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Merriell doesn’t like leaving his kingdom for anything, really, but it’s the Autumn Equinox and his presence is required on Olympus. He haunts the edges of the grand hall with its decadent gold ornaments and laughing deities, wine chalice in hand slowly growing warm in his grip. He’s never felt welcome up in the Mortal World, so going one layer over and ascending into the higher realms of existence is a true step out of his dark and shadowy comfort zone.
He has a bit of a reputation among the other Gods. He’s not a fool; he’s perfectly aware of the whispers in the halls of Olympus about the reclusive Lord of the Underworld- about his vicious gatekeeper in the form of a three-headed dog, about his unsavory skeletal servants. He gets where it comes from. The Underworld is, after all, a scary place, so it stands to reason the one who rules it would be scary himself.
He turns it to his advantage.
No one has approached him since the beacons were lit and the wine was poured, which is exactly how he likes it. People are never sure what to say to him in the first place, always so scared around his black robes and sharp cheekbones; his brothers always do their best to strike a conversation, but it stops dead (ha) in its tracks when they ask him about his affairs and he starts talking about wretched souls vying for redemption.
Say what you want about his job, but it keeps him from having to navigate through hours of inane small-talk.
A nymph is playing a lyre on a raised stage in the corner of the room. Merriell scans the hall with his chalice raised to his bottom lip, never taking a sip from it as a principle and as a defence tactic- no one strikes up a conversation with a man about to take a drink. It’s bright up here, too bright, the candlelight reflecting from every shining surface enough to put Helios to shame. People are always laughing up here, but it’s the hollow kind of laughter, the one that dies the second the person they’re talking to turns around, the one that comes from ego and not happiness.
Maybe that’s another reason Merriell never fit in with this crowd: he never bothers to put up a show for anyone. If he’s amused, he’ll laugh, but he hasn’t been amused by anything anyone on Olympus had told him for centuries now and he doesn’t see that changing any time soon.
A movement from the corner of his eye makes him turn his head, golden earrings clinking as he does. A young man sits down on the bench next to him, far away enough to be inconspicuous but close enough for Merriell to hear him when he speaks.
“Are you the Lord of the Underworld?” he asks bluntly, green-brown eyes looking straight ahead into the celebrating crowd as if he didn’t even notice that the words left his pink mouth.
Merriell is, for lack of better words, taken aback yet impressed. It’s been ages since someone was bold enough to approach him so unabashedly; most people are quaking in their shoes from the mere thought of him, mumbling a prayer and gesturing for good luck when his name is mentioned. This man seems to have no fear in him, not of Merriell or his position.
There’s something refreshing about it.
Merriell looks him up and down. Pink dahlias and petunias rest in wavy copper hair as if growing straight from it, laced with baby’s breath in a delicate crown. That hair glows gently in the candlelight, just like the many earrings dotting the shell of the man’s ears; the ones dangling from his earlobes are golden and inlaid with emeralds and apatite, polished to the point of being nearly see-through. He’s pale, freckles on his nose bridge (and oh, that nose), pink in his skin where Merriell is olive. His robes are white with boxy gold designs on the edges and his arms are adorned with countless bracelets, as are his fingers with rings.
He looks ethereal in the way Mortals write about; delicate like Aphrodite in his pink knuckles and fingertips, strong like Hephaestus in the muscles of his arms straining against a band made to look like a laurel leaf, glowing like Apollo in the burn of his hair, righteous like Athena in the determined set of his lips.
Lonely, like Merriell, in the line of his shoulders.
The man turns to look Merriell straight in the eye, catching him in the act; it might be a trick of the light, but Merriell almost thinks he can see specks of gold in that green-brown forest. “Are you?” he asks again, sounding impatient.
His voice feels like a fresh breeze in tall grass, like the sun beating down on tired fields. Merriell blinks and sits up straighter, trying to show authority with the way he holds his crowned head aloft. “I am,” he approves. He doesn’t take his eyes off of the man’s; he doesn’t back down, ever. “I’m Merriell.”
The man hums, turning his gaze back towards the room. Merriell feels colder suddenly, as if he stepped into the shade after being in the sun for a while. It’s ridiculous- he hasn’t felt the sun in years, yet this man’s very presence makes him want to grow. He feels desperate without wanting to, desperate to regain his attention just to feel that warmth again.
An involuntary shiver goes down his spine. What is he? What horrific thing is this man a master of for making Merriell feel like that?
He’d have recognized him by now for sure; he might not spend a lot of time in Olympus or around any of the other Gods, but he knows most of them after existing beside them long enough. Some people are kind enough to pay him the occasional visit once in a century and fill him in on all the gossip he does and doesn’t want to hear- who slept with who, who bore whose child, who slayed which horrible monster, who became a minor God. Merriell absorbs the information even when he has nothing to do with it, though it comes in handy once in a while.
Is this man a new God? Yet another one of his siblings’ many offspring? And why is he glowing brighter than any light in this hall?
Merriell is uncomfortable, though he’d die (good one!) before letting it show. He’s used to being the most intimidating thing in the room; being upstaged doesn’t feel good.
“Take me with you,” the man says suddenly, just as blunt as the first words to leave his mouth.
If he was Mortal, Merriell would pinch himself. “I’m sorry?” he asks, sure his ears are playing tricks on him. No one- and he means no one- has ever asked that of him in all of his years. His voice betrays the utter shock he feels; the man’s eyes flick towards him before settling back on the crowd, a small smile tugging at the corner of the lip Merriell can see.
(He ignores the way that tiny grin makes his heart skip a beat because it’s stupid and it feels like this guy can read his thoughts. The simple fact he managed to make Merriell display an emotion that isn’t mild amusement or boredom is victory enough for one night.)
“Take me with you,” the man repeats. He’s so casual about it, too, which is yet another thing that makes Merriell’s brain want to screech to a halt. Hey, do you mind taking me to the Underworld with you, total stranger? Can you take me to the place that makes Gods and Mortals alike shiver in fear? “I need to get out of here. As far away as possible.”
Merriell splutters. “And you want to go to the Underworld, of all places?” he asks, incredulous and knowing he’s right for being so. “You- it’s not exactly a popular vacation spot, you know. Why not hide in the Mortal World?”
The man rolls his eyes, looking annoyed; the light catches the gold in his irises for one fleeting second, and Merriell almost forgets to breathe. “I know that,” he snaps back with the heat of someone who’s been told that very same thing a hundred times and is sick of hearing it. Then, quieter, he adds, “they’d find me in the Mortal World. I need to go somewhere they won’t think to look.”
He looks insecure for the first time then, gaze dropping to the hands in his lap and voice almost leaning towards pleading. There’s a single crazy moment where Merriell thinks there’s nothing he won’t do to make him confident again, like there isn’t a stone on this Earth that he won’t turn to see the corners of those lips rise once more.
Fuck, he thinks, dread pooling in his stomach at that insane flash. This man might be the most dangerous being he’s ever encountered.
“What’s your name?” he asks, gentle, prodding.
The man turns to look at him again, earrings twinkling like stars with the movement. He regards Merriell with a careful look, as if he’s the one who should be worried between the two of them for a change, as if he hasn’t rewired every single nerve in Merriell’s brain the second he spoke those first words to him.
“Eugene,” he says eventually. Spine straightening. Shoulders back. Chin out and down. He speaks his name and becomes something brave and corrosive, something that spent years running its shoulder against a locked door and finally managed to break it apart. His eyes flash solid gold for a second, and Merriell knows it’s not just a trick of the light. There’s power in this man that terrifies him and revives him at the same time; he thinks he’s growing to love it (love him, despite knowing him for all of five minutes).
Here’s the thing: Merriell is intimately familiar with the oppressive feeling of not belonging, of eyes watching his every move and inspecting every word out of his mouth. He knows what it’s like to be held up to the light and examined for faults, knows it and hates it. It’s part of the reason he doesn’t go up to Olympus anymore. He got the chance to rule over a realm where no one watches over his shoulder or breathes down his neck; he’s lucky enough to have managed to put that feeling to the back of his mind for years now.
This is just a rude awakening, water splashed in his face to remind him that not everyone gets that privilege. The Underworld is the place where people go to be forgotten, and therefore absolved. Maybe he can give Eugene this small kindness.
If he could, Merriell would throw his head back and drain his chalice of every single drop of wine. As it stands, though, he puts it down and extends the hand that held it towards Eugene; he’s very proud of the fact that it doesn’t shake. He doesn’t feel like he’s entirely in control of his body at the moment.
“Well, Eugene,” he says, allowing himself a small grin of his own just to remind Eugene who he is and how dangerous he can be. “You’ve found yourself a hiding place.”
It feels like he’s hit square in the chest when Eugene beams at him, like a butterfly flew into his mouth and slid down his throat and into his stomach. He’s giddy with it when Eugene takes his hand, with his smile and the warmth that bursts from where their hands are touching. Trapped and happy about it.
They’re gone in a plume of black smoke before anyone can notice.
---
Nothing is as it seems with Eugene, Merriell learns. The man takes to the Underworld the way a siren takes to the water, the way grief strikes an orphan. There are moments Merriell forgets he wasn’t always there with him, somehow too used to his presence as if he was there the entire time and Merriell just didn’t notice.
It’s not like the Underworld changes, because it doesn’t change for anyone or anything, but it seems brighter with Eugene in it. He walks barefoot on the black ground and flowers bloom where his feet were, white lisianthus and spider mum bursting out of the soil and blooming in a supernatural speed; there’s no sun underground, but the lanterns burn brighter when he’s in the room. The dead souls sense it too, calming in his presence like a baby does in its mother’s arms.
Merriell finds that he’s calmer around him as well- calm, but with an underlying sense of urgency that he can’t explain but still manages to unnerve him every once in a while. It’s this urge to touch him whenever he’s around, to wrap a hand around an arm or run his fingers through that burning copper hair.
Maybe it scares him, he’s not really sure. Merriell hasn’t felt that way about anyone in centuries, actively tries his best not to; Mortals are too fragile to love- here and gone within a blink of an eye, not worth investing the time in. Gods are mostly too detached and entitled to ever really strike an actual genuine relationship with in the first place. Eugene is the first person in years who’s just him enough for Merriell to feel like there’s a chance of anything even happening between them, and he’s right here for him if he wants to make a move.
For what it’s worth, it seems like Eugene would be open to it. Merriell gave him his own chambers when he first arrived in his kingdom, yet as time went by and he got used to his new surroundings Eugene started spending more and more of his time by Merriell’s side.
He’d sit next to him while he worked, so much so that Merriell had a throne made for him- it stands next to his in the grand hall of his chambers, an ornate, delicately made thing of gold inlaid with drops of onyx. He accompanies Merriell on occasional walks around the borders of his land, which is starting to be filled with fields of white lisianthus and stephanotis. He sits next to Merriell in his private garden and reads poetry, sometimes out loud for Merriell to listen to. It’s the only place in the Underworld where his flowers bloom in colors, marigolds and hollyhocks and snapdragons between shocks of green grass; and always the baby’s breath in his hair, growing simply because of how good he is.
They forget what it’s like to be lonely. Merriell doesn’t know if it’s a good or bad thing.
Sometimes they’d sit in the garden, Eugene’s head in Merriell’s lap, and Merriell would swipe a lock of hair from Eugene’s forehead, prompting Eugene to look up at him with a smile in his eyes. It’s hard to breathe when that happens, the smell of honeysuckle and spring sneaking into the back of Merriell’s throat unbidden; he wants to tell him how grateful he is for running away and saving Merriell’s life, how the love in his chest grows every single day until he’s sure it’s about to burst. He doesn’t, but he thinks Eugene knows.
He didn’t ask Eugene what it is that he’s hiding from, wanted him to share it in his own time. One day, a month into their cohabitation (wooing? Merriell hesitates to call it that, but that’s what it feels like, and the thought makes him giddy), he told him.
“My mother,” he said, eyes closed and head tilted back so the light of the lanterns catches the glow of his eyelids just right; he looks serene, content despite the words leaving his mouth. “She wants me to be someone I’m not. They all do,” his mouth curls in distaste, and Merriell finds his hand in the grass and squeezes his fingers. “They want me to be delicate, and soft, and bring nothing but growth.”
Merriell thinks about flowers sprouting after bare feet, about baby’s breath in copper hair, about long, pale fingers. He frowns. “You don’t want that?” he asks gently, making sure to keep his voice devoid of judgement.
Eugene hums the way he often does when he’s deep in thought. “I want to do good,” he concedes. “But I’m not delicate.”
Merriell thinks of eyes flashing pure gold, of a feeling like he’d do anything to gain Eugene’s attention, of the sun beating down on tired fields. Eugene might be warm and glorious, but he’s a steel hand in a velvet glove. He’ll strangle you with flowers if it means he can be free.
“I know,” he says quietly.
He feeds Eugene pomegranate seeds from his hand the next week, fingers stained red with tangy juice that runs down his wrist in rivulets and looks like blood. Eugene eats four seeds out of his palm and looks him dead (ha) in the eyes the entire time, and Merriell feels something hot pool in his stomach.
Eugene kisses him, hovers over him in the grass and presses hungry, blood-stained kisses against an equally hungry mouth. Merriell tangles his hands in copper hair and baby’s breath and feels alive with electricity, a lightning in a bottle with how his skin burns where Eugene touches him.
“Whatever you want,” he gasps as Eugene kisses his way down his jaw to his neck, the smell of honeysuckle cloying and heavy in his lungs and baby’s breath tickling his face. “Whatever you want, I’ll give it you, Gene, I swear-”
“Give me everything,” Eugene whispers into his skin.
---
They should have known Olympus won’t leave them alone. The Gods are controlling, and vindictive, but some of them are reasonable. At least they get a warning.
They’re sitting in what’s become their shared chamber, lounged on a couch with Eugene’s head in Merriell’s lap like it usually is, Merriell’s fingers in Eugene’s hair like they usually are. They went on a walk earlier that day, flowers reviving themselves where they started to wilt without Eugene’s touch. There’s always the smell of spring nowadays, fresh and fortifying like nothing else is in the Underworld. Merriell loves it because he loves Eugene, says just that so he can see the smile it brings to Eugene’s face. There’s nothing he likes more than seeing Eugene happy, a rabid devotion in his ribcage that only rests when Eugene laughs.
“I love you,” Eugene whispers up at him, looking so reverent that Merriell thinks of Mortals at their altars.
One minute they’re alone and happy for it; the next there’s a bright light and Burgie’s there, standing in the middle of the room like he’s been there all along. Merriell tenses as Eugene sits up; he sees fear flash on his face, the first time he’s ever seen Eugene display that emotion- then his jaw sets and he’s furious, standing up with his fists clenched by his side. Merriell follows suit, takes his cue from Eugene the way he always does.
He has a short moment to be happy that they sent Burgie, of all people. Merriell knows him to be an honest, reasonable man, loathe to start a fight. Maybe they stand a chance with him.
Burgie bows to Merriell, then to Eugene. “My lords,” he greets, ice-blue eyes steady in their kindness. There’s something disarming about him that might have worked if Merriell wouldn’t’ve been able to sense Eugene’s rage next to him. “Olympus sends its regards.”
“What do you want?” Eugene snarls, a lion ready to pounce. Again, Merriell remembers how terrifying he can be when he wants to. There’s really nothing delicate about him.
Burgie has the dignity to look surprised, having expected Merriell to speak first in his domain. It makes Merriell want to laugh; Eugene is Lord of the Underworld just as much as he is, has ruled over their kingdom well over the past few months. Merriell has been planning to get him a crown of his own, had ideas that didn’t involve baby’s breath but bone. It scares him to think that he might not get to give it to him.
“Your mother worries about you,” Burgie says, quickly swallowing his surprise. “She wants you back by her side where you belong.”
The implication that Eugene belongs anywhere that isn’t where he wants to be makes Merriell’s hackles rise, nails digging into his palms where he’s doing his best not to shout. Eugene beats him to it, though, bares his teeth and growls. His eyes turn solid gold, the baby’s breath in his hair wilting; it doesn’t smell like honeysuckle and spring anymore, but of foxglove and wolf’s bane, miasma in the air. “I belong here,” he spits from between his teeth, and Merriell could fall to his knees and weep at that alone.
Burgie sighs, shoulders slumping. “I told them as much,” he mumbles. Merriell blinks in surprise, overtaken with a sudden appreciation for Burgie and his kind, understanding heart. “I’ll leave you be, but be warned: the next person to come asking for you won’t be as lenient,” he warns gravely, eyes flashing with sympathy.
Merriell steps forward to thank him, but he’s gone before he can even open his mouth, a flash blinding them momentarily.
It’s quiet in the seconds after. Merriell can hear the blood rushing in his veins, ringing in his ears. Pressure popping. He inhales, blinks a few times to clear the black spots dancing in his vision all of a sudden. He feels like there was pressure on his spine that was lifted and he can stand tall now, but all it's given him is a headache and a slightly sick feeling in his stomach.
Then he hears crying- gut-wrenching sobs coming from Eugene where he has his hands clapped over his mouth and fat golden tears running down his cheeks.
It’s like someone shot an arrow through his heart, breaking his flesh and piercing through his lungs until he can’t breathe properly. Panic rises in him as he wraps his arms around Eugene and leads him until they’re both sitting on the marble floor; panic over the idea that Eugene will be taken away from him, over Eugene crying, over being helpless in the grand scheme of things.
The Gods are controlling, and vindictive. If Eugene’s mother wants him back, she’ll have him one way or another.
---
In the end it’s Eugene’s mother who comes to claim him, appearing in their chamber much like Burgie did. She looks regal and righteously furious in her green and golden robes and wheat woven in her hair, and Merriell hates her with a burning passion.
“We need to talk,” his mother starts, voice cold and commanding. She holds her head high just like every other Olympian Merriell has ever met, convinced of her superiority by birthright. She hasn’t looked at Merriell once, eyes are locked on Eugene in all his defiant glory. “In private.”
Merriell could laugh. “Not gonna happen,” he says- asserts, really, with how definitive and final his voice is. In love or not, he’s still Lord of the Underworld; nothing leaves his realm without his permission, especially not those who don’t want to leave in the first place.
Eugene’s mother turns her eyes on him at that, gaze so full of hatred it’s almost impressive. Merriell is used to people looking at him with fear, with disgust, and recently (miraculously) with love, but it’s been a long time since someone hated him and didn’t make any effort to hide it. He might’ve been threatened by it if he didn’t hate her just as much. He juts his chin out, meets her gaze head-on.
“This has nothing to do with you, Hades,” she sneers, spitting his name out like it’s something vile. “This is between me and my son. I do not engage with those who stoop low enough to kidnap someone to entertain them.”
White-hot rage simmers through Merriell’s veins at the mere implication of that; so this is what people on Olympus have been thinking of them, that Merriell kidnapped Eugene just to be his little bird in a cage, just because he was bored and needed company and didn’t care who filled the part-
“I asked him to take me,” Eugene says just as coldly, loud and clear, voice steady even when Merriell can see him trembling with anger. He’s so proud of him in that moment, of the strength to defy those who can hurt him the most and stand fast in his resolve. He presses a quick kiss to his knuckles where he’s holding his hand, feels Eugene squeeze back. “I wanted to go. He did not kidnap me, he did not enchant me, he did not ensnare me-”
“Eugene,” his mother interrupts, scandalized.
“-I love him,” Eugene finishes.
It rings in the room, a confession that Merriell had heard before yet seems novel in this very moment. He’s almost crushed by a wave of love so strong it feels like he’s going to drown, honeysuckle and bone in his ribcage until he’s drunk on it. He’s seized by the sudden knowledge that he’d do anything for this man, this ridiculous, brave, kind man who makes his life better just by being in it; no matter where they take him, they’ll fight on both ends to get back to each other.
He reluctantly steps outside while the love in his chest still makes him malleable enough in Eugene’s hands to do what he asks, but not before he presses a kiss to Eugene’s temple just to see the thunderous look his mother gives him.
It might take hours, it might take minutes; voices are raised behind the door every once in a while, but he can’t catch what they’re saying (doesn’t want to, lives in fear of what might be said in that room). Eventually Eugene opens the door, eyes red and swollen in a way that rips at Merriell’s heart and makes him want to kill anything that could ever make Eugene sad.
He rushes to his side, cradles his dear face in his hands and smears away golden tears; places a gentle kiss on the corner of a trembling mouth and hates the way Eugene’s fingers clutch at his biceps. He leans their foreheads together and lets Eugene’s breathing calm enough for him to speak, expecting and dreading what he might say.
When he does talk, it brings his world crashing down around them.
“We have three days.”
---
They don’t leave their chambers those three days, stay curled up around each other with every inch of skin pressed together. They cry and kiss and fuck and make love and sleep, and in between they make promises they’ll die keeping.
I won’t forget you. (I can’t.)
I’ll never stop loving you. (I can’t.)
I’ll come back. (I have to.)
I’ll wait for you. (I have to. Gods, I wish I didn’t.)
I ate the pomegranate seeds. (I’m so happy I did.)
I love you. (I’ve loved you since-)
I know. (Me too, me too-)
In the end, Merriell is left alone.
---
They say the Lord of the Underworld spends months of every year wandering his vast kingdom watering white flowers, keeping them alive so he can live too. They say he cries tears of gold and plants baby’s breath in his personal garden. They say his heart is incomplete, torn every year when his one true love leaves him and rejoins his family on Olympus.
They say the Lord of the Underworld loves fiercely and wildly; he isn’t delicate, even with the flowers growing out of his hair. They say he reads poems in his garden and dedicates each one to his husband, so far below him but always in his heart. They say he wears a crown of bones wherever he goes, whether he’s with his one true love or not.
The ground grows cold in the Winter, the sky dim and heavy with grey clouds. Nothing grows; a love like that steals all warmth from the world, keeps anything that’s alive to itself, fueles itself with all it can hold.
A flash of golden light. Merriell turns around, and he’s in love.
“Hi,” Eugene says as he falls into his arms.