Piper got there first,” he adds, disgruntled.

Huh, Nico thinks. Musical cabins. That's a little weird.

After that, he pays more attention. It’s not unusual, as it turns out, to find the Apollo cabin overstuffed with various campers early in the morning, rivalling even the occupancy of the Hermes cabin. Sometimes it’s couples tucked in together, but more often it’s friends, siblings. Seeking comfort, and sleep.

It's six months into Nico's stay at Camp when he begins forgetting to lock the door to Cabin Thirteen. He nearly runs Harley through with his sword the first night he finds the younger boy fast asleep in his cabin. But after that, it quickly becomes routine to wake to the quiet comfort of someone else’s soft snoring across the darkened room. Most often it's Will, brushing a warm hand over Nico's forehead before settling into the other bed, but sometimes it's Harley, and several times Leo, complaining that Jason’s bed was already full.

It’s a little weird, but surprisingly nice. Nico begins leaving his door unlocked most of the time.

On a night late in February, the nightmares are worse than usual. Nico wakes in a cold sweat, heart pounding, tears welling behind his eyelids. He does what he usually does - dresses quickly, and walks. There’s something meditative about the rhythm of his boots on the ground and the sharp, cold air on his skin that usually settles him.

But the thing is, it’s really cold. And after only about half an hour he finds himself standing in the central green, torn. He can't feel his toes, but he can’t quite stomach the thought of returning to his own empty cabin, either.

His frozen feet lead him up the stairs to Cabin Seven. And gods, it’s warm inside.

There’s a soft rustle of blankets from Will’s bunk.

“Nico?” Will’s voice is soft and scratchy. “What’s wrong?”

The taller boy is out of bed and across the cabin in a heartbeat, reaching for Nico’s hand. Scanning him, Nico knows, blue eyes wide with worry.

Nico shakes his head. “I’m fine. Just - couldn’t sleep,” he murmurs, and the concern on Will’s face fades to sympathy.

“The bunk above mine is empty,” he says simply.

And that’s that. Nico climbs up, snuggles in. Will’s messy blond bedhead pops over the edge of the bunk, his smile fond. He squeezes Nico’s arm. “Sleep tight.” And then he disappears.

Nico worries it might be awkward, in the daylight. It’s anything but. The Apollo cabin is a riot of sound and motion in the morning. Austin flings a stuffed turtle at Nico's head. Nico's foot is hanging off the edge of the bunk, and Kayla tickles it, cackling when he squeaks.

“Breakfast time, sleepyhead,” she chirps.

“Sleep well?” Will asks as Nico climbs back down.

And the thing is, he really did.

Time passes. The nightmares wax and wane, but they get easier, mostly.

Until one night in July. It’s almost a year to the day since he came to stay at Camp - Nico thinks, later, maybe that’s why the nightmares hit particularly hard. He wakes shaking, gasping for air, convinced he’s fading again, permanently this time. It scares him so much more than it did when it was actually happening. He shoves his hands against the wood of his headboard, hard, positive they’re going to slip right through. They don’t, but he can't shake the panic.

Nico’s up and out the door in the space of a breath, no hesitation as he makes a beeline, barefoot, for Cabin Seven. The air is cool for July, the full moon shining bright above.

He can feel his panic ease the second he closes the door behind him, soothed by a quiet symphony of soft breathing.

But the bunk above Will’s is occupied tonight, and as Nico's eyes adjust, he realizes all the others are, too.

“Nico?” Will’s voice is a whisper. “Nightmare?” He sits up, silhouetted in moonlight.

“Yeah.” Nico steps closer. “Looks like you’re all full in here, though. I’ll see you in the morning.”

He turns to leave, but Will grabs his arm. “I’ll come with you.”

“No, it’s okay. I’ll be fine. You go back to sleep.”

Will gazes at him in the dark, fingers still wrapped around Nico’s wrist. “Or you could stay. Here.”

“There’s no room, though.”

“I have room,” Will whispers.

Nico blinks at Will’s bunk, then back at Will, his stomach attempting to leap into his throat. Will’s eyes are wide, nervous.

“I... um -” Nico begins. He can feel his face heating at the thought of it.

“Gods, di Angelo, just stop talking and get into his bed. Literally no one cares,” Kayla grumbles from the next bunk over. There appears to be at least one Demeter kid in her bed. Maybe two.

Will’s fighting a grin now and he shrugs. Nico shrugs back, then… climbs into the bed. Will scoots over to make room, pulling the blankets over them both. And gods it’s warm, and it smells like Will, and when nothing else calms him, that always does.

Nico lets his eyes close. Then -

“Do - do I feel like I’m fading?” he asks in a whisper, echoes of the nightmare flashing behind his closed eyelids.

Will gazes at him. Then he reaches for Nico’s hand.

“No,” Will whispers. Someone clears their throat nearby and Will grimaces, yanking the blankets over their heads.

“Did something happen?” he asks, his breath brushing Nico’s face.

“No, just - nightmare."

Will nods in understanding. “No. You’re good,” he smiles. He goes to pull the blankets back down, then seems to reconsider.

“That’s um… that’s usually why I end up in your cabin. At night.” he admits, quiet. “Sometimes... I just need to make sure that you’re still solid.”

Nico stomach flip-flops. "Oh."

Will shrugs, sheepish. He pulls the blankets back down, settling on his side. "Here," he says, reaching for Nico's hand again. "Then neither of us has to worry." He tangles their fingers together, reaching out to lay his other hand on Nico's arm, tethering him.

Will's soft smile in the dark is dazzling, and his hands are warm, and Nico worries his own answering smile might just light up the entire cabin.

When he wakes hours later to the familiar sounds of chaos, his head tucked against Will's shoulder, Will's face buried in his hair, well. He thinks maybe this musical cabins thing isn't so bad after all.

Notes

This is a short one! I tried to challenge myself to write something coherent in 1000 words or less. I almost managed it.

It is also my personal headcanon that Harley kind of attaches himself to Nico & sees him as a big brother. This comes up in something else I'm working on as well.

I would love to hear your related headcanons! Snuggly demigods! Sleeping in heaps like puppies!

Jason may not come up much in my fics but please rest assured he is Always Alive.

[ladybirdswritings]

Silken Webs & Pirouettes - Miguel O’Hara x Reader

Summary: Miguel comes up with a plan to make your time together much more tolerable. Ballerina!Reader & CEO!Miguel. Alternate Universe with most of the characters included as seen in "Across the Spiderverse." Many cameos ahead. Miguel is a successful business owner but personality is canon. This is a steamy reader insert, Miguel x You! Enjoy and pls leave me lots of love and comments as it keeps me motivated <333

notes: tysm for reading and i’m so srry for the delay but i hope this steamy chapter makes the wait worth it <33

chapter 10

Gold. Suffocating and blinding as it cascades upon the pale mounds and curves of your vessel. Your eyes a hue of darkness behind the shielding lids, your temples a pounding rhythm parallel to the beats you once waltzed amongst.

Your lips part, slumber’s dance with you slowly cascading into nothingness as luminous rays return to greet you. To tug your soft palms back into your reality.

Your lashes, fanned against your flushed skin now fan apart as your gaze is greeted with unavoidable radiance. The morning.

A breath leaves you, trembling as it greets the cool air. You force yourself upright and it is then that blood rushes from where it once lay dormant and pooled to spread itself evenly throughout you— enticing pins and needles from the tips of your fingers and toes.

You feel like a creature undead, following the actions as you would normally but in an imposter’s stance. Your feet drag you to the dimmer kitchen, and your temples are grateful to be secluded from the sun and its warmth.

A yawn overtakes your exhausted features as you open the russet metal of your refrigerator door. You must be dreaming still. It’s stocked with fresh fruits and produce bagged in tan wrappings. Your eyes wander over each welcoming color in the once vacant and lonesome, cold and gray space.

It’s lively now.

A burst of red peeking through behind awful greens piques your interest, and you bury your hands in the tufts of healthy emerald to pull the sweet basket filled to brim with blossomed strawberries. They are fresh and plentiful.

You truly are dreaming.

No longer do you notice the ache pounding at you. You only see red in the purest of ways. You shut the door with your foot and examine the seeded berry with hungry eyes before encasing your teeth round the plumpness of it.

It isn’t long before you part the ripe treat with pearly teeth, and you moan gratefully when you do. Juice drops from each corner of your mouth, down your chin as your lips suckle the nectar and swallow it in quick motion.

It’s the best one you’ve ever had.

Another bite, then another berry and another. You can only hear the soft chews of fresh fruit and sharp seed alongside the blood pumping in your ears.

You don’t hear the scorching water cascading to drain halt, and you don’t hear the rest until your eyes can register what your ears cannot.

As you munch upon the berries, you blink when a phantom creature turns the knob of your dilapidated washroom door and creaks the shield open. Steam rolls out into your living space like the waves of Poseidon’s great seas— but the only god to greet you beyond the mist is not one of oceans and pretty things.

It’s the evil one.

Hades.

Miguel.

A soft gasp leaves you as you swallow in the sight with dazed eyes, tufts of chocolate locks are coiled and dripping water all over your wooden floors. His suit pants are there as always, but his jacket is not present. No, not now. Only a white undershirt, tight to the body and tucked away into where a belt constricts is all he wears.

You gulp down the remainder of fruit you forgot to swallow and allow the severed berry to drop into its basket.

The man sighs, scrunching at his hair with the towel before tossing it on your couch. That would annoy you if you weren’t so baffled right here.

His eyes search the couch for you, and when he finds you vacant from your waltz with slumber— he scans the room quickly before settling on your frozen stance in the kitchen.

He locks eyes with you.

“Good morning.”

He says it with amusement, you’re certain. Laced behind his throat.

It is eerie, it is polar opposite.

He looks— calm.

Your mouth is ajar, you remind yourself to close it.

“I- what?”

He pays your confusion no mind as he approaches, weaving through your pathetic and unimportant home like he’s become comfortable with it— like he’s learned it.

He towers over all your trinkets and furniture, and the singular stool is bound to collapse under his weight. He eyes the broken thing then decides to lean forward against the counter instead.

You gulp, remnants of strawberry juice staining the newfound dryness in your throat. And the enigma of a man, he just studies you for a moment before turning over his palm. Waiting.

You gaze at it in confusion, wondering if he’s pointing out something upon you that you can’t see. Yet his eyes are on the basket.

Oh.

You pluck one from its leafy stem and shakily place it upon his calloused palm. His eyes lock back upon yours and he clears the tart berry in one bite— licking the juice from his lips with an eager tongue.

You squirm— knowing not what to do other than just slide over the basket. The silence is suffocating, reminding you of only two weeks prior when you practically begged the man before you for a place of employment alongside er— below him.

“I didn’t buy these!” You blurt out. Because you don’t know what else to say to break the quiet and because the thought only now crossed your mind. You know now. No appearance with him is any possibility of a dream.

The smell of palo santo is muted now. He smells of your floral soaps.

He indulges in another.

“I know. I did. Your fridge was pathetic.”

Oh.

Your eyes fall to the countertop, unwilling to meet his own. It’s far too tense, and far too confusing. You’re far too dazed.

“Why are you-?”

He interrupts you as if he had been expecting the question, “You were acting drunk, and stupid. I brought you home.”

You’d scowl at his description of you if you weren’t still coming to, searching the chilled air for answers you’d rather not be forced to ask of him. You knew well that you’d have to— he wouldn’t offer them any other way.

He must enjoy the torture. Inflicting it.

You narrow your eyes and the expression may seem devoid to most— but something tells you there’s more within it.

Fine, then.

Christ.

You shake your head, hearing him chew upon another berry as you greet your newly stocked fridge and steal a water from its stomach. Your back is to him as you swallow down heavy sips. You sigh after, and when the coolness has shocked you awake enough and you are satisfied- you turn.

A cool breath of air kisses your breast as result of the motion, and your eyes widen, shooting down to find a silken robe of powder pink all but you have clad on alongside your panties. It’s slipping.

Your eyes dart up to find him staring intensely at the spot where it does slip, and you twirl back away to harshly tug at it and fix it.

Your breasts are bare— your dress is gone.

Your jaw ticks and you turn again— taking quick strides toward the counter where he resides on the opposite side of.

“Did you fuck me?”

He is silent, eyes glazed over as if he’s lost in thoughts you cannot see or be apart of. He takes a moment to absorb your words, fingers twitching against the berry they clasp before he blinks and his dark orbs lock against your again.

They send an inferno against your flushed cheeks.

He hums.

You don’t know what at, but you have a strong feeling it’s at the thought.

You know, the thought of fucking you.

He stares on at you as he takes a bite of the berry, and slowly shakes his head back and forth.

It’s a no.

You sigh, but you’re not relieved.

You’re silent again, shakily taking a seat upon your creaky stool across from him. You fear if you stand for any longer under the brunt of his gaze, you’ll faint.

You bury your face in your hands, and you feel his eyes against your golden locks. The place where he stares, your scalp prickles.

Wood slides against chipped countertop.

“Eat these. You haven’t eaten.”

He seems to know a lot, right now. It makes you anxious.

And yet?

He tells you not a word of it.

It infuriates you.

This morning is odd enough, so you won’t stand for secrets. You force your head up and you’re unsurprised to find his gaze already locked upon your own.

“What happened?”

Your voice is firm, it sounds like more of a command than question and you’re certain he notes it. He studies you for a moment, and you don’t know why; but his eyes fan over your upturned lashes and the soft bridge of your nose. Down to your lips then back up to your eyes, again.

He takes his sweet, frustrating time to think his answer through. Just maybe though, your night was as rough as your morning has greeted you. Because he takes pity on you— he answers.

“You went out dancing. Made a big show at my club, drank all my good alcohol from every man willing to hand it to you, then you vanished without your things. Out my back door. Cindy came to me, and we went after you. There was a man out back. He was planning to— how did you put it? Fuck you, cariño… not me.”

You flush the color of persephone’s sweetest pomegranates— eyes wide as the images flash like some mortifying movie in your mind.

Oh my god.

“Oh my god…” you whisper in repetition of your horrified thoughts, pressing the coolness of your palms against the heat of your cheeks.

He hums again, but this time in agreement. It far from helps. You press two fingers against each temple, shaking your head as you search for suitable words.

“I don’t do this often or- at all, really. I just— I needed…”

“I know.” He cuts you off in the middle of your search for an end to your sentence, and it’s the first thing he’s done that you’re grateful for. Apart from the fridge full of food.

You remember now that you blew all your grocery money, so.

You feel ridiculous, mortified. He must think of you as some obsessed idiot who showed up at his club because you couldn’t be at his workplace.

God.

You can’t stand the thought.

Only you would chose there of all the clubs in New York.

You don’t even offer him any further explanation, you know well that it will be a mess you dig further and further. Deeper and deeper until you babble and stutter, you stay silent to avoid it.

You torture yourself in another way, reliving the night prior in quick flashes… piecing them together like a parted jigsaw. They weave in place swiftly, but there’s something missing…

You rack your brain, yet nothing comes of it in its crowded closet. You’re blank, baffled. You’re in a robe, a new robe and you’re topless underneath. Sitting across from Miguel O’Hara in your own pathetic kitchen.

Christ.

“You are a dancer.” He observes, making your head spin.

The conversation takes a left turn. Sharp, quick. Perhaps he’s not so used to seeing you this silent, perhaps he knows just the subject to get you talking again. It’s the most normal you both have ever talked, in fact.

“Was.” You correct in a shameful whisper, and you’re grateful when he doesn’t ask about it further. Your eyes drift to the framed photo he stares at behind you. It’s you, pretty as you are with one leg bent up to the heavens and the other firmly planted on tip toe into the ground. Your pale pink mesh cascaded from your hips and your golden locks were tamed into a perfected bun.

You adore that picture.

Yet as admirable as the memory is, it’s also sad. You don’t spare it another moment, your eyes fall to the surface below where it hangs. The Daily Bugle. It’s new, dewdrops of rain kissing the ink, bleeding some of it away. He must have gathered it for you.

Christ. He stayed here.

You wince at the thought, too plagued with headache to analyze his intentions— rushing forward to gather the fresh paper in your hands so you don’t have to worry about it any longer.

You’ll read the newspaper in silence or at least pretend to to avoid telling the three-headed Cerberus to leave and never return. He watches on at you, quiet and emotionless as you skim past the front page that speaks of sports nonsense. Further down, spending more time on the fashion column before reaching the golden page, the hot spot of Daily Bugle. Drama.

In all your years of consuming the horrid paper, you never leave this page unread. You feel slimey as you absorb, and yet it’s addictive. Miguel is still here, you remember. He must think even worse of you if it’s possible.

Just the girl who keeps reminding him of his dead daughter at every chance she gets. You wince, letting out a shaky breath as you smooth out the paper of the next page and finally see it.

In black and white proud, long curls cascading down a sequined number with heels higher than you’ve ever worn. Small, back flush against him. Your face is tilted to the side, captured blurred as it was in motion. Yet to you, it’s clear and recognizable. It’s a memory.

The puzzle piece, served up to you by the universe on a stupid, golden platter.

You’re on the front pages.

So is he.

You’re on the front pages, together.

CEO MIGUEL O’HARA ENJOYS A NIGHT OUT ON THE DANCE FLOOR WITH MYSTERIOUS PROCLAIMED “DANCING QUEEN”

You look— horrified, and he looks to be brushing his curled fingers against his tanned lips to stifle his amused grin. He can’t risk any other emotion than stoic, of course. Your eyes are wide as they snap up to him.

“You’re good publicity.” He offers.

His voice. It isn’t cold. It isn’t lifeless.

It’s as if something has laced itself within it. Something you don’t like.

Humor.

At the expense of you.

You’re angry. You’re confused and it makes you angry.

The puzzle is a painted picture now. The dance, the music, the heat, the grinding— god you’d just about melt if you weren’t so baffled and preoccupied right now.

You practically crush the paper in your hands. You look like a slutty girl taking her chance with the richest man readily available. How on earth will you ever work anywhere else again?

You’ll have to chop off your locks, you’ll have to—

He clears his throat as a weak attempt to conceal the amusement itching at his tongue.

You narrow your eyes at him.

“This is funny to you?”

This man. This mind fuck of a man has gone from towering over you with fury foaming at his mouth to forcing your hips to brush back against him to finding humor in your suffering in your own kitchen.

He narrows his eyes back,

“Very, cariño. Very funny to me.” His voice is dark, cold again.

You part your pink lips to curse him, but he interrupts the process before it even begins. He straightens his back, returning to the tower he is before rounding the counter till he’s right in front of you. You shrink again, your attitude melting as you remember the events of the week prior. His screaming, the ornament.

You shift, breath thinning as you turn your head away from him. He moves his head so his eyes may follow yours, when it doesn’t work— his jaw ticks.

“Mírame.”

You do, eyes snapping back to meet his gaze.

It’s soft, yet still commands your attention. You don’t have any other choice but to look on at him, you’ve noticed he has an odd thing for eye contact. You’d squirm, but your head is spinning.

No possibility to delay and procrastinate calling home now, it seems.

He sees your mind fogged with preoccupations, and you can’t keep like this any longer.

“What is going on, what are you doing?” You whisper, eyes darting to the paper then back to him. The question. It means far more than just now.

What is he doing?

Does he feel guilty? Is this how he’s apologizing?

You’re not sure, it’s impossible to know— to understand. Enigma doesn’t seem to be enough to describe him, nor does mystery.

He’s infuriating as he is simple, and maddening as he is tolerable. He’s back and he’s forth, up and he’s down and he’s killing you.

Why did he yell?

Why did he dance with you after it?

Why is he here now?

He sighs, his hands caging you up against the counter as he rests his palms on either side, grasping at the chipped marble and dipping his head to search for an answer.

It takes him a long moment, but when he’s satisfied? He lifts his head.

“I’m a good boss. A great one. I pay my girls generously, I would have done the same for you if you were capable of just following orders.”

You frown at that, he ignores it— continuing.

“You’re a shit employee.” He says it with conviction. As if his word is etched into stone at the birth of all life and creation. Your jaw nearly drops, but you allow tension to blossom like spring poppies within it instead.

“You’re an asshole.” You snap, gasping after the word leaves you. Your cheeks flush the color rose, and his expression remains cold and devoid as he tilts his head at you.

But his brows arch. Questioning.

You await for what seems like ages for him to respond, to snap, to scream— honestly you’re half expecting him to snatch the knife from the countertop and jab it into your gut to shut you up for good.

He does none of those things.

Warmth trails like caramel down a chasing tongue, rough and calloused palm sliding up the length of silken coverage from your knee and upward. Higher, higher. Your breath hitches in your throat, and his eyes burn furious holes into your face— your wide-eyed, pretty face.

The soft, small netting of nerves between your thighs jumps in excitement, and you’re certain your cheeks burn hotter than the sun. He reaches your hip, he halts— straightening his head. Almost unnoticed.

“I’m an asshole?”

A shiver overtakes you now, and you feel betrayal constrict you like that of a serpent as your pink nipples pucker themselves up for attention.

Don’t look, don’t look. You beg within the confines of your own mind.

The asshole…

His eyes flicker down immediately, as if he sensed your body calling to him.

It’s the first flash of emotion you’ve ever seen beyond anger. You can’t name it, you can’t understand it—you can’t even process it. You’re frozen here.

A noise, guttural— like that of a forest creature restraining itself from its natural instincts to slaughter a helpless lamb. It becomes him. From the very back of his throat.

You blink, tense, back straight and pushed firmly against the wall. His eyes find yours again and you’re certain then that you’ve bursted up in flames.

“You were saying?” He whispers, eyes wandering down. Past your puckered nipples and the bumps upon your skin. Down. Lower. To— there.

The action, it’s enough to shake you out of this trance. You push him back, he doesn’t protest the move and plays into it— you’re sure. You stumble from that suffocating wall and take a breath of air that feels awfully fresh even in your stuffy apartment.

His hand, where it once grazed you is a memorized motion replaying like a record shattered upon your leg.

He’s toying with you.

Getting his payment for his generosity, that must be it.

Or maybe he’s not. Maybe it was the dance…

Maybe— you don’t know which it is.

Now you’re angry.

Frustrated.

He’s put you through hell in the short amount of time he’s known you. Then suddenly, he does one good deed and takes it as a free ticket to fuck you?

You’re livid.

You turn on your heel, slamming your finger into the firmness of his chest.

“Tell me what you’re doing.”

His hand, warm as fresh laundry wraps around your wrist. He tilts his head low like a charred olive branch extending, leveling with you.

“Testing my theory.”

It’s all he offers. You narrow your eyes to cold slits, electricity still buzzing between your thighs in opposition to your anger.

“What theory?” You sound exasperated, and you are.

The tick in his jaw is back. It jumps. He’s frustrated again.

How is it possible?

A man so stoic and cold, and yet so capable of flipping through emotions like an old scrapbook buried away from years past.

He breathes slowly through his nose, and when you nudge his chest again with your finger as hopes to provoke an answer? He moves. Quick.

In a flash moment, he walks you back against the countertop— caging you again.

He must like that.

Making you feel small.

He wastes no time once you are caged there, happy to be in control again.

“It seems like the only way I can stand you is when I respond with lust, and not logic… Dios mío…” he breathes the last part. It allows a chill to creep up the base of your spine, paralyzing you.

Silence blankets you both again and he bows his head once more. You breathe, shakily but nonetheless.

Lust?

For you?

Hair unruly and unkept, frizzed and wild. Too loud for your liking and too sharp of a tongue for his.

Maybe he’s truly lost it.

Maybe it’s been there all along.

Although the thought excites you, you know it’s silly. Men of his status and power— they don’t busy themselves with pretty things like you. It’s impossible. It’s a movie, a picture made for fantasy.

But here he his.

Toying with you.

You’re certain now.

It clicks then, his game with you. Revenge sweetly. Play pretend, get you to fall but not catch you when you do. It’s cruel. It’s like him.

You’ve been at the harsh hand of a man vengeful before. You won’t do it again.

Tears sting at your eyes.

“Don’t do this to me again.” You mean it to sound like a demand, yet it floats from your petal pink lips like a weak and pathetic sound. You speak to him, and you speak to the man before him. In your eyes, now, they’re the same. All your interactions before this were so inhuman and cold, and yet here you are— feeling all the colors of the damned sky before him. Interacting like humans do. Only, he’s got a motive behind his emotion. Not you. Never you.

He hears the weakness, the falter. His head snaps up again.

You avert your eyes, playing a balance game with the swelled tears threatening to parachute onto your cheeks. He straightens his back at the sight of them, he gives you space. You relax.

His eyes, they find a map upon your face and they wander amongst it. Observing, analyzing. When he’s satisfied, after you’ve swiped away at your tears, he speaks again.

“I have a job for you.”

You’re certain he’s lost it now.

Completely thrown himself off the deep end and into the insane asylum. How can he lust you and loathe you and employ you all at the same time? All within the same hour?

You need to rest, you’re exhausted.

“No.” It’s all you offer, turning your back on him. Hoping he will take it and leave you be. Silly you. A firm palm spins you back around, right back to where you were.

“Listen to me.”

It’s not a question, it’s a command; and as much as you hate him and his arrogance… you comply.

“Fuck… there’s more to you. Something that I can find behind my frustrations with you. A hunger… Last night was an annoyance, an amusing one no less. I just can’t get rid of you no matter how hard I try… but I think sometimes that this game we’re all playing is at someone’s hand. I need morale, you’ve made the front covers now. Jameson can eat shit for all I care but for the sake of my girls— I need to fix the mess I’m in…”

He muses the last part to himself, and baffled as you are at the events that have taken place in one morning alone… you straighten your back and cross your arms over your chest. Curious. Listening.

“I’ve been here all morning because I have been thinking close to the source. Thinking about what it is about you that is so fucking infuriating. I didn’t find an answer. But what I did find was a solution. After— fuck… after Gabi…”

Oh…

Oh.

He’s talking about her, and not because of your snappy mouth.

Like a fresh petal, you unfurl.

“Jameson. He wants to slander me. He wants my girls to read his bullshit and believe it and as much as I hate to admit it, the cabrón could manage it. And fucking morale… it can’t function when my morale girl is only working hard at pissing me off.”

It’s an insult, but you’re far too glued on the edge of your seat to interrupt his train of thought. You scowl softly and let him continue,

“I don’t want you in my office, I don’t want you talking about things you don’t get to talk about. I don’t want you to anger me with your stupidity because I don’t want to yell at you like that again. I won’t. But I am glad your idiocy brought us here last night, because I can see how much of a shithole you’re in.”

You flush again at that, nervous eyes glancing around your dainty apartment and its rotted walls.

“I’m in one too, in a different way. The tabloid is a good thing. When you were dancing, I tolerated you. I enjoyed you, even. And your presence made for a good paper with a headline not involving my baby girl. I— need that. I need these people to stay distracted and fuck, sweetheart. Soy la respuesta...”

Cruel as he is, you find your heart constrict— just for a small moment. You can’t imagine it. Losing your life, your whole sun, moon and stars and being constantly reminded of it on every newsstand and broadcast because of some awfully obsessed vampire.

So much so that it leaks into your glass tower in the sky and makes it crack, each new story another stone thrown until it cracks under the pressure.

But you… you stopped it.

Just once, at least.

Even so….

It amazes you.

Makes you feel powerful.

He is watching you close, gauging your reactions. You challenge his eyes, imploring him to continue. He does.

“I want you to play pretend with me, just like you did last night. Dos desconocidos bailando por primera vez, like two strangers dancing on the floor. I wanna feed them the shit they want to be fed and keep their mouths shut and satisfied. Only for a few months until I find a way to buy out the Bugle and bankrupt the hijo de puta… We can help each other. You’ll live in my suite and do whatever the hell you want all day. You’ll get a monthly allowance on top of your big check. You’ll help me keep them quiet.”

He speaks slow. Calculated and measured. In a way one would immediately understand. But somehow, you don’t.

You don’t get it.

Beyond the words for what they are, you’re baffled.

He wants you to play pretend, and it all seems perfect and fine except?

“You hate me…” it’s meant for yourself, truly. Yet it parts from your lips nonetheless. Your brows are furrowed and soft as you search the space beside him for an invisible answer with your eyes.

He sighs.

“No. I don’t. I don’t like you, but I don’t hate you. How could I when you move the way you do? So pretty under my lights, I like her a lot. Maybe we have to get you drunk more often, hmm?”

He means it to lighten the tension, to slice it with silver blade and yet all it does s quiet you further. He sees this, and a warmth floating within his very fingertips meets your chin. He turns you to him again.

“Dime que sí, cariño. Tell me yes. Stop letting yourself think about it.”

You have a million loose and frayed ends that you cannot seem to knit together on your own. You’re certain he won’t offer you any assistance either.

There’s a plague in the air, a sickness. One that causes nothing short of pure insanity. Why? Well because of what you see now.

Money.

No more debt.

Food plentiful.

A door that actually locks. A heater that will keep you warm on harsh winter nights.

No going home.

Another chance… another opportunity to dance again.

Only for a little while will you have to bare him. Only for a little while and then all your troubles get tossed upon the burning pile. You could start again. You could fix what you ruined. You could be her, again.

Your eyes wander to the gold trimmed frame with a girl that seems so unrecognizable and unreachable now.

But what if he— this cruel and baffling creature with all the money, power and influence in all of New York City and maybe beyond could help you reach her.

All you have to do is play pretend..

That’s it, right?

You gulp.

And Christ…

You whisper it like it’s a gruesome sin on the tip of your tongue. Like it poisonous and repulsive. Sealing the deal with the devil himself before it is too late to think it over again…

“Yes…”

🏷️’s: @reirain @needybitez @migueloharastruelove @laysmt @maomaimao @daisy-artfield @poutysprouty @chorizobeets @bimb00000 @tabalittlelong @iitangerine @queenb27sblog-blog @dprmooni @neptunieesworld @cyd2301 @amelialysm @justanothers-things @heartfeltlonging @coralreefses @knightowl019 @justanothers-things

[luxthestrange]

RoR Incorrect quotes#55 The Proposal

When You are about to give the finishing blow to the king of the underworld

Hades*approaching the seething angered you*Waaait wait-wait, wait! Hold on a second!

Zeus*confused, then severe*Uh, Brother? What are you doin'?

Hades*theatrically, down on one knee, proposal-style*Y/n Strange... would you do me the honor of becoming... my bride? 

The Greek pantheon is dumbfounded along with the rest of the human fighters and valkyries...and audience; Zeus gulps, his mouth falling wide open. Y/n pauses for a beat before responding. Broadway farce-style music begins, the dialogue falling into the music's pattern rhythm 

Dr.S Y/n: I don't think so!

Hades*milking it* Y/n!, please!I know what you're thinking: "We're too different." "It'll never work." "What will the children look like?"

 Cut back to Zeus, who is still frozen with shock, mouth wide open

Dr.S Y/n*disgusted*Ooh, that violates so many laws of nature!

Hades*backing up against the wall*Listen to me! The problems of a couple of wacky kids like us don't amount to a hill of termites in this nutty circle-of-life thing. And so I ask you: If not now, when? If not me, who? *miserably; pleading*I'm lonely!

Zeus*tapping him on the shoulder; sniffling, putting the best face on his shattered emotions* Can I be your best man?

Brunhilde: I say we skip the wedding and go straight to the buffet!*Wanting you to whoop his ass even MORE*

Hades really went and said "I gotta make them my bride before or they will kill me-"Hades really out here stealing his Family crush away

...Hermes, Heracles, Poseidon,Ares, and even Aphrodite really got thrown under the bus

[fantasy-nerdddd]

Is Epic A Tragedy?

I've seen a couple people here question whether epic is a tragedy or a celebration of ruthlessness. I'll try to answer that by checking the criteria of definitions of ancient greek tragedies and tragic characters and the modern interpretation of tragedy.

Tragedy in ancient Greece was not defined as something bad or what we call tragic. It's actually, according to Aristotle:

"Εστίν ούν τραγωδίαν μίμησης πράξεως σπουδαίας καί τελείας, μέγεθος έχο��σιν, ηδυσμένω λόγω, χωρίς εκάστω τών ειδών έν τοίς μιριοις, δρώντων καί ού δι' απαγγελίας, δι' ελέου καί φόβου περαίνουσα τήν τών τιούτων παθημάτων κάθαρσιν." (Yes, I did copy the ancient Greek definition. No, I don't know why)

We'll go over Aristotle's points one by one:

Imitation of actions (μίμησης πράξεως): The tragedy must imitate and show actual actions. Of course it is. Even if we don't count the animatics, Epic will become a play, or a circus play, or whatever it will become at some point. Still in progress Epic does have both animatics and imitations purely by the music.

Has a certain length (μέγεθος έχουσιν): The tragedy needs to have a length not too short in order to relay every message and meaning, but not too long in order to keep the audience focused and entertained. Epic fulfills both, at least to me. I don't think you could say Epic is boring.

Cleansing (κάθαρσιν): The tragedy should satisfy the audience. The hero can't be way too bad, because the audience won't sympathise with them and will think of their punishment as inevitable and deserved. However, they can't be too good, because the audience won't understand the Gods and their punishment will be met with anger. The main character should be ambiguous. Odysseus manages that well; look at all the people defending him and all the people defending Poseidon, Circe and Polyphemus. He's not the best morally, but he is not hated by everyone and a devil upon earth.

Serious and important (σπουδαίας): Ofc, the tragedy must be serious and important. I think Epic is both. I mean, the Odyssey is a very serious matter, and taking 10 years to return to your homeland is pretty important. It wouldn't have been the second most well known epic if it wasn't important.

Finished (τέλειας): The tragedy must have everything that happened, the reasoning, the consequences and the excuses presented in some way. I'm not an objective judge because I knew the Odyssey before Epic, but there are no plot holes like that from what I know.

Seasonings (ηδυσμένω λόγω): The tragedy must have something to make it more interesting and entertaining. Yes, Aristotle used a parallel to cooking, but he mainly meant rhythm and music. I think the title shows that, yes, there's both. Epic The Musical is a musical after all.

Correct me if I'm wrong or missing anything, but for now the answer is yes, according to Aristotle, Epic is a tragedy.

That's going to be short, but tragedy is generally interpreted as a misfortunate event in general. Yes. I'm pretty sure Epic is a tragedy in this kind.

Now, let's see whether or not Odysseus is a tragic character. According to my Helen by Euripides professor, a tragic character has to:

• Fight with Fates and Gods generally but also other humans, sometimes even themselves.

• Go from ignorance to knowledge through facing tragic dilemmas, contradicting situations and dead ends. It also has to include the consequences of these actions (guilt, loneliness, woe, defeat or redemption)

• Result in moral freedom, which shows the personality of the tragic character

Okay, so, point 1. Odysseus fights with all 4 in some ways. In No Longer You, he hears that he won't make it back, misinterprets it and decides to change his personality in order to fight fate, making No Longer You a self-fulfilling prophecy. Gods are numerous. Poseidon in Ruthlessness, Get In The Water and Six Hundred Strike. Zeus' will in The Horse And The Infant. Athena, if we stretch it, in Warrior Of The Mind, Remember Them and My Goodbye. Calypso in Love In Paradise. Humans is Luck Runs Out and especially Mutiny, as well as the upcoming song Odysseus. Himself and his morals is one of the additions from Jorge, and a constant theme of Epic. Just A Man and Monster are centered around that however there are hints everywhere.

Point number 2 might be controversial, but I'll take as knowledge the "Ruthlessness is mercy" mentality and Odysseus' belief that it works as the story goes on. Odysseus starts with the Open Arms mentality, and in later songs starts to accept, even welcome and hunt ruthlessness. He starts to believe that ruthlessness will make him achieve his goal, showcased in Different Beast, Scylla, Thunder Bringer and, most of all, Six Hundred Strike and Odysseus. Does it work? For him and his family, his main priorities, yes. I'll take that as growing knowledge it will. He even says so in Monster:

"Ruthlessness is mercy upon ourselves

And deep down I know this well"

Are his words to be trusted? No, not really. But it's just one more point. As for the tragic dilemmas, contradicting situations and dead ends, I think I've got at least one example for each. Dillema is obviously the infant, Astyanax. Do you kill an innocent soul because you were told it will kill your family? Or do you spare it and hope for the best? Contradicting situations could be the lyrics from Just A Man and Puppeteer:

"Deep down I would trade the world to see my son and wife"

"There's no length I wouldn't go if it was you I had to save"

Up until Thunder Bringer, that's possible. But not both can happen when Zeus makes Odysseus choose. He'll either see his son and wife, or he'll save his brother-in-law, Eurylochus. I know he didn't really want to save Eurylochus at this point (though I don't believe he wanted him dead), but those promises are contradicting. Love In Paradise is a dead end for Odysseus. If Athena didn't care for him, he would have been left in Ogygia for eternity as Calypso's plaything. Odysseus thought it was a dead end. He saw death as his only way out. Hell, he almost acted on his suicidal thoughts (that was a very, very stressful part of the musical for me). And is anyone going to argue Odysseus doesn't feel guilt, woe, loneliness, defeat or redeemed at some point in the story? I thought so.

EDIT: I forgot point 3 for Tragic Odysseus, let me add it. The story hasn't ended yet, so we can't tell for sure. But I believe he'll have the choice, after killing the suitors, to soften down and live in peace or continue the ruthless, cold path. From the snippets we've heard, it's going to be the former. Which also reveals a thing or two about his character: he didn't want to be ruthless or cause pain. He has always wanted peace with his family, and he'll get it.

Odysseus is a tragic character, at least in Epic.

So why isn't the Odyssey classified as a tragedy? Or Odysseus by Homer a tragic character? There are two reasons.

a) It has no music or rhythm. Which means it doesn't fulfill all the criteria for a tragedy (look to the seasonings section)

b) In Homer's time, the word tragedy didn't exist. The word was created centuries later to fit plays like Prometheus Bound by Aeschylus, Antigone by Sophocles and Medea by Euripides. I'm not going to analyse those, but they involve acting and music, not just a guy reciting a poem.

Anyways, I didn't expect this to get this long. Tell me if I've missed anything or made a mistake :)

[saint-ajax]

Phantom Of The Sea

THE ONLY DAUGHTER OF POSEIDON AND Aphrodite was Sierra. She inherited her mother’s ethereal beauty and as her father was the God of  Sea, she could live in the deepest ocean there is. She was a product of mistakes and everyone in Olympus knew that. It may be one of the reasons why the Olympians look at her differently. None of the children wanted to make friends with her, and almost all her life she was treated miserably. But the Goddess of Warfare was the only soul who had a soft heart and kindness to the poor child. So as Sierra grew, she was clandestinely taught how to fight. She grew to be a brave lady with an astonishing beauty you can not deny. She was so beautiful that her mother, the Goddess of beauty and love, discovered a covetous jealousy that possessed her to banish her own daughter from her palace and sent her to her father to live in the sea. Sierra left Olympus with her heart filled with anger, hatred, and rage built ever since she was a child.

  In her life under the deepest and darkest sea, she found light in her enchanting voice and grace. At one point, she discovered that the sound and sight of her can seduce mortals, men, women, and… Gods. Ever since she was a child, she was clueless about what she was given to rule, what she was destined to be a God of,  but now in her new home, her lustrous scales gave her an idea. She was the Goddess of Sirens.

  Her heart was painted in anger and it pushed her to use her assets to seduce mortals who dared to sail, bring them to her cave, and decide their time of death. This continued for almost an eternity, thousands of humans tried to find and catch the infamous killer of the sea but none of them succeeded in passing her deceitful seducing mirage.

One morning, in one of her favorite islands where no one lives but silence, her paradise, where she goes to pass the time, had a living breathing mortal out of nowhere. The stranger was a rugged man in a veil. His mask seemed to be a skull of a being. And this awakened Sierra’s interest. It paused her plans to make that man her meal. From the corner of the island where she wouldn’t be seen by the young man, she eyed him in serenity. She watched how he walked by the shore in the morning and witnessed his sailing whenever the sunset. Her former annoyance of him vanished, whereupon the peacefulness of the island remained even with his presence.

One afternoon, Sierra’s curiosity got the best of her, and entertained the idea of approaching the boy’s boat without him looking. Her sneaking exposed her to silver and brass apparatus. Her attention was focused on a piece of silverware with four pointed edges. In a quick move, she swam deep with the material in hand. Back in her cave, after staring for hours at it, she ended up using it to untangle her silk hair. Meanwhile, the young man’s eyebrows furrowed in confusion as to why the calm water moved, but his focus was quickly diverted to his missing fork.

  The next day when he sailed, his fork came back out of nowhere with shiny pearls. Confusion built in his mind as he set them aside. Several exchanges of the moon and sun passed and their dance continued in its own rhythm. In every missing silver, comes back with newfound pearls. Whenever it was time to close the day, there was a mortal and a goddess watching without knowing the other knew about their presence.

      He could afford to build a castle with the amount of pearls he earned, he thought. At long last, he then decided to wait and catch the thief and returner of his belongings.

  He kept an eye on his ship and the body of water as the sun ended its reign, and by the time daylight covered the scene, the fairest woman he had ever laid his sight on made an appearance that surprised both companies. Their opposite-tinted orbs met. Once she realized that he saw her, she vanished out of thin air. She went back to her pitch-black nature. While he tried to chase her with his eyes, his confusion unfortunately froze him in his spot and he did nothing but let and watch her leave.

  The young man’s night became devoted to debating and thinking about whether it was a mermaid he saw. If he was in fact correct, he would be rewarded by the King if he ever brought them into their hands. The night went by and afterglow arrived once again, he found himself in his usual spot waiting for the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen.

Meanwhile, Sierra purposely showed up, she was testing what would be the mortal’s reaction to her presence. If he dares to make the wrong move, then there would be a siren singing that night.

           But silence joined salt air when they finally saw each other. Their eyes lingered on one another until the young man decided to shatter the deafening silence between them.

       "When shall you be returning my silverware, fair lady?”

      The masculine man’s first words to her left her dazed. She could sense no fear as he stared directly at her radiant orbs and it only blossomed her curiosity of the man. When the fair lady did not respond, he tried once again.

 “Are you heedless that thy actions as stealing are pondered as a crime you shall be responsible for?”

  Her eyebrows lifted at his statement, and she enchanted him by simply speaking.

“I committed no crime when I intended to restore your taken treasure, and in truth, gave back more than I took.”

      “Capturing an object that is not thy possession without permission is known as stealing which is a crime.”

        The young man noticed that her eyes were focused on his neck, where his pendant of identification hangs from his service as a remarkable knight lieutenant for the King. When she pointed at it, he immediately disapproved by shaking his head.

 “I vow to return your fortune.” She swears.

“I’m afraid that's not happening.” He declines.

   “I advise you to trade it for gold.”

    “You heard me the first time, my lady.”

  “Sierra.” She received only a hum of acknowledgment from the young man. “And you are..?”

 “Ghost.” He made her smile. And all of a sudden he couldn’t look away from her blinding beauty.

   “You are a mortal named ‘Ghost’?” He confirmed with a nod as she released a contagious laugh.

      Ever since the mortal and the goddess met, they didn’t realize that they deliberately pledged time to spend together to capture the last gasp of beauty before the death of the day perpetually.

        Sierra even sang for Ghost once without any incantation and what he could only utter was,

      “You are a Goddess I would worship for eternity, Sierra.”

While she only responded with a mischievous sly grin.

      Like a usual afternoon, Sierra and Ghost were letting one another read chapters of their life.

       “Ghost.. Was the designated name for me when I performed my duties as a Lieutenant for the King.”

   “Lieutenant.. Ghost?” She fathomed in fascination. “If so.. Then ’Ghost’ is not your true name?”

     He hummed to confirm. That had put a frown on her face when she perceived the truth of the lack of trust he had for her by the simplicity of giving his birth name. Ghost took notice of her sudden silence, therefore, he tried to check up on her, but she was quicker to notice that he saw what was happening with her thus she proceeded to speak before him to cut him off.

    “Oh, I nearly forgot to caution you to be careful..there is a forthcoming storm.”

      His brows knitted at her change of topic. “It shall be as you say.” She nodded at his response. And when she prepared to swim away, he tried to stop her.

      “Am I bound to hope that we shall meet again?”

      “Fate shall know… Ghost.”

      She purposely weighed his name before vanishing to the depths of sea.

      When the moon wielded the night, Sierra’s oath came to life. Gigantic waves dominated the sea, heavy drops of rain demolished, and it was pure rage the wind and lighting proclaimed. Inside his sanctuary, there was no distress, no terror of the storm from Ghost but worry for the lady who was recently trapped in his labyrinth. He was worried for the mermaid who lived below the light and kept him on the edge of his seat the whole night. But the reign of moon finally ended yet all he could think about was her safety, her situation, if she was harmed or hopefully spent the night safely.

   Soon the king of light rose from the horizon, chirps of birds echoed along the calm wind and the sea was now at ease. A quiet knock came from the door. He was puzzled as he reached to open the entrance and see whoever was at the other side.

      The ground caught his jaw when the door gave sight of the Goddess on the other side. A captivating heavenly beauty stood familiar by heart, covered in peplos. 

    He was speechless, left in shock. He couldn’t believe a Goddess was standing right in front of his eyes. Luckily, a skull and clothing hid his face from the world.

     “Pleasant morning, Ghost. I only arrived as I wish to be aware of your condition after the storm.” 

     Her soothing tone comforted the harmonic morning and it brought him back to reality. He came back to his senses when he realized it was Sierra who was the stunning ethereal lady standing in front of him.

     “Sierra..”

“Ghost? Are you well?” She was starting to worry about his lack of response.

      “Sierra.. How are you with feet? I was secured the whole night. I am grateful that you care. You are the one who shall be questioned of their well-being. Do come in.” He widened the space for her to enter.

   “My pleasure. It is not necessary for you to worry about my health. I have experienced an even more terrible life in Olympus.”

      “I guess so.. –Olympus?”

   Sierra’s eyes widened when she realized what she had shared.

     “I only casted my feet to know if you are well. Are you confident that you are?”

     “You endangered yourself due to my being? Sierra, you are clueless of what you are doing. You shall come as I will take you back to your home.”

      “You are home.”

      “Stop being oblivious, Sierra. You would not desire to be with me, for I am not a nobleman.”

      “I am certain that it is not an appalling atrocity.”

       “I have taken hundreds of lives with my bare hands, Sierra.”

     “I am aware. You are the Lieutenant for your King, did you not say?”

     “Exactly.”

  “Therefore?”

    “You are the definition of pure and noble, Sierra. Your flawless skin.. your angelic eyes I could not find myself to look away from.. your luscious tail. In truth, you define perfection.”

    “I have not heard of your true name nor have I seen the magnificent mortal behind the mask, Ghost. Thus, same as me, you have not dived into my pool of sins for you to be definite of my genuine self.”

       “I am certain that it is not an appalling atrocity.”

         When Ghost threw her own words at her, she couldn't hold it anymore.

      “I behold such a fact that you are aware of my great love and care for you, Ghost. May whoever or whatever you have done.” Sierra held back tears before abandoning him speechless. And it was too late when he tried to run after her.

    Days elapsed and Ghost sailed consistently to try and catch Sierra by the nightfall, the time of day they usually meet, hoping to ask for her forgiveness. But days evolved into weeks and it was beginning to feel as if there was no existence of the mermaid at all.

       A mermaid who woke his long dead heart.

       He was filled with great sorrow and regret in the days when there were no signs of Sierra.

    Until one night, a miracle knocked on his door and made his heart beat crazy in hope of seeing Sierra once he opened the door. Heaven and earth entwined him when a different face of a goddess faced him.

      “Are you the mortal known as ‘Ghost’?” Authority and bravery would be sensed on her tone of speaking.

      “I am.” He responded.

     “If you without a doubt care about the Goddess of Sirens, you are to come with me right this moment.”

        “In what reasons would I care about the Goddess of Sirens?” Even if Ghost thought he had an idea who the lady was talking about, he didn't make it obvious.

       “For the Goddess of Sirens who ruled the Sea is named.. Sierra.”

        It was as if he was poured down with cold water with what he heard that he couldn't speak.

        “You are nothing but a fool if you weren't aware of this truth. Cease this nonsense right this instance and save the Goddess from the verdict of Zeus.”

          Athena made the former soldier do as told with her commanding tone. Ghost wasn't sure how they arrived at the sacred mountain of Olympus, but he was certain that it was Gods and Goddesses daggering him with looks full of judgment and studying his existence as if he wasn't meant to be there. And they were correct, he was just a mortal who had no right to be in the same place or even breathe the same air as God. But he did not have any time nor intended to self-pity, for this once caused him the sole reason of his being. Or in simpler words, the love of his life. The only soul who was ready to accept and love him for whoever or whatever he had done.

       Proud yet emotionless was the face carved behind the mask of Ghost. He followed right behind Athena who stood and bowed to show respect to the throne of Zeus. One gesture of Zeus and Athena vanished from her position and stepped aside, leaving the center of attention to the only mortal in the room. Zeus flashed a taunting smirk when the mortal in front of him did not dare to break the eye contact it held with a God.

       “A foolish and impudent mortal is the one you bring to save the Goddess of Sirens from death, Athena?!”  He yelled, howled, and tore the noises they caused that made the whole stadium sit in silence.

      Meanwhile, the Goddess of Warfare reacted as if she heard nothing, as if she wasn't yelled at by the God of all, she remained cold and unmoved while staring at nothing. Ghost had the exact same posture except his eyes widened when he took notice of the use of the word death in the same sentence with Sierra.

     “Death.. ?” He could not hold back anymore and started asking, he badly wanted to know her situation. Is she okay? Has she eaten yet? Where was she?  Is she in the middle of the sea waiting for him to sail? How he wished that their condition would always be as it was.

        “Precisely. The daughter of Poseidon and Aphrodite shall be punished for unjust killings of thousands of mortals! men.. women.. And demigods.”

        Ghost knew that taking one’s life is vile, wrong, evil. But he couldn’t force to stop the smile that was forming on his lips when he knew that the woman who owned his heart was the same as he was. Morally corrupt, rotten soul, sinful and ungodly, a killer. They were fit for each other.

      “Yet.. the judgment can still be revoked..” All of a sudden, Ghost found a shed of light for just a split second when Zeus continued.

      “If only she were to marry me.”

     His closed fist tightened its grip on nothing when he heard those words. His anger boiled when he heard the condition of Sierra’s freedom from death. She was his. He would never let death nor any God or mortal take her away.

      “Bring her out!” He demanded.

   “Fool! And who did you think you are for anyone here to follow!?”

  “Bring Sierra out!” The mortal wasn’t moved one bit and even had a higher tone in speaking to a god.

     “Mortal!” Athena called out to Ghost to scold him for disrespecting.

   The mocking laugh Zeus released thundered the entire domain as he gestured to one of the knights.

  “You’re brave, Lieutenant.” An insulting smirk appeared on his lips while he sneered at Ghost, “I'll give you that.” obviously wanting him to know that he knew who he was.

    “Summon the Goddess.” Zeus commanded calmly which the knights obeyed immediately. A few tense minutes went by and the sound of chains hitting the ground was starting to sound close by. Then the knights appeared surrounding the most beautiful goddess in the room. But there was something off with her. She looked lifeless. And as if a dog whose owner did not want her to bark, she had a dog muzzle. His heart of stone tore into a million pieces at the scene. He fought the urge to run and rip the rope securing her wrists and feet and pull her to his embrace.

   But he became a statue as he took in her condition. She was pale, hollow-cheeked, as if she was starving for weeks. They forcedly sat her beside Zeus’ throne, as if she was the reigning Queen.

  “Sierra..” He whispered weakly.

    She slowly brought her gaze up to find the source of that familiar voice and found his warm eyes staring back at her. The eyes that calm her system down. She couldn’t do anything but squirm and persist to be free from being restrained. Her radiant eyes moistened from tears that begged to fall when she saw him. Weak and faint cries were heard from Sierra.

    Ghost wasn’t able to hold it together anymore when her cries reached his ears. He tried to run to her, but the alert knights held and forced him down before he caught the throne.

   “You stop this instance you imbeciles! You! Mortal! If you, as you claim, care for the Goddess, I challenge you to prove it right this moment.” One flick of his hand and one of the chevaliers threw Ghost away and a sword at him. He wholeheartedly accepted the challenge.

  Sierra became undone at the scene in front of her. She was nervous, scared, and at the same time impressed at the mad skills Ghost was showing as he defended and slayed the knights of gods. There was fire in his eyes, igniting him to win. But the battle wasn’t fair and square, Zeus was tiring him out by sending more and more warriors with each knight he slayed. Sierra kept squirming in her seat as she witnessed the unfair battle before flinching when she felt a hand land on her shoulder.

    Ghost was well aware of Zeus’ intentions, he was purposely exhausting him so he would give up, but no matter how many stabs or bruises he received, giving up would never cross his mind knowing the price it pays.

      Each swish of sword and duck of his, he sensed where the other was if it was nowhere near his sight. As he jabbed the steel into the man’s chest breaking through its skin and sinking into its bones, it was too late to duck from the stab that was coming from behind, but before a blade passed through him, a dead body dropped behind him instead, at the same time when the one in front his face dropped dead. When he turned around, he saw Sierra with a sword slightly gasping for air, his saviour from the traitor enemy. She ran to help him as soon as Athena untied her.

      “Ghost..” She whispered breathlessly. Just a few more steps and they were finally able to feel another’s embrace. At the drop of the armor, Sierra locked his neck around her arms while Ghost secured her waist in his arms.           

      “I love you, Sierra. I am such a fool, please, I need you to forgive—”

     “Shh.. shh.. I know, my only. I know. And I love you too, I love you so much.”

     “Fools!” At the same time as Zeus let out a scream, the arrow came free and landed on the back of the mortal.

    Sierra froze on her spot as she slowly processed what just happened. Ghost’s blooded body fell on the ground but she immediately tried to catch his head.

        “No.. no.. this.. This is not possible. This can not be.. no.. ”

        She couldn’t control the tears that were falling from her eyes. All the anger that burned inside her for centuries was turning into pure pain and sorrow.

       “Ghost.. Don’t.. Please.. Don’t leave me.. I beg of you.. Don’t.”

      Ghost weakly tried to reach his balaclava to let the Goddess know his genuine self. While Sierra was as seen as if she saw an angel, a handsome hunk angel. Even if he was painted in blood, and deep scars, it didn’t manage to lessen his striking beauty. From his brilliant eyes, sharp nose, and jaw, she was falling for him all over again.

       “You are the most handsome mortal I sang for.”

      “You are the most beautiful goddess I fought for.”

       At the same time a smile appeared on Sierra’s lips was the escape of tears and a cough of blood from Ghost.

      “Oh, Ghost. No.. shh.. no.. my ghost.."

     “Simon.” Simon corrected. “Simon is my true name, my only.”

     “Simon..” Sierra repeated in fascination. “I love you, Simon. I do.”     

     She left a kiss on his forehead as Simon left his last words before his last breath.

    “For eternity, even at the last gasp of sun, I can only witness beauty when I’m with you.”

      Each corner of the stadium was filled with Sierra’s screeching scream when Ghost officially caught his last breath. Her pain and grief were painfully evident in her yells and her cries. Every god and goddess watched her scream in pain. Her agony maimed everyone who heard her howl on the whole mountain of sacredness.

      Yet no matter what the two of them went through that day, she was still served with death on the same day and neither of her parents defended or sought to comfort her. No one ever did except for the mortal who lay lifeless next to her.

       From that day on, the cry and screams of agony of the siren echoed eternally at the depths of the sea, and anyone who came across, anyone unfortunate enough to hear it, was never found.

      And that became the birth of the phantom of the sea.

[tsunagite]

Miscellaneous

[onelittleworld]

So... you guys know how there are thematic parallels between opposing characters is EPIC:

Polyphemus (the cyclops) turns Odysseus' theme against him in 'Survive':

"Defeat is not allowed..."✊️ -> "Escape is not allowed..."😡

And later Athena turns Antinous' words to Telemachus in "Little Wolf":

"I'll teach you all the lessons your daddy never could... " 👑

-> "Let's teach this dog a lesson in front of all his kind..." 🤛

Soo I was thinking... WHAT IF Odysseus got to do such a response to Poseidon's "Get in the water"? 💧🩸

Maybe something like this:

ODYSSEUS:

You're going to call of that storm

POSEIDON:

Or what? You can't kill me.

ODYSSEUS:

Time's up

[Picks up trident]🔱

(PS: Shadowing mostly means it uses the rhythm from the original line; screenshot didnt catch the final lines...)

Thanks for reading this far <3

[choicesmaychallenge24]

MAY 2024 PROMPTS

Have fun! Take liberties! Be weird!

Playlist Inspo

SPOTIFY || YOUTUBE

Deity Inspo

(extensive list of Dieties can be found here)

Zeus

Power, Oak tree, unfaithful

"Statistically, you've got better chances being struck by lightning"

Hera

Marriage, revenge, peacock

"Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned"

Poseidon

Ocean, earthquakes, horses

"stormy eyes"

Demeter

Wheat fields, middle child, poppy

"...moods that changed like the weather"

Apollo

Harp, medicine, prophesy

"...like they were the sun"

Artemis

Wilderness, moon, archery

"lets go lesbians, lets go!"

Ares

War, strength, hated

"Don't be a boar"

Athena

Wisdom, strategy, owl

"You're giving me a headache"

Hephaestus

Inventive, disability, overlooked

"...Like a volcano about to erupt"

Aphrodite

Pearls, swan, passion

"You know ___ is an aphrodisiac"

Hermes

Guide, messages, travel

"That's just an eloquent way of saying, 'fuck you.'"

Hestia

Home comforts, Eldest Daughter problems, gentle

"Sometimes a family is (insert found family here)"

Dionysus

Wine, celebration, mania

"I heard it though the grapevine..."

Nyx

Mysterious, rest, starlight

"Goodnight, My Love"

Hades

Rich, death, responsibility

"who's a good puppy?"

Quotes

"You wish to be considered righteous, but not to act with justice." (Eumenides)

"Talk sense to a fool and he calls you foolish." (The Bacchae)

"Isn’t it delightful to forget how old we are?" (The Bacchae)

"I was born to join in love, not hate - that is my nature" (Antigone)

“I have no love for a friend who loves in words alone.” (Antigone)

“Have you ever been struck by a sudden desire for - soup?” (The Frogs)

Dionysus [doing everything wrong], "Like that?" (The Frogs)

“If you try to cure evil with evil, you will add more pain to your fate.” (Ajax)

“Which would you choose if you could: pleasure for yourself despite your friends, or a share in their grief?” (Ajax)

“I ask this one thing: let me go mad in my own way.” (Electra)

"Oh, it is easy for the one who stands outside the prison-wall of pain to exhort and teach the one who suffers” (Prometheus Bound)

“In childbirth grief begins.” (Medea)

"I'll take care of you."

"it's rotten work."

"Not to me. Not if it's you." (Euripides)

“Love, stealing with grace into the heart you wish to destroy, love, turning us blind with the bitter poison of desire, love come not my way. And when you whirl through the streets, wild steps to unchained rhythms, love, I pray you, brush not against me, love, I beg you, pass me by.” (The Love of the Nightingale)

“There is a time for many words, and there is also a time for sleep.” (The Odyssey)

“Be strong, saith my heart; I am a soldier; I have seen worse sights than this.” (The Odyssey)

"Any moment might be our last. Everything is more beautiful because we're doomed. You will never be lovelier than you are now. We will never be here again." (The Iliad)

FASHION INSPO

From Dolce & Gabbana

STORY INSPO

Many of these stories have different tellings and variations, embrace whichever version you most enjoy.

Echo and Narcissus (painting) (story)

Pandora's Box (painting) (story)

Arachne (painting) (story)

Hades and Persephone (painting) (story)

The Gorgon Medusa (painting) (story)

Cygnus (painting) (story)

Theseus, Ariadne, and the Minotaur (painting) (story)

Daedalus and Icarus (painting) (story)

Eros and Psyche (sculpture) (story)

Orpheus and Euydice (painting) (story)

Myth of Sisyphus (painting) (story)

Cassandra (painting) (story)

The Fates (painting) (story)

Atlas (sculpture) (story)

[jungle-angel]

Head In The Clouds (Bob Floyd x Reader)

Summary: When Bob makes love to you in the clouds, you swear it's the best thing ever (Greek Mythology AU)

Warnings: SMUT (18+ only, minors will be yeeted from this blog and blocked)

Tagging: @floydsmuse @sebsxphia @bobfloydsbabe and an especially big thank you to @attapullman as this is for International Bob Floyd Fucks Month!!!!! (lol).

At last, at long last you returned to your home in the clouds close to Mount Olympus, worn out from racing Ares and Apollo all day long on your black pegasus. The clouds had always been home for you and Bob, a place as wild and free as the forests on the earth below. Your fuzzy, fluffy little dream dragon ran right to you, curling around your legs and purring like a cat as if to welcome you home.

You saw Bob flying in just a moment later, fresh from helping Hermes on a mission for one of the Titans. Bob's sandaled feet touched down on the clouds as though they were solid ground, his snow white wings still unfurled like a pair of brilliant flags as he scooped you up in his strong arms.

"Missed you sweet cheeks," he said before planting a kiss on your lips.

You hummed into his kiss, reveling in the warmth that enveloped you. "I missed you too," you purred. "How'd everything go?"

"Better than ever," Bob answered. "Hyperion was more than happy to have the lamps working again and everybody made it home safe too."

You were relieved to say the least. Ever since the Titans had allied with the Olympians, things hadn't been better. You had yet to see the new island home of your distant ancestors, as did the rest of the Daggers, but Bob assured you that it would be something to look forward to going down the road.

You and Bob tended to your duties for the day, helping Hera, Poseidon and the others wherever you could until at last, night had begun to fall in the heavens. The moon and stars had all shined brightly as the creatures of the sky took to their cloud beds, curling up and drifting off to sleep along with your little fuzzy friend.

Bob couldn't help but stare off into that wild expanse of heaven, the deep sapphire blue skies making him sleepier than usual. He felt your arms sneaking their way around his waist as you pressed a kiss to his shoulder.

"Shouldn't you be getting ready for bed (y/n)?" he chuckled.

"Same can be said of you," you told him with a wry grin.

He pulled you into his arms, his deep blue eyes roaming over every trace of you as he pulled you into his strong but comforting embrace, breathing in your scent as though he had been away for longer.

In an instant you felt his warm lips on yours, kissing you gently and trailing from your lips to your jaw. You felt the tip of his tongue brushing against your skin, just tiny little licks at first, but as Bob began trialing down your neck, they became much more intense. A breathy little moan fell from your mouth as Bob kissed the curve of your neck.

"Shhhhh my love," he whispered. "Remember, somebody might hear us."

Bob gently guided you to the big mass of clouds that you both slept on every night, crooking a finger to beckon you closer. Your kissing became much more heated as his nimble fingers found the clasps on your copper colored tunic, drawing the thin, stringy straps down. The sheer fabric quickly fell, revealing your naked skin, pooling around your ankles as you helped Bob with his, the two of you never once breaking the kiss.

He laid you on your back, drawing a gasp as his rock hard cock found its way into your slick entrance. Bob watched with pure adoration as your eyes went wide and a gasp was drawn from your throat.

"Bob......?" you moaned.

"Hmm??"

You draw his hips against yours, creating a rhythm that made the little spot between your legs tingle with pleasure. "You like that?" he purred.

You nodded, a lazy smile playing with the corners of your mouth.

Bob slowly thrust his hips in and out of you, trailing kisses down your collarbone, taking great care to drag his tongue along the swells of your breasts and over your nipples. Bob swirled his tongue around them until they became pointed little dusty pink peaks.

"Bob......Bob.....p....please.....please....."

Your pleas were music to his ears as he dragged his tongue down to your navel, swirling it around and flicking it in and out. "My gorgeous wife," he groaned. "I love every bit of you and your body......."

Your moans grew louder as he spread your legs and kissed down the sensitive little spots on your inner thighs before going for the one spot that drove you crazy. His tongue worked its magic, flicking in circles, up, down and all around until you were a moaning mess.

"Bob.....Bob sweetie, I......I'm gonna......"

"Wait, wait for me sweetheart," he panted. "Hold on."

You moaned even louder when you suddenly felt him enter back into you, amazed at how fucking big he really was. He continued to thrust in and out of you, slowly, gently until both your hips jerked against each other, the both of you a fucked out, blissful mess.

Bob kissed your lips, his body heavy and relaxed against yours underneath him. "You're amazing, you know that?" he chuckled.

You laughed as he guided you down from the rest of your high, the clouds cool against your heat filled bodies. You and Bob lay in your bed of clouds, blissed out but relaxed and content as you explored each other's naked bodies, touching, kissing and caressing each other in the silvery moonlight.

"You get prettier every day (y/n)," he murmured sleepily. "You're everything to me."

You traced over his jaw, gently caressing his face. "And you're everything to me, Bob......you always will be."

Bob kissed you until you both fell asleep in each other's arms, never once letting each other go and waking up the same way, when the day began anew with the sun on your faces and the two of you together.

[trafalgarlogy]

☰ FAITH - POSEIDON !

→ TW ! possessiveness, gore, killing, lil bit of NSFW like a pinch of salt → Tags @aftongiulien, @posei-dont-mina, & comment if you want to be tagged!

"Why waste those precious tears over the cruel world, My Pearl the only one who can protect you & have faith is me..."

How Did You Meet !

→ Poseidon, the mighty god of the sea was certainly known to hate humans, he saw them as nothing but pests until he found an exception among those humans whom he never cared about and looked down on. He had found perfection. → It all started on that fateful day... when he was coast admiring the mesmerizing view of the sunset, and the sounds of waves crashing; it was all so peaceful and relaxing. → "What a beautiful view!" a soft voice interrupted him, turning around in annoyance he found himself meeting those gorgeous (e/c) eyes. He felt his heart soften in just the presence of this human. → Poseidon watched the human admire the sunset, as he examined at his/her/their features, the (h/c) hair blew in a matching rhythm with the wind, his/her/their rosy lips curled into a perfect smile. → the blonde god wanted to know about him/her/them but his pride held him back. the only courage he could hold was to ask, "What's your name, human?", the (h/c)-ette without any hesitation replied "I'm (Name) (Last Name), you can call me (Name)", he felt his heart beat rising at every word of the mortal, what was this strange feeling?. →"By the way, what's you-!" (Name) sentence was left incompleted when he/she/they saw Poseidon walk towards the sea and disappear in a blink of an eye.

Aftermath

→ Poseidon had a hard time accepting the fact he was in love, after having a "small conversation" with Aphrodite. the goddess was aware of Poseidon falling for a mortal like (Name) even after how Poseidon kept quiet about the human, and she knew it wasn't some normal love, it was far more chaotic and obsessive which is what she called "Mania". → The thought of (Name) drove him crazy, seeing him/her/them in the reflection of the clear water; even appearing in his dreams. → He would always admire him/her/them when they come by the coast from a corner smiling to himself. and sometimes send spies to gather every bit of information about (Name). → The obsession had got so tense that he got (Name)'s painting made, which he'd admire the entire day. → When he started interacting with (Name), he realized she was with another man/woman at the time. this enraged the god but not to be suspected by his beloved he couldn't get his hands dirty, and hired assassins do his work. When hearing the news of his/her/their lover's death made him/her/them depressed and during those hard times, Poseidon accompanied his beloved. → time passed by, and (Name) finally realized that he/she/they were now in love with Poseidon, but soon it became his/her/their biggest mistake.

How would he treat you !

→ Poseidon is the most obsessive and possessive yandere like this guy is just beautiful by just the looks but from the inside and why I say that? he would kill your entire family to cut down your bonds from the mortal realm just so you don't have a reason to go home. → Forget the word escape, there is no way you can get escape from him, cause he is one of the most powerful gods and it's easy for him to find you with his sources. → He would seriously gouge the eyes out of any man/woman who even mistakenly glances at you. → The man will take the word Friends out of your dictionary, he only wants you for himself, and himself only; no one else. → Ahem, just for your information, no matter how cold the god of seas maybe but he is 1000 times more lustful. So do expect yourself to end up in bed in a mess every morning. → But him having sex with you, always depends on his mood, he wants to do it with you he will; it doesn't matter whether it's against your will, cause my man is making the rules in the bed. → Well ahem, the sex you will be having is not gonna be gentle, *cough* more like hardcore and rough. So RIP, you won't be able to walk for an entire month (anyways enough with my crackhead NSFW, let's get into a few serious ones even though I can't make anything serious.) → there is a high possibility you'd have tried killing yourself because of your abusive and toxic relationship with him, but he would prevent that from happening by hiding all the sharp things, ropes, and poisons; and locking you up in a small cage and starving you till you beg for his forgiveness. → even asking for his brother's and other god's help is useless, cause they are not looking forward to the God of Seas wrath → your body would be full of bruises and marks, for how much he'd hit you for trying to escape or kill yourself. → He would always tell you for your best and to protect you from the cruel world that would always try to harm you, all you have to do is have faith in him. → The only cute thing he does is, he would plant kisses on bruises he gave you, and try making up with you by taking you outside to the mortal realm once in a while and showing wonderful places with famous architecture and aesthetics like take for eg. Paris, or any other place you dreamed to go. → If you want to survive with a yandere like him, its best for you to submit to him

About Mania !

→In Greek Mythology, There are 8 types of Love: Agape, Philia, Pragma, Ludus, Storge, Eros, Philautia and Mania →I won't be getting into details about other love types, but Mania Just like mentioned at the start Mania is Obsessive Love, where a person is so in love with someone that they don't realize that when it turns into obsession, in this type of love a person gets really jealous to an extreme level, →like taking the example of some toxic army fans, when they heard some rumors about BTS's Jungkook dating and they started a tag on Twitter "#cutforkookie" just to prove how much they "love" him, I will not get into the disturbing details of this case, case it can be disturbing for some. →this kind of behavior can lead to some unhealthy, toxic, and abusive relationships. →and so ladies and gentlemen prevent yourselves to get into this kind of love. If you think acting in this kind of love is cool, then I'd suggest you see a therapist cause it's not cool.

→THANK YOU FOR READING !

[shanastoryteller]

Do you think you'll tackle Serene and Endymion in your Greek Myths? They are gorgeous btw. ;)

Not all titans were subdued. Not all were lost, or chained, or changed.

Some simply endured, too large and distant to be concerned with matters of titles and thrones.

Helios raged. Even bound within Tartarus, his sun burned brighter and angrier with each day, feeding off the hatred of the cursed titan. Seas turned to deserts as water was baked out of the earth. Apollo scooped up Helios’s chariot, bringing the sun to bear and returning a normal rhythm to the days and nights. Helios’s rage burns him even still, but the chariot has at least accepted its new master.

Artemis becomes associated with the moon because she is her brother’s other half in all things. But she constructs her chariot herself and it is used for races and to transport huntresses and little else.

The moon’s first goddess has never left. She has dragged the moon across the sky in her chariot of starlight uninterrupted for over a millennia.

The titan Selene did not join the fight of the new gods and the titans. She did not defend her brother nor did she attempt to save him.

But neither has she acknowledged the new pantheon. Zeus rules the sky and has demanded an audience with her many times, but she has never granted it. Zeus chases her chariot, but even riding lightning he can’t catch it when she unhooks the moon and no longer has its weight slowing her down.

Poseidon shakes his head and says, “Leave her be. I am the master of the sea and yet if I suddenly had to push forward every inch of the tide myself, I wouldn’t be left with much power to do anything else. All you’re doing is causing problems for the rest of us. Leave Selene to her work.”

Artemis agrees. If even Poseidon thinks bothering the moon titan is a bad idea, then they should listen. Usually he can’t be bothered to have opinions about anyone outside of his own wife, and even that’s rare.

Zeus gives up. Time passes, as it does, and no matter how the sun bucks and fights against her brother’s grip, sometimes going too quick and then too slow, the moon continues at the same steady pace.

Artemis grows stronger beneath moonlight. This must be because of her worshippers, or perhaps her brother’s. She never answers any prayers for tides or from people lost in the darkness, refusing every attempt to give her a power not her own, but her silence doesn’t seem to discourage anyone. Under the night sky her chariot moves impossibly fast and moonlight seems to always find her through the trees, which makes hunting difficult, but she doesn’t dare complain.

She does not want to earn Selene’s ire.

But despite her best efforts, Artemis does not manage to avoid her attention.

She is separated from her huntresses, spending the third night in a row tracking down a leopard that Demeter claims she drove mad on accident. Artemis doesn’t believe her, but the truth is irrelevant. This creature stalks and kills with Demeter’s blessing upon it, taking down all manor of creature and person.

Her temples have been filled with those begging for her aid. She’s blessed many spears, but her blessing doesn’t seem to be able to outweigh Demeter’s.

That irritates her enough that she’s seeing to this personally. She’s going to skin that damn leopard and wear it’s pelt to the next meeting of the pantheon.

One moment she’s skulking beneath a canopy of leaves, following several drops of blood she’s convinced will lead her to her prey, and the next the hair of her arms is standing on end and her heart is beating fast enough to make her light headed.

She swings around, spear raised, convinced that the damn leopard has found her first.

It’s not the leopard.

“You are the one they are praying too,” says a woman, her body soft with roundness and with the palest skin Artemis has seen on a living person. The extra skin beneath her chin gives her a perfectly circular face and the pockmarks across her face and body are a perfect echo of the moon’s many craters.

Selene tucks her ink black hair behind her ear and looks at her with equally dark eyes.

Artemis was born long after the war with the titans and she’s never ventured into Tartarus. She had assumed their presence felt much the same as other gods, that perhaps it was similar to the feeling of getting caught up in Hera’s rage.

It’s nothing like that.

Selene’s power is like a physical weight, as if they’re suddenly underwater and it’s surrounding them everywhere. Artemis lets it push her to her knees, bowing her head and trying to force her heart to calm. “Titan Selene. I swear that I did nothing to encourage them. I have not claimed any of your power.”

She should have done more than ignore them. She should have toppled temples and killed dissenters. She should have redirected their prayers. Anything to prevent what’s happening now.

“Would you like to?”

Artemis risks raising her head. Selene doesn’t sound angry and she doesn’t look it either. “I don’t understand.”

Selene gestures to the sky. “The moon is different from the sun. The sun pushes forward on its own and must be restrained and goaded in equal measure. Untethered, it will still rise and set. The moon must be pulled. It wants nothing more than to rest and unprompted it will stay motionless. If I step from my chariot for even a moment, the moon halts. It is unmoving now, as we speak.”

Artemis looks up. The moon always looks still to her. She wonders if the tides have noticed the difference.

“I have not been able to walk among earth for more than a few moments since I forged my chariot, lest all that follow the moon also go still and silent. They call you a moon goddess.”

“Please don’t make me take your place,” she says, not above begging. If the goddess traps her on her chariot, Artemis won’t have a choice.

Selene smiles, amusement making her eyes sparkle like distant stars. “You are young. You could not survive the chill or the weight for long. But perhaps you could endure for an hour or two.”

“I don’t understand,” she repeats, but some of her fear is starting to recede. Selene is not speaking like she’s going to strike her or curse her.

“There is a man,” she says, then pauses.

“Oh,” Artemis blinks, then, “Um, that’s not really my area. I could ask my brother?”

Selene laughs. “No, that is not necessary. I just need time. Will you steer my chariot each night so that I may walk across the earth unworried? Then you shall be a moon goddess in more than name.”

A titan, offering to share power for so little a reward? There has to be a catch. “Aren’t you worried that I’ll take too much?”

“I am not a goddess as you are a goddess,” she says, her derision light enough that Artemis can choose not to take offense to it. “My power neither grows nor dwindles based on the opinions of mortals. If you gain more, I do not have less.”

It shouldn’t be that surprising. All gods have some level of innate power. But not like this, not something that could alter the course of a planet, not this large and this terrifying.

Artemis decides then that Selene must be the most powerful of the titans. Anything else is too much to think about.

“I accept,” she says.

Selene reaches out, wrapping her thick fingers around her wrist, and then Artemis is somewhere else and she’s freezing.

“You get used to the cold,” Selene says, nudging her to the front of her chariot. The starlight glitters beneath her, driving home how her own silver chariot is nothing more than a pale imitation, no matter how it shines. “I drive the chariot forward with own will.”

Artemis’s works similarly. She focuses, and the chariot lurches forward, but then it jerks backwards. She glances behind, seeing the massive moon attached to the chariot with pulsing, heavy black chains. She tries again, slower, but no matter how much power she puts behind it, the moon won’t move forward a single inch.

“It’s alright,” Selene says. “I’ll help. You’ll grow stronger.”

She leans forward and spits out into space. Her saliva splits into two and then grows, until two massive, pearly white great wolves are standing at attention. Selene summons more of that strange black chain, looping it around the wolves’ chest and forming a hook to pull it through the front of the chariot before handing the ends to Artemis.

They’re heavy enough that she can feel the weight dragging her arms down. “What do I–”

Selene whistles and then wolves bound forward. For a moment they just strain against their chains, but then Artemis adds her own power to push the chariot, and then slowly, painfully, the moon is dragged forward.

“Good,” Selene says, the word settling into Artemis’s bones. “Stop when you must, but not before. I will feel the moon’s stillness and return.”

Her disappearance leaves the air surrounding Artemis even colder, but she refuses to shiver and instead urges the wolves faster with a snap of the celestial chains.

~

Endymion spends most of his nights on the tallest mountain within walking distance of the city, tracking the stars’ movements so that his fellow astronomers can check their equations against the realities of the heavens.

It takes him much longer than his colleagues and he blames it on an unsteady hand.

The truth is that his hands are perfectly steady. He has a one tablet of star positions and several rolls of linens with paintings of the moon. He’s not a very good artist, but something about it compels him, and so he spends hours each night determined to capture ever crevice and angle.

“Why are you always looking at me?”

He startles, dropping his brush, and turns on his heel to see who on earth is up here with him.

It’s a woman, with long black hair and a large body. There’s a puckered line along her cheek and he resists the urge to press his fingers against it, to follow it’s path until his fingers reach her lips. The soft pink of her plush mouth is the only bit of color on her.

Her question catches up with him and he sputters, “I’ve never seen you before!”

He would remember.

“You are always looking,” she insists, walking towards him. “What do you see?”

“I really haven’t seen you before,” he says, but doesn’t move away when she comes right up next to him. This close, he can see some faint color in her cheeks. He wonders if there are any other parts of her that tinge from pale to pink.

He feels heat rush to his own face at the thought. The bright moonlight that lets him see her so clearly is the same moonlight that’s going to give away his indecent thoughts.

But she doesn’t call him on it, instead pointing down at the crumpled linen. “Why?”

“Oh,” he flushes even more. “I don’t know. It’s beautiful, isn’t it? That’s reason enough.”

Endymion waits for her derision, the same that he’s received every time he’s gotten caught, but instead she curls her hands into the material of his shirt and says, “I agree,” and then she’s yanking him down to press her lips into his.

He tries to convince her to follow him home, but instead she disrobes right there and he can’t argue with that.

“Be here again tomorrow night,” she orders when the sweat is cooling on their bodies.

She likes to order him around. He doesn’t mind. “Won’t you tell me your name?”

“I will not answer questions that you already know the answer to,” she says, and then kisses him again before he can argue.

He means to walk down with her, to escort her home at least, but the moment he turns his back on her, she’s gone.

It takes him seven more nights with her for him to work up the courage to call her Selene.

She smiles and bites his shoulder, the imprints of her teeth a perfect circle.

gods and monsters series, part xxxiii

read more of the gods and monsters series here