Chapter Text
One night, Persephone enters her old apartment building.
She’s maintained the little place’s upkeep over the forty years since she first bought it - before her wedding, before the Winter Plague, before Kronos’ and Ouranos’ final defeat. Since then, she’s used it to house Demeter during her visits, and to give her children a place to stay while attending college. Occasionally she and Hades would have a little staycation there, when they wanted to get away from the stressors of their roles but could not afford to take too much time off for a proper vacation.
Tonight is the first time she’ll have ever been alone in the place, come to think of it. She spent all of two days living there before circumstances forced her to elope, and in those two days, Hades had always been there, cuddling, marveling over the rooftop garden she was cultivating, soberly discussing the future. The thought of being here alone, without Hades, and without someone to distract her from the fact that she is without Hades, makes her sob, despite her best efforts to keep a straight face. Gods, she feels like a stupid, moonstruck teenager again instead of a grown deity who’s been married forty years and raised three children; after all the times she had fought to end a separation from Hades, here she is, instigating a separation herself.
“Man…you look like shit. Brings back memories.”
With the benefit of long practice, Persephone suppresses the urge to startle. Instead, her blue eyes glow red with divine wrath, and crimson vines grow almost lazily out of her rose-colored hair as she glares at the god lounging next to her apartment’s door. Despite her annoyance at seeing him, he’s right in that this brings back memories - one in particular, from forty years ago, when the amaranthine-skinned man sat in the very same position, awaiting her arrival.
“Hello, Zeus. Going into labor again?”
He bites his lip as he smiles, idly brushing his long, purple hair behind his ear, his gaze habitually scanning up and down her form, lingering at her bust and hipline. “Twice is enough for one lifetime, I think,” he says. “Plus, it would be really, really bad if I drank this while pregnant.”
She raises one eyebrow at the box of wine he lifts from behind him. “You didn’t stop smoking or drinking when you were pregnant with Dionysus.”
“Well, duh, he’s the god of wine.” Zeus rolls his eyes. “So, are you gonna let me in tonight? Or are you going to languish in your bodice-burster heroine’s angst all by your sober lonesome?”
“I’m not in the mood to deal with this.” Persephone whirls on her heel and heads back towards the elevator.
“Hera and Hades are fucking in your bed, aren’t they?”
She stops in her tracks, suddenly short of breath. “What-“ she sobs again, and bites her cheek, willing her voice not to quiver, not to show weakness. “What, makes you…m-makes you say tha-?”
A strong hand gently turns her around, pulling her into an embrace against a tacky, green, flower-patterned shirt. This sort of comfort, coming from Zeus of all people, someone she’d hated for so long, who’d gone out of his way to be antagonistic at every turn…she finds herself relaxing into the embrace, muffling a wail of grief against his chest. “They…he told me they were over…” she cries…and then she gets angry. “HE TOLD ME THEY WERE OVER, for THREE THOUSAND YEARS!” She hits Zeus’s chest with both fists, then seizes his shirt, shoves her face into it, and screams. “HE TOLD ME THEY ONLY GOT TOGETHER BECAUSE THERE WAS NO ONE ELSE TO DATE, and that when he was assigned the Underworld, she married you and became queen of the gods and THAT WAS FUCKING IT!”
A bitter chuckle sounds out from above her head. “Yeah…she was telling me the same story for three thousand years of marriage.”
Persephone pulls away, glaring up into his stormy gray eyes. Lightning flashes outside, and in the brief moment of illumination, she sees the same rage on his face that she feels in her very bones. In that very heartbeat, she pulls him down into a fearsome, savage kiss, teeth clacking painfully against his, lips bruising wherever they make contact.
What happens next passes in a blur; Zeus unlocks the door of her apartment with telekinesis and stumbles up the spiral staircase to her loft bedroom; buttons pop and fabric rips as they tear each other out of their clothing. All too soon and not soon enough, he pauses as he looms over her on the same bed where she and her husband have slept so often. Thunder rolls across the Underworld sky, letting the whole city know that Zeus is present, and that he is pissed. And yet, he lingers, gazing down at her, the question of whether he should continue written all over his youthful face.
Persephone thinks of the scene she’d witnessed at the mansion…her husband’s lips trailing over her mentor’s shoulder…the brazen groping in the hall where her family photos hung…the soft pet name of Bunny falling from Hades’ mouth…
Her eyes flash red, and she grabs Zeus by the ears and yanks him down to continue.
What follows is certainly not lovemaking, and it barely even qualifies as sex. This is a revenge fuck, sharp, rage-filled, and brutal; there will be bruises and scratches all over both of them, but neither of them cares. It’s not about pleasure, and it’s definitely not about love. Both of them want to cause themselves enough pain to dull the humiliation they’d been dealt elsewhere, and the only outlets available are each other.
When it’s done, Zeus flops on the side of the bed nearest the door, panting. “Fuck,” he cusses. “I picked the wrong decade to quit smoking.”
For some reason, that makes Persephone laugh.
***
They both pass out from the unexpected exertion. When they awake, somehow, they’ve managed to curl up together, nose to nose, legs entwined in the ripped and tangled sheets. The storm has passed over, the thunder ringing so distantly that Persephone can feel it more than she can hear it.
“I’m glad we did this. The Asphodel Meadows were in need of a good watering.”
He laughs, a bit less bitterly than before, but that was probably the afterglow talking.
“…how long have you known? About Hera and Hades, that is.”
Zeus looks…ashamed. Now there was an emotion she had never anticipated from him. “I…what color are my eyes?”
“…Gray.”
“And what color are Hades’ eyes?”
“…Red, but why…?”
“What color are Ares’ eyes?”
She blinks, and the realization started to dawn on her. “Red…and his hair is white, like Hades. But Dio looks the same, only with purple skin instead of gold…”
“Eris’ eyes are red, and she has black wings like the Erinyes. Hephaestus…yellow eyes like many other Underworld deities, and a talent that involves being underground. Eileithyia and Hebe…both have purple eyes, not gray or blue. Not one of them has my skin color, where all of my children with other mothers have purple skin.”
Persephone frowns. “Why did you never confront her?”
“Because one, I was doing a hell of a lot more cheating than she was, and I thought it was only fair. And two, Hera didn’t know that she was a fertility goddess at the time, so confronting her would have meant explaining why I thought ‘our’ kids were all fathered by my infertile brother. So…I didn’t tell anyone. I still haven’t.”
“…so you were protecting her?”
Another bitter chuckle. “I was protecting my own self-interest in keeping her close.”
“So why didn’t you fight her when she filed for divorce?”
He thinks about that for few seconds, his eyes distant. “Perhaps…I wanted her to be happy.”
***
In the morning, Zeus wakes her with a kiss to the forehead. “Hey, you’re a vegetarian, right? Do you eat eggs?”
She’s stunned by the question, so stunned that he repeats himself, not sure if she was awake enough to hear him. “Hades…always bought me furs, real furs, and didn’t ever ask…yes, I eat eggs. I’m vegetarian, not vegan.”
Zeus listens to her admission with a frown of mild concern, and nods, then kisses her lips. “I will make you a vegetarian omelette, then. Stay here, I’ll bring it to you.”
Persephone watches him leave, noting that he has snagged one of Hades’ dressing gowns from the closet. She hadn’t…anticipated he would stay this long. Zeus in her childhood had abandoned so many nymphs with her mother, had fathered so many children whose names he would never even learn…she’d thought he would just leave after their…infraction the previous night. Maybe time, divorce, trauma, and a brush with death have changed him?
Her phone interrupts her musings with a loud vibration. She gingerly sits up - there are a lot of new bruises she’ll have to heal - and glances at the screen.
Aidoneus: Sweetness, please answer, I’m beginning to get worried.
Oh, he’s only beginning to get worried? Hera must have kept him up a while. Persephone grits her teeth and almost puts the phone away to ghost Hades for a little while, but decides against it. If Hades gets worried, he will find her somehow, and if he finds her with Zeus…what is supposed to be a one-night thing will become a drawn-out divorce procedure, and possibly a war, like the last time she went to court. She has to reassure him now, so that she can have time to erase the evidence.
Me: I’m all right, my love. The conference went longer than I expected thought it would, and I crashed at the apartment. Forgot to plug the phone in, sorry.
…
Aidoneus: Oh, okay. Now I feel a little silly for worrying, lol. Do you want to meet up for breakfast?
Zeus returns right then, with an actually fairly decent omelette cooked with feta cheese and mushrooms, as well as a glass of orange juice. Persephone smiles up in thanks as she takes her plate, then turns her attention back to her phone.
Me: No thanks, I’ve got breakfast. Maybe we can do dinner, though?
…
Aidoneus: Sounds like a plan. Have a good day, little goddess! I’ll see you later!
Me: Love you!
…there is no response. Persephone’s heart falls. For some reason, she’d hoped he’d be harder to reassure than that.
“You look sad. Was that Hades who texted?”
“It was. He…I dunno, I said I love him, but he didn’t say it back. It’s…it felt like he was eager to get back to whatever he was doing.”
Zeus chews contemplatively on a piece of his own omelette. “He does love you.”
“And I love him. More than anything…”
Tears prick at her eyes, but she remembers blue lips caressing a golden neck in front of the pictures of her children, and realizes she’s not done being angry yet. With a determined sniff, she bolts down the rest of her breakfast, and looks Zeus in the eye.
“I need a shower before I head home. Tell me…is your shower sex game up to snuff?”
He grins wickedly. “Who do you think you’re talking to?”
***
As expected, the god of rainstorms has a fantastic shower sex game. So fantastic that she is too limp-kneed to stand when he’s done with her, so the shower quickly becomes a bath, as well as a much-needed aftercare session. She can remove her own scrapes, bruises, and bite marks with a thought; she decides to have a little fun with Zeus’s injuries, kissing gently at his neck, tickling his stomach, caressing the long, thin scratches on his back and watching them disappear under her hand.
Somehow, she ends up spooning him from behind, washing and rinsing his long hair. He makes a soft sound, leaning into her touch. As she shifts to accommodate him, a plant falls out of her own hair, and she idly scoops it from the water to examine it.
It’s a holm oak blossom; actually, it’s a whole sprig of tiny, golden-brown, hairlike flowers. And one of Zeus’ sacred trees, the one most exclusive to himself, is the holm oak.
That is when she begins to realize that this isn’t going to be a one-night stand by any means.
The thought doesn’t bother her as much as it probably should.