It's strange, to wake up early. Strange to wake up at all, when she can still feel the presence of her would-be executioner lurking always just out of sight. Stranger still, however, is waking up in this bed, beside this man, who she thought she'd never see again.
No, that was a different man. She was right to think they'd never again meet. This isn't Deimos, but Alexios.
Alexios. Alexios. She wakes up early, curled up against him, his arms around her, his face buried in her hair or sometimes pressed against her chest. He still holds on as tightly as Deimos. She still touches him as softly. Alexios.
He looks peaceful in the cool light of early morning, when her eyes open and she can't make herself go back to sleep. Everything seems too clear, too sharply focused, and while it's overwhelming during the day, in the stillness before everyone wakes, it's perfect for memorizing his face.
His arms are not around her this morning. He's sleeping on his back. Chest rises and falls, deep steady breaths. She wonders if the dark rings under her own eyes will fade, like his have. His face has filled out some, too, no longer hollowed out by fear and hatred and spite and abuse. Alexios. She reaches slowly, grazing her fingers over his features with a feather-light touch. Tracing the shapes, the lines, feeling the scruff on his jaw and where it dissipates on his neck.
"Alexios," Thea whispers, soft enough that it may as well have just been in her own head. This happened before, too. Thoughts would cross the line between brain and mouth and make themselves manifest, whether she bade them to or not. Alexios is not Deimos. Is she no longer Thea? She's not sure she knows who Thea was, before this.
He has left Deimos behind, after so many years, he ... unbecomes. He takes new form, this being who does not know Hades as intimately as a brother. He has a Mother now, who would fight Zeus herself for him, he has a sister who has done near that to prove to him that there is more than what he had been led to believe. Not just from the world but from himself.
But part of him has been too well trained to not open his eyes when the touch first brushes him. His eyes sliding open in the pre-dawn light. The grey wash of the Laconia mornings. He does not move, does not startle. He has come back to her every night, though his Father and his Brother keep him busy during the day so he does not twist himself in knots worrying over her.
Here, however - is where his thoughts return, when the time stills between each bout or task. Her little body seemed carved of sand, and as liable to crumble and wash away. Myrine had told him only time would pass this haze, and he knew that well. He had many nights wearing off the cult's drugs. She would find it just as exhausting and difficult to pass, even she was so little - so frail.
"Thea." He calls to her, as she would call him. Lifting his fingers up to touch her hand as she touches him.
But for all that has changed, all that is and is not, all that has passed between them: his fingers still have a care for her. That touches her knuckles as reverently as a statue of Artemis herself.
"Shhh," she presses her fingers to his lips, as if he would have much else to say. Maybe Alexios talks more than Deimos, but she doubts it. She curls tighter to his side and threads her fingers through his and drawing his hand closer that she might kiss it. "We are still sleeping."
She sighs, knowing that they're not likely to fall back asleep, but contented all the same. He's warm, the air cool, their bed comfortable. Even now, he smells of woodsmoke and war, but also of love and home and him.
"You smell nice," she whispers, closing her eyes.
"We're still sleeping."
Edited (changed my miiiinnnnddddd) 2020-05-06 21:13 (UTC)
Beyond them, to his keen senses, he hears Kassandra do her morning training, the warm affection of Nikolaos correcting stance or form. Stentor's rough drag of a voice beyond it that just makes him want to punch him in the face from here.
"We are."
Not a question, a simple confirmation. They are asleep as long as she still wants to be asleep. They are awake when she wants to be awake. He is hers to do with as she pleases for as long as she pleases. "Apollo has not yet left his stables."
She smiles and brushes the pad of her thumb over his knuckles, her hands soft and slender against his, rough hewn from hardship and training.
"He must have heard me," She has never spoken to Apollo, that she recalls. The stars were her confidants, when she was made to believe that Deimos would be among them someday. "He is stalling so I might tell you a secret."
Nyx would be a better companion to her, than Apollo ever would attempt to be. But being raised to be the son of war itself meant he never did think much of Apollo's words.
No, she is much more a star-clad, night clad thing. Even in the haze that the cult left him in, she always seemed to be clad best in night.
Always, always a tease. He watches her, and the grumble at her response and her reticence to speak.
So she does the thing that always works in getting her to relent when she thought she could tease and withhold from him.
He rolls on top of her like the great and huge weight he is, a wall of unbudging muscles that squishes her down into the soft blankets. Absolutely and totally unmovable.
As he overtakes her so too does surprise and delight and she giggles, muffled as it is beneath him. Her secret is muffled too, incomprehensibly laughed against his chest.
Three words that neither of them have ever spoken. Thea wraps her arms around him because what else can she do? Nothing. She's squished and she loves it, and she loves him.
With his face buried in her wild morning hair, he feels some tense, unsure place in his chest, relax. She would still have him. He could force her to want him, he knows, could demand and there is nothing she could do to refuse him.
But she still laughed in his presence. That sound was precious. Free and bright. The way no one dared to in his presence. The first time he ever saw someone be so brilliant and undiminished around him in a world of cowering and fear.
"Pythia. You serve Apollo. Will I need to take his retribution out on you?"
She laughs again, drawing idle patterns on his skin with her fingers. Any time her touch discovers a scar, she traces it, feeling the raised reminders of violence enacted upon him. They would make her sad, were they not proof of his survival.
"I serve no-one," she says, and turns her head to better hear the thrum of his heart through his chest. "Except you."
Thea moves to snake her arms over his shoulders, around his neck. Getting to be face to face with him, while pinned, is no easy task, and the feeling of her body sliding against his to pull herself closer is perhaps too stimulating this early in the morning, but as much as she loves to be crushed she also wants to be able to see him, his eyes, kiss his lips, press her face into his neck and inhale his scent.
He does his best to make it easier, even if, the same as the first time, once he touches her skin, her body, it's a herculean task to pull away from her. Her warmth, that soft smell of olive oil and incense he could inhale deeply and sustain himself on for weeks, he felt.
Watching her features delicately shift, her deep brown skin illuminated far better now with the morning light then what the Cult had fed her. "You don't have to do that, now. Not for anyone."
That he will make sure of. He still does not know what he feels for the Cult. For what had been done to him. But watching her soft lips part in easiness. No, he will not accept anything else but that happiness fill her, ever again.
She lets that settle in for a moment. She doesn't have to serve anyone anymore. In the midst of haze, she would insist that she served the Gods, served the Cult, served him, and that it was what she was made for. Right now, she still feels the tug of those words wanting to be spoken, but she can finally resist that conditioning with a clear head and really think about who she serves and why.
She doesn't have to serve him, but she wants to, because she loves him. She puts her hands on either side of his face, looking at him like a sacred work of art despite his imperfections, his scars, his past. No, not despite it all. Those things contribute to how beautiful he is to her, like a shattered vase repaired with gold.
"Bastard, now I have to tell you the secret," she says, smiling at him. The way she says bastard sounds more like a term of endearment than an insult, reflecting the same soft adoration that shows in her eyes and the curl of her lips. "I...know that I don't have to serve anyone. But you're not just anyone to me."
Thea takes a moment to brush her fingertip down the line of his nose, tapping the tip once. Boop. When she tells him the secret, her voice is merely a whisper. One must always whisper secrets, after all.
He stills. Over her, around her, he stills. Look at her features in a rapture.
This is so unbelievably precious a thing. Small and fragile, Aphrodite herself had blessed him with it, he was sure, though he had not ever given offerings enough to sway her favour in such a way.
His voice is rough - but it's neither lust nor anger, in truth he doesn't know what it is. "Athessa..."
There isn't a complete absence of fear and doubt in her — as ever there is a thin tendril that worms its way through the cracks, tries to whisper fell nothings into her ears and sow seeds of uncertainty — but what fears she has and what doubts she has pale in comparison to the love that threatens to burst from her chest. To split her apart at the seams with not a bang but a soft sigh.
He doesn't have to say it to her. She knows he loves her, even if he doesn't have the words. He says it in the way he looks at her, the way he touches her, the way he saved her. He is a creature of war and pain but there is gentleness that he bestows on her and that alone is enough.
"I love you," she says again, mapping his face with her fingers. She could be struck blind and still see that face with touch alone. If she was smiling before, her face splits into a grin now, barely containing the joy that illuminates her from saying three simple syllables. It's like a fire ignited, its smoke stinging her eyes with happy tears and she can't not say it again: "I. Love. You."
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hey guess what
It's strange, to wake up early. Strange to wake up at all, when she can still feel the presence of her would-be executioner lurking always just out of sight. Stranger still, however, is waking up in this bed, beside this man, who she thought she'd never see again.
No, that was a different man. She was right to think they'd never again meet. This isn't Deimos, but Alexios.
Alexios. Alexios. She wakes up early, curled up against him, his arms around her, his face buried in her hair or sometimes pressed against her chest. He still holds on as tightly as Deimos. She still touches him as softly. Alexios.
He looks peaceful in the cool light of early morning, when her eyes open and she can't make herself go back to sleep. Everything seems too clear, too sharply focused, and while it's overwhelming during the day, in the stillness before everyone wakes, it's perfect for memorizing his face.
His arms are not around her this morning. He's sleeping on his back. Chest rises and falls, deep steady breaths. She wonders if the dark rings under her own eyes will fade, like his have. His face has filled out some, too, no longer hollowed out by fear and hatred and spite and abuse. Alexios. She reaches slowly, grazing her fingers over his features with a feather-light touch. Tracing the shapes, the lines, feeling the scruff on his jaw and where it dissipates on his neck.
"Alexios," Thea whispers, soft enough that it may as well have just been in her own head. This happened before, too. Thoughts would cross the line between brain and mouth and make themselves manifest, whether she bade them to or not. Alexios is not Deimos. Is she no longer Thea? She's not sure she knows who Thea was, before this.
no subject
But part of him has been too well trained to not open his eyes when the touch first brushes him. His eyes sliding open in the pre-dawn light. The grey wash of the Laconia mornings. He does not move, does not startle. He has come back to her every night, though his Father and his Brother keep him busy during the day so he does not twist himself in knots worrying over her.
Here, however - is where his thoughts return, when the time stills between each bout or task. Her little body seemed carved of sand, and as liable to crumble and wash away. Myrine had told him only time would pass this haze, and he knew that well. He had many nights wearing off the cult's drugs. She would find it just as exhausting and difficult to pass, even she was so little - so frail.
"Thea." He calls to her, as she would call him. Lifting his fingers up to touch her hand as she touches him.
But for all that has changed, all that is and is not, all that has passed between them: his fingers still have a care for her. That touches her knuckles as reverently as a statue of Artemis herself.
no subject
She sighs, knowing that they're not likely to fall back asleep, but contented all the same. He's warm, the air cool, their bed comfortable. Even now, he smells of woodsmoke and war, but also of love and home and him.
"You smell nice," she whispers, closing her eyes.
"We're still sleeping."
no subject
"We are."
Not a question, a simple confirmation. They are asleep as long as she still wants to be asleep. They are awake when she wants to be awake. He is hers to do with as she pleases for as long as she pleases. "Apollo has not yet left his stables."
no subject
"He must have heard me," She has never spoken to Apollo, that she recalls. The stars were her confidants, when she was made to believe that Deimos would be among them someday. "He is stalling so I might tell you a secret."
no subject
No, she is much more a star-clad, night clad thing. Even in the haze that the cult left him in, she always seemed to be clad best in night.
"What secret is that?"
no subject
"But if telling you would appease Apollo, maybe I won't tell you. Why would I do what Apollo wants?"
Thea can be such a tease sometimes.
no subject
So she does the thing that always works in getting her to relent when she thought she could tease and withhold from him.
He rolls on top of her like the great and huge weight he is, a wall of unbudging muscles that squishes her down into the soft blankets. Absolutely and totally unmovable.
At least by her when she was squished, anyway.
no subject
Three words that neither of them have ever spoken. Thea wraps her arms around him because what else can she do? Nothing. She's squished and she loves it, and she loves him.
no subject
But she still laughed in his presence. That sound was precious. Free and bright. The way no one dared to in his presence. The first time he ever saw someone be so brilliant and undiminished around him in a world of cowering and fear.
"Pythia. You serve Apollo. Will I need to take his retribution out on you?"
no subject
"I serve no-one," she says, and turns her head to better hear the thrum of his heart through his chest. "Except you."
Thea moves to snake her arms over his shoulders, around his neck. Getting to be face to face with him, while pinned, is no easy task, and the feeling of her body sliding against his to pull herself closer is perhaps too stimulating this early in the morning, but as much as she loves to be crushed she also wants to be able to see him, his eyes, kiss his lips, press her face into his neck and inhale his scent.
no subject
Watching her features delicately shift, her deep brown skin illuminated far better now with the morning light then what the Cult had fed her. "You don't have to do that, now. Not for anyone."
That he will make sure of. He still does not know what he feels for the Cult. For what had been done to him. But watching her soft lips part in easiness. No, he will not accept anything else but that happiness fill her, ever again.
no subject
She doesn't have to serve him, but she wants to, because she loves him. She puts her hands on either side of his face, looking at him like a sacred work of art despite his imperfections, his scars, his past. No, not despite it all. Those things contribute to how beautiful he is to her, like a shattered vase repaired with gold.
"Bastard, now I have to tell you the secret," she says, smiling at him. The way she says bastard sounds more like a term of endearment than an insult, reflecting the same soft adoration that shows in her eyes and the curl of her lips. "I...know that I don't have to serve anyone. But you're not just anyone to me."
Thea takes a moment to brush her fingertip down the line of his nose, tapping the tip once. Boop. When she tells him the secret, her voice is merely a whisper. One must always whisper secrets, after all.
"I love you."
no subject
This is so unbelievably precious a thing. Small and fragile, Aphrodite herself had blessed him with it, he was sure, though he had not ever given offerings enough to sway her favour in such a way.
His voice is rough - but it's neither lust nor anger, in truth he doesn't know what it is. "Athessa..."
no subject
He doesn't have to say it to her. She knows he loves her, even if he doesn't have the words. He says it in the way he looks at her, the way he touches her, the way he saved her. He is a creature of war and pain but there is gentleness that he bestows on her and that alone is enough.
"I love you," she says again, mapping his face with her fingers. She could be struck blind and still see that face with touch alone. If she was smiling before, her face splits into a grin now, barely containing the joy that illuminates her from saying three simple syllables. It's like a fire ignited, its smoke stinging her eyes with happy tears and she can't not say it again: "I. Love. You."
And she kisses him, laughing.