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Persephone knows her husband’s come to pay a call ‘fore she sees him.
For one, the windows frost as she’s slipping a little bit of whiskey into her morning coffee. For two, there’s a chill she can’t quite shake blowing through all the cracks in mama’s thin old walls. Three, a quick peek out the door ‘fore he’s even gotten up the path to mama’s old clapboard house shows her roses have frosted.
She raises an eyebrow as she leans against the door; he holds his hat in his hands, and they both look away. Only been a couple of days since that boy left the underworld; only been a couple of days since he came back up top alone, too.
She knew, when that happened, that her husband would come to see her. Sooner or later, she knew he would come. As inevitable as taxes, himself. She did think perhaps he might wait a few months. She’s a little disappointed he didn’t. She tries not to show it, because they have to try, but she is, and she can tell he knows she is, because his mouth is just a tight frown, too.
“Hello,” he says, plain and simple. And aren’t there a million things that go unsaid in that statement? Hello, he says. Like he can just stroll up and say hello.
“Hello.” She takes a deep breath and holds out her hand.
He takes it. Holds it between his old fingers, rubs his hands over hers. And that’s…that’s not nothing. She squeezes his hand and he squeezes hers back. His ring clinks against her ring and she thinks: this is nice. Right nice. But she can’t tell what game he’s playing, and that keeps her on guard.
“You’re frosting my roses,” she says, trying to break the heavy silence that hangs over them like a funeral; he chuckles.
“Won’t stay long.” He tips his glasses down so they can see eye to eye and that’s a bit disquieting. “Just had business in the area. Thought maybe we could…” He closes his hand around her palm. “Just talk a little.”
“Talking is nice,” she says; good timing too, mama’s already gone, and Hermes hasn’t come sniffing around yet. “The boy?”
“What?” He tilts his head.
“That why you come?" She shrugs, trying to shift the guilt off her shoulders. Doesn’t work. “Hard to live, your lover buried a world away.” She glares at him. You oughtta know I speak from personal experience, she doesn’t say. He grabs her hand, kisses it with surprising verve.
“No,” he says. “Alistair Monroe, six doors down. Heart attack. In the barn.” Quick and painless is Mr. Death, she thinks; when he wants to be, at least. Bet Old Man Monroe didn’t feel a thing. “I don’t know where he’s gone, the boy.”
He could look, of course, but he doesn’t, for the same reasons she doesn’t: they’re both hurting.
“The girl?” she says, before she can even help herself. He drops her hands and looks away. Knows him well enough to know that’s a look he rarely gets: guilt. Her stomach turns.
“Back down,” he says, after a long minute. Too long a minute. “Waiting.”
“Waiting where?” She crosses her arms; she don’t blame the girl, don’t blame the girl at all, but forgiving him is harder, and trusting him harder still. She is trying, she knows this isn’t helping, but Persephone has her own emotions and she’s tired of smothering her needs for his.
“Isn’t…” He glares at her. “Can I come in? Mighty cold out here.” Which is his own damn fault.
She glares at him for a long moment and is tempted to say no, but no good will come of that, and Persephone has been trapped in this love him and hate him cycle long enough to want to break it, so she nods, pulls the door open wide.
“Always could,” she says, shutting it behind him. “Always could come. You just didn’t.”
“I know.” There’s mourning in his voice, whiskey-burn sweet. “I know.” He reaches out for her, uncharacteristically; she freezes even as he sweeps her into his arms, his big bulky body just curled up around her so tight she can barely breathe.
“Don’t have her in your bed,” she whispers in a small voice, and he holds her tighter. Selfish, to tell him to have no one else in his bed, when she has all the time in the world to live it up on top. But there’s something so wrong about him taking someone in a place that they have held so sacred; she’s always hated his office. She can pretend it doesn’t happen there. He clears his throat.
“She doesn’t fit in our bed,” he says. And the our there, maybe, gives her hope. He presses an awkward kiss on her brow and that gives her hope too, even if it’s way too hesitate and his beard is, it must be said, a bit overgrown and scratchy. “And I won’t…” He kisses her forehead. “Well, I won’t.”
She clings to his shoulder, breathes deep, and says nothing. She wants to believe him. She isn't sure she does. It’ll take time, healing. But this isn’t nothing, him holding her like this. He kisses at her forehead again, little sweet pecks, and she thinks if she sways a little bit, they might be dancing.
“I left her on the line,” he says, finally. His voice is far away; distant. He puts his glasses into his pocket – doesn’t need it, not here in the house. It’s nice to see his eyes clear. “Where else could I send her to wait?”
“She’ll forget him there,” she murmurs; she doesn’t bother to break his embrace, just clings tighter and curls into his chest. “Doesn’t seem fair.”
He shrugs; he doesn’t break the embrace though this is the longest they’ve held one another in a long time. His eyes glance toward the table, with her whiskey-coffee and her sugar. He holds his tongue. “Life ain’t fair, sweetheart.”
“Maybe not,” she says. She knows she could leave it there, and it might be safer too; he’s a big man, and he’s prone to letting his resentments build up in his chest and bringing up this girl, again and again, is only going to drive a wedge between him and her. There’s nothing he can do to take seducing that girl back, nothing he can do that will ever make her want to step foot in his office again. Only time will help heal that wound, time and trying. And Persephone, she is trying.
She separates from him for a moment, looks toward the table. “Want some coffee?” She asks. He nods, and she doesn’t have to ask him how he takes it, because she’s long ago memorized: black, but for one lump of sugar. No whiskey for him.
“If it’s not trouble,” he says, awkwardly, seconds after he should. He’s trying too. She looks at him, and then down at her little mug on the table. It’s still warm, but she picks it up, tosses it in the sink anyway.
“No,” she says, as she pulls out a can of coffee. “No trouble. Time to make a new batch, anyway. Sides, you bought me that coffee machine, didn’t you? Seems right we get some use of it.” It is, as a matter of fact, the only machine Persephone has begrudgingly allowed into her home.
He comes up behind her while she preps the machine, holds her close as she measures out the coffee (four scoops, not two, because the man has never liked his coffee anything less than strong enough to peel all the paint off his walls), adds the eggshell that in past years he’d squawk was a needless addition.
“I like...” he says, with a heavy pause. “I like the way you…make coffee.”
“Hm,” she says. He’s obviously trying to get onto safer ground, climb out of the deep crevasse that is their current state of being with a topic that's not so heavy as that little pretty birdie or her bard. “Beverages are my specialty,” she jokes, and then winces, because his hand tightens on her waist and she knows as well as he does that what she jokes about is nothing to joke about.
But he doesn’t say anything about her drinking. He’s trying, too.
“Maybe I’ll get you one of those fancy barista sets,” he huffs; he wants safety, desperately wants safety in this conversation, so bad she can taste his need for it. “Watch you make all sorts of coffee, keep us toasty warm in the winter.”
“Don’t need coffee to be warm down—” she says, but he cuts her off.
“You might, this year. Turned some of the factories down,” he says, smoothing his hands down the front of her dress. She processes that for a moment, stunned.
“Will slow down meeting your quotas, that,” she says.
“Yes,” he agrees.
“Your clients will be disappointed.” He traces the edge of her cheek as he tilts her head back, and that look – oh, that look. He always was a damned romantic. She forgot how much, til now, til his brown eyes are on her, twinkling with a boyish charm she hasn’t seen in many an age.
“Fuck’em,” he says, a royal pronouncement made with the quirk his lips, and then he tilts her back and he is kissing her, and he is kissing her good, and her knees go weak and he catches her, catches her and holds her as his lips taste hers for the first time in a long, long time. And she’s not sure how long they kiss, because he has a talent for making time stop, he does, he does most rightly, and only the soft click of the coffeepot turning off alerts them to the passage of time.
“Oh,” she says, and he chuckles as he breaks away. Didn’t think the pull of him would be that strong, not after all this time, after that girl – but it is. Strong as ever, his draw, and she's not sure if she's relieved or worried that that's the case. “Oh.”
“Oh,” he says, and with that voice, oh is seduction enough to make her want to go with him.
But he doesn’t ask her to.
He just reaches over her, grabs two mugs: she won’t tell mama he picked up hers. She’d bought him one too, ages ago; plain black mug. A few winters ago it had fallen, and she hadn’t replaced it. Wasnt much point then. Maybe she will, now.
He sets out the two mugs just so, getting ready for her to pour, and she thinks: damn. This is the first time they’ve worked together like this in a long time. She thinks with a brief flurry of hope how nice that might be: to work together again. She misses sharing a realm with him; running the old bar in the basement of his basement wasn’t quite the same, but she could never partake in the suffering that is Hadestown proper. A thought comes, so fast it scalds her. The bar. She makes a sharp inhale as she pours out their coffee; she overpours his a bit, in her excitement, but he doesn’t seem to mind.
“You hurt yourself?” He murmurs and reaches for her hand. She lets him take it but shakes her head.
“Had a thought,” she says, and he chuckles, a hint of a smile on his face. He won't like her thought, she thinks, but she blurts it out anyway.
“Put the girl in my bar,” she says; his eyes go wide and the smile vanishes. “Don’t act like you don’t know. I know you know and you know I know you know.” He’s known a long time; turning a blind eye ain’t being blind itself. Was times in the past she enjoyed him being too chickenshit to tell her he knew how she was thumbing her nose at him; but that time, it’s past. It’s got to be past, now.
“What?” Confused warble out of him; he tilts his head. “The girl—“
“Needs to remember. The bar’s got a stock of Cocytus’ water.” She smirks. “She’s clever enough. She’ll figure out what it does.” And when she does, she’ll keep drinking it. "And she’ll remember.”
“You’re asking me,” he says, and he’s gone very still, very still indeed. “To put that songbird in a position where she’ll tweet out to all our children every little thought that comes to her mind about that boy. Or…other things.” It’s the other, she knows, that he minds so muchly. Be easier for him if she could forget what he’d done to that birdie, she knows. Then he could pretend to forget too, maybe even take a sip of Lethe himself. “Could be a threat, that.”
“Could be an opportunity, too.” She grabs the edges of his coat, because he has always loved when she does. Runs her hands up and down like she hasn't for many an age, and he looks down at her doing so like its a totally alien act. “It’s more potent if you keep her lost boy a secret. Let them have their mourning songs. Natural to grieve. They lost. Letting that loss ferment does no favors.” That’s how we got like this, she thinks. Stewing in their own juices just makes everyone taste foul. "Fermenting makes us all bitter in the end."
“Doesn’t seem fair to me,” he says, voice a bit thick; annoyed, and trying hard not to be, but there it is anyway. Mr. Hades doesn’t like the thought of being seen as a mortal man, reduced to his appetites, she knows.
“Life isn’t fair,” she chirrups, and kisses his cheek. “It’s not forever. Just til he returns.” She rubs his shoulder, as if it could possibly sway him; his posture is still ramrod straight and hard as can be. “Might help keep them from rebelling if they see you like…like I do. As a man.”
“I'm not just a man,” he says. He grabs his coffee, sips at it so he doesn’t have to continue the discussion.
“No,” she agrees. She trails one hand over his side. “Never just a man.”
Would be so much the simpler if he were. Were he a mortal, and she not so much so, she could have burnt the mortality out of him. No powers come to those who’ve had that done to them, but he wouldn’t have craved power so much, then; been thankful enough to be rendered a God. Could have been at her side all year round without the complications they have, now, her and him. But that isn’t something available to them, either of them, so there's no point wishing for it. They have their duties. Always.
He grabs her coffee and his, walks to her table and sets both down with a gentle clatter. His spills a bit, on account of her over-filling. He says nothing about that, just dabs it with his coat, a silly little working man gesture that she’d forgotten she liked on him. Working-class manners, his.
They sip in silence for a while; his foot taps against hers, and she moves her away twice before she realizes he’s actually clumsily trying to play footsie, and counters for her late realization with a playful sprint at it, foot climbing high enough on his leg that she touches his knee and he actually gives her a weak little smile.
“I’ll consider,” he says. “But I won’t tolerate it, if they use it to—“
“Of course not.” She reaches across the table, clasps his hand with her own. “King can show mercy, but a King can’t accommodate anyone trying to usurp the throne, that’s the way it is.”
“You’ve always loved an underdog,” he notes; raises an eyebrow and she can hear it in his voice, the tension there.
“I’m with you,” she says, the tension in her voice every bit a match for his. “To the end of the line and beyond. That’s the truth of it.”
He grasps her hand tight, so tight a squeeze she can see the mark of it when he relents. “And I’m with you,” he murmurs. “All your days.”
“Lot of days,” she says, quiet. Time’s the one mercy they always have; they might age, but they'll never die. She’s tempted to crack that he only has half her days, but that’s still too sore a spot to poke, so she doesn’t. Instead, she nods toward him quiet and kind, as kind and small a moment as they get. “Thank you. For considering such kindness.”
He nods. He gestures towards her whiskey bottle, still sitting on the table, and she shakes her head.
“Had enough, really,” she says. “Should have poured it out up top. Just…habit, that’s all.”
“You ain’t gotta give it up,” he says, quiet. “Hard to change so much, all at once.”
“Maybe.” She looks up at him and smiles. “But it doesn’t hurt to try.”
They sip what’s left of their coffee in silence after that, but the silence isn’t so heavy as it used to be. Still isn’t comfortable, maybe, but not unbearable. His thumb rubs against her thumb, and that’s not nothing, the familiar press of his hand on her hand. It’s not much, not really; just an afternoon tête-à-tête, but it’s something, and when he leaves, going back down under the ground with her kiss on his lips and a soft smile on his face, well – it’s certainly not nothing, that.