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In the darkness of the underworld, Hades and Persephone are making love.
It is the first time, the first time in a very long time. He lies beneath her, staring up at her like he’s seeing her all-new, seeing her not as a God but as a man. His eyes are open and glassy, mouth scented with a hint of the last of her pomegranate wine, the wine they’ve shared. It’s the first time in years they’ve had sex before she left for the station; hell, the first time they’ve fucked in years, period.
“I love you,” he says, pleading worship between kisses as he moves his hips, burying himself deep within her. “I’ve always loved you.”
She bends down to him and kisses his lips, bites down hard enough to leave him bleeding. He groans, his cock twitches; she rides him hard and kisses him harder, his ichor staining her lips. “Love you too, lover,” she whispers, and he groans, his wide hands wrapping around her waist, possessive.
She rides him with a fury, passion moving their hips with Aphrodite’s glory. His mouth goes slack as she nibbles on his ear, the stern foreman melting into the innocent man who wants her so wholly, so utterly that she cannot help but be hungry for him again.
Hades kisses her with the fervent prayer of a man who wants to believe; she knows he wants to believe. He let the mortals go, and it didn’t work, but he tried, and Persephone wants to believe he’s gonna keep on trying, and she is too. No more electric cities; no more bickering. She holds on tight, and vows that much. It’ll be a new year, she thinks; he pulls back to cup her cheek and stare at her, the damned romantic staring at her like a love-struck boy. Her new, yet so familiar husband.
“What are you looking at?” She asks, her ability to speak hampered by her breathlessness, but she is not full of the recriminations that might have lingered in her speech a few hours ago. She stills her hips, staring at him, as he gasps up at her like he is seeing his most holy goddess. Which, she supposes, he is.
“My wife,” he says with reverence, the old softy. Deep down underneath it all, he’s the golden shackle that keeps her here, and they both know it. His finger strokes her cheek with thoughtful worship, like he’s afraid she’ll vanish if he strokes her too hard. “My wife.”
“How long have I been your wife?” She asks, cradling his chin in an old, familiar affection that feels new and necessary, now. His whiskers scratch her fingers as he stares at her, less the stern dictator than the love-struck fool.
“Since the dawn of time,” he drawls; his finger traces her mouth like he’s memorizing it. The look in his eyes is serious, far more serious than any man should be when he’s buried deep in his lover, but that’s Hades for you. “How long…” he looks uncertain a moment, hand comically paused on her lips, and she wants to tell him spit it out while you’ve still got time, but she doesn’t; she waits for him to find the words. It’s important, she thinks; if they learned one thing from Orpheus, It’s that they’ve got to listen. There have been too many years of not listening between them. Finally, Hades finds his words.
“How long will you be my wife?” He finally asks, with a tremble in that deep voice that makes her want to weep.
“Til the end of time,” she vows; she places both hands on his cheeks and stares at him a moment as his face almost breaks; as the old man looks young again and she kisses him with a passion she didn’t know she still had left in her. Her tears slide down his cheeks, turning to petals on their marriage bed. Her hips move in a dance as old as time and he gasps under her and responds: his arms encircling her gently, holding her as close to him as he can.
“Til-til the e-end,” he murmurs, his words stuttering as his body moves beyond words; even for a God, there are moments that are too sacred to speak through, though Hades tries, anyway. “Til the very…very end.”
His hand finds the space between them, his heavy thumb teasing the space between her thighs, and she rides him hard, seeking a final destination that lies between the stars in his eyes. She sobs and it’s the first time she’s cried with him in so long, because for the first time in so many years, it feels like they see one another plainly. His eyes are wet too, wet and soft and his tears glitter like diamonds in the darkness and they’re the first diamonds she’s seen in years down here that she actually likes.
He murmurs her many names over and over, voice ragged. He’s close, and she’s close too, and she nods and kisses him and his thumb circles her clit and then he presses hard and she shivers and she’s at the precipice, and then he takes her crashing down with a careful kiss and a hand that cares as much for her pleasure as his own and a heart that’s learning to listen to her. He’s trying, she’s trying. She screams out his name and her voice breaks, like not using it for so long left Hades’ name rusty in her throat. He comes within seconds of her, a tricky feat even for a God, dark seed filling her up in ways she didn’t know she needed.
He lies ragged and panting under her, spent and sweaty, and she is late and should go. But she doesn’t want to, and the train was only built for one passenger, and it doesn’t matter if she’s late. She stays on top of him, grabbing and holding his pale hand in her own.
“You should go,” he says, not with anger as in so many times before but with a sort of resigned grace. He’s letting her go, trusting her to come home to him, and it’s hard for him. She can see that on his face, and knows he’s trying to trust, trying to believe. Even for Gods, it’s the hardest thing in the world.
“I should,” she agrees, before lying down beside him. “But not yet. Spring won’t be destroyed if I’m a little late.”
“The humans will complain,” he says, but his free hand curls around her back anyway, half-heartedly tracing vines on her skin. He does not want her to go but he’s trying to plead the rules to her, and she’s not sure if it’s his usual penchant for rules and contracts and the consequences of breaking them, or if he’s trying his hardest not to keep her forever because he knows she’d die without her sunshine, her moonlight. Because he wants to keep her; she knows he does want, and right now, she’d eat six more pomegranate seeds without caring a whit for what’s above them.
“Humans are dumb.” She smiles into the crook of his neck, and his hands find her hair, playing with it.
“Hm,” He says, in one of those noises that he has that can mean everything and anything. He strokes her hair for a few moments while they both catch their breath, saying nothing. She can’t remember the last time she let him hold her without resenting him for it, but she’s happy to have this companionable silence instead. The ghosts of their past arguments are hard enough to dispel, and she tries to displace those memories with the one they’re making right now: he who scrapes the sky and she who ripens the vine, wrapped in a lover’s embrace. He’s open and bare in a way he hasn’t been in years and she loves him like this, trusting and raw and hers. He’s never been one to trust — none of their ilk is — but he is trying, and she loves that he tries.
“If…” She says, and he looks at her. “If you were sent on a journey, with me behind, would you have looked?”
“No,” He says, the answers to his test evidently far more simple than she’d thought it to be when she asked. His reply is a bit quick but, she senses, still true. He didn’t put a lot of thought into it, but maybe he didn’t have to.
“Why not?”
He’s silent for a long moment; she looks up at his face and sees the gears of his brain working on finding the golden plating for an iron truth. “Just…tell me,” she says.
“You’re gone often enough, lover. I know your ghost well.” He’s a bit hesitant in his words, and she senses the long-buried resentment hidden under the words; it isn’t fair, she knows, that he gets his wife six months of a year, when his brothers both get twelve. She holds him closer as if she can make that ache better, but there’s nothing she can do about it but come back. She isn’t Amphrite, and she certainly isn’t Hera.
“But I do come back,” she whispers. “I’m always coming back to you.”
“I know,” he says, though he doesn’t. She can see it written on his face, how much he wants to believe her, believe in her and how much he’s still afraid to she won’t be back. “Well, I want to believe.”
“Then you should. Know it.” She kisses his hand, gentle and sweet, and is rewarded with a gasp from him. “Always, you and I. Til the end of time. I will vow it on Styx if you wish it.”
“No need,” he harrumphs and she settles against his chest. He’s silent a long moment; in the quiet, he grabs her hand and presses it to his heart. Contrary to popular opinion: it beats, and it beats for her. She closes her eyes and listens to the steady thrum of the death god’s heart for a moment. He clears his throat and she looks up, smiling at how his heart beats fast. When she looks up to flirt with him the words fall from her lips, as he’s looking sterner than she’s seen him in the last few hours.
“Persephone,” he says. “Lover.”
“Yes?”
His hand squeezes hers, and then he looks at her with deadly serious intentions. “I…” He shakes his head, clears his throat again, then sighs, and finally, from that, he pulls up the words. “I, Hades, receiver of many children and king of the dirt, swear upon the dread river Styx that I trust my wife, Persephone, henceforth and evermore, shall return to me, the undersigned, Hades, for the allotment of her time as originally agreed, and should I distrust her ability to keep her word, may my kingdom grow cold and the ground hard with clay instead of ore.”
“That wasn’t necessary either,” she says, punching his shoulder lightly though in truth she’s pleased that he’s made the oath; it’s an effort, and nothing is more sacred to Hades than a contract. He’s taking this seriously, and for once she expects the train ride to actually be a pleasant one next fall: maybe they’ll fuck on it like when they were young, moaning in pure wanton destruction and creation as they move from her domain to his.
“It was,” he says, simply. “And you know it.”
Somewhere in the distance a train whistles, and they both ignore it.
“I’m trying,” he says, and then it’s her turn to turn toward him, to kiss him softly with a passion that makes her whole body feel like a live wire. “Before you go, I hope you know that. I am.”
“I know you are. I am, too.” She means it, too; she is trying, and for once she will be ready to come back to him in the fall, long as he keeps his word.
He groans into her neck at her pledge, but he’s then he’s too busy kissing down her neck to continue the conversation. His kisses are growing more frenzied now; they both know they don’t have much time and there’s been too much time wasted on accusations and petty jealousies this trip. The train whistles louder, and she wishes she was the goddess of mental communication so she could kindly tell Hermes to shut the hell up, she’s living it up down here and she’ll be on the tracks when she damn well pleases and not a second sooner.
“What will you do when I’m gone uptop?” She asks, though it’s harder to concentrate on talking when his whiskers are closing in on the area where her throat meets her shoulder, and he’s inhaling deep like he wants to commit every last scent of her to memory. Maybe he does. Six months is a long time.
“Tear things down.” He nips at her throat with ichor stained lips, a hand caressing her breast. “I thought perhaps next year we could rebuild things together.”
“Together?” She slides her legs apart to make room for him between them, and he shifts between her thighs, fluidly taking control. He stares down at her, a strange smile lighting his features in the after-light.
“I spent several centuries tryin’ to turn my hill of dirt into something you liked, but…” His mouth quirks, as if what he is saying is distasteful, and perhaps for him it is. “Maybe that’s the problem. Maybe I don’t know what you need. Maybe it ain’t enough to try to make my realm yours. Maybe we gotta remake it together.”
“Soil and steel?” She teases, as he slides her legs further apart.
“Soil and steel and iron and rust,” he promises and presses into her in one smooth motion and she cries out, not in pain but in the joyous union of two gods. Her legs lock behind him, trapping him, and he grunts a half-whispered pet name into her ear.
“I love you,” she says, a little breathless, as he thrusts inside her. “So, so much.”
“And I you,” he says, looking into her eyes as he holds her tight. “Only you.”
The train whistles blows, loud and shrill, but they pay no attention to it; Hades moves inside of her like a man possessed, and she holds on tight and thrusts back to the electric pleasure-current of the ichor humming within her bones; he may have strung the world in wire but she is the electricity that crackles across his lines, and they both know it. He hums an old song into her, a hand under her ass to bring her more together with him, and she hears the poet’s refrain in his throat: La, la la la la la.
And she thinks of the poet, waiting up above, waiting for someone down below, but the thought is gone an instant later when he fucks her into their bed, scratchy whiskers and eager fingers trying to please her desperately and he succeeds at it, as he always has in bed. The second round is going fast, all too fast, and she doesn’t want to go back up to; she doesn’t.
“I don’t want to go,” she whispers into his panting shoulder. He says nothing, just grips her tighter, fucks her faster, harder; his face is red with effort even as a God, and she kisses him deep and he kisses her hard and then she cries out, wanton, and then she’s over into the abyss and she takes him over the cliff with her, collapsing on top of her, filling her again.
His lips go to her cheek, kissing her gently. Sweet and tender. Kissing her like she belongs to him, or that he belongs to her. Both, she supposes, are true. He tries to get up off the top of her, and she slides her ankles across his legs, trapping him. The train whistle bellows in the distance, and Persephone laughs.
“You’re gonna bring the lighting down on us, darlin’,” he says in an exhausted huff. She giggles and shakes her head, not releasing him. She presses a kiss to the top of his head and he hums a soft beat of the poet’s song — and for the briefest of moments, she sees the shadow of a smile on his face.
She likes seeing him smile. “I’ll get Hermes a flower basket to apologize.”
He doesn’t respond; instead, his hand clumsily searches out hers; he threads their wedding rings together, holding her hand for a long moment.
“I am glad,” he says, in a voice so quiet and so unlike him that it makes her heart waver. “that you’re my wife. I have never regretted my choice, even if things are…”
“I know.” She squeezes his hand and slowly slides her ankles back, releasing him from her. He slides off her too quickly for her taste, moving to his side of their bed. Wordlessly, he reaches down and grabs her clothing from where he’d pulled it off, raising an eyebrow in wordless confirmation of what they both know: it’s time, lover.
She stands, and doesn’t miss the way he looks at her: longing and loneliness conflict on those patrician features, and he helps her slide into her dress. He kisses her neck as he pulls on the flower choker she always wears during the springtime.
“What will you do with the girl?” She asks carefully, as he puts the choker around her neck. She’s hesitant to bring up a potential minefield when things are still okay between them. It rankles, still, but she doesn’t want to go up top and run into the kid without knowing. He deserves to know.
He wraps his arms around her. “I have no plans for her. She is just a pawn I moved to sacrifice for a queen, nothing more. I just wanted you to get jealous.”
“It worked,” she says, then, quietly: “Please don’t do it again.” She doesn’t want to go through this again, doesn’t want to see another man whose heart is broken over their petty squabbles, doesn’t want more female shades pining for a life they can’t have, just because Hades wanted to prove a point to her. She signed up for this life; they did not. “Don’t send her to the Lethe. Let her wait for him — if she wants.”
“I will,” he says softly, his beard scratching the tip of her head as she presses her hand to his heart. “I regret bringing her here— “
“It’s okay,” she says, sliding a hand over his chest. Hermes is probably tapping his feet, wondering if they’re having the final fight to end all fights, but she can only feel the slightest tinge of guilt for being late. This is important, in a way it hasn’t felt for years. “We’ll just have to make it up to them.”
“Then will you find that jack of hearts upstairs?” Hades asks, suddenly, casually jealous despite trying so hard not to be. She can tell in the ram-rod straightness of his posture, the way his hands slightly catch. He trusts her – or at least he’s trying to – but six months is a long time, and death has always been possessive by nature.
“You don't need to fear that any more than I fear you with the girl,” she says, rolling her eyes, and his body unclenches, a long sigh of relief escaping him. “But perhaps I will dedicate a song to him if I find him. For luck. It is not such an easy thing, you know, to be the one leaving their lover. Especially when one’s heart shudders at the thought.“ She grabs his hand and places it upon her heart, staring up at him, willing him to know: this is yours. It beats for you.
“Mm,” he says, but his face softens as his palm settles heavy on her chest. “You should be kind, darling.” There's pity on his face for the first time in – ages. “One of us has to be, and it’s never been my nature.”
“You’re lucky I love you anyway,” she says, picking up his hand and kissing it. He inhales sharply and she wonders for a moment if the friendly jab has landed too close to his heart, but then he bends her backward and kisses her. It’s a good kiss, deep; his mouth probes for hers, hungry, and she lets him in, whimpering as his hands tangle into her hair.
Her heart pounds wildly and she can feel the same barely constrained wildness in him; as his lips touch hers, she blossoms. She wraps her arms around his naked shoulders and does not stop kissing him until she literally has to take a stop to breathe, or perish. Even Gods can be rendered breathless, after all.
“I am lucky,” he says, breathing heavily from the exertion. “I know I am a cold man. That you warm my bed for half a year is…enough. It will have to be enough.” He says it with a half-smile, and she knows what he is thinking. It isn’t enough, not really, but it is all they can have. He ducks away from her a moment and she admires the view as he puts the outfit she almost tore off earlier back on.
“You could visit me upstairs,” she offers; he pauses, buttoning his shirt, shaking his head.
“It’s not a good thing for death to walk the world too often,” he says, with a quiet sigh as he sits on their bed, putting his socks back on. “Besides, your mother would kill me.”
“We don’t need to meet at mama’s place. Just…rendezvous on the train for a few hours. Private car?” She straddles him boldly and his arms instantly curl up her sides; she is bold with him as she has never been with other men, but then, what other man could look at her like this? His mouth is open with just a bit of awe at what she suggests, and Persephone has always found she enjoys his worship.
“I might need you for more than a few hours,” he says, finally; his voice is husky. “But… we can arrange something.” He pulls her lips to him and kisses her again, soft and chaste but still enough to make her toes curl. Already, she’s aching for him, and she does not want to go, even if staying will doom them all.
“You’re too good for an old man,” he says in his gravel-deep voice, full of rocks as she stays curled up in his arms.
“Well, you’re too classy for a country girl.” She smiles and pulls back. She adjusts his armband, cinching it just a bit tight. “I’m afraid we both have our crosses to bear.”
They’re both silent for a moment as the train bellows — loud, shrill, close; Hermes is losing patience. They’re really out of time now and they both know it.
“I’ll miss you.” She keeps her parting words simple and true. “My heart.”
“And I you, lover,” he says; he stands, and offers her his arm. She raises an eyebrow – is he walking her to the train station? He nods, and she gestures from him to come closer, makes a quick rake of his hair — which still looks far too sex-ruffled to be properly proper for Hades, but its an improvement. “Pleased?” He asks, and she smiles.
“Muchly.” She grabs his hand, making a show of her wedding ring clinking against his.
If any of their subjects notices how unusually rumpled they are, no one comments. Persephone keeps an eye out for the girl but does not see her in the crowd. Hades will need to find her, and she trusts that he will. The insurrection seems to have been well-quelled, for no one gives them more or less than their usual share of attention. Not even Hermes, though his eyebrows certainly rise as Hades stops her right before the train.
“One moment,” he says; Hermes rolls his eyes, but Persephone shoots him a death-glare and her brother-cousin just grins. Some things, Hermes has never grown out of, and teasing her is one of them. Hades pulls a bit of copper from the ground with a dedicated flourish. The lump becomes a copper ball that he flattens in his fingertips; he breathes his breath into it and then, abruptly, presses it to her hand.
“Your ticket. Press it, and I’ll know and come for you. When you’re ready. For…a visit, or…” He looks away from her as he says it, a slight pink on his cheeks, and she sucks in a harsh breath. She knows what this is, what it means, what he’s giving her.
She stares at the golden coin, her freedom, and squeezes it tight in her fist. “Thank you,” she says, her voice wavering.
He nods, but doesn’t look at her. She leans up and kisses him on the lips chastely, slipping an asphodel over his ear.
He says nothing more, but she feels his eyes watch her until she’s safely boarded, and he doesn’t turn away from the train until they’re all-but-sailing across the landscape, sending her back to mother nature.
“You’re late,” Hermes says, but the wide grin on his face suggests he knows perfectly well why. She shoves at his shoulder. "I missed ya."
“I’m here,” She says, shrugging off Hermes’ teasing. “That will have to be enough.”
She thinks of the poet up above, waiting for his girl below, and she starts to think, maybe, of ways she can soften the old man, ways to put them back together. She thinks about her lover down below, still waiting for her, but lettin’ her go, and thinks: there's hope. She slips the coin into her pocket and hums an old song under her breath: la,la,la,la,la,la,la.