Chapter Text
In the mortal world, the humans call Jayce the god of spring.
The grass he steps on becomes greener, unfurling, and growing wild underfoot. With a wave of his hand, dead stalks stand up and burst into flowering bunches. He’s seen every flora in existence and admired their lovely shapes, colors, and scents.
But it all pales in comparison to the red flush that blooms across Viktor’s skin when Jayce trails a finger down his side.
“You are the prettiest thing I have ever seen.”
Below his hands, Viktor’s skin turns an even deeper shade of scarlet. Unaccustomed to being praised and treated softly, he retorts in the only way he knows how.
“I know what your body would look like cold and decaying in the dirt,” he bristles, “I could wipe a young godling like you out of existence in half a heartbeat.”
“I know,” says Jayce, tumbling further down into this pit of desire.
After all, he’s no stranger to the fact that the most poisonous of berries have the most beautiful blooms.
–
It starts, as many things start, with a simple prank.
Jayce is at a party in the glittering halls of Olympus. Sparkling ambrosia erupts from golden fountains. The sweet notes of Apollo's lyre drift through the air and in a fit of drunken joy, Dionysus fills every wine cup in the hall with a snap of his fingers.
Jayce is surrounded by every indulgence imaginable and yet he’s horribly bored.
He knows that one cannot refuse an invitation from Olympus. But still, he cannot help but wish he were back in the mortal realm, reading a book or making the wildflowers bloom, rather than stuck in this hallowed hall pretending to have a good time.
It’s something about the shimmering facade of the place. The rigid artifice of it all.
Back on earth, a river is never the same river twice. Seeds bud and wither and humans grow from bald-headed babies to old men with greying beards. But here nothing changes. It’s always the same glimmering halls with the same beautiful faces. Ageless and stagnant.
It’s difficult for Jayce to resist the urge to yawn as he reclines in the divan next to Caitlin who’s showing off her namesake bow and bragging about her latest hunt.
He’s just about to excuse himself to wander around the gardens for the rest of the night when suddenly the slamming of a door causes an eerie hush to settle over the ballroom. Then comes the sound of steps, stark and echoing like rocks falling into water.
He’s clearly a god. No one can step into Olympus if they’re not. But he is unlike any god that Jayce has ever seen before.
Disheveled is the first word that comes to mind. Which is sort of a revelation in itself because he’s never seen a god with so much as a hair out of place.
But this person. This dark figure who cuts a line through quiet crowds? He looks like the aftermath of a thunderstorm.
Like he’s made of jagged edges and splintered bits that would draw blood if touched.
His hair is a whirlwind of dark tendrils, curling in front of his eyes and his jaw, which is completely covered with something that’s a cross between a mask and a muzzle. With every minute movement of his breath, the mask makes an ominous whooshing sound, like wind scraping dry leaves.
Preceding his step is a long scepter which he uses to aid his journey. Similar to its owner, it looks deadly and ready to kill. Unlike the other gods who wear loose chitons cut from gold and creme silks, he’s nearly completely covered in a dark armor-like suit. In fact, the only visible parts of him are the ink pools of his eyes above his mask which regard the gilded revelry with an emotion that’s a cross between contempt and boredom.
“Brother,” says Zeus, stepping down from his throne at the head of the room to regard the newcomer. He opens his arms as if to hug, but doesn’t come forward to touch.
As the dark figure joins Zeus and Poseidon on the dais, Jayce's brow furrows in confusion.
“Brother?” he whispers, turning to Caitlin, “Then that must be–”
“Hades” replies Caitlin, flexing her hand on her bow as if preparing for the hunt.
“Haven’t seen him in ages. Guess he finally got bored of the underworld.”
Jayce’s spine prickles at the mention of the singular taboo subject amongst Olympians.
The Underworld. The shadowy nether realm where even Zeus’ power is tenuous.
The gods like to duck their heads and pretend it doesn’t exist. But Jayce spends most of his time in the mortal realm. He's seen flowers wither and drop from the stem. Once he even found a mangled field mouse crushed underfoot by something large and careless. He remembers holding its quivering body in his hands as the life drained from its body and wondering where the soul went to rest.
He’s a new god, only having come into existence in the past hundred years or so. So perhaps that’s why when he looks at the shadowy figure on the dais, instead of misgiving he feels a morbid sort of fascination brewing within.
He watches with thinly-veiled curiosity as the King of the Underworld pulls a slender flask from his pocket then slips his mask off for a half-second to take a drink.
It’s too fast to really see his face. Jayce is only left with a blurred impression of pale skin. And yet suddenly his mouth feels bone-dry.
“What’s that he’s drinking?”
“Nobody knows” interjects Jinx, who materializes beside him seemingly from thin air.
True to her namesake as the god of light-footed mischief-makers, she has a knack for always appearing where whispered conversations are held.
“Vik never eats anything on Olympus. And he only drinks what he brings himself.”
Caitlin looks disapprovingly at the trickster god but doesn’t deny her words.
“I’m dead curious what’s in it though” continues Jinx with a manic gleam in her eye, “Do you think it’s booze? I bet they brew some crazy strong stuff in the underworld.”
“It’s none of our business” sniffs Caitlin.
“But don’t you want to know?” asks Jinx, “and I mean, when’s the next time we’ll get the chance to find out? He comes out like what? maybe once a millennium?”
As if coming to a decision, Jinx stands from her seat in a flutter of motion.
“Follow my lead” she winks, as she strolls towards the raised dais.
Caitlin rolls her eyes and joins another group at a nearby table. But some sort of morbid curiosity has Jayce following in Jinx's footsteps.
It’s the boredom, he tells himself. When the truth is, there’s a burning need within to get closer to the god of death, to observe up close.
Jinx introduces herself with a flourishing bow and instantly has Poseidon and Zeus chortling over some joke about a fisherman and a siren.
The distraction gives Jayce permission to dart his eyes at the god of death, now only an arm’s length away.
It’s like witnessing a hurricane up close. Hades is not even looking at Jayce, but he still feels a dangerous thrill on his skin as if he’s walked to the edge of a cliff.
Up close he can see that the god’s eyes are not entirely black, but also contain shards of amber lurking in the inky depths. Jayce is so fascinated by this discovery that he’s wholly unprepared when the god suddenly removes his mask again.
Jayce is a god of agriculture, but he’s also a god of fertility. After all, flowers are not the only things that come alive in spring. It’s also when the blood quickens and desire courses through one’s veins demanding to be let out. That’s to say he’s certainly no blushing virgin and no stranger to seeing flesh, bared.
And yet seeing the other god’s mouth up close and naked nearly knocks him backward. He feels somewhat dazed by the pale bow of Hades' lips. And seeing not one, but two moles placed in the most biteable of places is like being pierced in the chest by one of Caitlin's arrows.
Gods, thinks Jayce as Hades lifts the drink to his mouth and takes one tortuous pull. His eyes fasten onto the minute up and down of his swallowing throat.
Jayce has a delirious vision of sinking his teeth into that pale column. Of biting through the skin like he would a fresh apple.
That’s when Jinx strikes.
She materializes behind the thrones of the high gods, finishing her story with a sweeping wave of her hands causing Hades to startle and spill some of his drink down his front.
Before Jayce’s face can heat at the slick skin there, Jinx lands on Hades, peppering him with the silks of her sleeves to mop up the mess.
”Oh geez. Sorry, Vik. you know I get too excited sometimes telling these stories.”
She smiles innocently under the drilling beam of Hades’ contempt.
“Jinx,” the god growls, sending a shiver down Jayce’s back. His voice is tinged with a rasping accent, hinting of an old and ancient power.
“Get off me please. '' he scowls, before putting his mask back in place.
Jinx smiles cheekily and screws the lid back onto the flask, patting the god’s chest before dropping it into his pocket. Except as soon as it disappears from view, Jayce feels a weight fall and drop into the pocket of his own chiton.
The sleight hand of a trickster god.
Hades gets pulled back into his discussion with the other high gods and Jayce comes away from the dais feeling like Prometheus stealing away with the forbidden fire.
He returns to the raucous belly of the party with the flask burning in his pocket like an ember. On the platform, Hades still seems unaware that anything is amiss and that damn Jinx has already flitted away to cause someone else havoc.
Hidden in the reveling crowd, he pulls out the flask, unscrewing the top to give it a sniff.
Scentless.
Unbidden, the vision of a pale mouth surges to the front of his mind. Suddenly his throat is parched and he licks his lips remembering a constellation of dark moles. An insidious voice seems to whisper in his mind.
Maybe just a taste.
He’s lifting the bottle to his lips when a sudden commotion happens near the front of the party. As the brim of the flask kisses his lower lip, out of his peripheral vision he sees a dark figure stand on the dais and say one ferocious echoing word
“No.”
The last thing he remembers before his vision fades to black is the rush of liquid over his lips. The taste of it, cold and sweet on his tongue.
—
When Jayce wakes up he’s wet and shivering.
Sometimes the wind blows in gusty gales through the mortal realm but he’s never experienced this type of cold before. The chill settles in his bones like teeth.
As he begins to take in his foreign surroundings he wonders where he is with growing urgency.
Normally, Olympus is always bathed in eternal sunlight, however the place he finds himself now is dark as a starless night. He seems to be in some sort of cellar with only the dim fire of torches lighting the room. And of course, there’s the cold. The pervasive chill that has him shivering in a pile on the floor.
His teeth rattle so hard in his jaw that it takes him a few moments to notice the murmur of voices drifting in from the room next door.
“Who is he?”
Jayce immediately recognizes the rasping accent as that of Hades. He remembers that quiet voice full of an old and bristling power, the way it cut through the ballroom with one horrified word.
No.
A pang of stabbing guilt settles into his stomach.
Not good, thinks Jayce with growing dread, I’ve really messed up this time.
“Persephone. Kore. Prosephine. God of spring and fertility.”
The voice that responds to Hades sounds like a dissonant chord played inside his eardrums. Each word becomes a knife that scrapes against the whetstone of his mind. As if three different people are speaking in unison in clashing tones like a badly tuned lyre.
“Spring and fertility? How strange,” replies Hades.
”Stranger still is path we see in his future, particularly where it intersects with yours-”
But before Jayce can hear the rest of the words, Jinx materializes in front of him making him fall back in shock.
“Hiya Perse!”
“Jinx-” he hisses, “What the- what’s going on?”
“That was pretty crazy back there huh? Not gonna lie, you had me worried there for a sec!” Jinx slaps her hand on Jayce’s back so hard it makes his bones ache.
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“At the party! Remember? You tried Vik’s drink and you musta had a bad reaction because the next second you were on the ground sorta… hmm, suffocating I guess?”
“Suffocating?!”
“I mean, if Vik hadn’t put his mask thingy on you well... Let’s just say you mighta been- Krrgh!”
Jinx draws a finger over her throat, making a slicing sound of a knife and lolling her tongue out playing dead.
Jayce has the sudden urge to throttle her, but then gets caught up in the meaning of her words.
“His mask... he what?” Jayce brings a finger to his lips.
Despite the shivers of cold still wracking his body, he feels a creep of warmth come over his cheeks. He feels the phantom sensation of a mask slipping around his mouth and flushes at the thought of sharing the same air as the other god. Oblivious, Jinx continues her ramblings as if it’s nothing more than trivial gossip.
“You shoulda seen everyone’s faces, Perse! Zeus was practically foaming at the mouth when Vik disappeared with you in his arms princess-style.”
“Princess sty-”
“You.”
The low growl seems to make the room drop a few degrees in temperature. A shadow falls over Jayce, and he has the uncanny sensation of being in the path of a beast on the hunt. He turns to see the owner of the voice, Hades, who is barely a shadow backlit by what looks to be three glowing spheres floating behind him.
He’s still donning his armored suit but now his mask is gone revealing a seething mouth that’s nearly baring fangs.
“I should have known you had your trickster hand in this Jinx. Care to explain yourself?”
“It was just a joke, Vik! Ever heard of sip, sip, pass? It’s unfair to hog all the good stuff to yourself-”
“You imbecile!” he roars, “Do you have any idea what you’ve done? The damage could be irreversible!”
“I’m sorry, Damage? What damage?” interjects Jayce between thundering heartbeats.
As if just noticing there’s someone else in the room, Hades turns to regard Jayce for the first time.
The arc of Hades’ gaze seems to lick across Jayce’s skin like wildfire. Jayce is only a minor god, a no-name agricultural deity who lives permanently on earth. But Hades examines him with the probing eye of a cartographer, as if he’s mapping out the lines of Jayce’s body to etch into paper.
It’s dangerous, the way that gaze makes him feel, and he struggles to escape like an animal, trapped.
“I'm sorry but I need to… I need to go home. Is the party still happening? Wh-Where on Olympus is this?”
“Oh dear” sighs Hades.
He brings a hand up to grasp Jayce’s jaw, tilting his chin upward as if to get a better view. A complicated emotion swims through the other god’s eyes. Pity, curiosity, and a flash of something dark and wild.
“I’m afraid you’re a long way from Olympus, little godling.”
Spellbound by the feel of his fingers on his skin, it takes a while for the words to register and Jayce’s eyes flicker in alarm to Jinx who stands to the side with a guilty expression on her face.
“Umm,” She grins sheepishly, “Welcome to the Underworld?”
“What?”
Jayce waits for the ensuing silence to break, waits for Jinx to reveal that this is just another one of her elaborate pranks. But the punchline never comes.
“But-But that's impossible” he wrestles his jaw free from Hades’ grasp, “Only the dead can cross into the Underworld.”
“Like calls to like” comes that ghastly voice again, “The half yearns to become whole.”
The three floating spheres behind Hades pulse with a ghostly light, making Jayce realize that the haunting voices must be emanating from them.
“Umm come again?” asks Jinx, making Jayce somewhat grateful that he’s not the only one who doesn’t have a single clue about what’s going on.
The Underworld. How in the hell…
Jayce feels like he’s crossed into a parallel universe where up is down and right is left. The party at Olympus, which was just supposed to be like any other dull night, now feels like it was centuries ago.
“The flask” hisses Hades, bringing up a hand to his furrowed brow, “The godling has drunk the wine of the underworld.”
He lets out another breath, but instead of sounding angry now he just seems exhausted.
“It’s liquor which was harvested from grapes sowed in the soil of the dead where no light shines. And those who consume the food of the Underworld are destined to stay here.”
"Like calls to like." echoes the ghostly spheres again.
The words are so surreal that Jayce wonders for the first time if he’s dreaming. But the chill in his bones and the shiver in his spine are proof that the coldness he’s experiencing is real. It settles inside him like wine in his stomach. A thoughtless decision that has changed his life forever.
Finally, numbness gives way to anger.
“Jinx.”
Jayce whips his head towards the trickster god who for once looks surprised by the turn of events, “What have you done to me?!”
“Hey whoa, how is this my fault? I didn’t tell you to drink the damn thing. Besides, how was I supposed to know about this mumbo jumbo?”
Before Jayce can retort, Jinx sticks her tongue at him then disappears in a plume of smoke.
Jayce pounds his fists against the floor wishing it was Jinx’s face instead.
"No borders contain the Messenger."
Ugh. Of course.
Jayce groans into his hands as another piece of the puzzle falls into place.
Jinx, née Hermes, is the god of thieves and messengers, meaning she can pass wherever she pleases.
It’s the reason she was able to come to the Underworld in the first place and how she can leave freely while Jayce remains trapped. It’s no wonder the slippery weasel has never paid attention to such rules or restrictions.
Jayce feels the weight of his position press down on him all at once. Trapped.
Anger transforms into panic. His surroundings close in on him, antagonizing and taunting. The roughness of the stone floor, the ghostly light of those eerie spheres, and of course the all-encompassing cold. He misses the warmth of the sun and wonders with growing desperation if he’ll ever experience it again.
“So are you saying I’m stuck here forever?”
A troubled look passes over Hades’ face. For the first time, the other god seems unsure and maybe even a little fearful.
“I..’’ He hesitates before opening his palm beckoning the three glowing spheres to come forward and nestle in his upturned hand.
“Let’s see what The Fates have to say.” He murmurs, letting resolve and a bone brittle determination take the place of insecurity.
Somehow Jayce is still able to feel a hint of awe through the chokehold of growing panic.
The Fates.
The fabled three oracles who see into the past, present, and future simultaneously.
As if pulling power from Hades, the three spheres grow brighter and brighter within his hand. When they speak, their voices are almost deafeningly loud.
“The road already taken is etched in stone. The path we stand, shifting sand. Ahead are a million riverbeds and only time will tell which way the water flows.”
The godly spheres pulse so brightly Jayce fears they’ll explode. But before he can duck for cover, the bright light subsides and their voices fade back to a low thrum.
“There are many splits in the future. More than usual. But in most timelines, the godling returns from whence he came.
The sigh that leaves Jayce feels like releasing a weight.
Just a temporary stay then.
“And the wine he drank?” asks Hades.
“Not enough to complete the conversion.” replies the Fates, “Sometimes a seed is planted but fails to take root. In one month's time, he may return to the mortal realm.”
One month.
Jayce feels his shoulders lower in relief. Compared to being trapped for eternity, one month seems almost laughable. He feels so spent that he could probably close his eyes and just sleep for the entire duration.
But the words don’t seem to bring Hades any relief. His already pale face drains even further of color, and he lets out a tight breath as if in pain.
“Alright then,” he says somberly, “I shall make arrangements for Persephone to stay in the palace until then.”
“Jayce. Call me Jayce.”
After all, no one but mortals call him by his old name and he supposes he owes the man his life.
The corner of Hades’ mouth twitches humorlessly as he replies “That would be a first,” making Jayce realize he must have said that last part out loud.
In one fell swoop, it feels like a veil is being lifted from Jayce’s eyes. It rushes over him all at once where he is. Who he’s with. The King of the Underworld. One of the three high gods.
And yet here he is, tending to the fate of a minor fertility god when he could easily cast Jayce aside like scraps. The fact that he’s indebted to the King of the Underworld bowls him over like a strong wind.
“If it pleases you, that is, your Highness.”
Jayce adds on weakly, scrambling to bow his head like he would before Zeus.
The silence lasts for so long that at first Jayce thinks Hades has already left. But then pale fingers grab onto his jaw once again, drawing his gaze upwards.
“Then do me the same favor,” says the other god, “and call me Viktor.”
–
The Underworld is somehow nothing and everything like Jayce expects it to be.
The palace is a towering collection of spikes and wrought iron. Yet despite its fortitude, there’s always a cold draft blowing through. But the fact that it’s always cold and dark is not surprising to him.
What’s unexpected is the effect it has on him. How weak he feels. It’s as if the entire Underworld is poisonous to him. The wind chill hurts him as if being cut by a knife. He takes deep labored breaths when he moves as if unable to draw enough air into his lungs. What’s even stranger is that wherever he steps, things always manage to get in his way.
Carpets wrinkle underfoot causing him to trip and fall. Doors slam in his face despite no one being on the other side. And objects nestled tightly on shelves tip over and fall to pieces leaving him shaken and rattled.
It’s as if the entire palace is telling him that he’s unwelcome. And although that one sip of wine seems to have trapped him here, clearly it’s not enough to inoculate him completely from the brutality of this world.
Jayce wonders if that’s why Viktor makes appearances so infrequently to Olympus. Just as the Underworld is savage to Jayce, maybe the heavenly halls of Olympus are poisonous to the King of the Underworld. So much so, that he needs to wear a mask just to breathe properly.
As a result, Jayce doesn’t leave his room for the first week.
He’s so frail that he barely lifts a finger to help the cloaked servants who come in and out to clean his room which is a small but cozy quarter on the top floor. The servants leave plates of bread and fruit on his bedside table. Food imported from the mortal realm so that he can heal and purge the foreign fruit of the underworld from his body.
The servants treat him with the utmost respect but none of them talk to him. And after two weeks of isolation, Jayce is so bored he’d almost prefer being at the Olympus parties he hates so much.
He thinks with a home-sickening lurch about the sun, about feeling warm, about running through fields of grass and making flowers bloom under his fingers.
With only himself for company, Jayce's mind unspools into an entangled mess. He wakes sweat-soaked from nightmares about dead mice and a pale mouth that whispers into his ear to ‘call me Viktor’.
That combined with his slowly returning strength finally forces him out of his room to explore the rest of the palace.
As expected, he makes extremely slow progress. He’s impeded dozens of times by furniture moving into his way and sharp table edges that come out of nowhere to bang into his hips.
Eventually, he finally makes his way to a large arching hall, with candles glittering in huge overhead chandeliers which illuminate row after row of towering bookshelves.
He feels the spark of wonder inside his chest. This library is easily twice the size of any book collection he’s seen on earth.
So enamored by the endless row of book spines it takes him a while to realize that he’s not alone amongst the shelves.
At the head of the room, is a large black-oak desk next to a roaring fire. Sprawled over the desk is Viktor who’s scribbling looping black script onto a large scroll after periodically consulting from a huge tomb of text splayed open next to him.
Not wearing his mask or his armor, he looks rather small. Like a quiet bookish youth from the village. It’s alarming how easily Jayce could forget that this slender waif of a man is the King of the Underworld. The ruler over all things dead and decaying.
“Hello?”
Jayce scurries behind a bookshelf. Waits until the scribbling of the pen resumes and continues his observations in secret.
He looks so… studious. And for some reason, it’s an incredibly strange sight to behold.
The gods he knows are more often than not found passed out in a drunken stupor, or fooling around with a pretty nymph or lazing about admiring their own reflection in a mirror.
So it’s bizarre, really, to see a god working so diligently.
“I know you’re there, you know,” says Viktor, “You might as well just come out.”
Jayce is about to turn tail and run when of course a lumbering bookshelf shifts behind him, walling him off from his exit.
He resists the urge to curse. Damn this palace.
Lacking an easy way to escape, he steps into Viktor’s view, nearly pouting at how helpless he feels.
“I… didn’t mean to intrude-”
“Too late,” says Viktor, rubbing his forehead and putting his quill down with a sigh.
The motion draws Jayce's eyes to the words on the scroll. A meticulous table of names and dates.
Curiosity battles foreboding and wins out easily.
“Are these names…?”’
“-dead souls,” replies Viktor without missing a beat.
“Did you kill them?”
“Some of them. Yes.”
“So what are you doing now? Cataloging them?”
“Didn’t anyone teach you that asking too many questions is rude?”
For the first time since arriving Jayce feels his face heat. He doesn’t usually care what other gods think of him, but for some reason, he feels deeply embarrassed about acting a fool in front of Viktor.
“Sorry I..” Jayce tries to recover his dignity, “I did not mean to overstep.”
But still, his eyes land hungrily on the dense text. He wonders what sort of work Viktor could possibly have to do in the Underworld. As far as Jayce understands it’s a pretty automated process. Dead souls get ferried over on the river Styx and wander the Underworld for eternity. But the complicated patterns and notes written on the scroll seem anything but effortless. And he can’t imagine that the dead are the needy sort.
Viktor pauses, regarding Jayce with an analyzing eye that makes his skin prickle and flush. Jayce fully expects to be dismissed so he’s surprised when the other god actually answers.
“Some of them put in special requests. The dead, that is.”
“Special requests?” asks Jayce, “Like what?”
“All sorts of things.” replies Viktor, “but mostly they ask me to find other souls for them. A parent. A lover. A child...”
Viktor lets out a long breath, an aching sound of buried grief.
“You’re…reuniting them?” says Jayce, desperately trying to keep his incredulity from bleeding into his tone.
“If I can find them. Yes” replies Viktor, looking into the fire with a faraway gaze.
“But… But why the need for-” Jayce waves his hand at the mess of books and papers littering the desk, “-all of this?”
“You think it’s just as easy as snapping my fingers and having them appear before me?”
Viktor lets out a dark laugh, “Maybe things are easy like that on Olympus but unfortunately it’s not so straightforward here. As you can imagine my domain is large. And unlike other kingdoms, mine is the only one whose population is always growing.”
Jayce doesn’t have words to answer. His mind is still reeling from the fact that the fearsome King of the Underworld is hunched over dusty tombs of texts reuniting lost lovers and families in death. Something wriggles at the back of his mind, a burning question he can’t withhold.
“Then why bother?” he finally asks.
After all, the gods on Olympus rarely involve their hands in mortal affairs despite the endless fanfare they receive. And when they do intervene most of the time it’s for their own amusement and almost always ends in catastrophe. That’s why Jayce is sort of boggled at the idea of a god actually serving their subjects instead of the other way around.
I don’t understand you, he thinks as he looks at the other god, and for some reason that bothers the hell out of him.
“Why do this at all?” he asks again.
A genuine look of confusion spreads over Viktor's face. He turns to Jayce as if he’s just suggested that fire is cold and ice is hot.
“Because if I don't, they’ll be alone.”
—
From then on Jayce makes a habit of reading in the library while Viktor scribbles his notes in his scrolls.
The cushions in front of the fireplace become his usual spot, and he languors in the warmth of the flames while reading book after book.
And if Jayce also sneaks a few glances at Viktor, slowly absorbing the sight of him like a sponge, well that’s simply because there’s nothing else to do in this drab palace. Or at least that’s what he tells himself.
He learns that Viktor mumbles to himself when he’s deep in thought, slipping into the old language of the ancient gods from time to time. He learns that a mysterious injury afflicts his left leg. And that sometimes it grows so stiff he needs to stretch the joint by the fire.
Jayce savors learning about Viktor’s tics and mannerisms like bites of delicious morsels and slowly, his feelings towards the other god shift from something fearful and cautious to something warm and familiar.
You really can get used to anything, he thinks, and the thought is both comforting and alarming at the same time.
He’s eating a plum by the fire while turning a page in his latest book, something about crop rotations. But the words slip through the hands of his attention like sand.
Like water on a hill, his eyes slide instinctively towards Viktor. His dark figure is hunched over the desk like usual and in the flickering fire, Jayce can see the pale line of his lips mouthing the names of the dead.
The sight fills him with a dizzying sensation and he clenches his fingers around the plum pit in his hand, suddenly feeling restless.
When he first arrived he barely had the strength to get out of bed. But now after a few weeks of rest and mortal diet, he’s beginning to feel the thrum of his former power returning.
He flexes his fingers around the hard seed experimentally and gives it a gentle prod with his mind. After a few seconds, the plum seed splits open in his hand, allowing one leafy stem to crack through.
He feels the prickle of Viktor's eyes on him now and is hit with the sudden urge to show off.
He furrows his brow, concentrating his focus and soon a delicate pink blossom erupts from the green stalk, filling the room with a sweet scent.
He knows it’s not even close to what he can do in the mortal realm. One time, he made an entire orchard spring up where there was once barren dirt. But still, the delicate pink bloom fills him with a surging flush of pride.
“Beautiful.” breathes Viktor from beside him.
Amidst his concentration, Jayce didn’t notice the other god creeping closer and closer, cautiously approaching like an animal strayed too far from its burrow.
Now almost shoulder to shoulder, Viktor looks at the flowering seed with a thoughtful wonder and it fills Jayce with a childish sort of pride.
“You have not seen flowers before?”
“Not this sort…” answers Viktor after some hesitation, “Mostly lilies. Orchids sometimes too.”
Of course, thinks Jayce. Flowers for the dead.
One petal drops off, falling to the floor in a fluttering arc. In the harsh darkness of the Underworld, the bloom is already starting to wilt.
Viktor picks up the petal, holding it up to the firelight to inspect the veined cross-section. Then in one bizarre motion puts it in his mouth.
“Hmm,” he says, rolling it over his tongue, “It’s not as sweet as it smells.”
Both flower and book fall from Jayce's hands as he stands up too abruptly. He sputters a choked-off ‘goodnight’ and flees to his room while breaking into a cold sweat.
Before his door has even fully shut, he has his hand on his cock.
He hears Viktor's words in his ears like thunder. Beautiful. Sees the torturous pink slip of a petal on his tongue.
He fucks rabidly into his fisted hand. Once. Twice. Before he feels his eyes roll into the back of his head.
With a bitten-off groan, he clamps his teeth onto his knuckles, biting down hard enough to draw blood as he spills over his fingers and onto the floor.
I’m fucked, he thinks over labored breaths. Well and truly fucked.
The next day the kitchen staff is aflutter with activity. In the middle of the night, all the fruit grew long vining leaves thick with flowering buds. Bursting at the seams with ripeness, it’s a mad dash to eat them before they spoil.
Jayce feels the weight of guilt pressing upon him and is so ashamed he can’t even leave his rooms for the rest of the day.
–
When Jinx materializes in his room a few days later, Jayce is so grateful for news from the outside world that he almost forgets to be mad. Almost.
“What the-?!”
“Hiya Perse!” she crows, crouching on top of the dresser like a gargoyle, “Miss me?”
Before Jayce can throttle her by the neck, she disappears, appearing the next second behind him sprawled across his bed.
She plucks a fig from the plate of fruit on his bedside table and pops it whole into her mouth.
“For me? Aww, you shouldn’t have.”
“Gods.” he hisses, ”When I get back I'm going to fill your bedsheets with stinging nettles coated in nectar. You won’t be able to climb into bed without bees attacking you for weeks.”
“Ooh. Kinky”
Jayce grumbles under his breath and thinks about murder.
“Speaking of which, when are you coming back, Perse?” Jinx’s eyes turn semi-serious, alerting Jayce to the fact that something must be seriously wrong.
“Things are loco on Olympus right now. Demeter is freaking out, saying you’ve been kidnapped and held for ransom. I think she’s practically begging Zeus to lead an invasion down here to rescue you like Helen from Troy.”
Jayce starts at the mention of his mother. Gods aren’t exactly known for being parental role models, but he’s always held his mother in high regard despite her having left him to manage agriculture on earth basically by himself.
“Invasion?” Jayce’s eyes widen in shock, “That’s-That’s insane! You’re talking about war.”
“Well can you blame her, Perse? No interaction from Vik or the Underworld for centuries, and then BOOM! A god snatched from right under Zeus’ nose in his own home. For all they know you’re locked up in a dungeon being forced to eat dead people’s fingers or something.”
“But-but look at me!” he gestures wildly down at himself, “I’m obviously fine!”
Jinx turns to him as if seeing him for the first time, trailing her purple eyes up and down.
“Are you though? What is he doing to you down here?”
“Absolutely nothing! He’s… He’s-”
He lights fires for me even though his skin doesn’t feel the cold.
He’s kind to the most wretched of souls in their darkest hour of need and thinks flowers are beautiful even when they’re dried up and dead.
Jayce tries and tries to come up with words that match the enormity of what he feels, but what comes out falls horribly short.
“He’s… nice to me.”
Jinx gives him an analyzing look, mouth quirked to the side in disbelief.
“Nice. Really?”
“Yes, really!” Jayce throws his hands up resisting the urge to tear his hair out.
“What about that so hard to believe? Why is everyone so hellbent that the opposite must be true? How.. how-”
How did things end up this way, he wants to shout. The wrongness of it all weighing down on him like bricks.
He thinks about what Viktor told him weeks ago when Jayce had asked why he even bothered reuniting the dead with their loved ones.
Because if I don’t they’ll be alone.
And yet here you are, thinks Jayce as his heart shatters into a million pieces, All alone with no one in your corner.
Viktor is the first god Jayce has met who’s actually trying to do good by his people. And yet he’s looked down upon with fear and revulsion. Locked up alone in his dark kingdom with only the dead for company.
Jayce feels a strange sort of protectiveness come over him, and amidst the crumbled ruins of his heart, something else is taking form.
“Jinx,” he says, feeling the shards of his broken heart rearrange and harden into something new. “Do you think you could send a message for me?”
–
While words trip and stumble in Jayce’s mouth, now sentences spill out like wine from the barrel when he puts quill to paper.
Dear Mother, he writes
Whatever you have heard about Hades is wrong. You may think him my dark captor and me, the unwilling guest when in reality the opposite could not be more true.
He has treated me with nothing but kindness, even though the same has never been extended to him.
Staying with him here, I have seen the care and affection he treats his citizens. Rest assured there is no desire in him to mutiny on Olympus. He only cares that his kingdom and its denizens are treated fairly (which is leaps and bounds more than I can say for how things are run on Olympus.) I cannot emphasize enough that it is I who is intruding on his life here and that this situation is entirely my fault.
As to why I have not returned yet. I drank the wine of his kingdom and part of it has anchored me here. Soon its hold on me will disappear and I shall return to the mortal realm in two weeks from the time of writing this.
Jaycee’s heart gives a painful tug as he writes those words and he dips into the last of his ink to finish.
I am just a minor god. Not able to do much besides push flowers from their buds. I know I hold not even a single scrap of power over what you and the others may decide. I can only tell my truth and pray that it falls on listening ears.
The god you know as the lurid overlord of the dead is not what you assume.
Yes, he is fearsome. Yes, he is cold, without the warmth of the sun running through his veins. But he has a heart that is good and true. I know with certainty that should he ever hold the core of my lifeblood in his hands that he would treat it with care.
Leave him in peace, Mother, and trust that I will return soon. Healthy and whole.
Yours,
Persephone
It’s his entire heart, poured out and minted into words on a page.
All of it is true except the last part.
Jayce knows that when he returns he might appear to be whole from the outside, but inside something has shifted and changed for good. Like an old house never fully explored, he feels a new room within him open up, and wonders with equal parts curiosity and fear what he might find inside.
–
The passage of time rushes forward like water over crashing rapids.
Jayce has never paid much attention to time passing before. And why should he? His skin will never wrinkle. His hair will never silver. What’s a week, a year, a century to an eternal being like him?
But now he feels the seconds slip by like knives against skin. Feels the dread grow as one day slips into the next. As it grows closer and closer to the day of his departure he hoards his moments like precious gems. He has never regarded time so preciously before and it leaves him feeling so utterly mortal.
It’s not enough, he thinks, it’s never enough.
With Jayce's full strength returning, he and Viktor make a habit of strolling through the palace estate in the mornings, if you can even call it ‘morning’. After all, there is no sun in the underworld to mark the beginning of a new day, just a ghostly glowing fog that barely illuminates the steps ahead.
Viktor usually walks in silence, accompanied only by the sound of his cane crunching into the dirt path. While Jayce fills the void with ramblings about dreams he’s had, books he’s read. Sometimes he flexes his fingers and wills the flora of the Underworld to grow, a new but challenging pastime.
The plants of the Underworld feel different from those up above, more rigid and harder to crack. But Jayce finds a subtle rhythm to push and prod, and sure enough, thorny twigs sprout from the ground and blue-grey ferns unfurl like smoke.
The first time he managed to do it, Viktor had laughed in astonishment, a soaring sound that Jayce wished he could bottle up and keep forever.
“I did not know they could do that,” Viktor had said, touching a thorny vine in wonder.
Jayce is studying some moss on a log. The underworld is constantly damp which breeds all sorts of interesting fungi and lichen. He moves his hand over it causing mushrooms to pop open releasing a haze of spores into the air.
“What does it feel like when you do that?” asks Viktor from beside him, regarding Jayce and the small biosphere with a contemplative gaze.
Jayce tries to formulate words for the sensation that is as much a part of him as his heart. His blood. A feeling as natural as flexing his fingers or pointing a toe.
“I can feel something inside,” he says, tapping the hard shell of the log with an index finger, “and it’s just a matter of..”
“Getting it out?” supplies Viktor.
“Sort of…” But something is wrong with the imagery and he tries to think of a frame of reference Viktor would understand.
“It’s less forceful and more soft. Some things open better with a gentle touch. Like handling an old book, or-” Jayce’s face heats before the words even come out “-a shy lover.”
Viktor’s breath stutters and dies in his throat.
There’s the faintest hint of flush on his skin that –if Jayce were to reach out and touch– would feel cold as ice.
Not enough time, he thinks again with despair.
“I see.” Viktor finally replies albeit somewhat breathlessly, “you must have had plenty of practice with those. Lovers, that is.”
“Perhaps.” Jayce doesn’t deny the words. After all, there is no other way for a fertility god to be.
“But every time is always different.”
It’s a garbled version of the real words Jayce wants to say which are,
It would be different between us. Something new and unique.
Instead, he asks,
“What about you?”
Jayce has yet to meet a god who doesn’t like to fuck. For a god, partaking in pleasures of the flesh is as casual and commonplace as taking a drink from the lake or scratching one’s nose. And back in Olympus, there are always parades of pretty mortals and nymphs wandering in and out of bedrooms.
But Jayce has never seen Viktor take someone to his chambers. A thought that sends both a thrill of curiosity and resentment racing through him.
“If you’re asking if I have a secret harem you don’t know about then the answer is no,” sneers Viktor.
“Spending all day with the dead and dying doesn’t exactly help in that department.”
“I could teach you,” says Jayce, heart racing while the words suck every last drop of moisture from his mouth, “If you were looking for help, that is…”
Viktor’s eyes are two voids, blown out and pupil-dark. In them, Jayce sees his own reflection. Waiting. Wanting.
When he finally responds his words are quiet and dipped in venom.
“Careful not to overstep young godling,” he hisses, “Perhaps you think I am not so different from you. But remember, I was there when the universe was born, a wriggling idea pulled from the head of Gaia. And I'll still be here when it dies in fire and brimstone and is reborn from its own ashes. Next time you presume you have something to teach me. Think again.”
The tips of Viktor's hair ripple as if moved by an unseen wind. His eyes are two black pools of wild magic and Jayce thinks that this is what it must feel like to be mortal and see a god for the first time.
It’s the memory of those eyes, dark like the unborn universe, that has Jayce orgasming into his bedsheets later that night, causing the leftover figs on his bedside table to erupt in a fountain of petals.