Archive of Our Own ^beta

The first time they meet, it’s only in passing. A moment to share glances between one another and then forget entirely aside from the cotton ball tufts of dreams where faces and features mesh together in a confusing kaleidoscope.

Steve rarely went up top, and every time he did it was either the best time he’d had in ages, or it was so impossibly miserable that he contemplated having poor El reopen the gate so the terrors could come back out and gnaw on his skull. There were ups and downs to going up top, essentially. The highs were so high, but the lows were a whole other level of extreme. Perhaps maybe that wasn’t being up top, though, maybe that was just how Steve felt things. Which, was honestly probably very true, but it felt better to blame it on circumstance than try to figure out a way to fix whatever unholy cauldron of chemicals his head had become.

Not a long while ago, he’d just fix it by forgetting.

There was a time where he was the center of the swinging parties, doing anything to forget about the morbid duties awaiting him when he would inevitably return. But after awhile, the luster of losing control wore off, and all that was left was the inescapable exhaustion. Too exhausted to join the revelry, too exhausted to dance, too exhausted to drink, too exhausted to be angry when Nancy called him bullshit, and much too exhausted to sever himself from both her and Jonathan when she fluttered away from him.

He figured he deserved it. He probably did. The heartbreak served to exhaust him further, and he refused himself leisure in all its forms. It was easier, he supposed, to just work himself raw than to deal with his own emotions, or the fallouts they cause. It was childish to avoid the people in his life who care for him, yet he couldn’t find it in himself to stop. It became a habit, a bad habit.

Eventually it gets so bad, Tommy and Carol reconnect with him, somehow. It’s awkward and stunted and sad, but he’s grateful nonetheless to finally have them back in his life. They’re still young and dumb, like he used to be, glowing with life and lack of wisdom. He let’s them drag him up the mountain, as is the custom for an invitee bringing a guest, feet still stumbling despite the trek upwards being nothing but habitual, and he lets them pull him into their swinging party.

And for a while, he gets lost in it.

He spins and dances and drinks and flirts and feels like his old self again.

The issue is that his old self feels disgusting. Because it’s fake, and all for show, and nothing but lies served on a shining silver platter with ambrosia that makes your head spin served in a finely crafted cup right next to it. The coveted feeling of slipping into ether didn’t comfort him like he thought it would, instead, it frightened him. He didn’t want to be lost to the confusing mesh and tangle of bodies anymore. It didn’t feel warm and welcoming like it used to, it felt too hot, stifling, like the oppressive heat of the sun in the summer when it beat like a drum against the rocks and singed skin until it was red and peeling and scabbing over. In order to stand it, he’d have to shed a new skin, but it would end up all wrinkly and rotted, as if it wasn’t really his. And, by all accounts, it wasn’t.

So he decides to leave, pushing against the throng of people pushing inwards. It’s a desperate scramble, one he’s still not proud of, but freedom was needed. He feels too open, too exposed, like he’s just a picked scab for the people around him to pull at further and make fester until it got infected. Maybe he was being melodramatic, but the room was spinning and the liberating environment of the party felt more like a gilded cage than anything else.

It’s only as he’s leaving that they cross paths.

A gaggle of nymphs, all draped in finery that would surely be stripped off by the night’s end, are dragging someone up the mountain as Steve descends it. He doesn’t want the partygoers to notice his absence, and if he kept his exit further away from the party itself no one would be aware he was even there in the first place. He’s far enough away to begin taking his leave, and he takes a deep breath before the process starts, wincing at the way his ribcage rattles in his chest with the effort.

As the earth opens up before him, split open with nothing but a thin gust of wind, an open maw of comfort, lined with stones for teeth; he glances over to the group of nymphs dragging the grumbling young man up the mountain. The nymphs giggle, pointing and jeering and chittering amongst themselves, and his gaze crosses with the poor soul they seem to be carting around.

It lasts for only a moment, but Steve swears the breath was knocked clean out of him. Whoever this man was, he was clearly meant to assimilate himself into one of these parties among the gods. The nymphs chose the right person to accompany them it seems, since he was all golden and chiseled. Steve vaguely wonders if the goddess of love had brought life to another impossibly perfect statue, as the young man certainly looked the part. In all his swarming thoughts he doesn’t notice the striking electric blue that joins in his own almost awkwardly long observance.

It’s gone in the next moment, as Steve is swallowed by the Earth, and then, all he can see is the dark staircase leading down into the underworld, home. It’s too drastic a change. It leads him down a lane of thoughts he should’ve let die a long time ago. He thinks of his parents, who fled this place the moment it was passed unto him, and how he’d never seen them since. He wonders how his father handled the titles, of how he greeted and welcomed the souls that fled down the marble stairs, Charon passing them along with a soft look, tears streaming down their cheeks as they stare you in the face and ask and beg for mercy for sins you couldn’t feel until they were spoken life into.

He wonders if his father was also abandoned here, among the crumbling wreckage of war torn families and saints whose tears feed the pomegranate trees that found a way to grow in the harsh environment, trunks glimmering with silver and dripping with sadness.

He wouldn’t know. His father was always drifting between gateways, socializing amongst others, and his mother was always two steps behind him, fearing the stories of the high god’s infidelity as well as feeding into her own adoration of the variety in the world up top.

Even back then, when he was still young and beaming with fresh new life, they left him alone to sit in the grove of pomegranates, and calm the frantic deceased that would flutter down so that they’d be nothing more than their faintly shining soul, that would then sink down into whatever area was best suited for the crimes and good deeds they carried on their shoulders.

It was always a shock when the nicest souls went off again, because their warm presence slipping off his shoulders to their own fates was like a bucket of cold water thrown into his face. They were company, however delicate and temporary. They were still there for him for at least for a little bit. But once they were gone, he was by himself again and so very tired. Sometimes he’d get desperate enough to try conversing with the Furies, but they’d eventually chase him off or taunt him too much before long. And then all he had left for company was the threatening roll of tartarus below, just beneath his home.

And it’s all he has now, as well.

He falls asleep underneath the pomegranate grove, with only the rumble of tartarus and the whispers of the saints through the trees to lull him to sleep.

The next time they meet, it’s at night during the summer.

Steve is sprawled out in the middle of a stream, long limbs spread wide and eyes shut soft as he lets the spring water brush lightly against him. It’s rare for him to come up, still, but he’s started acclimating himself to the feel of the world up top again. He wants to join it, never wants to part with a place so warm and welcoming. It’s sad, really. When he spent all his time up top, joining Nancy on her hunts, capturing prophecies with Jonathan, or partying with Tommy and Carol, he ached for the cool comfort of his home beneath the surface.

The grass is always greener on the other side, he figures.

Speaking of grass, he hears the rustle of it underneath something walking towards him. He sits up slowly, small shivers running down his neck and arms from the cool water paired with the swaying breeze of the night. It pleasant when added on top of the sizzling heat still left over from the day prior, beating down still upon the forest he’s taken up residence in for the night even while the sun wasn’t present. It was like the fleeting touch of an old friend, brushing across the shoulder, an ache he couldn’t place.

He turns to look when he hears the pebbles beside the stream begin to clink together, reminding him of the way the jewelry in his mother’s room used to sound back when she’d still visit him occasionally. She’d pretty herself up, claiming she had to be and look as sharp as the jagged gems dripping from the silver chains crossing at pressure point intersections along her body. He’d always ask her to pretty him up as well, young and unafraid of the scorn of his father. She’d smile at him, distant and detached, and carefully cross stitch the gleaming metal to his own skin. It makes him feel as soft as melting wax inside, yet ragged and frayed around the edges, to recall the memory.

In the present, it’s dark out, almost pitch black with the new moon hanging in the sky, a beautiful ornament. His eyes adjust to it easily, it’s dark like this in the underworld all the time, he can navigate without a torch just about anytime. He’s expecting a deer, or maybe some nocturnal animal with more curiosity than sense.

He isn’t expecting to be met with golden skin and electric blue eyes, and the red shock of blood dripping down to join his gray robes. The sharp scent of iron draws Steve closer, concern dripping from his eyes with every movement. It’s only when he lets out a small splash, and is nearly right up in the golden one’s face, that the other seems to notice his presence.

Steve almost feels bad for startling him, because he freezes, like he’s the deer Nancy would stun with a swift arrow to the neck. He looks wide-eyed and caught, wild but frozen, and it makes Steve wonder what happened to him to make him this frightened. But he supposes it’s only fair, since he is a strange person who seemingly appeared out of nothing right next to his face. It’s kinda funny, actually -- as if Electric Blue and Gold really was the deer he was expecting him to be at first.

But the stunned deer look melts away faster than expected, and instead hardens into something wild and unkempt. Something in it dredges up a whole lot of old thoughts he assumed were left behind when he let something go. He doesn’t quite remember what that something is, or why that hard look makes it come to mind, but he figures that was an issue for another date. Another question left unanswered and left in a pile of decay in the corner of his bedroom where the darkness hangs the thickest. His thoughts bounce around like that for a while, but it’s all stopped short when Electric Blue and Gold opens his pretty mouth.

“You just gonna stare at me all night?” His voice is rough and gravelly, and tinged with something Steve barely registers as pain. It’s well disguised, but he can still pick it out.

“You’re bleeding.” He ends up saying, dumbly. It seems Electric Blue and Gold agrees with him on that front, shooting him an incredulous look, thick brows furrowed.

“Yeah, no shit.” He spits at him, rolling his eyes. It was smarmy. It was wonderful.

Steve doesn’t really know what to say, clearly, so instead of opening his big stupid mouth again, he holds up a hand and offers it up to Electric Blue and Gold. He seems to hesitate for a long minute, searching Steve’s face for something -- deceit maybe -- before finally heaving out a long sigh and taking the hand offered to him.

Steve’s own grip was firm and steadfast, but Electric Blue and Gold’s grip was light and disinterested. It seemed like he wanted things to just be over with, so Steve obliged. The invocation was so simple for him now, it was like a second nature, soft breeze rustling with the hushed whisper of words both familiar and foreign on his tongue.

And then the moment passes, and he lets the golden hand go.

There’s another long pause, and then-

“And here I thought you were gonna kill me.” Gold snorts out a laugh, but it’s contained, caged, like he’s trying to hold it back.

“Now what gave you that impression?” Steve asks, lips quirking upwards at the remark. He hopes it masks his own nagging concern, considering Gold here just grabbed his hand fully expecting to die. Not to mention the blood. It’s more worrying than he’d like to admit.

“Oh, I dunno. Flowy little stream genie pops up, talkin’ bout how I’m bleedin’ like they’re a shark getting drawn in by the scent. Kinda makes ya’ think you’re about to get dragged in and eaten alive, don’t it?” He says, smiling and showing off the whites of his teeth. It could be a real smile, or it could be a grimace. Even with Steve’s good eyesight, it’s hard to really tell in the dark.

“I guess that makes sense. Don’t know what a shark is, though.” Steve replies, finally dragging himself up and out of the steam entirely, cool water sticking to his legs in little rivets and droplets that refuse to let go. He pokes at them absently, popping them with soft touches that turn them into soft rivers mirroring his veins. He draws his knees up to his chest.

“How-” Gold starts, giving out another snuffle that sounds like he wants to laugh so bad, but simply can’t. He starts over, more controlled this time, and Steve wonders why he can’t just let out that laugh, why can’t Gold just let himself feel joy. “I’m guessing you’ve never been to the ocean, then, stream genie?”

It takes a moment for Steve to reply, as he pokes at the dots of water on his legs and deliberates over exactly why Gold can’t just feel the good too for a minute. For all Steve’s power, he can only see the life story once the body starts to rot, and even then death rites have to be given. He snaps out of it soon enough when Gold starts anxiously tapping his finger against a pebble.

“Huh? Oh, yeah, guess not. I’ve always lived inland, never really got to see it.” He says, and it breaks open an entirely new line of dialogue inside his skull. He’s never seen the ocean. He’s never seen the mountain unless he was walking up it for a party in the middle of the night. He’s never seen a lot of things, and it makes him wonder what he’s missing out on.

“That’s a damn shame. It’s fuckin’ beautiful.” Gold exclaims, near breathlessly, stuck in a reverie Steve can only watch from the outside and envy endlessly.

“Tell me about it. What’s it like?” Steve feels like he’s begging, and it would be demeaning, if Electric Blue and Gold didn’t light up so fast when he asked. It makes something light flutter down his throat, and he gives a soft smile.

It doesn’t take long for Electric Blue and Gold to launch into detailed explanations about life near the ocean. He speaks about it reverently, with a fire seeping into his words that wasn’t really there before. Steve is enamoured immediately by it. Gold speaks of how you sink into the burning sand, of how the shells collect on the shores, of the tanned bodies screaming in delight and running around under the sun, and the sunburnt bodies laughing quietly with one another around a bonfire under the moon. Electric Blue and Gold speaks only of the beauty of it, and then it begins to taper off into soft murmurs about missing it so much. Steve can tell it hurts, and he’s nothing but a stranger to this golden glowing boy, but he wants to wrap him up in the softest of furs and hold tight to him and make him smile again.

He doesn’t do any of that, though. Instead he stands, brushing his fingers against this golden boy’s temple with nothing but praise, and tells him that he’ll rest well tonight if he stays by the stream. He claims it to have something to do with the way the water sounds, though he knows it will be because he invoked a prayer with the current Hypnos for the boy (on top of the one he already invoked to heal him up, because he is a fool smitten by a smile). Gaia knows the poor soul needs it with the kind of wounds he had been carrying.

When Steve bids him goodbye, intending to walk a long way downstream so as not to rouse his tired companion from a sleep sure to come soon, he’s stopped by a question.

“Who are you?”

It takes Steve a moment, and he allows himself to pause, standing with robes no longer damp as he stares at the moon still hanging above him in the sky. He hums, trying to think of what to say. Hades is far too formal, and way too intimidating. Steve is the name of the faux animal he’s sure the boy heard all about at the party Steve knew he went to. None of the usual other names would work either, especially for someone he’s drawn to like this.

And when he turns, his smile is surely visible.

“Your very own stream genie, my ocean boy.”

When he turns back around, beginning his trek downstream once more, he doesn’t hear anything else out of the man he’s leaving behind. His heart aches, but he knows that it’s better he leave now, before he risks falling asleep as well, and that would only cause more troubles for him. But as he walks, a giddy feeling bubbles up in his chest, and he smiles like an idiot as he treads aimlessly, following the water.

He reminds himself to have another chat with the spirit of the stream he was at. It’s the least he could do after tonight. He owes that spirit everything, for letting him lay there, for letting him meet him. It’s a good feeling.

His good mood and smile don’t even falter when he returns home, the loneliness not so bad with a concrete memory to keep him company.

And he falls asleep, nestled between the pomegranate tree roots, hearing the saints inside them sing with an inflection he hadn’t heard in what felt like forever.

After the initial meeting, they meet a number times more in the same way.

Always at night, always by the stream, never on a full moon.

His ocean boy is always battered and bruised, bloodied and broken, and Steve hurts for him while his ocean boy refuses himself the cathartic release of sorrow. It’s always dark, but the smell of blood is sharp and achingly familiar. It’s scary, because while his ocean boy smiles at him and plays it off, saying things like you should’ve seen the other guy , he can tell it was no fight - honorable or not - that hurt him like this.

He can tell by the tensing of his throat, by the candy lacquer shell of tears in his ocean boy’s eyes that are swallowed back so fast and barely noticeable to someone who isn’t like Steve. Steve drinks in everything about his ocean boy, and in return his ocean boy seems to gather what he can. His ocean boy is smarter than he looks, quick and sharp, observant and almost mean at times.

“You’re lonely, aren’t you? That’s why you gotta take up a charity case like me. Sorry to say, but trying to fix me ain’t gonna make you any less a sad sap, and it’s not gonna fix me either.” The sneer is there, desperate and needy in a way Steve doesn’t want to be antagonized by, but his hackles raise at how accurate it is. It makes him doubt himself. Who was he to assume this enamour went both ways? Who was he to think that his presence was a help instead of a hindrance?

He can’t allow himself to slip into it, to fall for those words. It’s a trap, a trap set by his beautiful ocean boy in an attempt to push him away. He knows that he’s just preying upon the weaknesses he chooses to lay bare, but if he reacts in the way he’s being goaded to, there’s no progress to be made. It gives him pause. He takes his time to study the expressions of his ocean boy, and the uncertainty swimming in the pools of his eyes, calms Steve in a backwards sort of way.

“You’re not a charity case.” Is what he ends up saying, eyes searching for a hint about what was going on beneath his ocean boy’s tumultuous surface. He can’t seem to keep his mouth shut around him. “If it were charity, you’d owe me. But you don’t. You… You don’t have to chase me away because you think I want something.”

The thoughtful pause is back, this time, his ocean boy is taking his time to study his stream genie.

“See, there’s your problem, stream genie, you care.”

“Is there something wrong with caring about you?”

“Yeah, there is.”

Steve is confused, more confused than he’s ever been. All he’s wanted is for people to care about him, just be there. He doesn’t need to be coddled or fretted over, he just wants someone to be present. He doesn’t understand his ocean boy’s need for space, his need to conserve his pride. He’d throw away all the pride he has just to keep someone around.

And maybe that is his problem.

“I’m sorry. But I won’t stop caring.”

“I know.”

His ocean boy doesn’t leave like Steve is expecting, preparing himself for the hit of abandonment that stung more and more every time it happened. But he doesn’t. Steve knows he tries to. His ocean boy wants freedom, wants to head to the coast again, be among the waves and the sand and the sun. Steve knows he’s restless, and itching for escape, but is tethered to stay inland by some impossible force.

Steve just doesn’t know what that force is.

He finds out on accident, mostly, while prodding his ocean boy about his family life.

He asks out of envy, his great downfall.

Every oracle, every spindly volcano fume huffing husk of a human had warned him. Jonathan had warned him, eyes glassy with sight far beyond what he could fathom, breathing out puffs of a sick yellow-green smoke. It was meant to be a light-hearted thing, something friends do for one another. A fortune for a rare gem, taaffeite most likely a gift for Nancy to be tinkered with by Dustin until suitable to become a part of a much more intricate weapon, simple and easy. The trade off was done, but they both had left with something solemn hanging between them, air charged with an electricity Steve knows intimately as a mild despair.

He doesn’t even remember what he says, but it can’t be anything good.

Steve was never good at heeding warnings, though he really should learn.

His ocean boy’s face goes dark, tainted by something sour, and Steve already regrets asking the question. He shrinks back, slightly, when he feels the air change between them. It feels the same way it had when he had gotten that warning from Jonathan what feels like ages ago. By all accounts, it might have been, Steve still isn’t in tune with the passing of time the same way those up top are. He doesn’t have a sun to count the days with.

“I’m sorry-. I’m-. I was-.  Just forget that--”

“Shut up.”

His ocean boy’s tone is sharp and unforgiving, jaw set and eyebrows furrowed. His fists clench, and Steve wants to cower and hide, but he can’t, his feet are planted firmly to the smooth pebbles of the stream. He deserves it when the punch lands, stunned but not surprised. He saw it in the set of his ocean’s shoulders, the intensity of his fire, the way he seemed to glow slightly with the anger radiating off his fingertips. Steve finds it just as beautiful as it is terrifying.

What does surprise him, is that he feels the punch.

He feels the snap of his head to the side, he feels impact, and the stumble backwards. It’s a lot to take in. Because mortals can’t hurt immortal beings, well, they can, they’d just have to be a demigod or a hero, perhaps a patron, and be blessed by a god.

But his ocean boy can hurt him, and does so easily.

Steve feels giddy for half a moment, he won’t have to resign himself to watching this beautiful boy die if he keeps invoking blessings upon him, it’s not so tragic anymore. The happiness shifts fast to grief within a split second. His ocean boy hits him again, and keeps going, and Steve only struggles when his back hits the rocks beneath him, the round pebbles turning from welcoming to antagonistic with the change.

He looks up at his ocean boy, and distantly he can hear people shouting a name, chanting with a frantic and angry energy. The sound of footsteps frighten him, since they come bearing torches that will surely show his face to this beautiful man who turned on him so fast.

What he sees in his ocean boy’s eyes, is most certainly fear, and some semblance of regret. Steve doesn’t know how to feel about that, he doesn’t know how to feel about anything that’s happened tonight.

The torches draw closer, making Steve’s breathing come in sharp spikes. Yes, he’s in pain, everything hurts, and his ocean boy is still looming over him with a malice that Steve doesn’t feel directed at him anymore as long fire red hair begins to make its way towards them.

“Billy?” The name is thrown up into the night, a call, a question.

And the whole world seems to shake under him, rolling with the name, the title, shuddering under his shoulder blades as everything hums in tune with the name now pouring from the stream and the blood mixing with it from Steve’s aching face.

Steve needs to leave, he needs to get out, but he can’t get up right now, his lungs wheeze with a soft wind-chime laugh that garbles out of his throat in the same way magma exits the volcano Jonathan camps out at, spills out of his ribcage. It hurts so much, it hurts worse than anything he’s ever felt because he’s a moron who fell in love with someone who didn’t know him and he really is the loneliest stupidest god, no, person, in and on the world. He wasn’t meant to covet and keep and that is why his envy was so sulfurous, he wanted so badly he’d do anything to keep and in turn that would only drive them further away.

“Billy- what the fuck?”

Steve doesn’t mind the torchlight on him anymore. His face is obscured by the transformation he induces to escape. He can’t get up and walk, and he can’t run, and he can’t open up the earth below him and let himself fall since he could hurt his ocean boy ( BillyBillyBillyBillyBillyBillyBilly ) or the young fire beside him. So his skin flakes into liquid, his body becomes hollow and empty, and all he becomes is his own sorrow, leaving behind his robes as he slips into the stream, merging with the water of the stream, letting himself slip among the poplar leaves and the spirit who has been generous to him for all these meetings under the dark moon.

The last glimpse of Billy ( ocean boy, Electric Blue and Gold, BillyBillyBilly, beautiful glowing boy- ) that Steve sees is his stricken face, illuminated by the torchlight, hands limp by his sides as he stands in the middle of the stream and clutches the thin robes Steve left behind. Steve doesn’t look back a second time, as the gentle guiding of the stream leads him onwards.

He allows himself to simply drift for a while, lax and empty. The stream whispers to him, a balm to his wounds. He feels the eyes of the forest follow him as he slips past, but he’s too exhausted to hide himself further. It’s too much for him to mask what he is to them. So instead of fighting it, he slips into the comfort the stream offers as it gently leads him away.

Soon the stream passes him off, waves him goodbye, and he’s swept into the waters of a river. It flows faster than the stream, much faster, and is deeper and more violent. It doesn’t harm him though, it doesn’t try to spit him out or shake him from it’s depths. It’s different, but the lingering balm of the stream surrounding him makes the river more welcome to his presence. They talk, briefly, thoughts passing between them. All Steve asks for is a way to where he needs to go.

The river agrees, easy, and takes great care of him while they’re together. It’s silent, unlike the soft babbling of stream, but in the way that no matter what words would be said, they’d be lost to the roar of the current around them. The ride along the river is shorter, because Steve begins to lose himself to the formless nature of the water, the way it holds him tightly and flows so fast.

Struma eventually lets him go, and it takes him a while before he wakes up from the stupor the water seems to has him in. Even outside of the stream and the river, the water still has an entrancing sort of hold on him.

He shifts slowly back in to a more solid form of himself, sluggishly forming bruises still angry and red against his pale flesh. No matter what luster he puts on like a new skin, he’ll always look pale and gaunt and dotted with flecks of the ash from his home sticking to his skin ( Beauty marks, his mother called them with her distant smile, tinged with hatred for them herself. Moles, his father called them, not hiding his own disdain for them, and not caring for politeness the same way his mother did ). They always feel like they’re trying to burn holes into his body, and the only thing stopping it was the fact that he was meant to embody death itself.

He’s washed ashore by the gentle grip of the ocean.

He digs his fingers in the sand, feels the sun rising in the sky behind him, grounds himself to the earth, and feels the sympathetic stares of the Aegean Sea and the ocean on his back that still has rounded stream pebbles clinging to it in choice spots. He lets the glowing sun warm his back, lets the tide lap at his legs, and lets himself sink slightly into the damp sand.

He wanted to be spiteful, to enjoy a day in the ocean, on the beach, because Billy made him mad and hurt. He wanted to spin in the sun with the bright sky bearing down on him. He wanted to laugh among a group of teens, or nymphs, or a group equally jovial and devoid of the beauty of Electric Blue and Gold.

But he couldn’t.

The guilt ate at him, until all he could do was sob into the sea foam as if it were Aphrodite herself.

They don’t meet each other for a long time after that.

Steve knows Billy waited for him for a long time, is told that by the stream that he keeps in good touch with. She’s a good one, soft and kind, if a bit weathered. He learns a lot about Billy through the stream. She says that he talks to her as if she were Steve. Says he never apologizes with words, but leaves little things for him.

Steve asks her to bring him what Billy leaves, and hands her poudretteite to place where Billy had been leaving his gifts. She agrees, eyes soft and gentle. Steve hates having her become the go between, and doesn’t want to prolong it.

In return for the gemstone, rare and unparalleled by anything man has found thus far, Billy leaves an uprooted bouquet of hyacinth and crocus flowers. The gesture is one with good intentions, though Steve can not help but think of their history.

The hyacinth flower was named for Hyacinthus, a beautiful young man whom Apollo loved so dearly and so fiercely. It was said, whispered among the pantheon, that Apollo killed Hyacinthus while teaching him discus-throwing, and in his grief, turned his lover's blood into the flower. Steve wasn’t there, a lot of the gods weren’t there, but that didn’t stop the talk that went around. Steve had been there, however, when Hyacinthus had showed up on the marble steps, wavering and confused, before being scattered across the top soil, unable to rest.

And the crocus flower, a beautiful array of color and life, used to capture and ensnare. Zeus used a crocus to lure the Phoenician princess Europa while she was flower-picking so he could carry her away with him. The flower is waxy, and durable, and strong, but carries such a horrific sadness to it. Who rips someone away from their home using what they love? Who taints something that beloved and twists it into something so awful?

He holds the bouquet gently through layers of paper, not wanting to directly touch it for fear of making the plants wither. The stream hands it off to him with such sorrowful eyes, and he knows he can’t burden her with this task for much longer. So instead of merely leaving a gift, he leaves a note as well.

He has the stream write it out for him, engraving it on a large river stone carefully. Whenever he writes, the words tend to mix together, and mistakes are common for him. It was hard for him to read things at all, as language was never his strong suit. He’s a physical person, he needs physical signs to work with, which speaks volumes about his own isolation. The stream understands this, still so soft, and the smooth river stone is placed along the bank with its twin in benitoite.

You’ll always have

my blessing, my protection.

But I cannot be your Icarus,

my ocean boy.

And that’s all Steve can really say. Everything else he wants to say, everything he wants to pour out from his lips and his palms, is too much. It’s too much to engrave on on a river stone, and place next to a rare gem from deep below the surface. It’s too much for him to choke out before he sobs, crumpling in on himself and letting the tears make him so hollow.

He plants the flowers in the pomegranate grove.

The next time they meet, it’s at yet another party.

Unlike the last one, the first one they met at, Steve actually wants to be here. He was invited by Nancy and Jonathan while going out on a hunt with them, trying to fall back into the rhythm of their friendship. Nancy and Jonathan still look at each other with adoration unrivaled, and Steve finds that watching them stings in a different way than it used to. He still feels envy stab his side with a dagger smooth and sharp, but it’s a different angle, a different lighting.

He’s not envious because he wants one of them to himself, he’s envious because they have something with each other he wants to have with another. He doesn’t allow himself to chase down that train of thought whenever it pops up, because it hurts too much to bear. The last time he allowed himself to get upset like this, when he slipped into the ocean on that dreadful night, the earth hadn’t stopped shaking for days.

He finds solace in Barbara, when he returns home before Nancy and Jonathan will surely arrive, and she smiles a knowing smile at him. Always knowing. They felt the ache for the same goddess, after all, for a long while. He still feels awful for her experience in tartarus, how he could have stopped it had he payed more attention. Barb is too forgiving of him, he finds, but he is wise not to assume it is out of weakness. They don’t speak for long, Barb is a weak soul, but a glowing and good one. She was a good friend in life, just as she is in death.

So, he’s dragged up to a party, and he’s dancing and spinning again and it feels so good , because while he hates the fakeness of it all, while he hates the noise and the people he doesn’t care about, while he hates the entrapment, he loves forgetting the horrible ache that follows him like a ghost. It’s present in the air he breathes, it hangs above his head while he sleeps, it’s his mausoleum, and his temple . The memories are bittersweet, and after what he’s sure are months of separation, it still clings to him like a burr.

He doesn’t have time at the party for anything but drinking ambrosia and spinning with the beautiful bodies of fellow gods. Tommy and Carol are there, at the center of it all, and soon he’s with them again, more fun to be around with than the last time, and they light up at the chance. Nancy and Jonathan are nearby, off in some corner talking and calmly sipping their own poison of choice, so he feels more safe than ever.

He dances for hours, and drinks more than he ever had before, and kisses so many people with joy dancing behind the mischievous smile he shoots all his partners. He manages to even catch Leuce’s eye, a very picky dance partner, a nymph, goddess of leaves, and patron saint of the poplar tree. They talk as they dance, and she speaks of his trip through the stream and the river.

He doesn’t like remembering it, but he has to in order to assure her he’s doing just fine now thank you. She doesn’t ask about the rumble beneath the earth for days after her witnessing it, she merely shoots a toothy grin at him, and spins him towards the outskirts of the party, directly opposite of where Jonathan and Nancy sit together. He and Leuce continue on like this, further and further away from his safety net, and eventually she sits him down on a lounge chair, fingers tracings his wrists before fleeing as she steps back.

“Bring whats yours back to you.” Leuce commands him, a deep wisdom rustling through and sitting heavy and sticky to Steve’s brain. Her words were always like honey, dripping down a jar, in the same way her leaves stuck to the side of the stream.

Sometimes he forgets the observance and power behind the nymphs. He’s heard the rumors of them being descendents of the powerful and elusive fae of the further north, of their inability to be replaced like he and the other gods are. It’s easy to forget what is behind their free-spirited and flighty facade, since they pull off the giggling dunce act so well. But every once in a while, Steve is presented with a firm reminder that they’ll be there for as long as there is nature, and he will taper out long before Leuce even grows sick.

“Okay.” He says, throat suddenly dry. There’s no use arguing.

Leuce smiles at him, before letting him be, and she slips off back into the crowd. He watches her go, downs the last of the ambrosia in his cup, and closes his eyes. He can still feel the golden glow of his ocean boy, can tell when it’s near, and it has been bugging him all evening to feel it so close yet so far.

He’s felt it out a few times before, when he knew that Billy was hurting in some way. He still doesn’t know exactly why Billy is still tethered to the place that hurts him so badly, and the way it morphs their own relationship, but when Billy is hurting it doesn’t matter. Steve always sends whatever he can invoke, whatever healing he can do for his ocean boy. He likes to feel useful, even though it still hurts, and most definitely detracts from his own health. He bounces back quickly, though, and justifies it to himself so often it’s become a force of habit.

This time, when he seeks Billy out, he pulls .

It’s the first time he’s drawn Billy in, tried to get him to notice him. When Billy would visit the stream, Steve would never give him a pull, he’d simply wait until Billy himself wanted to meet with him. Steve never wanted to make Billy do anything, he didn’t want something out of obligation.

So when Billy does arrive, mildly confused by his own behavior, Steve curls in on himself.

Billy sits next to him, looking at the party around them. It almost seems to be moving in slow motion, while also moving far too fast to keep up with. Steve doesn’t want to wonder about it, because as soon as he turns his head to look at Billy, he’s met with those electric blue eyes and he’s left breathless yet again.

Billy recognizes him, but only vaguely. Steve is known to him in some way, but he can’t seem to find a way to place it. It feels too familiar and close for comfort, and Steve can see his trepidation and the foggy cloud over his eyes. It makes Steve want to kiss him. He doesn’t.

“Hey.”

“Hey there pretty boy.” Billy says with a dazzling smile. It makes Steve dizzy.

“Hmm. Pretty boy is nice. I think I even might like it more than stream genie.” Steve says, casting out a chance.

The silence that rings out makes Steve more anxious than he already is.

Billy’s blank look doesn’t make it any better.

The noise of the party, the empty face Billy has, Steve’s own insecurities. It’s too much.

Instead of sticking around, he decides to leave, just like last time.

He’s outside in the cool air within moments, and it’s like he can finally breathe. He knows it must’ve gone awful in there, he must’ve hurt Billy by not talking to him for so long. He hasn’t asked the stream at all about the gifts since he left the river stone. For all he knows, Billy had still been visiting the stream, still leaving gifts, still sticking around and feeling abandoned like Steve had when his parents sent him word down the chain that they’d not be coming back this time - ever.

“You sure do like running away from me, don’t you?” The question thrown at his retreating back has him giving pause. He stops his descent down the mountain, a familiar one, one that suddenly feels so deep and empty. Billy’s words are said in what’s meant to be a joking tone, but the vulnerability hiding behind it isn’t lost on Steve.

“No. I don’t like it.”

“Then why do you do it?”

“You scare me.”

That has them both at another standstill. Steve is staring up at the stars, the waxing moon out and above them like an ornament. Steve vaguely wonders how Selene is holding up, before his feet begin to dig into the soil under him. He can’t stay here like this, stuck between one place and another. It makes him restless.

Billy turns him around before he can even think of returning home.

“Why? Why do I scare you?” He asks, desperate, gripping Steve’s shoulders like a vice.

“You hurt me. I get close, and then you push me as hard as you can.” Steve says, and Billy seems to waver some, eyes still hard. Steve continues, “But that’s not all there is. You… You get hurt so often. You came to that stream everyday with new cuts and bruises and chunks of flesh ripped out. Eventually it might be too much for me to fix... You were so miserable. I want to make you happy, and I want to keep you safe. I gave you that blessing for a reason. I don’t want you to die. You wouldn’t deserve where you’d end up.”

“I’m not your fucking charity case!” The grip on his shoulders tighten.

“No, you’re not. But you’re my ocean boy, Billy. You let me stake a claim.”

They stare at one another for a long while after that, studying each others expressions. Steve is frightened, and Billy is merely trying to process all the new information bestowed upon him. They wait a few moments more, Billy’s hands firmly on Steve’s shoulders, and Steve’s hands lying limp on Billy’s biceps.

It doesn’t take long for them to crash together, once their eyes finally snap into place, a tidal wave against a rock. The kiss is less than perfect, with the timing and the force of it, but it’s theirs all the same. It’s their kiss, on a night that couldn’t be worse but couldn’t be any better. It’s awful and joyous all at once. There’s nothing about it that would say it was the best kiss in the world. Steve had kissed many people that night, but he could definitely say that this one was the only one that mattered. It’s the only one he remembers with clarity.

When they part, they orbit around each other still. Billy lingers in Steve’s atmosphere for as long as he can, stuck with their foreheads touching and eyes searching for a signal to leave or stay or throw whatever bullshit they’ve constructed for each other away. Steve doesn’t want the moment to pass, and holds on tighter to Billy, and in turn, Billy pulls him impossibly close.

They don’t part until the sun rises again.

Steve tells Billy to meet him by the stream again when the full moon comes out.

Billy agrees.

The next time they meet, it’s not as jovial.

They don’t make it to the full moon, and they don’t meet by the stream.

A day after their reunion at the party, Steve feels a shooting pain through his entire body, and his form wavers as the shout tears through him. It makes him fold and crumple yet again, but this time, it’s not his own pain that has him drawing in on himself. It takes him a minute or two to understand the searing pain and why it’s there, but when he does, it sends chills throughout his whole being. The underworld grows a great degree colder, and Steve is stunned for an entirely different reason now.

Billy is hurting.

Billy is hurt, and it’s so much worse than all those times before. This time, it wouldn’t just take a simple invocation of basic healing, and he knows it. It’s too much, it’s so awful, it drags Steve a little closer to madness. For a moment, he almost thinks he’s accidentally fallen into tartarus it hurts so bad. It shoots up his arms and legs, and suddenly he’s screaming out into the dark that’s trying to suffocate him, and he can feel the rumble all around.

He calls on El, the first time he’s done so in ages.

She shows up fast, face pale and frightened, but stiff as stone. He knows that she’s prepared to descend into tartarus with him again, prepared to smother the screaming and die a death fit for a hero instead of the child she is. He can feel her relief when he explains the situation, but it soon switches to an understanding Steve will never truly be able to relate to.

El reaches out, opens his palm, and places one of her torches in his hand. His fingers shake as she pushes them to curl around the carved wood. It frightens him. He wants to be by Billy’s side, and he wants to keep him safe, but he’s terrified of what he might see when they get there. His breath comes in short panicked gasps, and El is dragging him towards a door he had never seen there before. He won’t ever see it again, but now he knows it’s there.

“I can find him. Just think of him.” She says, voice soft and billowing.

So Steve thinks of him. He thinks of Electric Blue and Gold, of the sway of the ocean, of the sun bearing down on his back as he cries into sea foam, of the kiss at the party where Steve felt his soul shatter even further.

When El opens the door, Steve doesn’t think twice about stepping through it, doesn’t have a single thought other than BillyBillyBillyBillyBilly . He doesn’t think twice about the way he hands the torch back to El, or the way he rushes past a head of fire red hair, or the shouting in the room.

All he can think about is keeping Billy safe, of shoving that man away from him, making him fly across the room and hit the wall with a thud. All he can think about is splitting the room in two when the man stands up, trying to come at Billy again. Steve doesn’t know who this man is or what he’s shouting, because all he can hear is the roar of the ocean in his ears, despite the lack of any body of water near them. Why was his Ocean Boy so far away from what he loved? It never made any sense to him. Man’s own discomfort with the things they loved.

All he can see is the blood gushing from Billy’s head, the bruises, the aches, the rib cage sprung open and splintered across floor. He wails, and the gap in the earth that splits the house in two grows even wider, pushing the man who only moments before surely would have killed Billy with no semblance of regret on his features.

“Bad man.” Is all that seems to get through to Steve’s ears, uttered by El, as she stands at the edge of the precipice that only grows wider. The red head standing across from her looks between Billy and the angry man with confusion and fear.

“He’s my son !” The angry man warbles through, deep and furious, and so very loud. It’s one of the few things that manages to break through the great roar of the tide blaring through Steve’s ears. It makes his embrace around Billy tighten, drawing him closer.

“No! Mine! My ocean boy!” Steve can’t help but shout, furthering the gap between him and the angry man. He refuses to call him Billy’s father, it isn’t right to have Billy be related to the disgusting creature before him. It wasn’t fair, to have someone who was supposed to protect Billy acting out the role of the great aggressor. The parent wasn’t supposed to harm, the parent wasn’t meant to hurt. It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fair to Billy.

The girl with the head of fire seems to plead with El, moving to the edge of the precipice with seemingly no fear despite the way the world shakes around her. He would commend her for her bravery, but his attention is drawn back to Billy. He invokes what healing he can, his own hands becoming gaunt and thin. It’s not his specialty by any means, but it keeps Billy alive, breathes life back into the body of Electric Blue and Gold.

Little else matters after that. He holds Billy tightly, and though Billy had begun to lose consciousness, he talks into his hair. He speaks of old legends, of the meaning of the flowers he was gifted, of Europa and her crown, of Hyacinthus and his blood spattered across the marble steps to the underworld and the flowers that sprouted there for a moment before rising upwards to join where Apollo spread them out in his greatest grief. He speaks of sorrow, murmured into Billy’s glowing hair, and weeps for a life he never experienced.

The outside world doesn’t seem to reach him, though he’s somewhat aware of how it moves around him. He can still hear the hoarse voice of that angry man still demanding for control. He can still feel the soft hum of El and the Fire Girl’s whispers as they discuss something with a strength he’s never had. He doesn’t know when Fire Girl had crossed the gap that split the room in half, but he’s glad she had, as El seems much less tense now. Though, in turn, El looks more angry, directed at the man still shouting.

Steve stands eventually, and El nods at him. The relief that shakes through him, gives him the strength he needs to pick Billy up. He may be lesser now, but he has enough in him to help Billy, and that’s what he intends to do. His wrists shake like rain, his feet brush up against the dusted floor as the swash along the beach, the roar in his ears the storm surge knocking everything around him down.

He watches El lead the girl of fire through the door, the girl of fire clutching one of El’s torches with determination etched onto her pale face. He watches the angry man look up and roar some more, but the words don’t mean anything and the volume itself doesn’t even breach the surface.

He jumps from the edge of the precipice, lets the earth swallow him with soil and rock just like water, and allows the room to reconnect into a whole.

He doesn’t look back.

He doesn’t think about how close of a call this was, how near to death Billy was, how his own body was beginning to short out and lose its luster.

He carries Billy to his empty home, desolate and cold, and wraps him in the finest linens and furs he can find, sits by the bedside, and stares out of the tall grand window overlooking the whole of the underworld.

All Steve can see are whitecaps; crests and troughs, rippling outwards for as far as he can see.

It takes days for Billy to wake up.

Steve tends to Billy as often he can. He only sleeps when he has to, when his body demands rest in order to reform itself. And even then, the luster only lasts so long before Steve is giving it up again to fix Billy further. Sometimes it requires him to pop bones back where they belong, and that alone makes tears well in the corners of his eyes. The ribcage is the worst, swung wide open like it was a cupboard instead of someone’s chest. It makes something ugly blossom in Steve’s throat, begging to make the cause of this pain wither and whimper under a sharp heavy blow.

It makes him scared, more jittery.

He has the judges take care of welcoming souls to the afterlife for a while, asks them to be kind for him, and while they don’t like it they agree. He’s just grateful he didn’t have to resort to the Furies. That would surely only cause disaster. He’s learned his lessons.

It takes days, and it feels like ages.

Steve was never truly aware of how time flowed up top unless he was up top himself. The same rules didn’t apply, and he didn’t have to conform to them. The underworld was a whole new region unto itself. It was better to merely accept than explain away. No matter how hard Dustin tried, it wasn’t something that could be given a name to.

When Billy does wake up, Steve had fallen asleep.

He’d been fraying at the edges for as long as Billy had been resting, staring at his face desperately hoping he’d just wake up and smile at him again and call him pretty. He was so exhausted and for the first time in ages, he had grown to have hunger. It was odd, he had been self sustaining for so long, eating more of a recreational activity than anything else since as long as he could remember, that the gnawing ache of starvation came as a surprise. It’d been sudden, snuck up on him, but at the same time he sort of saw it coming.

He leaves Billy’s side for the first time since he’s brought him here, and goes to the gardens. The grove of pomegranates is much more floral and welcoming now with the flowers that he’d planted there. They’d grown strong, somehow, taking root between the roots of the pomegranate trees, being fed by the brimstone soil and the watery tears of the saints still chained to the trees. Their tears felt softer now, with the new hum of life leaving promise hanging in the air.

He eats a pomegranate, lets the silver tinted rush of it fill him whole, and leaves his fingers sticky red and purple. He leaves the rind by the base of the tree, and takes a moment to just sit. It’s almost like torture, trying to sit and rest for a time after buzzing with work and obligation nonstop. He doesn’t want to slow down and think about the consequences of his actions, or why he can still hear the ocean beating itself against the shore while he’s underground.

Before he can recognize it, he’s settling down among the flowers. The soil feels softer than it ever has before, and he finds himself relaxing once again. His breathing slows, and he thinks, just once, just this one time, he’ll let himself be selfish. He’ll let himself sleep, regain a bit of what he lost when reviving Billy.

He doesn’t dream.

And then, when he wakes up again, Billy is there, looking more confused and terrified than ever. He looms over him again, but this time there is no water at his back, and he does not feel the same fear course through him. He smiles, instead of cowers.

He holds out his hand, an offering, and Billy takes it, pulls him to his feet with such strength it nearly makes Steve burst himself apart from the joy. He’s safe, he’s not hurt, he’s there and solid and real and glowing softly in the dim lighting of the pomegranate grove.

“Thought you’d never wake up.” Billy says, amused and relieved and dizzy all at once.

Steve doesn’t even bother choking back the tears that well in his eyes, doesn’t even wipe them away.

“Asshole. You nearly died.”

“Yeah. I guess I did.”

And then Billy’s suddenly distant, too far away for Steve to reach.

The recovery is slow, agonizing, arduous.

For a long time, their orbit around one another is as distant as can be. They don’t speak to one another for a long time, long enough to make Steve begin to not even sleep in his own bed. It’s too much for him to share a wall with Billy, close enough to reach out and touch him but too far away to even begin to move. So, instead, he starts sleeping in the pomegranate grove. It’s relaxing, somehow. The departed embrace of the sorrow of saints is the only cradle he’s known.

Steve knows there are thousands of questions bouncing around Billy’s head, thousands of things to explain and convey and express. Neither of them are good at letting things out, however, and it sits in the corner of the room like the darkness that used to linger there when all Steve could think about were the untold horrors of tartarus. It festers. Steve desperately wants to pick at it, at least scratch the itch so he can get a feel for what exactly went wrong.

Though it pains him greatly, he keeps his mouth shut.

Just like his mother before him.

Unlike his mother, he doesn’t cave and yield when Billy steps into the room, or joins him in the garden. He doesn’t smile politely and drag his attention elsewhere, existing in the same room with him as a courtesy. He doesn’t pick fights like his father does, seeking out the connection shared just to see how far things can be pushed. He doesn’t want to put things to the test like that. He doesn’t want to put unnecessary stress on the tentative bridge he’s trying to build.

Avoiding the pitfalls of his parents presents a new challenge. That is, finding his own footing. He’s gotten too used to the ability to run away from his problems, to used his home as an escape route from anything that was too much for him. Now, with Billy here, it’s an entirely different feeling. There is nowhere for him to run.

Then again, there really isn’t a reason to run either.

They begin to float in each other’s space again, closer and closer. Steve doesn’t think they’ll ever be as close as they were when they spoke to one another by the stream, at least not for a long while. They ease into it. It starts with feather-light touches along the arm, thrown in passing when in the same room or hallway. Then it moves to prolonged exposure. No words are shared between them, but they sit beside each other for long hours, as the world makes noise around them.

One day, Steve wakes up in the pomegranate grove, and Billy is right there with him.

He chooses not to move. He chooses to bask in the soft purple glow that highlights Billy’s cheekbones. He chooses to take the risk, and brush his fingers lightly across the tanned forehead close to him, and run his fingers through Billy’s hair. It’s a little tangled, and snags on his fingers, so he tries to be gentle with it.

To his joy, Billy doesn’t wake up for a while, and the glow of life in his skin never diminishes. It makes something expand in his chest, hot and viscous, frothing upwards and wanting to spill out and spread out slow like blood, like honey, like bloody honey. He doesn’t know what to call it, doesn’t know what name it carries, but it makes him feel invincible. It makes him feel like not even the fates themselves, nor the great oracles up top, could speak a word against them into existence.

When Billy does wake up, with Steve’s hands gently brushing through his hair, he smiles a hidden smile. Steve had seen it in the dark before, beside the quiet stream. Seeing it now, with the flowers all around, and the silver pomegranate trees, and the softly pulsing purple light, makes it all the more special to him. He can see it, here, the way Billy smothers the joy in his face just like he does to his laughter.

He wants to bring that joy out, so Billy doesn’t have to smother it. He wants to tease out that blinding smile where he can see the whites of Billy’s teeth and still have it be genuine. He wants to close the horrible divide that he carved between them that day he dragged Billy underground. That was what it was, dragging, not saving, not carrying, he’d dragged him down under the surface without a single word from Billy about how he felt.

But his envy reigned supreme. He was envious of the girl of fire for being able to exist in the same area as him, envious of El for being able to reach him, even envious of that angry man for having a relationship with Billy to ruin in the first place. They’re awful thoughts, and they cling to his skull like flies to a sticky corpse, swarming to grow maggots along the walls, forming into pale yellow pearls.

“You should smile more often.” Steve says, so soft it’s sickening.

“You should make me smile more often, pretty boy.” Is Billy’s raspy reply, throat still thick with sleep.

That frothing foam of something blooms again in Steve’s chest. All he can do is grin back at Billy, dumb and starstruck. He’s never looked more dorky in his life, and Billy rolls his eyes and snorts at him. Steve can’t help but think of the roll of the ocean, soft if you know how to ride it, but strong enough to be as violent as possible. It makes the guilt from when he visited the ocean return to him, if only for a moment.

“Is that a challenge ?” He asks, incredulously.

“Maybe.” Billy says, and though he presses it down, Steve can still see the slightest upturn of his lips. And that’s enough for him, at least for a little while.

After the exchange, things become much easier. Steve sleeps in his own bed again, and while he wants to wake up next to Billy for the rest of his life, he knows that would require trapping him underground with him. That’s the last thing he wants. He doesn’t want to become so envious of the glow pouring out of Billy, that he cages it. He doesn’t want to become so endlessly envious of others getting close to Billy that he pushes him away in the process. It’d nearly happened with Nancy, before she became Artemis, and he’s sure it would happen again if he didn’t keep himself in check.

But it’s so hard to be mature, when all he wants to do is reach out across the divide of the trench and the wall. He wants to softly touch. He doesn’t need the love and adoration to be returned, he just needs someone to stick around. He needs someone to be steady.

“Y’know, I never did ask what kind of god you were.” Billy says, one day in passing, while they sit just a little bit too close together on the marble steps that lead down into the pomegranate grove. Before Billy, it had been a place of solace for Steve. Now, it seems to be more of a place for conversation. Steve isn’t complaining about the trade-off, especially now that he’s returned to greeting the souls that arrive.

“I figured it was pretty obvious.”

“How so?”

“Dark underground temple, meeting up only at night when the moon isn’t shining, making the earth shake. Stuff like that.”

Bill snorts at that. “You can never tell with the gods, shit’s always overlapping.”

“Yeah, I guess so.” Steve shrugs.

“What’s it like? Being immortal.”

The question altogether isn’t that difficult to answer, but it makes something in Steve shatter. There are a hundred and ten different ways to answer it. There are plenty of safe ways to respond, plenty of ways to avoid confessing to Billy what he wouldn’t confess to Nancy or Jonathan or Barb or his own fucking parents. None of them seem genuine.

“Awful. And isolating.”

There’s a long silence between them, where Steve refuses to even look Billy in the eyes. He can’t help it, he can’t meet the gaze soldering into his shoulder. It burns, like the sun, warm and warding. He wants to cower from it, before he gets burned. But alas, he really was the Icarus.

He’s drawn in by the Sun he wants to touch so badly.

He wants to scream. He wants to shout until his voice is hoarse. He wants to pull his perfect hair everyone hates out from the root and yell, “I’m doomed as Hades. I can’t trap a Persephone, I can’t do that to a person. I can’t turn Orpheus away and tell him not to turn around or else Eurydice won’t be able to leave with him. I can’t split lovers apart. I can’t be dark and foreboding, it’s not in me. But I know that I’m going to. One of these days, it’s going to happen, and there’s nothing I can do to stop it. I’m trapped down here, I’m always watched up there, and my own autonomy was robbed from my very fingers. Everyone I’ve ever loved leaves me, and I’m left abandoned here to rot.“

“It’s like living in a small town. Everyone knows everyone else, so privacy is pretty much a myth. Word about stuff gets around fast. And your business is never your own damn business. And the nymphs are so nosy, it’s crazy.” He manages to huff out a laugh, though even to him it sounds weak.

“That’s not it though, is it?”

“No. But I don't think you’d want to hear the rest.”

“Why’s that?”

“It’s just a bunch of bullshit.”

“Everything about being immortal is bullshit.” Nancy had said once, blood on her hands and cold flames in her eyes. Her hands shook as she held tight to the gleaming bow, pulled taut with an arrow at the ready. Her muscles jumped with every minute noise, and the wild fright reflected through the split in the luster. He’d never seen anyone as terrified as she had been on that night after luring a great beast away from the depths of tartarus. The grief that clung to her, heavy and grimy, was all that remained of Barb.

“Are you gonna elaborate on that any?”

“If you want me to.”

“By all means, go ahead.”

“Okay. The. The myths you hear? They get revamped every once in a while. It's not because how they’re told change, though that does happen a lot… its, well it's like how they happen, repeats? But different. The gods change, switch out, and everything starts all over again. It never ends, and then you pass down your vices to your kids and they take the title and it keeps going until-” He stops.

“Until what?”

“I don’t know.”

They don’t talk much after that, but Billy does put an arm around his shoulder. Steve thinks it’s protective, but it doesn’t want to read too much into it, afraid of assuming too much and leaving both him and Billy even further away from one another. If Billy notices Steve leaning into the touch, he doesn’t mention it.

The Furies grow restless and angry, swarm Billy in the garden while Steve isn’t looking as intently as he usually is. It doesn’t take him long to stop them, but it takes the Furies an even shorter time to leave long, ugly gashes in Billy’s skin. They scream and shout about patricide, of damning thoughts, of horrible things. Steve doesn’t bother to think about it, doesn’t care what kind of crimes his ocean boy could have committed, or thought of committing like the Furies accuse him of doing.

He lets the luster drop, lets the vision of what he really is blink through for a brief moment. He lets his anger get the best of him then, lets out a short howl, a small snippet of the command that would have them banished from where they reside for an indefinite amount of time. They retreat, slinking backwards with eyes that scream with vengeance and rage. He has to remind himself that they’re nothing but ghosts, hardened and screaming ghosts of mothers betrayed, and he can’t blame them for their strong feelings and wills as it is all that is left of their being. They’re all that’s left of the original gods, aside from the nymphs and all their subsets. They are nothing but fleeting remnants of the ideals of the past.

And yet, he loathes them for the harm that they’ve caused Billy.

Billy.

Billy.

He looks frantically down at the man he still holds protectively in his arms. Sorrow floods him with such a fierce sting. How could he have let his luster slip? How could he have even thought of doing so? It wasn’t fair. Billy didn’t deserve the same fate as Semele, left as nothing but the hollowed vessel of fleeting glimpses of true forms. Billy didn’t deserve that. Anything too close to mortal, demigod, whatever, would be immolated, Billy shouldn't ever have to burn. 

As Steve’s eyes lock with shocking electric blue, still breathing and beating from within, the sorrow fades just as fast as it came. All he can feel now, is elated. There was no powdered dust left behind, there was no lack of a beating heart, there was no corpse, there was no emptied vessel laying limp with distant eyes. Billy still looked bewildered, maybe a little embarrassed, but not dead. Steve could tell the voices of the Furies were still weighing on him, but the joy he himself felt far outweighed any thought of asking Billy for answers.

“You’re alive!”

“Yeah?”

“Billy, you’re still breathing!”

“What in the fuck is wrong with you right now?”

“Forget about it for now, sit down while I fix this.”

Steve can’t help but shake his head with a laugh that bubbles up easy out of his throat. Billy still looks at him like he’s lost his mind, and by all accounts he likely has, but that doesn’t stop him from doing as he’s told, if only out of obligation. The wounds are healed, as they always are. And Steve feels a warm giddiness spread throughout his limbs.

“Do you know what happens to a mortal when a god’s luster slips?” He asks, his smile growing.

“They die? Or like, burn up or something. Like Semele.”

“Yeah. Yeah they die.” Steve can’t help but laugh, wry and whole and joyful. Billy looks at him like he’s lost his mind. And well, maybe he has. “But you didn’t die.”

“No.”

“I let my luster slip, I thought I’d kill you. Even being in close proximity to a god’s true form will have you burning up. But you’re still alive.” Steve doesn’t know why it makes him so happy, it doesn’t even cross his mind that the realization happened in the underworld, that this meant more than it should have, that there was a reason Hades stole Persephone, that there was a reason Persephone stayed.

“There is no fucking way.”

“Explain how you didn’t just die, then!”

“Pretty boy, I swear-”

“Will you stay with me?”

“What does this have to do with anything?” Billy shouts, exasperated and a little agitated. Steve can’t back off, he can’t stop.

“I’ll let you back up top if you want to leave, I’ll take you to see the ocean. It’s your decision, and your future, it’ll always be your choice. Will you stay with me?”

There’s a pause, of dawning realization, of shock, of an electric charge that singes the air as the pieces of fate click into place.

“Will you be my Persephone?”

There’s no verbal answer, but when Billy reaches for a pomegranate, the saints sing.

It doesn’t matter how long they had to wait, to not be lonely, to not be harmed.

They have time to fall in love all over again.

Six pomegranate seeds.

That's all it would have to take.

One for happiness.

Two for excitement.

Three for security.

Four for hope.

Five for home.

Six for an end to the bitter cold.